Threat Factor

by Don Pendleton

  On his third tank, Bolan tried one of the Refleks missiles for the hell of it, “painting” the target with a laser beam and firing the fifty-pound rocket through his smoothbore cannon. It traveled at subsonic speed and was there in a heartbeat, its tandem HEAT charges searing through the T-90’s armor to detonate within.

  Smoke shrouded the compound, but it didn’t faze Bolan. The Russian tank’s optics included night vision and FLIR—forward-looking infrared—capability that showed him what his enemies were doing, even if he couldn’t recognize specific faces.

  At that moment, a group of gunners was rushing from the CP building, which appeared to be in flames, toward Bolan’s tank. He swung around to greet them with a long burst from the T-90’s coaxial machine gun. About three dozen of the MG’s seven thousand rounds expended, while the bodies flopped and writhed.

  That done, Bolan turned his focus back to target number four.

  THE FIRST EXPLOSION HURLED Guleed to the floor of his CP with stunning force. By the time he lurched back to his feet, aided by Faadumo Khalid, the guards his customers had brought with them were there, shouting and clutching their automatic weapons.

  Guleed did not speak the Triginya language of Eritrea, or Ethiopia’s Amharic tongue, but he had a fair idea of what was happening outside. The booming echo of another cannon shot confirmed it.

  Someone, intruder or traitor, had hijacked one of the stolen tanks and was using it to wreak havoc inside Guleed’s compound.

  That someone would die.

  Guleed snapped orders at Khalid, commanding him to rally the troops, and Khalid rushed off to obey. Guleed, about to follow, saw Dahnay Zenawi glance upward and followed the direction of his gaze, startled to see flames spreading rapidly across the CP’s ceiling.

  “Everyone get out!” he shouted at the bidders from his suddenly aborted auction. When they hesitated, Guleed led them by example, bolting for the exit.

  Dahnay Zenawi caught him outside, clutching at Guleed’s left arm. “What of my bid?” the Ethiopian demanded, wild-eyed. “Do I win?”

  Clearly, the man had lost his mind. Guleed stepped back a pace and disengaged his arm, raising his voice to answer, “As you see, there is a problem with the merchandise.”

  “I’ve bid two million seven!” Zenawi raved.

  “Then, by all means,” Guleed said, sneering at him, “collect your prize!”

  Suddenly machine-gun fire rattled the camp. Guleed spun toward the sound, in time to see a skirmish line of riflemen collapse, riddled and thrashing as they died. He marked the tank whose gun had slain them, and considered how he might destroy it with his unknown enemies inside.

  Zenawi reached for him again, but Guleed slapped his pawing hand away. “You want these tanks?” he asked, feeling the blade of panic prodding him toward hysterical laughter. “Start with that one, why don’t you?”

  And with that, Guleed ran. Zenawi shouted after him, “Who’s in there?” but Guleed ignored him. One more question that he couldn’t answer, even for himself.

  But Guleed knew what he had to do.

  Destroy the damned tank.

  Slaughter his faceless enemies.

  If he could manage that, without himself being annihilated, he might salvage something from this night.

  His life, if nothing else.

  And while life lingered, there was still a hope for sweet revenge.

  MIRONOV WAS LITERALLY ON the edge of her seat—the T-90’s small, padded driver’s seat. None of the tank’s weapons were at her personal disposal, but she had access to the same optics as Bolan, in the command turret.

  And what she saw amazed her.

  So far, it was working!

  She’d been skeptical about the big American’s plan, but had endorsed it since the various alternatives seemed even more far-fetched. At this moment, they were buttoned down inside the tank and Bolan had destroyed three others—make that four!—and the responding fire from Guleed’s men was rattling off of the T-90’s composite armor like hail, loud but harmless. So far.

  Mironov couldn’t forget that Guleed had also stolen a stockpile of RPG-29 antitank weapons when he looted the Vasylna. Sooner or later, he would think of turning them against the rogue T-90. Or, perhaps, his men would pile into the other tanks and bring hers under fire.

