Conflict Zone

by Don Pendleton

  Lao cursed and tried to dodge the hurtling mass of flesh and bone. Too late. One of the tumbler's feet caught him on his right cheek and pitched him sideways, off into the bleachers, squawking as he fell.

  * * *

  Valentin Sidorov triggered three rounds from his GSh-18 pistol in rapid fire, knowing the bullets were wasted before the first slug left the muzzle. It was a battle reflex, using gunfire to give himself courage, and, with any luck, to spoil his deadly adversary's aim while Sidorov found cover.

  The Russian wasted no time wondering how his plan for the payoff rendezvous had gone awry. Any engagement with a well-armed, ruthless enemy amounted to a gamble, even when the odds were stacked in one side's favor. All that mattered to the Russian now was getting out alive.

  And with the satchel full of cash.

  If he escaped but lost the money, it would be the last straw for Arkady Eltsin and the other Uroil brass. Even if Eltsin took the brunt of blame from headquarters, Sidorov recognized the truism that shit would always roll downhill, and there would be enough to bury him, no matter how much stuck to Eltsin in the process.

  With the money and his life, he could at least say that the showdown was a wash, with nothing lost or gained. Sidorov didn't count the lives of any soldiers who might fall along the way, since they were paid to take such risks and sacrifice themselves, if need be, for the greater good.

  In this case, for Uroil.

  Sidorov had taken the same pledge, but his attitude toward sacrifice was flexible. If he could save himself, while others took the fall, so be it. History was written by survivors not just winners, and while life remained to Sidorov, he would find some way to come out on top of any situation.

  He was sprinting toward the north end of the pitch, his men around him, laboring to keep up with their leader, when Sidorov heard the wet, ripe-melon sound of an exploding skull. Fragments of bone and brain peppered his cheek, stinging his left eye as he ducked and swerved, too late to miss the worst of it.

  The shot that had decapitated one of his subordinates was lost in the general racket of gunfire, but Sidorov understood the skill behind it. If it hadn't been pure luck, it meant that someone with a very steady hand and eye was tracking him, prepared to bring him down and leave him leaking on the field.

  Not yet, Sidorov thought, and threw himself into a wobbling shoulder roll as yet another of his men went down, drilled from the stands and dead before he hit the grass facedown.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Bolan hadn't used all his frag grenades for booby traps. He'd held enough back to be useful in a crunch, and now lobbed one toward three shooters who had charged into the stands, intent on silencing his rifle. They didn't see it coming in the semidarkness of the covered seating area.

  It bounced in front of them, then detonated with a thunderclap and riddled them with shrapnel, pitching two back the way they had come, while a third vaulted off to his left, landing hard in the bleachers and staying there, as limp as a dishrag.

  The explosion helped distract Bolan's opponents, giving him a chance to shift positions once again. He wasn't trying to evade them any longer, although ducking hostile fire was still a top priority. Instead of rushing to another sniper's nest, Bolan was closing on the adversaries he could see and hoping that he'd overlooked no one in a position to surprise him fatally.

  The nearest shooters were a pair of Russians, crouching on the concrete apron of the soccer field, their eyes and folding-stock Kalashnikovs directed toward the spot where Bolan's frag grenade had detonated seconds earlier. It was the reflex Bolan counted on, and now it served him well.

  Instead of switching off to the Beretta with its sound suppressor, a waste of time with all the battle noise around him, Bolan shot the taller of the Russians with his Steyr AUG, a single round from twenty feet that drilled his left temple and burst out through the right a microsecond later.

  Even as the corpse began to fold, his partner was already turning, his blood-flecked face snarling, his rifle tracking toward the mortal threat. The Russian hedged his bet by squeezing off before he found a target, wasting half a dozen rounds that likely would have made another adversary flinch and spoil his aim.

  But not the Executioner.

  Bolan's next shot went in somewhere below the gunner's heart and slightly to its left. So much was in there that was essential for survival of the human organism. Impact slammed the shooter backward, swept him off his feet, but he kept firing as he fell, either determined or already dead, unable to release the AK's trigger.

