Executioner 058 - Ambush On Blood River

by Pendleton, Don

  "Come on, Jeff, you already told me more than that. Is it Zaire?" guessed Manning. "Not Angola again?"

  "How about in between? Right on the border is my guess. Probably Kuranda. The old Congo has been subdivided into a whole new realm of political real estate. This thing goes back a long way.

  "See Derek over there? The guy with the stubble. He was in the Congo in the sixties. With Five Commando. Mad Mike!" Clayton snorted at the wild stories he had been told of Major Mike Hoare and his mercenary brigade that quashed the Simba Revolt. He looked at Bolan again. "In this country we've got a leader who sings the praises of Andropov—the man who masterminded the KGB for years—and we vote him in as the prime minister. Over there, Mike Hoare tries to liberate an island from the grip of socialism gone mad and he ends up in jail. It's a topsy-turvy world, isn't it?"

  Clayton saw agreement in those clear blue eyes. Without principles, without a just cause, Bolan thought, it was indeed a topsy-turvy world.

  "Well, whoever's floating this mission has a bankroll behind them. There's a quarter of a million earmarked for the job. If you can do it with, say, five guys, that's fifty grand, for less than a week's work, I'm told."

  "It sounds like a job for us. The money's right," said Bolan. But Clayton had no idea that this overly generous payment made no difference to the big American personally. In truth, it only aroused Bolan's suspicions. Mack Bolan was a soldier all right—but he fought for principles, not for pay.

  Clayton made another guess of his own. "For my money, it's either a hit . . . or a treasure hunt."

  He had their undivided attention.

  "If it is in Kuranda, then the target would probably be General Mumungo. Maybe even the retarded boy-king himself, Buka Ntanga. Maybe it's both of them."

  "And the treasure you mentioned?" asked Manning.

  Clayton glanced around to make sure he couldn't be overheard. "Maybe at last someone's figured out where Scarr stashed his loot."

  "Scarr?" Bolan was mentally filing the names. He would have April Rose run a check on them as soon as possible. Maybe Brognola in Washington could fill in more of the background.

  "Brendan Scarr. A merc. From South Africa originally. He's doing time now in Angola. I guess fate caught up with him in the end."

  "What was this about loot?" Manning persisted.

  Bruce and his friends were leaving. Bruce looked at the three of them as he passed their table. His expression might have been a malevolent grin, but it seemed more like a sneer. No one said a word.

  Clayton felt he had already told the newcomers more than he should; he took advantage of this interruption to ignore the question. Instead, he scribbled down the number. "Call this guy. He's the one who can tell you what this is all about. I've played my part."

  Bolan got up and shook Clayton's hand. He looked the ex-Green Beret right in the eye. "Tell me one thing. If the money's so good, why don't you take a crack at it yourself?"

  "Are you kidding?" Clayton smiled and spread his arms wide, his gesture encompassing the room as if to indicate that he was quite satisfied with what he had. "My old lady would kill me!"

  A LIGHT SCATTERING of snowflakes was starting to drift down as they stepped out of the muggy warmth of Jeff Clayton's bar.

  Manning felt awkward. Neither Colonel Phoenix himself nor any members of his tactical strike force were killers for hire. If this operation should prove to be nothing but a contract for an assassination, then Gary would have to apologize for bringing Bolan up here on a wild-goose chase.

  But Bolan appeared to be interested. A quarter of a million dollars was a high price, even for a political hit. There would have been plenty of takers at a hundred thousand. No, there had to be more to it than that.

  Bolan wanted to find out exactly what the score was with this Malakesi.

  "If that scrambler unit of yours is on-line, we'll put it to work," he told Manning. "I'll get April Rose to run those names through Stony Man's computer—something's bound to show. Then we'll talk to this Malakesi character. Oh, yes, and I'd better find Katz."

  "If you can."

  "I think I know where he's staying in Paris. We'll have to contact everyone on the team and put them on standby. I've got a feeling we're going to have to move fast if . . . ."

  They had turned the corner and were almost on top of the Ferrari when they saw the three guys waiting for them.

