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Bolan awoke to find himself lying on an operating table

A pair of green eyes peered at him from over a hospital face mask. Kristen Kemp sewed the last stitches into his shoulder and said, “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“Where are we?” he asked.

“In my clinic.”

Bolan sat up and tried to collect his thoughts. “How long was I out?” he asked.

“About an hour,” she said.

Bolan remained silent, contemplating the likelihood that they’d been followed.

Kemp put her hands on Bolan’s shoulders and tried to get him to lie back down. “You should rest.”

“We’re not safe here,” Bolan said.

“Grassy Butte has two hundred and fifty people, and I know every last one of them. No one’s going to harm us here,” she said as she covered his wounds with sterile bandages.

“Whatever you thought you knew about this place changed the moment we got shot at yesterday,” he told her. “Something big is going on here—and it’s damned dangerous.”

Before Kemp could respond, Bolan saw the shadow of a man holding what could only be a gun outlined in the window. He grabbed Kemp’s shoulders and flipped her over him, as automatic gunfire tore through the walls of the clinic.

Hurling himself on top of her, Bolan had just one more question. “Where are my weapons?”

The Executioner^®

Toxic Terrain
Don Pendleton’s

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Hesitation and half measures lose all in war.

—Napoleon Bonaparte

1769–1821

Napoleon I: Maxims of War

A threat against America is a threat against me—and I will not hesitate to take out all conspirators, with swiftness and finality.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Prologue

Grassy Butte, North Dakota

Pam Bowman stared down at the dead Hereford calf at her feet and said, “This is not good.”

“It most certainly is not,” the man standing next to her confirmed.

He would know, Bowman thought. Though he was just the McKenzie County extension agent, Roger Grevoy had earned both an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, and had at one time been considered among the world’s top researchers studying the pathology of communicable diseases. Grevoy had never discussed how he’d gone from holding a high-powered research job with the Pentagon to being a lowly county extension agent, but Bowman suspected it had something to do with the meetings he went to in the basement of the local Catholic church every Wednesday night. Whatever the reason, she was damned glad to have his help.

“Is it what I think it is?” Bowman asked.

“I won’t have the test results until tomorrow,” Grevoy said, “but it looks like it might be. I’ve seen it before. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Mad cow disease.”

“How’s that possible?” Bowman asked. “This calf can’t be but four months old. It takes years for an animal to die from BSE.”

“I know. I think we’re dealing with something we’ve never seen before. And it’s extremely bad.”

“We’d better start riding back to the truck if we’re going to get out of here before sunset,” Bowman said.

Grevoy packed his tissue samples in the dry-ice packs in his saddlebag and the pair mounted their horses. They had ridden nearly an hour to get to the infected herd and had about fifty minutes before the sun set. They had good horses, but even a healthy, strong horse would have a difficult time negotiating the North Dakota Badlands in the dark.

They hadn’t ridden fifteen minutes before they heard the “whoop-whoop-whoop” of helicopter blades breaking the near silence that usually blanketed the rough country. On rare occasions one of the oil companies with wells in the Badlands would fly a helicopter out to a drill site, but not often because the bizarre rugged terrain of the area, with its deep crevasses and gullies carved out of the soft bentonite clay soil, offered few places to land a helicopter. Bowman’s grandfather had once described the Badlands as “mountains that go down into the earth instead of up out of it.”

The helicopter skimmed over the top of a butte and hovered about twenty feet above the trail. The horses Grevoy and Bowman rode were strong and sure of foot—they weren’t easily spooked and wouldn’t get upset over anything as mundane as a rattlesnake or a mountain lion. But they were not used to helicopters, and Grevoy’s horse reared up, tossing him to the ground. Ropes fell from the helicopter, and armed men clad in black combat gear slid down to the ground. Bowman reached for the .338 Marlin Express in her saddle scabbard, but before she could pull the lever-action carbine free of its leather, the armed men had combat rifles pointed at both her and Grevoy.

Several pairs of hands pulled Bowman off her horse and threw her face-first to the ground. She looked over and saw Grevoy trying to fight back. One of the men smashed the butt of his collapsible rifle stock into Grevoy’s head, knocking him unconscious. A couple of men tied Bowman’s hands behind her back and bound her feet together. The last thing she saw before they put the hood over her head was a group of men removing the saddles and bridles from their horses and setting the animals free. Anyone who saw them would assume they were wild horses that had strayed outside the confines of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, at least until they got close enough to see the brands. Then she felt a thud on the back of her head and the lights went out.

