Conflict Zone

by Don Pendleton

  He wouldn't ask again, not even if the midnight deadline passed without a call. Instead he'd have another double shot of whiskey and attempt, against all odds, to make his racing mind relax.

  Taiwo Babatunde had picked eleven of Ajani's best surviving soldiers and would lead them personally to the meeting, if it happened. With Ajani present and armed, that gave him thirteen guns to guard his money bag, the number that Sidorov had negotiated with his master and their Chinese opposition. Assuming that Ekon Afolabi agreed and played by the rules for once in his life, that made fifty-two guns against the unknown extortionists all of them hoped to destroy.

  And once that job had been accomplished, it would all come down to speed and the advantage of surprise. If he and Sidorov could catch Afolabi and the Chinese with their guard down, basking in appreciation of a job well done, a few more seconds of gunfire could decapitate MEND and China National Petroleum in one stroke.

  Neither would be so easily eliminated from Delta or from Nigeria, of course. Ajani realized that. But decimation of their leadership would wound both organizations, and might force Beijing to reconsider its future in West Africa. As for MEND, with any luck at all, the power vacuum caused by Afolabi's death might start a fratricidal free-for-all, gutting the group and tearing it apart.

  Ajani smiled, enjoying that vision while it lasted, then snapped back to the present.

  Scowling at his watch, he muttered to himself, "Goddamn it! Make the call!"

  * * *

  "Nicehouse," Bolan said. "Or, it would have been."

  The spacious lot on Warri's affluent northeast side had sprouted the skeleton of a potential mansion, beams thrusting skyward while subflooring spread out between them, upright studs sketching the layout of interior walls. The work was fairly well advanced, with part of the roofing completed.

  "I understand Yetunde had a hand in drawing up the plans," Umaru said.

  "That makes it even worse," Bolan replied. "Seeing the place go up in smoke."

  At Bolan's feet, a security guard lay manacled with his own handcuffs, gagged with his own clip-on necktie. Dirt stained his uniform, but that was hardly relevant, since he'd be out of work the following day.

  They had skipped down to the bottom of Umaru's list, to take a breather, checking out the gangster's dream house. Bolan hadn't seen the floor plans, but he could imagine it completed, a three-story monument to Idowu Yetunde's ruthless greed.

  "Tough luck," he said, and picked up one of the five-gallon gasoline cans they'd procured en route to the construction site. Tossing the lid away, he spread its contents in a trail along what would have been the mansion's west wall, pausing here and there to splash fuel on the larger upright beams.

  Behind him, Umaru was working the far side, laying down his own incendiary trail. It felt like petty vandalism, in comparison to all they'd been through since he launched the Warri blitz, but scorched earth meant exactly that to Bolan. When he chose a target for elimination, no aspect of the enemy's life was secure except wife and children.

  Idowu Yetunde had neither.

  And what was a half-finished house, beside Yetunde's numbers bank, his gambling dens, the boiler room where lackeys fleeced suckers around the world?

  Nothing, perhaps.

  But losing it would hurt him in a way that nothing else so far had done.

  This wound was personal.

  It had been simple, overpowering the single guard on duty at the building site. Umaru had approached him, asking for directions to a neighbor's house, and Bolan had surprised the watchman while he told Umaru that he didn't know the other local residents. They'd left him cuffed and gagged beside a free-standing portable toilet, safely beyond the range of any outward-falling walls.

  Ten gallons was enough to get the fire started. They didn't need to saturate the upper floors or to cover the visible construction materials. Days of exposure to the harsh West African sun had made the house-to-be a tinderbox.

  When they were done, Bolan and Umaru left their empty gas cans standing in the foyer of Yetunde's partially built home. Bolan struck a match and lit the trail of gasoline he'd left behind on his brisk circuit of the ground floor, watching as the flame caught and spread. Within a minute they were baking in the heat of dreams consumed by fire, and it was time to go.

  "Should we alert the fire department?" Umaru asked as the Kia pulled away.

  "I'm guessing one of the neighbors will do it," Bolan replied, "if the city can spare anybody tonight."

