Threat Factor

“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.

Bolan couldn’t argue with it as he saw three headlights bearing down on them and Mironov roared through another sliding left-hand turn.

SIMEON BOORAMA FELT as if his head were going to explode. His lips and chin were caked with blood from his flattened nose, and his right eye was bleary, swollen half shut. He knew his nose was broken, but the thought of any greater damage was subordinated to his craving for revenge.

One of his men had found him sprawled out in the marketplace and dragged Boorama to his feet, pulling him back into the fight. It would have been a simple thing to leave him where he lay. He would not forget the soldier who had helped him.

Sadly, circumstances being what they were, Boorama’s reputation might demand that he repay his savior with a bullet in the head, to silence any future gossip on the subject of his own incompetence.

We’ll see, Boorama thought, and braced himself against the dashboard of the lead car as it sped after their prey.

Someone had snatched Dirie Waabberi and the white man from his very clutches, and it shamed Boorama that he didn’t have a clue who that might be. He thought he’d glimpsed a white woman behind the wheel of the vehicle they were chasing, but Boorama knew that in his present state he could have been mistaken.

“Get after them!” he snapped at his own driver, as if angry words could make their car go any faster. When the driver cut a surly glance in his direction, Boorama punched the man’s shoulder hard enough to make the car swerve, as he shouted, “Faster, damn you!”

He had made an enemy, but that was life. In his world, fear was more important than respect, while kindness had no place at all.

Boorama wondered if the white man who had struck him also had his submachine gun. It was logical, but anyone could easily have snatched it while he lay unconscious back in the Bakaara Market.

Yet another cause to be ashamed.

At least he had not lost the Tanfoglio TA-90 automatic pistol that was wedged into his belt when he went down. Boorama clutched it now in his right hand, half-turning painfully to make sure that the second carload of his soldiers was behind him, staying close.

In order to redeem himself, he had to kill Waabberi and his white friend, plus whoever had arrived so providentially to offer them a ride. Three heads instead of two. But that meant nothing to Boorama at the moment.

Catching them meant everything.

“What’s wrong with this pezzo di merda?” he demanded, punching the dashboard with his free hand. “Hurry up, you cretino!”

His driver said nothing, but stood on the gas pedal, making the car’s engine whine in response. They were closing in now, and Boorama was weighing the odds of a shot from his window when the lead car braked, swung hard to the left with tires screeching, then roared down a side street.

“It’s Hamarwein, then. The old town. After them!”

His driver followed, mouthing a curse and missing the corner of a building by inches as he cut the turn short. Boorama did all he could to remain in his seat, without checking to see if the second car followed their lead.

Boorama thumbed back his pistol’s hammer and hunched forward in his seat, shaking his head to clear the fog of pain. He instantly regretted it and cursed the man who had humiliated him.

The man he planned to kill within a few short minutes.

“HOW MUCH FARTHER to this old town?” Bolan asked Natalia Mironov.

“Five minutes. Maybe less,” she said.

“We may not have the time,” he answered, and a muzzle-flash exploded from the first chase car, as if to punctuate his words.

That shot missed, but the second scored a ringing hit on Mironov’s trunk or bumper. She muttered a curse, and started swerving as she raced along the narrow street. There wasn’t much leeway for fancy driving, but her skill under the circumstances left Bolan impressed.

He could have tried a burst from the Benelli SMG, but that meant wasting bullets to take out the car’s back window, and he guessed that he’d be needing all of the rounds in its short magazine when they stopped to confront their pursuers. Until then, the best move was to keep his head down and trusting his driver to cook up a plan.

Unfortunately, trust was scarce in Bolan’s world, and trusting Russian agents on short acquaintance was a double challenge.

They cleared the narrow street and sped across a kind of open square, came kissing close to an old fountain that was dry and crumbling into ruins, then roared down another street that seemed more claustrophobic than the last one. Bolan had a fleeting hope they might be saved by accident, when their pursuers split and passed on opposite sides of the fountain, nearly colliding as they cleared it, but the one-eyed lead car surged ahead and held its lead.

“I thought we had them there,” Mironov said. “Those idiots nearly did our work for us.”

“Still, no cigar,” Bolan said.

“We can smoke one when we’re finished with them,” Mironov replied.

“And when would that be?” Bolan asked her.

“Any minute now.”

Bolan had refamiliarized himself with Mogadishu and Somalia by studying maps on his last night in the States. He knew the Hamarwein was close, but Mironov’s zigzag approach had managed to confuse him, even if it didn’t shake their enemies. He was relieved, then, when they cleared the narrow street and rolled into a sort of plaza flanked on every side by buildings that had once been shops.

He had a chance to see that most of them were empty now, their facades bullet-scarred and blackened by flames during one of the city’s innumerable firefights. A couple of the buildings had collapsed entirely, and it seemed that no one was in any hurry to rebuild them.

“Welcome to old town,” Mironov announced, as she slammed on the brakes and cranked the steering wheel, putting her car into a long and noisy slide.

Bolan held until it came to rest, then bolted from the backseat with his SMG and crouched behind his open door. Waabberi did the same thing on the far side of the car, leaving Mironov to use her own door as a shield.

As the pursuit cars reached the plaza, she turned back to look at Bolan and surprised him with a smile.

“Just shoot the fools who are chasing us, not me,” she said. “Okay?”

DIRIE WAABBERI HAD been witness to a hundred shootings in his lifetime, maybe more, but this would be the first where he was a participant. His hands were trembling slightly as they clutched the black Beretta, and he wondered whether he should be the first to fire a shot.

The hunters had already fired at him, of course—not once, but several times. He wondered how many they’d killed or wounded by mistake at the Bakaara Market, but he could not dwell on such things if he wanted to survive the night.