Threat Factor Read online

  “And as my second in command, I’m asking you, Jama, what will you do about it? How will you correct this error and redeem my reputation?”

  “I have people questioning the market vendors,” Hassan said. “Some of them saw the white man running past their stalls. One claims a car was waiting for him on the west side of the market.”

  “Not Waabberi,” Guleed said.

  “No. He was running with the white man.”

  “So? Who drove the car?”

  “Our witness says it was a white woman.” Guleed cursed.

  “It’s true, Musse. At least, he says it’s true. We’re trying to confirm it, but of course he didn’t see the license plate. The car was gray, he says.”

  “Oh, gray,” Guleed said with a sneer. “That solves everything.”

  “We’re looking for more witnesses.”

  “Waabberi went to meet a white man at the market, yes?”

  “So we were told, Musse.”

  “And now, we have a white woman already here in Mogadishu, waiting with a car to spirit them away, one jump ahead of Simeon?” Hassan shrugged.

  “If this is true,” Guleed pressed on, “what does it mean?”

  “Someone from the United Nations possibly.”

  “Someone from the UN who fights back and wins?” Guleed challenged.

  “Or, maybe not.”

  “Most definitely not. Waabberi’s new friend is supposed to be American?”

  “So we were told,” Hassan confirmed.

  “No mention of an agency or military branch?”

  “Nothing.”

  Their source had been a Mogadishu switchboard operator, paid to eavesdrop on specific lines and keep Hassan abreast of what selected individuals were saying, doing, thinking. She had listened to a certain businessman, believed to be a contract agent of the CIA, and heard him tell Waabberi when and where to meet a visitor from the United States. Waabberi had also been asking questions lately, about business that involved Musse Guleed. The combination was enough to make him a target, together with his unnamed Western guest.

  But both of them were still alive, while eight of Guleed’s men were not. And it seemed there was suddenly a third target whom he could not identify.

  At least, not yet.

  “I want Waabberi’s handler,” Guleed said.

  “He’s not at home,” Hassan replied. “His shop was closed all day.”

  “Find him!” Guleed bellowed, slamming the desktop with a meaty fist.

  “We’re trying, Musse. Honestly.”

  “Don’t try. Do it. And get a name for this bitch who plucked Waabberi and his friend out of the market. Do it now!”

  Hassan rushed off to do as he was told.

  If Hassan failed, Guleed would find another aide who would succeed.

  No one was irreplaceable.

  “MY PROBLEM,” MIRONOV SAID, “is finding out whether Musse Guleed or Jiddu Basra hijacked the Vasylna’s cargo. Either one is capable and has connections suitable for selling off the merchandise.”

  “You’re angling to find a hole in their security?” Bolan asked.

  “Without success, so far,” she granted.

  “In the spirit of cooperation,” he replied, “we might consider an alternative approach.”

  “And that would be…?”

  “Some razzle-dazzle,” Bolan said. “Get out and shake things up a little,” Bolan said. “Let our targets do some of the heavy lifting.”

  “Until this moment,” Mironov responded, “I believed my English to be fairly good.”

  The tall man offered her a smile of sorts. “What I’m saying is that I’ve had luck in the past, with situations similar, playing both ends against the middle. Start some brush fires here and there, encourage one side to believe the other’s doing it. Shake the tree and see what falls out. Get it?”

  “Divide and conquer, as they say?”

  “Same thing,” he told her, nodding.

  “And you think—or hope—that one group or the other may lead us to where the tanks and other items have been stashed?”

  “It’s possible,” Bolan said. “Or we may have to interrogate somebody.”

  “You surprise me, Mr. Cooper,” she replied.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Americans, in my experience, attempt to be more diplomatic. Or, I should say, they pretend to be.”

  “No one’s ever accused me of diplomacy, Captain.”

  “You may as well call me Natalia.”

  “Then drop the ‘Mister,’ while we’re at it,” the Executioner said.

  Waabberi chimed in then, asking, “Am I correct in thinking that you mean to start a war between Guleed and Basra?”

