Conflict Zone. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ sat quietly, waiting.

      “Bear, if you please,” the big Fed prompted.

      A screen behind Brognola came to life, displaying a candid photo of a ruddy-faced, balding corporate type wearing a tailored suit that Bolan knew was expensive.

      “Jared Ross,” Brognola said by way of introduction. “He’s an executive V.P. in charge of production for K-Tech Petroleum, based in Warri. That’s a Delta State oil town, with roughly one-fifth of the state’s four-point-seven million people. Most of the foreign oil companies working in Nigeria have their headquarters in Warri, operating refineries at Ekpan, more or less next door.”

      Bolan made the connection, saying, “He’s been kidnapped?”

      “Not exactly. First, some background on the local tribes. They’re mainly Itsekiri and Ijaw, with Ijaw outnumbering the Itsekiri something like nine million to four hundred and fifty thousand. Anyway, for centuries they seemed to get along okay, but back in 1997 some genius in Lagos created an Ijaw government council, then put its headquarters in the heart of Itsekiri turf, in Warri. Maybe the result was intentional. Who knows? Long story short, when the smoke cleared, hundreds were dead and half a dozen petro installations had been occupied by rebels, cutting back production until soldiers took them out. MEND got its start from there, and in addition to the oil issue, you now have tribal warfare going full-blast in a region where they once had peace.”

      Kurtzman spoke up, saying, “Beware the Feds who say, ‘We’re here to help.’”

      “Which would be us, in this case,” Brognola replied. “Except the government in Lagos doesn’t know it, and we weren’t invited.”

      “What’s the angle?” Bolan asked.

      “You nearly had it when you asked if Jared Ross was kidnapped. It’s his daughter,” Brognola elaborated as another photo filled the screen.

      Bolan saw a young woman in her late teens, maybe early twenties, smiling for the camera. She was blond and blue-eyed, fresh-faced, living the American dream. Bolan hoped it hadn’t turned into a dead-end nightmare.

      “How long ago?” he asked.

      “Last week,” Brognola said. “Six days and counting, now.”

      “Do they have proof of life?”

      “Seems so. The ransom note was flexible. MEND will accept a hundred million dollars for her safe return, or K-Tech’s pull-out from Nigeria.”

      “That’s optimistic,” Bolan said.

      “It’s fantasy. And Daddy doesn’t trust the local law to get her back. At least, not in one piece and breathing.”

      So that’s where I come in, Bolan thought.

      “I’ve got a CD file with all the players covered,” Brognola informed him, “if you want to look it over on your own.”

      “Sounds good,” Bolan replied. “When would I have to leave?”

      He already knew the answer, nodding as Brognola frowned and said, “They should’ve had us on it from day one. Let’s say ASAP.”

      ALONE IN THE second-floor bedroom he used when at the Farm, Bolan read through Brognola’s files on his laptop. He started with background on Jared and Mandy Ross, found nothing unique or remarkable on either, and moved on to meet his opposition.

      MEND, as Brognola had noted, was the source of most guerrilla violence in Delta State, but pinning down its leadership was problematic. An anonymous online article from The Economist, published in September 2008, described MEND as a group that “portrays itself as political organisation that wants a greater share of Nigeria’s oil revenues to go to the impoverished region that sits atop the oil. In fact, it is more of an umbrella organisation for several armed groups, which it sometimes pays in cash or guns to launch attacks.” It’s so-called war against pollution, Bolan saw, consisted in large part of dynamiting pipelines, each of which then fouled the area with another flood of oil. And more often than not hundreds of villagers perished while collecting the free oil, engulfed in flames from inevitable explosions.

      According to the files Brognola had provided, two men seemed to dominate the hostile tribal factions that were presently at war in Delta State. Ekon Afolabi led the Itsekiri militants, a thirty-six-year-old man who’d been in trouble with the law since he was old enough to steal. Somewhere along the way, he had discovered ethnic pride and politics. Depending on the point of view, he’d either learned to fake the former, or was using it to make himself the Next Big Thing within his sphere of influence.

      The candid shots of Afolabi showed a wiry man of average height, with close-cropped hair, a wild goatee and dark skin. In addition to tribal markings, his scrabble to the top, or thereabouts, had left him scarred in ways that would be useful for identifying his cadaver, but which didn’t seem to slow him in any kind of violent confrontation.

      Afolabi’s second in command was Taiwo Babatunde, a hulk who nearly dwarfed his boss at six foot three and some three hundred pounds, but from his photos and the file Bolan surmised that Babatunde lacked the wits required to plot a palace coup, much less to pull it off and run the tribal army on his own. Call him the boss man’s strong right arm, a blunt tool that would flatten Afolabi’s opposition on demand.

      And likely have a great time doing it.

      The file named Afolabi’s soldiers as prime suspects in a dozen oil field raids, at least that many pipeline bombings and the murder of a newscaster from Delta Rainbow Television Warri who had criticized MEND for its violence. Communiqués demanding ransom for the safe return of Mandy Ross, while carefully anonymous, had been dissected by the FBI’s profiling team at Quantico, who claimed that certain trademark phrases ID’d Afolabi as their author.

      Bolan hoped the Feds were right.

      The Ijaw tribal opposition’s leader was Agu Ajani, turning twenty-nine next week, if he survived that long. He was another bad guy from the get-go, and while anyone could blame it on his childhood—orphaned at age four, warehoused by the state, then written off the first time he went AWOL, living hand-to-mouth among eight million strangers on the streets of Lagos—Bolan only cared about Ajani’s actions in the here and now.

      By all accounts, he was a ruthless killer with a clear sadistic streak, one of the sort who’d rather leave his enemies shorthanded, courtesy of a machete or meat cleaver, than to kill them outright. Which was not to say he hadn’t put his share of bodies in the ground. Official sources credited his Ijaw faction with a thousand kills and counting in the ethnic war that ravaged Delta State.

      In photos, Ajani didn’t look the part. He favored floral-patterned shirts, the tourist kind, with short sleeves showing off his slender arms. A missing pinky finger on his left hand told the story of a near-miss in a knife fight, but he’d won that scrap and every one thereafter.

      Up to now.

      If Ekon Afolabi’s number two was a behemoth, Ajani’s was a smaller version of himself, some thirty pounds lighter and three or four inches shorter, with a bland face that belied his rap sheet. Daren Jumoke was a suspect in half a dozen murders before he turned political and started killing in the name of his people. Jumoke’s “civilian” victims had been women, who were also raped. Bolan guessed that his juvenile record, if such things existed where he was going, would reveal a violent bully with a hyperactive sex drive and a deaf ear СКАЧАТЬ