Flight 741

by Don Pendleton

  The French Israeli edged around McCarter, checked the minibar for snacks, found none and closed it with his steel prosthetic hand.

  "I'm hungry," he declared.

  His partner thought about it for a moment. "La Toscana?"

  "Now you're talking."

  Glancing back across the street in the direction of the Post Hotel, McCarter frowned.

  "I guess we've got the time," he said.

  "They won't be going anywhere," Katz seconded. "They're here to do a job, and that's tomorrow. We've got all night."

  They double-checked the L-shaped room and locked it up, McCarter taking time to pluck a hair from Katz's head, ignoring the Israeli's growl and wedging it between the door and jamb, above the lock.

  "James Bond?"

  "I taught the bugger everything he knows."

  Downstairs, they joined the press of Sunday tourists jostling along the sidewalks, passing jewelry shops, confectioners, a bakery and boutiques, the sporting shops with windows full of climbing gear and switchblade knives.

  The bank.

  Closed on Sunday, it would be reopening next morning, the employees unaware that they were targeted for terror.

  In the Post Hotel, a tiny group of men and women were preparing for a rather sizable withdrawal from the bank of Mittenwald, unhindered by the fact that none of them were currently depositors. Their banking methods were unorthodox and often bloody. In the past twelve months they had already "liberated" cash from seven German banks — and they had murdered fifteen people in the process.

  Of the five who had been publicly identified, three men and one woman had a record of connections with assorted Baader-Meinhof cells in Munich, Frankfurt, Diisseldorf. The rest, another three or four at most, would likely show the same affiliations once they had been caged or stretched out on a slab to be identified. They called themselves the Wolf Pack, but Washington and Bonn were laying money on a strong, continuing connection with the Baader-Meinhof Gang and, through it, the KGB.

  They needed stopping now, before they spilled more blood and wasted any other lives. Their own were forfeit, and the Phoenix warriors were prepared to take them any way at all, with personal survival as the top priority.

  It could get hectic, Katz knew, and as they passed the bank he wished the other members of the team had been available to help them wrap it up. But they were busy staking out a syndicate of Corsicans, whose high-grade heroin had started turning up in children's veins around New York, Chicago and points west. The other Phoenix warriors' lives were on the line and they were in for the duration. The Wolf Pack was reserved for Katzenelenbogen and McCarter.

  They deliberately had shunned involvement with the local law, preferring anonymity and the powerful advantage of surprise, so they had no reason to suspect a leak in Mittenwald. A single misplaced word, they knew, could blow the operation now, and they had mutually agreed to pass the risk.

  No side streets interrupted Obermarkt in central Mittenwald, but La Toscana was roughly two blocks from their lodgings at the Alpenrose. They cut into a cobbled alleyway and caught the narrow, dimly lighted stairs, following their noses and a waft of heavenly aromas to the second floor.

  A smiling waiter showed them to their window seats. Outside, the daily drizzle had started, but it failed to scatter hearty tourists.

  Inside the eatery, McCarter ordered pizza, and the stocky Israeli opted for an order of giant prawns that La Toscana grilled to sizzling perfection. Strangely absent from the guidebooks, it was easily the finest restaurant in Mittenwald — perhaps in southern Germany — and Katz was almost sorry that their tour of duty would be winding down tomorrow.

  Almost.

  But he was not a tourist in Mittenwald. He hadn't been dispatched to browse through shops or hike the sixty miles of mountain paths that ringed the village. He was on a lethal mission, in and out, with savage violence almost guaranteed. The moment he forgot his business there, began to think like any other traveler, he was as good as dead.

  The waiter brought their meal, and Katz was halfway through his prawns when movement in the doorway caught his eye. The early-evening crowd was light so far, and his attention was immediately captured by the couple who had just arrived.

  He recognized them both.

  The woman had bleached her hair, but Katz would have known her anywhere. Her name was Eva Zelner, and since dropping out of college in her junior year, she had become a driving force within the Wolf Pack. Katz hadn't seen her yet in Mittenwald, but he had known she would be there before the action broke... and so she was.

