Dead Reckoning

by Don Pendleton

Same drill. What he couldn’t do, even with Grimaldi to help him, was to search Geneva door-to-door, looking for leads to God’s Hammer. He could have Brognola tip local authorities and start them searching, with their vastly greater numbers, but that only worked if the cops believed Brognola, and they’d still be wasting precious time.

  Kabeer and company, if they could bridge the one-hundred-fifty miles between Geneva and Zermatt, would ultimately show up at the Grand Hotel Kempinski. Bolan’s one and only backup plan was to confront them there and take them down, before they turned the holiday resort into a charnel house.

  But could he stop them, even then?

  The only way to find out was to try.

  Grimaldi raised Geneva’s tower on the Hawker’s high frequency radio, identifying their aircraft by its tail number. In the tower, an air traffic controller already knew where they were and how fast they were closing, watching their blip on a radar screen as it approached.

  Geneva International had two runways—one made of concrete, pushing thirteen thousand feet, the other grass and earth, one-tenth the other’s length. Grimaldi drew concrete, together with his final ETA, and started lining up.

  “There are two flights ahead of us,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

  Bolan could see the airport now, a couple of miles from downtown, to the south. Already buckled in—the last time he’d be really safe until they lifted off again—he watched the ground slowly ascend to meet their hurtling plane.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Geneva International Airport

  High-flying traffic had to wait as Air Force One approached Geneva International, looped once above the airport, then eased into its approach. Hal Brognola heard and felt the landing gear as it was deployed somewhere below him, ready to touch down and bear the plane’s four hundred tons without letting it belly flop and spill its guts like candy from a huge piñata.

  The landing was smooth, all things considered, and they taxied toward the nearer of two terminals, though no one on the aircraft planned to go inside. From his small window on the port side, Brognola saw military and police vehicles standing by, with fire trucks and an ambulance.

  The big Fed knew without inquiring that the terminals would be on lockdown, more or less, until the Man and those attending him had left the airport in a motorcade of armored limousines and SUVs. There would be snipers from the Swiss Land Forces on each rooftop, covering the various approaches, while patrolmen made sure that no other sharpshooters had scaled those heights. Inside the terminal, members of the Federal Criminal Police unit would be keeping gawkers well back from all windows facing the runway, also helping officers of Geneva’s cantonal police scan the concourse for crazies, drunkards, anyone at all who might create a scene.

  Brognola wished them well and waited as the crowd on board began to thin, four Secret Service agents and a couple of Marines descending via air stairs, followed by the President and his aides in approximate order of rank. Brognola took his place near the end of the line, content with anonymity and hoping that reporters, held behind a cordon well removed from contact with the Man, would overlook him altogether.

  He’d been told to leave his go-bag on the plane. It would be waiting in his hotel room or turn up shortly after Brognola checked in, no sweat. If anything went wrong, he figured he could restock from the hotel’s shops and charge it to his room. Let Uncle Sam pick up the tab.

  Three black stretch limos waited on the tarmac, book-ended by SUVs and cop cars that looked gaudy by comparison, white with Police painted in black on bright orange door panels. Brognola figured that he would be relegated to the last limo in line, but he was wrong. Already headed off in that direction, he was intercepted by a Secret Service agent who rerouted him, steering him toward the lead car with its little fender flags beating the presidential seal.

  “The President would like to speak with you en route,” the agent said.

  “Okay,” Brognola said, as if he had a choice.

  He found a jump seat waiting for him in the limousine—a Lincoln Town Car stretched to twenty-eight feet overall—that placed him to the Man’s right, with two others sitting in between them.

  Turning to an aide immediately on his left, the President said, “Ray, would you mind switching with my friend there, for a minute? We’ve got something to discuss.”

  Ray didn’t seem to like it, but he moved without protest, Brognola filling in his spot just as the Lincoln started moving forward.

  Turning to Brognola, the President lowered his voice to an approximation of a whisper and inquired, “Where do we stand?”

  Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  “IS IT WORKING?” Barbara Price demanded.

  “Absolutely,” Akira Tokaido replied. “I designed it, didn’t I?”

  “That’s why I’m asking.”

  “Ouch!” Tokaido flashed a grin, the headphones draped around his neck whispering heavy metal like a sound of distant screams.

  “It’s five by five,” Aaron Kurtzman said, parked behind Tokaido in his wheelchair, his right hand clutching a ceramic mug of freshly brewed swill—or what he referred to as coffee.

  “So, where is he?” Price inquired.

  “They landed in Geneva twelve—make that thirteen—minutes ago. The presidential party is en route to their hotel. No problems yet.”

  In front of Price, a twenty-inch Samsung LED-backlit LCD monitor displayed a street map of Geneva, Switzerland, four thousand miles and change to the northeast where they stood in Stony Man’s Computer Room. A small red dot was moving over surface streets and getting closer to the lakefront by the second.

  “No one knows he’s carrying the homer?”

  “Nope,” Tokaido said. “Hal doesn’t know he’s carrying.”

  That much was true. The homer—activated by remote control from Stony Man for situations such as this, rare as they were—had been inserted in Brognola’s go-bag without telling him.

  “I thought the Secret Service would have scanned their luggage,” Price replied.

  “I say again,” Tokaido answered back, “the toy is my design.”

  “Smart-ass.”

  “You got the smart bit right, at least.”

  “Let’s focus, people,” Kurtzman interjected. When he blew lightly across his steaming coffee mug, its odd aroma tickled Price’s nostrils.

  “How you drink that stuff,” she said, “I’ll never understand.”

  “It’s nectar of the gods,” he said.

  “Yeah, maybe Hades.”

  “Philistine.”

  “Whatever. We can only track his bag, right? We’ve got nothing if he exits the hotel without it.”

  “True,” Tokaido admitted. “If I’d had the time and access to his house, I could’ve tracked his suits, his shoes, his skivvies—”

  “Never mind,” Kurtzman cut in. “We’ve got the meeting’s whole agenda. They’re not taking any day trips from the hotel, no boating on the lake, no nothing. Noses to the grindstone for the three days they’re in Geneva.”

  “That’s a gaping window for the other side to crawl through,” Price reminded him.

  “Assuming that they ever make it to Geneva from Zermatt,” Kurtzman replied.

  “Uh-huh. How are we doing on that end?”

  “Our last ping on the sat phone showed no movement.”

  “When was that?” she pressed him.

  Kurtzman hesitated, then said, “Four hours and twenty-seven minutes ago.”

  “Damn! What if they left the phone behind?”

  “Why would they?” Tokaido asked.

  “You’re right,” Price said, as if trying to make herself believe.

  Except, she thought, they’ve got nobody left to call outside Geneva, that we know about. Striker had taken down the other members of G
od’s Hammer, scattered around the globe, before they could regroup for what was shaping up to be their main event. Their leader, Saleh Kabeer, was running short on manpower, and all of his remaining men were with him now, in Switzerland.

  Would he suspect, by any chance, that someone might have traced his phone? If so, would he have used it for another call as recently as Kurtzman claimed? She couldn’t answer either of those questions, and the damned uncertainty had Price’s nerves on edge.

  “Striker and Jack?” she asked.

  There was another homer in the jet, which only told her where the Hawker was. Better than nothing, by some small degree.

  “Inbound,” Kurtzman said. “They’ll be on the deck in ten, maybe fifteen.”

  “And someone’s meeting them.”

  “Hal set it up.”

  Price hated situations that were not within her own immediate control, and this was one of them. Hell, half her life was spent observing actions far beyond her reach, hoping the latest well-laid plan didn’t disintegrate.

  It was a miracle that she wasn’t turning gray.

