Rogue Assault

by Don Pendleton

  And so Medina did. He told Mansaré of arriving at the drug plant with some kind of raid in progress and discovering the man responsible was an American and not a rival gangster. In that moment, suddenly confronted with a choice of who to kill, Medina had abandoned his assignment, shot the other members of the team and helped the stranger to escape. Now they were colleagues, it appeared, waging some hopeless two-man war against Edouard Camara’s syndicate and, at least by implication, against General Diallo and the nation’s army.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Mansaré asked Medina.

  “It may seem so,” his caller replied. “But I feel completely sane.”

  “That’s often true of lunatics,” Mansaré said. “You understand that you’re committing suicide?”

  “I realize that my career—”

  “We’re not discussing your career,” Mansaré interrupted him. “I mean that you’ve condemned yourself to death for this...this...estrangeiro.”

  “He’s foreign to you,” Medina replied, “not to me, now.”

  Mansaré’s mind was threatening to overflow with questions. “So, who is he? Who does he represent? Which agency of government? Is this an act of war against Guinea-Bissau? Why does he—”

  “Captain, just a minute, please.”

  When Mansaré was quiet, Medina replied, “I have his name, but cannot share it with you. As to agencies, it may seem strange, but we haven’t discussed it. It seemed to make no difference at first, now even less. As to the war you ask about, I don’t believe he plans any disruption of the government, beyond removal of Edouard Camara and the men behind him.”

  “Only that?” Mansaré asked. “It should be simple, then.”

  “It sounds ridiculous, I know,” Medina said. “I doubt that we’ll survive it. But I feel that I’ve accomplished nothing up to now.” Medina spoke to someone else, English, in an aside, muffled, then came back on the line to say, “I must go now.”

  And he was gone. Captain Mansaré listened to the dial tone for a moment, then hung up.

  “God help you, then,” he told the silent room.

  * * *

  “HOW’D HE TAKE IT?” Bolan asked Medina.

  “As you might expect,” the cop replied. “He says that I’m committing suicide.”

  “You know,” Bolan said, “there’s no reason why you can’t drop out right now. Assuming that the job’s a wash, you could relocate. I could likely help you out with that.”

  Medina seemed to think about it for a moment, then looked down and shook his head. “This is my home. I will not run away.”

  “Maybe a new assignment, then,” Bolan suggested, “if your captain goes along with it.”

  He’d been against the call to start with, but had kept his reservations to himself, suggesting that they use one of the city’s public telephones to keep police from targeting Medina’s cell phone. Beyond that, it still had to be Medina’s call on how and when he dealt with his superiors.

  “There is no going back,” Medina said. “I know that now. No going back and no escaping.”

  “Makes a pretty dismal picture,” Bolan said.

  “But we still have a chance. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think so.”

  “What I think’s irrelevant. Win or lose, I won’t be staying here.”

  “But you believe we can win.” Medina stated.

  “What I’m asking you to think about is afterward,” Bolan replied. “Let’s say we’re both still standing. What comes next?”

  Medina frowned, shrugged, answered, “I have no idea.”

  “Something you should consider,” Bolan said. “There’ll always be someone standing in line to take Camara’s place. Same with the general. On top of that, you’ve got the other drug lords and whoever they’ve paid off inside your own department, plus the Special Intervention Force. What makes you think you can live here?”

  “I’m taking it one step at a time,” Medina said. “Like you.”

  “I also look down range,” Bolan informed him. “I have exit strategies in place before I start. No job’s supposed to be the Alamo.”

  “But how—”

  “My point is that I always plan to walk out on the other side alive. Someday I won’t. Okay, I get that, but you’re just another kamikaze if you go in feeling hopeless.”

  “I have hope,” Medina said. “I hope to rid my country of Camara, the escória that serves him and perhaps a general. I’ve found out that I could not do it with the law, but you’ve shown me another way.”

  “Well, you’re ambitious, anyhow.”

