"Дон Пендлтон. Chicago Wipe-Out ("Палач" #8) " - читать интересную книгу автора

"No."
"When you can, we'll go out."
"Oh," she said, small voiced. Then..."Are you always this careful?"
"I try to be."
A moment later she advised him, "I guess my eyes are adjusted. I can
see you. Sort of."
He said, "Fine," and cracked the door open.
"M-Mack?"
"Yeah?"
"If I die... if we die..."
"Think living , Jimi - not dying." He made a quick doorway recon, then
took her by the hand and pulled her outside with him.
The choking snow enveloped them immediately and they moved swiftly
along the upper porch to the stairway. Again Bolan paused to get the lie and
the feel of the environment.
Jimi gasped, "What's the?.."
"Hush," he whispered.
The engine of an automobile could be heard idling somewhere just below.
The motel's outside lights were no more than faint and isolated specks of
useless luminescence. Bolan's hand went to the railing of the steel
stairway, fingertips lightly pressed to the dry underside.
They stood that way for perhaps thirty seconds, then Bolan quickly
propelled her along the porch and pressed her against the side of the
building. "Not a sound," he whispered. "Not even a harsh breath."
Jimi knew that the Beretta was in his hand and that he was waiting for
something of which she had not yet become aware. She covered her mouth with
a gloved hand and huddled to the wall, blinking away the snowflakes which
were trying to invade her eyes. Then she became aware that Bolan had moved
slightly away from her. She reached out to touch him - he gave the questing
hand a reassuring squeeze, and then he was gone.
Seconds later she heard voices, muted and ghostly in the wind, without
source of direction, but apparently drawing steadily nearer.
"Jesuschrist I can't see a goddam thing."
"Quiet, just be quiet."
"What if we get lost?"
"Whoever heard of getting lost on a fuckin' stairway?"
"I heard of a guy getting lost in his own backyard in a blizzard once.
They found him the next morning, froze to death, ten feet from his own back
door."
"Dammit, you guys heard me say be quiet!"
Three voices, evidently ascending the stairway. Jimi was learning to
understand the signs of the jungle.
"Did that pimp say B-240?"
"Don't call 'im no pimp. He's a personal friend of th' boss, you better
not let him hear... "
"Pimp, shrimp - the next guy to say a word is gettin' a bullet right
inna ear! Now dammit, shut up !"
There was little doubt as to the meaning of that muffled conversation,
even for a jungle novice such as Jimi James. And suddenly her mind seemed to
become as one with Mack Bolan's. She knew that he was poised there, near the