Threat Factor
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.