Threat Factor Read online

  “I will, Musse.”

  “Beyond that,” Guleed said, “find Jiddu for me. Find him, but don’t move against him yet, until I give the word.”

  “Just as you say.”

  “And reinforce our properties within the city. I want no more rude surprises from these interlopers, whether they are working for Jiddu or not.”

  “I’ll see to it at once, Musse.”

  “War always was your strong point, Jama. It’s the one thing I admire about you most.”

  Hassan blinked in surprise, then smiled.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t disappoint me, now,” Guleed advised him. “Admiration only goes so far.”

  7

  Waabberi took the shotgun seat for their approach to the khat plant, on Mogadishu’s east side. Bolan rode in back with the bulk of their mobile arsenal, watching for tails and ready to lay down defensive fire on a second’s notice.

  The neighborhood was seedy, more or less the norm for areas where urban dwellers choose to build warehouses and light industry, but at a glance it seemed to Bolan that the worst of Mogadishu’s street fighting had passed the quarter by.

  Bolan knew from his background research that Mogadishu’s industry consisted chiefly of cotton ginning and textiles, plus processing of food and beverages. The khat refinery and storehouse seemed to fit that theme, and while the drug was banned by law, the absence of effective government negated any rules inscribed on paper.

  Jiddu Basra had found himself a king-sized loophole and charged through it with guns blazing.

  It was time for him to exit the same way.

  They made one drive-by at the plant, noting a sentry slouched outside a smallish door in front, with three more on a loading dock at the north end of the warehouse. It stood to reason that there’d be more guns inside, but Bolan’s first concern was getting in.

  Whatever happened after that, he’d take it as it came.

  Mironov parked a block south of the target, killed the lights and engine. Even in the darkness, Bolan felt her watching him from the rearview.

  “Same story as the last time,” he informed them. “This is what I do. If either one of you is tired of ducking bullets, you can sit it out.”

  “You would go in alone?” Waabberi asked. In spite of everything he’d seen and done so far that day, he still seemed skeptical.

  “I’ve gotten used to it,” Bolan replied. Then added, for the young Somali’s benefit, “There’s no shame in it, if you’ve had your limit.”

  “I can still keep up,” Waabberi said, flashing a smile.

  “And me, you don’t ask,” Mironov said.

  “Fair enough.”

  When all of them were armed and ready, they walked back through brooding darkness toward their destination. Mogadishu’s crime problems had not translated into installation of streetlights, since there was no coordinating group or treasury to pay for them. The lights that Bolan and his comrades passed along their way were small, mounted above the doors and loading docks of drab buildings constructed without any passing thought to style.

  Their drive-by hadn’t shown them any angles of approach beyond the street, so they made a reconnaissance on foot, with Bolan leading. They discovered that besides the front door and the loading dock, the plant had two large doors unguarded at its back, facing a railroad line with more warehouses on the far side of the tracks.

  It was another exit that they would need to cover, once the strike began. Although no sentries had been posted at the building’s backside, Bolan wasn’t keen on taking any chances with the metal rolling doors. Even if they weren’t locked on the inside, they’d make a hellish racket as they opened, and he’d be an easy target as he crossed the threshold.

  “I’ll go in through the loading bays,” he said. “Mironov, if you’d watch these doors for anybody coming out, Dirie can take the front.”

  Waabberi nodded, while Mironov frowned.

  “You’ll make noise getting in, with that,” she said, nodding toward Bolan’s Steyr AUG.

  “Not much, and not for long,” he promised. “Five, six seconds, give or take. I’ll be inside before Basra’s men have a chance to do much.”

  “I can make it quiet for you,” she replied, raising a pistol sound suppressor that she’d produced from somewhere underneath her jacket. “For the GSh.”

  He’d seen her fight, but Bolan had to ask. “Are you prepared to do it in cold blood?”

  “I’m Russian,” she reminded Bolan. “Hot and cold are all the same to me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll take the loading dock, after we neutralize the guy out front. Dirie, if you can watch the back again, we’re good to go.”

