Rebel Trade

by Don Pendleton

  “This time, we give the girls a pass,” Bolan explained. “Take down whatever opposition shows itself and herd the johns out with the other staff.”

  “Then burn it,” Ulenga said.

  “Scorched earth,” the Executioner said.

  “They won’t be happy with us, I can tell you.”

  “If they are,” Bolan replied, “we’re doing something wrong.”

  They’d brought the Volkswagen for this raid, parked it up the block and walked down four doors to their target. There were no guards on the street—they would have been incongruous, considering the neighborhood—and the pair was just in time to trail a couple of well-dressed men who’d parked a silver BMW F10 sedan in the property’s double-wide driveway. The new arrivals didn’t notice Bolan and Ulenga on their heels, already looking forward to a night of pleasure with no thought that it would have to be deferred.

  A woman in a slinky evening gown answered the door, smiling at her expected customers, then blinking when she saw the interlopers coming up behind them. Her surprise turned into shock as Bolan and Ulenga flourished their Kalashnikovs and bulled their way inside. The latest partygoers tried to turn and leave, but found their exit route cut off.

  “Stand easy,” Bolan told them. “You’ll be leaving soon enough.”

  Together with the madam, Bolan and Ulenga marched them on into the brothel’s main salon, where eight or nine young women wearing next to nothing lounged on sofas and recliners, showing off their wares. They came in every color of the human rainbow, none of them appearing to be drugged or visibly abused.

  Which made no difference to Bolan. Maybe the MLF’s imported sex slaves occupied another site or worked the streets, leaving the high-end house to willing volunteers who served a better clientele. He didn’t know and didn’t care. This house was coming down, and it would take another hefty bite out of the so-called liberation army’s war chest in the process.

  Bolan fired a short burst toward the ceiling, taking out three-quarters of a crystal chandelier and prompting screams from several of the working girls. The gunfire served its purpose, as a husky bruiser with a pistol in his hand charged into view, emerging from some kind of waiting room to Bolan’s left. The man took the second burst chest-high and tumbled back in the direction he had come from, squeezing off a wasted shot into a vase of lilies as he fell.

  Ten seconds passed, then twenty, without any other guards showing up. When he was satisfied there were no others on the scene, Bolan announced, “This place is closing down for renovations, as of now. Get out, and don’t look back.”

  “We can’t go out like this!” one of the working girls complained.

  “No time for you to change,” Bolan replied. He nodded toward the dead man in the corner, adding, “Anyone who doesn’t leave right now can stay with him.”

  That got them moving, with some half-dressed stragglers from the rooms upstairs. Ulenga got the madam’s word that everybody was accounted for, then sent her out to join the others on the lawn.

  “A fire sale, eh?” he said to Bolan, smiling.

  “Everything must go,” the Executioner agreed.

  * * *

  MOSES KAUJEUA CLEARED his throat and said, “I cannot offer any explanation at the moment.”

  “That is most unfortunate, my friend.” Despite his amiable tone, Captain Acosta did not smile. “This moment is the time when we need explanations. If we wait until tomorrow or the next day, it may be too late.”

  “For what?” Kaujeua asked.

  “For you, amigo. If this kind of thing continues…well, the likelihood increases that your ties to the Mayombe Liberation Front will be exposed.”

  “How so?” the Second Deputy Assistant Minister for Home Affairs inquired.

  Acosta shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “These secrets have a way of coming out when there are difficulties and police become involved.”

  “Police!” Kaujeua fairly sneered. “I’m not afraid of the police.”

  “Or of the press? Perhaps the people of your country, if they learn the truth about you?”

  Bristling, Kaujeua said, “And what of you?”

  The captain smiled then. “You may recall,” he said, “that I have diplomatic immunity, eh? The very worst I can expect is to be sent home—which, if I may say so, would not be a punishment, considering the length of time I’ve spent already in your desert. As for you…”

  Kaujeua was considering the possibilities. Though highly placed in SWAPO, he was not untouchable. The party’s leaders would discard him in a heartbeat if they felt Kaujeua might taint them with any hint of scandal. He might even be chosen as a sacrifice to pacify the public. That could mean expulsion from the government, a loss of all the wealth he’d managed to accumulate, perhaps a stint in prison.

  “All right,” he told Acosta. “The police—who work for me, I should remind you—are exerting every effort to identify the individuals responsible for these attacks. We have descriptions of two men from the last incident—an African and a white man, speaking English with no European accent. Possibly the white man is American.”

  “American?” Acosta made a tent out of his fingers, used them to support his chin.

  “A possibility,” Kaujeua said. “I can’t be certain.”

  “Still, it’s something,” the Cuban said. “You can check the airport, eh? Try Immigration and Passport Control.”

  “We don’t take photographs of persons entering the country, unless they—”

  “That’s not important,” Acosta said, interrupting him. “You’ll have a record of the new arrivals, sí? Go back a week or so. I don’t believe the man you seek would wait longer than that, before he went to work.”

  “Looking for an American,” Kaujeua said.

  “Looking for any new arrivals who were white, male, of a certain age. No need to bother with the niños or viejos, obviously. You are looking for a soldier, not a child or pensioner.”