  Others had him spotted now, and decent cover on the lower seating levels of the stadium was nonexistent. Bolan's options had been narrowed down to one: attack and give them hell.

  No problem.

  He had palmed another frag grenade, armed it, and now he pitched it to his left, where Chinese shooters who had climbed the bleachers were returning from their futile quest, angling toward Bolan on an interception course. One of them shouted something to the others, but he had no time to finish as the lethal egg exploded in midair.

  Bolan was diving for the deck by that time, kissing concrete as the wicked shrapnel hissed by overhead. A wounded shooter wailed his pain into the night, ignored by Bolan as he scanned the killing ground for soldiers who were still in fighting shape.

  And found a couple of them rushing toward him, firing as they came.

  * * *

  Captain Johnson Mashilia hadn't questioned the order to arrive at Warri Township Stadium at ten minutes past midnight. There had been no need, as Idowu Yetunde had explained the situation to him, gloating all the while.

  Four groups of men were converging on the stadium to meet a fifth group, which was trying to extort cash from the rest. According to Yetunde, they were bringing money but didn't plan to deliver it. Instead they meant to solve their problem more efficiently and cheaply, killing off the troublesome extortionists.

  Such things weren't unknown in Warri, or across the breadth of Delta State. Gangs commonly "taxed" merchants for "protection," using terror to enforce a code of silence while police were sometimes paid to look the other way. Captain Mashilia knew that for a fact, since he was one of those who took the bribes and saw no evil.

  But this night was different.

  Mashilia could make himself a hero while taking down two of Delta's worst criminals. Ekon Afolabi alone should be enough to earn him a raise, perhaps a promotion to major, and no one would mourn Agu Ajani's passing, either.

  He could kill two greedy vultures with one stone.

  The other criminals might pose a problem, since they represented major petroleum firms, but the captain wasn't overly concerned. If they were caught consorting with known felons, armed with illegal weapons while committing a crime, what defense could they raise? Some of them might escape conviction — Delta's courts were as corrupt as its police, if not more so — but he saw no way in which arresting the Chinese and Russians could rebound against him.

  And if they resisted, well then, none of them would be alive to testify against him, if a hearing was convened.

  Captain Mashilia reached the stadium at 12:11 a.m. He was fashionably late, leading a column of seven military vehicles, including his Jeep and one other, plus five BTR.-3 armored personnel carriers. Manufactured in Ukraine, the APCs each mounted multiple weapons — a 30 mm dual-feed cannon with 350 rounds of ammunition, a 7.62 mm machine gun with 2,500 rounds, a 30 mm grenade launcher with 116 high-explosive rounds, and six electrically operated 81 mm launchers for smoke or aerosol grenades — while carrying a three-man crew and six passengers into battle at a top speed of fifty-three miles per hour.

  Mashilia heard gunfire when he was still half a mile from the stadium. He frowned at first, but then couldn't suppress a smile.

  They had started the party without him, but he was about to crash it. And anyone who tried to stop him would be leaving in a body bag.

  * * *

  Agu Ajani dropped the empty magazine from his MAC-10 and pulled a fres
h one from his pocket, slapping it into the submachine gun's pistol grip. Reloading forced him to release his grip on the satchel filled with cash, but he still crouched over it, clutching it between his knees, while two of his riflemen flanked him.

  "All right," Ajani said "I'm ready now."

  They had stopped near the south end of the football pitch, on Ajani's order, to let him reload the MAC-10. He'd chosen that direction to follow Valentin Sidorov and the other fleeing Russians, but they'd disappeared somehow in the confusion. Ajani supposed his delay in breaking from the center circle was to blame for losing Sidorov, and he would have to do without the Russian now.

  Without most of his men, as well.

  The eight he'd sent around to flank their faceless enemies were lost, apparently. He'd seen a couple of them fall to a grenade blast early on in the chaotic firefight, but Ajani didn't have a clue about the others. Shot, perhaps, or maybe they had panicked, fled the stadium entirely.