  THE HARDEST PART OF dealing with the sentry on the street was walking back around the warehouse in the same direction they had come from, to avoid the gunmen on the loading dock. Mironov chafed at the delay, but used the time to affix her suppressor to the threaded muzzle of her sidearm. It was ready well before they reached the southeast corner of the building and prepared to strike.

  “I make it twenty yards,” Bolan said.

  She nodded confirmation, knew her target was too far away for her to guarantee a fatal shot on her first try.

  “Take this,” she said, and gave the big American her AKS carbine to hold. “Too obvious.”

  They locked eyes for a moment, but he didn’t question her. Mironov appreciated that. She offered him a fleeting smile, patted her hair with her left hand as if she was about to make a fashion runway walk, then turned and stepped into the spill of pale light from the sentry’s post.

  The GSh-18 employs a trigger safety like those found on Glocks, and it is strictly double-action. She had primed it with a round inside the chamber while reloading it, after their raid on The Jackal, and it was ready to go.

  So was she.

  Cold blood, she thought. So, what?

  The guard was a negligent little man, which worked in Mironov’s favor. He didn’t see her coming until she had closed the gap by half, when any realistic hope of self-defense was gone.

  The Russian agent beamed a smile at the young sentry, raised her left hand with the fingers wiggling to distract him, then whipped up her gun and shot him once, a half-inch to the left of his broad nose. The gunshot was a muffled pop, but its result was devastating for her target, shearing through his brain stem and exiting through the left rear of his skull.

  Occipital, she thought, turning to find the Executioner advancing at a jog. Mironov paused to strip the magazine from the dead man’s AK-74 and slip it into her pocket, then took her carbine from Bolan and slung it over her shoulder, moving on toward the plant’s northeast corner and the guarded loading dock.

  One lazy guard was simple. Three would be more difficult. Her timing had to be nearly perfect, without counting on the gunmen to be sluggish or inept. That would be frosting on the cake if it were true, but taking it for granted was a sure way to get killed.

  ZIGULA BUUXO TUNNI stuffed a cluster of khat leaves into his mouth and began to chew slowly, ignoring the first bitter taste, anticipating the tingle and numbness preceding mild euphoria. One mouthful had the same effect as two or three glasses of wine, without the hangover induced by alcohol.

  In short, as someone from the West might say, a win-win situation.

  Tunni shifted the Beretta Model 12S submachine gun on its shoulder sling to stop the narrow strap from chafing through his muslin shirt. His backup weapon, a Vektor CP1, carried fifteen rounds and dragged his pants down in the back, where it was tucked inside his belt without a holster.

  Tunni didn’t mind the droopy pants. From what he’d seen on television, he imagined that the sagging blue jeans gave him the appearance of a gangsta from America, one of the Crips or Bloods who taunted adversaries with their strange hand signals while rap music blared from giant radios. Sometimes he wished that Jiddu Basra would pay more attention to such modern trends and keep up with the times.

  But he would never say s
uch things aloud.

  No matter how much khat he chewed, Tunni knew better than to stick his head between the jaws of a man-eating crocodile.

  Another night of watching khat leaves bundled, chopped and pulped stretched out ahead of him, with no reprieve in sight. He knew that things were happening in Mogadishu. Members of Musse Guleed’s militia had been killed, and Tunni wished that he had been a part of it. Things had been relatively quiet in the city, lately, and he craved action.

  He’d considered speaking to Nadif Ali, requesting reassignment to some other duty, but expressing any form of discontent was always hazardous. If word got back to Basra that one of his soldiers was unhappy, the warlord’s one-eyed gaze would bear down on that person long enough to strike him dead.

  Such things were possible, Tunni believed, no matter what it said in the Koran.

  Perhaps this night he would catch someone stealing and be forced to teach the thief a lesson. It was doubtful, but he could always hope.

  Or, then again—

  The first report of gunfire startled Tunni, made him think that someone had to have grabbed a hot tray from the ovens without donning gloves and dropped it to the concrete floor.

