VRA River Command Sergeant Isaac Opoku ran out the front door of the police station wearing his sweat-soaked V-neck “Super Dad” T-shirt and carrying a wooden-stocked AK-47 at his shoulder that was probably older than some of the men following behind him. The rest of the RIVCOM men wielded AKs as well, along with small canvas chest harnesses, most of which held three extra thirty-round rifle magazines. Nearly half the men were otherwise bare-chested, but many had undershirts or tank tops on.
Four of their number peeled off and went towards the admin building on the left, while Isaac and eleven others broke right.
The western edge of the dam was three hundred meters distant, and there on the river side of the dam, a small concrete building sat, housing both an elevator shaft and a ladder shaft, essentially an extremely steep metal stairwell. Both shafts went down into the bowels of the facility, thirty-six stories to the subterranean levels.
Just beyond the building and out of Isaac’s view from his position, a steep concrete staircase ran down the entire length of the embankment to the river, the power house, and the transformer switchyard.
Most dam employees up here took either golf carts or VRA vehicles down the winding road beyond the dam, but the 735-step descent down the thirty-five-story-tall structure was an option, as well.
But Isaac’s plan wasn’t for him and his men to head down to the power house just yet. Instead they ran the three hundred meters, made it to the dam wall railing just beyond the elevator building and to the left of the stairs, then fanned out, aiming their new and untested rifles down at the scene below them.
The noise from the water gushing through the spillway below them to their left was incredible, but they could tell there was no more shooting down at the power house at the moment.
The parking lot, the power house, the switchyard, and the churning river were all visible from here. Isaac counted fifteen or so bodies lying around the riser erected for the delegation visit, though he couldn’t tell who was friend and who was foe from this distance.
But he also saw clusters of men, very much alive, aiming rifles at the power house, and he was reasonably certain these men were wearing RIVCOM uniforms.
“Anyone have binos?” he called out to those around him. A young corporal scooted closer to him, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his iPhone.
Opoku admonished him. “The phones are dead, man.”
The corporal pointed the phone at the scene below. “The camera works, Sergeant.” He zoomed in on the clusters of men, and Isaac could see the red berets, the dark camo, and the M4s of his police unit.
“That’s them,” Isaac said. “They don’t have control of the power house, which means someone in there is fighting back. We’re going to help them.”
“The tunnels?” a man asked. A warren of tunnels several stories below them could be accessed by both the elevator up here and the ladder shaft, then a sequence of internal walkways, stairways, and more ladders.
Isaac shook his head. “That’ll take fifteen minutes. Best thing we can do is engage from here. Everyone find a target. Aim half a meter above their heads; these big, slow AK rounds will drop a lot at this distance.”
“We can’t hit them,” one said. “These old guns with their iron sights.”
“We can draw their attention, keep up the fire, drop a few of them and give them something to worry about.”
Everyone had their weapons resting on the railing, but before Opoku gave the order to fire, he looked up and down the dam.
He said, “Wait. I want the man on the far left and the far right to take a knee and aim to the west and east to provide security. We don’t know if there is anyone else around up here.”
Just then, several gunshots came out of the admin building. From the disciplined cadence of Kalashnikov fire, he said, “That’s our boys. They’ve found some rebels. Be on the lookout for more.”
He turned his attention back to the enemy, some three hundred meters or more away from his position and thirty-five flights down. After sighting on a group standing around a truck with their rifles over the hood pointed at the building, he shouted, “Fire!”
Suddenly twelve AK-47s began pounding; semiautomatic rounds hurled down the steep decline, and lead and steel and copper bullets impacted in and around their targets.
Conrad Tremaine, along with Junior, Krelis, and Baginski, drove onto the eastern side of the dam at speed, heading west, intending to just cross the river so they could head to the south towards Akosombo. The downlink-jamming drones were still in the air, meaning contact with Accra was a no go, so Tremaine knew that he remained de facto leader of this entire operation now, and he wanted to get on the road to the south with the other rebel forces.
