Читать книгу Justice Run - Don Pendleton - Страница 12

CHAPTER FIVE

Turrin bolted up the stairs to the second floor in search of Dumond. He wanted to capture or kill the guy. If Dumond was in the house, Turrin guessed putting him down was going to require blasting through a line of well-armed thugs.

And maybe he wouldn’t make it. It was something he always knew yet tried not to think about. When his old friend Mack Bolan called on him for help, it almost always required putting his life on the line. Turrin expected it. It was one of the few things in life he’d made peace with.

Before he could reach the top of the stairs, a hardman rushed into view. The guy was lining up a shot at Turrin with his Steyr AUG. His mind and body conditioned by countless near-death experiences, Turrin triggered his Beretta. The handgun coughed discreetly and a 3-round burst of 9 mm bullets drilled into his adversary’s chest. Surprise flashed on the man’s features an instant before his body dropped to the floor at the head of the stairs.

Turrin stepped over the corpse, moved onto the second floor and ran his gaze over his surroundings. The stairs led into a semicircular landing. Ornate tiles covered the floor and crystal chandeliers lit the upstairs. Railed walkways ran on either side of the stairway, and across the landing a door opened into another corridor. Since the walkways were empty, Turrin crossed the landing and moved into the corridor. Three doors lined the right side and four stood on the opposite side.

The first two doors on Turrin’s right were open. He checked the first room quickly and found nothing. Inside the second room, he found an oak desk with a computer monitor on top of it. As he moved around the desk, he spotted the computer tower on the floor. The side was cracked open and fragments of circuit boards and other electronic guts were strewed over the floor. Apparently the PC had contained something of value. He made a mental note to check with the cyber team at the Farm to see whether he should try to recover it.

Slipping back through the door, he caught a fast-moving dark shape in his peripheral vision.

He spun in time to see a rangy man hurtling at him, his right arm pulled back, his hand clutching a gleaming knife. The guy was on him quickly. Turrin didn’t have time to swing the Beretta toward his attacker and squeeze off a shot. He saw the knife plunge at him and stepped sideways, letting the blade cut through empty air. As the knife slashed downward, the guy’s torso leaned forward, putting him slightly off balance. With his left hand, Turrin grabbed a handful of his attacker’s shirt and jerked him forward, hoping to send him hurtling into a wall. At the same time, Turrin used the extra space to bring the Beretta into play.

Unfortunately the guy caught his footing. His hand snaked out and, grabbing the wrist of Turrin’s gun hand, pushed it away so the little Fed couldn’t get a decent shot at him.

Balling his other hand into a fist, Turrin lashed out and flattened his adversary’s nose, causing the guy to moan. Turrin pressed the attack, thrusting an open hand up at the tip of the man’s nose and driving the broken cartilage into his brain. The guy’s fingers uncurled from Turrin’s wrist and he backpedaled a couple of steps before sinking to the floor.

The Stony Man warrior leaned against the wall, taking a moment to catch his breath as he watched a last shudder pass through the man at his feet.

Two down. How many to go?

Hell, it was time to find out.

Turrin quickly searched the rest of the second floor, but found no one. Figuring he’d check the third floor next, he headed down the corridor. As he hurried forward, he heard footsteps pounding down the stairway, then spotted three men.

The hardman in the lead saw Turrin and reacted. In the blink of an eye he fired off a shot from a handgun. The weapon’s report echoed through the enclosed space as Turrin dived to his right just a bullet passed through the air where he’d stood only a microsecond before.

His body hit the hard tile floor, and sent bolts of pain through his chest and right shoulder. However, he kept a firm hold on his pistol and rolled away from his opponents.

Raising his pistol, he spotted the same thug trying to get another bead on him. The Beretta churned out a triburst. Two of the rounds missed the guy by inches while the third bit into his biceps. Through a haze of pain, the guy fired off two more rounds, both of which slapped against the floor just in front of Turrin’s face.

Turrin adjusted the aim on the Beretta and squeezed off another triburst, the rounds sinking into the man’s stomach and doubling him over. Turrin had spotted Dumond and was swinging his gun toward the arms dealer when the second hardman stepped between them. The Beretta’s Parabellum rounds drilled into the man’s torso. He teetered on unsteady legs but was still able to fire off a single round that zinged over Turrin’s head. Another trio of bullets from the Beretta hit the teetering thug’s chest and he pitched forward, his body tumbling over the stairway railing.

Dumond was gone, and Turrin could hear rapid footsteps on the stairs. He had been so hyper-focused on the two guards he’d missed his target sprinting away. From outside the building, the little Fed could hear the whipping of helicopter blades.

