Читать книгу Agent Of Peril - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

Mack Bolan crawled across the slate, low shrubs concealing him as he pulled his improvised sniper’s drag bag behind him while keeping an eye on the temporary auction lot a half mile distant.

The Executioner was tracking a trio of traveling Hezbollah, led by Bidifah Sinbal, a veteran organizer and moneyman for the Lebanon-based Palestinian terror organization. They had been moving a lot of cargo on a freight ship from Lebanon to Pakistan. The freight was being unveiled on a slab of granite adorned with ammunition crates and assorted military vehicles. Bolan couldn’t see into the massive cargo containers that Sinbal’s men were opening, but he saw the look of awe on the faces of the men who swung open the gates on the three massive containers.

Something nasty was in there.

Bolan swept the area with a field scanner, checking for motion. He slipped like a ghost along the very edges of the field, disturbing little as he crawled along the path.

Bolan’s battle gear was limited. He’d been able to smuggle most of his nonlethal gear across borders as he raced to get ahead of the freighter. However, the Executioner’s signature pistols and his heavier weaponry were left behind. Bolan had left his usual weaponry in a diplomatic pouch, ready to be forwarded anyplace that he needed more firepower for a long-haul mission.

This day the Executioner made do with what he’d bought at a tribal gun shop in Peshawar. He had plenty of money for some hand-built, if eccentric, weapons.

The primary weapon was a hand-tooled Short Magazine Lee Enfield—the classic SMLE of the British forces during World War II. The weapon was topped with a Chinese knockoff of an ECLAN scope that gave Bolan some reach. The pistol-gripped rifle was a smooth shooting machine. For more hectic work, Bolan had also bought a 9 mm Skorpion machine pistol and a pair of stainless-steel Brazilian Taurus PT-92s. The Taurus handguns were almost identical to his Beretta 93-R, lacking only barrel length, a folding foregrip and a 3-round burst option. The Peshawar gunsmiths even managed to retool the Taurus to operate with the Beretta’s extended 20-shot magazines. Still, they were somewhat different from what he usually carried.

That didn’t matter.

It wasn’t the tools that had allowed Bolan to survive against insurmountable odds for as long as he had. But they sure helped.

Bolan swept the fighting field and wondered what his course of action should be. He wasn’t sure what he’d find, following the trio. They’d come ashore at Gwadar, more than nine hundred kilometers south, but thankfully in the age of satellite telephones and satellite surveillance, the Executioner was able to keep tabs on the massive boxcars as they were loaded onto train tracks from Gwadar to Nok Kundi to Quetta, where they were offloaded.

Bolan was racing to intercept them from the north, having managed to snag a transport flight into Afghanistan and stopping off with American U.S. Army Special Forces. The Special Forces operational teams were dividing their time between restoring the nation in their role as teachers and diplomats, and on the side, still hunting for leftover madmen from the Taliban. The Executioner wished those men luck, and left them to their task, knowing that it was in good hands.

The Hezbollah trio was a danger that he had taken unto himself. They had picked up a good-sized bodyguard force during their train trip. Now the three moneymen were accompanied by a dozen well-armed men. Bolan didn’t know them by their faces, but if he transmitted their images back to Stony Man Farm, he was certain that he’d come up with local al Qaeda loyalists.

Bolan wanted to take another close look at the Hezbollah bunch.

They were talking, moving out of the way as the contents of the first container came rolling out.

It wasn’t the chill of the Pakistani spring winds that Bolan felt in his bones as he saw the familiar boxy frame of a tank rolling out of the boxcar. He wanted to believe it was a Soviet tank, or some Chinese knockoff, but his eyes and mind were already placing the unique frame and shape of the armored vehicle. His stomach curled into a knot. He didn’t want to believe what he saw, but there it was.

An M1A1 Abrams tank. The main cannon was disassembled, and from the range Bolan was looking, it was an older model, with the old 105 mm gun instead of the newer 120 mm gun that was the mainstay of the United States armed forces. This was cold comfort, as the tank was still an almost unstoppable war machine, capable of laying waste to an entire city before an air strike or other tanks could be brought to stop it.

Three boxcars.

Three tanks.

The terrorists could easily barter themselves up to seventy-five million dollars for the sale of these war machines to anyone who wanted a small armored force. And it wouldn’t take much effort to convert the old 105 mm cannon into the more modern 120 mm pieces that could cut through an entire building with one shot. Bolan set down the SMLE and checked his arsenal. He didn’t have a single thing that could make the odds anywhere close to equal against even an empty Abrams with half a tank of fuel. The forty pounds of C-4 explosive might be able to dent one tank, but to destroy all three…

The waiting game was over and Bolan swiftly began setting up his first shot with the SMLE.

