Читать книгу Death Dealers - Don Pendleton - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

The ceiling fan rotated slowly and Carl Lyons’s night vision had accustomed to the shadows so that he could even make out the wicker patterns inlaid into the paddles as he lay on his back. The Hawaiian night was full of the songs of insects and birds outside the open windows, but their tunes carried from the surrounding jungle, making this calm, warm night, silvery-blue moonlight cascading through gossamer drapes, seem far more warm and welcoming than it had any right to be. He was in this hotel under the name of Karl Long, also known as Stone among the Heathens Motorcycle Club of California.

This was an undercover operation for Stony Man Farm, and Lyons wasn’t here solo. In other hotel rooms were his two partners: fellow Able Team member Hermann Schwarz and Phoenix Force’s Thomas Jefferson Hawkins. Lyons would have felt more comfortable here in Hawaii with Able Team as a whole, cohesive unit, with the third member of the squad, Rosario Blancanales, as part of this deception. However, as Lyons was supposed to be a former member of the Heathens, and an up-and-coming bit of new blood in the Arrangement, hanging out with a Hispanic man, even if he was a blue-eyed “true Spaniard,” would have been suspicious. So Able Team had brought in Hawkins as a replacement.

All three men would be quite passable as members of a white supremacist movement. Lyons was tall, blond and Nordic. A twenty-first-century Viking warrior with a day’s worth of rough stubble on his chin and the faded tattoos running down his neck, arms and chest proclaiming his allegiance to the white race. The tattoos were fake, etched into his skin with a biological dye that would fade to nothingness after a month. Until then, the big blond ex-cop would have to endure the presence of obscene hatred and twisted, almost-blasphemous religious symbolism scoured across his skin.

That was part of why he couldn’t sleep tonight, why he allowed himself to be absorbed into the slowly rotating fan blades as they barely churned the night air in his room.

This was far from the first time Lyons had gone undercover, and also far from the only time he’d ever had to don the hideous mannerisms of a bigot to do his job. What kept him awake was more than disgust for the identity he’d slipped into, and more than paranoia that made him keep a Colt Python under his pillow, within easy reach of his right hand.

It wasn’t paranoia if you were surrounded by representatives from dozens of gangs around the world, all assembled for a global auction by handwritten invitation—one that Able Team had uncovered while cleaning up loose ends from a prior crisis. It had looked handwritten but in truth had been merely printed, the cursive script the product of a font. No one would be able to perform a handwriting analysis on the mechanized scribbling on paper, and there were also no fingerprints except for those of Kevin Reising, the man who’d received the letter.

Reising was currently still listed among the living, but in hiding. The truth of the matter was that his corpse was nothing but charred ashes, with a .45-caliber slug where the brainpan should have been. The announcement of the man’s death would not be released until after there was no longer a need for the current undercover identities of Karl Long, Herman Shore and Thomas Presley.

By then the organizers of this event, a sale for everything from handguns to long-range missiles, would be dead and gone. The host organization of this auction went by the name of Abalisah, and this hotel was far from the beaten trail, on a small island of the archipelago. With a title that was Arabic for devils, it was a sure sign that things were not going to be safe and calm. The man who was the face of the auction was a tall man who could have been anything from European to Middle Eastern. His skin was well tanned, but he had no accent, no truly identifiable features. He was called Jinan.

“Do what you will,” Jinan had said over a loudspeaker, his voice distorted by a modulator. At least it might have been, but it also could have been a simple computer program or just a schmuck hired to read a sheet of paper put before him. “You have been allowed to keep your sidearms, your knives, your poisons. I merely wish your money, so if you cannot outbid your enemy, perhaps you can steal from him or perhaps murder him. The only things that I forbid are attempts to steal my property or attacks upon my personal staff.”

Anything goes, Lyons thought, sliding his fingers under his pillow and around the handle of Colt Python, feeling the diamond-checkered grips against the palm of his hand. Surrounded by enemies, dozens of whom Lyons recognized from their Interpol profiles accessed at Stony Man Farm, he and his partners were in deep.

