Desert Fallout

Lobotomized by the razor-sharp blade, the pirate lost his grip on the FN FAL battle rifle he carried. Bolan released the handle on his knife and caught the big gun before it could clatter on the ground.

The Somali pirates skidded to a halt, gawking now that their opponent was suddenly in possession of a full-powered automatic weapon. Bolan let the partially spent Beretta fall to the ground, his trigger finger caressing the assault rifle to life. A volley of 7.62 mm NATO thunderbolts tore into the distracted rifleman who had been stopped by a collision with his dead partner. At over 2500 feet per second, the 165-grain rounds plowed aside bone and flesh like bulldozers.

“Get back! Get back!” another rifleman shouted in warning. Bolan swung the assault rifle around and took off the gunner’s head with a single bullet through the chin.

Retreating gunmen poured fire from their AKs into the car, but the fender and engine block proved sufficient to stop the much lighter 7.62 mm COMBLOC rounds that they fired. Knowing that their enemy was implacable and now much more heavily armed than he was when he’d whittled down their numbers with only a pistol, the Somali raiders retreated toward their compound.

Bolan gave them a few seconds’ lead, retrieving his Beretta, his knife and a bandolier of ammunition for the FN rifle he’d acquired.

Bolan checked his Beretta for any damage from its sudden meeting with the dirt. It was in perfect working order, so he slipped it back into its shoulder holster, keeping in mind that it had a few rounds missing from its magazine. The FAL was given a reload, simply because he had the luxury of seven full boxes for the rifle. The partially spent magazine went into the empty pouch on the bandolier. Fully armed, the big American scanned for signs that one of the Somali gunmen had hung back, ready to take a shot at him.

No snipers were in evidence, and Bolan took off on the trail that the remaining compound guards had left behind them. As the only white man in the streets, Bolan knew he’d draw a lot of attention. He’d lost track of a shipment of diamonds illegally mined across the continent in Liberia. Actually, it wasn’t a matter of losing the shipment. He had determined where the bloodstones were going—the port city of Kismayo to be exact. However, Bolan fell behind in pursuit of the diamonds in order to free the slaves who had been sent to hard labor by Liberian militiamen who were still sympathetic to al Qaeda, the Hizbul Shabaab. The precious gems were going to Kismayo as part of a plan to reinforce the finances for their pirates operating out of the hard-line Islamist-controlled southwestern coast of Somalia. Both the Ethiopian army and the Islamic Courts Union had tried to tame the port city, but there was still violent lawlessness.

Unfortunately, the ICU was standing by its claim of Kismayo, even after being pushed into retreat by the Ethiopians and Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, and were reluctant to act against the renegade Shabaab militia, which had worked so diligently as an impromptu special forces assisting the Islamic Courts’ military units against the Ethiopians.

It didn’t bode well for the country that the authorities turned a blind eye to Shabaabist activities that included kidnapping Western journalists and murdering unarmed and wounded enemy soldiers in their hospital beds.

Bolan wasn’t in Kismayo to determine the legitimacy of the ICU and the Taliban-like enforcement methods of their youth wing. He was here to make sure the murderous thugs who collaborated with slavers wouldn’t profit from the blood and sweat of Liberians kidnapped and abused on the other side of the continent.

So, walking in public, his general description known by the smugglers, was simply the best way to home in on the profiteers. The trail of wounded or frightened Shabaab militiamen was clear as they rushed back to their home base.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Bolan whispered softly.

He continued his pursuit, knowing that every moment he delayed, the longer the Shabaab gunmen would have to prepare against his assault.

ORIF MASOZI FROWNED as Ibrahim Mubarak patted the crate. Masozi’s briefcase full of diamonds was supposed to go toward buying rocket launchers for his fellow pirates. The crate, however, didn’t look as if it contained top-of-the-line Egyptian-issue 84 mm Carl Gustav recoilless rifles and the big, powerful rounds of ammunition they fired.

“What the hell is this?” Masozi asked. They shared the Arabic language, but the dialects were far enough removed from each other, and Masozi’s native Arabic was flavored with Somali phrases and dialects. They were forced to converse in English.

