Читать книгу Threat Factor - Don Pendleton - Страница 10

Mogadishu

Bolan dived into the backseat of the woman’s car, leaving Waabberi with the shotgun seat. The car surged forward, forcing startled bystanders to leap aside, while Bolan held his captured SMG ready to meet a threat inside the vehicle.

“I think you stepped on someone’s toes back there,” the driver said, and flashed Bolan a quick smile from the rearview mirror.

“Lucky you were passing by, I guess,” he said.

“It’s not coincidence,” she told him, as the gunmen who’d been chasing them burst through the milling crowd and into view.

One of them fired a pistol shot at the escaping car, then all of them together broke in the direction of two cars parked at a nearby alley’s mouth. Before his brunette chauffeur made a sharp left-turn, Bolan saw the shooters pile into the cars.

“I’d like to hear about that later,” he informed her. “Right now, we’re about to gain a tail.”

“We should be introduced, at least,” she said. “Don’t you agree? Mr. Waabberi, I already know, of course.”

“Is that right?”

Bolan’s contact half turned in his seat, glancing at Bolan’s weapon with a horrified expression on his face. “It is a lie, I swear!” he said.

“I should explain myself,” the woman said, still smiling. “While we’ve never met, I have been watching him and feel as if we know each other.”

Behind them, Bolan saw the first chase car appear. One of its headlights was burned out or broken, making it a cinch to recognize.

“Here’s company,” he said.

“I see them,” the driver said, putting on a bit more speed. “But I must introduce myself, at least. Captain Natalia Mironov, of the foreign Intelligence Service. You call it the SVR.”

By any name, it was the former First Chief Directorate of the old KGB, now an independent agency roughly equivalent to the CIA or Britain’s MI6. The SVR was responsible for collecting intelligence and performing any other dirty jobs it might be given outside Russia’s borders, while a separate Federal Security Service covered Russia proper.

“Russians in Somalia,” Bolan said, as the second chase car appeared. It had both headlights, but the left one had been misaligned, giving the vehicle a wall-eyed look.

“And Americans, no less,” Mironov said. “I hope we can cooperate. If not, you’re free to go at any time, of course.”

She tapped the brake, shaving perhaps three miles per hour from their speed. Behind them, Bolan saw the cyclops and its wall-eyed follower begin to close the gap.

“Let’s not be hasty,” he replied.

“By no means,” Mironov said, as she immediately put the pedal to the metal once again.

For all her skill at driving, Mogadishu’s narrow, crowded streets conspired against them. Even if the Russian had been psyched to kill or maim a hundred bystanders, it likely would have stalled her car, instead of helping them escape.

“I have a thought,” she said, “Mr….?”

“Matt Cooper,” Bolan said.

“No rank? No agency?”

“It just gets in the way,” he said, coming a good deal closer to the truth.

“I think we’ll try the old town, yes?” she said, not really asking. “There are fewer shops, and if we have to fight…well, everything is shot to hell already.” Killer logic.

Bolan couldn’t argue with it as he saw three headlights bearing down on them and Mironov roared through another sliding left-hand turn.

SIMEON BOORAMA FELT as if his head were going to explode. His lips and chin were caked with blood from his flattened nose, and his right eye was bleary, swollen half shut. He knew his nose was broken, but the thought of any greater damage was subordinated to his craving for revenge.

One of his men had found him sprawled out in the marketplace and dragged Boorama to his feet, pulling him back into the fight. It would have been a simple thing to leave him where he lay. He would not forget the soldier who had helped him.

Sadly, circumstances being what they were, Boorama’s reputation might demand that he repay his savior with a bullet in the head, to silence any future gossip on the subject of his own incompetence.

We’ll see, Boorama thought, and braced himself against the dashboard of the lead car as it sped after their prey.

Someone had snatched Dirie Waabberi and the white man from his very clutches, and it shamed Boorama that he didn’t have a clue who that might be. He thought he’d glimpsed a white woman behind the wheel of the vehicle they were chasing, but Boorama knew that in his present state he could have been mistaken.

“Get after them!” he snapped at his own driver, as if angry words could make their car go any faster. When the driver cut a surly glance in his direction, Boorama punched the man’s shoulder hard enough to make the car swerve, as he shouted, “Faster, damn you!”

