Ramrod intercept, p.19
Ramrod Intercept, page 19
Easy.
The soldier, jacked up on combat juices, told himself to take it one step at a time.
The Volvo rolled on through the sludge, parked, hidden from anything more than a passing scrutiny behind a stack of empty fifty-five-gallon drums. Out the door, overhead lightbulb already disengaged, and the three men descended into the drainage ditch. The stink of raw sewage, oil and other chemical run-off would have been strong enough to turn their stomachs under normal circumstances, buckle the most stalwart of legs. They got lucky as far as dressing room conditions went when they found a sturdy sheet of plywood they could settle over the sludge, change to blacksuit, buckle on the harnesses, lock and load in relative comfort.
Com links in place, Bolan told Taylor and Nhoubaff he would cover them until they made the roof. It was Taylor’s claim that the three-story office building had recently been abandoned by Bhoutami. Reasons for the bailout were unknown, but Bolan was aware of the tactical problem of securing the roof. Say a sentry or two was perched up top, scanning the industrial wasteland. Say a sniper was covered by the darkness in any one of two dozen blackened holes up the side of the structure.
The soldier knew better than to let paranoia skew the works with rust. Still, heightened vigilance never hurt.
They were out and running over the marshy no-man’s-land, the soldier taking up position behind the rusted-out shell of a bulldozer. He watched the rooftop, the darkened windows, stealing a second to note the glare of lights that marked the gathering of the savages, at some distant point beyond the edge of the ghost structure.
The Executioner rode out the tense moments as his comrades scaled the access ladder, landed on the roof.
Bolan’s com link buzzed, and Taylor informed him, “We’re clear.” A pause as the warrior began his own jaunt, veering for the southern end of their roost, and Taylor patched through again. “The show’s started. Looks like quite the party. First look, I’m counting seventy, maybe eighty enemy guns.”
The soldier keyed his com link, his M-16/M-203 combo leading the way through the gloom. “You’ll know when it’s started. Maintain strict silence until the curtain goes up.”
“Copy.”
Swiftly the Executioner cut his course down behind the darkened shell, homed in on the light hanging from the side of the warehouse to guide him through the night. His beast of burden included one satchel choked with forty pounds of plastic explosive, another satchel full of explosive payloads for the M-203. Rethinking his strategy before leaving the safehouse, he inquired about a radio remote control box for the C-4. A wink and a grin, and Taylor came through once more, pulling the requested magic act out of his personal armory. It made it more plausible, running in line with his strike plan to use radio remote detonation. Instead of setting timers all over the western back end of the warehouse, one signal would tie in the blocks to the same frequency. The idea was to get the bulk of the hardforce chasing him out some point of entry he needed to secure and clear to the west. Mow down as many enemy soldiers as possible, wing a few 40 mm doomsayers their way, and have them gear it up for a mass stampede his direction. Out the back door next to beat what would look like a fighting retreat, then bring the roof down on as many of the enemy as he could.
In theory, it sounded a winner. Reality, he knew, could throw something altogether different in his face. Part of the unknown factor was what sort of ammunition, weapons were housed inside. Once the blast went off, a whole slew of small-arms fire could be ignited, deadly lead firecrackers capping off everywhere, with chemicals thrown into the deadly mix.
Nothing to do but forge ahead.
The first snag turned up just as Bolan hit the edge of the vacant office complex. Not much of a problem in terms of taking care of one wandering sentry, but if timing was critical for the soldier, the same timing could work to the enemy’s advantage.
He watched the sentry grasp the doorknob, maybe forty yards away. He opened the door, stood there, as if wondering why it was open.
The Executioner palmed the sound-suppressed Beretta, steadied his aim, took up the trigger slack and chugged out a 9 mm Parabellum shocker. The wondering man was left wondering what hit him as he folded at the knees, the lights punched out from a clean head shot.
It was an anxious run, the soldier’s eyes watching the shadows beyond the east corner, then he made the door. Dragging the body inside, Bolan got his bearings. It was standard warehouse design: crates piled high in rows, steel containers out on the main floor, workbenches, fuel drums, and interlocking catwalks with offices on the second floor. The usual layout, from Los Angeles Harbor clear around the world.
