Читать книгу Plains Of Fire - Don Pendleton - Страница 10

Calvin James gunned the engine on the Fiat, swinging it around to rendezvous with Bolan.

The Executioner strode forward. He had Major Antoine Bashir by the collar, his hands bound behind him, the omnipresent Desert Eagle screwed against the prisoner’s ear.

“That’s a hell of a souvenir,” James said, pulling up to the end of the boardwalk. Rafael Encizo sat in the shotgun seat, MP-5 at the ready, scanning for the opposition. The Russians and the Africans were still busy escaping the destruction of a multiton freighter grinding down on a pier, but all it would take would be two or three men with rifles to turn their Fiat into a sieve with a blast of automatic rifle fire.

“Take him to the safe house,” Bolan told James. “I’m not finished yet.”

James glanced back at the carnage that he and Encizo had inflicted with their sabotage efforts. “You’re going to slip in among the Russians?”

Bolan nodded. “It will take them a few moments before they realize that a third party caused all this ruckus. Hopefully, Bashir’s second in command will take in the surviving Russians.”

Bolan gave Bashir’s collar a sharp tug as the African militiaman’s eyes grew wide at the sound of his own name. “Yes. I know your name. And I know that Captain Aflaq is your aide and principal bodyguard.”

“Want me to talk to him?” James asked, pantomiming an injection. With Encizo’s aid, the Phoenix Force medic would undoubtedly strip Bashir’s defenses and whatever intelligence he carried with him via a shot of scopolamine. The drug was a powerful inhibitor, making people more susceptible to questions and suggestion, and James was skilled enough to administer the drug without causing undue cardiac stress.

“Do it,” Bolan said. “I’ll see if I can get anything on the Russians and the Thunder Lions, then get some wheels and meet you back at the safe house.”

Encizo helped Bolan push Bashir into the backseat of the Fiat. Bolan’s statement of getting his own wheels wasn’t lost on the Cuban. “Bring me back something nice and shiny.”

Bolan glanced around. “In this neighborhood?”

Encizo chuckled. “Take care, Striker.”

The Executioner whirled and disappeared into the shadows.

BOLAN FLIPPED OPEN Anatoly’s cell phone and went through the programmed numbers. His limited knowledge of Russian Cyrillic symbols helped him to decipher the dead sentry’s phone book, and he had the name of the man who was likely Anatoly’s field supervisor, a Russian midlevel crime boss named Grigorei. He hit Send, then stuffed a pair of disposable earplugs up his nostrils to add to his planned ruse.

The phone rang, and Grigorei answered on the third ring.

“Anatoly?” Grigorei asked.

“Where is everybody?” Bolan asked, his words slurred and distorted by the earplugs blocking his exhalations. It was a simple means of disguising his voice.

“Anatoly?” Grigorei asked again. Bolan waited a moment.

“It’s me,” Bolan answered. “I got smacked in the face with a plank. I think my nose is broken.”

“Sounds like it,” Grigorei said. “What the hell happened on the gangplank?”

“I saw a flash of metal in the distance,” Bolan responded. “I thought they were going after the African.”

Bolan heard Grigorei’s voice, muffled by a hand. “Anatoly is confirming that there were third-party snipers.”

“That sounds possible,” Aflaq said. “Neither of our groups had pistol-caliber submachine guns, and yet I have wounds on several of my men matching low-powered carbine hits.”

“Same here,” Grigorei concurred. The Russian’s voice grew clearer as he removed his hand. “Anatoly, where are you?”

“Hard to tell, all these docks look the same,” Bolan lied. “Especially since all I have is one eye working.”

“Where is Bashir?” Aflaq’s voice was audible over the speakerphone function of Grigorei’s set.

“I lost track of him. We got separated. I tried to hold on to him, but he fought too much.” It was a partial truth. Bolan simply omitted the fact that when he became separated from Bashir, it was on dry land and into the custody of Calvin James and Rafael Encizo.

“Sadly, the major is a poor swimmer,” Aflaq said.

“I’m sorry,” Bolan returned.

“I’m sure you are,” Aflaq responded.

Bolan tensed. He could detect the skepticism in the African militiaman’s voice.

“We’ll send someone for you,” Grigorei explained. “Head to the nearest access road.”