  “My captain, the Judicial Police, will offer no assistance,” Medina told him.

  “No. I never thought they would,” Bolan replied.

  “I had a faint hope. Call it fantasy.”

  “Okay, I won’t say this again. You want to drop all this, we can split up right now. Whatever happens, no one on the other side will get your name from me.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Medina said. “What is the next stop on the list?”

  7

  Bairro Militar, Bissau

  Major Sérgio Ocante popped his second eight-ounce can of Forever Active Boost, a combination of guarana—twice the caffeine found in coffee—and other assorted ingredients brewed up by Russian chemists with their eyes fixed on Olympic gold. He was exhausted, but the drink invigorated him and left Ocante feeling that he could persist in working for a few more hours, on into the light of a new day.

  For all the good that it was doing him.

  He still had no leads on the men responsible for wreaking havoc in Bissau since sundown, and he knew that General Diallo viewed no news—at least, in this case—as bad news. Diallo might not literally shoot the messenger, but every time Ocante had to tell his boss that no new information was forthcoming, he could feel his own star dimming. How much longer, then, until it flickered out entirely and he was replaced?

  The silver star of a commandant, equivalent to the West’s lieutenant colonel, had been within Ocante’s grasp until the latest mayhem had erupted in the capital. Ocante had no personal responsibility for any of it, but he had been ordered to collect intelligence and lay out countermeasures, just in case Edouard Camara couldn’t do the job himself.

  And so far, he had failed.

  The notion of a white man running loose in Bissau, picking off Camara’s men like targets in a shooting gallery, bemused him. Airport records had been scanned, Caucasian tourists trailed to their hotels and most of them accounted for, though two or three remained elusive. The others would be found soon, but Ocante worried that they wouldn’t solve his problems. There were other ways to enter Guinea-Bissau—any country—and a covert operative from a hostile land would surely be aware of them.

  So far, Ocante only knew the man he hunted couldn’t be what Western journalists would call a “loner.” It would take a lunatic to challenge the Camara Family without support, and if the shooter was insane, he’d be in custody or dead by now.

  Say dead, and stop at that. If he was held for questioning, who knew what he might say?

  Ocante ran the mental list of likely sponsors for an all-out war against Camara. He eliminated agents of the navy and air force, since their commanding officers had forged a truce of sorts with General Diallo. After ticking off the likely syndicates from Europe and America, he thought about the other side of things, the law enforcement agencies that might have grown fed up with Guinea-Bissau’s reputation as a narco state.

  There was the CIA, of course, and Britain’s MI6, both capable of mounting operations of this sort on foreign soil. Russia’s Federal Security Service was another possibility, though it required a coin toss to decide if they’d be acting to prevent drug imports or secure a monopoly for their native Mafiya. The French Directorate for Defense Protection a
nd Security was a dark-horse candidate for intervention, along with Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service. Ocante considered, then dismissed, Italy’s External Information and Security Agency and Spain’s National Intelligence Center as mutually inept.

  And other candiates? Ocante couldn’t say how many agencies were active in America under the wide umbrella of Homeland Security, or under Britain’s Home and Foreign offices. Covert intelligence, by definition, meant that other nations were supposed to be kept ignorant.

  The major was en route to get an early breakfast, then return to work. He reached his car, had key in hand, when a shadow-shape appeared beside him and a pistol nudged his ribs. Before Ocante had a chance to speak, the stranger said, “Good morning, Major. If you wish to live, raise no alarm. We’re going for a ride.”

  * * *

  THEY COULDN’T USE Medina’s safe house for interrogation, but he had another place in the Alto Crim neighborhood, located southwest of downtown Bissau. En route, with their captive wedged into the Peugeot’s trunk, Medina explained that Alto Crim translated as “High Crime.” It seemed an odd name for a district of the capital, and Medina had no explanation on tap. The houses that they passed were small but well maintained, shaded by trees in many cases, some with plots of ground laid out for gardens. Farther south, as they approached the Geba River, homes gave way to cultivated land, then coastal marshes. There, on the river, Medina surprised Bolan by directing him to a houseboat, moored to a rickety dock.

