The three gray Airbus Caracals from the French army flew five thousand feet over the flat plains, the villages, and the dense jungle of south-central Ghana, still some twenty minutes away from the Akosombo Dam landing zone.
Gray skies hid the fading sun behind them, but up ahead the clouds were broken, and conditions looked good.
Josh watched from the back as Nichole spoke on her headset to the ambassador at the front of the cabin, and slowly, as he looked on, he could discern an intensity in the conversation, an expression on her face that she was concerned about something. The FSOs and the ambo were on a different channel from the one DS was using, so he couldn’t hear her.
But just when Josh thought about switching channels to listen in on her conversation, Jay Costa’s voice came over his headset. Jay sat up with the ambo and had been able to hear the conversation she was having. He said, “Be advised. I’m learning we’ve lost communication with personnel at the hydro dam. We’re looking into it now, but looks like service is down. Tried them on the sat but are having trouble with the signal. Must be interference from the helicopter.”
Josh rogered up along with Chad and Benjamin Manu, and they sat there another minute waiting for an update from Costa, while Nichole continued talking animatedly with Jennifer Dunnigan.
Finally, Costa came back on the net. “Still no comms at Akosombo for some reason. The EU thinks it’s probably just a power outage in the area, and the Ghanaian president’s staff agrees. They want to continue to the dam; we’ll do an overfly to make sure everything is okay down there, but Aldenburg says the whole point of the trip to Akosombo is to announce the upgrade and refurbishment of the dam, so there are some good optics involved in making a stop there while the power is down.”
Josh spoke up now. “Understood, Jay, but losing commo with the people at our destination could be a lot of things other than a power outage.”
“I hear you. The president’s detail will try to pick up somebody with the dam police there on FM radio when we have line of sight. We’re continuing.”
“Understood.”
This third stop of the day was turning into an interesting one, Josh thought, and he hoped like hell it didn’t get even more interesting.
Conrad Tremaine was still five miles south of the dam, on the western side of the Volta, racing along in a black Toyota Tacoma king cab. With him were three other mercenaries: Krelis from Holland; Junior, his fellow South African; and Baginski, from Poland.
The covered bed of the pickup was filled to the brim with rifles, a light machine gun, ammunition, an RPG-7 launcher, and a 60-millimeter mortar. The men carried their personal weapons on them; Baginski also had a short-barreled rifle on the floorboard in front of him, and they were fully engaged in the operation now, which meant they would stop for no one, including the police.
The only communications that worked in this area, already in the zone jammed by the drones, were radios, so the men in the truck listened to their powerful 10-watt walkie-talkies as the Russian mercenaries attached to the Dragon platoon broadcast their mission’s successes to Tremaine, one at a time, reporting casualties along the way.
For his part, Tremaine was damn glad the delegation would be all the way up in Tamale when they learned comms were broken in the southeastern portion of the country and that electricity to the nation had been shut down.
But he found it a pity that the president would survive this coup. Tremaine had nothing against Amanor, but he’d been around enough African coups to know that leaving a former leader in place, even an embattled one, could be dangerous.
He’d suggested to Kang that a decapitation of the government might ensure in those first few weeks after the operation that no countercoup could rise up and reclaim power, but Kang had pushed back on this. He thought attempting to kill the president would only alert the wider world to the fact that the rebels had sophisticated outside help.
No, Kang had insisted, Amanor needed to be pushed out of power after failing to protect his country from rebels and power outages, not overtly overthrown and killed.
Tremaine strongly disagreed, however. He wished there were some way the rebels could be blamed for killing Amanor without it looking like they had to work too diligently to kill him, but he’d been unable to come up with a scheme that seemed feasible. By the time the rebels got anywhere near the president, he would certainly be under the protection of the President’s Own Guard Regiment and totally safe from an assassin’s bullet.
Suddenly, the men’s walkie-talkies squawked throughout the pickup. “Condor, this is Bear. Do you read?”
Belov was Bear; all Sentinel operators had code names on the mission, though Tremaine only remembered the senior ones.
