Prairie Fire Read online

  A murmur ran through the troops, and the Cowboy waited for it to die down before he spoke again. "That's all?"

  "Uh-huh."

  Someone on his left cleared his throat in preparation for a question.

  "What is this? I mean, what the hell would they be doing with a bale of chicken wire, for cryin' out loud?"

  The Cowboy scrutinized him for a moment, leaden eyes invisible behind the mirrored glasses, and another of his soldiers beat him to the answer.

  "Shit, it's obvious. They're going hard."

  There were sporadic chuckles, but a growing number of his guns appeared uneasy at the prospect.

  "We ought to get in there and mop 'em up before they have a chance to lay an ambush for us," came a fourth voice. "If we do it now, we could just walk on in..."

  "And get your ass shot off," the Cowboy finished for him. Scowling, he surveyed the ring of sullen faces. "A daylight rush is something we do not need. Right now, we've got them under siege, outnumbered and cut off. I don't intend to give up that advantage just because a few of you are getting sunburned."

  The Cowboy listened to the uneasy muttering again, but mixed with cautious laughter now. The heat of early afternoon was working on them all. But they were professionals, and he was confident that he could hold them in formation.

  "We could drop a couple of cocktails on the roof," somebody ventured from his right. "Burn the house down and pop 'em when they run out."

  "If they do," a grinning comrade added.

  "Great idea," the Cowboy told them. "White you're at it, let's send up some flares to go along with the smoke signals, shall we? Wouldn't want a fireman in the state to miss it."

  "What's the story, then?"

  "The story hasn't changed," their leader snapped, allowing another flash of anger to show through. "We wait for nightfall, and we take them according to the plan. No fuss, no muss. And no damn signal fires out here to draw the cops like moths around a candle."

  "I wonder how they tumbled to the plastique," someone asked.

  "No matter. It was worth a shot. Forget it."

  "Better not forget who's got it now."

  The Cowboy flashed a grin devoid of humor.

  "What's C-4 to them?" he asked. "It might as well be Silly Putty. Hell, I hope they try to rig it up and do us all a favor."

  The Cowboy was in control again. He could feel it. They would follow orders, he knew, as long as they possessed an illusion of participation.

  The Cowboy was a natural leader, with a talent for manipulating his subordinates.

  But now, in spite of every possible delay, the time had come to deal with his superiors. And something told the gunman that they would not be so understanding or so easily manipulated as his button men.

  The Cowboy was supremely confident of his ability, but confidence was not contagious. His employers had been shaken by the man in black, and nothing short of his annihilation would put their minds at ease. They were already chafing at his overlong delay, unable to understand why he waited once the target was in sight.

  The Cowboy scowled as he climbed inside the Lincoln. These were different men, unlike the others he was used to working for. He was accustomed to the mobsters and the mafiosi, men who killed or hired killers in pursuit of monetary profit. These the Cowboy understood, because their motivation was identical to his.

  But with his new employers, there was a difference.

  Beneath the businesslike facade, he sensed a certain dedication to a cause that marked them as fanatics of a sort. He had done business with their kind before, of course — the wealthy headcases and professional haters who refused to get their own hands dirty. He understood them, to a point, but they were unpredictable if someone stepped on their obsession.

  Reluctantly, he snared the mobile telephone receiver, buzzed the operator, waited while she patched him through. A rough, familiar voice responded.

  "Yeah?"

  "It's Hunter. Is he there?"

  "Hang on a sec."

  After several moments another male voice on the line, softer, but with steel beneath the velvet.

  "Yes?"

  "I'm checking in with nothing to report. The party's scheduled for tonight."

  "We are uncomfortable with the delay."

  "It's unavoidable. I want to take the guest of honor by surprise."

  "It seems a little late for that."

  He read the condemnation in the other's voice, but the Cowboy forged ahead, undaunted.

  "That was just a fluke. Somebody got their signals crossed is all. We're ready for him this time."

  "I hope so."

  "Don't worry about it."

  "I have to. Nothing can proceed until you take delivery."

  "It's as good as done."

  Momentary silence on the other end, finally broken by the graveyard voice.

  "We cannot tolerate another failure, Hunter. Be advised."

  "I understand."

  "We knew you would."

  The line went dead, and he was quick to cradle the receiver, anxious to sever the polluting link. He wondered what it was about his late employers that made him feel unclean.

  The message had been crystal clear, at any rate. The Cowboy had to bring his quarry in or become the hunted. There could be no third alternative.

  He thought of it as an incentive rather than a threat, and there was no fear in him. Every job was life or death, without exception, for the quarry and the hunter. He was not afraid of targets that could shoot back, and he gave his all to every job regardless of the promises or threats from his employer.

  Still, it rankled him to have these foreigners insult him, treat him like a common soldier. When the job was done — and after he had pay in hand — the Cowboy would be pleased to teach them all a lesson.

  It could advance his growing reputation if he handled it correctly, and encourage future clients to regard him as the true professional he was. The Cowboy smiled, reflecting that he might be able to pick up some money on the deal if he could find a patriotic backer who would pay to have him do what he intended to perform for nothing.

