Rebel Blast

by Don Pendleton

  “Russians?” growled the giant with a vulpine grin.

  Orlov shook his head. “No, my friend, better than that... Americans.”

  Chapter Five

  It took just one call to raise an alarm in Moscow. The mayor recited the message provided by Orlov over his cell phone.

  “The town of Argun-Martan is now under the control and leadership of the Chechen National Socialists. We seek to show with this occupation that a true collective state of pure Chechen people can operate as an entity that does not need, or pay homage to, the Russian supposed masters. We have within our land a wealth of resources that we can utilize to build a country of which we can be proud. We have the forces and arms to mount a defense of our new state should the Russian oppressors seek to crush us. If they are foolish enough to make such an attempt, they will be shown up for the charlatans that they truly are.

  “We urge that other towns and cities within Chechnya—starting with that which should lead the way, Grozny— follow our lead and join with us. Those who seek to follow will find us open to sharing our way with them. Together we can forge a new land, starting with trade links that have been denied us for so long. We have within our town representatives of a great American company who are willing to negotiate for the resources we have. We will, of course, do all that we can to keep them close and protected while we hold these discussions.”

  The call was delivered directly to the secretariat responsible for former Soviet states that now fell under the protection of Moscow. It was, of course, recorded, and the digital file was soon in the phones and hard drives of every person in the chain of responsibility that led directly to the president. What none of these people knew was the reaction of Aslan Bargishev when he had finished delivering this speech and the connection was dead. Up to that point he had been so intent on becoming familiar with the speech, unnerved by the gun held far too close to his head for comfort, that the full import of it had not hit him. Now it did.

  “Hey, you moron, is your boss some kind of madman? Why does he want to anger the president so bad? He’s more or less telling him to come and get us if he thinks he’s big enough. Does your boss want to die? Because I don’t!”

  * * *

  “THIS IS JUST in, and I think that you should listen to it immediately,” the government official said, barely keeping the tremor from his voice as the GI-clad president stood and walked from the dojo, leaving his opponent prone on the mat. He scowled at the interrupting official as he took the proffered phone and listened to the message, his scowl deepening as it progressed. When it had finished, he listened to it again, grunting and nodding at salient points before looking at the phone, then throwing it at the wall with enough force to shatter the instrument.

  “Who are these Americans?” he snapped. Stammering, the official told him about the survey expedition. “Who authorized this?” he snapped again.

  “Uh, you, sir...ultimately,” the official said hesitantly. “It went through the appropriate channels, and you did see the final agreement draft...”

  “Find the son of a bitch who made the draft and bring him to me. I want the full details. This is no ordinary rebel uprising.”

  “Sir?”

  “This bastard is inviting me to attack him and threatening the Americans by implication. ‘Keep them close and protected’? ‘We have the arms to defend ourselves from attack’? He wants a fight. Very well, he may get what he wishes, and live to regret it, if he lives at all. But first I want to know why he’s doing this. In the meantime we need to keep this quiet while we map a strategy.”

  The official sucked in his breath. “That may be a little difficult, sir. Those hackers we have been trying to trace...”

  The president swore with a greater force and venom than the official thought possible. He was also very dubious if any hacker would be able to do the things of which the president accused them....

  * * *

  “I TAKE IT you have seen this idiocy on television?” the State Department official said to Hal Brognola.

  “Seen it? I wish I’d dreamed it,” the big Fed replied. “I think I did. Russia Today makes Fox News look like CNN. They’ve already made a circus out of it. I hate to think what they’d make a circus into.”

  The State Department official winced. “Colorful, Hal, but spare me. I’m not in the mood.”

  “Neither am I,” Brognola growled, “but what do you expect me to do about it?”

  “Wait until MacManus gets here,” the official said softly.

  Brognola waited impatiently. Despite the temperature outside, the heat in the room was turned up high, the windows closed, and he could feel the sweat gathering. He felt uncomfortable in his clothes, and this reflected his mood, making him more and more tetchy. Finally he said, “Ted, why do we have to wait for Dec?”

  “Because it’s his interests that are in part responsible for this,” Ted Rumnell answered. “I want to know just what they had in mind for a situation like this.”

  “As I hear it, they didn’t envisage it.”

  “Bullshit, if you’ll excuse my language, Hal. They’re greedy, but not stupid. They must at least have a security man on the inside.”

  “I wish I had your faith,” Brognola grumbled.

  Thankfully for the big Fed’s temper, they didn’t have to wait long before the congressman was shown into the office by Rumnell’s secretary. He greeted them as she withdrew, and then commented on the heat.

  “It’s this way because of my health,” Rumnell snapped, “and will remain so. It’s nothing compared to the heat you’re going to have to suffer if this goes fugazi on us. Suppose we cut the crap. Have your lobbyists told you everything? How do you know that they have? And what exactly did they have in mind by way of security for the survey party? You can answer them all at once if you wish. Or if you have any sense.”

