Misty green hills overlooked the village of Kadjebi, a tiny border settlement in Ghana’s east, just west of the nation of Togo.
The rising jungle terrain outside town was filled with the sound of birdcalls at nine in the morning, even with the rain, but the songs were disrupted by the rumble of a burgundy Toyota Hilux truck that rolled out of the town, then up a steep and winding graveled road, finally reaching a canopy of trees and then continuing higher, splashing through the brown muck as it picked its way up the hill.
Chinese intelligence officer Kang Shikun and South African mercenary Conrad Tremaine were the only two occupants of the Hilux, with Tremaine behind the wheel. They’d driven in from over the border the night before, leaving their mercs and their rebels behind, and they’d brought no weapons with them at all.
If anyone in the Ghanaian police or military had questioned Kang, he would have been able to claim credibly that he was there working for his front company, Shenzhao Star Global, heading to visit a diamond mine to bid on a security contract, and Tremaine was his employee.
But no one stopped them at the border, and no one stopped them in the village.
Eventually, however, someone did stop them. Twenty minutes east of Kadjebi they turned a corner on the climb, then saw a group of three men in civilian clothing standing in the road. There were no weapons visible, but Tremaine slowed down nonetheless when one of the men motioned for him to do so.
They were all three young, fit but thin, and their eyes were neither mistrustful nor malevolent, only intense, as if excited.
Tremaine gauged the look, as he assumed Kang did next to him. These guys weren’t soldiers. They’d probably lived rough lives, but they’d never seen combat, never watched their friends die in their arms or felt the bowel-loosening horror that came from indirect fire seeking out their hiding space in a shallow ditch.
No, these kids were just playing war.
He wondered what he always wondered when he encountered the untested. He wondered what they’d do when the fighting started.
Coming to a stop and then rolling down the window, Conrad Tremaine didn’t wait for the sentries to ask him about his business.
“The professor is expecting us.”
One of the kids looked at both men in the vehicle, then gave a nod. In English, he said, “Park over there. Get out. Leave weapons in the car.”
“No weapons, my friend,” Tremaine said, and then he did as the boy asked. Soon he and Kang walked back over to the three men, who by now had been joined by two more who’d appeared from the trees along the side of the road. Each of the men had an AK around his neck, but they looked just as fresh and unspoiled as the first group Kang and Tremaine had spoken to.
The South African and the Chinese were quickly patted down, and Tremaine saw this as a good sign, because the last time they’d come here to meet with the rebel leader, his people had been too poorly trained to realize that it might be a good idea to check the strangers to make certain they weren’t here to kill or capture their leader.
The frisk was competent enough, and when the check was complete, Kang and Tremaine followed an armed rebel as he walked along a rocky trail for several minutes, passing other forces, virtually all in their teens and early twenties. Eventually they arrived at a picturesque waterfall, a slim chute of spray falling some thirty meters into a crystal clear pool no larger than a tennis court.
A narrow stream ran from the pool, twisting on its way down the hill, which was especially steep here.
A cluster of tents and tarp-roof structures were arrayed along the base of the cliff, everything an olive drab that matched the surrounding flora and made it invisible from the air.
The sentry nodded to a pair of men standing outside one of the tents, their AKs on their backs and their posture relaxed like kids lined up at a high school lunch line, and one of them waved the two foreigners inside the open flap and into the darkness there.
The temperature outside was already above eighty, but it was cool here in the tent. An operations center of some sort had been arrayed in the middle of the low-lit space on a cluster of camp tables. Laptop computers, cell phones, even old FM radio sets were attended by a group of men in plain clothes.
The men looked up from their work for a moment; one motioned to a back corner, and here a small man sat on a cot, his legs crossed in front of him. He wore a brightly colored dashiki shirt, red and blue and green and gold, untucked, with a wide embroidered V-shaped collar and long sleeves.
The small man stood, and without smiling he shook the two newcomers’ hands.
“It is good to see you, Professor Addo,” Kang said.
“You, as well.” He looked up at the much taller white man. His eyes narrowed. “Condor.”
“Professor.”
Addo said, “Let’s go outside and talk, then we will come back inside and relax a moment.”
Tremaine wasn’t here to relax, but he followed the other men as they left the tent and walked outside, then over towards the waterfall. A couple of armed sentries stood around, but the trio left them behind, then moved towards the rocky cliff face, so close to the cascading water that the mist blew on them, cooling them instantly.