  The hunter stopped himself, returned his full attention to the problem. He had a contract to fulfill, and he had fumbled once — no, twice — already. Two strikes gone, and on the third one he was out. All the way.

  He shifted mental gears, now concentrating on the runner and his temporary hosts. It mattered little if there were three people or a half a dozen in the farmhouse. Either way, they all belonged to him, and he would have them soon enough.

  It was amusing to imagine them inside there, busy trying to defend the indefensible. A fortress made of chicken wire, defended with a blunderbus and pitchfork. It was enough to make him laugh out loud, and he surrendered to the moment as he left the Continental.

  The troops were watching him suspiciously, no doubt concerned about the sanity of anyone who started laughing in the present circumstances. Never mind. They were proficient at their work, but none possessed the full capacity to understand his feelings.

  He checked the sun's position overhead, confirmed the hour with his Rolex. Several hours yet until the darkness came to cover his advance. An afternoon of waiting, watching.

  The Cowboy turned and recognized the wheelman standing closest to him, called him over.

  "I make it thirty miles to town."

  The driver nodded.

  "All right, you take a couple of these heroes in and get some burgers — whatever. Something cold to drink. Keep it soft."

  "Okay."

  The driver turned away, retreating toward the final car in line and beckoning to some of his colleagues as he left. Two of them were handing over their automatic weapons to the others, moving toward the Caddy, climbing in.

  The Cowboy let them go, dismissed them from his thoughts. They would obey instructions because they feared his anger. And they would return with food and soft drinks, passing up the liquor stores and bars for now, because they knew anything that slowed their refle
xes on the eve of combat could be fatal.

  The hour was coming, slow but sure, and every man among his troops would be prepared, primed to kill on sight.

  He thought again of those inside the weathered farmhouse, huddled in the shadows and preparing their defenses. Let them do their best; in the long run, it would not extend their worthless lives an hour. If anything, it made the game more interesting for the hunter.

  He considered it a challenge, and the Cowboy knew that he was equal to it. He was looking forward to the final play with grim anticipation.

  14

  Bolan finished stripping down the rifle and arranged its parts along the coffee table, ready to begin a piece-by-piece examination. The weapon was a Winchester Model 90, the most popular slide-action rifle ever made and a genuine classic. Although production was discontinued in the thirties, thousands of the guns were still at large. But Bolan had not seen or handled one since boyhood days in Massachusetts.

  Assuming that the one in his possession was among the last produced — a perilous assumption in itself — the rifle must be more than fifty years old.

  He sighted through the twenty-four-inch octagonal barrel to satisfy himself that there were no obstructions. There were enough inherent risks in the coming battle without having his weapons detonate and blind or kill him when he fired the opening shot.

  Finally satisfied, the soldier turned his scrutiny to the rifle's other components, wiping down each part in turn with strips of oily cloth before he reassembled them.

  Bolan raised the slender Winchester, found it almost feather light compared to all the military hardware he was used to. A single fluid motion brought the weapon to his shoulder. He swept the muzzle in a wide arc, settling on a clock above the mantle. Bolan pumped the slide action smoothly, squeezed the trigger gently in a practice fire. The hammer fell, impacting on the firing pin with a resounding snap.

  Bolan rested the rifle in his lap, then reached across the table and retrieved the single box of rim-fire ammunition Jason had been able to locate. He shook the container experimentally, frowning as he upended it and spilled the little cylinders of brass onto the table, counting swiftly.

  Seventeen rounds of .22-caliber Long Rifle ammo lay scattered in front of him.

  Seventeen cartridges.

  Fewer than two dozen.

  They were newer than the rifle, certainly, but still of unknown age and dubious reliability. Under the circumstances, he could not afford to waste a single one of them in test fire, or for sighting in his weapon.

  It would have to do.

  He thumbed a dozen rounds into the tubular magazine beneath the barrel, pumped the slide to bring a round into the firing chamber. Carefully, he eased the hammer down and set the safety, finally topped the magazine off with a thirteenth rimfire cartridge. Just for luck.

  The .22's effective range was tabulated at a mile, but he was counting on a firing distance of less than thirty feet. No matter where the enemy attempted to invade their little bunker, he would be inside the soldier's killing range.

  The little .22 was often disregarded as a killer once the target grew beyond the rodent class, but the Executioner knew otherwise. The .22's ballistic properties made it particularly lethal. Once bullets were inside the body, ricochets were commonplace, with the tiny slugs caroming off bones and drilling channels through a dozen vital organs. A .45 or Magnum bullet might go through a human target, right, but the little .22 could turn his guts into a sieve.

  Satisfied that he had done his best, Bolan pocketed the five remaining cartridges and turned his full attention to the task of finalizing his defensive preparations.

  On the coffee table to his right, the soldier had arranged the brick of C-4, the lantern he had taken from the barn, several empty vegetable cans, the box of roofing nails, a carving knife and several rolls of tape.

