Читать книгу Volatile Agent - Don Pendleton - Страница 10

After the initial burst of automatic weapons fire riddled the wall outside the window to her room, the firing simply stopped. Remaining in a low profile, Saragossa waited out a tense fifteen minutes.

She heard movement in the street and she went carefully over to the shot out window. In the street below she saw armed men running through the square. The motley crew of brigands ran in and out of the UNICEF offices and the front gate of the mudbrick wall surrounding the main Yendere mosque. Islam was by no means the dominant religion in Burkina Faso, but the mosques were almost always the most dominant buildings in any given town in the country.

Weak, Saragossa leaned back against the wall of her room. She thought about making for the roof and decided against it. From the lobby below her she could hear men calling back and forth to each other in rough voices.

She felt flushed with fever, and perspiration dripped off her in sheets. She hurt all over, and she knew she had been irrevocably slowed down. She was no longer confident in her ability to hold out if she had to fend off another attack. She hadn’t packed enough ammunition to recreate the Bay of Pigs. The entire Burkina operation had been planned for one hell of a lot lower profile than it had turned out to be.

Saragossa went over to the bed and searched among her gear until she found her cell phone. She knew better than to think she’d get a signal, but the battery was fresh and other usage options on the device worked.

She crossed to the dresser and pulled out of the top drawer the legal tablet she used for her notes. On the first page, written in her tight, neat hand, was a summary of the information she had gathered about the Iraqi laboratory. This included a brief physical description of the building, its architecture and structural capabilities, a ten-digit grid coordinate and a precise GPS listing, as well as concise notes on the surrounding topography. It was everything she had been paid to deliver stripped down to the bare bone essentials. Using those notes, her intention had been to type up a full report for delivery to the principal in Caracas.

If push came to shove, however, everything they needed, all the information they had paid for, was on that sheet of paper. Saragossa settled herself back down below the window. The rain coming in through the shattered pane felt good against her feverish skin. With her back to the wall she could cover the door, and she kept her mini-Uzi close.

She placed the legal pad between her legs and opened her cell phone. She quickly tapped through her menu and selected the camera option. Carefully she centered the lens on the page. She drew the camera back, bringing the words on the paper into sharp focus. She held her hand steady and clicked the picture.

When that was done, she shut the phone and tore off the sheet with her notes on it, separating it from the legal pad. She folded the paper into quarters, then began ripping them into tiny pieces. When she was done she made a pile on the floor between her legs and used a match from her medic kit to light them.

The paper was consumed in seconds.

Still nauseous Saragossa leaned her head back against the wall. She cradled the mini-Uzi and prayed for her rescue to arrive.