Dead Reckoning Read online

  That was the rub. Sarhan had never learned a trade, unless you claimed guerrilla warfare as an occupation. He had never graduated from a school of any kind, though he could read and write in Arabic, to some extent. His life had been devoted to revenge against oppressors. After twenty-seven years, fighting was all he knew or cared to know.

  But how to keep himself secure until he had a chance to fight again?

  He was strapped for personnel, with only two members of God’s Hammer in town, besides himself, but he had hired street urchins to maintain surveillance on Kassala’s four top weapons dealers for the next three days. Bahjat Libdeh—Jordanian, but still reliable—was at the local airport, watching all incoming flights from Nova and Sudan Airways, as well as private planes landing with foreigners aboard. Kinan Asker, their Syrian, was at the border crossing from Eritrea, watching for anyone suspicious on that side.

  It was the best Sarhan could do with the resources presently in hand. As for defense, if enemies were spotted, he preferred a swift preemptive strike. They had a small but potent arsenal, and local thugs who would kill anyone desired for the grand sum of twenty Sudanese pounds—about $3.50 US. Sarhan’s bankroll could cover that, and then some, with enough left over for plane tickets when Kabeer summoned his team to battle once again.

  Waiting was what he hated most. There’d been no place for him to watch and wait. Kassala’s railway station had been closed for years, most of the track that once served daily trains now lost to scavengers. He could go out and sit beside the highway stretching from Khartoum to Port Sudan, but what would be the point in that?

  And so he waited, with nothing to distract him since Sudan banned liquor outright, and the bootleg stuff—Aragi—could be dangerous, from both a health perspective and the risk of being noticed by police. Drugs fell under the same ban, and while one could always find hashish around Kassala, this was not the time for Sarhan to expand his consciousness with cannabis.

  He had to remain alert, prepared to rally both his comrades and their motley crew of mercenaries at a moment’s notice, if potential enemies were seen. From that point, Sarhan would direct more strenuous surveillance, taking part himself, and then decide if violence was justified. In that case, he would err on caution’s side and kill the strangers, hope that he had got it right, and leave police to tidy up the mess. If only—

  The vibration of his cell phone startled him. Sarhan peered at its screen and recognized the caller as Bahjat Libdeh, his airport spy. He took the call and listened for a moment, feeling his blood pressure soar.

  Kassala, Sudan

  THE AIRPORT, SMALLER than the last, looked even more run down. Customs was no more difficult than in Khartoum, with only a single officer on duty here, though he took time to check their bags for contraband. When nothing surfaced, he applied the proper stamps and waved them on their way.

  The airport’s only car rental agency was small, apparently consisting of a youth in his late teens or early twenties, operating from a kiosk smaller than the kissing booth at county fairs back home. Bolan and Grimaldi both presented driver’s licenses and waited for them to be photocopied, and for “Matt Cooper’s” Visa platinum card to be swiped, and left the booth with keys to an Audi A4 compact executive sedan featuring permanent four-wheel drive.

  Their first stop, from the airport, was Alek Nimeiry’s auto body shop, located on a street whose signage neither Bolan nor Grimaldi could translate. They found the place regardless, parked outside and entered, to be greeted by a roly-poly man of fifty-something, with a shock of snow-white hair. He read their faces and approached them speaking English.

  “Gentlemen, how may I serve you?”

  “We were told you carry special tools,” Bolan replied.

  “Sometimes,” Nimeiry said. “They are expensive.”

  “Money is no object,” Bolan said. It wasn’t his; why count the cost?

  “In that case...”

  The collection, when they saw it in Nimeiry’s backroom storage area, was small but adequate. They both picked AKMS autorifles, chambered in 7.62 mm, with folding metal stocks, and backed those up with Chinese QSW-06 semiauto pistols in 9 mm Parabellum, both with factory standard sound suppressors attached. On his own initiative, Bolan added an RPG-7 shoulder-fired launcher, with a mixed bag of high explosives, fragmentation and thermobaric warheads to choose from. Finally, he took two dozen Russian RGD-5 frag grenades packed with one-hundred-ten grams of TNT, their casings scored to produce three-hundred-fifty shrapnel pieces on detonation, with a killing radius of eighty feet.

