Buch lesen: «Path To War»

CHAPTER ONE

Kinbuvu Gaungalat considered the monster holed up in the apartment, and images of predators on the high savage end of the food chain leaped to mind. The former UNITA colonel may have staked his surveillance point from the dark end of an alley in Old Madrid, somewhere deep in the maze of cobbled streets choked with adobe apartment buildings, plazas, restaurants, bars, monasteries and convents, but numerous visions of feeding frenzies seemed to burn, alive and thrashing, the longer he stared at the wrought-iron balcony, nursing hatred, craving revenge.

And there it came, in living color, it seemed, as he felt the fire searing out from the core of his soul.

He envisioned the lioness on the savanna, her jaws clamped on the throat of a zebra as she took it down in a blast of dust and spewing blood. Then he pictured the crocodile, erupting out of brown waters in a great spume as its razor-sharp teeth clamped the neck of a gazelle that had fallen behind the pack in the river crossing, dragging it beneath the surface, drowning it in a death roll, the beast’s throat filling with the blood of its victim before the real devouring began. He imagined next the white shark, its massive dark shape boiling, a torpedo with teeth the size of celery stalks, as it surged up from the depths of the waters around South Africa’s Seal Island, a crimson cloud spraying the air before the creature splashed down to consume its meal in a frothy scarlet maelstrom.

Ultimate predators, driven by primal instinct to consume flesh to survive.

All of which, he decided, was simply the beautiful brutality of nature sorting out the food chain, the larger, more aggressive and dangerous animals ruling supreme, deciding, for the most part, what would live, what would fall prey to fill its belly. Something always, it seemed to him, had to die so something could live. And that held especially true, he concluded, in the world from where he came.

Only the predator he wished to kill had never displayed even a scintilla of such courage, much less any skill in those death hunts of wild animals. No, the monster in hiding was a mass murder, he knew, a coward who wallowed in the lap of obscene luxury while others risked their lives to carry out his homicidal dictates, swell his coffers with money earned on the blood of those he oppressed.

That in mind, Gaungalat reached into the dark vault of the gruesome past. For a moment he felt a stab of pain and bitter remorse as he weighed the awful truth about the living hell that was Angola. Like many of his countrymen he was Christian, a Roman Catholic, in fact, his ancestors converted by European missionaries who had passed on the teachings of their faith and their Bible down through the generations. Thus, recalling the Book of Revelation, he couldn’t help but picture the former Portuguese colony as a vast and eternal plague of death, war, starvation and pestilence, delivered unto all—in spirit, if nothing else, as far as he was concerned—a terrifying preview of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But had he not played a small part in the madness of genocide, razing villages where rival MPLA rebels were suspected of hiding large weapons caches, only to slaughter their women and children? he wondered. Had he not turned a blind eye when his soldiers vented anger and hatred through orgies of rape, torture and mutilation on helpless victims? Had he not, as overlord of the diamond mines of Cuango, personally flayed with bullwhip the impoverished miners and near to death?

He had, in time, aborted the course of the Four Horsemen, at least in his private corner of command and control, but not before dipping his hands into figurative rivers of the blood of the innocent.

So, then, was he any better than the monster he had come here to slay?

Oh, but he was, he told himself as he grasped the mini-Uzi hung in webbed nylon rigging beneath his long coat. Had he not turned his back on his old ways, rebelled against the monster, and nearly at the cost of his own life? Was he not sickened for years after by the mere thought of how he could have done what he did for so long to so many? Was it not all he could have done, in feverish dark nights of the soul, weeping alone, begging the God of his understanding for mercy and forgiveness, to have not taken his own life?

He fingered the compact subgun with his left hand, then shucked the other side of his coat higher up, feeling the empty space where his right arm should have been, grinding his teeth at the memory of the amputation, delivered to him for dereliction of duty, or so according to the monster. In his own war-torn nation he knew he wouldn’t present himself such an aberration, where, he heard, it was estimated by the Red Cross and World Health Organization that almost forty percent of eleven million Angolans were missing a limb—or limbs—either blown off in a land estimated to be planted with twenty-five million mines and other boobytraps, or hacked off.

He shuddered, wondering about the horror, the why of it all.

Perhaps, he then decided, God had merely punished him for his vile transgressions, only to spare his life, guiding him here to deliver both justice and grant him redemption.

If that was true, he would find out soon enough.

