"Maloney, Mack - Wingman 05 - The Twisted Cross UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maloney Mack)

"Or they've been able to make a deal with the weirdos running the Canal," Hunter said, stating a third option. "And that's why I asked you boys to come down here tonight. I've scoped out a guy who can tell us everything we want to know. It's just a question 'convincing1 him to do it ..."

Tyler drained his coffee and poured himself another cup. "Well, we're all ears, Hawk," he said.

The plantation was located right on the edge of the Segnette Bayou, about 15 miles south of the port of New Orleans.

Earlier in the day, while he was still disguised as a baggage handler, Hunter had instinctively picked out one particular cruise liner passenger. For soon-to-be-obvious reasons, the man would have been hard to miss. When he required no less than six taxis to transport him and his rather large retinue of bodyguards away from the docks, Hunter tagged him as being one of the biggest rollers to get off the ship. Quickly flagging down a taxi, the pilot followed the suspect's convoy of cabs out of the city and into the Segnette Bayou. After a 30-minute ride, the half dozen taxis

turned into the front gates of an enormous plantation. The place was complete with an authentic-looking antebellum mansion, various farm buildings, many acres of land and the mandatory scattering of honeysuckle bushes and weeping willow trees.

Hunter told his driver to keep right on going past the front gate of the plantation. Eventually, they made a U-turn and headed back to New Orleans. A few bags of silver unloosened the lips of the driver on the return trip, giving Hunter enough information to identify the bigshot passenger as one Jean LaFeet, a wealthy gambler/smuggler/criminal, who was well-known in New Orleans. /

A trip to the headquarters of the newly installed military governor for downtown New Orleans told Hunter that La-Feet was suspected of everything from mass murder to kidnapping and selling young girls. It was rumored that the man kept as much as a quarter ton of cocaine on his own premises, just for personal use, while dealing many more thousands of pounds of the stuff on a weekly basis. He was also widely known as a Circle collaborator, and it was said that more than a few Soviet and Cuban officers had passed through the gates of his mansion before the last war.

The military governor told Hunter that it was just a matter of time before he and his militia moved in on LaFeet, but there were other more pressing concerns within his jurisdiction at the moment. Hunter told him he understood and, at that point, put in the call for the Cobra Brothers.

The Wingman had continued his research by spending the afternoon drinking in some dockside bars and carefully asking the right questions of the right people for the right amount of silver. It never ceased to amaze him how a glass of whiskey and a few silver coins would get people talking and the phenomenon was especially true in New Orleans. He thought maybe that was one of the reasons they called it the Big Easy.

Through several bottles of booze and a couple dozen games of pool, he learned that not only was LaFeet a ruthless murderer, drug dealer and sexual deviate, he also surrounded himself with a small army of criminals and wackos

who shared his penchant for brutality, narcotics and underage sex objects.

With a track record like that, Hunter felt no compunction about taking on LaFeet and his minions.

It was just a few minutes before midnight when the two Cobras began a high and wide circling pattern over the plantation.

Hunter was in the gunner's seat of Cobra One, the seat left vacated by Baxter when he drew the low card. The fighter pilot was familiar with the two main pieces of hardware crammed into the cockpit. One was the Cobra's personally designed early warning threat radar system. One punch of the button and Hunter knew that there were no anti-aircraft radar systems keying in on the two circling attack choppers. The second piece of equipment consisted of two triggers. One could unleash any one of the six TOW missiles locked under the Cobra's pylons; the other operated the fearsome Ml97 cannon protruding from the Cobra's chin.

Also jammed inside the cramped cockpit with him was a half-gallon jar of honey which he had bought in town and a fine-strand, but sturdy fisherman's net . . .

The plan was simple. Cobra Two would make some noise to attract LaFeet's henchmen while Hunter and Tyler in Cobra One did the heavy lifting.

At the stroke of midnight, Cobra Two went into its act. While the pilot Crockett brought the gunship in low over the plantation's mansion, Hobbs activated the chopper's awesome flame-thrower. The long stream of kerosene-fueled fire lit up the dark surroundings like it was daylight. Hobbs's target was a hay barn about 50 yards from the main house. Two passes and the wooden structure was engulfed in flames.

As predicted, the surprise attack brought LaFeet's men running. To the man they were amazed to see a Cobra gunship wheeling out over the swamps and turning back toward them. Armed with rifles, shotguns and only a few

dated Thompson machineguns, the 20 or so bodyguard: squeezed off a few token rounds apiece and then sought the< nearest hiding place as the chopper roared overhead.

Hobbs unleashed a TOW missile on the next pass, guiding it by way of his NightScope glasses to a priceless 193$ Rolls Royce touring sedan that was parked outside the mansion's elegant front entrance. The missile impacted just be hind the driver's seat, blowing the expensive vehicle 15 fee into the air. It came down in a shower of fiery pieces o metal.

Only a handful of LaFeet's men dared to crawl out o their holes and take a few shots at the Cobra as it roam over again, its powerful cannon blazing away at nothing in particular. Inside the mansion, several sirens were going off and LaFeet's collection of guard dogs - Dobermans and pi bull terriers mostly -were barking up a storm. Both Crockett and Hobbs noticed that lights were going on and of inside the huge house in crazy, panicky patterns.

While Cobra Two continued its 130-decibel attack, Cobra One was being relatively quiet in setting down on the mansion's roof. A flat deck, used no doubt by LaFeet and his friends to sunbathe and God "knows what else, served as a convenient landing pad for the gunship. No sooner had Tyler put the copter down when Hunter popped his canopy) and crawled out of the cockpit, his flight helmet secured or his head, his trusty, tracer-filled M-16 rifle up and ready

Like Hunter, Tyler was a man of gadgets. A lot of the functions on Cobra One were automatic, controlled by powerful minicomputer in the pilot's control panel. But a number of them, such as the engine starter, the oil and fuel pumps and, most importantly, the nose cannon, could also be operated by remote control. So before Tyler climbed out with his own M-16 in hand, he punched a pre-programmed set of instructions into the ship's computer. Then h< strapped on a small control box to his belt and raised it! long thin antenna. Only then did he join Hunter on the< roof.

They had to shout to one another, so loud was the racket Cobra Two was making with its once-every-ten-second

strafing passes.