Al-Waleed went down hard, whimpering in agony. He was out of the fight. The same wasn’t true of his companion, Tariq Maleef. The man who had almost blown up San Antonio wasn’t going to give up. He scrambled onto hands and knees and threw himself at the pistol lying on the ground a few yards away. Bill fired but missed, his bullet kicking up dirt only inches from Maleef.
The terrorist’s hand slapped down on the gun. He rolled, fired on the move. Bill felt like a giant hand had punched him in the side as the slug plowed a furrow through his flesh. He stayed on his feet and triggered the Browning again as Maleef came up on his feet. Maleef jerked back as the bullet punched into his chest. He fired yet again, the bullet whining past Bill’s head.
The Browning roared and bucked against Bill’s palm as he fired a final time. This bullet drove Maleef off his feet. Maleef’s pistol slipped from his fingers and flew off to the side.
Bill stalked up to the fallen terrorist. Blood flowed warmly on his side, but he still felt strong enough, although the wound might catch up to him later. He kicked Maleef’s gun even farther out of reach and covered the man as he stood over him.
Maleef’s shirt was soaked with blood. He blinked pain-wracked eyes against the sun’s glare as he looked up at Bill.
“You . . . again,” he gasped. “Who . . . are you?”
“Wild Bill Elliott. And I reckon you can call this the showdown at Snake Canyon.”
He could tell Maleef didn’t understand. The terrorist husked out, “I go . . . I go to . . . paradise.”
“No,” Bill said. “You go to hell.”
He put the last round in his gun through Maleef’s brain.
Bill left the broken body where it lay and went to check on the other terrorist. Anwar al-Waleed had passed out, probably from shock and loss of blood, but he was alive. Bill hurried back to the jeep to see about Nick. The driver was still alive, but his face was pale and drawn.
“Did you get ’em?” he asked.
“Maleef’s dead,” Bill told him. “The other one’s wounded and passed out but alive. Reckon he’ll be lookin’ at a lot of interrogation somewhere down the line. How about you?”
“I think I’ll be all right,” Nick said. “Sure wouldn’t mind . . . having somebody take a look at this wound, though. And I don’t think . . . I can keep driving, Bill. Sorry.”
“That’s all right, I can handle it.”
“But you’re . . . wounded, too. I just noticed . . .”
“Just a scratch,” Bill insisted. “Let me help you over into the other seat.”
Between the two of them, they got Nick over into the passenger seat. Then Bill went back to retrieve al-Waleed. He dragged the senseless terrorist/scientist to the jeep and hoisted him into the area behind the seats.
Then he went to the wrecked jeep to see if he could find what the two of them had been so desperate to get away with.
Several metal cases had been tossed out during the crash. Bill gathered them up and put them in the back of his jeep with al-Waleed. As he started to set the last case on the floorboard, he looked at the latches and thought about opening it to see what was inside.
Then he shook his head, said, “Nah,” and added that case to the rest of the cargo.
A minute later they were headed back to the camp with Bill at the wheel. He didn’t hear any more shooting coming from the valley.
That was either a very good thing . . . or a very bad thing.
Only one way to find out.
CHAPTER 43
Del Rio
“And in other news, there are reports from Mexico of a pitched battle between two rival drug cartels earlier today, at a remote location in the Sierra Madre mountains that one of the cartels was using as a drug distribution center. Oddly, a number of Mexican nationals who were being held prisoner and forced to work at the compound have claimed that several Americans were involved in the incident, as well. The State Department has vehemently denied this. A spokesperson said that it’s possible some expatriate Americans were working for one of the cartels but that Washington has no knowledge of such matters.”
Clark pushed a button on the remote to shut off the hotel room’s TV and said, “The guy should have just stopped after that line about how Washington has no knowledge.”
“How much do they know?” Bill asked from where he sat propped up in bed. Bandages were wrapped tightly around his midsection. The bullet that had grazed him hadn’t done much damage, but he would still have to take it easy for a few days.
“Who can say how much they know?” Clark replied with a shrug. “There’s nothing on the books officially. The help we got from your friend and his friends made it easier for us to keep the whole thing dark.”
Bill nodded, knowing that Clark was talking about Hiram Stackhouse. The multibillionaire was continuing to pay for much of the operation’s fall-out. Nick Hatcher was in a private hospital and would be for several weeks, before he was strong enough to claim that new life he’d been promised. A life that Nick had promised would be lived on the straight and narrow from here on out.
Stackhouse would foot the bill for the private funerals of Braden Cole, Jackie Thornton, Ellis Madigan, and Calvin Watson, too. All four of them would be laid to rest under false names, but Bill didn’t figure that would have bothered any of them. They had lived their lives as they saw fit, done plenty of bad things, but in the end had served a higher purpose, regardless of their motivations for doing so. Let ’em rest, Bill thought. Just let ’em rest.
The hard one was Catalina. She was the one he’d shed tears for as he cradled her broken body in his arms. Her life had been filled with hardship and she had known little joy in her time on earth. She had ended it by killing Alfredo Sanchez, a man who thoroughly deserved to die, and Bill figured she would have taken a little comfort in that, but her life could have been so much more, if only she’d been given the chance to make something of it.
She would be buried under her own name in a cemetery in Ciudad Acuña, next to Martin Chavez.
Counting Catalina, he had lost half of his team, Bill reflected. Actually, looking at it in the cold light of reality, that wasn’t bad, considering that all of them had gone into this job believing that it was a suicide mission. But really, that wasn’t the right thing to call it and never had been, he thought. Sacrificing your life to protect your country and save the lives of innocent people wasn’t suicide. Not hardly.