Shoving the howling ghosts to the catacombs of memory, he watched as the doors opened and a white man stepped out onto the balcony. Feeling the added weight of the 9 mm Makarov pistol snug in his waistband and the machete sheathed against his thigh, he melted back into the deeper shadows. As the raucous noise of the city in high-gear search of the night’s good times swirled into the mouth of the alley, Gaungalat studied the face of one of the monster’s mercenaries. The man had a hard glint in his wary eyes, framed in a lean face swathed in scruff, as if he had just retreated back to civilization after spending weeks in the African bush. There was a noticeable bulge beneath his buff-colored camou jacket, the slender shape of a commando dagger in sheathe poking out just beneath the left side. The whole picture simply confirmed in his mind this was just another whore of war, paid to murder blacks while the paymaster raped his country of diamonds or oil.

Which left Gaungalat wondering just how far and how much he could trust his own source of intelligence.

It was strange, he briefly reflected, why the white men who had found him in his apartment in Luanda would plant him on the trail of the monster. There were many—indeed, too many of his countrymen to count—who wished to see the monster die a slow and agonizing death by machete. Why him? Why not? had been their answer. So, they had paid him, ten thousand dollars in U.S. currency, making arrangements to land himself and a squad of three soldiers of his choosing under his former command to slay the beast and his mercenary thugs. Intelligence from his own paymasters stated two mercenaries, the monster, two of his own lackeys on the target site. And, if their information was accurate, they were in the process of unloading uncut diamonds, as he checked his watch, noted the time of the alleged rendezvous.

In a way, the setup was perfect. He had never seen the cutout, but he could surmise he had been sent from Wilders International. But, who else, he thought, other than the London-based cabal who had a monopoly on much of the world’s diamond trade would be sleeping with the monster? Angola, he knew, was responsible for at least fifteen percent of the world’s diamond haul. Where there were diamonds there was Wilders. Where there was Wilders there was oppression, misery and death for the poor by hard labor, or worse.

For a moment he wondered if his thirst for revenge, the burning need for redemption had trampled all reason when he should have been just as suspicious of Westerners he was certain were CIA. Was this a trap? If so, why? His hatred for the monster, his plans to create his own revolutionary army were no secret. And then there were rumors, whispering through the underground of former soldiers and officers in Luanda that the monster…

If they were true, then it was his task—no, he corrected himself—his destiny to stop the unthinkable before it became reality.

Gaungalat took the handheld radio from a coat pocket as the white mercenary retreated into the apartment. The team was parked two blocks north in a van provided them by his visitors from Luanda. Their escape route was already mapped out, but the more he thought about the predator he had come to kill, the less he cared if he made it out of the city alive, as long he killed the man-beast. What was one more life, when he considered the hell on earth the monster had helped create.

Critical, he decided, if his country would ever see any hope for real, and humane, change. If he didn’t do a thing to extinguish the evil he knew dwelled…

He depressed the button on his radio, told the others in Bantu, “It is time.”

THE PASSPORT AND VISA declared he was Francisco Alvandando, a Spanish National in America as a tourist. In truth, smiling to himself over the deception, he was Pakistani, and he had long since become Musa Mirba, recruited by his enemies to slay their enemies.

It was surely a strange and bizarre world, he thought, when the infidel became an ally, when he was asked to trust the enemy. So far, though, it had been easy enough to move freely about Washington, D.C., whiling away a few days and nights in strip joints, cash to burn on dancers and hookers, while he waited to be contacted by his handlers and told to move. No shadows were on his trail, as far as he could tell.

And he was now ready to strike down his designated targets here in the countryside of Fredericksburg, Virginia.

The targets here were high value. He and his brothers in jihad would pull off a mission that would shock and horrify their enemies, thrust terror and confusion, if nothing else, into the hearts of the highest infidel authority. Like the others, he was an assassin, trained in the camps of Afghanistan, skilled to move as silent as a ghost, infiltrating what high value targets believed were safehouses or fortified compounds. He had done this many times before, and in vastly more treacherous and hostile turf than the wide-open, so-called free society of America.

