Conflict Zone

by Don Pendleton

  It was almost killing time.

  The Executioner was in his element.

  The trick was not to die there.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Agu Ajani reached the Warri Township Stadium with minutes to spare. His small caravan parked close to the main public entrance, gunmen piling out of the cars with a concerted clicking and clacking of automatic weapons. Anyone close enough to hear or witness the sight would have been alarmed.

  But the place seemed deserted.

  Lights glowed at each end of the pitch, near the goals, turning the sky above the stadium's facade a washed-out orange. Ajani couldn't see the poles themselves, from where he stood, but knew the layout from attending matches in the past.

  All fun and games, then.

  Deadly serious this night.

  Daren Jumoke nodded as Ajani told him, "Just the way we planned."

  No further orders were required. They had planned the maneuver with sketches depicting the stadium, drawing little arrows for team deployment as if plotting a game-winning strategy.

  Which, in fact, was the truth.

  Ajani carried the satchel of cash in his left hand and a well-worn MAC-10 submachine gun in his right. A pistol and spare magazines for the MAC-10 were tucked into his belt and pockets, causing him to clank a little when he walked.

  Ajani liked the sound.

  It told him he was dressed to kill.

  Jumoke gave the order for Ajani's soldiers to fan out. Eight left the clutch immediately, jogging to different entrances where they would find their way inside the stadium, alert for any sign of lurkers in the shadows. If they met a stranger, armed or otherwise, they had been told to take him down.

  Alive, if possible. Dead, just as good.

  Ajani checked his watch again, then scanned the faces of the men surrounding him. Jumoke's was deadpan, while the other three wore mixed expressions of anticipation and anxiety. His soldiers loved a good fight — meaning fights that they won, without losing too many of their friends — but they had no great love for mysteries or stalking unknown enemies whose luck had been unbeatable so far.

  Ajani knew exactly how they felt.

  He was already tired of waiting in the parking lot, wished he could charge inside and get the party started, but he had to give his men sufficient time to reach their posts. And there were still the others to consider — Sidorov and his men, the Chinese, even the bastard Afolabi with his thugs.

  "They should be here by now," he told Jumoke.

  "We still have three minutes, Agu."

  "It will take that long to walk inside."

  "We're very close."

  "Midnight," he said. "No later."

  "If they aren't here within the next two minutes.....

  But they were. Some of them, anyway. Ajani saw the headlights of a three-car caravan approaching, swinging off Cemetery Road into the blacktopped parking lot. And close behind them, more cars, lining up to form a grim, nearly silent parade.

  "About time, too," Ajani said.

  High beams washed over him as he stood waiting, tightening his grip on the MAC-10.

  * * *

  Bolan heard the cars arriving, didn't need to check his watch to know that it was almost midnight. Truth be told, he would have waited for his adversaries to assemble, but it pleased him that they took his deadline seriously.

  When he scanned the bleachers on the far side of the soccer field, Bolan couldn't pick out Umaru. That was good, but someone entering from over there would have a better chance of spotting him. And when they started firing, no one in the stadium would have to guess where either one of them was hiding.

  Any minute now.

  He saw the creepers first, paired off and entering the stadium by any means available. Two men at each end of the field, for starters, then two more directly opposite, one lurking in each public entrance to the stands. Although they weren't visible from where he crouched in shadow, Bolan took for granted that there had to be two more on his side, standing in darkness, scanning rows of backless plastic seats in search of targets.

  But they hadn't spotted Bolan yet.

  The major delegates were coming now, not quite marching in lockstep, but close enough. Bolan spotted Ekon Afolabi and Agu Ajani first, trailing point men through the main entrance, flanked by other gunners and lugging their bags.

  Filled with what? Would there really be money inside?

  The Chinese and Russians were easy to spot, standing out from the Nigerians, but Bolan didn't recognize either one of their bagmen. No problem there. He hadn't expected Huang Li Chan or Arkady Eltsin to brave the dark night and show up in person when others could be sent to do their dirty work.