  Geneva International Airport

  TWO GUYS WERE waiting for Bolan and Grimaldi as they passed through Customs, with nothing to declare. One of them was a six-foot-something blond, his hairline creeping backward from a worried forehead. His companion was a stocky five-ten, with a dark buzz cut and a bristling mustache. Their suits were off the rack and likely cost less than their matching sunglasses. The shorter of the pair held a piece of cardboard with COOPER printed on it, watching passengers stream past him, at a loss to spot the travelers he’d come to meet.

  “I’m Cooper,” Bolan said, and left it there. He didn’t introduce Grimaldi and received no names from either member of the welcoming committee.

  “We’re in the garage,” the tall man said. “This way.”

  It was a relatively short hike through the terminal and down a hallway to the parking garage labeled P1 on walls and supporting pillars. The escorts led them to a navy blue Volkswagen Jetta, parked between one of the pillars and a black Citroën C4 Aircross compact SUV. The taller man produced a set of keys and popped the Jetta’s trunk lid. Inside, underneath a blanket, he revealed their hardware, neatly laid out for inspection, saying, “Hope these suit you.”

  The long guns were SG 552 Commando carbines, with folding stocks and 8.9-inch barrels featuring open, three-prong flash suppressors. The Commandos, smaller versions of Switzerland’s standard-issue SIG SG 550 battle rifle, packed its parent’s same firepower, feeding 5.56 mm NATO rounds from 30-round box magazines. Like the full-size rifles, these were also capable of selective fire at the shooter’s pleasure.

  Keeping it local, the greeters had also packed two SIG Sauer P226 MK25 pistols, each fitted with a SureFire X300 Ultra flashlight mounted on a Picatinny rail to pick out targets in the dark and tell combatants where their shots were meant to land. The pistols, Bolan saw, were chambered in .40 S&W, meaning they carried magazines with fourteen rounds and one more up the spout. Extended, threaded muzzles would accommodate the slim sound suppressors nestled next to each handgun, with adjustable shoulder holsters.

  Last came the stun grenades, a dozen of the M84 model, weighing in at half a pound each, detonated by M201A1 time-delay fuses allowing the thrower an average 1.5 seconds to duck out of range. “Okay?” the short man asked.

  “Have these been tested?” Grimaldi queried.

  “We keep our stock in perfect working order,” the taller guy stated.

  “We’re good to go, then,” Bolan said, taking the Jetta’s keys.

  “Good luck,” the taller man said, palming another key that made lights flash and an alarm chirp briefly on the Citroën parked next to it.

  Bolan and Grimaldi stood waiting for the men to climb aboard their vehicle, back out and exit the garage, before they leaned into the trunk, hiding their hardware from surveillance cameras. They checked each pistol’s magazine and chamber, holstered them, keeping the rigs down low until they both were seated in the Volkswagen, then slipped them on and covered them with windbreakers against the nippy air outside.

  “Zermatt,” the Stony Man pilot said, from his position in the shotgun seat.

  “Zermatt,” Bolan agreed, and put the Jetta into gear.

  Zermatt

  SALEH KABEER WATCHED as the Great Satan’s commander in chief deplaned at Geneva International Airport, welcomed by a small brass band and many security officers. The television flickered—something in the atmosphere, perhaps, or plain old age—but he could see enough. The slim Crusader’s smile, all arrogance, as he waved to a crowd restrained by waist-high barriers and armed police. Kabeer wondered if he could read some of the signs they waved at him, or if he thought the slogans all were complimentary.

  An ambush at the airport would have been impossible, even with RPGs if they had any. And besides, what was the point in killing just one leader of the mythical “free world,” when he could take out six at once?

  Grand gestures had been few and far between since 9/11, in the war against Israel and its supporters. It was high time for a greater, even more impressive strike that would demoralize the West for years to come. Perhaps, at last, they would take time and reconsider their commitment to an outlaw state that drained their resources and offered nothing in return except continual headaches.

