Conflict Zone

by Don Pendleton

  Umaru smiled at that, but only briefly. "Where do you intend to meet them?" he inquired.

  "Someplace with combat stretch and cover," Bolan said. "Maybe a park nobody uses after dark. Someplace like that."

  "Why not the football stadium on Cemetery Road?" Umaru asked. "It's closed at night, of course, but breaking in is simple. In addition to the field and parking lots, the stadium seats twenty thousand spectators."

  "Sounds good," Bolan said "We should go and check it out. But first..."

  "More cages to be rattled," Umaru said.

  "I wouldn't want the opposition getting settled," Bolan told him. "Having any time to plan and organize."

  "Agreed. What's next?"

  "We've worked through roughly half your list," Bolan replied. "Let's try something a little different."

  "There is a bathhouse," Umaru said.

  "And?"

  "It's very private. Certain wealthy men and government officials go there to relax with friends. Young men, especially."

  "It's a commercial operation?" Bolan asked him.

  "Run by EkonAfolabi."

  "Worth a look, then, if you're up for it."

  Umaru gave him the address, adding, "It's not far from the stadium, in any case."

  "Two birds, one stone," Bolan replied.

  He had no beef with anyone because of sex, unless that someone was a predator who forced himself on others, and the animosity some soldiers felt toward gays hadn't infected Bolan. This night's business was about crippling his enemies, putting them out of business, whether they were peddling drugs or fantasies, providing games of chance or squeezing money out of local merchants for "protection." Bolan didn't fault their customers — the weak, addicted or embarrassed — but neither would he let his sympathy for them divert him from his duty.

  Which, this night, was shutting down the predators in Warri. If their operations opened up again tomorrow or the next day, with new faces in command, Bolan would neither be dismayed nor disappointed. He had come to terms with human nature long ago, and understood that every battle had a limited objective.

  Evil was immune to unconditional surrender.

  It would always bounce back, always find another angle of attack.

  And while he lasted, it would have to face the Executioner.

  * * *

  Captain Johnson Mashilia stood outside Plato's Health Club, breathing smoke while the flashing colored lights of emergency vehicles stained his face red, blue and yellow. Firefighters were preparing to pack up and leave.

  The arson investigator approached Mashilia, scribbling something on his clipboard as he said, "Just the two dead inside. Both with guns. They were shot."

  "You can tell that, in spite of the fire?" Mashilia inquired.

  "Neither one of them burned," said the other. His name eluded Mashilia, though they'd spoken at several crime scenes over the past year or so.

  "Not burned?"

  "The fire wasn't extensive, Captain. Someone used a hand grenade, or possibly a pipe bomb, but the place is mostly tile and concrete inside. Little to burn, except the drapes and furnishings."

  The dead men would be guards, then, the captain thought. What health club needed gunmen standing watch?

  "I've heard about this place," he told the arson officer.

  "Who hasn't, eh? Rich people and their boys, pretending they come here for a massage and exercise. Some exercise!"

  "There were no customers inside when your people arrived?" Mashilia asked.

  "No one but the dead," the arson officer replied. "You've seen a lot of that lately, from what I hear."

  "Too much," the captain agreed.

  "Or maybe just enough, eh?"

  "What?"

  "Sometimes," the fireman said, "I think that we can only stand so much, you know? Society, the world. We reach a point where someone says, 'Enough! No more!' And when the smoke clears, we can start all over, mucking up our lives again."

  "You'd call it fate, then? People being murdered in the streets?"

  "I'd say it would depend on who's been murdered Do we need drug dealers, gunmen, perverts, revolutionaries? I think we can spare some of them, for the greater good"

  "You'll put me out of business if that notion catches on," said the captain.

  "Not a bit," the other told him, smiling. "You'll always have bad men to chase. Maybe the next lot can't afford protection, and you'll track them down more easily."

  Those words struck home, but Mashilia saw no malice in the firefighter's expression, heard none in his voice. Even a blind man had to know the government in Warri was corrupt, as throughout all Nigeria. What fool believed that wealthy criminals were punished like common thieves and rapists?

