Conflict Zone

by Don Pendleton

"Don't allow yourself to be distracted by a fantasy," Ajani said. "I need you now, with all your wits about you."

  "Yes, Agu."

  "I need you to go out and bring me Ekon Afolabi's head."

  * * *

  Huang Li Chan was running late. He'd lingered over paperwork and now urged his chauffeur to get him home with all dispatch.

  Before Tupele arrived at his condo.

  The doorman always phoned up when she came to visit Chan, intent on making himself look efficient, no matter how often Tupele came calling. Chan didn't mind the little game, but he knew well enough that if he wasn't home to take the doorman's call, Tupele would be left to wait downstairs or turned away entirely.

  That would put her in a sour mood, and would affect his own pleasure adversely.

  He'd met Tupele Bayewu at a fashion show, of all things. Chan knew less than nothing about women's clothes, but he had been invited to the function by a local businessman, and had been surprised to learn that they had fashion shows in Warri, where the public emphasis was all on oil and heavy industry. Tupele had been modeling — Chan still recalled the dress, a thing of gossamer and lace that someone might have painted on her body — and she had been bold enough to introduce herself after her catwalk turn, while models circulated through the audience.

  Chan had surprised himself by asking her to join him at his home for dinner, and she had agreed without pretense that she would have to check her social calendar. The next night was convenient for them both, but Chan, prepared for disappointment, had steeled himself for the possibility that she might stand him up.

  In fact, she had arrived ten minutes early, and had stayed all night. Since then, she'd come to visit him at least two nights per week, on average.

  Chan didn't delude himself with any fantasy that he had been transformed into a sex machine, nor did his mirror lie to him. Still, while he had an opportunity to revel in Tupele's firm young flesh, why not take full advantage of the situation while it lasted?

  They reached his building with minutes to spare. Chan dismissed his chauffeur with a reminder to pick him up promptly at eight o'clock in the morning, and passed the doorman with a bare acknowledgment of his greeting. The elevator seemed slower than usual, but Chan knew that had to be an illusion.

  Emerging on the sixth floor, Chan frowned at the empty hallway. Two security men watched his condo while he was at work, and their short list of duties included greeting him when he disembarked from the lift. Growing more irritated by the second as he moved along the hallway, digging in a pocket for his key, Chan turned his mind toward fitting punishments for dereliction of such simple tasks.

  He used the key and stepped into the foyer of the condominium, barking their names.

  "Guan! Tang! Where..."

  "They can't hear you," a grim voice said just behind him as an unmistakable gun barrel kissed the flesh behind his left ear. Chan imagined that the steel was warm.

  "This way," the intruder directed him, toward his own spacious living room. But it was a dying room now, with Guan Xi and Tang Mei sprawled in separate armchairs, their brains leaking out of their skulls.

  Chan felt his knees about to buckle, but the gunman's free hand caught his collar, held him upright, as the killer said, "You get to live this time. At least, a little while. But Mr. Eltsin has a message for you."

  Eltsin? Huang Li Chan's mind was racing. Who was Mr...

  Just as it came to him, the gunman released his collar and pressed something into Chan's left palm. It felt like folded paper as he clutched it.

  "If you want to live," the killer said, "don't turn around until you hear the door close. Read that when I'm gone, before you call for help."

  An age later, it seemed, Chan heard the front door to his condo open then close with a snap of its self-locking latch. Against all instincts, he did as he'd been told, raising the paper and unfolding it to read its two-line message.

  LEAVE NIGERIA ALIVE OR DEAD. THE CHOICE IS YOURS.

  * * *

  "Next stop," Bolan said. "I don't want our buddy Afolabi thinking that he's been forgotten."

  "This will hurt him. I've no doubt," Umaru answered from the Subaru's passenger seat, "but we cannot be sure how he'll react."

  "It doesn't matter," Bolan said. "He's bound to take a run at someone on our list. One's as good as another to me."

  "You specialize in chaos," Umaru said, his lips stuck somewhere between a frown and a smile.

  "It's a useful tool sometimes," Bolan replied. "Confused enemies mount ineffective defenses."

