Don Pendleton - Desert Fallout

Bolan stepped into the open, keeping the launcher at low ready. There was the chance that there was a second squad of sharpshooters among the rooftops, but there hadn’t been a shot fired in the minute that Bolan was conversing with the Shabaab. “I think it’s clear.”

“What the hell was that?” Kamau asked. “And never mind the name, who are you?”

Bolan didn’t lie with his answer. “I’m a free agent who needs a lot of firepower. What say we grab the diamonds and get the hell out of this place.”

Masozi pointed at the storehouse. “If you can sweep them up and sift them from the ashes, they’re all yours.”

Bolan grimaced looking at the gouts of smoke pouring out of the shattered warehouse.

“So much for that plan,” Bolan grumbled. “Let’s get a closer look at the guys who shot at us then.”

Kamau frowned, but after a moment of consideration, he nodded in agreement. Leading he way, Uzi locked in his massive fist, he approached the half-wrecked barracks. Through the shattered wall, Bolan and his companions could see the bullet-riddled bodies of Shabaab militiamen, slumped on their cots or strewed across the floor. It was a complete slaughter, and Bolan felt better.

The kind of commandos that Bolan could consider soldiers of the same side wouldn’t engage in wholesale execution of unarmed opponents. The corpses were evidence of bottomless ruthlessness that trained U.S. special operations forces wouldn’t resort to. None of the Shabaab gunmen had even gotten close to a sidearm. It was one thing to end the life of an armed sentry on patrol, even after knocking him out, but shooting unarmed, half-naked, half-awake men as they lay in their berths was a sign of brutal, cold-blooded murder.

Kamau sneered as he looked at the carnage. “Bastards. What kind of coward shoots a sleeping man?”

Bolan looked at the tall Somali and held his tongue. He had to remember that the Shabaab had declared that they would execute any American sailors they encountered after the United States Navy executed several pirates who’d held a U.S. merchant captain hostage. Looking back at the littered corpses in the barracks, he remembered that these sleeping men could easily have taken another ship and gunned down unarmed crew members.

Their loss wasn’t one that the Executioner would mourn, even if he would have waited until they were awake, dressed and armed to put bullets into them.

“Give me a boost to the roof,” Bolan said. “I’ll help you up then.”

The Somali giant nodded and laced his fingers together, lifting Bolan to the top of the building. It was empty except for a couple of fallen weapons and a stripped-off load-bearing vest. Bolan reached down and gripped Kamau’s massive paw. Had not the Executioner’s muscles been honed by countless hours of exercise and almost daily combat, the three-hundred-pound bulk of the Somali giant would have proved a strain. Even so, Bolan was glad that Kamau dug the waffle tread of his boots into the wall to assist in getting to the roof.

“They grabbed their wounded and dead and ran,” Bolan noted. “They left behind a vest and a couple of weapons, though.”

Kamau pulled a flashlight from his belt, and Bolan did the same. It was to examine the evidence left behind by the mysterious marauders, but it was also to look for weakened sections of roof. Neither man relished the potential of crashing to the ground if he took a misstep.

Bolan crouched by the vest and saw that it had been sliced off. Blood soaked into the ballistic nylon of the shell showed that one of the commandos had shorn off the garment in order to reach a chest or neck injury. Kamau, on the other part of the roof, prodded an assault rifle with the tip of his machete, just in case the weapons left behind were rigged with booby traps.

“They were too busy trying to escape to leave us a surprise,” Bolan said.

“Not that you’re taking chances by pawing that assault vest,” Kamau noted.

Bolan nodded. “Whoever it was unsnapped the pouches of spare ammunition and took them with when they bugged out.”

“That’s very odd,” Kamau said. “No spent casings.”

Bolan frowned. “They probably had brass catchers hooked up to their guns.”

Kamau squinted at the circle of light as he ran it across the rifle. Bolan recognized the gun as a Steyr-AUG, an A-3 model, from the rails mounted on it. The compact bullpup allowed a full-length barrel on a short, handy rifle. The weapon was the size of a submachine gun yet had the punch of a rifle. Bolan had used the Steyr quite a few times in the past. Its plastic furniture was dull, dark slate gray, in variance with the usual olive-drab shell that the AUG was adorned with. Kamau flipped over the rifle, and in the glow of the flashlight beam, Bolan could see frayed fabric hooked to a collar around the ejection port.

“They took their brass with them,” Kamau noted. “Probably will ditch it off a pier.”

“Those are paranoid levels of operational security,” Bolan said. He picked up the Steyr and worked the spring-loaded bolt handle. The chamber was empty. Whoever had sanitized the weapon had thought to take the round in the breech, as well as the remainder of its magazine. “We won’t get fingerprints off this, nor do we have serial numbers on this thing.”

“Fingerprints,” Kamau noted. “You have your own crime lab or something, Cooper?”

“I’ve got a few friends who can look through Interpol databases for relevant information.”

“How do we know you’re not a policeman?” Kamau asked.

“Would a policeman drop a grenade in a suspect’s lap?” Bolan countered.

“This is Somalia, Cooper. We chop off thieves’ hands and hurl rocks at the heads of women who won’t let their husbands have their way with them,” Kamau answered. There was a hint of a sneer on the big Somali’s lips, a hint of disgust at the behavior of the men who claimed to be the law. “Blowing the hell out of a man with a grenade would make you a saintly police officer, because you at least give a quick death.”

“I’m as much of a cop as you are, Kamau,” Bolan said. In all likelihood, the Executioner figured he hadn’t told the man a lie. Bolan was no officer of the law. He wasn’t some civil servant with a .44 Magnum. The Executioner was his own man, a warrior who haunted the shadows of the world, seeking out the criminals and psychopaths who haunted decent citizens of every country. Kamau, with his hint of moral indignation at the abuses of the Shabaab and the Islamic Courts Union in Kismayo, was someone who was more likely a policeman, working undercover. If he wasn’t working for a government law-enforcement agency, then he was likely a lone crusader, much like Bolan himself.

Kamau looked at Bolan under a heavily hooded beetle brow, suspicion dancing in his eyes like reflected firelight. It was a moment that the Executioner had experienced many times before, facing down a man who could have been either friend or foe. Though Kamau could easily have been mistaken for a muscle-bound brute, he had a sharp awareness in his gaze. The Somali strongman buried his glimmer of curiosity and extended a hand. “You mess with Masozi, I’ll tear you apart.”

Bolan nodded. “I don’t doubt that. The Egyptian…”

“Mubarak,” Kamau interjected.

“Mubarak cheated me. I only came to show him my displeasure,” Bolan said.

Kamau looked around at the spatter of blood. “You were displeased by these people?”

“Yeah,” Bolan answered.

“Then let’s file our complaint together,” Kamau suggested, a grin forming on his lips.

Bolan nodded. That Kamau offered Mubarak’s name indicated that there was a foundation of conspiratorial trust between the two men. Cop or crusader, the big man was offering a shred of cooperation.