  “But why?” Kaujeua asked. “Why would he come here? Why do this?”

  “I hope to be there when you ask him,” Acosta said. “I believe I would enjoy it very much.”

  Chapter 8

  Revolution is a bloody, violent business. Ditto piracy, drug smuggling, human trafficking and any other enterprise defined as a facet of organized crime. Rebels and gangsters need weapons. Where the ownership of firearms, ammunition and explosives is restricted, they must be either be imported or constructed on the spot.

  The MLF, Bolan discovered, liked to have it both ways. They brought certain weapons to Namibia, while shipping others to their comrades in Angola, and sometimes selling hardware to like-minded groups in other parts of Africa. Within Namibia, they stockpiled weapons, modified civilian arms for combat purposes, and manufactured IEDs—Improvised Explosive Devices, the new-age term for homemade bombs—from various components readily available in markets, chemists’ shops and hardware stores.

  Bolan’s third target was a combination arms cache and bomb factory, located in Windhoek’s Northern Industrial District. The building was a run-down former factory, located at the border of a park where Simmentaler Street met Cullinan. Sergeant Ulenga didn’t know what had been manufactured there in bygone days. In the present day, the product coming out of it was death.

  Unlike the drug lab and the brothel they had raided, Bolan soon determined that the bomb plant did not operate around the clock. There was no pressing call for IEDs, no walk-in buyers off the street who needed something blown up in the next half hour. It was closed, for all intents and purposes.

  Which didn’t mean the MLF would leave its stash unguarded.

  On their first pass, Bolan spied two lookouts sitting—maybe dozing—in a car outside the factory. They had the front door covered, but he knew there had to be a bac
k door, and perhaps a fire escape to serve the building’s second story. Once inside, they’d find no shortage of materials with which to carry off a demolition job, but that meant taking out the guards first.

  A circuit of the block showed him a solitary watcher on the factory’s rear loading dock. It overlooked a railroad line that might be as abandoned as the plant, for all Bolan could tell. One thing he took for granted: there would be no pickups or deliveries by train this night, before he finished up remodeling the place.

  Bolan drove back around in front and parked behind a blacked-out service station that had shut down for the night, like all the other shops in the immediate vicinity. Ulenga joined him on the blacktop, checking weapons, taking in the night before they made their move.

  “You know they’re feeling it by now,” Bolan remarked.

  The sergeant nodded. Answered, “So am I.”

  “It’s getting to you?” Bolan asked.

  “The very opposite,” Ulenga said. “I have surprised myself.”

  Bolan thought he understood, but asked the question anyway. “How’s that?”

  “When we began,” Ulenga said, “I thought I might feel guilty. That I’d have to overcome it as we went along. Instead, I feel…” He spent a moment searching for the proper word, then found it. “I feel free.”

  And Bolan understood that, sure. But feeling free came at a cost.

  They walked down to the factory, avoiding streetlights that were few and far between. Covered a block before they saw the old sedan with two men in it, facing in the opposite direction. There, as prearranged, Ulenga stepped into an alley on their left and vanished into shadow, moving out to take the watchman on the loading dock. Bolan drew his pistol and attached the slim suppressor to its threaded muzzle. Ready then, he closed in on the car, hoping he’d catch the lookouts snoozing, or at least bored to the point where they ignored their rearview mirrors.

  Seconds later, Bolan stood beside the four-door, on the driver’s side. He gave a little knock and when the guard saw Bolan he drew for his gun, but the big American beat him to the trigger and shot the driver once in the temple, the impact of his Parabellum mangler spraying blood and meat across the car’s dashboard and windshield. Crouching then, he caught the second gunman gawping at him, reaching for a weapon at his feet when it was too late for the piece to do him any good. The second round tore through his open mouth and finished it.

  Ulenga had gone silent, too, taking the Steyr TMP in preference to his Kalashnikov. No shots were audible behind the factory before the sergeant reappeared, a dark wraith crossing from the west side of the parking lot. There was no point in asking whether he had done his job. Ulenga’s presence, moving under his own power, said it all.

  “Place may be locked,” Bolan advised him.

  “We can handle that,” Ulenga said.

  “How are you with explosives, from your army days?” Bolan inquired.

  Ulenga smiled, a flash of white teeth in the darkness, as he answered.

  “Let’s find out, shall we?”

  * * *

  OSCAR BOAVIDA GLOWERED at his second in command, resisting a sudden and powerful urge to smite the bearer of bad news. He’d had enough to last a lifetime in the past few hours, but it kept on coming, like the aftershocks of a destructive earthquake, hammering his senses, making Boavida wish that he could crawl into a hole and close it off behind him.

  “When was this?” he asked Lúcio Jamba, speaking through clenched teeth.

  “Just now,” Jamba replied. “Well, half an hour ago, perhaps. Police have just arrived and one of them called me.”

  “And nothing’s left?” A knot had formed in Boavida’s stomach, tightening.

  “Three men are dead,” Jamba said, “and the factory has been destroyed. It sounds as if they used explosives from the plant itself to detonate the rest. Of course, we can’t be sure until the search—”

  “Is finished,” Boavida interrupted him. “I understand.”

