Читать книгу Lethal Compound - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

London

The Endeavor team meeting was in ten minutes. Bolan had gotten off the plane, ignored the man in chauffeur livery holding the sign that read Matt Cooper, met his Stony Man contact, gotten a cab, gone to the storage facility and geared up. Phillip Eckhart was the kind of man who did everything right. He didn’t go in for gold-plated toothbrushes and diamond-studded toilets, but he did insist on quality. The Stafford Hotel was not the fanciest in London, it lacked amenities like an in-house spa and gym and the rooms were not palatial. What the Stafford had was class and many travelers considered it the best hotel in London. The eighty-room Edwardian town house was centrally located on a secluded street with its own private access to Green Park and it had service in spades.

Eckhart had been mildly surprised when the Executioner had walked into the bar and introduced himself as Matt Cooper. He had looked Bolan up and down like he might examine a new company’s prospectus and apparently liked what he saw. He told Bolan that his good buddy from Canada had recommended him highly and that was good enough for him. He’d handed Bolan a folder full of files and asked him to peruse it at his leisure before the private dinner meeting later.

Back in his room Bolan examined each personnel file, scanned it and then e-mailed it to the Farm. Phillip Eckhart had hired himself his own private army. The men were from all corners of the globe, but so were Eckhart’s business contacts, and he had told Bolan each man came highly recommended from one respected source or another. Just as Bolan had himself.

Bolan ran the files a second time. Each man had served in private military forces. If you had served in your national army with distinction, had a useful military specialty, or had the magic “Special Forces” moniker attached to your record you could earn, double, triple or even quadruple pay compared to regular military service. The opportunity to safeguard convoys, local royalty and political bigwigs, or bodyguard your occasional billionaire, could bring perks and social and business contacts beyond the wildest dreams of a regular serviceman.

Bolan flipped through the files. Each one included a photo, a brief of each man’s service record and his nickname written over his picture.

Vivian “Viv” Blackpool was an Englishman from the famous beach town of the same name. He had served in Her Majesty’s Royal Artillery. The file said he had been a forward observation officer. That meant his job was to creep behind enemy lines, find the enemy, radio back to the artillery and ground attack fighters and rain hell down on them. He’d won the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross in Afghanistan. He had a steel-wool-tight white man’s afro and a jaw like a lantern. Eckhart had written Scout on his file.

Gobun Yagi had been a rugby player for team Kobe Steel. He’d served with Japanese 1st Airborne and been deployed to Iraq. Japan didn’t have official Special Forces but Yagi had qualified for the Central Readiness Force that was their closest equivalent. He was deeply tanned, had a shag haircut with strands of silver in it and he was grinning good-naturedly in his file photo. Eckhart had written C³ over Yagi’s photo with a red pen. C cubed stood for communications, command and control. Bolan knew that meant Yagi would be trained in battlefield communications with radios, computers and satellites. Bolan noted the warrior had also been a hand-to-hand combat instructor.

The big American flipped to the next file.

Yuli Simutenkov was a Russian who had served in his nation’s 10th Mountain Brigade. He had done two tours in Chechnya then deserted. Bolan had a hard time blaming him. He had then managed to smuggle himself to Paris and joined the French Foreign Legion. Eckhart had used a yellow highlighter to emphasize that while Simutenkov was ethnically Russian he had been born in the city of Shaymak, which just happened to be the most eastern city in Tajikistan. His language proficiencies were also highlighted. He spoke Russian and his native Tajik as well as Kyrg, Arabic, Mandarin, English and French. He was blue-eyed, blunt-featured and had taken up the Russian military in-the-field habit of shaving his head and then letting his skull and beard stubble grow to same length. In his photo he was smiling in a not particularly friendly fashion with a hand-rolled cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Some of his teeth were gold, some were silver and some were missing. Eckhart had written Interpreter over his picture.

Bolan raised an eyebrow at the next photo. You didn’t hear about Hungarian mercenaries very often, but Zoltan “ZJ” Juhasz was a combat engineer who had served attached to the Hungarian 88th Rapid Reaction Force in Afghanistan. With his wavy black hair, arched eyebrows and Vandyke beard he looked like a Napoleonic Hussar, or Satan, or maybe just a man from Eastern Europe who enjoyed playing with explosives a little too much. Eckhart had written Demo Man!!! over the Hungarian’s head.

Bolan turned the page. Gilad Shlomo Gideon, or “Giddy” had served ten years with the Israeli Field Intelligence Corps. They were tasked with collecting combat intelligence in real time during battle, which meant that there was probably very little in the way of modern warfare the man had not seen or done. He was a wiry-looking guy with curls even tighter than Blackpool’s. Medic was scrawled above his picture. Bolan frowned. Interrogation was written below it. As a battlefield intelligence man Bolan suspected Gilad was skilled in keeping the wounded alive long enough to give up the goods.

