Then the gates of hell opened up

The game was on, and the only way to win it was to charge on, straight ahead.

Bolan went through the curtain in a fighting crouch and dropped another adversary as his target tried to cock his AK-47. Shock was written on the gunman’s face as he went down.

The others started firing then, mostly without direction, making lethal noise as soldiers often did to keep the enemy at bay until they worked out what in hell was happening. The walls were being chipped and scarred by bullets, drilled through completely in places by the larger calibers.

Bolan had claimed the table of the second man he’d shot, flipped it to make a shield of sorts, but knew it wouldn’t serve him long or well. The first hits showered him with splintered wood, which meant that at least a couple of his enemies had seen him go to ground.

It was time to move.

But first, a little shock and awe.

Threat Factor

The Executioner ®

Don Pendleton’s

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

—Journals

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803–1882

Sometimes we have to fight evil with evil, fire with fire. Violence is the only language some predators understand, and I speak it fluently.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Prologue

Indian Ocean

Captain Danilo Andreychuk was worried. He had watched a trawler keeping pace with the Vasylna for the better part of two hours. Examining the rusty hulk through his binoculars from half a mile away, he could not escape a sense that he was being stalked.

It was entirely reasonable that Captain Andreychuk feared treachery. These waters, off the east coast of Somalia, teemed with hijackers and pirates who liked nothing better than to prey on merchant ships—stealing their cargo, sometimes offering it back for ransom to the rightful owners and frequently committing acts of needless violence against the transport crews.

And the Vasylna was a prime target.

Her cargo was supposed to be a deep, dark secret, but Andreychuk knew that every ship afloat sprang leaks from time to time. Some leaks let water infiltrate the cargo holds, while others provided information to the sea wolves who paid well for tips involving profitable merchandise.

With the exception of his first mate, Mykola Shymko, the captain didn’t trust the other members of his crew as far as he could throw them—preferably overboard. They were a mixed lot, competent enough as long as he was watching them perform their duties, but he assumed that most of them were ex-convicts. Their crude tattoos spoke volumes with respect to lives pursued outside the law.

Andreychuk noted that the trawler had drawn closer while he was distracted by his private thoughts. He had been debating whether he should hail the other ship, when a gruff voice behind him asked, “Is something wrong?”

The captain turned to face his latest client, known to him as Grigory Glazkov. The man was Russian, with a military look about him—flinty eyes and roughly chiseled features set beneath a graying crew cut that was thinning at the crown.

“I hope not,” Andreychuk replied. “But maybe so.”

Glazkov had seen the trawler now and recognized its flag. “Liberian,” he noted.

“Maybe,” Andreychuk said. “Maybe not.”

Glazkov had to have known that many vessels listed in the Liberian International Ship & Corporate Registry were Liberian in name only, logged as a matter of convenience that frequently included tax evasion and concealment of the true owner’s identity. The trawler’s flag—resembling that of the United States, but with only one star in its blue canton, and eleven red-and-white stripes in its field instead of thirteen—told Andreychuk nothing.

“Can we outrun them, if need be?” Glazkov inquired.

Andreychuk shrugged and said the obvious. “She’s keeping up so far.”

They were two miles offshore from Bargaal, still some thirteen hundred miles from their intended destination of Mombassa, Kenya. Andreychuk had no idea how fast the nameless trawler could travel—and now he saw that it didn’t matter. “Speedboats!”

From Glazkov’s lips, it sounded like a curse.

And so it was.

Three sleek powerboats—one red, two white—had suddenly appeared from the trawler’s starboard shadow and were racing toward the Vasylna at full speed, fairly skimming across the ocean’s surface. Each carried five or six men, and Andreychuk didn’t need his binoculars to know they were armed.

“You can repel them, yes?” Glazkov demanded.

“Perhaps.” Andreychuk’s tone left no doubt of his skepticism.

Even as he spoke, the first speedboat reached the Vasylna, one of its passengers raising a stubby weapon to his shoulder and squeezing its trigger. With a muffled popping sound, a grappling hook hurtled over the Vasylna’s port-side railing and caught hold, trailing a crude rope ladder behind it.

“We must fight back!” Glazkov barked at him, reaching underneath his jacket to produce an automatic pistol.

“Not so fast, Comrade,” another voice said from behind the Russian.

Glazkov and Andreychuk turned as one, to find a stocky figure standing in the wheelhouse doorway. Mykola Shymko held a pistol of his own, aimed at the Russian’s head.

“Full stop, Captain, I think,” the first mate said.

So much for trust.

1

Mogadishu, Somalia

Mogadishu—or Muqdisho, in Arabic—was the crossroads of East Africa. Local natives opened seafaring trade with India in the first century, and later welcomed Portuguese merchants and seamen. Ali bin Said al-Busaid, the fourth sultan of Zanzibar, leased Mogadishu to Italy in 1892, while his successors sold it outright to Rome in 1905. Kenya captured the city in 1941, then yielded control to Great Britain from 1950 to 1960, with the advent of chaotic independence. But Somalia’s capital retained its Italian flavor, at least in the names of its streets. Italian coexisted with English, Arabic and Somali as one of Somalia’s four official languages.

Which explained why Mack Bolan, driving west from Aden Adde International Airport in a rented car, made his first turn on Via Medina, proceeding southwestard from there onto Via Londra and Via Roma.

He was headed downtown, toward the teeming heart of a city whose population exceeded two million. A recent sitrep out of Langley estimated that Mogadishans owned at least one million assault rifles, making their city the most heavily armed on Earth.

And they weren’t afraid to use those weapons, either. Street battles between rival warlords and criminal gangs were routine—so common, in fact, that the Western media rarely bothered to report a skirmish or bombing with less than a dozen slain victims.

In short, Bolan was headed into an active war zone—unarmed.

Fortunately, he should have no trouble finding military hardware in the city.

His destination, as luck would have it, lay at the very heart of Mogadishu’s urban battleground. The Bakaara Market was Somalia’s largest open market, and while relatively new—created under the Mohamed Siad Barre regime, in 1972—it had compiled an impressive record of outlaw activities. Aside from the selling of daily essentials, such as dietary staples, medicine and gasoline, the market had become a virtual arms dump since the Somalian revolution of 1986-92 and the ensuing civil war that had continued to the present day. Aside from standard small arms and explosives, Bolan understood that antiaircraft guns, mortars and other heavy weapons were available upon demand, for those with ready cash.

No problem getting strapped, then, even with his relatively pale skin working to his disadvantage in a country where Caucasians were often regarded as the enemy, regardless of their nationality.

The Bakaara Market’s other offerings included forged passports and other vital documents, prepared within minutes for buyers in a hurry, and counterfeit currency produced in such abundance that it sparked the collapse of the Somali shilling and forced a brief closure of the market in 2001. For months after the market reopened, its vendors had demanded U.S. dollars in place of their own nation’s worthless money.

Small wonder, then, that the Bakaara Market had witnessed repeated, brutal acts of violence. Sporadic firefights and RPG attacks made the market hazardous for merchants and patrons alike, while a series of combat-related fires had swept the ramshackle stalls between 2001 and 2007, claiming dozens of lives.

It sounded like a little bit of hell on Earth.

Unfortunately, it was also Bolan’s point of contact with a native ally he had never met, but whose local knowledge might prove critical to Bolan’s latest mission.

Might being the operative word.

Experience had taught the Executioner to deal with strangers at arm’s length, regardless of their prior endorsements by those whom he had cause to trust. That was true in the States, true in Europe, and doubly true in a place like Somalia, where decades of savage internecine warfare had replaced civilization with something close to anarchy.