Destroying tanks with a .30-caliber rifle wasn’t something he planned for, but he did have eighteen stripper clips of .303 ammunition for the SMLE and he was mentally setting up the long shots to cause mayhem and destruction. Armor-piercing rounds were filling the magazines.

Bolan brought the scope to bear on a stacked crate of 67 mm artillery rockets. He reckoned the distance as around 400 meters, and brought the rifle’s point of aim up enough to compensate, then pulled the trigger. The SMLE shoved against the Executioner’s shoulder. Thick cedar burst apart like flimsy plywood as the 124-grain tungsten-cored slug slammed into the contents of the wooden crate. What happened next shook the ground, but the Executioner was already looking for new targets, throwing the bolt back to feed a fresh .303 into the breach.

With both eyes open, he saw the bowl of smoke rising, a blast zone easily forty yards across. Screams of panic rang out as the terrorists ran for cover. Spotting a fresh target, Bolan pumped a second round through the fuel tank of a motorcycle. Fuel sprayed wildly from the burst bladder, and the gunman atop the bike slipped, tumbling to the ground. Bolan dropped his aim and sent off a second round almost immediately after the first, skipping the third .303 round off the fuel-soaked tarmac. The bullet hit with a flaring spark, and gasoline flashed in a fireball, washing over the guard.

Panicked bodyguards whipped out weaponry from wherever they had it stored and more than a few began blasting at each other. Bolan swept along, burning off the rest of his first magazine, taking shots that nicked or sparked close to already hyper alert gunners.

A few bullets here and there got the maddened gunfight going. Bolan threw back the bolt one last time, then stuffed down ten fresh rounds and closed the rifle, swinging for more new targets. One of the weapons auctioneers was screaming, pointing frantically toward him. The Executioner might have ignored him except for the RPG-7 rocket launcher being aimed in his direction.

With a single stroke of the trigger a bullet slammed into the rocketeer’s groin, tearing through his pelvis with sledgehammer force. In the same instant, the severely injured gunner squeezed the trigger on his weapon, bending halfway over. He skipped the 77 mm warhead off the ground, firing too soon to slam it point first into the earth. The teardrop-shaped warhead deflected and went skidding along the tarmac, giving the detonator time to arm.

In an instant, the point of the rocket struck the treads of the Abrams tank. On impact, the shell went off. The explosion wasn’t the earthshaker that the Executioner started the show with, but Bolan saw one of the Hezbollah moneymen go skidding away, his feet turned to greasy streaks in their wake. He cried out, pistol in hand, clawing toward a suitcase full of money and firing aimlessly in rage.

The Hezbollah group had been chopped in two. Bolan had seen the fifteen-man force brought down to nine by the warhead’s explosion. If he was going to get any answers on the tanks, he needed to start taking the moneymen alive.

One was firing off the contents of his weapon into the wounded RPG gunner, stitching him with 9 mm pistol rounds. Bolan tagged him in the shoulder, blowing the back out of the joint with a .303 round and knocking him down. He swiveled and punched a second round into the face of a gunman who noticed the moneyman go down. Gunfire sizzled back and forth as the Executioner turned his weapon and aimed at the crates that the RPG gunner drew his shells from. The .303 round sailed and hit wood, but nothing happened. Bolan cycled the action and shifted his aim slightly.

This time RPG shells shattered the earth and sky in a chain reaction, one hammering explosion after another, sending shrapnel, flame and splinters flying in an ever growing cloud of devastation. Bolan rose, slinging his war bag. He ran hard toward the caldron of chaos and confusion and cut the distance between himself, and the destruction by half.

After reloading Bolan dropped to one knee. He snapped the rifle to his shoulder and burned off ten shots as fast as he could. The first rounds went into the tires of a jeep whose driver was trying to get himself, some customers and their goods, either bought or to be sold, the hell out of Dodge. The vehicle swerved hard and flipped.

The unlucky driver’s passengers went flying from their seats, and crushed crates vomited out rifles that were ground and shattered between the overturned jeep and unyielding asphalt. A desperate buyer froze in the headlights as the vehicle went skidding out of control at him, and found himself pinned as it slammed into him and crushed him under the tail boom of a Dauphin helicopter.

As Bolan was reloading, he spotted the drumlike extension on the wing stub of the Dauphin, reminiscent of the artillery rocket launchers of the old Vietnam helicopter gunships. On a hunch, the Executioner swung and aimed at the drum and pumped four .303 rounds into the launcher. The fourth shot gave the Executioner results as the helicopter disappeared in a massive shock wave.

The sales ground was sprayed with even more shrapnel and fire. Panicked buyers and sellers raced about, security men and bodyguards firing brutal bursts into one another.

