“Will you be needing anything else, sir?” He spoke English for the American’s benefit but pointed at his watch. The workday was officially over, and young Kuwaiti professionals did not work overtime.
Al-Douri offered tea again, but when the American refused it the secretary was dismissed and his footsteps retreated down the hall until the door clicked shut. As if waiting for the sound of the latch, Bolan announced, reading from his notebook, “Ar-Rutbah. You were born there. November 18, 1953.”
Al-Douri became a statue.
“You served in the Iraqi army, joined the Ba’ath Party, eventually made your way into Project 858, the communications monitoring sector of Iraqi intelligence know as al-Hadi. After Desert Storm you went undercover, eventually establishing yourself as a Kuwaiti citizen and worming your way into various ministry positions, usually handling foreign affairs and immigration issues.”
Al-Douri’s hands were on the desktop, but Bolan’s attention was riveted to his notebook, so he moved one hand casually, slowly—and in an eye blink found himself staring down the barrel of a suppressed handgun.
The weapon had appeared like magic. Like when the cartoon mouse whips a huge mallet from behind his back, where he could not possible have hidden such a mallet. Again, almost amusing, al-Douri thought. This Cooper had not broadcast the move, which happened with the speed and noise of the shadow of a bird.
“Who are you?” al-Douri demanded. He was disgusted—it was clear he was up against a professional. Al-Douri’s years of work establishing this cover would be for naught if this man exposed him, and the consequences would be unpleasant.
“You are the big mystery, Assistant Director,” Bolan growled. “What’s a nice Iraqi intelligence and communications expert doing in an office of the Kuwaiti government?”
“Why did you come here?” al-Douri demanded.
“To talk.”
“About my childhood inAr-Rutbah?” al-Douri said sarcastically. “About seven U.S. prisoners of war, held in custody in Iraq since 1991.”
Al-Douri was baffled. Then he became afraid. Whoever this man was and worked for, he was clearly an enemy. And any enemy who knew such secrets would kill him—or turn him over to those who would kill him.
“There are no U.S. prisoners in Iraq.” He couldn’t think of anything better to say.
“You’re lying,” Bolan replied.
The man with the ice-cold eyes made the smallest movement with the handgun. It was a Beretta 93-R, a monster of a pistol that could be set to fire 3-round bursts of 9 mm rounds. The aim was extremely difficult to control when fired in triburst mode, so the weapon was actually fitted with a secondary, foldable handle under the barrel. The handle was still in its folded position, but al-Douri did not doubt for a second that this man Cooper had the strength and skill to hit his target one-handed.
“What if I talk?” al-Douri demanded, licking dry lips. “Do I go free?”
“I’m not negotiating. I’m delivering an ultimatum. Start talking or start dying.”
Instead, al-Douri panicked. He flopped to the floor behind the desk and jerked a mobile phone from his pocket, thumbing the button that sent out an emergency call signal.
Then he found himself rising to his feet again, suspended by his jacket collar, in the grip of the man with the icy eyes. Al-Douri’s years of training came back to him. He twisted his torso and snapped one fist at the Beretta handgun in a single explosive movement. His perfect execution of the move pushed the aim of the handgun away from him while throwing his assailant’s defenses wide-open—al-Douri exploited his window of opportunity by striking a lightning kick at the American’s groin.
Bolan raised a shin to deflect the kick, and before al-Douri could make another move he saw the American’s left hand come out of nowhere, with the fingers locked flat and driving under al-Douri’s chin. The Iraqi who pretended to be a Kuwait bureaucrat gagged and crashed to the ground, choking up bile.
BOLAN HEARD POUNDING footsteps approaching. He knew that five or more Iraqi undercover agents worked in this building, and it sounded like all of them were responding to the emergency summons from al-Douri.
The soldier snatched the spy off the floor and walked him into the door, which crashed open. Several men were approaching in a controlled run, hands empty. At the moment they saw al-Douri and his assailant, the Iraqi agents simultaneously reached the same conclusion: their cover was blown. No reason not to put up a fight. They scattered for cover and produced weapons.
