Shadow of the Dragon полностью

Hala tensed and stuffed a hand in the pocket of her blue coat, no doubt touching the Snake Slayer. Good instincts, Clark thought. He patted her on the shoulder to let her know everything was fine — though he was far from sure himself.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “We are expecting him.”

She began to chew on her collar again, leaning against Clark’s knee.

They’d already discussed how to use the Bond Arms derringer. Unloaded, she’d demonstrated she could cock the hammer with the meat of her thumb and rearrange her grip and press the trigger. She wasn’t going to be doing any quick-drawing, but that was fine. In her case, the little derringer was more of a get-off-me gun. The whole thing exhausted Clark to his core. He believed in starting children early, but if he’d given a ten-year-old kid a pocket pistol in Virginia, society would have sentenced him to five days in the electric chair.

He wanted to calm Hala, but he kept his own hands in his coat pockets, his right curled around the butt of the Norinco pistol.

The Uyghur remained in the doorway unaware, or at least unsure, that they were there. He scanned the interior of the warehouse — apparently unconcerned that he’d made himself a target in the fatal funnel. This didn’t make him harmless, just ignorant. Clark knew from experience that there were plenty of idiot bad guys out there.

The Uyghur craned his neck but made no move to come inside.

“Helloooo?”

Clark motioned for Hala to stay back, and then took a deep breath, stepping out of the shadows. His hand remained in his pocket and on the pistol while he gave the initial passphrase. His words echoed in the hollow confines of the empty warehouse.

“It is dangerous to travel the roof of the world.”

The Uyghur’s head snapped toward the sound, seeing Clark for the first time. He shuffled from side to side, clenching and unclenching his fists, nodding excitedly. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. There are many devils there.”

The word many wasn’t in the passphrase, but the man was obviously nervous, so Clark cut him some slack.

“And angels,” Clark said.

“And angels, too,” the man said, confirming.

Clark made his way across the warehouse. “Samedi?” He shook the man’s hand, wanting to get a read on him.

“Yes,” the man said. His grip was firm, but he withdrew his hand quickly. “Yes, yes. I am Samedi. I get you out…”

It was almost a question.

Samedi was about Clark’s height, thin, with gaunt cheeks and dark BB eyes that darted constantly from point to point. He wore fingerless rag-wool gloves and a ratty karakul hat of curly black wool that looked as though it had been dragged behind a truck. Oddly, he had no overcoat against the bracing wind. His dark sport coat hung open. Beads of sweat dotted sunburned skin over bushy caterpillar brows.

The Uyghur grinned, showing several gaps where there should have been teeth. “You are ready?” The BB eyes bounced around the shadows. The muscles in his face, unencumbered by fat, tensed and twitched beneath patchy black stubble. “Where is the girl? She is ready to go?”

Clark ignored the questions, but asked one of his own.

“Tell me our route.”

Clark watched carefully as Samedi explained how he planned to stack the bolts of cloth so that a hollow space remained inside, and then drive them to “the border”—though he did not explain which one. It would be “easy,” “no problems,” “for sure.”

Samedi’s nonchalance about crossing the border — the most dangerous portion of the trip — while he continued to sweat his ass off just talking in the cold barn set Clark’s teeth on edge.

Customarily, Clark held to the rule of threes — one hiccup could be an anomaly, even two, but three hiccups, no matter how small, and he’d shut down most ops for a fresh start. Samedi’s arrival ahead of schedule, the almost-correct passphrase, the sweating — all of it could be explained away, but…

Hala walked out of the shadows, chewing her shirt.

“Come, come, child,” Samedi said, brightening. “Time to go.” He turned to Clark, less twitchy now, but still sweating. “Will you help me load?”

“Of course,” Clark said, releasing a pent-up sigh. He relaxed a hair — but still followed Samedi out to make sure he didn’t call anyone while he backed his truck into the warehouse.

The loading went quickly, with the Uyghur directing more than doing. It would be a relatively short ride, so the vacant cavern they’d left in the middle of the stack was just large enough for both Clark and Hala to sit down. Samedi used sharp wood dowels to pin the interior bolts of cloth in place. He’d done this before.

Finished, Clark used the rear bumper to climb out of the truck and turned to find the muzzle of a black Makarov pistol pointed directly at his chest.

Samedi grabbed Hala’s coat by the shoulder, but she yanked away and ran to Clark.

Clark raised both hands. “It’s okay,” he said, trying to calm the girl. He cocked his head at Samedi. “Is there a problem I don’t know about?”