“Sure,” Bolan replied. He snapped the cell phone closed and glanced around. He still retained the AK-47 he’d taken from Anatoly, but the assault rifle would make far too much noise. He knelt and dismantled the Beretta 93-R and the Heckler & Koch MP-5. Both the 9 mm handgun and the machine pistol had suppressors mounted on them, and he had to make certain their mechanisms were in good condition. A quick examination confirmed that they were ready for the upcoming fight. The quiet guns would be his advantage. The AK-47’s dunking wouldn’t have proved a problem even if Bolan had swum through sewage thick enough to stand a fork in. The Desert Eagle would require a more intensive inspection, but he didn’t have time for the detail stripping necessary to restore his confidence in the massive handgun.

He wrapped a length of cloth around his head, covering one eye to give himself as much of a cushion of uncertainty on the part of his enemy as possible. The AK hung in full view, loose on its lanyard. Bolan limped to a corner to maintain his ruse as the battered Anatoly.

If the voices of Aflaq and Grigorei together hadn’t convinced Bolan that the two factions had reunited in the wake of the freighter’s destruction, then the sight of a jeepload of white and black men sitting side by side and armed to the teeth with assault rifles would have clinched it. Fortunately, the Executioner was fully aware that the surviving gunmen from the covert meeting had banded together. He swept the shadows in alleys, looking for the betraying signs of a jeep heading down a parallel road to flank him.

Bolan’s hand radio hissed to life through the universal earplug he’d locked into it.

“We see him,” came a Russian voice. Bolan was glad that when he’d looked through Anatoly’s cell phone, he’d found the emergency alternate frequency for the Russian gangsters’ communication. Sure enough, they doubted the Executioner’s identity as one of their own, because they were speaking over the channel that Anatoly had put into a memo note on his cell phone. As the jeep rolled closer, Bolan bided his time, knowing that his ruse was crumbling rapidly.

“Is he reacting to you?” Grigorei’s voice asked. “Try to take him alive. We could get some information out of him.”

“Right, sir,” the gangster in the jeep said.

That was all the Executioner needed to hear. He whirled, bringing up the silenced MP-5 like a handgun, his other hand tugging his fake bandage aside, then unleathering the Beretta in his shoulder holster. Bolan’s initial salvo of suppressed slugs chugged out of the end of the blunt canister. Since the suppressor only captured the muzzle gases without retarding the velocity of the 9 mm rounds in the magazine, he had opted for extra-heavyweight, subsonic 9 mm rounds—squat, fat barrels of lead with a flat, ugly nose meant for contacting as much enemy flesh as possible, all wrapped around an overweight core of dense tungsten. The Parabellum slugs erupted out of the suppressor at a speed of 1000 feet per second, just slow enough to avoid producing a supersonic crack, but the bullets weighed in at a full 180-grains, more than sufficient to produce the kind of momentum and penetration that made up for the subsonic velocity.

The jeep’s windshield disintegrated, shattered glass and deformed blobs of lead and tungsten vaulting into the face and chest of the African militiaman at the wheel. The broken windshield carved only minor slashes on the Thunder Lion’s face, but the quiet and deadly bullets smashed through the driver’s rib cage, shattering bone into splinters and tumbling petals of flattened lead whirling like the blades of a lawn mower to slash brutally through lung tissue. The coalition jeep lurched violently as one slug stopped cold in the thick and heavy muscle of the African’s heart, dying reflex causing him to jerk the steering wheel violently to the right. The dead man’s companions scrambled to bring up their assault rifles and return fire, but their formerly steady platform was now out of control, forcing them to pay more attention to hanging on for dear life than opening fire on the Executioner.

Bolan had his Beretta up and firing, punching bullets into the head of the gunman in the shotgun seat. They cracked open the skull of the Russian mobster sitting beside the slain driver and burrowed through his brain to turn his central nervous system into whipped froth. The jeep rocketed along, an African militiaman in the back of the vehicle lunging wildly to grab at the steering wheel.

No amount of turning could have saved the three men in the back as the driver’s heavy, dead foot was jammed into the gas pedal, speeding them into a confrontation with the back wall of a warehouse. The hood crumpled violently, and the Thunder Lion who had striven to reach the steering wheel was launched head-first through the remnants of the windshield, his face torn free by the jagged wrinkles of the collapsed nose of the jeep. Fortunately for the mutilated gunman, his suffering at the loss of his face was measured in nanoseconds. The top of his skull met the stone wall of the warehouse, and his vertebrae burst and collapsed. A spear of bone shoved deep into the socket of the man’s brain, killing him before his neurons could even register the pain of his nose and cheeks torn from his facial structure.

