Ramrod intercept, p.14
Ramrod Intercept, page 14
Such foolishness for this Iranian boy, not much more than eighteen, if he judged the smooth, unlined, near babylike features correct, to think he could dupe, scam a man, no, a soldier who had personally killed in battle with the black SPLA rebels more men than he had wet dreams.
Ghaziz made himself look interested, rapt and ready to buy it all. There were pieces of the puzzle missing, Ghaziz was certain, and it had more to do with the youth’s sudden wish to look heroic than anything else, the Iranian all but tipping his hand on his cowardice.
One other thing Ghaziz understood about human nature. Most people created their own problems. In this case, the Iranian youth, by fleeing and leaving his comrades to do the dying, had created a nightmare for himself. He couldn’t possibly know it yet, but this Iranian wouldn’t live past breakfast.
Ghaziz leaned back in his swivel chair behind his desk. Behind the youth, two of his soldiers were working with a fury trying to raise the two patrols who had left the base hours ago. No luck. Ghaziz could be sure something had happened to them, but what, and how they met some violent end he couldn’t say.
“So, it is as I said,” the youth continued, in his panting voice, glancing with worry over his shoulder toward the soldiers.
“Interesting. Go on. One man, you say?”
“Yes.”
“American? Arab?”
“I did not hear him speak. There was so much shooting, the explosions, it was all I could do to fight my way out of there and come to you with this report.”
“Interesting. Perhaps you were too afraid to notice if there were other gunmen running about.”
“I saw only the one gunman, sir. Tall, dark.”
“The proverbial bogeyman. Interesting.”
“What I say is true. They are all dead.”
“How would you know?”
Now the youth showed the first sign of fear. “Sir?”
“Let me spell it out for you. A team of gunmen descended on a camp that I am responsible for protecting. You tell me a story of one lone shooter, razing the entire grounds. That you are here tells me you tucked your tail between your legs and ran at the first sign of shooting—”
“But!”
“Silence! Is this what I am out here in the middle of this wasteland to protect? This is the future of the mighty jihad? At the first hint of engaging an undetermined enemy, you run away like a frightened old hag?”
“It was not quite like that.”
“Then tell me, what was it like?”
“I…I…”
“Precisely.”
He pinned the youth with a dark gaze for a moment, then asked his radioman, “Well?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Take this one outside and shoot him.”
He didn’t look at the shock and horror veiling the young man’s face, but waved a hand, dismissing the pleas for mercy as the soldiers came and hauled him out of the command hut. He had problems of his own, no doubt. The situation called for him to ride out to the camp—or what was left of it. Little doubt the gunman—gunmen—were long gone. They would have left no clues behind as to their identity. And with what the Iranian paymasters shelled out for ownership of this province, someone higher up the chain of command would want answers.
Solid answers. And action, in the form of retaliation.
He was thinking of the mystery and the mess he now had on his hands, when the brief stutter of autofire rang out beyond the hut. If what the youth had said was true…
Impossible. No one gunman could lay waste to an entire camp, slaughter thirty men, even if most of them were inexperienced youth.
Then again, what if the Iranian had been telling the truth? What, then, was he facing? A madman? A crusader?
Ghaziz rose to go check out this mother of all slaughters.
BOLAN UNDERSTOOD the necessity to ditch the vehicle, claim new wheels. There was a strong possibility, if nothing else, the first patrol they encountered could have radioed back a description of the van, and Nhoubaff agreed. Apparently the man had made prior arrangements to stave off just such a problem.
They arrived at a small village of clustered block-shaped huts, the sun up and baking the surrounding desert, promising a day of furnacelike heat. It was going to be hot, all right, Bolan knew, the only question was who would know the fires of hell before the day was out.
