Rebel Trade

by Don Pendleton

  Assuming that the hardware wasn’t just for show.

  “You understand what happens now?” Bolan asked, as Ulenga stowed the items back inside his bag.

  The sergeant nodded, grim-faced, and replied, “We take no prisoners.”

  “And are you up for that?” the Executioner inquired.

  “I have killed men,” Ulenga told him. “Two during my military service—poachers. And another after joining the police. He was a rapist and a murderer of women.”

  “Once we start this,” Bolan said, “you can’t afford to hesitate. The opposition won’t. And if you come in second-best, you’re dead.”

  “I’ll just have to be better, then,” Ulenga said. “Shall we begin?”

  * * *

  LÚCIO JAMBA WAITED for an invitation to sit down, then settled in a rigid wooden chair facing the desk where Oscar Boavida sat. Jamba was careful not to slouch and made a point of meeting Boavida’s level gaze. As first lieutenant of the MLF, he was required to make a good impression, all the more so in the presence of his ultimate superior.

  “What news?” Boavida asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the desktop.

  “Sir,” Jamba replied, “unfortunately there is none.”

  “Explain!”

  “As you already know, sir, the police have taken custody of our survivors.” Jamba did not bother with the names, since Boavida was unlikely to remember them. “We have no contact with them at the moment—or, I should say, with the one who’s conscious.”

  “Is there no way we can reach them?” Boavida asked. “Perhaps someone disguised as an employee of the hospital?”

  “Too risky, sir. If it appears that we have tried to tamper with investigation of the killings…”

  “Yes, all right. But if we can’t identify the man or men responsible, retaliation is impossible.”

  “We have the witness who is not in custody,” Jamba reminded his superior.

  “I’ve spoken to him,” Boavida said, dismissively. “It’s clear that he was busy saving his own skin and witnessed next to nothing. I intend to make him an example for the others.”

  “Very good, sir.” Jamba knew that argument was fruitless when the killing mood came over Boavida. It was best, at such times, to agree with anything he said and stay out of his way. And yet, if Jamba failed to come up with results…

  “I do have a suggestion, sir,” he said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “We have contacts inside the FCID,” Jamba said. “With some additional incentive, they would share results of their investigation as the new leads are revealed. It’s possible that we could take the suspects into custody before police do.”

  “Hold and question them ourselves,” Boavida said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Find out who they’re working for and ward off any further possible embarrassment.”

  “Eliminate the threat entirely,” Jamba said.

  “And how much extra will it cost?” Boavida asked.

  Jamba did the calculation in his head, adding a profit margin for himself. “Around five thousand dollars, sir. Say seven hundred and fifty, American.”

  Boavida frowned, then nodded. “Make the deal,” he ordered. “But for extra payment, I expect a prompt and satisfactory result.”

  “Of course, sir,” Jamba said. “We’ll know what they know, when they have the information.”

  “And without delay. Stress that before the money leaves your hand, Lúcio. I’m not paying them to sit around and count the flyspecks on their wallpaper.”

  “No, sir. I understand.”

  “See that they do.”

  Jamba rose and left the office without further comment, moving swiftly and with purpose, his economy of motion calculated to impress. A phone call to the Nampol headquarters on Lazarett Street would achieve his purpose, and the bonus Boavida had approved would not be paid until Jamba’s FCID connection came through with results. As for his cut, there was no reason not to pocket it at once.

  Another day, another dollar, and the game went on.

  But if Jamba failed to find the enemies who had attacked the river camp and left his soldiers dead, money alone would not suffice to save him. He must bring the heads of those responsible to Boavida and present them to him as a gift, together with whatever information could be wrung from them before their final dying screams.

  It was a task that Jamba had performed before.

  He saw no reason to expect that he would fail this time.

  Chapter 7

  There are no drug plantations in Namibia. Only one percent of the country’s landscape is arable, and Namibian farmers waste none of it on dagga, coca or opium poppies. The climate would ruin those crops if they tried, anyway, so the drugs that Namibians use and abuse are imported from neighboring countries. The heroin—or morphine base, a cheaper product that can be refined on-site—comes mainly from South Africa, a legacy of the colonial era that has yet to release its hold.

  Bolan knew he couldn’t break that grip entirely, but thought a couple of the fingers could be twisted out of joint, to cause the men in charge some major pain.

  Beginning immediately.

  The heroin refinery and cutting plant was hidden, more or less, inside a warehouse on Rieckmann Street, midway between Windhoek’s Southern Industrial Area and Pioneers Park. A faded sign on one wall advertised the place as Ludik-Garoëb Storage, without specifying what was stored, by whom or why. Viewed from the street, the warehouse looked as if it had been locked up and abandoned for a decade, maybe longer, but the CCTV cameras mounted at each corner of the roof said otherwise.

  The sun had set upon another day in Windhoek, while Bolan and Ulenga laid their battle plans. They had decided to begin with the refinery, a major source of income for the MLF, and hit the other side where it would matter most: their bankroll. If they took out any shooters, that was gravy on the side.

  But first, the cameras.

