Warrior's Edge Read online

  "Right," Bolan said as he watched a bar girl proposition a man just a few feet away from them.

  "I have to trust the people," Molembe said, "if I want them to trust me. But I'm serious about this place. Consider it an oasis. In most Joyhouse joints, you need eyes in the back of your head. Here, you just need to mention my name."

  "I see. And that gets me a free lunch?"

  "Free passage," Molembe insisted. "Remember this place, remember these people. After all, you're the one who wanted to inspect the troops. Those satellite photos don't show everything, you know."

  Bolan nodded. The night on the town was business, not pleasure. When Molembe had told him he was ready to go to war, the warrior pressed the ZIS man to show him where his units were stationed so there wouldn't be any deadly surprises.

  And at the same time Bolan realised he, too, was being seen and studied by the eyes of an invisible army. It was taking a chance, but it was better to be seen now than to be shot at later.

  They'd already made the rounds of several of Molembe's deep-cover strongholds throughout Zandeville. This nightclub was one of the last on the list. And one of the most important. Smack in the middle of the capital, there was little going on that escaped the attention of Molembe's people.

  After Lorraine reappeared with the tea and a rather large bill, Molembe pointed toward the corner of the room where someone was pulling the plug from the jukebox.

  The jukebox fell silent as a group of musicians climbed up onto a small raised platform covered with instruments. Emblazoned on the head of the drum in red letters was the name of the band, Joyhouse Arkestra.

  "Take a good look at them," Molembe said.

  There were four men and a woman in the band. The man closest to the front of the stage wore a loosefitting white shirt that hung down to his knees. It gave him a monkish look at first, but the look was banished the moment he picked up the double-necked bass guitar and smiled down at the audience.

  His fingers flew down the bass neck with a mind of their own, tapping out a murky blues number. While the bass notes still hung heavy in the air, his fingers jumped up to the guitar neck and strummed a few jangling chords.

  One by one the others joined in, and the wandering notes gradually found each other in a mix of African and Caribbean rhythms. The woman started chanting, gradually escalating her voice to belt out sweet tropical blues.

  Life went on, Bolan reminded himself. No matter what happened, the party continued.

  Like the others he found himself caught by the soulful voice. But unlike the others he pulled himself away from it quickly, studying the faces of the band members and the men in Saint-Denis's crew.

  "Let's take a walk," Molembe suggested.

  He got up and led Bolan in front of the stage. The musicians casually followed their movements as they passed by.

  Molembe then worked his way through the crowd and discreetly opened a door that led down a narrow hallway. Midway down the corridor on the left side was a closed door with a sign printed in officiallooking block letters: Unauthorized Persons Will Never Be Seen Again The Management.

  "Nice friendly touch," Bolan observed.

  "Yes," Molembe grunted, "the management's a real bitch here." Then, as if there was any lingering doubt about who managed the club, Molembe fished a set of keys from his pocket and opened the door.

  It looked like a dressing room at first.

  Hanging from several hooks on the wall were an assortment of open-necked robes, log-splashed T-shirts and faded jeans.

  Leaning against the wall were several wide instrument cases.

  "What gives?" Bolan asked. "Are we auditioning?"

  "All part of the tour," Molembe replied. "Just taking inventory." Then he grabbed one of the guitar cases and flipped it on top of a tall wooden dresser with a heavy thud. He opened the clasps and turned back the lid.

  Inside the case were three Heckler tilde Koch MP-5 SD submachine guns. As well as a sound suppressor, each SMG was equipped with a laser-lock sighting system for instant target acquisition. The laser beam would pinpoint exactly where the burst was going to hit.

  Molembe opened another case, revealing shortbarreled submachine guns. The MP-5 Kurz models were nearly one foot shorter than the SD model and had an extra pole grip just beneath the barrel for maximum control when it was fired.

  "Nice instruments," Bolan said. "These guys know how to play them?"

  "Those men are professionals. Onstage and off."

  Bolan nodded. "You're saying that I can count on the band."

  "If you find yourself in the thick of it, you can always count on them to play a tune for you," Molembe said, a touch of pride in his voice, and Bolan knew he'd brought this unit along carefully. "That's one orchestra that knows how to rock."

  Molembe flipped the case shut, replaced it with the others, then led Bolan out of the room.

  "Let's finish our tour," the security chief suggested. "It's going to be a long night. In a little while we're going to do some midnight banking at the treasury."

  * * *

  The bank of Zandesi was emptied in the middle of the night. Or so it seemed to anyone watching from the shadows. Despite the late hour, people were watching. The ZIS had carefully leaked details about the «secret» move of treasury bullion to suspected informants, guaranteeing that some of Fowler's people would observe the clandestine transfer.

  Unmarked ZIS cars were parked on both sides of the street, engines running. Every car had a driver and a man running shotgun.

  Martin Molembe personally supervised the operation from inside the bank vault.

  The Executioner made himself visible with the street detail, conferring with the drivers and now and then scanning the streets intentionally overlooking the infiltrators who'd come to watch the transfer.

