Collision Course. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ time she did not hesitate. The woman scrambled to her feet and scurried to the door.

      From the chair Frankie Bonanno lifted his head, still confused by the events unfolding around him.

      “Who are—?” he began.

      “Shut up,” Bolan snapped. He pressed the cold muzzle of his Beretta against the oiled expanse of Bonanno’s forehead. “If you so much as twitch I’ll splatter your brains across the wall.”

      Frankie Bonanno froze. The mobster was deeply afraid. When the masked gunman had burst through the door, his first thought had been the Feds. But one man did not make up a SWAT team, federal or otherwise. A lone man meant a freelancer, and if that was true then Frankie wondered why he was still alive.

      Bonanno watched as the figure in black pulled a pistol from behind his back. The handgun was identical to the weapon already sitting on the desk, a factory-new Croatian HS 2000 pistol. The man dropped it with a clatter that shattered the overflowing ashtray and spilled cigarette butts across the desk and onto the floor.

      The man dropped something smaller onto the desk between the two HS 2000 pistols. It was the size of a quarter and when Bonanno saw it lying there, an involuntary groan escaped him. His eyes showed sullen fear as they moved from the microprocessor chip on the desk back up to the intruder looming above him.

      “Three months.” Bolan said, voice harsh. “Three months ago a six-man team took down the supply dock of Las-Tech in Jersey. They got away with a shipment of chips just like that one. Chips that can run the supercomputers needed to control the centrifuges used to enrich uranium to weapons grade, say in Iran. Microprocessors sophisticated enough to turn scud missiles into guided munitions.”

      “I—I—” Bonanno’s mouth worked uselessly as he tried to force his brain to come up with some lie that might save his life.

      “Then suddenly a capo in Palermo has those same microchips on the open market and they go to an arms dealer in Bosnia, then multiple loads of Croatian pistols start flowing back through Palermo out of Sarajevo and into Jersey. And look, you happen to have one.”

      “Sarajevo is in Bosnia, not Croatia,” Bonanno muttered.

      Bolan stepped forward and cracked the butt of his Beretta across the mobster’s face. His nose exploded and sprayed blood. His hand flew out and struck the open bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey sitting on the desk and knocked it over. Amber fluid gurgled out of the bottle and began to spread across the desk.

      “You think I need geography lessons from you?” Bolan asked, his voice flat. “Next time you get funny I put a bullet in your kneecap.”

      “I don’t know anything—”

      Frankie Bonanno’s denial was cut short by the cough of the silenced Beretta in Bolan’s hand. The slug slammed into the armrest of the mobster’s chair, shattering wood with a sharp crack and driving splinters into the man’s beefy arm.

      Bonanno howled in agony.

      Bolan stepped in close and leveled his pistol against Bonanno’s broken, mashed nose.

      “The name. Who facilitated the transfer through the Palermo capo and into Sarajevo?” Bolan’s voice was soft.

      Bonanno rolled his eyes toward the shiny, factory-new HS 2000 sitting on the desk just a few feet away, he knew it would do him no good. He inhaled breath through his pain and began to talk.

      “Some guy,” Bonanno said. “Got a Polack name or something. Taterczynski. Peter Taterczynski.”

      “How is he connected? Where does he work from?” Bolan fired his questions hard and fast, keeping the other man off balance.

      “He’s international, that’s all I know. He used the Palermo capo because he wants a screen between himself and primarie’s when it comes to operating in the States. The capo told my crew what to take, on spec.”

      “The microprocessors.”

      Bonanno nodded. “The microprocessors. Like I can move tech on my own? I deal in auto parts and cigarettes.”

      “So straight trade. Armed heist for tech you can’t move in exchange for pistols you can.”

      “Yeah, basically.”

      “All set up by this player out of Sarajevo, Taterczynski?”

      “Yeah, the Polack. But everything went through the Palermo capo’s guy. A lieutenant, really scary dude name Paolini.”

      Bolan looked over at the desk where Bonanno’s cell phone sat in the middle of the guns and the mess.

      “You talk to this ‘really scary’ dude named Paolini on that phone?”

      Bonanno nodded, his eyes hooded. They shifted past Bolan and suddenly he jerked upward toward the desk just as the hinges on the door behind them squeaked as it was thrown open.

      Bolan caught a flash of motion as he shifted and twisted hard and felt the jerking tug of a knife blade catch in the tough polymer fibers of his Kevlar vest.

      The soldier grunted in surprise as he reacted. It was the woman, back for some mad reason of her own and trying to save her tormentor in the vain hope of future favors. The knife in her hand was a big bladed kitchen utensil with a serrated edge, and she clearly aimed to kill Bolan with it.

      The Executioner grabbed the overextended woman by the tangled hair at the back of her head and flung her hard to the ground. Frankie Bonanno was in motion, rising out of his seat and grasping for the butt of his loaded HS 2000 with a sweat-soaked hand. Bolan stepped forward and lashed out with one big, strong leg.

      The heel of his low-cut boot ground against the mobster’s wrist with an audible crunch on impact. The woman struggled to her feet, shrieking in rage, and threw herself at the black-clad intruder. Bolan drove his elbow backward into her soft belly and tossed her against the office wall. She slid down to the floor, her eyes rolling backward into her head. Bolan snapped his head back around as Bonanno reached for the HS 2000 pistol on his desk.

      Bolan pivoted at the waist and fired three single shots into the fat man, pinning him to the seat, the Croatian pistol held uselessly in the man’s uninjured hand. Frankie convulsed as his lungs deflated and the Croatian handgun discharged into his desk. Bonanno’s eyes fluttered, and then a trickle of bright blood bubbled over his quivering lip and dribbled onto his chin.

      Purposefully Bolan crossed to the desk and began to jerk open drawers. Casually he swept the mess on the desktop onto the floor. When the police came, they could make the link between the stolen tech and the smuggled pistols. Bolan would be several thousand miles ahead of any local investigation by the time they finished putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

      He pocketed the dead man’s cell phone, a virtual treasure trove of information, Bolan knew. Inside the desk he found a locked metal box. He swept up the container and smashed it against the edge of the desk, busting the cheap lock. Inside he found several grams of cocaine and two grand in worn twenties and fifties.

      He stuffed the money into a pocket to add to his war chest. He turned and made for the office door, stepping over the sprawled form of the unconscious woman. He doubted if anyone outside would have heard the pistol СКАЧАТЬ