Bolan and Lyons were apprised of the situation as they sat and listened to Agostini. The priest, worldly wise in the misfortunes of the oppressed, scraped and begged and bartered for anything he could gather to hand out to the scattered inhabitants of the area. On a regular basis he drove countless miles in his old Land Rover that he kept going through determination, faith in his convictions and, as he claimed, the wish of God. He did it all while retaining his composure, offering gentle smiles and the occasional prayer for the sick and the dying.
And now he offered to help Mack Bolan and Carl Lyons in their own crusade against evil.
One of Agostini’s locals had picked up information about M’Tusi’s upcoming deal with the foreigners who had come to the region before. It wasn’t difficult to gain such information. It was picked up by workers in the diamond operation and passed by word of mouth. The details were not that much of a secret. M’Tusi, in his arrogance, believed he was in such control of the region that even if news of his deal leaked out to the workers and their families nothing would come of it. The region was isolated and its people so completely subjugated that talk was all they could ever rise to. Any physical resistance would lead to summary treatment, meted out by M’Tusi’s vicious squads of roving enforcers.
What M’Tusi had not counted on was the silent loyalty the people had toward Father Agostini.
One man.
Struggling against the odds, but who devoted his life to looking after his flock, as he called them. The man’s faith was unshakable. His determination stronger than anything they had experienced before. He came to them when they were sick. When they were starving. He ministered to their dying children and wept openly if he failed to save them. He gave everything to his people and asked nothing for himself.
When he learned about the diamond deal Agostini requested as much information as possible, making it clear that whatever was learned had to be passed to him alone and not allowed to make M’Tusi or his men suspicious. What Agostini asked was done without question and by the time Shambi arrived at the mission, along with his Americans, Agostini had the information they needed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The village lay in a dust-bowl landscape that baked under a hot sun, undulating, rock-strewed earth that could barely sustain plant life, let alone human. The village had been deserted for a long time. Any sign of human habitation had long since been erased. A hot, gritty wind blew almost continuously, dragging along thin dust that made a hissing sound as it scraped against the flimsy sides of the huts, filtering in through the gaps, leaving a fine coating on every surface. Apart from the brittle, dried grasses and stringy bush swaying beneath the wind, nothing else moved.
The vehicles came in from the east, two of them, moving fast and leaving heavy trails of dust in their wake. They swept into the village, coming to a noisy stop in what would once have been the central compound.
Two vehicles, ex-military, badly abused, carrying combat dressed and armed Africans.
Men climbed down from the vehicles, spreading out, weapons at the ready. The dust drifted away, caught by the wind. One of the armed men snapped out a command and watched as one of his group opened a slim case and activated a satellite phone. He spoke into it, received a response and relayed it to the commander of the group.
Joseph M’Tusi, the local warlord, was dressed in military fatigues. He was a big man, six feet tall, and starting to go soft. He called himself General, the rank self-promoted. M’Tusi enjoyed the prestige it bestowed on him. It sounded grandiose and allowed him the feeling of importance it generated. In truth he was little more than a vicious gangster, terrorizing the local population through violence and intimidation. He gathered a following of brutal gunmen around him and they roamed the territory, looting, killing, raping, employing terror tactics to get what they wanted.
M’Tusi nodded in response to the message, turning to disperse his men. They fanned out across the compound, moving with casual ease. They showed an unconcerned attitude bordering on arrogance. This was their territory. They ruled it with little opposition. At this moment in time there was no one who dared to oppose them. The central government, put in power after a military-inspired coup, had ceased to be more than an irritant. Since taking power it had failed to live up to its promise and the country had fragmented, breaking into different groups, each with its own policies—mainly how much each group could make from the country. As always there were personal agendas and, more important, tribal bickering and a surprising degree of racism between the indigenous factions. So the party in power had its own problems, preferring to leave local differences to be dealt with by M’Tusi who handled any upsets with ruthless efficiency. As long as the central administration received its bounties and aid money from international organizations, it stayed out of local politics.
TO THE WEST LAY sixty miles of barren terrain before the land gave way to the Atlantic Ocean. Waterless, empty, it produced little and offered nothing but despair. Very few of the original occupants of the strip remained. Nothing would grow here in any quantity, and there was barely any game left. The local inhabitants were under constant threat from M’Tusi and his roving marauders, and stayed hidden, so anyone entering the area was unlikely to encounter much resistance.
Mack Bolan and Carl Lyons, and their guide, Tomas Shambi, traversed the distance from Father Agostini’s mission overnight. By dawn they were concealed in a dry hollow at the south end of the village where they waited for the arrival of M’Tusi and his soldiers.
Bolan eased back down the dusty slope to the base of the hollow where Lyons and Shambi were waiting.
“It is M’Tusi,” Shambi said.
“Glad he could make it,” Lyons muttered, the bitter edge to his words unmistakable.
“So, you, too, have seen what he has done,” Shambi said.
“We read his file and saw the pictures,” Bolan said.