He drove with one hand, broadcasting with the other. “Go for Condor.”
“Listen carefully. The president, the EU delegation, the Americans, they are on their way to the dam now! Approximately twenty minutes out.”
Tremaine’s heart skipped a beat. “Wait. Repeat your last?”
Belov repeated it, and finished with “Do we leave, or do we stay?”
Tremaine looked to Krelis sitting next to him; the younger Dutchman’s mouth hung open.
Softly, and with utter confusion, Tremaine said, “They are supposed to come tomorrow.”
Belov answered by saying, “They changed the itinerary. Something to do with the weather.”
Kang and his people had been following the weather for the day of the planned attack Saturday, of this Tremaine was certain, but they hadn’t been following the weather up north for Thursday afternoon. With all the things the brilliant Chinese intelligence officer had accounted for, he hadn’t considered beginning his operation a day and a half early, and this was already causing unforeseen consequences.
Tremaine couldn’t believe the scale of this clusterfuck, and he was in the jamming zone now, so the only ways he could communicate with Kang in Accra would be to take several minutes to contact his mercenaries with the Chinese technical team, then have them shut down the jamming, which would threaten the operation at the dam, or else turn around and drive ten minutes in the opposite direction to get out of the jamming zone.
But if he did that, he would be out of range with Belov.
No, whatever happened now, Tremaine knew that he was the man in charge.
Belov said, “Comms are down here at the dam. Maybe the helicopters won’t land if they can’t make contact with anyone here.”
Tremaine shouted, his voice booming in the cab of the truck. “They already did make contact, otherwise the people at the dam wouldn’t know they were on the way. Maybe they’ll fly over to check it out if they can’t establish comms again, but you can’t just assume they’ll go home just because they lost contact.”
Belov transmitted again. “We haven’t even set the explosives in the turbines yet. To do it right will take time. My two guys have to take an access panel off, then climb down to the weakest point and attach them, then program the detonation codes. They’re going to need a half hour, at least. Maybe we should just go.”
Tremaine thought it over. “You can’t leave now, the entire operation will be ruined.”
“Yeah? Well, it’s going to be ruined when fifty people land here in helicopters.”
The Sentinel commander kept driving, but he sped up. After several seconds, he said, “You stay. Continue what you’re doing, planting the explosives. But get all the captives you have hidden and under guard, and clean up any signs of combat that could be visible from the air.”
“Then what?”
“All your rebels are wearing either RIVCOM uniforms or VRA badges, correct?”
“Except for myself and my two Sentinel men.”
“Make sure the rebels use the real RIVCOM’s weapons. Hide the AKs and field the police M4s, the pistols, the chest rigs. The security people will notice if cops are carrying rebel gear.”
“I know that,” Belov snapped back.
“Then put the people where the helicopters can see them. Let the helos land, let the entourage come to the switchyard and the power house as planned for their media stop. They’re only supposed to be on the ground for twenty-five minutes.”
Before Belov could ask a follow-up question, Tremaine said, “Get the other Sentinel men to work on setting the charges, but tell the dam employees that they have to act normal, to convince the delegation that everything is fine for the entire time they are on the ground, or you and your men will kill everyone.”
Belov said, “I’m not being paid enough for this.”
“What’s the alternative? You run now, you don’t get any more money because the op is dead.”
Now the Russian cussed into the phone. Tremaine didn’t speak Russian, but he knew the word “Suka.” Bitch. Finally, Belov said, “All right. I’ll tell the deputy plant manager to deal with the delegation or I’ll personally murder all his staff.”
“Last thing, Bear.” Tremaine thought a moment. “This is a hasty op, you didn’t have time to prepare. Is there anything on your person, or with the other Sentinel men, that can relate back to me, Sentinel, or the Chinese?”
Belov was the leader of the fifty Russians on this operation, and other than Tremaine himself, he was the only one to carry a tablet computer that contained all the radio codes, waypoints, code names, and geographic coordinates for the operation.
