Don Pendleton - Dead Reckoning

That meant that while sun-baked foreign tourists were in short supply, the city saw its share of Western businessmen, wheeling and dealing in suits that cost more than Hamilton earned in a month. Few of them visited the consulate, preferring to discuss their needs with the ambassador in Amman, but Hamilton was there, in case one of their trophy secretaries lost her purse and didn’t think the native cops were suitably outraged.

“What’s Rigby doing?” Hamilton inquired.

“Burning a lot of papers.”

“Shit!”

Hamilton left his aide staring at the monitors and went to find Cale Rigby in his office. Rigby was supposed to be a cultural attaché, which was not-so-secret code for CIA. Their spook in residence, he was involved in God knew what, lording it over Hamilton and Connelly as if he were the consul, and the pair of them were just his flunkies.

Then again, given the climate of the times and the leanings of the State Department back in Washington, he might be right.

Hamilton didn’t knock before he entered Rigby’s office—still the only one he’d ever seen that had its own incinerator in one corner, with a stovepipe routed through the outer wall. Rigby was sitting in his roller chair, with the incinerator door open in front of him, feeding the flames with documents one handful at a time.

“You think we’re that bad off?” Hamilton asked.

The CIA man didn’t bother facing him. “We could be screwed,” he answered, “but it doesn’t matter. This is protocol.”

“All of your hard work, up in smoke.”

“No sweat. It’s all on file at Langley, anyway.”

The first shot sounded like a firecracker outside, but Hamilton could tell the difference. His bunker had been strafed and stoned before, though never by a mob this size, so furious.

“Better go check that out,” Rigby advised, dropping another wad of top-secret reports into the fire.

* * *

THE FIRST SHOT was a signal, nothing more. Saleh Kabeer checked his Rolex watch and saw that it came right on time. He trusted other members of his team to hear and carry out the orders he had drilled into their heads over the past two weeks, in preparation for this moment.

He was grateful to the backwoods bigot in America who had devised a plan to outrage all of Islam at a single stroke. Without him, Kabeer would have had to plan a local incident himself, whip up the necessary anger to collect a mob and go from there. This stroke of luck, headlined and amplified by Muslim news outlets from Nigeria to Indonesia, was surely a gift from God to aid his endeavor.

Given the time and opportunity, Kabeer thought he might send the scrawny Crusader a fruit basket, as thanks. Of course, the fruit would all be poisoned.

Kabeer was supervising the attack, which he had also planned from its beginning as a spark of rage against the West. His group was not yet large enough to tackle major targets, but this would be a decent start. His young men were the best, most dedicated he could find, all disillusioned by the endless talk and feeble action from al-Qaeda and al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, craving battle and glory.

Starting this night, their wish would be fulfilled.

* * *

“JESUS! YOU SEE THAT?” Connelly blurted out.

It was impossible to miss. Someone had thrown a grappling hook over the razor wire topping the consulate’s south wall and was hauling in its line, ripping the coiled wire from its moorings. “And there’s another one!”

He turned and followed Connelly’s finger, pointing toward the west wall’s monitor. Same thing and same result. Within another minute, maybe less, the north and east walls both had broad gaps in their curly razor wire. A moment after that, he saw the ladders going up. Dark, nimble figures scrambled over, dropping down inside the walls.

Welcome to US soil, Hamilton thought. For whatever that’s worth.

Not much, this night, with no police in evidence and only two Marines to guard the consulate. He’d issued orders not to fire on anyone unless the building was invaded, then use common sense in self-defense. Hamilton knew Marines were tough, but two of them could no more stop a mob of hundreds—was it thousands, now?—than they could stop a tidal wave with sandbags and harsh language.

Five men altogether, in the consulate, and what would happen if he broke out extra guns for Connelly and himself? Would it make any difference to the inevitable outcome?

Hamilton had already phoned the embassy, not once, but half a dozen times. Their answer was the same each time he called: Hang on. Help’s coming.

So was Christmas, but the way things looked right now, Hamilton doubted he’d be celebrating it. More likely, he would be the ghost of Christmas past.

“Look! That guy’s got a rifle!”

By the time Hamilton turned, the man Connelly had seen was on the ground and out of sight. Another one came close behind him, though, and this one definitely had some kind of military rifle slung across his back, together with a heavy-looking satchel.

Ammunition? High explosives? Hamilton was betting that the gunman hadn’t scaled their wall to drop off a petition or his dirty laundry.

“We need to get out of here!” Connelly said.

Too late, Hamilton thought.

“And go where?” he inquired.

“Pile in the Hummer,” Connelly answered. “Rush the gate. Whoever tries to stop us, run them down or shoot them. Make it to the embassy.”

That might work, in an action movie, but the gates were fortified to keep a semi tractor rig from smashing through. The Hummer in their motor pool could take down a few rioters, but it could never part the human sea outside their walls. It was a fantasy.

“You want a shotgun?” he asked Connelly.

“What? Um...well...”

A flash of light on one monitor screen, accompanied by thunder in the building, told Hamilton that the bunker was breached. They had minutes left, maybe seconds, before the mob reached them. Hamilton turned to his aide, hand extended, smiling into Connelly’s pallid, panicked face.

“It’s been good working with you, Arnie,” Hamilton declared. Connolly was stunned, too terrified to answer, much less shake his hand.

“Um...um...”

Shouting and gunfire erupted in the hallway, drawing closer by the second.

Calm now, Hamilton turned toward the door he’d locked behind him, coming back from Rigby’s office. Thinking of his wife and daughter, he put on a smile and waited for the end.

CHAPTER ONE

Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

“It’s freaking hot down here,” Jack Grimaldi complained, lifting off his baseball cap to draw a handkerchief across his sweaty brow.

“It’s South America,” Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, answered from the meager shade cast by his Tilley hat.

“Hot,” Grimaldi echoed. “Like I said.”

They were on Avenida los Yerbales, near the sprawling greenery of Parque Jose Asuncion Flores, looking for a man who dealt in death. Their quarry didn’t advertise himself that way—in fact, his neighbors knew him as an importer of farming implements and sporty motorcycles—but behind the public face, familiar from his television commercials, the guy pursued a thriving trade in weapons.

Paraguayan law mandated record keeping for acquisition, possession and transfer of all privately owned firearms, yet no statute regulated activities of arms brokers or transfer intermediaries. Authorities claimed that one million guns, both registered and otherwise, were owned by Paraguay’s people.

“We’re here,” Grimaldi said, standing at ease while foot traffic eddied around him.

Bolan eyed the tractor showroom, looking for a trap, and came up empty. The interior was air-conditioned, almost frosty next to the oppressive humidity outside. Before they’d had a chance to look around, he saw the owner moving toward them, flashing the electric TV smile.