  Whoever they had sent as stand-ins, Bolan took for granted that the men in charge would know their business, and the shooters would be handpicked for their skill.

  And it was time to test them.

  Bolan let the leading delegation reach the field and start across it, following what would have been the center line if a game had been scheduled and anyone cared to mark it. As it was, approximation would be fine.

  He let them come, trusting the group of twenty or so to stop at midfield as instructed. Bolan, meanwhile, scanned the opposite bleachers through his Steyr's scope and picked out the first of his targets.

  A spotter stood off to the left, still partially hidden in shadow despite the floodlight at his end of the field. Bolan's mind had marked six others in his final scan, and he was prepared to move on each of them in turn after he fired the first shot, though he couldn't count on any of them standing still.

  As for Umaru, well, at this point, it was each man for himself.

  Bolan lined up his shot, took a deep breath, released half of it, held the rest — and fired.

  * * *

  Ekon Afolabi recoiled from the first shot as if it was aimed at his face, his knees buckling, his body dropping to a crouch that left him hunched over the satchel filled with cash.

  Around him, some of the others were crouching, as well, a few breaking off from the group, but others still standing upright with weapons in hand, defying the sniper. Among them, Lao Choy Teoh, the head Russian and Agu Ajani, barely disguising his sneer.

  "I see him!" someone shouted, but it didn't matter. One shot from the bleachers merged into another, then another, until Afolabi felt that he had to either break and run or soil himself.

  And yet none of the bullets whispered past him. None were even close.

  "He's found my men!" Ajani bellowed as he raised a stubby machine pistol, blazing away at the home-team bleachers. "It's an ambush!"

  Afolabi had already worked that out for himself, without anyone's help. And if Ajani's men were the primary targets, so much the better, in his view. It gave his own soldiers time to return fire, automatic weapons spitting death into the bleachers as they tracked the sniper.

  But which one?

  Before the echoes of the first shots died away, a second rifle joined the chorus from the other side of the field, redoubling the chaos. And this one was firing toward the clutch of men at center field, one of its bullets drilling through the forehead of a Chinese who stood six feet from Afolabi, spraying blood and brains.

  And it was time to run — but where? In which direction?

  All around him, guns were blazing, making Afolabi's ears ring. He'd drawn his own pistol by now, a Walther P-l automatic, but he hadn't fired it and had no intention of doing so now, unless he found a clear-cut, stationary target well within his weapon's range.

  Another man went down beside him, this one Russian, gasping curses in his brutish language as he clutched his chest and fell, thrashing across the turf, his legs flailing. Afolabi rolled away from him and came up running, calling for his men to follow him.

  "Ambush!" he cried again unnecessarily. "We're getting out of here!"

  If only they would follow him.

  If only he could find his way.

  * * *

  Obinna Umahu crawled over conc
rete, keeping his head down while bullets rattled through the air above him, chipping plastic seats and wooden rails in higher rows. Some of the wild rounds barely whispered, fired so high and wide in haste that they would miss the stadium entirely.

  He had shot two men so far, uncertain whether they were dead or only wounded, but there were plenty left to kill him if they found their range and kept their wits about them. So far he'd managed to elude them, but the night was young.

  Cooper was concentrating on the flankers, still, taking them down with one or two shots each, shifting each time the ones still standing marked his muzzle-flashes. Umaru had no clear fix on how many gunmen they faced, but he'd counted twenty-one on the field and assumed there'd be at least that many more stationed at other vantage points around the stadium.

  All looking for a chance to end his life.

  Umaru didn't want to die this way, crawling and hiding from a gang of men whose names he'd never know, but it came down to this at last.

  Succeed or fail.

  Kill to survive, or spend your final seconds spitting blood onto the pavement where ten thousand sports fans scuffed their shoes on game days.

