by Gar Wilson
"What a hole," Encizo groused, his words garbled by the joltings of the corrugated roadbed. "And I was hoping to find a classy nightclub somewhere, dance the night away with the girl of my dreams.''
The Land Rover lurched viciously as it made a corner, turned into Munzoga's main square. The buildings were taller, laid out on grander scale. Hundreds of people sat in chairs, benches, around outside coffeehouse tables, enjoying the oncoming coolness. More people walked around the edges of the vast square.
Vehicles were parked helter-skelter along what passed for curbside in the plaza, most of them vintage items, dating back fifteen, twenty years. The Land Rover's appearance caused a stir, and necks craned everywhere for better view of the outsiders.
Among those citizens with an instinctive feel for trouble, eyes instantly narrowed, expressions became guarded. These night loungers had seen mercenaries before; if these men were not hired guns, then they were the next best thing to it.
Katz and Salibogo climbed from the LR and began a slow walk around the square. Seeing a moderately friendly and curious face, they walked over, paused at the coffee-house table. A long rigmarole of Arabic amenities between Salibogo and the edgy townsmen ensued.
Finally Salibogo asked if the gentlemen would be kind enough to direct them to Sharia Ali Unqulah?
There was an immediate shadowing in the eyes, an unmistakable pause. It was apparent that the address was well-known. And who did they want to find on that street?
Salibogo courteously informed them that it was none of their business. The citizens shrugged, smiled, began a long, detailed explanation of how many corners, how many stock corrals, how many date palms they must pass before they found the street.
Munzoga was well-known as a hotbed of political intrigue. The Libyans, the Eritreans, the Chaddites, the Ansar all had listening posts here. These latest outlanders were but a few in an endless parade of insurgents and counterinsurgents; state coups were arranged on a daily basis.
Thus, it was not unexpected that the Phoenix Force feelers would draw covert attention from adjoining tables; indeed, there were several passersby who matter-of-factly sidled up, ears on strings. And as the elaborate instructions peeled off yard upon yard, one of these eavesdroppers, unnoticed by Katz or Salibogo, furtively eased away from his table, faded into the night.
Finally, after a dozen more salaams and Ba'allahs, they parted company with their new friends and hurried back to the Land Rover.
Finding Sharia Ali Unqulah consumed another forty-five minutes. In the darkness and the mouse-tunnel streets, they got lost twice, and again they had to talk with drowsy-eyed locals who reluctantly answered from behind locked doors. And if Phoenix had been counting on any kind of clandestine appointment — forget it.
They might as well have put an ad in the paper.
At long last, at 2200 hours, before a high-walled structure, they saw a barely discernible Ibrahim scrawled on the plank gate. "Aywa?" the soft voice called from behind the palisade. "Who is there? How may I serve you?"
"Abdel Ibrahim?" Katzenelenbogen responded.
"Yes?"
"El-khabr esh-shum yusal bi-l-agal," Katz said, his mouth close to the gate. Bad news arrives with speed — the curious password provided by Stony Man.
Thirty seconds later, a series of chains and crossbars falling behind the door, they were swiftly ushered inside. All except Gary Manning. "You watch the car," Yakov ordered. "We won't be long."
Nemtala hung back, intending to stay with Manning.
"No," Katz intervened. "You come with us, Nemtala. This may get sticky. We're going to need all the help we can get with this guy."
Still she was torn, her eyes darting between her lover and her accepted commanding officer. She wheeled and followed the rest of them inside the gate, which was quickly rebarred by a small, lithe man of about fifty.
"You have come at last," he said in mishmash of English and Arabic. "I have give you up for lost."
He led them through a small courtyard. Everything was immaculate. Even the sand around the plantings and surrounding the single date palm had been recently swept and graded.
Inside, the mud walls were enameled in a dark blue motif, the furnishings expensive and modern. After the darkness in the streets, the electric lamps were glaring. Obviously Ibrahim was a well-paid counteragent.
Katzenelenbogen declined Ibrahim's offer of coffee and something to eat. Business came first.
