Dead Reckoning. Don Pendleton

Or maybe they were just too wasted to care.

      “Hey, Grandpa,” one of them called out as they approached him. “Got a light?”

      The big Fed figured silence wouldn’t be the way to go this time. He turned to face them, saw them fanning out into a semicircle as he said, “No smoking in the mall.”

      “Ain’t what I asked you, is it?”

      Their elected spokesman was a burly specimen whose forehead bore the inked slogan “RAHOWA”: Racial Holy War.

      Brognola locked eyes with him as he answered, “No.”

      “So, do you got a light, or not?”

      The Justice man scanned the other grinning, slack-jawed faces, then said, “No.”

      “Is that all you can say, man? ‘No?’”

      The second speaker would have been a redhead if he’d let it grow a little. As it was, the stubble only made his scalp look sunburned, serving as a background for the swastika tattoo on top of his shaved pate.

      “I could say, ‘Move along,’” Brognola offered.

      That made two of them break out in laughter, while their leader and the almost-redhead eyed him with suspicion bleeding into fury. They were used to having people cringe before them, but it wasn’t working out that way, this time.

      “There’s sumpin’ wrong wid you,” the leader said, and tapped his temple with an index finger. “Sumpin’ wrong up here.”

      “Johns Hopkins, was it?” Brognola asked him. “Or maybe Georgetown? I’m surprised you found a med school that would let you in, with all that sloppy ink.”

      He was pushing the limit now, but punks like these had always ranked among his top pet peeves. Bullies were made for beating down, not coddling.

      “Man, you gotta have a death wish,” RAHOWA-face said. A thought surfaced inside his tiny mind. “Are you a Jew?”

      “Are you a cretin?” Brognola replied. The four of them were close, but he still reckoned he could reach the Glock 23 on his hip before one of them punched him or landed a kick to his groin with a spit-polished boot. Bad news if it came down to that, but the big Fed had too much on his mind to suffer morons gladly.

      “Man, you’re askin’ for it,” Red Fuzz said. “I oughta—”

      But he never finished, as a deep voice just behind him asked, “Is there a problem here?”

      * * *

      “I HAD IT COVERED,” Brognola said. “They weren’t going anywhere.”

      “I saw that,” Bolan granted. “But I thought about the paperwork, the wasted time.”

      Brognola mulled that over, frowning, then agreed. “Who needs it?”

      “Right.”

      They’d gone to Charley’s Grilled Subs, once the four skinheads had gotten a glimpse of Bolan’s graveyard eyes and figured out that two-on-four wasn’t such inviting odds. He had a deli sub in front of him, with fries, while Hal was working on a Philly chicken hero.

      “So, the mission,” Bolan prompted.

      “Right,” Brognola said again. “I guess you’ve heard about the consulate in Jordan?”

      “It’s been hard to miss.”

      “Behind the politics, what hasn’t been on CNN or Fox is the ID on those responsible.”

      “Already?” Bolan was impressed. “That’s quick work.”

      “They left tracks—and two dead at the scene. The consulate’s Marines got in a few licks.”

      “Semper fi,” Bolan replied. “Who were they?”

      “Members of a relatively new group,” Brognola replied, chewing around the words. “It’s called Allah Qadum in Arabic, or ‘God’s Hammer’ to the likes of us. It split off from the AQAP roughly eighteen months ago.”

      Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, that was, a splinter group itself, founded in January 2009 by defectors from the group that had masterminded 9/11 and assorted other horrors. One thing that predictably retarded global terrorism was the tendency of psychopaths to quarrel among themselves and storm out in a huff to form their own demented fragments of a parent group.

      “So, it was organized?” Bolan asked. “All I’ve heard has been the stuff about that yokel burning the Koran.”

      “They saw an opening,” Brognola answered, “thanks to Reverend Redneck. They’d have turned up somewhere, someday, but his sideshow gave them the jump start they needed. Nothing on par with the World Trade Centers, of course, but it put them on the map. They’ll be looking to build on it, make a name for themselves and claim a seat at the table.”

      “What table?”

      “Wherever the nuts meet and greet,” Brognola replied.

      “You said a couple of them didn’t make it out.”

      “Correct. Jordan’s General Security Directorate identified them from their rap sheets and drew up a list of known associates. CIA and Saudi intelligence put their two cents in, and some files turned up at Interpol. We now have sixteen names confirmed as God’s Hammer members still at large.”

      “All present at the consulate?” Bolan asked.

      “Hard to say, but probable. The whole bunch was in Jordan before the raid, and now they’ve scattered. Globally, we think.”

      “You think.”

      The big Fed took another bite of Philly chicken, chewed it, swallowed part of it and said, “You know how that goes. Whispers in the wind from NSA and anybody else who’s listening. As of two days ago, we know three members of the gang are in Paraguay.”

      “That’s some commute,” Bolan observed.

      “It’s relatively safe,” Brognola said. “We’ve had an extradition treaty with the government there since March 2001, but you know how that goes in South America. They talk tough on terrorism, and they crack down hard on anyone who threatens their control, but when it comes to foreign groups, they’ve got no statutes on the books. Their courts are as crooked as they come. We need chapter and verse to push an extradition through on narco-trafficking, much less something they view as foreign politics.”

      Bolan trimmed it to the bottom line. “They need retrieving, or elimination.”

      “Either one suits me, but here’s the problem. When I say we have a fix on three, that means the other thirteen goons are in the wind. They could be anywhere from Marrakesh to Malibu by now, and burrowed deep. We figure their three pals in Paraguay will have some means of reaching out, but if they all go down without a chance to talk...”

      Brognola left it hanging there.

      Bolan saw the problem now, and it was not a pretty one.

      “I’ll take it,” he told the big Fed. “But I need more intel.”

      Brognola slid a thumb drive in a paper sleeve across their little table. “That’s got everything we know, so far, but we can run it down right now.”

      Bolan reached out and made the thumb drive disappear. “Okay,” he said. “Before you start, though, if we’re going global, I may need some backup.”

      “Anyone in mind?” Brognola asked.

      “Just Jack.”

      Miami, Florida

      THE CELL PHONE’S buzzing caught Jack Grimaldi with a pint of Guinness at his lips, a plate of fish and chips in front of him, inside an Irish pub on South Miami Avenue. He recognized the number, took a sip and let it ring once more, then picked up.

      “Hey,