Patriot Strike. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ International Airport from Dulles, in Virginia, and then rented a silver Toyota RAV4. His ID—a more-or-less genuine Texas driver’s license in the name of Matthew Cooper—had served him well at his previous stop, a store with broad, barred windows whose tall neon sign promised Guns! Guns! Guns!

      Thanks to Texas’s lax firearms legislation, Bolan’s purchases included an AR-15 rifle, the civilian semi-auto version of an M16A1; a Benelli M4 Super 90 semi-auto twelve-gauge shotgun with extended magazine and collapsible buttstock; a matched pair of Glock 22 pistols, chambered in .40 S&W; and a Buckmaster 184 survival knife. He added a fast-draw shoulder rig, a clip-on holster for his belt, two dozen extra magazines and all the ammo he could carry. Bolan paid cash—lifted from an L.A. crack dealer some months before—and made the salesman’s day.

      “Y’all come back now, hear?”

      A little tinkering would turn the AR-15 into a full-auto weapon if Bolan had the time. Meanwhile it was a good killing machine straight off the rack. He would have liked at least one sound suppressor for the Glocks, but that meant filling out a lot of Class III paperwork and waiting while it cycled through the ATF labyrinth in Washington. In a pinch, the Buckmaster was quieter than any firearm and never had to be reloaded. He’d simply have to be up close and personal when he went in for the kill.

      This was supposed to be a peaceful meeting, though. No fuss, no muss, no bodies on the ground.

      Supposed to be.

      So here at the Alamo, he wore the Glocks and knife concealed, leaving the rifle and the shotgun in his rented SUV. He had parked it down on Crockett Street and had walked back to the Alamo, dodging the streetlights where he could. If all went well, it was a relatively short walk back to catch his ride. If not, two blocks could be a lethal gauntlet.

      Fifteen rounds in each Glock’s magazine, plus two spares in the pouches on his shoulder rig and two more in his pockets. Enough to stop a midsized company of soldiers, but it only took one lucky shot by an opponent and the game was over. Bolan could die and never know what hit him, sure. The way a combat soldier always hoped to go, if old age wasn’t on the table.

      But until that happened, he was working every angle for security. Taking nothing for granted beyond his next step, his next breath.

      * * *

      “WHERE IS SHE?” Jesse Folsom muttered.

      “Runnin’ late,” Bryar Haskin said. “How the hell should I know?”

      “We just sit and wait for her?” asked Jimmy Don Bodine.

      “Naw,” Haskin answered back. “We gonna go ’n’ get a lap dance, then tell Kent we didn’t wanna stick around. How’s that sound to ya? Think he’ll like it?”

      “I just meant—”

      “Check this out,” Cletus Jackson said, from the backseat.

      A car was turning north from Crockett onto Alamo Plaza. It slowed for the parking lot’s entrance, then swung in it. Creeping along, the vehicle slid into a space about two hundred feet from the old Mexican mission.

      “That her?” Folsom prodded.

      “Can’t tell,” Jackson said. “Wait and see, with the dome light.”

      The car was a black Dodge Avenger, four door, not an obvious cop car. Haskin puzzled over that, since they were waiting for a cop—a lady cop, at that—but he supposed that she could be off duty, driving her own vehicle. It didn’t matter what she came in, after all, as long as she went home with them.

      The cop...and whoever she was meeting at the Alamo.

      “I still can’t see the driver,” Jackson said, to no one in particular.

      “It’s one of ’em,” said Haskin. “Has to be. Who else would be here when the place is closed?”

      “Damn tourists,” Bodine suggested. “Wanna snap a picture standin’ in the lights.”

      “Parkin’ as far as they can get from anything?” Haskin snorted dismissively. “We got one. Now just keep your eyes peeled for the other.”

      “You figure they’ll be packin’?” Jackson asked him.

      “Wouldn’t you be?”

      “Hell, I am.”

      That was a fact. Between them, they were carrying two pump-action shotguns, one Heckler & Koch HK416 carbine chambered in 5.56 NATO, one AK-101 feeding the same NATO rounds and at least four handguns. Bodine sometimes wore a second pistol in an ankle holster for backup, normally a Colt .380 Mustang Pocketlite, but Haskin hadn’t looked to see if he was packing it tonight.

      They had firepower, anyhow, and horsepower under the hood of their GMC Yukon, with its 5.7-liter turbocharged Chevrolet small-block V8 engine. Haskin wished they’d had a bit more brainpower, but these were good boys, dedicated, all straight shooters. He would work with what he had.

      And how hard could it be?

      Pick up two people from the ever-loving Shrine of Texas Liberty and take them back to headquarters for questioning. It wasn’t like they had to fight John Wayne and Richard Widmark, or even Billy Bob Thornton. Sure, one of them was a Texas Ranger, but she was a woman, for God’s sake.

      One woman then and she’d be packing, but he didn’t know about the other one. Haskin had no idea who else they were looking for—a man or woman; white, black or whatever—but it stood to reason that there’d be at least one other gun against their eight or nine.

      Safe odds, if only they had been allowed to kill their quarry, but that wasn’t in the cards. His orders were to bring at least one of them back alive and preferably both. Headquarters couldn’t question corpses, and if Haskin dropped the ball on this one, it would be his own ass on the charcoal grill. And that was not one of them whatchamacallits. Simile or metaphor, maybe an oxymoron.

      Screw it.

      “Here goes,” said Jackson, as the Dodge Avenger’s driver opened up her door and stepped out. She’d turned the dome light off—smart thinking—but the parking lot was lit for security’s sake, and Haskin recognized her from a photo he’d been shown that afternoon.

      “It’s her,” he said. The lady Ranger.

      “One down, one to go,” said Bodine, like he had just invented math.

      “Suppose the other one don’t show?” asked Folsom.

      “Then we bag this one,” Haskin replied. “Call it a night.”

      “We have to take her straight back?” Jackson queried. “She’s a looker.”

      “Remember what we’re here for, damn it. And remember what you stand to lose, if you screw it up.”

      * * *

      WATCHING FROM THE SHADOWS, Bolan saw his contact step out of a vehicle he took to be her personal ride. Nothing the Texas Rangers would select for chasing outlaws on the open road, and Bolan wasn’t sure if they did any undercover work. He knew the force was small—about 150 officers to police America’s second-largest state and СКАЧАТЬ