Armed Response Read online

  “What? No. No new instructions.”

  Something still wasn’t right. Bolan could feel Douglas holding back.

  “I’m still waiting.”

  A pause, then it came out.

  “I know who you are.”

  The assertive voice came out of nowhere, replacing the nervous, subservient one that Douglas had been using. It was as if a wall had been broken down, and Bolan froze for an instant. The uncertain Douglas had been replaced by one an inch taller and more in command, as if a sudden weight had been removed from his chest. Douglas took a deep breath of the warm, unmoving air.

  “I know who you are,” he said again.

  “And who am I?” Bolan growled.

  “You have to be some deep-cover CIA shadow man who specializes in wet work, an assassin. Black ops. You really shouldn’t have used that Blanski alias. It’s what tipped me off. I probably crashed one of the Langley databases last night when researching you. At one point I was kicked out altogether. Told to cease the inquiry. You must have had something to do with the sudden death of Zaid abu Qutaiba.”

  “People die all the time. Qutaiba’s dead. So what? I’m not staying. I’m out of here today.”

  “That commotion I heard about on the ship. Was that you?”

  “Intelligence only. I was a spectator. And does that put your mind put at ease?”

  “I don’t know. The professional in me wants you gone, but—” The back window suddenly shattered. A bullet hole appeared in the front windshield.

  “Jesus!” Douglas yelled.

  Bolan ducked and twisted to peer through the broken rear window. Two black Toyota pickups were behind them, rapidly closing the distance. The front vehicle contained two men in the cab, with two more in the bed, each holding on to a roll bar with one hand while trying to level machine pistols with the other. He couldn’t see the second pickup clear enough for an analysis but assumed it was similarly crewed. The passenger of the truck was trying to lean out of the side window, gun in hand. One of them had opened fire too early. The element of surprise was gone, and Bolan intended to make them pay for the error.

  “Floor it!” he yelled at Douglas.

  “Here?” Douglas had his hand on the horn, keeping it there, the warbling making people jump out of the way. He maneuvered into the middle of the road, squeezing past a taxi and an oncoming minibus, which claimed his wing mirror. More horns sounded; people were yelling, screaming. More shots were fired. Bolan could make out the boom of the revolver over the excited zip of the machine pistols. Bullets impacted on the tailgate of the pickup, another hole appeared in the windscreen, and a bullet audibly scraped the roof between Bolan and Douglas.

  “Jesus!” Douglas yelled again.

  Bolan was rummaging around in the sports bag for his Beretta pistol. He found it and pulled it out. Still hunched over, he checked the pistol and released the safety catch.

  “I can’t go faster here! I’ll kill someone!” Douglas was trying to get past a motorbike, its pillion passenger clutching six-foot lengths of wood and pipes lengthways down the street, its rider refusing to get out of the way, oblivious to the danger behind him.

  Douglas heaved the steering wheel to the left, mounting a crumbling sidewalk. People screamed as they ducked into doorways or jumped out of the way. Once past the bike, he drove back onto the road, the biker mouthing obscenities. But only for a moment. The next second he was dead, along with his passenger, as one of the attackers opened fire on them, bullet holes appearing in their chests. The bike fell to the road, the two dead men and their cargo promptly driven over by the Toyota pickups.

  “They don’t seem to care about bystanders,” Bolan shouted. “Go faster!”

  “I can’t!” Douglas shouted back.

  “Then find somewhere with no civilians.”

  “Where? There are people everywhere!”

  “Just do it!”

  Douglas took a right-hand turn onto a one-way street. The Nissan’s tires protested, as the back end swung out. Douglas fought the wheel, apparently beyond registering the pain in his hands and the blood running down his fingers. The smoking wheels regained their traction, and their car shot up the street, heading against the traffic. Bolan hung on to the side of his seat with his left hand, the Beretta pistol in his right. He watched as the black Toyota pickup tried the same maneuver, the revolver guy hanging out trying to line up a shot. The driver was traveling too fast and didn’t have the skill to make the turn. The pickup barreled sideways into the faded yellow wall of a colonial-looking building. There was an awful, inhuman scream and the screech of metal as the driver accelerated, completely oblivious to the fate of his passenger, who was being smeared down the side of the building. A second later the whole body was ripped out of the cab and was gone, the driver noticing nothing, fixated on the target. Bolan could see his grin, even from a couple of dozen meters away. The machine gunners were banging on the cab roof, and the black pickup accelerated.

