Читать книгу Colony Of Evil - Don Pendleton - Страница 10

“It’s your ass if they get away!” Horst Krieger snapped at Juan Pacheco.

“Sí, señor.”

“But not too close!”

“Okay.”

It didn’t matter if his orders were confusing. Krieger thought the driver understood their need to keep the target vehicle in sight, without alarming their intended victims and precipitating a high-speed chase through the heart of Bogotá that would attract police.

Another backward glance showed Krieger that his backup car, with Arne Rauschman navigating, had followed them down the off-ramp from Avenida El Dorado. Krieger was surprised to see a third car exiting, as well—or fourth, if he counted his target—but he dismissed the fact as mere coincidence.

Some eight million people lived in Bogotá. Many more commuted to jobs in the city from outlying towns, and Krieger supposed that thousands arrived at the airport each day, for business or pleasure. It was no surprise, no cause for concern, that four cars should exit the city’s main highway at any given point.

“Where are they going?” Krieger asked, and instantly regretted it.

“I couldn’t say, señor,” Pacheco answered.

Was the bastard smirking at him? Krieger felt a sudden urge to smash his driver’s face, but knew such self-indulgence would derail his mission.

He drew the Walther pistol from its holster, holding it loosely in his right hand, stroking the smooth polished slide with his left. A simple action, but he felt some of the pent-up tension draining from him, as if it was transferred to the weapon in his hand.

The better to unleash hell on his enemies, when it was time.

Krieger had not bothered to memorize the streets of Bogotá, but he knew his way around the city. He could name the twenty “localities” of the great city’s Capital District and find them on a map, if need be. He knew all the major landmarks, plus the home addresses of those who mattered in his world. As for the rest, Krieger could read a map or tell his driver where to take him.

But uncertainty displeased him, and whatever happened to displease Horst Krieger also made him angry.

He was angry now.

He couldn’t tell if those he followed knew that he was trailing them, or if the exit off of Calle 26 had been their destination in the first place. And, in either case, he didn’t know where they were going at the moment, whether to a private residence, a restaurant or other public place, perhaps some rendezvous with other enemies, of whom Krieger was unaware.

The latter prospect worried Krieger most. He was prepared to stop and kill his targets anywhere that proved convenient, both in terms of an efficient execution and a clean escape. However, if he led his team into a trap, the eight of them might be outnumbered and outgunned.

Another backward glance showed Rauschman in the second car, holding position a half block behind the Volkswagen. Another car trailed Rauschman’s, hanging back a block or so, but Krieger couldn’t say with any certainty that it was the same car he’d seen departing Avenida El Dorado.

Ahead, his quarry made a left turn, drove two blocks, then turned off to his right. Krieger’s Volkswagen followed, leading the Mercedes-Benz. Unless the bastard at the wheel was drunk or stupid, he had to know by now that he was being followed.

Still, there came no burst of speed, no sudden zigzag steering into alleys or running against the traffic on one-way streets. If the target did know he was marked, he appeared not to care.

“I think he goes to Puenta Aranda, señor,” Pacheco said.

“You think?”

“We’re almost there.”

And Krieger realized that he was right. Ahead, he recognized the fringe of Bogotá’s industrial corridor, where factories produced much of the city’s—and the nation’s—textiles, chemicals, metal products and processed foods.

It was not a residential district, though Krieger supposed people lived there, as everywhere else in the city. There would be squatters, street people and beggars, the scum of the earth. Conversely, Krieger knew that some of the factories operated around the clock, which meant potential witnesses to anything that happened there, regardless of the time.

Too bad it wasn’t Christmas or Easter, the two days each year when the church-enslaved peasants were granted relief. On either of those “holy” days, Krieger could have killed a hundred men in plain sight, with no one the wiser until they returned the next morning.

This night, he would have to take care.

“Move in closer,” he ordered. “They must know we’re here, anyway.”

Palming the two-way radio, he told Rauschman, “Be ready when I move. I’ll choose the spot, then box them in.”

“Yes, sir,” came the laconic answer.

“There!” he told Pacheco, pointing. “Can you overtake them and—”

Without the slightest warning, Krieger’s prey suddenly bolted, tires squealing into a reckless left-hand turn, and sped into the darkened gap between two factories.

