Conflict Zone

by Don Pendleton

  * * *

  Valentin Sidorov came out of his long roll running, dodging toward the nearest bleachers that, with any luck at all, would offer him an exit from the stadium that had become a little slice of hell on Earth.

  He had one soldier left, the others dead or missing in the chaos that surrounded him. He would expect those who survived to seek him out, but in the circumstances Sidorov couldn't stand still and wait for them to find him.

  Standing still meant death — or at the very least, arrest.

  He'd been surprised to see police arrive so soon after the shooting started. Armored vehicles ruled out coincidence. They weren't used for neighborhood patrols, and five of them arriving in a column meant that someone on the inside had betrayed Sidorov and the rest, setting a trap for them while they schemed to surprise the faceless blackmailers.

  Or had his enemies arranged for officers to crash the party, as they had manipulated everyone — himself included — to appear in tandem at the stadium?

  There was no time to think about that now. Sidorov had the Uroil payoff, still intact, and he was thinking six or seven moves ahead as he proceeded toward the nearest exit.

  The police would find his soldiers dead among the rest, but that was no great problem. They had left all their ID behind, as ordered, and if they were later traced to Uroil somehow, well, what of it? None was listed on the company's payroll, and no one would contradict Sidorov's word when he denied that any of them served the company.

  As for the cash, it might go missing in the midst of so much violence, and who could say that Sidorov hadn't detailed one of his dead soldiers to guard it? He couldn't be everywhere at once, couldn't do everything himself, watch everyone around him all the time. It wasn't his fault that the payoff meeting had become an ambush, or that the police arrived before he and the rest could finish mopping up their adversaries. Only skill and luck had saved him when...

  Half a dozen men appeared in front of Sidorov, filling the exit, blocking his retreat. They were Nigerians, and Sidorov immediately recognized their leader. He had dealt with Idowu Yetunde in the past, using the local gangster as he used Agu Ajani and his other contacts, for Uroil's advancement and his own.

  "You are surprised to see me, yes?" Yetunde asked, smiling.

  "Nothing would surprise me at this point," Sidorov said.

  "You have my money there, I think."

  "Your money? No."

  The men around Yetunde shifted, not quite leveling their weapons, waiting for the word to take him down.

  "Perhaps you are mistaken?" Yetunde asked.

  "Not this time," Sidorov said.

  He still had nine or ten rounds in his pistol. Not ideal, by any means, but it could have been worse.

  Yetunde frowned and shook his head. "Well, if we can't be sociable.....

  Sidorov shot him in the face, one round below his left eye, snapping back the gangster's head, then he was rapid-firing down the line of gunmen to Yetunde's left, chosen at random, hoping that audacity and the advantage of surprise might save him yet.

  And he had dropped three more before the two survivors opened up with submachine guns at a range of fifteen feet, punching Sidorov backward, down the concrete steps. Before the darkness swallowed him, he saw the bag in his left hand blown open, spewing greenbacks like confetti as he fell.

  * * *

  Bolan emerged from the stadium near its south end. To his left, a small fleet of sedans and SUVs stood empty in the parking lot. A lone police car idled on the far side of the other vehicles, its driver standing at his open door and staring at the stadium, shotgun in hand.

  There was enough noise coming from the stadium to keep him occupied, with a variety of weapons hammering the night, from pistols to the 30 mm cannons of the APCs. The cop — a young one, from the look of him in profile — didn't notice Bolan as he left the stadium and turned back toward the place where he and Umaru had left the Kia parked.

  "White man!"

  The voice came out of the shadows, challenging. Bolan turned in a half crouch to face it, leveling his auto-rifle in the same motion. He didn't fire at once, because a twinge of curiosity prevented it.

  A fatal lapse? It would remain for time to tell.

  And if the lone policeman heard the voice? What then?

  Bolan couldn't afford a glance back toward the squad car as the man who'd called him stepped into the faint glow of a nearby streetlight.

  Make that two men, with the older of them carrying a handgun and a satchel, while the younger held a short-barreled Kalashnikov. Either would kill with ease at twenty feet, the range that separated them from Bolan.