  They were approaching the target by then, a drab two-story building in Warri's northwest quarter that served as a barracks for Afolabi's off-duty gunmen. Sizing it up, Bolan guessed it would sleep a hundred men or so, but he thought MEND's warlord would have most of his able-bodied men on the street today, kicking ass and taking names.

  The wrong names, granted. But still...

  "I'll take the note," he said, giving it a glance as Umaru passed it over.

  It read: mend is finished, give up and go home.

  Which ought to have roughly the same effect, he thought, as throwing rocks at a hornet's nest. But when he finished in the drab gray two-story, Ekon Afolabi would have lost a few more hornets.

  "If any cops come by.....

  "I leave," Umaru said. "And come back when they're gone."

  "Strike one," Bolan replied. "If cops come by and stop, you don 'i come back. Leave your cell phone on for an hour, and if you don't hear from me, do what we talked about."

  "Lagos or Abuja," Umaru stated. "Possibly the border."

  "Right," Bolan said. "Don't forget it."

  As he stepped out of the stolen car, Umaru shifted to the driver's seat and left the engine running. It crossed Bolan's mind that he was wasting lots of gasoline this time around, leaving an ugly carbon footprint on the Earth, as conservationists might say.

  He shrugged it off.

  This was a clean-up mission, not some slacker's holiday. And when he finished here, the footprints that he left would all be etched in blood.

  Clutching the AUG against his hip, Bolan steeled himself for the killing to come and pushed off toward his target.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "What do I want from you?" Ekon Afolabi raged. "I want action. I want you to do your goddamned job for once, and solve this problem now, before we lose another man! Is that so much to ask?"

  Taiwo Babatunde stood in front of Afolabi with his broad shoulders hunched, cringing as if his old friend's words were lashes from a whip. He'd asked the question innocently, but it only served to anger Afolabi more, after the fresh report of soldiers gunned down by a white man.

  And the note infuriated Afolabi most of all.

  "You know who wrote this, don't you?" he demanded.

  "No, Ekon," Babatunde replied, although he guessed what Afolabi wanted him to say.

  "Well, I do. I can see the bastard smirking as he wrote it, thinking he could twist the knife and make me lose my grip!"

  He nearly had, Babatunde thought, but he bit his tongue to keep the words inside. There was no "right" thing to be said when Ekon flew into one of his rages. It had to simply be endured.

  The big man didn't stop to think that he could wrap one hand around Afolabi's throat and shake him as a dog might shake a rat. It would have been so easy, given the disparity in size between them, but the notion literally never crossed his mind. Somehow, the pattern of their interaction had been fixed in childhood, and Babatunde couldn't seem to escape it now.

  He found the strength to ask, "What should I do?"

  "Strike back!" Afolabi snapped. "Hit Ajani anywhere you can, and keep on hitting him until his blood runs in the street, with that of every bastard who belongs to him. Kill all of them, and make me proud!"

  Babatunde wasn't convinced that he could do it, or that such a thing was even possible, but he responded with an ardent, "Yes, Ekon! I will!"

  "Go now," Afolabi said, "and don't return until you have
good news."

  "One other thing.....

  "What now?"

  "About the caller and his hundred thousand dollars," Babatunde said. "I have the money."

  "You believe I ought to pay him?"

  Afolabi was about to launch into another tirade when his second in command replied, "No, Ekon."

  "But.....

  "I said I have the money, not that we should give it to him."

  "Then why even mention it?"

  "Because, when he calls back, we can arrange to meet him. Lay a trap. Whoever comes to claim the money, we surprise him. If we can take him alive, he will certainly tell us who's behind him."

  "I already know.....

  "And it will hurt Ajani to lose his point man. Perhaps it will be Ajani."

  Afolabi stared at him with narrowed eyes, letting the best part of a minute pass before he spoke again.

  "That's good," the warlord said. "You're thinking now, with your whole brain. Has someone called with the payoff instructions yet?"

  "No, but they will. And I'll be ready."