  It was the lady's slim companion, though, who almost made the French Israeli drop his fork. Katz did a double-take, then realized he was staring, bent to choose another prawn. He nudged McCarter's foot beneath the table, nodding casually in the direction of the new arrivals as they were escorted to their seats.

  McCarter's startled look told Katz all he had to know. He hadn't been mistaken. But what precisely did it mean?

  While they had never met, the woman's escort was an old, familiar enemy. His grainy likeness, always slightly out of focus, had been taunting Katz from assorted television screens and posters now for years. He had believed that they would never meet — but now, no more than twenty feet away, he was confronted by the Raven.

  It was mad, of course — the world's most wanted terrorist, about to take a quiet meal at La Toscana. Based upon the latest rumors he should probably have been in Libya or Algeria, recuperating from the show at Beirut airport. Prior to his surprise appearance on Flight 741, he had been variously placed in Moscow or East Germany, in Cuba, Nicaragua and a quiet grave outside San Salvador. Katz had preferred the latter, but the recent hijack had removed all doubts about the Raven's durability.

  And here he was.

  Dark hair and eyes of flint, the face that could have passed for Hispanic, Indian or even Palestinian — but there was no mistake. Katz would have known him anywhere.

  "This changes things," McCarter told him softly, smiling for the benefit of any casual observers, keeping busy with his pizza as he spoke.

  "It changes nothing," Katz replied. "We have a job to do."

  "If he's involved, there must be more at stake. He wouldn't risk another outing just for cash. He's not had time to spend a fraction of the hijack ransom."

  Katz thought about it, knew the Englishman was right, but he was adamant.

  "We go ahead. What's one gun, more or less?"

  "He doesn't travel light," the former SAS commando quietly reminded him. "Let's just suppose he's traveling with friends."

  "I'd love to meet them," Katz replied.

  McCarter thought about it briefly, and he grinned.

  "Me too."

  * * *

  The shops of Mittenwald are closed by 6:00 p.m., with only scattered theaters and restaurants remaining to entice the local residents and tourists. Sundown drives the visitors away and brings the locals out, their young collecting at the ice cream parlor or the grill a short block farther on, some revving motorbikes to get attention from the girls, while others try to deal from silent strength, adopting cocky poses at the curb. Once paired and fed, they may adjourn to find a cinema or beer hall, to while away the evening hours.

  Sequestered at the Alpenrose, the Phoenix warriors waited while darkness slowly swept the streets. Where milling hundreds had congested Obermarkt by daylight, scarcely half a dozen souls were visible by ten o'clock. Across the narrow street, the Post Hotel was brightly lit inside, the dining room and tavern serving to capacity.

  Katz and McCarter figured they could afford to wait another hour. It would provide their targets time to finish dining, scouting out the streets, preparing for tomorrow. When they had regrouped inside the suite that Katz had laid out thirty marks to finally identify, they would be sitting ducks.

  Except that now there was a vulture among them.

  A Raven.

  His presence bothered Katz, but tight surveillance had revealed that he was traveling alone. B
ut from the way he had looked at Eva Zelner as they dined in La Toscana, sitting close beside her at the table, reaching down to stroke her thigh when he believed that they were unobserved, the terrorist would not be bedding down alone tonight.

  But Katz was not concerned about the bastard's love life. If everything ran true, they would be tucking in the Raven personally — and permanently.

  Their meager luggage was already packed and stowed inside the rented BMW, primed and ready in the Alpenrose garage. The single flight bag left would be sufficient for a pair of Ingram MAC-10 submachine guns, extra magazines and half a dozen frag grenades the Phoenix warriors hoped they wouldn't have to use inside the Post Hotel.

  But now the Raven's presence had upset the whole equation. They were dealing with an unknown quantity, and still prohibited from making drastic alterations to the plan. Each added hostile gun increased the odds against success, but there was no alternative. They would be forced to go ahead on schedule.