Dropping the magazine from the Beretta and reloading, Turrin got to his feet, cursing, then sprinted for the steps. By the time he reached them, he could hear Dumond running across the floor below. He surged downstairs but found that his target had disappeared. Hearing a heavy door slam shut to his right, Turrin spun in the direction of the noise and raced toward it.

Passing through a luxuriously appointed sitting room, the former undercover mobster found a heavy wooden door. He grabbed the knob and twisted, but the door wouldn’t budge. A dead bolt installed above the knob explained why the door was holding fast.

From the other side of the door, he could hear glass breaking. Muttering a curse, he holstered the Beretta, stepped back, unslung his shotgun and blasted through the shiny new lock. The dead bolt gave way in a shower of metal fragments and chunks of wood, and the door swung inward. The room in front of him was an office of some kind, outfitted with a desk, book shelves and filing cabinets.

Beyond the desk, Turrin saw the window had been broken out. The growl of a helicopter’s engines and the thrumming of its blades grew louder.

Turrin sprinted to the window and peered outside. A helicopter hovered overhead, the rotor wash causing tree branches and leaves to whip around as though caught in a monsoon. A rope ladder swung from the bottom of the aircraft. His eyes followed the length of the ladder. At the top, he saw Dumond, just a couple of feet from climbing into the craft.

Turrin aimed at the fleeing man. Before he could fire off a shot, though, two of Dumond’s ground thugs began unloading their automatic weapons at Turrin.

The sudden hail of bullets forced him to dive away from the window and land on the floor on his belly. Turrin rose, slinging the shotgun and unleathering his Beretta. He flattened against the wall and eased back to the window. Bullets speared through the opening, chewing holes in the large desk, shattering a set of crystal liquor bottles and glasses that stood on top of the desk, and ripping pockmarks in the walls.

Turrin remained just to the side of the window until the shooting subsided before he took a chance to peer around the frame. Dumond had disappeared inside the helicopter. One of the guards had slung his machine pistol over his shoulder and was climbing the rope up to the helicopter.

The other shooter, who was reloading his machine pistol, spotted Turrin in the window. The thug’s mouth dropped open. If he said anything, the noise was swallowed up by the helicopter. A burst from Turrin’s Beretta hit the man in the chest and knocked him to the ground.

The whine of the helicopter’s engines intensified, telling Turrin it was about to grab some altitude. He swung the Beretta, aimed at the aircraft and drew a bead on the second hardman on the ladder.

Before he could squeeze off a shot, though, the ladder came loose from its moorings and fell away from the helicopter. The man holding on to the ladder uttered a short cry before his body slapped hard against the ground.

Turrin climbed through the window. He ran a few yards before he stopped, raised the Beretta and tried to line up a shot at Dumond who was visible in the door of the retreating helicopter for a brief instant. Then he withdrew into the craft and slammed the door closed. Turrin let the pistol fall. There was no reason for him to waste another shot.

* * *

THE ELEVATOR CARRIED Bolan to the cellar. When the doors slid open, he stood to one side, holding the MP-5 in his right hand by its pistol grip. With his other hand, he kept a finger pressed into the Open Door button.

Light from the elevator spilled into the darkened hallway, illuminating several yards. Bolan saw shadows moving in the darkness.

The soldier took a flash-bang grenade from the pocket of his windbreaker, jerked out the pin and tossed the bomb through the doorway. He covered his ears as best he could, with one hand holding his pistol, and opened his mouth slightly. The grenade unleashed a white flash of light and a disorienting peal of thunder. The soldier went around the doorway in a crouch. One of Dumond’s hardmen had been knocked to the ground by the device’s concussive force. The other man was aiming his submachine gun at an angle, well past Bolan.

The Executioner swept the MP-5 in a wide horizontal arc as the weapon churned through the contents of its magazine. When he let off the trigger, the hardmen were sprawled on the floor in their own blood.

The soldier reloaded as he moved along the hallway. All the doors were locked. The soldier rolled one of the guards onto his back and searched through the pockets of the guy’s expensive suit. When he came away empty, he searched the second man and found a set of keys.

Bolan knocked once on the nearest door.

“Jennifer Rodriguez, are you in there? My name’s Matt Cooper. I’m from the Justice Department. I’m here to get you out.”

“Yes, I’m here,” the FBI agent replied.

The soldier tried a few keys and finally one unlocked the door. He pushed it inward.

Rodriguez had stepped back from the door and stood in the center of the room, staring at Bolan. The soldier was struck by her height first. Even at a distance, he could tell she was just under six feet tall and she still had a trim, athletic build. Her eyes were dark brown and Bolan could see the distrust beaming from them. After what she’d been through the past several days, he could hardly blame her.

She looked over Bolan’s shoulder. “Where’s the rest of the team?”

“The other half is upstairs.”