  “They’re at odds already,” Bolan answered. “As I understand it, it’s a rare week when their men aren’t killing one another.”

  Waabberi frowned at that. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “But I was given to believe that you were sent to make things better, not to cause more violence.”

  “I’m here,” the big American said, then hesitated, nodded toward Mironov and started afresh. “We’re here to find the military hardware that was stolen and prevent it from winding up with anyone who’ll use it in Somalia or elsewhere, against either of our countries. If I get a chance to put Guleed and Basra down, I’ll take it. I won’t make a move against civilians, or endanger them in any way avoidable, but job one is the weapons. Job two is disruption of the two opposing sides.”

  “For me,” Mironov added, “there is just job one. But I am happy to participate in any aggravation of the bastards who robbed my fellow countrymen.”

  “Are you in, or out?” Bolan inquired before Waabberi could reply.

  After another moment’s thought, Waabberi said, “I’m in.”

  Mironov said, “Matt, it occurs to me that we are ill-equipped to start a war, much less to finish one.”

  “You’re right,” the American said. “Which means we need to do some shopping.”

  JAMA HASSAN WAS ANGRY, and that made him dangerous. More dangerous might be a better way to phrase it, since Hassan was deadly at the best of times, regardless of his mood. Dozens of his own countrymen could testify to that.

  If they were still alive.

  This day, Hassan was angry that he had been chosen, once again, to bear the brunt of Musse Guleed’s rage against some third party beyond his control. Hassan had not killed Simeon Boorama or the seven men who died with him in Mogadishu’s old town. He had simply passed along Guleed’s order to kill Waabberi and his white man when they met at the Bakaara Market.

  Simple, yes?

  He hadn’t known that some white woman would come swooping in to save Waabberi and his friend. Unfortunately for Hassan, Guleed would say it was his job to know such things and plan ahead to cover every possibility.

  It was the price he paid for being second in command and wielding power he had never dreamed of as a child, with hunger gnawing at his belly, running wild through the streets of Huddur, in Bakool. His journey seemed much longer than the mere 230 miles between Huddur and Mogadishu.

  And he still had far to go.

  Hassan intended to replace Guleed—if not this year, then soon. He meant to claim the mini-empire that Guleed had built, with his assistance, and expand it into something greater, something even more impressive.

  That would mean killing Guleed, of course—if someone else didn’t do the job first—and Hassan would be fine with that. In fact, he had been looking forward to it for some time.

  But this was not the day.

  This day, they faced a new threat from outside, beyond his estimation at the moment. He was under orders to identify and then eradicate the enemy, a task that obviously served his own interest.

  And if he handled it correctly, Hassan thought the danger that they faced might work to his advantage. If the enemy disposed of Guleed, and Hassan wiped out that enemy, who then would challenge his succession to the throne?

  No one who
valued any further time on Earth.

  The first part of his plan, staging Guleed’s elimination, should be relatively easy. He could not attempt it, though, until he knew his enemies by name and could locate them on demand, to punish them for their offense.

  The thing had begun with Waabberi, now vanished, and his presumed CIA control agent, also vanished. The spook was a merchant named Dalmar Erasto Labaan. He ran a clothing shop on Viale del Lido, a few blocks from the former Russian embassy, and Hassan had suspected he worked for the Russians until his switchboard operator—a shy girl named Aziza, who adored him—overheard a mention of Waabberi’s white man coming in from the United States.

  Beyond that, nothing.

  Now, Labaan’s shop had been closed indefinitely, his flat stood empty and there was no sign of his small, dilapidated car. Hassan assumed that he—Labaan—had been frightened by what might ensue once the American arrived, and he had fled the city, bound for parts unknown.

  It was a dead end, which increased Hassan’s anger. Guleed had ordered him to find Labaan, which would likely prove impossible, but he had to still go through the motions. As a personal touch, he might send boys to burn out Labaan’s flat and shop. Let him come home to ashes, assuming he came back at all.