  After the second shot, though, he had no further doubts.

  He slipped the SMG off his shoulder, clutching it in both hands with the safety off as he followed the stutter sound of automatic weapons toward the loading bays. A walkie-talkie slapped against his hip, but Tunni made no effort to alert the other guards by radio, trusting that they would hear the shots no matter where they were inside the plant.

  It has to be Guleed, he thought. Of course, the bastard likely wouldn’t come in person where he might be killed or wounded, but a raid had to be his doing. Who else was there to oppose Jiddu Basra in Mogadishu?

  The sounds were closer when a pair of fleeing men stumbled into Tunni, almost knocking him off balance. Cursing, Tunni swung his SMG around to cover them and snapped, “What’s happening? Why are you running?”

  “Can’t you hear it?” one demanded. “We’re under attack!”

  “Which means you should be on the front line, fighting,” Tunni countered. “Or would you prefer to die right here?”

  Grim-faced, both men turned and moved back toward the sounds of battle coming from the loading bay.

  THE LOOKOUTS ON THE loading dock went down without a fight. One saw Mironov coming and was out before he had a chance to raise his weapon, gagging on a slug that drilled his larynx. His companions came alive at that, but not for long. The agent shot one in the chest, then plugged the other with a round between his shoulder blades as he tried to escape.

  Six concrete steps put Bolan and Mironov on the loading dock. They stepped around the leaking corpses, tried the door the three sentry had died protecting, and discovered that it wasn’t locked. Whoever had assigned the shooters to their last post had presumably believed they were enough to bar intruders from the warehouse.

  He’d been wrong.

  At first, Bolan saw nothing to suggest the place was occupied. The lights were on, but it wasn’t unusual for some plants to keep them burning even when the workers had departed, for the benefit of cleaning crews and night watchmen. Another moment passed before he heard a motor humming, drawing closer, followed by the sound of voices squabbling in what sounded like Italian.

  Bolan faded to the right, Mironov to the left, and they waited for targets to reveal themselves. A few more seconds brought a forklift into view, bearing a pallet heaped with bulging plastic garbage bags that smelled of something much like freshly mowed grass. Three workers trudged behind the forklift, arguing among themselves good-naturedly.

  All three wore pistols tucked into their belts. The forklift driver had some kind of stubby SMG, a MAC-10 knockoff, dangling from a strap outside his open cab.

  So much for innocent civilians.

  Bolan shot the forklift driver with his AUG, a clean hit just above the left eyebrow. The target’s head snapped back, then he slumped forward over the controls, his vehicle continuing in more or less the same direction he’d been driving, humming toward collision with the loading bay’s tall doors.

  The Executioner’s first shot had the other gunmen digging for their pistols, but they weren’t adept at fast-draw showdowns. Bolan dropped the nearest of them, while Mironov stitched the other two with short bursts from her AKS.

  At once Bolan heard voices raised from different quarters of the plant, alerting anyone who’d somehow missed the sound of rifle shots. He half expected an alarm to sound, but nothing of the sort went off.

  Just sounds of men in motion, running to confront an unknown enemy.

  Waabberi had predicted something like a dozen guards on-site, although he hadn’t been sure. They had disposed of four outside, but Bolan guessed the second quartet wouldn’t count as soldiers while assigned to moving merchandise around the warehouse. Call it eight more guns, at least, unless Waabberi’s estimate was too conservative, then add the normal workers who were also armed.

  How many hostile guns, then?

  Bolan couldn’t say, but from the sound of running footsteps, drawing closer, he suspected that a dozen wouldn’t cover it.

  He shifted, finding better cover for himself, and saw Mironov do the same. Ready for nearly anything, they settled in to wait.

  But not for long.

  WAABBERI LISTENED ONCE AGAIN to sounds of battle from a building he’d been told to watch from the outside. He understood Bolan’s reasoning—Mironov was obviously trained for battle, whereas he was not. And while Waabberi normally might have appreciated that consideration, at this moment he found it grating on his nerves.