“Don’t shoot!” al-Douri croaked in Arabic.
The nearest gunner lined up on Bolan with a small-profile handgun, but the Executioner beat him to the trigger pull, firing a 3-round burst from the powerful Beretta 93-R. The 9 mm shockers cut down the gunner and splattered the wall behind him. A second gunner cut loose, but a quick step aside pulled Bolan out of the line of fire and dragged al-Douri into it. The spy jerked when the small-caliber bullet slammed into his rib cage.
Bolan reached around his prisoner with the 93-R held sideways and triggered a triburst. The rise of the recoil carried his aim in a horizontal sweep of violence that slammed first into the gunner, then gut shot his nearest companion. Both of them fell to the floor.
Behind them two figures burst from the stairwell, then pulled back into the protection of the door. Bolan swore silently—the newcomers had folded-stock rifles or machines guns. This wasn’t going well.
“Hand him over!” one called in English.
Bolan ignored him, walking al-Douri backward in the other direction to the stairs on the opposite end of the narrow government building. The soldier kicked open the door—and heard approaching footsteps.
Someone shouted a command in Arabic, and Bolan found himself facing gunmen in uniforms. He pointed the 93-R at the ceiling—he didn’t shoot police.
“Help me!” al-Douri bawled and collapsed, allowing his body weight to drag him out of Bolan’s grip and carry him down the stairs. At that moment a burst of automatic gunfire slammed into the swinging stair doors from the hall.
Bolan weighed his options, then dived into the hall as the burst halted. He landed flat, arms reaching above him, and triggered a triburst at the exposed gunner. The man went down, his Russian-made AK-74 clattering on the carpeting. Bolan bolted off the floor and down the hall. The last surviving gunner was taken off guard but got his finger curled around the trigger with amazing speed. The rounds spewed out of his weapon into the floor, ricocheting noisily around Bolan. The warrior squeezed out a triburst that sent the gunner to oblivion.
There was another command from behind him as the MPs, or whoever they were, took cover in the stairs.
Bolan ran in the other direction.
7
Police were on the scene for hours, trying to make sense of the gun battle that had been waged in the government building. In a fifth-floor hotel room not a hundred paces away, Mack Bolan stared through a pair of binoculars and thought dark thoughts.
The probe had not gone well.
Al-Douri was more efficient than most of his ilk. For a man who had been undercover for years he still kept his team prepared for instantaneous response, and it paid off. Bolan had been unable to gain control of the situation in the few seconds he was allotted prior to the arrival of the police.
He wasn’t given to self-recrimination. That was counterproductive behavior. And he knew there was no way he could have anticipated the near-instant response from the Iraqis and almost-instant arrival of the police.
But the results spoke for themselves. He had no intelligence from al-Douri. He’d achieved nothing more than exterminating a few Iraqi moles.
Al-Douri would be questioned closely by whomever the Kuwaitis had investigating the shootings. Whatever story he told them, it would feature himself as an innocent bystander. Unless the Kuwaitis already suspected al-Douri, they’d let him go.
Then he’d come after Bolan.
It was time, the soldier decided, for a nice steak dinner.
THE HOTEL
COULD HAVE BEEN anywhere. New York. London. Tokyo. The rich decor of the lobby didn’t exhibit even a glimmer of originality, and the atmosphere was maintained at a consistent seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. The machine-cooled air felt unnatural to the young doorman as he moved from his podium inside to the cobblestone drive under the veranda, where the stifling heat persisted long into the evening.
The doorman recognized the passenger emerging from the taxi. At their first meeting he told the doorman to call him simply Alb. He held the door for Alb and they stood at the doorman’s podium, as casually as if Alb were asking for directions to a local restaurant.
The information wasn’t so mundane, and the doorman’s tip was better than the typical ten-dinar note. The doorman had to stifle a grin as he fanned the five hundred-dinar bills.