As he approached Mogadishu’s Hamarwein Old Town, rolling north on Via Morocco, Bolan considered stopping off before his meet to buy a pistol and some ammunition, maybe add an SMG to his preliminary shopping list, but he was running late already with a flight delay in Cairo, and he didn’t want to leave his contact hanging any longer than he absolutely had to.

He’d memorized a recent photo of the man he was supposed to meet, Dirie Awaale Waabberi, and hoped he would be able to quickly spot his face out of a mob at the Bakaara Market. But Bolan knew from personal experience that Third World slums and marketplaces could overwhelm strangers without even trying.

Bolan himself was no stranger to Africa, per se, but he couldn’t pretend to pass for a native or long-term resident. He had been in and out of the continent on varied missions through the years, but governments and causes changed like the seasons. Africa’s only constants were physical beauty and stone-cold indifference to human survival.

So Bolan passed on pistol-shopping for the moment, and instead took his chances with mobility and instinct as he drove to meet a stranger who would either help him or betray him to his enemies.

As for those enemies themselves, a cautious man would say that they had Bolan hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. But those who leaped to that conclusion didn’t know the Executioner.

DIRIE WAABBERI HAD a pistol of his own, but he wasn’t sure by any means that it would keep him breathing through the night. Dusk was approaching, and the floodlights mounted over the Bakaara Market were already lit, but he saw menace in the shadows between market stalls and in the eyes of strangers passing by on either side of him.

It was easy to die in Mogadishu. Anyone could sidle up to Waabberi in the crush of shoppers, slip a blade between his ribs or shoot him in the head, and who would care? Beyond a momentary ripple as he crumpled to the pavement, who would even notice?

On his way to the Bakaara Market, Waabberi had passed a small contingent of AMISOM—African Union Mission in Somalia—peacekeepers, instantly recognizable wearing their green berets and green armbands. They carried weapons but were virtually barred from using them except in the last straits of self-defense. Yet, even then, being outnumbered some 750 to one by Mogadishans who often possessed superior weapons, what chance did they have? If they kept any peace in the city, Waabberi had yet to observe it.

They would not save him, if he had been marked for death by enemies.

Waabberi had survived to celebrate his twenty-ninth birthday, just two weeks earlier, but he was ever conscious of the fact that it might be his last. The course of action he had chosen, working with a foreign stranger to defy powerful foes, could prove to be a fatal mistake.

But he was hopeful, all the same.

A man had to do something when confronted by such wickedness, or else humanity itself was lost.

Waabberi had never experienced peace. Somalia’s last elected government had collapsed four years before he was born, eclipsed in turn by military dictatorship, rebellion, civil war and eventual chaos, but he understood that some nations—even in impoverished, strife-torn Africa—enjoyed a measure of stability. If he could help his homeland move in that direction, even if he did not live to see it triumph, then Waabberi felt his life would at least count for something.

But dedication did not exempt him from fear.

Of late, Waabberi had felt that he was being followed. Granted, he could not have proved it. Stopping suddenly on sidewalks, peering into windows for reflected glimpses of a stranger stalking him, he had seen nothing that would stand as evidence. Perhaps he had grown paranoid, which on the deadly streets of Mogadishu was no more than a survival mechanism.

Still, Waabberi had a sense of being watched and shadowed. He was doubly cautious in communicating with his CIA control agent, avoiding any face-to-face contact, shunning even the use of public telephones. When messages were passed, he went the long way around to dead drops, using every trick at his disposal to get rid of followers. Sometimes he felt absurd, and yet he persevered, fully aware that enemies could strike the moment he relaxed his guard.

Or even now, when he was poised at full alert.

Waabberi wished that he knew more about the stranger he’d been asked to serve as translator and guide. The man was white and used the name Matthew Cooper, although Waabberi would have bet a year’s income that he’d been christened something else.

This Cooper was supposed to be “a specialist,” which could mean anything in cloak-and-dagger terms. Given the time and place, the opposition he’d be facing, it was safe to guess that mayhem was among his specialties.

How else could the American expect to tackle Mogadishu’s warlords and survive?

As far as the specifics of his mission, no details had been forthcoming. It was strictly “need-to-know,” a bit of hedging by Waabberi’s CIA control against the possibility that he would be abducted and interrogated by some unnamed enemy.

And so, Waabberi came to the Bakaara Market with a pistol tucked under his belt. It was a big Beretta Model 92, dragging his pants down on the left and covered by the loose tail of his baggy shirt, positioned for a cross-hand draw.

Waabberi guessed that most of those around him in the market crowd were similarly armed. Reliance on a gun or knife for personal defense was something every Mogadishan child learned at an early age from parents, older siblings, or the acts of violence they witnessed for themselves. Survival of the fittest—or the fastest—had replaced the rule of law so long ago that only those of middle age or older could recall a better time.

But if Waabberi’s life was dangerous before, he knew that the real peril would begin this day, within the next few minutes. When he met the stranger from America—assuming that the man actually showed up—Waabberi’s danger level would increase dramatically.

He would no longer be just an observer of the violence around him, someone who reported back in secret and was paid in U.S. dollars for his trouble. From the moment he laid eyes on Cooper’s face and shook his hand, Waabberi knew he would become a target.

Any second now.

SIMEON BOORAMA WAS TIRED of waiting. He had spent the best part of a week trailing his target, wishing he could simply kill the man and be done with it, reining in his agitation with great effort.

Now, the job was nearly done. This day Boorama was expected to eliminate his mark—but still, he had to stand and wait, until some other man arrived. It was a two-for-one, and his instructions were exremely clear: Miss either one, and it would be his own head on the chopping block.

Preferring overkill to failure every time, Boorama had collected five more soldiers for the final act. They melded perfectly into the mob of shoppers thronging the Bakaara Market on this absolutely normal evening. Their weapons were half-heartedly concealed, and in the absence of police patrols they passed unnoticed among others who were similarly armed.

Boorama watched his target, drifting among the produce stalls that offered maize, beans, sorghum, peanuts, wheat and sesame. A few aisles over, someone was cooking sambuusa spiced with green peppers that made his mouth water. Boorama contented himself with a cup of sweet lassi—yogurt and water, flavored with mango and sugar—while stalking his man.

A time or two during the long week of surveillance, he’d been almost certain that he had been spotted. Once, Dirie Waabberi had turned in the aisle of a grocery store and stared at Boorama directly, but Boorama had brushed on past him, nearly touching shoulders with a muttered “Scusi,” and moved on.

Apparently no harm had been done, since the target had not varied his routine over the next few days. Granted, Waabberi had made some basic efforts to evade surveillance, but Boorama had assistants on the case by then, and the man could not shake them off, no matter what he tried.

And finally, the end was near.

Boorama hoped his next assignment would be simpler. In and out, an easy execution without all the spying nonsense complicating every move he made. Of course, he offered no complaints to his superiors—that would have been the next best thing to suicide.

Boorama understood he was just a cog in the machine, expendable and easily replaced. With nearly half of all adult Somalis unemployed, and those with jobs averaging less than one thousand U.S. dollars per year in income, thousands of young men literally would have killed to claim Boorama’s job.

Somali lives came cheap, Boorama’s own no less than those he had extinguished on behalf of his employers. He’d lost count along the way, but knew his willingness to kill upon command was the only thing that kept him earning money—kept him breathing.

Boorama thought he might even have killed his own kin in order to survive. Waabberi’s life meant less than nothing to him, in the larger scheme of things.

His choice of weapons for the job was a Benelli CB-M2 submachine gun, an Italian 9 mm weapon that measured less than eighteen inches long with its butt folded. He had loaded the piece with a 30-round box magazine and stuffed his pockets with spares, just in case.

