Devil's Bargain by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Gordon “Buck” Walters licked his middle finger and stuck it in the air. It wasn’t Doppler radar, he thought, but a poor farm boy from Kansas could damn sure tell which way the wind was blowing with a little spit. Shuffling for the deep southwest corner, burdened with war bag, and he figured the stiff breeze wasn’t shifted much by those rusted, crappy metal TV antennae sprouting on the apartment rooftop, the likes of which he’d seen in every Muslim city from Casablanca to Karachi while working CIA black ops. Old school still worked for him, by God, the wind sweeping in nice and steady from the steppe, east of old Ankara. Maybe Noah’s ghost even, he chuckled to himself, up there in Mount Ararat on the border with Iran, now lent them a helping hand with good strong gusts, blowing over the vast east plains, keeping it honest for them, downright calamitous for scores of unsuspecting Turks out for a late-night stroll or cup of tea. Factor in the hills that ringed the town Kemal Ataturk, or Father Turk, staked as the country’s capital, and Walters had to believe—between high-tech and his middle finger—they were covered from having to whiff the nasty stuff.

God help them, he thought, if Mother Nature decided to belch long and loud in their faces. Talk about screwed and tattooed….

On the move, shuddering at the image of dying the way he’d seen thousands of Kurds go when Saddam got nasty after Gulf I, Walters watched two of his four-man team hustle into position, claiming their roost. No longer necessary to tromp around as askeri inzibat, Walters knocked the white helmet of the Turkish military police, branded with As Iz, off his head. Lanyard around his neck with pistol was dumped on the deck next, Walters looking back as Grimm drilled the steel plate into the doorjamb of the service stairwell. Midnight lovebirds or any party-crashers of the armed variety would have to blow the door, but Walters sure as hell hoped they were long gone by then. Grimm, he saw, then scurried to the far northeast edge, depositing four iron talons, already fastened with coiled rope, at the base of the retaining wall.

As Judd and Gregory unzipped their hefty war bags, hauled out and began assembling the two rocket launchers, Walters took a few moments to get his bearings. Snugging the com link over his bristled scalp, he crouched at the wall, the two Delta commandos erecting the launcher, clamping it down, diddling with cushioned recoil cradles. From his buzzard’s-eye view he found plenty of nightlife, stretching up and down the main street. Choked with traffic, the creatures of the night whooping it up in street side cafés and bars. The wide boulevard stretched south, ending about six klicks down before it rolled up at the gates of the presidential mansion. There were hotels, department stores, he saw, the famous Kocatepe Camii, which was the Turk version of Saks, gobbling up what he figured was a couple of blocks or so.

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