After three minutes of moving rubble with one hand, Lev Belov finally accessed the bent and twisted metal door of the elevator shaft building. One look at it told him it would be hard to open, but with his pistol still pointed at the exit to the ladder well, he pulled on the door and found it completely wedged into the metal doorframe around it. The partial collapse of the roof had bent in the metal, and now the door wasn’t budging.
The man down the ladder shouted up now. “Sounds like you’re going to have to blow that exit open. You try and climb out through that opening in the roof, I’ll put more holes in you than God intended.”
Belov’s frustration showed in his voice. “A stalemate, you are saying?”
The man downstairs gave a little laugh. “Maybe, but the army will be here soon enough, and you and your shitty rebel force will be wiped out.”
Now Belov laughed. “The army is hours away, my friend, and they have bigger problems than saving you. I, on the other hand, have people in the area, and they will come for me.”
Duff noted what the man said about the army, then replied, “I’ve killed a lot of those people in the area, including two of your Russian pals, so you’ll forgive me if I’m not too impressed by the cavalry you say is coming to your rescue.”
Belov stepped quickly to the ladder well, reached his pistol around the side, and fired yet another shot.
After the boom faded, the American said, “Dude, you have a weird way of managing stress.”
Belov groaned loudly in frustration, then walked back over to the rubble next to the door, well out of view from down the ladder. Looking at the evening sky showing through the hole in the roof, he got an idea.
He realized he was going to need help getting out of this building, and he wondered if he could somehow reach Tremaine on the radio.
He stepped around towards the elevators, away from the door and out of view of the ladder, then pulled his walkie-talkie from his chest rig. Speaking softly enough so that the American couldn’t make out his words, even if he could hear his voice, he said, “Bear for Condor.”
To his surprise, the response came quickly, though the signal was scratchy and broken in places. “This is Condor. Report status!”
“I’m in a ladder well in a building at the top of the dam. West side. The building I’m in is blown to shit, the door is wedged shut, and I need help getting out.”
“Confirm that you still have the computer in possession.”
“Confirmed.”
“And the explosives are set?”
“Affirmative.”
“All right, I’ll send Second Platoon to get you out. You can’t let that tablet fall into enemy hands.” Tremaine thought a moment. “Be aware, there are RIVCOM assets on the top of the dam. We saw two vehicles, and we engaged them, but you can expect significant oppo up there.”
“Roger,” Belov said, and then, “And…and we have another problem.”
“What problem?”
“I’ve got one enemy below me. An American, he must be from the U.S. ambassador’s security detail.”
“Just hold him back till Second Platoon arrives. They’ll deal with him.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s what he told me.”
There was a pause. Then, “What did he tell you?”
“That he knows I work for Sentinel, and he knows you are in charge.”
A longer pause followed.
“I said, he knows you—”
“How the fuck does he know—”
“No idea, but he mentioned you by name.”
On a twisty climbing jungle road three kilometers away, Conrad Tremaine ordered Krelis to pull the Toyota to a halt. As soon as the vehicle stopped, Tremaine had Belov repeat his previous transmission.
Again, the Russian claimed the American knew that Tremaine was part of this endeavor.
Tremaine just sat there while his three men looked on. They’d been running the truck with its lights off. It was dark in the jungle; the moonlight illumination just barely made it through the canopy of trees here.
Tremaine sat in silence…because he was completely dumbfounded. This operation was an hour old, he’d covered exactly zero meters of ground on his movement to the capital, and already somehow he’d been exposed to the enemy.
For six months he’d been so careful, because if he was uncovered as being involved in this endeavor he would never be able to return to South Africa, he’d never see his family again, and he’d be hunted down for the rest of his days by everyone from the Ghana Armed Forces and intelligence services to the African Union, the International Criminal Court, private concerns who stood to lose billions in mining rights in West Africa, and God knew who else.
Plus, knowledge by the wider public of mercenary involvement in the coup d’état would put a target on all Sentinel men’s backs. Kang had to make this look like it was a legit coup attempt from the Western Togoland Restoration Front with help from the Russians. Involvement of a high-dollar Manila-based private military corporation led by a former officer in the South African National Defence Force would make the entire endeavor reek of outside influence.
Tremaine knew that Kang would easily double-cross Sentinel in this to keep his own nation’s involvement under wraps.
No…whoever the fuck Belov was talking to in that ladder well, Tremaine needed to somehow shut the American up.
He opened the door to the pickup, climbed onto the hood of the stationary vehicle, then stepped up onto the roof, desperate to get the best signal he could get for his radio.
Changing the channel on his walkie-talkie now, he pressed the talk button.
“Condor calling Goose. Condor calling Goose.”
The distant reply came several seconds later.
“Goose for Condor. Go.”
