Don Pendleton - Dead Reckoning

FINAL PAYBACK

The United States consulate in Jordan is firebombed, its staff mercilessly killed. With the group responsible scattered to hideouts in war-torn hot spots around the globe, Mack Bolan has to hit these terrorists hard before they can warn one another.

Soon Bolan is turning safe houses and desert refuges into killing fields as he battles to take down the terrorists three by three. But the last of the group vanishes just as Bolan discovers their ultimate target: an international conference in Switzerland headed by the American President. The world’s leaders are caught in the crosshairs, and the Executioner has to stop the splinter group before they strike a global deathblow.

The gunner in the Mercedes van cut loose with another burst

Bolan’s assault rifle spit flame, and the chase car’s left headlight exploded. His volley was too low and too far to the right as Grimaldi swerved to avoid incoming bullets, spoiling the Executioner’s aim.

He fired another short burst, strafing the van’s narrow grille. The fusillade wouldn’t stop the Mercedes immediately, but an overheated engine could slow them in the short run.

They had reached the last paved road before the riverbank, crossing from east to west, while north-south drivers blared their horns, shook fists and shouted curses in the Audi’s wake.

Road rage. Damn right.

The van was crossing the river, pursuing them, with the biker trailing it, decelerating now that he knew where the fight was headed. Bolan hoped the guy would be smart, turn back and live to see another day...

But that wasn’t Bolan’s call. He had four men to take out, at least, before they finished him.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

—William E. Gladstone

Justice may be late sometimes, but it’s inevitable. I don’t judge my targets. I am their executioner.

—Mack Bolan

For John Christopher Stevens and Sean Smith

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text FINAL PAYBACK The United States consulate in Jordan is firebombed, its staff mercilessly killed. With the group responsible scattered to hideouts in war-torn hot spots around the globe, Mack Bolan has to hit these terrorists hard before they can warn one another. Soon Bolan is turning safe houses and desert refuges into killing fields as he battles to take down the terrorists three by three. But the last of the group vanishes just as Bolan discovers their ultimate target: an international conference in Switzerland headed by the American President. The world’s leaders are caught in the crosshairs, and the Executioner has to stop the splinter group before they strike a global deathblow.

Introduction The gunner in the Mercedes van cut loose with another burst Bolan’s assault rifle spit flame, and the chase car’s left headlight exploded. His volley was too low and too far to the right as Grimaldi swerved to avoid incoming bullets, spoiling the Executioner’s aim. He fired another short burst, strafing the van’s narrow grille. The fusillade wouldn’t stop the Mercedes immediately, but an overheated engine could slow them in the short run. They had reached the last paved road before the riverbank, crossing from east to west, while north-south drivers blared their horns, shook fists and shouted curses in the Audi’s wake. Road rage. Damn right. The van was crossing the river, pursuing them, with the biker trailing it, decelerating now that he knew where the fight was headed. Bolan hoped the guy would be smart, turn back and live to see another day... But that wasn’t Bolan’s call. He had four men to take out, at least, before they finished him.

Title Page Dead Reckoning

Quote Justice delayed is justice denied. —William E. Gladstone Justice may be late sometimes, but it’s inevitable. I don’t judge my targets. I am their executioner. —Mack Bolan

Dedication For John Christopher Stevens and Sean Smith

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

Copyright

PROLOGUE

Zarqa, Jordan

The mob was heating up outside. Its rhythmic chanting of the past two hours had given way to random shouts and jeers from individuals amid the larger, heaving mass of human fury. Rocks were flying, and if experience was any guide, Molotov cocktails wouldn’t be too far behind.

Mark Hamilton stood watching on a closed-circuit television, since the US consulate had no external windows. It was basically a bunker, the design dictated by security concerns, with eight-foot concrete walls around it, topped by razor wire.

That wouldn’t stop the mob, if its excited members were determined to get in.

“Still no police?”

Hamilton turned to face his aide, Arnie Connelly. “Not yet.”

“Jesus, how long does it take?”

Hamilton shrugged. They both knew members of Jordan’s national Public Security Force should have shown up by then, if they were coming. Their headquarters, another bunker, stood roughly half a mile from the consulate, a five-minute drive at rush hour, even without lights and sirens.

“They’re hanging us out to dry,” Connelly said.

“We’re not hung yet,” Hamilton answered, trying to sound confident.

The trouble, this time, had blown up out of nowhere. Back in the States, in some southern backwater, a crackpot preacher short on congregants and craving national publicity had hatched a plan to gain recruits and pocket their donations with a protest against Islam. Picking up a couple dozen copies of the Koran—likely the only ones for sale in his reactionary cotton-picking state, Hamilton suspected—he had invited all and sundry to a grand book-burning ceremony, featuring a barbecue, a bluegrass band and his incessant pleas for money to support his “great, important work.”

Predictably, the Muslim world had gone insane.

Now, here he was with Connelly, one other staff member, and two US Marines, manning a bunker in the middle of the night, a lynch mob at their gate.

Great time to be a diplomat.

Most people in the States couldn’t explain the difference between an embassy and a consulate. Embassies were the larger, more important facilities, defined as permanent diplomatic missions, generally located in a foreign nation’s capital city. Consulates, by contrast, were smaller outposts, normally sited in tourist cities, where they handled minor problems involving visas, travelers’ problems, and wheedling complaints from expatriates. They had smaller staffs, fewer guards, less prestige.

Zarqa was not a tourist town, per se. There were no tourist towns in Jordan, at least so far as jet-setting Americans were concerned. Zarqa was Jordan’s second-largest city, with a population of 481,000, and housed more than fifty percent of all Jordan’s factories, fouling the air till it hardly lived up to its own name’s translation: “the Blue One.” Zarqa also moved about ten percent of Jordan’s exports—leather goods and clothing, chemicals and pharmaceuticals.