He’d report to Kang some of what happened here, he’d lie about other events, but none of his Sentinel boys here would dispute him, and all of the rebels would be dead by the time the smoke cleared in Accra.
They’d only made it a hundred meters across the dam before a huge volley of muted gunfire erupted from somewhere far ahead. Krelis swerved the vehicle, assuming they were under attack, but quickly the men in the truck realized no rounds impacted around them or even passed by close to their truck.
No, somebody was shooting, but they weren’t shooting at Tremaine and his team.
The Sentinel leader gave the order. “Get us behind cover, we’ll try to raise Belov on the radio.”
They pulled behind a row of trucks parked on the northern reservoir side, and then all four men quickly bailed out, assault rifles at their shoulders. Rushing to the bed of the pickup, they each pulled a combat pack, slung it over an arm, and began running for better cover behind a small metal-and-concrete building there.
Tremaine pressed the button on the radio hooked at the shoulder of his body armor as he moved. “Condor, this is Bear. You reading?”
There was no answer. After a moment he jogged across the two-lane road at the top of the dam, heading towards the Volta River side. Water gushed from the spillways just below him, a rumbling roar, but still he could easily hear a massive amount of AK gunfire coming from several hundred meters farther up the dam.
His order to Belov had been that the Dragons would wield the RIVCOM men’s M4s so the delegation wouldn’t recognize them as infiltrators, so those barking reports of Kalashnikov fire weren’t coming from his people.
He thought a moment. There was one platoon made up of four squads of Dragon fighters here, thirty-two men in all, or at least there had been originally. Each squad had a squad leader, and each squad leader had been given a radio to keep in contact with the three Sentinel men assigned to this platoon. He quickly called again. “Any squad leader. This is Condor. Do you read?”
Quickly he heard a squawk, and then a man with a Ghanaian accent spoke. “Delta squad, over.”
Just after that he heard another man. “Charlie squad.”
Over the transmission he could also hear gunfire. “Delta, report status.”
The man was young, Tremaine could tell, and while he couldn’t remember anything about the squad members in this platoon—there were four hundred forty-eight rebels in this force, after all—he knew the man would have been deemed by Belov to be the most squared away in his squad of eight, otherwise he wouldn’t have been put in charge of the others.
The voice on the other end said, “We have two dead. The rest of us are in the switchyard, hiding behind the transformers. There are shooters above us on the dam, I think RIVCOM escaped, and I can’t reach Alpha squad.”
Tremaine shut his eyes a moment in frustration. “Okay, Charlie. What’s your status?”
“There are three of us, outside on the rocks at the edge of the river. Taking fire from those men on top of the dam. No dead, but we have five men in the power house. They were guarding the VRA employees and assisting the Russians, but the president’s security forces are in control of that building, so I don’t know if our men are dead.”
“Where are the Russians now?”
“I don’t know. They went in the building as soon as they got here.” He added, “I see three guys from Alpha squad still alive at the base of the staircase up to the dam. Lots of dead, everywhere.”
A new voice chimed in. “Condor, this is Bravo squad. We lost three men in the initial assault, but the rest of us are at the front guard post.”
Tremaine thought a moment more. It sounded like there were about twelve Dragons accounted for down there in front of the power house, and another five a few hundred meters away at the front post. He looked to Krelis for ideas.
The Dutchman said, “If those RIVCOM guys shooting up here on the dam didn’t set up security, then we might be able to slip up on them. Once I have line of sight, I’ll use the grenade launcher to thin them out.”
Tremaine agreed; they pulled the six-shot 40-millimeter grenade launcher from the truck, along with an extra bandolier of shells, and began running west on the long dam embankment. Ahead on the right was the admin building, and beyond that the police station. Well beyond that and on the river side of the embankment was a squat concrete building, almost all the way at the eastern end of the dam. Behind this would be the police firing down on the rebels.
