Rebel Trade

by Don Pendleton

  First money—which, in truth, Ulenga would be happy to accept—and next he was confronted by a basic ignorance of how things worked outside Namibia, or Africa at large. Of course, he knew the rudiments of travel, setting up a household, but when they were finished this mission, if they lived that long, Ulenga would become a stateless person. He would have to settle somewhere, go through all the red tape that surrounded immigration, and it might not suit him by the time he finished jumping through a hundred bureaucratic hoops.

  Too bad, he thought. You made your choice, you have to live with it.

  Assuming they—the MLF, Nampol, whomever—let him live.

  With that in mind, Ulenga turned into the eastern end of Korrthaan Street and followed it southeast to Perihuhn. A casual inspection of the street revealed no Nampol vehicles, but would they be that obvious?

  A stakeout team could commandeer a neighbor’s house, or might be waiting in his own apartment, with their cars tucked somewhere out of sight.

  All that assumed that headquarters had worked out his involvement in the Windhoek raids. It was just as likely, he supposed, that someone in the personnel department had declared him simply absent without leave during the crisis. There was no good reason for them to suspect him, on the face of it. Perhaps, when all the smoke cleared, if he was alive, he’d merely face suspension or dismissal for dereliction of duty.

  In which case, he need not leave Windhoek at all.

  Ulenga thought that he could find another job, however menial, and stash the money he received from Cooper while taking time to plan a leisurely, well-thought-out exit from the city and his homeland. If he was not forced to rush, fleeing from prosecution or assassination, everything would be much easier.

  And he could do it on his own, without any help.

  But first, he felt the need to look around his flat, find out if anyone had been there looking for him—and, if so, whether he could divine their motive and intentions.

  To do that, of course, he had to turn around, go back and find a place to park the Opel, then go on inside. Ulenga knew he would be vulnerable from the moment that he parked his car, but he could not drive off and leave his flat, all his belongings, without one more look around.

  Call it a salvage run.

  He circled north and east on Perihuhn Street, coming back to Korrthaan. Pausing at the intersection for a slow, deep breath, Ulenga turned west once again and started looking for a parking spot.

  * * *

  AFTER DROPPING OFF ULENGA at his car and setting up a time for them to rendezvous downtown, Bolan drove northwest on Florence Nightingale and wound his way from there into the Windhoek suburb known as Khomasdal. Its centerpiece appeared to be a soccer stadium, but Bolan’s interest lay elsewhere, specifically on Borgward Street, where the Mayombe Liberation Front maintained an office on the order of a numbers bank run by the syndicate at home, collecting bets and making the occasional payoff on an unlicensed lottery.

  His plan was simple—hit and git, enhancing Ulenga’s getaway fund with another MLF donation before they called it a day. Whatever happened next, it was unlikely that they’d find another opportunity to profit from the game as it played out.

  The place was decked out as a pawn shop, possibly appropriate for gamblers fallen on hard times. When Bolan entered from the street, two burly figures with dramatic hair—dreadlocks on one, cornrows atop the other—eyeballed him suspiciously from where they stood behind a showcase filled with rings and other jewelry.

  “Help you?” the man wearing cornrows asked.

  “Absolutely,” Bolan said. “I need a loan.”

  “So, what we talkin’ bout?” the other man asked.

  “Depends,” Bolan replied. “How much is in the safe?”

  The pair swapped glances, and the first man said, “The loan depends on what you pawn.”

  “Okay,” Bolan said, drawing the Beretta with its silencer attached. “Let’s call it a withdrawal, then.”

  “You crazy, man?” the second man asked.

  “It’s been said,” Bolan assured him. “Best for you if you don’t test the diagnosis.”

  The man with the cornrows made the first move, left hand yanking up his shirttail while his right went for the pistol tucked inside the waistband of his trousers. Bolan put a round beneath his stubbled chin, punching a clean hole through his larynx, severing his spine near its connection to the skull. The shooter dropped as if his skeleton had suddenly evaporated, limp and dead before he hit the floor.

  The man with the dreadlocks was frozen in the middle of a slow, aborted draw. “Hey, man,” he said. “You want the money, tha’s awright by me.”

  “Good thinking,” Bolan said. “Toss the gun away, left-handed, and we’ll get our business done.”

  The man obeyed, making no move that would invite a Parabellum round. Disarmed, he led Bolan to a spacious room in back, where a card table was piled with betting slips around a calculator. The safe sat in a corner, waist-high and speckled with rust.

  “Suppose I didn’t know the combination?” the man asked.

  “I guess you’re out of luck,” Bolan said.

  “Yeah. Just checkin’, man.”

  He knelt before the safe, shielding the combination dial with his broad torso as he spun it, as if that made any difference. Maybe it helped him feel as if he wasn’t giving in completely. Bolan didn’t know and didn’t care. Inside the safe sat stacks of cash, bundled with rubber bands. Bolan had no idea how much was there, but meant to have it all.

  “I’ll need a bag for that,” he said.

  “Should be one in the desk. You want me get it?”

  “Go ahead,” Bolan replied.