  Fowler had sent sympathisers, not soldiers, who eagerly gathered the disinformation. Had they been assassins and tried to eliminate Bolan or Molembe, they'd have been immediately taken out by hidden rooftop sniper units on both sides of the street.

  It was a very quick and professional operation.

  The transfer units came rolling down the street in snub-nosed armored vans. They pulled up in front of the thick glass doors of the bank and angled the vehicles so the back doors faced the main entrance. Uniformed guards hopped from the back of the vehicles and hurried up the stairs.

  A string of ZIS officers stood with their weapons at the ready, protecting them every step of the way. Similarly armed men lined the way inside the bank to the open vault.

  Then the apparent exodus of treasure began.

  Bullion-laden carts were wheeled down the stairs and raised into the back of the vans.

  An elite commando unit specially selected for the assignment followed the vans in black bulletproof cars. The unusual measure reinforced the cover, especially since the unit was drawn from Serpentine Force chopper pilots who normally hunted down the Desert Knights.

  Riding in the middle car of the Serpentine Force bodyguard was Julian, the pilot suspected of collaborating with Fowler. His copilot was beside him. Both men were given a front-row view of the vans delivering their cargo to its new location, which was a brick museum that had once been a fort guarding the mouth of the harbor.

  Thanks to his informants in Serpentine Force, Fowler would be one of the first to know of the bullion's new location.

  Molembe and Bolan had decided it was the best way of using the men. Rather than throwing them into jail, the two pilots had been cut out of the real desert operations and assigned patrol missions that kept them out of the way. But tonight they were completing their real assignment betraying their country.

  Intelligence had indicated that Fowler's contingency plan involved the looting of the treasury. If he couldn't steal the country, he'd steal the country's fortune.

  And here the ZIS was giving it to him on a golden platter. All he had to do now was to try to take it. But if the man managed to fight his way in, the only thing he'd capture w
ould be gold-painted iron bars.

  12

  Shadows moved in the darkness as the blacksuited shock troops moved toward the edge of the wooded ridge. While the snipers took up positions along the tree line, a three-man unit bearing wire cutters crawled downhill toward the high wire fence that bordered the eastern perimeter of the Zandeville Export Company, one of the largest corporations in the Zandesian capital.

  At night the compound resembled a small sleeping city, with isolated streetlights lighting the intersections of the long roads that ran along the huge hangar-shaped warehouses and smaller administrative buildings.

  Railroad tracks lined the full length of many of the warehouses. Perched on the tracks opposite the loading docks were dully painted dust-covered railcars. Some of the cars were wide open, but others had their doors closed, barred and sealed. At both ends of the buildings stood tall corrugated doors with canvas covered wooden bumpers for the trucks to back up against.

  During the day the export company thrived, full of the hubbub of commerce as the company conducted a solid business. Though it should have been an attractive target for looters, none of the troubles afflicting the rest of the capital touched down at the export company.

  During the riots people stayed away from the fenced-in compound. It was almost as if the company led a charmed existence or more appropriately a cursed one. The average Zandesian was wary of the place.

  It was haunted with the presence of Heinrich Fowler.

  Despite the paper trail that hid the real ownership of the company, it was fairly obvious that it was controlled by the would-be leader of Zandesi. Men who were close to Fowler during Nashonge's reign still operated the company.

  The ownership of ZEC was an open secret, and the locals didn't mind. They kept working and drawing their pay, safe in the knowledge that the export company was one of the safest places to be. And they were right at least during daytime hours.

  But at night the firm exported a more expensive commodity. Murder.

  Satellite photos had revealed a buildup of "night shift" workers inside the gates, though the company never operated at night. Molembe's men had watched the place closely, noting the comings and goings of hard-looking men who didn't make their money loading trucks and railcar containers from the warehouse bays.

  By shadowing the night shift, the ZIS surveillance teams were led to other safehouses in the capital, many of them already highlighted on the satellite photos as probable sites for Fowler's city legion.

  The first terror attack had been just a taste of what was to come. Fowler had sent out the call to his people in the capital. They were gathering behind the gates of the export company and in nearby safehouses, getting ready to make their move.

  The ZIS was going to make theirs first.

  The preemptive strike began slowly, almost casually, as several unmarked ZIS cars drove down the streets leading to the access gates of the export company. Blue-uniformed ZIS officers filtered from the dark cars and took up positions at the end of the streets where they could watch the gates without being seen.

  Then one official ZIS car rolled up to the main gate on the north side of the complex. Officers stepped out of the vehicle and began shining flashlights through the wires, calling for someone to come open the gate.

  The shock troops watched from the distant ridge. With them was Mack Bolan.

  Webs of moonlight filtered through the branches above the blacksuited, black-faced Executioner as the inland breeze swept through the forested ridge.

  Sitting in a tree-shrouded pocket of darkness, the warrior scanned the inside of the compound with the thermal imager. The night-vision device showed several ghostly figures emerging from unlit doorways. They stood on stairwells, along warehouse loading docks, behind half-opened windows, alerted by the noise at the gate.

  All of them were heavily armed.

  The men closest to the brightly lit front gate had their weapons aimed at the four ZIS officers who were still shouting for someone to come to the gate before they were forced to smash it down.

