Читать книгу Radical Edge - Don Pendleton - Страница 12

CHAPTER FOUR

Mack Bolan was on fire.

He could hear nothing but the wall of pressure building in his head, ringing through his brain, driving an iron spike through his skull. Angry, unseen ants crawled up his arms, burning him with their touch, tearing at his flesh with their phantom jaws. He tumbled in free-fall, unmoored from gravity. Blunt pain in his shoulder and hip, so different from the sharp, searing agony of his hands and forearms, told him he had crashed into a wall or the floor. He tried to force his eyes open and saw only a black-red miasma of exploding, interweaving Rorschach inkblots, tumbling and rolling through his vision.

Knife blades thrust through his palms in dozens of places. He fought the pain and found the stock of his

FN P90, fought the pain and found the broad, uneven surface of the torn floorboards, fought the pain and made himself put his legs beneath him. His thighs screamed as he stood, swaying and staggering, crashing into another barrier that could only have been the doorway.

From memory, from his flash-picture of the kitchen layout, he found the back door, careened off the frame, found the door again. Pushing, he plunged through, stumbling through the gravel, rolling, crawling, collapsing. The pain in his head worsened, crushing his skull, reaching a crescendo that threatened to burst his sightless eyes from within…and then slowly, tortuously receded, until the jet-engine whine became only the drumbeat of a sledgehammer crashing against his forehead. As the pain diminished, his hearing began to recover, and the blobs of painful light swimming across his vision began to resolve into shapes.

“Cooper. Cooper. Cooper.”

Why did he hear that name? Who was Cooper? What did Cooper want? Was Cooper—

“Agent Cooper!” shouted the mass of burning light that was Officer Jimmy. “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

The lines defining the cop slowed and then stopped crawling. Bolan still saw blooms of actinic afterimage as he blinked, but now he could see, could really see. Jimmy and Gray might have been shouting at him from the bottom of a swimming pool, but he could hear them, too, well enough. They were holding his arms by the elbows.

“Oh, man, Jimmy, look at his hands,” Gray said. Bolan’s vision cleared and he focused on the man’s nametag: Graham, P. The tag on Jimmy’s uniform read Hernandez, J.

“G-Force,” Bolan said. “G-Force. Striker to G-Force.”

“What’s he talking about?” Officer Graham asked.

“The g-forces, Agent Cooper?” Officer Hernandez suggested. “Is that it?”

Bolan reached up and fumbled at his ear. His earbud was gone, lost in the explosion. He patted himself down, searching for his secure satellite phone. He found it, and when he brought it to his face, he saw the ruggedized unit had been cracked almost in two by the force of the explosion. He tucked it back into his web gear without thinking.

Bolan’s hearing cleared further as the sound of squealing tires reached him. He rolled over and onto his hands and knees. As he did, automatic gunfire churned the gravel where he had been. Graham and Hernandez rolled in opposite directions.

The battered, primer-spotted Chevy Caprice swerved as if in slow motion. Bullets fired from the Uzi submachine gun in the hands of the unseen passenger ripped across the flank of the squad car, flattening both tires on the driver’s side. The car continued on, spraying gravel as it crossed the lawn at the far end. It could only have been concealed on that side of the house, between the bullet-riddled safe house and the residence next door.

Bolan didn’t speak. He left Graham and Hernandez to shout after him as he took off from his position on his hands and knees, a track-and-field athlete launching at the starter’s pistol. His target was the beat-to-hell Toyota Camry parked across the street. The car was so dented it looked as if it had been rolled down a hill. It was, however, pointed in the right way: aimed to pursue the Caprice.

The soldier then rolled his battered body over the hood of the car, ignoring the pain, and landed on the other side. He smashed out the driver’s window with the butt of the FN P90, popped the lock and wrenched the door open. Distant alarm signals were jangling in the back of his brain, jarring his awareness every time he used his hands. He ignored them.

Bolan didn’t believe in coincidences, nor did he believe “Matt Cooper” was such important a figure on the national scene as to warrant seemingly random assassination. The would-be killers in the Caprice were linked to whomever had assaulted the safe house and killed the skinheads. The gunner, or the man behind the wheel, could even be Shane Hyde. Stealing a car was the lesser of the possible evils. Bolan needed to catch that Chevy.

