Dead Reckoning Read online

  Washington, DC

  THE PRESIDENT WAS calling, and Brognola couldn’t let it go to voice mail. Sitting at his desk, a late-lunch hero sandwich spread in front of him—sausage and peppers, screw the doctors just this once—he recognized the red light blinking on the nearest of his two phones. He reached out to snare the handset on its second ring, tucking a bite of sandwich into one cheek as he answered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hal, how are you?”

  “Hanging in there, sir.”

  “I know the feeling. Congress, right? Don’t get me started.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So, I wanted to check in with you about that thing. The one we talked about.”

  Cagey. In Washington, even with those you trusted to perform the dirtiest of dirty work, those who ascended to the heights of power knew enough to watch their words, aware that anything you said might be recorded for posterity by someone who could turn against you later, muddying your legacy or even sending you to prison.

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got my best asset on top of it.”

  “Any results, so far?”

  “Yes, sir. The word’s just in. I would have called you with a confirmation in the next half hour or so.”

  “Well, since I’ve got you now...”

  “Of the original sixteen, three have been neutralized,” Brognola said.

  “If I may ask...”

  “Yes, sir. In Paraguay.”

  “That’s hitting close to home.”

  “We think it was a hideout, rather than a staging area, but there was no time to discuss it with the principals.”

  “Of course. I understand. As for the others...”

  “There’s a lead, sir, to East Africa. Sudan, specifically.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, if they have to be somewhere, I’d rather have them over there than in our own backyard.”

  “Yes, sir. There is a chance, with transit time from South America, that we could miss them on the other end.”

  “You could have gone all day without telling me that, Hal.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I know you value straight intelligence over Pollyanna kind.”

  “Rose-colored glasses never got me anything but blurry vision. Still...”

  Brognola took the opportunity to swallow his last bite of sausage, cleared his throat, and sent another “yes, sir” down the line.

  “About the three down south, if we could give the public something...”

  “Sir, I’m bound to say that would be premature, at this point. News like that goes global in a heartbeat. If there’s any chance at all the others haven’t heard about their pals yet, it would be a serious mistake to tip them off, in my opinion.”

  “And if they already know?”

  “They can’t know who’s behind it, sir. That’s definite. I’d rather have them paranoid right now, jumping at shadows, than convinced we’re on to them. A statement now, from us, might even spur them into further action.”

  Silence on the other end, as the big Fed’s caller digested that. “Okay,” he said at last. “I see that, and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for something else, God knows. It would be nice to have some points on our side of the scoreboard, though.”

  “We have the points, sir. We’re just saving the announcement till the final victory’s confirmed.”

  “How confident are you of that, Hal? On a scale of one to ten?”

  “Well, sir...”

  “Scratch that. Dumb question, never mind. I’m talking like a senator.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, sir.”

  Most senators, Brognola had decided, talked to please their base, and for the kick of showing off on Fox or CNN. This was a leader strapped for answers, in a corner, with the country clamoring for justice. Sure, any announcement of a victory against the terrorists responsible for killing Americans would be politicized, as well, but Brognola believed his caller—unlike others he could name—was more concerned with duty than the latest Gallup poll.

  “You’ll call me, then?”

  “Most definitely, sir.”

  “All right. Thanks for your time.”

  And he was gone. Brognola turned back to his sandwich, found he’d lost his appetite, and dropped its remnants in his wastebasket.

  Kassala, Sudan

  NOUR SARHAN ROLLED OVER, gasping, finished with the prostitute beside him. She was young and pleasing to the eye, but no one Sarhan cared to share a conversation with on any subject other than her price per hour for the service she had rendered with a semblance of enthusiasm.

  Pay for play. Where women were concerned, he had no interest in anything beyond the obvious, the physical.

  Sarhan had paid for this one in advance, no awkward arguments after the fact. She’d named a price—or, rather, her pimp had named the price—and that was business easily disposed of in advance. Now all she had to do was dress and leave.

  “We’re finished,” Sarhan told her. “You may go.”

  She seemed about to ask him something, for a small extra gratuity perhaps, but Sarhan’s frowning face discouraged her. She scrambled out of bed, collecting items of apparel from the bedroom floor. When she was dressed, a relatively simple process in the costume she affected, she moved toward the doorway without looking back.

  Kinan Asker stood waiting for her on the other side, his face deadpan. He stood back to let her pass, then entered and closed the door behind him.

  “I’m glad you’re done,” he said, one hand extended with a sat phone in it as he neared the bed. “Kabeer is calling.”

  Sarhan snatched the phone and thumbed a button, taking it off Hold. “Saleh,” he said, “it’s good to hear from you. Please, tell me that you have advanced the schedule.”

  “You know we cannot change the target date,” Kabeer replied, his voice as gruff as ever, even from twenty-six hundred miles away. “The enemy must come to us. We need them all assembled in one place.”

  “Of course. I only thought—”

  “I’m calling with a warning,” Kabeer said, cutting him off.

  “Warning?”

  “You—all of us—may soon be facing danger. Our associates in Paraguay have been eradicated.”

