Prairie Fire Read online

  "I swear that sleeping makes you hungrier than running," Jason said, and he was smiling for the first time since their gunpoint confrontation in the hayloft.

  "Everything was perfect. Thank you," Bolan told the women.

  "We've got work to do," Jason said to no one in particular.

  "They'll have the numbers on their side," Bolan said. "We need an equalizer. Are there any other guns around the place?"

  "I've got a .22," the farmer told him, "but I haven't used it in a coon's age."

  "Nothing else?"

  Jason Chadwick shook his head ruefully.

  "I never went in much for hunting."

  Bolan looked around the kitchen, and his mind was seeking alternatives, a way to make up for the firepower they lacked. The rack of kitchen knives he had observed earlier would not give them any range. And it if came to fighting hand-to-hand, he feared they were lost.

  The soldier reached beneath his chair, retrieved the lump of plastique. He weighed it in his palm, already calculating the defensive and offensive possibilities.

  "We'll get some mileage out of this," he said. "I wish we had a few more blasting caps."

  Across from him, the farmer banged an open palm against the tabletop, making both women jump.

  "We've got 'em!" he declared, excited now. "I had to blow some stumps last fall, and there were two or three caps left over."

  Bolan felt a cautious surge of hope. The time factor could be a problem, certainly, and Jason's caps might prove defective from exposure or old age — but it was still a chance.

  "Where are they?"

  "In the barn." The farmer scowled, remembering the danger outside. "I didn't want them in the house." Another hesitation, then, reluctantly: "I'll fetch 'em in."

  Bolan raised a cautionary hand.

  "Hold off a while." The military mind was racing now, envisioning a makeshift fortress where the house had stood. "We'll need some other hardware if you've got it."

  He started running down the checklist, pausing periodically while Jason mulled availability of items and suggested an alternative from time to lime. When they were finished, Bolan felt he had the makings of his fortress well in hand.

  If he could find the necessary hardware in the barn and bring it safely to the house, escaping the hunters waiting for him in the fields outside.

  They had a chance, but only that. Success would now rely on luck and on the jungle fighter's skill in almost equal measure.

  And he had a plan. But it required the soldier to transform himself. He took it one step at a time.

  "I could use a shower."

  Jason looked at him as if he doubted Bolan's sanity, but something in the warrior's face and manner stilled his questions.

  "Soap and towels are in the bathroom."

  Bolan thanked him, rose and left the breakfast table. He could feel their eyes on him as he cleared the kitchen door and passed into the living room, finally out of view.

  Inside the little bathroom, Bolan closed the door, not bothering to lock it. Gingerly he peeled the skinsuit off and dropped it in a corner.

  When he finished cleaning up, the soldier would require a change of skin. It was a necessary part of the facade.

  He turned on the shower, adjusted it until the heat was slightly short of scalding, finally stepped inside the tub. He let the stinging spray wash over him, the rivulets removing grime accumulated during two days in the fields. At first, the water pooled around his feet was murky, but after several moments it ran clear again.

  After a few minutes, Bolan cut the hot water off and switched to an icy spray that left him shivering and wide awake. It drove the final cobwebs back and out of mind, removing any drowsiness his sleep had left behind.

  He was reaching for the knob to turn the water off when Bolan heard the bathroom door swing open softly, close again. Jungle instincts sprang to action, and he whipped the plastic shower curtain back — eliciting a startled little cry from Toni Chadwick.

  Standing there, a stack of neatly folded clothing in her arms, the lady took in everything at once and quickly turned away with flaming cheeks.

  "I'm sorry. Really, I..."

  "Forget it."

  Toni never saw the grin that softened Bolan's face. He killed the water, snared a towel from the rack, and snugged it tight around his waist like a sarong.

  "This isn't me. I mean, I don't go barging in on men in showers." Toni hesitated. "Are you decent?"

  "More or less."

