Dead Reckoning

by Don Pendleton

  “I guess we’re bound to ruin someone’s day,” he said.

  “Bet on it.”

  “And they’ve got police up there?”

  “A small detachment, mostly for the tourist beat and climber rescues.”

  “Too bad we can’t fly in,” Grimaldi said. “It would make a quicker exit.”

  He was thinking of the funicular railway from Täsch to Zermatt, not a long ride at fifteen minutes one way, but time enough for SWAT to gather at the bottom when a fugitive was in a hurry. All dressed up and nowhere to go, when they got to the terminal.

  Terminal?

  Bad choice of terms. Shake it off.

  Grimaldi stretched as best he could and said, “You want a break, I’m good to drive.”

  “I’m fine,” Bolan replied. “We’re nearly halfway there.”

  Grimaldi didn’t want to raise the subject that was nagging at him: What if God’s Hammer had come down the mountain in advance, to be on hand before the summit formally got underway? There was nothing the two of them could do about it, barring redirection from the Farm, but it was troublesome. To come this far and miss the show...

  Not happening, he thought, just as they cleared the tunnel and another one came into view. It was as if the mountain highway had been built by giant moles, rather than men and their machines.

  No matter. They’d have ample daylight soon enough, before the pristine sky was fogged by battle haze.

  Täsch

  BOLAN HAD BEEN to Zermatt before, when he was wrapping up a mission that began with an airline hijacking, himself among the captive passengers. He had pursued the men responsible halfway across Europe and faced their ringleader almost within the shadow of the Matterhorn.

  He had been lucky then, but would it hold?

  From what Bolan recalled, security around the funicular depot in Täsch had been light last time, a couple of cops, no bomb-or drug-sniffing dogs. He and Grimaldi had their carbines packed in oversize gym bags, the extra magazines and stun grenades divided between them, padded with clothes to keep them from clanking together. He hoped they’d fit in well enough with other tourists hauling luggage, climbing gear and squalling children. Add the normal drunk or two, and Bolan thought they had a decent chance to pass unnoticed.

  Otherwise, if they were stopped and searched, the campaign ended here.

  Bolan parked the Jetta in a designated long-term slot, retrieved a ticket from the nearby vending machine and left it on the VW’s dashboard. He and Grimaldi went into the depot, bought their passes for an open-ended round trip and had five minutes to kill before the next train started on its uphill grind.

  Two cops, no nosy dogs. So far, so good.

  The call for boarding came, and in another moment they were seated on the second car of four in line, their lethal luggage stowed beside their feet. The haul up to Zermatt was estimated to take twenty minutes, much of it bored through the mountain in the steepest tunnel they’d encountered yet.

  It was a strange phenomenon, in Bolan’s personal experience, that people tended to keep their voices down on trains. It helped that many of the travelers sharing their train seemed weary from the drive to Täsch from wherever they’d started out that morning. That, together with the novelty of chugging through a mountain tunnel at an angle close to forty-five degrees, kept riders peering through the windows at stone walls illuminated every twenty yards or so by caged fluorescent lights.

  “This narrows down the getaway,” Grimaldi said, leaning a little closer in his seat.

  “Unless they catch a ride with Air Zermatt,” Bolan replied.

  It was the only helicopter service authorized to operate topside, available for cargo transport, sightseeing, and mountain rescues as the need arose. He thought the odds of God’s Hammer booking helicopter service would be slim. Shave them to zero if they had to make a sudden exit on the run and under hostile fire.

  But if you brought a pilot with you...

  Bolan had to smile at that. He didn’t plan on any skyjacking today, although the notion echoed how he’d met Grimaldi in the first place, long ago and far away. That was the way of fate, sometimes. You walked around a corner, maybe stepped off an elevator, and your whole life changed.

  Or it ended.

  Fate didn’t always deal the hand you hoped for, obviously. Sometimes, by the time he saw which way the cards were running, all a guy could do was call or fold.

  “There’s daylight,” Grimaldi announced, sounding relieved.

