Date with Death by Warren Murphy

Author:Warren Murphy [Warren Murphy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Chiun (Fictitious character) --Fiction., Williams, Remo (Fictitious character) --Fiction.
ISBN: 9781035999002
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

CHAPTER EIGHT

DEKE BAUER HAD THE PATIENCE that every good soldier required, but at the moment it was stretched to the limit. The major glanced at the clock on the mantel for the hundredth time that night.

Where in the hell were Brickell and his men? They’d gone down the mountain hours ago. They should have returned by now, bringing along with them the bodies of the three intruders.

The mantel clock chimed midnight. Bauer pushed back his chair, crossed the room to the dying fire, and then turned abruptly around, heading for the door. On his way out he scooped up his Uzi and a pair of infrared nightglasses.

He would check out the situation himself. That was the only way he’d get any sleep.

“I’m going out for a while,” the major informed the sentry at the main door. “If Brickell and his team get back before I do, tell Brickell to wait in my office for me. I don’t care how late it is.”

“Yes, sir,” the sentry responded quickly. He would not, he thought silently, want to be in Brickell’s size twelves for anything right now. The old man was pissed, and someone, probably Brickell, was going to pay the price. In spite of his heavy field jacket, the sentry felt a sudden chill. The money on this job was tops, and any mercenary in the country would jump at the chance to work here, but Bauer was no one to fuck with.

It was cold and windy on the mountaintop. Wisps of fog eddied and swirled around the tall pines. The major kept to the overgrown path, the same one the monks had hacked out of the mountainside nearly a hundred years before. When they’d first taken over the monastery, Bauer considered clearing away all the underbrush that obscured the trail. But then he’d decided it was best left as they’d found it. The buckbrush and high grass were an effective camouflage. Why let anyone else know there was an easy way up and down the mountain?

He smelled smoke. With his nightglasses, he could make out the embers of a campfire. Three figures were lying near it.

Dead?

He watched for another quarter-hour. One of the figures moved. So the intruders were still alive.

Bauer slipped by the clearing where the fire was and then worked his way up from the downwind side. Two tours of duty in Nam had taught him that it was best to arrive from the direction from which you were least expected.

When he found Brickell and the team, he resolved, he’d teach them a lesson they’d never forget. He’d told them to do the job and come straight back. The order had been clearly understood. There was no damn excuse for not carrying it out to the letter.

Bauer clambered over a boulder and dropped softly down into a shallow arroyo. His boot sank into something firm but yielding. Overhead, the moon shook off a bank of ragged clouds. Now Bauer could see the path clearly. What he’d stepped on was someone’s stomach.

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