As he crouched behind brush at the tree line, tugged on the hood to match the rest of his black combat fatigues, he scanned the split-level home, some two hundred meters east. It sat alone on a grassy field that rolled in spots, but he had already determined after poring over the intel pics he would crawl until he reached the first hump. Supposedly the only sensors and cameras were placed around the immediate perimeter, but there would be no alert to his incursion, as his handlers claimed their man on the inside was in charge of security. For a second he thought he had to be insane to place his life so freely, perhaps recklessly in the hands of those he had long ago sworn to kill. If not for the exorbitant sums of cash they had paid his brothers in jihad back in Peshawar, with pledges to deliver small and large arms, with vows to aid and assist their future operations on American soil, he would have never accepted the mission, which, in truth, was their mission. When the Americans wouldn’t state the reasons they wanted these selected high value targets dead, there had been some heated discussion, he recalled, laced with threats, and directed at the infidels if they were simply infiltrating him into America, only to arrest him. After all, he thought, touching the hilt of his combat knife, he was Al-Jassaca, and he and his two brothers were themselves high value targets on the list of the Americans’ so-called most wanted.

Stealing one last moment to shore up his resolve, he checked the clear, velvet sky, noted the scimitar moon. Pride and confidence swelled his soul, as he believed—had to believe—God was watching down, smiling, ready to sweep him with a Divine Hand to steer him safely through the night, with the blood of infidels on his hands. Removing his hand from the hilt of his fighting knife, he stared at the engraving of the strange, frightening beast. The ivory handle was carved into the head of a bull, the body of a lion, the legs of a camel. According to Islamic lore, he knew Al-Jassaca was the supernatural monster who would mark all souls, both saved and damned, with a sacred seal on Judgment Day.

Why wait until then? Why not deliver his enemies to judgment at the feet of Al-Jassaca whenever, wherever, the opportunity arose?

Ready now, he gave the house another search. Light spilled from the edge of the north face, lower level, barely outlining the lone figure standing guard. Adjusting the lens on his night vision field glasses, he found the one sentry, stationed on the west side, armed with an HK MP-5 subgun, another operative allegedly posted on the east end. which left—if his handlers were telling the truth—the lone operative planted on the inside. Whoever the infidel traitor he would be his way into the CIA official’s lair. Of course, he was leaving nothing to chance or treachery. Between the AKM, the Makarov pistol for a side arm, a dozen spare clips for both pieces, the F1 frag grenades fixed to his webbing and the SVD Dragunov sniper rifle it should be more than enough if his handlers had decided to march him into an ambush.

If that was the case…

Why bother with stealth? he decided. Drop the sentry, sprint across open ground, hit them hard, a dark lightning bolt delivering sudden death. He would find another way into the house, other than the side door leading to the game room his handlers had told him would be open.

He dropped to one knee, lifted the Russian sniper rifle, already fitted with sound suppressor. Failure was never an option, but in the event he was killed, he found it vaguely amusing fingers of blame may point toward Russia. Confusion, stirring up strife was the next best thing to terror.

With virtually no wind, a stationary target at his killing touch, Mirba adjusted the PSO-1 scope, specially upgraded for night vision by his handlers. He framed the sentry’s face, green in the crosshairs, so close it seemed he was but mere inches away.

He drew a breath, exhaled, finger taking up slack on the trigger. Judgment Day, he told himself, had arrived.

THE SENATOR’S POLITICS was a moot point. From where he sat, the Democrat from Florida, an infidel of voice and authority who headed some committee on so-called terrorism, would be dead as soon as the waitress delivered their dinner. Whether liberal or conservative, he was still a powerful demon who helped engineer the suffering and oppression of Muslims, and just by breathing the same air as his political opponents and constituents. Whatever his policies on the Middle East or his own country, he was still a poisonous serpent, one that needed trampling, even if he publicly voiced objections to the plight of Arab misery brought on by American military occupation and interference in sovereign Islamic nations. And his guest, an official from their Department of Defense, or so his handler informed him, was likewise a high value target.

Halud Demma sipped his coffee. Savoring the twin rush of caffeine and adrenaline, he weighed the setup. As fate had it, he was given a table within a few yards from where the curtained double doors kept the senator and the DOD man in isolation from the other guests, as they were granted complete privacy in the banquet room. The intelligence provided him by his handlers in Pakistan stated the senator was predictable in his dining habits. Same Italian restaurant in Virginia, same day, nearly the same time, give or take thirty minutes or so. One bodyguard for each man, side arms their only hardware. That the bodyguards were standing post just inside the doors, taking drinks and appetizers from the waitress once she knocked, would make his task that much easier. So far, it appeared their strange and unnatural collaboration with the American intelligence operatives was panning out, though he wasn’t about to take the mission for granted for one moment.

Which was why, at the last minute, he had acquired certain ordnance from a sleeper cell in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington.