Belov said, “I’ve got my tablet computer. I wasn’t going to leave it at the compromised safe house, was I?”
Tremaine pounded his hand on the steering wheel as he drove. “That device cannot be captured, do you understand?”
Belov answered back defensively. “Of course I know that.”
“You shouldn’t have brought it to the dam.”
“I didn’t exactly have time to find other accommodations for it, Condor. It has a five-watt radio in it. I’ll program the detonation codes into it and use it if we need to blow the dam.”
The South African was furious, but he knew he had to let it go. Finally, he said, “If you find yourself about to be overrun, you need to strap a grenade to that tablet, you understand me?”
“I’m not getting overrun, Condor. Bear out.” Belov ended his transmission, presumably to ready his forces and his captives to try to fool the approaching helicopters.
The Sentinel chief kept racing along the highway, panic welling in him about the tablet computer in the Russian’s possession and the damage it could cause, but soon something else came to him.
He turned to Krelis. “This fuckup, this change in the entire plan. Maybe we can use it as an opportunity.”
“Meaning what, boss?”
“Kang wants the Dragons to take the fall for the whole operation so that his general can take over, yeah?”
Krelis nodded. “Yeah.”
“Well, what if the Dragons assassinate the president of Ghana. Right here and now? Seems like it might make things a hell of a lot easier down the road if Amanor wasn’t around fighting for power.”
Krelis looked at his boss like he was crazy. “That wasn’t Kang’s plan.”
“Yeah, well, Kang isn’t here, and this is a better plan, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Look, bro, we can have that fecker in our sights in about twenty minutes. The Dragons there could do the job, but they’d probably just muck it up, and it makes more sense to me to have the Dragons stay in cover so the entire entourage doesn’t engage. We make this look like an outside hit.”
“The minute the president is shot, those Dragons are going to make it pretty fucking obvious they aren’t real cops.”
Tremaine nodded. “It’s going to be a hell of a party down there, that’s for sure.” He looked to Krelis and saw the man’s unease. “We’re overthrowing a democratic nation here, we aren’t playing patty-cake. If we lose all thirty-five rebels at the dam because I shoot the president and decapitate the government, then that’s a bloody damn good return on investment as far as I’m concerned.”
“What’s Kang going to say?”
“I’ll tell him the Dragons did it.”
“Yeah, well, Professor Addo is going to tell him they didn’t.”
“Addo’s not at the dam, he’s still hiding in the bush, getting ready for his move on Accra. He doesn’t even have comms with his men. He won’t be able to tell Kang anything. And when I finally see Kang down in the capital, he’s going to be glad President Amanor is no longer a problem and won’t be able to stand for the election, and he won’t question the hows and whys.”
Krelis didn’t seem so sure, but he said, “So…how do we kill the president? RPG when his helo takes off?”
Tremaine shook his head. “I’ve got a Dragunov in the trunk.”
The Russian Dragunov SVD sniper rifle fired a 7.62×54-millimeter round and had an effective range of eight hundred meters.
Krelis thought a moment, then said, “If you do it, do it from across the river. Three hundred fifty meters or so. Easy day.”
Just then the Adomi Bridge came into view. A couple miles south of the dam, the massive steel suspension bridge was the only way to cross the Volta on this stretch of the river.
Tremaine headed for the bridge, mentally preparing himself for the biggest operation of his life, but his fear was not that he might fail.
His fear was, instead, that his people at the dam might scare off the helicopters before they even landed.
Josh Duffy sat by the rear portal on the port side of the lead Caracal. His wife remained far ahead of him; she had been working furiously on her iPad for the past several minutes, probably, he assumed, making last-minute changes to the remarks the U.S. ambassador would be making at the dam.
He looked out the glass, saw something in the distance, then clicked his mic. “Jay? Can you look out the port-side window? Your nine o’clock.”
A razor-thin plume of black smoke rose over the town of Akosombo.
After a moment, Costa replied, “Yeah, I see it. Let me see if I can figure out what’s over there.”
