Don Pendleton: Hell Dawn

The whupping of chopper blades rent the air and the craft passed overhead, the whine of the engine reverberating from the alley walls. Biting off a curse, Fox headed for the mouth of the alley, which led back onto the main street. Chancing a look around the corner, he spotted two of the guys from the SUV moving up the street toward him. Jerking back, he spun on a heel, retraced his steps toward the other end of the alley. The helicopter’s engine grew louder as it returned for another pass. Had they spotted him during their previous pass? He had no reason to think otherwise.

A stout man clad in a black leather bomber jacket and jeans stepped into view, bringing a gun to bear on Fox. With less than ten yards separating them, Fox started to raise his own weapon when he suddenly heard tires screech in the alley, snagging the guy’s attention and causing him to snap his head toward the source of the noise.

Already committed, Fox continued running until he came right up on the man and threw himself into the guy, tackling him, both men crashing to the ground in a pile. Breath whooshed from between the man’s lips as he struck the ground. Fox pressed his advantage, lifting the Uzi, ready to crack the other man in the jaw with the submachine gun.

“Freeze!”

Fox complied, holding both hands aloft. He glanced briefly to his right and saw a police cruiser, a female officer crouched behind it. She gripped her weapon in both hands and laid her arms over the car’s hood, using it to steady her hands.

“Drop the guns!” she yelled. “Now! Both of you.”

Fox set the Uzi on the asphalt and, with a hard shove, sent it sliding toward the cruiser. The other man tossed aside his pistol. She ordered both men to their feet and Fox did as he was told. He hated taking orders, especially from a cop, but he didn’t mind grabbing some distance from the stocky bastard who a few moments earlier had been gunning for him. The woman rose, the weapon still held in front of her, and gestured toward a wall.

“Up against it,” she said.

“Look, Officer—” Fox began.

Her face reddened and her voice gained volume. “The wall. Now!”

He started for the wall, still keeping his distance from the other man. As he moved, he noticed the guy fumbling in his pocket for something while he used Fox’s body to shield his movements from the cop. Before Fox could say anything, the man’s hand came free and Fox caught the glint of something metallic, followed by a gunshot.

EMILIO CORTEZ WATCHED as his men fanned out over the small mountain town’s main drag, looking for Gabriel Fox. Two men disappeared inside the coffee shop across the street, while another slipped into a nearby bookstore. Three more began moving down his side of the street, peering through store windows. With a gesture, he sent the two SUVs inching down the street, the drivers ready to return should he summon them with a call through the throat microphone.

Despite the chill, he opened his knee-length black leather coat, putting his Ithaca 37 stakeout model shotgun within reach. The shotgun hung from his rangy frame in a custom-made rig, and he carried extra shells in his right coat pocket. A Browning Hi-Power handgun, a custom sound suppressor affixed to its barrel, rode in snap-out leather on his hip, opposite the shotgun. Laminated FBI credentials hung from his neck, and he carried a snap-out wallet containing a forged Bureau ID and badge in his coat pocket, in case he encountered the police.

Cortez scanned the street, listening to the radio traffic buzzing in his ear.

The helicopter zoomed by, the rotor wash tousling his black hair. His black eyes squinted even as he followed the craft as it passed him by.

A moment later one of the van drivers spoke. “Picking up a 911 dispatch. A guy matching our rabbit just bolted from inside the coffee shop using the back door. Apparently he got a visual on us.”

“We’ve got two in the coffee shop,” Cortez said.

A moment later the helicopter copilot spoke. “Clear. I’ve got a visual on our guy. He’s running down the alley behind the coffee shop. Ben, you and Alex got that?”

“Right,” said Ben Waters, one of the men searching the coffee shop, “we’re coming out the back now.”

“Clear,” the pilot responded.

Cortez adopted a grim smile as he listened to the chase unfold. He was ready to put this guy under wraps, forever and for good. They’d spent the past couple of days scouring Frisco, Breckenridge, Dillon, Leadville, and any other Rocky Mountain town within a fifty-mile radius, looking for some sign of him. They’d come up empty. Cortez had to admit that, for a computer geek, Fox had done a pretty fair job of covering his tracks. Fortunately for them, he’d gotten sloppy, overconfident and had made a rank amateur mistake, using his own credit card to access a public Internet terminal. The cyberteams in Mexico and Denver had caught the transaction and alerted Cortez. The contents of the e-mail had been encrypted so Cortez couldn’t be certain who the programmer had contacted. The uncertainty just added a measure of urgency to their chase, which the young Mexican didn’t mind at all.

A voice buzzed in his earpiece. “Cortez?”

“Go.”

“Got him in the alley,” Juan Vasconez said. “Tell the chopper to scoot. We don’t need the damn thing hovering overhead and drawing attention.”

“Clear. Warbird, you heard the man. Go!”

“Right.” An instant later the thrumming of helicopter rotors intensified and the craft headed west, likely circling outside the city limits, but staying within earshot of the fighting.

“He just cut between buildings,” Vasconez said. “The boot shop and the antique mall. Can we get a vehicle there to cut him off?”

“You heard the man,” Cortez said.

From a couple of blocks away, one of the SUVs screeched into a U-turn and made its way to the position. Cortez was in motion, closing in on Fox with long, quick strides, his hand inside his coat and yanking the Browning from its holster. Pressing the gun against his side, he let the folds of his coat swallow it.

“Shit, he’s turning back on me,” Vasconez said.

“Let him,” Cortez replied. “Don’t shoot. I repeat, do not shoot.”

“Right.” A pause. “He’s got a gun!”

The sounds of a scuffle filled his earpiece and he cursed under his breath as he crossed the street and came within twenty yards of the SUV, which had rolled to a stop. The driver’s-side door popped open and the guy stepped out. A siren blared from somewhere beyond view. Someone shouted something, and, though he couldn’t make out its content, Cortez knew it was a command of some sort.

“Shit,” Vasconez breathed. “Cop.”

Cortez’s heart pounded as he closed in on the scene. “Do not engage,” he said. “I repeat—”

The crack of a gunshot stopped him in midsentence. Damn, damn, damn.

Even as he continued toward his quarry, the beating of helicopter blades sounded from behind, growing louder, reverberating from the walls of the nearby storefronts, the noise drowning out all else. Rotor wash caught the tails of his coat, whipping them around his legs.

Whipping around, expecting to see his team’s helicopter, he caught sight of another craft, a black helicopter, touching down in the middle of the street. He stopped dead, and a moment later a side door slid open and a big, blond-haired guy stepped onto the pavement. A gray-haired man with the thick chest and shoulders of a bull and a smallish guy with brown hair and a mustache followed. The maelstrom whipped up by the helicopter parted their jackets and Cortez was sure he spotted at least one holstered weapon among the three of them. Apparently they’d missed the gunshot and had no idea they’d just touched down in a hot zone. Good, he thought. He knew how to play this one to his benefit.