Don Pendleton - Stolen Arrows

“Jesus Christ!” the other guard cried, jerking backward against the door and raising the shotgun for protection.

Moving without conscious thought, the burning driver clawed at the handle of the cab door and shoved it open to throw himself outside to try to escape the flames. Tumbling to the cool pavement, the driver beat at the fire with his blistered hands and only vaguely noticed some people coming his way. There was a metallic cough, a flash of pressure, and his pain ended forever.

BURSTING THROUGH the hedges, Osbourne and his people found the dead Libyans and the constable. But there was no sign of the Scion or anybody else.

“Son of a bitch, we’ve been tricked!” Osbourne cursed angrily, grabbing his throat mike. “Nest, this is Eagle. Evac, now! Scion may be compromised! Repeat, Zalhares may have turned! Acknowledge!” There was only the soft hiss of background static as a reply.

“Nest, do you copy!” Osbourne demanded, pushing through the foliage and starting back toward the distant library. He could see a plume of dark smoke rising from behind the building and doubled his speed.

Police and fire department sirens were growing louder as the CIA operatives circled the library. Tendrils of smoke sailed through the air, which carried an aroma oddly reminiscent of roasted pork. The older agents scowled as they identified the stench of burned human flesh mixed with the telltale reek of napalm.

The hot wand and pressurized tanks of a flamethrower lay discarded on the pavement. Sprawled nearby were two bodies; the uniformed guard, obviously shot in the head, and what appeared to be the driver, although the face was burned beyond recognition. There was no sign of the armored truck.

“The bastards got them,” an agent whispered. “Zalhares and his crew stole the entire shipment of Zodiacs!”

“Kissel, take two men and sweep the neighborhood for that truck or any more bodies,” Osbourne growled, slowly holstering his gun. “I’ll handle Scotland Yard. Wallace, grab a cab and get your ass to the American Embassy and call the White House.”

“We’ll need top authorization before we can brief the Brits on what’s loose in their city,” the agent replied, buttoning his jacket closed. “If then.”

“Yeah, I know,” Osbourne said woodenly as squads of police cars raced into the parking lot. “How can we tell anybody that the world just lost a battle in the war on terrorism?”

Aberystywyth, Wales

An old, dilapidated truck bearing two members of Scion trundled along the cliff road, the vast gray expanse of the Atlantic Ocean spreading in front of them to the distant horizon. No ships were in sight and no commercial jet planes flew overhead. Zalhares hadn’t even seen another car for the past hour, but he still kept a sharp watch on the sky for any sign of a Harrier jump jet. That’s what the British would send, the merc realized, something that could strike from the sky, then land to check the debris. He knew that the CIA would prefer a shoot-on-sight order, but with the Zodiacs in the possession of the Scion that would be far too dangerous. No, the orders would be to contain the merc unit and to call for reinforcements. But Zalhares had already taken steps to counter the event should it occur. Everything was under control, or rather, it would be in just a little while.

Hours passed as the two people in the battered vehicle bounced along the rough roadway, accompanied by the rattling of chains from the rear of the truck. A squat wooden box roughly the size of an office safe was securely chained in place on top of a thick bed mattress, the price tag still attached.

“Is this the best you could steal?” Jorgina Mizne muttered from the passenger seat, adjusting the baby blanket covering the 9 mm Uru submachine gun cradled in her arms.

“It will suffice,” Zalhares said, braking in the middle of the road to check the hand-drawn map. Ah, the turn was over there. Aberystywyth Avenue. Good.

“Welsh, ha! And I thought English was spelled oddly.” Mizne snorted in amusement.

“The English think of the Welsh the same way we do Bolivians,” Zalhares said, tucking away the map. “Idiot cousins who should not be allowed to play with sharp things.”

She flashed a predator smile. “Then they will not work well together to find us? Excellent.”

“It is why I chose here,” he said, shifting gears and starting forward.

Maneuvering past a pair of wooden markers that bracketed the gravel road, Zalhares shifted gears again to the accompaniment of loud grinding noises as the truck started along the steep incline that wound down the face of the cliff. He had heard that the locals often referred to the road as Dead Man’s Curve, but compared to the impossible mountain roads of western Brazil, it was a wide highway.

Reaching the rocky ground, a side road extended to the sleepy hamlet of Aberystywyth, which was so reminiscent of his home village of Botcaku it made Zalhares momentarily homesick. The bitter memories of wearing dirty rags for clothes and going to bed hungry for countless years killed the gentle recollections of playing with his brothers and sisters. His mind returned to the task at hand. Making money.

Soon the gravel became dirt, which abruptly turned into smooth pavement again as the truck rolled along the prehistoric-looking granite dock. Wooden jetties reached out to sea, the thick planks shiny from the constant spray of the waves crashing on the pillions underneath. A motor launch was moored at the farthest slip, guarded by several large men in raincoats. Two were smoking pipes, one was eating an apple, all were carrying Uzi submachine guns slung beneath yellow slickers.

More guards occupied the launch. A lone figure stood on the foredeck armed with an American surface-to-air Stinger missile, while another watched the skies through compact Russian military binoculars. American weapons, Russian equipment, Australian-registered cargo ship, the smugglers were the UN of crime operating in these waters, a covert cartel that dealt in the oldest currency in history—human misery.

Parking the truck a safe distance away, Zalhares got out as Mizne removed the blanket and leveled the Uru out the open window. The men on the dock reacted, then relaxed slightly as Zalhares stepped between them and the unusual weapon.

“Who the hell are you?” one of the smokers demanded, resting a hand on the checkered grip of the Uzi. The bolt was already pulled, the weapon primed and ready to fire.

“I hear this town used to mine tin for a living,” Zalhares said loudly to be heard over the endlessly crashing waves.

The man with the apple tossed it away and stepped forward, wiping his hands on his pants. “Now we sell trinkets to the tourists,” he said carefully. “But it’s a living.”

Code phrases exchanged properly, Zalhares touched a gloved finger to his ear to let Mizne know to stand down.

The leader of the sailors pulled out a military radio and hit the transmit button. “They’re here,” he announced, then turned it off.

Not a phone, but a radio. Zalhares approved. With so many high-orbit satellites scanning the transmissions of cell phones, it was safer to use a short-range radio for local communications. The signal was too weak to be intercepted by the military satellites and their damn code-breaking computers.

“The cargo is in the truck,” Zalhares said, nodding in that direction. “You’ll need a forklift.”

“Jones, Smitty,” the man shouted over a shoulder. “Get humping, boys.”

The two men walked off, the third staying near the launch, puffing steadily on a briarwood pipe that looked older than the granite dock.

“So where is the Tullamarine anchored?” Zalhares asked, glancing at the rough sea. There was nothing visible to the horizon.