  No one.

  Least of all a captain of the Delta Police Command.

  "I'll have a word with my superiors," Mashilia said. "More murders, for the good of the community." He smiled to show that he was joking.

  "It's a thought," the arson officer replied. "And now, I leave you to it. You should have a copy of my final report by sometime tomorrow."

  Mashilia nodded, already planning the questions he'd ask of the "health club's" owner. Assuming he could locate Ekon Afolabi at this hour, on a day when the warlord was hiding to save his own life.

  And why bother trying, when any serious investigation would lead him to powerful men with dark secrets they had to protect? How would he profit from confronting them, if he could even learn their names?

  At least the club didn't belong to Idowu Yetunde, so he wouldn't have to hear another whining tirade about how police failed to protect the gangster's livelihood.

  Small favors, the captain thought as he turned in the direction of his vehicle.

  Before the night was over, he supposed that there would be more murder scenes for him to visit. Some of them, perhaps, would be less sensitive. It would be a refreshing change if he could simply do his job, investigate a crime for once, without having to shield the guilty or concern himself about the reputation of the victims.

  His dashboard radio was squawking when he reached the car. Snagging the microphone, he raised it to his lips and asked, "What now?"

  * * *

  Fromhis rooftop perch, Bolan surveyed the drab facade of buildings on the far side of the street. Directly opposite, the Simba Social Club was not exactly jumping, but it had a steady stream of hard-eyed men parading in and out of its front door, flanked by two body-builder types whose muscles weren't the only things bulging beneath their loose shirts.

  After fifteen minutes on the roof, Bolan had seen no one but street soldiers enter or leave the Simba Social Club. Simba meant "lion" in Swahili, but the cats who frequented his latest target wouldn't qualify for singing roles in any animated Disney film.

  In fact, they worked for MEND and Ekon Afolabi.

  Bolan had no idea what they were doing in the club — receiving orders, stocking up on ammunition, simply killing time until their next deployment — and he didn't care. Each soldier he eliminated now was one less that he'd have to face at midnight, when his main targets lined up to kill him at the Warri football stadium.

  Assuming any of them kept the date.

  Bolan's Steyr AUG had a factory-standard grenade-launcher muzzle, but he hadn't brought any rifle grenades or blank cartridges with him when he parachuted into Delta State the previous day. Instead he had two white-phosphorus grenades remaining, and decided this would be an opportune occasion to use one of them.

  It was a relatively easy pitch, despite the nearly two-pound weight of the M-l 5 grenade. Forty feet, give or take, from Bolan's perch to the Simba Social Club's flat roof, tar over plywood waiting to sizzle and blaze when the incendiary blew. He didn't know if the club's occupants would hear his grenade strike the roof, but it hardly mattered. Long before anyone could climb up to check out the noise, its sixty-second burn at five thousand degrees would be well under way.

  And the rest, as someone said, would be history.

  Bolan ma
de the toss and ducked beneath the parapet of his own roof as the grenade went off, to spare his night vision. By the time he rose and shouldered his weapon, the M-l 5 fireball was well on its way to burning through the social club's roof and attic, to ignite the second floor.

  The panic started seconds later, smoke and gunmen pouring from the double doors in front and spreading out along the sidewalk. Some of the exiting soldiers held guns in plan view, while others kept hands tucked under their jackets or shirts, clutching weapons they chose to conceal.

  None of them realized that they were targets in a shooting gallery, until Bolan started dropping them, firing in semiauto mode to make each bullet count. He didn't hurry, worked no special pattern, and had put down half a dozen of the shooters before a couple of survivors spied his muzzle-flash and called a warning to their comrades.

  The return fire, spotty and inaccurate at first, changed Bolan's modus operandi. Flicking the Steyr's fire-selector switch to full-auto, he reared up once more and raked the Simba sidewalk gang with the remainder of his 30-round magazine, punching 5.56 mm tumbling projectiles through flesh and bone downrange.

