Rebel Trade

by Don Pendleton

  And what must his superiors be thinking in Cuanza Norte Province in Angola? Had they already decided that promoting him was a mistake? Were plans in motion to relieve him, drag him home for trial by court-martial, perhaps for execution by a firing squad? If so, could Boavida possibly do anything to head off that result?

  A victory at Kolmanskop, the absolute destruction of his enemies, might help if it was not too late. Proving that he could rebound from the worst adversity might demonstrate the wisdom of allowing Boavida to retain command and carry on with operations in Namibia.

  Or it might simply demonstrate that he had done too little, far too late.

  In any case, his last, best hope lay here, among the sand dunes and deserted buildings. He could not return to Windhoek—much less to Angola—without managing at least one victory. If he could only salvage something from the ruins that surrounded him—

  The crump of an explosion echoed through the ghost town, making Boavida flinch. He turned to face his watchman, found the soldier standing rigid, torn between an impulse to investigate and his sworn duty to remain on station.

  “Go!” Boavida snapped, as he slipped his AK-47 off its shoulder sling. “I’m right behind you.”

  Chapter 16

  Once Bolan had confirmed the presence of his enemies in Kolmanskop, he moved to close the door on any possible escape. Scouting the fringes of the ghost town and its dunes, he counted thirteen vehicles, all SUVs with four wheel-drive except for one small off-road motorcycle. Doing the math, he guessed that five men could ride comfortably in an SUV, or they could squeeze a couple more behind the backseat, in the cargo area. Sixty guns for sure, with one or two more on the bike, with a max of eighty, eighty-five.

  Still doable, if Bolan watched his step and took advantage of the desert night.

  Vehicles first. The bandoleer he wore across his chest held twenty VOG-25P caseless rounds, with one already chambered. Bolan’s problem was that Boavida’s soldiers had not parked their rides together in the semblance of a standard motor pool. Five clustered near what might have been an old hotel, four stood outside the ghost town’s former railroad station at the other end of town, the rest were scattered in between, parked close to buildings where, he guessed, their occupants had gone to ground. The bike was on its kickstand, tucked away between two long-abandoned stores.

  Lights shone from windows of the buildings where the vehicles were parked, but they were clearly cast by lamps of some kind, either burning fuel or run from batteries. The sole exception was the building Bolan took for a hotel or inn. The light in one of its front windows flickered, as if generated by an open fire.

  The lights were helpful—and potentially deceptive. Just because some buildings were illuminated, Bolan could not take for granted that the others were unoccupied. It would be smart to station shooters in the blacked-out shops and homes, waiting and watching for a target to reveal itself. Someone creeps in and goes to snipe an easy mark through lighted windows, getting cocky, and he’s dead before he knows it.

  Maybe.

  On the other hand, the men he’d come to kill might just be frightened of the dark.

  Bolan decided he would hit the cars parked at the railroad station first, see who—if anyone—emerged, and find out how it played from there. The GP-30 gave him reach to hang back from the blast zone, covered by the darkness while he gauged the MLF’s reaction to an uninvited visitor.

  Round one away. It struck the tailgate of a Range Rover Rhino and sent out a shock wave to rouse any sleepers in town. The car stood on its nose, riding fire to a vertical plane, then crashed back to the ground with tires sizzling and melting. It spewed enough fuel to ignite the Toyota 4Runner beside it and saved Bolan one round that way. The second car blew just as Bolan squeezed off with his sights fixed on a Honda Element.

  The third explosion brought men spilling from the one-time railroad station, but they couldn’t spot him in the dark without a muzzle-flash to give him up. The GP-30 offered none to speak of, with the nitrocellulose propellant built into its caseless rounds, so Bolan let it do his talking for him, left Boavida’s men milling in the firelight as he fired his third grenade at the remaining SUV.

  It was a Chevrolet Captiva that would have been fun driving on the dunes before it turned into a raging fireball, hurling plumes of burning gasoline like blasts from a flamethrower toward the shooters gathered on the railway station’s platform. One of them got roasted where he stood, a jiggling human torch, while his companions ran for cover anywhere that they could find it.

