Dead Reckoning Read online

  The enemy, Talhouni thought, but did that mean police, Yemeni soldiers or the damned Crusaders who had killed his comrades in a series of attacks over the past two days? No matter, he decided, struggling to all fours, then rising on his shaky legs. Whoever was attacking them, Talhouni had work to do.

  He found Damari, the policeman, still bound to his chair, though it had toppled over and was lying on one side. He thought perhaps the man had been knocked unconscious when he fell, a bonus, since he could not call for help in that condition. It would be an easy thing to kill him now, a muffled gunshot to the head, unnoticed in the racket echoing throughout the house around him, but it also struck Talhouni as a waste of time. Attackers were inside the building, maybe one or both of his companions injured, and he might have only seconds to assist them.

  Or escape.

  There was no window in the room where he had grilled Damari in a futile quest for answers, but the next room over, just behind him as he stood facing the fallen cop, had one he could open, scramble through, and run as if his life depended on it.

  Which it very likely did.

  Could he do it? Would deserting under fire shame him beyond redemption in the eyes of Saleh Kabeer? But how would anybody know, if he escaped and his two comrades both died fighting?

  It was worth a try. And should he kill Damari first, before he fled?

  Why bother? If the captive was not dying from his injuries, he could impart no knowledge of Talhouni to his rescuers, whoever they might be. The smart thing was to run, immediately, while he had the chance.

  “Good luck,” Talhouni muttered, leaving the prisoner sprawled where he’d fallen, and retreating to the exit. He clutched his SIG Sauer tightly, index finger on its double-action trigger.

  If he had to fire, the pistol’s silence would help Talhouni, masking his position in the house from any lurking enemies. If audible at all, it would be heard only by the ones at whom he fired, and even they might well be deafened for the moment, by the previous explosion and the gunfire still continuing inside the house.

  Trembling, Talhouni reached the doorway, checked both ways along the corridor outside, then slipped into the hall and turned right toward the bedroom next in line.

  * * *

  THE SAUDI, YUSUF ZUABI, headed toward the front door of the house to answer Bolan’s knock. He was immediately recognizable from just the portion of his face revealed around the door, still nearly closed and held in place by a brass security chain. He asked something in Arabic, then tried again in rusty English.

  “What you want?”

  Bolan reached out to Jack Grimaldi through his Bluetooth headset, told him, “Going...now!” and threw his weight against the door with strength enough to tear the slim chain from its moorings on the other side. With any luck, the door would knock Zuabi on his rear and leave him dazed while Bolan finished him, a clean shot to the head and on to find another target.

  But the wiry terrorist was faster on his feet than Bolan had anticipated. He sprang backward from the door, firing a pistol that he’d held concealed behind it when he answered, his first slug punching through the wood an inch or so from Bolan’s head, spraying his cheek with splinters.

  No time to think about that now—they’d missed his eye, at least—as Bolan powered through the door, his AK-47 tracking for a target. He was just in time to see Zuabi duck inside a doorway to his left, no more than six feet from the entryway, firing a second shot before he disappeared. That bullet wasn’t even close, a ceiling-scraper, but whatever kind of semiautomatic he was packing, Zuabi likely had at least six rounds remaining in its magazine.

  Bolan crouched in the empty foyer for a moment, hoping that Zuabi would come back and try another shot, expose himself to killing fire, but no such luck. Hearing a shout from somewhere toward the rear, immediately followed by an automatic weapon’s clatter, Bolan knew he had no more time to spend on waiting. He edged forward, toward the open doorway, following the muzzle of his folding-stock Kalashnikov.

  And got there without opposition from Yusuf Zuabi. There were two ways to approach the entry, and he chose the safer of them, unpinning an RGD-5 frag grenade and lobbing it into the room where he had seen his adversary disappear. Three seconds later, more or less, its detonation shook the house, spewing a cloud of smoke and plaster dust out through the doorway. Bolan kept his back turned to it, his eyes shielded, then moved before a shooter caught on the receiving end could pull himself together.