The Executioner went to work lightening his load, sticking shaped charges with detonator plugs activated to a crate here and there, sticking to the shadows as he navigated a swift course down the west end. Voices swirled his way from the main floor, the rumble of forklifts coming into view as he crouched behind a pile of tarp-covered pallets.
At first search, the numbers appeared staggering, but Bolan had tackled greater odds before. Plus he had the plan, all that was left to be done was execute, move them down and his way.
Come and get it.
He finished packing the last of the C-4 on the pallets, was lifting the M-16, ready to unload the 40 mm frag grenade first when a scuffling noise to his nine o’clock snared his eye.
There were two of them, coming from the direction of the late Wonder Man. They were looking the wrong direction at first, up a row of crates, AK-74s searching around the compass when Bolan made his decision to get it started.
The Executioner boiled up out of the shadows behind the pallets, saw the whites of their eyes framed his way and held back on the trigger of the M-16.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mohammed Nhoubaff had no problem whatsoever with the idea he might die that night, perish in a hail of bullets, blown off the rooftop, or whatever else the enemy sent his way. The truth was, a part of him would be glad to be free at last, gone to his maker, hoping against hope there would be some degree of mercy bestowed him for the wretched life he’d led.
Good luck in that department, he grimly mused.
Only now he had been granted—no, blessed with—the opportunity to make some sort of amends for leading what he knew, in his heart of hearts, had been, at best, a tawdry, lonely, selfish existence.
He was a cheat, a thief and a liar, no way around it, he knew. How many men had he set up to take a fall over the years at the hands of a rival arms or drug dealer? How many spies had he set at one another’s throats, greasing each side with inside information while plucking the cash out of both hands?
Too many to count.
In some way, though, that had been different, then as opposed to now. He had always marched bad men to their own justice at the killing hands of another bad man by his scamming, conning, playing both ends, always hedging his bets. He was amazed right then he had lived as long as he had.
This Cooper was different. To Nhoubaff the big American was soldier, warrior, crusader, all the things, he reflected, he wished he could have, should have been. But he knew his own character, the shabby, empty life he’d led, revealed now to him at the ultimate moment of truth. Nhoubaff knew he just hadn’t dug deep inside for the right stuff all those years, opting instead for some easy way out, the quick dollar, going for himself. He was sure, too, Cooper had seen this waffling of character, this straddling of the fence. But the man—either to his credit or plain grim awareness there was no choice once he landed in the Sudan—had given him the opportunity to prove himself. Something like the stage-master allowing a final curtain call on the sorry story of his life, one last chance to get it right.
The American’s war, on the other hand, was meant to cut out the evil in the hearts of bad men wherever they rose up along his path. No dancing around, no chicanery, no con job. Just a clean, straightforward walloping of the slaughter kind.
The simple approach, as clean as it could ever get.
No, Nhoubaff didn’t much care if he saw the night out in one piece or not. It was enough he was there, searching out his own redemption, at least in his mind, going the distance while covering Cooper’s tracks.
For once in his life, he knew what it was like to be a warrior, ready to accept the ultimate price for his role in the coming battle.
Death didn’t seem like such a big deal, after all, if he thought about it.
For one thing, he wasn’t married, no children, at least that he knew of. No woman anywhere, in fact, who would wail and gnash her teeth if she woke up and he wasn’t there to fill her bed. As for any earthly riches he might miss?—well, as far as money went, he’d always spent it as fast he got his hands on it.
Ah, well, it was simply his destiny, he figured, to be here, poised to give it all, give something back in the name of whatever good and justice could be found by slaying evil men.
He was crouched on a knee, next to the CIA man, near the retaining wall at the southeast edge of the roof. Their M-16s ready to unload, they watched the wave of cutthroats rolling for the warehouse doors. The ship itself looked deserted, but Nhoubaff made out a few deckhands amidships on a second, longer search, shadows, standing there, taking in the action.
