Rebel Trade

by Don Pendleton

  Bottom line: it could be a small army, but Bolan was here whatever the reality and ready to rock.

  Two miles and closing. Bolan considered last-minute advice, then decided to skip it. Ulenga was a former soldier and policeman, trained and blooded. He knew all the combat basics, and they had no time for schooling in refinements. Bolan’s Special Forces training had consumed the best part of a year, forty-eight weeks from start to finish, and he couldn’t replicate that ordeal for Ulenga even if he’d wanted to.

  So, no pep talk. No pointers. Just a nod to common sense that any cop or soldier should possess if he intended to survive.

  Stay low whenever possible. Line up your shots and squeeze—don’t jerk—the trigger. Put your target down, no matter what it takes. Forget about “fair” fighting if you want to see another sunrise.

  Kill or be killed.

  For a man who made his living with a gun, it was the only game in town.

  One mile to go, and Bolan was about to lower the binoculars when he picked up a sound from somewhere to his left rear, drawing closer. Engines coming from the wrong direction, at the worst time possible.

  Turning, he saw more headlights coming from the south.

  * * *

  LÚCIO JAMBA CURSED THE unpaved road, his driver and the circumstances that had brought him to Kaokoland, otherwise known as the Kunene Region. He was not convinced their enemies would meet the convoy coming from Angola—and if that turned out to be the case, despite his doubts, it was the last place on the planet that he cared to be.

  As if he had a choice.

  Jamba had spent most of the long drive north considering his options for deposing Boavida. Ordinarily, that end could only be achieved by MLF headquarters, based on charges amply verified. Incompetence, corruption, drunkenness resulting in a loss of soldiers or material would justify removal of an officer, but Jamba had no evidence that would support a court-martial. Instead, he had a vague scheme growing in his mind that could be fatal for him if it failed.

  But if he should succeed…

  Before there was a hope of that, Jamba had to complete the job that Boavida had assigned to him. Meet the Angolan convoy, help it cross the border without mishap and ensure its safe arrival at the scheduled drop outside of Sesfontein, a former outpost for police who hunted rhino poachers. These days, the settlement—named for its six natural springs, or fountains—served as the capital of Sesfontein Constituency, equivalent to a parliamentary district. The drop outside town, disguised as a mine complete with a hundred-foot shaft, was used for contraband in transit from Angola to end-users in Namibia.

  Jamba would see the lorries to their destination, guard them while they were unloaded, then head back to Windhoek while the transports trundled northward, bound for home. It would have been a simple, boring errand under normal circumstances.

  But the present circumstances could not pass for normal.

  Boavida thought their enemies would meet the convoy and destroy it. Jamba’s task was to prevent that interdiction, or to die in the attempt. He wondered if Boavida hoped that he would die. Had the man sensed Jamba’s ambition and his rising level of distrust for his superior’s judgment? Was the trip north meant to be the final journey of his life?

  But that would mean that Boavida knew where their opponents would strike next. A mere suspicion left the possibility—even a likelihood—that Jamba would survive. And if the MLF’s Namibian commander knew the next move of their enemies…then he was one of them.

  A traitor to the cause and to his homeland?

  Proof of that would justify whatever actions Jamba took against him. But if no such proof existed, might it not be fabricated? What would be required to prove the case and justify Jamba removing Boavida without first consulting headquarters?

  Plainly, his word alone was not enough. If there were photographs or documents proving disloyalty, the case would be ironclad. That seemed too much to hope for, but a talent with computers and the latest Photoshop technology should prove invaluable. All Jamba required was background, possibly a photo of the CIA field officer in Windhoek—or the men who were responsible for all the recent carnage.

  Even photos of a dead man’s face might be enough. And if the men themselves were not available, perhaps another corpse? One thing was certain: a cadaver could not offer any plea in self-defense.

  A white man and an African. Why not?

  As Jamba’s two-car caravan drew close to the Kunene River, he began considering a list of candidates.

