“Watch and think about this, woman,” Oboko said in a matter-of-fact tone. And as she watched in horror, he took Buchi’s head in the palm of one hand and drew his Glock with the other. He jammed the barrel into the weeping prisoner’s mouth, smiled and gently squeezed the trigger.
The noise was immense in the small room and drowned the hysterical screams of the woman as she could not take in what she saw. She was still screaming when Oboko turned to her. He slapped her face once, perfunctorily, to quiet her, and then said in an even tone, “Now you tell me, and the pain may not end in death. But there will be pain. There has to be.”
Chapter Fourteen
Backtracking over the territory toward the forest was simple. In the long savanna grass the truck that Bolan and his men commandeered left a trail that wasn’t difficult to locate and follow. Once they got into the forest, picking up a trail there might prove difficult. If the forest was dense enough, then the men of the Brotherhood would have found it necessary to hack a path in and out, and it would be a matter of locating it and then following back to source. If the forest was not as dense on the ground as aerial photographs and maps had suggested, then they ran the risk of getting lost and being ambushed themselves.
But time was the imperative. All of that went through Bolan’s mind as Ekwense directed the truck over the bumpy terrain, hitting the gas as much as he dared on the uncertain ground beneath. The truck bucked and rolled as he wrestled with the wheel. In the back, the men pitched and bumped against one another. The engine whined as it protested against the speed and terrain that it was forced to endure, making it impossible to keep any kind of ear out for other vehicles.
Ekwense was sure that the men of the Brotherhood in the forest knew that something bad had gone down with their men and would be either preparing some sort of welcome or else sending out a secondary party to meet them.
What both Bolan and Ekwense wanted was to get into the forest and out of the open country before that happened. The men of the Brotherhood would have the advantage of knowing the territory in the forest growth; conversely, Bolan would feel on safer ground using his skills and those of his men in such terrain, regardless. There they would not be so open to attack from all angles and would be able to marshal their resources with a greater impact.
In that sense, this was a race against time, more urgent than the other one that Bolan had just discovered.
His reverie was broken by a sudden awareness of the landscape moving in an unnatural fashion ahead of them. It was in an area parallel to the track forged by the outward-bound path of their truck, and it looked like it was moving toward them. The solider tapped Ekwense on the arm and indicated the disturbance. The driver peered in that direction, then a grin spread over his face.
“They know where we are, and they can see us coming. They going to circle us, I think. So stupid that they think we can’t see them?”
“I don’t know,” Bolan murmured. “I figure they’re just hoping to outpace and outflank us.”
“We’ll see about that,” Ekwense said with a wink before throwing the truck into a turn that took it off the beaten-down track and into fresh grass, crashing through the thick undergrowth, riding the rough land beneath as he spun the vehicle around and brought it to a halt. In the sudden silence as he killed the engine, complaints and curses filtered through from the men in the back. These died quickly when they picked up the distant drone of another engine.
Bolan and Ekwense were out of the cab before the curses had faded, the soldier beckoning his men to dismount.
“They’ll know we’ve gone off trail and stopped. Fan out but keep eye contact as much as you can—we can’t risk radio contact.”
“What do we do with them?” Samuel asked.
“I’d like to take the truck out before they get a chance to send back any messages,” Bolan said. “That depends on how far they come before they take the same action as us.”
“Then we need to move, not talk,” Ayinde spit out. He turned to his fellow military personnel and took it upon himself to detail which of them should pursue which direction. Ekwense looked questioningly at Bolan. He was going to allow this?
“Let him,” the soldier murmured. “Put one of your men on each and stay in eye contact. If any of them makes a move to contact but not engage the enemy, then take them out of the game.”
Ekwense nodded. “Which one you want to take, Cooper?”
Bolan had been mulling that over. It amounted to which one of them that he trusted the least.
Ayinde. For many reasons, yet all of them could be exactly why he was not the man Bolan suspected him to be. If nothing else, this action would eliminate him from suspicion, although the soldier would have to keep a close watch on his back at the same time. He told Ekwense and the driver nodded, moving off to speak quietly to his men, allocating them each a military man without them knowing of the hidden agenda.
Bolan moved across to Ayinde. “Good move,” he said with a nod of satisfaction. “We’ll double you as backup if your men take point.”
The military man eyed Bolan with a mixture of disdain and suspicion. “You’re not going to widen the net?”
Bolan shook his head. “No need, if your team takes a wide enough arc. The closer they get, the tighter we keep it, the better it is,” he said.
With the military man still eyeing him with suspicion, Ayinde directed his men to move. Habila and Emecheta stuck together as always, moving off to the east with Achuaba and Ken on their tails. Saro Wiwa took a more central path, and was shadowed by Ekwense—which, considering the unmilitary girth of both men, struck Bolan as an odd synchronicity. They would be a weak link, crashing through the undergrowth...
Sosimi and Obinna were shadowed by Samuel and Kanu, and they moved out to leave just Bolan and Ayinde standing by the truck. The solider eyed the Nigerian military man. Ayinde said nothing, but gestured for Bolan to follow him as he moved out on the widest western angle of the arc made by his men.