Not that he planned to miss.

Up close, the way Boorama liked to work, he would cut Dirie Waabberi and his nameless friend in two before they even recognized the danger to themselves.

His other soldiers were for backup, to support him if the set went wrong somehow—if, for example, Boorama killed or wounded others in the crowd, and the injured or their friends and relatives returned fire. He would have to fight his way out of the market, reach one of the cars that he had standing by and make good his escape.

What was it they always said in the United States?

No sweat.

If only that were true in the Bakaara Market, where the floodlights seemed to amplify the fading heat of yet another muggy afternoon, forcing Boorama to mop his forehead with a shirtsleeve. He looked forward to the getaway, riding at high speed in a stolen car with all the windows open, chilling him with the evaporation of his sweat off his skin.

But first, the kill.

Tired as he was of waiting, Simeon Boorama felt it coming to an end. His man was moving now, with more assurance than he’d shown since entering the market. Not just drifting, killing time, but walking with a purpose, eyes straight forward, locked on someone he’d been waiting for.

Boorama saw the white man half a second later, knew that he had to be the contact Waabberi had been expecting. Who he was or where he’d come from mattered no more to Boorama than the stranger’s choice of underwear or aftershave.

It was Boorama’s job to kill him, nothing more.

“I see him,” he informed the others, speaking into the tiny microphone attached to his lapel. “It’s time. Move in, but remember, they belong to me.”

BOLAN IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZED Dirie Waabberi from his photograph and moved to intercept him near a market stall piled high with what appeared to be secondhand clothing. He kept it casual, no rushing, making himself as inconspicuous as a tall white man could be.

Waabberi drifted toward the clothing stall, not making any signal of acknowledgment as yet. Bolan took time to scan the crowd behind his contact, and to either side, looking for any evidence of urgent, hostile movement. But the shoppers surged in all directions, jostling one another, making it a tough call.

Moments later, Bolan stood beside Waabberi, studying a rack of mismatched scarves as he began the ritual.

“I always fancy red or white,” he said.

“I like the blue, myself,” Waabberi answered automatically. “Welcome to Mogadishu, Mr. Cooper.”

“Thanks. I need to get some things before we start. Hardware. But it’s too public here.”

“No problem,” Waabberi said. “I know a dealer who provides good quality.”

“Are you on foot?”

Waabberi nodded and replied, “I understood that you would have a car.”

“I do.” Bolan had paid to park it in a fenced lot, guarded by a one-eyed man who wore a rusty-bladed panga on his belt. “We may as well get started.”

They were turning when he saw the gunman coming at them, smiling in anticipation of an easy kill. The shooter wore a loose jacket, drawn back to bare a stubby submachine gun slung over his right shoulder, its muzzle rising as he closed the gap to fire at point-blank range.

Bolan reacted in a heartbeat, instinct stepping up to take the place of conscious thought. Instead of bolting from the shooter, he lunged forward, struck the weapon’s muzzle downward with his left hand, while the right snapped forward from the shoulder, slamming the heel of his palm into the gunman’s nose.

It might have been a fatal blow. He didn’t pull it, but the impact varied from one subject to another. Bolan didn’t know if he had driven shards of bone into the shooter’s brain or blinded him with splintered cartilage. The hit was hard enough to put the man down without a fight, and that was all that mattered at the moment, giving Bolan time to whip the right sleeve of the gunner’s jacket free and release the submachine gun from its shoulder sling.

“Let’s go!” he snapped, and steered Waabberi back along the path Bolan had followed as he entered the Bakaara Market, hoping that the shooter was alone. He wasn’t.

Bolan guessed it when he saw three others closing in, instead of shying from the crazy white man with a gun. He knew it when another fired a pistol shot from somewhere on his left flank, missed and struck an old man in the face.

Waabberi ducked and drew a pistol of his own, but held his fire as Bolan said, “Not here!”

The last thing Bolan wanted was a bloodbath to begin his mission in Somalia. He would not initiate a cross fire that endangered innocent civilians, even if the bulk of them were packing heat and long accustomed to surviving in an urban war zone.

“This way!” Bolan urged his contact, weaving through the crowd with shoulders hunched, as more shots sounded from behind them. Someone screamed—a child or woman, from the pitch of it—and then the panic started, as shoppers bolted every which way as they sought to clear the lines of fire.

The first few shots from handguns echoed flatly through the marketplace, but then an automatic rifle joined the chorus. Bolan recognized the stutter of an AK-47 and heard more screams as military rounds struck flesh and bone.

The shooters obviously didn’t care who else went down, as long as they dropped Bolan and/or Waabberi. The Executioner couldn’t pause to verify that he was on some hit list after only two short hours in Somalia, but it strained the notion of coincidence to think the ambush had been sprung by chance, just when Waabberi met him in the market.

He could sort through the details if and when they made it to the car alive and put some space between themselves and the remaining members of the hunting party.

Bolan knew that he could drop at least a couple of them with his liberated SMG, but he resisted the temptation. There was nothing he could do to help the panicked shoppers who were falling all around him, but he would not boost the ever-rising body count.

They’d reached the outskirts of the Bakaara Market, facing onto a street. There would be fewer bystanders out here. His enemies would have a relatively clear shot when they overtook him, and he’d have a chance to deal with them, in turn.

“Across the street,” he urged Waabberi, but they never made it.

As the Executioner stepped off the curb, a car screeched to a stop in front of him, its female driver craning toward the open window on his side.

“Get in,” she snapped, “unless you want to die right here!”

2

Baltimore, Maryland, Three Days Earlier

Meeting in public was a switch. When Hal Brognola met with Bolan to discuss a new assignment, the usual sites were at Stony Man Farm or the resting place of heroes at Arlington National Cemetery. This day, of all places, the meet had been scheduled at Baltimore’s Harborplace and The Gallery Mall.

Brognola had joked about it in their brief telephone conversation, explaining that he had to do some shopping for “the little woman.” Swarovski Crystal, no less, for an upcoming anniversary. Bolan was in the neighborhood, more or less, mopping up the stateside end of a Nigerian heroin pipeline in Newark, and he drove down for the day.

The mall was located on East Pratt Street, in the heart of Baltimore’s posh Inner Bay shopping district. Bolan checked out the sailboats in passing, then focused on the signs that told him where to park his rented car.

Swarovski’s was predictably located in The Gallery, but Bolan was an early bird, by habit and as a condition of survival. He had time to browse through the Pratt Street and Light Street pavilions, admiring the World Trade Center, strolling past the windows of a self-styled psychic’s reading room. Finally, when it was time, he made his way on foot across Pratt Street, into The Gallery.

He trusted that it wouldn’t be a trap—Brognola was too slick for that—but Bolan still remained alert for enemies and noted exits as he passed them, without thinking twice about it. He was ever-conscious of the big Beretta 93-R’s weight beneath his right armpit.

The Gallery’s shops were a mixed bag, though mostly upscale. En route to Swarovski, he passed by Sbarro, Ann Taylor, Trade Secret, Talbot’s, a bank and an entrance to the four-diamond Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, with 620 rooms.

On a professional level, he noted fire alarms and security cameras, checked out the roving security guards whose visible hardware consisted of steel telescoping batons, and wondered if a holdup gang had ever tried the bank. The setup wasn’t perfect—far too many witnesses for comfort—but a team of pros would have the option of escaping over water, through Baltimore Harbor and out into Chesapeake Bay, if they timed it just right.

Most of the shoppers passing by him in the mall were casually dressed, but they still looked like money. There were no homeless souls in evidence, no street urchins except the kind who carefully cut holes in their designer jeans in affectation of a postgrunge style.

