Читать книгу Conflict Zone - Don Pendleton - Страница 11

In a rush of panic, Azuka Bankole forgot his own orders and those he’d received from his commander. He tracked the speeding Jeep with his pistol, rapid-firing round after round toward its tires, then the driver, praying for a lucky shot to stop the fleeing vehicle.

Around him, every soldier with a weapon followed his example, laying down a storm of fire that somehow failed to halt the Jeep. How was it possible?

His parents might have said that forest demons were responsible. Bankole had abandoned superstition as a child—or thought he had, at least—and reckoned careless shooting was responsible. He had been taught to squeeze a trigger, not to jerk it, but the lessons learned while practicing on lifeless stationary targets were too easily forgotten in the heat of combat.

Bankole’s pistol slide locked open on a smoking chamber, and he dropped the empty magazine, groping for a replacement from his gun belt. By the time he found it, the Jeep was out of sight, vanished into the dark maw of the forest road that granted access to the camp for vehicles.

Behind it lay chaos.

The Jeep had flattened several of Bankole’s soldiers, and at least two of their tents. From one, a man’s pained voice called out for help. Others, still fit and frantic, had begun to chase the Jeep on foot, firing into the night.

Bankole strained his throat calling them back, knowing that every second wasted gave his enemy a greater lead. As his guerrillas rallied to him, Bankole was on the move, leading them to the motor pool.

“Go after them!” he shouted. “The woman must not get away!”

Whatever happened in the next half hour could decide Bankole’s fate. If he allowed the hostage to escape, he had no doubt that Ekon Afolabi would demand his life in payment for that failure. If his soldiers killed the woman, trying to recapture her, his fate might be the same—but he could offer the defense of having told his men she had to be caught alive.

Bankole’s only other option was to send his men in pursuit, then flee alone in some other direction and try to escape Afolabi’s long reach. The prospect was attractive, for perhaps two seconds, then his mind snapped back to harsh reality.

What did he know of life outside of Delta State, much less outside Nigeria? He would be lost beyond the relatively small and violent world where he had grown into a savage semblance of manhood.

Bankole could run, but he couldn’t hide.

The only realistic choice, then, was to stay and fight; take apparent defeat and turn it into something that would pass for triumph.

Two Jeeps and three dirt bikes were already in hot pursuit of the escaping hostage and her rescuer, whoever he might be. Bankole leaped into the final Jeep, hammered the dashboard starter button with his fist and revved the engine, hesitating only for a moment while three soldiers filled the empty seats.

“Remember that we need the girl alive,” he said before he gunned the Jeep and followed those who’d gone before.

But did they, really?

Granted, he had orders to protect her, but he hadn’t counted on a bold escape. Bankole knew there was a good chance that his men would wound or kill the hostage, either accidentally or for the hell of it. And what would happen to Bankole then?

A sudden inspiration made him smile.

If anything went wrong, it was the white man’s fault for meddling where he didn’t belong. Who was to say that he didn’t kill the woman himself? If he was dead, then he couldn’t dispute Bankole’s version of events.

Perfect, Bankole thought, plunging down the tunnel of the forest road, his headlights burning through the night.

THE JEEP BOLAN HAD chosen was a rattletrap, but it could move. He drove with the accelerator nearly floored, knowing that he was finished if an antelope or some other creature charged out in front of him. He couldn’t stop short at his present speed, and anything he struck would likely wind up in his lap or Mandy’s.

She was swiveled in her seat, up on one knee and watching their trail for any sign of a pursuit. It wasn’t long in coming.

“Dirt bikes,” she informed him half a heartbeat after Bolan saw the first headlight reflected in his trembling, sagging mirror. Two more joined the chase almost immediately, followed farther back by the first Jeep to join the chase.

“Is this as fast as we can go?” she asked, then squealed as their Jeep hit a pothole, nearly pitching her out of her seat.

“Sit down and hang on!” Bolan snapped. “We’re lucky to have wheels at all, but it isn’t a racer.”

“So sorry,” she said. “But I don’t feel like going back into my cage.”

“That won’t happen,” he told her with more confidence than he felt.

Three bikes could mean six shooters, but he doubted they were riding double. Three or four men to a Jeep, however many were behind him on the narrow road. Wherever he was forced to stop and fight, Bolan knew he’d be outnumbered.

Situation normal.

“You’ve got me at a disadvantage,” Mandy said a moment later. “What’s your name?”

“Matt Cooper,” he replied, using the name on his passport.

“I guess my father sent you?”

“Not exactly,” Bolan said, checking the mirror.

Three Jeeps were back there now. The growling dirt bikes had already cut his lead by half.