The truck approaching them had slowed uncertainly as the crew had noted that sudden divergence and cessation of their target vehicle. It slewed around so that it was coming across the path already proscribed, and was headed toward the target’s location.
The truck’s slowing speed made it easy to circle and encompass. It was just fast enough to close the gap between itself and the men on foot, yet not so fast that it reached them before they had a chance to get into position. Better yet, the personnel on the truck were disinclined to get down and pursue their enemy on foot, which kept them all in the one spot.
“Easy,” Bolan breathed to himself as the truck bisected the two groups of men, one to the west and the other to the east. Although unable to keep visual observance on the men at the farthest end of the flank, he knew that they were all within sight of at least one other man. From his position, he could see Samuel and Obinna, and the slight movement of grass that signaled the careful progress of Kanu and Sosimi. They were closing in on the slow-moving truck while he followed Ayinde in circling and closing from the rear.
In the open rear of the truck—much like the one they had recently vacated—there were five men, two looking out from each side, leaning over the lip of the flatbed, using the uncovered tarpaulin struts for support. The fifth man cradled an AK-47 across his chest, one foot planted on the flap at the rear of the vehicle, one hand grasping the arch of the tarp strut for balance. He was scanning the horizon, and there was a vaguely puzzled look on his face, as though he was unsure of what he was looking out for.
Bolan could see a grin spread over Ayinde’s face as he pulled his own AK-47 off his shoulder and took aim. Bolan wanted to stop him, but it would be hard to do without drawing the enemy’s attention to them. His instructions had been explicit—take out the truck before any of the men had a chance to leave it. If Ayinde shot just one man, the alert would be raised, and th
e fight would be much harder.
There were a few yards between them. Maybe he could stop Ayinde from shooting, but even then, the crashing movement in the savanna that it would cause would still raise an alarm.
If it did, it might still buy them enough time for someone else to throw a grenade into the flatbed. His men had to be in range by now.
Ayinde sighted the unknowing soldier on the rear lip of the truck and began to squeeze the trigger. Almost as if everything was in slow motion, Bolan launched himself across the gap between them. He wanted to stop Ayinde from firing, so his emphasis was on the man’s arm rather than deflecting the rifle.
He hit Ayinde side on, barreling him over so that they hit the rock-hard soil beneath the flattened savanna grass, the impact jarring them both. As they hit, Bolan tried to wrestle the AK from the military man’s grasp, but it was too late. A report sounded as the rifle discharged uselessly into the long grass.
The man the shot was intended for brought up his own AK in a panic and fired a raking arc into the long grass. His sense of direction was poor, and although the earth and grass near Bolan and Ayinde were raked and pitted by his blast, it was nowhere close enough to being a threat.
The real damage was done by the way that his fellow Brotherhood fighters yelled in panic and surprise, leaping down from the truck. The two men in the cab did not follow quickly enough. They were the unlucky ones, as they were trapped inside when the grenade that arced through the clear, bright sky landed in the flatbed with a dry rattle before exploding, spreading shrapnel that tore through the metal and glass at the rear of the cab.
The blast pitched the men in the back out into the savanna with less control than they would have wished, landing heavily on the bone-hard earth.
Bolan didn’t know which of his men had pitched the grenade, but he was glad someone had the wits to do it before the situation got out of hand. He scrambled to his feet, cursing Ayinde. The military man shot him a venomous look but took the matter no further as he, too, scrambled to his feet in order to pitch into the battle that had broken out.
Bolan’s men closed on the vehicle, firing into the savanna where the Brotherhood men had fallen after the blast. They had some idea of where their enemies had fallen, but the blast had forced them to look away and take some kind of cover, so they could not be exact. A scream from within the grass showed that at least one man had been hit, but the percentages were poor as the flurry of return fire caused them all to drop to the ground and try to identify where the shots had came from.
Bolan edged through the grass toward where one blast had been visible by a muzzle flash in the grass cover. He kept an eye on Ayinde. The soldier did not follow him, but took off in the opposite direction. Not sure what to make of that, Bolan opted to concentrate on his target. His own gun was pointed down until he got sight of his man. There were too many of his own people in too dense cover to take any risks.
A rustle to Bolan’s right drew his attention, and he spun toward it. The muzzle-flash fighter had also been on the move and was running parallel to him. Bad news. He realized that just a fraction of a second after his intended prey. The man rose before him, and Bolan found himself staring down the barrel of an AK from ten yards. He swiveled and brought up his own gun, but knew by the sinking in his gut that he was destined to be just-that-fraction-of-a-second too late. At least he could try and take this guy with him.
The explosion of gunfire made him wince involuntarily as he braced himself for the inevitable impact.
No impact came, surprising him. The gunman facing him dropped his weapon as holes were punched in his back and out his chest. He fell forward and Bolan saw Ayinde standing in the grass, his own weapon leveled and steady.
The military man now faced Bolan head-on, with his weapon at a lethal level while the soldier’s was still only partially raised. If Ayinde was the man sent to kill him, then there would never be a more perfect time than right now. Bolan braced himself.
Ayinde, the sneer still on his face, dropped the angle of his gun and beckoned Bolan to follow him.
