no more information out of Mousuami who was retching and moaning, set to pass out. Cold-blooded killing normally wasn’t part of his SOP, but the enemy was proving itself more vicious and savage with every attack, every abduction, showing not a scintilla of mercy or compassion, especially when it came to noncombatants. Besides, if he let Mousuami live he could reach out and warn his comrades in Casablanca, perhaps see yet another day where he could plot mass murder.
Bolan gathered in the briefcase and laptop, tucked them under one arm. Then the Executioner drew a bead between Mousuami’s eyes, his finger taking up slack on the trigger to remove one more scourge from the planet.
RON BARAKA CAUGHT a bird’s-eye view of the Gulf of Naples along the Amalfi Coast as he was escorted to the villa by two men in black wielding HK MP 5 subguns. After his report on the Madrid incident, he had been summoned to Italy by the men of the Phoenix Consortium. He had a few hours’ downtime in the Learjet from Madrid to the private airfield they controlled outside Naples, the local authorities greased, he was sure, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy a few moments of the breathtaking view following the long ride in the van along the winding, treacherous cliffside roads. He figured they were several hundred feet in the air, high above blue-green waters sprinkled with fishing boats and pleasure craft, the compound perched on the edge of a cliff, ringed by native vegetation. It was a fleeting sensation, the sudden longing he felt to be in a cabin cruiser, stretched out in a chaise longue, drink in hand, the lassies at his beck and call.
Someday, he told himself as another black-clad sentry opened the ornately carved teak doors, allowing him entrance to a marbled foyer, the walls fairly splashed with frescoes, the corridor lined with statues of what he guessed were Roman and Greek gods and goddesses. For the foreseeable future it was all business, grim and savage, he considered, to the point of…
What? Madness?
The good news, as far as he could tell, was that he’d been allowed to hold on to his twin Beretta M-9 piston in shoulder holsters beneath his Italian silk sports jacket.
As his escort led him down another frescoed corridor, chandeliers the size of small automobiles hovering above him, he briefly considered the past, what had led him to man the helm of what would prove the most ambitious undertaking—in terms of conquering foreign land—since the Nazis blitzkrieged across Europe and into Russia. He was now “retired” from active duty, but his track record as assassin, saboteur and leader of covert operations for the CIA, from West Africa to the Far East, had shot him to the front of the employment line at present. No wife, no family of any kind, there was only himself and his work to consider. That, and the monumental task set before him.
And what was he? he wondered. Black bag operations was all he’d known, but was he simply their cannon fodder? An errand boy? A hired gun? For damn sure, he wasn’t like the Consortium, these men who called the shots from behind the front lines, never getting their own hands dirty, never having to dodge bullets or to worry about stepping on a landmine that could amputate on the spot. Hell, he couldn’t even begin to count all the men—and women and children—he’d killed. At times, when he felt the wear and tear of the years, it seemed as if an army of ghosts was marching behind him—or the dead were eagerly waiting for him to check out to the other side, anxious to take back their pounds of flesh. And what were his motives at present? he wondered as another black-clad sentry opened the door to the room where the men waited. On that score, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain. Money, lots of it, shot to the top of the list. Beyond basic greed, though, he couldn’t say why he had agreed to lead the charge into a New World for the Consortium. Where they wanted power, were perhaps looking to dictate whatever their terms and conditions to the rest of the world, he simply wanted to secure whatever was left of his future, retire for good. They wanted Africa, all of it, and Angola was the springboard. Madness? he wondered again. Or was it?
They had the means, he knew, to pull it off.
And that, he thought, should have scared him into a sprint for the setting sun.
Striding toward the long mahogany table, Baraka ran a look over the five men seated on the other side. He didn’t know their names, figured in the long run that was for the best, if it hit the fan and he was forced to go for number one. Considering their clout—the endless parade of contacts in the intelligence world, the way they could access intelligence and arms on the spot—clued him in they were former big shots. CIA? DIA? NSA? Pentagon honchos? He wasn’t about to ask or to go digging around for information. In his mind, their ambition—delusional or not—made them every bit as dangerous as he was. Even if they only drew the battle maps in the safety of this cocoon, they knew enough bad folks around the globe to yank his ticket if he became insubordinate, careless or didn’t perform to expectations.
There was no chair for him to sit, so he was forced to stand at attention, as usual. Mentally, he tagged the men according to appearance or vice, giving each one a look as they chewed on their own thoughts. Quickly, then, he gave the circular, whitewashed room a once-over. Other than a wet bar, there were two black-clad men manning what he knew was the Consortium’s supercomputer. It was above and beyond NSA quality, he had once been informed, with multiple processors linked and connected to a massive memory by a bus called a hyperchannel. Not only did it monitor all the world’s hot spots, capable of hacking into the mainframes of every intelligence and law-enforcement agency around the globe, it controlled the Serpent Tank. In fact, when one of the many tank’s accounts was electronically manipulated, cash could be ready and available in any Bank of America for any operative in about a dozen countries.
He knew. He’d seen cold cash in the six figures dumped in his hand in Luanda, Casablanca and Madrid to finance the ongoing operation.
Goatee got the ball rolling. “What is your take on the Madrid situation?”
“Renegade operation. One man going for himself. I have the diamonds in the van. Quite a sizable haul. I’d say he had about five, six million in uncut stones.”
“Good,” Pipe Smoker said, tamping fresh tobacco in his bowl. “There is no room in the Consortium for loose cannons.”
Baraka found that statement somewhat ironic, since their army was made up of mostly mercenaries, disgruntled ex-Special Forces with a smattering of criminal rabble in it purely for the buck. “Wilders lost a man.”
Cigar Man spoke up. “We will handle Wilders. Several of their executives are aware of the coming situation and they will accept the loss of one man who, as it would appear, wasn’t a team player.”
“We have other investors,” Whiskey Man chimed in, “who are most anxious for us to proceed. Once your operators in Morocco have acquired the package, we will launch the operation within forty-eight hours. Do you see a problem with that?”
Baraka did, but he’d come this far, what was he going to say? “As long as we have the backing of our contingent in the Angolan Armed Forces—FAA—and UNITA, there should be no problem taking down the palace. I’m assuming you will want the sitting president executed?”
“We will hand him over to his shadow adversaries,” White Suit said, “in the Angolan Armed Forces. According to our intelligence, there are some officers under our command in-country who have had family members ‘disappear.’ They believe the sitting president and some of his rabble are responsible.”
“And they will want answers,” Cigar Man said, “or retribution.”
“What we need,” Goatee said, “is to seize complete control of the diamond fields and as soon as the smoke of battle clears.”
“And,” Whiskey Man said, “the oil fields. Including the offshore platforms. Your men and trusted FAA officers will take charge of that area of responsibility. It will be difficult, considering we’re but a few hundred strong, but not impossible. Once the situation is explained and passed on to their army, with cash incentives being distributed, we should be able to bring the army under our control.”
Should, Baraka thought. Why did that make him so nervous? Loyalty wasn’t a common trait among West African grunts, unless, of course, cold hard cash was distributed and they were promised a slice of the pie. All