Red Frost by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Blancanales leaned against the back wall of Large Marge’s. The warped aluminum screen door was inches from his right hand. The smell from the garbage bin was much worse on this side of the picnic area.

Either that or it was wafting out of the kitchen.

He could hear the flat whine of silenced heavy-caliber rifle rounds zinging away from the front of the building. The semiauto Dragunov was firing steadily at four- or five-second intervals. Just long enough to ride the recoil wave back on target.

The target was Gadgets.

Blancanales fought down the impulse to boot in the screen and charge the dining room, machine pistol blazing. That course of action was temporarily off the table.

He needed to see around the corner. Slinging his weapon, he broke out the tactical spy camera. He turned it on and inserted the fish-eye camera lens in the crack between the battered aluminum screen door and the wooden door frame. The two-by-three-inch color LCD screen showed a long, narrow, cluttered kitchen—commercial stove, grill and deep fryers on one side and work counter and refrigerators on the other. It was deserted. He had no view into the restaurant proper.

The only window on the back side of the building was blocked by stacked cardboard boxes; the room appeared to be a pantry.

Blancanales shut off the tactical cam and slipped it in his uniform shirt’s bellows pocket. If he entered the kitchen through the back door, even in stealth mode, there was no guarantee that Spetsnaz wouldn’t hear him. The floor might creak. For all he knew, they had the rear entrance spy-cammed and bugged, or even booby trapped. If they caught him in the act of penetrating the perimeter, the situation would avalanche out of control. The Russians would slaughter the hostages and release the bioweapon, if they had it.

The shooting from the highway side of the building suddenly stopped, replaced by ominous silence.

Had the Spetsnaz bastard managed to hit Gadgets? he wondered. The gunner had expended ten rounds, an entire Dragunov clip. Gadgets was tops at using and evading a long gun, but there was always the chance of a lucky shot. Blancanales pushed the idea out of his head. It served no positive purpose.

He needed to get close enough to the hostiles to do the surveillance job without giving himself away. To his left, along the building’s concrete-block foundation was a ventilation screen. The mesh was loose and rusty. He used the point of his multitool to pry the screen out of its plastic frame. The opening was just large enough for him to squirm through. He stuck his head inside the gap in the concrete blocks and was hit by a different smell. Sweet, almost like perfume. It was mold. Weak light streamed into the crawl space through the few other foundation vents spaced around the perimeter.

Blancanales took a miniflashlight from his combat harness, turned it on and put it between his teeth. As he quietly levered himself through the small opening, rifle fire resumed out front.

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