Cal gunned the engine and hoped the tank was full. The gauge was broken, not a surprise given how hammered the bike was. Transportation in Congo was never pristine or pretty.
Second to having gas, he hoped there was an exit ahead that the bike could maneuver. Well, he’d take any exit, but given that they couldn’t return to Gbadolite, having a vehicle would be nice. His final hope was that if there were only one exit, it would be at the end of this tunnel and not behind them.
This op had gone from having a spy-movie feel to more of an Indiana Jones-and-horror vibe. Would they find an underground chamber filled with child slaves and a villain who ripped out hearts?
One thing was certain, Freya was no damsel in distress. She’d taken a brief pause to catch her breath after seeing her name attached to massive theft, and then she’d dived in and fixed it.
Shooting the hard disk had been a shock, but he had to admit, the idea that she might’ve destroyed all Lubanga’s financial records—maybe even access to his money—had Cal grinning from ear to ear. And she’d left the charred remains of the disk behind for Lubanga’s men to find, so they’d know exactly how screwed they were.
It had been brilliant of her to turn dollars into bitcoin. He didn’t know much about the cryptocurrency except that it required a key—usually in the form of a USB drive. He’d seen her take all the drives from the computer room. Each one could hold bitcoin or another cryptocurrency. In taking the drives, had she just bankrupted Lubanga?
Cal had stared in Jean Paul Lubanga’s eyes and negotiated paying kickbacks for a mining claim in which starving women and children would do the work, all while sex-trafficking victims put on a show in the background. Lubanga was soulless. He ran on greed and a thirst for power and could reignite the Congo Wars.
That Freya might’ve destroyed his finances made everything that had transpired to bring them here worth it.
Destroying Lubanga’s finances would be crippling in a way that was more devastating than assassination. Assassination assumed there wasn’t someone worse waiting to step in. But would-be dictators needed to pay their armies. They needed to pay the guards who beat the slaves. If Lubanga had been cleaned out, Team Democracy had just won a major battle—with only eight shots being fired.
Any lingering doubts he might have harbored about Freya had been wiped away. The woman was a crazy, all-in soldier, willing to risk anything.
They’d gone at least five miles when he noticed a subtle shift in the pitch of the tracks. They were ascending. He’d guess they’d been at least three or four stories deep at the nadir, they had a ways to go to get to ground level, but this was a good sign.
He glanced at his compass. As expected, they were going south. Was there an escape route into the Central African Republic behind them, at the opposite end of the tracks? Before the gunshots, he’d heard the men on the tracks. They’d been coming from the north, the direction of the CAR.
Given the infrastructure and tunnel, Gbadolite was the best staging ground for a coup. None of the factions fighting in the east had been able to take Gbadolite with its garrison of soldiers stationed in the other palace, so Lubanga had opted to buy the soldiers’ allegiance.
But Freya had nixed that.
The tunnel narrowed as the grade increased. Freya’s grip on his hips tightened. Ahead of them, there was nothing but black, no definition to the path. Were they nearing a dead end?
He slowed the bike. “Going to turn on the headlight. NVGs aren’t cutting it for distance.” He flipped up the goggles as he flicked on the light, able to see now the long, deep curve ahead.
He braced himself for the unknown. They could turn into a battalion of Lubanga’s men here. Or no one.
If the entrance under the palace wasn’t guarded, what did that mean for this end, well over eight miles south? But the men who’d come after them had been on the tracks, not in the palace tunnels.
“Grab my gun,” he said to Freya, knowing she hadn’t had a chance to reload her weapon. He’d keep his hands on the throttle and brake and let her do the shooting.
She pulled his weapon. Her knees tightened on his hips as she adjusted to a one-handed hold on his hip.
He leaned into the turn, hoping the headlight would blind anyone in wait around the bend, but it was possible no one at this end of the tunnel knew they were coming. He’d snapped the guy’s neck when they fought in the tunnel, and Freya’s shot had been deadly, leaving, as far as they knew, only the unconscious bound man in the computer room alive to warn others.