There was a rap at the door and Lyons sat up. He looked over and saw that it was closing in on three in the morning. He hadn’t placed any orders with room service. By the same token, he couldn’t imagine why someone out to blow him away would knock politely at his door. Out in the hall, he heard more knocks on different doors and softly spoken words even as they were opened.

Lyons got out of bed, not bothering to put on pants or underwear. It was perfect weather for lying in bed, no covers, naked and enjoying the sea breeze wafting through the window. A pair of undershorts wouldn’t make him any less vulnerable to gunfire or a knife. Still, his cop training took hold as he stood behind the doorjamb while he turned the knob to his door. If a bullet were to cut through the door at his moment, it would slice into empty air, not his chest.

The door swung open, silent on well-oiled hinges, and Lyons caught a hint of jasmine in the air as he looked into the hall. It was lit, but not so bright that it made his eyes hurt as they adjusted. Instead of a killer in the hall, there was a woman standing there. He couldn’t tell her age as she stood in front of him in the doorway.

Her skin was deeply bronzed, bare shoulders in sharp contrast to the cream-hued cloth that looped around her neck and then came down to cradle her full, soft breasts. The fabric draped to one side and knotted over her hip, exposing the curve of silken flesh beneath. The light caught a glint of gold from a small ring that adorned her navel while that same light cast an undeniable silhouette, leaving no doubt that the filmy fabric was the only thing between her bare skin and the sultry evening air.

Once more, Lyons hated the skin he was forced to wear, the tattoos of white power with hateful slurs branded, if only for a month, on his flesh. However, as he returned his gaze to her face, he saw that she wasn’t a black woman. He tried to place her, either as Hispanic, or perhaps a Pacific Islander, but her large brown eyes and full sensual mouth were most definitely not Asian or Caucasian.

“Mr. Long, my name is Sanay,” she said. Her accent was as unidentifiable as her features, and Lyons couldn’t help but think that the branches of her family tree had roots in different parts of the forest. There was a hint of British in it, but her voice was as elusive in its origins as her appearance. “I am your gift for tonight from Master Jinan.”

“Master Jinan,” Lyons repeated, looking her up and down. Was this some kind of test? After all, Karl Long was an Aryan thug, an outlaw motorcyclist whose racist pedigree had been cemented with a violent assault on a La Sombra prisoner that had left him brain damaged and with an amputated arm. It wasn’t murder, which would have meant that Long could never leave prison, but it was a show of strength and unity among the Arrangement. “What makes your boss think that I’d have interest in a little brown thing like you?”

Lyons smirked, hating the words that poured from his lips but also knowing full well that Long was spending prison time for the assault and rapes of Filipino, Polynesian and Hispanic women. Even her age, a little north of thirty, and her diminutive five-foot height, matched Long’s taste in victims.

Abalisah’s researchers were good, uncannily so, to have pulled up those kinds of facts about him. So even as Lyons made his dismissive challenge to the girl, Sanay stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. She glanced down to the cocked pistol in Lyons’s hand and then to the growing arousal obstinately making itself known despite his bravado. Her dark, slender fingers gave him a light brush, the tips of her nails tracing lines over his tightly packed abs before she cupped her palm over his pectoral muscle.

“Abalisah knows all the darkness in this hotel. Yours. Mine. Everyone’s,” Sanay whispered, pressing closer to him. Her other hand glided over Lyons’s hip and she explored his body in the darkness.

She was barefoot and she rose to the tips of her toes, lips barely able to press against his collarbone, brushing lightly, tongue darting out to taste his skin.

Lyons hooked his arm under hers, and he flexed, lifting her higher. He was able to hold her up with only one arm, bring her mouth to his, lips so soft and inviting that Lyons could easily forget himself as he carried her toward the bed. Sanay helped Lyons, bracing her thighs against his hips, her slender arms draped around his neck.