  That decided, Hassan turned his thoughts to the mystery woman. She was white, but where had she come from? It seemed she had not gone to the Bakaara Market with the man Waabberi planned to meet, yet she lingered close enough to save both men from Boorama’s strike team.

  And she had led the man to his death.

  Where to begin his search for her?

  There was no registry of whites residing in Somalia. Each of the country’s eighteen regions mounted its own border guards, but any vestige of coherent immigration policy had collapsed with the central government. Indeed, what foreigner would choose Somalia as his home, unless he was insane or had some crime in mind?

  His last hope was the Mogadishu airport, Aden Adde International, one of only three in all Somalia where customs agents screened arriving passengers. The other two, in Berbera and Kisimayu, were beyond his reach. Eleven more airports scattered across the countryside had neither paved runways nor anything resembling an official presence on their grounds.

  The woman had likely flown to Mogadishu, and he reckoned that Waabberi’s white man almost definitely had. Someone in the passport office could be bribed or terrorized into supplying him names and points of origin, perhaps even copies of their passport photographs.

  The last bit might be asking too much, he supposed, but it was worth a try. And as Hassan’s sole lead, he felt that it deserved his personal attention.

  Starting this moment.

  WHILE WEAPONS THEORETICALLY may be procured on almost any street corner in Mogadishu, Bolan wanted quality and privacy. With that in mind, Waabberi steered him to a dealer who did business from the cover of a hardware store on Via Ahmed Biri Orisa. In the interest of appearances, Waabberi drove Mironov’s car, with Bolan and the Russian agent riding in the backseat, never far from guns.

  The dealer called himself Adisa Enu Afolabi. He knew Waabberi through friends of a friend. Bolan had quizzed Waabberi, going in, about potential risks from the connection, and his contact didn’t seem concerned.

  “Adisa deals with many people,” he’d explained. “He’s one of hundreds, maybe thousands, selling guns in Mogadishu. By the time Guleed or Basra sends someone to question him, our business should be finished. Yes?”

  Maybe.

  The selling point had been Waabberi’s claim that Afolabi dealt primarily in first-class merchandise. He’d offered his Beretta as a sample, nearly new and well maintained.

  The shop was a decent size. It had been painted since the last firefight had pocked its facade, but the bullet scars could still be seen. Accordion security grates made window-shopping feel like visiting a jail.

  Afolabi greeted them with smiles and left a younger man to mind the store while he escorted them to a backroom, then downstairs. His covert inventory lay behind a steel door with a combination lock, which Afolabi screened from view by hunching over it to spin the knob.

  Inside the arsenal, it felt like home.

  Waabberi had been right about the quality of weapons Afolabi offered his customers. Clearly, some of them had been used, but all were clean, well-oiled and seemed to be in perfect working order. Crates of ammunition, magazines, grenades and various accessories were stacked against the walls.

  Bolan started with a sidearm and worked up from there, choosing a selective-fire Beretta 93-R to replace the Model 92 he’d snatched in old town. Twenty-round magazines and a fast-draw shoulder rig, before he picked out a Steyr AUG assault rifle to complete the ensemble. Adopted by the armies of twenty-four nations besides its native Austria, on top of being chosen as the standard shoulder arm for the U.S. Coastal Guard, the Steyr ranked among the world’s most popular and reliable weapons. It featured a rugged fiberglass stock and bullpup design, with clear plastic magazines that left a shooter in no doubt as to how many rounds remained. Tack on a factory-standard Swarovski 1.5x telescopic sight plus a grenade-launcher muzzle, and it was nearly perfect.

  Bolan added a half-dozen rifle grenades to his stash, then picked out a case of Russian frag grenades for good measure. He completed his kit with a foot-long fighting knife.

  Mironov already carried a GSh-18 autoloading pistol, Russia’s double-action replacement for the classic Makarov, slightly larger than its predecessor, but still 240 grams lighter, despite its load of eighteen rounds versus the Makarov’s eight. To back it up, she chose an AKS-74U carbine, the quasi-SMG model with a side-folding stock that retained all the firepower of its 5.45 mm AK-74 assault rifle.

