Читать книгу State Of Evil - Don Pendleton - Страница 12

Patrick Quinn might’ve lost some weight since moving from Wyoming to the Congo, but a quarter mile into the Executioner’s forced march, the body slumped across his shoulder seemed to be gaining more poundage with every step.

Bolan knew that the feeling was a combination of fatigue, deadweight and the oppressive jungle atmosphere, but understanding didn’t make his burden any lighter. He experimented with his speed, plodding, jogging, looking for a happy medium between the two, but nothing eased the chafing or the dull ache that had started in the left side of his body.

No hunters were pursuing him, so far. Bolan was confident he would’ve heard them coming through the forest, but he couldn’t say when the pursuit would start. His rest stop had to be a brief one, and perhaps he’d shift Quinn to his other shoulder for the next half mile or so.

When he was two miles from the village, he could use the satellite phone to contact Grimaldi, and his ride home would be airborne within minutes. There was still a long, hard march in front of him, but if he reached their rendezvous without a swarm of trackers on his tail, there would be time to rest while he waited for the chopper.

And by then, Bolan knew he would need it.

He was forced to lower Quinn by stages, to avoid a sudden drop that might inflict concussion or a list of other injuries. First Bolan crouched in front of a looming tree, then braced one knee against the spongy soil. He set down his rifle and gripped Quinn’s torso with both hands, leaning forward an inch at a time until his passenger was seated on the ground, reclining with his back against the tree trunk.

Perfect.

Only when he saw Quinn’s face did Bolan realize that something had gone wrong.

The young man’s skin was clammy, deathly pale. His breathing was a shallow whisper, barely there. When Bolan checked his pulse, two fingers probing for an artery below the bristly jawline, he discovered an erratic, feeble beat.

Bolan had never gone to med school, but he’d passed the basic first-aid course required of every Special Forces soldier, and he recognized a classic case of shock. Quinn’s vital signs were fading fast, and if the trend wasn’t reversed, Bolan’s inert companion would become a true deadweight.

Some people panicked in a crisis; others did what had to be done. Bolan has lost his panic gene in mortal combat, long ago and far away. Younger than Quinn, he’d learned that those who lost their head in crisis situations often lost their lives, as well. All things being equal, cooler heads and steady hands had better chances of survival.

Bolan’s life wasn’t at risk this time, not yet, but it was still a case of do-or-die. He guessed that Quinn’s condition represented a reaction to the sedative—either some kind of unexpected allergy or possibly an overdose occasioned by his recent weight loss.

In either case, if Bolan’s supposition was correct, he had the answer in his pocket.

Stony Man had planned ahead, as always. While the sedative injection had been judged appropriate and safe for adult males of Quinn’s expected size and weight, the Farm’s medical officer had left nothing to chance. The hypo kit furnished to Bolan also included an all-purpose antidote, a sort of steroid-adrenaline cocktail designed to suppress allergic reactions and to jump-start failing hearts.

It would be either Quinn’s salvation or a waste of time. If something else was killing him, or if he suffered some adverse reaction to the antidote itself, Bolan had no more remedies on tap. He couldn’t operate, couldn’t keep Quinn alive with CPR and still meet Jack Grimaldi for their pickup. He would simply have to watch the young man die, then take the bad news back to Val.

Screw that.

Bolan removed his last syringe from its high-impact case, peeled back one of Quinn’s denim sleeves and found a vein. He pinched Quinn’s bicep, made the vein stand out more prominently and administered the dose with steady pressure on the hypo’s plunger. Ten long seconds saw it done, and Bolan stowed the kit, now useless to him, as he settled back to wait.

Some fifteen seconds after the injection, Quinn began to twitch, as if experiencing a mild seizure. Warm color rose from underneath his collar, tingeing throat and cheeks. Quinn muttered something unintelligible, batting weakly at his face with his left hand.

And then his eyes snapped open.

“EXPLAIN THE PROBLEM once again, if you don’t mind,” Pablo Camacho said. His frown was thoughtful, almost studious.

It angered Gaborone to have his concentration interrupted, but he couldn’t show impatience to Camacho or the man who stood beside him, likewise waiting for his answer. One of them would soon pay millions for the key to Armageddon, and until the contract had been executed, Gaborone couldn’t afford to vent his spleen toward either one.

“The fires were set deliberately,” Gaborone replied in even tones. “Having discovered that, I realized that someone might be injured, or else missing from the camp.”

“The fire setter.” Adnan Ibn Sharif remained impassive as he spoke.

“Perhaps. In any case, a survey of our people has revealed one absent from his dormitory. An American. My men are searching for him now in other barracks, the latrines, mess hall.”

“You have guards here,” Camacho said. “Can anyone simply walk out, unseen?”

“It’s a community, Mr. Camacho, not a prison camp. My people stay because they wish to. They have faith in me and in the Process. We await the end times here.”