  Too late. Yusuf Zuabi was in pieces and beyond repair.

  Bolan supposed he had to have planned an ambush but had skimped on cover, settling for a low table he’d overturned to crouch behind. It hadn’t saved him from the blast or shrapnel, one arm nearly severed at the shoulder, while his chest was leaking like a sieve. Zuabi’s shattered jaw had been pushed backward, likely severing his windpipe on its way to meet his spine. Whatever went down as the final cause, he was irrevocably dead.

  And that left two, at least, dueling with Grimaldi somewhere deeper in the slaughterhouse.

  * * *

  AS SOON AS Grimaldi told Bolan that he was coming, he’d stepped back a pace and fired a 3-round burst into the back door’s knob, not taking any chances that a lock would slow him. From there, he rammed the door full-force, snapping some kind of flimsy chain inside and nearly spilling to the concrete floor beyond, as his momentum took him through.

  There was no one to greet him on the other side, but Grimaldi didn’t have to wait long for a target to surface. Two doors down and on his right, a head popped out, together with a slim arm clutching a machine pistol. The Stony Man pilot just had time to hit the floor before a spray of bullets chipped the walls on either side of him and plaster started raining down.

  He’d barely glimpsed the shooter’s face before he ducked back out of sight, but thought it might have been Khalid Kamel. Names weren’t that important at the moment, as Grimaldi fired a short burst in reply, then started worming toward the doorway on his belly, like a soldier crawling under concertina wire.

  The shooter tried again, just seconds later, lowering his sights a little for the next barrage, but still fanning the dusty air above his adversary’s head.

  Grimaldi answered with a burst that chipped the doorjamb, driving his opponent back and out of sight. He took advantage of the momentary lull, advancing in a painful rush of knees and elbows, made it to the open doorway and stopped there, taking a chance to rise and stand erect.

  A stray burst through the plaster wall could drop him now, Grimaldi realized, but he couldn’t creep around the doorjamb fast enough to keep the gunner on the other side from nailing him. He needed speed, agility, and that meant moving.

  He counted down from three, then bolted through the doorway, diving headlong as he cleared the threshold. Muzzle-flashes started blinking at him, bullets tracking him a step behind their mark. Grimaldi hit the concrete floor and slid, no carpet to arrest him, firing toward the enemy huddled to one side of the doorway, on his right.

  Khalid Kamel—yes, it was him—took most of it, reeling backward as Grimaldi’s slugs ripped through his scrawny chest. Whether he died before he hit the floor or seconds afterward, it made no difference. The operative word was dead, as in stone-cold.

  Grimaldi scrambled to his feet again, took time to breathe, then turned back to the exit from the killing room. He cleared it just in time to see another shooter stepping from a room downrange and recognized Tareq Talhouni, carrying a pistol lengthened by a silencer. Talhouni saw him at the same time, more or less, and raised his weapon, shifting sideways in a dueler’s stance that minimized his body mass and profile for incoming fire.

  It didn’t help him as Grimaldi held down the AK’s trigger and let it rip, burning through the better part of half a magazine to chop Talhouni down. The hot 7.62 mm full-metal-jacket rounds blew Talhouni off his feet and over backward, triggering
a single muffled shot into the ceiling as he fell. Grimaldi watched him twitching for an endless moment, boot heels drumming on the floor, then he lay still.

  Two were down on the pilot’s side of the ledger, and he had to look for Bolan now. Before he had a chance, though, the Executioner’s voice was in his head again.

  “Jack, if you’re clear, come in. We’ve got a prisoner alive.”

  * * *

  THE DAZED MAN lying on his side, bound to a chair, was a surprise. Bolan had come up empty in his search for other targets, after taking down Yusuf Zuabi, but he hadn’t been expecting a survivor trussed up like a Christmas turkey ready for the oven.

  Only this one was alive.