The soldier gave Nhoubaff credit for having foresight enough to keep a backup vehicle nearby and waiting. The dark man in the white turban greeted them as they stepped out of the van. Bolan didn’t care for the sudden appearance of any more unknown human factors than necessary, but Nhoubaff assured him the man could be trusted. As usual, the soldier knew that remained to be seen. AK-47 in hand, he kept himself braced for any sudden difficulties.
The backup vehicle was an old pickup with a covered bed. They stowed the weapons under false floorboards in the back, then Bolan told Nhoubaff, “Things are just getting heated up.”
“I can believe that.”
“From here on, it goes to the mat. No turning back.”
“I understand. I am with you.”
“I need a large black tool bag, some coveralls.”
Nhoubaff said he knew another contact who could get him those things on the way to Port Sudan.
“Ahmed will want a little something for his trouble.”
Bolan nodded, pulled out his war funds, peeled off enough Sudanese pounds to bring a smile to Ahmed’s face.
When they were rolling in the truck, Bolan laid out his game plan. Nhoubaff grew more grim by the minute.
“This kind of action, understand they will marshal all their resources to find us.”
“We’ll work it out as we go along.”
“The radio station, you say?”
“Our next stop.”
“Sounds like you had this, uh, shopping list worked out in accordance to movement toward the waterfront.”
“Careful planning’s always a plus in my line of work.”
“And having plenty of bullets likewise.”
“That, and seizing the initiative.”
“Well, let us go seize some more of that initiative.”
“Sounds like a plan. At some point I’m going to need a secured line.”
“A satlink. I can arrange that through the contact who sent me to you.”
Bolan needed an intro to that contact anyway. Assuming he saw the other side of this mission here in Sudan, he would need to nail down arrangements to get him out of the country.
Now, though, was the time to crank it up, and bring down a few houses of the unholy.
GHAZIZ FELT his anger mounting to a dangerous boiling point. First they had ridden up on the remains of Captain Hassan and his squad, the bodies already taking a savaging from the vultures. Someone had hit the APC with most likely an RPG-7, he deduced, blowing the troops out of their seats before they knew what hit them. Then another roving patrol had reported they had come across Sergeant al-Waddah and his soldiers, stretched out for yet more vultures, his men apparently shot down where they stood in front of their Hummer.
How could this have happened? he wondered. Who was responsible for this obscenity?
Now Ghaziz was inspecting the carnage of the Iranian camp, his rage deepening, questions with no obvious answers churning in his head. All of them—thirty plus—dead, likewise the vultures here hard at work plucking out eyes, gorging themselves on exposed flesh, greedy beaks digging out innards. In a moment of blind fury, Ghaziz unleashed a stream of lead from his AK-74, drilling a few of the more determined scavenger birds into crimson mist and bloody feathers as the other vultures took the clue to vacate and hit the air, squawking away in flight.
Ghaziz moved up to the smoldering remains of where the tents were nearly burning out. He could see what happened here, and found it even more incredible to believe that one man could have done this. Figure some planted charges on the ammo depot, the motor pool, whatever sentries supposed to be watching the grounds probably nodding off as some silent shadows moved in. The initial blasts then taking out a large portion of the tent housing the recruits. Then in some heightened sense of panic whoever survived came running out, the gunmen waiting to cut them down.
However it was spelled out, Ghaziz knew the leader of the NIF wouldn’t be happy. Some madmen were on the loose inside Sudan, running amok, killing his soldiers, some twisted scheme to scrap the plans for the training of future Iranian freedom fighters.
Or was there more to it than that?
He didn’t look forward to making the first of several calls to report a triple disaster, rife with mystery, no less, no identity on the gunmen. Colonel Issad Bhoutami might be a lower-ranking officer, but he carried more clout with the Iranians, not to mention he had ingratiated himself to the Khartoum government with his grim work on the black rebels in the south.
One last look at the carnage, and Ghaziz headed back for his jeep. He knew one thing right then, and feared the coming hours would bear witness to more such slaughter.
