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

still.
Then Bolan saw light, faint light, coming from the cracks of an
ill-fitting door some ten yards ahead. Surely this was the source of the
moving air he had noticed.
He pressed himself against the curving stone of the tunnel. He paused
when he was still several feet from the door. He listened intently. There
was a room of some sort beyond that wooden door, but it would be empty -
Bolan heard no sounds from within. Or... it could be a trap.
He stood against the wall at the very edge of the doorframe. He
extended his right foot and gave the door a slight nudge. The door was
unlatched. It swung inward.
Bolan looked inside cautiously. The Browning hi-power panned the room,
simultaneously with his eyes.
The floor was earthen. It was a storage room, with a door on the
opposite wall. A candle emitted the light that had drawn Bolan.
Two people were in the room. Libyan civilians: an old man and a young
woman. They were tied to kitchen chairs. Tied and gagged. They were alone in
the room. Their eyes watched with puzzlement - and fear - as Bolan stepped
toward them.
The man could have been fifty or a hundred years old. He wore a dark
robe and white headcloth. The snowy white of his beard was in stark contrast
to the dark of his Arabian skin.
The woman was a girl. Bolan judged her to be sixteen, if that. But she
was already budding with the sensual-eyed, lush beauty that Bolan knew to be
the birthright of the sisterhood of Islam.
He ungagged the girl, then the man.
The girl was fooled by the leathery brown of Bolan's skin hue, which
had been acquired over an adulthood of missions to every hotspot under the
sun.
She chattered at Bolan in Arabic.
Bolan stepped back. He cautioned her to lower her voice with a waved
hand.
"Do you speak English?" he whispered.
"I do. Some," replied the girl quietly. "Who are you?"
"A friend. Tell me why you're here."
"This is our home. My father manages the inn of the village."
Bolan made his decision. He undid the ropes that bound them to the
chairs.
"I'm looking for Kennedy." In a hushed voice he described the boss merc
to her. "Did he come through here? Do you know where he went?"
The old man muttered something in Arabic. The only word Bolan could
make out was "Kennedy."
"He is an evil man," said the girl. She rubbed the burn marks where the
rope had chafed her wrists. "At first we thought he was from the villa."
"What are your names?" whispered Bolan. "Tell me what happened here.
Quickly."
"I am called Fahima," she said. "This is my father, Bushir. The man you
call Kennedy, he has kept us like this for two days now. He keeps us alive
in case the owner of the villa should try to contact us."
"What is your employer's name?"