Читать книгу Triangle Of Terror - Don Pendleton - Страница 11

Major Alan Hawke, United States Special Forces, had heard the rumors, but seeing was, indeed, believing. What was inside the hovel, under medical examination, added a new and nervous wrinkle to the mission. It was just the kind of horror—and hassle—he didn’t need. This wasn’t Task Force Talon of Afghanistan infamy, where he had served under Colonel Braden, and soldiers turned a blind eye, or else. Out here, there were new grunts on the block who might go over his head, flap tongues to starred brass who would land his neck on a chopping block. At that moment, he wrestled with any number of conflicting loyalties as to whom to report to, aware his next move could well lead to a court-martial. But he knew what had to be done.

And he knew he would do it, if he wanted to survive, if he didn’t want his own atrocities brought to light.

Listening to the whapping blades of his Apache helicopter, the two Hueys framing the stone hovel in a white halo from a hundred yards south over his shoulder, feeling the swirling grit sting his neck, he silently urged Task Force Iron Hawk’s medic to emerge with a final report. Feeling the ghosts of fifteen dead Iraqis, he scoured the black walls of the wadi, M-16/M-203 combo ready to cut loose at any rebel who might have fled the firefight some eight hours earlier.

It had been a fluke, stumbling across the building while roving the skies in search of armed runners. Going through the door, ready to shoot, they found the two victims, stricken and stretched out on prayer rugs from God only knew what, though he had his suspicions. A man and a woman, husband and wife, it turned out. His interpreter, donning a HAZMAT suit, had pried from them a very unnerving tale.

And confirmed what he’d been hearing during the briefs the past several months.

He told himself he really had no business this far north, edged up against the Turk border, this neck of rugged mountain country. Kurd-controlled, there was enough ethnic hatred wandering around to mow down any resistance rabble who escaped their steel talons. But his orders didn’t always come direct from Central Command.

The problem was how to avoid reporting what he’d found.

He saw the spacesuit emerge through the doorway, Captain Medley removing his helmet. With no way to read the grim expression, Hawke waited until the man was on top of him.

Medley appeared to gather his thoughts on how to proceed. “The good news is it doesn’t appear to be a bio agent, but I’d like to draw blood, take tissue samples for further examination,” he said.

“No.”

Medley looked aghast. “But, sir—”

“What’s killing them?” Hawke asked.

“Killed.”

Hawke groaned to himself, more an act than anything else, hoping Medley read the noise as disappointment at the lack of information. In this case ignorance was bliss.

Medley continued. “The spasms, the manner in which their limbs locked up, asphyxiation, all classic symptoms of exposure to a nerve agent.”

“Sergeant Ellis informed me they had just returned from across the Turk border, delivering some cargo they could or would not specify.”

“My guess is they handled the agent, a seal broke on a drum, or whatever they were shipping it in. They must have been exposed to high doses given their symptoms.”

“Are you telling me this wasn’t their first trip?”

“That, running the nerve agent in faulty containers, or there’s a good chance they overturned the vehicle, dumped the cargo, got splashed in the process. For a nerve agent, inhalation or direct skin contact will do the deed.”

“If your scenario is correct, they should have dropped right then, across the border.”

“Not necessarily. It would depend on how much of the agent they were exposed to. Either way, they’re long past any atropine injection now.”

Hawke looked his medic dead in the eye. “You are to forget what you saw here. Do you copy, Captain?” He could see Medley didn’t like it, was poised to argue, but seemed to think better of it.

“Yes, sir,” the medic said with reluctance.

“Hop on board then,” he told Medley, then whistled at the four shadows hunkered in the wadi, rotating his raised fist.

So it was true, he thought, holding his ground, waiting while his troops hustled past him to board the Hueys. Whatever had begun in Afghanistan, all the talk he’d heard from CIA spooks dancing with the devil, Braden…

Marching for his grounded Hueys, forging into the whirlwind, Hawke raised his Apache crew and ordered, “Give me one right down Broadway, mister.”

The order copied, he gathered speed. The Hellfire missile flamed away from its pod. As the thunder pealed behind, and suspecting how the sins of the past were about to create hell on earth, he thought, God help us. God help us all.