Dead Reckoning
FINAL PAYBACKThe 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.
Читать Dead Reckoning онлайн беплатно
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 worldâs 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
Bolanâs assault rifle spit flame, and the chase carâs left headlight exploded. His volley was too low and too far to the right as Grimaldi swerved to avoid incoming bullets, spoiling the Executionerâs aim.
He fired another short burst, strafing the vanâs narrow grille. The fusillade wouldnât 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 Audiâs 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 wasnât Bolanâs call. He had four men to take out, at least, before they finished him.
Dead Reckoning
Don Pendleton
Justice delayed is justice denied.
âWilliam E. Gladstone
Justice may be late sometimes, but itâs inevitable. I donât judge my targets. I am their executioner.
âMack Bolan
For John Christopher Stevens and Sean Smith
Contents
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 wouldnât 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 wouldnât stop the mob, if its excited members were determined to get in.
âStill no police?â
Hamilton turned to face his aide, Arnie Connelly. âNot yet.â
âJesus, how long does it take?â
Hamilton shrugged. They both knew members of Jordanâs 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.
âTheyâre hanging us out to dry,â Connelly said.
âWeâre not hung yet,â 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 Koranâlikely the only ones for sale in his reactionary cotton-picking state, Hamilton suspectedâhe 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 âgreat, important work.â
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 couldnât 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 nationâs capital city. Consulates, by contrast, were smaller outposts, normally sited in tourist cities, where they handled minor problems involving visas, travelersâ 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 Jordanâs second-largest city, with a population of 481,000, and housed more than fifty percent of all Jordanâs factories, fouling the air till it hardly lived up to its own nameâs translation: âthe Blue One.â Zarqa also moved about ten percent of Jordanâs exportsâleather goods and clothing, chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