He figured the targets would be granted sufficient time before the main course was delivered, but he found himself becoming impatient. They were special guests. VIPs, after all. Why rush them through a pleasant dining experience? What was another few minutes? It had been a fearsome strain on nerves alone just to make it this far, trusting his fate to men he would have normally shot on sight. Only their money, their willingness to betray their own country for undeclared reasons, hire assassins to do their dirty work…

The mullah had given his blessing, and that was enough for the three of them.

Finally the waitress went to the door, tray on her shoulder. Quickly, he palmed his cell phone, tapped in the sequence of numbers required to time the executions. Call it one minute and counting, he figured, and the six-ounce block of C-4 would cover his exit from one of the side doors in the banquet room. Indulging a last-moment smile, he thought himself clever, walking in, dressed as a cleanshaven businessman, the briefcase perched on the empty seat, doomsday ticking down to the last supper for all gathered.

He unzipped the small duffel bag at his feet, easy access now granted to the Czech M-25 submachine gun. Grasping the weapon, he stood and marched ahead just as the bodyguard filled his hands with plates.

RIKAZ HANAHZUD WAS the avenging angel of death for all Islam.

Trained in the Afghanistan camps, he had sharpened his skills to lethal perfection in the killing grounds of Iraq. How many Iraqis, betraying Islam by serving the Great Satan, had he slain? he wondered. How many American soldiers had he sent on to judgment with roadside bombs or sniped dead from a distance?

Not nearly enough, as far as he was concerned.

There were always more enemies, millions, in fact, that needed to feel the sting of death if Islam were to thrive, remove itself from under the bootheel of the Americans.

No, his mission wasn’t the glorious big event he had often dreamed about in Peshawar, or fantasized about during the missions he had pulled off in the hit-and-run killing fields of Iraq, but the targets here in the condominium complex in Washington D.C. were high value. He had been told they were CIA officials, two men, he believed, who kept charting the genocide in Islamic countries. Whatever the reasons the American operatives wanted these men killed were insignificant in the long run. Any dead infidel, especially one who had the power to keep murdering his people, was a good infidel.

The pizza box and matching uniform had gotten him through the secured door when he buzzed the desk. A quick ride up the elevator to the seventh floor and he was now climbing the steps to number eight. He felt his belly churn with hunger as the aroma of pepperoni and onions filled his nose, aware he hadn’t eaten all day. Anticipation, adrenaline and nerves had kept him edged out before the call from his American handler gave him the green light. Food could wait until the victory dance.

It was time, he knew, feeling the weight of the duffel bag hung over his shoulder, open for quick access to the hardware he would use once he crashed the door. Once it was done, he would descend the stairs, evacuate through the basement door.

He was in the hall, gripping the sound-suppressed 9-mm Makarov, when the two infidels standing guard at the door came alive. Falling into his best subservient act, he showed them a wide smile, chirping, “Pizza delivery.”

They looked suspicious, turning his way, one of them lifting a hand, waving him off.

“This is a restricted floor, pal. And nobody ordered any pizza.”

He acted confused, shook his head, then one of them took a step toward him. Honahzad threw the box in the man’s face, the Makarov pistol up and chugging death.

THE HARDEST NATURAL substance on the planet was his ticket out of the life and into the sweet bliss of golden retirement in a tropical paradise of his choosing.

Mike Mitchell knew a little something about diamonds, and he found himself becoming impatient to the point of anger the longer the middleman from Wilders sat at the table, grunting, now and then, as he examined the uncut gems under the 10-power magnifier. No, he didn’t want to hear all the trade talk about clarity, brilliance of facets, color, carat weight and so forth. Nor listen to another round of patronizing babble from the man, how diamonds were the world’s best conductor of heat, with a higher melting point than any other mineral, all the gibberish about their being extracted from kimberlite beds, those pipelike intrusions formed by olivine, deep as eighty feet beneath the earth’s surface. He wanted his damn money.

