said.
“Her word and the word of Cooper, the guy who was with her.”
“Who the fuck is he?”
“I checked him out. He’s a retired Marine, lists his current occupation as ‘security consultant.’ Seems to have some pull with Justice and his record’s spotless.” As usual, Kurtzman had done an outstanding job setting up Bolan’s cover identity.
“Besides,” Buck said, “all the evidence backs up their story. The Ag Con guy fired four shots into the wooded draw where Kemp and Cooper were riding their horses. He was either poaching and thought the horses were elk, in which case he was even blinder than he was stupid, or the man was trying to kill them, which is what I’d say it looks like he was trying to do.”
“You’re going to write it up as an accident,” Gould said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Buck asked.
“I said you’re going to write it up as an accident. The man was out poaching, mistook the horses for elk and forced Cooper to return fire.”
“I’ll do no such thing. That’s pure bullshit, and you know it.”
“I also know that I have evidence that Linda’s been stealing meth from the evidence room and selling it to support her casino habit.”
“You’re full of shit.” Linda was Buck’s wife. The sheriff knew she had a gambling problem, but he couldn’t believe she’d sink that low.
“I figured you’d see it that way,” Gould said and pulled a remote control from his desk drawer. A large LCD monitor on the wall beeped and came to life. “In case you get any ideas, I burned these disks from the originals, which are now in the possession of my lawyer. Watch.”
He hit Play and a grainy image of Linda Buck appeared on the screen. The DVD was obviously taken with the security camera in the sheriff department’s evidence room. Buck watched as his wife, who happened to be the legal secretary for the county attorney, walked into the room and removed a package containing at least an ounce of meth. Gould stopped the DVD, and Buck heard the tray in the multidisk DVD player rotate. Gould hit Play again, and once more Linda appeared on screen. This time the camera appeared to be at a low angle in the cab of a pickup truck. The wide-angle lens showed Linda handing the package of meth to a fellow Buck recognized as Gould’s nephew, Jason. In return the nephew handed her a large envelope. Linda pulled a large stack of bills from the envelope and counted them. She was an attractive woman, in spite of her 1970s-era Farrah Fawcett hairdo. When she finished counting the money, Jason said something Buck couldn’t quite make out and then started to unzip his pants. Once he’d exposed himself, Linda moved toward his lap.
“Do you want to see the rest?” Gould asked.
“I’ve seen enough,” Buck said and Gould stopped the DVD.
“Isn’t that the mother of your children?” Gould asked.
Buck didn’t respond. He had his head in his hands and his shoulders shook. The sheriff was crying.
“Look,” Gould said. “I know you feel like killing me. I know you feel like killing her. But where will your kids be if their mamma’s dead and their daddy’s in prison for killing her? Don’t be mad at her. Gambling is a powerful addiction. Wouldn’t it just be easier to fill out the report the way I tell you to fill it out? Take care of this issue for me, then you get her the help she needs. I’ll even pay for it.”
WHEN BOLAN WAS four miles from Ag Con’s main complex in Trotters, North Dakota, he tethered his horse to a juniper in a deep wash where the animal wouldn’t be seen unless an aircraft flew directly over it. The satellite intel he’d received from Stony Man Farm had been sketchy—there weren’t a lot of satellites readily available to look at this remote part of the world, since it wasn’t exactly a high-priority hot spot for any of the world’s intelligence agencies—but from what he’d seen, the complex, which consisted of corrugated-steel pole buildings and an old ranch house that had been converted into office space, as well as a few barns and other outbuildings left over from the complex’s previous life as a working ranch, appeared to be patrolled by armed guards.
Bolan was armed with his rifle, which he wore from a three-point sling so he could access it while riding, as well as his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle and his silenced Beretta 93-R machine pistol. But this was a soft probe, and Bolan had no intention of shedding any blood on this excursion. Even though he didn’t buy the sheriff’s conclusion about that morning’s shooting being an accident, he had no hard evidence that the shooter had been acting on orders from his employer. The Executioner had no qualms about doling out judgment on the guilty, but he drew the line at murdering the innocent, and the Ag Con employees were innocent until he knew for certain that was not the case.
When he was within one thousand yards of the complex, he made his way to the top of the highest butte he could find. It was mid-July and most of the accessible grass had been grazed by this time of year, but not even the heartiest Badlands cattle could have made their way up the steep slopes of the butte. The grass at the top, though sparse, was tall and provided good cover. Bolan crawled through the grass to the edge of the butte nearest the compound and scanned the complex with a pair of 18-power binoculars that were the next best thing to being there. He identified four men carrying rifles patrolling the perimeter on quads. Inside the fence he counted at least four more armed patrols on the ground. An old hip-roof barn appeared to have been converted into office space or sleeping quarters; its windows had been recently replaced, and an industrial-size air-conditioning unit cooled the building. Bolan noted that there was an additional window-style air-conditioning unit mounted in the oversize cupola atop the barn. On closer examination, Bolan saw that the cupola was air-conditioned for the comfort of the armed guard posted inside. Several other armed guards were stationed around the barn itself.
The level of security was nothing short of bizarre. Most cattle operations in the area needed only the security of a big dog or perhaps some alpacas to keep coyotes and other predators away from the calves. Even though the Little Missouri National Grasslands—a chunk of land that covered more than a million acres in western North Dakota—was all open-grazing, meaning the cattle roamed on more or less free range, most ranchers kept their herds together and they knew one another’s brands and tags. The closest anyone ever got to rustling was when a stray animal accidentally ended up in someone else’s herd, and those situations were usually solved with no hard feelings. Though most people out here carried at least one firearm at all times, and often two, that had more to do with the chance of running into a rattlesnake or buffalo that had strayed from Theodore Roosevelt National Park, or a rogue Angus or Hereford, than with fear of humans.
A Bell 210 helicopter flew over the river and landed in the complex just as the sun sank below the western horizon. Except for the yellow-and-red “Ag Con” decal on its side, the 210 was painted flat black. The first helicopter had barely landed when a second came in from the north. Again, while unusual, Ag Con’s flying a couple of helicopters out here wasn’t unreasonable. The company ran twenty thousand head of cattle in a range that covered over more than sixteen hundred square miles. It would be a challenge to cover it all on ATVs and horses.
But the men wearing full battle gear inside the helicopters were a little harder to explain. Bolan had a hard time imagining a legitimate use for the grenade launchers mounted beneath their QBZ Type 97 assault rifles. Grenades weren’t the most useful tools for rounding up cattle or mending fences. The rifles themselves, modern bullpup-style weapons, with their grenade launchers poking out from under their barrels, looked as out of place in the Western landscape. Not to mention that the Type 97 had never been legally imported into the United
