Dead Reckoning Read online

  There was no time to waste.

  Bolan had only two rules that he followed without deviation in his endless war. First, he would always minimize the risk to innocent civilians before he made a move or pulled a trigger. Second, he would not kill a cop. He viewed police in general as soldiers of the same side, earning danger money in pursuit of criminals.

  If cops arrived, he had two choices: slip away somehow, or go to jail.

  And jail, inevitably, would mean death.

  Hearing the clock tick in his head, he left the kitchen, edged along the hallway toward the sounds of combat, closing on the next two doors in line. One ought to be a dining room, judging by proximity to the kitchen, while the other would be up for grabs.

  The door to Bolan’s right flew open as he neared it, someone coming late to join the party, with a toilet and a dripping shower in the background. It was not Walid Khamis, which made the new arrival Hezbollah. He had a pistol in his hand, a towel around his waist and an expression on his face that might have been excitement, maybe fear. Whichever, Bolan shot him through his naked chest before the man had an opportunity to attack him.

  Four down, including Grimaldi’s kill in the entryway, but from the sound of it, there were enough defenders left to hold the house if they could pull themselves together and decide on a strategy.

  His job was to make sure they died before they had that chance.

  * * *

  ASHRAF TANNOUS SPENT a moment in the open doorway, wondering if he should fight or flee. He was a leader, with a certain standard to uphold, but that was only useful if he lived to fight another day.

  The neighborhood would surely be aroused by now. The police were not loved there, were rarely called, and never to a simple family disturbance, but he knew that someone would alert them to a full-scale battle going on. Arrest meant prison, once they found Khamis and matched the bullets from his body to Tannous’s pistol. There was no death penalty in Paraguay, but he would rather die than spend his life inside a stinking prison cell.

  With that in mind, Tannous began to plan his exit from the house. The room where he had killed Khamis was windowless—the very reason he had chosen it—so he would have to find another exit. That meant moving toward the sounds of gunfire and away from safety for the moment, until he could break off to the left or right, choosing a door and slipping through it, hopefully unseen.

  Get on with it, a harsh voice in his mind commanded, spurring Tannous into motion. Three of his men passed by his doorway, one of them—Maroun Rahal—pausing to stare at him and ask, “Are you all right, Ashraf?”

  “Fine,” he replied. “I’m right behind you.”

  With a jerky nod, Rahal moved on, seemingly anxious for his chance to face the unknown enemy.

  Young fools. At Rahal’s age, Tannous had felt the same, but he had quickly learned to bide his time, strike without warning and retreat, keeping survival foremost in his mind. Let others wear the vests with high explosives packed in scrap metal and cow dung, hastening their flight to Paradise. Tannous was happy to remain on Earth and plot his moves against the enemy from safety, letting others do his killing for him—and the dying, too.

  What famous general in history was not the same?

  He stepped into the hallway, saw Rahal and his companions jogging off to meet whatever fate awaited them, and followed at a cautious distance. When they reached the central, east-west corridor, Rahal and company turned left. Tannous had picked the opposite direction as his best path to escape, and he would hold to that unless something prevented him from using it.

  “There is no shame in living,” Tannous muttered to himself. In fact, it was his duty to their sacred cause.

  An explosion rocked the house as Tannous neared the central hallway. A hand grenade, he thought, and that was bad, because his men had none, even assuming they were fools enough to set one off indoors, where it could kill or wound their comrades. That told Tannous that his enemies had come prepared for anything and did not plan on taking prisoners.

  No problem there.

  Surrendering had never crossed his mind.

  * * *

  GRIMALDI PUMPED THREE rounds into a gunner who had surprised him, springing from a doorway to his left with a Kalashnikov that almost looked too big for him. The guy was just a kid, maybe nineteen, but his AK and the expression on his face marked him as dangerous, until the Stony Man pilot blew his face apart and left him on the threadbare carpet, leaking brains.