“Goddamn it! After them!”

BOLAN WAS BRACED and ready when he saw the opening he wanted, aimed an index finger to the left, and told Guzman, “In there! Hit it!”

Guzman was good behind the wheel. Not NASCAR-good, perhaps, but so far he had followed orders like a pro and handled his machine with total competency. Even on the unexpected left-hand turn, he kept all four tires on the road and lost only a little rubber to acceleration, in the stretch.

Great factories loomed over them on either side, their smoke stacks belching toxic filth into the sky. Bolan had no idea what kind of products either plant produced. It had no relevance to his survival in the next few minutes, so he put it out of mind.

“We’re looking for a place to stand and fight,” he told Guzman. “Some cover and some combat stretch.”

“What is this stretch?”

“I mean some room to move. So we’re not pinned, boxed in.”

“Of course.”

Bolan had leafed through Guzman’s dossier, the one provided by the DEA, but it had said nothing about his fighting ability. He carried guns, but so did many other people who had no idea what it was like to kill a man or even draw a piece in self-defense. He might freeze up, or waste all of his ammunition in the first few seconds, without hitting anyone.

Bolan would have to wait and see.

“There is a slaughterhouse ahead,” Guzman informed him. “On the railroad line. Beside it is a tannery. I think they may be what you’re looking for, señor.”

“Let’s take a look,” Bolan replied. “And call me Matt, since we’re about to get bloody together.”

“Bloody?” Guzman asked.

“Figure of speech.”

“Ah.” Guzman didn’t sound convinced.

Two sets of headlights trailed the Fiat through its final turn. No, make that three. The final car in line was playing catch-up, running just a bit behind.

“Sooner is better,” Bolan told Guzman.

As if in answer to his words, a muzzle-flash erupted from the passenger’s side of the leading chase car. The initial burst was hasty, not well aimed, but Bolan knew they would improve with practice.

“Are they shooting at us?” Guzman asked, sounding surprised.

“Affirmative. We’re running out of time.”

“Hang on!”

With only that as warning, Guzman cranked hard on the Fiat’s wheel and put them through a rubber-squealing left-hand turn. At first, Bolan thought he was taking them into some kind of parking lot, but then he saw lights far ahead and realized it was a narrow access road between the leather plant and yet another factory, much like its neighbor in the darkness, when its lighted windows were the only things that showed.

Somewhere behind him, Bolan thought that he heard the hopeless cries of cattle being herded into slaughter pens. It seemed appropriate, but did nothing to lighten Bolan’s mood.

“We still need—”

Guzman interrupted him without a spoken word, spinning the wheel again, feet busy with the gas pedal, the clutch, the brake. He took them through a long bootlegger’s turn, tires crying out in protest as they whipped through a 180-degree rotation and wound up facing toward their pursuers.

“Is there ‘stretch’ enough?” Guzman asked.

Bolan glanced to either side, saw waste ground stretching off into the night. The hulks of cast-off vehicles and large machines waiting for someone to remove them sat like gargoyles, casting shadows darker than the night itself.

“We’ll find out in a second,” Bolan said. “Give them your brights and find some cover.”

Leaping from the vehicle, Bolan ran to his right and crouched behind a generator easily as tall as he was, eight or ten feet long. Approaching headlights framed the Fiat, glinting off its chrome, but the pursuers would’ve lost Bolan as soon as he was off the pavement.

As for Guzman…

Bolan heard the crack of a 9 mm Parabellum pistol, saw the muzzle-flash from Guzman’s side of the Fiat. Downrange, there came the sound of glass breaking, and one of the onrushing headlights suddenly blacked out.

Not bad, if that was Guzman’s aim, but would he do as well with human targets that returned fire, with intent to kill?

Bolan supposed he’d find out any moment, now, and in the meantime he was moving, looking for a vantage point that would surprise his enemies while still allowing him substantial cover.

He assumed that some of them, at least, had seen him breaking toward their left, his right. He couldn’t help that, but he didn’t have to make it easy for them, either, popping up where they’d expect a frightened man to stand and fight.