  It took a conscious effort to relax his balled-up fists, when Boavida felt the fingernails gouging his palms. He drew in a deep breath, tried to release some of the tension from his rigid muscles and control his spiking blood pressure.

  “What matters now,” he told Jamba, “is our reaction. You have soldiers on the street, as I directed?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jamba answered. “Everyone is mobilized, except the two in custody from the Durissa Bay attack. The trouble is—”

  “We don’t know where to look,” Boavida said, having recognized the problem. “Our connection at the Ministry of Home Affairs—”

  “Is checking passport records at the airport,” Jamba verified. “If he comes up with any candidates, at least we’ll have a name.”

  “Likely a false one,” Boavida said. “And still no face to go with it.”

  “Still—”

  “Does it seem likely to you, Lúcio, that a stranger—maybe even an American—could fly into Namibia and cause this kind of trouble for us without some kind of assistance from a native?”

  “I considered it,” Jamba said. “Even if it’s true, that leaves two targets unidentified.”

  “Consider who might aid a terrorist against us. If you have to guess, where would we start to look for such a one?”

  Jamba spoke through a frown. “Someone who hates us.”

  “Obviously that. But also someone with a knowledge of our operations, eh?”

  “You mean—?”

  “Someone who has investigated us,” Boavida said.

  “A policeman!” Jamba said.

  “Or something similar. Perhaps from NDF Intelligence,” Boavida suggested.

  “If that’s the case, how can we find him?” Jamba asked.

  “Start with Nampol, since we have eyes and ears inside,” Boavida said. “Your pet detective may know something, or at least have a suggestion for investigating further.”

  “I will ask him, certainly.”

  “We’re looking for a malcontent,” Boavida said. “Likely someone who has filed complaints with his superiors about a failure to arrest and prosecute our soldiers. Maybe even someone who has been dismissed for speaking out too freely on the subject.”

  “I’ll start at once, sir,” Jamba said.

  “If we can find the foreigner’s connection, we shall have him,” Boavida said, surprised to feel himself relaxing at the thought of wreaking vengeance on his enemies.

  “Yes, sir!”

  His voice stopped Jamba in the office doorway. “Make it happen,” Boavida ordered. “For your own sake, eh?”

  * * *

  HOCHLAND PARK, SITUATED west of Windhoek Central, once was called the city’s Old Location. It was a black ghetto until 1959, when the capital’s white population outgrew Windhoek Central and turned its gaze westward. The announcement of plans to uproot the Old Location’s populace sparked an uprising, crushed by apartheid police who killed eleven protesters and wounded forty-four two weeks before Christmas. Black survivors were moved to Katatura, out of sight and out of mind, while newly christened Hochland Park received a nine-year makeover. Its complexion had changed again with independence, growing darker over time. These days, most of its streets are named for birds—Kingfisher, Kestrel, Albatross and so on.

  Riding north on Goshawk Street with Bolan at the Jetta’s wheel, Sergeant Ulenga eyed a soccer field off to their right. There was no game in progress at this hour, of course, and it was just as well. The atmosphere in Hochland Park would not be suitable for sports on this night.

  The neighborhood was residential, and they had come looking for a home. It did not house a normal family, but rather served the MLF as a combination barracks and safe house for fugitive members. Police knew the address but seldom came knocking, except in the ca
se of some crime they could not well ignore.

  Ulenga and the big American planned on a wake-up call, but this part of their mission was preying on the sergeant’s mind.

  “What if no one’s at home?” he asked, as they turned left on Sunbird Street.

  “I thought about that,” Bolan replied. “It’s likely that the brass have got their men out on the streets by now. If everybody’s gone, we’ll torch the place. Let them find somewhere else to sleep.”

  “Scorched earth,” Ulenga said.

  “That’s it.”

  “Do you get tired of this, Cooper?” he asked Stone. “All the fighting, never resting?”

  “Sometimes I catch a little R and R,” Bolan said, then pointed to the dashboard clock. “But hey, you only joined the team three hours ago. Don’t tell me you’re burned out already?”

  “No, not me,” Ulenga said, in spite of the fatigue he felt from tension building up between their strikes. He wasn’t tired per se, at least not yet, but thought the pace would kill him if he kept at it too long. “I only wondered, after years…”

  “You can get used to anything,” Bolan said. And then, interrupting whatever words he may have spoken next, he said, “I see the address.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” Ulenga said.

  A yellow house, whose paint had faded over time from lemon-bright to pale pastel. It stood apart from neighbors on the east and west, with strips of dead grass in between the houses. Each had a front lawn, maintained with varying degrees of care—some lush, while others had a blighted, mangy look.

  “All dark,” Bolan said, stating the obvious. “I’ll find a way in around back.”

  There was an alley, made for backdoor trash removal when the neighborhood went white, still lined with garbage cans. Some of them overflowed, while others looked as if they had been used for martial arts, their sides dented and creased. They found the backside of the MLF safe house, parked there—no fence to block their access—and stepped out into the dry, warm night.

  “It looks deserted,” Bolan remarked, “but watch for booby traps.”