The delicate delinquents almost made him smile.

Brognola wasn’t quite as stylish, though he’d spent some decent money on his suit, keeping up with the fast-track bureaucrats in Washington. Still, the fedora planted squarely on the big Fed’s head looked like the same one he’d been wearing when he first met Bolan in Miami, several lifetimes ago.

Brognola’s handshake was the same as always, strong and dry. J. Edgar Hoover had discouraged clammy palms when Brognola was starting as a rookie agent with the FBI, and the big Fed maintained the standard ever since.

“Glad you were in the neighborhood,” he said, as they began to drift along the promenade. “You want some coffee?”

“Might as well,” Bolan replied.

They stopped at Starbucks, ordered coffee black and claimed a table for two in a corner away from the counter, where Bolan sat down with his back to the wall. When they were settled in their chairs, Brognola said, “You’ve been to Somalia. I need you to go back.”

“Okay. What’s going down?”

“Long story short, as you know, Somalia started falling apart back in 1977, when it went to war with Ethiopia. Some kind of border dispute. It seems to happen every day in East Africa. Anyway, the Somali army was decimated and the government’s authority went up in smoke, which sparked a military coup in 1978. A guy named Mohamed Siad Barre held the reins until December 1991, when half a dozen groups of rival insurgents collaborated long enough to kick him out. They replaced him with President Ali Muhammad, but as you might guess, it didn’t work out.”

“The tribal thing,” Bolan stated.

“In spades. Three other would-be leaders pulled out on Muhammad, and the coalition fell apart. Meanwhile, Siad Barre was hanging on with his own army in the south. The chaos and resultant famine prompted UN intervention in December 1992, lasting until the spring of 1995. A lot more people died, including some Americans, with no apparent progress toward resolving any of the country’s problems.”

“Sounds familiar,” Bolan said.

“Depressingly familiar,” Brognola replied. “By 1998 the original country was splintered. You had the self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland in the northwest, Puntland to the northeast, and Jubaland in the south. None were recognized by us or the UN, and there was still an outfit called the Rahanweyn Resistance Army running wild, shooting at everybody else.”

“There is some kind of government today, though, isn’t there?” Bolan asked.

“You could call it that,” Brognola said. “In 2004 a group of relative moderates founded the Transitional Federal Government, based in Baidoa. Before the ink was dry on their charter, Somalia got spanked with a huge tidal wave from the Indian Ocean, followed by floods that killed 350,000 people in 2006.”

“They can’t catch a break,” Bolan said. “Couldn’t last time I was in Mexico.”

“And Mother Nature’s only part of it,” Brognola told him. “Through it all, a bloody rivalry goes on between the tribes in Jubaland and Puntland, all of them ignoring the transitional government. Come 2006, Islamic fundamentalists declare a new state of their own, called Galmudug, imposing strict Sharia law from the Koran. That basically ignites another civil war between the TFG in Baidoa and something called the Islamic Courts Union. The Muslim militia captured Mogadishu in June 2006, then Ethiopia jumped in six months later, supporting the TGF. Fighting’s in progress as we speak.”

“It’s grim, all right,” Bolan agreed, “but we can’t straighten out a whole country.”

“You’re right,” he replied. “Unfortunately, civil war and scrambled politics are not the only problems in Somalia, right now.”

“Back to the warlords,” Bolan said.

“Exactly right,” Brognola agreed. “We’ve seen it all before, a hundred times. When government breaks down, there’s no Utopia. The savages take over. As it stands right now, the rival gangs in Mogadishu and surrounding areas have staked their claims to three main rackets, when they aren’t killing one another for sport.”

“Those rackets being…?”

“First,” Brognola said, “they went with kidnapping for ransom. It was logical enough, I guess. A spin-off from the civil, where snatching enemy officers may give your side an advantage. Now, though, it’s strictly commercial. The first major target was an economist from Mogadishu University, involved with some kind of UN development program. His kidnappers asked for ten grand, but the UN wouldn’t pay.”

“They killed him?” Bolan asked.

“Nope. Turned him loose, in fact,” Brognola continued, “but started going after fat civilian targets. Anyone with money or a way to get some may be grabbed at any time. You won’t see anyone of any substance traveling through Somalia these days, without a well-armed entourage.”

“Okay, that’s one racket,” Bolan observed.

“The second one is drugs,” Brognola said. “No great surprise, I know, but heroin and coke don’t get much play around Somalia, unless you’re rich and have a sweet connection. The hot ticket is something called khat, a locally grown narcotic plant. Most people chew the leaves to get high, then zone out—and I do mean most people. Current research claims that three out of four adult males in Somalia chew khat every day. It’s highly addictive, and the World Health Organization calls it an epidemic, leading to problems that range from domestic abuse and divorce to street crime. Hit men and guerrillas like it, too. A little bite of courage when they need it most.”

“So, that’s widespread,” Bolan said.

“Absolutely. But like any other drug, you have controlling syndicates who dominate the market. They’re the same ones who direct the big-league kidnappings and claim the lion’s share of the third racket.”

“Which is piracy.”

“Right,” Brognola said. “Somalian gangs with access to the coast will tackle damn near anything that floats. They’ve staged eighty-odd raids so far, in the first six months of this year, with fifteen ships hijacked and over a hundred crew members held hostage.”

“Any special targets?” Bolan asked.

“Not really. Most of the time, they sell the cargo back to its owners for five or ten cents on the dollar, collecting some extra for crewmen and ships. Sometimes they find a rival bidder. However, there’s one load we are concerned about.”

“What would that be?”

“Late last week,” Brognola went on, “a gang of pirates overran a Ukrainian cargo ship, the Vasylna, bound for Nairobi with a consignment of Russian military hardware. Not just AKs and grenades, unfortunately. In addition to the usual small arms, they grabbed thirty-three tanks, the new T-90s, complete with what the Russians are calling a ‘substantial amount’ of ammo for their 125 mm guns and factory-standard machine guns.”

Bolan suppressed a grimace. The T-90 main battle tanks mounted two machine guns: a 12.7 mm for antiaircraft work, and a smaller 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun for mopping up infantry. Each tank tipped the scales at 46.5 tons, seating a three-man crew, and could travel four hundred miles at forty miles per hour, powered by an 840-horsepower Model 84 V-84 12-cylinder diesel engine. It was, in short, a formidable killing machine.

“I’m guessing that the pirates haven’t offered to return the goods,” Bolan said.

“They’re taking offers,” Brognola replied. “Keep one of two of the T-90s for themselves, and they can still make millions selling off the rest to one of the militias. It could swing the balance on a local scale, at least.”

“I’m guessing that you have some leads on who might be responsible,” said Bolan.

“Two prime suspects,” Brognola said, as he drew a plastic-covered CD-ROM from somewhere inside his suit jacket and passed it to Bolan. “Look this over when you get a chance. It covers both the major gangs in Mogadishu and your native contact.”

Bolan took the CD-Rom and tucked it away inside his own jacket.

“As usual,” Brognola said. “This mission will be high risk for small reward, and there’s no safety net. We haven’t had an embassy in Mogadishu for over a decade, so the nearest consulate would be in Nairobi. For the record, that’s 635 miles as the crow flies, and you wouldn’t be flying.”

Bolan shrugged. “I never found much comfort at an embassy,” he said.

“The good news,” Brognola continued, “if you want to call it that, is that you won’t be bothered by police. They’ve only got a thousand cops to cover the whole country, and it turns out none of them are stationed in Mogadishu.”

“Makes it nice for the warlords,” Bolan said.

