Dead Reckoning Read online

  “Want me to call Hal with a quick heads-up?”

  “We don’t know who he’s with or what he’s up to,” Bolan countered. “Better tip the Farm instead, and let them run with it.”

  Grimaldi used the sat phone, Bolan listening to his side of the conversation from the driver’s seat.

  “It’s me...No, on the highway heading for Geneva... No...Two off the board...Mousa and Bakri...Yeah, I know that still leaves five...Okay, sorry...No...Striker thought you ought to call him, if you think the time’s right...Yeah, okay. Later.”

  “No joy in Mudville,” Grimaldi announced, when he’d cut the link. “They’ll get in touch with Hal ASAP.”

  Bolan wasn’t a brooder, but Grimaldi sensed his dark mood, adding, “It was just dumb luck, you know. Missing the rest.”

  “I know. It doesn’t help.”

  “It’s not too late to tip the cops,” Grimaldi said.

  “And tell them what? We don’t know what Kabeer’s people are driving, or how many vehicles they have. We don’t know what they’re planning, other than a massacre. Geneva already has people on the scene, along with armed security from half a dozen other countries. They’re prepared for anything Kabeer might try, in theory.”

  “But you’re worried.”

  “Sure. Aren’t you?”

  “Hell, yes. I’m picturing another Oklahoma City, or a mini-9/11. If they’ve got a pilot with them, access to a private plane stuffed full of RDX or something similar, I don’t see how hotel security could hold them off.”

  Bolan wondered how many guests were registered at the hotel that day, if some of them were sitting down to dine or sweating in the gym, swimming or getting a massage, browsing among the shops or watching some new movie in the theater. How many lives would be snuffed out or changed forever if he didn’t stop Kabeer in time?

  It was a question Bolan asked himself each time he took a new assignment from the Farm. The stakes were always life and death. Only the scale varied from one job to another, while the human cost remained identical for individuals caught up in Bolan’s endless war. Some didn’t even know the war existed, but it sucked them in and chewed them up, regardless.

  “When we get there,” Grimaldi said, “are we heading straight to the hotel?”

  “It’s all that I can think of,” Bolan replied. “We’ll have to play it cagey, with the timing and the layers of security in place.”

  “We might spruce up a bit and try to check in,” Grimaldi suggested. “Get a foot inside, at least.”

  “Might want to call about a reservation, if we’re doing that,” Bolan replied. “And we’d still have to think about the hardware.”

  “I can get the phone number online for reservations. Do you think they’d scan our luggage, checking in?”

  “With six heads of state in residence? I wouldn’t doubt it.”

  “Right. And if we leave them in the car...”

  “They’re inaccessible.”

  “Damn it!”

  “Hold off on phoning,” Bolan said, “and try to find a floor plan and service entrances. Turning invisible might be a better way to go.”

  “I’m on it,” Grimaldi replied, and bent over his sat phone, leaving Bolan to the long, dark tunnel of his thoughts.

  Rue de Monthoux, Geneva

  THE VAN WAS waiting for Mohammed Sanea when he reached the cavernous parking garage. He spotted it, then left his Renault Twingo on another level, walking back to reach the van while checking shadows high and low for any sign of enemy surveillance. One hand on his pistol, he retrieved the van’s key from its hiding place, unlocked it, climbed inside and locked it once again so no one could surprise him while he checked its cargo.

  Semtex was invented at Prague Technical University in the 1950s, and was odorless until the Lockerbie airline disaster of December 1988 persuaded its primary manufacturers to make work easier for bomb-sniffing dogs. Otherwise, its stable compound would pass through airport scanners as easily as a pair of socks. Sanea frankly didn’t care if there were dogs at work around the Grand Hotel Kempinski, or a team of psychics picking up on danger vibes. He had a relatively simple job to do: arrive on time, park at or near the hotel’s spacious underground loading dock, and wait to see whether the raid went down as planned or not.

