Don Pendleton - Death Gamble

He splashed some Scotch into his glass over ice, added soda and a cocktail onion. He dropped a crumbled Ecstasy tablet into his drink and stirred. She had requested straight vodka. He poured two fingers of liquor into a glass and spiked the drink with a sedative. Word had come minutes earlier that it was all going down later this night and Dade wanted the woman unconscious, dragged away, dumped elsewhere. Whether she lived mattered little to him; he just didn’t want to be associated with her. One dead hooker connected with him was enough. It had been enough to set everything in motion.

Tonight I get to play victim, he thought. Go out in style.

A smile tugged at his mouth.

“What are you thinking?” the woman asked. She also smiled, anticipating a shared joke.

“Nothing,” Dade grumbled. She frowned momentarily, recovered and plastered her hundred-dollar-per hour smile back across her face. Taking a long pull from her drink, she eyed him over the rim of her glass.

“Okay,” she said. “So, how long are you in town?”

“Leaving tonight. Within the hour. I’m flying out.” Dade had been told to expect extraction by helicopter.

The woman set the drink in her lap, feigning disappointment. “Tonight? I’d hoped to spend more time with you.”

“I’ll pay for the whole night,” he snapped. “You’ll have to earn a living someplace else tomorrow.”

A storm of anger swelled in her eyes but passed just as quickly. She unfolded her legs, set her feet on the floor and shifted across the couch to him. She placed a hand on his thigh.

“I guess we should get started then,” she said.

“That’s what I’m paying you for. First, finish your drink. I haven’t got all damn night.”

Shedding her veneer of civility, she gulped the remainder of the spiked vodka and slammed the glass on the coffee table. “No, you don’t. Not with me, anyway.”

He shrugged, settling into the couch, hoping to get his money’s worth before the drugs kicked in and the shooting started.

As she began to unfasten her dress, machine guns rattled outside, startling them both. He pushed the woman away and looked at the wall clock: 11:23. They’d come a half hour before they’d said they would.

He’d drill the Russian for this.

The woman looked at him. Her mouth started to open, to form a question. He put a finger to his lips to silence her.

“Shut up,” he said, “and let me check this out.”

Draining his drink, he rose from the couch with a grunt, shambled to a window and peered through it. Muzzle-flashes interrupted the darkness, momentarily illuminating the shooters. In the repeated glare, Dade saw members of his security entourage twisting, dying, under repeated bursts of gunfire.

Too bad about most of those guys, Dade thought. Except for Sharpe. Sanctimonious prick constantly looked down his nose at Dade. He’d never snort coke with Dade, or shack up with a hooker for an evening, even when Dade offered to pay. Dade wasn’t dying to party with the guy; he just liked to own things. And employees who took drugs on the job or married men who screwed around would sign away their souls to keep from being found out. Dade was only too happy to provide the paperwork.

But Sharpe, with his uptight, superhero morality, hadn’t been for sale. Dade had no use for him.

He turned. The woman stood behind him, trying to peer around his bulk to see what was happening outside. Her eyes looked clouded, and she struggled to stand. Dade assumed the drug was kicking in.

“What’s happening? Who’s shooting?” She slurred her words.

He shoved her hard back into the couch. “Sit down, shut up,” he said. “No one’s going to hurt us. I have people outside.”

“We should call for help,” she cried.

“Stay where you are. I’ll handle this.”

The woman looked like she wanted to stand, but she found herself unable to do so as the drugs raced through her system, claimed her will. She stayed seated, fought to keep her eyes open. Dade ignored her. He returned to the bar, fixed another drink. He heard gunshots and screams outside. What possessed these men to lay down their lives to protect someone? he wondered. Even someone as important as him?

He gulped his drink and prepared another.

Dade looked at the woman. She remained on the couch, eyes closed, head cocked to one side, asleep. He stepped behind the bar, withdrew a leather valise and set it on the bar. Popping the case open, he checked its contents, making sure the disks remained inside.

The disks contained the sum total of Dade’s dozen or so years of hard work developing the Nightwind aircraft. The world thought the best America could muster were lumbering jetliners outfitted with massive, sometimes unreliable laser-weapons systems. Sentinel and the U.S. military had been only too happy to perpetuate that belief, even as the Feds secretly funneled billions into the Nightwind program.

Sentinel had given Dade the proverbial blank check. In return, he had created a product expected to generate untold billions in revenue while also providing the military with the ultimate weapon.

Now they planned to repay him with a pink slip.

When the gunfire outside finally stopped, Dade stepped into the foyer and peered through the peephole. An army of strangers surrounded the door. A battering ram hit the oak portal with a dull thud. He considered keying in the security code, letting them in the easy way, but decided against it. Let them work for him.

He was, after all, the prize.

Freetown, Sierra Leone

It would be so damn easy.

Mack Bolan settled the crosshairs on the murderer’s nose, rested his finger on the Remington 700 sniper rifle’s trigger and paused.

He could finish the job in an instant, send a bullet crashing into the skull of the man who called himself Talisman, silencing the dozens of tortured souls crying out for retribution.

He’d come to West Africa looking for a kidnapped American scientist. He needed to figure out how a former Revolutionary United Front commander—and rapist and murderer—was tied into a kidnapping that occurred thousands of miles away in the Nevada desert.

After that, all bets were off.

Decked out in his black combat suit, face smeared in black combat cosmetics, Bolan had positioned himself on a rooftop fifty yards from the kill zone. The vantage point allowed him to get the lay of the land before he raided Talisman’s compound. Through the scope’s magnification, Bolan watched as Talisman took a pull from a joint, held the smoke for several seconds, exhaled. The killer smiled and passed the joint to one of his subordinates who obediently took a hit and passed it on.

Physically, the man was impressive. Talisman stood four inches taller than Bolan, and moved with the grace and confidence of a veteran soldier. The dossier provided by Stony Man Farm had indicated that the African, a former army officer, had gone rogue nearly a decade ago, joining sides with those sworn to unseat the government. Since then, he’d been linked with the rape, dismemberment and murder of countless individuals.

Bolan had no trouble believing the man was a coldblooded killer. Talisman carried a long-handled ax in his belt and an AK-47 hung from his shoulder.

Setting down his rifle, Bolan tugged at his collar to release the heat from inside his sweat-soaked shirt, and considered what he had seen so far. Several gunners milled about the compound, swigging beer and smoking. The smoke, coupled with the stench of rotting sewage and perspiration, hung in the humid air and assailed Bolan’s senses.

Two of the gunners concentrated on the job at hand, scanning the immediate perimeter for intruders.

The hardsite consisted of a large single-story building constructed of concrete blocks and roofed with rust-tinged corrugated metal. Several smaller buildings ringed the main structure. Fences topped with razor wire held the verdant jungle at bay on three sides of the rectangular property. In the distance, Bolan could see Lumley Beach and the white lights of boats traversing the ocean.