Читать книгу Pressure Point - Don Pendleton - Страница 10

As the toxic cloud drew nearer, Bolan quickly deliberated his chances of surviving a fall into the river below. Even if he managed to elude the boulders, it seemed unlikely the river was deep enough to keep him from slamming into the bottom. No. Like it or not, his best chance was to stay where he was and hope the poisonous vapors wouldn’t be as deadly as those that had killed the IMA workers. It was a faint hope. Already he could smell the cloud’s noxious fumes, and his eyes were starting to burn.

This is it, he thought. At long last, his number had come up.

The cloud was almost upon him when two shifting shadows began to sweep across the face of the precipice. When he heard the familiar, throaty drone of four 1600 horsepower turboshaft engines, Bolan felt a sudden stirring of hope.

The Black Hawks.

Bolan glanced up and saw one of the gunships bank slightly as it drifted close to him, so close that he could see the pilot, an olive-skinned Indonesian. The pilot brought the chopper to within twenty feet of the precipice and then hovered in place, its rotors whirring within a few yards of Bolan’s head. The vibration of the rotor wash nearly wrested him from the cliff, and for a moment he wondered if perhaps the Lashkar Jihad had somehow managed to seize the gunship. Then, as he glanced up, he realized that the updraft of the rotor wash was diverting the toxic cloud away from him. The cloud itself was dissipating, as well.

After a few seconds, the Black Hawk pulled away, its mission accomplished. Bolan’s eyes still burned, but the cloud had all but vanished.

The chopper drifted up over the roadway, directing its mounted guns at the sniper positions in the mountains. The second gunship came into view and hovered directly above Bolan, the sound of its rotors echoing off the cliff walls. As the soldier watched, a rope ladder began to inch out the side door. Once the ladder was fully extended, a figure emerged and began to slowly lower himself down the rungs. The man was dressed head-to-toe in HAZMAT gear and carried an extra mask similar to the one Bolan had shed.

The strength in Bolan’s arms was fading. When he tried putting more weight on the tree below him, the trunk began to snap, forcing him to hold tighter to the limb above. His fingers were going numb. He was running out of time.

“Hang tight, Striker!”

Bolan looked up. The man dangling at the bottom of the rope ladder, arm extended toward him, was his longtime colleague John Kissinger. Though officially on the Stony Man payroll as its resident weaponsmith, Kissinger was no stranger to the battlefield. He’d fought at Bolan’s side several times and had been on assignment in Islamabad with Bolan and Grimaldi when they’d received the directive to fly to Indonesia.

“How about a lift?” he shouted to Bolan above the din of the rotors.

“If you insist,” Bolan shouted back.

Once Kissinger was within reach, Bolan freed one hand and quickly transferred his grip to the other man’s wrist. Kissinger responded in kind. When the tree below finally gave way, Kissinger quickly pulled his comrade toward him. With his other hand, Bolan snatched at the ladder. Once his fingers closed around one of the rungs, he swung his right leg up, groping for a foothold.

“Almost there,” Kissinger assured him.

Bolan finally planted his foot on the bottom rung. He let go of Kissinger and grabbed hold of the ladder with both hands. On Kissinger’s signal, the chopper began to pull away from the precipice.

“Nice timing,” Bolan told him once he’d caught his breath.

“Always glad to lend a hand,” Kissinger responded. “But in the future maybe you might want to leave the wall-climbing to Spider-Man.”