A little panic goes a long way, the Executioner thought, scrambling closer to the battleground after feeding the Enfield some fresh rounds. A spray of bullets smashed into a rock off to the soldier’s right and he went to the ground, feeling pebbles stab into his ribs and knees, elbows barking on stone.

Bolan shouldered the Enfield and spotted a half dozen men working their way toward him. A second spray of autofire was a massive sheet sweeping through the air, pounding and deflecting like copper-jacketed rain on the barren hillside. In a heartbeat, the front sight of the Enfield was on the lead gunner, a .303 round punching through his chest and bursting out his spine in a single gore blast at a range of seventy-five feet.

Bolan threw the bolt and turned on another gunman. Slugs from the security man’s Uzi sliced the air, kicking up chips of slate and granite as they bounced off the ground short of Bolan’s position. The soldier took care of that situation with a single decapitating .303 Enfield round that hit the killer’s throat. Bolan rose and was moving hard to the left, bullets chasing him.

The Enfield dropped on its sling around the Executioner’s neck as he swept up the Skorpion from where it hung and held down the trigger. The 9 mm rounds spit at the enemy hardforce, four men scrambling for their own cover as they sent lead his way.

Unfortunately, the Skorpion rattled apart in a savage, recoil-induced field stripping that left the Executioner’s right hand numb with shock. He should have known the knockoff would prove useless. None of his rounds hit anything, though they did drive the enemy to cover.

Curling his right hand to his belly for protection, Bolan snaked his left hand around, freed one Taurus and straight-armed the 9 mm pistol at one of the Pakistanis who was rising again. A chopped-off AK-47 in the gunman’s hands swung toward Bolan’s midsection as he saw the tall, powerful terrorist charging him.

The Executioner’s sole saving grace was to get within bad-breath distance of the enemy fighter. He tripped the trigger on the Taurus twice, bullets slamming hard into the hollow of the terrorist’s throat and his chin. Jaw shorn away, the guy whirled, his AK tumbling from lifeless fingers. By the time the others were adjusting their aim against Bolan, he went to the ground again right in the middle of the three remaining men. Bullets swept the air from one overanxious machine gunner, autofire ripping like a steel storm through his two comrades as he tried to track his executioner.

Bolan rewarded the wild man’s efforts with two bullets through his groin and one in his stomach.

It was about then that Bolan started getting feeling back in his right hand. It hurt like hell, but he could move the fingers, and looking around, he saw three severely wounded gunmen, their fight gone, blood pumping out on charcoal-colored rock. Testing his weight on the right hand, Bolan got back on his feet and spared a single 9 mm bullet into each dying man’s head, granting them a swift release from their pain. Bolan was not a man to leave an enemy to suffer, no matter what they did.

A quick reload, and the Taurus went to Bolan’s right hand. He crouched and grabbed the chopped-off AK of the man he charged, as well as a pouch of magazines. Satisfied the weapon was in working order, he holstered his pistol and found the rifle was an AKSU in 5.45 mm Soviet. With the stubby barrel of the chop job, the rounds would put out a fireball the size of a watermelon, but wouldn’t have much more punch than a Magnum pistol, and have very limited range.

But the gun wasn’t going to shake to pieces and bruise Bolan’s battered hand any worse.

The Executioner looked over and saw that the Hezbollah hardforce had picked up a bunch of new shooters, and they’d noticed the conflict on the hillside. The range couldn’t have been more than sixty yards, and even for the most ill-educated thug, the math couldn’t have been difficult.

There was a stranger approaching in the wake of the destruction.

He was armed.

Bolan hit the ground again, using a large piece of debris for a shield as bullets raked the side of the hill. Sparks flew as copper jackets hit granite and flint, and crimson puffed skyward as slugs impacted on stilled corpses. The Executioner fisted the AKSU and poked it over the piece of metal, firing the contents of the clip already in place. It was a full load, and three seconds of mayhem swept in response to the crackling salvos downhill.

A bullet hammered into the frame of the AKSU and sent it flying again from the Executioner’s hand before he could pull it back to reload. Not wasting a moment, Bolan tucked tight and rolled, rocks stabbing along his body as he scrambled behind a flat plate of stone. Another wave of hellfire hammered a nearby corpse, reducing the lifeless body to a pulpy stew. Surrounded and outgunned, Bolan didn’t have many options. He took a look at the slab of granite he was behind and felt its thickness with his fingertips. Thick enough to stop enemy bullets for a while.

Long enough, Bolan realized, for his enemy to flank and kill him.

The hollow that he rested against was curved. The soldier could work with that. He wouldn’t have much of a chance, but it was a thread of hope. He began packing C-4 into the hollowed cavity, flattening the kilogram blocks like putty in three strips, kneading them like dough. Bolan pulled a radio detonator and plugged a wire into each strip, sticking it to the center patch of explosive.