  The man stood up, crossed to the desk, opened a drawer that would be on the bottom-right if he were seated in the low-backed swivel chair. His quick eyes telegraphed the thought of treachery before he reached inside the drawer, and Bolan shot him through his cranium, punching the corpse back toward collision with a row of filing cabinets.

  Inside the drawer, a Browning Hi-Power autoloader lay atop the folded fake-leather satchel he was looking for. Bolan removed the gun and left it on the desktop, took the bag and filled it with the money from the safe, closing the zipper with considerable effort once he had it stuffed with the currency.

  He’d let Ulenga count it later, maybe on the road that took him to a brand-new life.

  Meanwhile, the old one wasn’t finished yet. And if the Executioner got careless, it could go out with a bang.

  * * *

  DAMIÃO MATOS SAW the Opel start to make its second pass and said, in Portuguese, “I think it’s him.”

  “How can you tell?” Mário Cardoso asked from the backseat of their Mitsubishi Lancer. “See, the windscreen’s filthy.”

  “Here, I have the photograph,” their driver, Jonas Rafael, said, taking the passport-size photo from his breast pocket and hand it to Matos in the shotgun seat.

  Matos peered closely at the photograph, then turned back to the Opel, but it had already passed them, slowing as its driver found a parking space along the curb. One of the Opel’s brake lights flickered as he stopped, preparing to parallel park.

  “A short-circuit,” Rafael said. “He ought to fix that.”

  “Does it matter?” Matos asked.

  “I guess not.”

  “Get ready,” Matos said, to his two companions.

  And obeyed his own order, checking the safety on the Uzi Pro that he held cradled in his lap. A modernized version of the Micro-Uzi machine pistol, the Uzi Pro retained its parent weapon’s blowback-operated, closed-bolt, select-fire action, but features a side-mounted bolt handle. Its pistol grip and trigger housing had been redesigned for two-handed action and fabricated from polymer to reduce the original’s weight. Fou
r integral Picatinny rails allowed attachment of various sights and other accessories, but Matos had not customized his man-shredder.

  Cardoso and Rafael both carried AKS-74U rifles, the shortest Kalashnikovs available at 19.3 inches with stocks folded, but they still looked oversized in comparison to Matos’s machine pistol at 11.1 inches. Size did matter, at least for concealment, but any one of the weapons could take out their target this morning.

  Assuming they had the right man.

  The Opel’s driver spent close to five minutes parking his old dusty car. When he was satisfied at last, he spent another moment sitting there, perhaps deciding whether it was safe for him to make a move. Or maybe he’d forgotten something on his shopping list, if this was the wrong man. Their orders were to watch the target’s flat, not follow suspects here and there around Windhoek.

  “Come on, otario,” Cardoso muttered from the backseat. “We haven’t got all day to sit and watch a paneleiro daydreaming.”

  But when the new arrival moved, he managed to surprise them. Where a driver normally would exit through his own door, this one slid across the Opel’s seat to climb out on the passenger’s side, thereby keeping his face averted as he closed the door and moved away from them, along the sidewalk.

  “Merda!” Rafael cursed. “What now?”

  “Just wait,” Matos said. “Find out where he’s going.”

  They already knew the target’s address, had been staring at the red facade of the apartment house for two long hours. If the Opel’s driver chose another door, he could not be their man.

  “I can’t tell if he’s armed,” Rafael said.

  “Could have a pistol underneath that shirt,” Cardoso guessed.

  The same way that they each carried theirs.

  Matos sat watching, silently, until the Opel’s driver made his choice, turned off the sidewalk, moving toward the red apartment house with quick, sure strides.

  “It is him.” Rafael was fairly crowing.

  “Or another tenant,” Matos said.

  “What, coming home this early in the morning?”

  “From a night job,” Matos said. “Or partying at some bordel.”

  “What, you don’t want it to be him?” Cardoso challenged.

  “Idiota. I don’t want to kill the wrong man by mistake and pay the price for it,” Matos replied. “If he’s the one we want, he’ll be inside the right apartment, eh?”

  “Número cinco,” Rafael contributed.

  “Right,” Matos agreed, just as the Opel’s driver entered the apartment house and closed its door behind him. “Now, are you two coming with me, or must I do this alone?”

  * * *

  WHEN BOAVIDA’S CELL PHONE rang, he almost did not answer it. The MLF’s Namibian commander felt that he had reached a point where one more piece of bad news might just send him screaming through headquarters with a weapon in his hand, firing at anyone he met along the way.

  But, no.

  He drew back from the sharp edge of hysteria, picked up the phone and opened it, although reluctantly.

  “Hello?”

  “You’ve heard the news by now, I guess,” the too-familiar voice intoned. “From up north, that would be.”

  “You call me now to gloat?” The bitter taste in Boavida’s throat reminded him of bile.

  “To tell you that it just gets worse from here on in,” the caller said. “You have too many enemies to walk away from this, unless you leave right now.”

  The bark of laughter startled Boavida, coming as it did from his own lips. “Leave and go where?” he asked the stranger. “To Angola? Where I tell them…what? That I was frightened by a white man on the telephone?”

  “Your call. I’d pick another place, if I were you.”