He had made an enemy, but that was life. In his world, fear was more important than respect, while kindness had no place at all.

Boorama wondered if the white man who had struck him also had his submachine gun. It was logical, but anyone could easily have snatched it while he lay unconscious back in the Bakaara Market.

Yet another cause to be ashamed.

At least he had not lost the Tanfoglio TA-90 automatic pistol that was wedged into his belt when he went down. Boorama clutched it now in his right hand, half-turning painfully to make sure that the second carload of his soldiers was behind him, staying close.

In order to redeem himself, he had to kill Waabberi and his white friend, plus whoever had arrived so providentially to offer them a ride. Three heads instead of two. But that meant nothing to Boorama at the moment.

Catching them meant everything.

“What’s wrong with this pezzo di merda?” he demanded, punching the dashboard with his free hand. “Hurry up, you cretino!”

His driver said nothing, but stood on the gas pedal, making the car’s engine whine in response. They were closing in now, and Boorama was weighing the odds of a shot from his window when the lead car braked, swung hard to the left with tires screeching, then roared down a side street.

“It’s Hamarwein, then. The old town. After them!”

His driver followed, mouthing a curse and missing the corner of a building by inches as he cut the turn short. Boorama did all he could to remain in his seat, without checking to see if the second car followed their lead.

Boorama thumbed back his pistol’s hammer and hunched forward in his seat, shaking his head to clear the fog of pain. He instantly regretted it and cursed the man who had humiliated him.

The man he planned to kill within a few short minutes.

“HOW MUCH FARTHER to this old town?” Bolan asked Natalia Mironov.

“Five minutes. Maybe less,” she said.

“We may not have the time,” he answered, and a muzzle-flash exploded from the first chase car, as if to punctuate his words.

That shot missed, but the second scored a ringing hit on Mironov’s trunk or bumper. She muttered a curse, and started swerving as she raced along the narrow street. There wasn’t much leeway for fancy driving, but her skill under the circumstances left Bolan impressed.

He could have tried a burst from the Benelli SMG, but that meant wasting bullets to take out the car’s back window, and he guessed that he’d be needing all of the rounds in its short magazine when they stopped to confront their pursuers. Until then, the best move was to keep his head down and trusting his driver to cook up a plan.

Unfortunately, trust was scarce in Bolan’s world, and trusting Russian agents on short acquaintance was a double challenge.

They cleared the narrow street and sped across a kind of open square, came kissing close to an old fountain that was dry and crumbling into ruins, then roared down another street that seemed more claustrophobic than the last one. Bolan had a fleeting hope they might be saved by accident, when their pursuers split and passed on opposite sides of the fountain, nearly colliding as they cleared it, but the one-eyed lead car surged ahead and held its lead.

“I thought we had them there,” Mironov said. “Those idiots nearly did our work for us.”

“Still, no cigar,” Bolan said.

“We can smoke one when we’re finished with them,” Mironov replied.

“And when would that be?” Bolan asked her.

“Any minute now.”

Bolan had refamiliarized himself with Mogadishu and Somalia by studying maps on his last night in the States. He knew the Hamarwein was close, but Mironov’s zigzag approach had managed to confuse him, even if it didn’t shake their enemies. He was relieved, then, when they cleared the narrow street and rolled into a sort of plaza flanked on every side by buildings that had once been shops.

He had a chance to see that most of them were empty now, their facades bullet-scarred and blackened by flames during one of the city’s innumerable firefights. A couple of the buildings had collapsed entirely, and it seemed that no one was in any hurry to rebuild them.

“Welcome to old town,” Mironov announced, as she slammed on the brakes and cranked the steering wheel, putting her car into a long and noisy slide.

Bolan held until it came to rest, then bolted from the backseat with his SMG and crouched behind his open door. Waabberi did the same thing on the far side of the car, leaving Mironov to use her own door as a shield.

As the pursuit cars reached the plaza, she turned back to look at Bolan and surprised him with a smile.

“Just shoot the fools who are chasing us, not me,” she said. “Okay?”

DIRIE WAABBERI HAD been witness to a hundred shootings in his lifetime, maybe more, but this would be the first where he was a participant. His hands were trembling slightly as they clutched the black Beretta, and he wondered whether he should be the first to fire a shot.