Fear was a part of what he felt. No soldier who was sane ever completely lost that feeling when the bullets started flying, but he’d never given in to fear, let it control or paralyze him.

Fear, if properly controlled, made soldiers smart, kept them from being reckless when it did no good. The mastery of fear prevented them from freezing up, permitted them to risk their lives selectively, when it was time to do or die.

Like now.

“HE’S TURNING! Watch it!”

Krieger realized that he was shouting at Pacheco, but the driver didn’t seem to hear or understand him. How could the pathetic creature not see what was happening two hundred yards in front of him?

After its left-hand turn down another dark and narrow access road between two factories, the target vehicle had first accelerated, then spun through a racing turn that left its headlights pointing toward Krieger’s two-car caravan. At first, he thought the crazy bastard was about to charge head-on, but then he realized the other car had stopped. Its headlights blazed to high beams, briefly blinding him, as doors flew open on both sides.

“They’re getting out! Watch—There! And there!

He pointed, but Pacheco and the idiots seated behind him didn’t seem to understand. Pacheco held the wheel steady, but he was slowing as he approached the stationary vehicle they had followed from the airport.

“Christ! Will you be careful?”

Even as he spoke, a shot rang out and Krieger raised an arm to shield his face. The bullet drilled his windshield, clipped the rearview mirror from its post, but missed all four of those who occupied the Volkswagen.

“Get out, damn you!” he snapped at no one in particular, and flung his own door open, using it for cover as he rolled out of the car.

It wasn’t perfect, granted. Anyone who took his time and aimed could probably hit Krieger in the feet or lower legs—even a ricochet could cripple him—but all he needed was a little time to find himself a better vantage point.

He could’ve fired the Walther blindly, made a run for it, but Krieger hated wasting any of the pistol’s sixteen rounds. He had two extra magazines but hadn’t come prepared for any kind of siege and wanted every shot to count.

Both of his riflemen were firing now, short bursts from their CZ2000 Czech assault rifles. They had the carbine version, eighteen inches overall with wire butts folded, each packing a drum magazine with seventy-five 5.56 mm NATO rounds. The little guns resembled sawed-off AK-47s, but in modern times had been retooled to readily accept box magazines from the American M-16 rifle, as well as their own standard loads.

The CZ2000 fired at a cyclic rate of 800 rounds per minute, but Krieger and Rauschman had drilled the mestizos on conserving ammunition, firing aimed and measured bursts in spite of any panic they might feel. So far, it seemed they were remembering their lessons, taking turns as they popped up behind the Volkswagen and stitched holes in the Fiat.

Krieger saw his chance and made his move, sprinting into the midnight darkness of a field directly to his right. He’d seen enough in the periphery of headlights to determine that the field was presently a dumping ground for out-of-date or broken-down equipment. Krieger reckoned he could use the obstacles for cover.

As he crept along through dusty darkness, eardrums echoing to gunfire, Krieger took stock of his advantages. He had eight men, himself included, against two. As far as he could tell, his weapons were superior to those his enemies possessed. He should be able to destroy them without difficulty.

Now, the disadvantages, which every canny soldier had to keep in mind. Krieger was unfamiliar with the battleground, and he could see no better in the darkness than his adversaries could. Night-vision goggles would’ve helped, but how was he to know that they’d be needed?

Another deficit: his men, with one exception—Arne Rauschman—were mestizos, capable of murder but indifferent as soldiers. They obeyed Krieger and his superiors from greed, fear, or a combination of the two. Still, if their nerve broke and their tiny peasant minds were gripped by fear, they might desert him.

Not if I can kill them first, he thought, then focused once again on his hasty Plan B.

Plan A had been to trail the targets, find a place to kill them without drawing any real attention to his team and do the job efficiently. Now that the basic scheme was shot to hell, he needed an alternative that wasn’t based entirely on the prowess of his personnel.

Plan B had Krieger circling around behind his targets, looking for an angle of attack while Rauschman and the six mestizos kept them busy. Now that he considered it, already on the move, it might have been a better scheme with Rauschman circling to the left, a pincers movement, but that hadn’t come to Krieger in his haste.

Besides, he needed someone with the peasants, to make sure they didn’t drop their guns and run away.