  The price was high, but Bolan covered it with money squeezed from thugs whenever he spent time enough in one place to go hunting on his own, in his spare time. Money didn’t know where it had come from, didn’t care where it was going. As for Bolan, he could not have said whether the cash he spent this day had been contributed at gunpoint by a pimp, a drug dealer, a loan shark or the owners of a stolen car chop shop. It was all the same to him, going to serve a common cause.

  They stuffed the weapons, extra magazines and ammunition into Army OD duffel bags for transport to the Audi parked outside. Alek Nimeiry showed them to the door, all smiles, and wished them luck on their safari. Neither he nor his new customers paid any notice to a teenager examining a set of chrome rims in the shop’s showroom, or noticed his eyes trailing them out to the street.

  When they were safely out of earshot, the youth pulled a borrowed cell phone from his pocket, dialed the only number programmed into memory and spoke for fifteen seconds, listened briefly and then happily agreed to trail the white men on his old motorcycle.

  * * *

  MANDOUR MAYARDIT WAS careful as he left the car shop, trailing the two Americans. He mimed continuing his cell phone call, speaking Arabic to dead air in the hope that neither one of them would understand what he was saying or regard his sudden exit from the shop as threatening. His battered motorcycle stood waiting for him, chained to a lamppost, as the white men loaded their purchases into an Audi with rental stickers and climbed into the car.

  Mayardit pocketed his phone and quickly got his bike unfastened from the post, brought it to life with only two jumps on the kick-starter, and checked both ways before proceeding into traffic, trailing the Audi. His caution was rewarded when a gray Mercedes-Benz Vaneo stopped short just in front of him, its driver barking out to him, “Which way?”

  Mayardit pointed, answering, “The Audi, there,” and watched the compact van screech off without regard to any other vehicles around it.

  This was better than he had expected. When the Arabs hired him, they had vaguely told him “help” would come if he reported foreigners obtaining guns from old Alek Nimeiry’s shop, but he had not expected them to come so quickly. Mayardit had been prepared to trail the buyers, checking in by phone, until someone caught up with him, but this was different, as if the van was tracking them already when he called.

  Excited now, Mayardit revved his bike and followed the Mercedes. This was more fun than he’d had in weeks, and he was getting paid for it besides, ten pounds for his report, another ten if those he spotted were the foreigners whom his employers sought.

  Mayardit had smelled the fear on them, despite their smiles and cocky attitudes, as they’d described the nature of his job. The three Arabs were worried, and when they’d assigned him to Alek Nimeiry’s shop, Mayardit knew they thought the foreigners had come to kill them. Why else would they have him stationed at an auto body shop notorious for selling weapons on the side?

  With that in mind, Mayardit had prepared himself for trouble. Normally, when working hustles on his own behalf, he carried a short dagger for defense against street gangs. For a job like this, however, he’d retrieved his Webley Break-Top Revolver, an ancient British relic he had tested only once, to make sure it would fire without exploding in his hand. His hoard of ammunition came to fifteen rounds, six of them loaded i
n the pistol’s cylinder right now.

  Mayardit had the Webley tucked beneath his long, baggy shirt. It was uncomfortable back there, gouging him as he hunched forward on the motorcycle, but he could bear it for the thrill of being in on something new, exciting, dangerous.

  And there was danger here. He knew it from the way the men in the Mercedes sped through traffic, swerving as if there could be no consequence to striking other vehicles, as long as they eventually overtook the Audi that was still a block or so ahead of them. Mayardit did not know what they would do when they caught up with the Americans, but he intended to be present, watching—and perhaps earn extra pay if he assisted in their capture.