  * * *

  “THESE LOOK LIKE COPS to you?” Bolan asked, as he passed Ulenga the field glasses.

  After half a minute studying the late-arriving vehicles, Ulenga lowered the binoculars and shook his head. “They’re not official vehicles.”

  “No chance Nampol would bag two private cars in an emergency?”

  “None,” Ulenga said. “Their equipment may not be the newest or the best available, but there is no shortage of vehicles for back-country patrols.”

  “Okay, then.” Bolan made a mental note that his companion had said their equipment, and not ours. Without attaching too much psychological significance to that one turn of phrase, he recognized Ulenga’s growing separation from the force he served—or had served, until recently.

  Was that another strike against the Executioner? Had he taken a good man from his normal life and turned him into something else? Something that could be dark and dangerous?

  At this moment in time, the more important thing on Bolan’s mind was confirmation that the new arrivals weren’t police. Which meant that he had no compunction about killing them.

  The pair of dusty SUVs drove past the point where Bolan and Ulenga lay in shadow, in a gully carved by flash floods from a bluff above the river, and proceeded to the southern bank of the Kunene, stopping there. Bolan watched seven men pile out of the two vehicles, all armed. They left the two cars running, high-beam headlights angled north across the river toward Angolan territory.

  Welcoming the arms convoy.

  If this was the result of Bolan’s call to Boavida, he didn’t mind. Another seven guns shifted the odds a bit, but not dramatically. Surprise still worked on his side, though he’d have to make a small adjustment in his plan. Instead of dealing with the lead truck first, he’d have to drop a fireball on the soldiers closest to him, on his own side of the river.

  At any minute.

  His GP-30 was already loaded with a caseless high-explosive round. He made a small adjustment to the weapon’s notched quadrant sight, mounted on the right side of the launcher, scaling back some fifteen yards from his original setting. That should drop his first round on the SUV of Bolan’s choice to start the party. After that…

  “Ready?” he asked Ulenga.

  “Yes,” the sergeant answered, voice taut with anticipation.

  He watched the first truck in the convoy pull up to the northern riverbank. Its headlights flashed, the driver waiting for an answer. When it came, he eased his hulking vehicle into the water, grinding forward in low gear. The second truck in line waited until the first had crossed halfway, then followed.

  “Here we go,” Bolan said.

  As he spoke, he aimed and fired the GP-30 with his left hand, held his AK-47 steady as the VOG-25P frag round arced downrange toward impact. A second later, it struck the tailgate of the SUV on Bolan’s left and detonated in a thunderclap, slamming the vehicle forward and lighting a fat ball of fire at its rear. The fuel tank blew next, spewing brilliant streamers that set fire to everything they touched—gunmen, the second SUV, the river’s bank and the Kunene snaking past.

  So much for the surprise. Only sudden death remained.

  * * *

  IT IS A RULE OF FIREFIGHTING that water cannot douse a petroleum blaze. A fire lit with gasoline or simil
ar accelerants cannot be drowned; it must be smothered, starved for oxygen by chemicals or by some object physically impervious to flame.

  Still, when the SUV to Jamba’s right exploded, spraying him with liquid fire, he did not stop to ponder what he had been taught in safety class at school so long ago. His crackling, scalded face and scalp shrieked at him first, a bolt of white-hot misery, before the blazing fuel ate through his shirt, into his arm, shoulder and back. Screaming in agony, Jamba did all that he could think of in that moment. Lurching forward, he plunged into the Kunene River’s flow and sank.

  Relief was instantaneous, but tragically short-lived. The water did smother the flames tormenting Jamba, but a heartbeat later it washed over nerves exposed and sparking from destruction of his epidermis by the flash fire that had nearly killed him. And it might still kill him, Jamba realized, if he went into shock and let the river carry him away to some point where he’d sink a second time, and doubtless drown.