He had problems, no doubt about it, and someone would be held accountable for what was somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-plus dead men. Unless he sounded the alarm, relayed what the Iranian had told him to Bhoutami, that a storm of unknown, faceless gunmen were headed his way, Ghaziz knew it would be his neck firmly placed inside the noose.
COLONEL ISSAD BHOUTAMI was enjoying a cup of Turkish coffee when the call came through. He was at his desk early in his office headquarters of the National Islamic Front, expecting good news that the promised shipment of high-tech merchandise had arrived at his warehouse on the waterfront. Instead he nearly choked on the steaming black brew as he listened to what amounted to a horror story from Major Ghaziz of the al-Wad post. What he heard defied reality, and he asked the major to repeat himself.
“How could this be?” Bhoutami barked into the phone. “You are telling me you have a bunch of bodies, nearly fifty men all over the desert out there and no witnesses other than one Iranian recruit who claims one gunman did all this? Why am I suspicious, Major?”
“I am calling—”
“As what? A courtesy to warn me some mysterious killers may be headed in my direction?”
“I thought you should know.”
“I know the CIA, the DIA are like cockroaches swarming all over the country.”
“Perhaps,” the major informed him, “they have mounted a covert operation against us. Perhaps, as we suspect, they know you are waiting on that shipment. Perhaps, they suspect you are making inroads and progress toward seeing the return—”
“Enough speculation.” The line was secured, he knew, but the CIA were devious enough, with all their high-tech surveillance, to tap into his line just the same. “I need to make some calls myself now. I need to think. Get back to me within the hour.”
He hung up, staring at nothing, the walls of his office seeming to close in, crushing him with paranoia and anxiety. The first call he decided to make was to his head of security. If some undetermined threat was headed his way, he needed all the help he could muster.
Someone had just declared war.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Bolan was going in, prepared to leave behind a strong message for the fires of hate. Up to then, Sudan’s rising star of morning radio had been pumping out the hate over the state-controlled airwaves, the fanatic spewing out the contaminating poison for as far as he could shout it out from the black depths of his soul. But when the warrior left there the man would no longer be sitting at the mike to trumpet the message of death to the West to consume those Muslims who straddled the fence, those undecided masses who might be influenced by the diatribe to turn into killers.
There was nothing like fighting fire with his own brand of dispensing the cleansing conflagration.
According to his intel, there was also a small force of NIF gunmen on hand, hunkered inside the radio station, guarding their star disk jockey from stalkers, angry listeners who might come there to take the law into their hands out of rational disagreement with the man’s message. No clear fix on numbers on the hardforce, but either way it would be a bonus, shaving down some of the troops, a few loose mad dogs he wouldn’t need to deal with in the future.
And then there was his own message, Bolan’s own personal touch to signal his revulsion and angry disagreement with the message of hate broadcast all over Sudan from here.
Nhoubaff was parked three blocks over, where the souks began in this northern edge before the jumbled blocks of apartment buildings began blending into the city proper.
As luck would have it, an access ladder led to the roof. The giant satellite dish would be the soldier’s last victim, but first up to receive a destructive waiting nudge on the way in. The large tool bag with the necessities he needed slung over his shoulder, he scaled the ladder after giving the alley a search and finding it clear of watchers. The problem would come later when he was vacating the premises, retracing his steps back to the truck. The last thing he needed was to find a waiting convoy of authorities and soldiers scrambled to the scene.
The AK-47 fit snug inside the bag, with the Beretta 93-R, sound suppressor already threaded on the muzzle, stowed beneath his white coveralls. A few Russian grenades were stuffed in the pockets of his coveralls, one of them an incendiary bomb, meant to burn the building to the ground.
He hit the roof running, made the satellite dish and fixed a block of C-4, set the timer to give himself ample time to get in and out.
It was going to get hairy, he knew, from there on. No doubt the alarm had been sounded by at least one runner he knew about. He had made it this far, but there was a long way to go. The laser weapons or their component parts were somewhere in the city. Once he started kicking down key doors and grilling guys under the threat of death, he would find those weapons, one way or another, and send them up in smoke.