  Another tunnel cleared. How many left to go?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Grand Hotel Kempinski, Geneva

  The hotel was a five-star colossus, stretching along Geneva’s lakefront, advertised as a “veritable oasis in the heart of the city,” offering something for everyone: a thirteen-hundred-seat theater; three gourmet restaurants; an “elite” spa and fitness center; Geneva’s largest indoor swimming pool; and one of the city’s trendiest nightclubs. Brognola’s room had a sweeping view of the lake, with yachts and ferries drifting past, and a fruit basket that could have fed a family of three for two days.

  The big Fed wasn’t in his fourth-floor room just now, however. He’d been called to the Geneva Suite—largest in Europe according to the Kempinski’s brochure, at 1,080 square meters, nearly ten times the size of the hotel’s plain old Presidential Suite. The Man was holed up there, with pride of place, presumably because the joint was hosting six world leaders and he had the biggest army, or the biggest checkbook.

  By the time Brognola made it, passing four guards on the door, the rest of Air Force One’s exalted passengers were there ahead of him, eating pâté, sausage and various cheeses with fruit on the side, wolfing down everything within reach as if they’d forgotten they had a five-course banquet coming up in four hours. The man from Justice contented himself with a flaky croissant and a bottle of mineral water that tasted like thin olive oil.

  Good times.

  The President was busy, naturally, but he raised a hand to Brognola and gave that little half smile so familiar from his TV interviews. Someone from State was giving him the lowdown on whatever, gesturing with a six-inch piece of kielbasa for emphasis. It reminded Brognola of a political cartoon, but for the life of him he couldn’t come up with a caption.

  He’d been watching for an ambush since they touched down at the airport, knowing there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. Sure, he’d packed his sidearm and was wearing it to the buffet—a subcompact Glock 26 loaded with ten 9 mm rounds, holstered at the small of his back to keep it unobtrusive—but he also knew that if God’s Hammer came party crashing, they would have to deal first with the Secret Service and the local gendarmes standing watch outside the Geneva Suite.

  What were the Man’s guards carrying? SIG Sauer P229s were standard-issue for the Secret Service these days, chambered in .357 SIG for extra stopping power, but roughly one agent in three would also be carrying heavier firepower: Heckler & Koch MP5K machine pistols perhaps, maybe a Mini-Uzi or two. So the party ought to be secure. In which case, why couldn’t Brognola relax?

  Because he knew what was coming if Bolan and Grimaldi missed their targets in Zermatt, which was a four hour drive from Geneva. Hell, for all he knew, the birds had flown before his guys landed in Switzerland and were already on their way to make the summit meeting a reprise of the Munich Olympics massacre. It was what they lived for—and would die for, given half a chance.

  Why not?

  Watching the President, Brognola thought he seemed at ease, absorbing what was told to him, nodding along with the kielbasa guy before he interjected something on his own. A casual observer wouldn’t know that everyone in the Geneva Suite was under threat of death right now, but that was SOP for White House occupants these days.

  The big Fed hoped he would be ready if the ball dropped.
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  Zermatt

  EMERGING INTO SUNLIGHT from the spotless modern station where their train was prepping for its journey back downhill to Täsch, Bolan shouldered his bag of clothes and weapons, standing with Grimaldi as they scanned the picturesque town laid out before them. For transport, they had a choice of electric shuttles or horse-drawn carriages bearing the names of various hotels, but since they hadn’t booked a room, they wound up walking three blocks to a gingerbread boarding house that advertised both vacance and Vakanz.

  The proprietress was middle-aged and open-minded. She had nothing against two men sharing digs, as long as they presented cash up front: Swiss francs, euros or US dollars, it was all the same to her. She led them to a second-story room with double beds, en-suite facilities and a smallish window overlooking a street lined with touristy shops, leaving them to their own devices once she had been paid.

  “Nap time?” Grimaldi quipped.

  They had agreed to find a room, if only to deposit their mundane belongings, and as someplace to retreat to, if they had a chance. Outside, the day was clear but brisk enough to justify the coats they’d packed, to hide their military hardware as they circulated through the streets. Guns might be common in this neutral nation, ringed by various belligerents from days gone by, but the Swiss weren’t keen on America’s recent open-carry fad, particularly if the people packing heat were foreigners.