  A lanky dude in a Stetson and cowboy boots was propped against the hood. Jack Bruce stood by the door, a key ring bunched in his fist and a stupid grin on his face.

  Even in the lurid yellow glow of the streetlights, they could see the long ugly gash that had been scraped deep in the Italian sports car's paintwork.

  The third guy stopped smiling when Manning shook his head sadly and spoke. "I'm sorry you did that."

  "Yeah?" sneered Bruce. "I just bet you are!"

  Bolan stepped in front of the vandal and quietly corrected him. "No, he meant he was sorry for you."

  The tense silence lasted only a few moments, but it might have been for much longer. Then The Executioner made his move. With three strides he was past the puzzled Bruce and closing quickly on the cowboy who was leaning against the damaged hood of the Ferrari.

  As Bruce turned his head to follow the American's unexpected action, Gary Manning stepped in.

  Jack Bruce tried to swivel around just as Manning drove a powerful right jab deep into the man's flabby beer gut. The spasm of pain that tore at his diaphragm bent Bruce forward, gasping for breath.

  As Bruce doubled over, Manning's second shot was a left uppercut. Bruce's head snapped back, the column of his neck vulnerable to the onslaught of the burly Canadian whose hands, palms held together, now came slicing through the air like an ax blade at the man's exposed throat.

  Jack Bruce spewed blood and beer on the slushy sidewalk.

  Another searing paroxysm of pain tore at his vitals as Gary Manning's knee rammed into his crotch.

  No petty satisfaction he might have gained from scratching the car could be worth the excruciating agony.

  His body jackknifed forward again. Bruce could not even catch enough breath to scream. The hurting was totally bottled up inside and threatened to tear him apart.

  His face connected with Manning's other knee, which was coming up with the force of a piston.

  Bruce collapsed, whimpering, his nose smeared sideways across his face.

  By the time Gary Manning had demolished Bruce, one of the other guys was crawling through the snow with a broken wrist and a split over his right eyebrow that was going to require several stitches to close. Bolan was chasing the cowboy down the street, close enough behind for one well-aimed kick to send the last of the crew sprawling in the gutter.

  BOLAN WAS PLEASED. Today's action had shown how well Gary Manning worked with him. He had chosen the members of Phoenix Force well.

  The Canadian was also smart and showed good initiative. The scrambler worked perfectly and was smaller than any they had used before.

  Bolan held the receiver to his ear. The tone was shorter, sharper than the customary North American one. At the other end, the phone was ringing in Paris.

  Katz answered with a noncommittal, "Oui, allo?"

  Bolan identified himself.

  Katz listened attentively to the American's briefing.

  "And so I've spoken to Malakesi. Gary and I have an appointment with him in the morning. The only thing he wanted to know was how quickly we were prepared to leave."

  "Are you taking the whole team?"

  "If I can get hold of them in time, yes."

  "Do you need us all?"

  "I'm not sure at this point. I don't know what the job is, but Clayton seemed to think it could be done by five men."

  Katz weighed Bolan's reply before suggesting, "In that case, perhaps I should sit this one out."

  For a moment Bolan wondered if Yakov Katzenelenbogen found the idea of being the CO a problem. Katz guessed he had provoked such a suspicion so he expl
ained, "It's the Congo. I once said I would never go back. I'd like to be able to keep my word to myself."

  "I understand," said Bolan, mentally reading between the lines of the short entry he remembered seeing in Katz's dossier. But he knew these men well. Bolan had brought them together. "Does the name Brendan Scarr mean anything to you?"

  The second silence was even longer than the first. Then Katz asked crisply, "Where do we rendezvous?"

  "If I give the go signal, we'll probably link up in Salisbury." Bolan did not correct himself and call the capital by its new name, Harare.

  "Then I'll be there," Katz said. "You can count on it."

  3

  It was very late. Or very early in the morning. There was a morbid chill in the air and silver gray tendrils of mist snaked through the gardens and swirled along the Rue de Rivoli. Katz's mood now matched the weather. He was standing at the window, staring out over the silhouetted rooftops. The call from Colonel Phoenix left him brooding, unfocused and vaguely uneasy.

