Assassin's Code by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2011-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

OUS RESTED comfortably on cushions in Bilal’s house with his fingers laced across a belly distended with roasted goat. Bolan cleaned his Stechkin and drank tea. They had been shown every comfort except one. No one had offered to let them use a phone, and Bolan had decided it might make things awkward to ask, at least until he and Ous had earned a little more trust. Bilal’s son Jadeed entering the room excitedly waving a museum piece. At one point it had been a British Lee-Enfield Mark VI infantry rifle. Someone had long ago given it a Monte Carlo-style sporting stock and a dubious-looking Chinese copy of a Bushnell six-power scope. Bolan removed the magazine.

The weapon took .303 ammunition, however the magazine was loaded with gleaming new Federal Power-Shok soft-point ammunition.

“Three-oh-three!” Jadeed grinned. It might well have been his only English.

Bolan clicked the magazine back in place, racked a round and pushed on the safety. “Yeah, .303.”

Jadeed handed Bolan a homemade bandolier full of homemade, 5-round charger clips for the WWII-vintage weapon. They both looked up at the sound of rotors in the distance.

Bolan knelt beside Ous. “Can you walk?”

“I need a rifle and perhaps a shoulder to lean on just a little.”

Jadeed helped Ous up without being asked, and the two men spoke. Bolan went outside. Bilal and several villagers stood with rifles in hand looking to the ravine to the east. The headman held up one finger, then pointed toward the eastern hills. One chopper had deployed its passengers. Bolan held up two fingers in question. Bilal shrugged.

Bolan had a bad feeling the village was being flanked. He followed Bilal down to the hill to the creek that split the little canyon. A nice six-foot adobe wall girded the frontal arc of the village, and decades of fighting had taught them to put in a firing step for ease of shooting over it. Bilal stepped out into the opening in the wall. It had no gate. Beyond the wall were pens for the village livestock.

Bolan stepped out next to Bilal. Ous came a moment later, leaning heavily on Jadeed. “You all right?”

“Yes.”

Armed villagers began lining the wall while women and boys drove livestock from the pens into the village. Bolan took a moment to peer down his scope. It seemed to be in order. There was no time to check its zero. He was just going to have to hope that its owner took shooting seriously. “There’s going to be a parley?”

Ous nodded. “In this situation it is traditional.”

“Ask him who’s got the back door.”

Ous translated. “He says the cliffs behind the village are insurmountable, and should they try to deploy men at the peak from a helicopter they will receive a very hard welcome.”

Bilal held up both hands as though he was behind the spade grips of a heavy machine gun. “Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah!” he proclaimed.

Jadeed happily mimed, holding a rocket launcher over one shoulder. “Toof!”

The villagers had crew-served weapons in the crags overlooking the village and the land behind it.

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