  “What?” The news struck Sarhan like a swift punch to the gut. He jackknifed out of bed, stood naked, with his back to Asker. “When? Who did this thing?”

  “The last of them was lost within the hour,” Kabeer said. “And many of their hosts fell with them, I should mention, if you happen to be speaking with their comrades.”

  Sarhan had a sudden urge to spit. Screw the mewling rats of Hezbollah. He’d left them in the first place because they were soft, all turning into politicians now, instead of warriors. He was not concerned about retaliation from those weaklings, but with vengeance for his friends.

  “You must be on alert, these next few days,” Kabeer told. “If necessary, use the exit route we talked about.”

  Over the nearby border to Eritrea, and on from there to Yemen or Somalia, depending on the circumstances.

  “I remember,” Sarhan said.

  “Because we don’t know who may be responsible—”

  “I’ll be alert to everyone and everything,” Sarhan replied.

  “And I will be in touch about the next event.”

  “I shall be waiting,” Sarhan said, and cut the link.

  Roberts International Airport, Monrovia, Liberia

  JACK GRIMALDI LIKED long flights. Winging across the wide Atlantic was the perfect way to disconnect from Planet Earth and all its problems, put your mind on autopilot for a while and bask in simple freedom from the draw of gravity. As long as he had fuel, fair visibility and a beacon to his next LZ, the long jaunts liberated him as nothing else could ever do.

 
The down side: when he landed, all the same old problems waited for him, some compounded by events that had occurred while he was soaring through the clouds.

  As airports in Africa went, Monrovia’s was fair. It had been built in 1942 and christened Roberts Field, after Liberia’s first president, used as a base for air strikes against Rommel in North Africa and U-boats in the North Atlantic. After the war, it was revamped to serve Air France, Pan Am and Delta, later ranked as an emergency alternative landing site for NASA’s space shuttles. Damaged at the turn of the last century, during one of Liberia’s periodic civil wars, the main terminal still needed major renovations, but progress had always been slow in this part of the world.

  Grimaldi had the Hawker fueled and ready by the time Bolan returned from dealing with the officers at Customs. English was Liberia’s official language, so they had no failure to communicate. The trick would be to speed up the minutiae of paperwork, when no one on the airport’s staff had an incentive to work faster than a snail’s pace. Bolan had done well, based on Grimaldi’s personal experience in Africa, and he was smiling as he reached the plane.

  “How much?” Grimaldi asked.

  “Two hundred bucks, Liberian,” Bolan replied.

  “That’s what...two dollars in the States?”

  “Two and some change.”

  “Terrific. Cheap at half the price.” Grimaldi glanced at Bolan’s empty hands. “No eats?”

  “Nothing I’d trust,” Bolan replied.

  “Good thing we stocked up in Belém.”

  Val de Cans International was something else. They’d purchased food from three airport cafés, trusting the Hawker’s fridge and microwave to see them, though.

  “How’s pizza sound, once we get airborne?”

  “Suits me,” Bolan answered. “When can we take off?”

  Grimaldi glanced along the empty runway. This early in the morning, he could easily have used the runway as a bowling alley with no risk to life or limb.

  “Soon as we’re ready,” he told Bolan, “since we’re covered on the fees.”

  “All good to go,” Bolan replied.

  “Okay. Next stop, Khartoum.”

  Over Nigeria, at 40,000 Feet

  THE PIZZA WASN’T BAD, considering. It had a certain tang to it, some spice the chef had added in Belém, which Bolan didn’t recognize, but it was fine. He ate three slices, put the rest in the fridge in case they wanted it before touchdown, and picked a seat behind the cockpit, leaving Grimaldi alone at the controls for now.

  World maps, he’d found, often diminished Africa. The Mercator projection was probably worst, making Greenland seem three times the size of Australia, when in fact, the very opposite was true. Flying over Africa, you realized it was the second largest continent on Earth, nearly twelve million square miles of jungle and desert, savannah and mountains, sprawling from one horizon to the next in all directions: vast, inscrutable and beautiful.

  Of the many hot spots on the continent, Sudan ranked right up there. It wasn’t all chaotic like Somalia, next door, but its radical Islamic stance made trouble with most of its neighbors, one time or another, compounded by endemic human rights violations, institution of Sharia law despite a constitutional pledge supporting freedom of religion, strict media censorship, and near-genocide in Darfur. The good news was a rapidly growing economy, founded on oil, complicated by seventy native languages.

  And somewhere in the midst of all that, more targets Bolan had to find, interrogate if that were possible, and then eliminate.

  Unlike the job in Paraguay, he had no names to match against Brognola’s dossier on God’s Hammer, no idea how many of the thirteen members still alive were hiding in Sudan. He doubted any of the team had traveled solo to a place so far from home, but it could still range from a minimum of two or three to all thirteen.

  That was too much to hope for, he decided, catching the remainder in one place and taking out the Hammer, root and branch; too easy for the universe to smile on him that way. Bolan would take what he could get and go from there, doing his best.

  “About three hours,” Grimaldi announced over the intercom. “In case you want to get some sleep.”

  Instead, Bolan went forward, settling into the copilot’s seat. “I’m too keyed up,” he told Grimaldi.

