Robert Ludlum's the Treadstone Exile

by Joshua Hood

  But the night was silent.

  Hayes slung his rifle onto his back and drew the trench knife Charli had given him before lowering himself flat. He practically buried his face in the ground and slithered his way forward, the steel of the brass knuckles cold on his fingers.

  He took his time, measuring his progress in inches, not feet, silently creeping closer. At five feet he could smell them—the scent of gun oil and the onion stench of their body odor—and hear the muted hisses of their whispers. He knew that even the slightest sound would give him away.

  Nice and easy.

  He slipped to the door, the scrape of metal over concrete freezing him in place.

  “Jameson, will you hurry the hell up?” a voice hissed. “This bloody thing isn’t exactly light.”

  “I’m bloody working on it, aren’t I?”

  Hayes leaned to his right, slowly eased an eye around the doorjamb until he could see inside the shack. He found both guards on the left wall, the one closest to him busy positioning a table near the window while the second struggled under the weight of the belt-fed FN MAG 58 in his hands.

  About time I got a break.

  He stood at the doorway, heart hammering in his chest as he watched the men, forcing himself to wait for the perfect moment to strike. The seconds seemed to stretch into hours but finally the table was in just the right position.

  “There,” one man said, standing upright.

  “About bloody time,” the gunner said, reaching for the MAG 58’s bipod legs.

  Before the gunner had the legs snapped into place, Hayes was inside the shack.

  He slipped up behind the closest guard, clamping tight over his mouth, and then in one quick motion he torqued the man’s neck to the side, burying the blade in his neck. Hayes felt the man sag in his grip and jerked the blade free, shoving the dying man across the room.

  The second man had just set the machine gun on the table when he heard the wet smack of his mate slapping into the wall.

  “Jameson, what the hell?” he demanded, turning.

  The gunner took a step forward and stopped, and while his mind struggled to process what he was seeing, Hayes was all over him.

  He grabbed the man by the back of the hair, and after slamming his face hard into the brick wall, sunk the knife into the base of his spine.

  It was instant paralysis. The man dropped like a stone, Hayes waiting until he was laid out on the ground before driving the heel of his boot into the man’s throat.

  Hayes bent over the dead man. After he’d cleaned the blade, he returned the knife to its sheath and snatched the man’s radio off his kit. After turning the volume down and clipping the radio to his belt, he collected the men’s grenades, stuffed them into his pockets, and unslung his rifle.

  With the rifle pressed tight to his shoulder, Hayes moved to the door, checked to make sure it was clear, and stepped into the night. He darted behind one of the palm trees that lined the drive and pulled the night-vision binos from his cargo pocket.

  Hayes dropped to a knee and studied the parking lot, making a note of the three empty vehicles parked short of the building—a bank—before turning his full attention to the men deploying from the back of the Russian 6x6s.

  While he watched the mercs ready their weapons, the radio clipped to his hip hissed to life, and a man with a French accent began barking orders over the net.

  At the sound of the voice, Hayes shifted away from the men massed behind the 6x6 to the fuzzy silhouettes standing next to the open passenger-side door. He thumbed the focus knob and made minute adjustments until he had a clear view of the men.

  The first was tall and broad-shouldered with a scar across his face that looked bone-white in the ambient light. But it was the man with the radio that held his attention.

  Cabot.

  Hayes activated the binos’ internal range finder, the red 400 YDS that flashed across the screen telling him the distance from the palm to Cabot’s position in front of the truck.

  At that distance he’d be hard pressed to hit the man with one of the 40-millimeter grenades. The rifle, on the other hand, was a different story.

  But before he had a chance to even think about taking the shot, the thump of boots across the asphalt told him that the containment team was on the move.

  He dropped the binos to the dirt, cursing himself for his lack of focus, knowing that the men were wearing night vision—if even one of them had been paying attention to the range finder’s infrared laser, he was already given away.

  You dumb shit, the voice chided. What were you thinking?

  Hayes brought the rifle up to his shoulder and watched the darkened shapes fanning out across the parking lot. The realization that they might be maneuvering on him left him feeling exposed. But while his instincts screamed for him to move—find a new position—Hayes resisted. Knowing while they might have missed the laser, even Ray Charles couldn’t miss a man running across the lawn.

  No, hold fast.

  Hunkered down behind the palm tree, Hayes was starting to think that he’d gotten away with it—that the men hadn’t seen him—when he heard “light him up” followed by the opening burp of a machine gun.

  Well, that answers that.

  Keeping his body behind the tree, Hayes managed to fire off a grenade before the first line tracers came whipsawing overhead. Still on one knee, he snapped open the breech, ejecting the spent casing and shoving a second 40-millimeter round inside when the grenade detonated with a flash of orange and a resounding cruuump.

  The machine gun fell silent and Hayes was on his feet, angling toward the cover of a parked pickup to his front. He was almost to cover when a second shooter opened up from his right, close enough that he saw the gunner’s face backlit by the muzzle flash.

  With no time to aim, and his index finger still curled around the trigger of the 416, Hayes pointed the rifle in the general direction of the shooter’s feet and fired.