Bolan poked up his head and saw the enemy was charging. He pulled both Taurus pistols and dived backward away from the rock, scrambling in frantic retreat. The pistols barked out hot 9 mm pills until the left one ran dry. A couple slugs plucked at the Executioner, and one bullet hammered into the Enfield’s stock, cracking it against the soldier’s ribs. A bullet creased Bolan’s elbow skin, not touching bone. He probably had as much accuracy as his enemy.

On the run, the enemy had no aim as they charged, a small favor to the Executioner as long as they were at a decent distance. If they got closer, though, he was hamburger.

The nearest gunman was almost at the rock that Bolan had mined.

The soldier dropped his left Taurus and slapped the radio detonator’s switch. The hill shook before him, and the shock wave nearly blew out his eardrums.

While Bolan was slammed by a pressure wave, his enemies fared far worse. The granite slab that the plastic explosives were jammed into fragmented instantly, shattering like a fine crystal goblet under the force of a sledgehammer. The shards of the slab didn’t just sit around, however. Thrown at 1500 feet per second, in a widespread cone of bloody murder, the pulverized stone became a gigantic shotgun round.

Whether the chips of granite were blunt pebbles or razor sharp, they still went through human flesh like hot knives through butter. The lead gunner, jumping onto the rock, sailed through the air over Bolan’s head, slamming into the hillside headfirst.

Where once there were men, suddenly there were ghosts, the debris wave flashing at them, then passing on, bloody stumps standing in the wake of the improvised Claymore. The whole scene was a panoramic widescreen display in Bolan’s pressure-wave-shocked brain. His perceptions warped in time and space so that he could see the pulped cores that used to be humans pouring and melting down to the ground, any pretense at being a solid long stripped by the brutal death wave that crushed through them.

Bolan felt the back of his head, scalp split, blood flowing hotly down the neck of his black BDU blouse. He sensed a concussion, but he sat up, reloading his last remaining pistol. The other Taurus had been lost, swept away in the shock wave. He looked for signs of the enemy.

Everything was still, except for one squirming figure, trying to crawl up the side of the Abrams tank. Staggering to wobbly feet, Bolan got up, feeling weak and dizzy. He had business to attend to before he could tend to his own scratches and scrapes.

Bolan pressed some gauze against the back of his head, looking around at the spread of bodies. Anyone left standing had run like hell. They had to have been convinced that missiles were raining down on this little bazaar of death. Sure, the terrorists were escaping to fight another day, but for now they were frightened.

And being frightened was three-quarters dead. Good enough for a bleeding, limping Executioner.

Bolan recognized the guy climbing the tank. It was the Hezbollah moneyman who’d lost his feet. There was something familiar about the guy who scrambled like a drunken spider. Getting to the tank, Bolan casually reached up under the man’s suit coat and grabbed his belt.

“Come here,” he growled, yanking the terrorist off the tank. The footless killer squealed as the back of his head bounced on the flattened and cracked concrete.

“Bastard…”

“That’s what they call me,” Bolan said. He knelt on the hardguy’s chest, lifted the stainless-steel Taurus and let swing with a savage stroke. Already, his brain had cleared enough to recognize Bidifah Sinbal.

“A long death or a short death,” Bolan said. “Your choice.”

“Generous offer. I give you nothing.”

Bolan looked down at Sinbal, then realized that droplets of blood were pouring onto the guy’s face with every exhalation of his own breath. The soldier put the back of his hand to his nose and came away with a glove of sticky, slick fresh blood.

“Looks like you overdid the explosives, punk.” The terrorist chuckled, lying on his back, wheezing as he finished off his laugh.

Bolan sighed. He was too dizzy and hurt to conduct a proper interrogation on Sinbal. The Hezbollah savage wasn’t going anywhere.

The Executioner got to his feet and climbed up the side of the tank, calling back to the wounded terrorist.

“Sit. Stay.”

Inside, the mystery of the first generation M1’s origins were revealed.

Outside, flags and insignias were scoured off and replaced with desert paint that broke up the graded and scaled camouflage pattern of the metallic beast. Inside, however, the writing on the controls was in Arabic.

The Executioner knew only one modern Arab military force that used the U.S.-built armored vehicle.

Egypt.

Hezbollah was in Pakistan, selling three Egyptian tanks. Bolan crawled up through the hatch once more, wiping his nose. The bleeding had stopped. He was still hurt, hammered and beaten.

But someone was moving top of the line tanks around like they were common contraband.

That was a someone the Executioner had a vested interest in shutting down—permanently.

It was time to call the Farm.