  Kabeer studied the president—or POTUS, as they called him; what a foolish nickname for a head of state, more like a vegetable—as he approached the first of three stretch limousines, giving the crowd a final wave. Kabeer knew certain members of the presidential entourage by sight, from CNN and Al Jazeera broadcasts, but the rest were strangers to him, walk-on players in the drama he had scripted, simply present to enhance the final body count.

  “He’s here, then,” Mohammed Sanea said, having entered without knocking at the parlor’s open door.

  “All safe and sound,” Kabeer replied. “For now.”

  On screen, the band stopped playing, and the motorcade rolled out, led by police cars and black SUVs, with more trailing behind. A talking head for a local news station came on, describing the scene in French for those too stupid to use their own eyes, inserting some gibberish about the world’s “high hopes” for resolution of long-standing tensions in the Middle East.

  You may be right, there, Kabeer thought. Once God’s Hammer had its say, some in the West might finally decide the price of keeping Israel at the trough was too high for their liking. Or, they might retaliate with overwhelming force against the usual third parties, mouthing platitudes of justice.

  Either way, if still alive, Kabeer would be well satisfied.

  Mayhem inflicted on the innocent for “crimes” committed by small groups of dedicated freedom fighters was the norm, where Israel and its various supporters were concerned. Why should this time be any different? Each blow they struck against civilians, each home that they razed in Gaza or along the West Bank, brought the armed resistance more recruits.

  “The van is waiting for us,” Sanea said, his voice calm but devoid of enthusiasm.

  “Excellent. You have my every confidence.”

  “God will guide our hands.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  Kabeer switched channels, turning to M6 Suisse for another view of the primary target’s arrival. Watching the Crusader, he could only smile. It might well be the last time that a global audience would see his enemy alive.

  On the A40 Motorway, Switzerland

  GEOGRAPHY COMPLICATED TRAVEL by car and rail in Switzerland. The Alps did not cooperate with engineers to grant straight rights of way from one town to another. The last leg of their long campaign, Grimaldi hoped, would take some three and a half hours nonstop, winding around mountain peaks, ducking in and out of tunnels where multilingual signs warned drivers to lay
off their horns. Naturally, there was at least one clown in every concrete passageway who had to break the rule and blare away, trailing Doppler echoes behind him.

  They were headed for Täsch, a village of fewer than fifteen hundred souls that marked the end of the line for drivers approaching Zermatt. Täsch lay three and a half miles north of Zermatt, and some five hundred feet closer to sea level, featuring tourist hotels and restaurants, plus parking for those continuing on toward the summit. Zermatt itself had banned combustion engines to minimize air pollution, thus preserving its view of the Matterhorn. All cars and buses in the higher town were electric and nearly silent, aside from emergency vehicles and a handful of municipal garbage trucks.

  Clean air, great scenery, a date with death.

  “I would’ve thought they’d look for someplace closer to Geneva,” Grimaldi said, as they entered yet another tunnel through the latest mountainside.

  “It might have seemed too risky,” Bolan theorized. “Kabeer likely wanted someplace to hide, while he was hatching plans.”

  “He’s an ambitious prick, I’ll give him that,” Grimaldi said.

  “Nobody ever made it big by thinking small.”

  “Still, do any of them think they’ll walk away from this? Even a clean sweep leaves them dead, along with everybody else.”

  “That may not enter into it,” Bolan replied. “Outfits like this are all about the gesture, even if it takes them down.”

  “So, this could be like Oklahoma City with a bunch of suicide commandos.”

  “If we let them get that far.”

  “Let’s not.”

  “My thought, exactly.”

  “The address you got from Stony Man,” the pilot said. “Is that some kind of rooming house?”

  “It isn’t labeled on the aerials, like hotels and the Matterhorn Museum. It could be a rooming house, maybe a smaller hostel or a B and B.”

  The logo Blood and Breakfast surfaced in Grimaldi’s mind. He shrugged it off and focused on light at the end of the tunnel, a hundred yards distant but closing.