Читать книгу Perilous Cargo - Don Pendleton - Страница 7

PROLOGUE

Not far from the warehouse, he walked silently over the small stone footbridge that crossed the Bagmati River. Farther upstream, temples lined the banks of the waterway the Hindus and Buddhists believed was holy, but the man was not interested in the spiritual potential of the water—only the rippling, gurgling sound that helped hide his movements. The moonless sky ensured there were plenty of shadows, and the late hour left the streets empty and quiet.

Kathmandu was unlike any other city in the world. It was a city of contradictions—wealthy tourists mingled with poor-by-choice monks and hotels catering to the rich found near ancient shrines. Nepal was a strange place, and Kathmandu, a crossroads of religion, money, crime and constantly shifting political powers, was the hub. He liked it, though he was glad that this night would see him on his way home.

With no fear of being seen by late-night tourists in the remote district, he found the stone shrine he’d been seeking, reached inside to find the switch and slid the hidden panel aside. Cobwebs and dirt covered the handle, but he wiggled it back and forth, eventually pulling it free of its lock. Below the shrine, the opening for the staircase came free, revealing a steeply twisting set of stone stairs. He stepped inside and used another mechanism to close the panel behind him.

The man ignored the torch holders and slipped his night-vision monocle into place. The corridor hadn’t been used in years and he chuckled to himself. Some secrets were just forgotten, waiting to be exposed. He knew many of them, in cities and countries far and near. In fact, some might say he was a walking, talking secret himself.

The descent ended and a long corridor stretched ahead of him. He knew the hallway extended beneath a small market square, then a fenced parking area and, eventually, the warehouse. People walked over this passage every day, ignorant of its existence. Part of it was caved in, but he faced nothing more difficult than scrambling over a dirt mound. He paused, caught his breath and then climbed another set of stone stairs that ended in a sealed door above his head. This one opened onto the warehouse floor.

The escape tunnel had originally been dug by monks decades before inside a small temple. Later, the temple had been torn down and the warehouse had been built in its place. During the fall of the USSR, some factions within Russia had needed a facility and thus purchased it for their own use.

The man peered at the door, then found the small niche that would, hopefully, open it after all these years of disuse. He needed all of this to work. And it did. The door opened a crack, enough for him to pull himself up and inside a small office in the warehouse itself. So far, he’d triggered no alarms.

He slipped in, then snuck through the open office door and moved along the wall toward an interior sentry, half-asleep at his post. The man pulled a knife out of his boot. His movements were so swift the sentry had no time to shout as the man clasped a hand over his mouth and shoved the tip of the blade into his carotid artery. He lowered the guard to the ground as he grabbed his ID. After edging along the wall to the main entrance, the man swiped the guard’s badge along the electronic keypad and watched the lights flash as the bay door began to open.

He sprinted back toward the massive platform truck with the nuclear warhead attached and began to climb into the cab. Shots rang out and ricocheted off the door. He turned, drawing his own weapon, and fired back, knocking the assailant down in one shot. There was no time for playing around.

He got behind the wheel and started the truck. The warehouse doorway was beginning to fill with Russian soldiers, most of them milling around in confusion. He reached out the window and opened fire, scattering the sentries as they looked for cover. He shifted up another gear and drove through the door before they could lower it again.

He didn’t bother to head for the gate, just aimed for the nearest section of chain-link fence and tore through it. The bullets bouncing off the truck didn’t bother him. As soon as he cleared the facility he checked his mirrors. No one was in pursuit. The man smiled, knowing the chaos he’d caused would keep them busy. He shifted into high gear and headed for the Friendship Highway.

Everything would be different now. It was only a matter of time.