A ragged line of gunners sprinted into view, their Kalashnikov rifles unleashing punishing bursts in the direction of the Phoenix Force duo. Encizo’s MP-5 rattled out a deadly response. He hosed down the attackers with an unrelenting volley of autofire that cut down two of them. Hawkins’s rifle spit out a burst of its own that felled a third gunner by shredding his gut.
The rutted road leading to Mulumba’s quarters was J-shaped. The Phoenix Force warriors had made their way along much of its length. But now they turned the corner and walked the short curve leading to his tent. Each man had stepped off the road and was walking along the dry drainage beds that ran on either side of the road.
As they closed in on Mulumba’s tent, they crouched and surveyed before they passed the point of no return on the trail. From his vantage point, Hawkins could see more shooters had stationed themselves in various spots in front of his tent, finding cover behind parked ATVs, oil drums and waist-high walls made of concrete blocks. Several block walls had been erected around the large tent, several yards apart from one another. Hawkins guessed they’d been built to help protect him from head-on assaults.
Under other circumstances it probably would have worked, giving Mulumba’s hardmen a place from which to hold people at bay for hours if not days.
Hawkins activated his com link. “McCarter?”
“Go.”
“We’re in position.”
“No kidding you’re in position,” McCarter replied. “I can see you from here. You might as well be wearing those bloody awful orange hunting caps.”
“You have a count?”
“Five guys. Three in front, two in back. I’m surprised they had the presence of mind to cover the entire building.”
“Can you help us?”
“Silly question. Give me a three count.”
As they’d drawn most of the guards to one side of the camp, McCarter had been able to reach a slight rise that looked down on Mulumba’s compound. He’d positioned himself with an M-91 A-2 sniper rifle, chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum. Constructed with a four-round magazine, the rifle used by the Navy SEALS boasted a muzzle velocity of more than 2,500 feet per second and a range of 1,000 meters.
Hawkins knew McCarter, a master marksman, would put that kind of power to deadly use.
The rifle pealed once and Hawkins heard an anguished cry burst from behind one of the concrete block walls. One of the men apparently panicked. He popped up from behind one of the barriers and began to fire his AK indiscriminately in the direction of Hawkins and Encizo. The barrage forced both men to press as hard as possible against the ground as the bullets slashed the air above them.
After what felt like forever, another rifle shot boomed and the autofire ceased. Hawkins looked up and saw the shooter’s upper torso poking out from behind one of the block walls, on his back. The top part of his head was missing and blood had pumped out from his neck, darkening the bone-dry ground.
“Two more and I get a teddy bear,” McCarter said into their earpieces.
The final shooter surged out from behind a big oil drum. Even as he moved he laid down a blistering trail of bullets that smacked into the ground a few yards in front of Hawkins, forcing him to again press his face down into the hard ground. When a pause in the shooting came, Hawkins looked up and saw the guy diving behind a nearby pickup. The vehicle was a faded blue-green that reminded Hawkins of the paint used on the bottoms of swimming pools. The tires were long gone. Rust had eaten away the truck’s quarter panels and had left a reddish-brown-rimmed hole on the driver’s door.
In the meantime Hawkins flashed a series of hand signals at Encizo, who replied with a nod.
The Cuban warrior switched out magazines on the MP-5 and fired the weapon at the dilapidated truck, raking it with an unrelenting storm of 9 mm slugs. The bullets punched holes through the vehicle’s steel body, lanced through the windows and caused the glass to web. Meanwhile, Hawkins rose and ran in a zigzag motion for the vehicle. Moving around the vehicle’s tail end, he found the hardman crouched behind the engine block, presumably using the big piece of steel to protect himself from the gunfire. The guy’s face registered surprise as Hawkins moved into view. He raised his AK to attack, but Hawkins had the drop on him. Another burst from the M-4 dispatched the guy to hell.
“He’s down,” Hawkins announced into his throat mike.
In the next instant he heard a rifle’s thunderous report, followed a few seconds later by another shot.
“Two more gone,” McCarter growled.
“Hawk,” Encizo said. “Cover me.”
“Roger,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins watched as Encizo broke from cover, ran up to the tent and tossed something through the door before sprinting away. A moment later a loud crack sounded from within the structure, accompanied by a bright white light.
Hawkins moved up behind Encizo, who went through the door first, his MP-5 searching for a target. They found Mulumba standing there, hands clasped over his ears and staring at one of the walls. Encizo crossed the room in a heartbeat and hit the guy in the back of the head with the butt of his MP-5. The big African sagged, his body swaying for a stretched second before it crashed to the floor.
* * *
THEY’D SEATED MULUMBA in a folding steel chair and bound his wrists with plastic loop restraints.
Hawkins had seated himself on Mulumba’s cot, where he tried to break into the guy’s laptop with little success. Once they took it back to their hotel, he figured they could have the Farm’s cyber team break into it remotely to see whether it contained anything useful.
