Conflict Zone

by Don Pendleton

  "All men have a breaking point," he said.

  "I'll break them, when I get my hands on them again," Ajani muttered.

  "In the meantime, first things first, eh?"

  "Yes! How soon can we mount the attack on Afolabi's home?"

  "Agu.....

  "Don't tell me why we shouldn't do it! All I want to hear from you is the deadline."

  "Perhaps midnight," Jumoke said.

  "That's fitting. And the Chinese?"

  "As I've said.....

  "No arguments!" Ajani roared at him, slamming his fists onto the desktop with sufficient force to make his telephone and pistol jump.

  Startled, Jumoke swallowed hard and chose his next words carefully.

  "There's been an incident with one of the Chinese, apparently. Huang Li Chan, the man in charge. We don't have details yet, but something happened at his condominium. He and the rest are heavily guarded."

  "So, kill the guards," Ajani said.

  Daren Jumoke knew that if he tried to calm Ajani, reason with him, he might never leave the room alive. In self-defense, he nodded and replied, "Midnight it is."

  "Go, then, and make the final preparations. I will join you when the time arrives."

  Jumoke left the office thinking that the first thing he should do was pack two bags. One filled with money and the other with enough clothes for the road.

  * * *

  Uroil's field office in Warri had taken on the air of an armed camp. All leaves, time off and normal hours had been canceled for executives and personnel involved in plant security. Men armed with automatic weapons circulated through the hallways, and patrols on Uroil's property outside the city had been doubled. That force was supplemented by small units from MOPOL, the Nigerian Mobile Police, flying squads nicknamed Kill-and-Go by some observers in the 1990s.

  Arkady Eltsin didn't care what they were called — or who they killed, for that matter — as long as they protected him, his job and Uroil's property, in that order of priority. In fact, the more of Uroil's enemies who lost their lives, the better he would like it.

  But they had to find the bastards first.

  And so far, that had proved impossible.

  Hence, Eltsin's order that Valentin Sidorov should meet him in the basement, where there were no windows to accommodate snipers. Eltsin's first brush with sudden death would also be the last for many years, if he had anything to say about it. He would rather live belowground, tunnel into sewer pipes and travel thus around the city than expose himself to one more instant of the living hell he'd suffered when his office window shattered in a hail of automatic rifle fire.

  "What progress, then?" he asked Sidorov in the glare of harsh fluorescent lights.

  "This compound is secure," Sidorov said. "As are the pumping fields and the refinery. That doesn't mean they can't be attacked, of course. But if they are, we should prevail."

  "Should, or will?" Eltsin demanded.

  "Sir, I can't predict the future. Every man and weapon we possess is presently assigned and will remain on duty until we have resolution of this problem."

  "I have been in touch with headquarters," Eltsin observed.

  Sidorov nodded, as if he expected nothing less.

  "They are disturbed and disappointed, as you may imagine."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I expect that if our situation hasn't been resolved by, say, this time tomorrow, you and I will be in search of new positions."

  "Twenty-four hours?"

  "Who can say?" Eltsin replied. "'Tomorrow,' I was told, which could be one minute past midnight, our time."

  "It's to be expected," Sidorov told him. "The nature of bureaucracy."

  "And yet, I would prefer not to begin job-hunting at my time of life," Eltsin observed, allowing just the right amount of acid to flavor his tone.

  "Understood, sir."

  "So when I ask about progress," Eltsin continued, "I hope to hear something more than security estimates. Progress, to me, means identifying and locating the sons of bitches who tried to kill me in my office upstairs! Understood?"

  "Perfectly," Sidorov said. "Unfortunately, wishing for a thing doesn't make it appear."

  "And yet, as luck would have it, while I hold this post I can make certain things — and people — disappear. I have my deadline, Valentin, and you have yours. Midnight. If there are no significant results by then, you may expect to be replaced."

  For just a heartbeat, Eltsin thought that Sidorov might smile. It would have been the last straw, but he caught himself in time.

  "I'd best be going, then," he said.

