Nigeria Meltdown

by Don Pendleton

  “Door,” the soldier yelled, flinging open the rear passenger door so that as it flew out it caught bike and biker full-on.

  “My cab!” the driver moaned in anguish, but that did not stop him from doing likewise, his own door catching the biker on his side as he passed, spinning him into the curb and the low brick wall surrounding a yard where goats bleated in fright at the impact.

  Bolan was out of the cab and checking his man, who was out cold. Two were dead. That only left the man hit by the cab driver who might be able to give them any information. As the soldier hurried over, he saw the driver rooting through the man’s pockets. The biker was out cold, and there were sirens in the distance.

  The driver had a billfold in his hand, and he looked at Bolan before glancing down the road toward the direction of the sirens.

  “The money will pay for the damage, and there may be some information in here. But I suggest we look at it somewhere else, yes?”

  Bolan, after a quick look around at the collateral damage on the road, could only agree as both men clambered back into the cab. The driver muttered a prayer as he hit the ignition, the engine firing at the third try. He turned the cab and hit the gas. Neither man spoke until they were clear of danger.

  “Now I will take you to your meeting, Captain America. Take this—” he fumbled a cell phone from his pocket “—I have three others. I will call you in two hours and we will talk more of this when I find out who those ragamuffins were. What is your name?”

  “Matt Cooper. Why are you helping me?”

  “You know why. Sometimes you feel you can trust. I am Victor Ekwense. You will hear from me again, do not worry about that.”

  Chapter Five

  Inside the ministry building, the air was stifling. Fans droned in a desultory manner, doing little more than stirring the heat. Men in suits and others in military uniforms moved sluggishly across the floor, and the woman behind the desk showed more interest in her cell phone than in Bolan as he presented himself.

  Even when he announced himself and showed her the letter of introduction from Benjamin Williams that confirmed the time and date of this appointment, she did little more than sigh before hitting the button on her switchboard and curtly announcing his arrival.

  “Well?” Bolan asked after a short pause waiting for her to say something when she put down the receiver and returned to her absorbing cell phone.

  “He will see you. Hey, you!” she called, hailing one of the armed guards and just as curtly telling him where to deliver Bolan.

  The guard gestured Bolan to follow and led him to the elevator. When they were inside, the doors closed to the reception area, he said, “Ignore her. She is a rude bitch. They have her on the desk to put off people coming in from the street. You are visiting a minister, and so she should mind her manners.”

  “Maybe you should report her, get her reprimanded,” Bolan said, mildly amused by the man’s attitude. His reply made it harder for the soldier to stifle his humor.

  “I cannot do that,” the guard replied, eyes wide in shock. “She is my wife, and we need her salary.”

  Discretion being the better part of anything in such a circumstance, Bolan held his peace as the elevator ascended. He thanked the guard with a nod, not wishing to risk words, when he was deposited in the minister’s front office.

  Here he could see that he was on a different level. There was an efficient air-conditioning system, and the woman who was the minister’s secretary was distant but polite as she took Bolan’s letter of introduction.

  “The minister was delayed in a meeting and has paperwork to catch up on. I will let him know you are here. I will make you coffee, yes?”

  Bolan thanked her and sat back, expecting a long wait as she went into the office. He was pleasantly surprised when she returned almost immediately, a look of shrewd appraisal on her face.

  “I will bring your coffee in. The minister will see you now,” she said in a tone that expressed her surprise as she showed him in.

  The minister was already on his feet and across the room as Bolan heard the door close behind him.

  “Please, Mr. Cooper, sit down, sit down.”

  Bolan took the proffered hand and seated himself, watching the older man before him as he settled into his own chair. He was of medium height, slightly wizened and had a bend to his spine that suggested a long-term problem. Bolan could guess how he got it, having heard about him from Benjamin Williams. The man was in his early seventies, but his weather-beaten face made him look a decade older. His name was Wilson Oruma, a government minister in charge of a department that carried little weight in the current regime’s priorities, a department that had been given to him as a gesture for the service he had given to his country and to his fellow man in a long career.

  “We will talk of our supposed business until my secretary has been and gone,” Oruma said in a deep, throaty voice. “I can trust her as much as anyone, but she likes to gossip, like many women. They can cause more damage than anyone else because of that.”

  And so, while they waited for the secretary to deliver refreshments, linger and then finally go with a backward look, yet again, of searching appraisal. During this period, Bolan considered what Williams had told him about Oruma. The old man before him had fought during the struggles that followed Nigeria’s succession from the old British Empire, and when the Biafran war had broken out, over forty years before, Oruma had been instrumental in trying to broker peace, but in a hands-on fashion. He had fought the enemy and also his own men when they had been committing atrocities. He had personally saved Williams from a death squad that tried to assassinate the young politician, tracking him down to a house on the outskirts of Benin City and killing three of the assassination squad. Since that day, the two men had been allies, looking out for each other’s back and knowing each other as men of integrity.

