Threat Factor

by Don Pendleton

  With any luck.

  In preparation for departure, Bolan started wedging frag grenades between the cannon rounds remaining in the automatic loader’s carousel. He’d use a length of wire from the T-90’s tool kit to extract the loosened pins, once he had cleared the turret’s hatch, then run like hell to beat the doomsday clock.

  Simple.

  And after that, well, they would have to wait and see what happened next.

  Epilogue

  “So, your flight’s all set?” Bolan asked, as they pulled into the long-term parking lot at Aden Adde International Airport.

  “We leave at 1:13 p.m.,” Mironov said, “if such precision is not simply fantasy.”

  “Sometime today, then,” Bolan said, half-smiling.

  “I suppose so.”

  “And the we…”

  “My comrades,” she replied, then caught herself. “Associates, that is.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you believe things ever really change?” she asked him.

  “I need to hope so,” Bolan said.

  “You are an optimist? In spite of everything?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” he answered. “Everywhere I look, I still see bad guys winning.”

  “But you still have hope!”

  “Don’t you?” he asked, as Mironov nosed the car into a space between two other vehicles.

  “Hope.” She repeated the word as if it was new to her, something she’d have to research, then shook her head. “No, I don’t feel it. I believe we hold the line, people like you and I—or try to hold it. There are never quite enough of us, and our superiors, well, are they ever really trustworthy?”

  Thinking of Hal Brognola, Bolan said, “Some are.”

  “Perhaps,” she granted. “At the very least, I think we’ve done good work together.”

  “Absolutely.”

  They had left Dirie Waabberi with a doctor he assured them could be trusted, wished him well and phoned ahead for reservations on the next flights out to their respective destinations. Bolan would be touching down in Cairo, Athens and London, before his North Atlantic crossing to the States. Another twenty-odd hours on planes and killing time in airports, before he got home.

  Wherever that was.

  Some motel, once he’d picked up a car, retrieved some gear he kept stashed for emergencies at drops across the country—and then, what?

  Another job, when Brognola was ready. When they needed him at Stony Man Farm, to seek more predators and deal with them in language they could understand.

  “I’m sorry that we didn’t have a bit more time,” Mironov said. “I would have liked to know you better, I believe you say?”

  “That’s what we say,” he told her, smiling. “But I can’t pretend you’re missing much. You’ve seen the only thing I do.”

  “The only thing?” she teased him.

  “Well, the main thing,” he replied.

  “I see. A man of war, and nothing else. How single-minded you must be.”

  “And you?” he asked. “When you get back to Moscow or wherever, do you jump onto the social treadmill?”

  “God forbid,” she said. “As surprising as this may be, I much prefer a quiet life.”

  “Makes sense. I’ve always thought it would be nice to try one.”

  “But you can’t?”

  He shrugged. “Just never had the time. There’s always something that requires attention.”

  “I’m familiar with the problem,” Mironov said. “But you can’t go on forever, surely?”

  “No one does.”

  “A man of duty. Will you sacrifice yourself?”

  “I’m not a kamikaze or suicide bomber, if that’s what you mean. Just a soldier.”

  “And soldiers do what they must.”

  Bolan let that one slide.

  “I was never a soldier, per se,” Mironov said. “I was recruited for the SVR from Saint Petersburg State University.”

  “What were you studying?” he asked.

  “Political science, if you can believe it.” She laughed at herself.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “A lady never tells.”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ve been at this a while, I take it?”

  Bolan smiled. “It feels that way.”

  “And after this adventure…what?”

  “I’ll find out when it happens.”

  “See? We’re not so very different.”

  “We’d better get inside,” he said.

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “People to meet, and all.”

  “My associates and I aren’t flying together,” Mironov said, “Or, at least, we don’t acknowledge one another until we are safely home.”

  Bolan considered that, trying to recall when the words “safe” and “home” went together.

  The Russian agent locked her keys inside the car, after they had removed their carry-ons. They’d ditched most of their weapons and the other gear outside of Mogadishu, traveling with only pistols, which they now left in the car. It seemed a long and naked walk into the terminal, but no one tried to intercept them on the way.