  “Your home away from home?” Bolan asked.

  “One can never be too careful,” Medina replied.

  They retrieved Major Ocante from the trunk, leaving his blindfold on until he was aboard the boat. Belowdecks, one room served the vessel as a combination lounge, kitchen and dining area. The head and sleeping quarters were located forward, masked by accordion doors. Medina led their captive to a simple chair, removed his handcuffs long enough to seat the man, then pinned his hands behind the chair’s straight back before he took the blindfold off.

  “Você cometeu um erro grave,” the prisoner said.

  “English,” Medina ordered, standing two paces in front of him.

  “I said you’ve made a serious mistake,” the handcuffed man repeated. “I am—”

  “Major Sérgio Ocante,” Bolan interrupted. “Aide to General Diallo. Have I got that right?”

  Surprised, the soldier nodded. “If you know that,” he pressed on, “then you must know the danger that you face. Release me now, and I will intercede on your behalf.”

  “No, thanks,” Bolan replied. “We need some information, and you seem like someone who can help us. If you can’t, I guess we’ll have to try somebody else.”

  “After you’re dead,” Medina added.

  “Information? On the general? What makes you think that I’d cooperate?”

  “Survival instinct,” Bolan said. “I’m hoping that you’re not a masochist and haven’t got a martyr complex.”

  “Masoquista? No,” Ocante said. “But I do have a soldier’s pride and honor.”

  “How does that work out with running drugs?” asked Bolan.

  “What do you know of life in Guinea-Bissau? Ask this one,” Ocante said, nodding in the direction of Medina, “what it takes to live.”

  “That wouldn’t be the pride and honor that you mentioned,” Bolan said. “Sounds more like cashing in on misery to me.”

  “Americans. Always so righteous, eh? Telling the other nations how to handle their affairs. You don’t care how our people live, as long as we provide cheap labor and resources for your corporations.”

  “Cocaine,” Bolan said, bringing the soldier back on topic. “You import it from Colombia, with heroin from Mexico, and ship it out to Europe, to the States, wherever. What we need, right now, is information on the next delivery.”

  “I tell you nothing,” said the prisoner. “Vá se foder.”

  Medina turned to Bolan, frowning. “He is tough, this one. Maybe I need my tools.”

  Headquarters of the Forces Armées de Guinée-Bissau, Bairro Militar

  “MISSING?” GENERAL DIALLO blinked at the messenger standing before him. “What do you mean, missing?”

  “Sir,” the young lieutenant answered, “I have checked the building, everywhere. Major Ocante left ninety minutes ago to get breakfast. We expected him back within the hour. The staff at the officer’s club never saw him, and his car is in the parking lot outside. He’s simply...gone.”

  Diallo nearly asked what the lieutenant meant by gone, then realized that he would be repeating himself. It never paid for the man in charge to look foolish. Instead, he said, “And you’ve looked everywhere?”

  “Yes, sir. The offices, of course, both his and every other on the floor and those adjacent. Plus the toilets and the break room with the cots.”

  “He’d damn well better not be sleeping,” the general said, masking his worry now with anger. “Has his car been moved since he checked out for breakfast?”

  “I don’t know, sir. It is in his designated parking space, as usual.”

  “And have you checked the tapes, to see whether he actually left the premises?” Diallo asked.

  The young lieutenant blinked at him, swallowed and said, “No, sir. That is my oversight. I’ll see to it at once.”

  “Do that,” Diallo said. “And come back here directly afterward.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  While he waited, General Diallo smoked a Romeo y Julieta cigar from Havana, the fat Churchill brand that retailed for seventeen dollars apiece. They normally relaxed him, but this night—make that this morning—he remained on edge, unable to decipher where his personal assistant could have gone at such an hour. True, Ocante was a well-known ladies’ man, but he wouldn’t invite Diallo’s wrath by pausing in the middle of a crisis for sex. He was levelheaded, generally serious and devoted to the advancement of his own career.