  He realized he’d learned something about himself, since he’d met the mysteriously fearless American back in the Bakaara Market, and had nearly died as a result. Waabberi understood that his impression of himself, reflected in the eyes of others all his life, had been mistaken.

  He was not a timid man, or one who shied away from trouble, though he’d spent the better part of a lifetime doing so. He was not impotent, in terms of changing his environment. At the very least, he could assert himself and stand against the bullies who had turned Somalia’s capital into a scale model of Dante’s Hell.

  And he was tired of waiting in the dark while others fought his battle for him.

  Moving forward, he recalled Cooper’s warning not to use the large doors facing toward the railroad line. They were too large and awkward, certainly too noisy, for a covert entry to the warehouse. He had found another entrance, though—a man-size door beside one of the cargo bays. He tried its knob, but found it locked.

  No problem, Waabberi thought. He ejected the buckshot cartridge from his shotgun’s chamber and replaced it with a Hatton round, containing a 50-gram frangible round, consisting of dense powdered metal inside a plastic cup. That done, Waabberi stepped back a pace, aimed the Benelli at a point between the doorknob and the frame, then fired.

  His breaching round took out the door’s cheap lock and granted access to the plant. Waabberi entered in a crouch, prepared for someone to be waiting, already alerted on the far side of the door, but no one met him.

  Picking up his pace while keeping up his guard, he pressed on toward the firefight that was escalating somewhere to his right front. It couldn’t be much farther, given the dimensions of the warehouse, but it seemed to take forever getting there.

  And suddenly, two gunmen nearly stumbled into him, retreating from the battleground Waabberi sought to reach. They both wore running shoes with rubber souls, squeak-skidding to a halt in front of him, startled expressions on their faces.

  But it was Waabberi’s turn to blink, surprised, as one of them said, “Brother, we were just going to call for help!”

  A simple mind’s mistake, taking Waabberi for a comrade or superior. It would be their last.

  “Don’t bother,” he replied, firing his shotgun from the hip at point-blank range.

  The double blast of buckshot hurled his targets bac
kward, tumbling as they fell, then sliding on the concrete floor in crimson slicks of blood before they came to rest. Waabberi didn’t need to check for signs of life as he moved past them, claiming the pistols they no longer needed, tucking them under his belt.

  I am a gunman now, Waabberi thought, and almost smiled.

  The killing ground lay just around another corner, still concealed, but close enough to make his ears ring with the sounds of gunfire. Someone screamed, a man’s voice cursing in Somali, as a bullet found him. Someone else called out for ammunition but received no audible response.

  Waabberi took a moment to replace the rounds he’d fired so far, restoring the Benelli to its full firepower, then stepped out from cover with the weapon at his shoulder, muzzle sweeping in a quest for human targets.

  BOLAN HEARD THE SHOTGUN blasts, distinct amid the sharper notes produced by rifles and handguns. Echoes told him it was farther back than any of his frontline adversaries, firing somewhere to their rear, and he suspected it had to be Waabberi closing the back door.

  It wasn’t what he had been told to do, but under the circumstances, Bolan didn’t mind.

  Between the plant’s guards and its armed workers, Bolan was making slower progress than he’d hoped. In fact, his push was virtually stalled. He’d been about to lob a frag grenade before he heard the shotgun blasts, but then decided to delay the pitch. Assuming that Waabberi had moved in to help them, he could be within the RGN’s kill radius.

  Returning the lethal egg to his belt, Bolan checked the Steyr’s see-through magazine and saw that it was time to swap out with a fresh one. That done, he glanced over at Mironov, just in time to see her rise and rattle off another probing burst from her Kalashnikov.

  If she was feeling in the least intimidated by the odds, it didn’t show.

  The Executioner was edging forward, looking for another target, when four guards with automatic weapons broke from cover, charging into the open, firing as they came. He saw them pair off, two sprinting toward his position and the others toward Mironov, then slugs were hacking at the stack of wooden crates that sheltered Bolan, forcing him to edge backward and roll away.