Treason Play

скачать книгу бесплатно


She’d been hugging herself, fingers encircling biceps. Bolan noticed her hands tighten and she leaned farther back in her chair.

“We didn’t do that.”

The soldier exhaled loudly. With his forefinger and thumb, he pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. Pulling his hand away, he opened his eyes and looked at the reporter.

“You must think you’re extremely clever or I’m extremely stupid,” he said. “Whatever. Either way, you’re lying to me.”

She licked her lips and stared at Bolan, her eyes not bulging, but wide enough to tell Bolan something was wrong. “I’m telling the truth.”

The soldier nodded. Standing, he walked over to the coffee machine and poured himself a cup of coffee. He brought the cup to his lips, blew on it and stared ahead, studying the swirls in the wood grain of the cabinet doors.

“They peeled his skin off,” Bolan said.

“What?”

“The people who took Terry, they peeled his skin off, while he was alive. They stabbed him more times than I can count. Not fatal wounds, mind you. Just enough and in the right spots to put him through agony. I’d guess he was miserable his last hours on Earth.”

She turned in her seat and gave Bolan a look of shock and horror. “Why are you telling me this? What’s wrong with you?”

Bolan set the coffee on the counter and turned slowly to face the woman.

“I’m not sure what your game is,” he said. “But I know you’re not being straight with me. Why, is anybody’s guess. You haven’t told me anything useful. Apparently you don’t care that Lang’s dead. So I figured why not share a few more details? You don’t give a shit anyway.”

“You’re a bastard!”

“Sure I am,” the soldier said. “Here’s the thing, though. I’m trying to figure out what happened to Terry, find out who killed him and why. It bothers me that he died the way he did. You, on the other hand, seem at peace with the whole thing. So I thought I’d unburden myself. It worked. I feel better already.”

With his hands, Bolan pushed off the counter and started across the room.

“Wait!” she called after him. “You can’t keep me here. Am I under arrest? If not, then you can’t keep me here.”

His hand on the doorknob, Bolan paused, then shrugged. “So leave.”

He opened the door, stepped out into the hallway and kept on walking. Grimaldi followed behind him a couple of heartbeats later.

“Wow,” the pilot said, “which nugget of information should we follow up on first?”

“I’d send her packing,” Bolan said. “But I think that’d be like putting a bullet in her head. Whoever tried to find her earlier, is going to come for her again. I’m sure of it.”

“So what next?”

“You stay here,” Bolan said. He handed Grimaldi the key that the woman reporter had provided him. “If you can get her to spill her guts, great. In the meantime, I need to keep looking for Khan.”

CHAPTER NINE

Yuri Sokolov sat in the cabin of his Gulfstream executive jet. He listened to the engine’s whine as the craft cut through the air over Asia. Thoughts of what lay ahead rolled through his mind. It comforted him to think of such things, distracting him from the horrible thing sealed in a special smuggling compartment built into the aircraft, one normally reserved for weapons or drugs.

Absently he grabbed at the cloth napkin folded over his left thigh, dabbed imaginary beads of sweat from his upper lip and returned the napkin to his lap. He’d meet Haqqani in Karachi in a matter of hours, at the airport, where he could pass along the horrible substance the plane carried.

Then he’d get back on the plane and get his ass back out of Karachi. Fast.

He noticed his left foot tapping out a rapid-fire beat and willed himself to stop. What the hell is the matter with you? he wondered. Quit acting like a damn child and do this.

A tumbler of vodka was clutched in his right hand. Bringing it to his lips, he drained it, thankful he was alone. If the others—the ones who signed his paychecks—saw him acting this way, jumping at shadows that existed only in his mind, they’d kill him.

A rueful smile crossed his lips. Rising to his feet, he crossed the cabin to a wet bar and poured more vodka. After ten years with the KGB and then with the FSB, you’d think you’d be used to danger, he told himself. And used to bad bosses. He’d had more than his share of both through the years.

But these people, the ones with the Seven, were the worst. It’d all seemed so good up front. They’d showered him with money. And with women, lots and lots of women, he thought, allowing himself another smile. And it’d all seemed pretty easy. Carry a couple of suitcases filled with the money to Sunnis insurgents in Iraq. Ferry precision-machined centrifuge parts to Iran. He essentially was a well-paid delivery man. Very well paid.

But this…

This could start a war. Start many wars.

Enough, he told himself. His job was to deliver, not to worry about consequences. He was a foot soldier and foot soldiers, in his view, did what they were told. They let smarter people worry about the consequences.

He sank back into one of the jet’s plush seats. Besides, they’d assured him all this was temporary, essentially a ruse. He’d pass along the materials. They’d take them back later—by force if necessary. Sokolov ran his fingers through his thinning, reddish-brown hair. He didn’t trust Daniel Masters as far as he could throw the little British fuck. Didn’t trust any Englishman, for that matter, especially not one willing to undercut his homeland. But even that oily bastard wouldn’t lie about something so important.

No, he told himself, Masters wouldn’t lie about this.

And, if he did, frankly, it wouldn’t matter. Masters had the Council of Seven convinced he knew what he was talking about. Therefore, he held all the cards. In Sokolov’s little world that meant shutting up and doing as he was told.

And he’d do that.

Even if it brought Armageddon down on the whole world.

SOKOLOV WATCHED NAWAZ Khan push his way through the door of the aircraft, followed by an entourage of maybe a half dozen men.