"Yes, of course," Ibrahim nodded. "The information." All noted he was careful not to ask for or to mention their names or those of his employer — the mark of a truly professional intelligence man. "I have everything you could possibly want on our black friend."
"He has been this way?"
"Definitely. I have dates, times, coordinates. He is less than thirty-six hours away." Ibrahim smiled proudly. "I even have network in Munzoga pinpointed. Should you care to close that shop down before you leave."
For the next twenty minutes the conversation was quick, detailed; it stalled only when the language barrier became formidable. As it turned out the Phoenix headman's decision to keep Nemtala close at hand paid off; many of Ibrahim's technical references sailed clean over Salibogo's head.
"A missile strike?" Katz sucked in a harsh, disbelieving gasp. "Are you sure? How did you find that out?"
"Yes, I am sure," Ibrahim said. "I have ways of finding out these things. Your people in America pay for best- They get best."
Katzenelenbogen's head spun wildly. A missile? Dispatched from anywhere within a twenty- to two-hundred-mile radius of the High Dam? How in hell were they supposed to find that in time? Scrap Brognola's radio silence. They would have to make contact somehow, call in extra firepower. They were damned well out of their depth with a land mission.
The briefing went on. The spy provided charts, pinpointed the last known location of the Black Cobras, speculated on their route of march. He gave fleeting fill on which groups might possibly be involved in the complicated plot.
"This local outfit?" Katz drilled in, "the Eritreans? The ELF? Their hideout in Munzoga... Can you finger them?"
Again the man puffed up. Modesty was certainly not his strongest suit. "But of course, effendi. Nothing on paper, understand, but I am reasonably positive who the main contact is. A man named..."
Abdel Ibrahim's last bit of puffery proved his undoing. And that of Phoenix Force. For at that moment they all froze, shooting frantic looks at the high, domed ceiling. A rapid scuttling of footsteps carried from overhead.
As the counteragent darted right, attempted to slap off the main light switch, the crash of splintering glass was heard. Then a triple-tongued burst of machinepistol fire exploded in the close confines of the room. Abdel went down in a grunting heap, the front of his white gakabieh suddenly saturated with blood.
His eyes went wide with disbelief, rolled for a last time. Dedicated professional to the end, he fought to spit out the contact's name to Katz. But the words were drowned in a gush of blood that suddenly issued from his mouth.
Encizo hit the light switch and flung himself to the floor in one fluid movement. The room was instantly plunged into blackness; leather hissed in every corner of the room. Katz's Beretta 92-S, McCarter's Browning Hi-Power 9mm both blasted up at the overhead bay, taking out the overconfident assassin.
When they heard him tumble down the dome, bounce on the roof, they were up, spreading out. Since all exits had been pinpointed the moment they had entered Ibrahim's home, Rafael kicked out a smallish window encased in a foot-thick arch in the wall facing the courtyard. McCarter broke for the rear of the house, shouldered open the door there. Katz undid the lock on the front door and used a chair to push it open. All dropped back, waiting for the chatter of automatic weapons. When only Yakov found a buyer — the characteristic sound of an AK-47 splitting the night — Rafael and McCarter bailed out, their automatics punching death. They hit the ground, swept a practiced recon, caught one ELF drone flat-footed as he sprinted straight ba
ck at them.
Rafael's Walther PPK spit .380 cal, ventilating the man's groin, while McCarter's nine mills slugged his chest with the impact of a linebacker's tackle. The bedouin bungler went down.
There was no time for a finish-off round. Their attention was caught by the thump and slap of sandaled feet along the courtyard's west wall. There, clinging to ropes thrown over the parapet, two men were walking up the sheer face like trained monkeys.
The Browning and Walther spun out a single round, each Phoenix sharpshooter tagging his man low in the spine, the upward trajectory of the slug churning a huge, gut-mangling hole through each terrorist goon.
The terrorists suddenly lost all interest in mountain climbing. They plummeted fifteen feet to the sand.
Rafael and McCarter crashed forward, eager for a desperate, last-minute game of twenty questions. But they were distracted. At the far end of the garden, through the main gate, which now hung wide open, they saw a fleeting shadow as Katz went in pursuit of yet another hardman. Instantly they were up and after him.
