Conflict Zone. Don Pendleton

want to do the handshake bit?” Grimaldi asked him from the pilot’s seat.

      “I’ll skip it,” Bolan said. “The deal was that we get to use the helipad as needed, with no questions asked. They’ve also got a spare room waiting, when you’re ready. Carte blanche at the cafeteria.”

      “Be still my heart,” Grimaldi said, half smirking. “I’d say Daddy got himself a bargain.”

      “Someone else has got his markers,” Bolan said. “We’re just the go-to guys.”

      “As usual,” Grimaldi answered. “Wouldn’t it be nice to get an oil well for a Christmas present? Maybe just a little one?”

      “And change tax brackets?” Bolan said. “No thanks.”

      In fact, he hadn’t filed a tax return since he had died officially, back in Manhattan, several years ago. He also had no income, in the normal sense, but managed to collect enough in passing for his simple needs.

      It was remarkable how generous a loan shark or a drug dealer could be when you negotiated in their native language: pure brute force.

      Bolan watched Mandy Ross vanish into the limousine and wished her well. Her father lingered on the pavement for another moment, meeting Bolan’s gaze through the LongRanger’s tinted Plexiglas, and raised one hand in some kind of peculiar half salute before he turned away. Bolan sat still until the stretch had pulled away before un-buckling his safety rig.

      “What now?” Grimaldi asked.

      “You hit that cafeteria, or catch some shut-eye,” Bolan said. “I need to see a man downtown.”

      “I don’t mind riding shotgun,” Grimaldi remarked.

      “I wouldn’t want to spook him,” Bolan answered. “He’s expecting one white face, not two.”

      “I kind of hoped that we were finished.”

      “We are,” Bolan said. “I’ve got some solo work to do. Putting some frosting on the cake.”

      “Why do I get the feeling someone will be choking on it?” Grimaldi asked.

      “Well, you’ve seen me cook before.”

      “Okay. But if the kitchen gets too hot…”

      “You’ll be among the first to know,” Bolan replied.

      Besides the borrowed wheels, he had a chance of clothes waiting, to trade-off with his sweaty, battle-stained fatigues. There should be time enough for him to shower, change and stow his hardware in the drab sedan K-Tech had furnished him, before he had to meet his contact.

      As to what would happen after that, well, it was anybody’s guess.

      “THERE WAS SOME difficulty overnight, I understand,” Huang Li Chan said. His voice was soft, but no one well acquainted with him would mistake it for a casual or friendly observation.

      “Yes, sir,” Lao Choy Teoh replied.

      The two men sat with Chan’s large desk between them, in his office on the top floor of a building owned by China National Petroleum, in downtown Warri. A glass of twenty-year-old Irish whiskey rested on the desk in front of Chan. None had been offered to his visitor.

      “You may explain,” Chan said.

      As CNP’s top man in Nigeria, Chan had no need to browbeat his subordinates. They recognized, to the last man and woman, his authority within the firm, and in the country. No Chinese except Beijing’s ambassador in Lagos had authority to countermand Chan’s orders. Anyone who tried was likely to be slated for a quick flight home and some “reeducation” on the precedence of duty to the state.

      “Apparently the kidnapping of Jared Ross’s daughter has been unexpectedly resolved,” Teoh replied.

      “How so?”

      Chan had received his own report of the event, but he desired both confirmation from his chief lieutenant and more detailed explanation of the incident.

      “Our friends at MEND report a raid against the camp where she was held. Some of their personnel were killed, the woman was extracted and pursuit proved fruitless. They are furious and crave retaliation, but confusion handicaps them at the moment.”

      “There is more?” Chan asked.

      “Yes, sir. A helicopter bearing unknown passengers landed at K-Tech Petroleum’s compound a few hours after the raid. It wasn’t a corporate aircraft, yet it remains.”

      “And you find that significant?”

      “The timing is…suggestive, sir. Of course, we don’t know who the helicopter brought to visit Ross.”

      “You’ve run the registration number?”

      The International Civil Aviation Organization, an agency of the United Nations, issued alphanumeric code numbers to aircraft for use in flight plans and maintained the standards for aircraft registration—“tail numbers” in common parlance—including the code numbers that identify an airplane or helicopter’s country of registration. The ICAO’s nearest regional office, serving West and Central Africa, was a short phone call away, in Dakar, Senegal.

      “I have, sir,” Teoh confirmed. “The ‘J5’ prefix indicates official registration in Guinea Bissau.”

      “What brings it here, then?” Chan wondered out loud.

      “I’m afraid we don’t know, sir.”

      “But can we find out? That’s the question, eh, Lao?”

      “As you say, sir.”

      Subservience had its limits. Although he enjoyed wielding power, beyond any question, Chan sometimes wished for aides who displayed more initiative than simple fawning obeisance.

      “We once had eyes inside K-Tech Petroleum,” Chan said.

      “She was dismissed, as you recall, sir. Their security discovered her communications with our private operative.”

      “Yes, a nasty business.”

      “Thankfully resolved,” Teoh added, “by her suicide.”

      If such it was. Chan had been raised from infancy to trust the state and to deny religion in all forms, but he wasn’t inclined to question a convenient miracle. And if someone in his employ had helped the burned spy to decide that her life was intolerable, how was Chan to know?

      “Make every effort to identify the latest visitors,” he ordered. “Maintain tight surveillance on the K-Tech grounds and staff. Inform me instantly of any new and unfamiliar faces on the scene.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “And while you see to that,” Chan said, “I will attempt to pacify our Itsekiri friends.”

      THE WARRI headquarters for Uroil—with its home office in Yekaterinburg, on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains—stood a mere two thousand yards from the office building owned by China National Petroleum. Its drab gray walls and modest logo gave nothing away to passersby.

      “Bad news for the Chinese today, I take it,” Arkady Eltsin said. “And their underlings, too.”

      “Unfortunately, not so bad for the Americans,” Valentin Sidorov replied.

      As an agent of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service—known as the SVR—Sidorov answered first to Moscow, but his present orders placed him at Uroil’s and Arkady Eltsin’s disposal. Eltsin understood that his command of Sidorov had limits, and he hadn’t tested them.

      Not yet.

      “The Ross girl,” Eltsin said, nodding. “Who was it, do you think? The CIA?”

      “I doubt it,” Sidorov replied. “The quality of personnel available to them is scandalous, these days. So much of what they used to do