  From the pocket of his overalls, he withdrew a tissue-paper parcel and unwrapped it gently, laying out its contents on the table with his other gear. Neatly ranked before him on the table were four blasting caps — the one retrieved from Jason Chadwick's pickup and three others, which he had located in the barn. As was the case with the rimfire ammunition in his .22 repeater, there would be no opportunity for testing in advance of combat.

  They would work, or they would not. But either way, the warrior had to try.

  He pulled the lantern close and satisfied himself that it had been refilled to adequate capacity.

  Then Bolan took the carving knife and quartered the loaf of high explosive into roughly equal segments. Three of these he shoved aside; the fourth was quickly molded to the lantern's globe, secured in place with strips of black electrician's tape. In the center of the charge, he cut a narrow slit and filled it with the newest blasting cap, tamped the lethal firecracker in its place so that a quarter inch remained exposed. That done, he cut two strips of white adhesive tape and plastered them across the blasting cap. In darkness, when the lamp was lit, the pristine cross would give him something he could shoot at with a fair degree of accuracy.

  When he was finished Bolan began production of some crude offensive weaponry to complete the little stockpile. He dropped a handful of the wicked roofing nails inside each of the empty cans. Next, he stood a twist of C-4 upright in each can, and filled the space around the goop with more nails, so that a square inch of the lethal putty was exposed on top. With each in turn, he wedged an ancient blasting cap into the plastic charge, approximately half of each protruding above the rim of the can.

  The lids were ready for him; each now bore a hole dead center, punched by Toni with a hammer and screwdriver. When the metal discs were fitted into place and heavily secured with tape, the primer caps extended up above the lids like lethal nipples.

  Like percussion detonators, right, prepared to blow on impact, spewing twisted tin and roofing nails as gruesomely effective as the latest military frag grenade.

  Assuming, sure, that he could pitch the loaded cans with any kind of accuracy under battlefield conditions. And assuming, always, that the blasting caps would blow in any case.

  He left the homespun charges in a lineup on the coffee table, took the rifle with him as he rose to leave the living room. It was time to check the others, do his best to guarantee that everything was ready when the hostile troops arrived in force.

  By Bolan's calculation, there was little better than an hour of light remaining. Anything they accomplished in their own defense would have to be achieved within that hour.

  They were swiftly running out of time.

  And with the darkness, Bolan knew, the killing would begin.

  * * *

  Toni Chadwick tugged the strip of chicken wire taut against the window frame. Then she hammered a nail in place, securing the upper corner. Yet another tug, another roofing nail, and she stepped back to admire her handiwork. When she was satisfied that it would give them warning of a break-in, she began tacking down the edges.

  Standing there before the window, with the curtains necessarily open wide, the lady felt exposed and vulnerable. Her skin was crawling with the knowledge that a hostile stranger might be watching her, examining her every movement. And if that observer crouching in the corn grew nervous, if his trigger finger twitched involuntarily...

  Her hands were trembling, interfering with her work, and Toni put the fear behind her with a Herculean effort. In its place, she concentrated on the stranger who had stumbled in from nowhere to upset her life completely.

  Frank LaMancha.

  He was not entirely strange to her, of course — not after their surprise encounter in the barn. Toni felt the heat and color rising unbidden in her cheeks. For a frozen moment of eternity, they had been as close as soul and body ever could be, but at every other level he was still a mystery, exotic and enigmatic.

  Frank LaMancha.

  The name itself inspired a host of questions. Toni never doubted for a moment that it was an alias of some kind. Still, it seemed to fit the stranger perfectly.


  A thousand different questions crowded in on her all at once, until her inner turmoil almost canceled external fear. She wanted to know anything and everything about him: who and what he was, his mission, how he came to be inside their barn in handcuffs, wounded, with a troop of killers on his trail.

  LaMancha was a soldier of some kind; she saw it clearly in the way he took command as if by natural right or instinct. He was familiar with the world of guns and bombs and killing; it reflected in his eyes and in his many scars, the way he handled weapons and directed others in the preparation of defenses.

  He was a professional at this, no doubt about it, but she wondered whether his ability could compensate for their inadequate supply of weapons. Take the chicken wire, for instance; while she understood the logic, Toni knew the flimsy makeshift screen would never stop a determined enemy. It would not even slow him down.

  She felt the fear returning, frowned and went ahead with it. She would complete the job because he asked her to, if for no other reason.

  Strange, the way this man from nowhere had imposed himself upon her life, reviving in several hours the sensations that had been dormant since Jerry. Toni had succeeded in suppressing her desires — or very nearly so — after that abhorrent Friday night.

  There were stirrings underneath the surface ice, of course, the transient throbbing of remembered love and pain, but she had been in charge.

  Until yesterday.

  The stranger dressed in black had literally burst her cold protective shell, a human cannonball demolishing the igloo Toni had constructed for herself. He had released a whirlwind of emotions, and the lady knew that it was too late now to duck the storm.

  Whatever he had started, she would have to see it through.

  Providing that she got the chance, of course. And at the moment, it was doubtful that she would survive the night.

  An unexpected sound behind her startled Toni and she jumped involuntarily, striking her thumb with the hammer.

  "Damn it!"