The Payback Assignment Read Online Free Page B

without ramming his bumper into a tree.   He really had no choice.
                Gritting his teeth, he down shifted and gunned the engine.   His stomach clenched as he bumped over Smitty’s body, the sound of cracking ribs reaching his ears.   He feared he would be sick.   He squeezed his eyes tight for a moment, swallowing hard.
                When he looked up, he spotted a lone rifleman on the edge of the dirt road, maybe sixty meters ahead.   The soldier was taking slow, careful aim at the target rolling toward him.   Morgan pointed the Jeti, squeezed its trigger and heard the hollow sound of an empty magazine.  
    “Damn!”   Dropping the submachine gun on the seat next to him, Morgan yanked his Browning Hi-power from its shoulder holster.   One bullet smacked the jeep’s hood, just before Morgan fired.   The rifleman’s head exploded under his helmet.   Morgan pressed the accelerator to the floor, passing the rifleman’s body before his helmet hit the ground.  
                He kept the jeep rolling unerringly north, a talent having nothing to do with his training, but rather a gift he had possessed since birth.   He had an unnatural, uncanny sense of direction and distance.   Someone had once told him he was psychic or something, but he couldn’t care less what others called it.   All he knew was, he had a grid map in his mind on which he could see himself moving.   And he never needed a compass, because he could literally feel magnetic north.   For him, getting lost was a complete impossibility.  
                So he would drive to Mexico.   From there he would go on to the United States.   He would track down Stone, and through him, his mysterious boss.   Someone was going to pay and pay big for cheating him, for stranding him, for getting his men killed.   Someone was going to pay, and soon.

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                Jonathan Stahl saw himself as just another wealthy man in a crowd of wealthy men.   The Acapulco beach on which he stood was cluttered with the rich and a few of the famous.   He considered it a tragic waste to be listening to the surf gently tapping the sand while wearing a tuxedo.  
    When a woman eyed him, it made him feel as if maybe he wasn’t just one more man on the beach.   Looking around, he thought he was perhaps a shade thinner, a bit taller than some of the others, and the gray starting to show at his temples could be seen as distinguished.
                For whatever reason, the beauty standing at one of the portable bars was looking him over.   What distinguished him from his peers in her eyes?   He really did not know or care.   All that really mattered right then was that Victoria was off making one of her interminable visits to the ladies’ room.   That meant that he could return the beauty’s stare and maybe even risk a smile.   Could she possibly be there alone?
                This girl apparently took his smile as an invitation.   When she stepped away from the bar Stahl’s breath caught in his throat.   She was stately, perhaps five feet nine or ten inches, and quite svelte in an emerald gown clinging tenaciously to her hips.   She wore no watch, no jewelry of any kind except for one finely cut emerald on her left hand.   He knew it was a cliché, but the only phrase he could think of to describe her skin was peaches and cream.   Not just her face, but her shoulders and the satin globes bursting from her bodice as well.   Her gown was simple, sleeveless and low cut, with a slit up the left side exposing long, well-muscled legs as she walked toward him.   Her hair was that deep fiery red that can only be natural, and it hung to the small of her slender back.  
                Every element of the picture was a point of beauty.   Despite all this, her most striking feature was certainly her eyes.   Slanted almost like a cat’s, they matched the color of her gown