Conflict Zone

by Don Pendleton

  But no shots came, and in another moment he was seated in the lead car's backseat, sandwiched between Babatunde and a slightly smaller gunman, their bulk making Afolabi feel like the meat in a sandwich.

  Three cars and thirteen men, himself included. Twenty-six guns among them, at least, and some likely carried more than one pistol. Add to that the Chinese, Russians and Ajani's men — the rotten bastards — and they had the making of a small army.

  His caller, Afolabi thought, would be surprised.

  MEND's warlord hoped that he would have a chance to see the man's face while he was still alive. It would be pleasant to watch as the arrogance drained from his eyes and he gasped out a vain plea for mercy.

  For life.

  But to kill him, they first had to catch him.

  And if they were late...

  "Hurry!" he snapped at his driver. "We only have fifteen minutes!"

  The others would have to keep up, and if that meant running traffic lights or scattering sluggish pedestrians, so be it. Afolabi wouldn't be late to the meeting.

  But what of the others?

  His paranoia came back in a rush.

  What if the rest were setting him up for a fall, pretending to go along with the plan, then letting Afolabi stand alone?

  Worse yet, what if the Russians and his own Chinese were all in it together with Ajani, scheming to dispose of him and shatter MEND?

  Seething, his teeth clenched, the warlord told his men, "Tonight, trust no one but your brothers. If the others — any of them — make a false move, shoot to kill."

  * * *

  Huang Li Chan felt perfectly relaxed. He'd taken half a Valium to calm his nerves, washed down with twenty-year-old Irish whiskey, and the combination was miraculous. He still remembered his bodyguards, with their leaking skulls, but it was like a memory from childhood, something with no power to affect him now.

  By contrast, Lao Choy Teoh seemed more anxious than usual, his normal stoic demeanor showing signs of strain as he studied the clock on Chan's wall.

  "Perhaps it was all just a hoax," Chan suggested.

  "A hoax, sir? With two of your bodyguards killed and a gun to your head? With all the rest that has happened?"

  "A ploy, then," Chan corrected himself, devoid of rancor. "Suppose our enemy, whoever he may be, had some other design in mind? The blackmail demand may have been a diversion, distracting us from his actual goal."

  "Which would be.?.."

  Chan shrugged and spread his open hands. "Who knows? Some feud against one tribe or the other, perhaps. They kill each other all the time."

  "And the attack on you, sir?"

  "Misdirection, like the Uroil sniping incident. You'll note that neither Eltsin nor I suffered any personal harm."

  "I have considered that," Lao said, "but.....

  He was interrupted by the shrilling telephone that sat on a corner of Chan's ornate desk. Lao moved to answer it, but Chan raised a hand to restrain him, then lifted the receiver himself.

  "Hello?" he said.

  "Tell me you have the money," said a voice that he would recognize in dreams and nightmares. Chan had heard it twice before — once on the telephone, and once while he was standing with a pistol pressed against his skull.

  "I have it," he answered, resisting an impulse to smile.

  "Great. I'll take it off your hands and give you what you need at midnight. Not a minute later. Meet me at the Warri Township Stadium, at center field."

  "I understand," Chan said and listened to the click as he was disconnected.

  Cradling the receiver, he asked Lao, "Is everything prepared?"

  "Yes, sir. You know it is."

  Chan glanced at the wall clock and said, "In that case, you should hurry. You're going to the football stadium, across town. Midnight, as explained."

  Now it was Lao's turn to look at the clock.

  "Fifteen minutes?"

  "Correct. I suggest that you hurry."

  Lao bolted from the office without a backward glance, calling the men he had assembled for the final phase of what had been, so far, a hellish day. Chan almost wished him luck, then held his peace.

  Whatever happened at the stadium, he was convinced that Lao had outlived his usefulness to CNP, and to the People's Republic of China. Chan didn't appreciate Lao taking the initiative for contact with the Russians, even if it worked out to his ultimate advantage and the company's. There were procedures to be followed in bureaucracies, and those who trampled on the rules for personal advancement should expect no great reward.