“Other half? There are two of you?”

Bolan nodded. As she moved to the door, he stepped back from the room and started walking toward the elevator. “Are you okay?”

“I haven’t eaten or showered in forever. But otherwise, I’m okay, yes.”

“Good,” Bolan said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Bolan ushered her into the elevator, then followed her inside and they returned to the first floor. When the doors opened, Bolan gestured for her to remain inside and he left the car.

A ragged line of hardmen was scrambling to head Bolan off. The soldier scythed them down with a barrage of 9 mm rounds just as the MP-5 clicked dry. Ejecting the magazine, he slipped his last fresh one into the weapon and called for Rodriguez to come out of the elevator.

They made a beeline for the front door with Bolan still in the lead. As they stepped into the warm evening, the soldier heard sirens screaming. Keying the throat mike, he called for Turrin.

“Yeah?”

“Meet me at the Jag,” Bolan said.

“Roger that,” the retired Fed replied.

“Jag?” Rodriguez asked. “You have a Jaguar? What department are you with again?”

“It’s complicated,” Bolan said.

When they reached the car, Turrin was already there, tossing some of his gear into the trunk.

The Stony Man warriors claimed the front seats, with Bolan behind the wheel. Rodriguez slipped into the backseat as Bolan stomped on the Jaguar’s accelerator. The car’s engine responded with a growl and the vehicle lurched ahead, barreling toward the gates of Dumond’s estate. Rodriguez twisted at the waist and stared through the rear window.

Bolan looked into the rearview mirror and saw a couple of muzzle-flashes wink in the darkness. A bullet struck the trunk lid, sparked against the steel and angled off into the darkness.

As the Jaguar neared the gate, another of Dumond’s shooters ran into the vehicle’s path, a machine pistol tucked in close to his body.

Turrin stuck an arm through his side window to fire on the guy. Even over the roar of the engine, Bolan heard the dry crackle of autofire and saw jagged flames lash out from the shooter’s weapon. The bullet went low. The Executioner heard something thunk against the vehicle and he guessed the round had hammered into the vehicle’s engine block.

Turrin’s Beretta roared twice, just as the Jaguar rolled over a speed bump. The car shuddered. Bolan clenched his teeth and fought to keep control of the steering wheel, which wanted to jerk to the right.

The bullets from Turrin’s weapon went wild, leaving the guard untouched.

Headlights bathed the hardman in their white glow, making his face look deathly pale.

His mouth dropped open and he threw up an arm to protect himself. The vehicle’s right front fender smacked into the shooter, the force spinning his body and heaving it into the air all at once.

“Bull’s-eye,” Turrin muttered.

* * *

THEY’D DRIVEN LESS than a half mile when Bolan caught a whiff of the distinctive odor from a busted radiator. The needle on the temperature gauge was rising to the red quickly. The vehicle probably would overheat in a matter of minutes. Bolan knew they needed to do something.

He glanced at Turrin. “We’re going to have to ditch,” he said.

Turrin nodded.

“Ditch?” the woman said. “If Dumond sends his people after us, we can’t outrun them on foot.”

Bolan looked up into the rearview mirror and saw a reflection of her staring at him.

“We also can’t outrun them in a dead car,” he said. “Trust me. We’ll get you out of here.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but hesitated, seeming to consider his words. “Okay,” she said with a nod.

“Up there,” Turrin said, pointing at something beyond the windshield. Bolan followed where he was pointing and saw the mouth of an alley up ahead. The smell of antifreeze intermingled with overheated plastic, metal and oil had grown stronger. The soldier acknowledged Turrin with a nod.

A couple of seconds later when they reached their destination, he cut the wheel to the right and guided the car into the narrow alley. He killed the engine but left the headlights burning. “Wait here,” he growled.

Popping open the door, he stepped from the vehicle and walked up to the front end and checked the damage. Bullet holes pockmarked the grille in a ragged line.

Another slug had taken out one of the running lights. White plumes of steam curled up from around the edges of the hood. The car definitely was damaged goods.

Moving back to the driver’s door, Bolan leaned inside, pulled up on a floor switch that opened the trunk and switched off the headlights.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Turrin nodded and exited the car. The woman climbed from the backseat and, eyeing the two men cautiously, approached them. She stopped several feet away from them.

“We need another car,” she said.

“We’ll get one,” Bolan replied.

“What, are you going to steal one?” she asked, her voice incredulous.

“Yeah.”

“Wait! What?”

Turrin looked at her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The big guy does this shit all the time.”

“He’s a federal agent!”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”

“No time,” Bolan said.

