Blood in his eyes and face shredded, Shaw screamed, dropped the Kalashnikov, and stumbled backward. He raised his hands to trying to shove the big cat away, but that was no longer necessary. By the time he got his hands up, the cat was long gone, having torn large tufts of his prized blond hair as he jumped away and was gone.
As his eyes cleared, Shaw saw Burke step out from behind the airplane accompanied by a second, much larger man. They walked quickly toward him, but being captured was out of the question. That would be the last straw in the night’s growing string of failures. He reached inside his jacket, pulled out his Ka-Bar knife, and stepped behind the woman again, throwing his arm around her shoulders and putting the knife to her throat. That should stop them, he thought.
“Stop right there!” Shaw ordered, but Burke wasn’t listening. He continued to walk straight across the hangar floor toward him, staring down along the barrel of his Beretta which was pointed at Shaw’s forehead. “Stop, I’m telling you, or I’ll slit her throat,” Shaw tried to regain control, but that wasn’t working either.
“I don’t think so,” Burke answered in a quiet, firm voice as he closed the remaining distance. “You see, Henry, amateurs always get that wrong. You think your hand can move faster than my trigger finger and a bullet, but you’re wrong. If your left hand so much as twitches, this 9-millimeter will turn out your lights so fast that your left hand will never get the message before your brain explodes all over that back wall. Want to test me?” he asked as he leaned forward and placed the barrel against Shaw’s forehead.
Shaw stood there staring into the most icy-cold eyes he had ever seen, knowing the man was probably right. “You don’t know that, Burke,” he said anyway, not having much choice. “I keep my Ka-Bar sharp enough to shave with. You can shoot me, but the blade’s pressed against her jugular vein. If it moves even an eighth of an inch, she’s dead.”
“Maybe so, but she’s only a second wife,” Burke countered. “And if you do, I’ll call the cat back and let him finish you off. I’m sure you’d rather have the 9-mil.”
The two men continued to stare at each other until Linda finally spoke up. “Okay, guys, your pissing contest isn’t getting me anywhere. Robert, why don’t you put the cannon down and let him go. You know you can always track him down and beat the crap out of him at your leisure. And Professor Shaw,” she added as she turned her eyes up at him. “Why don’t you drop the knife? He really will feed you to the cat one piece at a time if you don’t.”
Shaw stared at Burke. His head and face were still screaming in pain, and he felt the blood running down his chest. “Your wife has a point. Looks like an old-fashioned Mexican standoff to me,” he said.
“Not really. Time’s not on your side, Marine. Your last friend just flew out the door, and mine have surrounded the building by now.”
That was when Ace Randall came up behind Bob with his left hand gripping al-Karman by the throat. “Just shoot the dumb bastard, Ghost,” he told him as he stopped twenty feet away. “You know that knife won’t do diddly to her.”
“Okay, Henry, here’s my deal,” Bob said as he lowered his Beretta and tossed it onto the floor. “How about a little mano-a-mano, just you and me? Right here, right now. You let Linda go, and you can even keep that silly Marine Corps knife you love so much. Me? I’ll just use these,” he said as he raised his hands and wiggled his fingers. “No gun, no knife, just little old me. After all, you have me by what? Five, maybe six inches and forty pounds? It should be a piece of cake for a trained Parris Island killer like you. What do you think?”
Shaw’s eyes narrowed as he looked over at Ace. “No deal. As soon as I put the knife down, your large friend will shoot me.”
“Nope,” Bob said as he turned and looked at the other man. “Ace, don’t shoot him, no matter what happens. Okay?”
“I never have before, why should I start now?” Ace replied.
“You’ve done this before?” Shaw asked.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Linda answered. “And they do mean what they say. If you let me and Ellie go, you can walk out of here… provided you get past him, of course.”
“Oh, come on, Henry, a big old ex-Marine like you versus a little Army runt like me?” Bob goaded him. “You should be able to gut me like a Mississippi River carp and be out the door in under a minute. This is your big chance to take down the champ.”
