Death Run (12 page)

Eddie rode out on the track and opened up the throttle. He'd hit two hundred miles per hour by Turn One and he braked hard for the Andretti Hairpin. He circled the difficult corner perfectly, hitting his apex points exactly where he wanted. He flew through Turns Three and Four as if they weren't even corners and took Turn Five faster than he ever had before. And he was still warming up his tires, preparing for his really fast lap. He hit his braking points perfectly for Turn Six and rocketed up the hill toward the Corkscrew, the infamous downhill left-right chicane. When he exited the bottom turn he felt like he was piloting a low-flying airplane instead of an earthbound motorcycle. He rocketed through Rainey Curve, completely forgetting the previous day's unpleasantness, and set himself up for the deceivingly slow Turn Ten. He hit his braking markers perfectly once again as he approached Turn Eleven — always his most difficult corner — and hit his apex spot on.

After a couple of more laps, he was ready to start turning in some hot laps. He rode every lap a bit better than the last and before he'd even completely broken in his soft qualifying tires he was approaching his brother's record lap time. When his tires finally came into their own, he rode the most blazingly fast laps of his entire career. When the dust had settled, he turned in a best lap that shattered his brother's record by almost a second. While part of him felt guilty about taking away one of his brother's proudest moments, he could almost hear Darrick cheering for him with the rest of the crowd.

In the post-qualifying press conference Eddie, who had never been at a loss for words, choked up. The press had come to rely on his colorful statements to provide provocative pull quotes in their stories. They bombarded him with questions, but Anderson knew that if he tried to speak, he would burst into tears. Finally he managed to say, "I did it for Darrick," and he walked out of the building.

Eddie Anderson was supposed to stick close to the garage area throughout the racing weekend, but after the press conference he felt he had to get away from the masses of people at the track.

He put on his street helmet and street-riding leathers, climbed aboard his Ducati motorcycle and rode away from the track.

Anderson turned left at the gate and headed east on the Monterey Salinas Highway. Traffic was backed up for miles coming into the track, but since the races were just beginning hardly anyone was leaving the track and Anderson had the road away from the track almost to himself. He loved his motorcycle, a gift from his employers at Ducati. It was like an overgrown, overpowered dirt bike. It wasn't the most comfortable machine for long trips, but it was crazy maneuverable and wicked fun on a twisty road. Perhaps its only real drawback was that the rearview mirrors were virtually useless, especially when the big twin-cylinder engine revved up and started buzzing them with its throbbing vibration.

Normally this wasn't a serious problem; a rider only needed to know that something was behind him or her and that he or she needed to be careful. It only became a problem when the person behind was a law enforcement official and the rider was having a little too much fun on a public road. Or in the case of Eddie Anderson, leaving the Mazda Raceway, if the person behind was a Filipino gangbanger who had been hired to kidnap him and take him to a Malaysian terrorist with a perverted need to torture him.

Several BNG members in a modified Mitsubishi Evo tailed Anderson down the Monterey Salinas Highway. After another failed attempt to dispatch Cooper, bin Osman had redoubled his efforts to eliminate the meddlesome young Anderson brother and had a team of BNG members watching him at all times. The attempted kidnapping on Thursday seemed not to affect the kid and he'd continued to squawk about the death of his brother. He'd even mentioned him at the press conference after his record-breaking qualifying ride. Bin Osman didn't seem to be able to clip the loose thread that was the marauding American, but he could certainly handle this boy.

After riding a short way Anderson turned right and rode south on the Laureles Grade Road, a twisty, empty road that wound its way toward the little bedroom community of Carmel Valley. He hadn't noticed the bright red sport compact following him so far, but he rode in such a spirited manner his pursuers assumed he was making a break for it and drove the Mitsubishi so fast its intercooled turbocharger glowed red hot. In reality this was how Anderson always rode motorcycles; his idea of a relaxing pace differed radically from what most riders considered relaxing — for Eddie Anderson, a hundred miles per hour felt so slow that he thought he was going backward, which is why he didn't ride on the street much.