He flipped to the next page. Pieter Van’s blond hair was almost white and his fair skin turned to saddle leather by years of fighting under the African sun. He had been a South African SAS commando and his resume read like a travelogue of every African trouble spot in the last twenty years. He’d worked security for several diamond consortiums in Africa that was undoubtedly where Eckhart had met him. Sniper was written and underlined on his photo.

Bolan turned over another wild card. Evo Solomon “Waqa” Waqa was Fijian. The man had a head like a block of granite and his hair was a series of two-inch, cone-shaped spikes that stuck up out of his head in remarkable imitation of Bart Simpson. Bolan noted his career highlights. He had been a member of Fiji’s infamous “Zulu” company counterrevolutionary specialists. The unit had been disbanded after elements of it had mutinied during the 2000 coup. Waqa had survived the purge and gone on to serve with the United Nations peace-keeping forces in East Timor. Over his name Eckhart had written Rai recommended, and Bolan recalled that five hundred Fijians had served or were serving with the Global Risks group in Iraq along with a similar number of Nepalese. Bolan doubted a Gurkha rifleman would recommend any non-Nepalese who couldn’t pass muster.

The last man was an American. He had blond hair and a blinding smile. He was grinning out of an American military ID photo and just from his neck and shoulders alone Bolan could tell the man had spent many hours pushing heavy iron in the gym. Roy Blair was 3rd Ranger Battalion. He’d been in Afghanistan then redeployed to Iraq. He then opted not to reenlist but had stayed in Iraq and gone to work for a private security company. Pig was written over his photo. That was Ranger-speak. There were two kinds of Rangers. “Maggots” were riflemen and “Pigs” were in the weapons squad. Roy Blair would know his way around machine guns, recoilless rifles, and antitank and antiaircraft weapons.

Bolan grunted in thin amusement at the last file. It had one word typed in quotes, center-spaced.

Cooper?

There was a hand-drawn smiley face beneath it.

There was another page that had a table with each man’s name and then a number of specialties checked off. Each man could ride a horse. Each man had qualified as expert or his national army’s equivalent with a rifle. Each man had passed courses in mountaineering and orienteering. Some men had specialty footnotes. Waqa, of all people, was a cook. Pieter could fly a helicopter and both Blackpool and Yuli could drive semis. Zoltan had Wrangler checked off by his name so the Hungarian probably knew something about the care and feeding of horses and he had been a Hungarian armed forces fencing champion. Roy Blair had attended the Defense Language Institute between deployments and learned basic Arabic. Yagi had done the Japanese equivalent and spoke Mandarin. Not surprisingly for a combat intelligence man in the Middle East, Giddy spoke Arabic as well as Farsi. Bolan’s line was empty so he checked off a few boxes that applied. He left out a lot. He’d demonstrate those abilities when and if the time came, and he’d give Eckhart his impressions after he’d had face time with each man.

Bolan closed the folder and grunted to himself. Eckhart had his own private little Foreign Legion and Bolan had joined it.

The Executioner checked the loads in his sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R. It was a .22 caliber conversion and had twenty-five rounds in the magazine plus one in chamber. He placed it in a shoulder holster under his left arm and four spare magazines rode under his right. Bolan pulled on a black leather jacket and went downstairs to the hotel’s private meeting room.

Sitting around the conference table were a billionaire, his bodyguard, a hot blonde and eight very dangerous men.

Eckhart gave Bolan a friendly wave and gestured at the one empty chair. “Coop! Glad you could join us. Take a seat.”

Bolan handed the file back to Eckhart and took the offered chair. He nodded to the Fijian and Hungarian sitting to either side of him.

Eckhart called the group to attention. “Gentlemen, let’s get started. First off, you will all find a nondisclosure contract in front of you, which I will require you to sign if you want to attend the rest of this meeting. If you don’t wish to sign, I’ll have to ask you to leave immediately.”

This was met by some muttering but Eckhart waved it away dismissively. “However, your rent here at the Stafford is paid ’til the end of the week, you have an open tab at the bar and your return tickets are open-ended. Thank you for coming.”

The soldiers made mollified noises.

Eckhart’s face became serious. “If you sign, stay and afterward do not wish to participate, you may leave. However, if you sign and then break the nondisclosure contract and talk about what is discussed in this room outside of the Endeavor Team here assembled, you will be subject to the kind of lawyers and lawsuits only a billionaire can bring on. And, short of hiring hit men, I will use every legal, political and business contact I have to shit on you for the rest of your lives. I strongly urge you to think about that before you sign.”

