Conrad Tremaine stood in the darkness just meters back from the edge of a rocky outcropping high above the eastern bank of the Volta River, just a kilometer south of the dam. He had a decent view of the well-lit facility and could see two of the helicopters circling beyond the structure out over the reservoir to his right, their lights off but their silhouettes easily distinguishable in the night sky.
A third helo had disappeared behind some buildings inside the facility’s gates and alongside Lake Volta; he knew that aircraft would be loading up right now, but he had no idea who would be on board.
His dirty black king cab pickup was parked on the gravel road behind him, out of sight, though it was doubtful anyone would have been able to see it up here in the darkness from the dam. Two of his three Sentinel operators had posted security around the truck, and the third man, the fellow South African named Junior, stood by his side.
Tremaine thought about his brief conversation with Duff over the radio. He assumed the American would be getting on one of those three French helicopters, but he didn’t think it possible his former colleague could be on the one that now began climbing out of the buildings by the reservoir. No, the American must have just found the radio, because Tremaine had been talking to Belov just before this, and Belov had been stuck in a room at the top of the dam.
So if Duff wasn’t on the first helicopter to leave, he would have to be on the second or the third. And if Duff got out of there alive with the knowledge that Sentinel had been involved in this attack, along with the tablet computer that proved it, then he had the ability to ruin everything.
Duff’s proclamations that Tremaine and Sentinel were here were bad enough, but the militarized rugged tablet computer was the real problem. If Duff had that, then he had everything, all the information about the operation set in motion, and the plans for the next hours and days of the coup.
It had been foolish to read Belov into the complete operation, but Kang had insisted. The intelligence officer had been worried about Tremaine becoming a casualty, so he demanded that someone in the Sentinel force not connected to Tremaine’s direct-action fire team carry a carbon copy of the tablet Tremaine himself carried in case they needed to take over command.
The device found in the hands of the Russian leader would reveal every target and waypoint from here to the capital, every target in the capital, and even the safe houses the Sentinel operators had been told to hole up in while the overthrow was conducted by General Boatang.
The tablet in the possession of Josh Duffy was the smoking gun that would get Tremaine and his men killed, and if Tremaine couldn’t get it back, then he told himself he’d have to destroy it.
Tremaine’s mission changed in that very moment. Now his secondary objective was regime change in Accra. He’d get it done, but he wouldn’t let it get in the way of his primary objective—killing Josh Duffy and destroying that evidence before they both made it back to the capital.
The South African’s jaw fixed as he steeled himself for his next actions. He turned to Junior. “Load the RPG and bring it to me.”
Junior understood what his commander was planning to do. “Moving target from this distance, boss? In the dark?”
To this, Tremaine just said, “Bring extra rockets. Double time.”
Junior ran off and then, after changing channels on his walkie-talkie, Tremaine clicked the talk button and said, “Copper, Condor. You reading me?”
Copper was the Liberian Sentinel contractor embedded within Second Platoon, racing up from the south on their way to support this operation at Akosombo that had turned to shit. Tremaine could only hope he could reach him on the radio.
To his relief, the radio squawked. “I read.”
“What’s your location?”
“We’re on the road along the west side of the river heading north; we’ve passed the Adomi Bridge. Should have the dam in sight in three minutes.”
“How many RPG-7 launchers do you have with you?”
“Four.”
“And three Russians with you?”
“Two Russians. Antonio is Chilean. Why?”
“Stop your vehicle, load up all your RPGs as fast as you can. I want all of you on the weapons, and I want you ready for helicopters coming your way. They will probably fly a river heading, but they might bank to the southwest before they get to you. I have eyes on now and will advise you of their flight path when able.”
“Helicopters? Whose helicopters?”
“Doesn’t matter, the first will be on you in thirty seconds. It’s less important, let it pass if you can’t get your weps in position in time. But the other two…knock them out of the sky!”
“Roger!” Copper said, and with that, Tremaine turned to Junior, took the RPG launcher from him, and hefted it in his arms.
The RPG-7 fired a dumb rocket, meaning it had no homing capabilities. Just like a gun, its accuracy was dependent on the user taking into consideration a myriad of factors: the speed of the projectile, speed of the target, distance to the target, range of the projectile, angle to the target, even wind conditions.
But the optical sight on the weapon had a simple yet effective rangefinder and targeting grid on the glass, and though it took some practice, the weapon was relatively easy to employ in the field.
Tremaine had fired RPGs probably three hundred times in training and in combat, and he knew he was adept, although he imagined that at least one of those Russians on the opposite riverbank and to the south would be better than he was with the device.
He looked back to the reservoir now. The first helo had climbed away from the buildings and turned to the south; the second began its descent to the landing zone, lowering its wheels as it did so, while the third circled a half mile to the north out over the lake.
Tremaine watched the first big Caracal as it began heading south, crossing the top of the dam, maintaining a river heading. As it quickly increased speed, he felt certain his men to the south wouldn’t have their weapons ready in time to attack it.
He thought about taking a shot himself but decided to hold his fire. No, if he hit the helicopter, it would crash right there, and then the other two helo crews would be aware that someone was out here targeting them.