  "Yes," Eltsin replied. "I'd say that's wise."

  * * *

  "Another drug plant," Bolan noted as he parked the stolen Subaru a long block from their target on the north side of Warri.

  "Khat only, here," Umaru clarified. "The bales of leaves come in. Yetunde's people chop and bag it for his retail dealers."

  The target was a duplex, heavy curtains drawn across its windows, no light showing from inside. Which didn't mean the cutting plant was closed, by any means. Bolan would have to wait to see about that when he made his way inside.

  There was no foot traffic to speak of on the street as Bolan crossed, leaving Umaru with the car. A couple crossing farther down the block spared him a glance, then picked up speed, continuing along their way.

  Bolan considered the front door, then passed along a strip of worn-out grass between the duplex and its neighbor on the west, ducking below a pair of curtained windows as he passed them, just in case. He saw nothing suggesting cameras in place, or any other kinds of sensors on the property, and made it to the northwest corner without incident.

  Two gunmen occupied the back stoop, smoking cigarettes that had a funny smell about them. Bolan hoped their final high was worth it as he leveled the Beretta 93-R from a range of twenty feet and dropped them both with silent head shots.

  The dead men had been armed with folding-stock Kalashnikovs. Leathering the Beretta, Bolan removed their magazines, flung them into the night, then stood in front of the back door they had guarded carelessly in the last moments of their lives and unslung the Steyr.

  Knock, knock, he thought, and kicked it in without trying the knob. A heartbeat later he was standing in what once had been a kitchen, now converted to a basic packaging setup, with heaps and cases of plastic bags standing to one side, bundles of khat leaves on the other.

  Two middle-aged women were stuffing the bags when he entered. They gaped at him, blinking, hands raised, until Bolan stepped clear of the doorway and waggled the AUG's muzzle to get them moving. Another moment and he had the kitchen to himself.

  "What's all this noise?" a harsh male voice demanded, moving toward him from beyond the kitchen doorway opposite where Bolan stood. He waited with the Steyr leveled, ready when a husky gunman filled the doorway, stopping short to blink at him.

  "That would be you, dying," Bolan replied, and stitched the gunner with a 3-round burst that punched him backward, out of sight.

  More voices, then, and feet running in his direction. Bolan primed a frag grenade and pitched it through the doorway, crouched beside tile-topped kitchen counter as it blew, then followed in a rush before the echoes finished rattling through the duplex, raining plaster from the walls and ceiling.

  Shock waves reached out to his enemies in hiding, giving them another taste of Hell on Earth, before their final meeting with the Executioner.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Captain Johnson Mashilia surveyed the smoking ruins of a former duplex — or, as he understood it now, a house devoted to the packaging of khat for dealers on the street. The mix of smells — charred wood and roasted flesh — told him that someone had died in the fire.

  The fire inspector found him, read the question on Mashilia's face and said, "Four dead inside. They burned, but I can't tell you how they died. You'll need an autopsy for that."

  More damned delays. There was no medical examiner in Warri, and Mashilia frankly d
idn't trust the Delta Police Command's surgeon with much beyond first aid. He was certainly no pathologist, and any report he prepared would be highly suspect.

  "It's Lagos, then," he said disgustedly.

  "And if you put a rush on it, you might hear something back within a month," the fire inspector answered as he lit a thin brown cigarette.

  "Doesn't it bother you to smoke around all this?" Mashilia asked.

  "Why?" the fire inspector countered. "I'm already breathing smoke and human ash all day. What difference can it make?"

  He had a point, at least where the futility of trying to accomplish anything in Warri was concerned. It had been years since Captain Mashilia qualified by any standard as an honest cop, but there were times he would have liked to do his duty simply and efficiently.

  Like now.

  He should at least be able to determine how four people had been killed. Then he could pocket any bribes that were forthcoming to conceal the truth about their deaths, content to realize that someone knew the facts, even if they couldn't be publicized, the guilty never brought to justice.

  And what was justice, anyway? There'd been a time when Mashilia thought he knew the answer to that question, but a life of compromise and lies had stolen even that from him.