As odd as it might seem on cold reflection, Bolan’s attitude had flipped, and he now felt that he could trust the man. No matter how many of the others may be playing a double game, this man—despite his attitude—was not one of them.
Elsewhere in the savanna, there were exchanges of gunfire as the Brotherhood fighters engaged with the military and shadow teams. This second Brotherhood team was outnumbered three to one now that Ayinde had accounted for one and the grenade for another two in the truck. On one side Sosimi, Obinna, Ken and Achuaba were circling their two men, drawing fire from them in order to pinpoint their position and firing shots into the ground to push them back without risk of stray fire hitting their own men. On the other side, Samuel and Kanu were adopting a less circumspect approach. As Bolan and Ayinde came round to a point where they could see the four men in the waving grass, Kanu and Samuel raised their weapons and hit the two men with an indiscriminate hail of fire that drove them down onto the savanna floor.
Ekwense and Saro Wiwa appeared in their wake.
“You leave us nothing to do, brother,” the chubby military man remarked to Samuel.
“Should have been quicker,” the laconic fighter replied. By the time the words had left his mouth, he and Kanu were already on their way around to where the other confrontation was approaching an end game. Ekwense followed, in time to see the two Brotherhood fighters surrounded by four of his team—two military, two mercenary—who had their weapons trained on them.
“Drop. Now. Heads down. Hands on head.”
Sosimi and Obinna were yelling those words at them, over and over again. The Brotherhood gunners, knowing when discretion was the better part of maybe getting away to fight another day, let go of their weapons, dropped to the dry soil and did as they were told.
“Take their weapons, strip them,” Ayinde said as he walked over and prodded them both in the back. “Not so clever now, eh? What unit you come from?”
“We are the Brotherhood of the Eagle,” one of them replied in a sullen tone.
“Shut up, fool,” Ayinde yelled, reversing his rifle and driving the butt down between the man’s shoulder blades so that he yelped in pain. “You know what I mean. Where have you deserted from?”
“I have not deserted,” the man replied, gasping between the pulsing of pain as he spoke.
“I don’t suppose you have,” Ayinde said, sneering. “Your general sent you as part of your orders, I have no doubt. Riddled with scum like you....”
“Give us your location, and we’ll allow you to live,” Bolan said calmly. “Resist, and we haven’t got the time—”
“You do not know the territory there, and you will never find us,” the other Brotherhood fighter said. “We may have failed, but they will know that we have failed and that you are coming. We outnumber you.”
“We’ve knocked out two trucks of your men so far,” Bolan pointed out. “That’s not a bad hit rate. Now are you going to do this the smart way?”
“You cannot make us do anything, and you will surely pay the price for your arrogance.”
“Yeah, arrogant...that’s us.” Bolan shook his head. “So you’re not going to do this, then?” He was greeted with silence. “Okay, I guess we’ll make you show us the way. Get them up.”
He directed Ekwense and Saro Wiwa to lift them up, and indicated they should be taken back to the working truck.
As they marched to where they had left their vehicle, Ayinde dropped back and muttered to Bolan, “You should have disposed of the jackals. You cannot trust them. They will try to lead us astray.”
“I realize that,” the soldier said calmly. “But I don’t kill people for the sake of it. There has to be a reason, and the fact is that I figure these two might just let on more than they know.”
“They won�
�t lead us to their camp. You do realize that, right?”
“I’m not that stupid,” Bolan said with a grin. “I figure their vehicle tracks should be fresh enough to follow. Besides, I have a feeling that when Ehurie realizes we’ve taken out a second group of his men, he’s going to see red and come charging after us, all guns blazing. He’ll count on numbers.”
“Exactly. That is why we cannot afford to have passengers. They have strength in numbers.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Bolan said simply. “But we’re smarter. Trust me on this.”
Chapter Fifteen
Ehurie brooded in his aerie, waiting for word from either of the war parties that he had sent after the American and his men. He knew that one of them was a member of the Brotherhood of the Eagle, waiting for the right moment, and he wondered why the fool had not already struck. Even more so, he was wondering why his own men had proved so ineffective.
In number, this was not a large base, but it was important. It purported to be the nerve center of the Brotherhood, and the leader was reputed to sit at the head of his organization from within the center of the forest. Of course, that was not true, but if people thought that—friend or enemy—then it gave the base a cachet and kept the leader from detection in his day-to-day existence. Both of these things were of great importance until the day of rising came. They bound the Brotherhood by faith.
Perhaps its greater importance lay in the fact that it was the centralized communications center of the Brotherhood. The high plains on which the savanna stood gave one of the best areas for coverage and reception from satellite in the whole of the continent. Given the use of electronic media to communicate instantly, this was its greatest asset. Modern communications allowed for a small base that was transportable. Its value in staying put was mostly psychological.
And now all of that was in danger. To avoid scanning of unscrambled communications, the men on the ground at the base still used more traditional radio systems. It was these that gave Ehurie cause for concern as he brooded. Two parties, each of which were equipped, and no word from either. He was certain one had been eliminated, as the communication eventually answered had been suspect. This was why he had sent out the second party. They had appeared to fare no differently.
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