  What was it that the “cool” youth sometimes said? Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse. The Hezbollah gunner had bagged two out of three.

  Grimaldi put him out of mind and tried to estimate how many rounds were left inside the Spectre’s casket magazine. It was a closed-bolt weapon, meaning that the last round fired would leave the bolt locked open, but Grimaldi liked to plan ahead and eliminate surprises any time he could.

  Because, one day, a rude surprise could get him killed.

  He hadn’t found Walid Khamis so far, had no idea whether the scumbag they were looking for was even in the house, but taking out another nest of Hezbollah still counted as a fair day’s work. It wasn’t strictly kosher—hell, it violated both the Paraguayan and the US constitutions—but the modern world had reached a point where evil often seemed untouchable, corrupting governments from top to bottom. When the slow machinery of justice jammed and then broke down, a clear-eyed, able-bodied man could make a difference.

  Bolan had showed Grimaldi how to do that. It was in his blood now. There was no retirement plan, no thought of turning back.

  Grimaldi left the gunner where he’d fallen, pausing first to pluck the magazine from his Kalashnikov and flinging it away. He’d barely straightened when bullets started snapping through the air around him, hasty shots from downrange, poorly aimed but getting better as the shooters compensated.

  With a curse, Grimaldi ducked into the doorway that his late adversary had appeared from, quickly checking out the room and making sure he had it to himself. The storm of autofire outside was picking up, and he knew it would leave him trapped, cut off, unless he did something about it in a hurry.

  Reaching underneath his raincoat with his left hand, he retrieved one of the frag grenades clipped to his belt, pulled its pin and moved back toward the doorway in a crouch. A left-hand pitch wasn’t his strongest play, but it would have to do in this case, since he couldn’t stick his head into the hallway and expect to keep it on his shoulders.

  Grimaldi made the blind pitch, felt—imagined?—the heat of a near miss on his knuckles as he whipped his hand back under cover. In their rush to reach him, his opponents didn’t recognize their danger. By the time one of them barked a warning to the rest, it was too late.

  The close-range detonation stung Grimaldi’s ears. He ducked as shrapnel ripped into the walls around him, highlighting the house’s cheap construction. Some of it apparently took out electric wiring, since the room where Grimaldi sat huddled suddenly went dark. The hallway had its lights on, though, but dimmer, as if one or more of its successive ceiling fixtures had been shattered.

  Move it, Grimaldi thought. Get it done.

  He burst out of the dark cave, Spectre at the ready, slamming short bursts into enemies who’d made it through the blast of his grenade. Some of them bled from wounds, others were simply dazed, all vulnerable to the close-range Parabellum rounds that ripped their flesh. A couple of the hardmen got off shots in self-defense, one bullet tugging at Grimaldi’s sleeve, but they were down and out before the slide locked open on his SMG.

  Time to reload and go in search of other prey.

  * * *

  BOLAN MOVED THROUGH dust and battle haze, no smoke alarms announcing danger from a fire. After the blast from a grenade—hopefully one of Grimaldi’s—the gunfire had slacked off remarkably, down to a stray shot here and there. He
couldn’t tell yet whether that meant victory or just his enemies regrouping, but the time to push forward was now.

  As if on cue, a figure turned the corner just ahead of Bolan, yet another unfamiliar bearded face above a T-shirt and a folding-stock Kalashnikov, a handgun tucked into a pair of low-slung jeans. Another Hezbollah hardman, not Bolan’s target from God’s Hammer, and there was no point taking any chances with him, trying to interrogate him when he had that crazed look in his eyes.

  They fired almost together, Bolan slightly quicker off the mark and certainly more accurate. His 5.56 mm rounds impacted in a cluster that he could have covered with his hand, maybe three fingers, while the 7.62 mm bullets his adversary’s piece spewed out went high and wide, etching a zigzag slash across the wall to Bolan’s right. Falling, the shooter shivered once, twice, then lay still.