“You may run into AMISOM,” Brognola added. “They’re loosely backed by the UN Security Council. But they’ve only got twenty-six hundred troops on the ground, and they try to stay out of harm’s way.”

“Sounds all right,” Bolan said. “I’m in.”

Brognola nodded, put a grim smile on his face, and reached for Bolan’s hand again.

“Stay frosty, then,” he said. “And stay in touch.”

BOLAN SAT IN HIS CAR, in the mall’s parking lot, and slid Brognola’s CD-ROM into the laptop he’d picked up earlier. The computer whirred briefly, then began displaying photos of his targets with their background information, gleaned from databases maintained by the CIA, Interpol and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council.

First up was Musse Bahdoon Guleed, age thirty-two, identified as Mogadishu’s primary criminal warlord. He had been jailed for robbery in 1996, released three years later and had managed to remain at large since then, building a reputation for ruthless ferocity nearly unrivaled in a nation where homicidal violence was routine. Observers estimated that Guleed had at least a thousand armed men under his direct command, perhaps as many as twelve hundred. His gang was suspected of several high-profile ransom kidnappings and peddled some two-thirds of the khat consumed in Mogadishu and environs over the past five years. His pirate navy roamed the coast from Xarar dheere southward to Kismaayo, picking off commercial targets and skirmishing with rivals.

Guleed’s number two was Jama Samatar Hassan, a transplant from the Bakool district, on the Ethiopian border, who had come up the hard way as a militia infantryman turned bandit and smuggler. At twenty-eight, he’d served two prison terms for trafficking in stolen property but ducked indictment for the various suspected murders in his past. Among those was the slaughter of two dozen villagers near Wanlaweyn, in early spring. According to reports from Interpol, the victims had been growing khat and balked at selling to Guleed for half the normal wholesale price. Now, they were in the ground and Guleed had it all, thanks to his strong right arm.

The strongest opposition to Guleed came from one of his ex-lieutenants, twenty-six-year-old Jiddu Abtidoon Basra. According to the file provided by Brognola, Basra had grown jealous of his boss’s wealth and power over time and lobbied for a larger slice of the pie. What he got, instead, was a near-fatal slashing with pangas that left his once-handsome face scarred on the left side and minus one eye, its socket masked by a patch. Basra had been seeking revenge ever since, narrowly flubbing half a dozen opportunities to kill Guleed. Meanwhile, his gang was making headway on Guleed’s own turf—raiding his khat supplies, interdicting some of Guleed’s pirate raiders, and killing his ex-master’s men wherever he found them.

The man coordinating Basra’s insurrection was Nadif Othman Ali, a wiry rodent of a man, birth date uncertain, who seemed to scowl in all his photographs. Confusing prison records indicated that he had been born either in Qardho or Bu’aale, sometime between 1975 and 1980. So far, during his thirty or thirty-five years, he’d served four prison terms and had been held on suspicion of various crimes twice that often. Ali had been sentenced to die for a young woman’s murder in 2001, but he broke out of prison with several other convicts and found shelter with Guleed’s outfit, later switching allegiance when Basra defected.

It was impossible to say how many victims Guleed and Basra had killed, maimed and terrorized during their rein as warlords of Mogadishu. Between them, they reportedly had some two thousand men prepared to murder on command, without question or second thought, and finding new recruits should be no problem in Somalia’s present atmosphere.

Bolan had seen it all before. After a war dragged on so long, whole generations passed from cradle to grave with no concept of peace. They fought and killed because it was expected of them, and because they knew no other way to live.

Bolan knew he couldn’t erase Somalia’s bloody history or clean up Mogadishu, but he could deal with specific targets in a way they’d understand. And if he found the missing Russian hardware, he would do his best to see that it did not remain in lawless hands.

Brognola’s CD-ROM contained a list of what the pirates had collected when they captured the Vasylna. In addition to the big T-90 tanks, and ammo to supply them, there’d been three hundred RPG-29 Vampir antitank grenade launchers, two dozen 9K32 Strela-2 surface-to-air missile launchers, twelve NSV 12.7 mm heavy machine guns, four hundred AKS-74 assault rifles with side-folding stocks, a dozen 9 mm PP-2000 submachine guns, five SV-98 sniper rifles chambered in 7.62 mm and fourteen cases of RGO fragmentation grenades.

Enough, in short, to start—and win—a not-so-small war.

Bolan’s sidekick and guide in his search for that arms cache would be Dirie Waabberi, a native of Mogadishu who’d survived nearly three decades under fire and had prospered as a jack of all trades. Brognola’s file reported that Waabberi was fluent in all four of Somalia’s official languages, plus the regional tongues Af Maay and Af Maxaa. He was unmarried, and his family had been consumed by Mogadishu’s mayhem in the past decade, leaving Waabberi ripe for CIA recruiters who’d offered him cash and a chance to make a difference. He had supplied reliable intel so far, and it was not Waabberi’s fault that there was no effective government in place to use it.

They would be meeting soon, strangers connecting for the first time in a killing zone eight thousand miles away, and Bolan hoped Waabberi was prepared for what would happen next. If he was squeamish, if he harbored any racial prejudice, their collaboration might be doomed from the start. If he was combat ready, on the other hand…

Well, they would see who came out on the other side alive.

3

Mogadishu

Bolan dived into the backseat of the woman’s car, leaving Waabberi with the shotgun seat. The car surged forward, forcing startled bystanders to leap aside, while Bolan held his captured SMG ready to meet a threat inside the vehicle.

“I think you stepped on someone’s toes back there,” the driver said, and flashed Bolan a quick smile from the rearview mirror.

“Lucky you were passing by, I guess,” he said.

“It’s not coincidence,” she told him, as the gunmen who’d been chasing them burst through the milling crowd and into view.

One of them fired a pistol shot at the escaping car, then all of them together broke in the direction of two cars parked at a nearby alley’s mouth. Before his brunette chauffeur made a sharp left-turn, Bolan saw the shooters pile into the cars.

“I’d like to hear about that later,” he informed her. “Right now, we’re about to gain a tail.”

“We should be introduced, at least,” she said. “Don’t you agree? Mr. Waabberi, I already know, of course.”

“Is that right?”

Bolan’s contact half turned in his seat, glancing at Bolan’s weapon with a horrified expression on his face. “It is a lie, I swear!” he said.

“I should explain myself,” the woman said, still smiling. “While we’ve never met, I have been watching him and feel as if we know each other.”

Behind them, Bolan saw the first chase car appear. One of its headlights was burned out or broken, making it a cinch to recognize.

“Here’s company,” he said.

“I see them,” the driver said, putting on a bit more speed. “But I must introduce myself, at least. Captain Natalia Mironov, of the foreign Intelligence Service. You call it the SVR.”

By any name, it was the former First Chief Directorate of the old KGB, now an independent agency roughly equivalent to the CIA or Britain’s MI6. The SVR was responsible for collecting intelligence and performing any other dirty jobs it might be given outside Russia’s borders, while a separate Federal Security Service covered Russia proper.

“Russians in Somalia,” Bolan said, as the second chase car appeared. It had both headlights, but the left one had been misaligned, giving the vehicle a wall-eyed look.

“And Americans, no less,” Mironov said. “I hope we can cooperate. If not, you’re free to go at any time, of course.”

She tapped the brake, shaving perhaps three miles per hour from their speed. Behind them, Bolan saw the cyclops and its wall-eyed follower begin to close the gap.

“Let’s not be hasty,” he replied.

“By no means,” Mironov said, as she immediately put the pedal to the metal once again.

For all her skill at driving, Mogadishu’s narrow, crowded streets conspired against them. Even if the Russian had been psyched to kill or maim a hundred bystanders, it likely would have stalled her car, instead of helping them escape.