  Sobbing, one-eyed, Jamba struggled toward dry land. He veered off from the burning SUVs, the lorry that had detonated with its own apocalyptic BANG!!! mere seconds later, while he was submerged and sucking water in with every gargled scream. Gunfire was crackling back and forth between the convoy and a party of attackers on the south side of the river. Muzzle-flashes vaguely registered with Jamba, while the pop-pop-pop of firing mingled with the raging static in his half-fried head.

  Before he reached the riverbank, it struck Jamba that he had not lost his rifle. When he tried to flex the fingers clutching it, new pain lanced up his arm, and Jamba realized his palm was melted to the gun somehow. If he could not release it, he could not defend himself, could not exact revenge against the bastards who had left him scarred and suppurating in the desert night.

  Somehow, he reached the water’s edge, collapsed there, dropping to his knees, then rolling over on his left side to avoid contact between his raw flesh and the soil. Wheezing through seared lips, Jamba took stock of his condition.

  He was still alive, if only just. His suffering proved that. And he could move, although the crisped skin on his right side bled and crackled when he did so, flooding him with waves of pain that threatened his consciousness. His first job, Jamba knew, was to control his weapon—or at least find out if it was functional.

  Cursing and groaning without respite, Jamba wedged the AK-47’s stock between his trembling knees, then brought his left hand to his right and started peeling his fried fingers from the rifle’s pistol grip. Each finger that released the weapon left seared flesh behind, protesting with new jolts of agony, but Jamba kept on at the task until his hand was free.

  Next all he had to do was stand, switch hands to fire the piece left-handed, awkward as it might be, and move out to find his enemies. To kill them for this thing that they had done to him.

  And if he died a heartbeat after finishing the last of them, so be it.

  Jamba thought it might be a relief.

  * * *

  BOLAN RAISED THE GP-30’s sight and sent another HE round hurtling across the river, toward the third truck in the convoy, scored a hit atop its hood, and saw the windshield vanish in a burst of smoke and flame. That took the driver and his shotgun rider out of action, but a third man leaped out of the truck’s rear bed, splashed down in the Kunene, and went churning back the way they’d come from, toward Angola’s side.

  Take him, or let him go?

  Why let an enemy escape to fight another day, when it could mean another act of terrorism targeting civilians or legitimate authorities?

  Bolan lined up the shot and fired a 3-round burst from his Kalashnikov, dropping the runner in mid stream. The current took his target, sweeping him away and out of sight westward, as the Executioner turned back to living adversaries.

  Fifteen feet away, to Bolan’s right, Ulenga raked the river’s bank and burning SUVs with measured bursts from his AKMS carbine, picking and choosing targets from the reinforcements who’d arrived in time to die after a long drive from the south. Bolan swung toward the convoy’s second truck, sandwiched between two smoking hulks, and fed another caseless round into the 30’s muzzle, felt the spring catch clasp it, then aimed quickly and squeezed off, lobbing one more dose of death into the night.

  The middle truck shuddered on impact, as the flat roof of its cab peeled back, a fiery storm of shrapnel taking out its occupants. Maybe they screamed, but Bolan couldn’t hear it over all the other noise of combat roaring in his ears. Another rifleman bailed out behind, and got no farther than the other had, as Bolan’s AK tracked him, zeroed on his back and brought him down.

  All that remained was mopping up. A quick scan of the riverbank showed Bolan one man standing—more or less standing. The figure lurched and staggered, struggled to remain upright—and seemed to be trailing smoke, or steam. It grappled with a weapon, borne left-handed in an awkward grip, the right hand flinching back repeatedly from contact with the rifle. Bolan guessed it was one of the late arrivals, caught up in the firestorm that his first grenade unleashed.

  A little taste of hell on earth.

  He sympathized with any suffering, but did not let it sway him. This was war, and war meant killing, as some long-forgotten general had said, somewhere behind him in the mists of time. A man who didn’t recognize that basic truth had no damned business carrying a weapon into combat in the first place.

