Rogue Assault

by Don Pendleton

  But what form would the outside intervention take, assuming that it ever came? Would it be of the lazy watch-and-wait variety that had already failed so monumentally in Rwanda and Sudan? Or would the lightning strike efficiently, as was the case in Libya? That had been NATO’s operation, sanctioned by the UN, but the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had no visible interest in sub-Saharan Africa. The Organization of African Unity might have been helpful, but it had disbanded in 2002.

  No, Mansaré thought, they were alone. And even worse, divided by internal rifts that might be insurmountable. The Special Intervention Force, controlled by General Diallo and his army cohorts, was ostensibly a law enforcement agency but sometimes operated as a military hit team for Camara’s syndicate. Assassination of General Batista Tagme Na Waie in 2009 had removed the country’s last military chief of staff, leaving the army, air force and navy to operate as de facto independent bodies. Thus far, neither the air force nor the navy matched Diallo’s strength in manpower, although Mansaré thought a three-way war between the military branches might succeed in wiping Guinea-Bissau off the map.

  And now, his only man inside the army-dominated syndicate had disappeared. Mansaré didn’t know if Medina was dead, had been taken captive by someone or if he was simply in hiding after the factory massacre. Unless he reached out soon, Mansaré reckoned he would have to start from scratch and risk another agent’s life.

  For what? The captain scowled, thinking, for justice.

  But the bitter churning in his stomach told him it might be a futile exercise.

  5

  Chão de Papel, Bissau

  “This way,” Nilson Medina said, directing Bolan to turn left and leave Estrada de Bandim, eastbound. “Two blocks, perhaps a little less.”

  Bolan followed directions, watching out for headlights in his rearview mirror, even as he scanned the street ahead of him for any sign of a potential ambush. They were passing homes and shops, mixed in together without seeming rhyme or reason, looking for the address Medina had placed at the top of their hit list for Bissau.

  An arms cache, hidden from police—if any had been looking for it—at a haulage company called Transporte Tempestade, or Storm Transport in English. Bolan wasn’t sure if someone had a pun in mind when they had named the company; in fact, he didn’t care much, either way. Hitting Camara’s arsenal would send a message, maybe leave his troops short of matériel, and maybe net some hardware on the side for Bolan and his unexpected ally.

  “There,” Medina told him, pointing, just as Bolan saw the parking lot surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link fence with razor wire on top. Inside the fence sat half a dozen trucks of varied makes and sizes. Bolan saw two Nissan Diesels, one Dongfeng, a BMC from Turkey, a Mahindra Navistar from India and a Tata Daewoo made in South Korea. Guinea-Bissau manufactured no vehicles of its own, at any size or price, which kept the money badly needed on the home front flowing out of country.

  Bolan drove around Storm Transport on surrounding access roads and found no point of entry other than the wide front gate, which was secured with chain and padlock. There were no signs to suggest the chain-link fence had been electrified or otherwise equipped with security devices beyond the wicked coils of razor wire on top. Two floodlights bathed the trucks out front with bright illumination, but the yard in back was dark. Bolan slowed and let Medina whistle at the fence, but no dogs surfaced in response.

  “They had none on the property the last time I was here,” Medina said.

  “And it’s just left unguarded overnight?” Bolan asked, skeptical.

  Medina shrugged. “The weapons are supposed to be a secret. Anyone who’d know about them also knows who they belong to. If Camara’s reputation does not keep them out, the fear of General Diallo will.”

  All clear, then, if Medina had the straight of it. And if he didn’t?

  Bolan had no thought of the policeman leading him into a trap. It would have been bizarre beyond belief, an undercover cop blowing his mission, killing half a dozen mobsters, just to snare a stranger he couldn’t have known existed prior to the event. That didn’t mean Medina was correct about the lot being unguarded, though. Caution would be required to get them past the fence and back again.

  Beginning now.

  Bolan parked at the southeast corner of the fence, switching off the Peugeot’s dome light as the engine died. There were no homes within a clear line of sight, but why take chances with a sudden glare of light? Both dressed in black, they stood beside the car and double-checked their weapons, leaving safeties off, rounds in the chambers as a hedge against surprise. Medina drew a pair of wire cutters from one of his pants pockets, crouched beside the chain-link near the car and went to work, while Bolan stood watch over him.

  No dogs, no guards, no sudden flare of spotlights in the night. Three minutes saw Medina finished, peeling back a flap of fencing large enough for one of them to enter at a time, on hands and knees. The African went first, then held the flap for Bolan. After both of them were clear, he put it back in place and used a simple twist-tie to secure it against casual inspection in the dark.

  Easy, so far.

  Bolan still half expected an alarm as they approached the combination office and garage, despite Medina’s confident assurance that there would be none. “Who would respond?” he’d asked, while they were driving over.

  The soldier couldn’t say, but he’d be checking out the door and windows carefully, before he tried to breach their locks. There was no good excuse for being careless now, when it could blow up in his face and get them killed.