Their backup efforts were wasted. The Beretta poised, Katz zeroed on the waddling yards of white robe, squeezed off three fast rounds of 9mm.
The hit man raised his arms, spun almost completely around before he slammed facedown in the street.
He was still breathing when they reached him, and there was fleeting hope that they could still wring crucial info from him. Again they were cheated. The ELF patriot had drawn a long-bladed dagger, and now, as they rolled him over, he was defiantly burrowing it into his paunchy gut.
It was then, for the first time — all perspective lost in the midst of the chaotic, time-stopping action — that they realized...
Where in hell was Manning?
Blood drained from their faces, the crushing sense of fear akin to taking a sudden haymaker in the belly.
"Oh, Jesus," McCarter gasped. "Gary. Them filthy bastards got Gary."
They stood in stunned disbelief, eyes darting to Ibrahim's gate, to the Land Rover, to the narrow, twisting street beyond.
But no Gary Manning.
"They must have blindsided him," Rafael murmured, his face a study in rage, frustration and dejection.
Cursing, McCarter blasted back into the courtyard, approached the two men at the base of the wall. One of them had to be alive. Both were dead.
Nemtala and Salibogo, unarmed, burst from the house. "Gary," Nemtala yelled, instinctively appraising the situation. She ran to the Land Rover, stared wildly inside.
Her despair was short-lived. Instinct told her that panic would not bring her lover back. A flitting dark shadow, she fell back into the courtyard. When she reappeared she had a Kalashnikov assault rifle over her shoulder, a cartridge belt in place. Another AK-47 hung in her free hand. This weapon she handed to her father. No tears. Only murder, cold and deadly, shone in her eyes.
"Bitching bloody hell," McCarter groaned, truly beside himself. "What do we do now?" He stared into the black, endless maze of streets. "Where do we begin to look in a dung heap like this?"
12
It was then, sound carrying incredible distances in the arid desert air, that they heard the faint whine of a vehicle off toward the west. The vehicle gradually wound through the gears and picked up speed.
"That's gotta be them," McCarter said, digging into his pocket for the Land Rover keys. "Who else'd be out driving at this time of night?" He plunged into the LR, kicked the engine to life. "Move it, you guys."
"Hang on," Encizo muttered, sprinting back to the courtyard. "I'm gonna even me some odds."
Quickly he returned, a third AK-47 in tow. And as he piled into the back, he handed a sheaf of papers to Katz. "Just an afterthought," he said. "These might come in handy."
Katz nodded gratefully. In his distress over Manning, he had forgotten the contact's papers.
The Land Rover bucked forward, McCarter howling in frustrated fury, curses rolling off his tongue in steady flow.
But they might as well have parked the vehicle.
Blind alley turned into blind alley. Time and time again, relying on instinct, following the drone of the far-off vehicle, they came up against a mocking wall. Then it was bucking, roaring reverse, a flurry of wheel-spinnings to get the overland vehicle about-faced. And all the while precious minutes were getting away from them, the terrorist vehicle's noise becoming more faint by the moment.
Ten minutes later they found themselves back at Abdel Ibrahim's house.
"What now?" Encizo asked, putting voice to his panic. "This is crazy. We have no idea which way to turn in this maze. They could be holding Gary fifty yards away from where we're sitting. Or five miles. Cristo, if Abrahim had hung in there thirty seconds longer..."
For long, teeth-grinding moments they sat in silent funk. Katz, knowing he was responsible for decisions at such moments, was driven to the brink of brain-exploding despair.
It was Nemtala who suggested the only reasonable course of action. "We go back into city square," she said. "We ask people... anyone... if they know of Eritrean sympathizers." Her eyes flared desperately. "What else do we have?"
Katz paused a half minute more, then nodded. "She's right," he said. "God knows, we've got to start somewhere. We can't just sit here and wring our hands. Go, McCarter."
The crowds in Munzoga's city plaza had thinned out considerably. Encizo and Nemtala took one area, Salibogo and McCarter another. Katzenelenbogen, his skill with the Cairo dialect adequate, did a solo.
