Don Pendleton - Stolen Arrows

Now annoyed, Zalhares controlled his temper and started to open his mouth to speak.

“Red alert,” a new voice said in his earpiece. “We have a Zodiac in the park. Repeat, we have a Zodiac coming home from sector two.”

That wasn’t Osbourne, but a member of his Zalhares’s team, Artero Mariano, also known as Dog by his many enemies because of his tendency to bite people in the throat during fights. An expert in Kodokan judo and high explosives, he was one of the most feared assassins in the S2, the dreaded secret police of Brazil. That was, until Cirello Zalhares had recruited the man from the government and into the Scion, his mercenary unit.

As surreptitiously as possible, Zalhares gestured behind the book toward the child standing directly in front of him.

“Better get rid of the kid, my friend,” Mariano said urgently. “The Libyans will be here at any second and we’ll have to move.”

Keeping his expression neutral, Zalhares leaned forward slightly so that his windbreaker fell open, exposing the silenced Imbel .22 pistol in the holster to his team hidden in the nearby trees.

“No, just chase him away,” Mariano suggested. “There are too many people around. Killing the brat would only start a riot if somebody found the body. The English are very sentimental about their children.”

“Well, I must be going now,” Zalhares said, rising to his full height and closing the book. The adult towered over the child like a giant from a fairy tale. When the physical intimidation didn’t frighten the boy away, Zalhares impatiently tried another tactic.

“Would you do me a favor and return this inside?” he asked, pushing the volume into the boy’s grasp. “Thank you.”

“Not late, is it?” the boy asked suspiciously, looking over the thick book. “Billy once asked me to return a book, and it was late and I had to pay the fine.”

“No, it is not late,” Zalhares stated, starting to walk away. “But I am. My…daughter is having a birthday and I’m late for her party. Thank you again.”

The boy scowled in disgust. “Yuck, girls,” he said, turning to charge up the flight of stairs into the library. “Goodbye, mister!”

Once safely in the crowd, Zalhares walked until two more people slipped into position nearby, never coming close, but now each of them was able to cover the other with gunfire if the need arose. Dressed in slacks and a turtleneck, Minas Pedrosa was a bald giant who sported a drooping red mustache. His companion was a muscular woman who wore gray pleated slacks and a matching vest over a loose black shirt to try to mask her ample chest. In their line of work her curvaceous figure was often a source of consternation for the team, but Jorgina Mizne was one of the best knife fighters in the world, along with being a superb interrogator, which more than made up for the minor inconvenience of her beauty.

Upon reaching a footpath, Zalhares turned into the trees and paused in a pool of shadow. The fourth member of the team, craggy-faced with a short ponytail, stepped out of the greenery. Once an escaping prisoner had foolishly grabbed that hair to try to subdue Artero Mariano, but the razor blades hidden inside had neatly sliced off his fingers. The prisoner had howled at the pain, but when Mariano got hold of him, the screaming really began.

Making sure they were alone, the four exchanged pointed glances, then nodded in readiness and checked their weapons.

“We’re in the clear, Eagle One.” Zalhares sub-vocalized into his throat mike, thumbing the control in the pocket of his windbreaker to change to the CIA channel. The unit automatically scrambled the broadcast, then shifted to another frequency and code so that even if MI-5 or the local police were listening in, they would never be able to decipher the transmission soon enough to stop what was happening in the peaceful London park.

“Our goat has arrived, Falcon,” Osbourne said brusquely, his voice tense with controlled excitement. “Caucasian male, denim pants and shirt, portly, mustache, steel-rim glasses.”

“Confirm, Eagle,” Zalhares said, starting along the footpath. “We will engage. Want anybody alive for questioning, sir?”

There was a buzz of static in the earphone for a moment, masking the reply. “Hello, Eagle? Repeat, please, 10-2.”

“Falcon, I said not this time,” Osbourne said tersely. “Our psych department says that it will scare the hell out of the others in their group to have a team simply vanish off the face of the earth. No bodies, no news coverage, just gone. It makes the next batch of killers move a little slower, and thus easier to stop. Terminate with extreme prejudice.”

The word is “kill,” Zalhares thought snidely to himself. How can the CIA order something done if they’re too cowardly to even speak the word? Americans were rich, but foolishly sentimental. A combination he found to be highly conducive for business.

“Confirmed,” he said out loud. “Falcon out.”

The rest of the Scion dispersed into the greenery as Zalhares turned toward the street. Reaching the corner, he saw a double-decker bus pull to a halt at the curb with a hiss of air brakes, the oversize vehicle gently rocking for a few seconds as the shocks rode out the inertia.

A short, fat man with metal glasses and tightly carrying a plain leather briefcase stepped quickly from the bus. As he started toward the park, several men rose from parked cars and headed after the plump courier. They were dressed in ridiculously loud sports coats with noticeable lumps under their arms from holstered weapons. Zalhares tried not to frown at the sight of the rank amateurs. These Libyan fools were a threat to America?

Hurrying down a footpath, the fat man darted into a break in the bushes and disappeared from sight. Only seconds behind, his pursuers quickly followed.

“Now,” Zalhares said, entering the bushes from another direction.

“Confirm,” Mariano replied.

Moving with silent grace, Zalhares slipped through the manicured hedges and entered a small clearing in the heart of the park. There he saw the four Libyans converge on the fat man, each of them carrying a stun gun or pepper spray. As they tried to cut off his escape, the courier simply dived to the ground, hugging the briefcase.

Zalhares and his people charged the circle of Libyans from behind. At the sound of their footsteps, the men turned from the cringing courier and the members of the Scion moved like lightning, each choosing a target and ramming a knife upward into the bottom of the jaw to pin the mouth shut.

As the startled Libyans began to choke on the blood filling their throats, they dropped the stun guns and spray cans and tried to pull real weapons, but it was too late.

Zalhares grabbed an arm of the biggest man and broke it with a twisting gesture, making him drop the 9 mm Glock pistol. Mariano did the same. Pedrosa crushed another man’s neck in his bare grip, the bones audibly cracking. Mizne stabbed her target with another knife, leaving the blade buried deep in his chest to stem any possible gush of blood from the ruptured heart.

Only yards away from cheerful families having a picnic on the village green, the Libyan terrorists died, drowning in their own blood, not so much as a whisper escaping their lips. Rising from the ground, the fat courier nodded at the members of Scion in frank appreciation, then calmly walked away and out of sight. The moment he was gone, the mercs shifted the bodies behind some bushes instead of lugging them to the open sewer grating deeper in the parkland as they had the other corpses. Then they pulled their weapons and carefully checked the sleek sound suppressors attached to their Brazilian-made Imbel .22 pistols. The mercs clicked off the safeties and racked the slides to chamber a round for immediate use.