Whipsaw by Don Pendleton Read Free Book Online Page A

to make deliveries at night. Too much traffic in the daytime," the driver said without taking his eyes off the road.
    Bolan was not in the mood for idle chatter, so he said nothing. The driver seemed to sense his mood, and set his jaw. At the appropriate corner, he pulled over to the edge of the walkway and announced the fare. Bolan paid him and slipped out on the street side.
    He had thought it best to cover the last couple of blocks on foot. He'd been set up too often in the past to get careless and make it easy for the other side. The street was lined with shops on both sides, all bearing signs in Chinese ideograms and some also in English. Every window was dark. As he walked past, Bolan's eye caught the whole panoply of Far Eastern trade. Silks and ivory carvings, firecrackers and Japanese cameras, imported foods and homegrown crafts were piled helter-skelter in bins behind every pane of glass.
    Twice he hesitated before crossing the mouth of a dark alley. The street was surprisingly clean.
    He could just imagine the jungle the street would become in five or six hours, and marveled that not a single scrap of paper stirred in the slight, sticky breeze. Crossing a narrow side street, Bolan glanced in both directions, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. A striped cat darting in among the silent vans was the only living thing he saw.
    Entering the last block, he wondered where he was supposed to go. All four corners were dark. He slowed his pace a little more, listening intently for the slightest sound. There was only the grinding of sand on the asphalt underfoot. Halfway down the block, he stopped and ducked into a doorway. His watch read 11:53. He scanned the two corner buildings on the opposite side of the street, but both were dark and closed up tight. Not even a window open to catch a little of the breeze broke the seamless face of either building.
    Puzzled, he crossed the street and ducked into another doorway. He had the Desert Eagle in his hand now. He didn't like the quiet. He didn't like the darkness, either. The quiet seemed almost palpable, too perfect and too absolute. It reminded him of countless western streets Dodge City, Abilene, Tombstone in too many western movies. It was the calm before the final shootout, when every window was closed, and somebody peered into the silent street from behind every curtain.
    He had the urge to shake things up. His eyes bored into the second pair of corner buildings, each as dark and silent as the other two.
    He was getting close to that antsy frustration that assaulted him whenever things were totally out of control.
    It was as if someone had handed him a perfectly smooth globe of polished obsidian and said, "Here, open it." In the unnatural quiet Bolan could hear his heart, its rhythm throbbing in his ears. He stared at the shop on the near corner. The English portion of its sign read "Fabrick," but he didn't smile at the misspelling. Like every thing else, it just seemed one more proof that things were out of whack.
    He started to look away when something caught his eye. He riveted his gaze on the spot where it had been, but there was nothing there. It had been, or at least he thought it had been, a brief flicker, as if a candle had passed by or a match been struck and extinguished. Then again. It flashed, and he was certain this time.
    He waited, aware that he was holding his breath, as if to exhale would kill the delicate glimmer behind the dusty glass. It had become steady, electric light rather than a flame, but it did nothing. Losing his patience, Bolan began to fidget in the doorway. When the light disappeared again, he sprinted across the street at an angle. Pressing his face to the glass, he tried to see inside, past the cascading silks. They tumbled over a rack in thick, almost seamless folds.
    He tapped on the window with his knuckles, and the glass rattled in its peeling wooden frame. A chunk of putty fell from the bottom of the pane and hit his foot. He backed