  Twenty minutes later, when he’d finished nearly half of the cigar, a tapping on his office door drew General Diallo from his gloomy thoughts. “Enter!” he said.

  The young lieutenant’s face looked drawn and harried now, and was there just the bare suggestion of a tremor in his hand as he saluted?

  “Well?”

  “Sir, on the tape...a man...that is, it seems Major Ocante was abducted.”

  “What?”

  “His vehicle is parked within range of a camera that scans a portion of the parking lot. It sweeps across some forty-five degrees, so that it is not focused on his car exclusively, but—”

  “Just get on with it!” Diallo ordered.

  “Sir, the tape reveals a man approaching him, then leading him away. We cannot see the second party’s face, or where they went beyond the camera’s line of sight.”

  “You said abducted.”

  “Yes, sir. There appears to be an object in the second person’s hand that may have been a pistol.”

  “May have?”

  The lieutenant shrugged, half cringing. “Sir, the quality of video is not the best. There may be some way to enhance it, but—”

  “And show this other person’s face?”

  “No, sir. Not from the angle he was photographed.”

  “Damn it!” Diallo spit the curse. “Then can you say what sort of man he was, at least?”

  “What sort, sir?”

  “Black? White? Anything?”

  “Sir, he was African. We know that much. A little taller than the major. Slender, in civilian clothes.”

  “And no one noticed him skulking about before the kidnapping?”

  “No, sir. Apparently, he just came up as if from nowhere.”

  “Listen well, Lieutenant. I don’t give a damn where he came from. What I want to know is where he took Major Ocante. Find that out, or don’t come back!�
�

  * * *

  MEDINA’S TOOLS INCLUDED PLIERS, wire cutters, a claw hammer, a plane, two chisels and a propane torch. He laid them out in line before Major Ocante, on a table where he’d eaten many meals in solitude.

  “You do this often?” Bolan inquired.

  “I handle most repairs myself,” Medina said. “It’s not so very different. Dismantling instead of mending.”

  Looking up from the array of implements, he asked Ocante, “Do you feel like speaking now?”

  “Fuck you,” the major said.

  “As you wish. I’m not a surgeon, Major, but my training has included courses on anatomy. To kill efficiently, as you must know, a knowledge of the body’s working parts is mandatory.”

  “I will say nothing, whoreson.”

  “In your position, I might spare the insults,” Medina said. “But I understand we all have different temperaments. My goal this morning will not be to kill you, Major, but to cause sufficient pain that you may reconsider your decision not to speak. The torch—for now, at least—will minimize the loss of blood. I don’t intend to lose you prematurely.”

  “Listen,” the major said, sweating now under the lights. “If you release me now—”

  “Not possible,” Medina said. “Whatever promises you make will all be lies. Besides, we still need information on the next delivery of drugs from South America.”

  “I don’t—”

  Medina cut him off again, saying, “Edouard Camara lost a large amount of merchandise tonight. The cartel won’t excuse it. He needs more cocaine, as soon as possible, to make up for the shortfall. If he hasn’t made arrangements with your general already, I’ll be very much surprised.”

  “I don’t have access to that kind of information,” their prisoner stated.

  “Oh, no?” Medina smiled. “You want me to believe the general makes calls for scheduling himself? While you do...what? Bring coffee and a pastry? Listen! It is time you took your situation seriously, Major.”

  The captive slumped. “I cannot help you,” he replied.

  “In that case,” Medina said, “I’ll be starting with your feet.” He used duct tape to pin Ocante’s ankles to the front legs of his chair, then easily removed the major’s shoes and socks. “You don’t march much, I would suppose. A few toes won’t be missed.”