  Barely, it seemed, at first. Someone had worked him over big-time, beating him and burning him with—what? A glance around the makeshift torture chamber showed Bolan the battery attached to jumper cables, shoved into a corner after they had done their gruesome work. The guy needed a medic, soon, but he still had a pulse, and he was breathing raggedly through torn lips and a broken nose. One eye managed to open after Bolan cut him free and eased him from the chair that had become his torture rack.

  “Jack,” Bolan spoke into his Bluetooth, “if you’re clear, come in. We’ve got a prisoner alive.”

  “Incoming,” his partner replied, and in another moment he was on the threshold, checking out the scene before he joined Bolan, kneeling beside the prisoner.

  “Has he said anything?” Grimaldi asked.

  “Not yet.”

  The captive’s one good eye cracked open, focused on the faces leaning over him, and seemed to pick up on the fact that they were speaking English. In a croaking, nearly breathless voice, he said, “Police.”

  “I don’t think we should call them right now,” Grimaldi said.

  On the floor, the stranger tried to shake his head. It cost him, but he still managed to tell them, “I...police.”

  “Well, damn.”

  “You’re safe now,” Bolan told the bruised and bloodied man. “Is there a hospital in Lahij?”

  That produced an obviously painful nod. “Mustashfa ’Ali Jahis.”

  “Is that the name of it?” Bolan inquired.

  “Yes. Name.”

  They hadn’t seen a hospital when they were driving in from Aden. Bolan turned to his partner and asked, “You want to check that out?”

  Grimaldi dug his smartphone from a pocket, went online and started tapping keys. A moment later, he said, “Got it. Right downtown, maybe a half mile south of where we’re standing. Listen, if we’re going...”

  “Right,” Bolan agreed. “Let’s get him to the car.”

  “Ambulance run,” Grimaldi said. “Go figure.”

  The two men righted the chair, then Bolan cut his bonds with his a penknife.

  He took the captive’s left side, started hoisting him, stone-faced against the groaning that evoked, then Grimaldi was on his right, providing more support. The policeman’s arms weren’t broken, so they each took one across a shoulder, slinging him between them as they might a drunken friend after a long night on the town. Except this friend wasn’t enjoying it, and he might well be dying as they guided him out of the room where he’d been tied up and abused.

  Grimaldi glanced across the sagging head toward Bolan. “If you plan on going in with him...”

  “I don’t,” Bolan said, cutting off that line of thought. “We’ll drop him off outside the ER, if they’ve got one.”

  “He could give us up.”

  “We saved his life.”

  “Cop logic,” Grimaldi replied. “Can’t always trust it.”

  Bolan knew that well enough. “We’re done here, anyway,” he said. “The docs will have to work on him a while. Before he starts describing anyone, we can be in the air.”

  “You hope.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “Leave him. Call 911 or whatever it is here. Cops can pick him up. They’re likely on their way already.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then. I’m just saying.”

  “Understood.” Bolan had another motive, too. “Maybe,” he said, “we’ll get some information from him on the way.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Naseem Damari tried to pull himself together on the short ride from his former prison to Mustashfa ’Ali Jahis hospital. He occupied the backseat of a new four-door sedan, with duffel bags of weapons at his feet, and had no thought of reaching for them to arrest the strangers who had saved his life.

  The pain he felt had lessened somewhat, since his benefactors had extracted him and guided him through relatively fresh air to their waiting car. Along the way, he’d seen the monster who had tortured him, sprawled out in blood, but lacked the energy to kick or even spit on him. There’d been no time to waste, in any case, as they heard sirens closing when they pulled on to the road southbound.

  His comrades were rushing to reports of gunfire, unaware that one of their own brothers was involved. Damari was already working on an explanation in his head, trying to craft a story that would make sense at his next interrogation. It was difficult, given the throbbing in his skull, but he could always feign amnesia, buy more time that way, until he came up with a tale he thought might fly.

  From the front seat, the taller of his two American rescuers spoke. “While they were holding you,” he said, “did they say anything that indicated any future plans?”

