"Дон Пендлтон. The Libya Connection ("Палач" #48) " - читать интересную книгу автора

replacing the ancient tangled bazaars.
Libya's population, predominantly Arab Muslims, never thought that they
would ever have it this good.
Of course, there was a price. And his name was Khaddafi.
The Company's Benghazi cover operation was a small accounting firm that
serviced many of the second-string U.S. business concerns in Libya.
The offices of Mid-Am Incorporated were in the old section of the city,
on a hillside of narrow, winding lanes that only donkeys and pedestrians
could negotiate, where the poor lived crowded together amid occasional small
business fronts that shared the crumbling, antiquated stone architecture.
Mid-Am's quarters were behind such a storefront. The glass had been
painted black. Only the silver lettering on the painted glass door indicated
that this storefront was occupied at all.
The flow of the street scene before the storefront seemed unconcerned
and unaware of Mid-Am Inc. The storefront was around the corner from the
neighborhood Bah el atouk, the Street of Merchants. The sounds clearly
carried of grocers in their open-air stalls, all enthusiastically and
simultaneously proclaiming the virtues of green figs, pomegranates, lemons,
oranges, almonds. All around, under blue skies but in the shade from the
throbbing sun, buzzed the added hubbub of foot traffic in and out of scores
of craft shops specializing in jewelry and leatherwork and shoemaking.
Berber music from flutes and goatskin drums filled the air.
Even along this narrow side street fronting the offices of Mid-Am,
which was little more than a cobbled footpath, the scene bustled with local
women clad in traditional veils, on their way to or from the market, and the
Arab men - Berbers, Kabyles, Mzabites and Bedouins - wearing the burnous, a
hooded mantle, all pushing, shoving, chattering their way about their
business.
Within the desultory building, the offices of Mid-Am were a modern
complex of "work areas" that housed just one cell in a network of covert CIA
operations in Libya.
The head man of the Benghazi facility was an amiable Bostonian named
Lansdale. At least, that was what he said his name was. Bolan met the guy
after passing through two separate security checkpoints that blocked his
path in the facility.
Grim-faced men and some women hurried busily about their errands,
answering phones, checking files.
Lansdale showed "John Phoenix" to the soundproofed cell in one of the
basement work areas where the real Michael Rideout was being detained.
Bolan gazed in upon the Spartanly furnished, not uncomfortable, room
and saw the renegade American stretched out in a sedated sleep.
Ten minutes after his arrival at the Company offices, Mack Bolan was
alone with Lansdale in the head agent's office in the back of the building.
"The first piece of classified news I have for you is that Pentagon
investigators tracked down General Thatcher stateside," said Lansdale.
"Unfortunately, the general is not doing any talking. The coded communique
we received says he got his hands on a gun and blew his brains out. Before
any questioning got underway."
Bolan fired a cigarette. He had hoped that Thatcher would have the best
clue to the whereabouts of Eve Aguilar. But that hope was now dead, like the