  For the first time in twenty-four hours, Ekon Afolabi seemed almost happy. He still paced the floor, but with a different kind of energy now, radiating anticipation rather than pure unadulterated fury.

  "Make me proud, Taiwo," he said. "Bring me the bastards who have caused this trouble. Bring them before me, and let me hear them scream!"

  * * *

  "A "white man," Lao Choy Teoh repeated, as if the concept was foreign to him.

  "That's what I said," Huang Li Chan replied.

  "Russian?"

  "If so, he's lost his accent. I'd have guessed American. Perhaps an Englishman who's spent much time away from home."

  "And he left this," Lao said, not asking, as he poked an index finger on the note that lay between them in the middle of Chan's ornate coffee table.

  They were seated on the long couch in Chan's living room. The corpses of Guan Xi and Tang Mei had been carried out, together with the matching chairs in which they died. The carpet had been scrubbed clean with some chemical that made Chan's nostrils twitch and sting.

  "I've told you that already," Chan reminded him. His patience with the younger man was swiftly drawing to an end.

  "From Eltsin."

  "As I said. As he said. 'Mr. Eltsin has a message for you.' There was no mistake on my part."

  "No, sir. I'm simply thinking that a Russian might have phrased it differently."

  "I didn't call you here to seek instruction in the Russian language," Chan said stiffly. "I don't claim that Eltsin wrote the words himself, or even spoke them to another. He undoubtedly has others to perform such tasks."

  As I do, Chan thought, then dismissed it.

  "Certainly," Lao answered. "But I wonder, sir, if this..... he waved a hand to indicate the note, the missing chairs and corpses of Chan's bodyguards .....has anything to do with Eltsin and the Russians, after all."

  "Who else?" Chan asked.

  Lao's shrug was casual enough to be infuriating.

  "I don't know, sir. I'm simply curious."

  "And while you whet your curiosity, assassins wait to kill me."

  "I have tripled your security," Lao said. "You are as safe as you can be in Warri, at the moment."

  "Meaning what?" Chan challenged his subordinate. "That I should leave? And say what to Beijing? That I'm afraid a Russian may creep into my bedroom?"

  "By no means, sir. I think we should retaliate," Lao said. "But against whom?"

  "You really don't believe the Russians are responsible?"

  "They may be," Lao replied "Of course, they'd all be thrilled if CNP abandoned Warri and Nigeria. But something troubles me about the white man's words. Would Eltsin give his name, then let you live?"

  "Why not?" Chan asked. "Humiliate me in my own home, hoping that I'll be frightened enough to leave. Letting me know who was behind it would be frosting on his cake."

  "Or, it could start a war that Eltsin might not win. We have more men in Warri and across the country than the Russians do," Lao observed. "A phone call can double their number in twenty-four hours."

  "You're thinking of the man who called me," Chan said, "offering to sell the names of those behind the recent violence."

  "I am," Lao said. "And have you heard from him again?"

  "I would have mentioned it," Chan said, frowning.

  "I know it's difficult, but can you possibly recall the killer's voice?"

  "I am not likely to forget it!"

  "And, perhaps, compare it to the voice from that telephone call?" Lao asked.

  "I'm trying," Chan replied. "They could be similar. Beyond that, I can't say."

  "Perhaps you'll have another chance to hear the phone voice soon," Lao said. "Meanwhile, I'll increase security at all of our facilities. If you have any other special orders, sir.?.."

  It would have been so easy, then, to speak the words. Send gunmen for Arkady Eltsin at his home, office, wherever they could find him. Somehow, at the final instant, he restrained himself.

  "Not yet," Chan said. "But hold a team in readiness in case I change my mind."

  "Yes, sir," Lao replied. "And now, I leave you to your rest."

  Chan almost laughed at that, but thought it would have made him sound hysterical, and bit his tongue instead.

  * * *

  The target was a gambling club on Warri's southeast side, owned by Idowu Yetunde. Another boss might have shut down in the face of the losses he'd suffered, but not Yetunde. He was open for business and ready to rake in the cash.

  Which made Bolan's job easier, at least in theory.

  "There will be more guards than usual," Umaru cautioned as they made their second drive-by at the club.