“I’ve never believed anything an officer told me, Major. But I guess I’ll have to take you at your word, won’t I?” Shaw said as his lips formed a thin, knowing smile. He relaxed his grip on Linda’s neck and pushed her toward Burke. “I don’t fish and I haven’t ‘gutted’ an officer in a long time, so this should be fun.”
Linda looked over her shoulder at him and shook her head. “Professor, you’d have been way ahead if you took your chances on the cat,” she said as she led Ellie away. “Let’s go find Crookshanks, honey,” she said, knowing the big cat could take care of himself, but she didn’t want Ellie to see what was about to happen.
“Don’t screw with him, Ghost,” Ace said with a measure of impatient disgust as he heard the engine on the other Cessna and shoved al-Karman to his knees. “You stay here, Haji, or I’ll come back and rip your heart out. You got that!” he said as he raised his Beretta and jacked a fresh round into the chamber. “I’ll be back in a minute, Ghost. I’m going to see a man about an airplane, and you damn well better be done with this turkey before I do!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Caspian Air Services Hangar
Mergen Khan hit the Cessna’s brakes and eased back on the throttle as he stared through the front windscreen at the American Blackhawk helicopter sitting sideways on the taxiway directly ahead of him. He was not about to let that stop him, neither would the big American he saw running toward him from the other side of the hangar. The Cessna had inoperable windows but it featured a sleek “gullwing” door on each side of the cockpit, which opened from the bottom up. He reached over and grabbed his Sig Sauer, which he had set on the other seat, popped the door latch far enough to stick the automatic outside, and pointed it toward the Blackhawk. In quick succession, he fired off a half-dozen rounds at its fuselage. Several missed, but he heard two clang off its engine and air frame, and two more smash through its plexiglas side window. Whether he hit anyone inside or not was immaterial. The helicopter pilot got the message and promptly executed an autorotation that turned his cockpit away from the Cessna. It took off low and fast, tail high and nose down across the runway.
Mergen wasn’t fooled, however. He saw the weapons pods hanging from the mounts underneath the big helicopter and knew it would soon be circling back. It probably carried a full array of missiles and rockets, and one of those deadly M-134 miniguns in its nose. They could spew six thousand 7.62-caliber rounds per minute, and chop and dice the little Cessna into tiny pieces if he let it get in range. So, as soon as the Blackhawk lifted off, Mergen closed his cabin door and opened the throttle. The turbocharged engine roared to life and he taxied toward the runway.
As he did, a sudden flurry of gunshots struck the Cessna on the passenger side. Inside, with his own engine roaring and his headset on, he felt them strike the airplane rather than heard them. But they had not come from the Blackhawk. It was still flying away from the hangar and the other pilot could not have had enough time to loop around and engage him, not yet. No, they had to have come from the big American, the one who dropped through the skylight with Burke. The last time Mergen saw him he was holding a pistol, and that was what they felt like — pistol shots rather than a machine gun.
Plexiglas doesn’t shatter. The first bullet punched a small, round hole through the passenger-side window and exited harmlessly through his front windscreen. The next two rounds, however, tore through the passenger-side door and were much more problematic. One struck the Cessna’s avionics array in front of him and blew out his right-side display screen. It suddenly flashed and turned black, while the picture on the other screen began
to roll and pixelate, hopelessly out of control. That was bad enough, but the third bullet struck Mergen in his right thigh. It ripped diagonally through the meaty vastus lateralis and rectus femoris muscles, bending him forward in pain. Instinctively, his right hand dropped to his thigh to stop the pain and the bleeding, but neither was going to happen anytime soon. Fortunately, the bullet had spent some of its energy passing through the door, and as a former wrestler, the thick muscles of his leg absorbed the rest before the bullet could hit bone. He had been shot twice before in the second war with the Americans. He had survived those and he would survive this one, too.