The sight of the slung AK-47s, the hard urgency in the eyes of the roving band of interrogators worked wonders on the natives. Even if the nighthawks knew nothing, they were quick to say as much.
It only took five or six minutes of their man-on-the-street questioning to convince themselves they were not going to get anywhere. Those who had heard rumor of the existence of insurgent groups in the city were vague. Perhaps there were such, but they could not attach a name or address to the alleged rabble-rousers.
Again frustration built.
As Phoenix Force regrouped in a disgruntled huddle to discuss their collective failure, a break materialized.
At first they did not notice the disfigured, dirty-faced urchin as he closed in on them, his twisted-stick crutch tapping on the brick cobbles.
He tugged on the sleeve of her baggy field jacket. "You're looking for the man who sells information?" he said in Arabic. "The man who watched you before, ran off to tell the others?"
Nemtala knelt before the boy, took his hands in hers. From the top, she instructed, her voice impressing him with the urgency of the situation. "Please, Dembo," she said. "Tell us that again."
The beggar did as he was told. And as the story unfolded, their heads spun. Light at the end of the tunnel, a chance to save Manning.
Dembo had been watching as Salibogo and the one-armed man had made inquiries before. A man known as Ashwar Fawzi had been observed skulking in the background while they talked. He had seen Fawzi, apparently a free-lance informer, steal into the night. He had not given the incident a second thought. Fawzi was always wheeling and dealing. It was no business of his. But when the group of strangers had appeared in the city plaza, ail looking desperately agitated, a tie-in immediately registered in the streetwise kid's brain.
"You know where this Fawzi is?" Nemtala asked. "Can you lead us to him?"
Dembo nodded slowly. "Yes. You give me ride in wagon?"
A moment later, all reloaded into the Land Rover, Nemtala and the lad sitting next to McCarter in front, they were careering out of the square, boring into a dark, winding tunnel on its opposite side. Dembo chattered with delight, forgetting to provide directions through the snake-winding streets from time to time.
Five minutes later Demo cautioned, "We are coming near where Ashwar lives."
"Pull over, McCarter," Katz snapped. "We'll go the rest of the way on foot. No point in giving the swine advance warning."
This time they left the Land Rover unguarded and melted into the gloom, the
ir feet making a soft shush-shush in the sand. When Dembo's missing leg slowed them, Katz said, "McCarter, can you carry him?"
McCarter swept the fragile bundle up. "Righto, Katz," he said. "Phew. The little bugger needs a bath in the worst way."
"Here," the boy whispered perhaps a thousand feet farther on. "There's where he lives."
"Let's hope that the bastard has called it a day," Katz said, sliding his Beretta from its holster.
From the humble appearance of the adobe structure, it was obvious Fawzi's sell-out career was not flourishing, it was small, squat, fronting directly on the street. There were no walls of any sort to impede their assault.
McCarter put Dembo down, motioned him out of range of any gunfire. "Cover me," he said, advancing boldly on the decrepit plank door. "I'll blow the fucker down."
He rapped softly on the door. "Ashwar?" he called in a hushed, confidential tone.
Shortly there was stir behind the door. "Go away," the drowsy voice said.
With a vengeful snarl McCarter slammed his massive shoulders into the flimsy barrier. It fell inward with a splintery crash. McCarter charged forward, his Browning Hi-Power at ready.
Fawzi never knew what hit him. One moment he was alone in his bed, congratulating himself on the easy money the night's industry had provided, the next he was cowering on the floor, a crew of menacing giants standing over him. What was happening here?
Then, as the woman, the old man, the crippled boy eased themselves into the dark cubicle...
He knew. A chilling spasm of terror racked his body.
And yet — once a con, always a con. He attempted to bluff things out. "Hey," he said in pidgin English, "no need for rough stuff. We can talk this over, can't we? We make a deal, huh, buddy? What you say?"
Someone lighted a candle across the room. When Fawzi saw the barely suppressed rage in the intruders' eyes, he knew he was in big trouble. He made a feeble effort to slide farther away from his visitors, but a huge foot dropped over his wrist, pinned him to the floor. He whimpered, went limp.