  The Executioner moved on, turned left to probe a hallway that he hadn’t checked and cleared two empty rooms in nothing flat, before he saw the third door standing open. This one was an inside room, with no windows, and a man-sized bundle in a blue tarp occupied the center of the room, black zip ties fastening each end. The near end of the blue burrito had a leak, drooling fresh blood on to the rug.

  The Randall Model 18 knife occupied an armpit rig on Bolan’s left side, hanging with its pommel downward, toward his hip. He drew it, knelt to feel around the bloody end of the blue bundle, then began to slice the tarp with care, cutting a flap he could peel back and bare the face within—or what was left of it.

  Five seconds later, he looked into the bulging eyes of Walid Khamis, no longer a threat to anyone unless he stayed there, rotting, and eventually spread disease. The major pathogens he carried—hatred and fanaticism—had departed from the living world with his last breath, leaving an empty, useless husk behind.

  Bolan reached out to Jack Grimaldi via Bluetooth, telling him, “I’ve found our guy. He’s out of it.”

  “Where are you?” the pilot inquired.

  “Side hallway, north side, second on your right. It’s standing open.”

  “With you in a second.”

  That was an exaggeration, but he made it inside ten, with no more sounds of killing as Grimaldi circled through the house. Bolan allowed himself to hope that it was finished for the here and now, at least.

  They stood together, looking down into Khamis’s shocked dead face.

  “Guess he pissed them off,” Grimaldi said.

  “Looks like it.” Bolan wished they could have grilled Khamis, but doubted whether he’d have broken without drugs to which they had no access. Short on time and opportunity, they’d missed their chance.

  “Sudan, then,” Grimaldi stated.

  “Right.”

  “One thing. We’re gonna need a plane with longer range.”

  Bolan nodded, hearing the first ping-pang of sirens in the middle distance.

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll make a call.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Zermatt, Switzerland

  The last phone call from Paraguay was no surprise to Saleh Kabeer. He had been wise enough to hedge his bets, acquiring an informant at a mosque in Ciudad del Este that solicited donations for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, arranging for a call if, for whatever reason, his three men in Paraguay were lost and Kabeer’s link to Hezbollah was broken. A strategic cash transfer from one Swiss account to another had sealed the bargain, and now it had paid dividends.

  The loss of three men from his meager force—twenty percent of the survivors from their debut raid in Jordan—was grim news, naturally, but God’s Hammer could still survive it, soldier on and gather new recruits in droves after their next event earned them publicity around the world. The worst part for Kabeer, right now, was wondering exactly who to blame for the demise of Rajhid, Khamis and Farsoun.

  His mind immediately focused on America, that nest of vipers that had meddled in the Middle East since 1947, first among the nations of the world to buttress Israel, sponsors of a Syrian coup d’état in 1949, deposers of Iran’s prime minister in 1951, collaborators with the British in the 1956 Suez crisis, looters of oil, invaders of Lebanon and Iraq. The list of crimes went on, but most Americans were so naive, their first response to any pushback from the region was a plaintive wail: “Why do they hate us?”

  Saleh Kabeer knew the answer to that question. He was an expert on the subject, doubtless qualified for an exalted Ph.D. if he had spent his life in classrooms, rather than the front lines of his people’s struggle to be free of Western interference and oppression.

  So, America had killed his men in Paraguay, retaliating for their strike against the Zarqa consulate. But who specifically had carried out the executions? Which among the countless agencies devoted to intelligence, homeland security and all the rest of it had hunted down the three? How were they traced to Ciudad del Este and, beyond that, to the safe houses maintained by Hezbollah?

  One possibility—the obvious—would be a Hezbollah informer. Spies and traitors were a daily fact of life for any revolutionary. Choosing comrades was more difficult than picking out targets or weapons, every step and spoken word a risk for those who fought against Western aggression. Some joined revolutionary movements with the goal of undermining them, while others started out sincere, then lost their fervor and surrendered to temptations.