What had the big American said? he thought. “You’ll know when it starts.”
It started with the muffled retort of autofire from the point of entry Nhoubaff had seen Cooper penetrate, pulling the dead man in behind him. As agreed upon, Nhoubaff would work his field of fire from left to right, Taylor sweeping it back the opposite way.
Flying lead and 40 mm scissoring all goons, large and small.
For the opening shot, Nhoubaff had loaded his M-203 with an incendiary round.
Shock effect.
He tapped the launcher’s trigger, heard the muffled pop, then watched it zigzag on its way, before impacting near a group of ten Iranians, or maybe they were Bhoutami’s lackeys, it didn’t matter.
He dumped a frag bomb down the chute, and sent another hellbomb on its way.
THEY CAME RUNNING scared at first, a little shaky on the move, weaving this way and that, ready to lunge for cover at the next show of force. Understandable, since Bolan hit a group of six out of the starting gate with a 40 mm frag grenade that cut the heart of the timid pack.
The Executioner began spraying the warehouse proper with long raking bursts of autofire, clipping two hardmen off their feet here, three there, bodies thrashing across the concrete floor in running crimson, someone near the doorways shouting out the orders to keep moving, nail the bastard.
Just what he needed, Bolan thought, a stand-up, take-charge guy out there on the dock, getting them in gear to come and nail him.
There was thunder and fire aplenty out front, gunmen and motor pool taking big hits, Bolan tipping a mental salute to Nhoubaff and Taylor. They were unloading the whole she-bang, 40 mm blasts upending fancy cars, shredding gunmen like disected insects under the microscope.
The soldier didn’t have but two seconds of luxury to indulge the sight, crouching behind some pallets at the end of the aisle. But he bore witness to what he sure as hell hoped was the mother lode take a terrible pounding. Whether it was a fluke or by punishing design, the crates were pulped to flying shards, debris bowling down gunmen in screaming heaps, some poor unfortunate’s arm cleaved off at the shoulder, skimming along the dock, trailing greasy smears of blood. The steel container was the big score, however, and somehow an angry fate, the soldier glimpsed, took care of that problem.
Twin sheets of fire ripped through a couple of Towncars, flipping them up in the air on a wall of roaring fire. Both came down, nose first, when fuel tanks lapped up some fire, then ignited. One fiery fist of warped metal came pounding down through the top of the steel container, as if they were joint flaming can openers.
So much for the dreams and schemes of his enemies, Bolan thought, then started making a beeline for an exit door as lead sizzled the air all around him.
He fired his M-16, covering his retreat, winging one shooter in the hip as they started leapfrogging down the aisle.
It was all rock and roll, big heavy metal thunder out front, and Bolan left Nhoubaff and Taylor to it.
Nice work.
But the three of them, the warrior knew, were hardly in the home stretch.
Things were just getting heated up.
Bolan hit the back door, checked his flanks, found he was clear. No time enough, so far, for the enemy to try to outflank him, since they were just now getting it together, crawling out from under a falling sky.
And bulling his way.
A rough guesstimate, and Bolan figured he was looking at thirty, maybe forty coming for his scalp.
Coming to get a taste of hell.
“IT’S HIM! The lunatic!”
Bhoutami staggered to his feet, the whole dock going up in a firestorm that shattered his senses, the noise and the horror grinding some nausea deep into his gut, shimmying the whole ball of sickness down through quaking bowels.
“Of course, it’s him, you stupid fool!”
The colonel found he was clutching his AKM, stared at the rage on Hajmin’s face through a daze. The Iranian was bellowing out the orders for his men to go after the lunatic. They were moving in a strange weaving pattern, Bhoutami saw, stumbling ahead, flinching as sporadic bursts of autofire rang out. Beyond his hatred for the lunatic and the Iranian, Bhoutami despised next the sound of his own terrified cry as another luxury vehicle close by erupted in fiery mushroom cap.