  He'd been keeping them busy, but someone would answer the call, sooner or later. For Yetunde, it was already too late to salvage his vision. The palace he'd planned for himself had already gone up in smoke.

  And Bolan's break was over.

  Soon he would have calls to make, a meeting to arrange. But in the meantime, there were more cages to rattle, more soldiers to cull from the herd. He was shaving the odds, bit by bit, and looking forward to the last round of winner-take-all.

  * * *

  Ibowu Yetunde stared at the suitcase lying open on the bed in his safehouse, half-filled with clothing he'd packed for the road. He had begun packing in desperation, after hearing that his home-to-be had been incinerated, but he stopped now, feeling anger and a grim resolve replace the early wave of panic and depression.

  He had been taking hits all night, suffering one loss after another, while he searched in vain for targets against whom he could retaliate. So far, that effort — like his money and the enterprises he'd built up from scratch in Warri — had been wasted.

  But he wasn't beaten yet.

  It was a fact that Captain Mashilia had no useful information for him, yet. True, also, that the watchman who'd survived the torching of Yetunde's home could offer only vague descriptions of the same black-and-white team glimpsed at the scenes of his earlier losses.

  Yetunde crossed the small bedroom and seized the open suitcase, bellowing with fury as he picked it up and flung it at the nearest wall. His clothing scattered on the floor in rumpled piles, but he ignored it. Fashion sense meant nothing at the moment, with survival riding on the line.

  At last, Yetunde realized his grave mistake. While naturally focusing upon his own losses, he had ignored the fact that others had been under fire around him, suffering attacks from the same men who persecuted him. In hindsight, it was clear he should have learned something from that and offered to join forces with the competitors who normally ignored him in pursuit of politics.

  They shared a common enemy, and now — if it wasn't too late — Yetunde hoped they could collaborate against the common enemy.

  And if it was too late? If they rebuffed him?

  Well, he'd be no worse off than he was already.

  Yetunde removed his cell phone and small black leather address book from his pockets, refreshing his memory of private phone numbers for Agu Ajani and Ekon Afolabi. He had never dialed those numbers, but kept them on file, updated as they changed by spies within each warlord's inner circle.

  This night, with their forces dwindling and his contacts out of touch, perhaps dead or dying, Yetunde hoped that the numbers were both still in service.

  He dialed Ajani first and listened to a distant ringing.

  "Hello?"

  The voice that filled Yetunde's ear was apprehensive, hesitant.

  "Agu Ajani?" he inquired.

  "Is this about the meeting, then?"

  Yetunde took a chance and said, "It is."

  "One moment."

  Thirty seconds later a new voice came on the line. This time, Yetunde recognized it.

  "Where are we to meet?" Ajani asked.

  "That's up to you," Yetunde said.

  There was a brief silence, followed by, "Who is this?"

  Yetunde identified himself, half expecting Ajani to sever the link. Plainly, he was expecting someone else. But then, the Ijaw leader asked, "What do you want?"

  "I hope," Yetunde said, "that we can help each other. If you're willing to discuss it.....

 
"So they've been in touch with you, as well?" Ajani asked.

  "I'm not sure.....

  "For the ransom! Are you going to the meeting, too?"

  Frowning, Yetunde said, "I haven't been invited yet. But from the sound of it, I wouldn't want to miss it."

  "But.....

  "If we could start from the beginning..."

  "There's no time! Just forty minutes left!"

  "Speak quickly, then, and let me help you if I can."

  * * *

  Huang Li Chan needed a drink — or, perhaps, several. He denied himself the calm induced by alcohol, however, focusing upon his duty as the midnight hour neared.

  He had received no further call from the extortionist who had demanded money in return for the names of those responsible for Chan's humiliating loss of face. A part of him devoutly hoped midnight would pass without another contact, but his common sense rebelled at leaving the grim situation unresolved.