  If so, he was to walk away, trigger the charge remotely and claim credit for the devastating blast with CNN as soon as possible.

  If not, should he be cornered or the plan should fall apart somehow, the small remote control device that waited for him in the glove compartment would become his ticket to the Elysian Fields of Paradise.

  But was he ready for the end?

  In theory, certainly. Sanea’s training with al-Qaeda, then with God’s Hammer, had strengthened the belief he shared with every fellow Muslim, of a grand reward beyond the veil of death for God’s loyal disciples. Many differed on the context of that loyalty, excluding those who waged the long jihad, and that had troubled him at times. If the Koran was true, how could imams vary so radically on their interpretation of the text?

  Sanea counted bricks of Semtex, plastic wrapped, each one weighing a kilo more or less. The detonators were in place, but disconnected from the battery that would, on cue, send voltage sparking to their blasting caps and turn the van into a massive fireball, slamming its destructive force through the selected target, rending flesh and bone along with glass, concrete and steel.

  All present and accounted for.

  Connection of the battery required only a moment’s time. That done, Sanea crawled back to the driver’s seat, opened the glove compartment and removed the small remote control. It had two switches: one to arm it, and the other to direct its deadly signal through the air by line of sight, within one hundred yards of where its user stood. Sanea flipped the arming switch, saw the green light come on and turned it off again for safety’s sake.

  Ready.

  The van started immediately, and he backed out of its parking space, wound slowly through the circuits of the vast garage, until he reached the street, then turned and headed for the lake.

  Grand Hotel Kempinski, Geneva

  IT WAS NEARLY DINNERTIME, and Brognola admitted to himself, if grudgingly, that he looked sporty in his borrowed tux. He could have used a trim around the ears, but balked at going down to the hotel’s salon. Sometimes, with a command performance, the commander had to take his players as they came.

  There’d been no time to fit the tux jacket precisely, so he still had room to hide the small Glock 26 behind his back, no bulge to speak of. If the Secret Service challenged him, he would refer them to the President, and if the Man turned thumbs down on his being armed, Brognola thought he might as well go back up to his suite and order room service. He had no role in any of the talks that might start over dinner, and if he was stripped of any minimal protective function, it was all a waste of time.

  In fact, nobody seemed to notice he was packing. In the elevator, riding down with members of the German party, Brognola stood off to one side, catching stray words here and there, without a hope of stringing them together. I’d have been a lousy spy, he thought, more suited to administration in the new world where so many threats were global and the players represented every color of the human rainbow.

  On the ground floor, Brognola stood back and let the Germans off, then trailed them toward the banquet room. Local police and Secret Service had the door, checking IDs, but they had left their scanning wands at home and weren’t inflicting any pat-downs on the guests. If any Arab states had been included in the gathering, Brognola thought Kabeer or someone from his clique could have obtained an invitation, slipped inside without much fuss and been in place to try some dirty work, but this turnout was virtually lily-white.

  Brognola wasn’t seated with the Man or other potentates, up on the dais at the head of the long dinin
g room, which put his nerves a little more at ease. Dining among the great and near-great could be harrowing enough, without three-quarters of the room watching each bite he forked into his mouth. Seated with lesser members of the US team who had trouble remembering his name, the big Fed focused on the menu, reading through the courses that included double appetizers chosen from a list of twenty, a palate-cleansing sorbet, an entrée making no allowance for potential vegans in the crowd, and a choice of five desserts leaning toward chocolate. He said farewell to any semblance of a diet and prepared to chow down like a hog.

  If this was going to be Brognola’s last meal, he might as well enjoy it—though he could have wished for better company.

  Sommeliers were circling, offering a sip and sniff of wine to those who viewed themselves as connoisseurs. Brognola knew the difference between a red and white, but still had trouble matching them to their respective dishes, so he started with a glass of claret, wishing it was beer.

