"Дон Пендлтон. The Violent Streets ("Палач" #41) " - читать интересную книгу автора

the darkness like a wraith as he backtracked toward the home of the lady
cop.
He entered her yard, which was wrapped in deepest shadow, and it didn't
take thirty seconds to confirm his worst suspicions.
A cigarette was bobbing and glowing in the driver's seat of the black
Cadillac. It did not take any combat genius to decide that a friend or lover
spending the night with a lady would not leave his chauffeur waiting at the
wheel.
The car was a crew wagon. If not Mafia, then some deadly affiliate. And
it looked as if the driver was expecting his crew back at the car at any
moment.
Mack Bolan decided not to keep the guy waiting any longer.
Sliding the Beretta Belle from its side leather sheath, Bolan made a
stealthy approach to within arm's length of the driver's window. Even with
the iron-clad certainty of experience and intuition burning in his mind, he
refused to snipe the guy from a distance without making positive, final
verification of his allegiance and identity.
The Executioner would have no innocent blood on his soul.
And from five feet away, he knew that his intuition still functioned,
his combat instincts were still finely honed and working smoothly.
The guy was syndicate. There was no mistaking the bulge of bolstered
hardware beneath the left arm. And even in the darkness, there was no
mistaking the type, either. The thirty-dollar haircut and the expensive suit
that somehow never matched the swarthy face of a street-wise, slum-born
punk.
And yeah, Bolan was certain. But he had to be certain in his soul,
where it counted, as well as in his mind and in his gut. There would have to
be one last, indisputable test.
Bolan made the split-second decision, recognizing all possible
consequences in the space of a heartbeat. If his instincts were wrong, and
the guy was a lawman or an armed civilian bodyguard of some sort, he would
have to withdraw as best he could and contact Fran Traynor another time. If
he was right...
Bolan moved. He stepped out of the shrubbery, deliberately exposing
himself and holding the Beretta out of sight along his thigh. The driver saw
him at once, and his boredom vanished in a fast double-take. His reaction
was swift, practiced, and it sealed his fate. The sawed-off shotgun that
came nosing up over the dash told Bolan all he needed to know.
No cop or trained security man would react in such a fashion, without
warning, and none would have armed himself with such a weapon. The guy was
dirty, all right. And he was dead.
Bolan extended the Beretta to arm's length, the squat muzzle of its
special silencer a foot from the wheelman's face, and he stroked the trigger
lightly. The shotgun muzzle continued to rise and level out. The Belle
coughed out a single breathless phut. The driver slumped sideways in his
seat, the cigarette a fading ember now on the blood-spattered floorboards of
the Caddy.
Bolan moved on, rounding the rear of Fran Traynor's house and finding
the back door unlocked. From that angle, he could also see that lights were
burning inside, although they had been invisible from the street.