William W Johnstone Ashes 30 Tyranny in the Ashes (txt)

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eating up a week's worth of groceries."
"Okay, I see your point. It's just that I can't stand these MREs. They
taste more like warm sawdust than"-he paused to read the small print on
the side of his food container- "ham and navy beans."
"They weren't designed for taste, Coop. They were designed to keep you
alive and healthy in the field."
"Alive maybe, healthy I doubt," he answered, tentatively tasting his MRE
with a grimace.
After they'd finished eating, Jersey began to unroll a sleeping bag from
her pack in the corner of the room.
"You know, it gets pretty damned cold up here in the mountains. Maybe
we'd better share one of those to conserve body heat."
Jersey looked back over her shoulder to see him staring at her behind as
she bent over. She straightened up and faced him, hands on hips. "We're
on a mission here, bozo. And that doesn't include fooling around."
Coop smiled. "Oh, and if we weren't on a mission, does that mean you'd
fool around with me?"
Jersey rested her hand on the butt of her K-Bar assault knife in the
scabbard on her belt. "Sure, Coop," she answered sarcastically. "I'd be
glad to fool around with you. Of course, then I'd have to scalp you to
keep you from bragging about it all over the camp."
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Hmmm, it might be worth it."
Jersey shook her head. The man was impossible. "Go to bed. I have a
feeling we're gonna be up early tomorrow."
She climbed in her bedroll and pulled the edge up to her chin. "Coop,
seriously, do you think those men stand a chance of killing Perro Loco?"
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82 82 William W. Johnstone
He glanced back at her from his own bedroll across the room. "Honestly?
I think they've got two chances, slim and none."
83 Eleven
"The flying machine is coming," Reynaldo said.
"I see it. I hear it," Jose replied.
"It will be very dangerous to kill the comandante here at the hacienda,"
Reynaldo whispered.
"Think of the money," Jose told him.
"I have been thinking about the money. I am also thinking about death .
. . about dying today if we do not escape into the jungle," Reynaldo
replied, gripping with sweaty palms the Heckler and Koch sniper rifle
the norteamericanos had given him.
The clatter of a helicopter's blades grew louder from the east.
"We were promised to be paid in gold," Jose muttered, jacking a shell
into the firing chamber of his carbine. "There is no gold in Belize. We
will be rich men if we follow the instructions the americana gave us.
All we have to do is kill the mad-dog Nicaraguan who oppresses our
people, calling himself a soldier. Think of the gold, Reynaldo."
"If we live long enough to spend it," Reynaldo said in a quiet,
deliberate voice as he removed the plastic covers from the telescopic
sights on his sniper rifle.
"What about the others guarding the landing place?" Jose asked.
"They will not shoot us. If one of us can kill Comandante Perro Loco
when he gets out of the flying machine, the others will not know what to
do."
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"Where is Paco Valdez?" Jose wondered. "He is the one to be feared."
"In Belize City. Some of our soldiers captured two ameri-canos at the
Yucatan border. Capitan Valdez had them brought to him at the Gray Gull."
"I hope this works," Jose said. "If it does not, we are both dead men."
"Our families are starving. We have no money. It is a chance worth
taking," Reynaldo reminded him. "All we have from Comandante Perro Loco
is empty promises and empty bellies. We have no choice." He added to
himself, "And my Rosita needs the money for her operation."
Jose knew that Reynaldo was right. When the offer came to assassinate
Perro Loco, it had sounded too good to be true. But when the soft-spoken
americana who made them the offer gave them each a pair of gold coins,
with the promise of much more if they could kill Perro Loco, he was
listening closely. To a Belizian jungle farmer like Jose, it seemed like
a fortune, more money than he had ever seen in his life.
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"The black machine is coming down," Reynaldo said. "Wait until you are
certain of your target. The radio message from Belize City said that
Perro Loco would be aboard this dark helicopter."
"I will not miss," Jose promised, shifting the butt-plate of the fancy
gun to his right shoulder, glancing around him to be sure none of the
other soldiers guarding the landing pad was suspicious.
Jim Strunk, a transplanted Englishman with a Belizian wife and four
children, crept outside the hacienda walls with a Glock 9mm pistol, a
silencer screwed into the muzzle. A houseboy for the comandante had said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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