  The gate house was dark and empty, but fifty feet inside the gate there was activity at a small office that sat close to the main road.

  A glare of light suddenly cut through the darkness as a door slammed open.

  Cursing loudly, a man wearing a dark necktie and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves thumped down the steps and headed toward the gate.

  At first glance he looked like a man who'd stayed late to go over the books or finish some paperwork. Obviously a man impatient with interruptions, he kicked some loose gravel out of the roadbed as he stalked closer to the gate.

  It was a very convincing portrait except for the automatic holstered in the belt at the small of his back. Except for the surveillance photos that had identified him as Gunther Braun, a mercenary whose record of atrocities had put a price on his head on the East African coast.

  A former associate of Heinrich Fowler's, he'd answered his friend's call for reinforcements.

  Braun and several of his men had been ushered into the compound hidden inside railcars.

  A lot of materiel had also found its way into the warehouses via the railcars. Surveillance photos showed special crews overseeing the off-loading of a number of cars, carefully stowing their crates in separate bays.

  Molembe's contacts in the day-shift work force had told him of the special areas reserved for some of the incoming freight.

  Bolan studied the warehouses again, getting a solid picture in his mind of the layout.

  Then he trained the night-vision device on Braun's four-man backup unit, which was quietly slipping out a side door on the dark side of the office building.

  Unseen by the ZIS officers at the gate but expected by Molembe's sniper crew, who followed them through their own night scopes the hardmen crept along the side of the building, keeping in the shadows.

  The white-shined hatchet man started talking through the fence with the ZIS officers to cover up any sounds his backup team might be making.

  "Take a look," Bolan said, passing the binocularsized thermal imager back to Molembe, who'd been crouching next to him on the ridge. "Over there." He pointed toward the gun-wielding quartet. "Must be a midnight housekeeping crew."

  Molembe swept the imager over the office building, then studied the other rifle teams spread out throughout the interior of the compound. "Working overtime in a war zone. Hope they're getting danger pay."

  "Whatever it is, they're earning their keep," Bolan said. "I'd say we found our rioters and saboteurs. Half of Fowler's free-lancers are holed up in there."

  "Looks like our intelligence is right on the money."

  "Checks out on all sides," Bolan said. "Satellite photos, your own surveillance teams and the Intel from Nicholas Croy point to this place as Fowler's main staging area."

  "Photographs I can believe," Molembe said softly. "My own people I can believe. But Croy is the worst sort of criminal. I trust him like I'd trust the devil."

  "Croy was fairly high up in Fowler's crew from the beginning. So far everything he's told us has come to pass."

  Molembe didn't deny it. Just as Croy had predicted, Fowler tried to force negotiations by keeping Sabda hidden and Molembe's troops occupied in the desert. Failing that, he shifted attention to Zandeville. Then came the riots and the terror attacks. All of it was part of a carefully orchestrated campaign that was rushing toward a final stage of all-out warfare.

  Bolan looked down at the compound full of men carrying submachine guns and automatic rifles. "My guess is we're about nine millimeters away from the final stage."

  "Maybe Croy's telling the truth," Molembe said. "Maybe he's painted it with his lies. We'll know soon enough."

  While they waited for the ZIS officers to set up their diversion, Bolan thought back to the conversations he'd had with the Australian hardman. According to the gospel of Nick Croy, President Sabda would only be kept alive as long as he could provide leverage for Fowler's position. Once Fowler ga
ve the go-ahead to the final stage, Sabda's life expectancy would be very short indeed.

  While his mercenary troops plunged Zandesi into chaos, Fowler would move toward his ultimate target, the National Bank of Zandesi.

  If he couldn't take over the government, he'd steal what propped up that government the gold bullion reserves in the national treasury.

  He'd leave behind a bankrupt country.

  Knowing what Fowler was planning was one thing. Stopping him was another. It was a risky operation that could blow up in their faces.

  Though the majority of the profits of the Zandeville Export Company went to Fowler's silent partners, a number of foreign shareholders owned the rest of the company stock. Legitimate French, U.S., Dutch and German businessmen had used their contacts to give the company an international presence.

  It was a showcase for Zandesian enterprise.

  If the operation went wrong, the showcase would come crashing down around them.

  Molembe and the ZIS would be discredited in the eyes of the world. They might win the battle and lose the throne.

  "You still want to go in there alone?" Molembe asked.

  "That's the best way," Bolan replied. "If I'm in there by myself, I'll know who the enemy is every one inside the fence. If we go in with force, it'll be a free-for-all. Let's stick to what we planned. Wait until all hell breaks loose, then go in. I'll be done and gone by then. Or dead and gone."

  * * *

  Through the wire gate the senior ZIS officer shone his flashlight on Gunther Braun, casting a Halloweenish glint onto the hardman's angular face.

  "All right," Braun snapped, shielding his eyes with his hand. "I'm willing to talk things over."

  "Thank you for cooperating," the officer said, ceremoniously holstering the automatic he'd drawn a moment earlier. It had achieved its desired effect, silencing his blustering protest about police harassment.

  He lowered the flashlight beam to the ground.