  Ekon Afolabi didn't look exactly like the photos in Brognola's file, but Bolan chalked that up to stress he'd suffered since the Executioner's campaign began. Fighting an enemy he couldn't see had aged MEND's warlord visibly.

  "I don't know you," Afolabi said.

  "No," Bolan replied. "You wouldn't."

  "But I think I know your voice, yes?"

  Bolan shrugged without losing his target acquisition.

  "You tell me."

  "I tell you it is so. And now I ask you why you've done this thing to me."

  Bolan had no time for debating, and he wasn't in the mood.

  "Because I could," he said.

  "And now I kill you, for the same reason," Afolabi said, with a crooked, crazy smile. "It will be.....

  He was interrupted by a shout of "Hey, there! Put those guns down!" from the officer who'd been left to watch the parking lot. Bolan ignored it, but the call made Afolabi's face twitch.

  "Deal with him!" he snapped at his companion.

  Bolan felt it coming, saw the rifleman begin to pivot, firing from the hip before he had his target framed, brass spewing from his AK in a glinting stream. Downrange, a shotgun blast boomed out, wasted.

  Bolan shot Afolabi first, a rising burst that sheared through ribs, lungs, heart and spine to kill him where he stood. It was a simple shift from there to drop the younger thug with two rounds through his right-hand profile, blowing out the left side of his face.

  A glance back toward the cop showed Bolan he was down, still moving, prognosis unknown. Bolan had neither the equipment nor the skill to save a gut-shot man himself.

  As if he'd voiced the thought out loud, he heard a voice say, "We can't help him."

  Bolan faced Umaru, read the mixture of emotions on his face and said, "You're right. I know."

  "We should be going now."

  And just a nod this time, acknowledging the truth.

  There was nobody left to watch them as they jogged to their waiting vehicle, sporadic sounds of battle fading as they put more ground between themselves and the arena of the slaughter pen.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Arkady Eltsin rode the elevator from his basement office to the ground floor of the Uroil building. It was crowded in the eight-by-ten-foot car, with seven bodyguards around him, leaving barely space enough for breathing- But considering his nearest flankers — one of them a garlic addict, while the other seemed to bathe infrequently — Eltsin decided he could hold his breath during the brief ascent.

  The elevator door hissed open well before his lungs showed any sign of strain. Two of the bodyguards preceded Eltsin, separating as they left the car to scan the lobby, hard eyes sweeping left and right in search of enemies and finding none. They took their time, hands lingering in front of unbuttoned jackets that concealed their weapons, then relaxed a bit. The one on Eltsin's left turned and nodded to him.

  "Clear, sir," he declared.

  Eltsin delayed his exit for another two heartbeats, then left the elevator car, the other watchdogs pressing close around him for his transit of the open lobby. Even with the point men satisfied that it was safe, Eltsin still worried.

  What if they were wrong?

  Worse, what if they were traitors?

  And suppose their judgment was correct, no danger lurking in the Uroil lobby. Could the sniper who had menaced Elt
sin once before be waiting on the street, somewhere, to cut him down?

  Eltsin took a stab at positive thinking. It failed.

  He was frightened! And not without reason.

  The previous night's meeting, planned by Valentin Sidorov and the others as a trap to slay their common enemies, had failed, to put it mildly. Sidorov was dead, along with all those who had followed him to Warri Township Stadium. Not a survivor in the baker's dozen who had bid Eltsin farewell nine hours ago.

  He had been summoned by police to view their corpses at the morgue, lined up on tarps across the concrete floor because the place was overflowing. In addition to the thirteen Russian dead, there was an equal number of Chinese and twice as many Nigerians, with Agu Ajani among them.

  The sights and smells were nauseating, but he'd done his duty, answered questions from a stern-faced captain mostly in the negative.

  Of course, he hadn't known that Sidorov and some of his other employees had taken guns to fight a battle at the stadium. How could he be aware of such a thing? Uroil was a completely legitimate firm, concerned with nothing but petroleum. If Sidorov had taken on another job, moonlighting somewhere else, Eltsin was unaware of it. Sidorov's benefits and company insurance would be void, in such a case. There was no question of Uroil accepting any liability.