First to douse the fires of hate.
The Executioner made the door at the edge of the roof. He didn’t know the layout, but a running blitz below was in the cards either way.
Bolan found the door open, slid free the Beretta, the AK-47 resting near the top of the bag, ready for a quick pull. Combat senses on full alert, the Executioner ventured down the steps, going for the bulldoze approach to set loose a raging fire of his own.
OMAR GIRGIS HAD a good life as the morning host for Radio Free Islam of Sudan, and he intended to keep both the trappings of his celebrity status and to make sure, on a daily basis, the message of “us” and “them”—Islam versus non-Islam—went on ringing loud and angry to call the faithful to service.
It hadn’t always been so grand a life. There was a time, not long ago, when he climbed the ranks of the army the hard way, up the ladder all the way to colonel because of his war against the black rebels of the south. His service to his country had been rewarded by the minister of finance and the leader of the National Islamic Front. They were both personal friends, had pulled a few strings to land him this job as a glorified mouthpiece to spread the word of Islam across Sudan, and as far north, thanks to a tie-in to a Chinese satellite, to Cairo. A Mercedes, an expense account, paid vacations to Europe and a villa on the Red Sea were a few of the more noticeable perks for Sudan’s most popular disk jockey. The gaggle of prostitutes he wiled away the nights with was another fringe benefit, long orgies after a hard day at the radio station, which kept him looking forward to going to work the next morning. Not necessarily something, he knew, he wanted broadcasted to his listeners.
Yes, he had a large following, pushing near seven hundred thousand strong, a possible talk show in the near future, and he didn’t think the Muslim faithful would appreciate knowing their hero indulged long hours of wallowing in a tangle of limbs with common whores.
He always waited until his listening audience across Sudan was finished with morning prayers before he greeted them. “In the name of God, the compassionate and the merciful, this is Omar Girgis, his humble servant who has been sent in his name to encourage our holy war against the West.”
Each morning he began with issuing the fatwa, hoping to incite his countrymen, believing, if nothing else, he could march them out to kill black Christians wherever they were found. This morning he railed against the latest uprising by black rebels in the south, the SPLA fighting to hold on to land that was believed to be awash with oil, a potential gold mine for all Muslims if the area could be returned into the rightful possession of Arabs. Black rebel blood for black gold, was his favorite mantra.
He went on with the usual spewing of venom toward renewed American efforts to use commandos in the Middle East. He said the Americans had unleashed mad dogs after the attack on the USS Cole, devils in human skin who were hunting down holy Islamic warriors around the Middle East and north Africa. There was yet to be any evidence of that allegation, but it never hurt to inflame passion and righteous indignation with the right dose of paranoia and fear. Wherever a Westerner was to be found in Sudan, it was the sacred duty of all Muslims to expunge even a single walking blight of infidel presence in the country.
He looked through the open doorway to his studio, face close to the mike, feeling the heat of his passion burning inside. These were hard times for Muslims, he proclaimed, but they had to rise up, stand strong against the infidels. Of course, he knew, not everyone in Sudan agreed with him. Anyone opposed to his views, well, that was the reason he kept an armed security detail of NIF loyalists at the station, close by in the hallway, close enough where he could call out and have them refill his coffee cup. Just in case some lunatic made it past the six loyalists—a long shot, since all of his guards had earned their reputations in the killing fields of southern Sudan—he kept the Makarov pistol on the console.
He was calling for Arab unity, the usual spiel, when he thought he heard a chugging sound, the thud of a body out in the hall. Alarm bells went off, and a moment later he heard the stutter of an automatic weapon, voices raised in fear, the pounding of feet, followed by the scream of a secretary. This couldn’t be happening, he thought, frozen at his console, wondering why he couldn’t find his tongue, a man who could talk loud and angry volumes for hours on end.