  Bolan had no idea what kind they were, whether they featured any sort of infrared technology, but no part of his plan included crashing in on adversaries who had seen him coming from a block away, with ample time to lay a trap and take him down on sight. Instead of trying to slip past the cameras and maybe blowing it, he chose to take them out.

  For that, he used the Dragunov, lying well back and in the shadows as he found his first mark with the PSO-1 telescopic sight and sent a bullet on its way, the rifle’s bark muffled by a suppressor and the noise of traffic passing by. One shot, one hit, and Bolan waited to discover if a guard would come to check the camera when it ceased transmission.

  None appeared, and Bolan zeroed on the second camera that he could see from where he sat, Ulenga at his side. There would be others, doubtless, covering the rear of the warehouse, but Bolan didn’t plan to go in that way. Having cleared the front, surveillance-wise, he meant to walk in like he owned the place.

  Sergeant Ulenga’s badge might help with that, if they were challenged in the process, but he wasn’t counting on it. Once he’d breached the doorway that they had been watching from across the street, all bets were off. It would be war to the knife, and the knife to its hilt. Payment in blood for the accumulated debts of human predators.

  The second CCTV camera imploded. Yet another wait, with no sign of a watchman to investigate. More traffic lumbered past, none of it slowing down.

  “Okay, they’re blind,” Bolan said. “Time to go.”

  He stowed the Dragunov inside the Jetta, took his AK-47 in its place, and locked the car. Ulenga had his AKMS carbine, his pistol and a couple of the flashbangs, just in case. They’d talked about the use of pyrotechnics in a drug lab and agreed that it would be a last resort. While driving over to the warehouse, they had also hit an all-night p
harmacy and bought a box of cheap surgical masks. Concealment wasn’t part of it, but respiration was.

  The last thing Bolan needed, in the middle of a firefight, was to fill his lungs with powdered heroin. One high too many when the Executioner was battling for his life.

  Emerging from the roadside shadows, Bolan waited for a moving van to pass, then struck off toward his target, running hard.

  * * *

  SERGEANT ULENGA FELT exhilarated as he ran across the street, clutching his weapon to his chest, knowing that in another moment battle would begin. They had seen two cars drive around behind the warehouse while observing the building, another leaving, which suggested changing shifts. Drug plants were known to run around the clock, and they were always guarded, even if the lookouts were not visible to passersby.

  And they were always armed.

  What of it? He had made his choice, he realized, and he would live—or die—with it on this night.

  Ulenga’s AKMS carbine felt heavier than its actual eight pounds, and he gripped the weapon tighter to prevent his hands from trembling, but it was not fear that made his muscles shiver. In the seconds he had left to think about it, before the blood began to spill, Ulenga knew it was excitement. An anticipation that was almost gleeful, and which troubled him with its intensity.

  He felt as if he had been waiting for this moment since he’d first joined Nampol, hoping for a chance to make a difference in some way other than cleaning up after traffic accidents or jailing addicts for parading their disease in public places. When Ulenga thought of all the times he’d wished that someone would unleash him to attack the criminals who shamed his homeland, it embittered him. And to find his leash cut by a white man from America, caused him to wonder if the world had tilted on its axis, turning everything he knew or thought that he had known about his life completely upside-down.

  Ulenga knew he might have only minutes—seconds—left to live, but he would make them count for something.

  He watched as Matt Cooper reached the front door of the Ludik-Garoëb Storage warehouse, tried the knob and glanced across his shoulder at Ulenga as it turned. His smile concealed behind the paper mask he wore. So arrogant, these bastards, the sergeant thought, believing that they were untouchable. Even the slaughter at Durissa Bay last night had failed to educate them.

  One more lesson, coming up.

  The big American cleared the threshold first, Ulenga on his heels, the safety off his AKMS carbine, index finger on the trigger, muzzle pointed toward the ceiling while he waited for a target to reveal itself. Ulenga half expected an alarm to sound as they pushed through the door, but nothing happened. Somewhere up ahead, around the corner of the hallway that they occupied, a sound of muffled voices drew him onward.

  In another moment they were at the corner, pausing long enough for his partner to whisper, “You go high. I’m low.” Then they were moving, Cooper in a crab-walking crouch, Ulenga upright with the carbine at his shoulder, sighting down its 16.34-inch barrel at a clutch of startled faces.

  What he saw—the two men closest to them, automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, frozen in the middle of a conversation that had once amused them, but presently forgotten. Farther back into the room, a waist-high metal table heaped with powders, three men mixing, weighing, bagging it. Ulenga understood that some of it was heroin, the rest an additive to cut the dosage and increase their profit on the street.

  The guards reacted after half a second, groping for their weapons. The big American took down the shooter on their left, stitching a line of holes across his chest that spouted blood as he fell over backward, sprawling on the floor. Ulenga shot the other in his startled face and saw a portion of his scalp lift off, like a toupée in a high wind. The dead man fell beside his comrade, and Ulenga felt nothing at all beyond relief that it was done.

