Conflict Zone

“They don’t have to be good, just lucky,” he replied.

The hunters wouldn’t need real skill until he stopped to fight on foot. And how long he could keep the Jeep on the road was anybody’s guess.

THE GRAZE ON Mandy’s arm burned furiously, but she recognized at once that she had suffered no great injury. Untended in the wilds of Africa, the wound might fester, maybe kill her with gangrene, but that took time.

And Mandy Ross knew time was running out.

She’d maybe hit one of the bikers, and she’d keep on trying for the others, but it was ridiculous to think that she could stop them all.

Still, she’d been truthful with the mysterious Matt Cooper. She would rather be shot in the forest than dragged back to camp, raped and tortured to death. If living wasn’t one of Mandy’s options, she would choose the quickest exit she could find.

It suddenly occurred to her that she could turn the borrowed pistol on herself, right here, right now, and end the whole ordeal. But while she might have done so in her prison cell, short moments earlier, the suicide solution didn’t appeal to her now.

Not yet.

Cooper was some kind of hellacious soldier, it appeared, and while there was a chance that he could reunite her safely with her family, Mandy would help in any way she could.

With that in mind, she craned around the stiff back of her seat again and triggered two quick shots at their pursuers. One bike swerved, but didn’t spill, and she supposed the sound she thought might be a bullet striking the lead Jeep had been illusory.

If she had hit the speeding vehicle, she didn’t slow it down.

More flashes from the Jeep now, and a lethal swarm of hornets hurtled past her, one drilling the Jeep’s windshield between her seat and Cooper’s.

Too damned close.

Gritting her teeth, she peered around the seat and fired again.

AZUKA BANKOLE CURSED bitterly, swerving his Jeep from left to right on the forest roadway, trying to keep an eye on the action ahead. He knew that shots were being fired, and he had passed the wreckage of one dirt bike without stopping, but he couldn’t get a fix on what was happening.

And in his haste to join the hunt, he had neglected to pick up a two-way radio before he left the camp. It was a clumsy error, but made little real-world difference, since none of his men in the other Jeeps had radios, either.

So far, only those in the lead vehicle had traded gunfire with the fleeing hostage and her savior. Firing from the second Jeep in line would put the forward troops at risk, while firing from Bankole’s, at the back of the procession, would be worse than useless.

Flooring the accelerator, feeling every bump and dip along the way as sharp blows to his spine and neck, Bankole gained ground steadily, until his grille was no more than eight or nine feet from the tailgate of the vehicle in front of him. At that speed, if the second Jeep stopped suddenly, collision was inevitable.

But he didn’t care.

If possible, he would have swept the other Jeeps and dirt bikes off the road, giving himself free access to the enemy. His men were good enough at fighting in most circumstances, better still when raiding unarmed villages, but they weren’t trained soldiers in any true sense of the word.

They would do their best, but was it good enough?

He had rushed out of the camp with nothing but his pistol, and its magazine was empty. Swallowing embarrassment, he shot an elbow toward the man beside him, ordering, “Reload my gun!”

“What, sir?”

“My pistol. Put in a fresh magazine!”

The soldier nearly blanched at that, but did as he was told, reaching across the space between them, past Bankole’s elbow and the gearshift, to remove his pistol from its holster. He extracted the spent magazine, then found himself with both hands full until he slipped the empty into his breast pocket.

“Sir?”

“Yes? What?” Bankole snapped, eyes on the narrow road.

“The other magazine, sir?”

“On my belt, for God’s sake!”

“Yes, sir.”

Fairly trembling, the soldier leaned closer, snaking an arm beneath Bankole’s, reaching for the ammo pouches on the left front of his pistol belt. The way he cringed and grimaced, he could have been mistaken for a creeping pervert in a porno theater, risking his life for an illicit hand-job.

“Hurry up, damn you!” Bankole gritted.

“Yes, sir!”

At last the job was done, the gun reloaded, safely holstered, while the nervous soldier wiped his sweaty face with a discolored handkerchief. Bankole almost had to laugh at that, but there was no room in his world for levity this night.

More gunshots echoed down the road, stinging his ears as he sped through the rippling sound waves, but the fugitives were still in motion, still retreating at top speed.

Could no one stop them now?

