Don Pendleton: Dark Savior

Prologue

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Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Las Cruces, New Mexico

“It’s hot,” Rob Walker said.

“You say that every day. New Mexico,” Greg Kilhane replied. “It’s always hot.”

“Hotter today than usual.” Walker used a handkerchief to blot his sweaty face.

Kilhane, who never seemed to sweat, drew on his cigarette and shook his head. “Go back inside, then. I can handle this alone.”

The two of them were standing on the patio so Kilhane could smoke. No smoking in the safe house under the established guidelines. Nearly dusk, and it was still too hot for Walker’s liking, but he’d come out anyway and left their third man with their subject.

“Don’t mind me,” said Walker. “Just keep poisoning yourself.”

Bitching was part of witness duty with the U.S. Marshals Service. Guarding rats was tedious, dead time, when they could just as well have been out serving warrants, busting fugitives, transporting prisoners from jail to court or court to prison. Anything was better, more exciting, than babysitting squealers in the Witness Security Program.

“Only two more days,” Kilhane said.

Until their witnesses testified, that was. Which meant they’d all be flying out the day after tomorrow, headed back to New York City and the high life, handing off their pigeon to the Special Operations Group for coverage until he testified against whomever he’d decided to betray in exchange for a new name, new life, new whatever.

Walker didn’t know the details of the case, except that it was “big,” according to the supervisory deputy who’d handed them the assignment. “Big as in bad guys with billions,” he’d said, a real wisecracker.

That raised the threat level and meant they had two AR-15 rifles and a shotgun at the safe house, in addition to their standard-issue .40-caliber Glocks. There were vests in the house, one for each marshal and a spare for the rat, but Walker hadn’t tried his on and wouldn’t bother with it till they headed for the airport, day after tomorrow.

Easy duty, sure, but boring. And hot today, as usual, even at sundown.

“Done yet?” he asked Kilhane.

“Are you the nicotine police?”

“Forget it.”

Kilhane stubbed his butt into a three-foot-tall ceramic ashtray filled with sand, and sighed smoke. “Yeah, I’m done. Let’s make sure Marshal Marshall hasn’t lost the subject.”

Walker laughed at that, the way he always did, on reflex. Ethan Marshall was their third team member, “Marshal Marshall” to the others like Kilhane, who couldn’t let it go. Sometimes Walker wondered if he’d gotten out of high school, after all. Still hanging out with jocks and trading silly puns, except the stakes were higher. If he dropped the ball on this job, it could cost him his life.

* * *

“THEY’RE GOING BACK INSIDE,” Killer Combs said. “Over.”

A second later Spike O’Connor’s voice came back to him, the walkie-talkie giving it a tinny echo. “Copy that. Let’s do it.”

“Roger that,” Combs responded.

His mama hadn’t named him Killer. She had called him Cleveland, of all things, and that had drawn the schoolyard bullies like a magnet pulls iron filings from the dirt, until Combs taught them that he didn’t swallow any shit. “Killer” came from buddies in United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance, two tours of duty in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. Combs might’ve still been in the Corps, maybe a master sergeant by now, if slotting Afghans and Iraqis hadn’t turned him on so much. If only he’d restrained himself a bit that day, outside of Lashkar Gah.

To hell with it, he thought, and moved out toward their target. It felt strange, working inside the States and with a dozen guys involved, but who was he to question clients with that kind of cash to throw around? They wanted certainty, an ironclad guarantee that no one in the house would ever bother them again, with cell phone snaps to prove the job was done.

Quirky, but what the hell.

“You heard the man,” he told Cohen and Hitchener. “Let’s roll.”

* * *

“WHERE’S WALKER?” KILHANE asked Ethan Marshall.

“In the crapper.”

“Jeez. How long has he been in there, anyway?”

Marshall considered that, checking the TV against his watch, the six o’clock news winding down into sports and weather. “Twenty minutes, give or take,” he said.

That put a frown on Kilhane’s face. “I’m gonna check on him and—”

The second part of his sentence was cut off as the doorbell rang. Walker emerged from the bathroom.

“Who’s that?” Walker asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Marshall countered. “Jehovah’s Witnesses? Or maybe Girl Scouts pushing cookies.” He rose from the sofa and unholstered his Glock.

“Check it,” Kilhane said to Walker. And to Marshall, “Back him up. I’m going for the subject.”

“Right,” Walker replied, the three of them all business now.

“Up and at it,” Kilhane ordered. “This is not a drill.”

* * *

COLIN HUME WAS dressed up in a brown UPS uniform, the van they’d stolen for the evening behind him, idling at the curb. His parcel was a cardboard box large enough to hold a Bizon submachine gun with fifty-three 9 mm Parabellum packed into its helical magazine, ready to rip. Hume had cut out the back of the box, and now he slid his right hand inside to clutch the Bizon’s pistol grip. A clipboard balanced up on top helped his cover.

He was on the verge of trying the doorbell again when a voice from inside asked, “Who is it?”

Hume smiled at the peephole in the door, its blocking shadow proof that someone was already eyeing him. “Parcel delivery,” he answered, adding a mush-mouth garble for a name.

“What’s that?” the man behind the door demanded.

Hume spat out another mess of jumbled syllables, his index finger on the Bizon’s trigger, that part of the weapon borrowed from larger rifles designed by its creator, the great Viktor Kalashnikov.

Some men were giants in their field. Others, like Colin Hume, stood on their shoulders for a better shot at whoever was marked for death today.

“Hang on,” the guy behind the door said now, clearly disgruntled, maybe wondering if he should get his ears checked. Hume kept smiling as a dead bolt clacked, and then the door began to open.

Easy does it...

Hume waited until he had a clear view of the doorman, checked him with a glance to see if he was wearing Kevlar underneath his wilted dress shirt, then fired a six-round burst into the stranger’s chest. The Parabellum rounds slammed the guy backward as he spouted crimson from a tidy group of holes above his heart, and Hume pushed through the doorway into a small sitting room.

The second marshal waited for him there, as Hume had expected, wielding his Glock but firing just a beat too slow, still not quite believing that he’d seen his partner killed before his eyes.

Hume dropped to one knee, ditched the smoking box and gave the second guard two short precision bursts. The first one opened up his belly before the second caught him doubling over, tattooing his startled face.

Two down, but there were three guards on the target. Hume went looking for the third. The back door opened with a bang, three of his team members moving in to help him sweep the place. Two more were close behind Hume, bulling through the front door he’d left open, which left six outside in various positions, covering the action from a distance, watching for police.