  Bolan didn't count the dead and wounded, didn't press his luck by reloading and rattling off a second magazine at the scrambling survivors below. Umaru had the Kia waiting for him one block over, and it was time to go.

  Time to select another target from the dwindling hit list and move on.

  * * *

  One hundred thousand dollars didn't look like much when it was bundled up and packed into a nylon gym bag. Granted, it possessed a certain weight that lent reality to the idea of parting with substantial funds, but in the scheme of things, it was a trivial amount for any thriving petroleum company.

  Uroil had a yearly operating income of nearly eleven billion dollars per year, reporting a net income of seven billion. A hundred grand was petty cash. It wouldn't be missed.

  Besides, Arkady Eltsin thought, the bastards won't collect it, anyway.

  Still, carrying the money made him think of losing it, and that put a knot in his stomach despite Valentin Sidorov's assurances that nothing could go wrong.

  Since yesterday, it seemed that nothing had gone right. Eltsin himself had nearly died at the hands of a lunatic sniper, whose poor aim alone had spared him from death.

  Eltsin pushed the gym bag across his desk, closer to Sidorov, frowning as he spoke. "You're sure the Chinese will make good on their end of the bargain?"

  "I'm as sure as I can be until the moment," Sidorov replied. "They have nothing to gain by backing out on us, and much to lose."

  "A risk they may be willing to accept," Eltsin replied. "You know how cheap life is in the People's Republic. They test a nuclear warhead and call it birth control."

  Sidorov smiled politely at the ancient joke, then said, "They're human. I trust them to act in their own best interest. Beyond that, naturally, there are no guarantees."

  "And if they try to rob you?"

  "I'm taking twelve armed men. At the first hint of any double-cross, we'll turn Lao's men into chop suey."

  Eltsin's frown deepened as he replied, "I still can't shake the feeling that Beijing is behind all this trouble, somehow. We know they support MEND's guerrilla war against the government- If they install a new regime in Abuja, it won't be long until Uroil is expelled and our facilities nationalized"

  "Which is why we support the Ijaw," Sidorov reminded him, "and why I'll be keeping close watch on the bastards tonight."

  "If you suppose that it would help for me to be there.....

  "No, no," Sidorov replied almost too hastily. "You're not accustomed to these operations, sir. Why place yourself at risk, unnecessarily?"

  "Well.....

  Eltsin made an effort to conceal his great relief, but doubted that Sidorov was deceived. The man knew him too well.

  Another reason why Eltsin wouldn't mourn if Sidorov suffered an accident.

  "Any word yet on the meeting place?" he asked.

  "No, sir. They're leaving it as late as possible, I'd guess, to keep us from putting our people in place."

  "And it's working," Eltsin said.

  "No problem. Between my team and the Chinese, Ajani's men and Afolabi's, we'll have fifty guns at the hand-off, wherever it is."

  "And if that's not enough?" Eltsin persisted.

  "So far, we've only seen one of two shooters at any engagement in Warri. One white and one black, when they show up together. If our adversaries had an army, we'd have seen more soldiers on the firing line, I promise you."

  "I want this money back," Eltsin instructed.

  "Understood, sir. Every penny of it."

  "And no tricks with the Chinese. The last thing that we need is more bloodshed."

  "It ends tonight, sir," Sidorov responded. "Rest assured of that."

  * * *

  "Should you be calling soon?" Umaru asked as they were cruising toward their next target, a numbers bank owned by Idowu Yetunde.

  Bolan checked his watch and saw that it was 10:47 p.m.

  "Let them sweat," he replied. "I'd prefer them to scramble while we get set up for the show. Twenty minutes is plenty to drive across town, if they're motivated."

  "What if they get tired of waiting and give up?"

  "We'll know at midnight, when nobody shows."

  The Warri numbers racket was a spin-off from Nigeria's National Sports Lottery, with daily winning numbers selected from the final scores of various public sporting events. Whereas the official lottery was created to fund "sports and good causes," however, the outlawed private version was carried out strictly for personal profit. Passage of new laws against black-market lotteries in early 2009, predictably, had done nothing to curb illegal betting.

