Bloodland, p.1
Bloodland, page 1
KILLING TIME
Key Lessard slipped out of the timber and belly-crawled for a hundred yards, easing up onto a slight rise. He lifted the .308, sighted in the bar lights of the sheriff’s squad car, and pulled the trigger.
The slug blew a fist-size hole in the lights, sending bits and pieces of plastic and glass flying.
“Jesus Christ!” the sheriff yelled, looking wildly around him. “Dammit, Key, I know that’s you out there. Cain’t we talk about this, partner? You’ve got to see our side of this thing!”
Key had never seen it fail. Hate groups were all the same. Cowards when the chips were down. He raised the .308.
It was a good day for killing.
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BLOODLAND
BY WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
850 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 1986 by William W. Johnstone
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Pinnacle and the P logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
First Zebra Printing: November, 1986
First Pinnacle Printing: March, 1999 10 98765432
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Prologue
BOOK ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
BOOK TWO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Dedicated to Lace — with long overdue apologies.
Death is afraid of him because he has the heart of a lion.
Anonymous
Pride, envy, and avarice are the three sparks that have set these hearts on fire.
Dante
Prologue
He was twenty-three years old when the Vietnam War ended for him in 1973. He had entered the army at seventeen. A year later he had completed NCO school and one year after that had entered OCS. He had graduated at the top of his class. He had never told anyone at Benning he could have had an appointment to the Point if he had wanted it.
Now he had gone through nearly every type of dirty training the army could toss at him. He went through it, picked it up, and tossed it back at them. He had endured some of it, enjoyed some of it, and grown and matured as the training shaped him.
He was a captain in the army’s Special Forces, commanding a spook team, when he decided to call it quits. He knew with a soldier’s insight and no small amount of bitterness, that the U.S. was not going to allow its fighting men to win the war in Southeast Asia.
And that pissed him off mightily.
He felt as if his country had let him down.
Which it had.
He was on his way home when he realized he was not ready to go home. He didn’t know if he would ever go back home. He was restless and filled with ill-concealed rage. He was trained to kill with his hands, his feet, a rolled-up newspaper, a stick, a knife, a gun, explosives.
He possessed no skills for the civilian job market.
He was still in uniform when he deplaned in San Francisco. He threw his green beret into the bay, changed into newly purchased civilian clothes, and boarded a plane for Paris. In Paris he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. He was wounded two and a half years later and got out of the Legion. He drifted to South America and was involved in dozens of little no-name brush wars. He sent most of the money he earned to a stock brokerage firm with instructions to play it high risk and reinvest any profits. They got him in on the ground floor of computers and earned him several hundred thousand dollars.
What to do with it? they asked, after tracking him down in Central America.
Make me some more money! he telexed back. It was just a game to him.
They made him some more money.
He barely got out of Nicaragua alive; came close to meeting the same fate as several other American soldiers of fortune: Dead. He drifted to Africa and knocked around, doing what he did best — fighting.
He drifted down to South Africa but didn’t like what was shaping up there. He went to the Mideast just to see it all blow up.
It became so confusing there not even the so-called experts could tell what side was fighting whom, and for what reason.
He woke up in a Beirut hospital and was told by a gentleman from the U.S. State Department it was time for him to head on back home. Back to Nebraska.
He had asked why.
Because your mother died about six months ago. The family’s been looking for you.
BOOK ONE
THE HOMECOMING
Chapter 1
He hadn’t been home in fourteen years. Had never seen several of his nieces and nephews. Hadn’t voted in any election in over a decade. Politics and politicians made him nauseous anyway. The outcome of the Vietnam war still rankled him.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of going back to see his mother and father and sisters and brothers. It was just that whenever he did make plans to return, a war always got in the way.
And now he was —
How old was he? He had to think about that.
Thirty-seven.
Most people his age had kids in high school. Or were married. Or had been. Key Lessard had never married.
Key had loved well but not wisely. He smiled. Oh, he’d been in love. Especially that first time, back in high school. Wow! Had he ever been in love.
He tried to recall her name. Jesus! What was her name?
Was was probably right. Surely she had married by now. Probably had three or four kids. Hell, she might even be a grandmother. For sure, she had married a farmer.