The Able Team commander still couldn’t get rid of a knot of dread in his stomach, even as he joined with Sanay, exploring her wonderful caramel skin, her dark, firm nipples, velvety soft lips and warm, tender tongue in her mouth.

* * *

THE LIGHT OF dawn would not pour through Lyons’s westward-facing balcony, but he did notice the graying skies as sunrise approached.

He lay still, Sanay, the exotic, beautiful woman entangled around him, a trickle of wet drool having dried and crusted on his chest. He couldn’t see her; his eyes were mere slits, only open enough to register the increasing light of day.

Lyons could feel her moving, stirring from his chest and crawling off him. He continued breathing deeply, as if asleep.

Maybe the women were sent to these rooms as spies.

Sanay quietly moved to the nightstand, where he’d placed his pistol the night before, and lifted the revolver. When Lyons heard her check to see if the weapon was loaded, he acted without thinking. He clamped his hand down hard over hers, pinning her finger inside the trigger guard. He heard the ugly pop of her index finger, but even as that happened, he drove the heel of his palm against her jaw in a Shotokan karate stroke.

The blow knocked her to the hardwood floor with a sharp crack. The revolver was locked now in Lyons’s left fist, and he watched as a trickle of blood seeped from her cheek onto the rug. Even as he looked down at the grisly damage he’d wrought in the space of a few moments, he noticed something else on the rug at his feet.

Sanay had removed the rounds from the revolver, rendering it useless even before she’d pointed it at him.

Lyons did a press check; the weapon’s barrel was empty. She’d made it seem as if she were about to attack him, but it had been a ruse. Once more, he had an uneasy feeling wash over him. The tattoos on his flesh seemed to come alive, their hints and promises of intolerance and rot audible in their gnawing on his soul.

“Why’d you let me almost kill you?” Lyons growled, taking her by the wrist and pulling her into a sitting position. His cold blue eyes must have flashed with lightning-bright anger because she winced, recoiling at his touch.

“Because...Jinan would not believe your story...” Sanay whispered. Blood now stained the side of her neck; there was a gash down one cheek. Her big brown eyes were glimmering with tears. “He would kill you.”

Lyons loosened his iron grasp on her wrist.

“No...don’t stop. He’ll kill you,” she whispered.

Lyons sat on the mattress. Karl Long was a rapist. He wouldn’t make gentle love to the kind of women he’d been in prison for violating. The Able Team commander had stumbled dead into a trap, dropping evidence that he was not the sexual predator, the destroying creature, whose identity he’d assumed.

Too many years on the LAPD had taught him that rape had very little to do with sex, with sensuality, with lovemaking. And yet, that tiny bit of information had failed him as he’d given in to his body’s normal, human sexual desires, bonding with Sanay, tending to her tender little form the way she’d explored his hard physique. Already, the lips of the laceration on her cheek puffed up, darkening. Her jaw was also deepening its hue, red and raw from where he’d punched her.

“I needed you to do that,” Sanay repeated softly. “He’ll kill you if you don’t.”

Lyons cupped the tip of her chin, looking into her eyes. “Why would you do this?”

“Because you’re kind. You’re a good man,” Sanay answered. She lowered her head, scrunching her shoulders up around her neck. “A man like that doesn’t deserve to be treated like...”

Lyons bit his lower lip. At once, he was ashamed of his violent reflexes, but at the same time, they’d intervened and protected him despite himself. The girl had leveled a gun at him.

“You took a damn chance,” Lyons growled. He helped her up, a hand under each armpit, then sat her beside him on the mattress. “What if I’d shot you? What if I beat you to death?”

“Then this would be over,” Sanay answered.

In the ever-growing light, Lyons could see that Sanay’s skin wore her years with nearly as much character as he’d earned in his years of battle. Cigarette burns, healed cuts and freckles were now visible as the concealer makeup she’d worn had been scrubbed away by their vigorous lovemaking. Her whole life was a wrought tale carved into her flesh, hidden by that caramel coating.