  Her eyes were on the wound in Bolan's side, a little worried frown upon her face. She reached out for him, caught herself, withdrew the hand. Selfconsciously, she offered the clothing. Bolan saw a denim shirt and overalls, some underwear.

  "These are Jason's," she explained. "The fit may leave a lot to be desired, but still... I thought you could use a change."

  "Thank you."

  Toni made a little gesture of dismissal, shifting restlessly from one foot to another as she stood in front of him. Unconsciously, her eyes were wandering across his chest and shoulders, studying the musculature and the patchwork pattern of his battle scars. A moment later, realizing he had caught her at it, she was coloring again, retreating toward the bathroom door.

  "I guess that's everything," she said.

  "I guess."

  The silence stretched between them, making Toni even more uncomfortable, and Bolan finally let her off the hook.

  "I'll only be a minute. Thanks again."

  As she closed the door behind her, Bolan's face relaxed into another smile. Some kind of lady, right, for damn sure.

  In another time, another set of circumstances...

  Bolan cut it off before the fantasy could put down roots. There was no time for gentleness or rest and recreation in this hellground.

  Moving briskly, grimacing in silence at the lancing pain between his ribs, he started dressing. Another kind of uniform — and Toni had been right about the fit — but it was what he needed at the moment. With a little luck, it just might be enough to see him through.

  12

  "You really think this'll work?"

  "It's worth a try. Besides, I may spot something we didn't think of."

  Bolan gave a final tug to the suspenders of his borrowed overalls and snugged the straw hat on his head. The sleeves of the work shirt were rolled to his elbows, but there was nothing he could do about the high-water cuffs of his pants. Close up, he was a gawkish parody of a farmer, but at a distance...

  "Don't expose yourself," he said to no one in particular, "but keep an eye out. There's a chance I may need cover fire on the return trip."

  Jason made a jabbing motion with his shotgun.

  "I'm on top of it," he promised.

  "Okay. It's going to take some time, but I'll be back as soon as possible. If I run into any opposition, you'll be hearing from me."

  He left them in the kitchen, lined against the window, and crossed the covered porch. Emerging into morning sunlight, Bolan hesitated on the wooden steps, his narrowed eyes adjusting once more to the glare. For what he had in mind, the soldier needed every operating sense at full efficiency.

  It was a daring plan, fraught with peril, but the Executioner was far from reckless. He had calculated; odds and angles, tried to weigh the variables before determining his course of action. In the end, he could not come up with any viable alternative.

  He was relying on "role camouflage," a talent first acquired in Vietnam and later polished to an art form in the urban jungles.

  In Nam, the Executioner had once been trapped behind hostile lines, cut off from all communication with his comrades. Cornered, he had donned a coolie hat and black pajamas, crouching in the middle of an open rice field while the Cong patrolled the roads around him. Through an endless afternoon he waited, with a hundred pairs of savage eyes surrounding him, until the twilight offered him a chance to slip away. And while the soldier should have been picked out at once, betrayed by stature as a foreigner, no enemy had challenged him. The sav
ages had seen what they'd expected, overlooked the infiltrator in their very midst.

  With any luck at all, he just might pull it off again. No need to squat for hours in the open now; it was a simple walk, no more than forty yards from house to barn, and it was harder to identify a moving target every time. But still...

  He cast a final glance around the barnyard, taking in the silent fields on either side. The corn could hide a multitude of snipers, any one of them prepared to cut him down — but Bolan had surrendered choice the moment he left the shelter of the porch.

  The fact was unavoidable; he had to go ahead.

  He pulled the hat brim lower, making sure to keep the movement casual as he put his face in shadow. Slouching to take inches off his height, the warrior moved out, ambling across the open ground as if he had nowhere to go and a lifetime to get there. Attitude was half the battle if he meant to carry off his daring ploy.

  Before he took a step, the military mind was reaching out ahead of him, anticipating obstacles and dangers.