The Russian made no effort to hide his disgust at the Pakistani. Sokolov’s brother, a Spetsnaz soldier, had been killed in Afghanistan, the personnel carrier he was traveling in pulverized by a Stinger missile, one presumably supplied by the United States. In light of that, he had little use for the Pakistanis, or the United States, for that matter.

Nawaz Khan marched up to within a foot of the Russian and stood, his fists cocked on his hips, and stared at Sokolov.

“You have it?” Khan asked finally.

“Yes.”

Khan nodded approvingly. “And you can show us how to use this material?”

“Of course,” Sokolov replied.

“Good.”

A phone trilled from somewhere in the knot of men positioned behind Khan. From the corner of his eye, Sokolov saw one of the men bring a phone to his ear and heard him utter what the Russian assumed was a greeting, though he didn’t understand the language. The man paused and listened. When he spoke again, the volume of his voice rose. Though Sokolov couldn’t understand what the man was saying, he easily recognized the distress in the man’s voice. By now Khan had turned to look at his assistant. The arch of the Pakistani’s eyebrows, the ripple of his cheek muscles as he clenched and unclenched his jaw betrayed his worry, Sokolov thought.

When the man hung up the phone, he looked at Khan.

Khan gestured at Sokolov with an open palm. “Excuse me,” he said. He turned and walked with his assistant to another section of the cabin, out of earshot of Sokolov, at least at first. As the conversation progressed, Khan’s voice rose to a point where Sokolov could hear the conversation even though he couldn’t interpret the words spoken. Khan occasionally punctuated his statements by jabbing his index finger into the man’s chest. When the conversation ended, the man turned and exited the airplane while Khan came back to Sokolov, a strained smile plastered across his lips.

The Russian flashed a smile of his own. “Trouble?”

Khan shook his head. “Nothing we can’t handle. This business we’re in, it occasionally yields some surprises, yes?”

“Expect the unexpected,” Sokolov replied.

“Certainly.”

Sokolov stepped forward, bent his head until his face hovered within inches of Khan’s own. The former KGB agent’s smile faded. “If you have trouble on your hands,” he growled through clenched teeth, “you better damn well deal with it before it becomes our trouble, too. You understand me, yes?”

Khan swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes.”

“Good, I feel better already,” Sokolov said.

Khan nodded in the direction of his entourage. “You can supervise them as they unload the cargo? You know better than they do how to handle the material.”

“Damn straight I do.”

CHAPTER TEN

Binoculars pressed to his eyes, Bolan studied the warehouse. He was on the roof of a neighboring building, crouched next to a large chiller unit, his body enveloped by shadows.

He’d been situated there for hours, studying the number of guards, their patterns of movement, their weaponry, making note of it all in his mind.

Thus far, he’d logged two trucks within the past hour rolling into the warehouse. Both were nondescript, large tractor-trailer rigs, engines growling, pipes belching smoke into the air. He’d been unable to get a good look at the drivers, though that mattered little to him, either.

He was more concerned with what lay inside the warehouse than anything else.

According to intelligence gathered by Stony Man Farm, Khan owned the warehouse through a web of shell companies, and it was believed to be a transit point for some of the weapons the Pakistani shipped to conflict zones worldwide.

Hitting the facility would accomplish two goals as far as Bolan was concerned. One, he could hobble Khan’s weapons-smuggling ring and—at least temporarily—prevent deadly weapons from getting into the hands of killers. Second, since Khan had submerged out of sight, Bolan figured his best tack was to drop some depth charges and bring the guy back to the surface. Sort of like fishing with hand grenades.

But first he wanted to make sure he had the right spot.

The intel he had was good, but he wanted to make sure it was right. The only way to do that was to check out the place himself.

He had changed into his combat blacksuit and smeared black camo paint on his cheeks, nose and forehead. The sun had fallen hours ago, taking down the heat considerably, making the surveillance gig more tolerable.

Grabbing his gear, the soldier got to his feet. He carried with him the usual handguns and also had brought along a Heckler & Koch MP-5 K. He looped the SMG’s strap over his head and right shoulder, then pulled on a lightweight black trench coat to hide his weapons and other gear.

Walking up to the edge of the roof, he set both palms on the ledge, swung first one leg, then the other over the side and lowered himself slowly until he hung from his fingertips. Releasing his grip, he dropped to the top landing of the fire escape below, folding into a crouch. He scrambled down the stairs until he reached the final landing and, releasing the ladder, dropped to the alley below. Light in the alley was limited. Bolan glided along the wall of the building he’d just left. He stopped at the corner, flattened his back against the wall and stole a glance around the edge and saw that the target warehouse remained busy. A tractor-trailer idled outside the building.

The soldier surged across the street to the outer perimeter of the warehouse, using the big truck for cover.

From his surveillance, he’d gathered that one or two guards patrolled the exterior at any given time. They didn’t wear uniforms, but instead dressed in khakis and royal-blue polo shirts. They looked as much like insurance salesmen as anything else, except for the pistols clipped to their belts. They appeared to communicate via mobile telephone rather than with radios. Both guards had deep brown skin and jet-black hair, and Bolan guessed they were of south Asian extraction.

One of the men was tall, wide and thick, built like a weightlifter. He wore his hair cut close to the scalp and rested the palm of his right hand on the butt of his pistol. The second guard was big, too, but soft, dumpy. A lit cigarette dangled from his lower lip.