"Destroyer 036 - Power Play.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"Well, what?" Bobbin asked with a small sinking feeling.
"You said you could take care of it."
Bobbin nodded.
"Then you better do it. There's no room in this business, Bobbin, for weaklings who can't see their duty and do it. You get my drift?"
Shaken, Bobbin rose to his feet and nodded. He was dismissed by a curt nod of the head. As he walked from the office, he vowed to himself that he had not come this far in the business just to have his life messed up by some porn publisher. If it turned into a question of the good life for Will Bobbin or life for Wesley Pruiss, well then Wesley Pruiss had just better duck.


The assassin stood in the woods behind the Furlong County Golf Course. He was a small man, dressed casually in khaki slacks and a yellow sports shirt, and he would have looked like many other small men in Furlong County if it had not been for the fact that his skin, like his shirt, was yellow.
His attention was fixed on a squirrel, hopping along a felled tree. The squirrel moved a foot in a nervous hop, stopped, with his plumed tail waving about, then hopped again, all in a quick, herky-jerky movement.
Slowly, the assassin bent down and picked up a small stone in his left hand. He tossed it up into the air, about ten feet high, in the general direction of the squirrel. The stone bounced off the log behind the squirrel who took off as if propelled by a diarrhetic jet.
The animal raced the ten feet down the log, across two feet of open space, hopped onto the trunk of a fat black tree and flashed up toward safety.
The assassin's right hand sped almost like an electric spark toward the back of the thick black leather belt he wore. In one smooth movement, he extracted a red handled knife, brought it up to his ear, and let fly.
The knife made one fast half-turn in the air and then slammed into the squirrel's tail, ripping through the fur and flesh and burying itself an inch deep into the wood of the tree. The squirrel kept trying to climb but, pinned by the knife, was unable to move and emitted a pained, noisy shriek.
The shriek lasted only a split second, because even while the first knife was being thrown by the right hand, the assassin's left hand was moving to the back of his belt, removing another knife, and with an identical throwing motion, winging the knife toward the spot on the tree where the squirrel futilely moved his legs.
That knife too made a lazy half-turn before the spike-sharp point buried itself into the squirrel's small skull, cracking it with an audible split and pinning the animal to the tree. The shriek died in the animal's throat. The assassin smiled and walked toward the tree to retrieve and clean his knives and return them to the belt of six he wore.
But the assassin's smile was not a smile of pleasure. This had been his third squirrel of the day and he felt a lingering tinge of apprehension that his ancestors who had honed this knife-throwing art over the centuries would be disturbed if they could see that he kept his skills sharp by killing squirrels.
But soon, he thought, soon came Wesley Pruiss.
But even that did not give him much satisfaction, for a normal man was not much more to him than a squirrel. No more of a challenge. No more of a threat.
He wished instead for the days he had read about and heard about, in centuries past, when great killers were sent out to track down other great killers.
Today, he thought to his dismay, there were no great killers left to test him and to challenge his genius in a contest in which second-place meant death.


Wesley Pruiss was sleeping when the pickets arrived. Rev. Higbe Muckley wore a long frock coat and a shirt with a frayed collar and a tie whose back strand was longer than the front.
Behind him were forty pickets, most of them carrying signs. One sign read: "Rock of Ages."
"What the hell does that sign mean?" Remo asked Theodosia.
She came to the window and brushed her body against his, but she did not recoil at the touch. Instead, she stayed there and pressed against him harder.
"What sign?" she asked, looking down.
"The one the lunatic is carrying."
"Be more specific."
"'Rock of Ages,'" Remo said. "What does that mean?"
Theodosia shrugged, a rubbing shrug that manipulated her body against Remo's.
Pruiss woke up as the pickets, marching slowly around the building, began to sing.
"What's going on out there?" he snarled from his bed.
"The dancing girls have arrived," Remo said.
"Chase 'em, I'm trying to sleep."
Their voices drifted up from below:
"... Cleft for me.
Let me hide myself in Thee."
"Who brought the pickets?" Pruiss asked sleepily.
"It looks like that Reverend Muckley," Theodosia said. "The bible thumper from California." She pressed closer to Remo.
"Well, at least it ain't none of them lesbian libbers," Pruiss said, before turning his face away on the pillow and closing his eyes. Remo felt Theodosia's body stiffen slightly.
"Why'd this Reverend Muckley come here?" Remo said.
Theodosia said, with sureness. "Those goddam oil companies must have put him up to it. I think they're behind everything that goes on around here."
Pruiss, on the edge of sleep, mumbled something.
"What, Wesley?" Theodosia asked. But Pruiss was asleep.
"The CIA," Remo said.
"What?"
"He said 'the CIA.'"
The dark-haired woman shook her head. Her hair brushed against Remo's cheek.
"Ever since Gross did an article on CIA assassins, Wesley's been convinced the CIA is after him. If his car runs out of gas, it's the CIA. If the tailor rips a button off his shirt, it's the CIA. It's like a fixation with him."