He grinned. Rosanna Emerson.
Yeah. That was it. Pretty, pretty Rosanna. Class of ‘65.
Twenty years ago. Twenty years ago!
And then later, while in the army, there had been —
No! He would not think of her. She came too often into his thoughts as it was.
He shook his head, chasing her away. He thought instead of Rosanna. When he’d flown back home after his first tour in ‘Nam, Rosanna and he had had a very awkward meeting. She had shown him her engagement ring. What was the guy’s name? Oh, yeah. Skip Gerris. Pretty good ol’ boy, too. Damn good tailback.
And I was a pretty fair country linebacker, Key mused. No, he corrected that. Not fair, damned good. Good enough to have had several offers from colleges and universities.
Turned them all down and joined the army.
He hadn’t watched a football game in more years than he cared to remember.
Television was still a rarity in many of the countries Key had fought and lived in.
Despite it all, Key still thought he had made the right choice. He would change nothing.
Except for —
Again, he fought away her memory.
Key cut off Interstate 29 and crossed the Missouri River into Nebraska City, taking Highway 2 into Lincoln. Warm summer air fanned him through the open windows of the Grand Prix he’d bought in New
York City.
Key had not owned a car since he was eighteen. Never had a need for one.
The crops looked good as he drove the highway.
Key did own land.
Ten years back,
He didn’t want to think about Lester Kidd, either. God, how could Claire have married that creep?
Key recalled the last time he’d heard from his father. His dad had said a lot of men were losing their farms. Taylor Lessard hadn’t gone into much detail as to the why of it, just that it looked bad. Real bad. And when was Key coming home?
Waves of shame washed over him. Fourteen years was just too damned long to stay away. No excuses for it.
And now Mother was dead.
Damn! He pulled into a motel in Lincoln and checked in. He hid a smile as he filled in the registration card.
What name to use?
He had about a dozen he was known by, in various parts of the world.
He signed his Christian name. Key Lessard.
He once asked his father why he had named him Key. His father had told him he liked the name, that’s why.
Back in New York, Key had bought, in addition to the new Grand Prix, all new clothing. Three suits, a couple of sport coats and slacks, some jeans and sport shirts, new shoes and Wellington boots. He had bought new luggage; nice leather luggage. A traveling briefcase bar. He’d seen one like it in a movie one time and had always wanted one.
In his twenty years of war, Key had never owned many nice things.
He had once possessed —
He shook her mental face away one more time. “Goddamnit!” he said. “Stay away!”
But he had always wanted to buy nice things for his parents. He kept sending money home, instructing his mom and dad to buy something for themselves. TVs, living room and bedroom suites, carpet — hell, spend it on anything you like.
He wondered if they had.
Probably not.
Opening his little briefcase bar, Key built a Crown Royal and water over a couple of small pieces of ice. He sipped his drink and then showered and shaved. He looked at his reflection in the door mirror.
What he didn’t need was one more bullet or knife scar. Wounded four times in ‘Nam. Twice in the Legion. Four more times as a mere. He’d picked up that knife scar on his leg down in South America. That knife scar on his chest in Africa. He shook his head. Lots of mileage on a thirty-seven-year-old body.
He finished his drink, dressed in slacks and pullover knit shirt, and walked outside to sit poolside.
Many of the young ladies were firm and shapely, their swimsuits barely covering the essentials. A couple of the ladies — Key guessed them about nineteen to twenty-two years old — openly flirted with him. He smiled but otherwise ignored them.
Other than the supposed instability of many Vietnam combat vets, their unpredictability and so forth and so on, there was something else most were very hesitant to speak of: The twisted and bent sex drives. Not twisted or bent in a perverted way. But the oftentimes inability to function sexually. Passion and/or lust could lie dormant for weeks, even months, then come in waves. The shrinks tried to explain it, but most combat-torn vets learn early on how to work shrinks, many of them never telling the truth to a noncombat asshole with ten dollar words. And when the passion/lust was not there, nothing could bring it. Nothing.
“Don’ttouchmegoddammitleavemealone!”
That’s tough for a woman to take. Key had never heard of one who could tolerate it for very long.