The Mitsubishi was one of the few cars with the power needed to keep up with the Ducati on such a twisty road, but the driver of the car was no match for Anderson when it came to skill. Without effort Anderson kept so much distance between himself and the overachieving sport compact car that he never even realized he was being followed. Before the trailing car reached the halfway point the driver had called ahead for help.

Anderson rode as hard as he dared, watching for deer and cars coming out of hidden driveways, enjoying the freedom of being away from all the pressure of the track. He slowed to a sane pace when he rode into the more populated area around Carmel Valley, but he was still going too fast when a low-rider pickup truck backed out in front of him from La Rancheria Road. The vehicle took him completely by surprise because there was no reason for the pickup to be going backward.

At least Anderson couldn't imagine a reason for the truck to be backing up, but the driver had a very good reason for his aberrational driving — he wanted to make Anderson crash.

Anderson got on the brakes hard, but the dual-sport tires on his motorcycle lacked the grip of the super sticky race tires he was used to riding on and he broke both wheels loose. He missed the pickup, but in the process he low-sided the bike and it slid in front of the front bumper, Anderson following it as he skidded along the pavement in his ventilated leather riding suit.

By the time he'd come to a stop, the driver of the pickup truck and a passenger had run over to where he was sprawled on the road. Anderson assumed they'd come to help him until he saw the Glocks in each of their hand.

"Get up," the driver shouted. Before Anderson could stand, the Mitsubishi had pulled onto the scene.

"Get in the car," the driver commanded, waving toward the open back door with his Glock. Before he could comply, two men jumped out of the back seat and slammed the motorcycle racer into the back of the car. One of the passengers jumped in one door and the other jumped in the opposite door. Fitting three average-sized Americans in the back seat of the Mitsubishi would have been physically impossible, but the two men who had jumped out were slight of stature, and Anderson's morphotype was about as far from the average American's as possible. Still, it was a tight fit and the two Filipinos pinned Anderson in the seat so he couldn't move.

He watched through the windshield as the other members of the crew threw his motorcycle into the back of the pickup. They didn't want to leave behind any sign that something had happened to the young American rider. When the bike was in the pickup, both the car and truck left the scene. Anderson tried to imagine how he might exit the scene himself, but with one Glock poking him in each side of his rib cage, he knew that wasn't going to be easy.

Bolan was ready to start looking for the plutonium when he noticed Eddie Anderson changing and then riding away from the track. That worried him, but not nearly as much as when he noticed that Anderson was being followed by four men in a Mitsubishi sport compact with a loud coffee-can muffler and an oversized carbon-fiber rear wing. When the car drove past him, Bolan saw a distinct question-mark tattooed on the driver's arm. He hated to take time away from hunting for the plutonium, but he knew he couldn't let Anderson meet the same fate as his brother.

The BNG crew in the Mitsubishi were so focused on following Anderson that they didn't notice Bolan's motorcycle tailing them. When they turned right on Laureles Grade Road, the Executioner was about ten car lengths back. He hadn't expected either Anderson or the BNG members to take off so quickly once they got off the main highway, but by the time he turned the corner and was heading south, Anderson was nowhere to be seen and the Mitsubishi was disappearing around a bend almost half a mile ahead of him.

Bolan rode as hard as he could to try to catch up with the Ducati and Mitsubishi, but Anderson's riding skills were so advanced and the Ducati so fast that Bolan couldn't catch up to him even though he held the throttle to the stop for most of the way down to Carmel Valley. When both bikes were ridden by riders of equal skill, the Ducati Hypermotard was one of the few motorcycles capable of outrunning the BMW on a tight, twisty road like Laureles Grade Road. As good as he was, Bolan's riding skills were a long way from equal to those of Eddie Anderson, who many people thought might turn out to be the greatest motorcycle racer of all time.

The Mitsubishi was just as hard to catch. Bolan rode an extremely capable bike for the type of road, but it was no match for a high-powered car with a well-tuned suspension and sticky gumball racing tires. It was a simple matter of physics; a vehicle's ability to negotiate a curve depends in large part on the amount of rubber connected to the road. Not only did the Mitsubishi have four tires to the motorcycle's two, but because of the size and flat profile of the tires, each of the four had a bigger contact patch on the pavement than the rounded tires of Bolan's bike. Bolan soon lost contact with both Anderson and the gangbangers.