After a minute he came back on the radio. “Nobody seems to know what is down there that might be burning, but they aren’t too worried about it. They want to continue to the dam.”
Josh just said, “Roger that.”
Soon the three helos flew over Lake Volta, the largest artificial reservoir on planet Earth, heading south to the hydroelectric facility. Once they came to the north side of the dam, they slowed their speed, then passed above the massive structure at an altitude of two hundred meters.
The lake was high; the dam spillways were open and water gushed down the steep concrete structure on the southeastern side, churning the river below white with foam. It was a gargantuan, impressive sight, and Josh caught himself looking at it in awe for a moment before scanning the area out his port-side window again, hunting for any danger below.
Costa spoke into the radio. “Benjamin, I’m passing binos to you. Check out the area and tell me if it looks okay.”
Duff knew that since they’d been unable to establish communications with the people on the ground, they’d want to make sure they didn’t see anything amiss before landing the helos. Even though the Airbus helicopters weren’t armed, they could just rocket out of the area at the first sign of trouble while in the air, but that would change once they landed.
Even without the binoculars, Duff could see men in camouflaged uniforms on the top of the dam, along with marked vehicles.
Benjamin Manu looked out the portal through the binos that Costa passed to him. After several seconds he said, “RIVCOM trucks and officers on the dam and down at the power house, and I see a VRA truck with some civilians in it at the switchyard. RIVCOM guarding the front gate.”
“How many RIVCOM cops do you see?”
“A lot. Twenty, maybe more.”
“Good,” Costa replied, then said, “Stand by.” Several seconds later he transmitted again. “Okay, just got word the president’s helo has made FM comms with the VRA down there. They confirm all power coming from the dam is down, they’re working to restore it.” After a pause, he said, “Uh…we’re going to land behind the power house, as planned. The stage is set up in front of the switchyard. The people at the power house will stay inside working, but we’ll have twenty RIVCOM men and the deputy plant operator joining us for the speeches. Another dozen or so RIVCOM controlling access to the facility.”
The helicopter banked to starboard and headed for the landing zone.
On the ground, Russian Sentinel officer Lev Belov stood in the control room of the power house, looming over deputy plant operator Martin Mensah, who perspired so much now that his Coke-bottle glasses had steamed up.
Belov spoke to him slowly, emphatically. “It’s all up to you, man. You have to convince those people that everything is fine here, that everyone is working on the issue so they can get the power going. If you fail…if they suspect something is wrong and pull out their guns, then we have over thirty men here ready to start shooting something.”
Mensah clearly understood his assignment. He pulled a handkerchief from his slacks and rubbed his forehead, then nodded. “The delegation won’t come in here?” he asked.
“They are supposed to stand on that riser out there with the dam in the background, talk into cameras for less than twenty minutes, and then leave.” Belov put a finger in the man’s chest. “And that is what is going to happen, or you and your staff in here will be among the first to die.”
The middle-aged Ghanaian nodded again, wiped his forehead again. “Yes. Just don’t hurt anyone and I will do what I have to do.”
The two other Russians stood nearby, each with a pack on their backs, a rifle across the magazine rack and body armor on their chests, and a second military-style gray pack at their feet. While Mensah stood there, Belov walked over to them quickly, unzipped a pouch in the center of his chest rig, and pulled out a ruggedized black tablet computer. He turned it on quickly and began speaking to the men in Russian.
“Quickly, give me the detonation codes off your devices.”
Gresha read off a long number as Belov typed it in, and then Vadik did the same. Belov closed the computer, placed it back in his chest rig, then said, “Once you set the devices, make sure you turn on their transceivers. When you do, I’ll be able to det the explosives with my tablet if ordered to do so.”
Now Belov motioned to the eight Dragons with him in the room. “Four of you will escort Mr. Mensah out to greet the delegation. If he says anything to give us away, kill him immediately.”
Back to Mensah, Belov now smiled. “All on your shoulders, my friend,” he said, and then he followed the two other Russians towards the stairs down below.