"Дон Пендлтон. Blood Sport ("Палач" #46) " - читать интересную книгу автора

It didn't matter to Bolan anyway. Tandy and Cleveland would do. They
would have to.
"Listen close," Bolan snapped briskly, his voice all business. "This is
a simple arrest. You've both done that before, right?"
"Yes, sir I", Corporal Tandy barked.
"I will go up the fire escape and block off the window. They cannot get
out that way. Then you two go in the front door and arrest them. And keep
your guns, aimed and ready. These guys play for keeps." Bolan checked his
watch. "I want you through the door at 01.23. That's five minutes from now.
Got it?"
Corporal Cleveland checked his watch. "Got it, sir".
"Okay, get moving. Remember, I want them alive. If possible."
"Yes, sir!" Corporal Tandy said.
Corporal Cleveland's eyes flickered with doubt. "Might be difficult,
Colonel. What you told us about them... his..."
"If possible, Corporal," Bolan repeated. "If possible".
The two soldiers moved off into the darkness at a trot, dodging the
puddles this time. They disappeared around the corner.
Bolan did not hesitate. He ascended the feeble old fire escape, its
shaky vibrations rattling up his spine with each step. At the third-floor
platform he squatted close to the wall. He pressed his face against the
gritty brick. With fingertips spidering along the rough wall, the night
warrior silently eased himself to the edge of the dirty hotel window, just
far enough for him to see what was going on inside. He did not like what he
saw.
Three men in U.S. Army uniforms were sitting around a cheap folding
card table. The one with the sergeant's chevrons was the highranker of the
three; he was tipped back on his metal folding chair so that it balanced on
its two wobbly back legs. The guy's big gut bubbled over his belt in a slab
of lard, and a couple of bags of flab sagged down his cheeks into jowls. He
was tossing playing cards one at a time across the room into his army cap.
Bolan mentally searched the file of photographs stored in his mind since the
mission briefing. He soon had the handle to match the face.
"Sergeant Edsel Grendal, pure one hundred percent USDA trash, weight
exceeded only by greed," was Brognola's acrid assessment. The other two
"soldiers" were at least twenty years younger than Grendal's midforties. One
was tall and gangly-looking, even sitting down. A PFC.
He had straight red hair with a stubborn cowlick sticking straight up
at the back of his head.
Occasionally he gave it an absent pat, more out of habit than any real
expectation it would lay down.
He also had a nasty rash encircling his neck as, if his skin were still
too sensitive for shaving. He was shifting a good deal in his chair,
blinking with nervousness.
The third man was a corporal, though he looked to be a year or so
younger than the redheaded boy, unless you looked closely at the mouth: it
was thin and bloodless, twisted into the kind of smug grin seen on a
sadistic child setting fire to the neighbor's cat. The guy was slumped
forward in his chair, staring at the paper napkin as he methodically
shredded it into neat little piles on the table. The hard cruel mouth set in