  If they were alive, and he survived to track them down, they would regret the day their mothers had delivered them.

  Of the four men who had accompanied Ajani to the center circle, only two remained. Daren Jumoke and a young man named Naeto Ejogo had fallen to sniper fire, killed where they stood, within arm's reach of Ajani himself. Jumoke's blood was drying on his shirt collar, adhering to Ajani's skin.

  Too bad, old friend, he thought. But death comes to us all.

  Ajani, though, didn't intend to die this night.

  "Come on!" he snapped at his remaining bodyguards, resuming his jog toward the exit at the south end of the field. From there, he could circle back to their cars and escape, while Sidorov and the rest went to hell, for all he cared.

  If he had been a praying man, Ajani would have offered up a prayer for Ekon Afolabi's death. The Russians and Chinese were less important to him, but if they were slain as well, so be it.

  Ajani meant to get out with his life, and with his hundred thousand dollars.

  And he'd almost reached the far end of the field when he heard the sound of heavy vehicles approaching. As Ajani tried to place the sound, identify it, two armored cars charged onto the field, their big wheels — four on either side, he saw now — churning up the turf.

  "Lay down your weapons!" said a ringing, disembodied voice. "Cease firing and surrender now!"

  Ajani didn't know which vehicle the voice was coming from, nor did he care. Surrender was the last thing on his mind just then.

  Cursing bitterly, he raised the MAC-10 and unleashed a storm of bullets toward the closer of the armored cars.

  * * *

  Lao Choy Teoh was dazed for several seconds after landing on his head, but rough hands dragged him back to groggy consciousness, hauling him upright. He resisted them at first, grappling to save the satchel he still clutched in spite of the grenade explosion and the impact of the tumbling corpse. Only when someone spoke to him in Cantonese did he cease struggling.

  Anxious faces swam into focus, revealing one of Lao's men on each side of him, holding him upright, trying to shield him from incoming fire with their bodies. And there was plenty of gunfire to worry about.

  The stands on both sides of the football pitch, hazed with smoke from grenade blasts, still crackled with small-arms fire, but something new had been added. Now, Lao saw armored vehicles entering the stadium from both ends of the wheel — two on the south, three on the north, each unit trailed by open military Jeeps.

  An amplified male voice commanded everyone inside the stadium to drop his weapons and surrender, but someone — an African, one of three down near the field's southern goal — sprayed automatic fire at one of the advancing APCs.

  And then, all hell broke loose.

  While the defiant gunman's bullets rattled off the APCs armored hide, the APC responded with a burst of heavy automatic fire, and the shooter with the submachine gun literally came apart. His two companions bolted, firing as they ran, but both collapsed in clouds of crimson mist before the chopping fire from both APCs.

  A moment later Lao made out the legend painted on the side of one armored car. It read Delta Police Command and told Lao that his time was up. Whoever summoned the police now called the shots, and it hadn't been Lao.

  Lao snapped a hasty, "Follow me!" at his surviving bodyguards and started once again to climb the concrete steps where he had been knocked sprawling by an airborne corpse. The riflemen were almost on his heels as he ascended toward the exit where at least two soldiers had already died.

  But then, the disembodied voice called out to them. "You! On the stairs! Stop where you are! Lay down your weapons!"

  Lao hesitated, felt his gunmen turning, was about to shout a warning at them when they opened fire, instinctively. Even before their bullets found their mark, Lao saw the APCs turret rotating to face him, the muzzle of its big gun winking flame.

  Thirty millimeter, Lao mused before the thumb-size bullets vaporized his skull and chest.

  * * *

  Mack Bolan didn't see the Chinese die, but his ears noted the addition of 30 mm weapons to the firefight. A glance showed him police vehicles falling in from both ends of the soccer field and told him he was nearly out of time. He wouldn't fire on cops, and only that would save him from arrest if he remained inside the stadium too long.

  But Bolan still had work to do.

  And it was possible that officers had ringed the stadium with guns.