  Umaru found another vantage point while gunmen ranged across the pitch's center circle firing toward the point where they had glimpsed him last, some fifteen yards away. He framed one in the Daewoo's open sights, squeezed off and saw his target stagger, moving on without a confirmation of a drop.

  The others were already turning, bringing guns to bear against him, when the sound of an explosion rocked the stadium. All eyes turned toward the sound, including Umaru's, beholding a cloud of smoke rising from one of the exits on his side.

  Cooper had warned him of the hand grenades set here and there, with loosened pins and trip-wires. One of them had claimed a victim, visible from where Umaru lay facing his enemies. The shock of the explosion lasted for a heartbeat, maybe two, and then was gone.

  Umaru broke eye contact with the mangled body first, returning full attention to his would-be killers on the football field. He saw that their attention was divided — some searching for Cooper, others for himself — and took advantage of it, thumbing the Daewoo's fire-selector switch to full-automatic and spraying the field with the rest of his first magazine.

  Soldiers were falling, ducking, running for cover downrange as his slugs flew among them, finding some targets and bypassing others completely. A couple tried returning fire, but couldn't make it count while they sprinted for cover.

  Umaru watched them go, replaced his empty magazine and went back on the hunt.

  * * *

  Bolan heard the grenade blast, echoed by gargling screams, and wondered how many shooters had been caught in the blast. It was a simple booby trap, but still effective against adversaries unschooled in guerrilla warfare, who felt overconfident on their home turf.

  Still, the explosion would give others cause to watch their step if they were thinking clearly, and the other two grenades he'd planted might be wasted.

  A second explosion proved him wrong.

  More cries of pain, this time across the field, from the stands where Umaru was ducking, dodging, trading fire with gunmen on the field. Bolan had gambled on the top dogs having guts enough to stand and fight when he'd begun the party by eliminating flankers, but he knew the crowd at center field could only stand so much before they broke and ran.

  As they were running now.

  It was a toss-up whether he should focus on the men with satchels — two of them familiar from Brognola's photo files, the others likely security chiefs for CNP and Uroil — or let them run for now and strip them of their bodyguards. He didn't care about the money, whether someone snatched it up and split in the confusion, but if Bolan saw a chance to save it for a good cause, he wasn't averse to doing so.

  Okay. The bagmen.

  Bolan's nearest runner with a satchel was Chinese, a lithe man sprinting toward the goal on Bolan's right, where vehicles and foot traffic had access to the field. The Executioner tracked him, framed his man in the scope's crosshairs and squeezed his rifle's trigger.

  At the last split second, coming out of nowhere, one of the runner's bodyguards lunged into Bolan's line of fire and took the 5.56 mm tumbler that was earmarked for his boss. It struck him in the chest, a puff of crimson glittering under the nearest floodlights. As he fell, Bolan's initial target started zigzagging, shouting at his surviving guards to cover him.

  And one of them had to have seen Bolan's muzzle-flash, the way they started laying down return fire. The Executioner ducked his head and rolled away, thankful that shooters firing uphill commonly aimed higher than they should, assuming they took time to aim at all, in a firefight.

  He slithered like a reptile, digging in with knees and elbows, feeling every crack and chip in the concrete, while bullets raked the stands behind him. Bolan knew that he could only do so much while he was scrabbling around the bleachers, dueling shooters from a distance. Knew he'd have to get in closer for the wrap-up, if he meant to win it.

  Starting now.

  * * *

  Ibowu Yetunde smiled beneath the fat Zeiss binoculars, enjoying the firefight more than he'd ever enjoyed any sporting event in his life. How fitting that it should be played out on a soccer field, albeit for an audience of one.

  Or seven, if Yetunde counted his six bodyguards.

  He had remained at a distance, content to observe the action and wait for Captain Mashilia to arrive with his troops, but now Yetunde was rethinking his initial plan. Instead of letting Mashilia seize the money, skim his share and surrender the rest, why shouldn't Yetunde step in and take all the cash for himself?