  “They have more power under the hood than we do!” Bolan shouted at Douglas.

  “No kidding!” Douglas looked manic, eyes wide, dodging around bicycles, motorbikes, taxis and minibuses. Everybody seemed to be on the road that morning.

  “They’re coming in! Brace yourself!” Bolan yelled.

  There was a lurching thump as the attacking vehicle rammed their less powerful red pickup. One of the gunners let out a war whoop and began clambering over the cab. He paused on the hood, getting his balance, then with a yell, leaped into the bed of the red Nissan pickup, wild eyes bulging out of the head of a man who was sure of a kill. Bolan showed him the error of his ways by pumping three shots into the assailant’s chest at point-blank range. The man shuddered, then fell back, the machine pistol falling from his fingers. His corpse landed on the hood of the Toyota pickup, just in front of the driver, who seemed as unconcerned about the second passenger as he had the first. The second machine gunner didn’t seem as crazed. He was lining up a shot, hoping to riddle the cab with bullets. Bolan fired several more shots, trying to hold his aim true despite the bouncing and lurching pickup. One round connected, and the gunner spun and disappeared from view.

  “Road’s clear!” Douglas roared. “We can go faster now!”

  “Do it!”

  Bolan brushed the broken safety glass of the rear window aside and crawled into the pickup’s bed. He rose to his knees and brought the pistol to bear, pointing it at the feverish face of the driver. Only now did the driver seem to realize his predicament, but self-preservation came too slow. Bolan squeezed the trigger three times and the cab of the black pickup filled with blood splatters.

  The black pickup instantly lost speed and spun to one side, momentum tipping it onto the driver’s side. There was a loud smash of impacting metal and glass as the second Toyota pickup careened into the wreck. The sudden loss of velocity catapulted both men in the pickup bed high into the air. Screaming, they plunged down, their lives ending on contact with the black asphalt. Bolan couldn’t see the fate of the two inside the cab of the second black pickup, but he guessed that if they were not wearing seat belts, then they would have exited the vehicle the hard way.

  He crawled back into the cab. His face blanched, Douglas was breathing heavily, peering out of the one corner of the windshield that wasn’t starred or bearing holes in it. Bolan looked back at the wreckage. People were already coming out of hiding places to crawl over it, looking for something to salvage.

  “You know what I said earlier?” he said to Douglas.

  “What? What! What about?”

  “About leaving. I’ve changed my mind. I’m suddenly interested in seeing the local culture. Take in some of the sights. Find somewhere to dump the pickup. Then we’ll catch one of those green-and-white taxis back to your place. It seems I’m going to pay Djibouti a visit.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They abandoned the red Nissan pickup on the edge of a rough neighborhood, a no-go area unless you had a death wish or an armored car. Three
young toughs spotted them and began to swagger over, apparently thinking that they had scored an easy mark with some lost white men. Bolan slowly exited the pickup and stood at his full height, coldly gazing down on the punks. The death stare brought the three up short, unsure whether to back off and lose face, or to proceed with their mugging and kidnapping. Bolan saved them the trouble. He held out his hand to Douglas, who had also climbed out of the vehicle, brushing fragments of shattered windshield off his clothes. Douglas tossed the car keys to Bolan, who promptly tossed them at the feet of the lead punk. Without a word both men turned and walked away, heading into a slightly safer part of town where a taxi could be found.

  They changed taxis twice, hoping to lose any followers, although it wouldn’t be too hard to locate two white men in Djibouti, one tall, the other with bandaged hands. They proceeded on foot to the safehouse, having the taxi drop them off two blocks away.