Enraged, he shouted at the troops who could not hear him. “Aim, you bastards! Make those bullets count!”

A BLOWOUT ALWAYS came as a surprise. On city streets, at thirty miles per hour, it was nerve-racking. At sixty-something on a freeway, it could kill you. Same thing in an unfamiliar forest, when you were being chased by twenty thugs with guns.

The blowout didn’t kill Bolan or Mandy Ross, but when a bullet ripped through the Jeep’s left rear tire, Bolan knew they were in for bad trouble.

“Hang on!” he warned, fighting the wheel to keep the vehicle upright and moving for at least a little while longer. They couldn’t travel far, dragging the Jeep’s tail in the mud and cutting furrows with a rusty rim, but just a few more yards…

“When I stop,” he said, “bail out my side into the woods.”

“You’re stopping?”

“Either that, or slow to a crawl and let them kill us where we sit.”

“So stop already. Jeez!”

Bolan slammed on his brakes and cranked the steering wheel hard-left, nosing the Jeep into a gap between two looming trees. Another second saw him out and seeking cover, slipping the Steyr AUG off its taut shoulder sling. Mandy Ross followed Bolan, then passed him and knelt by a tree of her own, gun in hand.

There was no time to talk about strategy, optimal targets or anything else. Headlights blazed in his eyes, wobbling this way and that as the bikers reacted and tried to avoid the ambush, framed in light from the Jeeps at their back.

They were just shy of good enough. One guy laid down his bike, rolling clear in the dirt, while the other veered off to his right—Bolan’s left—and plowed into a tree.

The Executioner fired at the closer one first, semiauto, one round through the chest as he lurched to his feet and then tumbled back down in a sprawl. If he wasn’t dead, he was well on the way.

Number two had been dazed when his bike rammed the tree, but he came up with pistol in hand and got off two quick rounds in the heartbeat of life he had left. Bolan’s second shot punched the guy’s left eye through the back of his head. The soldier was dead on his feet, reeling through one more short step before he collapsed, leaving Bolan three Jeeps and all hands aboard to contend with.

High beams washed over the scene, bleaching tree trunks and ferns, forcing Bolan to squint. He lost sight of Mandy for a moment, then her pistol was banging away at the enemy. Two, three, four shots in a row, echoing through the woods.

And had she scored?

The lead Jeep swerved from Mandy’s barking gun and ran over the second biker Bolan had put down, pinning his corpse beneath one of its tires. The occupants sprang clear, using their vehicle for cover as the others arrived. If any of them had been hit by Mandy’s fire, it didn’t show.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN a standoff, then, but Bolan didn’t plan to hang around to trade shots with the MEND gunners until sunrise. He’d already beamed a silent signal from a small transmitter on his combat harness to a satellite miles overhead, from which it would rebound to a receiver Jack Grimaldi carried with him.

The scrambled signal came down to a single word.

Ready.

Meaning that Bolan had succeeded in retrieving Mandy Ross, and they were on their way to rendezvous with the Stony Man pilot, to be airlifted from a selected hilltop to the K-Tech Petroleum complex in Warri.

There’d been no way to explain that they were being chased by gunmen bent on killing them, that it might slow them or that Grimaldi might wind up waiting in vain for passengers who never showed.

“Ready” meant Grimaldi would be airborne by now and on his way. Another loop over the Gulf of Guinea, then the run toward shore beneath radar. To find…what?

The ace pilot could wait a little while, but not forever. If they meant to catch that ride, they had to move.

Bolan palmed a frag grenade, yanked the pin and pitched the bomb overhand, across the road and into the trees where his enemies clustered. He hadn’t warned Mandy, and the blast brought a little squeal from her lips, but she recovered and had her piece ready when two of the MEND gunners lurched from cover.

Bolan took the taller of them with a head shot, and was swinging toward the second when he heard Mandy’s pistol popping again, four shots in rapid fire. At least one found its target, spinning him and punching him back toward the trees with an odd little hop before falling facedown.

Bolan left him to Mandy, in case the guy got up again, but she’d already shifted to fire at the other guerrillas concealed in the tree line. Two more shots, and Bolan saw her pistol’s slide lock open on an empty chamber.

