Patriot Strike. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ knew her face from photos he’d received in preparation for the meeting. She, on the other hand, wouldn’t know him from Adam until Bolan introduced himself. Photos of Bolan—with the new face he had worn since “dying” some time back in New York City’s Central Park—were scarce as the proverbial hen’s teeth. He hadn’t bothered changing fingerprints at the same time, since he was dead to the world, and Uncle Sam’s elves had purged every file they could find that contained Bolan’s prints—from the Pentagon and FBI headquarters, to LAPD, NYPD and so on down the food chain.

      In that sense, at least, it was good to be dead.

      The Ranger he had come to meet, by contrast, was very much alive. And Bolan hoped to help her stay that way.

      Adlene Granger was thirty-one years old, five-seven without standard Ranger cowboy boots and Stetson hat, her frame packed with 137 fairly trim, athletic pounds. Green eyes and auburn hair, no known tattoos, although she had a scar inside her left forearm from taking down a crackhead who had pulled a razor in the scuffle. All of that was in her file, together with the fact that she had shot two would-be bank robbers in Brownsville, on a stakeout, killing one of them.

      But now she needed help and couldn’t ask her fellow Rangers. Couldn’t put her faith in local law enforcement, Texas-style. She wasn’t all that keen on trusting Feds—from what Bolan understood—but everybody had to lean on someone, sometime.

      Nature’s law.

      Enter the Executioner.

      His contact—Ranger Granger?—had a tale to tell, and Bolan had agreed to listen. He already knew the basics from his briefing, but he needed more details. Needed to know if it was serious enough to rate his kind of handling and yield a positive result.

      Bolan had known too many dedicated and courageous women of the law to swallow any crap about their runaway emotions, inability to cope with crises or the rest of it. Short of a power-lifting contest in the heavyweight division, Bolan couldn’t think of any field where women did not rival or surpass their male competitors—and he had seen some Russian ladies who could hoist the big iron, too.

      He wasn’t looking for a partner, though. Had no intention of enlisting anybody for his mission, if it turned out that there was a mission here, deep in the heart of Texas. He wanted information he could act on—if it seemed his kind of action was appropriate—while Ranger Granger went back to her normal daily life and put their meeting out of mind as best she could.

      Simple—unless it wasn’t.

      Bolan knew she had a personal connection to the problem, but he didn’t know how far she planned to chase it. He would have to make it crystal clear that he was not recruiting, not inviting her to join in a crusade. She would be briefing him and nothing more.

      He hoped.

      Emerging from the shadows, Bolan showed himself, waited and watched her start the long walk from her Dodge Avenger toward the south end of the Alamo’s facade. She took long, determined strides, an easy swing to her arms. She wore hand-tooled boots with sharply pointed toes, blue jeans, a denim shirt under a thigh-length suede jacket. The jacket was unbuttoned, granting easy access to a good-sized pistol on her right hip, worn in a high-rise holster.

      Here we go, he thought, standing his ground.

      * * *

      “YOU SEE ’IM?” Jackson blurted out.

      “We ain’t blind,” Haskin told him.

      “Let’s get after ’em,” said Bodine.

      “Not yet.”

      “Why the hell not?” Folsom challenged.

      “Look, we know it’s her and likely him, but I ain’t making no mistakes ’cause we got hasty.”

      “What, you think he’s just some random guy walkin’ around the Alamo?” asked Jackson.

      “Making sure don’t cost us nothin’ but a little time. And they ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

      “Oh, yeah? Suppose his wheels is back there and they just take off?”

      “We ain’t afoot,” Haskin reminded him. “And Kent didn’t put you in charge.”

      “Hey, I’m just sayin’—”

      “Shut your piehole, will ya? Lemme see what’s goin’ on.”

      “Yeah, yeah.”

      At times like this, Bryar Haskin wished he didn’t have to deal with idiots. They were useful, in their way, but Christ, their whining grated on his nerves.

      He watched the woman walk toward the man who had appeared as if from nowhere—meaning that he’d walked up somewhere from the south, maybe approached by way of Crockett Street. Whatever. He was here now, if it was him, and while Haskin had no serious concerns on that score, he was still determined to be sure before he made a move.

      It was interesting that the guy, whoever he was, made no attempt to meet the woman halfway. He hung close to the Alamo, ready to duck back out of sight and under cover at the first suggestion of a trap. A cagey bastard and corralling him could take some doing. Granted, Haskin had three men to back him, odds of two-to-one, but if the man and woman separated, and it turned into a foot chase, they were screwed. He didn’t plan to run around the Alamo all night, like some dumb cluck in one of The Three Stooges comedies.

      And what if someone started shooting? They’d have cops up the wazoo in nothing flat, the very last thing he needed on a job like this. He thought about the shit storm that would rain down on him if he got arrested, and it made his chili supper curdle in his stomach.

      Not a freakin’ chance.

      Haskin clutched his Ithaca 37 shotgun—the Deerslayer Police Special version—in hands that were suddenly sweaty. At first he had relished being in charge of this mission, taking it as a sign of advancement, but now he saw how it could blow up in his face. Spoil everything, in fact. And it would be his fault if anything went wrong.

      Across the parking lot, the lady Ranger was within twenty feet of Mr. X and closing in. They hadn’t started talking yet, as far as Haskin could tell, but he couldn’t swear to it. There’d likely be some kind of recognition signal, or a password, then they’d either start to do their business or the Ranger would bail out, if she discovered the guy wasn’t who she had come to meet.

      The odds of that were nil, but Haskin wasn’t taking any chances.

      Wait and see.

      Now they were close enough to speak without raising their voices, and he wished he’d brought a shotgun microphone to supplement the Ithaca. Something to let him eavesdrop for a little while before they rushed the couple, maybe pick up something useful for the chief, in case one or both of the targets went down for the count or was trained to resist interrogation. It would stand him in good stead, a little extra boost, but thinking of it now did Haskin no damned good at all.

      “We goin’ in or what?” Bodine asked.

      “Hang on a sec,” said Haskin.

      “But—”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