Just as he pulled into Carmel Valley, the Executioner saw the Mitsubishi turn right onto Carmel Valley Road heading toward Monterey. A red pickup with wide, low-profile tires seemed to be following closely. Anderson was nowhere to be seen. When Bolan got to the intersection of Laureles Grade Road and La Rancheria Road he saw fresh skid marks that looked like a motorcycle had just crashed. On the side of the road he spotted a broken black plastic hand protector and a broken piece of red plastic. It looked like the fork-seal guard from Anderson's Ducati. He saw no other evidence of a bike or a rider.

The pickup, Bolan thought. The bike might be in the pickup. That meant that if Anderson was still alive, he might be in either the car or the pickup. Bolan cranked on the throttle and rode to the Stop sign at the intersection of Carmel Valley Road and Laureles Grade Road. Looking right, he saw the pickup and car disappearing over the crest of a hill. Bolan jammed on the throttle and slid the bike around until he was facing west, toward Monterey and the ocean, and cranked the throttle wide open once he was straightened out.

Bolan rode full-out through most of the little bedroom suburb of Carmel Valley. When he got the vehicles back in sight, he eased up, not wanting to draw the attention of the gangbangers or the local constabulary. Using other vehicles for cover so that the gangbangers wouldn't spot him, he followed the vehicles to Carmel-by-the-Sea, then back to Monterey, through town and up the Coastal Highway toward Santa Cruz. Because there were so many motorcycles going to and coming from the racetrack, the soldier's glowing headlight was just one of thousands on the road and the gangbangers never noticed they were being followed. The four-wheeled vehicles were forced to move at a crawl while Bolan could position himself pretty much wherever he wanted thanks to the mobility of his motorcycle. He continued to follow the vehicles through Santa Cruz. Out of town just a couple of miles beyond where he'd crashed the big BMW the night before, the two vehicles turned right onto Laguna Road.

Bolan rode past the turnoff, and when he was out of sight of the intersection, he made a U-turn and headed back. Once again he rode past the main drive up to the derelict compound he'd spotted earlier. He knew it was the only possible place they could be taking Anderson. When he got to the back route to the compound he turned off the highway. When he was about a half mile from the building site, he rode off the road and down into a shallow gully. He removed his riding gear, revealing digital camo-pattern Marine MARPAT fatigues. In the broad daylight, his blacksuit would have been almost as visible as a neon-pink leotard, but the Marines had a digital desert camo pattern that was perfect for the dry hills north of Santa Cruz. Under his marine blouse he wore the soft body armor he'd had on when he'd crashed his motorcycle. It had taken a beating and its integrity was questionable if someone shot him in the exact same spots he'd been hit before, but it was better than nothing.

He stowed his riding gear in the top box, equipped himself with the P90, extra magazines for both the little FN subgun as well as for his Beretta and Desert Eagle, and clipped more grenades to his utility belt. They'd come in handy on this mission.

When he was ready for battle, he leaned his bike against a dirt bank and threw some sage brush over it for camouflage.

Bolan crept through the brush alongside the road, plotting a course that would take him into the compound in an area not likely to be heavily guarded. He emerged from the brush in a clearing near what looked like a lived-in trailer home. He crept to the rear of the trailer and raised his head just high enough to see into the window of the master bedroom, or what passed for the master bedroom in the rusted, filthy little receptacle of broken humanity.

Broken humanity was exactly what he saw inside the trailer. A nude woman lay sprawled on the bed, her body so emaciated that he could see the outline of her hipbone through her skin. Her body fat was so low that her breasts, if she had ever had them, had virtually disappeared, leaving just loose skin with brown nipples. The space between her thighs had to be three inches wide. The only thing that kept the Executioner from thinking he was looking at a corpse was that he could see her bony chest rising and falling as she breathed.