No one had to think about it. A couple of the men made a pretense of flipping through the pages of legalese but everyone quickly signed. Rai collected the contracts and put them in a folder.

“Good.” Eckhart rapped his knuckles on the table and on cue two of the hotel staff staggered in carrying buckets of beers from around the world on ice. The arrival was met with cheers. Bolan smiled inwardly. Alcohol had been part of successful soldier recruitment since the Renaissance. Beers were passed around the table and Bolan picked himself out a Guinness.

“Gentlemen, may I introduce Nancy Rhynman,” Eckhart continued. “She’ll be part of our team.”

A chorus of whistles and catcalls greeted the news. Bolan noted Rhynman blushed slightly and smiled at the barrage of lewd suggestions but she didn’t seem intimidated.

“Most of you have probably heard of me,” Eckhart said.

This was met with some pointed comments that Eckhart ignored. “And as you may have heard every once in a while I go off on an endeavor in the name of science. Africa, the Amazon, Southeast Asia, I’ve had a few adventures around the globe and been on a few boondoggles.” Eckhart eyed the assembled soldiers wryly. “As I suspect have most of you.”

The comment was met by grunts of agreement.

Eckhart spread his hands in mock helplessness. “Well, I’m off on another one! And it’s going to require stepped-up security. That’s where you men come in.”

Waqa leaned back and frowned impatiently. The chair creaked ominously beneath his massive frame. “What’s the job, brah?”

Eckhart nodded to Rhynman. “Nancy?”

The soldiers sighed as she rose and they approved of the way her lightweight wool pants clung to her curves. She clicked a remote control and a projector showed a map on the wall that stretched from Spain to Hong Kong. “This is the modern world.” She clicked the remote again and nearly all the cities disappeared. “This is the ancient world.” Nancy clicked her remote again. “And this was the world of Alexander the Great.”

The map lit up in highlight from Mount Olympus in Western Greece to the Himalayas.

“As you may or may not remember from your school days, Alexander and his army conquered all the way across what is today modern Turkey, Iraq and Iran. His conquests spread from—”

“Jesus, here comes the History Channel.” Blair’s boots thudded on top of the table as he rocked back in his chair. “Can’t you make this more entertaining?”

“Take off your clothes!” Waqa suggested.

Eckhart held up his hand. “Guys…”

“Da!” Yuli produced a one-hundred-pound note. “Dance! Dance on table!”

Blair spread his feet on the table. “Lap dance!”

Eckhart might have been a billionaire and a captain of industry but he suddenly found himself in a room full of rowdy soldiers whose respect he hadn’t earned. “Gentlemen, I—” he stammered.

“Show us your tits!” Waqa shouted.

Again Bolan noticed that Nancy wasn’t scared, embarrassed or intimidated. She was quietly and coldly becoming furious. He saw an opportunity to get on her good side. He picked his victim. His voice cut through the cacophony of sexual harassment and hilarity.

“Yo, Waqa.”

Waqa grinned and cracked himself another beer. “Yeah, brah?”

“I’ve got no money in my pocket, a bucket of beer I haven’t finished and I need this job.” The room went dead silent as Bolan’s arctic blue eyes bored into Waqa’s. His voice was as serious as the grave. “Don’t screw this up.”

The Fijian was clearly not used to being challenged but he found himself taken aback and blinking at Bolan’s glacial gaze. “Shit, I’m just having some fun,” he said.

Pieter Van spoke like the elder statesman of the group. “Enough of this kak. I too need a job, and I would like to hear what Miss Rhynman and Mr. Eckhart have to say.” He spoke with the authority of a veteran commander. “I believe those who do not need the work already know the location of the door.”

An awkward silence fell across the table.

Bolan noticed Rhynman staring at him. She wasn’t beaming in gratitude. She was taking mental notes. Bolan reminded himself that she was a body language expert as well as an archaeologist. He suspected she would be writing assessments of every soldier around the table to add to Eckhart’s personnel files.

“So, Miss Rhynman,” Pieter said. “Alexander the Great?”

“Let me summarize,” Rhynman said. “Alexander the Great conquered a big chunk of real estate. Wherever he went he built Alexandrias, cities that bore his name, and he left generals and trusted companions to command and rule from them. To this day ancient Greek artifacts and even ruins turn up all over this territory from Egypt to India.”

The men were beginning to roll their eyes and look at one another in disbelief. The blonde scholar looked around the room and could tell she was losing her audience. “What we are looking for is the Citadel of Hades,” she announced.

That got everyone’s attention.

“What the fuck?” Blair asked.

