Dead Reckoning

Yes! the voice inside his head ordered. Stop wasting time!

* * *

MACK BOLAN SAW the changeup coming, read his target’s body language when the runner nearly glanced behind his shoulder, then resisted at the final instant. Breaking to the right meant running into traffic, no percentage there, but there were stalls and stores along the whole block to his left.

And left it was, a pivot in midstride, and Rajhid of the red shirt dropped from sight. Bolan slowed but didn’t halt his forward motion, just in case the Saudi had a bluff in mind, stalling pursuit with fear of gunfire, while he wriggled clear behind the outdoor stalls. It might have fooled somebody else, if that was what he had in mind, but not the Executioner.

Most definitely not this day, with so much riding on the line.

Bolan closed in at walking speed, ready to peel off left or right, depending on what happened in the next few seconds.

When it came, however, Bolan was surprised.

It started with a squeal. The woman selling used books from the stall where Rajhid had concealed himself let out the cry, as Rajhid sprang erect and whipped an arm around her throat, clutching her as a human shield. His weapon—a MAC-10 or MAC-11, unmistakable—was pressed against her head, its stubby muzzle in her ear. At that range, if Rajhid fired, he would blind himself with brain and bone fragments, but that would be no consolation to the woman he’d have killed.

Bolan already had the Steyr at his shoulder, half of Rajhid’s face framed in the reticle of his integrated telescopic sight. Rajhid was stuck there, obviously knowing that the only way to hide his face completely was to lose sight of his enemy.

“Put down the gun and you can walk away from this,” Bolan said, lying through his teeth.

“Put down your gun,” Rajhid replied, “and you can—”

Bolan’s bullet drilled Rajhid’s forehead just above his right eye. The 5.56 mm bullet left a tidy entrance wound, then tumbled through the man’s brain, yawing after it cleared the bony barrier of his frontal bone and found soft tissue. Dead before the impact registered, Rajhid slumped over backward, still clutching his female hostage as he fell.

Bolan was on the pair of them in nothing flat, released the woman from Rajhid’s dead grasp and plucked the subgun from his other hand. No questions would be answered here, but Bolan did his best under the circumstances, patting Rajhid’s several pockets, locating a compact satellite phone first and then a regular cell phone. He claimed both, then kept digging until he found a bulging wallet, while a group of cautious rubberneckers started edging closer.

Time to go.

Rising, he tucked the Steyr out of sight beneath his raincoat, left the stall with no attempt to hide his face and walked away. An alley beckoned to his left, and Bolan ducked in there, then sprinted down past its stinking garbage cans to reach another cross street, operating from a street map of the city he had memorized beforehand.

How long before police arrived to check out Rajhid’s corpse and start interrogating witnesses? The apartment-building battleground should distract most of them for a while. With any luck, enough time for him to regroup with Grimaldi and clear the scene.

When he was on the next street over, strolling with the flow, Bolan fished out his cell phone and pressed the button for Grimaldi’s number. Two rings in, he heard his voice.

“I blew it,” the Stony Man pilot confessed, without preliminaries. “Got the shot, but came up empty-handed.”

“Nearly the same for me,” Bolan replied, “but I’ve got two phones and a wallet.”

“Could be helpful,” Grimaldi said.

“Fingers crossed. I’ll meet you at the car in five.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Walid Khamis sat and watched the Hezbollah fighters conferring in the dining room, just out of earshot from the sofa where they’d ordered him to sit and keep his mouth shut. They were angry, obviously, seeking ways to blame him for the raid on their apartment building, but he did not intend to stoke that anger by admitting the attack might well have been, in fact, his fault.

Not his specifically, of course, but all of theirs, his comrades and himself. He sat and wondered if the others, Rajhid and Farsoun, were even still alive.

Upon arrival in the city, when the Hezbollah team had grudgingly accepted them, Khamis and his companions had been warned against leaving the four-story apartment building. If they managed to forget that simple rule, or were forced out somehow and got lost, they’d been provided with an alternative address, the house in which he now sat, waiting for these strangers to decide his fate.

There was a chance, he understood, that they might kill him. Hezbollah was ruthless with its enemies, and he might qualify as one if they believed he was responsible for the attack on Calle Victor Hugo Norte, costing them that property and any men who had been killed or nabbed by the police because of it. They risked the wrath of God’s Hammer if they executed him, but Hezbollah was vastly larger than his own small group of fighters, famous globally for decades, and they feared no one.

