Death Gamble Read online

  “I guess we should get started then,” she said.

  “That’s what I’m paying you for. First, finish your drink. I haven’t got all damn night.”

  Shedding her veneer of civility, she gulped the remainder of the spiked vodka and slammed the glass on the coffee table. “No, you don’t. Not with me, anyway.”

  He shrugged, settling into the couch, hoping to get his money’s worth before the drugs kicked in and the shooting started.

  As she began to unfasten her dress, machine guns rattled outside, startling them both. He pushed the woman away and looked at the wall clock: 11:23. They’d come a half hour before they’d said they would.

  He’d drill the Russian for this.

  The woman looked at him. Her mouth started to open, to form a question. He put a finger to his lips to silence her.

  “Shut up,” he said, “and let me check this out.”

  Draining his drink, he rose from the couch with a grunt, shambled to a window and peered through it. Muzzle-flashes interrupted the darkness, momentarily illuminating the shooters. In the repeated glare, Dade saw members of his security entourage twisting, dying, under repeated bursts of gunfire.

  Too bad about most of those guys, Dade thought. Except for Sharpe. Sanctimonious prick constantly looked down his nose at Dade. He’d never snort coke with Dade, or shack up with a hooker for an evening, even when Dade offered to pay. Dade wasn’t dying to party with the guy; he just liked to own things. And employees who took drugs on the job or married men who screwed around would sign away their souls to keep from being found out. Dade was only too happy to provide the paperwork.

  But Sharpe, with his uptight, superhero morality, hadn’t been for sale. Dade had no use for him.

  He turned. The woman stood behind him, trying to peer around his bulk to see what was happening outside. Her eyes looked clouded, and she struggled to stand. Dade assumed the drug was kicking in.

  “What’s happening? Who’s shooting?” She slurred her words.

  He shoved her hard back into the couch. “Sit down, shut up,” he said. “No one’s going to hurt us. I have people outside.”

  “We should call for help,” she cried.

  “Stay where you are. I’ll handle this.”

  The woman looked like she wanted to stand, but she found herself unable to do so as the drugs raced through her system, claimed her will. She stayed seated, fought to keep her eyes open. Dade ignored her. He returned to the bar, fixed another drink. He heard gunshots and screams outside. What possessed these men to lay down their lives to protect someone? he wondered. Even someone as important as him?

  He gulped his drink and prepared another.

  Dade looked at the woman. She remained on the couch, eyes closed, head cocked to one side, asleep. He stepped behind the bar, withdrew a leather valise and set it on the bar. Popping the case open, he checked its contents, making sure the disks remained inside.

  The disks contained the sum total of Dade’s dozen or so years of hard work developing the Nightwind aircraft. The world thought the best America could muster were lumbering jetliners outfitted with massive, sometimes unreliable laser-weapons systems. Sentinel and the U.S. military had been only too happy to perpetuate that belief, even as the Feds secretly funneled billions into the Nightwind program.

  Sentinel had given Dade the proverbial blank check. In return, he had created a product expected to generate untold billions in revenue while also providing the military with the ultimate weapon.

  Now they planned to repay him with a pink slip.

  When the gunfire outside finally stopped, Dade stepped into the foyer and peered through the peephole. An army of strangers surrounded the door. A battering ram hit the oak portal with a dull thud. He considered keying in the security code, letting them in the easy way, but decided against it. Let them work for him.

  He was, after all, the prize.

  1

  Freetown, Sierra Leone

  It would be so damn easy.

  Mack Bolan settled the crosshairs on the murderer’s nose, rested his finger on the Remington 700 sniper rifle’s trigger and paused.

  He could finish the job in an instant, send a bullet crashing into the skull of the man who called himself Talisman, silencing the dozens of tortured souls crying out for retribution.

  He’d come to West Africa looking for a kidnapped American scientist. He needed to figure out how a former Revolutionary United Front commander—and rapist and murderer—was tied into a kidnapping that occurred thousands of miles away in the Nevada desert.

  After that, all bets were off.