This couldn’t be happening, he thought, hearing the pitiful moans of men all around him, seeing them crawling through their own blood and spilled innards, a few of them missing an arm or a leg. But he was lucky, or was he? Somehow he’d survived the opening blasts. Somehow he was in one piece.
This wasn’t the way it should have been, he thought. Before, while serving the Khartoum government under the command of Arakkhan, the killing had always been one-sided, doled out by the droves, as he led gunship sorties against black villages in southern Sudan, standing tall in the fuselage doorway as women and children were strafed and mowed down by machine-gun fire, putting the torch to whatever was left standing, raping mothers before their children, the wives of the hated SPLA rebels. Old men digging the mass graves before his soldiers lined up the survivors and mowed them down into the hole.
This wasn’t right, he thought.
This was…what?
The thunder of hell? Calling out to him, death screaming, or chuckling out his name? He couldn’t be sure if the lunatic was thinking along these lines, but Bhoutami was viewing this slaughter as something like reverse genocide.
On him.
“You will pay for this!”
Bhoutami watched the horror show as bullets slashed through darting figures, dropping them in their tracks on spurting lines of scarlet. The colonel also despised the fat jiggling around his waistband as the fear kept shooting down him, head to toe. He saw Hajmin backpedal toward the doors, the Iranian still directing the rage and the threats his way.
“I lost my merchandise! You will answer for your incompetence! You provided no security! Just your thugs by your own side! Tehran will hear! Khartoum will skin you alive! I will see you strung up by your balls!”
All was madness, more explosions peppering the motor pool, torn bodies flying away in all directions, screams of agony trailing out to sea. Somehow, Bhoutami found his voice, as he pinned down the direction from which the missiles were flying. The office building he had abandoned, months back, having seen no need to be so close to the waterfront, paying lackeys, civilian or otherwise, to watch the store.
“Get your men to that rooftop, Bhoutami! The lunatic has comrades up there!”
Bhoutami could tell they didn’t like it, shuffling all about, hunching for cover behind a stretch limo.
“Go! To the roof!”
They went, reluctant, moving out but veering on a course for the warehouse front.
Bhoutami was turning, wondering how he was going to get out of there, when he saw the mountain of fire, roiling up from the skeletal remains of two vehicles, leaping from the steel container. He groaned. He was a dead man, indeed. Inside that container were component parts for the Ramrod Intercept satellite tracking station. Plus a sizable cache of laser weapons and more component parts. Something in the neighborhood, he knew, of fifty million U.S. dollars, getting melted down to silver goo.
Oh, yes, he was a walking dead man. Better to hold his ground, as bullets tore into the less fortunate and flung them to the dock.
No. Time to bail.
“You will pay for this!”
The Iranian shook his fist, wheeled to follow the point charge into the warehouse, when Bhoutami lifted the AKM, drawing a bead on his back.
The explosion rocked the air, Bhoutami feeling the heat, a furnace belching flames for his face. He was darting off to the side, aware he couldn’t outrun the blast in time, when he was bowled down, something heavy slashing off his head.
Flying next, but before Bhoutami hammered down to the dock, he saw the lights wink out.
HAJMIN SAW the charge was losing steam. His own men were mingled in with Shalibah and his goons, plus a half-dozen of the colonel’s thugs. They needed someone to lead the charge, to send them after the dreaded lunatic!
“Move ahead! Move!”
He turned, hugging cover behind a forklift, glancing at maybe a dozen sprawled bodies, then decided whatever Bhoutami had sent to the vacant office building might not be enough to take down the rooftop shooters. He barked at a group of ten of his men, firing—at nothing he could see—to fall back outside and storm the office.
The lunatic had stopped winging around grenades and bullets for the moment. Hajmin wondered why, then realized the maniac was retreating. He nearly sobbed, as he thought how cruel fate was, crushing, now burning up the high-tech merchandise Tehran had paid fifty million and change to the Sudanese middlemen, who in turn had paid…
The Great Satan!
It was unthinkable, unbelievable, but someone, namely him, was going to be held accountable for this disaster. Well, if he went down, he would make damn sure he didn’t hang alone.