  What did he care about foreigners? Life in his homeland was already bad enough without intruders meddling and making things worse. That went for the Arabs who’d hired him, as well. Their actions told Mayardit that they had something to hide—but they were paying him to help them. That was business, which took priority over his personal feelings.

  Unless, at some point, Mayardit could sell them out, as well.

  * * *

  “WE’VE GOT A TAIL,” Grimaldi said.

  Bolan checked his wing mirror, then half turned to scan the crowded street behind them. “The Mercedes van?” he asked.

  “That’s it,” Grimaldi said. “And there’s a motorcycle tailing them. I think I saw it parked outside Nimeiry’s place.”

  Bolan considered that. “He would’ve had to speed-dial reinforcements while we walked out to the car. And if the bike was already in place—”

  “Somebody staking out the local dealers,” Grimaldi finished his thought. “They knew trouble was coming.”

  “Someone knew,” Bolan corrected him. “We can’t connect it to the Hammer positively, yet.”

  “Coincidence?” Grimaldi smiled. “One thing I know for sure. They’re not cops.”

  Sudan’s National Police drove an assortment of vehicles, some donated from foreign countries, but they all bore insignia and emergency lights, some with the added touch of camouflage paint jobs. A Mercedes was out of line, from what Bolan knew of the national economy, and that meant private money had gone into hunting them—or someone—in Kassala.

  “Take for granted that it’s us,” he told Grimaldi. “We need someplace relatively safe to deal with them.”

  “When you say ‘relatively’...”

  “Minimal exposure for civilians.”

  “Right. You know it’s rush hour?”

  “Just do your best,” Bolan replied.

  Reaching behind his seat, he found the zipper on a duffel bag and tugged it open, pulled one of the AKMS carbines from inside and set it on his lap. A second stretch retrieved a curved 30-round magazine loaded with steel-core ammunition capable of penetrating six millimeters of steel plate at 328 yards or drilling through standard body armor from one hundred feet.

  It was enough to stop a van, sure—even a Mercedes-Benz—if Bolan got a clean shot in the teeming traffic, without jeopardizing any innocents.

  And that would be the trick.

  He left it to his partner, who was tops at flying and at driving. Some men had the knack of handling machines, while others never managed it. Grimaldi was a natural.

  They’d studied street maps of Kassala in advance and knew where they were headed, north to reach the address Stony Man had matched to Abdullah Rajhid’s sat phone, back in Ciudad del Este. Now that they were being followed, though, it meant they couldn’t head directly for the target, telegraphing their intentions to the enemy. And if the tail meant something else...

  Bolan still didn’t know how many members of God’s Hammer were hiding in Kassala, but he counted four men in the trailing van, at least. Its tinted window interfered with a precise head count, but that was close enough in terms of mounting a defense. Toss in the biker who was following the Mercedes, and that made five for sure.

  It was far from the worst odds he had ever faced, but five men—all presumably well armed—would take some killing. Bolan didn’t want to undertake that kind of action on a crowded city street, if he could help it, with the high potential for stray rounds turning simple cleanup into a god-awful massacre.

  “The river?” he suggested, making it a question so he didn’t cramp Grimaldi’s style.

  “Worth trying,” the Stony Man pilot agreed, and Bolan realized they were already headed in that direction, from their last left turn.

  He double-checked the carbine in his lap and settled back to wait.

  * * *

  “GET AFTER THEM!” Kinan Asker snapped at his driver, one of the young locals Sarhan had recruited for surveillance of potential enemies arriving in Kassala. Asker knew his name but could not think of it just now.

  “You want me to run over people?” the driver asked.

  “I don’t care!” Asker replied. “Just catch them!”

  With a bleat of crazy glee, the driver Asker stomped on the accelerator and their van surged forward, sideswiping an ancient blue sedan and forcing it into a street-side market stall. Asker heard people screaming, shouting curses after them, as they sped on, chasing the Audi with two men inside.

  The right men?