  Decked out in his black combat suit, face smeared in black combat cosmetics, Bolan had positioned himself on a rooftop fifty yards from the kill zone. The vantage point allowed him to get the lay of the land before he raided Talisman’s compound. Through the scope’s magnification, Bolan watched as Talisman took a pull from a joint, held the smoke for several seconds, exhaled. The killer smiled and passed the joint to one of his subordinates who obediently took a hit and passed it on.

  Physically, the man was impressive. Talisman stood four inches taller than Bolan, and moved with the grace and confidence of a veteran soldier. The dossier provided by Stony Man Farm had indicated that the African, a former army officer, had gone rogue nearly a decade ago, joining sides with those sworn to unseat the government. Since then, he’d been linked with the rape, dismemberment and murder of countless individuals.

  Bolan had no trouble believing the man was a coldblooded killer. Talisman carried a long-handled ax in his belt and an AK-47 hung from his shoulder.

  Setting down his rifle, Bolan tugged at his collar to release the heat from inside his sweat-soaked shirt, and considered what he had seen so far. Several gunners milled about the compound, swigging beer and smoking. The smoke, coupled with the stench of rotting sewage and perspiration, hung in the humid air and assailed Bolan’s senses.

  Two of the gunners concentrated on the job at hand, scanning the immediate perimeter for intruders.

  The hardsite consisted of a large single-story building constructed of concrete blocks and roofed with rust-tinged corrugated metal. Several smaller buildings ringed the main structure. Fences topped with razor wire held the verdant jungle at bay on three sides of the rectangular property. In the distance, Bolan could see Lumley Beach and the white lights of boats traversing the ocean.

  Peeling paint, rusting roofs, sagging walls and roaming livestock contrasted sharply with the signs of prosperity littering the property.

  A half-dozen Toyotas, Mercedes and BMWs, caked in dirt, but otherwise brand-new, were parked around the compound. A satellite dish was perched on the roof of the compound’s largest building.

  Moreover, the weapons carried by Talisman’s gunners nagged at Bolan. He had expected to face down AK-47 copies, the Saturday-night Special of developing nations. But of the men carried new Beretta 92-F pistols, M-4 assault rifles with grenade launchers and Remington shotguns. Several of the men, including Talisman, wore headsets for communication.

  Talisman had either bought the toys with blood money from the diamonds he sold, or someone was bankrolling him. This begged the question whom? But Bolan dismissed it from his mind as quickly as it had entered. If there was more to this than met the eye—and he was sure there was—he’d unearth it after he grabbed the scientist and returned the man to safety.

  If he could get the scientist. A sinking feeling told him the mission had been compromised from the start, that he might be walking straight into a death trap.

  Over his protests and those of Hal Brognola, head of the Justice Department’s Sensitive Operations Group, a team from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Services had been drafted to participate in the raid. Bolan preferred to work alone. Failing that, he wanted the warriors of Phoenix Force or Able Team covering his back. Unfortunately, both teams had been on missions elsewhere. The President had insisted that Bolan have someone waiting in the wings as a conting
ency plan, in case he took a bullet and couldn’t pull off the rescue.

  The State Department team had gone MIA, and so had Bolan’s confidence in the mission. But the clock was ticking, and he couldn’t wait for a better time to make his play.

  Bolan inventoried his weapons. The Beretta 93-R with its attached custom sound suppressor was holstered in his left armpit. A .44 Magnum Desert Eagle rode on his right hip. He cradled a sound-suppressed Heckler & Koch MP-5 SO-3, the lead weapon on this assault. A .357 Colt Python with a 2.5-inch barrel was snug in the small of his back, standing by as a last-chance weapon if everything else went to hell. He carried ammunition for the various weapons, a Ka-Bar fighting knife and an assortment of grenades on his combat harness and in the various pockets of his black combat suit. He unloaded his rifle, pocketed the cartridges and left the empty weapon on the roof. The rifle was great for distance, but its size and mule’s kick recoil made it impractical for the up close and personal war he was about to wage.

  Descending from his vantage point like a silent wraith, Bolan hit the ground and moved toward the compound, crouching in the shadows of a small shed, twenty-five yards from the knot of hardmen. He watched as Talisman laughed and cuffed one of his men on the temple. The man spun away while the others howled in delight. Talisman turned and disappeared inside the sagging house.

