Collision Course. Don Pendleton

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      PAOLINI WASN’T the first gunner through the door.

      Two of his men, Yeats and Delgaro, entered first. Yeats came in high and on the right, swinging forward with his HS 2000 Croatian pistol and laying down a hailstorm of covering fire. The weapon jumped and kicked in his hand, scattering hot shell casings onto the floor.

      Delgaro was the low man, his own pistol poised to provide supporting fire. A thunderous silence echoed along the hallway as their prey neglected to return fire.

      “He’s gone rabbit!” Delgaro said.

      He pointed down the corridor toward the intersection of hallways.

      Yeats’s face split into a smile, his teeth blunt and very white against the darker complexion of his skin. He put a finger to his lips to silence his partner and pointed. Paolini came through the doorway and peered over Yeats’s shoulder. He looked down the hall to where the subordinate was indicating.

      “You better be right,” he whispered, his lips close to the man’s ear. “Now slide on up to that corner and take a look, little sister.”

      Yeats bristled at Paolini’s mocking tone. The capo’s lieutenant was always testing the crew, establishing his dominance in little ways, pushing them to see if they would snap or if he could provoke emotion. It didn’t matter to him that each man had made his bones with the organization a dozen times over before being promoted to the capo’s bodyguard. Paolini was never satisfied, and with his minutes-old promotion to the top slot, Yeats knew it wasn’t likely to get any better.

      Yeats sighed and began to move forward, clearing the corner with Delgaro, using rudimentary but practical tactics. Unlike Paolini, none of the other hitters had formal military training, only street experience. Still, the men had picked up a lot as targets of Italian anti-Mafia government raiders.

      Yeats’s head exploded like an overripe melon.

      Dellavechia and Montenegro died in the next second. Delgaro screamed in fear and flung himself down to his belly on the blood-slick linoleum floor. Behind him Paolini grabbed up Yeats’s falling corpse and swung it around to use as a shield.

      A hitter named Vincenetti had time to turn, dropping low in a combat crouch and swinging around on one knee, his HS 2000 pistol outfitted with a laser sight that burned down the hall, tracking for a target.

      Vincenetti saw the black-clad form of the crazy bastard who’d dropped the Palermo capo in his own building. The Italian gunman lined up the sights of his handgun and his finger flexed around the plastic-alloy curve of his Croatian pistol. He had the bastard.

      Vincenetti was too slow, and Paolini had another corpse at his feet. An untidy third eye blossomed in Vincenetti’s forehead.

      Delgaro was sweating, pressed flat against the floor and panting in fear. Their adversary had gunned down four experienced killers in the blink of an eye.

      For the first time since the hunt had begun, Delgaro thought about just running. He no longer cared if the kill was personal. Screw avenging the capo, screw pride and screw honor. He just wanted to live, goddammit.

      “Get up!” Paolini snarled at the prostrate man.

      Delgaro looked up, and Paolini pushed the bullet-riddled corpse of Yeats away from him. It fell to the linoleum floor with a wet slap like a bag of loose meat. Delgaro realized that as terrified as he was of the apparition that had brought hell to Palermo, he was still frightened of his lieutenant.

      He scrambled to his feet, following Paolini down the hall to the elevators, trusting the ex-Foreign legionnaire’s instincts. Delgaro had never seen anything like the ambush before in his life, not ever and not even close. Even the Chechens didn’t kill like that and they were fucking СКАЧАТЬ