She couldn’t.
Aw, shit! Key thought. She tried. She really did. In her own way, she did. But Key, at the time, was a knock-around-the-world professional soldier, and she was a very rich, very classy lady. No hope from the start. None at all.
He gritted his strong, even, very white teeth. He had smoked cigarettes until he was thirty, then quit. Not that he particularly gave a damn what was printed on the side of the pack. If people wanted to kill themselves, that was the individual’s business. It was just that Key had been out in the field and couldn’t get any smokes.
He sat by the pool for a few moments more, thinking what to do next. It was far too early to have dinner. If he ate now, he’d wake up in the middle of the night ravenous. He didn’t want to go into the bar — he hated barrooms. Always some loudmouthed craphead who wanted to start some trouble. Some town bully who thought he was bad.
There was, as Key knew well, a great deal of difference between bad and tough. And Key knew, too, that in many cases, the loudmouthed bullies who thought themselves bad were just tough. Not bad.
Being bad was a completely different story.
Key was both tough and bad.
He stood six feet, two inches. Two hundred and fifteen pounds. Trim waisted, big chest, wide shoulders. Solid. There was not a conventional weapon of war in use throughout the world that he was not an expert with. From pistol and rifle and explosive to 155 howitzer. And everything in between. He held no belts in exotic hand-to-hand fighting techniques. But he was expert in any most could pronounce. Key was utterly ruthless in a fight. He would give no quarter — ever. Fighting was his business. And Key was a good businessman.
His eyes were gunsmoke grey. His hair was worn short, the dark brown peppered with premature gray. His wrists and hands were huge. The fingers blunt-ended, the knuckles scarred.
Not that he would hit a man with his fists — unless he just absolutely had to. Only a fool uses his bare, unprotected fists for a weapon. The hand is such a complex piece of engineering; so many little bones to break. Hurts, too. A better way is the balled fist brought down on an opponents’ neck, or onto the kidney. The knife edge of the hand onto the neck, or stiffened fingers into the softness of the throat. The fingers gouging out an eye. The feet and elbows are also excellent weapons.
There is no such thing as a fair fight. Not in Key’s mind. There is a winner and a loser, and that’s all. There is only one rule in fighting: Win.
At any cost to the opponent.
But Key rarely lost a fight. He couldn’t remember the last fight he’d lost. He never started a fight and tried his best to stay away from unnecessary fighting. Fighting was his business. And Key kept a neat profit and loss sheet; the loss column almost void of figures.
And if by chance Key did lose a fight he was pushed into — well — strange things happen at night. Knives flash, a silencer huffs, an arrow sings.
Those who kill for pleasure are sadists. Those who kill for money are professionals. Those who kill for both are —
Mercenaries.
Key Lessard was a mercenary.
One of the best.
Chapter 2
Key carefully knotted his tie and stepped back, inspecting his reflected image.
Conservative suit, conservative shirt and tie, polished, lace-up shoes. He should have looked like a very successful business executive.
But he didn’t.
The burnt-in tan gave him away. Years of dust and winds and sun and sweat had hardened his features. Gave him a very slight permanent narrowing of the eyelids. That scar on his forehead. The piece of ear missing. Not a very big piece but noticeable.
Crap! he thought. I still look like the stereotyped Hollywood mere.
Key was not a handsome man in the classic pretty-boy sense. He was square jawed and hard eyed. He did not smile often. There had been damn little in his life to smile about.
Unless one smiles at death and pain. Many of whom could be placed directly at the feet, or hands, of Key Lessard.
He did not now and had not for years given a damn what present style dictated. He wore the clothing that was comfortable to him at the time. He wore his hair short because it was easier to take care of in the field.
There was something about him that made most men very uncomfortable.
He turned off the bathroom light and walked toward the dining area. He ordered a vodka martini on the rocks, prime ribs, salad, and baked potato.
As he took the first sip of his drink, he was conscious of eyes on him. He tried to ignore the sensation. Finally he turned his head to look at the man staring at him.
Guy looked familiar. From a long time ago.
The man began to smile. He pushed back his chair and walked toward Key’s table. He held out his hand.