His only hope, Khamis believed, was to play stupid, claim that he had no idea the raiders could have come for him and his compatriots specifically. The more he thought about it, Khamis almost managed to convince himself. Who could have traced their path to Paraguay and mounted an attack there, after all?

A phone rang in the dining room. One of the Hezbollah fighters answered, listened and answered in Spanish. Khamis had no clue what he had said, but when the call was ended, his interrogators whispered urgently among themselves, glancing frequently in his direction, then approached him as a group, their faces dour.

“Your friends are dead,” their spokesman told him bluntly.

“Both of them?” Khamis thought he could feel the planet tilting underneath him.

“Both. Shot down a mile apart. You separated?”

“To escape,” Khamis acknowledged. “Yes.”

“And you alone survived.” There was suspicion in the man’s gruff tone.

“If you say so.” A shameful tremor shook his voice. He had been disarmed upon arrival and felt vulnerable now, an easy target.

“We have had no trouble at the safe house for the past eight years,” his interrogator said. “You arrived mere days ago, and now we have a dozen soldiers dead, police demanding answers. It’s peculiar, you’d agree.”

“I would not,” Khamis answered. “You’re all fugitives from the Israelis and Crusaders, just as I am. Who’s to say they did not come for you, over the rockets that you send from Gaza?”

His hosts—captors?—exchanged dubious glances, two of them shaking their heads. Their mouthpiece said, “The timing is suggestive. We have no faith in coincidence.”

Khamis stiffened his spine and squared his shoulders. It was time to bluff, he thought. What did he have to lose?

“All right,” he said. “If you believe I am responsible for this somehow, then I shall leave you. Give my weapons back, and you will see no more of me. Whatever happens next, find someone else to blame.”

The Hezbollah man smiled at that, a hungry jackal’s smile.

“It’s not so easy,” he replied. “Before we rid ourselves of you, we must decide whether you are, in fact, responsible for this attack. If someone wants you, it may be to our advantage to accommodate them. Possibly, we might receive some compensation for our losses.”

Praying that they could not see him trembling, Khamis said, “So, you would ransom me? A soldier of the same cause you avow? I thought the men of Hezbollah were freedom fighters, not a pack of gangsters.”

“You’d be wise to say no more,” the leader warned him. “Even if we sell you, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t take a few fingers and toes.”

* * *

BOLAN AND GRIMALDI chowed down at an American fast-food restaurant, a familiar stop these days no matter where on Earth you were. Over hamburgers and fries with coffee, Bolan gutted Rajhid’s wallet, while Grimaldi did the same with one he’d lifted from Salman Farsoun. Walid Khamis was in the wind.

Between the two of them, the fallen God’s Hammer members had been carrying a hundred and fifty thousand Paraguayan guaranís—some thirty-five US dollars—in cash, two bogus passports and a notebook, Farsoun’s, filled with Arabic notations Bolan couldn’t translate. He set the currency aside, secured the notebook in his pocket and placed the other items on the empty seat beside him, where he planned to leave them when they left the restaurant.

That left the telephones, two cells and Rajhid’s satellite phone. Each of them took a cell phone first, scrolling through their memories in search of any recent numbers called by either of the two dead terrorists.

“Nothing on this the past ten days,” Grimaldi said.

“I’ve got one local call,” Bolan replied. “Prefix sixty-one. Rajhid called it three days ago.”

“Around the time they’d have checked into Hezbollah Arms,” Grimaldi stated.

“We can try for an address from Stony Man,” Bolan suggested, reaching for the small sat phone. Three calls had been logged in memory and not erased, a bonehead move. He set the phone beside Grimaldi’s plastic food tray. “Do the numbers ring a bell?”

The Stony Man pilot studied them. “The 249 is a country code, so forty-one is the city and the rest a local number. Off the top, I couldn’t tell you where it is. Sorry.”

Bolan got out his smartphone, thankful that the restaurant offered free Wi-Fi. He went online to check the foreign phone codes, found what he was looking fo, and told Grimaldi, “Two forty-nine is Sudan. The city code’s Kassala.”