  Brognola suppressed a smile. It was exactly how he would have liked to talk to MacManus, but his long acquaintance—and perhaps more importantly the fact that in the chain of command Brognola, at least on the surface, ranked far below the congressman—had put up a barrier to this. Rumnell, outranking MacManus by far, had no such obstacles.

  The congressman cleared his throat and ran through the details he had given Brognola. Everything tallied; there was nothing new. MacManus had little to add about the security man who traveled with the party, other than revealing that he traveled as a data analyst.

  “He can’t do much on his own, but if he was known to the enemy, then he’d be useless. As it is, he may still have some use.”

  “Should we be talking about them as the enemy?” MacManus asked hesitantly. “At the moment, this is a Chechen against Russian stand-off situation. Our people may need protection or extraction, but they’re still innocent bystanders.”

  “No one is innocent,” Rumnell murmured. “I assume that the Russian government knows exactly why permission was asked for the presence of the survey party?” He waited in vain for an answer from the squirming congressman. “I see,” he continued. “What pretense did your lobbyists work under?”

  “Sir, I resent your tone,” MacManus blustered. “The lobby system is one that has been fostered under democracy—the like of which they do not have where the survey party have gone—for business and government to work together—”

  Rumnell held up a hand. “Spare me, Dec. I’m not the press. I know the good points, but I also know the bad points. How much did they tell the Russians?”

  The congressman sucked in his breath. “Because Chechnya is known generally to have mineral wealth, this was represented as the first of a number of surveys across the territory to present our conglomerate—and by extension the Russian government, with whom we would share information gathered—with a clearer picture of the distribution of the resources throughout the state.”

  “You nev
er mentioned your pet Russkie?” Rumnell asked.

  “I think the days of such terms are long since past, and in bad taste,” the congressman said sententiously, searching for some moral high ground. “But no, we did not mention the report we had. That would have raised issues regarding the provenance of the information—”

  “And meant that the Russian president would have edged in one of his pet oligarchs first,” Rumnell finished. “Naturally... You do, of course, realize that the terrorists who have taken over the town will question your team? And frankly, it won’t take much for them to spill whatever they know. They’re lambs to the slaughter, and you should be ashamed of yourself and the people you take ‘expenses’ from, Dec. Not just because you’ve put those poor guys in an untenable situation, but because you’ve landed the U.S. government deep in shit. The terrorists will use this as a bargaining tool, and when the Russian president realizes that his boys have been kept in the dark about this, then that’s when the shit we’re in will hit that fan and splatter. We’ll all get stained, Dec.”

  “Listen, Dec,” Brognola growled, “if the Russians and the Chechens want to face each other down, then that’s their business. If our people are innocent bystanders, then we can make representations to the Russians through regular channels to secure our people or try to assist. If our people are not innocent bystanders, and are in some way implicated with activities against the Russian government, even if it has no direct link with the terrorists, then we can do jackshit except watch it unfold and try for damage control when it blows up.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” The congressman shrugged helplessly.

  The big Fed shook his head sadly. “I thought that was why you gave that asshole Billings my line. Not just for diplomatic channels.”

  MacManus looked puzzled. “Hal, I know you have the President’s attention whenever you want it. Maybe he can put men in the field. I wanted your advice, and for you to be ready when it blows up, which it inevitably will. But now you’re telling me that doesn’t matter as you can’t do anything about it.”

  “Dec, let me put it this way. There are times when the constitution can only be upheld by actions taken in manner that may appear unconstitutional. At those times, people like Ted go suddenly deaf, and I claim not to know about someone who may just appear at the precipitation of action.”

  Brognola and Rumnell exchanged glances. The big Fed said, “I can’t work out if you’re being obtuse, stupid or playing safe, or maybe a bit of all three. Officially, I’m informing you that I will ask the President to have men on standby if a situation develops, dependent on the actions of both the Chechen terrorists and the Russian authorities. Leave it at that, don’t ask questions and don’t let that asshole Billings call me again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have work to do.”

  * * *

  IT TOOK LESS than two hours before the survey team found out what was happening. On the advice of Leonard, they stayed in the one room, with Freeman and Acquero keeping an eye on activity in the street below.

  There was little to report. For the most part, people went about their business much as usual, with a stoic acceptance and reluctance to curiosity that was alien to the Americans, but had kept the Chechens alive through the decades. The only marked difference between this and any day was that the corpse of the police chief lay in the street where the giant had left it. The convoy had driven around it, and the police had not returned to collect their dead. It was only after some time that an unmarked hatchback drove up and two men in dark suits picked the body from where it lay, bundled it into the rear of the vehicle with little ceremony and drove off with little trace of the bloodless death left behind. If they hadn’t seen it happen, Freeman, Acquero and Slaughter may not have believed it had happened themselves.

  The only sign that anything had changed was the appearance in pairs of the tribally clad men who had arrived in the convoy. Carrying slung AK-47s , they passed at regular intervals. There were two pairs, and after an hour and a half it was obvious that they were patrolling in regular circuits.