“What’s that mean?” Mandy asked.

Bolan shot her a sidelong glance and said, “We’ll talk about it later, if there’s time.”

“You mean, if we’re alive?”

“Well, if we’re not, there won’t be much to say.”

She laughed at that, a brittle sound, cut off almost before it left her lips.

“Want me to shoot the bikers?” she inquired.

“Can you?”

She half turned in her seat again, raising the pistol taken from her would-be rapist.

“Let’s find out,” she said.

She spaced her shots, took time to aim, their vehicle leaving the sharp reports behind. After her fourth shot, Mandy yelped, “I got one!”

Bolan’s rearview mirror proved it, as the second dirt bike back in line veered to the right and plunged into the forest. Bolan couldn’t tell if she had hit the driver, his machine, or simply cracked his nerve with a near-miss, but she had taken out one of their enemies, in any case.

“Good work,” he told her.

“I’m not finished yet. I owe these pricks for—”

Bolan saw the muzzle-flashes in his mirror, ducked instinctively and heard one of the bullets from the lead Jeep strike the rear of his.

“Get down!” he warned.

Mandy obeyed, but only to a point. She peered around the backrest of her seat and raised her weapon for another shot. When she’d fired two without apparent hits, she answered, “What the hell. I’d rather die out here than go back in a box and wait to see what happens next.”

He couldn’t fault her logic or her nerve, but Bolan didn’t want to see her killed by stubborn anger. Mandy squeezed off three more rounds, then gave a little squawk and dropped back in her seat.

“Damn it! I’m shot!” she said.

“Show me,” Bolan demanded.

Mandy held her right arm out to him, showed him where blood spotted the sleeve.

“Call it a graze,” said Bolan. “Next time, it could be between your eyes.”

“They aren’t that good,” she said.

“They don’t have to be good, just lucky,” he replied.

The hunters wouldn’t need real skill until he stopped to fight on foot. And how long he could keep the Jeep on the road was anybody’s guess.

THE GRAZE ON Mandy’s arm burned furiously, but she recognized at once that she had suffered no great injury. Untended in the wilds of Africa, the wound might fester, maybe kill her with gangrene, but that took time.

And Mandy Ross knew time was running out.

She’d maybe hit one of the bikers, and she’d keep on trying for the others, but it was ridiculous to think that she could stop them all.

Still, she’d been truthful with the mysterious Matt Cooper. She would rather be shot in the forest than dragged back to camp, raped and tortured to death. If living wasn’t one of Mandy’s options, she would choose the quickest exit she could find.

It suddenly occurred to her that she could turn the borrowed pistol on herself, right here, right now, and end the whole ordeal. But while she might have done so in her prison cell, short moments earlier, the suicide solution didn’t appeal to her now.

Not yet.

Cooper was some kind of hellacious soldier, it appeared, and while there was a chance that he could reunite her safely with her family, Mandy would help in any way she could.

With that in mind, she craned around the stiff back of her seat again and triggered two quick shots at their pursuers. One bike swerved, but didn’t spill, and she supposed the sound she thought might be a bullet striking the lead Jeep had been illusory.

If she had hit the speeding vehicle, she didn’t slow it down.

More flashes from the Jeep now, and a lethal swarm of hornets hurtled past her, one drilling the Jeep’s windshield between her seat and Cooper’s.

Too damned close.

Gritting her teeth, she peered around the seat and fired again.

AZUKA BANKOLE CURSED bitterly, swerving his Jeep from left to right on the forest roadway, trying to keep an eye on the action ahead. He knew that shots were being fired, and he had passed the wreckage of one dirt bike without stopping, but he couldn’t get a fix on what was happening.

And in his haste to join the hunt, he had neglected to pick up a two-way radio before he left the camp. It was a clumsy error, but made little real-world difference, since none of his men in the other Jeeps had radios, either.

So far, only those in the lead vehicle had traded gunfire with the fleeing hostage and her savior. Firing from the second Jeep in line would put the forward troops at risk, while firing from Bankole’s, at the back of the procession, would be worse than useless.

Flooring the accelerator, feeling every bump and dip along the way as sharp blows to his spine and neck, Bankole gained ground steadily, until his grille was no more than eight or nine feet from the tailgate of the vehicle in front of him. At that speed, if the second Jeep stopped suddenly, collision was inevitable.

But he didn’t care.

If possible, he would have swept the other Jeeps and dirt bikes off the road, giving himself free access to the enemy. His men were good enough at fighting in most circumstances, better still when raiding unarmed villages, but they weren’t trained soldiers in any true sense of the word.

They would do their best, but was it good enough?