Camacho fairly sneered. “Someone grew tired of waiting, it would seem.”

“We don’t know yet if the young man in question set the fires. He may still be in camp, somewhere. In any case, he will be found and questioned.”

“Found in any case?” Sharif was plainly skeptical. “What if he’s run into the jungle? Can you find him there?”

“Some of my men are native hunters. They can track a leopard through the thickets to its lair.”

“This is a man,” Camacho said, “not some dumb animal.”

“A white man from the U.S.A.,” Gaborone said. He forced a smile. “If this one ran into the forest, he’ll be lost by now.”

“But going somewhere, all the same,” Sharif replied. “We’re wasting time.”

“On the contrary. Even as some search the village, others are scouting the perimeter. They will discover any signs of recent passage.”

Camacho shifted restlessly, hands clinched to fists inside his trouser pockets. “Tell us something more of this American you’ve lost. How do you know he’s not a spy?”

“I know my people,” Gaborone replied. “They’re converts, gentlemen, not infiltrators. Each has sacrificed to demonstrate devotion. They have given up their lives and families to follow me.”

“Still, if a spy wants to impress you,” said Camacho, “he could do all that and more. I’ve been indicted in absentia by the government in Washington. For all I know, your arsonist is a narcotics agent and these fires were signals for a raid.”

“In which case,” Gaborone asked his uneasy guest, “where are the raiders? Do you hear the sound of aircraft circling overhead? The only landing strip within a hundred miles is guarded by my men, and they have radios as well as weapons. You are perfectly secure in Obike.”

“Why don’t I feel secure?” Camacho asked.

“Perhaps you’ve lived in fear too long,” Gaborone said. “In fact, the young man whom we seek converted to the Process months ago. Before I had the pleasure of your company—or yours, Mr. Sharif. Could he predict that we would meet and come to terms on business matters, gentlemen? I doubt it very much.”

“We have not come to terms,” Sharif reminded him. “Not yet.”

Gaborone was rapidly reaching the end of his patience. “Indeed,” he replied, “have we not? Please pardon my presumption. I assumed that our discussions had some basis in reality. If you prefer to look elsewhere for what you seek, I won’t detain you any further. I can halt the trivial pursuit of one young man and have you taken to the airstrip. Are your things in order? Is an hour soon enough?”

Camacho fanned the muggy air with an impatient hand. “No one said anything about leaving. I can’t speak for Sharif, but I still want the merchandise, if we can strike a bargain on the price.”

“And I!” Sharif confirmed. “I’ve come empowered to close a deal.”

“Then, by all means,” Gaborone said, “leave petty matters of internal discipline to me. I’ll soon find out who set the fires and what possessed him to make such a grave mistake. Until then, gentlemen, please take advantage of our hospitality.”

He left them less than satisfied, but they were staying. It was all that mattered at the moment.

That, and finding Patrick Quinn.

NICO MBARGA HAD INFORMED his men, at the beginning of the search, that all results should be reported directly to him, without troubling the master. His troops knew the drill well enough, but it did no harm to remind them, especially when there were strangers in the village who might form a bad impression of the Process if its guards ran willy-nilly, here and there, spreading false rumors to the populace.

In this case, though, Mbarga was concerned with truth, as much as lies.

He wanted to be confident of every detail the master received about what had transpired. He also meant to be the only messenger with access to the throne.

To that end, long ago, Mbarga had commanded that his men shouldn’t address the master unless spoken to directly by His Eminence. If such a conversation should occur outside Mbarga’s presence, they were tasked to find him afterward and faithfully report whatever had been said. And as insurance against crafty liars, Mbarga had decreed that his soldiers had to always work in pairs, thus providing a witness for any chance encounter with the master.

It was the best he could do, and now it seemed that his system might be shattered by a pasty-faced American of no account.

Mbarga knew Patrick Quinn as he knew everyone in Obike, as a sketchy printout from the personal computer in his head. Quinn was a white boy from America, apparently devoted to the Process if his former words and actions were a proper guide. He’d come from money but had been cut off from access by his parents. That occurred from time to time, and while the disappointment hadn’t been enough for Gaborone to cut him loose, it ended any chance of Quinn’s advancement to the master’s inner circle. Quinn would be a cipher, toiling in the fields or begging handouts for the Process on some street corner until he either quit the sect or died.

This day, the latter exit seemed more probable.

Mbarga supervised the search, rather than rushing door-to-door himself and peering into cupboards, groping under cots. He left the grunt work to his men, as usual, and relegated to himself the task of asking questions where he thought they might be useful.