  At the same time, Chan questioned Lao Choy Teoh's plan — concocted with the Russians and a pair of native gangsters — to eliminate the terrorists with swift, decisive action. Chan had no qualms about eliminating those who had offended him so grievously, though he wouldn't be present at their execution, but he wondered if the ambush would, in fact, solve anything.

  On one hand, it would silence the demand for cash and might punish the men who had invaded Chan's home, killed his guards and embarrassed him there. Conversely, if the blackmailers weren't the killers, slaying them would simply guarantee that Chan's true enemies remained unknown, unpunished.

  Until they struck again.

  And if the man who'd held a pistol to his head while Chan faced bloody corpses in his living room wasn't eliminated, Chan had no doubt whatsoever that the bastard would return. The gunman's message on that score was crystal-clear.

  That message, so the killer claimed, had come directly from Arkady Eltsin, Uroil's chief of operations in Nigeria. Lao, for his part, had dismissed the name-dropping as classic misdirection, and it did seem odd to Chan that his would-be assassin should name Eltsin, then waltz off and leave Chan still alive.

  Peculiar, but impossible?

  Chan was confused enough to hedge his bets. Without informing Lao, he had picked four strong, young men from plant security and drafted them as private bodyguards for the duration. All four were former members of the People's Liberation Army Special Operations Forces, and two had served in the elite antiterrorist Snow Wolf Commando Unit before they were discharged. All had killed men in the past, and expressed no regrets.

  Would they be good enough?

  That question nagged at Chan, making him thirst for liquor, but the answer lay in waiting, not inside a bottle.

  And whatever happened, he had done his best.

  That wouldn't matter to Beijing or his superiors at CNP, if China lost its foothold in Nigeria, but Chan had made his mind up not to fret about what might happen when he was dead. At fifty-three, he had been raised and educated from his birth as a loyal Communist, who shunned religion and the sort of childish superstitions that depicted ghostly ancestors on high, smiling or weeping tears of shame as they beheld the antics of their spawn on Earth.

  Chan gave no thought to what might lie in store for him beyond the grave, but he suspected it was only mold and worms. If so, his troubles ended at the moment when his heart stopped beating and his brain shut down.

  Which didn't mean that he was anxious for that final moment to arrive — far from it. But his mind focused on matters of survival and a lifelong fear of painful death, rather than any fantasy of souls in flight.

  Lao had pledged that he and his strange bedfellows would solve Chan's problem at their midnight meeting with the blackmailers. Assuming that there was a meeting.

  And, if not, Chan reckoned that his four new bodyguards could deal with Lao.

  Once and for all.

  * * *

  The Paradise Club billed itself as a tavern, but Bolan supposed that its neighbors were aware that two-thirds of its floor space comprised an unlicensed casino. They might have known, as well, that MEND controlled the operation, kept the payoffs flowing, while the cream ensured that Ekon Afolabi's troops had guns and ammunition ready when they needed them.

  There was a certain irony in bribing the authorities to keep illicit operations up and running when the profits from those enterprises served a group of revolutionaries pledged to overthrow the government, but that summed up corruption in a nutshell. Once a politician or a cop began accepting bribes, he sacrificed his oath of office in pursuit of private gain.

  Not that the Paradise was earning much for anyone tonight. Shock waves from Bolan's blitz had been reverberating through Warri for hours now, and everyone involved in criminal activities had gotten the message. It was dangerous to work the joints and streets, while unknown enemies were striking here and there, at random, claiming lives and trashing property on every side. The operations that couldn't afford to close outright were running with skeleton crews and beefed-up security, hoping that luck would protect them.

  But it wouldn't spare the Paradise.

  Bolan arrived just as two of Afolabi's soldiers were emerging from the club, grim-faced, clearly unhappy with whatever task and destination they had been assigned.

  And as their luck would have it, they weren't going anywhere.

  He met them with the 93-R, punching a silenced round through each dour face and stepping around the pair as they collapsed. The club's front door was still swinging shut as Bolan reached it, caught it with his free hand and stepped across the threshold into stale tobacco smoke and muted voices.