More shooting, as he edged around the rusty housing of a bulky cast-off air-conditioner. He marveled at the things some people threw away, while others in the country lived in cardboard shanties or had no roof overhead.

Gripping his pistol in both hands, he was about to edge around the far end of the obstacle when more headlights lit up the scene behind him. Turning, half-expecting the police or some kind of security patrol, Krieger saw a fourth civilian car, convertible, slide to a halt some thirty yards behind Rauschman’s Mercedes.

Who in hell…?

But Krieger’s mind rebelled at what he saw next.

A young woman, pretty at a glance, leaped from the convertible without resort to doors.

Clutching a pistol in her hand.

BOLAN ALSO OBSERVED the fourth car’s entry to the battle zone and saw its lights go out as someone vaulted from the driver’s seat. He had no clear view of the new arrival, but it seemed to be a single person, no great wave of reinforcements for his enemy.

Whoever they were.

Bolan had his IMBEL autoloader cocked and ready as he circled to his left around the bulky generator. It was shielding him from hostile fire, but it also prevented him from taking any active part in the firefight. To join the battle, he had to put himself at risk.

Same old, same old.

Erratic gunfire—pistol shots, full-auto bursts, a shotgun blast—and he wondered whether Guzman had already fled the scene on foot. Bolan could hardly blame him, if he had, but he still hoped his guide and translator was made of stronger stuff than that.

Leaving the generator’s cover, moving toward what seemed to be an air-conditioner, he glimpsed the fourth car’s driver rising from the murk behind his vehicle and squeezing off to shots in rapid-fire.

Another pistol, aiming…where?

It almost seemed as if the new arrival fired toward the pursuit cars, rather than toward Guzman’s vehicle. Bolan dismissed it as an optical illusion, knowing Guzman had no allies here this night, except Bolan himself.

He started forward, cleared another corner, and immediately saw one of the hostiles standing ten or fifteen feet in front of him. Blond hair, as far as he could tell, and military bearing, minus a defensive crouch.

Take him alive for questioning, Bolan thought, but instantly dismissed the notion as too risky. He had nine guns against himself and Guzman. Playing games with any of his adversaries at the moment was an invitation to disaster.

Bolan raised his IMBEL .45 and shot the stranger in his back, high up between the shoulder blades. It wasn’t “fair” by Hollywood standards, but Bolan wasn’t in a movie and he couldn’t do another take if anything went wrong.

At that range, if the .45 slug stayed intact, he was expecting lethal damage to the spine and heart. If it fragmented, jagged chunks might also pierce the lungs and the aorta.

Either way, it was a kill.

His target dropped facedown into the dust, quivered for something like a second, then lay still. Bolan approached him cautiously, regardless, thankful that the dead man’s comrades couldn’t see him for the bulk of old equipment strewed between them.

Bolan rolled the body over, saw the ragged exit wound and looked no further.

One down, eight to go.

How long before police arrived? He guessed that it was noisy in the factories surrounding him, but someone would be passing by or working near an open window, maybe pacing off the grounds on night patrol. Even in Bogotá, where murders were a dime a dozen, someone would report a pitched battle in progress.

But until the cops showed up, he had a chance to win it and escape.

A sudden escalation in the nearby gunfire startled Bolan. First, he feared the hunters had grown weary of their siege and had decided it was time to rush the Fiat, throwing everything they had into the charge. As Bolan moved to get a clear view of the action, though, he found something entirely different happening.

Two of the hostile shooters—make it three, now—had stopped firing at the Fiat and had turned to face the opposite direction. Bolan checked the access road, saw nothing but the last car to arrive—and then he understood.

The driver of the sleek convertible wasn’t a member of the hunting party: he was something else entirely, and he had been firing at the chase cars, rather than at Guzman.

Why? Who was it?

Bolan couldn’t answer either of those questions in the middle of a gunfight, but he recognized a universal truth.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The strange diversion gave him hope and opportunity.

The Executioner had never wasted either in his life.

JORGE GUZMAN WAS FIGHTING for his life, and he was hopelessly confused. He couldn’t figure out how anyone had tracked him to the airport, but it wouldn’t matter if the gunmen killed him in this filthy place, with rank pollution blotting out the stars above.