  He knew the burned-out duplex had belonged to Idowu Yetunde. Mashilia would be forced to hear another tirade, field more questions that he couldn't answer, promise a solution he couldn't deliver. Even thinking of it made his stomach start to cramp.

  But there was something he could do. In a crisis where no adequate response was feasible, the wise police commander made a point of seeming to be busy. There were orders to be given, witnesses to be interrogated, squads of men on standby, waiting to race here and there around the city in pursuit of leads.

  "Some kind of gang war, you suppose?" the fire inspector asked.

  Now it was Mashilia's turn to shrug. "Who knows? I'll have to trace the deed, for whatever that's worth, or wait to find out who was killed."

  "Good luck," the fire inspector told him, drawing deeply on his rancid cigarette. "I still have three more scenes to visit. One's a market. Seven people trapped inside."

  "Why do we do it?" Mashilia asked.

  "Have you forgotten? For the fame and fortune."

  Laughing to himself, the fire inspector walked off, trailing smoke.

  And he was right, at least in part. Captain Mashilia had banked a small fortune from bribes in the past thirteen years, but fame was the last thing he wanted. Any undue publicity would mark him as an officer for sale, and while that hardly made him special in Nigeria, exposure might compel his equally corrupt superiors that it was time for a cosmetic change.

  The recent spate of violence threatened Mashilia's peace of mind, and while he might not have the power to stop it, he could certainly appear to try.

  His cell phone chirped and the captain scowled. No matter who was calling him, it had to be bad news.

  "Hello?"

  "Where are you?" Idowu Yetunde's too-familiar voice demanded.

  "Looking at the ashes of your khat house," Mashilia said.

  "And do you know who is responsible?"

  The captain snorted. "I can't even tell you who's been killed."

  "No one important," Yetunde said. "I need answers, and I need them now. Come see me."

  "When I can," the captain said.

  "Don't keep me waiting, Mashilia. That would be a serious mistake."

  The line went dead.

  I wonder, Captain Mashilia asked himself, if I could get away with murder.

  And the answer came back silently. Why not?

  * * *

  "Police," Bolan said as he drove the Subaru Impreza past the target he had chosen for their next drop-in.

  "I see them," Umaru replied, riding shotgun.

  It would've been hard not to see them, with a marked Land Rover parked outside the bar and brothel owned by Ekon Afolabi, patronized on any normal day by troops from MEND. Bolan counted five uniforms, four of them standing by with automatic rifles while the fifth harangued a clutch of people whom he took to be employees.

  "So, they're catching on," Bolan observed.

  "Or Afolabi missed his bribes this week," Umaru said.

  "Not likely," Bolan said. "Let's try the next place on your list."

  "Another Afolabi spot?" Umaru asked.

  "Whatever's handy," Bolan said.

  "In that case," his navigator replied, "there's a small apartment building nearby, where MEND folk sleep."

  "I doubt if anybody's home," Bolan replied, "but we can have a look. What else?"

  "Another brothel. This one is Ajani's. It's... distasteful. Children."

  "Now you're talking."

  "Yes," Umaru said. "I was, but.....

  "Sorry," Bolan interrupted him. "Figure of speech."

  "I see."

  "The address?"

  Umaru directed Bolan to a street of smallish shops, with an aging hotel at one end of the block. It wasn't much to look at: square, three stories tall, flat-roofed, with nothing in the way of decoration but a sign in front that marked it as the Hotel Hebe.

  It took Bolan the best part of a minute to recall his Greek mythology from high school.

  Hebe. The goddess of youth.

  "Somebody has a sense of humor," he observed, un-smiling.

  "This," Umaru answered, "is an evil place."

  "It's going out of business," Bolan answered as he circled once around the block to find a parking place.

  There were no guards in evidence, no traffic in or out of Ajani's slime pit. Bolan supposed it might be closed for the duration, but that didn't mean he couldn't bum it down just for the hell of it.

  "What will you do if there are children here?" Umaru asked.