He had rushed out of the camp with nothing but his pistol, and its magazine was empty. Swallowing embarrassment, he shot an elbow toward the man beside him, ordering, “Reload my gun!”

“What, sir?”

“My pistol. Put in a fresh magazine!”

The soldier nearly blanched at that, but did as he was told, reaching across the space between them, past Bankole’s elbow and the gearshift, to remove his pistol from its holster. He extracted the spent magazine, then found himself with both hands full until he slipped the empty into his breast pocket.

“Sir?”

“Yes? What?” Bankole snapped, eyes on the narrow road.

“The other magazine, sir?”

“On my belt, for God’s sake!”

“Yes, sir.”

Fairly trembling, the soldier leaned closer, snaking an arm beneath Bankole’s, reaching for the ammo pouches on the left front of his pistol belt. The way he cringed and grimaced, he could have been mistaken for a creeping pervert in a porno theater, risking his life for an illicit hand-job.

“Hurry up, damn you!” Bankole gritted.

“Yes, sir!”

At last the job was done, the gun reloaded, safely holstered, while the nervous soldier wiped his sweaty face with a discolored handkerchief. Bankole almost had to laugh at that, but there was no room in his world for levity this night.

More gunshots echoed down the road, stinging his ears as he sped through the rippling sound waves, but the fugitives were still in motion, still retreating at top speed.

Could no one stop them now?

Enraged, he shouted at the troops who could not hear him. “Aim, you bastards! Make those bullets count!”

A BLOWOUT ALWAYS came as a surprise. On city streets, at thirty miles per hour, it was nerve-racking. At sixty-something on a freeway, it could kill you. Same thing in an unfamiliar forest, when you were being chased by twenty thugs with guns.

The blowout didn’t kill Bolan or Mandy Ross, but when a bullet ripped through the Jeep’s left rear tire, Bolan knew they were in for bad trouble.

“Hang on!” he warned, fighting the wheel to keep the vehicle upright and moving for at least a little while longer. They couldn’t travel far, dragging the Jeep’s tail in the mud and cutting furrows with a rusty rim, but just a few more yards…

“When I stop,” he said, “bail out my side into the woods.”

“You’re stopping?”

“Either that, or slow to a crawl and let them kill us where we sit.”

“So stop already. Jeez!”

Bolan slammed on his brakes and cranked the steering wheel hard-left, nosing the Jeep into a gap between two looming trees. Another second saw him out and seeking cover, slipping the Steyr AUG off its taut shoulder sling. Mandy Ross followed Bolan, then passed him and knelt by a tree of her own, gun in hand.

There was no time to talk about strategy, optimal targets or anything else. Headlights blazed in his eyes, wobbling this way and that as the bikers reacted and tried to avoid the ambush, framed in light from the Jeeps at their back.

They were just shy of good enough. One guy laid down his bike, rolling clear in the dirt, while the other veered off to his right—Bolan’s left—and plowed into a tree.

The Executioner fired at the closer one first, semiauto, one round through the chest as he lurched to his feet and then tumbled back down in a sprawl. If he wasn’t dead, he was well on the way.

Number two had been dazed when his bike rammed the tree, but he came up with pistol in hand and got off two quick rounds in the heartbeat of life he had left. Bolan’s second shot punched the guy’s left eye through the back of his head. The soldier was dead on his feet, reeling through one more short step before he collapsed, leaving Bolan three Jeeps and all hands aboard to contend with.

High beams washed over the scene, bleaching tree trunks and ferns, forcing Bolan to squint. He lost sight of Mandy for a moment, then her pistol was banging away at the enemy. Two, three, four shots in a row, echoing through the woods.

And had she scored?

The lead Jeep swerved from Mandy’s barking gun and ran over the second biker Bolan had put down, pinning his corpse beneath one of its tires. The occupants sprang clear, using their vehicle for cover as the others arrived. If any of them had been hit by Mandy’s fire, it didn’t show.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN a standoff, then, but Bolan didn’t plan to hang around to trade shots with the MEND gunners until sunrise. He’d already beamed a silent signal from a small transmitter on his combat harness to a satellite miles overhead, from which it would rebound to a receiver Jack Grimaldi carried with him.

The scrambled signal came down to a single word.

Ready.

Meaning that Bolan had succeeded in retrieving Mandy Ross, and they were on their way to rendezvous with the Stony Man pilot, to be airlifted from a selected hilltop to the K-Tech Petroleum complex in Warri.

There’d been no way to explain that they were being chased by gunmen bent on killing them, that it might slow them or that Grimaldi might wind up waiting in vain for passengers who never showed.