  They swept on past the corpses, saw the drug lab workers turn to run and Cooper was firing after them, Ulenga joining him. All three went down in crimson mist, and ringing silence settled on the lab. When no one else appeared to challenge, Ulenga let himself relax a little, but he kept the AKMS leveled at his waist.

  “What now, Cooper?” he asked.

  “Now,” the man replied, “we send it up in smoke.”

  * * *

  LÚCIO JAMBA LISTENED to the news with rapt attention, scowling as he pressed the cell phone tightly to his ear. That ear would ache when he was finished with the call, but Jamba was immune to pain at this moment.

  “All gone?” he asked, incredulous.

  “A total loss,” the caller said.

  “But how?”

  “We know it’s arson,” the caller said. “I can smell the petrol stink from here. Your people burned, but it’s unusual for none to get away. The autopsy, I think, will show that they were killed beforehand.”

  “Killed how?” Jamba asked.

  Across town, his informant—Dorian Diescho, a detective with Nampol’s FCID whose young wife loved expensive things—stood staring at the blackened wreckage of Ludik-Garoëb Storage, a front for the MLF’s heroin pipeline. Jamba could imagine it, since he had seen fires burn and had set some of his own from time to time.

  “I can’t be sure without postmortems,” Diescho said, “but since two of them were armed with automatic weapons, I suppose that they were shot.”

  Arson and murder, on top of the Durissa Bay attack. He recognized the folly of believing it was just coincidence.

  “And were there any witnesses?” Jamba asked, with no realistic hope of learning anything. The neighborhood had been selected for the lack of curiosity among its residents.

  “A passing driver saw the flames and called the fire department, but they didn’t get a name or number. There are people at the scene, of course, but none of them admit to seeing anything.”

  They might have heard the shooting, Jamba thought, or maybe not. It was a district of light industry—warehouses, metal shops, auto repair garages and the like. Most would be closed at night, and those still open would produce their own racket, to the perpetual annoyance of whatever residential tenants lived nearby.

  “You’ve earned a bonus,” Jamba told Diescho. “And you’ll call me first thing, with the autopsy results?”

  “You know I will,” Diescho said, and broke the link.

  Jamba felt like cursing, but he did not have the energy, much less the time to waste. Each second counted. His first job—and the one he dreaded most—was to call Boavida and inform him of the latest disaster. Boavida might be waiting for his call, expecting word that Jamba had identified the gunman from Durissa Bay or even captured him, but this would be another blow. Boavida would not be grateful for the timely information. Rather, there was every chance that he’d blame Jamba for their new loss, thinking in his backward way that his lieutenant should have seen it coming and prevented the attack somehow.

  Impossible, of course, but when his nerves were frayed there was no reasoning with Boavida. Jamba sometimes wondered how and why the man had been selected for the MLF’s top post in Windhoek, but he could not ask the question without putting his own life at risk. Such was the world he lived in, rife with revolutionary passion and with paranoia that could turn a sidelong glance into a mortal threat.

  Jamba looked at his cheap watch, saw that nearly two minutes had slipped away since he had spoken to Diescho, and he knew the call to Boavida could not be delayed another second. Using speed-dial, he connected to the phone at headquarters and waited through four rings until a sleepy-sounding voice responded.

  “Mayombe Liberat—”

  “I need to speak with him,” Jamba said, cutting through it.

  On the other end, the night man recognized his voice and came fully awake. “Yes, sir! At once, sir!”

  Two more minutes passed before the nasal sound of Boavida’s voi
ce filled Jamba’s ear. “You have news for me?” he inquired.

  “News, yes. But it’s not good,” Jamba replied. Without drawing another breath, before Boavida could ask him anything, he launched into his tale.

  * * *

  THEIR SECOND TARGET was a brothel one block south of Raben Street, in Hochland Park. It was an upscale neighborhood, serene compared to what Bolan had seen of Windhoek up to this point, but evil wasn’t bound by zoning laws. Wherever human beings gathered there were cravings, and suppliers of the things that people only spoke about in whispers, in the dark.

  This brothel didn’t have a name, as far as Bolan knew. Its prim facade appeared to be respectable enough: two-story, painted sometime in the last twelve months or so, new-looking shingles on the roof. Its porch light was an amber shade, not crimson, likely to discourage flying insects. If the traffic was unusual at night, the cars Bolan had seen so far all came with hefty price tags, some with liveried chauffeurs, and none were likely to inspire complaints to the police.

  Not that it would have mattered, since Ulenga had assured him that the Nampol vice squad was forbidden to set foot upon these premises.

  No problem. Bolan didn’t have a warrant, and he didn’t plan on taking anyone to jail. It was another case of hit the opposition where it hurts them most—and that was nearly always in the wallet.

  “Ready?” Bolan asked Ulenga.

  “Ready,” his companion answered.

  Bolan was impressed with how the sergeant had performed during their drug-lab raid. Instead of hesitating when confronted with armed opposition, as some might, he had responded instantly and taken down his targets. Afterward, Bolan had seen no evidence of second-guessing or regrets.

  Another warrior stepping forth into a world of hurt.