Читать книгу The Killing Rule - Don Pendleton - Страница 11

Guernsey

It had taken two days to get back to Lord William’s manor in the Channel Islands. Bolan had assumed both the British and American embassies were being watched, so they had simply driven to Belgium. At the U.S. Embassy Bolan had used their satellite link to download his PDA into the Farm’s computers. Lunk had started making phone calls. Lord William had rented a French turbo-charged Socata Trinidad aircraft and flown them to the neighboring island of Jersey. From there he had hired a fishing captain he knew to sail them to Guernsey in the dead of night.

They sat in front of the fire and compared notes and files. Lord William had filled Bolan in on his peer. Lord Ian Parkhurst was a hereditary earl, a senior member of the House of Lords, and sat on the Appellate Committee of Law Lords. As a teenaged lieutenant in World War II he had won two wound stripes and the Victoria Cross in desperate rear guard actions during the terrible withdrawal at Dunkirk. He’d twice been a British ambassador, and he’d been knighted for his philanthropic activities in former British colonies. He was a very wealthy man with international business interests and despite being a Lord he was very active in the liberal British Labor Party. He lent his name, money and political clout to a number of British environmental and political activist groups.

None of which explained why he’d sent men to kill Lord William in Amsterdam.

Bolan knew that with a man of Lord Ian’s wealth, influence, title and popularity he could put a smoking gun in his lordship’s hand and still get zero cooperation from MI-5 or any other British law-enforcement agency. Bolan would have to gather the evidence himself. No one would help him, no one would thank him, and indeed he would be resisted all the way if not arrested and deported.

Most of the news was bad.

McCarter had phoned from London. Assistant Director Finch had been cordial but had little new information to offer. The barristers of Sylvette MacJory, Ruud Heitinga, Kew Timmer and Guy Diddier had arranged for their clients’ release on bail, and all four had promptly dropped off the face of the planet. MI-5 had no idea of their whereabouts.

Lord William was wanted for questioning in the Netherlands regarding his role in the firefight at the Aegis offices in Amsterdam. Clive Jennings was wanted for similar questioning. According to Dutch authorities and Interpol, Mr. Jennings’s whereabouts was currently unknown.

The first thing to come out of the stolen files from Aegis was the current roster. There were 315 men and seven women on it, each with an accompanying personal file. The majority of the contractors were former soldiers in the British and American armed forces with a sprinkling of other nationalities. Most of the active ones were working as VIP protection contractors in Afghanistan and to a lesser extent Iraq and Pakistan. A few were doing similar work in Central and South America, mostly Colombia. Again there was a sprinkling of strange and out-of-the-way destinations but all could be classified as world “trouble spots” where above-average men of above-average martial ability could expect to be paid top dollar for their skills and services.

That was one of the problems. The mission profiles were not matching up with reality. Ruud Heitinga and Kew Timmer were supposedly in Afghanistan at the moment. According to the files, Guy Diddier and Miss MacJory were currently on jobs in Vietnam.

The next problem was that neither Lord William nor Lunk knew very many of the men on the list. They’d been out of the game for a decade. Most of the names they did know were on separate inactive and reserve lists of old soldiers like themselves. Nevertheless they knew a few, and Lunk had been making some calls. Lunk swallowed a pint of ale in a gulp. “Well, the good news is Partridge is in and ready for anything. He got hold of Layland and Layland got hold of Lovat. Lovat thinks Thapa might be in, but only if you ask him personal.”

“Thappy!” Lord William straightened in his chair. “By God, we could use that little bugger!”

Bolan glanced at files. Alvin Partridge was a fellow Welshman and fellow Royal Marine of Lunk’s. He’d made Mountain Leader Grade 2 in the Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre. Nick Lovat had been a corporal in the U.K.’s 5th Airborne Brigade and a sniper. Scott Layland was a former Australian SAS sergeant.

Bolan paused at the next file. Thapa Pun had been a member of Queen Elizabeth’s own 6th Gurkha Rifles and gone on to join the Gurkha Independent Parachute Company. He’d served on detachment to the Sultan of Brunei, returned to Nepal and then joined the Indian army’s 8th Gorkha Rifles and reached the Indian NCO rank of subedar. He’d been decorated in all three services, and had seen heavy counterinsurgency fighting in Kashmir.

“Ah, Thappy.” Lord William sighed into his whiskey. “I swear the man has the power to turn himself bloody invisible. We had some trouble in Africa back in the day with some locals. They called themselves revolutionaries, but they were hill bandits, pure and simple. Knew the jungle, though. So Thappy goes walkabout, lurking as is his wont, for a couple of weeks. I swear, it got to the point all he had to do was carve his sign on a tree, and the jungle emptied like a bloody vacuum.”

Bolan smiled. The “happy warriors” of Nepal had earned a fearsome reputation as jungle fighters in their centuries of service in the British military. Many legends had sprung up around them, many of them specifically about the huge, curved, kukri knife. Rumor had it that once a Gurkha drew his knife it could not be sheathed until it had drawn blood. That wasn’t true, but the Gurkhas themselves had done nothing to discourage it. Throughout British military history, riots and even small unit engagements had ended abruptly or resulted in panicked routs at the sight of Gurkha riflemen drawing their foot-long knives.

“A wizard with a bloody wok, by God!” Lunk enthused. The giant Welshman’s life seemed to revolve mostly around his stomach. “One always eats well with Thappy about. We’ll be lucky to get him.”