He also didn’t understand why a strange woman in a car he didn’t recognize had joined the fight, apparently on his side. It defied all reason, made Guzman question whether he was hallucinating, until one of his opponents stopped a bullet from the woman’s gun and crumpled to the ground.

Don’t think about it! Guzman told himself. Just stay alive!

That was no small task, in itself, with eight men—seven, now—intent on blasting him with automatic weapons, pistols and at least one shotgun. Even in his near panic, Guzman could recognize the sounds of different weapons, picturing what each in turn would do to him if he was hit.

Flesh torn, bones shattered, blood jetting from wounds to drain him dry in minutes flat. Maybe he’d suffer every agonizing second of it, or a bullet to the brain might grant him swift release.

Guzman peeked out, around the Fiat’s left-rear fender, and fired two shots toward the nearest of the enemies who’d pinned him down. He guessed the shots were wasted, since the two men he’d been hoping to deter immediately answered him with rapid fire.

Bastards!

As far as Guzman knew, he hadn’t even wounded one of them, although he’d been the first to fire a shot. God knew it hadn’t helped him, but at least he’d had a fleeting moment when he almost felt courageous, capable of anything.

Now that the grim truth of his situation was apparent, he could only wonder who the woman was, and what had happened to the tall American.

It seemed impossible that Matt Cooper had simply run away and left Guzman to fight alone. He had to have had some strategy, but so far—

Even with the other din, Guzman picked out a gunshot from one side, off in the dark field to his right. Cooper had run in that direction when the Fiat came to rest, not long ago in real-world time, although it felt like hours with the bullets snapping past Guzman.

He wondered if his car would ever run again, after the hits that it had taken and was taking, even now. He doubted it. Cars were such fragile things, despite their bulk and high price tags. A single loose wire ruined everything, and now his little ride was taking bullets like a target in a shooting gallery, most of them through the hood and grille.

Stranded, he thought, then almost laughed out loud.

What did it matter if his car was broken down when Guzman died? Where did he plan on driving, with his brains blown out?

That image made him angry, spurred his need to fight and leave the other bastards bloody, hurting, when he fell at last. Blazing away from cover, Guzman emptied his pistol’s magazine and actually thought he’d seen one of his targets fall before the weapon’s slide locked open on an empty chamber and he fumbled to reload.

He slapped his next-to-last clip into the receiver, knowing that it might as well have been the very last, since he would never have a chance to take the third one from his pocket. Once he rose, exposed himself, and charged the hostile guns, his life span would be timed in nanoseconds.

Still, the Latin concept of machismo said he had to do something, take some action that did not involve hiding and waiting for the enemy to root him out. If he had to die this night, at least it would be as a man and not a cringing worm.

Guzman lunged to his feet, snarling through clenched teeth as he felt the air ripple with bullets zipping past him. One of them would find him soon, but in the meantime he was firing, choosing targets, giving each in turn the double-tap that a policeman friend had taught him at the firing range. Advancing without hope that he would see another sunrise.

And, incredibly, his enemies fell back from Guzman’s wrath, reeling as his rounds sought their flesh and blood. It didn’t quell the hostile fire, but at the very least it spoiled their aim, sent some of the incoming bullets high and wide.

Amazing!

Guzman bellowed at them now, his rage echoing to the sounds of gunfire. He was vaguely conscious of new weapons firing on his left and right, joining their voices to his IMBEL’s hammering reports, and while he knew one of them had to be Cooper’s pistol, one of them the unknown woman’s, Guzman felt as if he had the battlefield all to himself, charging his enemies with more courage than common sense.

The bullet, when it found him, had the impact of a giant mailed fist, slamming viciously into the side of Guzman’s skull. He staggered, felt the earth slip out from underneath his feet, then saw it rush to meet him in a wave of darkness as he fell.

BOLAN SAW GUZMAN DROP but couldn’t help him at the moment. Only finishing their other adversaries would allow him to examine, and perhaps to treat, his contact’s wounds. Meanwhile, he also had to figure out who else had joined the fight, and why a total stranger would risk death to help him.

Nothing made sense yet, in the chaotic moment, and he couldn’t stop to mull it over while five or six gunmen were trying to kill him.