  What then?

  Then, he would die.

  Gunned down while fleeing from arrest or murdered later, in a jail cell, it hardly mattered. Bolan wouldn't survive incarceration.

  And neither would Obinna Umaru.

  Still, Bolan's work remained unfinished.

  He would go out fighting, if he made it out at all.

  His nearest adversaries were distracted by the amplified calls for surrender, the hammering of heavy guns below them. Bolan took advantage of the moment, stitching three more targets with short bursts from his AUG and brushing past them as they fell, to seek new prey.

  But Bolan's enemies were scattering, every man for himself as they bolted for exits, some firing at the APCs and drawing fire in return, others dropping their guns as instructed, then sprinting for cover and safety. The APCs fired on all runners, armed or otherwise, mowing them down with fine impartiality.

  Too late for Bolan to get out?

  Not quite.

  Deciding that he'd have to leave his four main targets to the cops, perhaps remain in Warri until they made bail and he could take them out with sniper rounds or by some other means, Bolan began retreating toward the nearest exit.

  Unlike the shooters who were drawing fire, he didn't sprint, or even stand completely upright. He double-timed in a crouch, his retreat less obvious to officers inside the armored cars.

  He'd almost reached the exit, almost made it, when two gunmen loomed in front of him. One black, one white. Both holding automatic rifles leveled.

  Knowing he was dead before he even tried it, Bolan raised his Steyr AUG to bring them under fire.

  * * *

  Obinna Umaru was saying a prayer and preparing to flee, ashamed of himself but unwilling to die, when he saw Matt Cooper breaking for an exit on his side of the stadium. He was relieved to see it, hoping one or both of them might have a chance to get away.

  Umaru wasn't bound by Cooper's personal aversion to shooting policemen, if it came to that. Most of those he'd personally known were either brutal or corrupt, often both. Ridding the world of one or two, to save himself, meant no more to Umaru than the other killings he'd performed since meeting Cooper.

  And if caught, what of it? They could only execute him once.

  Umaru was turning away from the field and the opposite stands when he saw two men block Cooper's path. He was too far away to make out faces, but he saw that one was white, one black, and both were armed. In fact, they seemed to have him covered, weapons pointed at his face.

  Too fast for conscious thought, Umaru shouldered his Daewoo
K-2. It was a long shot for the rifle's open sights, made worse by a sudden near-panic attack, but he aimed for center of mass and squeezed off. One round, and then a jerky sweep to his left for round two, riding the Daewoo's kick against his shoulder.

  Umaru blinked once, then again.

  Where were the riflemen?

  It took another second for Umaru to find them, both sprawled on the deck, one still writhing, the other rock still. Before that fact had time to register, he saw Matt Cooper turning, searching for him in the stands, and raising one hand in salute.

  Then he was gone.

  Umaru took the hint and bolted, up the stairs and out. Behind him, uniformed police were spilling from the APCs, through doors on both sides of each vehicle's hull, fanning out on the pitch to confront their opposition. Umaru felt, as much as heard, a lull in firing, turned in time to see a few Chinese and Russians laying down their guns, but then a couple of Nigerians cut loose again, and it all went to hell.

  Umaru saw his chance to score a few more hits, and let it pass. The officers were fully occupied below — at least, the ones that he could see from his position in the stands — and he would never have a better chance to exit the stadium.

  But if he found more uniforms awaiting him outside, he'd have a choice to make, with life or death at stake.

  Cooper, he guessed, wouldn't allow himself to be arrested. Arrest meant worse than trial and prison, in this case. Even if Afolabi and Ajani died in this fight, they would be leaving friends behind to tie up all loose ends. And job one on that list would be elimination of the men who'd put the grim killing machine in motion, for a start. It wouldn't matter if Umaru was condemned to spend his life inside a solitary cell. Someone would reach him, sometime, with a blade or dose of poison, maybe with a can of lighter fluid and a match.

  Why wait? he thought, and, smiling grimly, rushed into the waiting night.