Once behind the wheel of the Camry, he was as brutal as he’d been gaining entry. The FN P90 was once again his hammer as he smashed, ripped and tore, gaining access to the wires he wanted. He twisted one pair together and was rewarded with dash lights. Using his Sting knife, he cut sections of insulation from the next pair, struck them and made the engine turn over. Dropping the knife on the seat next to him, he floored the accelerator. The beat-up Camry responded ably, leaving a six-inch length of rubber behind the front tires as he spurred it onward.

He drove straight, grateful that traffic was light. Pushing the car as fast as he dared, he trusted his instincts, following his nose, avoiding turns until he came to a fork. Traffic was heaviest to the left; he bore right, hoping the traffic pattern hadn’t altered in the last two minutes.

The light ahead of him changed. He ignored it, pressing the accelerator to the floor, veering around honking, outraged drivers who brought their vehicles to screeching stops to avoid him.

Bolan clenched the steering wheel, which felt like sandpaper beneath his bloody palms. Each minute turn of the wheel caused a stabbing pain, and when he glanced down he could see the ragged sleeves of his blacksuit and the livid flesh beneath. He was burned badly, maybe seriously.

He flexed his right hand, picturing the butt of the Beretta beneath it, feeling the FN against his body on its sling, the weight of his canvas war bag, the pressure of his web gear over his blacksuit. His body was screaming, racked with pain and vibration, coming alive again as the numbing effects of the explosion wore off.

Curling his hand into a fist hurt. He was ready for it, expected it, and still it hurt badly enough to surprise him. He would need medical attention.

Later.

Far ahead, at the end of the block, he saw the paint-spattered trunk of the Chevy Caprice. He had guessed correctly. His quarry was there and, for the moment, moving slowly enough that he was gaining ground.

The Chevy’s leisurely pace didn’t last when the occupants noticed the speeding Camry. The vehicle shot through a four-way stop and sideswiped a minivan, tearing off its bumper and speeding away. Bolan guided his stolen car around the damaged minivan, feeling the Camry threaten to pull up onto two wheels as it heeled past the obstacle.

As he got farther from the target zone, with Grimaldi well out of range, he realized his position was worsening. With both his transceiver and his secure phone lost or destroyed, he had no way to call for help except by conventional means—finding an increasingly rare pay phone, or even use a landline, which meant dialing a scrambled trunk line and waiting as the call was routed through a series of encrypted cutouts. He couldn’t do that until he dealt with the immediate threat, followed the immediate lead. He couldn’t risk losing the men in the Chevrolet.

Once he pinned down the killers in the Chevy, then he could call the Farm. They could route Grimaldi back to his location, wherever Bolan ended up. Hell, he would send smoke signals if he had to. It wouldn’t matter once he’d brought the two men down.

Both cars powered through a red light, the Chevy dodging a panel van. Bolan caught an opening created by terrified drivers, all of them pausing to wait out the adrenaline rush caused by witnessing an obvious and flagrant violation of traffic laws before their eyes. The idea almost made Bolan smile, despite the discomfort in his hands and arms. The average civilian would freeze at the sound and sight of gunfire, but run a red light before him and he was apoplectic with outrage.

We all react according to what we know, Bolan thought.

He was drifting. Accustomed to focusing on the combative task at hand, he realized that his injuries were taking their toll. He shook his head, trying to clear it, tromping on the accelerator again and squeezing another few miles per hour out of the abused Toyota. The vehicle wasn’t much to look at, but it responded well, its engine revving gamely as he pushed it for more.

Something was happening ahead. Bolan knew it would be nothing good. The Uzi gunner leaned farther out his window, and as the Chevy passed a slow-moving Smart car, the gunner fired a withering, sustained blast that raked the wheels and punched holes from front bumper to the rear. The Smart car lurched to a stop in the middle of the road, blocking Bolan’s path.

He took the Camry up over the curb, praying the wheels would hold as he struck it at speed. Nothing popped. He managed to get the vehicle back on the road, drawing a line of gold paint across three parked cars doing so. Well, the Camry’s owner probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference… .

Bolan shook his head again and deliberately squeezed the steering wheel. The jolt of pain brought his eyes back into focus. The Chevrolet missed by inches a woman crossing the street. She shouted something he couldn’t hear as the Camry rocked past her.