  English was troubling at the moment, with Damari’s mind all out of joint, but he translated it to Arabic and gave the halting answer back in their own tongue. “I hear something about Geneva,” he replied.

  Up front, the two men exchanged glances, frowning in the dashboard’s light. “Can you remember any more of that?” the tall one asked.

  “A great day coming, one said. Death to the Crusaders.”

  “Did they mention any time frame?” the driver asked.

  When Damari tried to shake his head, he side-slipped to the brink of consciousness, riding a wave of pain. Through clenched teeth he replied, “No. Nothing else.”

  “We’re on the right track, anyway,” the tall one told his friend.

  “I’d say,” the driver answered. Then, to Damari he said, “Almost there, I think.”

  Damari scanned the street scene with his one good eye and said, “Two blocks, then left.”

  “Got it.”

  There was a line outside the hospital when they arrived, people awaiting service, some with children, and no room to sit inside the waiting room. Mustashfa ’Ali Jahis was small, but Damari trusted its physicians to repair him, if repair was even possible.

  They pulled up to the low curb, and the tall man asked him, “Are you sure you’ve got this?”

  “Yes,” Damari said. “And thank you. You have time, but not so much.”

  “Already gone,” the driver said, with something like a smile.

  Damari found the inside handle of his door and eased out of the car, got both feet under him and clutched the open door until he was securely balanced on his legs. He closed the door behind him, managed not to stumble on the curb and proceeded toward the ER’s entrance in a shuffling zombie walk, not looking back. He heard the car leave, focused on the distant doorway, moving past the other sufferers in line.

  They glared at him, of course. Why not? Some had been waiting hours, and Damari was about to jump the line. They would not take his injuries into account, but if accosted, he was carrying his badge and pistol, both retrieved by the men who had saved him, as they left the torture cell.

  As he approached the door, Damari took the plastic whistle from his pocket, placed it to his swollen lips and blew a shrill, insistent cry for help.

  N1 Highway, Southbound

  DRIVING BACK TO ADEN, they encountered no more ac
cidents or other roadblocks. They passed no squad cars rolling north toward Lahij, nothing that suggested any kind of citywide or regional alert.

  “You think he’ll cover for us?” Grimaldi asked.

  “Buy some time, at least,” Bolan replied. “One-eyed, with a concussion and the rest of it, he won’t have any trouble mixing up descriptions.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  “You’re worried?”

  “Till we get up in the clouds, amico,” Grimaldi replied. “Maybe outside Yemeni airspace.”

  “Anyway, we know we’re on the right track with Geneva,” Bolan said.

  “A great day coming,” Grimaldi said, echoing their recently departed passenger. “Death to Crusaders. Yeah, I’d call that pretty definite.”

  “The summit starts on Monday. All the bigwigs will be flying in tomorrow, schmoozing, sleeping off their jet lag,” Bolan said. “Kabeer could put his team into play at any time from early afternoon on Sunday, through the next three days.”

  “Are we still starting with Zermatt?” Grimaldi asked.

  “I’d say we have to, since we have an address there. The only other way to go is having Bear ping the phone again and hope they aren’t just drifting aimlessly around Geneva.”

  Bolan had already done the math. Zermatt had fewer than six thousand full-time residents, packed into a mountain valley fifty-three hundred feet above sea level. Geneva had close to two-hundred thousand citizens, with tourists piled on top of that. The odds of finding seven Arabs in Zermatt were vastly better than prowling Switzerland’s second largest city, hoping for a chance encounter on the street.

  If he missed them there, at least Bolan knew where the summit’s VIPs were staying in Geneva. He could mount surveillance there, try Stony Man and see if Kurtzman could work any magic from long distance—and be ready for a quick eleventh-hour intervention, if it came to that.

  The best plan, he’d agreed with his partner, was to locate Kabeer and company, eliminate them well before they had a chance to move on any heads of state, then leave the cleaning up and explanations to somebody else. But if they failed...