The hunters had already fired at him, of course—not once, but several times. He wondered how many they’d killed or wounded by mistake at the Bakaara Market, but he could not dwell on such things if he wanted to survive the night.

He had to focus on the enemies in front of him and do his best to kill them, hopefully with the assistance of his two new allies.

An American, and then a Russian! It was too much for his mind to cope with, when his life was riding on the line.

The chase cars roared into the plaza, and Waabberi had a momentary fear that they would ram the Russian’s car, but both screeched to a halt in front of him, breaking respectively to right and left. Four men leaped out of each car, weapons in hand, and then a shot rang out before Waabberi had a chance to fire.

Within a heartbeat, every weapon in the plaza opened up, pistols and submachine guns hammering at one another, shiny cartridges clinking on paving stones. All of the cars were taking hits, and he could hear the Russian agent cursing as she fought.

Waabberi’s first selected target was the driver of the second chase car, barely visible behind his open door, some twenty feet downrange. Waabberi’s first shot missed the car completely, while his second struck the door but failed to make it out the other side.

Waabberi ducked a couple of incoming bullets, frowning as an idea came to him. He backed up slightly, then lay down beside Mironov’s car to aim beneath his open door. And as he’d hoped, he had a clean view of his target’s knees.

Waabberi took a breath and held it, squinting with his left eye as his right took aim. He knew he’d only have one chance to get this right. A miss would warn his adversary, and the man would bolt before Waabberi could correct his aim.

His index finger seemed to take forever, squeezing the Beretta’s trigger, then the pistol bucked against his palm and his opponent howled in pain, sprawling into the open as he clutched the bloody ruin of a mangled knee.

Waabberi wasted no time gloating. Still without exhaling, he lined up another shot and put his fourth round through the wounded gunman’s gaping mouth.

Simple.

Perhaps it was his background, all the death that he had witnessed growing up in Mogadishu, but Waabberi felt no pity for the man he’d killed, no sickness at the thought of having snuffed out a human life. The gunman was no better than a snake or scorpion, in his opinion.

All Waabberi felt was sweet relief—and pressing need to drop his other enemies before they did the same to him.

Rising to crouch behind his open door again, he scanned the battleground in search of ready prey.

SIMEON BOORAMA TRIGGERED three quick shots and broke for cover, sprinting toward a burned-out building to his right. He hoped a change of vantage point would help him kill the adversaries who were shooting up his men and cars, before he found himself alone and trapped.

In truth, Boorama didn’t care that much about his men, and both the cars were stolen. If he had to leave the battle site on foot, so be it. All that mattered was eliminating those whom he’d been sent to kill—and the white woman who’d come from nowhere to assist them.

Bullets rattled past Boorama as he ran, head throb bing with the jolt of every stride, sweat burning in his eyes. Boorama nearly reached his goal, then stumbled on the paving stones and sprawled facedown, gasping in pain. He fired a wild shot toward his enemies, then scrambled toward the nearest cover, scraping knees and elbows bloody in the process.

A bullet clipped the heel of Boorama’s left boot as he lurched through the open doorway of a burned-out shop, sending a rough jolt up his leg that echoed in his aching skull. Cursing, he huddled under cover, pausing long enough to catch his breath before he risked another look outside.

Two of his men were down, either dead or wounded, and the three they’d come to kill showed no signs of surrendering. Why should they, when it would mean instant death? Boorama hoped they would run out of bullets soon, and let his soldiers rush them with impunity. But then he felt a surge of panic that he might have no men left when that occurred.

Boorama cursed the white man, who appeared to have his submachine gun, after all. The good news was that he had failed to take the extra magazines Boorama carried in his pockets, and the gun should soon be empty. Then, even with four guns against two, Boorama thought his soldiers should prevail.

Just then, as if his thought had been a curse, he saw another of his men go down, flopping across the pavement like a fish flung out of water. In another instant the man lay still, either dead or unconscious. A useless lump of flesh.

Boorama knew he had to get back in the fight, but he was frightened. The feeling galled him, made him nearly sick with shame. Infuriated by his own weakness, he scrambled to his feet and dropped his pistol’s magazine into his palm. Six or seven rounds remained, but he stuffed it in a pocket and replaced it with another that held fifteen rounds.

