Dead or Alive - Страница 2

Доступ к книге ограничен фрагменом по требованию правообладателя.

Down the trail, another sound now: liquid splattering against stone. This brought a smile to Driscoll’s lips. The call of nature. The urinating tapered off, then stopped. Footsteps began padding down the trail. Twenty feet away, Driscoll estimated, around the bend.

Moments later a figure appeared on the trail. His gait was unhurried, almost lazy. In the night vision Driscoll could see an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, barrel down. The guard kept coming. Driscoll didn’t move. Fifteen feet… ten.

A figure rose up from the shadows along the trail and slipped in behind the guard. A hand appeared over the guard’s shoulder, then the flash of a blade came over the other shoulder. Collins twisted the man to the right and down to the ground, and their shadows melted together. Ten seconds passed. Collins rose, ducked off the trail, and dragged the guard out of sight.

Textbook sentry takedown, Driscoll thought. Movie portrayals aside, knifework was something of a rarity in their business. Even so, Collins clearly hadn’t lost the skill.

Moments later Collins reappeared on Driscoll’s right.

Driscoll returned his attention to the sentry on the ridge. Still there. Hadn’t moved at all. Driscoll brought his M4 up, settled the sights on the nape of the man’s neck, and then tightened his finger on the trigger.

Easy, easy… squeeze…

Pop. Not much of a sound. Hard to hear at all at a range of more than fifty meters, but the bullet flew true and transited the target’s head, leaving a puff of green vapor behind, and he went off to see Allah, or whatever god he acknowledged; at twenty-odd years old, growing and eating and learning, and probably fighting, came to an abrupt and unwarned end.

The target crumpled, folding sideways out of sight.

Tough luck, Gomer, Driscoll thought. But we’re after bigger game than you tonight.

“Sentry down,” Driscoll said quietly into his radio. “The ridgeline is clear. Move on up. Keep it nice and tight.” That last bit wasn’t really necessary-not with these guys.

He looked back to see his men moving a little faster now. They were excited but under control, ready to get down to business. He could see it in their postures, the economy of movement that separated real shooters from wannabees and in-and-outers who were just waiting to return to civilian life.

Their real target might be less than a hundred meters away now, and they’d worked hard over the previous three months to bag this bastard. Mountain climbing was not anyone’s idea of fun, except maybe for those nutjobs who pined after Everest and K2. Be that as it may, this was part of the job, and part of their current mission, so everybody sucked it up and kept moving.

The fifteen men formed up in three fire-teams of five Rangers each. One would stay here with their heavy weapons-they’d brought two M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) machine guns for fire cover on overwatch. No telling how many bad guys there might be about, and the SAW was a great equalizer. Satellites could give you only so much intel; some variables you just had to deal with as they came to you. All his men were scanning the rocks, looking for movement. Any movement. Maybe just a bad guy who came out to take a dump. In this neck of the woods, there was a ninety percent chance that anybody you encountered was a bad guy. Made their job that much easier, Driscoll thought.

Moving even more slowly now, he stalked forward, eyes flicking from his feet, watching each placement for loose rocks and twigs, then ahead, scanning, scanning… This was another benefit of wisdom, he thought, knowing how to quash the excitement of being so close to the goal line. This is often where rookies and dead men made their mistakes, thinking the hard part was behind them and their target was so close. And that, Driscoll knew, is when Old Man Murphy, of Murphy’s Law fame, usually snuck up behind you, tapped you on the shoulder, and handed you an ugly surprise. Anticipation and expectation were lethal sides of the same coin. Either one in the right dose at the wrong moment would get you killed.

Not this time, though. Not on my damned watch. And not with a team as good as his.

Driscoll saw the ridgeline looming ahead not more than ten feet away, and he hunched over, careful to keep his head below the lip, lest he present a tantalizing silhouette target for some alert gomer. He covered the last few feet on flat feet, then leaned forward, left hand flat against the rock, and peeked his head up.

And there you are… The cave.

2

LOW FUEL,” whoop, whoop, “low fuel,” the computer-generated voice announced. “I know, I know,” the pilot growled in reply.

He could see the necessary information on his instrument/ CRT display panel. The onboard computer master-trouble light had been blinking for fifteen minutes. They’d crossed the Canadian coast ten minutes earlier, and they could look down at what in daylight would have been green terrain covered with stunted trees. Unless he’d really screwed the navigational pooch, they’d see some lights soon. Anyway, they were feet-dry, which was a relief.