  He had spotted them at Customs, in the airport terminal, two out-of-place white men whose faces were expressionless while dealing with the solitary officer who stamped their passports. He had followed them and watched while they arranged a rental car, using his cell phone to contact Sarhan, receiving orders to stay with them and report what happened next. Asker had left the terminal ahead of them, sat watching in the van with three of Sarhan’s locals, while the new arrivals drove through crowded streets to reach an auto body shop. Worried that they would be too obvious, sitting outside, he’d told his driver to circle the block—four circuits, twice reversing their direction to be clever—when Sarhan had called to say his spotter at a local weapons dealer’s place of business had two white men buying guns.

  God be praised, the address was identical.

  Their last mad rush around the block had missed the strangers, but Sarhan’s lookout had just been preparing to chase after them. He’d pointed out the Audi, two blocks down and gaining distance, and the chase was on.

  “The kid is still behind us,” one of Sarhan’s shooters said from the backseat. Asker had not bothered listening when Sarhan gave their names.

  “His problem,” Asker said, his mind focused on the chase. He did not know the boy and had no interest in him, only hoping that the young fool did not interfere in Asker’s dealing with the foreigners.

  I am a foreigner myself, he thought, but shrugged it off. White men were different. They had no business in Sudan or anyplace where Islam was the law.

  “They’ve spotted us,” his driver announced, just as the Audi swerved around a truck in the street, accelerating.

  “Just catch up to them,” Asker replied. “I need a clear shot.”

  He had already pulled his short AKS-74U carbine from the paper bag between his feet, and had no need to double-check and verify that a live round was in the chamber. Asker never made mistakes like that. It was the first sign of an amateur playing at war and asking to be killed. The little weapon weighed six pounds and measured only nineteen inches with its metal stock folded, but it retained the full firepower of its larger parent model, spitting 5.45 mm rounds at a cyclic rate of seven-hundred rounds per minute. The eight-inch barrel reduced its effective range to some four-hundred yards, but Asker planned to be much closer when he sent these white men to their hell.

  His driver, Zeinab, he now remembered, was shifting, milking every ounce of speed he could from the Vaneo’s engine. He was Asker hunched forward with his hands like claws around the steering wheel.

  “Get ready,” he told Asker. “You can take them any minute now!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

&
nbsp; “Heads up,” Grimaldi said. “We’re about to have incoming.”

  Bolan had seen the van’s shotgun rider lean out of his window, looking awkward as he tried to aim his piece left-handed. Grimaldi was ready for him when it came, a short juke to the right, dodging men in their long jalabiyas and women in colorful thoub, making them scatter like chickens. He managed to miss them all, which was no small achievement, and sent the first rattling burst from their enemy’s gun high and wide, strafing shop fronts and forcing pedestrians to dive to the sun-bleached sidewalk.

  They’d almost made it to the river—Gash or Mareb, take your pick, with roughly another block or two to go. Bolan had swiveled in his seat, bringing up his AKMS carbine, thankful that the Audi’s right-hand drive gave him a better angle firing backward than the shooter in the Mercedes Vaneo had.

  That wouldn’t matter in the least to Bolan if his opposition scored a lucky hit.

  Behind the Benz, he glimpsed a youngster on a motorcycle, keeping pace, now visible, then tucked behind the van and out of sight. Bolan had seen a bike outside Alek Nimeiry’s shop, but they were everywhere around Kassala, most showing their age, nothing remarkable about them until they turned up in the middle of a running firefight through downtown.

  So, make it five shooters whom he and Grimaldi might have to deal with, if the biker weighed in on the other side. He wasn’t the youngest foe Bolan had ever faced, but pushing it, and it wasn’t his choice if someone with a full life still in front of him decided it was better thrown away, trying to kill a total stranger.

  If the kid was old enough to play, he had to be old enough to pay.

  “I see the river, Sarge.”

  It lay in front of them, a muddy brown, maybe two hundred fifty yards across to reach the other side, with waste ground stretching out another couple hundred yards between a road that paralleled the river and its eastern bank. The soil looked solid there, with scrub brush spiking from it.