"Destroyer 052 - Fool's Gold.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"Why is that?"
"Because we cannot have another armed force on the island."
"Who is this we?"
"It's a secret organization. I can't tell you about it."
"What secret organization?"
"I said I can't talk about it," Remo said.
"It's a game."
"Not a game. You and your brothers are going to be dead by morning."
"Do I sign something? When do I get the prize?" asked Malaise.
"I have come here to kill you and your brothers and you will all be dead before tomorrow noon," said Remo.
"All right. What for?" said Jean Malaise. The commercial was on now and he didn't like commercials.
"Because you murder people on their boats and smuggle drugs into America with those boats."
"So why kill me? We've always done that. Are we cutting into your market?"
"Listen," said Remo, feeling a rare sense of anger. "I am not here because I am a competitor. I am here because you are going to die. Tonight. And your sixteen brothers."
"Shhhh, the commercial's over."
"Mrs. Malaise," said Remo. "Would you please call all the brothers here? I want to see them tonight."
"They were here last night," said Mrs. Malaise.
"Just call them and tell them to bring weapons if they want."
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"They always carry weapons."
"Call them," Remo said.
"They are really going to kill you," said the woman.
"Call," said Remo and then to Jean Malaise, "What's happening? I don't understand French."
"This detective, Mr. Columbo, who is French on his mother's side, is outsmarting the British."
"I think they've changed the story line in translation," Remo said. "You wouldn't happen to know what a fuesal is?"
"That again?" said Malaise.
"It goes on a boat and is about eight inches long and has ball bearings and does something with the fuel mixture or something."
"No," said Malaise, still absorbed by the picture.
"You doing a good business?" Remo asked.
"It's a living," the man said.
"So far," said Remo.
It took the brothers less than 20 minutes to assemble in the living room. Remo could not remember their names. He waited until Columbo was over and then spoke to all of them.
"Quiet. Will you please? Quiet. Quiet. Shhh. Will you listen? I've come here to kill you. Now we can do it here, but I suggest outside because the floors here will get messy as hell."
"What is the game?" said one.
"There's no game," Remo said.
"Jean Baptiste says you are giving away something for a game show. We will be on American television."
"No, no. You will not be on American televi-
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sion. You are all going to die tonight because I am going to kill you. All right, is that clear?"
There was much confused talking in French and there were a few angry voices. They all looked to the oldest brother, Jean Baptiste Malaise.
"Okay, you sonofabitch, now you going to die. You come here interrupting Columbo and bringing no beer and then lying about us being on television. You will die. We've killed hundreds."
"Not in my living room," screamed Mrs. Malaise.
"Outside," said Malaise.
"Not in the peonies," said Mrs. Malaise.
Remo was the last one outside and Jean Baptiste tried a simple turn with a pistol. It was basically just hiding the pistol, then turning and firing straight ahead on the turn, but Remo caught the wrist before its fingers could fire and smoothly pushed the sternum up into the heart, stopping it. He caught three temples immediately, stopping the brains, and followed the others who had yet to turn around with six blows, rapid, using both hands, sending fragments of the occipital into the brain, three strokes, two hands, one, two, three, very rapidly like an automatic riveter. Two others were turning around with knives as he caught their skulls at the coronal sutures, splitting the casing of the brains and rupturing them.
One of the brothers had a submachine gun and was waiting to get a shot. He waited forever. He couldn't quite pull the trigger because his arm had been crushed at the elbow. He didn't even see the hand go through the suborbital notch of the skull. There was just darkness.
Another was squeezing off a shot from a .357
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magnum with which he had personally taken 22 lives in desperate island coves. He could have sworn he was pointing the gun at the stranger but if that were so, why was he looking at the flash? He did not look long. The big shell exploded in his face.
Another had a length of chain with a heavy copper-pointed lead slug at the end that he cracked bottles with for practice and faces with for real. Somehow the stranger caught this deadly slug being whipped with centrifugal force with one delicate finger and just as delicately put it back into the face that had seen so many others die.