  Bolan considered that. He didn't have the rolling stock to transport any minor hostages, nor could he think of anyplace that would accept them.

  "Call the cops, I guess," he said at last. "But not until I settle with their keepers."

  "I'd like to help you," Umaru said. "This is... personal for me."

  It meant leaving the Subaru unguarded, but it wouldn't be the first time. "Come ahead, then," he replied. "Be careful with your fire through walls, though. Just in case."

  Umaru grabbed his Daewoo rifle from the floorboards, tucked it underneath his arm and followed Bolan at a jog across the street. With each step closer to their goal, he felt a mounting sense of urgency. If there were children suffering inside this house of horrors...

  Bolan heard the pop and whoosh of an RPG round somewhere above them, glancing up in time to see the rocket-propelled grenade streak from an open third-floor window of the Hotel Hebe. They were too close for the shooter to hit them, but another heartbeat told Bolan that he was aiming for their car.

  And Bolan couldn't fault his marksmanship.

  The Subaru erupted into flames and sprayed the street with smoking shrapnel, sinking on melted tires into a lake of blazing gasoline. While windows rattled up and down the street, the front door of the Hotel Hebe opened, spewing gunmen from its lobby to the sidewalk, firing as they came.

  * * *

  Umaru reacted on instinct, a heartbeat behind his comrade in arms. He didn't know or care how long the trap had been in place, or whether more teams had been placed throughout the city, waiting for a chance to kill him and the tall American.

  To hesitate under the gun meant death.

  Cooper had dropped one of Ajani's gunmen by the time Umaru raised his stolen Daewoo rifle and sprayed the hotel's facade with 5.56 mm NATO rounds. Two of the opposition fell — one stitched across the chest, the other clutching at a wounded arm — before the rest returned fire, driving Umaru under cover behind a parked car.

  He saw Cooper priming a grenade and nodded when the tall man said, "Be ready when I make the pitch." A second later, Cooper lobbed the lethal egg over the low roof of their bullet-punctured shelter, ducking back and down before it blew.

  The bl
ast was trailed by cries of pain, but Umaru had seen Ajani's gunmen fanning out before Cooper had pitched the grenade. He guessed that some had managed to escape its full effect, so he came up with the Daewoo seeking targets, aping Cooper's movements with his Steyr AUG.

  Three men were standing as he rose, and Cooper nailed the first two with a pair of 3-round bursts at something close to point-blank range. Umaru caught the third turning to bring the white man under fire, and slammed a short burst through his rib cage, shredding heart and lungs to leave a dead man tottering, eyes blank, before he fell.

  "Come on!" Bolan snapped, and they ran westward along the empty street, past cars that might have had ignition keys in place, but would have cost them precious time. Umaru didn't know if there were more gunmen inside prepared to chase them, but the rocketeer upstairs was still in play, firing another RPG just as they reached the nearest intersection.

  This time, his missile struck the curb and ricocheted beneath an ancient pickup before it blew, the shock wave nearly dropping Umaru to all fours. He scrambled through it, deafened for a moment by the blast, but found his footing and ran after Cooper, north along the side street going — where?

  They needed wheels, as Cooper would say, before another squad of gunmen overtook them or police arrived with sirens screaming to infest the neighborhood. If they were forced to stop and search for hidden keys or to hot-wire some old junker, Umaru believed they might be finished, here and now.

  Just then, a BMW MINI Cooper turned onto the street ahead of them, its driver slowing as he saw the smoke and flames ahead. Cooper didn't hesitate, Umaru saw, lunging into the street and leveling his rifle at the driver's startled face, pulling the door open to drag him from behind the wheel.

  Umaru ran around the car and hurled himself into the passenger's seat as Cooper floored the clutch to keep from stalling the engine, shifted down and gave the little car some gas. He found a lever underneath the driver's seat and shoved it back to full extension, driving with the Steyr AUG across his lap, its muzzle angled through the open driver's window.

  "Here they come!" he said as half a dozen gunmen raced around the corner, spotted the car and raised their weapons in the semblance of a firing squad "Hang on!"