  Experience with battling the Mafia and other gangsters had taught Bolan that the worst pain they could suffer was a hard blow to the pocketbook. Street soldiers were a dime a dozen, especially in Third World slums, but money was the lifeblood of organized crime.

  The numbers bank was operated from a small law office on Warri's south side, sandwiched between a barbershop and a boutique that specialized in formal clothes. The flanking shops were closed when Bolan got there, but the bank was running strong behind locked doors.

  Not that a lock would stop the Executioner.

  Bolan breezed in on a burst of 5.56 mm rounds that sent the back door's dead bolt flying like a piece of shrapnel, ready as he entered for the two heavyweights who came charging to meet him with pistols in hand. Neither was quick enough to beat his Steyr AUG, absorbing three rounds each before they dropped like sacks of dirty laundry to the blood-slick floor.

  He found two more men in the counting room, one armed with a shotgun, the other with a calculator. Bolan went in low and firing, cut the shooter's legs from under him, and finished him as he was falling, buckshot wasted on the ceiling overhead.

  The accountant thought twice about trying to run or to fight back, then decided against it. At Bolan's direction, he pulled a large satchel from under his desk and stuffed it with cash from the desktop until he could barely close it. That still left several heaps of currency on deck, and Bolan didn't plan on leaving it behind.

  He palmed his final Willie Peter canister and held it up for the accountant to inspect. "Get out of here and find a telephone," he ordered. "Call the fire department. Tell them it's white phosphorus. Got that?"

  The bean counter nodded, but Bolan still made him repeat it, then gave him a running head start. When he was alone in the bank, Bolan primed the grenade, set it down in the midst of the leftover cash, and then double-timed back to the street.

  He could have found a church somewhere and dropped the money in its poor box, he supposed, but Bolan had the sense that he was running out of time. Another strike or two, and he would need to call his pigeons, make sure they knew where to meet him with their money and their soldiers.

  If his luck held, all of them would keep the date and make a party of it. And if any of them let him down, he'd h
ave to find them later for a little chat.

  Assuming he was still alive.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Agu Ajani gulped a second shot of whiskey, waiting for its heat to spread from throat and stomach through his limbs, to reach his brain. He thought he would allow himself one more, then stop.

  This night of all nights, he couldn't afford to cloud his mind with alcohol. Not when his very life and everything he owned depended on his clarity of thought and the ability to make decisions under fire.

  So far, Ajani realized, he'd not been doing well. He had lost count of his murdered soldiers. Any effort to calculate financial losses was hopeless. Ajani could say that he'd suffered a great, perhaps crippling loss, but beyond that...

  No! He caught himself. I will not be defeated!

  He could battle back, with effort, to regain his former stature and surpass it. With a bit of luck and careful planning, he might even manage to eliminate his leading rival in the process, but he knew that it would be no easy task.

  And if he failed, besides his life, he stood to lose another hundred thousand dollars.

  Ajani had considered stuffing his satchel with odd bits of paper — or porn magazines, for a joke — but he guessed that the others would insist on confirming that everyone present had come with cash. Afolabi, for one, would be quick to suspect and accuse him of trickery, hoping to shame him in front of the others.

  The others.

  Ajani was counting on Valentin Sidorov for help against Afolabi at the final showdown. He couldn't predict what the Chinese might do, but he knew that they supported MEND with guns and money. If Sidorov had plans to dispose of them, along with Afolabi and his men, Ajani would cooperate.

  But first, the meeting had to be arranged.

  Why weren't the damned blackmailers calling?

  Twice within the past half hour, Ajani had summoned his personal guard, demanding to know if there'd been any phone calls. Each time, the man answered respectfully, insisting that Ajani would be told the moment any message was received. But there was something in his eyes, a kind of smirk, perhaps, that made Ajani want to rip them from his screaming face.