  That baptism of fire, and the subsequent decades, was why Williams had described him as the only man he could truly trust. Looking at the old man as he talked of fertilizers and pesticides, with his eyes elsewhere, Bolan could see what he meant.

  Finally they were able to get down to business.

  “I have seen the report,” Oruma said at length. “I would not wish to believe it. I am not a man of religion—it does nothing but divide—but as long as men believe, then we just have to deal with it.”

  “You understand that I am not here in any official capacity, and so—”

  “You are a salesman to me. That is all,” Oruma replied with a grin. “I have arranged for a small group of men who will accompany you on your mission. They have been handpicked by one of the few men in the military who has dared to investigate the Brotherhood.”

  “How much do you know about them?”

  “More now that I have heard that poor bastard’s report,” Oruma said softly. “You have to understand, Mr. Cooper, that if you are not one of them, then their presence is a shadow. Their aims are to overthrow, of course, but given that they have people here and also in the North—”

  “Any talk of religion could be a cover.”

  “Indeed. They may be Christian infiltrating Muslim or the other way around. My own view is that they use both and are as false to the Christians as to the Muslims. They just want power and know how to play men. I have seen it many times.”

  “So have I,” Bolan said heavily. “I think it’s best to put all sectarianism to one side and just call them the enemy of democracy. Can I rely on the men you’re giving me to feel the same way?”

  “You think their religion may sway them when it comes to combat?” Oruma shrugged. “That is interesting. I think it will not. Their allegiance is to the government, which is not, as far as I am aware, friendly to the Brotherhood. There may be some—”

  “But if they were a majority, then Nigeria would be openly supportive of
the Brotherhood.”

  “Precisely. I will lend you all the tacit support I can, but you will also deal directly with the solider I have asked to put together your team. He is outside, I think.” Oruma buzzed his secretary and inquired if the man was outside. When confirmed, he bade her to send the man in.

  The door opened, and Bolan swiveled in his seat to see a sweating giant of a man in an ill-fitting uniform.

  “Mr. Cooper, this is General Franklin Oboko.”

  * * *

  AS HE LEFT the building, Bolan looked back to see Oboko in the lobby, making a call on his cell phone. He was watching the Executioner with interest, and as their gazes met for a moment, Bolan could see the general’s eyes cloud over, disguising his thoughts.

  Bolan paused for a moment. The general had greeted him without showing any signs of surprise that he had arrived. Did he know about the bikers sent to intercept Bolan? He had apparently spoken freely in discussion with Oruma and Bolan. He regretted sending Yobo, as the man was too inexperienced. It had been an error in judgment that he wished to correct. Was he aware that Yobo had fingered him as a member of the Brotherhood? Or did he just assume that his cover was safe?

  Bolan had arranged to meet the general at the barracks on the edge of Lagos the following afternoon, in order to meet his handpicked team and pick up the necessary provisions for his mission.

  Would Bolan be able to trust any of the men the general had chosen? He would have to approach them with caution. Again he wondered if Yobo had been correct in fingering the general. Was it just the resentment and paranoia of a man tortured to the edge of endurance?

  When they had spoken of the Brotherhood’s base being in the northern part of the country, Oboko had been opposed to that, taking the view that the training camp was in the south region where Yobo had been sent and was more likely to house the heart of the Brotherhood.

  “Why,” he had asked passionately, “would such an organization make its headquarters in an area where those who are their enemies are so thick on the ground?”

  Perhaps because of that very reason. The general was either naive or trying to deflect attention. Bolan was not sure what to think of him but would reserve judgment and watch his own back. One thing was for sure: Oruma believed in Oboko, which would make it politic to hold his peace once again.

  From his pocket Bolan took the cell phone that the cab driver had given him and looked at his watch. Ninety minutes had elapsed. He slipped it back into his pocket and hailed a cab to take him to the hotel booked for him. He replied to this cab driver only in grunts and checked in with no further incident. He kept alert for any signs of being followed, but for whatever reason, he was not now a target.

  The phone rang. Bolan was presently in his hotel room, looking down on the street below.

  “Victor,” Bolan greeted him as he hit the accept button. “I hope you have something interesting to tell me.”

  “If I do, my friend, then I hope you will return the favor,” the cab driver replied in warm tones. “I think you must be a very important man.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Why else would a man who has just arrived in the country invite himself to be attacked by boys who come from Kano?”

  “The region or the city?” Bolan queried.

  “You know the country better than you want me to think,” Ekwense said. “The city. They are Kano Youth FC, a gang of youth who are getting greedy. They used to just want to mug and rob, but now they have been hanging out with the big boys.”

  “Terrorists?” Bolan asked.

  “You may call them that. They call themselves freedom fighters. They are neither. They are just fools who are being used.”

  “By whom?”

  “I think if you want to know that, then we should not be talking like this on a cell phone that can be scanned. I may already have said too much to you. I am on the move, you are not.”