Goose was the code name for a Serbian Sentinel operator named Hristov. He was the mercenary with the Chinese technical team across the river at a farm outside Akosombo who were working to jam the satellites. He provided security for the five independent contractors from Hong Kong along with a single eight-man squad of rebels from First Company, Third Platoon. Right now they were at the farm, more than ten kilometers away, but their drones circled over the dam, keeping the downlink from the satellite jammed.
Tremaine said, “Tell the techs to turn off all jamming until I tell them to turn it back on again.”
The Serbian replied with an uncertain tone. “You are saying you want them to land the drones? Kang said we had to—”
“I don’t give a fuck what Kang said! Do it now, Goose!”
“Okay, boss. Will take a minute, stand by.”
Both Junior and Baginski had climbed out of the truck and now they held security, one man posted facing each way on the road, while Krelis remained behind the wheel and Tremaine stood on the roof of the Toyota, his walkie-talkie in one hand and his satellite phone in the other.
The sun had set over the city of Accra, and from his view from the office of his three-story modern white mansion on Ankama Close in the Aburi Hills north of town, Kang Shikun could see twinkles in the distance that he took to be gunfire and explosions, and plumes of smoke had begun to rise from various points across the city.
He could hear nothing from his location, of course—he was miles away from the action—but he was pleased to see the flashes near the police stations, the military bases, the airport, and the presidential palace.
The shooting and the killing was not being committed by the rebels; no, Kang’s best estimates didn’t have the hapless camouflaged fools from Western Togoland here in the capital until midnight, but the Islamic extremists from Nigeria, Benin, and Burkina Faso had already begun sowing disorder in the city.
In the end, Hajj Zahedi was able to supply eighty-eight men, far less than the two hundred he’d originally mentioned. Still, eighty-eight men operating in four-man teams meant twenty-two simultaneous attacks had kicked off just ninety minutes after Kang called Zahedi and told him the operation was being pushed up a day and a half because of a potential compromise.
The Iranian Quds Force commander wasn’t happy about the change, and he had been forced to scramble units that weren’t in the correct position this early, sending them to alternative targets.
But the most important thing to Kang Shikun was not the tactical successes of this force but rather the panic they would cause.
And eighty-eight trained fighters with the commitment of these men, the willingness to die for their cause, could sow a great deal of panic, indeed. Of the twenty-two cells, twelve carried an RPG-7 grenade launcher in addition to their Kalashnikov battle rifles. Four more teams operated British-made 81-millimeter mortars stolen from the Nigerian army, a potent indirect-fire weapon that sent a 9-pound shell up to a mile.
The mortar teams were set up on the roofs of abandoned buildings in derelict districts in the east and west of the city, far enough away from businesses and residences to where the sounds of the shells launching out of the tubes wouldn’t give away their locations, but close enough to the important parts of the city to be in range.
The other six teams had hand grenades, improvised explosive devices, and even suicide vests. There were no heavy machine guns, just the battle rifles, because other than the mortar crews, it was the job of these teams to stay highly mobile and even covert, at times, driving from neighborhood to neighborhood, targeting police and military installations and generally creating mayhem and confusion.
And from the flashes and smoke rising from a dozen parts of the city, Kang saw that the Iranian Zahedi and his African extremists were holding up their end of the bargain, at least so far.
But Kang knew there was not as much mayhem and panic as there should have been, because he saw one glaring problem, one obvious lapse in the operation. Not by Zahedi and his force but by Tremaine and his. The power had been off for only about thirty minutes before it was restored to the city. Now the gunfire and the rocket and mortar detonations miles away weren’t the only illumination. No, the city lights remained bright after the sun set, and this meant something was going wrong at the dam.
The satellite phones were still down in the Akosombo area, and Kang took the fact that he had yet to hear from Tremaine to mean that the Sentinel commander was still under the drone umbrella around the hydroelectric dam.
Just then, however, his sat phone buzzed on the glass table behind him. He rushed away from the window, snatched up the device, and accepted the call.
“Yes?”
“Kang, it’s Condor. No time to explain, I need you to get some intelligence for me in a hurry.”
Kang wasn’t ready to take orders from his hired mercenary. “Why is the power on here in the capital?”
“You get me the information I need, and I’ll be able to turn the power back off.”
Kang said, “You don’t need information to do that. Just blow the turbines if you can’t hold the facility. Follow the contingency and you—”
“Listen!” the South African shouted. “Give me what I’m asking for, or this entire operation could fail.”
Kang took a breath, noting a flash of light near the airport, and he felt sure the jihadis had just dropped a high-explosive shell on the tiny Ghana Air Force facility there. He sighed. “What do you need?”
“I need you to find out the names of the American security officers protecting the U.S. ambassador.”
“Why do you need that? I haven’t even looked into—”
“Because they are here.”