  Bon appétit, he thought. Here’s hoping we all make it to dessert alive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mont-Blanc, Geneva

  “There! I see it!” Habis Elyan called out from the Volvo SUV’s backseat.

  “We all see it,” Kabeer replied, more than a touch of acid in his tone.

  “Of course. I just—”

  “Drive past it slowly,” Kabeer told Majid Hayek, at the Volvo’s wheel. “One pass to check it out, before we stop.”

  The Grand Hotel Kempinski lived up to its name, at least in size and its display of lighting now that night had fallen over Lake Geneva and the waterfront. Reflections of its sign, its countless lighted windows, and its port cochere all shimmered on the lake, casting moored ranks of yachts and smaller powerboats in stark relief. Behind the vast facade, he knew, there was a courtyard with a giant swimming pool and outdoor dining area, three-quarters covered by a glass roof said to be unbreakable.

  Tonight, that theory would be tested.

  The hotel filled a whole city block, boxed on the north by Rue de la Cloche, on the south by Rue de Monthoux, on the east by Rue Philippe-Plantamour, and on the west by Quai du Mont-Blanc, where Kabeer’s SUV cruised past at a leisurely speed, Hayek ignoring the drivers behind him. From all outward appearances, they were another group of rubbernecking tourists taking in Geneva’s sights.

  Hotel brochures advertised public parking “available on site,” but the hotel concealed it well—below ground, as Kabeer knew from the floor plans he’d obtained in preparation for this night. The entry to that subterranean garage was on Rue de la Cloche, near the hotel’s northwest corner, also serving the separate loading docks that would have jammed the hotel’s border streets with traffic otherwise. Deliveries were not accepted from the giant trucks that served outlying restaurants and “big-box” stores, but rather limited to tidy vans—such as the one Mohammed Sanea should be driving toward the scene right now, if he was not already in his place. The underground location was ideal.

  “Turn left,” Kabeer ordered, as they approached the intersection of Quai du Mont-Blanc and Rue de la Cloche.

  He was imagining the sheer destructive force unleashed by fifty pounds of Semtex, bursting upward from the man-made cavern underground, propelling steel and concrete toward the sky, through the hotel’s eight floors and out its roof. It would resemble a volcano’s blast, he thought, in a mountainous land where eruptions had never been seen.

  Magnificent.

  But would he be inside when that occurred? And if so, would he already be dead, cheated of seeing it?

  “And left again,” he said, spotting the entry to the hotel’s secret world below ground. Hayek signaled for the turn, let two oncoming cars pass by, then swung their SUV on to the entry ramp.

  Two guards were waiting there, one in the garb of a hotel employee, his companion some kind of policeman with a pistol and a walkie-talkie on his belt, a Brügger & Thomet MP9 machine pistol slung across his chest, its stubby muzzle angled toward his boots.

  The hotel man addressed them, asking, “How may we help you tonight, gentlemen?”

  “Four for dinner,” Hayek said, as they had rehearsed. “The FloorTwo Lounge. We have a reservation.”

  “Ah.”

  The hotel man studied their faces for a moment, then checked out their clothing, suitable for dining in the lounge where business was conducted at all hours of the day and night. He could have asked to check the car, but glanced back at the well-armed officer instead and got a lazy shrug in return.

  Kabeer pegged that one as a moron whose career would not advance beyond this night, assuming that he lived to see another sunrise. He was perfect.

  “Excellent,” the hotel man decreed. “Enjoy your time at Grand Hotel Kempinski, gentlemen.”

  “We will, I’m sure,” Kabeer replied, before Hayek pulled away and left the two guards at their lonely station, unaware that they had made the greatest—and perhaps the last—mistake of their lives.

  Quai du Rhône, Geneva

  A LONG, THIN island lay beneath them as they crossed the Rhone, then took the off ramp onto Quai des Bergues, along the waterfront. Bolan was concerned about time but handling it, Grimaldi restless in the passenger’s seat to his left. They’d made up some time on the highway from Täsch, taking chances with speed and police through the mountains and racing through tunnels if there was no traffic, trying to shave Kabeer’s lead.