  Fair enough. Game on.

  * * *

  FLYING SOUTH FROM WINDHOEK in the HAL Light Observation Helicopter he had managed to secure from Nampol’s tiny air wing, Captain Fanuel Gurirab felt as if he was rushing toward a funeral, perhaps his own. If that turned out to be the case, he was prepared to pay the price, redeem some vestige of his honor if it was not already too late.

  Five well-armed officers accompanied him, together with the helicopter’s two crew members who were also Nampol sergeants. Twenty more were converging on Kolmanskop by land from various rural stations, but he had no patience for the long drive south. It seemed to Gurirab that he had wasted too much time already, possibly his whole career, and he refused to spend another futile moment idling in complacency.

  Their whirlybird was manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited of Bangalore, India, with a cruising speed of 161 miles per hour and a service ceiling of 21,300 feet. On this night, they were flying much lower than that, barely a thousand feet above the Namib Desert’s undulating sand dunes, buoyed by the latent heat still radiating from the vast ocean of sunbaked sand.

  They were a hundred miles or so from Kolmanskop, but Captain Gurirab had spent the whole flight worrying about what he would do when they arrived. It was impossible for him to know how Boavida’s gunmen would react to the arrival of a helicopter with the word Police emblazoned on its fuselage. They might think that the officers were sent as reinforcements, based on prior collaboration with Nampol, or they might fear arrest and open fire on sight, blasting the chopper from the sky.

  With that in mind, Gurirab had ordered his pilots to set down a quarter-mile short of the ghost town. He and his men could hike in from the landing zone—not truly a surprise, given the helicopter’s lights and noise, but still better than being shot like birds over a hunter’s blind.

  This way, at least, they had a chance of getting into Kolmanskop alive.

  And then what?

  Gurirab would see how they were greeted, how close he could get to Boavida without gunfire. If he could arrest the man in charge, even use Boavida as a hostage, then the situation might be saved. If not…well, they would have to fight their way in, find whatever cover was available at Kolmanskop, and hold on while they waited for the other Nampol officers to finally arrive.

  The darkness yawned before Fanuel Gurirab as he hurtled southward, like the maw of some huge monster poised to swallow him alive. The captain wondered whether he would see another sunrise, for the first time in his life uncertain that it mattered either way.

  * * *

  BOAVIDA FELT AS IF HE WERE trapped in a recurring nightmare. Only hours earlier, he had been spattered with the blood and brains of men sworn to defend him, cringing with their bodies at his feet and waiting for a bullet to snuff out his own life. He had survived that ordeal somehow, suffered the humiliation of a flight into the wilderness, and yet seemed his enemies had found him once again, bringing Hell to his very doorstep.

  As he lurched out of the former inn, clutching his AK-47 like a holy talisman before him, Boavida saw three of his party’s vehicles in flames outside the long-abandoned railway station. Even as he reached the porch, second blast rocked Kolmanskop, tearing another of their SUVs apart and leaving it a fiery wreck. One of his soldiers, also burning, leaped and shrieked un
til another hurled him to the ground and rolled him in the sand to smother the engulfing fire.

  “Go back inside, sir,” one of Boavida’s watchers cautioned him. “We don’t know where they are.”

  “Then find them!” Boavida bellowed in reply, and wondered even as he spoke how many enemies had trailed him to the ghost town.

  Only one had been observed by the survivors at Durissa Bay. In Windhoek there were two, but one of those—the vigilante Nampol officer—had been eliminated. That left one by Boavida’s count, unless the white man everyone assumed to be American had found more allies to assist him.

  Boavida’s mind was reeling as he reached the inn’s threshold, ducked in and slammed the door behind him, locking out the night. As if a simple dead bolt lock would keep the man who hunted him from entering and finishing his work.

  He could have killed me back in Windhoek, Boavida thought. Why didn’t he?

  Was it some kind of strange, sadistic game? Was Boavida meant to suffer hours of anguish first, before he died?