“Never heard of it.”

“More homework for the Farm. I’ll send the numbers through.”

He switched to email on the smartphone, typed an address that would eventually allow the message to reach Stony Man Farm in Virginia without pinpointing his or Stony Man’s location and sent two phone numbers with a request for a speedy response. It was a relatively easy job for Aaron Kurtzman’s cyber-team, hopefully landing some pointers for Bolan within the half hour.

“When we get the local number—” Grimaldi began.

“We check it out.”

“Hoping Khamis is there, assuming that he even knows where there is.”

“Hoping,” Bolan granted. “If he’s not around, smart money says we’ll find another Hezbollah hangout.”

“Small favors.” Grimaldi was working on his last few fries. He washed them down with coffee, pushing back his tray. “Ready when you are, kemo sabe.”

Zermatt, Switzerland

SALEH KABEER WAS dining when Mohammed Sanea interrupted, bringing him a sat phone.

“My apologies,” Sanea said. “A call from Paraguay.”

Kabeer frowned at his second in command. “Rajhid?”

Sanea shook his head. “One of the Hezbollah men. Ashraf Tannous, he says.”

The frown became a scowl. Kabeer set down his fork and took the phone, waving Sanea toward the nearest exit from the dining room.

“Greetings.”

“And greeting be unto you,” the caller replied. “I hope I have not reached you at an inconvenient time.”

Kabeer glanced at his cooling dinner, likely ruined by the interruption. “Not at all,” he lied.

“We have a problem,” the man said. “Is this line secure?”

“It is, if you are.”

“Very good. I’m sorry to report that there has been...an incident.”

“Explain.” Kabeer was not the most patient of men, nor the most courteous.

“Crusaders have attacked a safe house here. It’s possible they came for your men.”

“Possible?”

The caller’s shrug was nearly audible. “Your three fled from the building. They were followed. Two of them are dead now.”

“Followed.” He was sounding like an echo chamber. “Do you mean pursued?”

“It seems so.”

“You say two are dead,” Kabeer stated.

“We have the third one here, Walid Khamis. He claims it was coincidence.”

“You disagree?”

“The evidence—” the caller began.

“I understand. Is he available to speak with me?”

“One moment.”

It took longer, but Kabeer tried not to grind his teeth. When Khamis came on the line at last, his tone was cautious, worried.

“Sir, have they explained what happened?”

“Not in any great detail. We’ve lost two friends, I understand?”

“Yes, sir. I can’t explain it, but—”

“Another time, perhaps,” Kabeer said, cutting off the man’s inept apology. “When we can speak more privately.”

“Of course, sir...if there is another time.”

“Why should there not be?”

“They...um...are considering a ransom.”

“Are they?”

“I’ve discouraged it, of course, but—”

“Pass me back to Tannous, if you’d be so kind.”

“Yes, sir.”

Another moment’s silence, then Tannous came on the line again. “You’ve finished with your man, then?”

Kabeer ignored the question, asking, “What is this about a ransom?”

He had spoiled Tannous’s lead-up to the pitch. The Hezbollah cell leader took time to clear his throat, then said, “Housing your men has cost us more than we anticipated. Twelve men dead, and our best safe house lost for good. I feel we should be compensated.”

“You feel?” Kabeer challenged. “Have you discussed this plan with your superiors?”

“They have received a tabulation of the damages,” Tannous replied, rather evasively.

“And their response?”

“I’m waiting for it now.”

“Do you imply that my men are responsible for the attack on yours? And if so, what do you present as evidence?”

“They were pursued by two Crusaders from the scene. Why them, if they were not the targets?”

“Ask the two Crusaders,” Kabeer told him.

“I would, and gladly, if we had them here.”

“So, you don’t know who sent them? Whether they’re Americans, Israelis? Nothing?”

“At the moment—”

“I thought not. But since you seek to profit from a tragedy we share, here is my offer—nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Tell Walid our prayers are with him. We shall miss him—and we shall remember you.”

Smiling at last, Kabeer cut off the call and turned back to his veal.

Barrio San Blas, Ciudad del Este

THE CALL CAME in twenty minutes, not a record for the Farm, but close. Kurtzman—called “Bear” by anyone who knew him well—read off two addresses, the first on Avenida San José in Ciudad del Este, the other in Kassala, halfway round the world, in far-eastern Sudan.