  At least while Chan still held the reins.

  If Lao managed to destroy the scum who had humiliated Chan, more power to him. But it wouldn't save his life. When Chan addressed the mourners at Lao's funeral, he would praise Lao's memory and courage as if they were friends.

  But he'd be laughing on the inside, thankful that he'd never have to see Lao's smirking face again.

  * * *

  Agu Ajani closed his cell phone and turned to face Daren Jumoke. "The stadium," he said. "Midnight, precisely."

  "Stadium?" Jumoke seemed confused. "What stadium?"

  "On Cemetery Road. How many are there, Daren?"

  Stung, Jumoke nodded, checked his watch and said, "We haven't got much time."

  "The men are ready, and I have the bag. Let's go," Ajani said.

  Two cars waited outside, a more or less matched pair of aging Lincoln Continentals capable of seating six people each. One car was black, the other navy blue with rust spots showing near the wheel wells, but Ajani had no time to waste considering appearances.

  The men who would accompany him to the Warri Township Stadium were waiting with the cars, each carrying a slung submachine gun or assault rifle, spare magazines and handguns weighing down their belts and pockets. A lone motorcyclist would lead them, his Japanese bike equipped with police lights and siren in case they were slowed by traffic en route to the payoff.

  Ajani smiled at the term, and the foolish bravado he'd heard in the caller's voice moments earlier. A payoff was coming, all right, but not the sort his enemy anticipated.

  This night, Ajani was settling all manner of scores, cleaning slates as it were. By sunrise, he would stand un-opposed in Warri.

  If he still stood at all.

  There was a chance that he would lose. Nothing in life was guaranteed, especially where enemies with guns stood ranged against him. He had suffered major losses since the plague of violence had descended upon Warri, and eliminating his opponents wouldn't heal those wounds.

  But it would help. Oh, yes.

  "We were instructed to deliver on the field," he told Jumoke, once the two Lincolns were off and rolling. "On the center line."

  "We'll be exposed to any snipers in the stands," Jumoke said, stating the obvious.

  "I didn't say we would obey the order," Ajani said. "Only that it was delivered."

  "So, you have another plan?" Jumoke asked.

  "First, see if any of the rest arrive on time," Ajani said. "If they are late, we must proceed, but not directly to the field. We can divide our force, send six men in on either side, to sweep the stands."

  "And if we're seen?" Jumoke asked.

  "What can they do about it? If we're quick enough and keep our eyes open, no one inside the stadium can slip away. We'll have them cornered."

  "That's if Lao Teoh and the others don't arrive on time. What if we find them waiting for us at the stadium?" Jumoke asked.

  "Then we'll have fifty-two men, rather than thirteen. Let them march to the center circle if they like, while we close off the exits and prevent our quarry from escaping."

  "There may be some argument against that plan," Jumoke said.

  "I don't plan to consult them, any more than Sidorov consulted me when he went running off to the Chinese."

  "There's one other possibility we haven't talked about," Jumoke said.

  "You mean, what happens if the bastard who's been calling us never shows up himself?"

/>   Jumoke nodded, frowning.

  "That's no problem," Ajani said. "With our own men in the stands and everybody else down on the field, we have the high ground, cover, everything we need to finish it."

  "Kill all of them, you mean?" Jumoke asked.

  "And let God sort them out," Ajani said. "It's really His job, after all."

  * * *

  Ibowu Yetunde cradled the telephone receiver, frowning thoughtfully while he digested the information he had just received.

  The spies he'd hired inside Agu Ajani's gang and MEND were worth their weight in gold. He'd confirmed it: both Ajani and Afolabi were keeping a date with blackmailers at midnight, bearing money and a little something extra to the meeting at the Warri Township Stadium. Beyond that, it appeared that some of their foreign supporters, "security" agents of the Chinese and Russian oil firms, would be going along for the ride.

  Carrying money of their own.

  Four hundred thousand U.S. dollars in all.

