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“What would you like to inspect first?”
“You will show me—”
“This?” Bolan’s sucker punch snapped the bridge of Osmani’s sunglasses and the septum beneath. The right uppercut lifted Osmani onto his toes and sat him down. Pienaar and Tshabalala exploded into synchronized flying rugby tackles that pushed two of the men holding their rifles into the dust. Bolan spun 360 degrees and his spinning back-fist clouted Osmani’s driver like a ball and chain. Nelsonne’s leg flew upward in a goose step from hell and her savate kick toppled a man, spitting teeth as he fell to the ground. Bolan looked for his next opponent.
His team had the situation well in hand.
The Executioner turned his head just in time to see Tien Ching relax his hands. Three men lay fallen at his feet in moaning ruin. Ochoa stood over a man who clutched his groin and vomited. Mrda had his man in a stranglehold and was easing him down to the ground. Onopkov rubbed his head and lit a cigarette. His man lay on the ground with an egg-size lump between his rolling eyes. The Kong brothers gleefully stomped the truck driver who lay in a ball trying to cover himself.
Bolan watched with admiration as Ceallach pressed his opponent over his head and hurled him against the grille of the truck. “That’s for you, wee man!” he roared. Wee man bounced brutally off the bumper and fell fetal into the dust.
Bolan waved the Kong brothers off. “Enough.”
Shartai gave the truck driver a last kick for good measure, then the brothers began walking up and down the line of violence, collecting weapons.
Bolan looked at Grimaldi. “Where were you?”
The pilot waggled the manifest. “Someone had to hold the clipboard.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
“No problem.” The pilot looked meaningfully into the mounting storm. “Can I go now?”
“Yeah, you’re out of here.” Bolan turned to his team. “Haitham, Shartai, load their weapons into the back of our truck. Speaking of weapons, Lucky, break ours out. Goose, T-Lo, burn the command vehicle. Who here is good at tying up people?”
Nelsonne smiled winsomely. “I am quite talented at securing men.”
Bolan grinned. He bet she was. “Secure the prisoners. Rad, Val, help her and then load them in the back of the truck. Leave them any water they brought. Confiscate any phones or radios. Sancho, disable the truck engine, and I mean permanently, then help Scotty get the canvas top on over the prisoners. Once you’ve finished your jobs I want everyone to go to the Mog and Lucky will issue you weapons.” Bolan watched as his team set about their tasks with well-oiled precision. “We’re out of here in twenty.”
4
The Sudan
The dust storm died at dusk. The team set up camp for the night in a dry creek bed and strung camouflage netting across the three vehicles to form a covered camp. It was a cold camp, as well. They kept no fire, and the heating elements of the MREs were used in the back of the truck. Bolan walked over to the Unimog. Nelsonne sat in the cab monitoring the radio. Everyone was bundled against the sudden chill. “Any chatter?”
“Nothing on the captain, but I suspect his superiors keep him on a loose leash. He has carte blanche to commit his crimes, and they demand their cut when he reports in. I don’t think anyone will go out looking for him until tomorrow, perhaps the day next.”
“You think he’ll come after us?”
Nelsonne sighed. “You should have killed him.”
“That would have drawn the wrong kind of attention. He was humiliated, and he’s going to have to explain how he got his ass kicked to his superiors. I’m betting he won’t. He’s going to pay off whoever pulls him and his men out of that stalled truck. If he tries to come after us, it’s going to be a private vendetta. I’d like to think I forestalled any official notice of our departure.”
“You have a gorgeous mind.” Nelsonne sighed again longingly. “I would still like to have seen you kill him.”
“It may still come to that.”
Ceallach appeared at the other cab door. He held a couple of steaming coffee mugs and passed them out. “Bit of all right this morning, then.”
“Yeah, you gorilla-slamming one of Osmani’s men was pretty impressive.”
The Briton made a self-deprecating noise. “Call that a ‘potato toss’ back home.”
Bolan knew Ceallach hadn’t come to reminisce about the morning brawl. “What’s on your mind, Scotty?”
“Been talk among the lads.”
“What kind of talk?” Bolan prompted.
“Well, we’re feeling a bit like mushrooms, then, aren’t we?”
It was a mantra invented by U.S. Special Forces during the Vietnam War.
Mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed on shit.
Ceallach sipped coffee and turned a contemplative eye to the Sudanese night. “Well, you wouldn’t hear me saying it… .”
Bolan decided to give a little. “The target is a high-value individual, and may require forcible extraction out of a refugee situation.”