And Lyons hated himself for having gone full karate on her. He knew that his palm-heel stroke would leave hairline fractures along Sanay’s mandible, and she was still in pain right now. It would stay with her as a constant, sharp ache for months, acting up every time she bit down hard. He just knew that she’d be taking an extra painkiller or two to numb herself further against the lifetime of punishment she’d received.

Lyons gently dabbed the blood from her cheek, careful not to apply pressure to the swollen edges of her laceration. Sanay’s welling tears didn’t fill her eyes quite enough to trickle down her face, but Lyons could see into her dark, soulful eyes, spotting a small spark. A tint of hope gleamed in them. He could see that he was the first in a long time who had treated her like a human.

“Don’t,” Lyons told her, his deep voice having a slight crack in it. He’d been here before, with brave women, those who knew how to fight and survive.

“Don’t what?” Sanay asked.

“Don’t risk yourself for me,” Lyons ordered.

“Jinan said to expect to be raped, to be hurt, to be destroyed,” Sanay whispered. “But he said that if I made it, he would give me all the opium I needed. Enough to ride away into eternity.”

She looked down at herself, sinking her upper teeth into her soft, cushiony lower lip. “This...this isn’t enough. You’ll—”

A knock at the door cut her off. Sanay froze, her sadness-brimming eyes finally bursting like a dam as she shot a glance at the door. Lyons moved with the speed of a cobra, scooping up his Colt Python and readying it for action.

Still standing at the jamb, using it as a shield, he tore open the door. “What the hell do you want?”

Lyons was eye to eye with a man who looked too wide to even step through the hotel doorway. He could see brawny muscles rippling in the newcomer’s neck, shoulders, upper arms and chest. However the farther down he looked on the ever-broadening form, those muscles ebbed, slipping under a layer of fat that, at a distance, would have most fools thinking him to be a ball of blubber. Fortunately, Lyons had run into many of this type of man, as well. He called them “hard fat,” men who would never display a set of washboard abs, but had endless reserves of strength and endurance, capable of tossing around throngs of bodybuilders as if they were rag dolls. The Lump, as Lyons named the man, glowered in reaction to Lyons’s hostility.

“Picking up the bitches. Or what’s left of them.”

The man had no accent, though his features were solidly Polynesian. He also didn’t show the slightest bit of intimidation at the sight of the Colt in Lyons’s fist. He turned to Sanay and barked. “Here! Now!”

Sanay sprung to her tiny feet and darted from the bed to the doorway. She hadn’t bothered to pick up the folds of flimsy cloth that Lyons had torn off her the night before.

“Was expecting you a little more ripped up,” the Lump said.

Lyons glowered at him. “Jinan said not to kill the staff.”

The round ball of disguised muscle tugged Sanay into the hallway, looking at her closer, his gaze falling on the darkening bruises of her face.

“Well...” Lyons added, letting a little sheepishness creep into his voice. “I remembered that eventually.”

The Lump swiveled his head atop that tree trunk of a neck, ropes of tendon and sinew stretching from it and into his shoulders like the gnarled roots of a hideous tree. “She ain’t staff. She’s party favors.”

The Lump pulled on Sanay’s wrist. “Come on. I’ll get you some fresh...”

Lyons growled, cutting off the slab of humanity in the hallway. “Screw that. I want her back. The bitch sits up and begs when I cough. Don’t want to have to train something else like that.”

Lump glanced from Lyons to the frightened girl. Sanay looked like a rabbit caught between a wolf and a mountain lion. The slab glanced back to Lyons, standing there naked—the only thing he wore was a scowl of annoyance—accessorized with a menacing Colt.

“I’ll have her cleaned up, just like last night,” Lump told him.

Lyons nodded, standing by helplessly as Lump tugged Sanay after him. She looked at him, confused.

Lyons slammed the door shut, resting his head against the doorjamb. He looked at the reflection of his face in the chrome of the door chain’s slot.

He hated what he saw.