  * * *

  THERE WAS, IN FACT, a guard on duty at Storm Transport, though he missed the hostile penetration of the firm’s perimeter. Malam Furtado was distracted by a porn website that he’d bookmarked on the laptop he had stolen from a schoolchild on the street, several months earlier. The theft hadn’t troubled Furtado’s conscience, possibly because he had none, but he justified it on the grounds that thousands of cheap computers, costing only $150 apiece, had been distributed throughout West Africa by an American philanthropist, under the banner of One Laptop Per Child.

  Who was this foreigner, undoubtedly a white man, who was hell-bent on corrupting African youth with free internet porn? That was a privilege reserved for certified adults. In fact, Furtado managed to convince himself that he had saved the boy he robbed from degradation by the very Asian sluts who now performed before Furtado’s eyes.

  He was a hero, in his own way!

  But not a watchman worthy of his paycheck, it turned out. He only knew that there were prowlers on the property when he experienced a server hang-up and was suddenly aware of voices in the night, outside the building where he sat in darkness, feet up on a corner of the company manager’s desk, waiting for his access to the information superhighway to resume.

  Prowlers?

  They likely intended to steal one of the trucks, or maybe all of them. Furtado wasn’t in the loop concerning any contraband concealed around the premises. It never crossed his mind, although his thoughts flashed to the three marijuana cigarettes he carried in a pocket of his shirt. If he went out and caught the would-be thieves, his next step would be summoning police. What if they searched him for some reason? It didn’t seem likely, but without a guarantee...

  Quickly, he hid the three joints in a top drawer of the desk, then rose and drew his pistol. It wasn’t a new one, or expensive, just a 9 mm Llama made in Spain before the company went bankrupt in the early 1990s. It would kill, all right, if Furtado could aim it correctly—a big if, that one, since he’d only fired the pistol twice during the four years since he bought it off the street.

  He knew enough to rack the weapon’s slide, putting a live round in the chamber, and he left the safety off, his index finger well outside the trigger guard for now. Furtado remembered the sound and recoil of the pistol from last time, a
bungled attempt at rat hunting some eighteen months earlier. But could he use it on a man?

  Perhaps. If he felt threatened, definitely.

  In a flash, while he was moving from the desk chair toward the exit, Furtado saw himself on television, being interviewed about the robbery he’d foiled. The men who ran Storm Transport would be thrilled, of course. They might even—

  No, wait!

  If he appeared on television, it was likely he’d be seen by the first owner of his laptop. What would happen when the boy described their brief encounter on the street? All things considered, Furtado would probably lose his job if he was known for robbing children. Maybe he should just stay where he was and...what?

  Let thieves steal all the trucks? He definitely would be fired in that case, maybe even beaten by the rough types he had seen around the place. And what if the prowlers came into the building, looking for money? Should he hide in the closet like a coward until they had looted the place and gone on their way?

  Angry at himself now for being so frightened, Furtado moved toward the door on trembling legs, silently cursing his bad luck.

  * * *

  NILSON MEDINA FELT strangely relaxed. It was peculiar, he realized, when he should have been worried about so many things: his execution of six gangsters, the probable loss of his job, his involvement with the grim American in an illegal campaign that would most likely get him killed. Yet none of that fazed him just now, as they moved through darkness toward the back door of the building where he knew a cache of arms and ammunition was concealed.

  They were Edouard Camara’s weapons, held in reserve for his soldiers, as if support from General Diallo and the army was inadequate to make Camara feel secure.

  Of course, the general couldn’t ask regular troops to fight his battles on the streets of Bissau. On occasion, members of the Special Intervention Force might help, but Diallo preferred that Camara solve his own problems whenever possible, leaving the great man in peace with his profits. Destroying the stockpile would hurt Camara as much as the loss of his cocaine at the cutting plant, or more so, since the weapons would take longer to replace.

  The back door to the shop was double-locked, with a keyhole in the doorknob and a separate deadbolt. Instead of trying to finagle them, Matt Cooper produced a pistol with a sound suppressor appended to its muzzle, warned Medina to stand back and fired a muffled shot into the doorknob, blowing it away. Two shots were needed for the deadbolt, punching it back into space where it clattered on concrete.

  Still holding the pistol ready, Cooper hooked two fingers of his left hand through the hole left by the deadbolt and pulled the door open. The room beyond the threshold was a dark cave, but faint light was visible beyond it, coming through another door that stood ajar.

  Medina followed Cooper inside, holding his Spectre submachine gun with its muzzle pointed toward the floor. Its double-action trigger let him keep a live round in the weapon’s chamber with the safety off, ready to fire at any moment. Its 50-round quad-column casket magazine was fully loaded, with the fire selector set for 3-round bursts. Not that he needed all that firepower to raid an empty building.

  Still...

  “Which way?” Cooper asked him, pausing at the partly open door.

  “Through there and to your left,” Medina said. “In the garage they have three service pits, but only two are used for trucks. The third one, farthest from the door as you go in, is covered by a steel plate. Underneath, they keep the guns, with ammunition and explosives, all together. There was Semtex last time I was here. Tonight, who knows?”

  “Let’s find out,” Cooper replied, and led the way along a short hall to the truck garage.

