Extreme Instinct by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

“LEE? Captain Lee!”

Wearily opening his eyes, the pilot looked around to see five people in dark suits standing around his bed. Four of them were men, and one woman, but she was so inherently masculine it was hard for Lee to tell for sure without asking.

The brick walls were covered with paintings of pastoral scenes, flowers mostly, and there was a dresser covered with unwrapped boxes of medical supplies. That was when he noticed the IV of something clear dripping into his arm, and there was a strong smell of cooked pork in the air. Lee found that odd for a hospital, until the pilot realized the smell was coming from his cooked flesh.

“Captain Lee!” a man bellowed again.

“Sir?” the pilot asked, and tried to salute, but his right arm was in a cast. Then he noticed that both of his legs were also in casts, the plaster still shiny it was so new.

“Report please, comrade,” the woman asked tolerantly.

“We…the mission failed, sir,” Captain Lee said, the words tumbling freely from his mouth. Whatever painkillers were in the IV had him feeling warm and loose. Almost carefree. Get a grip, act like a professional. “Sir, we got ambushed by some assholes in a Tiger that shot the ever-loving shit out of my Chinook with a 30 mm chin cannon.”

Impatiently, one of the men waved that aside. “Yes, comrade, we have seen the pictures of your wrecked vehicle. Very sad. But what about the woman who sold nuclear weapons? Weeks, Rebecca Weeks. Is she alive or dead?”

“My crew is dead,” Lee said, the words tasting funny in his mouth. “All dead from shrapnel. Bad way to go.”

“Comrade! What about Rebecca Weeks?”

“Alive,” Lee said, forcing his mind to focus. “Taken by Blue Lightning.” Then he added, “My crew is dead. All dead from shrapnel. Bad way to die, that.”

Wordlessly, the other men looked at the pilot for a long moment, then turned and walked from the makeshift hospital room.

“Bah, he is too far gone to be of any use to us,” one of the men growled, closing the door. “You should not have given him so much painkiller.”

“Any less and his injuries might have killed him,” another man declared. “This way, at least we learn something about what happened in Milan.”

“His statements are not reliable.”

“Comrade, his best friend and entire crew just died. I think we can safely assume that he wants the people responsible killed.”

“The television news—”

“Is controlled by the state. The broadcasts will contain nothing of any use, or interest, to us.”

“Blue Lightning,” one of the older Chinese men muttered, walking to the window of the farmhouse and looking across the pastureland to the smoldering ruins of the Chinook. “I know of these people. They are supposedly freelance, but always seem to be working for Sheikh Abdul Benny Hassan.”

“The word is ben, not Benny,” another man said with a sniff. “In Arabic, it means ‘son of—’”

“Shut up, fool. His middle name is Benjamin, and never correct me again.”

“We are getting off the point,” a fat man said, tucking his hands into his pockets.

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