Read Online Clean Kill by Jack Coughlin, Donald A. Davis - Free Book Online

the Colt’s clip into the dead driver, just to make sure.
    Police guards were running toward them, yelling, their bright yellow-green warning vests almost glowing in the gloom.
    Sybelle held up the badge. “FBI!” she called. “We’re both FBI! Americans. Kyle, drop the gun!”
    Swanson tossed the empty weapon over his shoulder but scrambled into the cab and grabbed the hand of the dead driver to keep it away from a red-button pressure switch attached to a bulky vest of explosives around the waist. He fished out a knife and started hacking at wires. Sybelle yanked open the doors in the back. Cylinders of gas and boxes of TNT had been thrown about by the collision and lay scattered at cockeyed angles.
    One policeman grabbed his radio from his belt, ready to transmit a message but Sybelle screamed for him to stop, that using the radio might set off the weapon. He ran back up the ramp to find a landline telephone as she climbed into the back of the ambulance and began pulling out wires and detonators.
    For two full minutes, Kyle and Sybelle worked feverishly to disarm the makeshift suicide bomb. “Clear back here!” she finally called.
    “Clear up here,” he replied, and backed slowly out of the cab. They stood together, taking deep breaths and looking at the Saab, which had been smashed and torn by the bigger truck.
    “Delara is going to be pissed,” Kyle said.
    “Linda, too,” Sybelle answered.
    “Let’s get inside. This may not be over,” he said, and bent down to retrieve his pistol.
    11
    JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA
    GERMAN FINANCIER DIETER NESCH hung up his telephone to end the call from Moscow, shook his head slightly, then shrugged away the call. His client, Andrei Ivanov, was checking in still again. The young man’s normally confident voice betrayed a sense of nervousness. Nesch considered it to be just a normal reaction for anyone who backed such schemes, which were very expensive to fund and risky to pursue. Nesch had seen it before, when other men with other dreams suddenly found themselves in an unsteady boat with their fates in the hands of others. The tendency to micromanage the situation was overwhelming.
    His pale blue eyes moved to the calming scene beyond the window of his villa beside the Red Sea. Tall and skinny palm trees and broad manicured grounds spread toward the nearby beach, and small pleasure boats and sailing craft danced about on the water. Nesch was not nervous at all, and had counseled Ivanov to remain calm. Everything was going fine. The peace process had been utterly destroyed by the attack in Scotland, and that was only the lighting of the fuse. There was much more to come before Saudi Arabia plunged into the abyss.
    Dieter Nesch was a most unlikely terrorist, and actually did not view himself that way. It was just another form of business, because somebody had to specialize in handling the money in these situations. He decided to have a bite to eat, and summoned his chef to fix a small plate that would tide him over until dinner. Nesch, in his forties, was only about five foot six and was slightly overweight because of his love for good food and wine. He was always neat and always calm.
    That serene ability to remain unflappable usually worked to his advantage. Novices in the game, like the Russian president, usually bordered on panic. Part of his job was to keep them calm. Trust the plan. Trust the man. Nesch had hired the best of the best to handle this coup. They had worked together on numerous occasions in Europe. For now, he must stand back and allow this mad genius to work. From where Nesch stood looking out at the Red Sea, things seemed perfect. The storm was coming soon enough.
     
    INDONESIA
    The person whom Dieter had hired to run the show wore only a blue printed batik sarong that reached from his hips to his ankles as he stood barefoot on an immaculate floor of dark teak wood. He used the remote control to surf television news channels: American, Canadian, British,