Past the wash, Bolan saw a trio of CHP cruisers raising clouds of dust as they approached from several directions. Another two patrol cars remained on the road, racing toward the farmhouse. From the other direction, a helicopter was also drifting its way toward the farmhouse.
As he waited for the various vehicles to converge on the wash, Bolan tossed aside the boulder and made his way down the embankment to the pickup. There was no one else in the front seat and no sign that anyone else had been thrown clear of the vehicle when it had crashed into the wash.
“Where the hell are the rest of them?” he wondered out loud.
“BEATS THE HELL out of me,” Jayne Bahn told Bolan ten minutes later when he caught up with her at the REDI safehouse.
They were standing in the front yard near one of the CHP cruisers that had raced to the house after the first shots had rung out. The officers were in the house, looking for evidence as to where the REDI team had fled to with their prisoner, Li-Roo Kohb. Jayne had already done a quick room-to-room search and come up empty-handed.
“The place is a mess, but there was no sign of blood, so we can hope that defector’s still in one piece,” Bahn told Bolan. “My guess is they figured their work was done here and split, leaving your Killboy friend to drive back to L.A.”
“Speaking of blood,” Bolan said, gesturing at a deep, bleeding scratch on the woman’s cheek.
“It’s nothing,” she said, wiping the blood away. “When that guy took a pot shot at me, I hit the ground, quick. The ground hit back. But from the sound of it, I think you got the worst of it.”
“Yeah, he took me for one hell of a ride,” Bolan conceded, rubbing his sore shoulder. His right hip ached, as well, and his left arm was raw with abrasions from his rough landing after being thrown from the runaway pickup.
“The only thing they left behind that raised any kind of flag was a syringe,” Bahn went on. “It was on the floor in one of the back bedrooms and still had some fluid in it.”
“Smack?” Bolan wondered.
“I don’t think so. If somebody was shooting up, it seems like they would’ve taken the needle along with the rest of their kit. I wouldn’t make any bets on insulin, either.”
“They probably used something on Li-Roo, then,” Bolan guessed. “A sedative, most likely, though I wouldn’t rule out some kind of truth serum.”
“Could be,” Bahn said. “And considering what we just found out about Li-Roo being in touch with this Shinn guy, if they got him to talk, they’re gonna be one step ahead of us.”
“Again,” Bolan murmured.
They were interrupted suddenly by a shouting in the back yard. The Clark County Metro chopper, which had been circling the farmhouse with its searchlight, was now hovering in place above the area where the shouting had come from.
Bolan and Bahn jogged around the side of the house in time to see three CHP officers huddled around an old well. One of the officers had just climbed into the well and was using the winch rope to lower himself into the hole. The chopper’s search beam was directed straight down into the well.
“Got ourselves a body,” one of the officers told Bolan when he and Jayne joined them.
“Li-Roo?” Bahn wondered.
Bolan moved closer to the well and peered down. The water table had apparently dried up years ago, because when the officer in the well let go of the rope, he was standing on solid ground twenty feet down. Bolan saw the body but couldn’t get a good look at the face.
“White male,” the officer called, “and from the looks of it, he hasn’t been here long.”
“Not our guy, then,” Bahn said.
The Metro chopper hovered in place a few moments longer, then pulled away and gently set down in the backyard near the barn, where another team of officers was checking out the area where the Ford pickup had been parked before Ok-Hwa had attempted his ill-fated getaway. Even before the pilot had killed his engines, two uniformed Metro officers piled out and scrambled clear of the rotor wash. They joined their CHP counterparts near the well and crowded in for a better look at the body.
“I’ll be damned,” one of the Metro officers muttered.
“What’s that?” Bolan asked. “You know who it is?”
The officer nodded. “Yeah. I helped the guy change a flat tire back in Vegas before I hopped on the chopper.”
“Whereabouts?” Bahn interjected. “Anywhere near the Headliner Estates?”
“Pretty close, yeah,” the officer said. “He was parked off the shoulder on a road just over the hill from there.”
Bolan exchanged a glance with the female bounty hunter. “That explains how that guy we were looking for slipped the dragnet.”