  Yetunde understood the premise of the meeting. Someone, seemingly a white man, had offered names and other leads to the persons responsible for Warri's recent spate of violence. Anyone could buy the information, it appeared, for a flat one hundred grand.

  Yetunde wondered, briefly, why some of the buyers hadn't pooled resources. Afolabi and the Chinese, say, or Agu and the Russians. But it hardly mattered. If his spies were right — and two of them from separate camps could hardly make the same mistake; in fact, he would have said it was impossible — none of the buyers headed for the meeting planned to pay a cent, in fact.

  They wanted satisfaction, without giving up their cash. A pound of flesh, as it were.

  Yetunde knew exactly how they felt.

  He, too, wanted revenge for all that he had lost. And if he had an opportunity to bank some cash in the process, why not take full advantage of it?

  The question was how to achieve his design without being caught up in a slaughter himself.

  Yetunde still had soldiers he could call on, but their ranks were dwindling. He'd never had as many guns at his command as either Ajani or MEND. Yetunde provided the Nigerian public with services it desired — sex, drugs, games of chance — while his global fraud network was self-sustaining. He maintained a security force to protect his investments, and to collect from recalcitrant customers, but Yetunde seldom thought in terms of waging war.

  For that, he would require an army.

  Preferably, someone else's army.

  The solution came to him at once, without the blinding light of a divine revelation, but no less inspiring for its lack of celestial fireworks.

  Who better to break up the stadium patty than someone who was paid to identify and arrest criminals? Someone who also depended upon Yetunde's generosity to support his lifestyle? Who better than Captain Johnson Mashilia of the Delta Police Command?

  Mashilia had the men, guns and authority required to deal with lawbreakers. To disarm and arrest them, if he caught them in commission of a crime, and to kill them if they resisted arrest. The captain could perform his legal duty, win official commendation and serve Yetunde's best interest, all at the same time.

  And if the criminals resisted, if they forced Captain Mashilia's troops to use deadly force at the crime scene, who was there to say that any money had been found among the corpses? The captain would receive his share, of course, and he'd be free to split that take with his superiors or underlings, as he saw fit. The lion's share, however, should belong to Idowu Yetunde, for the timely tip that made Mashilia's triumph possible.

  And there was no time left to waste.

  He snatched the telephone and dialed the captain's private number, waiting while it rang twice on the other end. When Mashilia answered with a weary voice, Yetunde gave him no time to protest.

  "Listen to me!" he said. "You are about to be a hero, and a wealthy one, at that."

  * * *

  Matt Cooper called the Russians last of all Umaru sat beside him in the semidarkness, hearing variations of familiar lines for the fourth time in twenty minutes, wondering how Cooper pulled it off.

  Not lying on the telephone. He reckoned anyone could handle that, to some extent. But all the rest of it — laying the strategy for a campaign, then carrying it out, surviving one firefight after another on alien ground, somehow tricking gangs that hated one another into a volatile, doomed experiment in collaboration.

  It boggled Umaru's mind.

  He knew there were standardized tests to quantify genius, questions and exercises that were judged to generate numerical scores and plot them on graphs. But what did it all really prove?

  Umaru had seen Cooper in action, both saving and taking lives. And there was genius to it. Cooper managed to accomplish things Umaru would have thought impossible.

  At least in part, because he dared to try.

  "You have the money, then?" Bolan was asking Eltsin. Pausing, then replying to a question, "Right. The names and everything you need to settle it, however you decide. Midnight exactly, at the Warri football stadium. No late admissions."

  Bolan killed the link and closed his phone before the Russian could respond. "All set," he told Umaru as he pocketed the instrument. "They'll be here soon."

  "And are we ready?" Umaru inquired. He felt that he should know the answer, but it managed to elude him.

  "Once we're in position," Bolan said, "the only thing that's left to do is to get ready for the unexpected."

  "Ah, yes. That."

  Umaru knew he sounded skeptical.

  "It's not so hard," Bolan explained. "Just get inside your adversary's head and calculate what you'd do in his place."