There was no forgetting the chilling illustrations of Joseph M’Tusi’s past rampages through the region during the tribal slaughter, when M’Tusi led his pangawielding squad through the area. It was not war, or combat. That was the explanation used to justify what the warlord and his followers did. In their eyes every member of the rival tribes was a threat, or potential future threat. Women and children were not spared and even Bolan, used to seeing the excesses of human barbarity, had flinched at the stark, graphic images of children being deliberately hacked to death during the purges. They were bitter images to see and impossible to wipe away.
“We saw them,” Lyons added quietly.
“Every gun M’Tusi buys. Every bullet. They mean more suffering for the people,” Shambi said. “And nothing is done to stop him.”
“Things change,” Bolan said.
“Now we just need Regan and company to show up,” Lyons added.
“He will be here,” Shambi said. “He deals with M’Tusi often. I have seen him in the city on a number of occasions, talking to M’Tusi’s agent. The one who sets up the exchanges.”
Lyons glanced up from checking his weapons. Like Bolan, he wore a long-billed baseball cap on his head against the heat. Even so he was hot and uncomfortable, a combination that did little to ease his mood. “If it goes right today, there won’t be any more deals to negotiate.”
“Your friend is not the kind who negotiates?” Shambi said.
Bolan smiled. “In his own way he’s a hell of a negotiator.”
The sound of Lyons racking the SPAS shotgun offered his only comment on the matter.
“I did not ask before,” Shambi said, “but you know this man Regan?”
“We know how he does business.”
“He sells death. Yes?”
“Pretty well describes him.”
“Then he is an ideal companion for General M’Tusi.”
Lyons raised a hand, indicating he had heard something.
“Incoming chopper,” he said.
Bolan heard it now. Approaching from the north. He recognized the familiar beat of a
Huey’s power plant. The military workhorse he had flown in many times. This one sounded slightly weary, and Bolan could empathize with that; it was a feeling he knew well personally.
“Eyes open, Ironman,” he said. “Watch the chopper in case they still have the M-60 operational.”
The Huey swung into their line of sight, sucking up dust from the ground as it landed. Painted in dull, military olive-green, previous markings painted over, the chopper was old and it showed. The first thing Bolan saw was the muzzle of an M-60 framed in the open side hatch.
“Good call,” Lyons said.
The 7.62 mm M-60 was a flexible, gas-operated, air-cooled machine gun with a firing rate of 550 rpm. Depending on the specific application, the M-60 weapon system comprised a pintle mount and one of two ammunition storage systems. An ammunition can bracket that mounts to the gun or the mount, the bracket held a single 200-round ammunition can. The second ammunition storage system was made up of a 500-round ammunition can and a flexible feed chute attached to the base of the mount. The M-60 had spade grips, an aircraft ring-type sight and an improved ammunition feed system. A canvas ejection control bag was attached to the machine gun to catch ejected links and cartridge cases, preventing them from being ejected into the path of the rotor blades or turbine engine intake. Either way, the weapon was provided with a controllable firing system and a plentiful load.
As the dust cleared, they were able to distinguish three figures alighting from the Huey. Jack Regan in his trademark white, crumpled suit and battered Panama hat was conversing with a lean African who wore his clothes as if he had just stepped out of a storefront display.
“That is Kesawayo, M’Tusi’s agent,” Shambi said. “A most untrustworthy man.”
As Shambi spoke, Bolan checked out the third man carefully. Bolan had seen the face before. The image he had seen on the photo Kurtzman had put up on the big screen in the War Room at Stony Man during the briefing, a group shot of the Brethren taken by a press photographer during a Jersey City rally. The Brethren showing their public side. The man had been just behind Liam Seeger, who had been talking to Jerome Gantz, the bomb maker, just his head and shoulders exposed, but his face had registered with Bolan. There had been an expression in his eyes that stuck. He had been smiling, presenting an amiable presence, yet Bolan had seen something in his eyes that went far beyond the humanitarian facade he was presenting: cold, empty, devoid of any humanity. It was unmistakable. It had forced Bolan back, to examine the man more closely and to lock away that image for future reference. Now that recognition clicked back and Bolan was watching the man step down on African soil, still exuding the smile that did nothing to hide the dead eyes.
This was Max Belmont, the name Kurtzman had tagged the guy with. He was a Brethren political activist with extreme views on the American government.
Beside Bolan, Tomas Shambi stretched above the rim of the hollow, desperate to get a clear image of M’Tusi. As Bolan reached up to drag the young man back he caught the expression on Shambi’s face. It exposed the African’s barely suppressed hostility toward M’Tusi. Something that had been building for a long time. Now that the object of his hatred was in clear sight Shambi had allowed his emotions to override caution.
That abandonment had repercussions instantly as one of M’Tusi’s entourage caught sight of Shambi’s ducking head. He raised a warning shout that alerted the rest of the group.
In that instant any element of surprise had disappeared, and with it much of Bolan’s advantage. He accepted the fact and moved on. Concerns could be addressed later.
