Stolen Arrows. Don Pendleton

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      PROLOGUE

      Archbishop Park, London

      Distant thunder rumbled softly in the cloudy London sky, warning of a coming storm. Soon now, very soon.

      Trying to act casually, heavily armed CIA operatives strolled through the budding greenery of the south bank parkland. No two were dressed alike, but each had a telltale flesh-colored wire trailing from his earplug to the compact transponder clipped to his gunbelt. A few smoked, one was eating an ice-cream cone, but all were razorsharp and braced for the oncoming action.

      Stopping to tie a shoelace, a man checked the digital readout of the Geiger counter strapped to his wrist as if he were comparing its time against the distant chimes of Big Ben. Satisfied for the moment that the combat zone was clear, he coughed twice into his hidden throat mike to relay the information, then moved onward to take a sip of water from a nearby fountain.

      Scattered across Archbishop’s Park, several families had spread checkered blankets on the freshly cut lawns while excited children ran along the footpaths darting in and out of the trimmed hedges and among the strolling pedestrians. Rising like a glass cathedral above the lush trees was the new Archbishop’s Hospital and past the footbridge was the old baroque-style library, the once-clean Scottish granite blocks now stained a dull uniform gray with the passage of the long centuries.

      Sitting on the steps of the library, a large man was reading a book in Portuguese, the volume positioned to hold down his loose windbreaker and to hide the gun in his shoulder holster.

      “Falcon, we have a contact,” whispered a voice from the radio in his ear. “Sector five, a Zodiac is approaching the park. Repeat, a Zodiac is near. All agents, full combat protocol at all times. Stay sharp and wait for my command.”

      Grunting in confirmation, Cirello Zalhares continued reading his novel, waiting for target identification. The voice on the radio was David Osbourne, the CIA operative who had hired his team of mercenaries for this dirty job. But then, black ops were what his group did best and the CIA always paid top dollar.

      Just then a teenage girl walked by, her yellow print dress rising high in the river breeze to expose a lot of tanned leg and a hint of lace panties. Nice. Raising his sight, Zalhares admired the fullness of her young body and finally her face, loose, golden blond hair framing elfin features. Noticing his attention, the girl paused for a moment and pursed her lips in a controlled smile at the stranger, but as he smiled back she paled slightly and hurried away, fearfully glancing backward to make sure he wasn’t following.

      Unconcerned by her reaction, Zalhares returned to his reading. Although only in his early thirties, it had been many years since Zalhares could have been called handsome, the network of scars on his face and neck from his line of work reducing his looks to merely striking. Although the black hair and dark skin proclaimed a Spanish ancestry, his sharp eyes were swirls of different subdued colors. Egyptian, the effect was called, although he knew of no such Arab relative in the family tree. Just a genetic fluke, an abstraction that caught the attention of many beautiful women, until they saw the savage mind behind the beautiful eyes and their ardor cooled just as quickly as it had flared to life.

      A small boy walked over to the man and stopped directly in front of him. Hoping the boy would go away, Zalhares did nothing for a minute, but then when it was obvious he had to respond. The big man slowly raised his eyes from the book and looked at the child without any emotion.

      “That’s a funny kind of writing, mister,” the boy said curiously. “Is it Latin?”

      “Portuguese,” Zalhares answered, closing the book on a finger to hold his place. In spite of the summer warmth, he was wearing expensive gloves on both hands. The leather was so pale that it resembled human skin.

      The boy tilted his head. “You Portugeese?” he mispronounced.

      Controlling his impatience, Zalhares started to answer but then paused as a well-dressed businessman in a Gucci suit walked into view, holding a briefcase. The killer relaxed at the sight of the alligator-leather trim. That wasn’t a Zodiac. Those were plain brown leather, as ordinary and plain as humanly possible, virtually invisible in a crowd.

      “Mister?” the boy repeated.

      “I’m from Brazil,” Zalhares said, giving an empty laugh. Stay loose, do not attract attention from the crowd. Bore the child with details. “The Archbishop library has the largest collection of books in Portuguese in all of Britain. I come here often for a taste of home.”

      “Don’t they speak Brazilian in Brazil?” the boy asked, and then added, “I know I would.”

      Now annoyed, Zalhares controlled his temper and started to open his mouth to speak.

      “Red alert,” a new voice said in his earpiece. “We have a Zodiac in the park. Repeat, we have a Zodiac coming home from sector two.”

      That wasn’t Osbourne, but a member of his Zalhares’s team, Artero Mariano, also known as Dog by his many enemies because of his tendency to bite people in the throat during fights. An expert in Kodokan judo and high explosives, he was one of the most feared assassins in the S2, the dreaded secret police of Brazil. That was, until Cirello Zalhares had recruited the man from the government and into the Scion, his mercenary unit.

      As surreptitiously as possible, Zalhares gestured behind the book toward the child standing directly in front of him.

      “Better get rid of the kid, my friend,” Mariano said urgently. “The Libyans will be here at any second and we’ll have to move.”

      Keeping his expression neutral, Zalhares leaned forward slightly so that his windbreaker fell open, exposing the silenced Imbel .22 pistol in the holster to his team hidden in the nearby trees.

      “No, just chase him away,” Mariano suggested. “There are too many СКАЧАТЬ