Mitchell paced the apartment, chain-smoking, hating the setup more with each passing minute, fearing the worst, which was that his little game plan had been found out and someone on the home team was coming to yank his ticket. The ringer and his two cronies from Luanda, he saw, were more interested in the porn flick on the giant screen TV—one of several perks imported along with a case of whisky and Cuban cigars—than a business transaction with the Swiss cheese who called himself Herr Cabal he figured would net him three, hopefully four mil or more. With their AK-74s resting on the deck, barely within quick snatching distance, if they were concerned about security…

Look at them, he thought, chortling, swilling booze, lounging on the big couch, wishing probably they could jump through the screen and devour some light-skinned flesh, ignorant people thinking the bottom line here belonged to them. No way. This was his deal, earned on sweat, blood and balls of steel. A pound or more of rocks, smuggled, here and there, out of Angola the past year or so, stashed in a safe-deposit box in Madrid until he felt it safe to bring in his man from Wilders. And the idiots, he thought, he was sitting on for the organization he had slaved for as mercenary were one of several reasons he was bailing. The org’s end game, for one item, was unnerving enough, preposterous, even suicidal the more he thought about it. It was time to look out for number one. Fifteen years dodging bullets had earned him the right to walk off into the sunset with a bag stuffed with cash.

Mitchell felt his hand wanting to twitch to unleather the Beretta M-9 pistol under his coat, force Herr Cabal to hand over the briefcase he knew was stuffed with a down payment. He looked at Johannsen, sitting on the other side of the table, the big blond merc boring diamond-edged drill bits into the middleman, his AKM resting in his lap. One nod and they would force this show to a surprise ending.

“What’s the story?” he barked at Herr Cabal who took another handful of stones from the large silk pouch. A noncommittal grunt, a shake of the head, and Mitchell snapped, “Come on. Those stones are perfect, but you’re sitting there, acting like they’re cheap knockoffs.”

Cabal grunted. “Perfection is impossible. A ‘perfect diamond’ is an unacceptable trade term. What I am looking for are as few flaws as possible.”

“What’s the whole lot worth?”

“Did you know that diamonds are also found in meteorite?”

“All that’s very interesting, but answer my question before you really start to piss me off.”

Mitchell was taking a step toward the man, on the verge of slapping a straight answer out of him, when the front door crashed open. For a second he was paralyzed at the sight of four armed blacks charging the room, frozen long enough for the invaders to begin unleashing autofire. By the time he palmed his Beretta, he glimpsed Johannsen tumbling to the deck, scarlet fingers spurting from his skull and chest, then felt the first few rounds tearing into flesh pitching him, back and down.

MIRBA SETTLED the severed head beside the man’s notebook computer, placed the card with the image of Al-Jassaca in a spreading pool of blood. Quickly he wiped the knife on the man’s shirt, sheathing the blade as he sensed a presence just beyond the doorway to the study. He slipped the AKM off his shoulder.

“You’ve had your fun. I suggest you vacate now.”

It had been almost too easy, dropping the sentries, lopping off their bullet-shattered heads, then penetrating through the kitchen door. He wasn’t sure what he’d actually expected—more hardmen, bells and alarms blaring, some type of resistance—but he had gunned down the CIA man with a quick burst of autofire where he sat, scrolling through what looked like an endless series of numbers. Not a stir in the house, until now.

Mirba, though, knew all along what he would do when he encountered the traitor. His part of the mission was finished, and so was the American, as he turned, found the shadow, armed with a pistol, looming tall and angry in the doorway. Witnesses, even paymasters, were always a liability.

“I’ll take it from here.”

And Mirba lifted his AKM, squeezed the trigger and blew the infidel traitor off his feet. The nameless adversary was grunting curses, rolling on his side, pistol tracking when Mirba drilled a 3-round burst into his chest.

All done, he figured as he took the laptop and dumped it in a nylon sack and began his retreat from the abattoir, as silent as a ghost.

THE CROWD BURST into a stampede with the opening rounds. Their terror and panic was pure sweet music to his ears, a taste of paradise, he thought as he surged into the banquet room swinging the Czech subgun to his three o’clock as Bodyguard-driver Two was digging into his coat for his weapon. Number One was already tumbling back, pasta and sauces flying through the air, when Haludba Demmahom hit the second guard with an SMG blast. He aimed for the face, having already noted the extra girth beneath the shirts, hit the grim snarl point-blank with. Number Two kicked off his feet, he advanced deeper into the room, found the two HVTs jumping from their seats. The DOD man was hauling his bulk for the exit door next when Demmahom gave him some lead, squeezing off a short burst that stitched him up the arm before his head burst apart in a gory detonation of red and gray. Advancing, he looked at the senator who had his hands raised, blubbering something Demmahom couldn’t make out through the maelstrom of shouts and screams to his rear. A check of his watch, counting down to pay dirt, and he delivered 7.62 mm judgment to the senator, shredding his white shirt to a crimson rag, the man windmilling his arms as he jig stepped, tumbling over his seat, down and crashing to a twitching sprawl.