  Katz thought he had said farewell to Africa.

  He took a sip of cognac.

  Damn the Congo!

  And damn Scarr!

  Katz took another sip and put down the glass.

  He closed his eyes and rubbed his fingertips against the lids. He found himself absorbed by the swirling pattern of reds and gold and black. There was a word, a word in English, for that phenomenon.

  Phos . . . phosphenes.

  That's what they called the dizzying display of electric colors on the back of one's eyelids: phosphenes. And the more he concentrated on the phosphorescent dance of restless photons, the more sense he began to see in it.

  The black spots were now small blobs floating in a brazen sea of fiery gold, a shade of the same intensity as the flames. But the gold was turning molten, bleaching out the warm reds. It was soon no color at all, just a shimmering backdrop of pure heat.

  Katz recognized the black dots for what they were: he knew now they were vultures.

  Damn Africa!

  The year was 1964 . . .

  KATZ WATCHED THEM circling lazily in the midday updrafts. Drifting downward, then spiraling away, gliding, waiting all the time, waiting for their grisly feast. But they were in no hurry. For here in the dark heartland of Africa, the vultures always ate their fill.

  Katz wiped his forehead and stared again through the field glasses. Nothing! No sign of Nieuwenkamp. The Belgian officer's column should have reached them by now. But the horizon was merely a shimmering empty haze.

  He let the binoculars hang on their strap around his neck and glanced over to watch Jo-Jo and his men filling jute sacks with the crumbling reddish earth.

  Some things never change.

  Like war, for instance.

  New and more efficient weapons are devised. The terrain varies from battleground to battleground. But for the fighting man—that poor bastard on the sharp end—much remains constant.

  Like the waiting.

  And the lousy food.

  And the fear.

  Not the fear of death itself, because death is the only certainty in this life. It was the haunting anxiety that you could be badly wounded. Maybe so shot up your buddies would have to leave you behind.

  Katz watched the men digging in between the withered trees in the old orchards.

  This flea-bitten village was called Shogololo.

  The place: the south-central border region of the Congo.

  The Belgian Congo had barely been granted its independence when the troubles began. Old interests clashed with new ideals; tribe was set against tribe; and the infant African state, rich in resources, was coveted by Marxist dreamers from both within and without.

  Tshombe declared Katanga province independent in its own right. But he had no soldiers to back him. Recruiting offices were opened in Johannesburg and Bulawayo, in London and Paris. Hoare, Nieuwenkamp and other top mercenaries rallied to the call, with dozens of men who were ready to serve under these sometimes flamboyant officers.

  They struck a new kind of terror into the hearts of their enemies. They became the feared les Affreux: the terrible ones. The white brutes of Africa.

  It took 20,000 UN troops to stop the mercenaries and put an end to Katanga's bid for independence.

  But then, in that summer of 1964, a new rebellion broke out: the Simba Revolt. In Swahili, simba means lion; but that was too noble a name for this Communist-backed guerrilla army.

  Faced with the growing menace of the Simba up rising, the once-disgraced Prime Minister Tshombe recalled his mercenary friends. Mike Hoare was field commander of the English-speaking Five Commando. The mercenaries soon launched an offensive, spearheading counterattacks to recapture many of the towns and regions seized by the Simbas.

  The Simbas wanted one crushing defeat of the foreign forces; one massacre to show that les Affreux were not unbeatable. Nieuwenkamp's unit was bearing the brunt of this Simba counter-attack.

  Katz and his men had been ordered to dig in at Shogololo. If Nieuwenkamp and his men could reach the village they could make a stand there.

  "Any sign of them?" asked Delon, climbing up the slope.

  "No, nothing yet. Just the vultures," Katz replied. They had about twenty mercs under them, and twice as many native troops. "Everything in place?"

  "The mortars are in position. Jo-Jo and his squad are still digging a few more pits. Schneider's got his blacks strung out along the perimeter under those trees."

  Delon glanced at his watch. "Scarr should be in position by now."

  "How many men did he take with him?"

  "Thirty good soldiers. Scarr's young but he's experienced enough to hold the Mbanja Gap."

