Cody's Army Read Online Free PDF Page B

He’ll recognize the rifle aimed at his heart. He’ll know the Weatherby fires a five-hundred-grain
     bullet that achieves the highest velocity of any bullet in the world. He’ll know what such a bullet would do to his chest
     if he made the slightest wrong move.
    “Drop it,” Cody instructed. “You don’t have to die.”
    The man dropped it.
    Lund continued swaying back and forth, not giving up the impossible task of trying to free himself.
    “Cody, damn you, you rotten goddamn sonofabitch. Let me the hell down from here!”
    Cody did not take his eyes or the Weatherby’s muzzle away from the bead drawn on the third man’s heart.
    “Handgun, too.”
    Lund shouted, “Cody, for chrissake—”
    “Shut up, Pete.”
    He watched the other man reach under his jacket and ever so gently remove a .44 Magnum from concealed shoulder leather. The
     man held the pistol by his fingertips, away from his body, and let it drop.
    An owl hooted from a tree somewhere nearby.
    Cody motioned with the rifle, directing the man to stand near where the unconscious figure of the first one lay sprawled.
    “Over there.”
    The agent obeyed, his hands raised, his mouth a worried, tight gash across a nervous face.
    Lund gave up struggling.
    “Jesus H., Cody, what the hell is this? Let me down, damn you—”
    Cody kept his peripheral vision on the agent standing with upraised hands next to his unconscious pal. He lowered the Weatherby
     so the snout of the muzzle nudged Lund’s nostrils none too gently, like the cold kiss of death.
    “You’ve been behind a desk too long, Pete. You bozos were too easy. How did you find me?”
    “How the hell should I know?” Lund bristled. “I didn’t find you. I was told where you were and I came, and this is the kind
     of a goddamn welcome I get!”
    Cody could not hold back a grin that was tight around the edges; the first grin he remembered cracking since he’d come here.
    “You’ve still got your balls, Pete, I’ll say that for you.” He applied a degree of pressure and the Weatherby’s muzzle nudged
     Lund’s nose not quite so gently. “What makes you think I won’t blow your Company head off for coming up here after me?”
    “Hey, hey, relax, John.” Lund’s voice took on a shading of panic that had not been there before.
“Relax!
I’m not with the old unit anymore. They gave me a new job.”
    Cody stepped back, removing the end of the Weatherby’s barrel from Lund’s nose, pulling the rifle away.
    “I came up here because I don’t want any part of you people, or of anyone else. I want you and these two clowns off my land
     or I will blow your heads off and I’ll take real good care of what’s left of you and no one will ever pin it on me. And when
     they send the next team, I’ll be ready for them, too.”
    “There won’t be any teams,” Lund insisted from his upside-down position. His swaying had stopped when he ceased struggling.
     “For godssakes, cut me down from here so we can talk, will you?”
    Cody mulled that over for a few seconds. He reached another decision. His right hand flashed across his chest and the knife
     blade glinted.
    The length of line stringing Lund up was snicked in two.
    Lund plummeted head-first down five feet to the ground, emitting a full-bodied
thump
and a full-throated yowl that lifted high above the treetops.
    “In a nutshell,” Lund said, some time later, “the U.S. government has decided to do something about its inability to cope
     with international terrorism; an inability that has reached crisis proportions.”
    Cody and Lund sat at the table in the center of the one-room cabin, Lund nursing with a makeshift ice pack the bruise on his
     forehead, Cody nursing a glass of scotch.
    The two Company agents Lund had brought with him loitered out front of the cabin near the station wagon, the one having regained
     consciousness, and he and the other having both been given their weapons back. Neither had tried to conceal their open