Mulumba’s back was to Hawkins. From his vantage point, the American could see the guy had a large bruise forming on the back of his skull where Encizo had struck him. After about forty-five minutes, Mulumba groaned and began to stir. As he realized his hands were immobilized he took in a sharp breath and began straining at his bonds.
McCarter had been shuffling through Mulumba’s papers while he was unconscious. Once he heard Mulumba make a noise, he threw the papers on the floor and strode over to the prisoner. He stood in front of the murderous rebel leader, crossed his arms over his chest and smirked.
“Hello, lad,” he said.
“You’re British? Why would the British want me? I mean, why are you doing this?”
“Blah, blah, blah,” McCarter said. “Shut the hell up and leave the questions to the professionals.” He yanked his Browning from its holster and gave the guy a hard stare. “Otherwise,” he said, “I might lose my patience. You don’t want me to lose my patience.”
Mulumba glared at him, but said nothing.
“So,” McCarter said. “You were expecting someone, just not the British. Is that right?”
“I said no such thing.”
“No need,” McCarter said. “I’m pretty perceptive.”
“You’re mercenaries,” Mulumba said. “You have to be. Otherwise, why would you be here?”
McCarter thought he detected a note of hope in the rebel leader’s voice.
“Not mercenaries,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t buy us off, if that’s what you were thinking.”
“We’re big fans of your work,” Hawkins said.
Mulumba straightened in his chair. He turned his head and tried to throw a defiant look at Hawkins, but he couldn’t quite swivel his head far enough.
“My work is freedom,” he said. “I am here to stand up against tyranny, the tyranny of this government.”
McCarter snorted.
“Freedom?” he said. “Do you call it freedom when you kidnap small children from their families and turn them into your personal soldiers? The stable of women you were keeping here—how many of them had the freedom to come and go? Not too many, I’d venture to say. They looked scared to death.”
“I am at
war,” the big African said. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”
McCarter bent at the waist and positioned his face about a foot from Mulumba’s.
“You’re right,” the Briton said. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. We both know what you are. This isn’t some grand political movement you and your friends are running. You don’t want to make things better for your country or your people. All you and your friends really want is to burn down villages, steal other peoples’ shit and force women to have sex with you. All the political crap you and people like you spew is just a wild stab at making it all seem less insane than it really is.”
“Cut me loose and say that to me.”
McCarter laughed and held up both his hands, palms facing Mulumba. “I’d cut you loose, but my hands are shaking too much,” he said. “Now let’s get down to business. A U.S. ambassador was killed in this country. Your friend, Jules Nmosu, was involved in it. It seems like he got the short end of the stick on that deal, though, considering that someone shot and killed him after he made his big score. Awfully shabby treatment for one of the founders of your high-minded organization.”
Mulumba said nothing.
“Unfortunately,” McCarter said, “things being as they were, there was no footage of the shooting. So we’re left to wonder—who killed poor Jules?”
“Like you care. He’s just another dead African to you.”
“Oh, we care,” McCarter said. “Granted, we don’t really give a crap about Jules, per se. Frankly, I’d go piss on his corpse if it was lying on the ground here. That said, he did kill some people who actually matter. That pissed off some other people who really matter. And here we are. So, for starters, why did you idiots actually think killing a U.S. ambassador might be a good idea? And why did the guy who did it end up dead immediately after? You guys didn’t want to split the money?”
McCarter saw Mulumba tense just a little bit. He held McCarter’s gaze, but licked his lips before speaking.
“Who said anything about money? Or about killing this man in the first place?”
McCarter straightened. His hand lashed out in a blur and he backhanded the thug in the cheek. He then stepped back and let a grin tug at the corners of his mouth.
“Not sure who you think you’re dealing with,” he said. “But, in case you weren’t paying attention, we laid waste to a dozen or so of your men, and barely broke a sweat. Not sure why you think people who can do all that will fall for your line of bull. Maybe that works with the local cops and military. But we’re not them.”
“You don’t scare me,” Mulumba growled.
“Of course we don’t,” the Briton said. “If we cut those plastic ties, you’re probably ready to jump out of the chair and tangle with us.”
The African pursed his lips. He stared at McCarter, then flicked his eyes to Encizo and Hawkins.
“Who started all this?” McCarter said.
“Ahmadah,” he replied. “Hossan Ahmadah.”
“Means nothing to me.”
“He’s Iranian. The son of a high-ranking army general, one who was involved in taking over the U.S. Embassy back in the 1970s.”
“Okay.”
“He’s not military, though. He’s Hezbollah. But he also runs an import-export business in Kenya. It’s mostly been a front for shipping counterfeit things.”
“Sells it to raise money to pay for Hezbollah’s operations?”
“Right.”
“And why did he want the ambassador dead?”
Mulumba shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Bullshit,” Encizo said.
“I don’t know,” he said more emphatically. “I didn’t make the original deal with them. Nmosu had dealt with Ahmadah. He’d bought some weapons from him. The Iranian approached him a few months ago about this whole thing, offered to pay him for doing it. I didn’t want to do it. I knew it would bring us nothing but trouble, but they didn’t listen to me. That’s why they killed Nmosu. They wanted to make sure no one could trace it back to Hezbollah, back to Iran.”