  According to a street map Grimaldi had purchased at the railway depot, they were roughly half a mile from the short street where Stony Man had pegged their targets’ sat phone being last in use. It was an easy walk, in spite of narrow, steeply sloping cobbled streets where homes and shops pressed close on either side, with window boxes full of blooming flowers mounted overhead.

  They unpacked the SG 552 Commando carbines, leaving their skeletal stocks folded off to the right-hand side, double-checking their magazines and pocketing the spares. Cheap nylon slings secured the weapons over one shoulder, while their suppressor-equipped pistols rode armpit rigging on the other. When the small room’s full-length mirror told them they were reasonably squared away, they donned coats, locked the door behind them and descended to the first floor.

  The landlady was waiting below, reminding them that they were on their own for meals, suggesting a café nearby that probably kicked back for word-of-mouth promotions. Both men thanked her, and they stepped out just as a red electric shuttle passed, with tourists’ faces pressed against its windows.

  On the street, based on the faces Bolan saw and languages he overheard, Zermatt was more like the United Nations than a simple Swiss village. Granted, it had all the outward charm of someplace from a children’s fairy tale—or, on the darker side, a 1930s Gothic horror film from Hollywood—but catering to members of what once was called café society had stolen something from the scene. Bolan’s eyes swept over Asians dressed as Alpine hikers, backpackers with scruffy beards and dreadlocks, and a host of plump pink specimens who didn’t seem to do well in direct sunlight, all a contrast to the hearty peasant types and roly-poly tavern keepers that the scenery might have suggested.

  Some of them were about to suffer hitches in their vacation plans, through no fault of their own. As Bolan turned left from the rooming house and started on his trek uphill, he hoped that all the innocents would make it through the afternoon alive.

  * * *

  “THE TROUSERS ARE too short,” Kabeer advised Faisal Mousa. “You’ll have to wear them lower on your hips.”

  Mousa nodded and tugged his pants down, underneath the navy velvet blazer that completed his disguise, topped with a matching bellman’s hat like those worn by the Grand Hotel Kempinski’s servant staff, secured by a strap beneath his chin. He wasn’t happy with the uniform, but it made no difference, as long as he fit in.

  The next in line was Kamal Bakri, in a blazer too large for his slender frame. His pants, by contrast, seemed to be a perfect fit, but Kabeer frowned while peering at his feet. “You need to shine those shoes,” he said. “The bell captain won’t let you on the floor looking like that.”

  “Then I will leave him on the floor,” Bakri replied, smiling as he mimed slitting someone’s throat.

  “You think this is a farce?” Kabeer snapped back at him, then ranged along the line, including all of them. “Who thinks this is a joke? Show me your hands!” None rose, but he was not placated. “We are on our way to strike a blow for God. If you mock the mission, you are mocking Him!”

  Bakri lowered his eyes and muttered an apology. Some of the others followed suit, although they had done nothing to offend Kabeer so far.

  “Ali,” he said, reaching Dajani, “you must brush your hat. The lint makes you resemble an old man who’s going bald.”

  The joke fell flat. They were afraid to laugh.

  “All right,” he said, addressing all of them at once. “Remember that the hotel staff does not arrive in uniform. They have a locker room for changing out of street clothes, which you’ll share.”

  “We don’t have lockers,” Majid Hayek said.

  “I’ve told you they are not assigned,” Kabeer replied. “Since servants work in shifts around the clock, the lockers are first-come, first-served. No one should question you, since shifts are often traded. Even the bell captain should accept it, if you tell him you were transferred unexpectedly. And by the time he gets suspicious, if he does—” Kabeer raised both hands, palms up toward the ceiling “—it will be too late.”

  The five fake bellmen nodded, more or less in unison.

  “Now, are there any final questions?”

  No one answered.

  “Excellent. You all know your positions and assignments. If you’re told to go somewhere or do something, agree at once, then keep to the arranged schedule. It’s not as if the manager can fire you, after all.”

