Rebel Trade. Don Pendleton

he meant to travel once he’d cleared the river’s mouth, or even how much gasoline was in the fleeing craft’s fuel tank. He checked on fuel before a raid, and would have done so in the morning, but the midnight strike had caught him unprepared.

       An error that he would have to correct before the night’s disaster was reported back to MLF headquarters in Windhoek. If he survived to file that grim report himself, he’d include a conclusion that would mollify his masters—the destruction of the enemy who’d ravaged them, preferably after he was grilled for information on his motives or the sponsors of his raid.

       If, on the other hand, Andjaba did not live to speak with headquarters…well, then, his troubles would be over.

       But he did not plan to die this night. He’d lost enough men as it was, without taking a fling at martyrdom.

       The boat they sought was running without lights, of course, but Andjaba could hear its motor snarling, sending echoes back to him across the dark water. He was tempted to unleash the Pecheneg, but wasting ammunition in a fit of rage solved nothing. Worse, it might defeat his purpose when he found a target and the gun refused to fire, adding insult to injury.

       A sudden difference in the sound confused Andjaba for a moment, then he realized the stolen boat had slowed—or had it stopped? Why would the damned fool cut the throttle, he wondered, when he knew they must be coming after him?

       Perhaps the boat had stalled from careless handling, or maybe it was running out of fuel. But no, when they were almost within sight of it, Andjaba heard the motor roar again and speed away, almost as if their enemy was playing cat-and-mouse.

       Madness. But it would cost him, having let them close the gap. The first glimpse of his target would be ample for the PKP to do its work, hosing the stolen boat with fourteen rounds per second. He would try to hit the engine, stop the boat and leave their adversary to be captured, but Andjaba thought the night-prowler would choose to fight it out.

       Too bad.

       A shot-up boat could be repaired. A corpse could be examined for whatever tell-tale clues remained to its identity. Jackson Andjaba, on the other hand, could not be resurrected if his MLF superiors ordered him shot for dereliction of his duty—as they well might, if he let the enemy escape.

       A bit of caution, then, but if the bastard saw no wisdom in surrender, death would be his choice. And Andjaba would be happy to oblige.

       “Just let me see your face,” he muttered to the night. “It’s all I ask.”

      * * *

      THE FIRST RATTLE OF automatic fire made Bolan duck and twist the speedboat’s steering wheel, swooping from left to right and back again, in an attempt to spoil the shooter’s aim. It was a risky move, since he had no clue as to the river’s depth at any given point, and stranding on a sandbar or some other unseen obstacle could finish him for good.

       Evasion was the key, but that meant constant forward motion, leading his pursuers toward the killing ground he had prepared for them. It all hinged on his drawing them along behind him—and not getting killed in the process.

       The shooter in the lead pursuit craft was about four hundred yards behind him, well within effective range for what sounded like a 7.62 mm weapon. Then again, there was a world of difference between the range at which a given slug could wound or kill, and any shooter’s realistic hope of zeroing in on a target.

       The down side: with a Russian light machine gun’s rate of fire, the man behind the weapon didn’t have to be a legendary marksman. All he had to be was lucky. Just one round had to find its mark by accident, hurtling along at something like 860 yards per second, and the man on the receiving end was down. Forget about the Hollywood “flesh wounds” that left an action hero fit to run ten miles and take out half a dozen burly adversaries with his bare hands on arrival at his destination. That was movie magic, light years out of touch with flesh-and-blood reality.

       The truth: a hit by any military bullet hurts like hell, unless it slams the target into instant shock on impact. Any torso wound can kill, unless there is an expert MASH team standing by to pull a miracle out of the hat. And any talk about a “clean” wound through a human abdomen is fantasy. Get “lucky” with a stray shot through an arm or leg, and anything beyond a graze will shatter bone, turn muscle into hamburger, and leave you bleeding out from severed arteries.

       Long story short—in any shooting situation, it is best to give, and not receive.

       Or, in the present case, to duck and weave like crazy, until it was payback time.

       But just to keep it interesting…

       Bolan kept his left hand on the speedboat’s steering wheel, picked up the AK-47 with his right, and half turned in the pilot’s chair to fire a burst one-handed in the general direction of the boats pursuing him. He kept it high on purpose, wasting rounds to spoil his adversary’s aim without inflicting any damage on the leading shooter or his crew.

       Not yet.

       Their moment was approaching.

       Another aimless burst from his Kalashnikov, and Bolan set the rifle down beside him once again. The LMG fire from the lead pursuit craft faltered, and he pictured crewmen ducking as the bullets rattled overhead. It was a different game entirely when the rabbit shot back at the hunters, changing up the rules. Raiders accustomed to attacking merchant ships and terrorizing unarmed crews acquired a new perspective when the bullets came their way.

       Call it a learning curve, while it lasted.

       With any luck at all, about another minute, maybe less.

       Ahead, Bolan could see a glint of moonlight on the South Atlantic, stretching in his mind’s eye all the way to Rio de Janeiro. Wishing for a brief second that he was there, relaxing on a beach at sunset with a cold drink in his hand and someone warm beside him, Bolan freed the detonator from his web belt, switched it on and started counting down the doomsday numbers in his head.

      * * *

      ANDJABA DUCKED, CURSING, as bullets swarmed over his head and off into the night. But for its strap around his neck, he might have lost the PKP machine gun overboard, and that only increased his rage at being forced to cringe and crawl before his men.

       Not that they noticed him, as they drove for the nearest cover themselves. The pilot of Andjaba’s speedboat nearly toppled from his seat, grabbing at the steering wheel to save himself, and in the process sent the boat roaring off toward a collision with the river’s northern bank before he managed to correct the looping move and bring them back on course.

       Seizing any chance to salvage wounded dignity, Andjaba rounded on the pilot, bellowing, “Will you hold it steady for Christ’s sake! How am I supposed to stop him if you can’t drive straight?”

       The pilot mouthed an answer, but his words were whipped away and lost as the boat accelerated, engine revving upward from a rumble toward a howl. Andjaba was relieved, knowing the last thing that he needed at the moment was a confrontation with an overwrought subordinate.

       One adversary at a time, and top priority belonged to the intruder who had left so many of his soldiers dead or dying in the river camp.

       Andjaba bent back to the Pecheneg and checked its belt by touch, discovering that he had only twenty-five or thirty rounds remaining in the ammo box. Was there another on the boat? If so, could he find and retrieve it, then reload, before his target reached the open sea, less than a quarter mile away? And if the faceless raider did reach the Atlantic, which way would he turn?

       Northward, 250 miles along the coastline, lay Angolan waters, possibly patrolled by gunboats of the Marinha de Guerra. Southward, he would have to travel twice as far before he could seek sanctuary in South Africa. No contest, either way, with two boats against one.

       But what if he proceeded out to sea?

       It struck Andjaba that his ignorance of their opponent might prove fatal. How had this man arrived to strike the MLF encampment? Clearly he had not walked from Angola or South Africa, nor even from Windhoek.