  Waabberi seemed a little bashful when it came to picking out a long gun, finally admitting that his marksmanship was only fair. He compromised, at last, with a Benelli M4 Super 90 shotgun, a semiautomatic 12-gauge that held six rounds in its tube magazine plus one in the chamber. On Bolan’s advice, Waabberi chose cartridges containing twenty pellets of No. 1 buckshot, offering a probability of seven hits on any man-sized target at a range of fifty yards. A box of Hatton rounds, designed for breaching locked doors with a 1.8-ounce frangible projectile, made the shotgun doubly useful.

  “My treat,” Bolan said, when everyone had finished choosing weapons. He paid Afolabi from a hefty roll of U.S. currency, which was preferred to the Somali shilling notes in standard circulation at an exchange rate of approximately thirty-five thousand per dollar.

  The dealer looked happy and wished them good hunting.

  “Now, all we need,” Bolan said, as they left the shop, “is targets.”

  “I can help you there,” Waabberi said, and moved off toward Mironov’s waiting car.

  5

  According to Waabberi, Guleed’s favorite hangout was a combination gambling hall and brothel situated near the Mogadishu waterfront. It was called The Jackal, which seemed appropriate to Bolan.

  Although he’d never been inside the club, Waabberi knew a man who knew a man, and he had sketched a rough floor plan. The gambling was on the ground floor with the bar, while ten or fifteen working girls kept busy in the rooms upstairs. All such activity was banned under Islamic law, but Mogadishu was a no-man’s-land, where law enforcement was concerned.

  Until this night.

  “How often does Guleed drop by this place?” Bolan inquired.

  Waabberi shrugged, using the motion to secure his shotgun on its shoulder sling. “We can’t depend on any schedule,” he replied. “Guleed and Basra do things when they feel like it.”

  “And what about his men?”

  “Oh, they are always here. It closes in the morning, for a few hours, but some of them sleep here. They use it as—what do you say? A flip house?”

  “Flophouse,” Mironov corrected him.

  They’d driven around the block once, then parked where they could watch the club a while before they made their entrance. Customers went in, came out, the la
tter sometimes staggering, more often wearing faces that suggested they’d been cleaned out at the gaming tables. None made any serious attempt to hide the weapons they were carrying.

  One question nagged at Bolan’s mind.

  “You’re positive the club’s restricted to Guleed’s people?” he asked Waabberi.

  “Absolutely.”

  “What about the guy who briefed you on the floor plan?”

  “His half brother sweeps the club while it is closed,” Waabberi said. “He won’t be here tonight. No one inside but Guleed’s soldiers, dealers and hookers.”

  Bolan thought about the prostitutes and decided that he didn’t have to tell his two companions not to shoot them without cause. He had no prejudice against eliminating female predators, if they were armed and dangerous, but in his personal experience a hooker would rarely jeopardize her life to help a john.

  “Is it normal to find the club unguarded?” Bolan asked.

  “Who except an idiot would try to rob it?” Waabberi asked.

  “Okay,” Bolan said, satisfied. “I’m going in the front door. Someone want to watch the back?”

  Mironov frowned at him. “When you say watch, you mean…?”

  “Just that,” Bolan replied. “I know you weren’t assigned to start a war, and Dirie signed on as a guide and translator. I’ll sweep the place, but I need eyes in front and back to head off anyone who wriggles past me.”

  “No,” Mironov said. “It’s unacceptable.”

  “This isn’t a negotiation,” Bolan said.

  “Indeed, not. I have a responsibility to my superiors, the same as you. I was not sent to stand around the sidelines, watching an American retrieve the stolen merchandise.”

  “You’ve seen the club,” Bolan said. “They don’t have your tanks stashed in the lobby.”

  “But perhaps some of the pigs inside know where they are. Besides,” Mironov said, raising her automatic rifle as she spoke, “unless I make good use of this, your money will be wasted.”

  “I will take the back door,” Waabberi said, interrupting them. “No one shall pass.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Mironov said. “I go in with Matt.”