“I have a thought,” she said, “Mr….?”

“Matt Cooper,” Bolan said.

“No rank? No agency?”

“It just gets in the way,” he said, coming a good deal closer to the truth.

“I think we’ll try the old town, yes?” she said, not really asking. “There are fewer shops, and if we have to fight…well, everything is shot to hell already.” Killer logic.

Bolan couldn’t argue with it as he saw three headlights bearing down on them and Mironov roared through another sliding left-hand turn.

SIMEON BOORAMA FELT as if his head were going to explode. His lips and chin were caked with blood from his flattened nose, and his right eye was bleary, swollen half shut. He knew his nose was broken, but the thought of any greater damage was subordinated to his craving for revenge.

One of his men had found him sprawled out in the marketplace and dragged Boorama to his feet, pulling him back into the fight. It would have been a simple thing to leave him where he lay. He would not forget the soldier who had helped him.

Sadly, circumstances being what they were, Boorama’s reputation might demand that he repay his savior with a bullet in the head, to silence any future gossip on the subject of his own incompetence.

We’ll see, Boorama thought, and braced himself against the dashboard of the lead car as it sped after their prey.

Someone had snatched Dirie Waabberi and the white man from his very clutches, and it shamed Boorama that he didn’t have a clue who that might be. He thought he’d glimpsed a white woman behind the wheel of the vehicle they were chasing, but Boorama knew that in his present state he could have been mistaken.

“Get after them!” he snapped at his own driver, as if angry words could make their car go any faster. When the driver cut a surly glance in his direction, Boorama punched the man’s shoulder hard enough to make the car swerve, as he shouted, “Faster, damn you!”

He had made an enemy, but that was life. In his world, fear was more important than respect, while kindness had no place at all.

Boorama wondered if the white man who had struck him also had his submachine gun. It was logical, but anyone could easily have snatched it while he lay unconscious back in the Bakaara Market.

Yet another cause to be ashamed.

At least he had not lost the Tanfoglio TA-90 automatic pistol that was wedged into his belt when he went down. Boorama clutched it now in his right hand, half-turning painfully to make sure that the second carload of his soldiers was behind him, staying close.

In order to redeem himself, he had to kill Waabberi and his white friend, plus whoever had arrived so providentially to offer them a ride. Three heads instead of two. But that meant nothing to Boorama at the moment.

Catching them meant everything.

“What’s wrong with this pezzo di merda?” he demanded, punching the dashboard with his free hand. “Hurry up, you cretino!”

His driver said nothing, but stood on the gas pedal, making the car’s engine whine in response. They were closing in now, and Boorama was weighing the odds of a shot from his window when the lead car braked, swung hard to the left with tires screeching, then roared down a side street.

“It’s Hamarwein, then. The old town. After them!”

His driver followed, mouthing a curse and missing the corner of a building by inches as he cut the turn short. Boorama did all he could to remain in his seat, without checking to see if the second car followed their lead.

Boorama thumbed back his pistol’s hammer and hunched forward in his seat, shaking his head to clear the fog of pain. He instantly regretted it and cursed the man who had humiliated him.

The man he planned to kill within a few short minutes.

“HOW MUCH FARTHER to this old town?” Bolan asked Natalia Mironov.

“Five minutes. Maybe less,” she said.

“We may not have the time,” he answered, and a muzzle-flash exploded from the first chase car, as if to punctuate his words.

That shot missed, but the second scored a ringing hit on Mironov’s trunk or bumper. She muttered a curse, and started swerving as she raced along the narrow street. There wasn’t much leeway for fancy driving, but her skill under the circumstances left Bolan impressed.

He could have tried a burst from the Benelli SMG, but that meant wasting bullets to take out the car’s back window, and he guessed that he’d be needing all of the rounds in its short magazine when they stopped to confront their pursuers. Until then, the best move was to keep his head down and trusting his driver to cook up a plan.

Unfortunately, trust was scarce in Bolan’s world, and trusting Russian agents on short acquaintance was a double challenge.

They cleared the narrow street and sped across a kind of open square, came kissing close to an old fountain that was dry and crumbling into ruins, then roared down another street that seemed more claustrophobic than the last one. Bolan had a fleeting hope they might be saved by accident, when their pursuers split and passed on opposite sides of the fountain, nearly colliding as they cleared it, but the one-eyed lead car surged ahead and held its lead.

“I thought we had them there,” Mironov said. “Those idiots nearly did our work for us.”

“Still, no cigar,” Bolan said.

“We can smoke one when we’re finished with them,” Mironov replied.

“And when would that be?” Bolan asked her.

“Any minute now.”

Bolan had refamiliarized himself with Mogadishu and Somalia by studying maps on his last night in the States. He knew the Hamarwein was close, but Mironov’s zigzag approach had managed to confuse him, even if it didn’t shake their enemies. He was relieved, then, when they cleared the narrow street and rolled into a sort of plaza flanked on every side by buildings that had once been shops.

He had a chance to see that most of them were empty now, their facades bullet-scarred and blackened by flames during one of the city’s innumerable firefights. A couple of the buildings had collapsed entirely, and it seemed that no one was in any hurry to rebuild them.

“Welcome to old town,” Mironov announced, as she slammed on the brakes and cranked the steering wheel, putting her car into a long and noisy slide.

Bolan held until it came to rest, then bolted from the backseat with his SMG and crouched behind his open door. Waabberi did the same thing on the far side of the car, leaving Mironov to use her own door as a shield.

As the pursuit cars reached the plaza, she turned back to look at Bolan and surprised him with a smile.

“Just shoot the fools who are chasing us, not me,” she said. “Okay?”

DIRIE WAABBERI HAD been witness to a hundred shootings in his lifetime, maybe more, but this would be the first where he was a participant. His hands were trembling slightly as they clutched the black Beretta, and he wondered whether he should be the first to fire a shot.

The hunters had already fired at him, of course—not once, but several times. He wondered how many they’d killed or wounded by mistake at the Bakaara Market, but he could not dwell on such things if he wanted to survive the night.

He had to focus on the enemies in front of him and do his best to kill them, hopefully with the assistance of his two new allies.

An American, and then a Russian! It was too much for his mind to cope with, when his life was riding on the line.

The chase cars roared into the plaza, and Waabberi had a momentary fear that they would ram the Russian’s car, but both screeched to a halt in front of him, breaking respectively to right and left. Four men leaped out of each car, weapons in hand, and then a shot rang out before Waabberi had a chance to fire.

Within a heartbeat, every weapon in the plaza opened up, pistols and submachine guns hammering at one another, shiny cartridges clinking on paving stones. All of the cars were taking hits, and he could hear the Russian agent cursing as she fought.

Waabberi’s first selected target was the driver of the second chase car, barely visible behind his open door, some twenty feet downrange. Waabberi’s first shot missed the car completely, while his second struck the door but failed to make it out the other side.

Waabberi ducked a couple of incoming bullets, frowning as an idea came to him. He backed up slightly, then lay down beside Mironov’s car to aim beneath his open door. And as he’d hoped, he had a clean view of his target’s knees.

Waabberi took a breath and held it, squinting with his left eye as his right took aim. He knew he’d only have one chance to get this right. A miss would warn his adversary, and the man would bolt before Waabberi could correct his aim.

His index finger seemed to take forever, squeezing the Beretta’s trigger, then the pistol bucked against his palm and his opponent howled in pain, sprawling into the open as he clutched the bloody ruin of a mangled knee.

Waabberi wasted no time gloating. Still without exhaling, he lined up another shot and put his fourth round through the wounded gunman’s gaping mouth.

Simple.