  "I've already lost my chance to scout the stadium ahead of time," Umaru said. "And I'm expected with my money on the center spot."

  "You are," Bolan agreed.

  "That doesn't mean my men must be there with me," Umaru observed.

  "Considering they weren't invited in the first place," Bolan added.

  "I would have them find the exits, slip inside the stadium as cautiously and quietly as possible. Locate my enemies and stop them from escaping."

  "There you go," Bolan said.

  "But we have four men — four groups of men — coming to meet us. Arriving together, perhaps."

  "All the better," Bolan said. "Any confusion works for us, against the other side. Even if they've made some arrangement to collaborate, you've got the old antagonisms brewing, and they're bound to have a few snafus."

  "More targets," Umaru suggested.

  "That, too."

  "I'll take my place now."

  "Good idea."

  Umaru rose, holding the Daewoo rifle tucked beneath one arm, descending toward the football pitch. Twin lights mounted on poles illuminated each end of the field but left the center line in darkness as he jogged across it, toward the visitor's side. His comrade in arms occupied the home team's side and had arranged a few surprises for the guests who would begin arriving soon.

  Umaru wondered if their preparations would suffice, remembering the placement of the exits, if he needed to escape.

  But could he leave the big American behind to save himself?

  Scowling at his self-doubt, Umaru reached the viewing stand and started climbing toward his sniper's roost.

  * * *

  The layout wasn't perfect, but it could have been worse. Bolan would've liked more cover than the bleachers offered, but at least he had the high ground, with a sweeping field of fire and ample room to move.

  Of course, so would his enemies.

  Bolan had walked the stadium before he'd placed his calls, noting the entrances and exits, pegging the various ranges and angles of fire in his mind, leaving a few traps here and there for shooters who would certainly try to sneak up on his blind side. Their handicap lay in not knowing where his blind side was, or might be, while the killing ground lay spread before Bolan and Umaru in plain sight.

  In short, his adversaries had to come to him. They couldn't camp outsi
de and lay siege to the stadium in hopes of starving Bolan out. An army in the parking lot would draw attention after sunrise, if not sooner, with police patrols scouring Warri for gunmen since sundown.

  Time was of the essence, then, a message Bolan's calls had driven home. His targets couldn't know if he would be inside the stadium or watching from a distance as they rolled in with their money and their soldiers for the main event. For all they knew, it might be both. Someone — or several someones — could be waiting inside to greet them, while spotters reported their movements outside.

  Any way they sliced it, the way to Bolan lay through the stadium gates, normally chained at night, but currently unlocked, courtesy of a bolt-cutter Bolan had found in the maintenance shed.

  Bolan had done what he could to prepare for the battle to come. He didn't know how many guns he'd be facing, or exactly how they'd approach him, but barring an airlift, their options were limited. The field was accessible by vehicle or by foot at either end, and on foot only via two entrances through the stands. Smart planners with men to spare would hit him from all sides at once, but he'd have to wait and see.

  Seven minutes and counting.

  Patience was among the first things that a sniper learned in training. It might be deemed a virtue of the saints, but it was absolutely critical to long-range killers waiting for a target to reveal himself. Some missions might require a shooter to remain in place, virtually immobile, for days on end, exposed to weather, insects, snuffling scavengers — whatever Mother Nature had to throw at him.

  Hours or days of waiting for a man he'd never met to step forward, framed in the crosshairs of a telescopic sight, and meet his death.

  One shot, one kill.

  And after that, a scramble to escape before the dead man's comrades could retaliate with anything from small arms to artillery and helicopter gunships.

  Bolan couldn't see a full-fledged army marching on the Warri Township Stadium to trap him, but he did expect his enemies to pull out every stop at their disposal, fielding their best troops to bring him down. With any luck, their ranks would be depleted and spread thin by Bolan's blitz, some forced to guard facilities their masters left behind while going off to keep the rendezvous. But Bolan harbored no illusion that the firefight he had staged would be a cakewalk.