1

The beauty of the North Dakota Badlands surrounded Mack Bolan as he rode across the terrain on horseback, following Dr. Kristen Kemp, co-owner of a large-animal veterinary clinic in Grassy Butte. Her partner, Pam Bowman, had disappeared a few days earlier, along with Roger Grevoy, a former Pentagon researcher who specialized in communicable diseases.

Grevoy had done some work for Stony Man Farm, an intelligence organization that operated so far under the radar that only the President of the United States and a select few knew of its existence. Grevoy’s drinking had eventually destroyed his once-promising career and taken over his life.

The last Bolan had heard, Grevoy was getting back on track. He had several years of sobriety and had been rebuilding his relationship with his ex-wife and kids. When Grevoy disappeared, his ex-wife had contacted Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, and asked for his help, which was how the Executioner found himself riding a horse through the North Dakota Badlands, with the comely large-animal veterinarian riding the horse in front of him.

Suddenly Kemp stopped her horse at the beginning of a tree-lined ravine. “They found Pam’s horse in this wooded draw. Its saddle and bridle were gone. They haven’t found Rog’s horse yet.”

“What were they doing out here?”

“I’m not sure.” Bolan got the sense Kemp was holding back on him, but he said nothing.

“What do you do again, Mr. Cooper? And why are you out here?”

Bolan repeated his cover story, that he was Matt Cooper, a security consultant who’d worked with Grevoy on a government contract when the man had been with the Department of Defense. The two had become friends, and he was here at the request of Grevoy’s family. The details were vague enough to raise Kemp’s suspicions.

“So what, exactly, is a ‘security consultant’?” she asked, examining the Executioner’s face.

“I’m an expert on securing things.”

“How about killing things?” Kemp asked.

“Sometimes that’s part of the job.” The woman seemed about to respond—she struck Bolan as someone who liked to have the last word—but before any sound could leave her lips the crack of a rifle split the air and a crater erupted in the trunk of a Rocky Mountain juniper tree just inches from her head.

“Get down,” Bolan shouted. He’d already pulled his gun from the scabbard, a DPMS LR-260L, an AR-10-type rifle chambered for the .260 Remington round, and pulled Kemp off her horse. He noted that she’d grabbed her Marlin 1895G Guide carbine from its scabbard. She was nearly down when a second round hit her horse and it fell on top of the vet, pinning her leg to the ground.

“You okay?” Bolan asked.

“I think so, but my foot’s caught in the stirrup.”

Bolan looked for something to use for a lever but found nothing better than the rifle in Kemp’s hands. Unfazed by the rounds that continued to hit the dead horse providing cover between them and the shooter, Bolan lowered the hammer to the half-cocked position and wedged the stock in between the horse’s carcass and the ground, as close as he could get to Kemp’s leg, and tried to lift the dead animal. He managed to get enough space for the woman to work her foot free. They crawled away from the horse, keeping out of range from the rifle shots that flew over their heads. The rough terrain provided the pair with cover from their would-be assassin—or assassins—and they made it into the temporary safety of the wooded draw.

Bolan checked Kemp’s leg, which was already showing bruises but didn’t seem broken. “You’re bleeding,” he said, wiping a trickle of blood from her cheek.

“I think I got hit with slivers from the juniper.”

“Stay down,” he told her. “I saw where the shooter’s hiding. I’m going to try to get a shot at him.” Bolan crept along a low wash in the draw, which would have been a streambed in those few times of the year when the arid Badlands had measurable precipitation. He reached an outcropping near the end of the draw, edged his rifle between a couple of boulders and peered through the Nikon Laser IRT scope. He made out the top of a desert-camo boonie hat poking over a ridge exactly 436 yards to the southeast, according to the scope’s built-in range finder. He placed the crosshairs of his reticle on the part of the boonie hat that would contain at least a portion of the wearer’s head, and squeezed off a round.

It was an easy shot and Bolan watched the shooter’s cap disappear, along with a good chunk of the back of his head, judging by the red spray that went with it. The soldier watched for other signs of movement from behind the ridge, waiting several minutes before he moved from his hide.

