Rebel Trade. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ fire made Bolan duck and twist the speedboat’s steering wheel, swooping from left to right and back again, in an attempt to spoil the shooter’s aim. It was a risky move, since he had no clue as to the river’s depth at any given point, and stranding on a sandbar or some other unseen obstacle could finish him for good.

       Evasion was the key, but that meant constant forward motion, leading his pursuers toward the killing ground he had prepared for them. It all hinged on his drawing them along behind him—and not getting killed in the process.

       The shooter in the lead pursuit craft was about four hundred yards behind him, well within effective range for what sounded like a 7.62 mm weapon. Then again, there was a world of difference between the range at which a given slug could wound or kill, and any shooter’s realistic hope of zeroing in on a target.

       The down side: with a Russian light machine gun’s rate of fire, the man behind the weapon didn’t have to be a legendary marksman. All he had to be was lucky. Just one round had to find its mark by accident, hurtling along at something like 860 yards per second, and the man on the receiving end was down. Forget about the Hollywood “flesh wounds” that left an action hero fit to run ten miles and take out half a dozen burly adversaries with his bare hands on arrival at his destination. That was movie magic, light years out of touch with flesh-and-blood reality.

       The truth: a hit by any military bullet hurts like hell, unless it slams the target into instant shock on impact. Any torso wound can kill, unless there is an expert MASH team standing by to pull a miracle out of the hat. And any talk about a “clean” wound through a human abdomen is fantasy. Get “lucky” with a stray shot through an arm or leg, and anything beyond a graze will shatter bone, turn muscle into hamburger, and leave you bleeding out from severed arteries.

       Long story short—in any shooting situation, it is best to give, and not receive.

       Or, in the present case, to duck and weave like crazy, until it was payback time.

       But just to keep it interesting…

       Bolan kept his left hand on the speedboat’s steering wheel, picked up the AK-47 with his right, and half turned in the pilot’s chair to fire a burst one-handed in the general direction of the boats pursuing him. He kept it high on purpose, wasting rounds to spoil his adversary’s aim without inflicting any damage on the leading shooter or his crew.

       Not yet.

       Their moment was approaching.

       Another aimless burst from his Kalashnikov, and Bolan set the rifle down beside him once again. The LMG fire from the lead pursuit craft faltered, and he pictured crewmen ducking as the bullets rattled overhead. It was a different game entirely when the rabbit shot back at the hunters, changing up the rules. Raiders accustomed to attacking merchant ships and terrorizing unarmed crews acquired a new perspective when the bullets came their way.

       Call it a learning curve, while it lasted.

       With any luck at all, about another minute, maybe less.

       Ahead, Bolan could see a glint of moonlight on the South Atlantic, stretching in his mind’s eye all the way to Rio de Janeiro. Wishing for a brief second that he was there, relaxing on a beach at sunset with a cold drink in his hand and someone warm beside him, Bolan freed the detonator from his web belt, switched it on and started counting down the doomsday numbers in his head.

      * * *

      ANDJABA DUCKED, CURSING, as bullets swarmed over his head and off into the night. But for its strap around his neck, he might have lost the PKP machine gun overboard, and that only increased his rage at being forced to cringe and crawl before his men.

       Not that they noticed him, as they drove for the nearest cover themselves. The pilot of Andjaba’s speedboat nearly toppled from his seat, grabbing at the steering wheel to save himself, and in the process sent the boat roaring off toward a collision with the river’s northern bank before he managed to correct the looping move and bring them back on course.

       Seizing any chance to salvage wounded dignity, Andjaba rounded on the pilot, bellowing, “Will you hold it steady for Christ’s sake! How am I supposed to stop him if you can’t drive straight?”

       The pilot mouthed an answer, but his words were whipped away and lost as the boat accelerated, engine revving upward from a rumble toward a howl. Andjaba was relieved, knowing the last thing that he needed at the moment was a confrontation with an overwrought subordinate.

       One adversary at a time, and top priority belonged to the intruder who had left so many of his soldiers dead or dying in the river camp.

       Andjaba bent back to the Pecheneg and checked its belt by touch, discovering that he had only twenty-five or thirty rounds remaining in the ammo box. Was there another on the boat? If so, could he find and retrieve it, then reload, before his target reached the open sea, less than a quarter mile away? And if the faceless raider did reach the Atlantic, which way would he turn?

       Northward, 250 miles along the coastline, lay Angolan waters, possibly patrolled by gunboats of the Marinha de Guerra. Southward, he would have to travel twice as far before he could seek sanctuary in South Africa. No contest, either way, with two boats against one.

       But what if he proceeded out to sea?

       It struck Andjaba that his ignorance of their opponent might prove fatal. How had this man arrived to strike the MLF encampment? Clearly he had not walked from Angola or South Africa, nor even from Windhoek. And an air drop would have left him no means of evacuation from the battle zone. But if he’d landed from the sea, there might be reinforcements waiting for him on a larger vessel, running dark, somewhere beyond Andjaba’s line of sight.

       Perhaps with guns trained on the river’s mouth, waiting for targets to reveal themselves.

       Andjaba nearly called a halt then, but his fear of telling headquarters that he had let the raider slip away was greater than his dread of being sunk or blasted from the water, shredded into food for sharks and bottom-feeding crabs. Whatever lay in store for him beyond the breakers, he could not be proved a coward in the eyes of soldiers who relied on him for leadership—or in the view of his entirely merciless superiors.

       Two hundred yards would tell the story either way. So little distance left before they reached the breakers and were suddenly at sea. Andjaba’s former haven lay behind him, shattered, turned into an open grave for slaughtered comrades. All that presently remained to him was vengeance and a chance to save his damaged reputation as a leader.

       What else mattered, in the world he’d chosen to inhabit?

       Almost there, and up ahead, already clear, he saw the stolen speedboat turning, spewing up a foaming wake before them, as it circled back to face the onrushing pursuers. What possessed the stranger to turn back, once he had reached the open ocean, with a chance to flee?

       Unless—

       Andjaba tried to see the trap before it closed on him, but he was already too late. Off to his left, the river’s southern bank erupted into a preview of hell on earth. Airborne, he could only hope the dark water rushing up to meet him might preserve him from the hungry flames.

      * * *

      MINI MS-803 MINES ARE five inches long, three inches tall, and one and a half inches thick. Their convex polystyrene case is brown. Each mine’s total weight—one kilogram, 2.2 pounds—includes one pound of PE9 plastic explosive with a PETN booster charge. СКАЧАТЬ