  Bolan could have gone to meet his last surviving adversary on the riverbank, but what would be the point? High noon was still twelve hours off, and they were half a world away from Hollywood. He framed the shambling figure in his AK’s sights and stuttered off four rounds to finish the job.

  On the Kunene, fire had found the ammunition and explosives packed aboard the trucks. The echo of their rapid-fire explosions followed Bolan and Ulenga on the walk through sand dunes to the Jetta, and their long drive back to Windhoek’s urban battleground.

  Chapter 12

  Mayombe Liberation Front Headquarters, Windhoek

  Boavida was expecting Jamba to call as soon as the man had reached a point where cell phone links were possible. Instead, the voice addressing him belonged to a Detective Constable Nangolo Esau, who spoke almost mechanically as he recited Boavida’s private number.

  “May I ask to whom I’m speaking, sir?”

  Suspicious, Boavida thought about the question for a moment, then decided there could be no harm in giving up his name. He was already known to Nampol officers above the caller’s rank, and had some of the most important on retainer.

  “Oscar Boavida,” he admitted, finally.

  “And, sir, are you familiar with a Mr. Lúcio Jamba?”

  Disturbed, Boavida answered with a question of his own. “Why do you ask, Detective?”

  “Mr. Boavida, I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”

  Of course. What other kind was there these days?

  “And what would that be?” Boavida asked the stranger who was calling him at—check the time for reference—3:19 a.m. in the morning. He pictured a freak auto accident, Jamba in custody. Christ, had he been driving drunk? Had the weapons been found?

  “Sir, I regret to tell you that Mr. Jamba is dead…along with fifteen other men whom we are trying to identify.”

  The floor tilted beneath him, might have toppled Boavida if he had not been sitting on the edge of his bed with the phone at his ear. Even so, he felt a giddy sense of vertigo, approaching nausea. It took a Herculean effort to control his voice, and Boavida wasn’t altogether sure that he had managed it.

  “Fifteen, you say?” Remembering in time to act confused. “But…where? What happened?”

  “We’re still sorting out the details, sir. Did Mr. Jamba live in Windhoek?”

  “Yes,” Boavida said. “Where are you, if I may ask?”

  “Calling from Opuwo, sir.”

>   “Opuwo? But I don’t… What was he doing in Opuwo?”

  “I was hoping that you might tell me, sir,” Detective Esau said.

  “No. I mean, I couldn’t say. He didn’t mention leaving Windhoek when we spoke last.”

  “When was that, sir?” the officer asked.

  “Yesterday morning, half-past eight o’clock or so,” Boavida said. “Lúcio called me to say he wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be at work today.”

  “What is his work, sir?”

  “I am a political consultant,” Boavida answered, sticking to the vague title that graced his cut-rate business cards. If necessary, he could offer references. “He is…he was my office manager.”

  “Do you have any thoughts on why he might be here in Kaokoland?” the detective asked.

  “No.”

  “Or why he might be traveling with six armed men, as it appears, to meet a train of lorries coming from Angola, filled with weapons?”

  “What? I don’t… What are you saying?” Boavida gave himself top marks for feigned confusion. It was no great challenge, this projecting of emotion, when his stomach roiled with acid threatening to eat him from the inside out. “Weapons? You’re not making sense, Detective.”

  “I’m afraid it is the facts that don’t make sense, sir,” Esau countered. “For an office manager, at least.”

  Boavida let a hint of anger creep into his tone. “I can’t explain what Lúcio was doing in Kaokoland, Detective. All our clients live and work in Windhoek—in the Parliament, the Ministry of Home Affairs and so on. As for weapons and armed men, let me assure you they play no part in our work.”

  “Very good, sir,” Detective Esau said. “I have no doubt someone from the ministry you mentioned will be calling you for further details later on today. Meanwhile, I hope you will accept my personal condolence on the loss of your…assistant.”

  “Yes. If I could tell you any more—”