The Road to Gandolfo Read Online Free PDF

was also pointless. He had to get to the mission and let the Free World know what kind of enemy it was sucking up to. Enough was enough, goddamn it! They could send out radio messages, barricade the whole complex, and fight it out until the offshore carriers sent in air strikes to pinpoint pulverize, even if it meant blowing up half of Peking. Then the copters could come in and get them out.
    Of course, the civilians would shit in their pants, but he would control them. Teach the fancy pants how to fight.
Fight! Not talk
!
    MacKenzie stopped his fantasizing. Below to the right, coming around the bend in the road about a quarter of a mile away was a lone motorcycle. On it was a
shee-san
police official, a kind of Chinese state trooper. The answer to a prayer!
    Hawkins rose from the tall grass and started scrambling down the hill. In less than a minute he was at the edge of the dirt border. The bike was still around the curve out of sight, but he heard it coming closer. He threw himself down on the dirt in the middle of the road, drawing his legs up to appear smaller than he was, and lay perfectly still.
    The motorcycle’s engine roared as the driver came around the curve, then sputtered as it skidded to a stop. The
shee-san
got off the bike and whipped out the kickstand. Hawkins could hear and feel the quick footsteps as the trooper approached.
    The
shee-san
bent over him and touched his shoulder, recoiling at the recognition of the American uniform. Mac moved. The
shee-san
shrieked.
    Five minutes later Hawkins had stretched the
shee-san
’s tunic and pants over his rolled-up trousers and shirt. He slipped the trooper’s goggles over his eyes and put on the ludicrously tiny visor hat, using the chin strap to hold it in place, a cloth pimple sitting on the crew-cut, grayish black hair. Fortunately for his sense of well-being, he had a cigar. He chewed the end to its desired juiciness and lighted up.
    He was ready to ride.
    The diplomatic attaché ran into the director’s office without saying a word to the secretary or even knocking at the door. The director was threading his teeth with dental floss.
    “Excuse me, sir. I’ve just received the instructions from Washington! I knew you’d have to read them!”
    The director of the diplomatic mission, Peking, reached for the cable and read it. His eyes widened and his mouthopened in astonishment. A long strand of dental floss, caught in his teeth, extended down to the desk.
    He saw the roadblock cutting off his entry onto the Peking highway. It was about three quarters of a mile down the semipaved thoroughfare; a single
shee-san
patrol car and a line of troopers stretching across the road was all he could distinguish through the fogged-up goggles.
    As he drew nearer, he could see that the guards were shouting to each other. One trooper stepped in front of the line and began waving his rifle in the air—hysterically—back and forth, a signal for the approaching rider to stop.
    There was only one thing for it, thought Hawkins. If you’re going to buy a goddamned grave, buy it
big
! Go out with all weapons on repeat-fire, blazing barrels of thunder and lightning; go out with the screams of the Commie bastards ringing in your ears!
    Goddamn! He couldn’t see for the fucking dust, and his goddamn
foot
kept slipping off the tiny fucking gas pedal.
    He slapped his hand to his holster and pulled out the .45.
    He couldn’t focus worth shit, but by
Christ
, he could squeeze the trigger! He did so repeatedly.
    To his astonishment the
shee-san
did not fire back; instead they dove into the mounds of dirt and sand, screaming like hysterical piglets, scampering into and over the mounds of dirt, burying their asses from the firepower of his single .45 weapon.
    Goddamn!
Disgraceful!
    Unless his goggles were playing tricks with the dirt and cigar smoke and the onrushing blurs, even the trooper in front—an officer, by Christ; he had to be—even
he
didn’t have the balls to fight