"Дон Пендлтон. Doomsday Disciples ("Палач" #49) " - читать интересную книгу автора

Tommy frowned.
"Professional's the word, all right," he answered. "Somebody led those
boys around the block and met 'em coming back. They were good - handpicked -
but they couldn't measure up."
Minh made a sour face. His voice was tight.
"Again 'somebody.' Is there any indication of our enemy's identity? His
strength?"
Tommy shook his head, dejected.
"Lester - at the gatehouse - lived long enough to say there was one man
in the Caddy with the girl. No way to tell about the ambush. From the looks,
it could've been an army."
"No."
His military mind was circling the problem, probing for solutions.
"I do not think an army. If our enemies were certain..."
He let the statement trail away, unfinished. Leaning back in his swivel
chair, Minh made a steeple of his fingers and focused on them. Calling up
the monastic training of his youth, he made his mind a blank, the better to
concentrate his full attention on the puzzle.
If his enemies were conscious of the plan, if they had evidence to move
against him, federal officers would be knocking at the door with arrest
warrants. The Americans were formalistic in their dealings with suspicious
characters, affording common thugs a battery of rights that often made
conviction an impossibility. If police overstepped their bounds, the fact
was trumpeted on radio and television, plastered all across the headlines.
Frequently, it was the officer who found himself in court.
Minh was thankful for the ignorance of enemies. He could work within
their decadent society, use their precious laws and Constitution to protect
himself.
A subtle man, he also appreciated irony.
But if the girl had not been rescued by police - which she almost
certainly had not - then his problem remained unsolved.
There were agencies, of course, which handled covert operations for the
government. Once again, however, the Americans roped themselves with
limitations and restrictions: their CIA could only operate outside the
country, and the FBI was strictly a domestic agency, under constant scrutiny
from critics in the press. Coordination was a problem, and Occidentals
seemed to take a masochistic pleasure in reviewing every foible, every
failure of their "secret" agents.
The Soviets, of course, had no such weakness, and Minh thought at once
of Mitchell Carter. The man himself would not be capable of such a daring
rescue, but he could hire professionals, even as he had recruited Tommy
Booth and Minh's troop of "elders." It was not beyond the realm of
possibility, and yet...
Minh frowned as he wrestled with the question of a motive. On the
surface, Carter was an ally, but it never paid to underestimate the KGB's
duplicity.
Minh viewed the Russians with particular contempt. If Americans were
greedy pigs, the Soviets were little more than traitors, their epic
revolution long degenerated into something like a form of leftist fascism.
He could tolerate Carter and the KGB, as his country tolerated Soviet