  “I still have work to do in Windhoek,” Boavida said, no longer caring if the line was tapped, his words being recorded.

  “Okay,” the caller said. “It’s your funeral.”

  “Not only mine,” Boavida said. “Who will save your little friend from Nampol, eh?”

  Dead silence on the other end rewarded and encouraged him. The information he’d been given must be accurate, or else the phantom caller would be laughing at him. Instead, the white man answered, “Anything you do from this point on just digs a deeper hole.”

  “And that should matter, why?” Boavida asked. “If I’m doomed, as you’ve already said, why should I make it easy for you?”

  “Easy, hard, it’s all the same. Whichever way it plays, you’re done.”

  “So your CIA proclaimed during the war for independence in Angola. Where are they today?” Boavida asked. “Your consular officials come with hats in hand to beg for oil.”

  “I’m not a diplomat,” the caller answered. “And for whatever it’s worth, I’m not affiliated with the Company.”

  “And if I don’t believe you?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” the stranger said. “It goes down the same, regardless.”

  “And for your comrade, too. Sergeant Ulenga, is it?” Boavida listened for a catch of breath, heard nothing, so he forged ahead. “You think he can survive this? Now that he is known? Even in prison for his many crimes, do you believe he will be safe?”

  “Can’t say I recognize the name,” the caller said. “But you’ve been warned. Unless you leave Namibia today, you’re dead.”

  And so, a second later, was the line. Boavida cut off the buzzing dial tone, closed his cell phone and laid it aside with a trembling hand. Standing up to the caller had cost him. He felt drained of energy, but his fear had receded.

  And why?

  Had the promise of death stiffened up his resolve, or simply removed any doubt of the battle’s outcome? Either way, he’d been truthful in telling the caller that he, Boavida, had nowhere to run.

  Angola was closed to him if he tried to go home a defeated, pathetic failure. His own superiors would have him killed as an example to their other warriors, reinforcing their determination to keep up the struggle. If he stayed and fought in Windhoek, then it might be possible for Boavida to redeem his honor.

  Failing that, at least he would not have to face himself again and see his shame reflected in a mirror.

  Even that was something, after all.

  * * *

  ULENGA FELT NERVOUS, exposed, on the walk from his car to the porch of his lodging house. The feeling eased a little once he was inside, the door shut behind him. But he knew that danger might be waiting for him up the stairs, inside his flat. It would be easy for a stakeout team—or anyone, for that matter—to penetrate the house and set a trap, waiting for his return.

  The house was quiet, but the time of day explained that. All his neighbors would be at work. There were no children in the place, and all the tenants worked long hours to make ends meet. Some held two jobs, were rarely seen. Ulenga had no qualms about drawing his pistol as he climbed the stairs to reach the second floor.

  He half expected someone to be waiting for him on the landing there, prepared to ambush him, but he found himself still alone. Ulenga felt a bit more confident as he proceeded to his flat, paused at the door, and switched the weapon to his left hand while he rummaged in a pocket for his key. Thinking I should have had it ready, when he found it, looked both ways along the hall once more, then braced himself.

  The key turned easily, as always. There was no explosion as he cracked the door, paused listening, then pushed it open with his pistol raised. No movement in the one room he called home. The great advantage of a small flat was its lack of hiding places for an enemy.

  Ulenga crossed the threshold, finally remembering to breathe, and locked the door behind him. Moving toward the closet, he retrieved a small suitcase and placed it on the bed, open, as he went back to fetch his clothes. Th
e bag would hold most of them, he’d decided, since he had no further need for any of his Nampol uniforms or their accessories.

  Where would he be, this time the next day, when his work with the big American was finished? Maybe on an airplane flying from Hosea Kutako International to…where? His mind still balked at choosing destinations, making any long-range plans. It was too difficult to see beyond the afternoon. Beyond what must be done.

  More killing, certainly. The MLF would not retire without a fight. Cooper recognized that fact and made no bones about it. He had offered yet another chance for Ulenga to leave—while the “getting was good,” as he put it—but he had declined. He had not come this far and given up the only life he’d ever known, to turn and run away before the end.

  A bitter end, no doubt. Even victorious, if such a thing was possible for two men facing down an army. They could hardly celebrate. At some point even victory rang hollow, had a sour taste about it. In the army, he had felt the same thing. Doing “good,” however that was legally defined, might not bring any great sense of accomplishment. In fact, sometimes, the feeling it engendered smacked of shame.

  Ulenga didn’t know how his American friend lived with the course of action he had chosen, meeting criminals outside the law and fighting on their terms, but it depressed him. Once the raw exhilaration of a fight had had time to fade, Ulenga had to wonder whether he was any better than the men he had defeated. Murdered, in the law’s eyes, if it ever went to court.

  Which, he was confident, it never would.

  Whatever happened to him, finally, his future held no trials, no sentencing, no prison cage. The path that he had chosen led to victory or death—and was there really any difference between the two?

  Ulenga had the suitcase closed, was fastening its latches, when someone rapped on his door. A muffled voice called out, “Sergeant Ulenga? You are wanted at headquarters.”

  So.