“That’s near a teaching hospital,” Kurtzman added. “Also near the Mareb River, if that helps.”

“It will, when we get there,” Bolan replied.

“It’s not the best place to go hunting, but you know that, right?”

“We do,” Bolan agreed.

Sudan’s latest civil war had dragged on for more than two decades, finally ending—at least, on paper—in 2005. Before the ink was dry on that treaty, slave traders went back to business as usual, capturing at least two-hundred-thousand victims in the intervening years, while mayhem in Darfur killed at least three-hundred-thousand people, displacing nearly three million more. Some of that was religious warfare, Muslims versus Christians, and conversion from Islam to Christianity ranked as a capital crime in Sudan. A recent State Department report found that in the Darfur slaughter, all parties to the conflict committed serious crimes.

Nothing much had changed since then. At least, not for the better.

“Well, take care,” Kurtzman said, at a sudden loss for words.

“I always do,” Bolan replied.

The computer wizard was laughing when he cut the link.

“So, what’s the word?” Grimaldi asked him.

“We’re good to go on both ends,” Bolan said. “Addresses, anyway.”

“And what’s the game plan if we don’t find Khamis at the new place? Do we stick around and hunt for him?”

Bolan had already considered that and shook his head. “If he hasn’t gone back to the Hezbollah team, it means he’s on his own and likely lost in Ciudad del Este. Or he could’ve caught the first bus out of town, maybe across the Río Paraná to Foz do Iguaçu. From there, who knows where?”

Foz do Iguaçu lay just across the river, linked by a Friendship Bridge constructed to promote traffic between Paraguay and Brazil. Another crossing, the San Roque González de Santa Cruz Bridge, carried traffic back and forth between Ciudad del Este and Posadas, capital of Argentina’s Misiones province. Either way, there’d be no way to track Walid Khamis once he slipped out of town.

Welcome to the wonderful Triple Frontier.

“The good news,” Bolan said, “is that he’s stranded here, at least for now. If we can find the other remnants of his crew and deal with them, he’s neutralized.”

“Until he makes his way back home and finds another crew,” Grimaldi pointed out.

“It’s not ideal, I grant you,” Bolan answered. “But the time we’d waste looking for him across three countries gives his thirteen pals a chance to plan their next performance.”

“Right, a trade-off. So we’d better hit it.”

Outside, the rain had stopped, and steam was rising from the pavement. To Bolan, glancing up and down the street, it seemed as if fires were burning underneath the city, looking for a place to break through and devour everyone above.

* * *

“YOUR FRIENDS DON’T want you back, it seems,” Ashraf Tannous told Walid Khamis.

“You expected them to pay for me?” Khamis was smiling, but it strained the muscles in his face and did nothing to ease the sickly churning in his stomach.

Tannous shrugged, seeming disinterested. “It was worth a try,” he said. “My problem, now, is what to do with you.”

“Release me,” Khamis offered. “Then you have no problem.”

“On the contrary. I doubt you’d last two days in Paraguay alone, much less in Argentina or Brazil. You don’t speak Spanish, don’t speak Portuguese, can barely manage simple English. How long until you make a mistake and find yourself in custody? From there, it’s but a short step back to us, when you begin to squeal.”

“I’m not a rat,” Khamis said indignantly.

“Not a rat so far,” Tannous corrected him. “Police in Paraguay...well, let us say they are not known for sensitivity, especially to foreigners.”

“Are they worse than the Saudis?” Khamis challenged him. “Worse than the Egyptians? Worse than the Syrian?”

“After the bloodiness this afternoon, they will be hunting Arabs to arrest and question. You, alone, don’t stand a chance against them.”

“So, show me a way out of the city, then,” Khamis replied.

“I have already lost a dozen men because of you and your two friends. You think I’d risk another? Even one?”

“What, then?” Khamis asked Tannous, hating how his dry throat made his voice crack.

“You disappear,” Tannous replied. “If any of your comrades ask—which seems unlikely, you’ll admit—I simply say that we released you, at your own request, to make your way...wherever.”

“Kabeer will not believe it.”

“Have you not been listening? Your friend Kabeer told me to deal with you as I see fit.