  “I can be. I’ll be walking west from where you last saw me,” Bolan replied circumspectly before disconnecting.

  As he left the hotel and hailed a cab that took him back toward the ministry building, keeping watch all the while, he wondered if he should trust Victor Ekwense. He knew nothing about the man, only what he had picked up from observation. Yet what the Nigerian had said to him as they had parted company earlier that day had been right. There were times when like recognized like.

  Bolan got the cab driver to drop him a block away from the ministry building and walked toward it. Standing opposite the entrance, he divined which direction took him west and started to walk. Before he had gone more than a block, a familiar battered vehicle weaved through traffic and pulled over toward the curb, slowing to a crawl.

  “Hey, mister, are you looking for a cab?” Ekwense yelled at him.

  “Beats walking,” Bolan replied, sliding into the back.

  “You been followed?” the cabbie asked in a normal tone as Bolan settled in.

  The soldier shook his head. “No, not that I can tell. What about you?”

  “Do I look like a man who will let some fool follow me, my friend?” Ekwense replied in a tone of admonishment.

  Bolan grinned. “Then we need to get wherever you’re going and out of sight,” he said. “As soon as possible.”

  * * *

  OBOKO WATCHED THE American get into a cab and drive away from the ministry building. He wondered why Cooper had taken out a cell phone and looked at it and his watch before putting it away without use.

  “He is gone,” he said softly into his own cell phone. “I will come at once.” He disconnected and barked at the receptionist, ordering her to get his car around to the front of the building immediately.

  She simpered and smiled, calling his driver and delivering the order while her guard husband watched her fawn over the general with a mounting frustration that he would probably discuss with her later.

  The American puzzled him. When Oruma had approached him, he had suspected that he was being set up. The old man had a reputation that meant the Brotherhood had never bothered to approach him as they had other senior politicians. In some ways, he was an irrelevance. He would soon be dead or retired, and the current generation on the street did not remember him. He was only of importance to some senior politicians and civil servants who had worked with him and fought with him. Yet such was his reputation that, until they were gone, it was best not to touch him.

  The idea that he was to put together a task force for this American to lead in an attack against the Brotherhood could easily be a trap. He had decided that his best option was to recruit five men who were clean, and insert only one of the Brotherhood’s soldiers. One should be enough. The others being clean should keep his position in the official structure unblemished, while still appeasing his other paymasters.

  But it was all getting too much. Oboko did not believe in the Brotherhood of the Eagle. He did not care what they wanted. He only knew that, to him, it meant power, cash and the chance for as much pussy as he could get. He was a man of simple tastes, in that way. Power over men was useful only for what you could get out of it, not to build empires. Besides, if the Brotherhood was really as strong as was rumored, then it would be politic to have favors owed to him should they take over.

  Nonetheless, the constant juggling was getting too much for him. As his car pulled up at the gates of a walled compound, the driver leaning out to identify his passenger to the camera-phone intercom that opened the gates, Oboko felt an ominous rumbling in his immense gut.

  Ordering his driver to wait, he left the car once it had rolled up the drive to the low-level white stucco house that sprawled across the unkempt gardens. As he approached the doors, they opened and he walked into the lobby of the building. Women in bikinis and negligees lounged, waiting for clients, looking perfectly in place among the gilt and plush. An older white
woman approached him.

  “General, you are expected. Would you like to choose for afterward?” she queried with an expansive gesture at her merchandise.

  The general shook his head and mopped at his sweating brow. “I do not think I will feel like it afterward,” he muttered.

  The woman pursed her lips, nodded and led him through the lobby and to a door that was located beneath the faux-marble spiral staircase. She knocked once and left the general in charge of a cold-eyed soldier. Without a word, he led Oboko through to an office at the back of the house, secured from the rest of the building.

  The office was decorated much like the rest of the building, though differentiated by the animal skins on the walls, and the banks of CCTV and computer monitors that were anchored by a large teak desk. Behind it sat a tall, thin man with a shaved head and a knife scar that ran down his left cheek. He gestured that the general be seated in the chair before him.

  “Franklin, you have a lot to explain to me before I leave,” he said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  Chapter Six

  Victor Ekwense pulled the cab to a halt outside a bar where men eyed Bolan with some suspicion as he got out of the back.

  “Victor, man, no tourists. You know that,” one of them muttered as Bolan and Ekwense passed him.

  “No tourist,” the cab driver replied dismissively. “You come in and listen. You might actually learn something, instead of standing around moaning like an old woman.” He carried on, leaving the others outside laughing.

  Inside the bar was dark and dingy. A plasma-screen TV played a low-budget Nollywood film where a man and a woman were arguing in a local dialect on a set that looked a lot like the hotel room Bolan had just left behind. He couldn’t follow all that they said, but it made the few men and women in the bar that were watching laugh out loud. He was actually surprised that they could hear the TV over the sound of music that bubbled from the jukebox.