  The grenade hit the ground five feet in front of the man and detonated, the blast blowing the man off his feet, and Hayes was almost to the back of the pickup when a second shooter arced in, the AK in his hands strobing as he fired.

  Hayes brought the EOTech up on target and was pulling the trigger when a bullet slammed into his chest, the impact cracking a rib and sending him staggering off balance.

  Shit, already?

  Pushing away the pain, he managed to bring the rifle to his shoulder and stitch a burst across the shooter’s chest before throwing himself to cover behind the vehicle.

  “He’s behind the truck!” a voice shouted.

  Hayes dug a frag from his pocket, pulled the pin, and lobbed the frag at his attackers, the bullets hammering the bed of the truck telling him it was time to move.

  But where?

  The grenade exploded and Hayes leaned out and opened fire on three men rushing toward him, managing to drop two of them before a hail of return fire sent him scrambling back to cover.

  Got to move, he thought, inching to the front tire.

  52

  ILHA DE LUANDA, ANGOLA

  Andre Cabot was out of the 6x6 the second it stopped in front of the building, barking orders into the radio clutched in his hand.

  “Alpha, I want this building secured. Bravo, get a perimeter set. No one in or out, do you understand?”

  “Alpha copies.”

  “Bravo copies.”

  “Good. Now fucking move!”

  “You heard Mr. Cabot!” the team leaders yelled over the banging of the tailgates and the scuffle of boots and muted curses as the men leapt from the back of the trucks.

  The men hit the ground en masse and then, like liquid mercury, instantly separated into smaller units—Bravo breaking into gun teams before racing off into the darkness, Alpha already stacked up and moving toward the door.

  The
team leader stopped the men short of the door with a closed fist, his voice little more than a whisper when he keyed up over the radio.

  “Breachers up.”

  Three men from the rear of the stack peeled off and dashed to the door, two of them pulling cover while the third slapped a charge on the door. He worked fast, clipping the det-cord into the blasting cap, and then he moved backward, unspooling the wire from the pouch.

  “Set,” the breacher said as soon as they reached the minimum safe distance.

  “Blow it,” the team leader responded.

  Cabot watched the breacher hook his finger through the ring at the top of the firing device and instinctively turn away a split second before the door exploded in a reverberating boom. By the time he turned around, the first three men were stepping through the breach, the number one man turning left, digging his hard corner, the number two man tight on his tail, when Cabot saw the firefly blink of muzzle flashes through the smoke, followed by the staccato chatter of a rifle opening up.

  The number two man stumbled, but before he could fall, the next in line shoved him out of the way.

  “Alpha Two, frag out,” the assistant team leader said, his voice cool as a fan despite the chaos unfolding inside the house.

  The grenade detonated in a roar of orange, the concussion blowing out the windows in the room to the left of the door, the rolling thunder of the explosion followed by the distinctive thwap, thwap—thwap, thwap of the assault team’s suppressed rifles.

  “Alpha Two, Tango down.”

  “Alpha Three, Tango down.”

  Cabot moved to the bank, sidled up to one of the shattered windows, and peered inside. Through the smoke he could see two bodies splayed out on the floor near the front door, their lack of faces telling him that they’d been caught by the breaching charge. Farther in, one of his men sat slumped against a wall—his killer lying facedown a few feet to his front.

  But Cabot didn’t care about the dead, all he wanted was his money.

  “Alpha, what is taking so damn long?” he demanded over the radio.

  Silence.

  “Alpha team, come in.”

  Dammit.

  “Beck!” he yelled, turning away from the window, his anger burning in his guts hot as a blast furnace.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Get in there and find out what in the hell is taking them so long,” he ordered.

  “Of course,” the big German said, before turning to the Bravo team. “You two, come with me.”

  They rushed inside, the gun smoke in the building closing around them like a charcoal curtain, and then Cabot was alone, helpless to do anything but pace back and forth in front of the shattered window. Painfully aware that the money he so desperately needed was somewhere on the other side of the wall.

  What is taking them so long?

  He was about to ask Beck for an update when a shout from the Bravo team leader drew Cabot’s attention to the rear.

  The sharp “contact front,” followed by the staccato chatter brrrraaaaaaaap of one of the belt-fed FN MAG 58s opened up behind him.

  Cabot turned in time to see a line of orange tracers zip across the parking lot toward one of the pickups that had been sitting there when he arrived. The bullets slammed into the vehicle, tracers hitting the engine block and bouncing skyward.

  “What now?” he demanded, lifting the night-vision monocular to his eye, focusing on the pickup in time to have it whited out by the flash of an exploding grenade. Cabot cursed as he waited for the night vision to recover from the overload of ambient light, and when it did he saw a lone figure leaning out behind the pickup, firing at his men.

  You have got to be joking.

  “Bravo Two, suppressing fire,” the team leader ordered over the radio. “Bravo Three and Four, flank left.”

  Cabot watched in disbelief as the one-man army tore into his men, silenced one of the machine guns with his first grenade, then stopped a fire team’s advance with the second.

  “Can anyone kill this motherfucker?” he yelled into the radio.

  “We’re on it, sir,” the Bravo team leader responded.

