Shadow Hunt. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ his hands were shaking.

      He took another long look around the restaurant, but didn’t see anything that raised his hackles. Still… “You nervous, Smythe?”

      “Hell, yes, I’m nervous,” he snapped, his blue eyes darting around the room. “Wouldn’t you be?”

      Rio shrugged. “I’m not the type.”

      “If you knew these guys, you would be. If they knew I was having dinner with a federal agent, I wouldn’t make it through the night,” he said. He refilled his glass. “I’ll have everything for you tomorrow, but I want your word that you can get me what I want.”

      Rio thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I can get it,” he said. “But not until I see what you’re putting on the table.”

      “Fair enough. When?”

      “First thing in the morning,” he said. “My hotel, seven sharp. I’ve got a flight scheduled to leave at ten.”

      “You’re leaving?” Smythe asked, incredulous. “Now?”

      “Relax,” Rio said. “If you bring me real information we can use to ferret these bastards out, I’ll reschedule.”

      “Oh, all right, then.”

      Their food came and they ate in silence. Italian wasn’t his favorite, but even Rio had to admit that his spaghetti was very good. He finished quickly, then stood up. “You’re buying, right, Smythe?” he asked.

      “Sure, sure,” he said. His words were slightly slurred, but then he’d almost polished off the entire bottle of wine himself.

      “Tomorrow morning, then,” Rio said. “Don’t be late.”

      “I won’t,” he said.

      Rio left the restaurant without another word. The parking lot was dark, and his car was parked on the far edge of the lot. He moved with easy grace to the vehicle, sweating already in the humid night air. He unlocked the door, opened it and wedged himself into the seat. Then he put the key into the ignition, started the engine and reached for the air-conditioning. It was too damn humid to not run it on full blast, and he twisted the dial as far to the right as it would go.

      As the vents blasted air into his face, two things happened at once. He recognized the acrid tang of pepper spray, and four large men appeared around his car—one at each door. Almost instantly blinded, he tried the door, but the goon standing there held it shut.

      “Damn it!” he said, sneezing, coughing and hacking. He forced himself against the door with all his strength and it popped open. He fell out onto the concrete, reaching for his gun even as he landed. Blind, he didn’t have much of a chance, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight.

      “Don’t bother, cowboy,” a voice said in his ear. He felt the cold metal barrel of a gun pushed against his flesh.

      Still coughing, his lungs and eyes burned from the pepper spray, Rio moved his hands away from his coat. The man pulled out the .45 and handed it to one of his pals. The marshal couldn’t make out faces clearly through the tears running from his eyes.

      “What the hell?” Rio started to say, when the Italian leather boot slammed into his head.

      “Welcome to New Orleans, cowboy,” the man said. “The boss wants to have a word with you, and I suggest you cooperate. The gators are hungry this time of year.”

      Knowing that if he fought now, they’d just kill him outright, Rio relaxed. He’d have to wait for a better opportunity.

      “Told you I’d bring him,” he heard Smythe’s voice say. “Didn’t I?”

      “Yeah, Trenton, you did real good,” the man said.

      His eyes were clearing, and Rio saw a man dressed in an expensive suit, Smythe standing behind him. Rio spit blood from his split lip. “I won’t be forgetting this, Smythe,” he said. “Not for a long, long time.”

      “You’ve got more to worry about than I do, Marshal. A lot more.”

      Rio was about to reply when the boot hit him again, this time connecting with his temple, and the world went hot, then dark.

      1

      There weren’t that many people who could call Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, out of the blue and get an instant response, but Hal Brognola was one of them. Apparently one of the big Fed’s colleagues, Jacob Rio—a man Brognola had a great deal of respect for—had become quite concerned lately for the welfare of his brother, U.S. Marshal Jack Rio.

      According to Jacob, Jack was almost a week overdue for a visit they’d scheduled. Jacob had told Brognola that his brother had been slated for a couple of weeks off, and they’d planned to use one of them to go fishing in the Gulf. Brognola had asked him what his brother was doing for the other one, but Jacob hadn’t known for sure.

      “He just said he wanted to check something out,” he’d said. “For him, that usually means a really cold case or something way off the beaten path or both.”

      “You’ve tried all his numbers?” Brognola had asked. “Gone to his house? Contacted his office?”

      “All of the above,” Jacob said. “No one knows anything, and it’s not like Jack to just disappear.”

      Trusting Jacob Rio’s instincts, Brognola contacted Bolan and relayed the details as he knew them. Bolan caught the next flight to Houston out of Denver, where he’d been taking some downtime mountain climbing. From Houston, the drive down to Galveston where the marshal lived wasn’t very long, and Bolan cruised the street looking for the white, two-story house that Brognola had told him Rio called home. He ran through his conversation with Brognola again as he drove. It would seem by all accounts that Rio was the real thing—a tough fighter, a more than competent lawman, and the kind of person you’d want watching your back when all hell broke loose. He wasn’t the kind of man to take off on a whim without telling anyone.

      Rio’s neighborhood was that in name only. It might be an area that would make your average suburban family nervous, as the houses were interrupted by equipment and buildings for the oil companies. It wasn’t an area where people would let their kids play on the street.

      As the driveway came into view, Bolan saw that a black Lincoln Town Car occupied it, so he pulled up short and parked. There was no record of Rio owning a Town Car in the information that Brognola had sent him. The license plate was Louisiana, not Texas, and wasn’t a law-enforcement plate. The Executioner climbed out of the car and eased the door closed, then made his way along a low hedge that fronted the house. He could see that the door was open, but wasn’t close enough yet to hear anything from the inside. It didn’t help that the ocean was less than two blocks away and the incoming tide was making enough noise that hearing anything that wasn’t up close and personal would be difficult.

      Deciding that a direct approach might work just as well as stealth, Bolan straightened and turned up the walk that led to the front door. When he neared it, he could hear the sound of muttered cursing and the crash of drawers being slammed shut. He knocked loudly on the door, and called out, “Hey, Rio, you in there?”

      The sounds from the back of the СКАЧАТЬ