Meanwhile, Kemp had worked her way along the wash and joined him. “I told you to stay back,” he told her.

“You told me to stay down. I stayed down. Besides, I don’t recall signing the contract that made you the boss of me. Did you get him?”

“I think so. I’m waiting to see if there’s anyone else out there.” Kemp took off her cowboy hat and flung it Frisbee-style into the open. Nothing happened.

Bolan checked out Kemp’s firearm. The Marlin 1895G Guide was a good choice for the sort of work she was likely to need it for—stray buffalo, hormone-crazed Angus bulls, maybe an elk, a stray cougar, or even a bear—but it made a lousy sniper rifle. It fired the slow-but-hard-hitting .45-70 Government round, making it ideal for big game in close quarters, but practically useless at 400-plus yards.

“You familiar with an AR?” he asked her.

“I paid my way through college by serving in the military,” she said. “It’s been a while, but I could still field-strip that thing down to the firing pin.”

He handed her the DPMS and took the Marlin. “Cover me. I’m going to sneak around the ridge and make my way up to the shooter. If you see anything moving that’s not me, shoot it.”

Using the terrain and flora for cover, Bolan made his way to the back of the ridge. Using a pair of compact binoculars, he scanned the area for other potential shooters but saw nothing other than a horse tethered to some brush at the base of the ridge opposite the gully where he’d left Kemp. He made his way up the ridge and found the shooter’s body slumped over an old, dry log, the back of his head blown away.

When Kemp saw Bolan standing on the ridge, she jogged over and climbed to the top. Bolan had turned the body over and retrieved a wallet from the back pocket of the jeans. The vet looked at the shooter’s face and Bolan asked, “Know him?”

“Not really. I’ve seen him in town once or twice, but he’s not from around here. He works for Ag Con.” She looked at the bloody corpse. “He worked for Ag Con,” she corrected herself.

“Agricultural Conglomerates?” Bolan asked.

“Yeah, they’re the biggest employer in the county. Hell, in this half of the state. They must have three or four hundred employees, but they don’t hire any locals.”

“You or Ms. Bowman ever do any work for them?”

“Not directly. They have their own vets on staff.”

“Ever do anything for them indirectly?” Bolan asked. Once again he sensed that she was holding out on him.

Kemp looked him up and down. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but when it comes to Ag Con, we’ve developed the habit of watching what we say around here. They’ve been known to bring in a few ‘security consultants’ of their own. Near as I can tell, you just saved my life—maybe, maybe not. How can I be one hundred percent sure I can trust you?”

Bolan looked straight into Kemp’s sparkling green eyes. “You can’t,” he replied. “How can you be one hundred percent sure about anything?”

“You can’t.”

“Sometimes you just have to believe what your gut tells you,” Bolan said.

“Is that one of your security-consultant aphorisms?”

“Yep. Aphorism number seventeen. Want to hear one through sixteen?”

“No, thanks,” she replied. “One’s enough for the time being.”

Then it was her turn to stare into the eyes of the man who’d introduced himself as “Matt Cooper.” When she looked into his icy blue eyes, she felt trust. “At least you weren’t the guy who shot my horse. That’s something, I guess.”

“If it helps, I’ll be as honest as I can about who I am and what I’m doing here,” Bolan said. “You’ve probably figured out that there’s a reason I can’t be more specific. But what I can tell you is that I intend to find out what happened to Rog and Ms. Bowman and hopefully bring them home safely. I have some training and experience in this sort of thing.

“I should also tell you that I know Rog and Bowman were investigating a possible outbreak of BSE,” Bolan continued. “Rog suspected that the prions that cause BSE had in some ways mutated, and that had him worried.”

“So why’d you need me to tell you about that?” Kemp asked.

“You’re not the only one who needs to know who can and can’t be trusted.”

“Do you already know about Ag Con, too?”

“Some. It’s Chinese-owned, but the exact nature of the corporation is a little murky.” He didn’t tell her that Stony Man Farm intelligence indicated Ag Con was controlled by retired officers of the People’s Liberation Army— PLA—and ranking members of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China. Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, who headed Stony Man Farm’s team of crack cybersleuths, was helping Bolan on this project. He had become friends with Roger Grevoy and wanted to find out what happened to the man. Kurtzman suspected that some of the Ag Con’s principal owners were part of a secret cabal dedicated to ending China’s drive toward a free-market economy and restoring the country’s former socialist status quo by creating chaos in China’s primary export market: the United States. This was just a suspicion on Kurtzman’s part; since he and his team hadn’t been able to find any substantial evidence about the existence of this cabal. But it was starting to look as though Bolan might have found a solid lead.