  Was it enough?

  Quai des Bergues turned into Quai du Mont-Blanc where it met Rue de la Servette, three hundred yards south of the Grand Hotel Kempinski. Rolling northward, Bolan kept his eyes turned to his left, hoping he wouldn’t see a roiling cloud of smoke with flames leaping inside it, or a swarm of helicopters circling the scene of some other disaster, dreaded flashers winking on the street.

  Nothing.

  “You think we made it?” Grimaldi inquired.

  “We’re here,” Bolan replied. “The question is whether we made it in time.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  They’d researched the hotel’s layout in advance, knew where to park and had absorbed the message that no reservations were required for hotel visitors to park their vehicles. Whether that still held true with half a dozen leaders of the “free world” gathered in the banquet hall still remained to be seen. If not, Bolan would drop the Jetta anywhere he could get it off the street, without creating traffic hazards.

  They’d changed on the drive, more or less, shedding the wilder tourist duds to avert police attention at the railway depot. Going in, they would seem average enough to pass, he hoped, but failing that, the aerials on Google Earth revealed what seemed to be a vacant lot immediately west of the hotel, across Rue Philippe-Plantamour and Rue Abraham-Gevray. They could walk back a hundred feet or so from there and find another way inside, with any luck.

  “They don’t exactly have the place closed off,” Grimaldi observed.

  Good news, as far as that went, but they had to think about an exit plan, along with getting in. Whatever happened at the Grand Hotel Kempinski, Bolan hoped to survive it and drive—or walk—away when it was done. Parking below ground put a crimp in any plan to flee the scene, since underground garages were notoriously easy to seal off, but getting close was more important at the moment than an easy getaway.

  He saw Rue de la Cloche, turned left and hoped that they weren’t too late.

  Grand Hotel Kempinski Banquet Room

  THE SMALL SCOOP of sorbet was raspberry. It was refreshing after Hal’s two appetizers—stuffed prosciutto with mixed greens and parmigiano shavings, followed by smoked salmon, horseradish, crushed peas and caviar—but it was small enough that Brognola could have wolfed it in a single bite. He took his time, though, mimicking the other diners, making sure he used the right miniature spoon to make it last.
r />   Next up, if nothing interrupted them, he had a roasted pork chop with crispy anchovies, baby artichokes and lemon thyme jus on the way, followed by homemade tiramisu for dessert. The big Fed was already leaning toward full, but when in Rome—or in Geneva, as the case might be...

  The speeches wouldn’t start until the crowd had dined, stuffed and high enough on wine to make the same hot air they’d heard before more palatable. Everybody on the dais hoped for peace and justice, yada-yada, but Brognola saw the head of the Israeli delegation flicking eyes over the audience, preparing to deliver the same show of defiance that had been his stock in trade for years. There would be no concessions to “the enemy,” no pullback from occupied lands, no relenting on “self-defense” tactics that struck some other nations—and the UN Security Council—as aggressive acts of war.

  Same old, same old.

  The only thing this summit meant to Hal Brognola was a prime target for terrorism, with himself at ground zero for once. He didn’t like it there, but it had not soured his appetite.

  His table’s sommelier was making another round, topping off glasses. The big Fed considered passing this time, then decided he should take the fill-up, use his own willpower if he didn’t feel like drinking any more, but keep the wine handy in case the later speeches dragged. He had begun to think that Bolan and Grimaldi had to have nailed down God’s Hammer in Zermatt, although he’d had no bulletin to that effect from Stony Man. The cell phone in his pocket, set to vibrate, had been silent as the grave since he’d put on his tux.

  Which meant precisely nothing, one way or the other.

  Terrorists were like the water babies in Charles Kingsley’s old fairy tale. Just because you don’t see them, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You have to see them not existing, first.

  And in Brognola’s world, that generally meant you had to see them dead.