“He’s onto us!” a voice yelled over Anatoly’s radio. Bolan heard the echo of the Russian’s voice emanating from an alley off to his right, informing him that the flanking maneuver he’d anticipated was in motion. Had they tried it against any other man, they might have had a chance, but the Executioner’s years of experience and his ability to improvise had given him a killing edge. Bolan rushed toward the crushed jeep, the two surviving gunmen crawling out of its backseat, oblivious to his presence. He spared the briefest of moments, his boot lashing out to render the survivors insensate with well-placed kicks. They were both unarmed, the force of the crash ripping the rifles out of their hands, and the onset of shock helped the remaining Russian to forget about the handgun in his hip holster. Rather than slaughter helpless opponents, Bolan put them out of commission, preferring to save his ammo for the alternate force coming up behind him.

The strike team arrived only a second after Bolan’s estimate, which was to the warrior’s advantage. He had the drop on the enemy force, and had put the wreckage of the jeep between himself and their rifles. Firing from a position of cover and knowing his enemy’s angle of approach, Bolan had put all the cards in his favor. He gave the members of the African and Russian team time to expose themselves as they exited the alley, then triggered the MP-5 and Beretta. The suppressors on the weapons swallowed the muzzle-flash and bark, which would have betrayed the Executioner’s position, while the rear frame of the jeep provided him with a solid rest position to assist him in controlling the two weapons he fired simultaneously.

The Russian mafiya leader screamed as a stream of bullets from the MP-5 drilled into his heart, multiple tungsten-cored slugs burrowing through the tough muscle and smashing his spine on the way out. An African militiaman to his left vomited blood as a Beretta round crushed his windpipe.

With two of their number down in a heartbeat, the remaining quartet of smugglers and troopers panicked, their rifles spitting out wild streams, fanning the shadows. The jeep’s wreckage shook as bullets were stopped by its massive bulk, protecting the Executioner.

“Any movement?” one of the African militiamen asked as Bolan listened on the Russians’ party line.

“Negative,” a smuggler responded. “Step out and have a look.”

“Fuck you,” the Thunder Lion responded. “He’d just shoot me while playing possum.”

The Russian chuckled. “But then we’d know where he was.”

Bolan held back a sigh that would have lamented his opponents’ lack of radio discipline. Rather, he hauled the corpse of the Russian in the shotgun seat to the ground, then triggered a burst of AK fire from the dead man’s rifle.

That brought a salvo of concentrated autofire down on the front seat of the jeep. The corpse of the driver jerked violently under the combined storm of lead that hammered him. Bolan shouted, approximating the Russian’s voice, to stop shooting. He grabbed the dead mobster by the back of the neck and pushed his head above the jeep, using his other hand to wave the corpse’s arm.

“It’s me!” Bolan shouted.

“Fuck. Boris! I could have killed you!” one of the Russians called. “What happened?”

“I was hit pretty hard when we crashed. Where is everybody?”

The quartet of gunmen broke from cover, moving low and quickly toward the jeep. Their intent was to hook up with their surviving ally, as he was behind some of the best cover on the street.

Instead, Bolan tossed the dead man aside and fired his AK across the front seat. The Russian at the front of the pack screamed as his belly burst open under the onslaught of rifle bullets. Intestines boiled from his savaged abdomen, thick loops of entrails sagging down to his knees. Somehow, the gangster had the strength to continue standing as the rifle rounds zipped through his ruined guts and out his back, tearing into the trio behind him.

One of the Thunder Lions whipped around in a circle as the high-velocity devastators pulverized his pelvis. As his finger was on the trigger as he was hit, his FAMAS rifle spoke, snarling a violent death song in response to his crippling. Rather than hit Bolan, his muzzle had swung around and jammed into the groin of his fellow African. The front sight snagged on the pants of his partner, holding the barrel there as thirteen rounds burned away the rifleman’s crotch and upper thighs. In blind anger and rage, the wounded victim stuffed his own rifle under the crippled Thunder Lion’s chin and pulled the trigger, bullets pulling trails of brain out of his murderer’s skull in a volcano of gooey tissue. Both African militiamen flopped to the street, one with his brains blown out, the other rapidly bleeding to death as his femoral arteries jetted streams of thick crimson onto the concrete.

The last of the Russian smugglers whirled and ran as Bolan’s borrowed AK cycled dry. The Executioner let the empty rifle fall to the ground as he vaulted past the dead driver and the dying remnants of the flanking force. The mobster’s fighting discipline had disappeared at the sight of his allies chopped to ribbons by one man. The way he ran, clutching one uselessly dangling arm, had also indicated that the Russian had taken a bullet.