Here they could not be heard by others, nor by any listening devices if any intelligence agency was aware of the group’s presence here, which, from Kang’s checking of his sources in Accra and back in Beijing, seemed highly unlikely.
When the rebel leader stopped, Tremaine looked him over, not for the first time.
Professor Mamadou Addo stood five feet, seven inches, and he carried himself with an urbane air that belied his relatively young age. Thirty-five years old, he’d received a doctorate in public studies at Accra University before working for a time with the government in Ghana’s Western Togoland region.
A radical from birth due to political activism on the part of both parents, Dr. Addo joined the Togoland resistance while teaching at the University of Lomé. From the beginning he found the resistance unorganized and inefficient, and he set his sights on professionalizing the organization.
By the age of twenty-nine he was their leader.
He spent two years doing hard labor in prison after an attack at a radio station led to a government roundup of the usual suspects, and when he was released, he immediately traveled into Togo so that the Ghanaians could not arrest him again.
He broke off from the organization he’d been a part of and eventually formed the Dragons of Western Togoland Restoration Front. They slipped back into Ghana and had a few skirmishes with police in the Volta region, but a warrant went out for his arrest, and he fled once again back over the porous border into Togo.
He’d been out of Ghana for nearly two years, spending his time on social media and on radio that bled into Ghana, espousing his beliefs that the Western Togoland rebellion was growing in power despite the devils in Accra who were oppressing the people of the region.
He claimed, over and over, that between four and five thousand young men had been trained and armed and were ready to fight, but in truth the number had been in the low dozens.
At least until Kang had come to him a year earlier and begun supporting him with money and equipment, propaganda and cyber warfare.
And then Kang brought Tremaine in, referring to him only by his call sign, Condor.
Now, with Addo’s power of persuasion, the Chinese money, and Sentinel’s training, Professor Addo commanded four companies of troops, well over four hundred men in all.
He looked around nervously now before speaking, making sure there were no spy drones or enemy infiltrators. Tremaine found this silly but said nothing.
The professor finally addressed them in a hushed tone. “I have spoken to my chief lieutenants in the camp back in Sadomé. They say all training is complete. Weapons are cleaned and ready. The men are fed and rested, trucks and vans are loaded, and they are prepared.”
Tremaine confirmed this. “Four hundred forty-eight well-trained fighters, Professor. You will move into position on Thursday to begin final preparations along with my mercenaries.”
Kang said, “Professor, you must remember. You have to keep your forces hidden until six a.m. Saturday morning.”
“Yes, I know. You are afraid of endangering the Western diplomats who will be traveling around the nation.”
Tremaine shook his head. “It’s not fear. It’s expedience. The wider world must not know this is happening until it has already happened.”
Kang nodded. “The EU representative leaves Ghana Friday evening. Saturday morning, there will be no stopping us.”
Addo said, “I have some concerns.”
“Tell me, please,” Kang urged in a calm manner.
“The Ghanaian military, of course, or parts of it. I am not worried about Northern Command. They are on the border keeping the Islamists up in Burkina Faso. Our movement from the river to the capital will take hours, not days, and by then it will be too late for them to intervene.
“I am not too worried about Southern Command. They have good equipment and numbers, but their garrisons are completely unprepared for an attack, and according to the intelligence you have shown me, many of their soldiers would support our rebellion.”
Kang nodded. “There will be token resistance, but the majority of Southern Command will be on your side, Professor.”
“I do, however, remain concerned about Central Command, in Kumasi. General Boatang is popular, and his forces are well equipped and trained. He can travel from Kumasi to Accra faster than I can travel from Western Togoland to Accra. If he gets any early word of our movement, his troops could ruin everything.”
Kang said, “Leave Central Command to me. I have a plan.”
“As you have said. A plan that you will not reveal.”
“All will become apparent soon enough.”
Addo wiped mist from the waterfall off his face with the back of his hand. “I will require the support of the people in the south.”
“And you will have it,” Kang said. “My nation has arranged everything.”
Tremaine broke in now. “Boatang will be tied up when you take the capital. After you take the capital—”
“After you take the capital,” Kang interrupted back, “my nation will negotiate with him. He will fall under your rule.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“There are some…compromises. Information my nation has on the general and his extracurricular activities. You have my assurance he will be happy to comply and to serve you faithfully.”
Addo just looked back with mistrustful eyes, Tremaine saw, but he noted something else in those eyes. Just like the boy rebels at the checkpoint, there was an energy in them. An energy that came from ambition.
The professor wanted this nation, wanted his rebel force to take the capital, wanted his rule to be accepted by the world at large.