  “I want you to remember one thing,” Leonard said softly to the assembled party. “We are all—all of us—innocent bystanders in this. We are simply here on business. We just want to do our work and leave. And we know nothing. We have found nothing,” he added with a slow and deliberate emphasis. “We’re passing through, and we want to keep our heads down and go home. Our government will be working with the Russians to get us out, so we need to keep calm.”

  He looked around. Although some of the team seemed to be stoic and accepting of what was going on, there were others who looked as though their fears were weighing on them. He would have expected Simmons and Callaghan to be fearful, but Winters was a surprise to him. The seemingly hard-bitten engineer was quiet and morose, and seemed to have withdrawn from the others, sitting in a corner alone.

  As the others talked quietly to one another, Leonard took the opportunity to go over to the engineer.

  “Hey, man, I need you to keep it together here. I need you all to keep it together,” he added by way of reassurance, “and I know you’re a tough dude who’s seen some shit. C’mon...”

  Winters laughed bitterly. “I got married last year, and we’re expecting a daughter in March. I’m getting old, and I never thought that would happen. I agreed to do this job for the bonus for her. I didn’t want to miss any of her growing up. I feel pretty sick about this...”

  Leonard didn’t know what to say. He did know one thing, however: this made Winters an unexpected weak link.

  “Shit, incoming,” Freeman said from his post at the window. “That big fucker and the blond guy who pulls his strings... I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Leonard wanted to prepare his people, but there was little time. Before he had even gathered his own thoughts, the door to the suite was flung open.

  The blond man entered, with Viktor looming over his shoulder.

  “I am Alexsandr Orlov. I must say it’s very convenient of you to have already gathered yourselves together. It saves me sending Viktor to do this. Now, as I have you all here I will come to the point. We are the Chechen National Socialists, and we now run Argun-Martan. If you think your government will come and save you, then you are mistaken. They will not have the choice, for we are entered into a dialogue with the Russians, which will preclude American action. This means that you are isolated, so it will be as well for you to be honest. We will need your expertise if we are to take advantage of what you have found.”

  Acquero, who was still nominally manager even though way out of her depth, spoke nervously, heeding an encouraging but barely noticeable nod from Leonard.

  “We haven’t found anything. Not yet. We’ve only just begun our survey, and this is just the first stop on our Chechen mission. This is a speculative trip—”

  “Please, do you think I am a fool?” Orlov questioned coldly. “I know why you are here, and if you have conducted your survey, I wish to know the results. If you have not finished, then my men will accompany you as you complete your task.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” Acquero said, trying to keep the fear from her voice. “We haven’t found anything, and there’s no guarantee—”

  Orlov sighed heavily. Before anyone had a chance to react, he moved swiftly and grabbed the nearest member of the party—Callaghan—and pulled him so that he fell nearer to the grasp of the giant. As Adamenko pulled him to his feet, the man was sobbing and gibbering softly.

  “Don’t worry, I am not going to ask you to tell me,” Orlov said softly.

  “Thank you,” Callaghan whispered.

  Orlov snapped his fingers and Adamenko held the young man up in one giant fist while he leveled his Glock with the other. Callaghan’s eyes widened as he realized what Orlov had really meant: one trigger pull from the giant and the young man’s head was blown from his
neck, the mess hitting Winters and Leonard, the twitching corpse still held upright by the giant’s paw.

  “Now, we do not fool around anymore. He will be the first, and he will be the last if you tell me. If not, I will have Viktor eliminate you one by one until either I am told the truth, or I have no choice but to find it out from the papers you will leave as your sole legacy.

  “Do I make myself clear?”

  Chapter Six

  Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, set up the tripod and assisted the young man as he assembled the four-foot length that constituted the Dragunov sniper rifle. The Russian rifle had an accuracy in trained hands that was second to none, but in a combat situation, it was something that the soldier preferred to use sparingly. The lack of mobility made it a fixed point that could easily be traced back, and in such a situation as this he was unwilling to leave his men exposed in such a way.

  He was heading up a six-man party who had a simple mission: to eliminate Hector Chavez, the Peruvian crime boss, and get the hell out of Lima before the local law enforcement caught up with them. This was a task not made easier by the fact that they had been forced to enter the country separately at different points, then assemble and keep a close watch on any activity that may lead to suspicion. Bolan preferred to work alone, but for this mission the powers that be had determined a team was needed.

  The Peruvian government, like many in South and Central America, was keen to stamp on the crime bosses who had reduced many of their cities to nothing more than playgrounds and combat zones for personal and business grudges. However, money was a driving force, especially in economies that were otherwise starved of such a force, and the contrapull of a black economy that pumped so much into the local retail and wholesale infrastructure while at the same time providing a living for so many who would otherwise starve, made a complete crackdown both difficult and unwise. People did not want to give up their living, and if they did, then how would the party responsible for their starvation ever hope to win their votes? The fact that many of those in the civil service, law enforcement and the governments themselves added to their own incomes with sweeteners from the men they professed to be against was another mitigating factor in this almost-phony war.