  And under questioning, he had known nothing of the CNP's involvement in the previous night's bloody affair. The Chinese were Uroil's competitors, in Delta and elsewhere. Eltsin had met the local CEO, Huang Li Chan, but any cordiality between them stopped far short of criminal conspiracy. If charges were anticipated...

  But the captain stopped him there. More time would be required before he knew if anyone besides the men killed at the stadium had been involved in the massacre. Eltsin should be available for further questioning, at need, but in the meantime, he was free to go.

  And meet with Huang Chan.

  They spoke first on a private line, swept twice a day for taps. All possible security precautions would surround the meeting they arranged, at which they would discuss the late-night slaughter and its ultimate significance to their respective firms.

  It worried Eltsin, meeting with the man before he knew what had gone wrong last night. But he might never know, with any certainty, and it was clear that they had much to say between them.

  Eltsin's guards surrounded him before they left the Uroil building, one unfurling an umbrella made from Kevlar to conceal him and deflect prospective rifle fire from any rooftops in the neighborhood. They looked ridiculous, emerging in a crush and scuttling toward the waiting limousine, with the umbrella raised against a blue and cloudless sky, but Eltsin had no fear of ridicule.

  He was afraid of sudden death.

  When they were packed inside the car, with Garlic Breath on Eltsin's left and BO on his right, doors shut and locked, the limousine pulled into traffic, rolling eastbound.

  "Watch for Chan's car," Eltsin told the driver. "It's a white Mercedes-Benz."

  Eltsin's own limousine was black, a Lincoln Town Car. It could almost symbolize the difference between Uroil and the Chinese, before grim circumstance had forced them to collaborate.

  Arkady Eltsin brooded over gray thoughts as the tank rolled on.

  * * *

  Huang Li Chan normally enjoyed riding in his white Mercedes-Benz S600 Guard Pullman stretch limousine, hidden behind its deeply tinted windows in air-conditioned comfort. He normally felt safe inside the twenty-four-foot status symbol as he toured Warri's crowded streets.

  But not this day.

  For openers, the car was crowded. Built to seat ten passengers in decadent luxury patterned on the old Pullman railroad cars — from which the limo took its name — the Mercedes already had eight men aboard, besides Chan, with five more soon expected. Jump seats would handle the overflow.

  And then, there was the problem.

  It hadn't been solved last night, at Warri Township Stadium. If anything, the move that Lao had planned with Ekon Afolabi and the rest, Russians included, may have made things worse.

  For starters, he had lost one hundred thousand dollars, along with Lao and a dozen of CNP's best security men, all but one of them killed in a fight that included police. The thirteenth was unconscious and hospitalized with a head wound. Physicians weren't sure if or when he'd regain consciousness, but Chan was hoping for never.

  In fact, he had plans to ensure it.

  Meanwhile, this morning's meeting-on-the-move with Arkady Eltsin had been hastily arranged, to discuss their next step in the crisis at hand.

  It wouldn't go away on its own, of that he was certain. A head count from the soccer battleground revealed no corpses that were unaccounted for. The men whom Lao and his companions planned to kill the previous night had managed to escape somehow. Again.

  And worse yet, now the Delta Police Command was involved, a nosy captain asking questions that Chan was unprepared to answer. Chan had stalled, so far, pleading ignorance of Lao's actions once he left the office, but that smokescreen was thin and would soon dissipate.

  Police admitted capturing three hundred thousand U.S. dollars at the stadium, and Chan assumed they had the other hundred grand, as well. Since no one dared to claim the money, it would be a total loss. Nothing significant in the long view, but still an irritant.

  And those who had demanded payment for the information they supposedly possessed were still at large. That was the larger problem, since Chan reckoned they would soon come back for more, perhaps engaging in new acts of reckless violence at the same time.

  It had to be stopped, and now, with MEND in disarray and Afolabi's major rival slain, with the Delta police their usual corrupt, incompetent selves, who else would shoulder the burden, if not CNP and Uroil?