  There were two guards outside.

  Or so Bolan hoped.

  Like a sleek jungle cat, the warrior bore down on his prey with deadly efficiency, using shadows and car bodies to shroud his approach.

  Bolan crept up on his target, a man smoking a cigarette and scanning the surrounding vegetation with infrared binoculars. As he closed the gap between himself and the hardman, he heard the guy’s headset crackle to life.

  Spotters.

  In a single fluid motion, the man wheeled toward Bolan and raised his weapon. The M-4’s barrel was ablaze as the stubby assault rifle churned out 5.56 mm rounds that flew high and wide to Bolan’s right. Without a doubt, the guy was fast; but Bolan was faster and he had the drop.

  Bolan loosed a burst that hammered the man’s center mass, knocking him off his feet as though he’d just been struck by a thirty-foot tidal wave.

  Suddenly gunfire flared toward Bolan from the surrounding jungle, chewing into the ground and kicking up geysers of dirt around his feet. He dropped into a crouch and darted left. He stroked the MP-5’s trigger on the run and sprayed the jungle with a torrent of 9 mm rippers. The hail of gunfire bought him a couple of seconds and he started for the house.

  Another guard stepped across his path, a Beretta 92-F extended in a two-handed grip, the muzzle locked on Bolan’s head. The man hesitated for a moment, giving the big American a chance to squeeze off another burst from his weapon. The slugs slammed into his target, striking the hip and continuing diagonally across the man’s abdomen, chest and shoulder. The guard crashed to the ground in a dead heap.

  Cracking a fresh clip into the H&K, Bolan continued toward the house. He’d hoped to take out the men with knives and silenced weapons. But that idea was shot to hell, thanks to the army of unseen spotters tracking his movements.

  Where the hell had they come from? Bolan wondered. He had scoured the area for backup troops and had found nothing. He’d even made a second sweep when the State Department men had failed to show. Had he missed something?

  He didn’t have time to second-guess himself.

  Several men spilled from the doorway of Talisman’s stronghold, firing assault rifles and automatic pistols in Bolan’s direction. The warrior plucked a fragmentation grenade from his web gear. Pulling the pin, he lobbed the bomb toward his attackers and threw himself behind a nearby Mercedes. The weapon exploded, causing thunder, orange yellow flames and screams to pierce the compound.

  Bolan peered around the Mercedes’ front end and surveyed the damage wrought by the grenade. Some hardmen were dead; others, soaked in their own blood, fire chewing through garments and flesh as they screamed, shook or gasped for breath. Bolan plowed through the dead and dying, plugging an occasional mercy round into the wounded as he closed in on the house.

  More gunfire streamed out of the jungle, whipping around Bolan, passing just inches from his body. He wheeled and spotted a pair of men simultaneously sprinting from the brush and converging on him from opposite directions. Caressing the H&K’s trigger, Bolan laid down a sustained burst and hosed the men down.

  A dull thud sounded behind him. Anyone else would have missed the sound amid the sounds of battle, but not Bolan. He had senses, combat instincts, honed to a keen edge from countless battles. Turning, he saw a grenade in the dirt just a few yards from where he stood. If lucky, he had three seconds or so before the numbers dropped to zero and he found himself in the heart of a deadly firestorm.

  A door, Bolan’s only hope of refuge, yawned open before him. A gunner with blood in his eyes folded himself around the doorframe and drew down on Bolan with an assault rifle.

  Caught in a no-win situation, Bolan did the only thing he could.

  Legs pumping, heart slamming into overdrive, he closed in on the house and hurled himself forward into what seemed a certain death.

  RYTOVA WATCHED the big soldier fighting it out with Talisman’s men while also taking fire from behind, and decided she’d seen enough.

  Cradling an Uzi tricked out with a sound suppressor, she pushed her way through the tangles of trees and vegetation surrounding Talisman’s compound and closed in on the fence surrounding the property. Autofire crackled ahead of her, a din occasionally interrupted by screams or a pistol’s lone bark.