  Inside, there was the usual disorder of a major airport, with arrivals and departures underway. Tower of Babel time, with different languages and dialects, vendors in shops or manning mobile carts, some people meeting flights, while others sat with bags and solemn faces, waiting to take off for who-knew-where. Bolan saw no police, but noted AMISOM peacekeepers in their helmets, walking in pairs or larger groups, eyes peeled for any hint of trouble as they circulated through the crowd.

  There was no way for Bolan and Mironov to avoid being conspicuous. Their white faces were two of only ten or fifteen visible inside the terminal. If anyone from AMISOM, or the Guleed and Basra gangs, were watching for a Caucasian male and female, this would be the place to corner them and finish it.

  But nothing happened.

  Bolan kept his distance from Mironov, as she checked in at the Aeroflot desk and retrieved her boarding pass, with tickets for the other legs of her homeward journey. She did the same when Bolan showed his Cooper passport to the Alitalia clerk, confirming transfer to a British Airways flight at London’s Gatwick Airport. After that, they dawdled through the shops, Mironov picking out a paperback to read, while Bolan settled for a magazine.

  “Newsweek?” she asked.

  “The international edition. Hey, I have to keep up with current events.”

  “Perhaps we’ll be in it, next week,” she suggested.

  “I doubt it.”

  “In spirit, at least.”

  “That’s a thought.”

  “One can hope,” she replied.

  “Sure. There’s that.”

  “I suppose it is too much to hope that we may meet again,” Mironov said.

  Bolan could only shrug at that, and tell her, “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Yes, but rarely pleasant things.”

  She had him, there. Maybe he wasn’t quite an optimist, at that.

  “And if we do meet,” she continued, “there’s a good chance we’ll be adversaries.”

  “That would be a shame.”

  “Indeed,” she said. “But I have seen your films. A man’s got to do—”

  “What a man’s gotta do,” Bolan finished it for her.

  “Of course.”

  “So, then, I’ll cancel the reunion,” Bolan said.

  “It’s for the best, I think.” Mironov sounded almost wistful, and it didn’t suit her. When they called her flight, a short time later, Bolan thought she seemed relieved.

  “Another life, perhaps,” she said, and rose to kiss him on the cheek before she turned away and entered the chute to clear airport security without a backward glance.

  Bolan was out of there before she disappeared from sight, making his way along the concourse to his own gate, answering generic questions at the checkpoint where he had to shed his shoes and jacket, put
his pocket litter in a plastic bucket that pursued his one bag through the scanner and came out long moments later on the other side.

  He could begin the countdown, now, marking the hours off in transit, as he closed the hemispheric gap between himself and home.

  He’d find no peace or safety there, but all of that was relative. Compared to Mogadishu, camping out at night in New York’s Central Park seemed positively tame. Beside Musse Guleed and Jiddu Basra, homegrown Crips and Bloods were little more than children playing soldier, who had somehow managed to acquire real guns.

  Bolan would get the final details of his mission in Mogadishu from Brognola, once he’d landed on the far side of the pond. Whether the hijacked arms went on to Kenya, were returned to Russia, or got sidetracked in the process, he had done his best to keep them out of local hands and off the black market for terrorists. Hanging around to blast a few more tanks and sacrifice his life would have accomplished nothing more.

  The hell of it, in Bolan’s world, was that no victory was ever truly final. There would be more arms consignments, and the pirates would keep sailing—from Somalia, from Nigeria, Malaysia, Indonesia, from the Philippines, Colombia, and tropic flyspecks dotting the Caribbean. Wherever one group went down, two more sprang up to take its place.

  Circle of life?

  Make it circle of death, and you’d not be far off the mark.

  In Bolan’s world, there was no end to war. And if hope sprang eternal, there was always someone standing by to crush it underfoot.

  But there was also someone else, prepared to put things right.

  The Executioner was still on duty. Standing by.

  The war went on.

  Mack Bolan wouldn’t have it any other way.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6625-8

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Mike Newton for his contribution to this work.

  THREAT FACTOR

  Copyright © 2010 by Worldwide Library.

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