  She ached to do something, but Cooper had been preoccupied since she’d started up the tank’s engine, allowing him to load and fire the smoothbore cannon. If and when he craved mobility, then he would order her to drive the beast and she would do her best.

  But until then…

  Neither of the tank’s machine guns could be accessed from the driver’s seat. Mironov had her AKS carbine, but the T-90 had no gun ports for the crew. Gun ports could also let things in, like bullets, flames and gas. The tank was perfectly secure, and she was trapped inside, until such time as someone cracked it with an armor-piercing round.

  In which case, she might have just enough time to scream before she died.

  The earphones she had donned, as soon as she sat down, helped deaden the terrific cannon blasts, as well as the incessant rain of bullets striking the T-90’s hull. Outside its armored shell, she would be dead already, shot to bloody tatters, but that knowledge scarcely fazed her sense of being caged, waiting to be roasted alive or obliterated by explosives.

  To suppress that fear, Mironov concentrated on her view of the compound, where gunmen scampered back and forth, seeking an angle of attack that would reward their efforts and potential sacrifice. Meanwhile, Bolan was firing, firing, taking out one tank after another. Every shot hit home. She saw six shattered vehicles in flames, and knew from counting thunderclaps that three more had been trashed beyond her line of sight.

  Nearly one-third of them were destroyed, and she began to think they might just pull it off. As for escaping, though, it sounded like what an American might call a pipe dream. She supposed that phrase derived from smoking opium, and wished that she had something of the sort to dull the pain of dying, when the time came.

  Never mind, she thought. Do it the hard way, just like always.

  And with that, for the first time since they had entered the compound, Mironov found her smile.

  She’d go down fighting, come what may, and any of the bastards out there who survived her would remember this night’s work for the remainder of their wasted lives.

  JIDDU BASRA HEARD THE EXPLOSIONS, followed by the crackling sound of automatic weapons, and cursed his soldiers for slowing him. Somehow, the battle had started without them, and Basra was furious.

  “Pick up your feet, damn you! Faster! Faster!” he exhorted his commandos. “Run, you bastards, or you’ll miss the party!”

  They’d been stalled for several minutes at their meeting with the Abgaal clansmen, whose commander had insisted on exchanging proper introductions and receiving Basra’s reassurance that he would be properly rewarded for participating in the raid to come. All that, and now the fight had started while they traipsed across wasteland to reach Guleed’s compound.

  But who was Guleed fighting?

  Not the AMISOM troops. You had to slap their faces, maybe even poke them in the eyes, before they would defend themselves, much less launch an attack.

  One of the local clans? Basra discounted it, assuming the Abgaali would have tipped him to an insurrection in the making. Who, then?

  Rather than allow the mystery to slow him further, Basra redoubled his efforts to spur his troops onward, shouting until his voice broke and his throat felt as if it was tearing inside.

  And it worked.

  His mixed troops almost sprinted toward the killing ground ahead, losing formation, but producing such an uproar with their own hoarse battle cries that Basra didn’t care. They couldn’t breach the camp in tidy ranks, and the appearance of a howling, well-armed mob appearing from the darkness, mad with bloodlust, would unsettle the other combatants.

  Whoever they were.

  Basra did not mind killing strangers. He’d do
ne it before, and doubtless would do it again at some point, if he lived through this night. But he craved a glimpse of Guleed in his gunsights—or, better yet, cringing and begging for mercy while Basra stood over him, panga uplifted to strike. How sweet it would be, hearing squeals of panic before he delivered the death blow.

  But I have to find him, first, he thought.

  And that promised to be no easy task.

  Up close, Basra discovered that the compound was in shambles, ruled by chaos. A dozen or more tanks were burning, lighting the camp with their flames, while the compound’s own lights had gone dark. He saw men running everywhere, firing their weapons aimlessly.

  No, some of them were firing at a tank parked on the east side of the camp. As Basra watched, the armored monster strafed them with machine-gun fire, left six or seven soldiers dying in the dust. Then, almost without pausing, it unleashed another cannon blast, and Basra saw a carbon copy vehicle explode, against the western fence.

