Don Pendleton: Hell Dawn

“What are we?” Lyons said, his face flushing. “Chopped liver? I’d like to be there for that, not babysitting some damn egghead and cleaning up the Agency’s messes.”

Kurtzman nodded. “Understood, Carl. But we need to look at the bigger picture here. Someone wants to get hold of Gabe for a reason. And, if they do, they’d have something horrible in their grasp. They don’t call this worm Cold Earth for nothing. Imagine multiple meltdowns occurring at once.”

Lyons held up his hands defensively. “I get it. I get it. I just don’t like sitting on my rump when something needs done, is all.” He displayed one of his snakeskin cowboy boots. “These boots were made for kicking tail, baby.”

“Nancy Sinatra you’re not, amigo,” Blancanales said, grinning. “Aaron, do we have any of our own people following up on the Mexican lead, just in case things start happening?”

“We’ve got Phoenix Force on standby. Until we get a little more hard intel, Hal’s decided to leave them in Virginia. We have no idea where these guys might surface, or whether a second crisis might pop up. So he’s trying to conserve resources, as they say in the business world.”

“That’s a euphemism for cooling your heels,” Lyons said with a smirk. “Good. No sense in us having all the fun. Let’s just hope your boy’s got an eye out for us.”

Where the hell were they?

Fox peered through the coffee-shop window again for the fourth time in twenty minutes, eyes scouring the streets for some sign of Kurtzman. This was his third day on the run, and he found himself jumping at shadows. He’d arrived in Leadville two days earlier, after hitching a ride from a trucker. He’d been able to get some clothes from a church, and public rest rooms had given him a place to wash, making him look like just another hiker stopping in town for a shave and warm meal. A dull ache in his back and neck reminded him that he’d spent the last couple of nights sleeping on the ground in a meadow behind the local elementary school.

Setting down his coffee, he reached for the nylon satchel he normally used for carrying his laptop. Unzipping it, he stared at the weapon inside, an Uzi submachine gun. Computer nerds weren’t supposed to know how to use such weapons. But he did, thanks largely to a couple of gang bangers he’d known in his hometown who were given to driving to the country, dropping hits of acid and shredding rabbits and squirrels with well-placed bursts from the Israeli-made subgun. He’d never had the stomach to shoot an animal, but he’d wasted more than one discarded beer can during those trips. So he could shoot straight, if necessary.

Besides, you didn’t need to be Annie Oakley to shoot yourself in the head. Just the proper motivation. He figured losing a wife, being betrayed by his own government and having every creep in the world chasing him gave a guy all the motivation he needed. A crashing realization of what he was about to do struck him, causing his hands and knees to tremor. He shoved the bag aside, leaving it closed, but not zipped, and lit up a cigarette.

“Might as well smoke ’em,” he muttered. “You’ll likely be dead in an hour.”

“Sir?”

The voice caused him to start. Yanking the cigarette from his mouth, he whipped his head around and found the waitress standing next to his table. Brushing aside her kinky brown hair, she gave him a confused smile.

“Sir, did you say something?”

He waved dismissively. “Just yapping to myself,” he said.

She nodded. “Can I get you something else?”

He looked at her face, oval-shaped with pale blue eyes, and felt that heavy sensation settle into his chest again. His wife also had had blue eyes. “Just the check.” The uncertainty still in her eyes, she nodded and headed back toward the counter to tally the bill.

With his left hand, he rubbed his cheeks, now bare because he’d shaved his goatee in an attempt to alter his appearance. Good luck. A man mountain covered in tattoos trying to hide himself by removing a little facial hair, it seemed a vain effort. Like trying to dress up hell with a flower garden.

Kurtzman’s reply to his e-mail had been brief, but comforting. We’re coming, he’d written. Stay cool. So he’d been doing just that for the last several hours, but he’d yet to see any sign of his old friend.

Fox had been operating as a computer nomad of sorts over the past few days, using the machines at the local libraries to check his e-mail account and to scan media Web sites for any word of his appearance or of the shootings at the safehouse. As expected, he’d found nothing. He’d checked his e-mail account about an hour ago, looking for any further communications from Kurtzman, but had found nothing.

The sound of car doors slamming outside pulled him from his thoughts. Maybe it was Aaron, he thought. Glancing through the window, he spotted three men climbing from a black Cadillac Escalade. A fourth already stood by the driver’s-side door, scanning his surroundings. A matching SUV had parked a few spots back and three more men were disgorging. Blood thundered in Fox’s ears and sweat immediately broke out on his forehead. How the hell? When the realization struck, his stomach plummeted. The credit card. He’d used a credit card to pay for the Internet access, and apparently someone had been waiting for him to do just that.

He rocketed to his feet, grabbing his satchel. Turning on a heel to bolt, he nearly collided with the waitress. Her eyes wide, she crossed her arms over her chest protectively and inhaled sharply as she came to a halt. Reaching into his pocket, Gabe grabbed a crumpled ten-dollar bill and held it out to her.

She took it. “It’s going to be a minute on the change.”

“Keep it,” he said, his voice sharp and loud. “A back door. You got one?”

The volume of his voice, his size and his erratic behavior seemed to take her aback. Eyes wide, her lips parted but no sound came out.

“A door!” Without taking her eyes from him, she turned and gestured toward a pair of swing doors at the other end of the counter.

“There. Through there.”

“Thanks,” he said, his voice dropping in volume. He darted for the back of the restaurant. Pushing through the swing doors, he wound his way between a series of tables covered with chopped food and kitchen appliances. A twenty-something man, his hair dyed green and three earrings on his left ear, his skinny torso covered in a stained apron, stepped into Fox’s path, a butcher’s knife clutched in his right hand, but not upraised to strike.

“What’s the—” he said.

Fox’s stiff-armed the cook, planting the open palm of his left hand into the man’s sternum, sending him spinning backward into a wall. The cook yelled, but it only vaguely registered with Fox. He pushed through a wood-framed screen door, which emptied into an alley that ran the length of a row of commercial buildings, most of them stout and more than a century old. Cutting right, he began to move along the alley, his lungs already feeling the exertion from years of smoking combined with the thin mountain air.

Even as he moved, he heard the screen door slam behind him, prompting him to glance over his shoulder. He spotted the cook from the restaurant, knife still in his hand, yelling and cursing at him.

A corridor, little more than the space between two buildings, opened up to his right and Fox darted into it. Footsteps pounded the pavement and he heard a faint thumping in the distance. Flattening himself against the wall, he reached inside the satchel and fisted the Uzi, but kept the bag over it for the moment. Chances were the irate cook or the waitress was already calling 911, summoning the local police. If they showed up, he’d lose the weapon, give himself up and hope to stay alive in custody until Kurtzman arrived. Fox wasn’t in love with the police, and the memory of his betrayal by the CIA was fresh in his mind, but he wasn’t about to draw down on some local cop trying to do his or her job. He’d die before doing that.