Maybe they were home free.
The report of a bullet killed that fantasy. It was impossible to gauge where it came from given the echo down the chamber, but Freya must still be wearing her NVGs with heat sensor, because she fired into the darkness just as the headlight illuminated a man crouched in an alcove.
The man’s head snapped back, and he dropped as they zipped past. Cal took the next curve at speed and swerved to miss several heavy mine carts lined up on the track, blocking their way.
Freya rolled from the back of the bike as it fishtailed. He turned a hundred and eighty degrees to see her fire off two shots, taking out two men with AKs who’d likely been blinded by the headlight. They’d fired, one bullet zipping past Cal’s head alarmingly close.
A third man was in the path of the bike, beside the tracks. Cal did his own roll, pulling his knife as he pitched the bike into him. A moment later, he had the man pinned under the bike, his blade to his throat.
“Who do you work for?” he asked in French.
The man spat in his face and dislodged the knife.
Shit. He was gonna make Cal kill him.
Fine.
Cal punched the man in the face with his other hand. They rolled. They guy was thick and muscular, and he knew how to fight. Cal took a blow to the face as he kicked upward, dislodging his opponent.
Cal rolled to his feet at the same time the other guy did. He charged Cal, and it was over with the man’s next heartbeat. Cal’s blade sank deep into his chest.
Cal turned to Freya, breathing heavy, adrenaline pumping. She stood in profile to him, running her flashlight over an alcove.
“Anyone there?” Cal asked.
“No. But I found tools and…gas cans.” She lifted a jerry can and shook it. “Five of them. And they’re full.”
Thank you, God.
He lifted the bike and threw the kickstand. While he topped off the tank, she grabbed machetes, a hammer, a wrench, and a few screwdrivers from the tool cache and collected the AKs from all three men she’d shot.
“Look at this,” she said, holding up the Kalashnikovs.
They weren’t 47s. They were AKS74Us—short assault rifles. The short barrel and folding stock made them easier to conceal, while the distinctive open triangle stock made them lighter than other assault rifles. AKS74Us were rare, especially in Africa.
“They might’ve been gifts from Gorev,” he said. Terrorist groups had coveted the Russian rifles ever since Osama bin Laden was photographed with one.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“When this is over, we’ll send Gorev a thank-you note.” Things were looking up. They had a bike, fuel, concealable AKs, and a hell of a lot of money.
He strapped two full jerry cans to the back of the bike, which had a platform just for that purpose. In a land where roads were narrow and unpaved or nonexistent, motorbikes were the most reliable, best transportation to be found, and this bike was tricked out for just this sort of journey.
They had enough fuel to reach Lisala or Gemena and could figure out their next steps from there. He strapped his pack to the back along with the fuel cans, so it would be easier for Freya to ride without the bulk between them.
He climbed on as she secured the machetes and folded AKs to their gear, then straddled the seat behind him, her thighs against his hips. They set off down the tracks again and rounded the curve to see a flatbed cart loaded with fifty-five-gallon steel drums blocking their path and what appeared to be a large metal bay door with train tracks running underneath.
Over the engine noise, he could hear rain pounding against the metal door. They’d reached the exit.
He skirted the cart and halted the bike by the crank that would roll up the door—no electricity required. Freya hopped off, but she didn’t go for the crank; instead, she headed for the cart they’d passed.
He shut off the engine at her hand signal and dismounted.
“I need the hammer,” she said, her gaze fixed on the drums.
He plucked it from their gear and approached. “You want to see what’s inside?”
“Yes. My guess is the men were delivering something when they heard the engine—or got a call from someone at the other end—and left this to take up positions in the tunnel to ambush us.”
The trolley was motorized—which explained the stockpile of gas cans—and held three drums painted dark green. He used the claw end of the hammer to pry open the latch on the ring clamp of a barrel. She removed the ring and lifted the lid. He shone the light into the container, revealing a yellow powder.
He recognized the contents as Freya said the name.
“Uranium oxide concentrate. Also known as yellowcake.”