  Of course, the captain would protest, but what could he do? If Yetunde moved quickly enough, the police would find nothing but gunmen and corpses. Yetunde could plead ignorance, suggesting that Ajani, Afolabi and the rest had double-crossed their blackmailers and left the cash at home, preferring bloody vengeance.

  By the same token, if he should miss one of the money bags, or even two, Yetunde could argue that some of the players had held out their share of the payoff, cheating all concerned. In that case, he would have whatever cash he seized before police arrived, plus his share of the swag that Captain Mashilia seized.

  It was a win-win situation, the kind Yetunde preferred.

  And he had helped himself by telling the captain to arrive no earlier than ten minutes past midnight, when they could be sure that everyone who planned to keep the rendezvous was present at the stadium. That gave Yetunde time to make his move before the uniforms showed up to intervene. Initially he'd simply hoped to snare his various competitors and adversaries. Now however...

  Lowering his field glasses, Yetunde turned to face his gunmen. "There has been a change of plans," he told them. "We are going in ahead of the police."

  A couple of them blinked at that, but no one argued with him. He had chosen well, selecting the most ruthless and courageous of his soldiers, men who flinched from nothing, be it facing hostile guns or slaughtering an infant in its cradle. They would do as he commanded, because none of them feared anything on Earth more than they feared Yetunde's wrath.

  "Our task," he said, "is to locate and capture four bags filled with money. Kill whoever stands between us and the bags. Ignore the rest, unless they challenge you. Questions?"

  None of his soldiers spoke.

  "Right, then. I'll point the targets out as we proceed. Come now, and make me proud!"

  Drawing a pistol from his shoulder holster, Idowu Yetunde turned and led his handpicked killers toward the soccer field.

  * * *

  Lao Choy Teoh didn't believe in God, by any name, but he was willing to admit that something may have intervened to save his life from the grandstand sniper. Or, then again, it might have been coincidence.

  In either case, he was taking no chances.

  Running erratically, ducking and weaving as if he were a football star himself, shouting at his guards to keep pace and serve as human shield
s, Lao veered off toward the nearest exit he could see.

  Taking advantage of it would require his entering the stands, climbing a flight of concrete steps where he would be exposed to hostile fire, but staying on the open field was every bit as risky, in the present circumstance.

  Outside, his vehicles were waiting. Any of his soldiers who survived the final sprint could drive — or Lao could be his own chauffeur, if that was what it took to liberate him from the trap.

  He still had no idea exactly what had gone wrong with the scheme he and the others had concocted. It had sounded good, in theory — adversaries joining forces to defeat a common enemy — but now the line was wavering, about to break, and Lao couldn't have said how many guns were ranged against him in the stadium.

  And he no longer cared.

  Survival lay in flight. If someone, after all, managed to kill the terrorists who'd laid the trap, so be it. At the moment, though, Lao didn't intend to be a sitting target in a shooting gallery where he had no control over the action.

  Gasping with exertion, wincing every time a bullet whispered past him like the voice of death, Lao reached a flight of stairs linking the bleachers to a concrete apron surrounding the main soccer field. He grabbed its rail with his right hand, still clinging to the heavy satchel with his left, and took the steps two at a time, without losing momentum. Lao could hear his guards behind him, firing bursts of automatic fire and cursing as they labored to keep up with him.

  He reached the bottom row of bleachers, was about to hit the next long flight of stairs, when another explosion rocked the stands. This time, it was above him, smoke and shrapnel spewing from the very exit Lao had planned to use for his escape.

  Gaping, he saw a human form ejected from the roiling smoke cloud in a tumbling somersault, slack fingers losing their grip on an automatic rifle in midair. The acrobat landed on concrete steps, twenty feet above Lao, then bounced into a kind of twirling, twisting dive that brought his body arching down on a collision course.