  Jason had seen no one in the barn that morning, but he might have missed a silent sniper in the hayloft. Likewise, there had been time and opportunity enough for the hunters to install a team to the barn after Bolan had defused the Dodge and took their burden inside the house.

  They could be waiting for him in the barn, yeah, and if they were...

  Then what?

  There would be nothing he could do about it, other than to warn the people in the house. If ambushed, he would have to make his dying loud enough that Jason and the women could prepare themselves for an attack. He had to let them have that chance.

  And even as the thought materialized, he shrugged it off. The Executioner was nothing if not realistic, and he knew the farmer's family would be dead without him. They had seen and heard too much by now for his pursuers to show any mercy. Their only chance for living lay with Bolan — and the jungle fighter knew that chance was slim enough already.

  Bolan was halfway to the barn when he heard the screen door bang like the crack of a pistol shot against its frame. Bolan froze. Then he heard the sound of running footsteps closing on him from behind. Toni Chadwick called to him, attempting to disguise the tension in her voice.

  "Uncle Jason, wait for me!"

  The soldier cursed under his breath, and turned to face her. There was nothing he could do out there on open ground to turn her back without revealing his intent.

  "I'm glad I caught you." Toni's face was flushed, her breathing heavier than brief exertion justified. "I'll walk with you."

  Stiffly, covering his irritation with an effort, Bolan nodded, pivoting and continuing in the direction of the barn. The lady fell in step beside him, looped an arm through his, a carefree woman in the company of a favored older relative.

  But her aptitude did not soften the soldier's anger. All the odds were out of kilter now. If they walked into an ambush, it would be impossible for Bolan to protect her.

  He was conscious of the prairie sun above him, beating down on his head and shoulders, baking into him. He had the sudden feeling of a specimen beneath a magnifying glass. He shook off the feeling of defeatism as they reached the questionable safety of the barn.

  Inside, the sudden shade was cool and soothing. Bolan stood rock still for a moment, combat-ready eyes surveying the interior. He scanned the stalls, the workbench, searched the loft as best he could from down below.

  As far as he could tell, they were alone.

  He turned to Toni Chadwick now, his face and voice a study in control.

  "You should have stayed inside,'' he told her simply.

  "Don't be angry." Toni's manner bore no trace of meek subservience. "I couldn't let you come out here alone."

  "You might have killed us both. If someone had been waiting here..."

  "I thought of that," she interrupted him, determined. "And I knew it didn't matter. If they kill you, they kill us all."

  Hesitation, and the lady's voice was softer as she finished with a question.

  "Do you really think we've got a chance?"

  He nodded solemnly, suppressed a sudden urge to reach for her and draw her close against him, shelter her.

  "We do," he answered, "if we can be ready for them when they hit. I wouldn't want to pick a favorite, but we've got a chance. Just that — no more."

  "Ouch." She grimaced. "You don't pull your punches."

  "We're in this together," Bolan told her. "You deserve to know the odds."

  "Okay." She straightened, shoulders back. "Let's get started."

  Bolan found a gunny sack beneath the workbench and began to fill it with the items from his shopping list. He bagged a hammer and a five-pound box of roofing nails, a pair of wirecutters, and a twenty-foot electrical extension cord.

  The bale of chicken wire was where the farmer had predicted, and although Bolan had been hoping for barbed wire instead, he thought it would be adequate to serve his purpose.

  From a shelf above the workbench, he retrieved a dusty lantern with perhaps a pint of kerosene inside. And finally, rounding off his survey, Bolan chose a sickle and an ax from the assorted tools, deposited them in his bulging sack.

  He turned to find the lady watching him intently, with a kind of sick expression on her face. Her eyes were focused on the ax protruding from his bag.

  "I don't know if I can handle this," she told him candidly.

  "You'll handle it," the Executioner assured her. "When the action starts, there isn't any time to be afraid."