Bolan circled toward the Benz through darkness, ready with the IMBEL .45 for anyone who challenged him. His first clear shot, after the blonde he’d left behind him in the junk-yard, was a short and swarthy shooter with some kind of AK-looking weapon, firing from a fat drum magazine.

The gunner didn’t see him coming, likely never knew what hit him when a single round from Bolan’s autoloader drilled his skull behind the right ear, dropping him as if he was a puppet with its strings cut.

Forward from the crumpled corpse, between the dark Mercedes and the Volkswagen, three shooters bobbed and weaved, rising to fire at Guzman’s Fiat, crouching again for someone else’s turn. Two of them had the same short rifles as the man Bolan had killed a heartbeat earlier; the third carried a sleek pump-action shotgun with extended magazine.

Bolan came in behind them, wasted no time on a warning, caught one of them turning to investigate the sound of his last shot. He drilled that shooter through the left eye, swung a few feet to his left and gave the survivor a double-tap before the target realized that anything was wrong.

The shotgunner was turning, quicker than the others, ratcheting his weapon’s slide-action. Bolan wasn’t sure that he could beat the other man’s reflexes, but it didn’t matter.

From Bolan’s left, a gunshot sounded, and the side of his adversary’s head appeared to vaporize. The dead man standing looked surprised, but if the killing shot had caused him any pain, it didn’t register in his expression. He stood rock-still for a few heartbeats, then folded at the knees and toppled over backward, sprawling on the pavement.

Bolan had already swiveled toward the source of that last shot, the IMBEL automatic following his gaze. The woman who had saved his life—he saw her clearly now, and there could be no question of her femininity—held up an open hand, as if to block his shot, then nodded toward the other gunmen who were still blasting at Guzman’s car.

Split-second life-or-death decisions were a combat soldier’s stock-in-trade. Bolan made his and nodded, turning from the woman who could just as easily have killed him then, returning his whole focus to their common enemy.

Bolan had no idea where she had come from, who she was, or why she’d risk her life to help him in the middle of a firefight, but those questions had to wait. There would be time enough for talk if both of them survived the next few minutes.

Part of Bolan’s mind, condemned to deal with practicalities, wondered if he’d need Guzman to translate his conversation with the woman. And if Guzman died, how in the hell would they communicate?

Focusing once again on here and now, Bolan moved up toward the Volkswagen, with the woman flanking on his left. As far as he could see, two gunmen still remained. One was a short mestizo like most of the others, while the second was a dirty-blond white boy, stamped from the same mold as the one Bolan had left behind him, in the waste ground.

Bolan took the shooter nearest to him, offered no alerts or other chivalrous preliminaries as he found his mark and drilled the rifleman between his shoulder blades. The gunner went down firing, stitching holes across the trunk of the Volkswagen, while his Nordic-looking partner ducked and covered.

Rising from his crouch, the sole survivor caught sight of the woman first, and raised his pistol to confront her. She was faster, snapping off three rounds in rapid fire, stamped a pattern on her target’s chest and slammed him to the ground.

Bolan advanced with caution, made sure that the dead were all they seemed to be, then took another risk and let the woman have a clear shot at his back, while he ran to examine Jorge Guzman’s wounds.

Guzman was grappling back to consciousness as Bolan reached him, tried to raise his pistol, but he didn’t have the strength to stop Bolan from taking it away. Blood bathed the left side of his face and stained the collar of his shirt.

“Wha-What? Am I…Are we…?”

Bolan examined him and said, “You’ve got a nasty graze above your left ear, but the bone’s not showing. Scalp wounds bleed a lot. It doesn’t mean you’re dying.”

“Not…dead?”

“Not even close,” Bolan replied. “You may need stitches, though.”

“Hospital…no…report….”

“I can take care of him,” a new voice said from Bolan’s left. He glanced up at the woman as she nodded toward Guzman. “I’ve stitched up worse than that, believe me.”

Bolan helped Guzman to his shaky feet and held him upright, left hand on the other man’s right arm. It left his gun hand free as he turned toward the woman, saying, “Maybe we should start with names.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’m Gabriella Cohen, and I work for the Mossad. We share, I think, a common goal.”