Hostile Odds. Don Pendleton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ took his mind off it before the idiot got them both killed. “Sorry, Tiny, didn’t see you there.” He flashed the door guards a semiwicked grin and then walked out.

      The man continued arguing with the bouncers for another minute, probably just to make it look good, then joined Bolan outside the restaurant that sat directly above the underground club.

      “Why do I feel the compunction to punch your lights out?” Special Agent Jeff Kellogg demanded.

      “Lack of common sense,” Bolan said as he turned and headed for his car.

      “Wait a minute, Cooper!” Kellogg called, using Bolan’s cover name for the mission. The Fed trotted to get ahead of Bolan’s long strides. He stopped in the Executioner’s path and held up a hand, careful not to touch the imposing form. “I don’t know where you’re from or who you work for, but I thought I made it clear yesterday to butt out.”

      “I don’t take orders from you, Kellogg,” Bolan said flatly. “And don’t blame me because you couldn’t get in. You got any idea where you were just now?”

      Kellogg tried to look confident but seemed to falter under Bolan’s scrutiny.

      “I didn’t think so,” Bolan continued. “In case it escaped notice, you were facing off with Mickey Gowan’s boys.”

      “What? That’s impossible!”

      “And it’s exactly that kind of thinking that’ll get you killed one of these days,” Bolan said. “Count me out.”

      “What proof you got Gowan’s running that operation?”

      “Plenty. I tried to bring it to you nearly three weeks ago, and you didn’t seem interested.”

      “I’m interested now. But I’m not a law unto myself, pal, and I damned sure can’t just go busting down doors without hard evidence. The only things you brought me were theories and conjecture. The FBI doesn’t operate speculatively.”

      “Maybe you should start,” Bolan said as he walked around Kellogg and continued toward his car.

      “You’re not bulletproof, Cooper!” Kellogg called after Bolan. “Don’t go doing something stupid, or I’ll bust you in no time flat.”

      The soldier got into his car and split. Kellogg was too obtuse to realize Bolan had probably just saved his hide. Bolan considered his options as he drove back to his room at the Tulelake lodge. He’d just left one of many of Mickey Gowan’s operations. But while some of the people at that underground casino were helping to line Gowan’s pockets, Bolan couldn’t categorize them in the same class as the crime boss. Many were there simply to have some fun, and certainly hadn’t done anything worthy of the Executioner’s wrath. Besides, Bolan had what he needed. Something big was happening just over the border in Timber Vale, one of the lumber towns north of Klamath Falls. Less than a two-hour drive from Tulelake, it was filled with lumberjacks, mill workers and carpenters. The mill there also had a union, which was run by one of Gowan’s underlings.

      As Bolan drew closer to the lakeside lodge where he’d been staying, he noticed two pairs of headlights swing into the review mirror. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He’d driven this road enough to know it was practically devoid of traffic this time of night. Despite the fact this was tourist season in Siskiyou County, he could chalk up a single vehicle to coincidence but not two.

      Bolan increased speed as soon as he rounded a curve and the lights disappeared, then he pumped the brakes and swung the wheel hard left. Halfway into the turn he released the brake and floored the accelerator, jerking the wheel back to the right and then hard left again. Bolan maneuvered out of the power slide and stopped cold, his car now pointed the way he’d come. He kept one hand on the wheel while he reached over to the glove compartment, popped the latch and withdrew the Beretta 93-R. He placed it on the seat next to him and waited.

      A few seconds elapsed before the first tail car rounded the bend and its occupants found Bolan’s rental directly in their path. Bolan caught the flash of surprise in the driver’s face as he cranked the wheel and slammed on the brakes to avoid a head-on collision. The Executioner dropped into low gear, depressed the brake and spun his wheels by putting pedal to metal in hopes his opposition would think he was trying to flee. The tactic worked and the tail car immediately swung around to pursue—right into the path of their backup car just now rounding the curve.

      The second vehicle T-boned the first, and then Bolan released the brake and floored the accelerator. He put a little distance between the two vehicles and then pulled to the shoulder and backed into a private road leading into the darkness of the woods. When he’d proceeded about fifty yards he killed his lights and engine. Bolan reached beneath his sport coat and withdrew his cellular phone. He would have preferred to use a pay phone, given it had better security than wireless, but such weren’t always the luxuries of field operations.

      The voice of Johnny Gray answered on the second ring. “What do you say, Sarge?”

      Only two men had ever called him that: Jack Grimaldi, ace pilot for Stony Man, and Johnny Gray, Bolan’s brother.

      “Hey,” Bolan replied. “We’re not secure.”

      “Got you,” Johnny said.

      “I need you to look into something for me,” Bolan continued. “Start gathering intelligence on a place called Timber Vale. It’s a logging town just north of Klamath Falls, Oregon.”

      “What are you looking for?”

      “Not sure yet…just anything unusual or different.”

      “You thinking of heading that way?”

      “It crossed my mind. Can you find out and get back to me?”

      Johnny paused for a moment, and Bolan could hear the faint clack of a computer keyboard. A moment later, Johnny said, “Give me an hour.”

      “You got it.”

      As Bolan hung up the phone, he saw one of the pursuit vehicles race past the road. He smiled, placed the phone on the seat next to the Beretta and started the engine. He turned onto the road that would take him down the hill and eventually lead to Highway 139. He could leave his belongings at the lodge for now—he was paid up through the month. Something told Bolan the answers he sought awaited him in Oregon.

      In a town called Timber Vale.

      JOHNNY GOT BACK to his brother with the information in the time frame he promised.

      “There have indeed been some eye-opening activities,” he told the Executioner.

      “Like what?” Bolan asked.

      “I hooked up a secure-shell Telnet to Bear’s system at Stony Man,” Johnny said. “About a week ago, two F-15E training fighters crashed as they took off from Kingsley Airfield. You familiar with that area?”

      “Slightly,” Bolan said, searching his almost eidetic memory. “It’s an Oregon Air National Guard base.”

      “Right. Preliminary information has already been fed through the Pentagon’s computer systems, which of course was no trouble for Bear to access.”

      Bolan believed it. Aaron “The СКАЧАТЬ