  Turning his back on the firefight unfolding behind him, Cabot tried to raise the Alpha team leader on the radio, but once again there was no response.

  “Beck . . . Beck, what the hell is going on in there?”

  Silence.

  “Fuck it!” Cabot yelled, slamming the radio to the ground and yanking the Glock 19 from its holster. “I’ll do it myself.”

  He moved to the door, paused to retrieve the flashlight from the assaulter lying facedown in the threshold, pressed the thumb switch, and stepped inside.

  The explosive residue and gun smoke hung thick in the air, the particulate catching in the back of his throat, choking him as he crossed the lobby. Cabot pulled an Hermès handkerchief from his coat pocket and, holding it to his nose, started to the back staircase.

  He was almost there when the house lights flashed to life. The sudden blaze of yellow against his dilated pupils left him temporarily blinded.

  “What the hell?” he growled, raising his hands against the glare.

  He blinked away the spots, unaware of the figures arrayed on the balcony above him until one of them spoke.

  “Hello, Daddy.”

  53

  ILHA DE LUANDA, ANGOLA

  Hayes was in the fight of his life, and with more men pouring in, all he could do was aim and fire, aim and fire, until he ran the rifle dry and the bolt locked to the rear. He dumped the mag and dropped to a knee, shoved a fresh magazine into the magwell, and slapped the bolt release.

  The reload had taken less than three seconds, but his attackers had taken advantage of the lull in fire and were closing in.

  Shit.

  But it was either that or get cut down in the open.

  He kept his finger on the trigger, managing to make it to cover before running the rifle dry again. While he wasn’t happy about the ammo, the expended thirty rounds had done their job, left bodies scattered across their line of advance. The second wave faltered—went to ground and began firing indiscriminately across the parking lot.

  He prepped another frag and sent it wobbling in the air, waiting for the explosion before darting from cover and throwing himself toward the dead gunners draped over their MAG 58.

  Hayes had been in enough gunfights to know that a bullet didn’t care about a man’s sentiment—or the delicate sensibilities that governed society. A bullet’s job was to kill and his was to stay alive and if he had to use a pair of dead bodies to accomplish that task—then so be it.

  While his attackers shook off the effects of the grenade, Hayes ripped the machine gun from the dead gunner’s hand, and then wrestled the man’s body on top of his mates, dropping flat just as the attackers opened fire.

  Lying flat, Hayes grabbed the fresh belt of ammo from the ground and worked on reloading the machine gun, doing his best to ignore the meaty thunk of the rounds slapping into the dead men’s flesh.

  He got the gun up, shoved the buttstock into his shoulder, but held his fire, wanting as much meat in the grinder as possible before opening up. He waited, his finger resting on the trigger, as the men rushed toward him—and then let them have it.

  The MAG 58 bucked like a bronco, unleashing a wall of lead into the rushing masses. Hayes held the trigger down, working the machine gun back and forth, the bullets cutting the men down like wheat on harvest day.

  He ran through the first belt and quickly loaded a second, kept hammering away at the men until the barrel was sunburst red—then it was over.

  Hayes stayed behind his makeshift sandbag until he was sure all the men were dead, then he got to his feet and trotted toward the front of the bank—half deaf from his dance with the MAG 58.

  He never heard the vehicle racing across the parking l
ot.

  One second Hayes was running to the front door of the bank and in the next instant he was airborne, his body skipping off the windshield, the impact tearing the rifle from his hands, sending it cartwheeling into the darkness.

  He hit the roof, but instead of crumpling beneath his body weight, the thin aluminum flexed like a trampoline and sent him bouncing over the vehicle. As he sailed through the air, Hayes was all too aware of the ground rushing up at him and desperately twisted his body, vainly trying to get his legs beneath him.

  But instead of the feline landing he’d been hoping for, Hayes hit like a bag of shit. The impact of his body splattering across the pavement knocked the breath from his lungs and blasted the magazines from the pouches on the front of his kit.

  The pain cascaded across his body like a sheet of lightning and he lay there, flat on his face, dimly aware of the magazines skittering across the asphalt and the approaching footfalls that stopped in front of his face.

  Hayes lifted his head with a pained grunt, vision swimming as he looked up at the figure standing over him.

  “You don’t look so good,” the man said.

  “Didn’t I . . . already kill you?” Hayes asked.

  “Kevlar,” Vandal said, giving the front of his chest an affectionate tap. “Never leave home without it.”

  “So, I guess,” Hayes began, wincing from the effort of pushing himself to his feet, “this means you’re ready for round two?”

  “If you don’t have it in ya, I can always shoot you in the face,” Vandal suggested.

  “Thanks, but I’ll take my chances.”

  “Well, let’s do this,” Vandal said, producing a Ka-Bar from the sheath on his hip.

  Hayes reached down and drew from his boot the trench knife he’d picked up at Charli’s.

  The two men circled each other, a grin spreading across Vandal’s face. “You pick that up in Flanders, back when you were fighting the Huns?” he asked.

  “I’ve got shit to do,” Hayes said. “So, can we get this over with?”

  “Fine with me,” Vandal said, feinting a slash, while he danced to the right.