Threat Factor

“Absolutely. But like any other drug, you have controlling syndicates who dominate the market. They’re the same ones who direct the big-league kidnappings and claim the lion’s share of the third racket.”

“Which is piracy.”

“Right,” Brognola said. “Somalian gangs with access to the coast will tackle damn near anything that floats. They’ve staged eighty-odd raids so far, in the first six months of this year, with fifteen ships hijacked and over a hundred crew members held hostage.”

“Any special targets?” Bolan asked.

“Not really. Most of the time, they sell the cargo back to its owners for five or ten cents on the dollar, collecting some extra for crewmen and ships. Sometimes they find a rival bidder. However, there’s one load we are concerned about.”

“What would that be?”

“Late last week,” Brognola went on, “a gang of pirates overran a Ukrainian cargo ship, the Vasylna, bound for Nairobi with a consignment of Russian military hardware. Not just AKs and grenades, unfortunately. In addition to the usual small arms, they grabbed thirty-three tanks, the new T-90s, complete with what the Russians are calling a ‘substantial amount’ of ammo for their 125 mm guns and factory-standard machine guns.”

Bolan suppressed a grimace. The T-90 main battle tanks mounted two machine guns: a 12.7 mm for antiaircraft work, and a smaller 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun for mopping up infantry. Each tank tipped the scales at 46.5 tons, seating a three-man crew, and could travel four hundred miles at forty miles per hour, powered by an 840-horsepower Model 84 V-84 12-cylinder diesel engine. It was, in short, a formidable killing machine.

“I’m guessing that the pirates haven’t offered to return the goods,” Bolan said.

“They’re taking offers,” Brognola replied. “Keep one of two of the T-90s for themselves, and they can still make millions selling off the rest to one of the militias. It could swing the balance on a local scale, at least.”

“I’m guessing that you have some leads on who might be responsible,” said Bolan.

“Two prime suspects,” Brognola said, as he drew a plastic-covered CD-ROM from somewhere inside his suit jacket and passed it to Bolan. “Look this over when you get a chance. It covers both the major gangs in Mogadishu and your native contact.”

Bolan took the CD-Rom and tucked it away inside his own jacket.

“As usual,” Brognola said. “This mission will be high risk for small reward, and there’s no safety net. We haven’t had an embassy in Mogadishu for over a decade, so the nearest consulate would be in Nairobi. For the record, that’s 635 miles as the crow flies, and you wouldn’t be flying.”

Bolan shrugged. “I never found much comfort at an embassy,” he said.

“The good news,” Brognola continued, “if you want to call it that, is that you won’t be bothered by police. They’ve only got a thousand cops to cover the whole country, and it turns out none of them are stationed in Mogadishu.”

“Makes it nice for the warlords,” Bolan said.

“You may run into AMISOM,” Brognola added. “They’re loosely backed by the UN Security Council. But they’ve only got twenty-six hundred troops on the ground, and they try to stay out of harm’s way.”

“Sounds all right,” Bolan said. “I’m in.”

Brognola nodded, put a grim smile on his face, and reached for Bolan’s hand again.

“Stay frosty, then,” he said. “And stay in touch.”

BOLAN SAT IN HIS CAR, in the mall’s parking lot, and slid Brognola’s CD-ROM into the laptop he’d picked up earlier. The computer whirred briefly, then began displaying photos of his targets with their background information, gleaned from databases maintained by the CIA, Interpol and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council.

First up was Musse Bahdoon Guleed, age thirty-two, identified as Mogadishu’s primary criminal warlord. He had been jailed for robbery in 1996, released three years later and had managed to remain at large since then, building a reputation for ruthless ferocity nearly unrivaled in a nation where homicidal violence was routine. Observers estimated that Guleed had at least a thousand armed men under his direct command, perhaps as many as twelve hundred. His gang was suspected of several high-profile ransom kidnappings and peddled some two-thirds of the khat consumed in Mogadishu and environs over the past five years. His pirate navy roamed the coast from Xarar dheere southward to Kismaayo, picking off commercial targets and skirmishing with rivals.

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.

3

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.