  If so, the bastard who’d been sent for him was in for a surprise. Whatever he and his employers might suppose, one did not rise to a commander’s rank in the Mayombe Liberation Front by being squeamish or retreating from a fight. Perhaps his rank and its administrative tasks had softened Boavida, but beneath it all he still remained the soldier who had lived in jungle squalor, ambushed government patrols and terrorized opponents in the name of liberty.

  And he would not be trapped inside a crumbling guesthouse while his men lay down their lives defending him. It shamed him, and the only way to rinse that shame away was with the blood of his opponent.

  Boavida turned back to the door, unlocked it, trying to ignore the trembling in his hand as he unlatched the dead bolt. Once the door was open, he had to force himself to take the next step, as another thunderous explosion almost drove him back inside. He turned in the direction of the latest blast and saw another, closer SUV settle on wings of fire after its fuel tank blew.

  Cursing himself to keep his feet in motion, Boavida went in search of his enemies.

  * * *

  BOLAN HAD WORKED HIS way through half of Boavida’s vehicles before one of the MLF defenders spotted him. He knew it had to happen, but he was disappointed that he couldn’t trash a few more of their rides before the fight was joined in earnest.

  As it was, the shooter nearly stumbled over him by accident, coming around a corner of the one-time theater, clumsily grappling with his rifle and his zipper at the same time. Literally caught with his pants down, Bolan decided, as their eyes met and the startled gunman suddenly forgot about his fly. Survival took priority over embarrassment, both hands fumbling to level his Kalashnikov, but he was already too late.

  Bolan’s three-round burst found the ten-ring and dumped his target over backward, sand spraying from boot heels as they rose into the air. The dead man never got a shot off, but he didn’t need to as the stutter of the rounds that killed him echoed through the darkened streets of Kolmanskop.

  Not waiting to discover whether anyone had glimpsed the muzzle-flash, Bolan kept moving, feeding the GP-30 another caseless round as he ran. Shouted questions in the dark told him his enemies were still confused, unfocused and, he hoped to keep them chasing shadows for at least a short while longer. And to that end…

  Bolan saw the old hotel or inn a hundred yards in front of him, dropped to one knee, and sighted through his LUCIE goggles at the clutch of SUVs parked out in front of it. He sent the VOG round off to do its deadly work. A second was loaded, fired and airborne by the time the first made impact on the windshield of a Great Wall Haval H3 and peeled its roof back with an echo that stung Bolan’s ears.

  The second HE projectile struck the left-rear door of an Infiniti QX56 and punched through it, flushing the luxury SUV’s interior with flames, leaving the body bent and twisted like a beer can crumpled in a biker’s fist. Somehow, one of the hubcaps chose that moment to go sailing through the night, a glinting UFO that vanished when it flew beyond the reach of firelight.

  As before, the fuel spewing from ruptured tanks helped to ignite the other vehicles and saved Bolan the effort of destroying each in turn himself. The central street of Kolmanskop was filled with running, dodging figures, some of them firing short bursts into shadows at suspected enemies, but none coming close to Bolan yet.

  He took a chance, sighting on one, and dropped him with a double-tap from thirty yards. Another ran across his line of fire and joined the other in a dusty wallow, ending face-up toward the desert sky, sand in his sightless eyes. A third veered toward the fallen pair, then reconsidered, spinning off to flee, his mad dash terminated by a 7.62x39 mm round between his shoulder blades.

  Then someone spotted him. But Bolan was prepared for it, already up and running when the shout was raised and soldiers swung their weapons toward him, firing well before they had a target sighted. Bullets swarmed around the Executioner like fat mosquitoes thirsty for his blood, as he dived into cover at the southeast corner of the long-deserted inn.

  * * *

  OSCAR BOAVIDA SAW THE enemy, or thought he did—a shadow-shape running along the rim of firelight toward the inn where Boavida had been hiding moments earlier. He raised his AK-47 for a shot, then lost the figure as he was about to squeeze the trigger.

