Don Pendleton - Critical Intelligence

The place smelled like sweat and cigarettes and liquor and sex. The din of the DJ’s stereo system was enough to qualify as a sonic weapon. Klegg could literally feel the 2-4 backbeat of the bass shake him with tactile force as it pumped out of the massive speakers.

He wasn’t here to have a good time.

He spoke Russian, among four other languages, and he was young enough not to stand out too terribly in the club during the initial surveillance. His cover was simple and straightforward because it was, in fact, his profession. He was a procurement specialist for a private contractor specializing in large-corporation inventory.

He made deals for engines in Peru, he acquired stockpiles of diamonds in South Africa, he secured binary processors in India, he obtained cooling systems for French Mirage jets and sold them to African dictators.

All the while he built his networks of shady lawyers, street contacts, intelligence agents, criminal syndicates, ship captains and bush pilots. Today he was going to expand that network into the field of soldiers for hire, and Svetlana was going to help him.

“There,” the woman said.

Across the dance floor near where a phalanx of bouncers guarded the club’s entrance he saw Milosevic. The Russian lawyer came in like a visiting emperor, his entourage part Praetorian guard, part sycophantic toadies and part pleasure slaves.

Klegg reached down to where his attaché case rested against his leg. He took the not unsubstantial weight of the thing in his hand and stepped away from the bar. Across the room Milosevic was shown to a private area at the top of a short flight of stairs leading to a balcony over the dance floor.

A massive, impassive-faced thug with the body of a professional wrestler and an Armani suit stood sentry before the red-velvet rope dividing the stair and viewing lounge from the common dancers and general population.

As they approached, the man’s head turned on a bull neck like a 20 mm cannon on an APC gun turret. His eyes were cold chips of blue. Klegg felt an instant rising of his own hackles as he drew closer. It was an instinctual reaction to so much rival testosterone. The potential for conflict was intense. It wouldn’t pay to lose his head, and this was what Svetlana was earning her percentage for.

He let a small smile play across his face as the bodyguard’s eyes were drawn away from him, a man with a briefcase in a Ukrainian nightclub, to the slinky form of the icy blonde. The guy might be tough, Klegg mused, but he wasn’t a pro.

Behind the guard up the stairs Milosevic was opening a bottle of champagne. He said something and everyone in the group laughed like marionettes. A flamboyantly gay man with purple spiky hair and tight leather pants shrieked his giggles like a siren and dumped a copious amount of white powder down directly on the glass top of the low table set between the party’s couches.

“Dmitri,” Svetlana pouted. Her hand went to the mile-wide expanse of his chest. “You act like you don’t remember me.” Her chin came down, and her eyes looked up as she made coy into a seduction power play.

She was like a big-league power hitter, Klegg realized. Her technique wasn’t subtle; she’d either strike out completely or knock the ball out of the park. And like a high-paid baseball home-run specialist she’d knock more out of the park than she’d lose…until age and the drugs caught up with her.

Dmitri broke into an easy grin, his eyes trailing down her body like the laser guidance system of a jet fighter locking on to target. He replied in guttural, bass Russian, his chest rumbling like the engine of a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

“I remember you, Svetlana. That time in Moscow—” he began.

“We stayed up all night,” she answered, and they laughed together.

Dmitri caught sight of Klegg standing behind her and his smile hardened. Catching the shift in him Svetlana put her hand on his chest again, drawing his attention back to her the way a tiger’s eyes will follow a piece of raw meat in the hands of a circus trainer.

“How is he?” she asked. “Does he ever talk about me?” She sounded so sincere Klegg, who had planned the ruse with her, was almost fooled despite himself. Dmitri grinned knowingly and Klegg could see he had bought into the act completely.

“Of course, baby,” the bodyguard purred. “Like anyone could ever forget you.” He shrugged his shoulders and the effect was like seeing tectonic plates shift. “But you know how he is. Everything, all the time—it’s hard to look back. Hard to keep track.”

“Let me talk to him,” she purred.

He started to shake his head no and she slid two crisp folded American hundred-dollar bills into his hand before he could speak. He made the money disappear and reached for the hook to the red rope strung between the stanchions in front of the short flight of stairs.

“Okay, ’Lana,” he growled. “But just you. I don’t know your boyfriend, and Milosevic doesn’t want to make any new buddies.”

He stared at Klegg as if daring him to argue.

Klegg said nothing. Everything was going according to plan. Svetlana reached up and kissed Dmitri quickly, leaving a lipstick mark so red on his pale skin it looked like a wound. Then she was up the stairs and being greeted like an old friend.

Klegg waited patiently, ignoring Dmitri’s hard stare. He waited while Svetlana passed kisses of greetings all around and hugged Milosevic. She laughed at something he said, then helped herself to a line of the coke and a glass of the expensive champagne. Milosevic seemed generally happy to see her and, having spent time with the lady himself, Klegg could understand why.

After a few moments, once she was comfortably ensconced next to the Russian syndicate lawyer, he saw her lean in close, hand on Milosevic’s thigh, and begin whispering in his ear.

Klegg, long attuned to these things, watched Milosevic’s body language change. The smile, a social mask, stayed in place, but when his eyes cut away from Svetlana and down the stairs to Klegg they glittered like a snake’s, sizing him up.

Klegg smiled slightly back in acknowledgment.

It was time to make his play. He was a six plus one.

Stony Man Farm

The Bronco pulled out of the dirt road emerging from the orchard and came to a stop at the foot of the hill. Doors were kicked open and the five members of Phoenix Force emerged from the vehicle. Gary Manning unwrapped a protein bar and began eating it.

“Good God, Manning,” Calvin James said. “Are you always eating?”

Still chewing, the massively muscled Manning looked at him and shrugged. “I’m in a bulking phase. I want to see how much weight I can put on and still keep my two-mile-run time under eleven and a half minutes.”

“Christ,” Rafael Encizo groused. “If you get any goddamn bigger we’ll never get the helicopter off the ground.”

“Then I’ll just leap to the target in a single bound,” Manning shot back.

Moments later a second SUV pulled up, this one containing Able Team and driven by John “Cowboy” Kissinger.

Kissinger had done time as a DEA agent before coming to work as armorer for the Stony Man operation. When it came to tactical equipment, firearms and explosives, he combined the creative insight of Akira Tokaido and the intense analytical skills of Professor Wethers.

McCarter took a sip of his coffee out of a cardboard cup and looked over at the armorer. Kissinger was laughing in response to something Hermann Schwarz was saying.

“Oh, Christ,” the Briton muttered as Manning strolled up beside him. “Schwarz is telling jokes again.”

The Canadian moaned in response as the two field teams converged. Schwarz kept right on talking, his eyes fairly dancing with delight as Carl Lyons, his favorite target for off-color humor, studiously ignored him.