They were still halfway to the administration building, hundreds of meters from the squat concrete structure and the enemy, when a group of three men carrying AK-47s appeared out of the front door of the admin building, then turned right, running away from them. The men all wore white undershirts.
Krelis stopped and raised the grenade launcher at them, not more than fifty meters away, but Tremaine called out to him.
“Hold fire!”
“Why? Those aren’t our guys.”
“We’ll give away our position to the larger force before we’re in cover and before we’re ready to fire on the main element.”
The four mercenaries turned and retreated back to their pickup, and there Tremaine pulled a pair of binoculars from the dashboard and looked up the length of the dam.
“They’ve set security, facing this way. We can’t get close enough to use the grenade launcher.”
Junior spoke up now. “We can pull out the mortar. Nail them from here.”
Their 60-millimeter mortar would be able to travel the distance to the RIVCOM men, dropping high-explosive shells right on them.
But Tremaine shook his head. “Too long to range that fucker. We’re on high ground, wide open to the south. Might be able to get a signal to Second Platoon, they’re out there somewhere.”
Junior said, “Too far away, boss.”
Tremaine pulled his walkie-talkie off his chest rig. “Peak to valley, these radios have a range of up to twenty klicks.” Pushing the button, he said, “Second Platoon, this is Condor, come in.”
A faint reply came several seconds later. “First Company, Second Platoon, over.”
Tremaine knew the voice. This was Copper, one of the Sentinel officers attached to the Dragon platoon that had been blowing up the radio tower and hitting the police station in Akosombo town. Copper was African, from Liberia, and Tremaine had worked with him in the DRC.
He said, “We’re in trouble at the dam. RIVCOM is still in play. Head north to us.”
“Roger. We are ten kilometers from you; the road is bad, though. Will take us at least twenty minutes.”
“Expedite it.”
“Roger, Copper out.”
“Wait!” Tremaine shouted, thinking for a few seconds. “Copper, who is just south of you?”
Copper replied, “That would be First Company, Third Platoon. They’re on the N2, already heading south towards Accra.”
“Try and pick them up on your walkie-talkie, turn them around and get them here. If the delegation got word out somehow, then there might be an attempt to take the dam back before we have the explosives set, and we need to be ready to thwart it.”
“Roger that.”
Tremaine’s original plan didn’t have him here at the dam at all, so he hadn’t studied this hydroelectric facility like Belov had. But now Belov was somewhere in the bowels of the structure with the other two men who knew the lay of the land here, leaving Tremaine to manage things at surface level with limited information.
After thinking a moment more, Tremaine turned to Krelis. “Krel…let’s get that sixty out and start dropping shells on those police.”
Tremaine hadn’t wanted to take the time to set the mortar, but now he didn’t see another option.
The Sentinel commander looked to Baginski now. “Help Krel. Fire from cover behind the truck, try to walk the rounds past that concrete building the RIVCOM men are positioned behind.”
“Right,” the Pole said, and while Junior and Tremaine covered the east and the west, he began helping Krelis remove the mortar tube, the baseplate, and the shells from the bed of the pickup.
Duff, Kaku, and the two members of Amanor’s detail moved out of the stairwell and into a dimly lit space that felt to Duff like the cargo hold of a massive tanker ship.
Instead it was an enormous concrete room under the power house, fifty meters deep and two hundred meters wide, and in the low emergency lighting he made out a row of five circular forms, each one the size of an aboveground swimming pool, rising some five meters in the air. Duff knew nothing about hydro dams, but he could put together that these were the generators the deputy plant operator spoke of, under which the turbines would sit.
There was a loud constant rumbling here, and he assumed it was from either the water pumping through the facility or the cascading water gushing through the spillways he’d seen when he was outside.
He looked around the big room; it seemed to be empty, but it would take ten minutes to fully check it. Mensah had clearly said the Russians were heading to the turbines, so Duff decided to press on. “I see no movement in here. We’ve got to descend again and check there.”