  “Does anybody else know about this place?” Bolan asked, as they stood at the end of the litter-filled avenue, surveying the street.

  “As a safehouse, no. I was told that my own apartment was under surveillance, so I came here. Who the watchers are, I don’t know. Those attached to the bombing would be my guess, wanting to know what Saint-Verran told me before he died. Or it could be the French. I heard that they’re quite pissed off.”

  “Who are those guys?” Bolan indicated several men guarding the building opposite the hopefully still-secure apartment.

  “Black marketers. Dangerous if you bother them. Well, probably not for you. I think they’re selling food. I watched one guy get murdered here yesterday for a chicken leg.”

  “Then let’s not bother them. We’ve drawn enough attention to ourselves already.”

  Bolan thought Douglas muttered a “no kidding” as he led the way down the avenue to the safehouse apartment. The city was divided into blocks, similar to a North American city, making it easier to navigate. Bolan could feel the eyes of the two black-marketer guards on him as he followed Douglas. He watched them surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye, but the guards made no suspicious moves, even looking away when they lost interest.

  Douglas unlocked the rotting brown door, which opened onto a flight of stairs, a threadbare, stained tan carpet leading the way up. Bolan put a hand on Douglas, holding him back.

  “Hold this. Stay here,” he whispered, handing over his sports bag. The Beretta pistol was already out and ready. Douglas nodded. Bolan crept up the stairs, back against the wall, the pistol leading the way. The stairs creaked and groaned under his weight. The soldier entered the tiny apartment, wary for trip wires, and quickly covered the rooms. The place was empty, and there were no booby traps. He called back down to Douglas, who came upstairs and dumped Bolan’s bag on the sagging orange sofa.

  “You want a drink?” Douglas asked. “Something to eat?”

  “What have you got?”

  “Ethiopian coffee and plenty of MREs.”

  Bolan didn’t feel like eating Meals Ready to Eat, but knew from long experience that it was always best to eat and drink when the opportunity arose.

  “Coffee is good, and an MRE with something resembling beef in it.”

  “Resembling is the right word. Meals Refusing to Exit is a better name for them. I had one of these years ago, couldn’t shit for four days after.” Douglas set an ancient coffeemaker to work, then dug around the MRE box for something that said beef on its label. He prepared it for Bolan, who was sitting on the sofa dismantling the Beretta pistol and spreading its parts across the table.

  “So, what now?” Douglas asked.

  “For starters, open that for me.” Bolan indicated the locked cabinet. Douglas dug a key out of a drawer and unlocked it, revealing two M-16-A-2s and two Beretta 92s. Boxes of ammunition were stacked at the bottom along with some gun-cleaning kits. Bolan reached over for one, and Douglas noted the expression of disappointment etched onto the man’s face.

  “What, five guns isn’t enough for you?”

  “It’s enough for half an hour. I was hoping for something compact, an Uzi or Ingram, something easy to conceal.”

  “Sorry to disappoint. This safehouse wasn’t meant to be a fortress, so it only comes equipped with standard Marine fare. You’ll have to make do. You have enough bullets here to shoot up the neighborhood.”

  “Like I said, enough for half an hour. What about that laptop, is it secure?”

  “Runs straight through Lemonnier,” Douglas said, returning to the kitchenette, where the coffeemaker was gurgling.

  “In other words everybody from the National Security Agency to the IRS is listening in. I’ll need to use it later. After you finish your coffee, I have a task for you.”

  “Yeah, about that…” Douglas placed a plate and a fork on the coffee table, the MRE spread out so that it resembled an edible meal.

  Bolan finished cleaning the Berretta pistol, reloaded it and placed it within arm’s reach. He picked up the plate and started on, what was for him, breakfast.

  “You said something about staying. I take it that means you intend to kill people,” Douglas said.

  “I have an aversion to people shooting at me. Makes me want to know why. How many people knew that I was arriving today?”

  “A few.” Douglas began pouring coffee into two chipped mugs. “How do you like it?”

  “Black. I don’t think they were after me. They were after you.”

