Читать книгу Damage Control - Gordon Kent, Gordon Kent - Страница 48

Alan’s mixed bag of troops—a former SEAL, a boy, a woman, an officer who didn’t like shooting people—trickled down the parking lot between the cars, moving so that they couldn’t be seen from the gate. They had left Ong hunkered down beside their van, halfway down the lot.

The gate was off-center toward the end of the lot, so that Alan was the only one to its right; the others were staggered up the line of cars on the other side. Alan lost them after they crossed the last roadway, and he pulled up in the lee of a Honda sedan and waited, using the front wheel to mask himself from the gate. He had said he would count to sixty to give them time to get into position. Now that he was there, he saw how difficult it was going to be for Benvenuto, who would have to aim—and shoot, if he made that judg-ment—in a split second. Maybe it would have been better if Fidel had taken Benvenuto’s role, using the AK, but then they’d have no automatic fire ready if the others opened up. Well, Fidel was right—if you were going to do this in a combat situation, you’d give no warning and you’d want only to kill.

As if this wasn’t a combat situation. No, the trouble here was that Alan was trying to apply an ethic that came from a place outside combat and that was, unless you were an idealist, irrelevant.

So he was an idealist.

He watched the last seconds tick down and checked the CZ. He put his index finger along the frame and hooked his third finger into the trigger guard. Well, the second time today. If I’ve been stupid, Rose, forgive me—

“Friends!”

He was standing. He had the CZ in his right hand, raised to shoulder height but not pointed at them, the barrel up and the side of the pistol toward them. The hood of the Honda protected his gut and legs, but he was exposed from his belt up. In his peripheral vision he saw Fidel rise on his right, a silhouette in the violent sunlight.

All five of the Indians were near the gate, three of them focused on the street. One of the others saw him even before he spoke; the man hesitated, then reacted, reaching for the weapon he had leaned against the gatehouse. Reacting to him, the officer turned to follow the man’s eyes, then Alan’s voice, and his eyes widened.

For a microsecond, Alan’s and the officer’s eyes met. And in the officer’s face was unmistakable recognition. Of him.

The officer shouted and scrabbled at his side for his pistol, and a rifle shot banged and echoed and the officer whirled and went down and lay on the ground, legs flailing. At the same time, the man who had reached for his AK heard the shot and saw Fidel and again hesitated; the other three turned, and Fidel fired a burst just over their heads, and the first man dropped his weapon, and then it was too late for the others to respond, three of them looking at four armed men behind cover. One of them held his weapon in hip-firing position while the other two lowered theirs. He swung the weapon toward Alan, and Alan pointed his index finger and fired and the shot ricocheted off the gatehouse wall and Fidel hollered at the three, his voice hoarse, eyes bulging, bellowing like a bull because he wanted to gun them down and instead he was doing what his commanding officer had told him to do.

And the guns went down.

Benvenuto was pumping his fist in the air; Fidel was red-faced, breathing hard; Clavers was blowing out her cheeks and muttering, “Holy God, Holy God—”

Alan touched Fidel’s shoulder. “Beautiful.” Fidel shot him a look, went back to communicating to the four men with the barrel of his AK: lie down, don’t move, shut up or I’ll blow your fucking guts out. The international language.

“You okay?” Alan said to Benvenuto. “You were great.” The boy hardly heard him, riding an adrenaline high. Alan made a mental note to keep an eye on him, because he was likely to crash. He sent Clavers to get Ong and the van, and then he and Fidel organized the captured four into a team to move the cars apart while Benvenuto held one of their own AKs on them.

The officer was still on the ground, blood vivid and hot around him on the yellow earth. Alan bent over him, saw that the man was still alive, looked away; he wanted the golden thing inside the man’s shirt. He had to go through blood to get it, found it on a fine gold chain. Then the officer was dead.

Alan held the thing up. “See who else has one of these,” he said to Fidel. “Maybe on a chain around their necks.”

The cell phone was in the officer’s pants pocket. It was a new Japanese model, expensive, with a small screen that could show pictures as well as text—the best and newest, perhaps unusual for an underpaid Indian officer.

Alan turned it on. The LCD lit up.

He was looking at a picture of himself. In full color. With text in English: “Kill on sight.”

“What the—?” Fidel was looking over his shoulder. “Shit, man, that’s you!”

“Yeah.”

“Hey.” Fidel pulled him partway around. “Hey, Commander, what the fuck? These guys had a cell phone that works; they got your picture—this isn’t some fucking two-bit mutiny!”

The van pulled up. Clavers began picking up guns and throwing them inside. Fidel, after a look at Alan, went into the gatehouse and raised the barrier and then herded the captives inside. Benvenuto, still high and now shaking a little, stood next to Alan. “We’re ready to go, Commander. Commander? Sir?”

Alan was frowning, thinking that Fidel was right: that it made no sense that this officer had had his picture and an order to kill; thinking that this cell phone could get a signal when the system had been jammed; thinking that this was more than a mutiny—

“Let’s go.”