  Kabeer’s smile at his own wit signaled that it would be safe for them to laugh, but only two joined in. The others were preoccupied with thoughts of death.

  “Remember we must leave at four p.m., in time to make the train’s final descent at five. Go separately. Is there anyone who needs money for tickets?”

  Once again, silence.

  “Aboard the train,” he told them, stressing what they knew already, “do not speak or sit together if it is avoidable. We meet below and take the hired cars. On the road, we stay in touch by radio. Questions?”

  None.

  As satisfied as he could be, Kabeer dismissed them all to change their clothes and spend the next four hours as it pleased them, conscious of the fact that this might be their final night on Earth.

  * * *

  “NICE PLACE FOR a vacation, I suppose,” Grimaldi said.

  “It is,” Bolan agreed.

  He could have said the same for countless other places, from Hawaii to the shores of Acapulco, the Bahamas, London, Paris, Rome and Tuscany—you name it: sites and cities that drew anyone from lovers on their honeymoons to seniors who had saved enough to travel in their so-called golden years. Places to get away and live it up in style.

  For Bolan, they had all been battlegrounds.

  Zermatt was quaint, almost a village out of time, like Brigadoon. Surrounded by the Swiss Alps, it maintained a flavor of the nineteenth century, until you scrutinized the merchandise on offer in its shops: TAG Heuer watches, smart phones, iPad tablets, fashions by Marianne Alvoni, Consuelo Castiglioni, and Albert Kriemler. Alongside classic fare, the restaurants included Japanese, Tex-Mex and Thai cuisine.

  A horse-drawn carriage clip-clopped past them as they climbed the sloping street. Inside it, two tourists, maybe man and wife, slurped ice cream cones and ogled shops along the way. Proprietors stood watching through their windows, willing passersby to step in and divest themselves of cash. One raised a hand to Grimaldi and Bolan as they walked along, then let it drop and lost his smile as they passed on.

/>   When they had covered half the distance to their target, Bolan made a left-hand turn into an even steeper side street, this one paved with cobblestones instead of asphalt. Bicycles would have a rough go of it, heading uphill, but the ride back down would be a howler, risking life and limb. Plants trailing from a row of window boxes overhead came close to grazing Bolan’s scalp as he trudged up the hill, starting to feel it in his thighs and calves.

  “I should’ve spent more time on the stepper,” Grimaldi said.

  “The good news,” Bolan told him, “is that going back, it’s all downhill.”

  Their target was one block west of Bahnhofstrasse, near the Rifflealp Resort hotel. Aerial photos showed only rooftops, leaving Bolan to discover for himself if it would be a private home, a boarding house or a hotel. In any case, he couldn’t get a floor plan and had no idea precisely where his enemies might be inside the building.

  That was, if they were inside.

  Kabeer and his men had to know the President was in Geneva now, the other summit members close behind, if not already on the ground and rolling toward their rendezvous. It would have made sense for the team to get a jump on things, move out ahead of time and be in place, but Bolan only had the sat-phone fix to go by, courtesy of Stony Man.

  And if that failed him...what?

  Reach out to Brognola first, in Geneva, then the Farm, to see if Aaron Kurtzman’s cyberteam could give him any kind of update on Kabeer’s location from some other source. That seemed unlikely, in the final run-up to a major operation, when they would be using every trick at their disposal to avoid detection, and that brought him back to the alternative he favored least: the Grand Hotel Kempinski, hosting a cast of global VIPs and who knew how many tourists, all of them oblivious to terror waiting in the wings.

  Bolan thought he should keep his fingers crossed, but that made it more difficult to shoot.

  Täsch

  ONE MEMBER OF the God’s Hammer team had gone ahead, in fact. Mohammed Sanea caught the train down from Zermatt at one o’clock, en route to fetch the van that waited for him in Geneva, parked in a long-term garage on Rue de Monthoux, near the railroad yards. The key, he had been told, would be secured inside the left-rear wheel well, in a small magnetic box.