Thirty-five years after its maiden voyage, the Toscana Empress still had never sailed anywhere within twenty-five hundred nautical miles of its namesake of Tuscany, Italy; nor, for that matter, had any of its crew. An offshore supply vessel based at the Port of Lagos, Nigeria, the seventy-meter-long craft had been used for decades to transport personnel, equipment, and provisions to Nigeria’s thirteen offshore oil rigs, all within a couple dozen miles of Lagos, but it had never traveled beyond these familiar waters.
Until now. From the predawn mist, the rusty red-hulled vessel glided into view of the coastline, 140 miles to the west of Lagos, growing in size as it neared the bright lights of a modern shipping terminal.
The West African nation of Togo is an impoverished place, ranking 143 on the world economic scale between Mauritania and Kyrgyzstan, but the Port of Lomé on the southwestern edge of the nation was new and modern, sparkling in the fog like a beacon towards the sea.
The Chinese had loaned Togo the money to construct this terminal, but the interest had been high for the locals; in exchange for the funds to build the port, they’d given up nothing less than their territorial integrity. Ostensibly the Togolese owned the land and controlled access to the facility, but in truth the Chinese had the ultimate say on what, and who, made its way into the country by water.
They called it “debt-trap diplomacy.” Loan a poor nation enough money to get itself into trouble, then control it with the compromise of debt.
The Chinese didn’t invent this ploy, but they had perfected it in Africa.
A man on the dock watching the approaching supply ship adjusted his binoculars, then lowered them, taking a moment to look around his environs. Four men stood behind him, as still as stone. Twelve tractor-trailers, each with a local driver at the wheel, were parked in a row behind them, and a cluster of seven worn but powerful Land Rovers idled nearby, as well.
The man with the binoculars began approaching the water’s edge, while the four behind him held their positions.
The Toscana sailed right into port, dockworkers who came in early this morning for the arrival tied it down at the bow and the stern, and within minutes the gangway lowered on creaking chains. As previously planned, the man climbed the steps onto the vessel, and after receiving directions from a crewman, he made his way across the deck, down a ramp, and into a massive cargo hold.
The lighting was poor but good enough for him to see exactly what he’d hoped to see.
His mercenaries.
Twenty or so in number, sitting on or standing around crates and duffels. More crates rose to the ceiling on the far side of the space. Sleeping bags had been rolled up, gear packed up smartly, but the hold smelled like food, sweat, and piss.
Mostly piss.
But the man was not fazed, because it was impossible to faze Kang Shikun.
According to his business card, Kang Shikun was the director of Shenzhao Star Global, a midsized private security company that protected Chinese-owned mining and construction concerns all across sub-Saharan Africa. There were hundreds of such firms on the continent because of China’s interest in the development and extraction of resources from dozens of nations here.
But Kang’s position with Shenzhao served merely as a front for his real work. For the past sixteen years Kang had been employed by the Ministry of State Security, China’s all-encompassing foreign and domestic intelligence concern.
The four men traveling with him were MSS, as well. Body men. Former People’s Liberation Army officers; intelligent men all, but men also good with guns, good with knives, good with intimidating looks.
Kang himself knew how to fight. Before becoming a spy he’d spent eight years as a member of Arrow, the elite Beijing Military Region Special Forces Unit.
And now Kang was the African expert that Chinese intelligence sent in to do the most difficult tasks, and his reputation as a tough, smart, and resourceful operative had grown into legend back at MSS.
Virtually all the mercenaries in front of him now wore beards, cargo pants, and either T-shirts or tank tops, or else they were bare-chested. The hold was stuffy and the nighttime temperature over eighty degrees. Some were Black, most were white, and Kang quickly scanned the crowd for signs of alcohol use. He searched for bleary eyes, empty bottles, cuts and bruises on their faces, the telltale signs of bar fights. He’d dealt with drunk mercs here in Africa in the past, and he demanded utter sobriety at all times from the people who worked under him.
This ensemble of hard men, to his pleasure, seemed completely switched on. Even in the poor light he could make out clear and serious faces, though the majority of them appeared completely unimpressed with his arrival.
These men were clearheaded, at least, but they didn’t have the discipline that Kang had learned to expect and appreciate in his own men. Here in the cargo hold, backs were slumped; many mercenaries had kept their seats when he entered.
A man in back spit on the deck in front of him.
A show of disrespect, or it would have been if Kang didn’t know this type of individual. They’d keep up their air of detached defiance, and they would do their jobs.
And that was all he needed out of them.
It took him a moment, but he finally recognized a face in the crowd. A strongly built bear of a man in his late forties, with a dark brown mustache and a goatee, and skin just slightly pocked from a childhood disease, stepped forward and extended a hand.
Kang shook it with a little bow. He said, “Hello, Tremaine. Nice to be working with you again.”
The man did not smile back. With a strong South African accent, he said, “Let’s hope this goes better than it did in Niger.”
Kang considered his response before he spoke. Finally, he said, “Niger was a success, on paper, at least, but of course I understand why you might not see it that way.”