The North Atlantic winds had been far stiffer than predicted. Most of the night traffic was eastbound this time of day, and those aircraft carried a lot more fuel than a Dassault Falcon 9000. Twenty minutes’ more fuel. Ten minutes more than they needed. Their indicated air speed was just over five hundred knots, altitude twenty-five thousand feet and falling.

“Gander Approach,” he said into his radio microphone, “this is Hotel zero-niner-seven Mike Foxtrot, inbound for gas, over.”

“Mike Foxtrot,” came the reply, “this is Gander. Winds are calm. Recommend runway two-niner for a normal approach.”

“Calm winds?” the copilot observed. “Damn.” They’d just come through more than a hundred knots of jet stream right on the nose for three hours of minor buffeting, not too bad at forty-one thousand feet, but still noticeable. “This is about as long a hop over water as I like.”

“Especially with winds like this,” the pilot replied. “I hope the engines work on fumes.”

“We set with customs?”

“Should be. We’ve done the CANPASS, and we’re cleared into Moose Jaw. Do immigration there?”

“Yeah, right.” Both knew better. This flight would be a little on the unusual side from Gander on in to their final destination. But they were being paid for it. And the euro-dollar exchange rate would be working in their favor. Especially Canadian dollars.

“Got the lights. Five minutes out,” the copilot said.

“Roger, runway in view,” the pilot said. “Flaps.”

“Flaps coming down to ten.” The copilot worked the controls, and they could hear the whine of the electric motors extending the flaps. “Wake up the passengers?”

“No. Why bother?” the pilot decided. If he did this right, they wouldn’t notice a thing until the acceleration for the next takeoff. Having earned his spurs and twenty thousand hours with Swissair, he’d retired and bought his own used Dassault Falcon to charter millionaires and billionaires across Europe and around the globe. Half the people who could afford his services ended up going to the same places-Monaco, Harbor Island in the Bahamas, Saint-Tropez, Aspen. The fact that his current passenger was going none of those places was a curiosity, but as long as he paid, the destination was none of his business.

They passed downward through ten thousand feet. The runway lights were easy to see, a straight lane in the darkness that had once accommodated a wing of United States Air Force F-84 interceptors.

Five thousand feet and descending. “Flaps to twenty.”

“Roger flaps twenty,” the pilot acknowledged.

“Gear,” he commanded next, and the copilot reached for the levers. The sound of rushing air entered the cabin as the landing-gear doors opened and the struts came down. Three hundred feet.

“Down and locked,” the copilot replied.

“One hundred feet,” the computer voice said.

The pilot tensed his arms, then relaxed them, easing the aircraft down, gently, gently, picking the proper spot to touch down. Only his skilled senses could tell when the Falcon touched down on the ten-meter concrete squares. He activated the thrustreversers, and the Dassault slowed. A truck with blinking lights showed him where to go and whom to follow as he headed off to where the fuel truck would be waiting.

They were on the ground for a total of twenty minutes. An immigration officer queried them over the radio and determined that there were no changes from the CANPASS data. Outside, the fuel truck’s driver disconnected his hose and secured the fuel valve.

Okay. That’s done, the pilot thought. Now for the second segment of the three-part flight.

The Falcon taxied back out to the north end of the runway, going through the pre-liftoff checklist, as he always did, after waiting at the end of the runway. The acceleration went smoothly; then the wheels came up, then the flaps, followed by the climb-out. Ten more minutes and they were at thirty-seven thousand, their initial assigned altitude from Toronto Center.

They cruised west at Mach 0.81-about 520 knots, or 600 miles per hour true air speed-with their passengers asleep aft while the engines gobbled fuel at a fixed rate of 3,400 pounds per hour. The aircraft transponder broadcast their speed and altitude to the air-traffic-control radars, and aside from that there was no need for radio traffic of any sort. In rough weather they might have requested a different, probably higher, altitude for more comfortable cruising, but Gander tower had been correct. Having passed through the cold front that had opposed their flight into Newfoundland, they might not have been moving at all, except for the muted roar of the jet engines hanging on the tail. Pilot and copilot didn’t even speak very much. They’d flown together enough that they knew all the same jokes, and on such an uneventful flight there was no need to swap information. Everything had been planned, down to the proverbial gnat’s ass. Both wondered what Hawaii might be like. They could look forward to a pair of suites at the Royal Hawaiian, and a long sleep to ward off the inevitable jet lag, sure to accompany the ten hours of additional day they were going to experience. Well, both liked a nap on a sunny beach, and the weather in Hawaii was forecast to be as monotonously perfect as it usually was. They planned a two-day layover before proceeding back east to their home field outside of Geneva, with no scheduled passengers on that leg.