His knowledge of the white boy didn’t extend to peripheral friendships, so Mbarga questioned first the other occupants of Quinn’s barracks. Two-thirds of them were Africans, the other pair young Arabs, possibly Jordanian. In that mix, it was no surprise to find Quinn rated as a quiet loner who made few attempts at conversation. Probably, they wouldn’t understand him if he spoke, and wouldn’t care about the subject matter if they did. One failing of the master, Mbarga ruefully admitted to himself, had been the effort to dissolve racial and ethnic barriers between disciples of the Process. Sermons on the subject were absorbed, but never seemed to take.

The upshot of Mbarga’s grilling was that he knew nothing more of Quinn than when he’d started. Did the young man have a special friend inside the village, either male or female? Master Gaborone himself controlled the coupling of his congregants, selecting mates based on criteria known to himself alone. Even the married people, though, were segregated into dorms by gender, granted conjugal relations at the master’s pleasure, once per month on average.

Of course, that didn’t stop some villagers from falling prey to whimsies of the flesh. Mbarga and his men caught them from time to time, rutting like animals inside a storage shed or in the forest, passion honed to razor sharpness by the danger of discovery. In such cases, Mbarga took names for Master Gaborone, and punishments were devised to fit the crime. Public humiliation was a common penalty, sometimes accompanied by corporal punishment.

And wayward girls were marked. The master liked to counsel them himself.

In fact, the young American named Quinn appeared to have no contacts of that kind within the village—which meant none at all, since he was never sent outside Obike on his own. It seemed unlikely, then, that passion would’ve led to fire setting, and since he’d fled alone, it couldn’t be supposed that he’d eloped.

Mbarga still had more questions than answers when he carried his final report to the master, but at least one thing was settled. He knew where the white man had gone. More precisely, he knew how Patrick Quinn had left the village, though his destination still remained obscure.

He found the master standing with their foreign guests, and approached cautiously from fear of interrupting some important conversation. They had business to discuss, Mbarga knew, and it was not his place to meddle in such things.

“Nico, what news?” the master asked as he approached.

“Master, the white man is no longer in Obike, but I found the point where he departed from the village, heading south.”

“Toward Brazzaville?” Gaborone asked.

“Master, the city is two hundred miles away.”

“I know that!”

“My apologies, Master.”

“You must go after him and bring him back at once.”

“Of course, Master.”

“A hunting party, is it?” the Colombian asked. “That sounds like fun. I’ll join you.”

The Arab standing to his left immediately looked suspicious. “I will also go,” he said.

“You wish to interrupt negotiations?” Gaborone seemed more amused than curious.

“Why not?” the Colombian asked. “It won’t take long.”

“By all means, then, enjoy yourselves,” Gaborone said. “But be aware of dangers in the jungle. Trust in Nico’s judgment if you value life and limb. And, Nico?”

“Yes, Master?”

“I want the boy alive.”

“WHO ARE YOU?” Patrick Quinn demanded when his eyes swam into focus on the stranger’s face in front of him.

“A friend,” Bolan replied, not altogether sure if that was true.

“I don’t think so,” the youth challenged. He tried to rise, but weakness and the residue of drugs still coursing through his system dropped him back against the tree trunk. “I was with my friends,” he said, “before you grabbed me. You kidnapped me from Obike!”

Bolan didn’t have the time or inclination to debate the point. “That’s one way you could see it.”

“It’s the true way. But you didn’t knock me out,” Quinn said. He raised a slow hand to his neck, feeling the sore spot there. “What did you—? Did you drug me?”

“Nothing heavy,” Bolan lied. “We didn’t have the luxury of sitting down to tea and chatting. It was touch and go, you might say.”

“You’re a fool for choosing me,” Quinn told him. “I suppose you’ve heard my family’s rich, but guess what? They’ve disowned me. I don’t have a penny to my name, and they won’t pay whatever ransom you’re expecting.” Quinn produced a woozy smile. “You’re out of luck.”

“It’s not a ransom snatch,” Bolan replied, and watched the humor vanish from his young companion’s face, supplanted by confusion and a healthy dose of fear.

“You don’t want money?”

“No.”

“Then why…?”

Apparently, Quinn’s mind was clear enough to think of several possibilities. The first one he came up with was a stretch, but it caused him to tremble, even though he tried to hide it.

“No ransom. That means you’re working for the enemy!”

“I told you, I’m a friend.”

“You would say that, of course. You’re lying! Master Gaborone has warned us. But you’re making a mistake.”

“How’s that?” Bolan asked.

“I don’t have the information that you’re looking for. Whatever you came after, I can’t help you. I’m nobody, just a flunky in the village.”

Bolan frowned. “I thought you all were equal in the master’s sight?”

“Well, yes, but…See, that proves it! You’ve been studying the Process. That makes you—”

“A friend of Val Querente,” Bolan interrupted him. “Do you remember her, or is your brain really as messed up as it sounds?”