Back in the stairwell they hunted for targets, for rebel sentries left here to control the stairs, because it seemed impossible that anyone working down here would fail to post a guard at the stairwell that led to the control room.
But they made it unimpeded to a door twenty meters below, and they formed on it. Duff checked the latch, finding it to be unlocked. After a nod to the others he opened the door a few inches and was immediately met with a burst of gunfire, tearing through the metal door on his right.
A piece of metal shrapnel scraped his scalp in the same place where he’d cut his head during the initial shootout, and he fell back into the stairwell, crouching behind the wall on the left. Looking up, he saw the man called Bismark stumbling back, then falling on the stairs, both hands on his throat, blood pumping through his fingers with the pulse of his heartbeat.
His throat made a sickening gurgling sound that Duff had heard before and always prayed he’d never hear again.
Duff reached his AK around the doorjamb and began firing, although he had no idea what he was shooting at.
Kaku’s pistol barked above Duff while the American climbed back to his knees, shooting out the door as he did so. After a dozen rounds from the rifle, he stopped shooting, and Kaku retreated around the wall to reload.
Gideon pulled Bismark to the side, but his partner was dead before he got him up to the wall to check him.
They waited several seconds for the gun smoke to clear, and when it did, Duff saw that they were facing a low and narrow concrete hallway, essentially a tunnel.
And there, in the middle of the narrow space, a man in a RIVCOM uniform lay on his stomach, his rifle wedged under him.
Gideon stepped away from his fallen comrade, walked out into the hall, and fired once into the back of the unmoving form. Then he knelt down and pulled the man’s rifle, reloading it with a fresh magazine he found after flipping the bloody body on its back.
The three men moved up the narrow tunnel without a word, then stopped at another metal door. It was locked, but Kaku went back to the body and felt around, finally finding a set of keys.
Duff began going through them, fumbling them more than once because he was trying to hurry. He knew at any moment this entire dam could blow, or someone else from the opposition could burst into this tunnel, responding to the sound of the gunfire.
He found the right key, opened the latch, and pulled the door open, swinging his AK around with one hand at first, scanning for threats.
He faced a large concrete chamber, similar to the generator gallery above. The visibility was equally poor here, but the emergency power did illuminate some spotlights high on the wall that pointed down.
From what he could tell, the turbine gallery looked much the same as the generator gallery, except where the generators only rose about fifteen feet, the turbines went all the way up to the ceiling, where they attached to the generator’s housings through the floor. This essentially put five massive column-type structures in a room the length of a football field.
This would be incredibly challenging for only three men to clear, but he had no alternative, because his ambassador, the president of Ghana, the chief diplomat of the European Union, and even his wife were directly above them, surrounded by gunmen and unable to flee out of the blast radius of the bombs somewhere down here.
He stepped out onto the gallery floor, his wooden-stocked weapon swiveling back and forth frantically as he did so.
The noise here from the spillway water crashing into the river just outside was loud, like a jet aircraft’s engines at idle. Duff imagined the pressure the world’s largest human-made reservoir put on this concrete structure, and he shuddered thinking about bombs going off here and weakening the dam.
As he moved, Kaku and Gideon followed close behind him, and they stuck to the wall as they progressed, because the glow from the spotlights centered on the middle of the gallery and the turbines there.
Duff was looking for three Russians and at least two more of the local rebel force dressed as RIVCOM cops, but with the low light, the equipment running down both walls in huge brown cabinets, and maintenance rooms and offices every dozen meters or so, he knew the task ahead of him was nearly impossible.
And with the combination of both the noise and the ringing in his ears from all the gunfighting, he knew he couldn’t rely on his hearing to help him identify threats ahead.
He considered firing a few rounds into the air so that the enemy might come to him, but then he decided against it. He pressed on in the shadows, hoping to get lucky before some Russian assholes blew up the bombs that he knew were somewhere down here.