That would leave her with one magazine of fifteen rounds, assuming it was fully loaded when he’d pulled it from the dead man’s ammo pouch. He couldn’t help her if she burned through that too quickly, but with any kind of luck, their problem might’ve been resolved by then.

To which end, Bolan lobbed another frag grenade a few yards to the left of where his first had landed, waiting for the smoky flash and cries of pain. Before the echoes faded, he was up and moving, charging across the road on a diagonal tack, falling upon his enemies while they were still dazed and disoriented.

Hoping Mandy wouldn’t shoot him by mistake.

A couple of the gunmen saw him coming, but they couldn’t manage a response in time to save themselves. He stitched them both with 3-round bursts of 5.56 mm manglers, sweeping on to spray the other four still on their feet. Then he switched to semiauto, dealing mercy rounds to those who had been gutted by the shrapnel from his two grenades.

And silence, finally, along the forest road.

Until Mandy called, “Cooper? Are you all right?”

“We’re clear,” he told her, easing from the shadows, back into her line of sight. “Nobody left on this side.”

“Jesus.” She had a vaguely dazed expression on her face as she emerged from the tree line, pistol dangling, asking him, “Are they all dead?”

“They are,” he told her. “And we’re running late.”

“For what?”

“Our lift back to your father.”

“Daddy? Really?”

“I didn’t go through all of this to tell you lies,” Bolan said.

“The Jeep’s wrecked,” she reminded him.

“We’ve got more wheels to choose from,” he replied. “You feel like two, or four.”

“Whatever’s fastest.”

“Two it is,” he said, slinging his rifle as he moved toward the nearest dirt bike.

GRIMALDI BROUGHT a chopper for his second run into Nigeria. There’d be no room to land a plane, and paperwork had been completed—forged, of course, but still impressive—on the whirlybird.

It was a Bell 206L LongRanger, seating seven, powered by an Allison 250-C20B turboshaft engine. Its 430-mile range was adequate, since he’d be refueling in Warri, and its cruising speed of 139 miles per hour would put him over the LZ in two hours and change, if he met no opposition along the way.

And if he did, well, he was done.

The Bell wasn’t a gunship, and it wouldn’t outrun military aircraft if the Nigerian air force happened to spot him, despite his running underneath their radar. At last count, they had six Mil Mi-24 helicopters on tap, assuming they didn’t send one of their fifteen Chengdu F-7 jet fighters to blast him out of the sky with rockets or twin 30 mm cannons.

Either way, he’d be dead, leaving Bolan and his damsel stranded. Which was simply unacceptable.

Pickups were always worse than drops. This time, he’d actually have to set down on the ground while Bolan and the girl scrambled aboard. If they had company, the best that the ace pilot could do to help was wave the Springfield .45 he carried in a shoulder rig and tell them what he thought about their ancestors.

But leaving without Bolan and his charge wasn’t an option. Never had been, never would be.

Only if Grimaldi reached the arranged LZ and saw them dead, beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, would he return alone the way he’d come. And what would happen then?

A sat-phone message to the Farm, for starters, bearing news that everyone on-site had dreaded from the day they first broke ground.

And after that?

Grimaldi didn’t want to think about what Brognola would do, how he’d react. Whether retaliation would be ordered, or the whole thing would be written off as fubar from the jump.

Who would they even target, in retaliation for eliminating Bolan? Could they pin it on an individual or group of heavies beyond question? Would the scorched-earth treatment help to ease their suffering?

Grimaldi couldn’t answer that, but if it happened, he intended to be part of the first wave.

And then all thoughts of loss and grief were banished as he saw Bolan astride a dirt bike, on the chosen hilltop, with a young blonde just dismounting. Leave it to the big guy to pick up a stylish date.

Smiling, Grimaldi took the chopper down.

CHAPTER FIVE

Effurun, Delta State

Ekon Afolabi often stroked his sparse, red-tinged goatee when he was in a thoughtful mood. This day, pacing his office like a caged animal, he yanked the wiry hairs as if attempting to uproot them.

“Say it again, Taiwo. How many dead?”

“Fifteen, at least,” Babatunde replied. His voice rumbled out of his massive body as if he were speaking from deep in a pit.

“And then, the woman gone, of course.”

“I need to speak with Bankole,” Afolabi said.

“He’s one of those who died, Ekon.”

“Lucky for him. Who is still alive, then?”