Ceallach nodded knowingly. “You know, Striker? I’ve seen this movie. Wrong part of Africa, but in the end everyone dies but you and the sexy bird.”
“I saw that movie, too.” Bolan nodded. “Wasn’t bad.”
“Is there a sexy bird, then?” He gave Nelsonne a wink. “Besides the one we already brought along?”
“There is,” Bolan stated. He slid out of the cab. “I’m going to check the perimeter.”
“I’ll stay here and guard Russo.”
Nelsonne smirked.
Bolan scooped up his rifle.
Lkhümbengarav had issued weapons just before the convoy had headed out, and grumbling had ensued immediately. Ceallach went so far as to give it the raspberry. Bolan’s team were all spec ops or at least elite-unit veterans. It had been some time since they had seen wood-and-gunmetal-blue weapons rather than black plastic and matte-black Parkerized steel. That wasn’t quite true. They saw it often, but almost always in the hands of the hapless people opposing them.
The Chinese Type 81 rifle looked like a stretched version of an AK. The one nod to the twenty-first century was the forward-mounted optical sight that John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Stony Man Farm’s armorer, had mounted where the rear iron sight used to have been. In its favor, the rifle could fire the ubiquitous Russian .30-caliber ammo littering the Sahel, it came equipped with rifle grenade-launching rings, and Bolan’s team was currently dripping in them.
Mrda was on sentry duty. The Serb spoke quietly across the link. “Striker.”
“Yeah, Rad?”
“Contact.”
“All units, arm up. Prepare to break camp. Everyone get your night-vision eyes on. Drivers, get behind your wheels but do not start your engines. Sancho! Haitham! With me!”
Ochoa appeared at Bolan’s elbow in an eyeblink. He had volunteered for the role of the soldier’s right-hand man, unasked for but with admirable will. Haitham loped out of the darkness. “Striker-man!”
Bolan put a finger to his lips. Haitham fell into formation and the three warriors jogged toward Mrda’s position. They stopped running and quietly climbed the ladderlike clay side of the arroyo. They stretched out on either side of Mrda. The Serb was staring intently through the scope of his Dragunov sniper rifle into the wasteland. “They’re coming straight toward us, Striker.”
Bolan brought up his binoculars.
It was a scene he had seen more times than he could count. The people walked and limped in a small mob. Everything they owned they carried. The lucky ones had blankets wrapped around them against the evening cold. There were far too many women, children and the elderly, and far too few men and boys. They hunched and searched the sky for the sound of jets or rotors. They cast fearful looks behind them for the terror that had driven them into the desert night. Bolan saw no weapons beyond walking sticks and crutches.
“Jesus,” Ochoa muttered. “‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…’”
“‘Yearning to breathe free,’” Bolan continued. “‘The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.’”
Ochoa turned to Bolan. “Jesus, Striker! You gave me goose bumps!”
“You been to the Statue of Liberty, Sancho?”
“No.” Ochoa grinned beneath his night-vision goggles. “But I’ve been to the Rio Grande.”
Bolan snorted. “You’ll do, Sancho.” He clicked his com link. “Scotty, bring up the SAW. I also need a canteen of coffee. Put a lot of sugar and powdered cream in it.”
“Roger that, Striker. On the double.”
Mrda’s sniper rifle never wavered from the refugees. “How do we play it?”
“Me, Sancho and Haitham are going to go talk to them. You and Scotty are going to cover us.”
Ceallach trotted up the arroyo with his Type 81-1. It was simply a Type 81 assault rifle with a longer, heavier barrel, a bipod and a 75-round drum. The Briton handed Bolan the canteen, then snapped open the legs of the bipod and took position next to Mrda. “Bob’s your uncle, Striker!”
Ochoa sighed. “I don’t understand a word he says.”
“Let’s take a walk.” Bolan walked out into the night flanked by Ochoa and Haitham. They covered about a hundred yards and stopped. Bolan watched the mob blindly approach through his night-vision goggles. At fifty yards he pushed up the device on top of his head and took a glow stick out of his web gear. He gave the stick a bend and a shake and a green glow filled the night. The platoon of refugees immediately came to a halt. Several individuals bolted from the group in random directions. Bolan stood with his rifle slung and waved in a friendly fashion. Haitham called out in Arabic. An old man and an old woman detached themselves from the group. Each wore a gray humanitarian-relief-issue blanket like a shawl and each leaned on a stick. The two came forward warily. The old man had an ancient-looking Sudanese arm dagger strapped just below his shoulder. Haitham nodded to the elderly couple and exchanged quiet words with them.
