Don Pendleton - Threat Factor

Guleed’s number two was Jama Samatar Hassan, a transplant from the Bakool district, on the Ethiopian border, who had come up the hard way as a militia infantryman turned bandit and smuggler. At twenty-eight, he’d served two prison terms for trafficking in stolen property but ducked indictment for the various suspected murders in his past. Among those was the slaughter of two dozen villagers near Wanlaweyn, in early spring. According to reports from Interpol, the victims had been growing khat and balked at selling to Guleed for half the normal wholesale price. Now, they were in the ground and Guleed had it all, thanks to his strong right arm.

The strongest opposition to Guleed came from one of his ex-lieutenants, twenty-six-year-old Jiddu Abtidoon Basra. According to the file provided by Brognola, Basra had grown jealous of his boss’s wealth and power over time and lobbied for a larger slice of the pie. What he got, instead, was a near-fatal slashing with pangas that left his once-handsome face scarred on the left side and minus one eye, its socket masked by a patch. Basra had been seeking revenge ever since, narrowly flubbing half a dozen opportunities to kill Guleed. Meanwhile, his gang was making headway on Guleed’s own turf—raiding his khat supplies, interdicting some of Guleed’s pirate raiders, and killing his ex-master’s men wherever he found them.

The man coordinating Basra’s insurrection was Nadif Othman Ali, a wiry rodent of a man, birth date uncertain, who seemed to scowl in all his photographs. Confusing prison records indicated that he had been born either in Qardho or Bu’aale, sometime between 1975 and 1980. So far, during his thirty or thirty-five years, he’d served four prison terms and had been held on suspicion of various crimes twice that often. Ali had been sentenced to die for a young woman’s murder in 2001, but he broke out of prison with several other convicts and found shelter with Guleed’s outfit, later switching allegiance when Basra defected.

It was impossible to say how many victims Guleed and Basra had killed, maimed and terrorized during their rein as warlords of Mogadishu. Between them, they reportedly had some two thousand men prepared to murder on command, without question or second thought, and finding new recruits should be no problem in Somalia’s present atmosphere.

Bolan had seen it all before. After a war dragged on so long, whole generations passed from cradle to grave with no concept of peace. They fought and killed because it was expected of them, and because they knew no other way to live.

Bolan knew he couldn’t erase Somalia’s bloody history or clean up Mogadishu, but he could deal with specific targets in a way they’d understand. And if he found the missing Russian hardware, he would do his best to see that it did not remain in lawless hands.

Brognola’s CD-ROM contained a list of what the pirates had collected when they captured the Vasylna. In addition to the big T-90 tanks, and ammo to supply them, there’d been three hundred RPG-29 Vampir antitank grenade launchers, two dozen 9K32 Strela-2 surface-to-air missile launchers, twelve NSV 12.7 mm heavy machine guns, four hundred AKS-74 assault rifles with side-folding stocks, a dozen 9 mm PP-2000 submachine guns, five SV-98 sniper rifles chambered in 7.62 mm and fourteen cases of RGO fragmentation grenades.

Enough, in short, to start—and win—a not-so-small war.

Bolan’s sidekick and guide in his search for that arms cache would be Dirie Waabberi, a native of Mogadishu who’d survived nearly three decades under fire and had prospered as a jack of all trades. Brognola’s file reported that Waabberi was fluent in all four of Somalia’s official languages, plus the regional tongues Af Maay and Af Maxaa. He was unmarried, and his family had been consumed by Mogadishu’s mayhem in the past decade, leaving Waabberi ripe for CIA recruiters who’d offered him cash and a chance to make a difference. He had supplied reliable intel so far, and it was not Waabberi’s fault that there was no effective government in place to use it.

They would be meeting soon, strangers connecting for the first time in a killing zone eight thousand miles away, and Bolan hoped Waabberi was prepared for what would happen next. If he was squeamish, if he harbored any racial prejudice, their collaboration might be doomed from the start. If he was combat ready, on the other hand…

Well, they would see who came out on the other side alive.

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.