Two more bullets slammed into the rear fuselage. He could feel the impact in his fingers as he gripped the stick. Could they have hit anything important like the hydraulics or fuel lines? Well, this was no time to think of problems. He was a pilot. He was alive. His airplane was still operational. And he had a mission to perform. To do that, he knew he must block out the pain and focus all his energy on flying the airplane, as he had been trained to do. As soon as his front tire reached the runway, he executed a sharp turn to the left. The Cessna heeled over on two wheels and he could feel the fiberglass tip of his right wing scraping the tarmac, but he ignored it and continued accelerating. Seconds would matter, he thought, as he got the nose pointed down the runway and gave it full throttle.
By then, he knew the helicopter would be completing its turn and coming back around, so the instant that he felt the Cessna’s nose wheel lift off the runway, he switched off his running lights and made a second sharp, banked turn to the right, staying low, barely off the ground, and going for speed rather than altitude. Looking through the front windscreen was useless. His eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness, so he kept his eyes locked on what was left of his instruments. The next half-minute was critical. He drove the Cessna relentlessly forward, building speed and zigzagging every ten seconds. Insha Allah, God willing, he knew he should be able to clear the dark tree line ahead of him and get out of range before the Blackhawk found him.
He took a second and glanced down at his leg. He was bleeding heavily, and cursed, knowing he must stop the bleeding, but he needed both hands to fly. Trying to control a speeding airplane with one hand would never work for long. Besides, when he finally reached his target, he would need both hands and feet to control the plane and release the two cylinders. In the bin in the door next to his left knee he saw a half-dozen folded FAA charts and several state highway maps. From constant study and earlier flights, he knew them by heart, knew they were the last thing he needed. He pulled them out and pressed them against his thigh, and then loosened his thick leather belt and pulled it out as well. Ignoring the pain, he worked the belt under his thigh, pushing the charts and maps around to cover the wound before he cinched the belt tight. The pain was excruciating, but at least he wouldn’t bleed to death here in the cockpit. No, he had a mission to carry out first.
Bob had been studying Shaw and his movements since he stepped out from behind the airplane. That came naturally for a gifted martial arts master who was adept at unarmed techniques from a dozen different “self-defense” schools. He could switch from one to another seamlessly, without giving it much thought. His only constant was that he never believed in “self-defense”; he believed in attack. In the past two years, he had become a proponent of Krav Maga, the Israeli Army system of brutally efficient street fighting, which was based on attack and counterattack.
From everything he had read in Shaw’s service record and the recent crime scene reports, Shaw preferred a knife, not his hands. However, a knife was a fickle thing that could give a man a false sense of confidence. Further, Shaw stood six foot two, six inches taller than Bob, giving him the longer reach his arms and a seven-inch blade afforded, as well as the power from thirty or forty extra pounds. Looking down on a small opponent like Bob Burke, bullies like Henry Shaw were accustomed to those things giving them a huge advantage. They would, if his weight was lean, trim muscle and the height was useful and well-practiced. If not, it would only slow him down against a much faster and more highly skilled opponent, as he would soon learn.
Henry Shaw was a nasty piece of work who liked to kill people, but he wasn’t stupid. While he had never met Burke, he had heard stories, and his instincts told him to be wary, to circle and get the feel of the smaller man before he went on the offensive. However, that was what Burke would assume he would do; and as Burke himself told him, time was not on his side. Burke had promised that they would let him walk out of here, but if the Fayetteville SWAT team was waiting outside, his word would mean nothing.
So, Shaw did begin to circle and to probe, holding his Ka-Bar out in front of him and making a few simple feints. He wanted to see how Burke moved and see if he could get him off balance. Slowly, Shaw picked up the pace and varied his approach. He then came quickly at Burke from the left and then from the right, suddenly switching his knife to his other hand and following up the earlier feints with a quick thrust to Burke’s mid-section. It was a simple, efficient move he had used many times before, leaving Burke with no choice but to back away and shift his own weight onto his back foot.
This was exactly the opening Shaw had been looking for. He shot his right leg out and lunged forward, thrusting the knife as far forward as he could. The tip of the Ka-Bar’s blade was aimed straight for Burke’s sternum, and Shaw fully expected it to cut deep into muscle and bone, “gutting” the fish and ending this sharp, short fight before it ever got started. Unfortunately for Henry Shaw, that wasn’t what happened. When he reached his full extension, there was… nothing there.