“Val sent you?” Quinn considered it, then shook his head. “I don’t believe it. No, you’re lying. It’s impossible. How could she—”

“Care enough to go the extra mile and help you?” Bolan shrugged. “Beats me. I only work here. Now, if you can make your legs work—”

“Wait! You think I’m going somewhere with you?”

“One way or another, that’s exactly what I think.”

“Well, guess again. You took me by surprise the first time, with your needle or whatever, but I see you now. I won’t go quietly.”

Bolan leaned closer, let the muzzle of his Steyr AUG rest lightly on Quinn’s left kneecap. “I’ve carried you this far,” he said, “and I can carry you to the LZ. You don’t need kneecaps to ride piggyback, and consciousness is strictly optional.”

Quinn didn’t seem to register the threat. “LZ? What’s that?” he asked.

“Your exit from the Process. Will you walk, or not?”

Quinn struggled to his feet, using the tree trunk for support. “Val wouldn’t do this,” he insisted. “I explained to her about my faith. I grant you that she wasn’t happy, but she understands.”

“You can discuss it with her soon,” Bolan said.

“This is a mistake,” Quinn said.

“It wouldn’t be my first,” the Executioner replied. Then he pointed through the trees and said, “That way.”

GABORONE WATCHED as the hunting party vanished into jungle gloom, a tracker leading Nico and four of his men, Camacho and Sharif surrounded in the middle of the group. He craned his neck and tried to find the sky above the forest canopy, where daylight glimmered on the sea of leaves.

How long before nightfall?

Some hours yet, and maybe time enough for Mbarga’s team to overtake the fugitive American. Mbarga was pledged to capture him alive, if possible, but there were other perils in the forest that might claim Quinn’s life before he was discovered. If they found him dead, the fires and his escape would be a nagging mystery.

Or worse.

Gaborone had puzzled over the events, attempting to resolve them in his mind, but there were still too many missing pieces. It seemed inconceivable that Quinn had been corrupted by their enemies outside Obike, but if that wasn’t the case, what had possessed him? Had his mind snapped in the jungle, as some others had before? Why else would he attempt to burn the village down, then flee into the forest?

It was too much to suppose that someone else had set the fires, and that Quinn coincidentally had chosen that precise moment to run away. That was preposterous. Unthinkable.

Or was it?

Gaborone began to worry that Mbarga’s party might not find Quinn, even with the tracker’s keen nose to guide them. If the American was fleeing southward toward Brazzaville, despite the near impossibility of a white man and a stranger to the jungle covering that distance on his own, Gaborone knew he should do anything within his power to cut that journey short. Quinn might find other settlements much closer to Obike, and who could predict what he would say about the Process or its master if he wasn’t silenced?

Gaborone still had a few tricks up his sleeve, and there would never be a better time to use one.

Picking up the sermon megaphone, Gaborone faced toward the heart of the village and called out an amplified name. “Samburu! Samburu Changa, come to me!”

A moment later he saw Mbarga’s first lieutenant running toward him from the eastern corner of the village. Changa wore a worried look, as if afraid that some new crisis had befallen them and he wouldn’t be equal to the task awaiting him. He stopped short, several paces from the stoop of Gaborone’s bungalow, breathing heavily and clutching his rifle tight to one side.

“Master, how may I serve you?”

“As you know,” Gaborone said, “Nico has gone to find our missing sheep. The visitors are with him, and I fear that they may slow his pace.”

Changa waited for more. He had the gift of silence.

“I’ve decided you should help him,” Gaborone explained. “I want another team to hurry on ahead and intercept our wayward brother. Failing that, you may explore the nearer villages and satisfy yourself that he will find no shelter there.”

“Master,” Changa said, looking suddenly confused, “the nearest village to Obike, southward, is still fifteen miles away. I cannot reach it before nightfall, even if I leave right now. To overtake Captain Mbarga—”

“Calm yourself, Samburu. I ask nothing human flesh and bone cannot achieve. Fetch Danso Beira and three soldiers you can trust. Drive to the airstrip. Use the bird!”

Changa smiled at that, now understanding the command. “Yes, Master! As you say, so let it be!”

“Go swiftly! Time is of the essence.”

Bowing sharply from the waist, Changa turned and fled the royal presence, shouting names as he moved through the village. Gaborone smiled after him, convinced that his last-minute inspiration would resolve their problem nicely. He would catch Quinn in a pincers, capture him alive with any luck, and then squeeze him at leisure for the secrets of his flight.

Rapid resolution of the crisis would persuade his visitors that Gaborone was someone to be taken seriously. They would respect him as more than a conduit for the merchandise they craved, and having seen him act decisively, they might be less inclined to quibble over price.

Perhaps.

If not, thought Gaborone, he might be forced to wipe the slate clean and begin anew with different customers.

It was a seller’s market, after all.

And Armageddon could afford to wait.