Bolan didn’t withhold this because of lack of trust in Kemp—his gut was telling him she was okay, and he tended to take his own advice. He withheld it because at this point it wasn’t solid information but rather innuendo and rumor based on vague suspicion.

“What do you know about me?” Kemp asked.

“You’re thirty-four, you have a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Purdue University, you served six years in the military, where you finished your undergraduate degree and started your doctoral program, you have far too many speeding tickets, and you are the co-owner of Grassy Butte Veterinary Clinic with Ms. Bowman.”

“Anything else?”

“You and Ms. Bowman are lovers.”

“My, you are thorough,” Kemp said. “But not completely up-to-date. We were lovers, not that it’s any of your business. These days Pam and I are just business partners again. She’s got another partner in her personal life.”

“You okay with that?”

“You mean did I kill her in a jealous rage? Who the hell are you again? Wait, I know—Matt Cooper, security consultant. I guess you got me. I busted a cap in both her and Rog’s asses because I couldn’t stand the thought of her with another chick.” She held out her hands. “You might as well cuff me and bring me in.”

Kemp was a tiny woman, maybe five-two in her stockings, tops, but she had an energy that seemed much larger, and Bolan couldn’t help but like the incendiary little brunette. He could see the gold flecks in her green irises start to glow, but she calmed down.

“Sorry if I got a little melodramatic,” she said. “I’m not used to complete strangers regaling me with the sordid details of my love life, especially while I’m standing over the dead body of another stranger who just tried to kill me.”

“About that,” Bolan said. “I suppose we have to call the sheriff. Can we trust him?”

“Jim Buck? Hell, yes, we can trust him—to a point, anyway. I know he’s not working for Ag Con, though he does have to answer to some county commissioners who do. Plus he’s as lazy as they come. He’s not going to be happy with all the paperwork this is going to create.”

“I have to say, you’re taking this dead body thing fairly well.”

Kemp looked down at the corpse. “I put down animals all the time,” she said, “and most of them have never done anything to me. This son of a bitch shot my favorite horse. Please excuse my lack of compassion.”

Watford City, North Dakota

“SHUT THE FUCK UP,” Gordon Gould said to the large man standing in his office. “I’m trying to think.” McKenzie County Sheriff Jim Buck didn’t appreciate being treated in that manner, but Gould, president of the North Dakota Cattle Raisers’ Association—and one of the most powerful men in the state—could make Jim Buck’s life a living hell.

After he’d digested the information Buck had given him, Gould said, “Tell me again what happened.”

“Apparently one of those guys Ag Con brought in from out of state went ape shit and tried to shoot Kristen Kemp and some dude named Cooper up north of Beicegel Creek Road, just east of the Little Missouri River.”

“So how come the guy from Ag Con is dead instead of that woman or her friend?”

“I guess he missed and shot Kemp’s horse,” Buck said.

“So you’re just taking her word for this?” Gould 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 States.

Several other men came out of the guarded barn dragging something that eliminated any doubts Bolan might have still harbored regarding the nature of the Ag Con operation—two figures, a male and a female, both with their hands and feet zip-tied together and black hoods draped over their heads. They had to be Pam Bowman and Roger Grevoy. Seeing the two captives was all the evidence Bolan needed to turn this into a shooting war.

Though he was well-armed, the Executioner could see no way to turn this soft probe hard without endangering the captives. Bolan had taken on more people than were guarding the compound and lived to tell about it, but if he started shooting now, there was no way he could take out all the enemy before they executed Bowman and Grevoy.

He watched as the prisoners were loaded onto one of the helicopters and flown from the compound. The Bell had a maximum range of 225 nautical miles, but since it hadn’t refueled, its destination was likely much less than that. The helicopter headed northeast and was soon followed by the second helicopter. There was no cell phone service this far into the Badlands, but Bolan had brought a satellite phone in case he needed some help from Stony Man. Bolan punched in Kurtzman’s secure number, but before he heard the big man’s gruff voice answer, he felt a gun barrel touch the back of his head.