  Damn it!

  He had a choice to make without delay: collect his men and seek the prowler, or save the time that would be lost and do the job himself. A leader would not hesitate, and yet…

  A surge of self-contempt made the decision for him. Boavida started forward, picking up his pace after a few strides, making it a chase. He would feel foolish if he found himself pursuing one of his own soldiers, but the clothes and gear seemed wrong, as had the shadow-figure’s stature, profile, all of it.

  He had a chance to be a hero. One shot, one moment, could redeem him in the eyes of his subordinates, perhaps even with his superiors. It would not cancel out the losses suffered by the MLF over the past two days, but at the very least it would prove he was no coward, cringing in a bunker while his men took all the risks.

  A line of footprints in the sand led Boavida from the southwest corner of the inn, where there was light enough to see by, into darkness at the rear. He slowed his pace, cursing the drifts beneath his feet that would not let him move in perfect silence. His ears strained for a corresponding sound, to indicate his target was still running, and heard nothing but the crack of weapons firing aimlessly on Kolmanskop’s main street.

  The damned fools would be lucky if they didn’t kill each other. Meanwhile—

  Wait! There was another sound, but it was coming from behind him. Not the sound of footsteps, but of…what? Something approaching from a distance, to the north, and closing rapidly. He stopped dead in his tracks until he’d worked it out.

  A helicopter.

  Boavida knew the MLF had no aircraft, not in Angola or Namibia. Therefore, a helicopter could not be good news—unless, perhaps…

  Was it possible that someone in Windhoek would send him aid at Kolmanskop? Nampol, perhaps…or even the elusive Cubans? Even if the helicopter only used its searchlight to pick out their enemy and mark him for elimination, it would be a help.

  But if the law had turned against them, Boavida reckoned they were finished.

  Should he keep on searching for the shadow-shape he’d briefly glimpsed, or go to meet the aircraft and be done with it, whatever it might be? Another tough decision, but he made it, turning back in the direction of the nearing engine sounds.

  And found the man whom he’d been seeking, standing right in front of him. Something about his face was strange, deformed, as if—

  Night-vision goggles!

  Boavida understood, began to raise his AK-47, but the silent figure got there first. His weapon hammered Boavida backward in
to darkness deeper than the desert night, and silent, where he didn’t have to think about the helicopter or his reputation any more. Nothing but pain, and in another instant, even that was gone.

  * * *

  THE HELICOPTER’S NOISE told Bolan he was out of time. Whether the new arrivals were coming for him, or planned on mopping up the remnants of the MLF, they would be lawmen. He could wreak more havoc on the rebels as he left, but Bolan’s top priority, with Oscar Boavida dead, was getting out of range before he had to deal with any cops.

  The fires would draw the chopper into Kolmanskop. If he was quick enough, Bolan imagined he could put some ground between himself and the approaching force, leave them to deal with Boavida’s remnants in whatever way they chose, while he backtracked to where he’d left his Nissan SUV.

  But walking out, he realized, would take too long.

  He’d blown up more than half the vehicles in Kolmanskop, but that still left three SUVs and one dirt bike to choose from—if he found one with the keys in place. And if Boavida’s men weren’t fleeing at that very moment themselves, from the airborne new arrivals.

  Bolan wasted no more time considering his options. He could see the chopper’s running lights as he dodged soldiers on the move, circling beyond the reach of firelight toward an SUV that sat alone, outside the empty hulk of Kolmanskop’s one-time casino. Peering through the driver’s window, he could see the dangling key fob. No need for security on that score, he supposed, when you were camped out in a ghost town in the middle of the planet’s oldest desert. Who would steal your car?

  Except, perhaps, a passing Executioner.

  The dome light made him wince briefly, but it switched off when he closed the driver’s door. A second later he was rolling without headlights, but he couldn’t kill the daytime running lamps that are a standard feature on most modern cars, worried they might attract the chopper for a strafing run, hoping the fires and random muzzle-flashes visible from Kolmanskop might cover him.