  Confused beyond the point of caring as to who was killing whom, Basra used the last vestige of his raspy voice to urge his gunmen forward. Psyched for action, they angled toward the compound’s gate—open, he saw—and poured inside to join the slaughter.

  They had no friends in the camp, so anyone or anything that moved automatically ranked as a target. The camp was one hellacious free-fire zone, a madman’s playground.

  Basra swallowed once, to ease his aching throat, then plunged into the fray.

  AMARE TENAGNE FELT AN unaccustomed surge of panic as another tank exploded, this one closer than the others, spewing flame and shrapnel. Berhanu Kelile and their two bodyguards huddled closer, as if shielding him with their bodies would help.

  Tenagne focused on the anger that competed with his fear, compelling it to dominate the shameful sense of helplessness he felt amid the gunfire and explosions. Rage took over, as he ran the hasty mental checklist of calamities.

  First, he had traveled to Somalia, at risk to life and freedom, in the hope of buying weapons that would let his troops achieve decisive victory. Even before the shooting started, he had seen that dream evaporate, thanks to the damned Ethiopian who bid more than Tenagne could afford to spend.

  As if that hadn’t been bad enough, it seemed that he might die through no fault of his own, for simply being present at the auction. Any second now, Tenagne could be shot or blown to bits by someone else’s enemies, who likely didn’t even know or care that he stood in their line of fire.

  It was humiliating and infuriating, more than any righteous soldier of Allah should have to bear.

  And finally, the architects of his embarrassment—perhaps his doom—stood gawping at the hellish scene before them, perfectly oblivious to Tenagne distress. Guleed could only see a fortune going up in smoke, while the Ethiopians—whatever their names were he couldn’t think—pointed and stared like stupid children on their first trip to a zoo.

  Tenagne’s rage boiled over, spilling bile into his throat as he groped for the pistol hidden beneath his loose shirt. The leader of the Ethiopian group—he remembered his name—seemed to sense the danger, turning toward Tenagne as the weapon rose and found its mark.

  Tenagne fired without warning his comrades, but they were conditioned to follow his lead. Even as his first shot drilled Zenawi’s cheek and punched him backward, arms flailing, Berhamu Kelile began firing, dropping the Ethiopians before they could defend themselves.

  Tenagne swung his pistol toward Guleed, and knew immediately that he was too slow, too late. His thin edge of surprise was sacrificed. Guleed, his second in command, and several of their men had automatic weapons leveled from the hip before Tenagne could squeeze off another shot.

  He had a fraction of a second only to pronounce the words “Allahu Akhbar”—“God is the greatest”—before a storm of bullets ripped into his flesh.

  BOLAN LINED UP HIS SHOT—the fourteenth—and sent another Refleks missile hurtling down a laser beam toward impact with its target. The doomed T-90 was a giant sitting duck, inert, silent, until the HEAT warhead seared through its armored hide and detonated with a numbing thunderclap.

  It wasn’t simply that the blasted tanks caught fire, blazing from the inside, but the HEAT rounds also set off their stockpiled ammunition. The first blast was a mere preliminary to the main event, when shells and rockets started cooking off inside the tank’s super-heated ovens.

  It was panic time inside Guleed’s compound, but some of his soldiers still held it together, ducking and dodging for cover, firing at Bolan’s T-90 with small arms that wouldn’t penetrate the monster if they cranked off every rifle cartridge ever made. It was a hopeless fight with their selected weapons, but he had to give them points for pure courage.

  The Executioner had used up three full boxes of 7.62 mm machine gun ammunition, sweeping the camp between cannon blasts, which meant he still had twenty-five to go—6,750 rounds, in all—before he had to use the top-mounted 12.5 mm piece. He could fire it remotely, but the larger MG only held three hundred rounds, and he was hoping he could save it for their getaway.

  Unless Guleed got wise and tried to use some of the RPGs his men had snatched from the Vasylna when they bagged the tanks and other hardware.

  Three riflemen sprang out from cover, some twenty yards to his left, and peppered Bolan’s tank with wasted Kalashnikov rounds. He considered giving them a pass, then thought about the people they might kill tomorrow if he let them slip away. Stone-faced, he hosed them with the turret’s coaxial MG and watched them fall.