Addo’s logic took second place to Addo’s unquenchable lust for power.
Tremaine moved the conversation along, lest Addo spend too much time talking over the minutiae. “We expect to achieve our objectives by nightfall Sunday. The president and his cabinet will be deposed, they will flee the country, and they will be permanently exiled by sympathetic military forces in Southern Command.
“By the time the capital opens for business on Monday, the world will learn of the new leadership of Ghana.”
Kang said, “A fait accompli, Professor. You will be filmed speaking in Black Star Square, the Gulf of Guinea in the background, and my people will spread your speech, flood the news with positive stories about you and negative stories about the deposed government.”
Addo’s eyes lingered mistrustfully at the much larger South African now. Finally, he said, “I don’t know why we need you here, Condor. Of course I appreciate the training your men have provided my men these past several months. But now that it is time for my people to act, having you nearby, associated with my cause…I don’t see how the risk is worth it.”
Kang began to speak but Tremaine beat him to it. “That’s understandable, Professor. You have never been in combat. But trust me, once the shooting starts, you will know exactly why I am here.”
Addo just glared at the bigger man a moment. There was a smugness in the professor that Tremaine wanted to beat out of him, but the big South African just stood there, his clothes dampening in the waterfall mist as he waited on the rebel leader to come to his point.
Professor Addo finally spoke again. “When this is over, I want you and your men gone.”
Tremaine smiled. “We will leave the moment you are in power. Not before, not after.”
Addo let it go. To Kang he said, “The social media campaign you initiated to foment the will of the people has been a great success.”
The Chinese intelligence officer nodded. “Beijing is committed to your objectives. Their resources will be helpful, especially when you come to power.”
“And…and what does Beijing require in return?”
Kang raised an eyebrow and hesitated, but he finally replied. “I have told you already. Once you sit in Jubilee House, emissaries from Beijing will come to ask you to improve relations with us.”
Addo smiled. “You are an emissary of Beijing. I am asking you now. What do you want?”
“As I have told you before, I do not have that answer. When you take power, I will be long gone. The diplomats will be better suited to deal with you than I am.”
“One question I have,” Addo said. “What if you install me, what if your plan works exactly as described, and then I refuse to give China the resources and access it has worked so hard to acquire? What then?”
“Is that a possibility?”
Addo shrugged. “I am a professor. We deal in hypotheticals.”
“Well, that is a question best left to the diplomats.”
“I don’t want diplomatic speak.”
Kang looked across at the waterfall, then slowly back to Addo. “If you do not uphold your end of this bargain, I imagine I will be sent back by my government.”
“To do what?”
“To do what I am ordered to do.” He paused, then said, “Whatever that may be.”
Addo nodded slowly. “I know this to be true. I only wanted to see if you would be transparent with me.”
The three men stood in silence a moment, and then, for the first time in the conversation, Professor Mamadou Addo grinned, his teeth shockingly white. He said, “You put me in Jubilee House, Mr. Kang, and the palace door will always be open to China.”
After tea and conversation with the professor back in the tent, Tremaine and Kang returned to their Hilux, and the South African began motoring back through the jungle, down the hill towards the town of Kadjebi.
They were a few kilometers past the last Dragon checkpoint when the South African finally spoke. “That bastard has no bloody idea what he’s in for.”
“He does not,” Kang agreed. “And that is just the way we want it.”
“You know,” Tremaine said, “I’ve been thinking. There’s one thing that would make this coup of yours a lock, a sure thing.”
Kang chuckled a little. “Oh yes? Tell me, what have I missed?”
“If President Amanor was assassinated, then there would be no countercoup. I’ve looked into the politics of this nation. It’s fractured. Amanor is the only one with any real pull on the people.”
“How do you propose to kill him before he knows the coup is under way?”
Tremaine said, “You move up the attack. Kill him Friday afternoon at Akosombo Dam, then start your coup. I’m one hell of a sniper. I’d take the shot myself if the price were right.”
Kang shook his head vehemently. “We need that dam to be in our control before we show our hand. We must have that leverage. There are seventy-one Sentinel men in Ghana now, almost four hundred fifty rebels either here or just over the border. The plan is set. The time is set.”
“Okay, Kang. You’re the boss.”
They drove on. Kang Shikun sat in silence, but his mind was active. Just like Professor Addo, Conrad Tremaine did not know the entire plan, either, and that was just the way Kang wanted it.
Kang was the chess master, and his pawns would be used and they would be sacrificed, because that was simply how the game was played.