Threat Factor Read online

  “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 corn
er 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.