He had to stop this. He had to stop it now. The danger to innocent pedestrians and drivers and passengers in other cars was too great for a sustained pursuit. Bolan picked his angle. The Caprice was a big, rear-wheel-drive vehicle, much less nimble than the borrowed Camry. It was heavier, but Bolan knew the physics of what he was about to do. He could make it work.

He needed to make the Chevy turn.

Bolan reached to the back of his web belt and found the cylinder of a smoke grenade. The skin of his fingers cracked as he unclipped the lethal orb. Blood smeared the grenade as he wrenched the pin free with his teeth and waited, counting silently in his head. When the canister was almost ready to burst in his fist, he hurled it with all his strength through the broken window of his driver’s door.

The grenade burst in the air. The driver of the Chevy broke right, avoiding the smoke. Moving at high speed, he wouldn’t process that the smoke was harmless; he would simply avoid the potential danger.

As his quarry veered to the side, Bolan cut the arc, aiming the nose of the Toyota for the rear quarter of the Chevy.

It was unorthodox, but it worked. The Chevrolet spun, scraping its passenger-side door along a telephone pole. The two men inside, opting for confrontation over flight, started to climb from the vehicle.

Bolan threw the gearshift into Reverse and jammed his feet on the brakes. The transmission banged heavily and then threw him forward. Slamming on the gas, he shifted again. The Camry lurched ahead once more.

The driver was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and a windbreaker, and he had a SIG Sauer pistol in his hand.

His eyes were very wide as Bolan crushed the life out of him, pinning him between the open door of the Chevy and the grille of the Toyota. Blood erupted from the man’s mouth. As Bolan backed up again, feeling the Camry’s tire fight against its crushed right front fender, the dying man collapsed back into the Caprice.

Bolan grabbed the back of his vehicle’s passenger seat. Pain shot up his arm. Looking over his shoulder, he wheeled around the stricken Caprice. He was going to use the same tactic again. Bullets ripped holes in the roof and smashed through the windshield only inches from his face. The gunman with the Uzi was hosing him down.

The rear of the Camry ripped the passenger door from the Chevy. Bolan’s stolen ride stuttered under the abuse he was heaping on it, then stopped when he struck the same telephone pole. The gunman ran his magazine dry and, rather than reload and try again, dived back into the Caprice. Suddenly, the Chevy’s engine was roaring and the vehicle was mobile once more.

Bolan threw his door open and jumped from the Toyota. He landed on his feet, stumbled, and managed to recover. The FN P90 was barbed wire in his damaged palms as he brought the weapon to his shoulder and tried to acquire his target.

The Caprice struck another telephone pole. The gunman, practically on top of his dead colleague, went for something out of sight on the floor of the car.

Bolan dropped to one knee and took careful aim. The pain in his hands had the sights jumping around in his vision. The beat of his pulse was a metronome of punishment that rocked its way up his arms with every thud of his heart.

Traffic around the danger zone was slowing. Frightened drivers were honking. Others were screaming. Bolan had to stop this now, before someone wandered into the impromptu battlefield.

His shot was clear.

Bolan squeezed the trigger. Even the light recoil of the 5.7 mm cartridge caused a fresh blossom of pain in his palms when the P90 went off. He fired again and again, punching rounds through the side of the Caprice, trying to hit the Uzi gunner before he could pop up and start spraying the neighborhood anew.

Bullets peppered the pavement by Bolan’s feet. His enemy was shooting back through the car door, crouching down below the window. The danger of ricochet had to be severe, yet he kept on. He was either insane or very daring.

Bolan shifted, duck-stepping from his kneeling position. The Uzi gunner was firing blind. The danger was greater for innocents than to Bolan himself, but thankfully, the area behind him was free of pedestrians. It was, in fact, a small parking lot, where some of the parked cars were taking bullet holes. A car alarm went off.

In the distance, above the cacophony, the first sirens could be heard.

Bolan sprayed out the 50-round magazine on the FN P90, holding the trigger all the way back, grouping his rounds in the car door, where his enemy had to be hiding. The soldier then changed magazines, moving quickly. Even that act hurt him. When he slapped the new magazine home, he saw bloody, partial fingerprints on the plastic. He retracted the cocking lever and adjusted his aim for the rear of the Chevy, where the Uzi shooter seemed to be creeping. He was using shadows on the pavement to gauge the enemy’s movements.