  He understood the impulse but did not excuse it. If and when Kabeer identified the individuals responsible for selling out his men, he would gain access to them somehow, question them and find out who they served. Only when he was satisfied, when he had all the facts required, would Kabeer mete out retribution for their crime against God’s Hammer and their insult to him. They would die screaming.

  And once the sponsors of the raids in Paraguay had been identified, what then?

  Kabeer was not entirely sure, yet, how he would reach out and touch specific enemies in Washington, reducing their rich lives to ashes, but at the moment he had more immediate priorities. The remnants of his little army had to be warned without delay. He was not looking forward to that task, but it was inescapable.

  Frowning in thought, Kabeer reached out for his sat phone.

  Guarani International Airport, Ciudad del Este

  THE PLANE SWAP took some time, slowing them. No stranger to delays in war, Mack Bolan had developed stoic patience, but he was aware of fleeting time and felt its sharp teeth gnawing at the corners of his mind.

  The new plane, when it got there, was a Hawker 400 twin-engine corporate jet, formerly owned by a leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. The boss had hired the wrong pilot, a ringer who diverted him to Miami on a hop from Mexico to the Bahamas, landing both the boss and his high-flying toy in DEA hands. Maybe he missed it, from his cell in a supermax, but it belonged to Bolan and Grimaldi now.

  The jet was forty-eight-feet long, with a forty-five-foot wingspan and seating for nine passengers. It cruised at 510 miles per hour, with a service ceiling of forty-five-thousand feet, and had been custom built with oversize fuel tanks, granting a nonstop range of thirty-five-hundred miles. That still meant pit stops on their long flight to East Africa, but Grimaldi had worked it out.

  They would be in the air twelve hours, plus six more on the ground, refueling, checking in with Customs at their several stops along the way, waiting for clearance to depart, and so on. Anything could happen in three-quarters of a day, now that they’d made their first move against God’s Hammer and potentially sent tremors racing off across the outfit’s spider web. Forewarned was forearmed, whether his targets chose to flee Sudan or stand and fight.

  Grimaldi joined him on completion of the preflight checkup.

  “Everything shipshape?” Bolan inquired.

  “We’re good to go,” the pilot said. “This cartel guy spared no expense.”

  “Wet bar?”

  “Hot tub,” Grimaldi answered,
grinning. “You can catch a transatlantic soak. I promise not to peek.”

  “I’ll pass,” Bolan said. “It always makes my fingers pruny.”

  “That can be a problem,” the pilot agreed.

  “I touched base with the Farm. They’ve got a couple guys who can equip us in Sudan.”

  “They’re solid?”

  “Nothing’s really solid where we’re going, but they have connections to the Company. They’re vulnerable if they try to pull a double-cross.”

  “Too late to help us, though.”

  “It’s all a gamble,” Bolan said, stating the obvious.

  Grimaldi knew that, but he liked to vent sometimes, like anybody else. It never interfered with his performance on a mission, and he’d never disappointed Bolan in a crunch.

  “You think the Hammer has official cover in Sudan?” Grimaldi asked.

  “The Farm didn’t come up with anything on that,” Bolan replied. “Officially, they’re an Islamic state under Sharia law, but it’s hit or miss. They still have slavery. South Sudan split off in 2011, and its warlords have been skirmishing with Ethiopia for border turf since then.”

  “Sounds like Somalia,” Grimaldi commented.

  “They have their share of pirates, too, but mostly smuggling arms to South Sudan. They haven’t pulled a major hijacking at sea, so far.”

  “Small favors, eh?”

  “How long until we’re cleared for takeoff?” Bolan asked.

  “Slow day,” Grimaldi said. “We’re good to go in twenty, if we’re squared away.”

  “Sooner the better,” Bolan said, and followed him aboard the jet.

  Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building,