The Egyptian smiled to his Somali trading partner. “A little something extra for the Shabaab.”

Masozi’s frown deepened, and he was tempted to brush his fingertips over the 9 mm MAB pistol under his untucked white shirt. “The dimensions on that crate are all wrong for military armor-piercing shells and their launchers.”

“You’ve got your recoilless rifles,” Mubarak returned. He pointed at a pair of containers.

Masozi did some quick mental math, and realized that there was only room in the two standard crates for three-quarters of the shipment he’d needed. “Son of a bitch! You shorted me on the firepower, and now you’re making up for it with what?”

Mubarak pried open the crate with a crowbar. “Good stuff.”

Masozi looked and saw there were two Egyptian jars. “Artifacts? Who are we going to sell secondhand Egyptian treasure to?”

“You could throw the jars away for all I care,” Mubarak said. “They’re only replicas.”

Masozi took a deep breath, his patience starting to fade. “Give me a good reason not to open up your idiot skull, Mubarak.”

“Seeds of the castor oil plant, Orif,” Mubarak explained. “Ricinus communis, in Latin.”

Masozi’s eyes widened as he looked in the open-topped jar. “Ricin.”

Mubarak smiled. “The plants originated on this continent, my friend. And I’m a little off in the actual botanical title of this particular strain.”

Masozi raised an eyebrow. “But you can process this stuff into ricin.”

Mubarak nodded. “A particularly powerful strain. Just the thing your people would need to push back against the Ethiopians and the TFG.”

Masozi looked at the seeds, temptation tugging at him for a brief moment, then his frown returned.

“Weapons of mass destruction bring down some serious heat,” Masozi said.

“This is Somalia. The Americans went after North Korea, and lost. North Korea developed nuclear weapons, and all those cowards could do is negotiate. They were murdered up the coast in Mogadishu, and they will never come back. The sentiment among those who would have the courage to go against the Islamic revolution here is that Africa isn’t worth the effort. You don’t see them landing in the Sudan, or invading Libya. They’ll turn a blind eye, and you can poison all the Christians and Ethiopians you want,” Mubarak said.

Masozi ran his fingers over the case full of diamonds. “Why not sell this to someone with some real backing?”

“Because Syria already has those markets filled,” Mubarak replied.

“Don’t try to screw with me, Ibrahim,” Masozi snarled. “If your group had real, viable weapons of mass destruction, you wouldn’t be fucking around with a bunch of people who can barely afford rubber rafts and recoilless rifles and ammunition.”

Mubarak squeezed the skin between his eyebrows, his eyes clenched shut as he fought off a wave of frustration. “Fine, you don’t want it, keep the third of the diamonds that would have gone to the missiles I didn’t bring.”

“Don’t get testy with me. I wanted that firepower so that we could make damn sure that we could deal with the gunboats sent to escort freighters rolling past the Horn,” Masozi said. “Even if we have ricin on our side, how is that going to help against a twenty- or thirty-foot craft bristling with cannon?”

“It’s for whatever ground forces the TFG and Ethiopian government send after you,” Mubarak replied.

Masozi looked at the seeds in the jar. “Are they safe to touch?”

Mubarak nodded. “They haven’t been processed.”

“And if we do process them?” Masozi asked.

“Twice the yield of standard ricin,” Mubarak told him.

Masozi let the seeds sift through his fingers. “Twice the yield? Where did you get this shit? Syria?”

“Egypt,” Mubarak said.

Masozi frowned. “Not a lot of arable land to plant this stuff. Whatever there is, it’s all dedicated and you can’t mix it with other crops.”

“They were grown in a hydroponics laboratory,” Mubarak said.

“How’d you develop that?” Masozi asked.

“Are you buying it, or what?” Mubarak countered.

Masozi’s frown turned into a grimace. “I—”

There was commotion at the storehouse door. Masozi sighed and went to it.

“Sir, there’s an intruder in the compound,” his security chief, Kamau, announced. The Somali guard was well over six feet tall, and Masozi often imagined that there had to have been the blood of giants in his background.