  "By God, I hope so. We're depending on him." Katz started walking back down the slope.

  CAPTAIN YAKOV KATZENELENBOGEN was not a Common mercenary. French born but raised in Palestine, he was a serving officer in the Israeli army. A senior intelligence official, who had long been keeping an eye on Katz's potential, had had his young protégé drafted for special duties. And now Katz was posing as a soldier of fortune.

  The more farsighted among the Israeli command suspected that their future security might lie much in African hands; relatively friendly ones like South Africa, that other beleaguered nation, or in the implacably hostile hands of these newly emerging leaders who expressed their sympathy with the Arab cause. That was why they wanted to know what was happening in the Congo. But behind his cover as an ex-legionnaire, the reason for Katz's presence ran deeper still.

  He was on the track of Friedrich Kruger.

  The German called himself "Schneider" now. Katz could see him standing over there between the trees, tapping the side of his leg with a rhino-hide fly whisk. He had once been the commander of a Death's Head unit in Eastern Europe. There were others who had methodically disposed of a greater number of Jews and Gypsies, but few who had taken as much pleasure in it. He had earned his title—as the Scourge of Saravansk.

  Katz had finally run him to earth in the village of Shogololo. Now this private vendetta must wait as they prepared to make a stand against a mutual enemy.

  There had been so much killing. Too much. Katz had seen men die in skirmishes, ambushes and through plain carelessness. He understood that; he was as well-trained as any man in the soldier's trade. But the butchery did not end there.

  An old man had been decapitated in Kasagi for not saying in which direction the Simbas had fled. How could he? He was blind. Automatic fire had shredded two children like rag dolls when they unwisely ran out from their hiding place. A twelve-year-old girl was disemboweled when she refused to submit to the lust of a German mercenary.

  Katz was caught up in the killing. He, too, was pulsing with this tropical bloodlust. There was a fever in the air. Katz was certain of it. The savagery of the Congo had infected even him. . . .

  "They're coming in!"

  It was Jo-Jo who had spotted them first. The wiry black man, Bren gun slung around his shoulder, was stand
ing near the fringe of trees, pointing along the track. It took Katz a few moments to focus on the dark wavery blobs seeming to crawl toward them.

  Nieuwenkamp took ten minutes to reach the outskirts of Shogololo. As soon as the two trucks and the armored scout car had passed the old carob tree Delon was using as a range marker, he gave the order to fire.

  Delon's mortar fire straddled the track. Dirt, stones and clumps of grass sprouted up along the rutted path. The pursuing Simba jeeps slewed off the road and sought cover.

  Major Nieuwenkamp's armored car slowed down in front of the village's only store and the driver sought cover for the vehicle behind a sagging Coca-Cola sign.

  Despite the high-speed chase through billowing clouds of African dust, the Belgian officer emerged impeccably dressed. He wore a printed silk scarf knotted around his neck, a plain black beret, and carried an ivory-topped walking cane, which he used more to emphasize his orders than actually for support. Katz had seen him in action and respected his abilities.

  "Good to find you here, Captain." His accent was as neatly clipped as his pencil-thin mustache. "What is the situation? Is there a way out?"

  The Simbas were regrouping. Jo-Jo saw something move and opened up with his Bren gun.

  "The Doushasi road is still open. If we . . ." Katz was drowned out by the explosions of two incoming shells. One hit the pigsty behind the headman's cottage. Two wounded sows set up a terrible squealing. "If we can stand them off until dark, then the trucks could slip away toward Doushasi. But I must warn you, Major, there have been reports of more Simbas heading through the Mbanja Highlands. Scarr's taken a small force up there to hold the gap."

  "Brendan Scarr?" Nieuwenkamp had never trusted the young Afrikaaner.

  Katz read the look on the major's face, then shrugged. In this situation they were forced to depend on each other. Every man had a vital role to play. Even Kruger, who was now firing short bursts at anything that moved.

  A squad of Simba raiders tried charging up a gully to the right. One of the mercs, spotting them, waited till the last second and then threw two grenades with pinpoint accuracy.