  Katz killed some time double-checking the Ingrams, while his companion watched the street and Post Hotel, alert to any sign that members of the Wolf Pack might be leaving prematurely. Beneath them on the street, pedestrians had all but disappeared.

  A raucous dinner party exited the Post Hotel, dispersing to their cars with laughter and catcalls. McCarter chuckled, shook his head, eyes fastened on the doorway opposite until they were gone.

  "It's time," he said. Katz noticed that he hadn't checked his watch.

  "All right."

  He stowed the Ingrams, making certain they were cocked and loaded, with the safeties on. There was no room inside the bag for silencers. Once they had let their adversaries see the guns, there would be no more time for stealth in any case.

  Downstairs, the two men passed the night clerk, and she gave them her workaday smile, which vanished as they crossed the street.

  The lobby of the Post Hotel was sparsely furnished, basic in its architecture, with the ornate decorations saved for restaurant and tavern walls. Another night clerk eyed them briefly, seemed about to ask if he could help, and then thought better of it when they brushed on past his cubbyhole. They continued past the tavern and the restaurant toward the stairs.

  The target suite was three flights up and to the rear. The corridors were kept in semidarkness, ceiling fixtures weak and far apart as if the ancient wiring could not easily accommodate more wattage. That was fine with Katz; it would reduce the possibility of accidental witnesses describing them to the authorities when constables arrived. Assuming, of course, that he and McCarter were not stretched out among the other casualties.

  He shrugged the morbid thought away and halted in the middle of the corridor, still twenty feet from target. There was light beneath the door, soft music audible from just inside.

  Katz knelt to open up the zipper bag, dispensing hardware, ammunition, grenades. McCarter filled his pockets, slipped the safety off his Ingram, and the French Israeli followed suit. They left the flight bag and stalked across the final twenty feet in perfect step, and Katzenelenbogen hit the door latch with a vicious kick that snapped the mechanism, slammed the door right back against the inside wall.

  Their entry was explosive, and it took the members of the Wolf Pack by surprise. Katz saw young faces weathered by a life in hiding, by the magnitude of crimes committed, others still in store. There were two women and seven men collected in a ring around the coffee table, on which a service station map of Mittenwald had been spread out to help them plot their getaway.

  Eva Zelner was the first to move, recoiling back along the sofa, stretching for a pistol that protruded from her handbag, slung across a straight-backed chair. Katz tracked her with his Ingram, squeezing off, and watched the clinging tank top ripple, spouting crimson geysers as she died.

  The suite erupted into chaos, members of the Wolf Pack scrambling for weapons or exits, reaching neither as the Phoenix warriors swept them with a lethal cross fire. Katz had time to register that none of them appeared to be the Raven, then his combat instincts took control and he was fighting for his life.

  Two members of the Pack, both male, were breaking for the bedroom, one already digging out a pistol from his waistband when McCarter caught them with a knee-high burst. The former SAS commando was reloading, crouched behind an armchair, when the second woman found her weapon and the range. Two bullets burrowed into the stuffing of the chair mere inches from McCarter's face, before the big Israeli stitched her up and down, forever silencing the anger in her eyes.

  His own clip empty now, Katz discarded it, already snapping in a fresh one when the last surviving Wolf Pack member tried for freedom. He surged up from behind the couch and dodged toward the bedroom sanctuary, sprinting for his life. Twin Ingrams hammered out the final punctuation to his run, and he was wallowing along the floor in blood and fluid before he knew that he was dead.

  Katz did a rapid scan of leaking bodies around the room, and verified that none of them had been the Raven. There were two alternatives: the bastard was in hiding somewhere in the suite, or they had missed him in the intervening hours before their strike.

  A sound of furtive movement came from the bedroom, followed by the crash of breaking glass. The warriors moved instinctively, hesitating only slightly at the darkened doorway, finally going through it high and low, their weapons searching for another target in the murk.

  Too late.