  She hesitated, eyes downcast, embarrassed, like a penitent preparing to confess her sins. The soldier sensed a conflict going on inside her, and he did not push, preferring that she get around to it in her own way and time.

  "I wish we had more time," she said at last. "To talk, and... get to know each other."

  "This is all the time there is."

  "I know that, dammit."

  And the lady stepped into his arms, her own around his neck as she surprised him with a burning kiss. The soldier hesitated for a second, conscious of her body pressed against his, the electric charge that seemed to surge between them, then his own arms closed around her tightly.

  They clung together for a long, loving moment, and the Executioner was first to break the contact. He held Toni away from him, looking deep into the shining eyes. He saw the desire in her face and something in himself responded ardently, but caution bora of battlefield experience restrained him.

  "Toni, listen..."

  "No," she told him flatly, interrupting. "You said it yourself; this is all the time we have. Tonight we may..." She hesitated, swallowed hard around the knot of fear and tension in her throat, and tried again. "I don't intend to waste my last few hours by denying what 1 feel."

  He looked at her and understood the yearning that so often gripped combatants on the eve of mortal conflict. Something in the human animal demanded it, an affirmation of survival in the face of violent death.

  And was there more to it than that? The soldier neither knew nor cared. He shared the lady's urge, her primal passion.

  "They're expecting us inside," he said, and knew before he finished speaking that it sounded lame.

  "So they are."

  She was unbuttoning the woolen shirt and shrugging out of it, presenting Bolan with a little glimpse of heaven. Nervous fingers took the belt and zipper of her jeans by storm, and as he watched, she peeled them off and stepped away from them.

  The combination of reserve and animal abandon in her attitude was stirring Bolan, whipping at his senses, and almost before he knew it he was struggling out of Jason Chadwick's overalls.

  They stood together and Bolan gathered her into his arms. Bolan could not mask the grimace of pain from his recent wounds as the lady locked her legs around his waist. But the pleasure surmounted anything else he felt in the fevered moment. Bolan entered with a driving thrust that wrung a gasp of pleasure from them both. She matched his ardor, wriggling, straining, head thrown back and fingers clenched in
to the muscles of his shoulders.

  The moment was too fiery, their passion too intense to be prolonged. Within seconds of each other they exploded, clinging desperately together.

  Afterward they did not move, reluctant to forsake the warmth of human contact. Toni shivered, not from any chill, and Bolan felt her tears upon his shoulder. When she spoke, her lips were pressed against his chest, the words a muffled whisper.

  "God, it's been so long. There's been no one... since Jerry."

  Bolan's heart went out to her. He was well attuned to loneliness of soul and body, to the loss of someone close enough to be a part of him. The jungle fighter had been through it all, in spades.

  He knew what she was feeling, right. They had much more in common than the momentary sharing of some private space.

  "I know it's crazy, everything considered, but I'm glad you're here."

  "So am I."

  He felt the power returning, and the lady felt it, too, her dark eyes widening in surprise.

  Toni let herself accommodate his movements, picking up the tempo on her own. The dance began again and both of them surrendered to it, lost in one another.

  They were alive, damn right. And if the night, another hour, found them otherwise, they would have this to carry with them into darkness everlasting. The delicious friction of their coupling struck a spark, their labored breathing fanned it into flame no hostile shadow could extinguish.

  Bolan and the lady were alive, and living large. Together.

  If it came to that, their dying would be large, as well.

  13

  "We could have taken them, no sweat. They were sitting ducks, but you said..."

  The Cowboy interrupted his observer, and he made no effort to conceal the irritation in his voice.

  "I know what I said. Get on with it. What were they doing?"

  "Cleaning out the barn, from what I could tell. They took some things back with them to the house.''

  Involuntarily, a muscle started ticking in the Cowboy's jaw.

  "What kind of things?"

  The spotter shrugged. "Nothing special. Just a hopsack — I couldn't see inside it — and a pitchfork. Oh, some kind of chicken wire or something — in a roll, you know?"