“Because it would cause a war.”
“Yes.”
“You know this for a fact?”
Mulumba shook his head. “It’s a guess. But tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that’s not why Lukwebo is dead.”
McCarter blanked on the name, but tried to keep his expression flat so the guy didn’t realize it. After a second he remembered who Lukwebo was and shook his head no.
“We didn’t kill Daniel Lukwebo,” he said. “We didn’t know he was dead, for that matter.”
“Wish we had killed him, though,” Hawkins interjected. “He’s nothing more than a butcher and a serial rapist. How many international charges had he been indicted on?”
“Go to hell,” Mulumba said.
“If I go to hell,” Hawkins said, “I hope they give me a room right next to yours.”
McCarter continued, “So some bastard from Hezbollah paid your band of merry men to kill an ambassador. You have no idea why. Did your friends ever stop to think they’d end up with the U.S.A. breathing down their necks? What the hell was their end game?”
“Hezbollah offered them a million dollars to commit this murder. Need I tell you that’s a lot of money?”
“More than I have in my pocket, that’s for damn sure,” McCarter replied. “Offered, but didn’t pay up, right?”
Mulumba ducked his head and stared at the floor. “Right.”
“So you guys signed up for this gig. You killed several men. And now, the whole group’s destroyed. And you didn’t get your money. Is that right?”
The rebel leader nodded.
“Well,” McCarter said, “nothing wrong with trying to better yourself, right?”
Scowling, the creases in Mulumba’s forehead deepened. He knew they couldn’t leave a killer like him to hurt more people. He shot a glance at Hawkins, who smiled grimly as he thought of the woman he’d encountered. He’d send her and her group, armed with the machetes Mulumba was so fond of, back to exact revenge.
“Payback’s a bitch, they say,” Hawkins mused. He addressed Mulumba directly. “You just wait right there, my friend. There are some women I’m sure you’re dying to see.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Two hours later the members of Phoenix Force had returned to the Embassy. As they walked across the grounds and made their way toward the main building, McCarter again noticed the American flag outside the entrance was flying at half-mast. When they entered the lobby, he saw the framed portrait of Ambassador Pearson staring down at them from the wall. McCarter knew the guy had a wife and kids. He’d been young enough to still have a fulfilling career ahead of him. That Hezbollah and Iran had caused all that to be cut short galled McCarter. That he had no idea why they’d set these events in motion bothered him even more.
While the others went off to grab a shower or to watch some television, McCarter and Manning went to Richard Austin’s office to ask him to let them into one of the secure conference rooms.
McCarter had earlier contacted the Farm via his secure sat phone to relay what Mulumba had told them about Hossan Ahmadah. Kurtzman had asked for a couple of hours to investigate and promised to call back with information. McCarter was expecting that call, so he really didn’t have time for any of the niceties.
Manning was too much of a workaholic to take a break. Instead, under his arm, he carried Mulumba’s laptop and his satellite phone. He figured he would let Kurtzman and his cyber team at the Farm work their magic and mine for information.
During the trip back to their helicopter, the Phoenix Force warriors had met up with the group of women they had freed from the terror experienced at the hands of Mulumba and his thugs. When informed that Mulumba was back in his tent, securely tied and helpless, the women swore to r
etrace their tracks and turn the tables on their depraved master.
At two minutes after the hour, the secure phone in the conference room rang. McCarter snatched it from its cradle and brought the receiver to his ear.
“You’re late.”
“Two minutes,” Kurtzman said. “Ease up.”
“Sorry, lad. It’s almost a reflex. You find anything?”
“A little,” he said. “Ahmadah’s tried to keep a low profile, but he’s been on a couple of radars.”
“CIA?”
“Yeah. And the State Department and a couple other alphabet-soup agencies—NSA and DIA—have been tracking him. Hunt is mining Europol and a couple other international databases, too, for leads.”
“Hunt” was Huntington Wethers, a professor of cybernetics who’d taught at UCLA before being recruited to Stony Man.
Manning had been scrolling through the numbers stored on their seized satellite phone. “Did the good professor find anythingt?”
“Not yet,” Kurtzman replied. “He’s trying the shared databases first, which don’t have the juicy stuff. But it’s a hell of a lot easier than hacking into the systems of foreign intelligence agencies. We also filed a formal request with MI6 and the Canadians.”
“Lord help us,” McCarter said, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “The Canadians?”
Manning scowled at him and gestured with his middle finger, prompting a grin from the Briton.
“What did you find, Bear?” Manning asked.
“Well, the basics your warlord friend provided are accurate. He did come from a prestigious family in Iran. His father retired from the military as a general. Apparently he was a smart political player. He was in the army during the last couple of years of the shah’s rule. But he was smart enough to know changes were coming. While he wasn’t a terribly devout Muslim, he was smart enough to make friends with several people who were. Once the ayatollahs took over, a lot of those relationships served him well. Next thing he knew he was getting kicked upstairs every few years.”
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