  "Most likely," Bolan said. "Of course, the smart move would've been to close."

  "He can't afford to lose face with his people," Umaru replied. "To lose and run away would be the end of him in Warri. Everyone would test him, then. He might as well dress up in women's clothes."

  "Sounds good to me," Bolan replied. "As long as he keeps setting targets up, I'll knock them down."

  He parked the Subaru a block downrange, stepped out and let Umaru scoot across to take the driver's seat. Bolan was wearing a light plastic raincoat to cover the Steyr AUG he carried under his right arm, slung muzzle-down. The Beretta 93-R was snug in his left armpit, while his pockets bulged with spare magazines and grenades.

  Just another night on the town for the Executioner.

  There were no guards on the street outside Yetunde's club, which seemed to have no name. Government-licensed casinos operated freely in Abuja and Lagos, but Yetunde's club appeared to be an off-the-radar kind of place, where cops were paid to look the other way and taxes somehow never made it to the revenue collectors.

  Bolan didn't care about all that. Legitimate or otherwise, the club was shutting down this night.

  The front door opened to his touch, and Bolan was inside, absorbed into a miniversion of the smoky world offered by Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, among other "gaming" spas. A doorman built like King Kong's little brother moved to intercept him, but a glimpse of Bolan's rifle sent him backpedaling into the main casino proper.

  That was where all hell broke loose.

  The doorman shouted to a couple of his buddies on the sidelines, both of whom drew stubby SMGs from underneath their baggy sport coats as they spotted Bolan. He was quicker, feeding each a 3-round burst that left them wallowing in blood, before he caught the doorman reaching for a hidden piece and made it three for three.

  And somewhere in the midst of that, the screaming started, players breaking for the nearest exit, some of them delayed by frantic efforts to sweep chips and cash from the felt-topped tables.

  Bolan fired a ceiling burst to keep them moving, then began a prowling circuit of the room, watching for other guards along the way. He met two just emerging from an office at the northwest corner, framed in the doorway with guns at half-mast when he stitched them both with
5.56 mm manglers and moved on.

  Most of the gambling crowd had found its way outside as Bolan doubled back toward the main street entrance, double-tapping one last shooter who had tried to hide in a tiny coat room. The last few vanished through a back door that was marked with warning signs but had no functioning alarm in place.

  All clear.

  The Executioner primed an incendiary grenade and pitched it toward the middle of the room, saw it bounce across a roulette table before it detonated, spewing white-hot coals and streamers across the casino. Overhead sprinklers came on at the first hint of fire, but they couldn't douse white phosphorus. Their output was steaming, turning the place to a sauna as Bolan pushed back through the street door and into what passed for fresh air in Warri.

  Umaru spotted him and cut the Subaru through a tight U-turn to meet Bolan at curbside. The Executioner let himself in on the passenger's side, riding shotgun.

  "Next stop," he told Umaru. "Let's do it."

  * * *

  "How many men can we gather on such short notice?" Agu Ajani asked.

  Daren Jumoke considered the question and finally said, "By sunrise, perhaps 150."

  "That's all?" Ajani seemed surprised and angry, all at once.

  Jumoke risked a shrug. "We've suffered losses," he reminded Ajani. "And since the trouble started, there have been desertions."

  "Bastard scum! I want their names put on a list for punishment."

  "I'm keeping track of who they are," Jumoke said. He didn't bother to explain that finding those who'd fled might be extremely difficult, particularly if the tribe's ranks suffered any more attrition from assaults by unknown enemies.

  "Name three," Ajani ordered, staring from across his desk, prepared to catch Jumoke in a lie and vent his wrath on someone close at hand.

  Jumoke drew a small notebook from his pocket, opened it and read the first three names he'd written there. "Jimoh Dangote. Ladi Ibrahim. Femi Dantata. Shall I go on, Agu?"

  "No. I would have sworn Ladi, at least, would be loyal to the end."

  Another shrug, more confident this time. Jumoke saw no need to mention that he'd filled four notebook pages with the names of those who'd run away, or that the list was growing by the hour.