The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,191
expected. Just as he reached the threshold, though, Czerny loosed a spray of bullets, sweeping around an almost 180-degree range. Anybody laying in wait for him outside would have been struck by the wildly chattering submachine gun. Janson admired Czerny's efficiency and forethought as he watched the gunman's pivoting torso - from behind.
Now he rose up from where he was hidden, by the staircase on the very floor of the burning parlor, perilously near the gathering conflagration - the one place the gunman would not have expected.
As Czerny directed another raking fusillade at the grounds outside, Janson lunged, lashing his arm around the gunman's neck, his fingers hurtling toward the trigger enclosure, tearing the weapon from his hands. Czerny thrashed violently, but rage made Janson unstoppable. He smashed his right knee into Czerny's kidney and dragged him onto the stone porch. Now he scissored the man's waist with his legs and forced his neck into a painful backward arch.
"You and I are going to spend some quality time together," Janson said, his lips close to Czerny's ear.
With an almost supernal effort, Czerny reared up and threw Janson off him. He ran down the yard, away from the burning house. Janson raced after him, taking him down with a powerful shoulder tackle, throwing him to the stony ground. Czerny let out a groan as Janson sharply wrenched one of his arms upward behind him, simultaneously dislocating the arm and turning him over onto his back. Tightening his grip on the man's neck, he leaned in close.
"Now, where was I? That's right: if you don't tell me what I want to hear, you'll never speak again." Janson yanked a combat blade from a holster in Czerny's belt. "I will peel the skin off your face until your own mother wouldn't recognize you. Now come clean - you still with Consular Operations?"
Czerny laughed bitterly. "Goddamn overgrown Eagle Scouts - that's all they were. Should have been selling cookies door-to-door, for all the difference they made, any of them."
"But you're making a difference now?"
"Tell me something. How the fuck do you live with yourself? You're a piece of shit and you always were. I'm talking way back. The shit you pulled - you goddamn traitor. Somebody once tried to help you, a true-blue hero, and how did you repay him? You gave him up, turned him in, pushed him in front of a firing squad. That should have been you at Mesa Grande, you son of a bitch - that should have been you!"
"You twisted bastard," Janson roared, sickened and dizzy. He pressed the flat of the man's knife against his lightly bearded cheek. The threat would not be abstract. "You part of some Da Nang revenge squad?"
"You gotta be joking."
"Who are you working for?" Janson demanded. "Goddammit! Who are you working for!"
"Who are you working for?" the man coughed. "You don't even know. You've been programmed like a goddamn laptop."
"Time to face the music," Janson said in a low, steely voice. "Or you won't have a face."
"They've messed with your head so bad, you don't know which end is up, Janson. And you never will."
"Freeze!" The abruptly shouted command came from above him; Janson looked and saw the big-bellied tavernkeeper they had spoken to earlier that day.
He was no longer wearing his white apron. And his large, reddened hands were clutching a double-barreled shotgun.
"Isn't that what they're always saying on your crappy American cop shows? I told you that you were not welcome," the beetle-browed man said. "Now I will have to show you how unwelcome you are."
Janson heard the noise of a runner, vaulting over boulders and branches, plunging through thickets. But even from a distance, he could identify the lithe, leaping figure. Seconds later, Jessie Kincaid emerged, her sniper rifle strapped to her back.
"Drop the goddamn antique!" she shouted. She held a pistol in her hand.
The Hungarian did not even look in her direction as he carefully cocked the Second World War-era shotgun.
Jessie squeezed one well-aimed shot into his head. The big-bellied man toppled backward like a felled tree.
Now Janson grabbed the shotgun and scrambled to his feet. "I've run out of patience, Czerny. And you've run out of allies."
"I don't understand," Czerny blurted.
Kincaid shook her head. "Drilled four fuckers up the hill." She hocked on the ground near Czerny. "Your boys, right? Thought so. Didn't like their attitude."
Fear flashed in Czerny's eyes.
"And get a load of that barkeep showing up. You'd have thought we stiffed him on the tab."