Like a matador, Burke had deftly slipped to his left, redirecting Shaw’s arm and causing the knife to miss him by a good three inches. In the process, Burke brought his right forearm across, over Shaw’s arm, stepped into it, and smashed his elbow into Shaw’s face, flattening his nose. As he continued his followthrough, he jammed his knee into Shaw’s gut, lifting him off the floor and knocking the wind out of him. He then rotated and executed a lightning-fast Tae Kwon Do spinning “hook” kick. With ballet-like precision, he pivoted on his left foot while his right leg whipped around and the heel of his boot slammed into Shaw’s left temple, dropping him to his knees, glassy-eyed. Bob then stepped in and took the knife from his hand as if he were dealing with a small child.
Bob casually flipped the knife from hand to hand as he began to slowly circle Shaw, looking down at him and taunting him. “Get up, Henry, I’m not done with you yet, not by a long shot,” he said as he passed around him once more. When Shaw continued to kneel there and didn’t move, Bob kicked him in the ribs, hard enough to get his attention and drop him to his hands and knees, but not hard enough to break anything.
“General Stansky was a fine old man and a good friend of mine,” Bob told him.
“Well, I’d say he’s a well-done one now, isn’t he?” Shaw managed a painful laugh.
Bob dropped the knife next to Shaw’s hand and told him again, “Here’s your knife, Marine. Time for you to get up and finish this thing. I’d just kill you right here and be done with it, but I still owe you a lot more pain first.”
Slowly, Shaw picked up his Ka-Bar knife, studied it for a moment, and rocked back onto his knees. Burke was expecting him to make a quick move of some type, and the professor did not disappoint. After all, desperate men try desperate things, such as the quick backhanded sweep with the knife blade that Shaw aimed at Bob’s legs. Once again, though, instead of finding flesh and bone, all his blade did was rip through empty air. Worse still, the move and weight shift caused him to over-swing again and left him wide open to a counter. The Ghost didn’t wait. He drew his right foot back and kicked the professor as hard as he could, dead center in his sternum. A kick like that had been known to stop a heart, but dead or alive, Bob slipped behind Shaw, grabbed him by his chin and the back of his head, and gave it a quick twist, snapping his neck.
“Well, that took long enough!” Ace complained as he came jogging back
and saw Shaw’s body lying on the bare concrete floor.
“Did you stop Khan?”
“No. I put a half-dozen rounds into his plane. Maybe I hit him, I don’t know, but he managed to take off.”
“Yeah, but where the hell is he going and why? Come on, we’ve got to find out,” Bob said as he walked over to al-Karman, who continued to kneel on the floor where Ace had placed him, probably hoping against hope that the two Americans might think he was just another piece of equipment in the hangar, and forget he was there. That wasn’t to be. Bob bent over, and got right into the young Yemeni’s face. “No time to screw around. Tell me who you are or my friend will rip your ears off and shove them down your throat.”
“Sameer al-Karman. I’m… I’m a student at the college; that is all I am. Those two men kidnapped me and brought me here. I swear, I am not one of them.”
“Don’t bullshit me. I saw you cooking that stuff in your little white smock and no one had a gun to your head. What is it? More C-4?”
“Yes, yes, C-4, but I…”
“Like the batch you cooked up for Shaw, right? Like I said, don’t bullshit me or I’ll have you in Guantanamo before the sun goes down tomorrow. You got that?” Bob told him and Al-Karman quickly nodded like a bobblehead. “How much did you make for them?”
“Fifty… fifty pounds.”
“Fifty pounds!”
“Plus… plus the ten they already had, but I…”
“Jeez!” Ace jumped in. “You mean he’s got sixty pounds of that stuff up there?”
“No, no, only thirty,” al-Karman cowered. “Fifteen in each cylinder… plus fifteen in the one under the other plane, and…”
“All right, where the hell is he going?” Bob got in his face again and demanded.
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 41