Kitabı oku: «Stolen Arrows»

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 people around. Killing the brat would only start a riot if somebody found the body. The English are very sentimental about their children.”

“Well, I must be going now,” Zalhares said, rising to his full height and closing the book. The adult towered over the child like a giant from a fairy tale. When the physical intimidation didn’t frighten the boy away, Zalhares impatiently tried another tactic.

“Would you do me a favor and return this inside?” he asked, pushing the volume into the boy’s grasp. “Thank you.”

“Not late, is it?” the boy asked suspiciously, looking over the thick book. “Billy once asked me to return a book, and it was late and I had to pay the fine.”

“No, it is not late,” Zalhares stated, starting to walk away. “But I am. My…daughter is having a birthday and I’m late for her party. Thank you again.”

The boy scowled in disgust. “Yuck, girls,” he said, turning to charge up the flight of stairs into the library. “Goodbye, mister!”

Once safely in the crowd, Zalhares walked until two more people slipped into position nearby, never coming close, but now each of them was able to cover the other with gunfire if the need arose. Dressed in slacks and a turtleneck, Minas Pedrosa was a bald giant who sported a drooping red mustache. His companion was a muscular woman who wore gray pleated slacks and a matching vest over a loose black shirt to try to mask her ample chest. In their line of work her curvaceous figure was often a source of consternation for the team, but Jorgina Mizne was one of the best knife fighters in the world, along with being a superb interrogator, which more than made up for the minor inconvenience of her beauty.

Upon reaching a footpath, Zalhares turned into the trees and paused in a pool of shadow. The fourth member of the team, craggy-faced with a short ponytail, stepped out of the greenery. Once an escaping prisoner had foolishly grabbed that hair to try to subdue Artero Mariano, but the razor blades hidden inside had neatly sliced off his fingers. The prisoner had howled at the pain, but when Mariano got hold of him, the screaming really began.

Making sure they were alone, the four exchanged pointed glances, then nodded in readiness and checked their weapons.

“We’re in the clear, Eagle One.” Zalhares sub-vocalized into his throat mike, thumbing the control in the pocket of his windbreaker to change to the CIA channel. The unit automatically scrambled the broadcast, then shifted to another frequency and code so that even if MI-5 or the local police were listening in, they would never be able to decipher the transmission soon enough to stop what was happening in the peaceful London park.

“Our goat has arrived, Falcon,” Osbourne said brusquely, his voice tense with controlled excitement. “Caucasian male, denim pants and shirt, portly, mustache, steel-rim glasses.”

“Confirm, Eagle,” Zalhares said, starting along the footpath. “We will engage. Want anybody alive for questioning, sir?”

There was a buzz of static in the earphone for a moment, masking the reply. “Hello, Eagle? Repeat, please, 10-2.”

“Falcon, I said not this time,” Osbourne said tersely. “Our psych department says that it will scare the hell out of the others in their group to have a team simply vanish off the face of the earth. No bodies, no news coverage, just gone. It makes the next batch of killers move a little slower, and thus easier to stop. Terminate with extreme prejudice.”

The word is “kill,” Zalhares thought snidely to himself. How can the CIA order something done if they’re too cowardly to even speak the word? Americans were rich, but foolishly sentimental. A combination he found to be highly conducive for business.

“Confirmed,” he said out loud. “Falcon out.”

The rest of the Scion dispersed into the greenery as Zalhares turned toward the street. Reaching the corner, he saw a double-decker bus pull to a halt at the curb with a hiss of air brakes, the oversize vehicle gently rocking for a few seconds as the shocks rode out the inertia.

A short, fat man with metal glasses and tightly carrying a plain leather briefcase stepped quickly from the bus. As he started toward the park, several men rose from parked cars and headed after the plump courier. They were dressed in ridiculously loud sports coats with noticeable lumps under their arms from holstered weapons. Zalhares tried not to frown at the sight of the rank amateurs. These Libyan fools were a threat to America?

Hurrying down a footpath, the fat man darted into a break in the bushes and disappeared from sight. Only seconds behind, his pursuers quickly followed.

“Now,” Zalhares said, entering the bushes from another direction.

“Confirm,” Mariano replied.

Moving with silent grace, Zalhares slipped through the manicured hedges and entered a small clearing in the heart of the park. There he saw the four Libyans converge on the fat man, each of them carrying a stun gun or pepper spray. As they tried to cut off his escape, the courier simply dived to the ground, hugging the briefcase.

Zalhares and his people charged the circle of Libyans from behind. At the sound of their footsteps, the men turned from the cringing courier and the members of the Scion moved like lightning, each choosing a target and ramming a knife upward into the bottom of the jaw to pin the mouth shut.

As the startled Libyans began to choke on the blood filling their throats, they dropped the stun guns and spray cans and tried to pull real weapons, but it was too late.