  “Why me and not you? You were in Yemen yesterday. Don’t deny it. Lots of people will be pissed about Qutaiba. Then you had some adventures on that freighter, which will not have gone unnoticed. I’d say that you were the target.”

  “If an enemy knew I was here, then they would not have sent amateurs. Those guys in the black pickups were high on something and too trigger-happy for pros. No, they were after you. So what happened in the hotel? Were you the target?”

  Douglas handed Bolan a coffee cup, then sat on the desk chair opposite the sofa. He gazed into his brew for a moment before turning his eyes to Bolan.

  “So I only warrant druggies, do I? I don’t know whether I should be insulted or not. No, I wasn’t the target. A Frenchman by the name of Pierre Saint-Verran was. His car exploded as he was climbing into it.”

  “Who was he, and what was your relationship with him?”

  “I met him in Djibouti years ago, then became reacquainted with him when I was reposted here. He used to be DGSE but retired over here. He ran his own little agency, offering intelligence analyses for businesses and aid agencies, guides and translators, that sort of thing. He still dabbled in intel, knew a lot of people, fingers in a lot of intelligence pies. What he passed on to me was always reliable. I suspected that he was being used by the Deuxième Bureau to pass on information unofficially. Anyway, I have been back a little over a year now and met with him on four different occasions. Most of the intel was about undesirables entering the country.”

  “And this time?”

  “The same. People who had entered without us or the government knowing about it.”

  Bolan finished his MRE and washed the feel of it away with a mouthful of coffee as Douglas narrated what Saint-Verran had told him during those last few minutes.

  “So you learned about the mercs and oil prospectors minutes before the blast. Do you feel that they’re connected to Saint-Verran’s assassination?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no evidence to prove it. As I said, he had his fingers in a lot of pies. But I have to assume it was. I also think that the bomb was meant to go off before he reached us. Why detonate it after he passed the information on? That doesn’t make sense. But so far I have no other leads. And my station chief wants answers yesterday.”

  “You know a lot,” Bolan said. “Trenchard Oil, for a start. What do you know about them?”

  “Small-time production business based in Dallas. Started by Robert Trenchard over a hundred years ago, is now run by his grandson, Robert Trenchard III. Seems a pretty clean company, always paying
taxes on time and has happy employees. Langley looked into them while I was hospitalized. It seems Trenchard did have some people over here. However they failed to turn anything up and are now back stateside. Officially Trenchard has nobody in country at the moment, and I can’t say that I blame them. There’s no oil here, despite the close proximity to the Gulf States.

  “Then there’s Saint-Verran himself. As I said, he has an agency here, some small offices. Sometimes worked with a guy called Gullon. I wanted to go over there today, with or without permission from the chief, but instead I had to babysit your ass.”

  “I heard rumors of a civil war that is supposed to be coming,” Bolan said, changing the subject. “What is that about?”

  “Now, that one is strange.” Douglas thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t even call it a civil war, more of a civil unrest. Nobody seems to be behind it, and I do mean nobody. The last civil war ended after nine years of bloodshed between the government and the FRUD Afars. The Afars are the main tribal group to the north, with the Issars in the south. The Afars are made up of Eritrean and Ethiopian stock. The Issars originate from Somalia. The government was Issar, the Afars felt neglected, so the two sides were at each other’s throats. When it was all over, the president of the country was Issar and the prime minister Afar. Together they run a corrupt, secular Muslim state. Both sides seem happy but for the drought and the fact that the politicians are eating when the rest of the people starve. But nobody wants a new war. There was once an attempted coup by the police, but that was crushed by the army as soon as it started.”

  Bolan drained his cup. “And what about the rioters. Have any of them been picked up?”

  “Yeah, and there’s not much info there, either. The ones in prison claim they want Djibouti free of America and France, that they only joined the protest when it passed outside their front doors. They saw another Arab Spring, an uprising for television. But who was organizing,” Douglas said, shrugging, “nobody knows. It’s claimed that an extremist Muslim group may be behind it.”