"Дон Пендлтон. The Violent Streets ("Палач" #41) " - читать интересную книгу автора

The Executioner entered the house silently, moving through a cluttered
utility area and down a hallway, following the source of illumination. The
silenced Beretta nosed its cautious way ahead of him, ready for trouble.
At last he stood beside a partially open bathroom door, poised and
listening, his every combat sense alert. From beyond that threshold came the
sound of water and the low mutter of voices, as if someone within was
washing clothes by hand and talking to himself.
Bolan risked a glance around the doorjamb, taking in the whole scene
immediately.
Two hardmen, both in shirtsleeves, knelt beside the porcelain bathtub.
Their jackets had been laid carefully aside, their sleeves rolled up above
the elbows to avoid becoming drenched as the men went about their task.
They were drowning a naked woman in the tub.
Almost reluctantly, it seemed to Bolan, they would dunk the blonde head
under water and hold it there, strong hands subduing what were minimal
struggles at best. He guessed that the woman had been drugged or otherwise
rendered semi-conscious as a prelude to her watery execution.
And they kept dragging her up again from beneath the water's surface,
shaking her as if they sought to keep her at least partially sentient and
aware throughout the ordeal. Bolan caught a quick glimpse of a flushed face
half-hidden by a screen of sodden hair, and the roundness of one breast
before the lady was submerged again.
And close up now, he could understand the words spoken by the two
rental ghouls.
"I still say it's a shame all of this has to go to waste," the one on
the left was saying with a leer.
"Forget it, stud," the guy's partner snapped. "This is supposed to look
like an accident, not an orgy."
"A goddamned shame," the first guy grunted, bending to his task with
renewed vigor.
Mack Bolan had seen and heard enough. He stepped through the doorway,
the Belle up at full extension and steadied in a two-handed grip for optimum
accuracy in rapid fire. He nudged the bathroom door wide open with one foot,
and the hinges gave out a tiny squeak of response.
One of the gunmen was half turned toward him, growling, "Dammit, Joey,
I told you to stay..." The kneeling man saw not Joey, but the dark, grim
specter of Death poised in the doorway, ready to collect its dues.
The guy's mouth dropped open, emitting a strangled sound somewhere
between a curse and a prayer.
Neither helped.
The Beretta Belle chugged once, the 9mm bone-crusher impacting between
startled eyes and bouncing the man off the side of the tub, draping him over
the toilet bowl. The back of his skull gleamed sticky red in the artificial
lighting.
Hitman number two was at last aware, in the slow motion of crisis, of
something terribly wrong in the bathroom. He twisted in his crouch, one wet
hand clawing at the .38 snubby on his right hip.
He never made it.
Bolan shot him through the throat. Then a second parabellum slug ripped
through his temple to core his brain and explode on the other side in a