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Appointment In Baghdad. Don Pendleton
Читать онлайн.Название Appointment In Baghdad
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781472086099
Автор произведения Don Pendleton
Жанр Приключения: прочее
Издательство HarperCollins
Out of the jumble of conversation Bolan suddenly heard several words he recognized from his intel briefings at Stony Man Farm. Someone said Monzer al-Kassar’s name, which he’d already known. Then Hadayet said a different name: Scimitar.
The code name was cliché but iconic and was used as the calling card of a man believed to be at the center of the web of an international network of violent jihadist and criminal enterprises that stretched across the Middle East and southwest Asia.
Bolan slowly pulled his borescope out from under the lip of the door. He coiled the fiber-optic camera cable back up into a tight loop and attached it behind the heads-up display with a little Velcro strap designed for the purpose. He slid the device into the inside pocket of his jacket and shifted the H&K MP-5 SD-3 around.
Gary Manning’s deep voice came across the com-link. His voice remained calm but his urgency was obvious.
“We’ve got trouble,” Manning said. “There was nothing across the scanner, but I got an unmarked sedan with a dashboard light that just pulled into the alley.”
“Roger,” Bolan whispered.
“Get out!” Manning’s voice suddenly gritted. “Get out, they just rushed the door and a request for backup call just went out over the scanner. My boys had a surveillance operation. Get out.”
At that moment Bolan heard the downstairs door break open and the shouts of men as they entered the stairway on the first floor.
“Get Jack into the air and over the rally point,” Bolan ordered.
“Roger,” Manning acknowledged.
Then everything began to fall apart.
The voices in the kitchen went silent then burst into frantic curses, and in the distance Bolan heard the wail of police sirens. He knew with sudden intuition that a storm had just arrived in Toronto.
CHAPTER THREE
Bolan heard chairs scrape across the floor from inside the mosque’s kitchen and backpedaled from the door as it was thrown open. Light spilled into the gloomy hallway like dawn rising, and Bolan dropped to one knee and swung up the MP-5.
The first of the kitchen cabal rushed into the hallway. Raneen Ogedi held his Skorpion machine pistol at hip height as he emerged from the cramped room, his head already turning toward the far end of the hall where the footsteps of numerous men could be clearly heard thundering up the fire stairs. He looked stunned to see the black-clad Bolan crouched in the hallway. Ogedi leveled his weapon. The chugging sound of the silenced MP-5 was eerie as Bolan pulled down on the terrorist. His spent shells were caught in the cloth-and-wire brass catcher attached to the weapon’s ejection port. A 3-round burst of 9 mm Parabellum slugs ripped into the Iraqi’s face with brutal effect.
Blood splashed like paint onto the wood of the door and stood out vividly against the pale linoleum of the kitchen floor behind the man. Ogedi turned in a sloppy half circle and bounced off the kitchen door before dropping onto the ancient carpet of the hallway.
The next figure in the frantic line stumbled into the door frame. Bolan cut loose again and put a tight burst into the chest of the pistol wielding Sourouri, who had raced into the hallway directly behind the Iraqi killer. The man’s eyes were locked on the fallen form of his jihadist brother, and they lifted in shock as Bolan’s rounds punched up under his sternum, mangling his lungs and heart.
Blood gushed in a waterfall over the lips of the man’s gaping mouth and he tripped up in Ogedi’s legs and went down face-first. Bolan saw Bakr frozen at the edge of the kitchen door, hands held out and empty, his eyes locked on the grim specter of the Executioner.
Down the hallway the fire door burst open and Bolan glimpsed three men in suits, pistols drawn, as they raced into the hall. The lead man had a leather wallet open in his left hand and Bolan caught the dim flash of an RCMP badge.
Bolan rushed forward, hurtling the tangled mass of the two fallen terrorists. He slammed his shoulder into Bakr and knocked him out of the way. The old man grunted under the impact and spun off Bolan, stumbling backward over a chair and falling heavily to the kitchen floor. Something in Bolan, some sense of mercy or propriety, kept him from killing the man.
The soldier used the momentum of his impact with the man to spin to one side, putting himself at an angle to the fumbling Aram Hadayet, who was attempting to bring his pistol to bear. Bolan gripped his MP-5 in both hands and chopped it down like an ax, using the long sound suppressor like a bayonet.
The smoking, cylindrical tube struck the youth in his narrow almost-feminine wrist with a crack, and he dropped his weapon in surprised shock. Bolan swept the submachine-gun back and then thrust it forward, burying it in the Syrian’s soft abdomen. Hadayet folded as he gagged, and Bolan cracked him across the back of the neck with the MP-5’s collapsible buttstock. The youth went down hard to the floor. A cell phone skidded out of his hand and slid across the floor to bounce off the stove before sliding back to Bolan’s feet.
The Executioner heard footsteps pounding in the hall and sirens wailing outside as more police cars raced into the alley below the kitchen window. In the hall men were shouting, identifying themselves as police officers. Bolan caught a flash of motion out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Hiba Bakr scrambling to escape the kitchen.
Bolan let the man go, hoping he would slow the plainclothes police officers outside as he made good his own escape. Two hardcore killers had been put down and two intelligence coups left for the authorities to question. Bolan’s code of ethics wouldn’t let him fire on the police, even in self-defense, and he had an aversion to killing holy men.
He heard Hadayet moan at his feet, and he twisted to fire a burst across the room, shattering the glass. Beyond the window he saw the spiral reflections of flashing red emergency lights. In the hallway officers ordered Bakr to “Get down! Get down now!”
Bolan used the distraction to bend and secure the loose cell phone dropped by Hadayet. He rose and sprang toward the window across the kitchen. An RCMP officer, rushed the door with his pistol up, a mini flashlight attached below the barrel of the handgun. As Bolan passed the kitchen table, he turned and flipped it up so that it flew back and landed in the doorway.
The officer ducked back around the corner of the kitchen door to avoid the flying furniture. Bolan dropped the MP-5 and let it dangle from its sling as he scrambled up onto the counter. The leather sleeve of his jacket protected his arm as he knocked splinters of glass away from the window frame.
He stuck a leg through the window and prepared to duck out onto the fire escape. He looked back toward the kitchen door as he slid out and saw the officer he had distracted swing back around the corner, his service pistol held in both hands.
Bolan threw himself to the side as the man fired his weapon. A 10 mm slug cracked into the wall just to the soldier’s right, creating a pockmark, and the roar of the pistol was deafening in the acoustic chamber of a tiny room.
There was a frenzy of activity beneath him. Two separate police cruisers had entered the alley behind the mosque from either direction, and more sirens heralded the arrival of backup. Men shouted up at the fire escape from below, excited by the pistol shot.
“I have sights on. I have sights on,” Manning said over the com-link. “You want me to put their heads down?”
Bolan kept rolling as he fell, turning over his shoulder. He reached out with his hands and pulled himself upright by grasping the cold iron bars of the fire escape ladder. He hauled himself up and gathered his feet under him. Set, he scrambled upward, running hard up the rungs.
“Negative, negative,” Bolan snarled. “I’m still good.”
Below him the Canadian cop thrust his body out of the window and shouted for Bolan to stop, raising his weapon. Bolan ignored him, his lungs burning as