“Three of my boys dead. Three more injured and sent home to their families with no ability to earn a good wage. I guess I missed the paper that described that as a success.”
Kang said nothing, unfazed as always. He just eyed the larger man.
After a time the South African seemed to lighten up, if only just a shade. He turned to the men behind him. “Boys, you take orders from me. I take orders from him. It’s as simple as that.”
The men in the shadows looked on.
“How many?” Kang asked now.
“Twenty-one of us, myself included. The usual suspects.”
Kang looked over the man’s shoulder at the group arrayed there. With a nod, he said, “As we discussed, I’ll need more. A lot more.”
“You have an aircraft available for me?”
“As you requested. A Cessna Caravan. Local pilots, but good. Fueled and at your disposal.”
Tremaine nodded. “I’ll fly out tomorrow to talk to the Russians.” His eyes drifted a moment. “They’ll be looking for work; their last job didn’t turn out so good for them.” He again fixed his steely gaze on the man from China. “I reckon I can get us fifty more quality operators.”
“Good.” Kang looked past Tremaine now, past the other humans in the hold, and fixed his eyes on the crates and pallets behind them, stacked to the ceiling. “What did you bring?”
“Two hundred forty-six tons. Everything we talked about. Body armor, small arms, heavier weapons.” He shrugged. “For the rebels…old stuff, but battle tested, bought in Nigeria from the underworld, stolen from a government cache in Port Harcourt. Four hundred eighty AKMs, seventy thousand rounds of 7.62, fifty-two PKMs. Twelve cases of pistols, nine-millimeter ammo, plus basic load. Webbing, walkie-talkies. We aren’t equipping a proper army, but we’ll kit your boys up to make an honest show of it.”
The Chinese intelligence officer was pleased. “Very well. Your men will begin training the rebels immediately while you go and talk to your Russian friends.”
“Didn’t call ’em ‘friends,’ did I?”
“Is there a problem?”
Tremaine shrugged. “I’ve operated against them before. I won, they lost.” He added, “Here’s hopin’ they aren’t sore losers, yeah?”
“We need them.”
“I can be charming.” Tremaine deadpanned this, causing Kang to question whether the South African could be charming in the least.
From the back of the cargo hold a voice came. “We ain’t just training troops, are we? We’re gonna do some killing, as well, yeah?”
Kang pegged this accent as South African, just like Tremaine’s. He stared the younger man down a moment before he replied. “You know what you need to know for now.”
Tremaine looked back at his subordinate. “Nothing more out of you, Junior.”
Junior still looked into the angry eyes of the Asian man as he answered his superior. “Yeah, boss. Sorry.”
Kang held the gaze, but then he answered. “You will be doing quite a bit of killing. It is West Africa. Violence is a given. Even where we are going.” He seemed to think a moment. “Especially where we are going.”
When he said nothing more, the men all rose and began moving the crates with two-wheelers out of the cargo hold and up a ramp to the main deck.
After an hour and a half they were loaded up, and they began leaving the shiny new container port as the first glow of morning sun began to burn the fog.
Less than a mile up the blacktop road, Kang, Tremaine, and the first few trucks were joined by six pickup trucks full of men. Tremaine looked out at the vehicles, at the dark figures in the beds. He saw no weapons, which was good. A convoy of this size drew enough suspicion, even with the vehicles spread out with a kilometer of space between them.
Guns in the hands of the men visible would draw more.
They’d be armed, of course, but they kept their weapons out of view, and the South African respected this.
Tremaine himself carried a Beretta 92FS pistol on his hip. In his bag was a folding-stocked Vektor R5 battle rifle, just like the rest of the team.
A Dutchman who went by the nickname Krelis—his given name was Cornelius—sat next to the South African and leaned close in his ear. “You’ve got a history with this Chinaman?”
Tremaine nodded. “The guy looks like a history professor, but he’s as cold a fucker as I’ve ever come across. He had us slot a roomful of bandits in Eritrea, all of them just boys. They’d stolen a couple of trucks, but the trucks had equipment he needed. He didn’t know what the boys had seen, and he didn’t trust the kids to keep their mouths shut. Must have been a dozen. We shut their mouths, we did. No comebacks.”
Krelis looked up at the man sitting behind the passenger seat. “What happened in Niger?”
“What always happens to guys like us?”
“You were expendable.”
“And Kang didn’t have a problem expending us. Three dead out of eighteen; we survivors were paid well.” He shrugged. “That’s the job, isn’t it?”
Krelis nodded.
“Kang is the best operations man in country for his government, and the Chinese are throwing money around this continent to make sure he gets his job done.”
Krelis said, “When China throws its money my way, I grab it, salute, and do what it tells me.”
“Do what I tell you,” Tremaine said, a finger in the Dutchman’s face. “We’re here to kill, not to die. Stay out of a body bag, and then you can enjoy that Chinese money.”
“An order I’m happy to obey, boss.”
The truck rolled north out of town, disappearing into triple-canopy jungle just as the approaching dawn began to illuminate the blacktop road.