The Executioner glided past her and moved to the trunk. He slid his fingertips into the seam between the edge of the trunk lid and the car and pulled. The lid sprang open. He tossed the MP-5 into the trunk. When Turrin saw what Bolan was doing, he reached into the car, pulled out his shotgun and tossed it into the compartment. Bolan slammed the lid.

He hated to leave the weapons behind, but he had little choice. They could conceal their sidearms under their jackets. But walking around a foreign city with shotguns and submachine guns would probably attract all the wrong kinds of attention.

For all intents and purposes, John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Stony Man Farm’s armorer, had rendered the weapons untraceable. If someone ran the prints on the weapons, they’d find nothing. Any prints the soldier had left behind as Mack Samuel Bolan or under his aliases Matt Cooper or, before that, Mike Belasko, had been scrubbed. Whenever he had any brushes with the authorities, the Farm’s cyber team hacked into the computers after the fact and erased any mug shots or fingerprints that might have been taken. As far as the world was concerned, Bolan was dead and had been for years. It was a fiction that Stony Man Farm went to great lengths to maintain.

From the corner of his eye he saw Rodriguez standing there, watching them. Bolan raised his right foot, set it on the bumper and pulled up the cuff of his pant leg. A small Glock pistol rode on his ankle in a holster. He drew the pistol. He sensed Rodriguez tensing, saw her back away a step. Turning toward her, he extended his hand and offered the weapon.

“You need a little something,” he said.

Nodding, she took the pistol from him, pulled back the slide and looked to see whether a round was in the chamber. Satisfied, she let the slide snap forward and slipped the pistol into her waistband.

“Thanks,” she said.

Spinning away from the car, the Executioner strode toward the mouth of the alley. When he reached it, he paused for a couple of heartbeats and glanced in both directions to see whether Dumond’s men had followed them. Men and women, tanned and fit, walked up and down the sidewalk, smiling and laughing.

Bolan slid the Beretta into the shoulder holster under his jacket and stepped from the alley, with the others moving behind him. As they moved up the street, he glanced at Rodriguez. The woman had plastered a smile on her face and was walking with a steady, confident gait, all of which took attention from her mussed hair and ripped jacket. In the distance, Bolan could hear sirens. He assumed police and emergency vehicles were speeding to Dumond’s estate. Once they arrived, they’d find the place littered with bodies.

And, if prowl cars weren’t already sweeping the area for Turrin and him, they soon would be. Once the police found the Jaguar, they’d realize whoever had driven the car had moved away on foot. They’d establish a perimeter that would make it harder for Bolan and the others to get away quickly.

They needed to move fast before that happened.

They’d put a couple of blocks between themselves and the Jaguar when Bolan spotted a police car halted at the intersection just ahead of them. The officer driving the car stared at them. Had Dumond or his people given the police a physical description? Bolan doubted it, but he felt himself tense up just the same.

“Is he looking at us?” Turrin asked, his voice low.

“Seems like it,” Bolan replied.

Rodriguez cast a glance at the soldier. “What if he is looking at us?” she asked.

“Let him look,” Bolan replied with a slight shrug.

“We can’t fight him.”

“You’re right. We can’t. And we won’t.”

One of the few rules Bolan had in his War Everlasting was that he never would draw his weapon on a police officer, even if the cop was about to shoot him. A second later, the traffic light changed and the squad car lurched forward and turned onto the street Bolan and the others were walking along. The officer at the wheel gave them one last look as he drove past, but kept going.

“Thank God,” Rodriguez said quietly.

“Yes and no,” Bolan said. “We just gained a couple of minutes. But if the guy’s instincts nag at him enough, he may turn around and want to talk to us. Look at us. We don’t exactly look like rich, carefree tourists.”

“True.”

When they reached the intersection, Bolan veered right down a side street and followed it away from the main drag for three blocks. An older-model blue Citroën parked along the curb caught the warrior’s eye. He walked up to it, peered through a side window, looking for blinking red lights that might signal an alarm, but saw nothing. Pulling his arm back, he shot forward and drove the point of his elbow into the glass. The window shattered on impact, glittering shards falling to the ground and into the car.

Bolan reached through the window, unlocked the door and within seconds was seated inside the vehicle, working to hotwire the starter while Turrin watched their surroundings. Once the engine growled to life, Turrin opened the passenger-side door and gestured for Rodriguez to climb into the backseat. As she settled inside, he stuck one leg into the car before the sound of yelling caught his attention. He turned and saw an elderly man, silver hair contrasting against deeply tanned skin, running down the street, yelling in French and shaking his fist.

Turrin folded himself into the car and slammed the door just as Bolan began wheeling it from its parking space. He gunned the engine. The Citroën gained speed as it hurtled away from its owner who was now standing in the street, shaking a fist at the thieves stealing his car. The soldier navigated the car out of the neighborhood and aimed it toward the safehouse.