Читать книгу Stealth Sweep - Don Pendleton - Страница 12

Pushing open the swing doors, Sergeant Ming walked into the Ichi Ban restaurant radiating death the way a furnace radiated heat.

Instrumental jazz was playing over the wall speakers mounted in the corners of the sushi bar, nearly masking the steady sound of traffic from the busy street outside. A pretty waitress with a solemn expression was working the cash register, the punching of the keys and the rattle of the old machine sounding almost like music itself.

“We’re closed!” a short fat man announced from behind the counter, both hands busy washing crystal wine goblets.

“Not anymore,” Ming snarled, firing the Norinco from the hip.

Across the room, the waitress looked up just in time for her face to be removed, then the bartender jerked backward from the arrival of a .50-caliber hollowpoint slug, his brains blowing out the back of his head to splatter across a gilded mirror and the neat rows of imported liquors.

The noise of the shots echoed throughout the restaurant, and seconds later the wooden lattice of the pass-through was slammed aside and two Japanese men shoved out double-barrel shotguns.

Already safely behind a bubbling stone fountain, Ming fired a fast five times, and one of the sushi chefs staggered backward, blood everywhere, his face bristling with splinters from the ruined lattice.

The other chef bellowed in rage, spittle flying loosely from his distorted mouth. The double-barrel 12-gauge boomed like thunder inside the restaurant, and the stone fountain exploded into rubble.

Water gushed high from the shattered pipes, and Ming answered back with the Norinco, the big pistol blowing hellfire and doom from his scarred fist.