“From the camp?”

“I don’t mean from the Lagos red-light district. Think, Taiwo!”

“Sorry.” The huge man looked as if he meant it. “There were thirty-five or forty men in camp. Subtract fifteen, you have—”

“For God’s sake, don’t start doing math,” Afolabi snapped. “Question all of them. They must remember something more about this shambles than a ‘big white man.’ Did he say anything? If so, was there an accent to his voice? Did he leave anything behind, aside from bodies? Can we find out who he was and where he came from?”

“I will ask them, Ekon.”

“No. Send Pius to do it. I can’t spare you here, with this shit going on.”

The lie was intended to soothe his lieutenant’s feelings, in case he worked out for himself that Pius was smarter, more adept at drawing the truth out of people without using brute force as a first resort. Pius would obtain the information Afolabi wanted and report it without stumbling over any bits, forgetting what was most important in the lot.

And once he had that information, then Afolabi could unleash Babatunde to do what he did best.

“It could have been the girl’s father,” Babatunde said, as if talking to himself.

“Too soft,” Afolabi replied. “The only way he could kill fifteen men is by stealing their savings online and letting them starve.”

“I mean, he could have hired someone,” Babatunde explained.

Afolabi paused in the midst of his pacing and beard-tugging, just long enough to close his eyes and offer up a silent prayer for strength. He had no special god in mind, nor any hope of a response, but it relaxed him all the same.

“You may be onto something, Taiwo,” Afolabi granted, having reached the same conclusion within seconds of discovering that Mandy Ross had been rescued. “We must look into that.”

“It will be done,” his chief lieutenant promised.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” the MEND warlord replied dismissively.

As Babatunde lumbered from his office, Afolabi turned his mind to what had to follow in his campaign against K-Tech Petroleum. There was no question of receiving any ransom, now that Mandy Ross was free. He took for granted that there would be no chance to recapture her. The men in charge of K-Tech’s corporate security would see to that, most likely flying her back to the States as soon as she was cleared for travel by a battery of high-priced doctors.

Afolabi had no fear of being charged with her abduction. First, State Security would have to catch him. Then they’d have to prove he was responsible for the kidnapping, which should be impossible. He’d never met the hostage, hadn’t spoken to a soul from K-Tech Petroleum about the ransom and hadn’t touched any of the letters sent demanding payment. Some of those whom Mandy Ross had seen were dead now, and the rest would soon be scattered to MEND’s outposts in the hinterlands of Delta State.

But being free and clear of charges didn’t satisfy him. Failing payment of the ransom he’d demanded, Afolabi craved revenge for the humiliation he had suffered at the hands of the anonymous “big white man.”

Jared Ross might be beyond his reach, at least for now, but Afolabi wasn’t giving up. He would find someone he could punish.

And his vengeance would be terrible.

Warri, Delta State

A LIMOUSINE WAS waiting when the Bell LongRanger settled gently down onto its helipad inside the K-Tech Petroleum compound. Bolan had thought of dropping Mandy Ross at Warri’s airport, but he’d opted for her dad’s home base in deference to its superior security.

“You’ve never met my father?” Mandy asked.

“We move in different circles,” Bolan said.

“Well, sure, I guess so. But I thought, since you were hired to come and get me—”

“Wrong word,” he interrupted. “I was asked to help you, if I could. There’s no payday.”

She fairly gaped at him. “You’re kidding, right? You did all this for nothing?”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Bolan said, and left it at that.

“Thanks, I think. But—”

“No buts,” Bolan cut in. “We’re square. Hit the deck.”

Reluctantly she turned away from him, released her safety harness and climbed down onto the tarmac. By the time she’d turned to face the limo, men were piling out of it. The first half dozen were security, ex-soldiers by the look of them, with weapons bulging underneath their jackets. Mandy’s father was the last out of the car, appearing older in the flesh than in the photographs Bolan had seen, but that was understandable.

Having your only child abducted by a gang of murderers could do that, adding gray hairs overnight—and worse, in some cases. All things considered, Jared Ross seemed to be bearing up all right. His face lit up at the sight of Mandy, and relief was leaving wet tracks on his cheeks as she ran into his embrace.

“You want to do the handshake bit?” Grimaldi asked him from the pilot’s seat.