  Katz reached the window, swept the drapes away and craned outside, but in vain. The bedroom window, unused to opening upon the fire escape, had resisted the Raven, and he had finally smashed it out — perhaps had dived directly through the pane. A flitting shadow in the alleyway below dropped from the wrought-iron fire escape and was gone before Katz had a chance to aim and fire.

  "We missed him."

  "Bloody hell."

  And there was no more time to count the loss. Not here, not now. Already frightened voices could be heard along the hallway from the buildings opposite, responding to the gunfire in the night. Already someone would be dialing the police.

  No time at all.

  But Katz would think about it later. And he would wonder what in hell the Raven had to do with killer kids still wet behind the ears. He might still have a chance to answer that one.

  It meant that much.

  For the moment, it meant everything.

  Chapter Fourteen

  "But are you sure?"

  "Of course, I'm sure." Carl Lyons shifted in his seat, his blue eyes never leaving Hal Brognola's face. "You think I made this up?"

  "Hell no," the man from Justice replied, "but you can see what kind of spot it puts us in."

  "We're not in any spot at all," the former LAPD sergeant snapped. He jabbed a finger down the conference table, toward McCarter and the burly French Israeli. "I dropped my man; theirs got away. If there was a mistake, they made it."

  David McCarter faced him squarely, spoke a single syllable.

  "Balls."

  Beside him, Yakov Katzenelenbogen pushed a sheet of paper toward the center of the table. Lyons recognized it instantly, a likeness generated by an artist and Ident-i-Kit.

  Brognola took the sketch and placed it next to one prepared by Lyons earlier. The two were not identical but they were close enough. The differences could be written off to memory — a few more age lines around the eyes; a bit more hair; a slightly wider nose — but both could certainly depict one man.

  The Raven.

  He passed the sketches on to Lyons, but he waved them off. "I've seen it, and it doesn't prove a thing."

  McCarter's voice was stiff. "We weren't hallucinating, Carl. We both observed the subject at close range. There's no mistake."

  "A look-alike. Coincidence."

  "That's bloody nonsense."

  "I brought evidence, goddammit! All you've got is some guy sitting in a restaurant."

  Brognola cleared his throat. "Unfortunately, Carl, the prints don't prove a thing. In fact, we couldn't lift a print."

  "Say what
? I had those fingers bagged and tagged, right down the line. Don't tell me that they couldn't lift the prints."

  "No prints to lift," Brognola answered softly. "They were clean."

  "What do you mean, clean? What kind of crap is this?"

  "The prints had been surgically removed."

  "So what? Go down another layer and try the corium, for Christ's sake. What's the matter with your people in the lab? You can't just wipe out fingerprints."

  "Whoever did this took the time to do it right. Deep grafting, reconstructive surgery... the whole nine yards."

  "Okay, so there's your evidence! Who else is gonna take that kind of time and trouble to erase his mark? It has to be the Raven."

  "No. In fact, it isn't."

  "What?"

  "We have a jacket on the Raven two feet thick. You know that, Carl. Wherever he's been sighted in the past five years, however tenuous. Whenever he gets mentioned in connection with an incident, no matter if we know he wasn't there. We file it all, and most of it is bullshit, granted — but we know a lot about the man himself. His childhood, education, psychiatric profiles ... name it. We could write a test about the bastard that his mother couldn't pass."

  "So what's the point?"

  "When he was six years old — six years and seven months to be precise — the Raven had an accident. He broke the first and second fingers of his right hand... here."

  Brognola raised his own right hand and used the index finger of his left to indicate a point between the first and second joints.

  "Well, shit." And Lyons knew the punch line now. "The fingers that I clipped..."

  "Were never broken," Hal agreed, dejection in his voice. "Whoever you took out..."

  "Was not the Raven," Lyons growled. "Goddammit!"

  "A look-alike," McCarter goaded him. "Coincidence, old son."

  "I wouldn't go that far," Brognola said.

  The Able Team warrior shot a glance across the table. Katz and McCarter looked at each other, frowning, then turned their eyes back toward the man from Wonderland.