  Someone shook a pair of dice and rolled, cursing as he missed his point. A hollow laugh from someone else carried no honest humor with it. Ice rattled inside a cocktail glass, Dutch courage on the rocks.

  Bolan had nearly cleared the foyer when a doorman loomed in front of him, all muscle and surprise. The lookout's mouth fell open, but whatever he had planned to say never escaped his lips. A muffled bullet severed thought from speech and dropped him in the doorway, where he made a grisly, twitching speed bump.

  Bolan stepped across him, half expecting dead fingers to clutch his ankle, and beheld four other soldiers grouped around one craps table. A fifth had gone behind the bar, helping himself to booze.

  One of the players glanced up, froze, then barked a warning to his comrades as he fumbled for a weapon underneath his leather jacket. The others were turning to face Bolan when he began firing.

  Three rounds gone from the Beretta's 20-round magazine, and that left plenty for the five MEND gunners ranged in front of him. Bolan took the quick-draw artist first, closing his left eye forever with a full-metal jacket 9 mm slug, then shot his way around the craps table, double-tapping the dead man's three companions.

  By the time they hit the floor, the guy behind the bar had recognized his danger and was lunging for an SMG he'd left within arm's reach. He nearly reached it, had the fingers of his right hand curled around the weapon's pistol grip, when Bolan drilled him through the ear and sprayed his final thoughts across the back bar mirror.

  Silence reigned in Paradise, except for someone's shoes scuffling the floor, briefly, before they came to final rest. Bolan stood waiting in the doorway, ready if the back room yielded any more contenders, but none showed themselves. Content to let it end there, he retreated to the sidewalk, keeping one eye on the club now hazed with cordite.

  Outside, Bolan holstered the Beretta, checked his watch and saw that it was close enough. He'd left some nervous adversaries hanging, and he reckoned it was time to tell them where he could be found, if they were still inclined to keep the date.

  A trap? No doubt about it.

  But he wouldn't be the prey.

  He was the trapper, and the men who doubtless planned to kill him didn't know it yet.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ekon Afolabi was exhausted. He felt as if he hadn't slept for days, although in fact his torment had begun less than twenty-fo
ur hours earlier. Afolabi had gone much longer than that without sleep, but this time...

  His cell phone made a sound somewhere between a purr and a snarl, vibrating across the coffee table in front of him. Afolabi stared at it for a moment, as if surprised by the sound after all the hours of waiting. Finally, jarred out of his half daze, he lunged to grab the phone and press it to his ear.

  "Hello?"

  "I hope you haven't been on pins and needles," said the voice he remembered and despised.

  "Business as usual," the MEND warlord replied through clenched teeth.

  "Really? I'm surprised you ever make a dollar, if your days are all like this. Speaking of money.....

  "Yes, I have it," Afolabi interrupted, smothering an urge to spew profanity.

  "All of it?" asked his faceless caller.

  "Yes. One hundred thousand U.S. dollars."

  "Sounds like we're in business."

  "Concerning delivery.....

  "I'm getting to that," the man said. "You know the Warri Township Stadium?"

  "Of course."

  "Make that our rendezvous. You bring the money to the center circle, midnight on the dot, and we're in business."

  Afolabi glowered at his watch. "That's not much time," he said.

  "So don't waste it complaining. Either be there at the witching hour or.....

  "I'll be there!" Afolabi snapped, then realized the caller had disconnected.

  Seventeen minutes, damn it!

  Afolabi vaulted from the couch where he'd been seated, shouting for Taiwo Babatunde and his other soldiers, barking orders even before they responded. His rage and pent-up nervous tension translated to frantic action, Afolabi snatching up the bag of cash and a Spectre M-4 submachine gun from the table where they lay together, waiting for him. Thus prepared, he watched the others shoulder weapons, moving toward the exit where their cars stood waiting, cloaked in darkness.

  Stepping from the quasi-safety of his headquarters in hiding, Afolabi felt a sudden stab of paranoia. What if all this business with the money was a ploy to flush him from cover, give his enemies a chance to kill him as he crossed the sidewalk to his vehicle?