It was the highest form of honor and duty, and it was within the reach of anyone with the courage to grasp it. Catalina Ramos was the proof of that.
“What about those cases Maleef was tryin’ to get away with?” Bill asked. “Any word on what was inside them?”
“They went on a jet back to Langley already, to the deepest, most secure labs we’ve got. What I’m hearing is that it was some new sort of biological weapon, and a particularly hellish one at that. You may have done more than just save the country, Bill. You may have saved the whole damned world.”
“The world’s not damned,” Bill said. “Not yet, anyway. Seems like we’re workin’ on it . . . but it’s not damned yet.”
Keystone, Colorado, six months later
Jake Costigan came into the diner, pushed his cap to the back of his head, and sat down at the counter. A nod to the waitress was enough to let her know that he just wanted coffee. Costigan had lived in Keystone for only four months, but that was long enough for folks to get to know him, and like him.
He was a tall, muscular man, bigger than anybody else in the diner. He worked mostly as a hunting and fishing guide but was also an excellent carpenter and handyman, and his wife Sarah was the town librarian, having taken the job when the previous librarian retired after thirty years on the job. They were a nice young couple, a mighty fine addition to the community, everybody agreed.
A few minutes later another man came into the diner and took the empty stool next to Costigan. He was older, with a shaggy thatch of mostly gray hair and a mustache. As he sat down he said to th
e waitress, “Reckon I could get a cup of coffee and a slice of that apple pie, miss?”
“Sure,” she said. She was about twenty years old, a pretty, rosy-cheeked blonde who had probably been the head cheerleader at Keystone High School a couple of years earlier. A little bulge under her uniform showed that she was expecting. “I don’t remember seeing you in here before, sir.”
“That’s because I’ve never been here before,” the stranger said with a smile. “Just passin’ through.”
Costigan looked over at him and extended a big hand.
“Jake Costigan,” he introduced himself.
“Call me Bill,” the older man said as he shook hands.
“Good to meet you. You’re not staying around here?”
Bill shook his head and said, “Nope. Just checkin’ in on a couple of friends of mine who moved here a few months ago.”
“My wife and I just moved here not that long ago ourselves,” Costigan said. “It’s a really nice place. We love it here. I hope your friends do, too.”
“I’ve got a feelin’ they do,” Bill said. The waitress put the pie and coffee on the counter in front of him, and for the next few minutes he concentrated on them.
“Actually, Sarah and I got married here, right after we moved to Keystone,” Costigan mused. “A buddy of ours was the best man. To be honest with you, I think he was sort of sweet on Sarah himself for a while, but he got over that when the two of us got together. He’s a good guy, this buddy of mine. Drives a truck, so he gets to see the whole country. I hear from him now and then, and he seems happy.”
“I’m glad to hear it, even though I don’t know the fella.” Bill took a sip of his coffee, then said, “The friends of mine I was looking for, I really wanted to see ’em because I heard about a job they might be interested in. Seems like it’d be right up their alley.”
Costigan’s eyes narrowed. He said, “If I lived in a beautiful place like this and had a good life here, I don’t think I’d be interested in any other job, no matter how good it was. Hey, I do live here, don’t I? It’s a good thing I’m not looking for anything else.”
Bill sighed and said, “Yeah, now that I think about it, I’ve got a hunch my friends would feel the same way. I don’t think I’ll even bother ’em about it.”
“Maybe you should stop by their house and have dinner with them anyway,” Costigan suggested.
“Naw, I don’t really have time. Anyway, this pie’ll tide me over.” Bill took the last bite of his pie, drained the rest of his coffee, and stood up. “But it was nice talkin’ to you . . . Jake, was it?”
“Yeah. Nice talking to you, too, Bill. Take care.”
Bill laid a twenty on the counter and nodded.
“You, too,” he said. He walked out of the diner, not seeming to hurry but not wasting any time, either.
The blond waitress wandered back over and said, “That seemed like a nice old man.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Costigan said.
“Hey, would you tell Sarah that I’ll come by and help her with Story Time at the library tomorrow?” The waitress patted the little bulge on her belly. “I want to get used to reading to kids, so I’ll know what I’m doing when my own little one gets here.”
“Sure,” Costigan agreed. “I’d be glad to.”
He finished his coffee a few minutes later, paid for it and left a nice tip, and started out of the diner. As he stepped through the door, a man coming the other way bumped heavily into him.
“Hey, watch where you’re going,” the man said gruffly. He shouldered on past Costigan and went inside.
He never noticed the way Costigan’s muscles bunched and tensed, or the way the big man’s eyes narrowed as he calculated just where and how hard to strike to break the rude son of a bitch’s neck.
Then Costigan took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. The guy was just an asshole, not worth doing anything about. Anyway, those days were far behind him now. He was content just to live out his days here in this peaceful little Colorado town where nothing ever happened, just him and his beautiful wife . . .
And he wouldn’t even tell Sarah about running into that talkative old-timer in the diner. He made that decision as he got into his pickup and drove away.
He made it almost a mile before he pulled over to the side of the road. It was starting to snow a little, but it would be a while before the roads got bad enough to keep them from getting to the airport in Denver.
The flakes sure were pretty, though, floating and dancing on the air currents as they drifted down.
He sighed, took a cell phone from the pocket of his hunting jacket, and punched in a number that only half a dozen people in the world knew. When the familiar voice answered, he said, “It’s me. Damn it, Bill, what’s the job?”
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Copyright © 2013 J. A. Johnstone
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3134-4
First electronic edition: October 2013
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3135-1
ISBN-10: 0-7860-3135-2
Suicide Mission Page 28