Bolan was about to take on a knight and lord of the realm with God only knew how many professional mercenaries and the Irish Republican Army in his back pocket. He’d take every Gurkha rifleman he could get.

“Got hold of Otto.” Lunk shook his head. “He’s back in bloody Nigeria. He says he’ll come, but he’s broke. We’ll have to send him a ticket.”

Bolan scanned the list. Otto Owu had been born in England of Yoruba parents. He had spent a great deal of time shuttling back and forth between the U.K. and Nigeria before enlisting as a teenager. He had made corporal in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Bolan noted he’d earned his expert rating in rifle, pistol and light machine gun and had served a tour in Northern Ireland. It also mentioned that he’d currently been spending time as a hunting guide in Africa, which meant he was a tracker. “Is that a problem?”

Lord William stared into his whiskey. “Well, Cooper…”

“Bill? Call me Matt.”

“Matt, do you remember that story about being between fortunes for Clive?”

Bolan sighed. “You weren’t making it up.”

“’Fraid not, old boy.” He gestured around the manor. “This bit of sod is just about all I have left. Well, and Lunk. But he’s strictly a volunteer. The rest of the men will come out of loyalty, and face anything, but they’ll expect to see something for their trouble at the end of it.”

Bolan considered his money belt. “Will a hundred thousand pounds get the ball rolling?”

The baron waggled his snowy eyebrows gleefully. “You know, it just might.”

Lunk grinned. “I want mine up front.”

Bolan reached into his gear bag and pulled out the money belt. He placed approximately fifty thousand-pound notes in varying denominations into Lunk’s hand. “Lunk, I’ll leave recruiting up to you. You decide who you want and how to pay, but I want every man to have a good chunk of change in his pocket up front.”

“Not to worry, then.”

“You’d better tell them up front we’re going up against a Lord of the realm, and that arrest and incarceration for life are a real possibility.”

“I know, I’ll—”

“And you’d better tell them we may be going up against Aegis employees.” Bolan locked eyes with the Welshman. “If they aren’t salty for any of that, then we don’t want them.”

“Aye.” Lunk nodded slowly. The enormity of the undertaking hadn’t escaped him. “I will.”

“Well, I’m to bed, then.” Lord William rose with a wince. “Bring the dogs in, will you, Lunk? And have Tommy and Carrick spelled by Rooney and Todd. They’ve been in the weather for hours.”

“Aye, m’lord.”

Bolan watched Lord William limp toward the stairs. He’d been limping since Amsterdam. Worse, he’d been coughing since the gas, and it occasionally descended into an ugly, wet rattle. “He’s not well.”

“No. He’s not.” Lunk’s face went stony. “Damage accrues.”

Bolan was all too aware of the accumulation of battle damage. He’d had access to the very best doctors, surgeons, physical therapists and alternative medicine the planet had to offer. But he’d still been strenuously warned by all and sundry against suffering any more of the battering that was unavoidable in his profession. In the end he was a soldier in a war that was everlasting. The war would take his life. He’d accepted that long ago. But in the dark of night, in those contemplative moments, he sometimes wondered what he would do when even he himself had to admit that time, tide and damage had reduced him to ineffectiveness.

He watched Lord William pull himself up the stairs one stair at time and knew the old man wouldn’t accept being sidelined, and that was the rub. He needed the old soldier. He needed his connections both military and with the English peerage. Bill could open doors. Bolan grimaced. There was another thing Lord William had told Clive Jennings that wasn’t a lie.

This was his last hurrah.

BOLAN AWOKE to the tube noise. His feet were in his boots and the folding stock of the Sterling snapped open and the bolt racked on a live round heartbeats before the first mortar bomb struck. By the sound Bolan figured it was a pair of 81 mm’s firing in tandem. He was surprised not to hear the blast and shake of high explosive. Instead he saw a flash. Outside the window yellow-white fire snapped and hissed in the rain and streamers of gray smoke fell in arcs. The enemy was hitting them with white phosphorous. Shotguns roared downstairs in quick double booms and were met by automatic weapons fire. The enemy’s plan was fairly obvious. They were going to burn down Lord William’s manor and shoot anyone who came out. Anyone who stayed inside would be burned alive.

Bolan slung a web belt with six spare magazines around his shoulder and charged out into the hall. Lunk was pounding up the steps with a Sterling in hand. “We’re afire!”

“Get the baron!”

“The baron is here.” Lord William was shrugging into his hacking jacket and had his Sterling. “Lunk, go find our friend Carl.”

Bolan knew Glen-Patrick meant the Carl Gustav recoilless rifle.

Lunk pounded back down the stairs.

The yeomen had made a strategic retreat into the manor. Spot and Starkers were lunging on their leads and almost out of control. The blond man Bolan only knew as Todd was breaking open his shotgun and plucking out spent shells as he shouted up the stairs. “Tommy’s dead! Carrick’s injured.”

That left four yeomen.

Bolan cocked his head as the mortars thumped again in tandem. They were close, by the sound. The lag time between firing and detonation implied they were firing nearly straight up, which meant a lot of hang time. “They’re right on the other side of the hill. The riflemen will be in the hedges front and back, waiting for us to make a break for it when the fire drives us out.”

Lunk returned with the antitank weapon hanging from one hand and a crate of rounds perched on one shoulder.

The second salvo hit the manor. They all crouched as rifle fire began cracking in a steady stream outside, punching out the windows.