“We’re looking for a hidden fortress. Farther east than any historian believes Alexander ever got. A lost citadel gentlemen, perhaps the last great classical archaeological find that remains undiscovered. Right on par with the pyramids of Egypt and the Coliseum of Rome.”

The soldiers looked at one another and didn’t know what to think.

Eckhart began his pitch. “Men, I’ve recently been doing some investing in western Asia. Wherever I am I’m always looking into the local antiquities market. I was in Tajikistan when some Greek writings literally fell into my hands. The seller was a local tribesman who had no idea what he had. When I began to suspect what I’d found I contacted Nancy, and she contacted scholars she knew in the field, and it appears to be genuine.”

Giddy peered at Eckhart with genuine interest. “What did you find?”

Eckhart was positively smug. “The writings of Gorgidas of Thebes.”

Yagi spoke for the first time. “I do not know what that means.”

Rhynman took over. “Alexander wanted to be remembered. He wanted his accomplishments to be heralded throughout the ages. So he took Greek scribes along with him wherever he went. The scribe these writings are attributed to, Gorgidas, wasn’t very famous as Greek writers went. Much of his writing was considered trivial and catalogued day-to-day goings-on in camp and on the march. He was almost a glorified accountant. But for some reason Alexander took Gorgidas with him when he went on a secret journey to the Citadel of Hades, and Gorgidas recorded the trip.”

“Citadel of Hades,” Bolan said, adopting a relaxed pose. “I never went to college but doesn’t that mean Citadel of Hell?”

Rhynman shook her head. “Close, but not quite. Hades is the Underworld, but in Greek mythology it’s a dark and gloomy place rather than the Christian Hell. Gorgidas speaks of ‘a house of weeping columns with walls of glittering stone’ in his writings.”

Bolan took the obvious leap of logic. “So it’s a cave.”

“Yes.” Nancy Rhynman favored Bolan with a smile. “In the metaphor of the day a Citadel of Hades would imply a subterranean fortress. Weeping columns could mean stalagmites and stalactites, and walls of glittering stone most likely would refer to quartz formations that happen to be rampant in our target area. Many cultures throughout the ages have taken natural-occurring cave complexes and dug citadels and fortresses within them. Those of you who have fought in Afghanistan know the entire region is riddled with caverns. We have no idea how old this citadel might be, but it was most likely built or inherited by the Persian Achaemenid Empire, and when Alexander conquered them it appears he received access to it. Think of it, a hidden citadel, and secret refuge, a—”

“A fortress of solitude?” Blackpool suggested. “Has he got one at the North Pole, too, then?”

Rhynman smiled but her eyes went cold. “‘Fortress of solitude’ might not be a bad metaphor. If the Citadel is there it’s way off the beaten path. Nothing in the way of agriculture or civilization was anywhere close. Resources in the Pamir Mountains are scarce. It might well be a fortress of solitude, Mr. Blackpool. A place where people were sent into exile or went to hide during wars of succession.” Rhynman leaned slightly forward, fixed Blackpool in place with her eyes and raised one eyebrow in challenge. “Or it might also be a place to store unimaginable wealth.”

Waqa leaned forward. “You’re talking like treasure and shit.”

“Yes, Mr. Waqa,” Rhynman confirmed. “Treasure and shit. Wherever Alexander went he demanded tribute, and the Persian Empire of Darius was the richest in the world. Much of the vast wealth that Alexander took was never accounted for. Undoubtedly a great deal was stolen by his successors after his death and the breakup of his empire. But there is enough accounting in the archaeological record to suggest that huge amounts of it were hidden and only Alexander and a few of his closest confederates knew its whereabouts.

“Alexander died suddenly without settling his affairs. The fact is there is the possibility of gold, silver, gems and jewels being stored in this location by the ton. Not to mention a priceless archaeological trove of writings, sculptures, tools, weapons and fabrics—with luck all perfectly preserved in the subterranean environment. The Tajik government will most likely try to claim most of it as natural heritage.” Nancy Rhynman’s smile became predatory. “But our employer pretty much has the ability to buy Tajikistan lock, stock and barrel.”

This was met by harsh, renewed laughter.

Rhynman waited for it to die down. “And even if there’s nothing there but bare rock, just finding the Citadel will be the greatest archaeological discovery of this century. You’ll all be famous. All the news agencies will pay to interview you. We’re talking TV, radio, Internet and printed press. All of you will be heroes in your native countries. There will be movie rights, book rights, you name it, and Mr. Eckhart is willing to extend to you free financial advisement to make the most of all opportunities that you may accrue from this endeavor.”

There was silence around the table.

Eckhart filled it. “And if all we find is scorpions and dirt, I’m still paying a thousand dollars a day.” The billionaire smiled. “So, who’s in?”