  It didn't make them friends, comrades or allies. Quite the contrary, in fact. By working together briefly, in this isolated instance, each could demonstrate its strength to the opposition, setting the stage for conquest of Nigeria from its oilfields upward to the National Assembly and the president's mansion.

  "Here they are, sir," said Chan's driver, pointing ahead toward a black limousine cruising slowly through mid-morning traffic.

  "Keep on to the point arranged," Chan ordered.

  "Yes, sir."

  Chan and Eltsin had agreed to meet in the parking lot of a nearby shopping center, where Eltsin and four of his bodyguards would transfer to the Mercedes limo as a show of good faith. Or blind faith, take your pick. Eltsin's car would then follow the Pullman around while Chan and Eltsin talked business, however long it might take.

  They reached the shopping mall, Chan's driver turning in behind the Russian's black Lincoln.

  The cars stopped several yards apart, guards stepping out of both while Eltsin and his party made the transfer. When the Russian had settled in beside Chan, his armed men perched on jump seats, Chan signaled for his driver to proceed.

  "And now, my friend," he said to Eltsin, "shall we find the best way to remove these sharp stones from our shoes?"

  * * *

  "I "wish "WE knew where they were going," Obinna Umaru remarked.

  Seated beside him in the stolen Kia, Matt Cooper replied, "They probably won't stop again until they're finished talking."

  "That's a problem, eh?" Umaru asked.

  "Not really. I don't need a sitting target, just a little lead time."

  Glancing at his rearview mirror while he trailed the ebony and ivory limousines, Umaru couldn't see their latest acquisitions lying in the backseat, covered by a threadbare blanket. Cooper had purchased the matched pair of RPG-7s with four armor-piercing grenades from an arms dealer of Umaru's acquaintance on Warri's east side. Two launchers, he had specified, in case there was no time for reloading in an emergency.

  "So, I should get ahead of them?" Umaru asked.

  "A front tail isn't easy," Bolan answered. "They could turn off anytime, onto a side street, and we'd have to double back. It's time-consuming, and we'd run a risk of losing them entirely."
r />   "What, then?"

  "Now that we've got them spotted, shift a block over to left or right and run parallel to the Mercedes. I'll check the map for a good place to swing back and intercept them."

  Umaru did as he was told, turning left at the next intersection, then right again to regain his original direction. He accelerated through traffic, sparing the Kia's horn but surging around slower cars when he could. Cooper sat with a street map unfurled on his lap, shooting glances along each cross-street as they passed it, keeping track of their prey on the next street over.

  "Okay so far," he said. "Now, if we pick it up a bit, four blocks ahead we've got a roundabout circling the Queen of Sheba's statue."

  "Yes, I know it," Umaru said.

  "Can you beat the limos there?" Bolan asked.

  "Watch me!"

  Four blocks. It wasn't much, in terms of time or distance, with the stoplights and the traffic snarled in front of them, but Umaru pulled out the stops, driving like a madman, simultaneously fearing that he would attract police.

  They'd had a near-miss at the stadium the previous night, barely escaping as the shootout turned into a massacre by the authorities, and Umaru didn't fancy a replay in broad daylight, with no other targets present to distract police marksmen.

  But Cooper relied on him now, and Umaru wouldn't let him down.

  He jumped the second traffic light as it was turning red, then raced through another on yellow to reach the fourth intersection downrange. Beside him, Cooper had turned and was leaning into the backseat, checking the rocket-propelled grenade launchers — both already loaded — and clearing the blanket for easy access.

  "Almost there," Umaru told him as he swung into a final right-hand turn and gunned the Kia toward the Queen of Sheba's statue, with her sword upraised in her left hand.

  A landmark of war, for their new battleground.

  * * *

  Arkady Eltsin sipped the Smirnoff vodka Chan had given to him, feeling it light a fire in his gut while the limousine's air-conditioning chilled the sweat on his forehead. Part of it came from Nigeria's unrelenting humidity, the rest from a fear that he might never leave the Mercedes alive.