He turned to Bolan. “They are Sirel and Mina. They are Christians, and displaced farmers.”
Bolan uncapped the canteen and held it out. Sirel caught the smell of coffee and insisted that Mina drink first. Sirel waved his arms and spoke rapidly. Haitham translated.
“They say bad men attacked their camp, though they got warning across the missionary radio and managed to leave. They fear the bad men are still looking for them.”
Ochoa rolled his eyes. “What do they have that anyone would want?”
“Women,” Bolan said. “And children. They’re commodities around here.”
Ochoa turned his head and spit. “Christ wept.”
“Haitham,” Bolan said, “ask them if it’s Captain Osmani they’re afraid of.”
Mina spoke for the first time. She started speaking low, but she began waggling her stick and speaking in greater and greater outrage. “Mina says that Osmani is bad. Everyone knows who he is. He comes and he takes any gold or silver or medicine, but these men are worse. They come on horseback. They take everything, and they are led by a terrible individual called Yellow Mnan. They say he keeps hyenas in his main camp and feeds people to them.” Haitham stopped translating. “Something about him being an…evil ghost?”
Bolan considered that. “Ask her if Mnan is black like you but has skin like me.”
Mina nodded and made the sign against the evil eye.
“He’s an albino.” Bolan knew how much of a badass an albino had to be to rise to a position of leadership in a genocidal civil war.
Mina continued.
“Anything Mnan does not want, he burns,” Haitham said. “Anyone Mnan does not want, he kills.” He frowned. “And Mina says when they kill they take their time.”
“Sound like some real loco hombres, Jefe,” Ochoa added.
“Janjaweed,” Bolan said.
Sirel and Mina flinched in unison.
Ochoa brightened. “Ganja weed?”
“Janjaweed, Sancho. It’s an Islamist militia. They were originally drawn from the nomadic tribes in East Darfur. The Sudanese government used them to try to pacify the rebelling farming tribes who were mostly Christian and Native African animists. The lines got blurred pretty quickly. At one point it was rumored the government in Khartoum was emptying the prisons, giving each man a horse and an AK, saying, ‘Go west, young man.’ They were widely accused of genocide.”
“Jesus…”
“Jesus is right, Sancho. They’re real bad hombres, and loco.” Bolan did a quick head count and clicked his com link. “Russo, I need thirty-seven protein bars and the same of the bottled waters.”
“Sacre bleu!” The French agent sounded bemused. “Do I detect a big, fat heart in that American chest?”
“Just do it.” He turned to Haitham. “Ask them how far behind Mnan and his Janjaweed men are.”
Sirel spoke for long moments. Haitham looked as if he might cry. “Sirel says his people are the dead, walking in dust. They leave little to follow unless one of them dies. He says Mnan probably does not know where they are, but he will be roaming for his next prey.”
“Jefe?” Sancho asked.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t like this Mnan. I don’t like him at all.”
“Me, neither, Sancho.”
Nelsonne walked up with Onopkov behind her. The lanky Russian carried a big box. The refugees were scared of Bolan and his group, but they recognized international aid immediately and swarmed forward for food and water. Nelsonne smiled, chucked chins and passed out food and water and hugs like a pro. More than the concentrated calories and desperately needed hydration, the woman was passing out empathy, and hope. She was also quickly interviewing each person she fed. The French agent was also cataloging interviews as she distributed aid. When the last elderly person had cracked the cap on his water bottle and the last child had crinkled open the wrapper of his food bar, Nelsonne rose and leaned in to Bolan. “Tell me.”
“What?”
“Tell me we’re going to wipe the Sudan with this Mnan.”
“The French do have the term ‘mission creep,’ I assume?”
Bolan had to factor in the fact that Nelsonne was an intelligence agent and quite possibly had her own agenda, but the woman seemed to be getting genuinely worked up about the refugees. “Then why did we stop and give them food? We fatten them up for slaughter?”
“To get intel? Because we couldn’t have them walk on top of us and set up camp?” Bolan suggested.
“We’re going to kick Mnan’s ass.”
“We just might teach him not to go our way.” Bolan watched the refugees as they finished their rations. They sat huddled together, literally leaning against one another to hold themselves up. Half had already fallen into exhausted sleep. Some couldn’t help themselves and tore into the rations Nelsonne had issued for the morning. “Or theirs.”
“So we kick his ass?”