“All of Israel wants me dead,” Tannous reminded him, smiling, “along with half of the United States, at least, and much of Britain. The Saudis have sentenced me to death in absentia. Warrants are out for my arrest in Syria and Jordan. I assure you, little man, that Saleh Kabeer is the least of my worries.”

As Tannous spoke, he reached around behind his back and drew a pistol from its place beneath his shirttail. Khamis recognized the Beretta 92 issued to Paraguayan military officers as a standard sidearm, then noticed its extended, threaded muzzle, added to accept a sound suppressor.

“I’m sorry that you ever came here,” Tannous said. “More sorry for my brothers than for you, of course, but still. You struck a blow at the Crusaders. It’s unfortunate that you’ve become a liability.”

Walid Khamis was tired of worrying about what happened next. Now that his fate was sealed, he simply wanted to get on with it and minimize the small talk. Paradise awaited him, he still felt sure. Tannous was simply standing in his way.

“So, kill me, then,” he blurted, as Tannous affixed a sound suppressor to his Beretta. One of his men had produced it from a pocket, all the time watching Khamis for his reaction, seeming disappointed when he did not weep and wail.

“You’re anxious now?” Tannous inquired. “Ready to see the virgins waiting for you? Or would you prefer boys, if I may ask?”

“Bastard!” Khamis spit back at him.

“Alas, my mother is deceased, but she would not have joined in any such activity were she still living. Now, your jackal of a father, on the other hand—”

Khamis lunged for him, hands formed into claws, but someone struck him from behind, and suddenly the lights went out.

* * *

“IT DOESN’T LOOK like much,” Grimaldi said, as they rolled past the target.

“No, it wouldn’t,” Bolan said. “Low profile. Trying to fit in.”

“And Bear was clear about the address?”

“Crystal,” Bolan said. “He’s never steered me wrong.”

“Okay.”

It was still daylight as they drove down Avenida San José, but dusk was closing in on Ciudad del Este after one hellacious afternoon. Bolan knew crime was rampant all along the Triple Frontier, but he had no idea what the average daily murder rate might be for any of the district’s top three border cities. The number was totally irrelevant, but he and Grimaldi had bumped the day’s statistics.

And they were about to give the stats another nudge.

The rain had passed but might return at any time. Both warriors left on their raincoats, concealment for the weapons hanging from their shoulder slings, pistols in armpit leather, frag grenades attached to belts. Even in Ciudad del Este, those accoutrements would raise eyebrows and have observers reaching for their cell phones to alert police.

Their Bluetooth headsets, on the other hand, were normal.

On the drive across town, Grimaldi had scanned the neighborhood on Google Earth, getting the layout and an aerial of the Hezbollah safe house. It was on the small side, maybe four bedrooms, although he couldn’t judge the floor plan from a snapshot of the roof, taken from outer space. The last snap hadn’t captured any dogs roaming the fenced backyard, which faced a narrow alley at the rear. There’d been no guards outside, either, and Bolan wasn’t sure exactly what to think of that.

It could go either way, he knew, after their hit on Calle Victor Hugo Norte. If the Hezbollah hardmen were hurt and spooked badly enough, they might have fled the city, but he didn’t think so. It was more likely, to Bolan’s mind, that they would go to ground at their alternate hideout, pull the blinds and disconnect the phones, hoping the storm blew past them and moved on.

If he was wrong, this second stop-off was a waste of time. They should be airborne, winging out of Paraguay and toward their next meeting with God’s Hammer, on the far side of the world.

But Bolan wasn’t often wrong. He had a feel for what his enemies were thinking, how they’d play it in a given situation. Even dealing with fanatics hyped on hatred and religion, he could get inside most predators’ minds and guess what to expect, at least in generalities.

Because at bottom, where it mattered, they were all the same.

“You want the front or back?” Bolan asked.

“Front,” Grimaldi said. “I know enough Spanish to confuse them and get a foot in the door.”

“As long as they don’t chop it off,” Bolan said.

“No problemo, señor.”

“Okay, you convinced me.”

The back door could go either way, once Grimaldi dropped in around in front. The men they wanted could come boiling out the back or plaster Grimaldi with everything they had to keep him out. If it went down that way, Bolan would be a rude surprise for them, another drop-in they were not expecting.