Perhaps it was his background, all the death that he had witnessed growing up in Mogadishu, but Waabberi felt no pity for the man he’d killed, no sickness at the thought of having snuffed out a human life. The gunman was no better than a snake or scorpion, in his opinion.

All Waabberi felt was sweet relief—and pressing need to drop his other enemies before they did the same to him.

Rising to crouch behind his open door again, he scanned the battleground in search of ready prey.

SIMEON BOORAMA TRIGGERED three quick shots and broke for cover, sprinting toward a burned-out building to his right. He hoped a change of vantage point would help him kill the adversaries who were shooting up his men and cars, before he found himself alone and trapped.

In truth, Boorama didn’t care that much about his men, and both the cars were stolen. If he had to leave the battle site on foot, so be it. All that mattered was eliminating those whom he’d been sent to kill—and the white woman who’d come from nowhere to assist them.

Bullets rattled past Boorama as he ran, head throb bing with the jolt of every stride, sweat burning in his eyes. Boorama nearly reached his goal, then stumbled on the paving stones and sprawled facedown, gasping in pain. He fired a wild shot toward his enemies, then scrambled toward the nearest cover, scraping knees and elbows bloody in the process.

A bullet clipped the heel of Boorama’s left boot as he lurched through the open doorway of a burned-out shop, sending a rough jolt up his leg that echoed in his aching skull. Cursing, he huddled under cover, pausing long enough to catch his breath before he risked another look outside.

Two of his men were down, either dead or wounded, and the three they’d come to kill showed no signs of surrendering. Why should they, when it would mean instant death? Boorama hoped they would run out of bullets soon, and let his soldiers rush them with impunity. But then he felt a surge of panic that he might have no men left when that occurred.

Boorama cursed the white man, who appeared to have his submachine gun, after all. The good news was that he had failed to take the extra magazines Boorama carried in his pockets, and the gun should soon be empty. Then, even with four guns against two, Boorama thought his soldiers should prevail.

Just then, as if his thought had been a curse, he saw another of his men go down, flopping across the pavement like a fish flung out of water. In another instant the man lay still, either dead or unconscious. A useless lump of flesh.

Boorama knew he had to get back in the fight, but he was frightened. The feeling galled him, made him nearly sick with shame. Infuriated by his own weakness, he scrambled to his feet and dropped his pistol’s magazine into his palm. Six or seven rounds remained, but he stuffed it in a pocket and replaced it with another that held fifteen rounds.

Better to be prepared than find himself exposed, unable to return fire from his enemies. If he was swift and bold enough, he might surprise his adversaries and take them down before they recognized the danger on their flank.

If not…

Before logic could rob him of his courage, Boorama broke from cover, charging toward the target from the driver’s side, the TA-90 blazing in his fist. Running and aiming at the same time was a challenge, all the more so with one eye swollen shut and epic pain throbbing inside his head, but rage and a commitment to preserve his reputation drove him forward.

He was halfway to the car and gaining when the white man swung around to face him, sighting down the stubby barrel of Boorama’s submachine gun. Two more shots went wild, before a burst of slugs ripped through Boorama’s chest.

Collapsing to the pavement, slain with his own gun, Boorama wasn’t sure if he should weep or laugh. Instead, he simply died.

THE SLIDE ON BOLAN’S captured SMG locked open as his adversary fell, sprawling, some thirty feet in front of him. The guy was down and out, but so was Bolan’s only ammo magazine, with three or four opponents still confronting him.

He had two ways to go. He could lie back and let his companions finish off the set as best they could, or he could act.

For Bolan, lying back had never been an option.

Good news: he had recognized the last man down, from his loud shirt and battered face, as the same shooter who’d donated the Benelli SMG to Bolan back at the Bakaara Market. Odds were fair that he’d be carrying spare ammunition in the pockets of his baggy cargo pants—and even if he wasn’t, there was still a pistol lying near his outflung hand.

Bad news: the thirty feet that separated Bolan from his goal was open ground. He would be totally exposed to hostile fire, coming and going, all the way.

He hated to distract the woman who had saved him once already, but there seemed to be no choice. Bolan waited until she had paused to feed her pistol a fresh magazine, then said, “Can you cover me?”

She frowned. “What did you have in mind?”

He let her see him drop the SMG’s spent mag and nodded toward the nearby corpse. “A little shopping run,” he said.

“If I were you,” she answered, “I would stress the running part.”

“That’s the plan.”

She nodded then and said, “I’ll do my best. Be quick, eh?”

As she turned away and rose to fire across her open door, he bolted from the cover of the bullet-scarred sedan. There was no point in trying any broken-field maneuvers, since his enemies were all to Bolan’s right, sighting across his path of travel. All that he could do was keep his head down, offer up a silent prayer to anybody listening, and run like hell.

He left the SMG behind and took off.

Two seconds, give or take, and he was at the body. Fumbling with the pocket flaps would use up too much precious time. Instead, he scooped up the Beretta pistol in one hand and gripped the corpse’s collar with the other, dragging the deadweight back toward Mironov’s vehicle and firing as he ran.

Three rounds, in fact, before an empty chamber finished it. By that time, though, he’d reached the car and had started rifling the remains.

The first pocket he tried held three spare clips for the Beretta. Number two Benelli magazines. A third gave up a formidible-looking switchblade knife. He pocketed the blade, reloaded both Italian guns and spent another second charting his next move.

His luck had held so far. Bolan decided it could stand a bit more stress.

“I’m going in,” he told Mironov, rising even as he spoke and rushing past her, angling toward the nearer of the two chase cars.

A single man was hanging on behind its open driver’s door. He’d ducked, perhaps reloading, just as Bolan made his move, and was surprised to find an adversary bearing down upon him when he rose to fire again. A 4-round burst from Bolan’s SMG tore off three-quarters of the gunner’s face and dropped him twitching to the pavement.

That left two, huddled behind the second car.

Bolan considered setting fire to it, but couldn’t trust the plaza’s paving stones to strike a proper spark from ricochets, even if he could hit the fuel tank first and start a spill of gasoline.

Bolan’s companions had the targets pinned, giving him time to circle wide around their vehicle and come in from behind them. One of them saw Bolan coming, tried to raise his SMG too late and took a short burst in the chest. His friend was far too late recovering from the surprise, half-turned in profile when the Parabellum manglers hit him, tore him up beyond repair and put him down for good.

Mironov joined the Executioner beside the corpses, ready with her pistol if one of them tried to pull a Lazarus routine. When she was satified that they were dead, she said, “You run well, for a man…and an American.”

“I do my best,” he said, then nodded toward her car. “Will that still run?”

She smiled again. “Let’s try it and find out.”

4

Natalia Mironov made a call on her cell phone as they were leaving the plaza, speaking rapidly in Russian with a sharp bite to her tone. Five minutes later, when the trio reached a side street off Corso della Repubblica, a grim-faced thirty-something man was waiting with another plain sedan. They switched cars without speaking to the man, leaving him to dump their shot-up ride.

“The backup must be handy,” Bolan said, when they were on the move again.

“I use him sparingly,” Mironov answered, making eye contact with Bolan in the rearview mirror. “He won’t know where we’re going now.”

Bolan would have to take her word on that, unless he decided to bolt and drag Waabberi with him. Instead, he told her, “I have wheels back at the market.”

“Did you leave something you can’t afford to lose?” Mironov asked.

“Nothing.”

“It’s best to write the car off, then, I think. Not wise to go back when the wasps are swarming and you may be stung, yes?”

Bolan nodded. He could always get another car.

“I take it that we have a destination, then?” he asked.

“A safe place,” she responded. “For a talk.”

