"Dean Ing - Soft Targets" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ing Dean)

from the HP was identified in the sink of the Toronto apartment and its instruction executed.
little man fidgeted for another fifteen seconds before the line went dead. He nodded to him
replaced the receiver, and ambled back to his table.
In the Toronto apartment, beads of light had grown in the clay pot over the sink as the sq
energized pyrotechnic igniters. The beads began to sink from sight into the silvery mixture bef
reluctantly, the thermite caught fire and pros-pered.
Thermite is a simple composition of great util-ity when it becomes necessary to weld, say,
frames of locomotives. Because one of its com-bustion products is pure liquid iron. The o
product is aluminum oxide, also common in solid rocket exhaust.
A tiny ravening sun radiated from the top of the clay pot as its temperature rose to approxi-ma
twenty-five hundred degrees celsius. Since thermite is hot enough to melt concrete there w
considerable quantity of smoke, which boiled above the starlike glare and crawled across the cei
An observer with protective goggles might have seen the thin trickle of brilliant yellow-w
molten iron that began to drip through the hole in the pot. It instantly destroyed the microproces
consumed the circuit board, and proceeded to fry the answering device into bubbling junk w
smoke thickened in the two-room apartment. Tiny particles of aluminum oxide began to fall as s
on the carpet while the sink enamel pinged and spat under incandescent metal soup. The stream
iron dwindled, slag already congealing as the clay pot disintegrated to add its thermal content to
mass in the sink. The cast-iron sink began to char the wooden counter at its lip, then slowly coo
At that point, tendrils of smoke found their way through ceiling moldings into the apartment abov
In Victoria, the little man dallied at his lunch, which was evidently filet of shoe sole,
aban-doned it after a few minutes. He walked to his own hotel, tossed a pillow on the floor of
room, and lay with his bare feet touching the locked door. He would need sleep now, to as
alertness that night.
While the sleeper husbanded his strength, an apartment dweller in Toronto arrived to find
smoke alarm whining in panic. Fire marshals traced the problem, took one look through the d
they forced in the apartment below, and radioed the Toronto Metropolitan Police. Within an
they had conferred with the RCMP which, unlike the generally similar Federal Bureau
Investigation to the south, has more sweeping powers in domestic matters.
A thorough description of the apartment's contents reached Ottawa early in the evening,
shortly afterward Ottawa sent five new photographs by wire to Toronto. None of the new pict
were from passports or mug shots; all were of a special category of people whose expertis
communication devices fitted the Toronto pattern. Neither the three men nor the two women w
thought to be in CanadaтАФuntil now. Pelletier took the group of new photofaxes, spread t
irritablyтАФand howled with delight.
Pelletier brandished a `known photograph,' distinguished neither by clarity nor recency,
handed it to the RCMP sergeant, who flinched. It was `Trnka,' beyond any shred of doubt. At
moment, there were five men on the case. A few minutes later, after RCMP/Ottawa conta
FBI/Washington, there were over thirty.
The HP tintinnabulated in the sleeper's ear at ten o'clock, Pacific Standard Time. Presently
little man strolled from the hotel to a dust-covered Pontiac off Wharf Street, and then moved o
the Inner Harbour. He watched a tall figure move across the lights from the cabin of an Isla
Thirty-Four, continued his walk, and stopped again as the lights went out. He cursed softly, reali
that Graham intended to sleep aboard the damned boat. He found a coffee shop, wasted an h
then returned to the Pontiac.
He dressed inside the car, beginning with the wetsuit, struggling into the zippered black turtlen
and charcoal denims more by feel than by sight. The deck shoes were new, stiff,
uncomfortable. He stuck the Llama auto-matic into his waistband and locked the car, taking on
his three B-four bags with him from the trunk. He sank the bag in shallows, two moorages from
Islander, and brought the other bags.