Bolan knew that the gangster’s first instinct would be to get back to his closest allies.

Settling into a ground-eating pace and sticking to the shadows, the Executioner tailed his quarry, knowing that he’d have a chance to finish off the last of the mobsters who’d thrown in their lot with the Thunder Lions.

It was a simple message, Bolan mused.

Seek profit from helping in the Sudanese slaughter, and your only wages will be the wrath of the Executioner’s cleansing flame.

CAPTAIN AFLAQ LISTENED to the rattle of distant gunfire and dying screams, then glanced over to Yuri Grigorei, his brow furrowed in disdain.

“I thought the mafiya had the services of Russia’s finest warriors.” Venom dripped from Aflaq’s every word.

Grigorei sneered at the African militiaman. “What would a scumbag like you know about anything Russian?”

Aflaq’s nose wrinkled, but he shook off the insult. “Now is not the time for us to be at each other’s throats. Someone stumbled onto us, and they have done an excellent job at turning this deal to shit.”

“Your enemies?” Grigorei asked.

Aflaq shook his head. “The goat-fucking primitives and their Ethiopian defenders don’t have enough brain cells combined to even spell Alexandria, let alone send a covert operations team here.”

“Setting off a bomb in an Egyptian harbor isn’t the style of the CIA,” Grigorei noted. “And there isn’t another crime organization with the kind of reach to touch us here.”

The Russian’s eyes narrowed as he saw a shadow in the distance. “That idiot.”

Aflaq followed the Russian’s line of sight and saw a man running down the street toward their position. His arm hung uselessly at his side and his pale features were twisted into a mask of terror and pain.

“He’s leading the enemy to us!” Grigorei snapped. “Everyone! Harden up!”

Aflaq’s hand tightened around the pistol grip of his rifle. “You’ll frighten off our adversaries, yelling like that.”

Grigorei glared at the African. “If we do, then we’ll live another day.”

Aflaq shook his head in disbelief at such a naked display of cowardice on the Russian’s part. Still, there was the evidence of nine men shredded into lifeless sacks of meat in the length of a minute. It was possible that it could have only been three-to-one odds, but none of his men had survived long enough to estimate the size of the force that had killed them.

Could it have been one man, utilizing psychology and stealth to strike at the forces who outnumbered him when they were at their weakest and most underprepared?

If so, then Aflaq counted the men around him. Adding in Grigorei and himself, he had twelve gunmen total. Thirteen if the bewildered, wounded fool jogging frantically toward their position recovered his wits long enough to utilize the handgun he wore on his belt. For someone who’d snuffed out nine men in under sixty seconds, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge.

“Flashlights!” Aflaq ordered. “Get some lights on the shadows! A herd of elephants could walk by in this murk!”

He received a nod of approval from the surviving leader of the Russian smugglers. Cones of light splayed out, slicking apart the darkness, seeking out the lone opponent who’d turned their arms deal into a wash of carnage.

Yuri Grigorei swung his rifle, following the diameter of light thrown off by one of his men. He wanted to be on the spot to take out the bane of this evening.

Aflaq watched in disbelief as three explosions erupted on the side of Grigorei’s head, geysers of gore vomiting out and spraying his face as he looked at the Russian’s dying shudders. More bullets flew, striking only at the Russians, all except for the wounded, terrified man who simply folded into a fetal position when he saw his friends shriek and die under a hail of silent, brutal death.

Aflaq’s own Thunder Lions were untouched.

“Captain Aflaq,” a voice said from Grigorei’s radio.

Aflaq looked down at the corpse, the small electronic device speaking his name.

Bolan’s voice cut over the airwaves. “Pick up his radio. He won’t have any use for it.”

Aflaq picked up the radio. “Hello?”

“Captain. I’m giving you a courtesy call. Tell General Bitturumba that if he was trying to seek my disapproval, he found it,” Bolan said. “The predatory scum among you who call yourselves Muslim militiamen know who I am. I am God’s wrath for your twisting of the path he laid out for you. Surrender and retirement will save your life, once you send my message to Bitturumba.”

“He would surely kill me,” Aflaq answered.

“Then phone him. And hide,” Bolan retorted.

Aflaq looked around. “Are you…?”

A bullet smacked violently into Grigorei’s slack face, the round exploding through flesh and bone.

“Small talk is over. You have my message,” Bolan said.

Aflaq listened to the static on the other end of the line, feeling the darkness of the dock grow deeper and colder as he waited for another act of wrath.

But the Executioner had moved on.

There were other matters to attend to before the sun rose.