  Bolan spared a glance for Waabberi, huddled in a corner of the turret with his shotgun clutched against his chest. His face was blank, the muffling earphones giving his head a lopsided appearance. Waabberi met Bolan’s gaze without blinking, revealed no expression beyond nostrils flaring to take in the ripe cordite smell of the canned atmosphere.

  The tank had exhaust fans and air-conditioning of a sort, but there was still no escaping the scent of battle. Burning fuel and gunpowder, scorched flesh and metal, sweat and apprehension—it all added up.

  Leaving Waabberi to his thoughts, whatever they might be, Bolan picked out another target—number fifteen in a row—and fixed his sights. By firelight, he saw gunmen scrambling around the tank, whether for cover or to find a way inside, he couldn’t tell.

  Too late, in either case.

  He fired and watched the target come apart, exploding from within, spewing torn flesh and shrapnel.

  One more left along the western fence, and then he’d have to start on his own lineup. As the next shell slid into the cannon’s breech, he raised Mironov on the intercom.

  “You ready down there?” he inquired.

  “I am!” He almost heard her crack a smile.

  “Give me one more shot,” he said, “then take us out of line.”

  15

  Captain Abasi Boipelo smiled when he heard the explosion, soon followed by others, interspersed with fire from automatic weapons. He did not need a great imagination to decipher where the sounds originated.

  Something had gone wrong between the warlord and his neighbors. They were in the midst of killing one another, and using Guleed’s stolen arms to accomplish that goal, from the sound of it. Captain Boipelo’s only problem, now, was choosing whether he should stand back and ignore the firefight, or join in.

  He took all of two seconds to decide.

  It was the opportunity he had been wishing for. Having been sent to guard the bandit’s store of contraband, against all logic, Boipelo had an unexpected chance to put things right.

  If that was even possible within a bloody madhouse like Somalia.

  But he could try.

  Captain Boipelo issued orders to his driver, then repeated them over the radio to crewmen in his second APC. The men had tasted blood earlier that day, and from the comments he had overheard, Boipelo guessed they would like some more.

  Winning was always like that. Soldiers gloried in it, after months of watching from the sidelines, doing nothing, and a
victory encouraged them to think that they would always win. It took defeat to change that attitude, and these young men were not conditioned to be losers.

  Not yet, anyway.

  The sounds of cannon fire concerned Boipelo, but he reasoned that Guleed was busy killing whoever had dared attack his camp. Distracted by that chore, he might not notice when Boipelo’s team returned. And if he did, he’d expect the AMISOM troops to be fighting on his side.

  It was their stated mission, after all: Defend the indefensible.

  That gave Boipelo the advantage of surprise. It was doubly advantageous that there were no innocents inside Guleed’s compound. Whether invaders or defenders, all of them were violent criminals—the very sort that AMISOM was theoretically created to suppress. None of the officers above Boipelo could complain if he performed his duty by suppressing bloodshed. And if anyone did, he could resign, go home to Kenya with his honor more or less intact, and try to pick up his career where it had been so rudely interrupted.

  Rolling through the darkness toward what sounded like a massacre in progress, Boipelo steeled himself for the fighting to come. His men might be outnumbered, very possibly outgunned, but if they followed orders and maintained strict discipline, he thought they had a fair chance to prevail.

  And based upon the ringing sounds of battle, every moment spent in transit meant more dead and wounded enemies. Perhaps there would be no one left to kill, when he arrived at Guleed’s camp.

  That notion made Boipelo wonder if he should slow down, allow the criminals to do his work and spare his men from risk. But that would be the same as letting some of them escape, perhaps taking the stolen tanks and other weapons with them.

  “Faster!” the captain barked to his driver, and repeated it by radio. “We have no time to waste!”

  AT FIRST WAABBERI THOUGHT he had imagined hearing footsteps on the tank’s rear deck. His earphones muffled sound, although they could not spare him absolutely from the steady string of cannon blasts the big American was unleashing toward the other armored vehicles. It seemed impossible that he would hear a sound as minor as the noise of boots on steel.