“Carl, the chopper,” Bolan snapped, and left it at that, knowing Lyons would deal with the helicopter.
“Tomas, you put your damn head down and stay down.”
Bolan turned his attention on M’Tusi and his group as they moved in the direction of the hollow. Two of the leading gunmen were advancing fast, weapons ready, AK-74s, replete with customized chromed barrels and receivers. The sharp crackle of autofire concentrated Bolan’s mind. He kept his head below the lip of the hollow as the first volleys slammed into the hard earth, showering him with dust. He rolled to the right, clearing his original position and brought his M-16 into play as he showed himself. He hit the pair with solid bursts, seeing the impact of the 5.56 mm slugs dust the fronts of their camou fatigues. The stricken Africans stumbled and fell to the ground, blood starting to bubble from their wounds, weapons spilling from their fingers.
Bolan moved the moment he fired, keeping his shift to the right, and as he pushed up out of the hollow he had cleared at least ten feet, forcing M’Tusi’s men to change direction. Before they could counter his move he opened up again, raking the moving figures with murderous fire, the M-16 jacking out a searing stream of bursts that dropped the yelling Africans to the ground. The wild yells they employed during their attack, supposedly to frighten their enemy, did nothing to faze Bolan. He ignored the implicit threat the shouting posed and used his own energy to lay down his accurate fire.
Pausing briefly, he plucked a fragmentation grenade from his harness, yanked the pin and threw the bomb in the direction of the lead vehicle. Panic drove those near the vehicle to scatter. The grenade detonated with a hard crack, the explosion rocking the vehicle and mangling metal. Those who were still in the vicinity were caught in the blast and the resulting injuries were far more extreme to human flesh that to inert metal and plastic.
In the short moment it took M’Tusi’s men to recover from the shock of the grenade, Bolan had moved again, cutting around them and then advancing on the far side of the dust cloud the grenade had created. He made out the hesitant figures of the armed Africans and took them on without a moment of hesitation, hitting hard and with ruthless efficiency. The warlord’s kill squad was facing a different enemy during this engagement. Not a helpless, near starved individual, but a healthy, well-armed solider who had faced larger odds on many occasions and who refused to back down because of their reputation as killers.
CARL LYONS HAD MOVED at the same time as Bolan. His concentration was focused on the Huey and particularly the door gunner. The moment the situation went critical the gunner swung his M-60 around, seeking a target. As the first seconds went by and Bolan engaged, Lyons could see the muzzle of the M-60 wavering. The gunner was eager to join the firefight but his own people were between him and the lone enemy figure he could see. Lyons had no intention of allowing that to change. The way the gunner was acting he might open up at any given moment.
Lyons was already reaching the far curve of the hollow and once he did, his scant cover would be gone. He saw that M’Tusi’s squad was concentrating on Bolan. That would allow him a little more time but once that had gone, Lyons’s element of surprise would vanish.
The detonating grenade presented Lyons with his single chance and he took it, bringing into play the reckless streak he always found hard to curb. Digging in his heels, the Able Team leader broke over the lip of the hollow and ran hard in the direction of the Huey, the SPAS already rising. He wanted to be within a decent range before he used the weapon.
The grenade’s effects were still being registered when the M-60 gunner made a sweep of the immediate area and picked up Lyons’s moving figure. He opened fire instantly, raking the area with 7.62 mm rounds. Lyons, on the run, took evasive action, ignoring the slugs punching the earth around him. He covered a few more yards, bringing himself well inside the shotgun’s effective range, then shouldered the SPAS and triggered the first shot. The blast shredded the edge of the open hatch, causing the gunner to flinch as keen shards of aluminum peppered him. The brief halt in the M-60’s fire allowed Lyons to close in and he pumped out three more rounds, spacing them evenly, and saw the door gunner jerk aside when he was hit. The powerful charge from the combat shotgun tore into his upper right chest and shoulder, tearing at flesh and muscle, almost severing the guy’s arm in the process. Blood and fleshy debris filled the air as the screaming gunner dropped to the deck inside the Huey. Lyons kept moving until
he was able to flatten against the side of the chopper. He heard frantic movement coming from inside and gauged it was the pilot. He ducked under the M-60 assembly to the far side of the hatch and picked up on the outline of the pilot, an autopistol in his hand, as the guy pushed his way to the rear of the chopper. The moment he had a clear view of the pilot Lyons stood, leaned in through the hatch and hit the pilot with a direct blast from the SPAS that hurled the dying man back across the passenger compartment. He slammed up against the far side and pitched to the deck.
Out of the corner of his eye Lyons spotted an armed African from the main group racing in his direction. The man had an SMG in his hands and was firing as he ran, the slugs spraying the area, none coming even close to Lyons. The Able Team commander calmly swiveled at the hips, dropped the muzzle of the SPAS and blew the moving man off his feet with a single shot, the charge tearing into his midsection and spraying his insides across the dusty ground.
Patriot Play Page 13