“Talk,” Alb said.
“He came in here just a minute before the police started showing up down the street at the ministry offices,” the doorman said eagerly. “As soon as I got the word from your guys, I knew I’d seen a guy that fit the description. Then I look up and here he comes out of the elevator and I stood here watching him eat his dinner.”
The young doorman nodded at the section of the lobby where decorative fencing made a faux outdoor café. Circle-T Ranch Fine American-Style Steaks and Barbecue was the less formal of the hotel’s two restaurants.
“He ate at the corner table. He asked for it special. I know because after he was done I went and asked the host,” the doorman explained. “It’s the best view out the front, and he watched the police the whole time he was eating. Then when he was done eating he kind of casually walked up to the doors and watched some more.”
“What then?”
“Went back to his room,” the doorman said with a shrug.
“Which room?”
Out of sight behind the podium the doorman fanned his bills. “Room 509. His name is Mike McKay. Passport says he’s a journalist.”
When there were no more questions, the doorman looked up and found himself alone. Alb was heading across the lobby.
He wondered briefly who Alb really was and why he was so interested in Mike McKay, the journalist in room 509. Maybe he would arrest him. Maybe kill him.
Not that he cared. He was a Saudi, in Kuwait because that was where he could get a job that paid decent money, and he thought every Kuwaiti he came in contact with was arrogant and elitist. He couldn’t care less what they did to one another or to visiting Americans.
In fact, the doorman hoped there was more trouble coming, because these occasional five hundred-dinar payoffs did wonders for his standard of living.
ALNAKEEB ALB requested suite 509. The young man at the desk was perfectly polite and utterly bored. He explained that room 509 was occupied, but there were several other suites available on that floor and would Mr. Alb like to see a diagram of the rooms? Alb glanced at it and requested suite 511. The desk clerk was pleased to inform Mr. Alb that suite 511 was indeed available and could he please provide a credit card? Did he have any bags that would require a porter?
Had the desk clerk possessed any genuine interest about Alnakeeb Alb, he might have met the man’s gaze and seen an odd mixture of ruthlessness and manic self-control. They were the eyes of man for whom killing was a career choice.
But, the clerk might have thought, at least he enjoyed his work.
ALB DID LIKE HIS WORK. He enjoyed nothing but his work. There was the excitement of the hunt, the adrenaline rush of the kill, and every other waking minute was tedium.
He also had self-mastery. Without it he would have been a wild man, an indiscriminate killer, one of those freaks who was hunted ruthlessly, displayed in the media like a monstrosity when apprehended, then beheaded. At least, in Iran he would have been beheaded—he wasn’t sure about the Kuwaitis. But Kuwait was where the money was, with a concentrated population of entrenched wealth. These were families who had become rich on oil, but who were not too far removed from the territorial battles of only a few generations ago. Some of them had enough fight left in them to make use of the services of a man like Alnakeeb Alb.
Alb was now as rich as some of the men who hired him, but to him the real measure of his success was continued steady employment.
This time he had to be careful. He knew what happened in the ministry building and was impressed by the reports he heard. The man was as professional as Alb himself.
Alb didn’t know enough about the American perpetrator, though, to be sure of his affiliation. Was he some sort of agent? Not CIA, certainly. In fact, no sanctioned agent would set himself up in a hotel like this. Hamza al-Douri had offhandedly mentioned that the American’s attack was unwarranted, but that was a lie. Hamza al-Douri was not what he said he was, either. Certainly an innocent Kuwaiti bureaucrat wouldn’t have hired a contract killer to take care of this problem, or the other problems Alb had solved for al-Douri in recent years.
He was staring at the printed paper folder containing his two key cards as he stepped from the elevator and scanned the fifth-floor hallway, finding it deserted. There was a highly polished wooden table and a brass vase arrayed with fresh flowers, and the carpet was fancifully printed with beige, gold and umber geometric shapes on a burgundy background. The design was repeated a hundred times in each direction, unbroken by other furniture or human beings. No one was strolling this hall trying to look like a hotel guest while actually guarding room 509. Maybe the guy really was working independently.