  The light they’d seen on entering had come from there, a single bulb over a workbench set against the spacious room’s west wall. Medina didn’t know if it was left on by mistake, or as a matter of routine, since he had never visited the place at night before. It was convenient, either way, guiding them past welding equipment and machines used for repairing tires, an air compressor and a tool cabinet on wheels. Without the light, Medina thought, the shop would have become a bruising maze.

  They stood over the farthest service pit, Cooper studying the slab of metal capping it. Steel rings were set into the plate at either end, to aid in lifting it aside. Medina guessed that it had to weigh a hundred pounds or more, but he thought they could handle it, between the two of them.

  “Ready?” Cooper asked.

  Medina nodded. “Yes. Ready.”

  “You take the other end. We’ll slide this over and see what they left for us.”

  Medina walked down to the far end of the pit, and set his weapon in the concrete floor. Stooping, he clutched the metal rings, prepared to lift on his companion’s command and haul the metal plate aside.

  “On three,” Cooper said. “One...”

  “Pare!” a shaky voice said from behind Medina. “Estabelecer suas armas! Levantem as mãos!”

  Medina translated for Cooper without turning to face the stranger. “He demands that we lay down our guns and raise our hands.”

  “No guard, eh?” Cooper said.

  “It seems I was mistaken,” Medina replied. “If we live, I hope you will accept my most sincere apology.”

  * * *

  MALAM FURTADO HEARD the prowlers speaking English and was even more unnerved than when he’d first confirmed their presence in the building. Finding them armed with automatic weapons was another shock, his old pistol suddenly inadequate. One of the pair spoke Portuguese, at least, and was translating for the other, as it seemed, although Furtado wasn’t sure.

  A moment passed, then both placed their machine guns on the concrete floor. Furtado edged into the room with nervous baby steps, his Llama sweeping back and forth to cover one man, then the other. They were far enough apart that watching both of them was difficult. If they leaped off in opposite directions, a coordinated movement, which should he shoot first? Or try to, since he had no confidence in hitting either.

  Making up his mind, Furtado told the African, “Se aproximam mais!” The black man said something in English and the two of them obeyed his order, edging closer together.

  Was that a mistake? Furtado couldn’t say. He wasn’t a policeman or tactician, just a lowly security guard paid by the hour to keep burglars out. No one had ever briefed him on what he should do if he caught one inside. In fact, he had only one standing order: if anything happened requiring attention, Furtado was to call his boss, not the police.

  That might have seemed suspicious in some other country, but in Guinea-Bissau it was more or less routine. Police were spread so thin, and they were so inept, that calling them to handle an emergency was like a form of gambling. Would they come at all? And if so, would they help or make things worse?

  Furtado’s mind snapped back to his two prisoners. What now?

  He had no handcuffs, and wouldn’t have dared to approach them, regardless. Cuffing one, or binding him in any way, meant laying down the Llama pistol. And without the gun, Furtado sensed, he was as good as dead.

  All right. He had to contain them while he placed the call to his employer, then sit back and keep them covered until help arrived. That shouldn’t be too difficult. There was a telephone in the garage, on the south wall. Furtado saw no reason why he couldn’t hold his gun in one hand, dialing with the other, and have reinforcements on the scene in...what? Say half an hour, at the most?

  “Stay where you are,” he told the black intruder, leaving him to translate for the white man, but instead, the African replied, “You don’t work for Camara, do you?”

  “Who?” Furtado asked reflexively, regretting it almost before the word had left his lips.

  “Edouard Camara,” the prowler replied. “I suspect you recognize the name.”

  Of course Furtado did. Camara was notorious and fil
thy rich. Why would this prowler think Camara was involved with Storm Transport?

  Against his better judgment, Furtado said, “I work for Capital Security and watch this place six nights a week. Edouard Camara, no.”

  “But you are working for him, brother,” the burglar said. “We have come to here to destroy the weapons he keeps hidden in this pit.”

  Weapons? Why would a trucking company need weapons, other than for self-defense? Still, it was odd, two armed invaders seeking access to a service pit in the garage, instead of stealing trucks or seeking money from the office. Then again, if Storm Transport had weapons in the pit, what business was it of Furtado’s? He was paid to guard the premises and all that it contained from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., Monday through Saturday.

  “You’re stealing,” he replied. “That’s all I know. Stand still. I need to make a call.”

  But as he half turned toward the telephone, the white man moved so suddenly that there was no time to react. A gun was in his hand like magic, and it made a muffled chugging sound, before a double hammer stroke to his chest propelled Furtado into contact with the nearest work bench. Gasping, suddenly unable to draw breath, he toppled to the floor, unconscious.

  * * *

  “THAT’S MOST UNFORTUNATE,” Medina said.

  “Agreed. But we couldn’t let him make that call. Hopefully he won’t die from blood loss before someone finds him. We’ll move him to the yard on the way out.”

  Medina nodded, then came back to help him shift the heavy cover from the service pit. Inside, revealed in half light from the single bulb above the work bench, wooden crates were stacked by size. Some were long enough for rifles, others squat and square, presumably containing ammunition, magazines or the Semtex Medina had referred to earlier.