“Ready” meant Grimaldi would be airborne by now and on his way. Another loop over the Gulf of Guinea, then the run toward shore beneath radar. To find…what?

The ace pilot could wait a little while, but not forever. If they meant to catch that ride, they had to move.

Bolan palmed a frag grenade, yanked the pin and pitched the bomb overhand, across the road and into the trees where his enemies clustered. He hadn’t warned Mandy, and the blast brought a little squeal from her lips, but she recovered and had her piece ready when two of the MEND gunners lurched from cover.

Bolan took the taller of them with a head shot, and was swinging toward the second when he heard Mandy’s pistol popping again, four shots in rapid fire. At least one found its target, spinning him and punching him back toward the trees with an odd little hop before falling facedown.

Bolan left him to Mandy, in case the guy got up again, but she’d already shifted to fire at the other guerrillas concealed in the tree line. Two more shots, and Bolan saw her pistol’s slide lock open on an empty chamber.

That would leave her with one magazine of fifteen rounds, assuming it was fully loaded when he’d pulled it from the dead man’s ammo pouch. He couldn’t help her if she burned through that too quickly, but with any kind of luck, their problem might’ve been resolved by then.

To which end, Bolan lobbed another frag grenade a few yards to the left of where his first had landed, waiting for the smoky flash and cries of pain. Before the echoes faded, he was up and moving, charging across the road on a diagonal tack, falling upon his enemies while they were still dazed and disoriented.

Hoping Mandy wouldn’t shoot him by mistake.

A couple of the gunmen saw him coming, but they couldn’t manage a response in time to save themselves. He stitched them both with 3-round bursts of 5.56 mm manglers, sweeping on to spray the other four still on their feet. Then he switched to semiauto, dealing mercy rounds to those who had been gutted by the shrapnel from his two grenades.

And silence, finally, along the forest road.

Until Mandy called, “Cooper? Are you all right?”

“We’re clear,” he told her, easing from the shadows, back into her line of sight. “Nobody left on this side.”

“Jesus.” She had a vaguely dazed expression on her face as she emerged from the tree line, pistol dangling, asking him, “Are they all dead?”

“They are,” he told her. “And we’re running late.”

“For what?”

“Our lift back to your father.”

“Daddy? Really?”

“I didn’t go through all of this to tell you lies,” Bolan said.

“The Jeep’s wrecked,” she reminded him.

“We’ve got more wheels to choose from,” he replied. “You feel like two, or four.”

“Whatever’s fastest.”

“Two it is,” he said, slinging his rifle as he moved toward the nearest dirt bike.

GRIMALDI BROUGHT a chopper for his second run into Nigeria. There’d be no room to land a plane, and paperwork had been completed—forged, of course, but still impressive—on the whirlybird.

It was a Bell 206L LongRanger, seating seven, powered by an Allison 250-C20B turboshaft engine. Its 430-mile range was adequate, since he’d be refueling in Warri, and its cruising speed of 139 miles per hour would put him over the LZ in two hours and change, if he met no opposition along the way.

And if he did, well, he was done.

The Bell wasn’t a gunship, and it wouldn’t outrun military aircraft if the Nigerian air force happened to spot him, despite his running underneath their radar. At last count, they had six Mil Mi-24 helicopters on tap, assuming they didn’t send one of their fifteen Chengdu F-7 jet fighters to blast him out of the sky with rockets or twin 30 mm cannons.

Either way, he’d be dead, leaving Bolan and his damsel stranded. Which was simply unacceptable.

Pickups were always worse than drops. This time, he’d actually have to set down on the ground while Bolan and the girl scrambled aboard. If they had company, the best that the ace pilot could do to help was wave the Springfield .45 he carried in a shoulder rig and tell them what he thought about their ancestors.

But leaving without Bolan and his charge wasn’t an option. Never had been, never would be.

Only if Grimaldi reached the arranged LZ and saw them dead, beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, would he return alone the way he’d come. And what would happen then?

A sat-phone message to the Farm, for starters, bearing news that everyone on-site had dreaded from the day they first broke ground.

And after that?

Grimaldi didn’t want to think about what Brognola would do, how he’d react. Whether retaliation would be ordered, or the whole thing would be written off as fubar from the jump.

Who would they even target, in retaliation for eliminating Bolan? Could they pin it on an individual or group of heavies beyond question? Would the scorched-earth treatment help to ease their suffering?

Grimaldi couldn’t answer that, but if it happened, he intended to be part of the first wave.

And then all thoughts of loss and grief were banished as he saw Bolan astride a dirt bike, on the chosen hilltop, with a young blonde just dismounting. Leave it to the big guy to pick up a stylish date.

Smiling, Grimaldi took the chopper down.