Rough Justice Read Online Free

here. We should go down and take a look at what’s happening.”
    Blake took a deep breath. “If you say so.”
    “Oh, I do, but I like to be prepared.” Miller produced a Browning from the holdall. “I know it might seem a little old-fashioned, but it’s an old friend and I’ve always found it gets the job done.” He produced a Carswell silencer and screwed it in place.
    “I wouldn’t argue with that,” Blake said, and took the jeep down into the village street, his stomach hollow. There were people peering out of windows on each side as they drove down and braked to a halt outside the inn. The two soldiers were totally astonished. One of them, his machine pistol on the floor, stared stupidly, his beer in his hand. The other had been fondling one of the girls, his weapon across his knees.
    Miller opened the jeep door and stepped out into the rain, his right hand behind him holding the Browning. “Put her down,” he said in excellent Russian. “I mean, she doesn’t know where you’ve been.”
    The man’s rage was immediate and he shoved the girl away, knocking her to one side against her friend, started to get up, clutching his machine pistol, and Miller shot him in the right knee. In the same moment, Miller swung to meet the other soldier as he stood up and struck him across the side of the head with the Browning.
    The two girls ran across the road, where a door opened to receive them. Blake came around the jeep fast and picked up the machine pistol on the porch floor.
    “Now what?”
    “I’m going on. You take the alley and find the rear entrance.”
    Blake, on fire in a way he hadn’t been in years, did as he was told, and Miller crossed to the door, opened it, and went in, his right hand once again behind his back holding the Browning.
     
 
THE INN was old-fashioned in a way to be expected deep in such countryside: a beamed ceiling, wooden floors, a scattering of tables, and a long bar, bottles ranged on shelves behind it. There were about fifteen men crouched on the floor by the bar, hands on heads, two Russian soldiers guarding them. A sergeant stood behind the bar drinking from a bottle, a machine pistol on the counter by his hand. Two other soldiers sat on a bench opposite, two women crouched on the floor beside them, one of them sobbing.
    The officer in command, a captain from his rank tabs, sat at a table in the center of the room. He was very young, handsome enough, a certain arrogance there. That the muted sound of Miller’s silenced pistol had not been heard inside the inn was obvious enough, but considering the circumstances, he seemed to take the sudden appearance of this strange apparition in combat overalls and old-fashioned trench coat with astonishing calm. He had a young girl on his knee who didn’t even bother to struggle as he fondled her, so terrified was she.
    He spoke in Russian. “And who are you?”
    “My name is Major Harry Miller, British Army, attached to the United Nations.” His Russian was excellent.
    “Show me your papers.”
    “No. You’re the one who should be answering questions. You’ve no business this side of the border. Identify yourself.”
    The reply came as a kind of reflex. “I am Captain Igor Zorin of the Fifteenth Siberian Storm Guards, and we have every right to be here. These Muslim dogs swarm over the border to Bulgaria to rape and pillage.” He pushed the girl off his knee and sent her staggering toward the bar and his sergeant. “Give this bitch another bottle of vodka. I’m thirsty.”
    She returned with the bottle, and Zorin dragged her back on his knee, totally ignoring Miller, then pulled the cork in the bottle with his teeth. But instead of drinking the vodka, he forced it on the girl, who struggled, choking.
    “So what do you want, Englishman?”
    A door opened at the rear of the room and Blake stepped in cautiously, machine pistol ready.
    “Well, I’ve already disposed of your two guards on the porch, and now my friend who’s