Final Assault. Don Pendleton
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Название: Final Assault
Автор: Don Pendleton
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Приключения: прочее
isbn: 9781474046565
isbn:
Garrand saw a startled face peering out through the window of the shutter control booth—the night crew—and fired. The window rattled as the bulletproof glass absorbed his shots, as he’d known it would, but the face vanished. “Two men on duty,” he said. “One armed, one not.”
“Unless they changed the routine after we left,” Yacoub said as they sprinted toward the booth. The others were spreading out, covering the entrance to the cove. They knew what to do and did it with the alacrity of trained professionals. Yacoub and two others would hit the engine room. The rest would follow Garrand to the upper decks and the control center. But first, they had to secure the cove.
“They didn’t change anything,” Garrand said.
Yacoub fired a burst at the closest set of speakers, mounted above the booth, and cut off one of the sirens in mid-wail. “Eight minutes until our window closes, by the way.”
“Plenty of time,” Garrand said. He hit the steel door with his boot. “Open up!” He kicked it again and then thumped it with the butt of his weapon.
Silence. That too was standard procedure. One member of the security team and a crewmember would be on duty. The booth was reinforced, and theoretically, the men inside could wait out most anything, up to and including an assault by armed invaders. Theoretically. Yacoub made a face. “Want to blow it open?”
Even as he spoke, a muffled sound came from within. “No need,” Garrand said. He waved Yacoub back as the lock disengaged and the door swung open. A man wearing the gray fatigues of the Demeter’s security forces stepped out of the booth holding a smoking pistol. “Hello, Sergei. How’s tricks?” Garrand asked mildly.
“Better now,” Sergei said. The big Russian was slab-faced, with eyes like polished stones. Beneath the plain uniform his broad torso was covered in elaborate tattoos. Sergei looked at Yacoub and nodded.
“Sergei,” Yacoub replied. The two men eyed one another for a moment and then looked away. They didn’t like each other, but they were professionals. They would work together. Failing that, he’d shoot one of them. He peered past Sergei into the control booth. He saw a body on the floor and blood. He looked at Sergei questioningly.
“I let him get off an alert, as you asked,” Sergei said.
“Pirates?”
“I told him you were the most piratical Somalis to ever prowl these waters,” Sergei said, holstering his weapon. He glanced toward the cove and then cocked an ear to the alarms. “Speaking of which, that hole in the hull is going to be a red flag to the bastards when they figure out we’re dead in the water. Those alarms will carry for miles, and even the most pig-ignorant fisherman knows what that sound means by now.”
“And that’s why you’re here, Sergei.” Garrand smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Make sure no one else tries to steal this boat before I do.”
“I’m going to need more men,” Sergei said doubtfully.
“I know,” Garrand said. His smile turned wolfish. “Don’t worry, Sergei—it’s all part of the plan.”
The Biggest Little City in the World
The Catania Hotel in Reno, Nevada, had seen better decades. The upper floors had been stripped to the plaster for everything and anything that could be sold, and the bottom floors weren’t much better. It had been five years since a guest had stayed at the hotel. These days, the only resident was a certain representative of the Claricuzio family and his bodyguards.
Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, gave a quiet grunt of effort as he inserted the crowbar between the doors of the elevator. The elevator hadn’t gone higher than the sixth floor since the upper floors had been stripped, and the car was permanently stationed on the third for the exclusive use of Domingo Claricuzio and his bodyguards. Bracing his foot against the wall, Bolan forced the doors open and peered down into the shaft.
Bolan, clad in khaki fatigues and body armor, tossed the crowbar aside and swiftly slid a safety harness over the rest of his gear. A Heckler & Koch UMP-45 was strapped across his chest and his KA-BAR combat knife sat snugly in its sheath on his leg. After he’d gotten the harness on, he clipped several M-18 smoke grenades to lanyards for easy access.
It had been simple enough to get onto the Catania’s roof from the casino next door; Domingo had neglected to post guards on the upper floors. Perhaps the elderly don thought he didn’t need to bother with such measures.
Bolan hefted an ascender—the same device used by repair technicians—and attached it to the elevator cable and his harness. Then he clipped his harness to the cable and took a slow breath. His heart rate was steady. Instinctively, he checked his harness and his gear once more, and then, with a sound like tearing silk, he began to descend the length of the shaft.
Despite being semiretired and in hiding from his enemies, Claricuzio had his fingers in more than one greasy pie. He ran any number of businesses at a remove, including some profitable prostitution rings in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. But not for much longer.
At that thought, Bolan’s sun-bronzed face split in a grim smile. In the earliest days of his long and bloody war, he’d gunned down men like Domingo by the dozen and had taken his own licks in turn. Bullets, blackjacks and blades had exacted a cruel toll from his flesh over the years, and he sometimes wondered if he were held together by nothing more than scar tissue and bone sutures. But it was all worth it, every moment of blood and pain. When beasts like Claricuzio were put down, lives were saved—the lives they would have ruined or tainted or ended.
The Executioner had needed only a few days to set everything up. He’d kept tabs on his target, and he knew the hotel’s layout down to the unconnected light switch on the first floor. Five guards were posted at any one time: one in Claricuzio’s suite, two on the hall doors and two more patrolling the floors above and below, respectively. If any of Claricuzio’s brood were visiting, there might be more, but the don’s family members weren’t the visiting types. Even so, there was a chance Bolan would be facing more resistance than just five inattentive and relatively lazy punks in bad suits, which meant he would have to be quick and careful. Even a punk could get lucky.
On that grim note, the soles of his boots touched the top of the elevator. Swiftly he disengaged his harness and dropped to his haunches. With the tip of his combat knife, he pried up the hatch and dropped through. Bolan disabled the control panel and pulled a small wedge of thick rubber from his harness. Holding it between his teeth, he carefully pried open the elevator doors and slid the wedge into the gap to hold the doors open. Next, Bolan removed a small dental mirror from a pocket, unfolded it and slid it through the gap at the bottom of the doors.
Angling it one way and then the other, he pinpointed the two guards in the hall. Bolan retracted the mirror, placed it in his pocket and pulled a smoke grenade from his harness. He hauled the doors open with one hand and popped the pin on the grenade. Then he rolled the canister down the corridor, where it hissed and spewed smoke.
Shouts of alarm cut the air. Bolan sent another grenade rolling down the hall in the opposite direction. When the corridor was filled with smoke, he stepped out. The soldier knew there СКАЧАТЬ