“I’ll skip it,” Bolan said. “The deal was that we get to use the helipad as needed, with no questions asked. They’ve also got a spare room waiting, when you’re ready. Carte blanche at the cafeteria.”

“Be still my heart,” Grimaldi said, half smirking. “I’d say Daddy got himself a bargain.”

“Someone else has got his markers,” Bolan said. “We’re just the go-to guys.”

“As usual,” Grimaldi answered. “Wouldn’t it be nice to get an oil well for a Christmas present? Maybe just a little one?”

“And change tax brackets?” Bolan said. “No thanks.”

In fact, he hadn’t filed a tax return since he had died officially, back in Manhattan, several years ago. He also had no income, in the normal sense, but managed to collect enough in passing for his simple needs.

It was remarkable how generous a loan shark or a drug dealer could be when you negotiated in their native language: pure brute force.

Bolan watched Mandy Ross vanish into the limousine and wished her well. Her father lingered on the pavement for another moment, meeting Bolan’s gaze through the LongRanger’s tinted Plexiglas, and raised one hand in some kind of peculiar half salute before he turned away. Bolan sat still until the stretch had pulled away before un-buckling his safety rig.

“What now?” Grimaldi asked.

“You hit that cafeteria, or catch some shut-eye,” Bolan said. “I need to see a man downtown.”

“I don’t mind riding shotgun,” Grimaldi remarked.

“I wouldn’t want to spook him,” Bolan answered. “He’s expecting one white face, not two.”

“I kind of hoped that we were finished.”

“We are,” Bolan said. “I’ve got some solo work to do. Putting some frosting on the cake.”

“Why do I get the feeling someone will be choking on it?” Grimaldi asked.

“Well, you’ve seen me cook before.”

“Okay. But if the kitchen gets too hot…”

“You’ll be among the first to know,” Bolan replied.

Besides the borrowed wheels, he had a chance of clothes waiting, to trade-off with his sweaty, battle-stained fatigues. There should be time enough for him to shower, change and stow his hardware in the drab sedan K-Tech had furnished him, before he had to meet his contact.

As to what would happen after that, well, it was anybody’s guess.

“THERE WAS SOME difficulty overnight, I understand,” Huang Li Chan said. His voice was soft, but no one well acquainted with him would mistake it for a casual or friendly observation.

“Yes, sir,” Lao Choy Teoh replied.

The two men sat with Chan’s large desk between them, in his office on the top floor of a building owned by China National Petroleum, in downtown Warri. A glass of twenty-year-old Irish whiskey rested on the desk in front of Chan. None had been offered to his visitor.

“You may explain,” Chan said.

As CNP’s top man in Nigeria, Chan had no need to browbeat his subordinates. They recognized, to the last man and woman, his authority within the firm, and in the country. No Chinese except Beijing’s ambassador in Lagos had authority to countermand Chan’s orders. Anyone who tried was likely to be slated for a quick flight home and some “reeducation” on the precedence of duty to the state.

“Apparently the kidnapping of Jared Ross’s daughter has been unexpectedly resolved,” Teoh replied.

“How so?”

Chan had received his own report of the event, but he desired both confirmation from his chief lieutenant and more detailed explanation of the incident.

“Our friends at MEND report a raid against the camp where she was held. Some of their personnel were killed, the woman was extracted and pursuit proved fruitless. They are furious and crave retaliation, but confusion handicaps them at the moment.”

“There is more?” Chan asked.

“Yes, sir. A helicopter bearing unknown passengers landed at K-Tech Petroleum’s compound a few hours after the raid. It wasn’t a corporate aircraft, yet it remains.”

“And you find that significant?”

“The timing is…suggestive, sir. Of course, we don’t know who the helicopter brought to visit Ross.”

“You’ve run the registration number?”

The International Civil Aviation Organization, an agency of the United Nations, issued alphanumeric code numbers to aircraft for use in flight plans and maintained the standards for aircraft registration—“tail numbers” in common parlance—including the code numbers that identify an airplane or helicopter’s country of registration. The ICAO’s nearest regional office, serving West and Central Africa, was a short phone call away, in Dakar, Senegal.

“I have, sir,” Teoh confirmed. “The ‘J5’ prefix indicates official registration in Guinea Bissau.”