Kang turned away from the window again. With a furrowed brow, he said, “Who…who is where?”
“The delegation, the entire delegation, is at the dam.”
Kang slowly lowered down to his chair. “What are you saying?”
“Look, I need to reestablish jamming here, I don’t want the enemy to get a signal out. Just get me the names of the U.S. security personnel.”
Kang was barely listening, but he had heard, and after a few seconds he snapped out of it. “Jia!” he shouted, and soon the female intelligence technical contractor rushed into the room, in keeping with the urgency of her boss’s beckoning.
“Sir?”
“Find out the names of the security officers at the U.S. embassy. The ones who would travel with the ambassador.”
She nodded. “Right away, sir.”
Now Kang turned his attention back to his call. “Getting you the information, but listen carefully to me. The president, the ambassador, and the EU representative must not be hurt. That would bring more international attention to this—”
Tremaine interrupted. “Those were my orders to the Dragons, but something went wrong. There’s been a gun battle for the last forty-five minutes.”
Kang could not believe this. “Why did the helicopters come to Akosombo?”
Tremaine didn’t answer, he just said, “It’s a fluid situation. I have a platoon of rebels coming here in the next fifteen minutes and I—”
“Is the president dead?” Kang asked.
“No.” He sounded unequivocal, but then added, “I mean…not as far as I know.” After an extremely brief pause, the South African said, “Do you want him dead?”
Kang answered quickly. “We’ve discussed this. A successful decapitation operation by poor rebel boys would not be believed. We only need the Dragons to look sophisticated enough to cause havoc until General Boatang routs them, damaging the dam, putting the police and the Southern Command on the back foot. That is our plan, and that is what needs to happen.”
Quickly, Kang said, “What about the French helicopters? Where are they now?”
“I hear rotors in the distance. They’re probably about to extract the delegation.” Frantically, Tremaine said, “I need those fucking names, Kang!”
Jia came running back into the room. Kang thought she looked nauseated; her skin was pale, and sweat hung from her brow, but he didn’t care about her health. “We have it?”
She nodded and handed a single sheet of paper to her boss, and Kang began reading it into the phone.
“Personnel of the U.S. Department of State Diplomatic Security Service at the U.S. embassy, Accra. Regional Security Officer Javier Costa, aged fifty-four. Assistant Regional Security Officer Chad Larsen, aged thirty-five; Assistant Regional Security Officer for Investigations Carla Houston, aged fifty, although our intelligence tells us she is not traveling with the joint delegation, she is back at the embassy overseeing—”
“Who else?” Tremaine demanded with a shout.
Kang ignored the insubordination. “Assistant Regional Security Officer Joshua Duffy, aged thirty-six. That’s all the Americans on the security force, but Benjamin Manu is the Foreign Service National Investigator, and the Local Body Guard force consists of Kaku Yeboah, Malike—”
Kang did not finish reading the page, because Conrad Tremaine screamed into the phone again. “Duff! It’s motherfucking Duff!”
“I’m sorry?”
On the now completely dark jungle road in the hills to the east of the Volta River, Conrad Tremaine stomped his foot down on the roof of the Toyota Tacoma, and he thought about those few moments before he pulled the trigger of the Dragunov. He’d seen a white man looking his way, he’d even focused on him with his sixteen-power scope, and he thought the man looked familiar. Now he realized that he did know that face.
Tremaine hadn’t seen Duff in seven or eight years, and back then the American always had a mustache and a beard, and virtually always wore a ball cap with the logo for United Defense, the private military corporation both men worked for.
Tremaine had seen him on television once, as well, when he became temporarily famous for some contractor disaster down in Mexico. Tremaine had been working in Somalia at the time and hadn’t been privy to the whole story, but he’d seen a quick news report about the incident, and he remembered the American who worked under him for a time in Afghanistan.
Tremaine said, “I need to know everything you have about Assistant Regional Security Officer Joshua Duffy. Where he lives, where he shops, if he has family in country…everything. And I need that information now!”
Kang snapped back at him. “I don’t know what is going on, but if you are still in the satellite downlink jamming zone, I demand to know how you are able to—”
Tremaine hung up on him, dropped his phone into his pocket, and clicked the walkie-talkie on the shoulder strap of his vest. “Condor for Goose.”
The response was quick. “Go for Goose.”
“Tell the techs to resume jamming.”
“Roger. Will take about two minutes to get the birds back up into position.”
Tremaine jumped down onto the hood, then down to the ground. Climbing back into the vehicle, Krelis spoke up from behind the wheel.
“Where to, boss?”
“Somewhere on this hill where we have line of sight on the dam.”
“Back down?”
“No. Up higher. Get me a little to the south, as well.” Tremaine had a plan, but he knew he’d have to haul ass to pull it off.
“Got it.” Krelis floored the truck, and it climbed on in the dark.