Zalhares grabbed an arm of the biggest man and broke it with a twisting gesture, making him drop the 9 mm Glock pistol. Mariano did the same. Pedrosa crushed another man’s neck in his bare grip, the bones audibly cracking. Mizne stabbed her target with another knife, leaving the blade buried deep in his chest to stem any possible gush of blood from the ruptured heart.

Only yards away from cheerful families having a picnic on the village green, the Libyan terrorists died, drowning in their own blood, not so much as a whisper escaping their lips. Rising from the ground, the fat courier nodded at the members of Scion in frank appreciation, then calmly walked away and out of sight. The moment he was gone, the mercs shifted the bodies behind some bushes instead of lugging them to the open sewer grating deeper in the parkland as they had the other corpses. Then they pulled their weapons and carefully checked the sleek sound suppressors attached to their Brazilian-made Imbel .22 pistols. The mercs clicked off the safeties and racked the slides to chamber a round for immediate use.

“Eagle, this is Falcon,” Zalhares said, touching his throat mike. “All clear.”

“Confirm, Falcon. Another good job,” Osbourne said. “And so ends the British cell of the Libyan National Front. Hell of a day, people. Forty-five terrorists killed and no breakage. Not an agent lost.”

“Well, sir, a live Zodiac is a hell of a bait,” another CIA agent added on the encrypted channel, a trace of a Southern accent in his voice. “Too good for those sons of bitches to pass up.”

“Damn straight it is,” Osbourne chuckled. “Good job, Falcon. You handle the bodies, and we’ll cover the Zodiac to the truck. We’ll meet you back at the Savoy Hotel for a debriefing.”

Holstering his piece, Cirello Zalhares looked at his people and they nodded.

“Confirm, Eagle,” he replied, giving a rare smile. “See you real soon.”

But as the mercs began to leave, the bushes rustled near the stacked corpses and a London constable pushed his way into the clearing.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded firmly.

Without pause, the Scion pulled their guns and fired, the silenced weapons whispering death. Grunting at each impact, the patrolman folded over and tumbled to the grass, bleeding from a dozen small wounds.

“Sorry, I was once a police officer myself,” Mariano said, advancing close to press his weapon directly to the temple of the dying man. “But business is business.”

Struggling to breathe, the unarmed constable clawed for the radio microphone hanging over his shoulder. Mariano fired the pistol. Jerking backward, the patrolman trembled for a moment, then lay still.

“Quickly! Get him into the bushes,” Mizne directed, removing the partially used clip from the Imbel .22 and quickly inserting a fresh one. “We must not deviate from the plan!”

“Wait,” Zalhares said slowly, glancing at the park beyond the thick hedges. “Maybe we can use this dead man to our advantage.”

AS THE PLUMP COURIER reached the footbridge near the bank of the Thames, six other men moved smoothly from the surrounding crowd to form a protective ring. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the CIA agents kept everybody away from the man and his battered old briefcase.

From on the footbridge, Osbourne keenly watched the milling civilians for any suspicious movements. But nobody seemed to be following the group or paying them any undue attention. Good. Everything seemed to be under control. Although Osbourne grudgingly admitted a faint unease at his inability to locate the constable who patrolled the riverbank. But since neither Scotland Yard nor the local bulls were privy to the covert actions here today, the fellow could just be having lunch, or was otherwise occupied.

Reaching into a pocket, Osbourne switched channels on his radio. “Nest, this is Eagle, all clear, we’re on the way with the egg.”

“We’re ready, Eagle,” a woman replied. “Hawks are live and ready for anything.”

“Good. Stay alert, see you in five.”

“Roger that, Eagle. Nest, out.”

Passing a fish-and-chips vendor, one of the CIA agents scowled as an elderly woman liberally doused her chips with vinegar and salt.

“What the hell is a ‘toad in the hole’?” he muttered. “Sounds like something you get from a Hong Kong hooker for fifty bucks.”

“God, I want a hamburger so bad my dick hurts,” another man answered curtly.

One of the other agents snorted a laugh. Everybody was starting to relax. This was the last Zodiac, they were in the clear now and it was smooth sailing. The project was completed and a total success.

“So after this, we’ll hit the McDonald’s in Piccadilly Square,” the first agent said, scratching his chest to keep a hand near his gun. “Burgers and fries sounds good to me.”

“Amen, brother.”

“Please, I have not eaten American food in thirty years,” the courier said, shifting his grip on the briefcase. “I would kill for a hot dog right about now.”

“Then lunch is on the Agency. You guys did a hell of a job and deserve a bucket of medals. The least we can do is buy lunch.”

“Yes, it is almost over,” the courier said, sighing deeply. “Only a few more minutes and I shall be free.”

At the base of the footbridge Osbourne joined the others and all conversation stopped. Staying in tight formation, the group swung around the library, to find an unmarked armored truck in the parking lot, the engine idling softly.