He could have asked for her definition of safe, but Bolan let it go and watched for landmarks as she drove through winding, mostly darkened streets. Their destination was a small apartment block located two blocks west of Via Casa Popolare, in what passed for one of Mogadishu’s quasi-upscale neighborhoods. He noted the other cars parked on the street, most of them aging and in need of bodywork or fresh paint jobs, and building windows shuttered against roaming peril in the night.

Inside Mironov’s flat, Bolan took a quick look around, opening each door and peering into darkened rooms while the Russian tracked him with eyes that mirrored vague amusement.

“You don’t trust me yet,” she said, not making it a question.

“It’s a little soon for me,” he said.

“I understand, of course. Perhaps I saved your life to bring you here and kill you.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Bolan told her.

“Perhaps. But that is not the case here. The two of you have me outnumbered.”

Right, he thought. Unless the two of you set all this up.

Bolan kept that thought to himself. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re here for the Vasylna.”

“For her cargo,” she corrected him. “Ukrainians can take care of themselves.”

“That sounds more like the KGB,” Bolan replied.

“Americans are fond of clinging to the past,” she said.

“What’s changed, except the name?” he challenged.

Her shrug seemed unaffected, drew attention to the way she filled her clinging blouse. “For one thing, we’re not communists. Well, most of us, at least. And we do not give arms to terrorists.”

“Are you upset because they’re headed for the wrong hands, or because you got ripped off?” he asked.

“I think it must be a bit of both,” she said.

“Our interests may conflict on this,” Bolan said.

“You object to lawful sales between my country and the government of Kenya?” she inquired. “Your embassy is in Nairobi. Surely Washington does not object to reinforcing the stability of that regime…and earning money in the process? We are capitalists, after all. You win.”

“Nobody wins, with all that hardware on the open market in Somalia,” Bolan said.

“And once again, we’re in agreement,” Mironov said. “Let’s speak frankly. I was sent to find the missing cargo and recover it, if possible. Failing in that, my orders are to render it inoperable and deprive the thieves of any value. Are your orders similar?”

“Minus recovering the shipment,” Bolan granted.

“So, no major conflict, then.”

“And do you know who has the merchandise?” he asked.

“We have suspects. Two groups in competition, I am told. The thieves are unidentified as of yet.”

“We’re in the same boat, then,” Bolan said.

“Should we sail together for a time, or would you rather work alone?” Mironov asked.

“I’m not alone,” Bolan replied, tipping a quick nod to Waabberi.

“Nor am I,” she said, “as you have seen.”

Bolan considered it and made his choice.

“Cooperation works for me,” he said, “if we’re agreed to trash the cargo when we find it.”

“If we find it,” she replied, “I may be open to persuasion.”

“Fair enough,” Bolan said, as he took her outstretched hand.

MUSSE GULEED WAS NOT accustomed to defeat. He’d risen from the gutter, literally, to command a private army known in Mogadishu and the surrounding Banaadir Region as a ferocious fighting unit. Foreign peacekeepers shied away from contact with his troops. Merchants and politicians paid him tribute on demand.

It came as something of a shock, therefore, to learn that eight of his men had been killed in Hamarwein, apparently without inflicting any damage on their enemies.

Guleed’s voice was an earthy rumble in the cluttered office as he asked, “I sent them to Bakaara Market, did I not?”

Seated across the desktop scarred by cigarettes and water rings, Jama Hassan nodded. “You did,” he said.

“Why are they dead in old town, then?”

Hassan shrugged. “I suppose they followed this Waabberi and his white man.”

“Did I tell Simeon to follow anyone?” Guleed demanded.

“No, Musse.”

“He was supposed to kill them in the market, was he not?”

“Something went wrong.”

“I know something went wrong! I’ve lost eight men for nothing! Where’s the man they were sent to liquidate?”

“I don’t know, Musse.”

“It’s your job to know, Jama.”

Hassan slumped lower in his chair, adopting a contrite posture. “You know that Simeon was no good at communication from the field. We found his radio still in the car, turned off.”

Guleed breathed deeply, focused on diminishing his rage before it sparked another blinding migraine and he had to chew more khat for pain relief. When he was calmer and the pulsing at his temples eased, he spoke again.

“You’re right about Boorama. And the others, pig shit on my boots. They’re easily replaced. My point is that they didn’t do their job, and that is what bothers me.”

“You’re right, Musse.”

“And as my second in command, I’m asking you, Jama, what will you do about it? How will you correct this error and redeem my reputation?”

“I have people questioning the market vendors,” Hassan said. “Some of them saw the white man running past their stalls. One claims a car was waiting for him on the west side of the market.”

“Not Waabberi,” Guleed said.

“No. He was running with the white man.”

“So? Who drove the car?”

“Our witness says it was a white woman.” Guleed cursed.

“It’s true, Musse. At least, he says it’s true. We’re trying to confirm it, but of course he didn’t see the license plate. The car was gray, he says.”

“Oh, gray,” Guleed said with a sneer. “That solves everything.”

“We’re looking for more witnesses.”

“Waabberi went to meet a white man at the market, yes?”

“So we were told, Musse.”

“And now, we have a white woman already here in Mogadishu, waiting with a car to spirit them away, one jump ahead of Simeon?” Hassan shrugged.

“If this is true,” Guleed pressed on, “what does it mean?”

“Someone from the United Nations possibly.”

“Someone from the UN who fights back and wins?” Guleed challenged.

“Or, maybe not.”

“Most definitely not. Waabberi’s new friend is supposed to be American?”

“So we were told,” Hassan confirmed.

“No mention of an agency or military branch?”

“Nothing.”

Their source had been a Mogadishu switchboard operator, paid to eavesdrop on specific lines and keep Hassan abreast of what selected individuals were saying, doing, thinking. She had listened to a certain businessman, believed to be a contract agent of the CIA, and heard him tell Waabberi when and where to meet a visitor from the United States. Waabberi had also been asking questions lately, about business that involved Musse Guleed. The combination was enough to make him a target, together with his unnamed Western guest.

But both of them were still alive, while eight of Guleed’s men were not. And it seemed there was suddenly a third target whom he could not identify.

At least, not yet.

“I want Waabberi’s handler,” Guleed said.

“He’s not at home,” Hassan replied. “His shop was closed all day.”

“Find him!” Guleed bellowed, slamming the desktop with a meaty fist.

“We’re trying, Musse. Honestly.”

“Don’t try. Do it. And get a name for this bitch who plucked Waabberi and his friend out of the market. Do it now!”

Hassan rushed off to do as he was told.

If Hassan failed, Guleed would find another aide who would succeed.

No one was irreplaceable.

“MY PROBLEM,” MIRONOV SAID, “is finding out whether Musse Guleed or Jiddu Basra hijacked the Vasylna’s cargo. Either one is capable and has connections suitable for selling off the merchandise.”

“You’re angling to find a hole in their security?” Bolan asked.

“Without success, so far,” she granted.

“In the spirit of cooperation,” he replied, “we might consider an alternative approach.”

“And that would be…?”

“Some razzle-dazzle,” Bolan said. “Get out and shake things up a little,” Bolan said. “Let our targets do some of the heavy lifting.”

“Until this moment,” Mironov responded, “I believed my English to be fairly good.”

The tall man offered her a smile of sorts. “What I’m saying is that I’ve had luck in the past, with situations similar, playing both ends against the middle. Start some brush fires here and there, encourage one side to believe the other’s doing it. Shake the tree and see what falls out. Get it?”

“Divide and conquer, as they say?”

“Same thing,” he told her, nodding.

“And you think—or hope—that one group or the other may lead us to where the tanks and other items have been stashed?”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.