“Hey!” the Uzi gunner shouted. “You out there! Are you law?”

“Justice Department!” Bolan shouted back. “Lay down your weapon! Come out now with your hands where I can see them!”

“No way, pal.”

“Identify yourself!” Bolan barked.

The sirens were louder, but still far enough off that much could happen before emergency personnel complicated the situation. While Bolan normally hoped for the combat stretch to resolve things himself, without endangering others, he had to admit that backup might be useful in this situation. His vision kept fuzzing at the edges.

“Identify yourself!” he repeated. “Who are you? Are you with Hyde?”

“Hyde’s filth!” the gunner yelled.

“What’s your involvement?” Bolan called back.

“Every last one of them is going to die,” the man shouted. “They all deserve it. Don’t try to tell me they don’t!”

“That’s not your call!” Bolan said. “This is bigger than whatever play you’re making.”

There was a pause. Then, from the Chevrolet: “You’d die for them? For white supremacist garbage?”

“I don’t intend to die for anybody today,” Bolan retorted. “Last chance!”

The gunner rolled on the asphalt, his Uzi held before him, stretched along the pavement. Bolan had expected something like that. The blast went wide, as the soldier thought it might; an automatic weapon, especially a subgun, was no easy thing to control on the fly. He took careful aim, braced himself mentally for the slap to his palms, and fired on full automatic, walking his 5.7 mm rounds up the road and into the gunner.

The man saw it coming and tried to roll back. Bolan’s fire stitched him across his shoulder and tore holes in his back. He crawled back behind the Chevrolet, trailing blood without a word.

The passenger door opened. Bolan, on his feet, came around the Chevrolet, his head swimming. He was close to passing out, but cleared the rear bumper of the Chevy in time to see the gunman pulling a leather shoulder bag from the car.

The wounded man’s hand came up with a grenade.

No, Bolan thought. Not a grenade. An incendiary device. The red canister was clearly marked. There were more of the weapons visible in the leather bag. It was possible the gunner and his driver had been a mop-up crew, whose job may well have been to burn the safe house to the ground—and shoot down any stragglers in hiding within, who would be driven outside by the flames. It was a proved tactic when cleaning out a nest of vermin.

The hostiles, whoever they were, hadn’t counted on being interrupted. Bolan’s presence had to have thrown them off their game. Then again, the fire raging in the kitchen would have consumed the house eventually. The occupants of the Chevy might have been waiting to see if that happened, saving them from leaving behind more evidence that wouldn’t quite fit with a nice, clean theory of gang warfare among skinheads and other criminals.

The theories flitting through Bolan’s mind were sound enough but, he realized, disjoined and oddly timed. He was fading on his feet. The muzzle of the FN P90 began to drift… .

The wounded man saw his opportunity and took it. He popped the pin on the incendiary and made as if to throw it.

Bolan shot him.

The Executioner tried to snap his weapon back into position, but his knees were turning to rubber beneath him. He managed to hit his enemy in the chest.

The incendiary, pin freed, fell into the bag of similar bombs.

Every hardwired instinct Bolan had told him to go, and go fast. He turned and found himself stumbling, dragging, rolling. Clawing at the pavement, he nearly fell flat on his face, but then was up and running, pumping his legs, screaming. He let the P90 fall to the end of its sling and bellowed at the bystanders who had not already sought cover from the gunfight.

“Go! Bomb! Run!”

They fled before him, trying to escape the seemingly crazed, bloody man flapping his scorched limbs at them.

The first incendiary went off. Almost, but not quite in the same beat, the others erupted. A white flash and a ball of heat punched Bolan in the small of his back, burning his neck, singeing his hairline. He tried to turn, tried to cover himself, tried to bring his arms up to protect his head.

Then he was falling. As he floated through the air, suspended in space, he turned his head and saw the finger of thick black smoke roiling from the flash-burned Chevy and climbing high into the sky.

The pavement rushed up to meet him.

The soldier didn’t feel the impact. He was suddenly prone, staring at the blue sky, watching the smoke climb to heaven. He was losing all sense of time. He heard voices; he saw faces. Were civilians gawking at him? Trying to help him? He had no idea how long he lay there. It might have been seconds; it might have been hours.

As gray snow crawled in from the edges of his vision, finally carrying him to oblivion, he thought he heard the sound of helicopter rotors.

The darkness claimed him.