Alb liked the idea of going against one of his peers head-to-head.
His ears strained to hear any sound behind the door of 509 when he strolled past. Nothing.
His suite was lavish and huge, with a parlor, bedroom, and dressing room that adjoined a bathroom. Alb pretended he was impressed with the place, but as he strolled through it he was searching for any sign that he was being watched by his neighbor. Satisfied that there were no hidden cameras or planted video monitoring devices, he searched the room for audio bugs. Nothing. Finally he examined the door that adjoined the two rooms. He saw the dead bolt firmly in place, and behind it was a second door, also dead bolted.
Maybe this was overkill. Maybe he was being too careful. But if half of what he heard about the ministry building battle was accurate…
He pulled out a stethoscope and listened to the wall, hearing CNN Europe playing on the television. After a few minutes the TV was turned off and Alb heard faint footsteps, then water. The shower. Alb was almost disappointed at how easy this was going to be.
He jammed face towels into the narrow space around the door to help muffle the sound as he picked the lock on the first door, listened again, then jimmied the dead bolt on the second door. The hotel’s key-card system did not extend to the doors between adjoining rooms, but that made no difference to Alb and he had the all the locks neutralized in three minutes.
The shower was still running, but there was a chance that his target was not alone in the room, and before he barged in Alb took a peek. He had purchased the video device from a Mexican Web site for less money than he had just spent to rent the suite for a night.
The flexible wire was an eighth of an inch thick, and when he wiggled it under the door it fed an image to a three-inch LCD display that was low resolution but more than adequate for a security sweep. The suite was just one big room, and there was nobody in it.
Alb withdrew the M-85, an automatic handgun with a medium-size frame that meant it wasn’t hard to conceal. It was his firearm of choice, but his intended lead weapon was an Israeli combat blade, stolen from one of his first victims. He removed the sheath from his sport coat and clipped it on the front of his pants.
He opened the door. The shower was still running.
Too easy.
BOLAN USED A DENTAL MIRROR to monitor his hotel suite from inside the bathroom.
He had made himself the bait. Dinner in the hotel steak house had been like wiggling the hook to attract the attention of the fish. Not much later a new guest had arrived to take the
overpriced, oversize adjoining suite. Bolan observed through the peephole that the man had no luggage and no companions.
Despite the newcomer’s skill, he couldn’t pick the locks on the adjoining doors without making some small sound—Bolan had stood with his ear almost brushing the door’s surface and heard it clearly. Then he had moved to the bathroom.
His dental mirror showed him the little metallic worm that poked under the bottom of the door, then retracted, and that was when Bolan changed positions again. He moved fast on bare feet, the carpet deadening the sound, and put himself behind the door in the spot the intruder had already observed as empty.
The door opened and the intruder’s handgun came through first, then his shoulder. Finally his torso and head appeared.
Bolan lashed out with one foot, propelling the door with immense force into the gunman. The steel fire door and the steel doorjamb caught the intruder down the middle like spring-activated pinchers clamping down on an insect.
The gun thumped on the floor and the intruder’s head lolled momentarily before Bolan grabbed his arm and jerked him into the room, dropping him face first and cuffing his wrists behind him. The gunner had not made a sound.
After a quick pat down Bolan flipped the gunner onto his back to find his mouth bubbling with blood. The carpet was puddled with it. The Executioner took the knife, found an extra knife and narrow-profile .22 tucked away on the man’s shins, then pulled him into an upright sitting position. The blood cascaded down his chest. The killer looked at Bolan with a simpleton’s gaze.
“How did you do it?” he asked in broken English. “How could you have been there when I opened the door?”
“You were sent by Hamza al-Douri,” Bolan said. “Where can I find him?”
“I do not know,” the killer man said offhandedly. “How you got the drop on me? There is no place you could have been hiding in this room.”
Mercy Mission Page 5