Better to be prepared than find himself exposed, unable to return fire from his enemies. If he was swift and bold enough, he might surprise his adversaries and take them down before they recognized the danger on their flank.

If not…

Before logic could rob him of his courage, Boorama broke from cover, charging toward the target from the driver’s side, the TA-90 blazing in his fist. Running and aiming at the same time was a challenge, all the more so with one eye swollen shut and epic pain throbbing inside his head, but rage and a commitment to preserve his reputation drove him forward.

He was halfway to the car and gaining when the white man swung around to face him, sighting down the stubby barrel of Boorama’s submachine gun. Two more shots went wild, before a burst of slugs ripped through Boorama’s chest.

Collapsing to the pavement, slain with his own gun, Boorama wasn’t sure if he should weep or laugh. Instead, he simply died.

THE SLIDE ON BOLAN’S captured SMG locked open as his adversary fell, sprawling, some thirty feet in front of him. The guy was down and out, but so was Bolan’s only ammo magazine, with three or four opponents still confronting him.

He had two ways to go. He could lie back and let his companions finish off the set as best they could, or he could act.

For Bolan, lying back had never been an option.

Good news: he had recognized the last man down, from his loud shirt and battered face, as the same shooter who’d donated the Benelli SMG to Bolan back at the Bakaara Market. Odds were fair that he’d be carrying spare ammunition in the pockets of his baggy cargo pants—and even if he wasn’t, there was still a pistol lying near his outflung hand.

Bad news: the thirty feet that separated Bolan from his goal was open ground. He would be totally exposed to hostile fire, coming and going, all the way.

He hated to distract the woman who had saved him once already, but there seemed to be no choice. Bolan waited until she had paused to feed her pistol a fresh magazine, then said, “Can you cover me?”

She frowned. “What did you have in mind?”

He let her see him drop the SMG’s spent mag and nodded toward the nearby corpse. “A little shopping run,” he said.

“If I were you,” she answered, “I would stress the running part.”

“That’s the plan.”

She nodded then and said, “I’ll do my best. Be quick, eh?”

As she turned away and rose to fire across her open door, he bolted from the cover of the bullet-scarred sedan. There was no point in trying any broken-field maneuvers, since his enemies were all to Bolan’s right, sighting across his path of travel. All that he could do was keep his head down, offer up a silent prayer to anybody listening, and run like hell.

He left the SMG behind and took off.

Two seconds, give or take, and he was at the body. Fumbling with the pocket flaps would use up too much precious time. Instead, he scooped up the Beretta pistol in one hand and gripped the corpse’s collar with the other, dragging the deadweight back toward Mironov’s vehicle and firing as he ran.

Three rounds, in fact, before an empty chamber finished it. By that time, though, he’d reached the car and had started rifling the remains.

The first pocket he tried held three spare clips for the Beretta. Number two Benelli magazines. A third gave up a formidible-looking switchblade knife. He pocketed the blade, reloaded both Italian guns and spent another second charting his next move.

His luck had held so far. Bolan decided it could stand a bit more stress.

“I’m going in,” he told Mironov, rising even as he spoke and rushing past her, angling toward the nearer of the two chase cars.

A single man was hanging on behind its open driver’s door. He’d ducked, perhaps reloading, just as Bolan made his move, and was surprised to find an adversary bearing down upon him when he rose to fire again. A 4-round burst from Bolan’s SMG tore off three-quarters of the gunner’s face and dropped him twitching to the pavement.

That left two, huddled behind the second car.

Bolan considered setting fire to it, but couldn’t trust the plaza’s paving stones to strike a proper spark from ricochets, even if he could hit the fuel tank first and start a spill of gasoline.

Bolan’s companions had the targets pinned, giving him time to circle wide around their vehicle and come in from behind them. One of them saw Bolan coming, tried to raise his SMG too late and took a short burst in the chest. His friend was far too late recovering from the surprise, half-turned in profile when the Parabellum manglers hit him, tore him up beyond repair and put him down for good.

Mironov joined the Executioner beside the corpses, ready with her pistol if one of them tried to pull a Lazarus routine. When she was satified that they were dead, she said, “You run well, for a man…and an American.”

“I do my best,” he said, then nodded toward her car. “Will that still run?”

She smiled again. “Let’s try it and find out.”