  “About this outfitter we’re meeting in Kassala...”

  “Alek Nimeiry,” Bolan said. “He’s got a garage on the west side of town, near the Kassala Teaching Hospital and the Mareb River, which locals call the Gash.”

  “I hope he’s not expecting us.”

  “No way. I’ve got a password for him. He can check it with the Company if he gets hinky on us.”

  “Starting rough,” Grimaldi said.

  “Starting and finishing, I’d bet. The usual.”

  Grimaldi didn’t ask what they would do next if the birds had flown when they arrived. He had to have known that Bolan wouldn’t have an answer for him, that they’d have to put their trust in Stony Man to strike another trail, dig up a name or address somewhere in the world, before God’s Hammer decided it was safe to make another grandstand play.

  He knew the heat had to be on high in Washington, with politics piled high and deep on top of anger at the killing of five Americans abroad. Opponents loved to twist the knife, find blame where none was evident and use it to support themselves come next election day. Bolan did not engage in those games, and he was not advancing anyone’s agenda but his own.

  Identify the targets. Isolate them. Take them out.

  A recipe for slaughter in Sudan.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Khartoum International Airport, Sudan

  “Nothing much to look at is it?” Grimaldi said.

  He was right: one runway, asphalt, with security restricted to a simple chain-link fence, beside a terminal that had seen better days. It looked like something from the Seventies, and while a multilingual billboard boasted plans for new construction, it was fading from exposure to the weather, with no sign that any work had been attempted. Military planes shared space with jets bearing the logos of assorted African and Middle Eastern airlines.

  From its appearance, Bolan thought that terrorists could overrun the airport easily. Maybe they’d never thought that it was worth the trouble.

  They were about 250 miles from their target, Kassala, located due east of Khartoum. Eight hours and change if they’d been driving, fifty minutes with Grimaldi in the Hawker’s cockpit.

  They were almost there, and Bolan still had no idea what they would find.

  “I’ll go take care of Customs,” he told Grimaldi, and headed for the terminal.

  It wasn’t quite so bad inside. The place had benefited from a face-lift sometime during recent months, but there was only so much decorators could accomplish when it came to hiding age. The morning light through tinted windows showed where cleaners had slacked off while buffing vinyl floors, and the employees working ticket counters had a weary look about them, even with the standard-issue smiles clamped doggedly in place.

  Customs was worse. Two scowling officers in uniforms that wouldn’t pass inspection at a small-town cop shop in the States examined Bolan as he stepped up to their station, almost willing him to give them grief. Maybe they still resented Sudan being tagged as a state sponsor of global terrorism, back in 1993, or held a grudge from US bombing raids in ’98. Tension had eased since then, with Sudan listed as a “cooperative partner” against al-Qaeda in 2010, but the State Department still hadn’t removed the country from its roll of states to watch where terror was concerned. Four gunmen convicted of killing two US Embassy staffers in 2008 had been sentenced to death, then escaped from the counrty’s “maximum-security” prison, with only one of them captured at last report.

  Bolan presented two passports, both of them genuine in form, alth
ough they bore false names. Bolan’s identified him as one Matthew Cooper from New York; Grimaldi’s listed him as James Burrell from Florida. If anyone took time to check, both home addresses were legit—up to a point—and calls would be accepted at their listed phone numbers. Both IDs had clean credit histories, bills paid on time and they had other documents to back them up: state driver’s license, Social Security, the whole nine yards—all courtesy of Stony Man.

  The Customs men took fifteen minutes poring over both passports, exchanging them to search for glitches, finding none. While that was underway, they asked the usual questions: why was Bolan visiting Sudan, how long did he intend to stay, where would he be residing while within the country.

  Bolan told them he was on vacation, booked for a big-game safari. They could check the company and find a reservation for Matt Cooper in its files, if they were so inclined. Sudan was big on letting wealthy foreigners slaughter its wildlife—leopards, lions, hippos, elephants, giraffe, whatever—so the tale was plausible and had a twist of irony that Bolan could appreciate.

  The big game he had come to find was human, the most dangerous of all. He hoped to put them all on the endangered species list.

  The Customs men considered shaking down his plane, then finally decided it was too much work. They stamped both passports, let him go and glowered all the time that he remained within their line of sight.

  Another hurdled cleared.

  Next stop: a little slice of Hell on Earth.

  Kassala, Sudan

  NOUR SARHAN HAD pondered ways to make himself secure while waiting for the call to action from Kabeer in Switzerland. It was a strange world these days, soldiers scattered to the corners of the world in hiding, when he’d grown up huddled in the refugee camps where his people had been relegated, first in Egypt, later in the desert wastes of Jordan. In Sudan, at least, he had a roof over his head instead of canvas, indoor plumbing rather than a foul latrine and no guards peering at him every time he made a move.

  Sarhan could have remained there, could have given up the cause and lost himself in Sudan, with its 597 identified ethnic groups. Seventy percent of the country’s population was Arab, close enough to his own Egyptian, and Arabic was the dominant tongue among four hundred clashing languages and dialects. He could pass, change his name...and do what?