  Rytova stepped into a morass of mud, a leftover from the rainy season, and felt her foot sink up to the ankle. She grimaced and cursed under her breath. If indeed there was a hell on Earth, this African sinkhole qualified. Pulling her leg free, she continued on. Perspiration slicked her palms, and she worried it might cause the Uzi to slip from her hands at a critical moment. Moisture-laden air and sweat-soaked clothing clung to her trim form like a second skin, at times seemingly suffocating her. Her ash-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail and hidden under a black baseball cap, but loose wet strands clung to the back of her neck. What the hell was she doing here?

  She pushed the grousing from her mind and instead focused on the job at hand. She’d come to Africa looking for the man—the monster—who’d decimated her entire life.

  Nikolai Kursk.

  The very thought of his name stoked a fiery rage within that scorched her heart and soul and seemed her only companion. The bastard had robbed her of everything—killed the two men who’d meant the most two her, her husband and her father. Normally, Kursk barely would remember either one. However, during the past several months, Rytova had taken steps to insure he’d never forget them.

  God knew she wouldn’t.

  Her friends in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service—the small number of men and women willing to stand up to the Russian Mafia’s murder machine—had said Kursk was in Africa, but didn’t know exactly where. To get that information, she needed to talk to someone on the inside of Kursk’s organization, specifically his African operations. Talisman, who ran guns and diamonds for the butcher she sought, filled the bill perfectly.

  She’d expected to find Talisman and his gunners lounging, drunk or stoned out of their minds, easy pickings. Instead she found them engaged in a full-fledged firefight with a stranger. The hell of it was, the stranger seemed to be winning.

  She watched as he wheeled, fired on a pair of gunners who burst from the surrounding brush and unloaded weapons in his direction. Both died in a hail of gunfire as the man fanned a sound-suppressed submachine gun in their direction. The weapon seemed an extension of the man, an appendage wielded with deadly efficiency,

  The powerful man dressed in black reminded Rytova of Dmitri, strong and confident in battle. But—and it felt a form of sacrilege to think this—the stranger was even more so; he was like a human cyclone, ripping through his opponents with an ea
se that seemed almost impossible.

  Still, he was outnumbered. And no single person could survive against those odds.

  Staying in a crouch, she tunneled through the heavy jungle foliage surrounding the killing field and closed in on the compound. Tracing the muzzle-flashes emanating from within the jungle, she pinpointed at least two of the gunners. One was positioned fifty yards northeast of her; a second was closer, about twenty yards straight north. She moved in that direction.

  Rytova had brought a pair of night-vision goggles with her, but had decided against using them. Outdoor halogen spotlights powered by an unseen generator illuminated Talisman’s stronghold, and accidental exposure to intense light while wearing the goggles could have left her temporarily blind.

  As it was, the lights threw off enough glare to make trudging through the jungle manageable. And, under the circumstances, manageable was about the best she could hope for.

  She wasn’t sure if the man tearing up the compound was a law-enforcement officer or a military operative. Perhaps Talisman had run afoul of his handler and Kursk had ordered him hit. She dismissed that thought outright. Odds were the man wasn’t carrying out a hit at Kursk’s behest—he’d send in an army, not a single man, even someone with this man’s fighting prowess.

  Subtlety wasn’t Kursk’s style. She’d learned that painful lesson months ago.

  Anger again burned through her body and a coppery taste filled her mouth. She swallowed hard and gripped her Uzi tighter. Let the mystery fighter try his head-on assault. She’d rely on stealth.

  She came in behind one of the gunners. He shouldered an assault rifle and stared through a scope, apparently trying to catch the black-suited stranger in the weapon’s crosshairs.

  She drew down on him with the Uzi, hesitated. She’d killed before, but always in head-on attacks. Could she shoot a man from behind?

  Her quarry suddenly stiffened and turned, swiveling at the waist as he sought her out with his rifle muzzle. She hadn’t made a sound, so how did he know she was closing in? Was it instinct or had someone warned him of her approach via his headset communicator? Sloppy, she was so blasted sloppy. She was thinking like an intelligence analyst again, ignoring her paramilitary training.