The two uniformed guards in the front nodded at Osbourne. One raised a mike from the dashboard to speak a single word, then tucked it away again. A few seconds later, heavy bolts could be heard disengaging before the thick rear door of the truck swung ponderously aside. Inside the vehicle there was a squat lead safe bolted to the floor and surrounded by six more CIA agents wearing flak jackets and armed with M-16 carbines. More weapons hung on the metal walls, along with medical kits, metal netting and ABC breathing masks. No chances were being taken this day.

As Osbourne and his team approached, the six guards assumed a firing stance.

“Blue skies,” Osbourne said. “You can stand down.”

At the all-clear signal, the guards moved away from the safe as the courier climbed into the truck. Kneeling on the floor, the plump man nervously wiped a sweaty palm on a leg to dry it first before pressing it to a security pad on top of the box. The indicator lights blinked twice, then the door loudly unlocked to swing aside, revealing several identical briefcases. Placing the item into a numbered slot, the courier closed the safe with a satisfied expression.

“Done,” he whispered. “It’s finally over.”

A crackle of static sounded over everybody’s earphones, followed by muffled gunfire.

“Red alert!” Zalhares shouted. “We have a situation in the drop zone. A police officer is down…shit, Dog is hit! We’re under attack by an Iraqi backup team. We need immediate assistance Eagle! Now, goddammit, right now!”

Drawing his piece, Osbourne now realized why the constable had been missing. Poor bastard. “We’re on the way, Falcon,” Osbourne said, jumping out of the armored truck. “Let’s move with a purpose, people!”

Pulling their weapons, the CIA agents poured onto the parking lot, then impatiently waited for the guards to close and lock the armored door. As the agents raced around the library, the strolling civilians started to scream at the sight of armed men running through the park.

Seconds later the Scion came charging around the other side of the library, their weapons drawn and Zalhares adjusting the preburner on a U.S. Army M-1 flamethrower. Halfway to the armored truck, he crouched against the recoil and pressed the lever on the insulated wand to send out a stream of napalm. The burning lance hit the rear grille of the thick door and sprayed through to fill the vehicle. Covered in flames, the guards and the courier shrieked wildly and dashed around, slamming into the walls and one another in a blind panic to escape. A few moments later the ammunition in the rifles began to cook off from the mounting heat, the hardball ammo ricocheting off the walls in a hellish clamor, cutting short the agonized wails.

Seated in the front cab, the driver and uniformed guard couldn’t see what was happening on the other side of the steel wall in the rear of the truck, but they could clearly hear the hideous screaming. Grabbing a Remington shotgun from a ceiling mount the uniformed guard racked the slide to chamber a shell as the driver pulled a .357 Magnum pistol and threw open the sliding panel covering the conversation grille. Broiling waves of flame poured instantly into his face, searing his skin and setting his hair on fire. Recoiling in a wordless scream, the driver accidentally discharged his pistol, blowing a hole in the seat. He threw away the weapon to wave his hands at the flames engulfing his head.

“Jesus Christ!” the other guard cried, jerking backward against the door and raising the shotgun for protection.

Moving without conscious thought, the burning driver clawed at the handle of the cab door and shoved it open to throw himself outside to try to escape the flames. Tumbling to the cool pavement, the driver beat at the fire with his blistered hands and only vaguely noticed some people coming his way. There was a metallic cough, a flash of pressure, and his pain ended forever.

BURSTING THROUGH the hedges, Osbourne and his people found the dead Libyans and the constable. But there was no sign of the Scion or anybody else.

“Son of a bitch, we’ve been tricked!” Osbourne cursed angrily, grabbing his throat mike. “Nest, this is Eagle. Evac, now! Scion may be compromised! Repeat, Zalhares may have turned! Acknowledge!” There was only the soft hiss of background static as a reply.

“Nest, do you copy!” Osbourne demanded, pushing through the foliage and starting back toward the distant library. He could see a plume of dark smoke rising from behind the building and doubled his speed.

Police and fire department sirens were growing louder as the CIA operatives circled the library. Tendrils of smoke sailed through the air, which carried an aroma oddly reminiscent of roasted pork. The older agents scowled as they identified the stench of burned human flesh mixed with the telltale reek of napalm.

The hot wand and pressurized tanks of a flamethrower lay discarded on the pavement. Sprawled nearby were two bodies; the uniformed guard, obviously shot in the head, and what appeared to be the driver, although the face was burned beyond recognition. There was no sign of the armored truck.

“The bastards got them,” an agent whispered. “Zalhares and his crew stole the entire shipment of Zodiacs!”

“Kissel, take two men and sweep the neighborhood for that truck or any more bodies,” Osbourne growled, slowly holstering his gun. “I’ll handle Scotland Yard. Wallace, grab a cab and get your ass to the American Embassy and call the White House.”

“We’ll need top authorization before we can brief the Brits on what’s loose in their city,” the agent replied, buttoning his jacket closed. “If then.”

“Yeah, I know,” Osbourne said woodenly as squads of police cars raced into the parking lot. “How can we tell anybody that the world just lost a battle in the war on terrorism?”