If the president was in the first aircraft away from the dam, then that meant the president was going to live tonight, because all Tremaine cared about at this point was killing Josh Duffy and destroying the evidence he’d taken from the Russian mercenary leader.
The Liberian nicknamed Copper ordered the Chilean behind the wheel to slam on the brakes in the middle of the road, and then he climbed out, shouting at the other three men.
Both Copper and Antonio assumed that the two Russians were better on the RPG than they were—it was a Russian weapon, after all—but all four were adequately trained, so all four men grabbed a launcher, then began pulling rockets from a case in the bed of their pickup. While they did this, several flatbed trucks and pickups pulled to the side of the road around them. These were the rebels in Second Platoon, thirty-two men strong.
The first helicopter raced by over the water while the Sentinel team was still loading the tubes.
“Faster!” Copper shouted to the others. He evaluated the altitude and speed of the aircraft above them, and he hoped the others would pass much the same, because he had no doubt at all that with four rocket launchers, at least one of them would be able to hit the next helo if it flew the same route.
From his position sitting on the broken roof of the little shaft building on the top of the dam, Josh Duffy watched the first helicopter disappear into the night, heading south, back towards the relative safety of Accra.
He then looked back over his shoulder and saw that the second Caracal was already landing, and he hoped like hell Nichole either had been on the first one or would be getting on this one, because if there were still enemy around here in position to attack, the last helicopter would be the most vulnerable.
He looked down at the radio clipped onto his rifle sling, and he wondered why Tremaine had stopped communicating.
He began to stand on the broken roof of the little building, trying to find a way down, but then he heard a noise to the east.
Duff looked up and saw a group of men wearing camo pants and black boots climbing out of a parked RIVCOM pickup on the road just thirty yards away from him. They wielded AK-47s or some variation thereof, and some had bare chests while others wore T-shirts. Their pants were uniform dark jungle camo, but none of them wore the RIVCOM tunics or berets he’d seen on the rebels.
Who the fuck are these guys?
He’d only just noticed these men; he hadn’t been able to hear them approach over the sound of the rushing water of the spillway below him, but it was clear they had seen him first, because their guns were up and they moved carefully towards the building he knelt on.
With the sound of the water he also couldn’t hear if they were shouting commands at him, but he was pretty certain he wasn’t going to be taking on nearly a dozen men who already had the drop on him while kneeling on the little broken roof of this tiny building.
He put his rifle down in front of him and lifted his hands into the air.
Nichole Duffy watched from the doorway of the motor pool garage while Johanna Aldenburg and her five remaining security officers boarded through the sliding door of the second Caracal to land in the parking lot. The EU diplomatic corps climbed in next, and then came the surviving members of the media. There were injuries in all the groups; three people had to be carried by their arms and legs by others, the crew chief of the helo jumped out to help another injured person on board, and then, after no more than thirty seconds on the deck, Julian Delisle looked across at the garage from where he crouched in the cabin, gave a quick wave, and shut the door.
The aircraft’s rotors increased in pitch, and the big helicopter lifted into the air.
As soon as it did so, Jay Costa shouted to the nineteen other people destined for the third and final helicopter. Dunnigan, Nichole, Scott, and Arletta were the diplomats; Ben Manu, Malike, Larsen, and Costa were the remaining security officers; and Martin Mensah and his eleven power house workers made up the rest of the group.
“It’s going to be a tight fit,” Costa said. “Give the wounded space to lie down.”
Costa looked to Nichole now. “Holster that weapon and help Ben, okay?”
“Got it.” She didn’t have a holster, but she stuck the gun in her waistband, then moved over to the Foreign Service National Investigator, putting his arm over her shoulder and assisting him up to his feet, just as the third and last helicopter landed out front.
The men from the pickup surrounded the damaged concrete building on the top of the dam; Duff stood on the roof now, his hands still up, and he spit away a little blood that had drained into his mouth from a cut on his forehead.
The gray belly of the second Caracal passed directly over his head just as one of the men in the street shouted something to him. Only twenty feet away now, Duff still couldn’t hear the man under the deafening rotor noise, but he looked at him and cocked his head in confusion when he realized the man’s T-shirt had the words “Super Dad” on the chest in red letters.
He thought about the prospect of being gunned down by someone wearing a novelty T, and then he shook his head to clear it from his mind. After waiting for the helo to continue towards the south for a few seconds, he then shouted back. “What?”
The man spoke English, and he was clearly Ghanaian. Even with the helo gone, he still had to yell to be heard over the spillway noise. “I said, who are you?”
“Who are you?”
The man shook his head. “No, man. It doesn’t work that way. We have the guns.”
The American had to agree with the logic. “Duffy. U.S. Diplomatic Security.”
The same man who spoke before looked around to his mates, then back at Duff. “How do we know you are telling the truth?”
Duff shrugged. “You don’t have to trust me, just don’t shoot me.” He added, “I’ll climb down and show you some credos, but I’m going to kick off the rifle and toss my bag down first.”
“You don’t need your rifle.”
“Have you been paying attention to what’s been going on?”
The Ghanaian in the “Super Dad” shirt hesitated, then shrugged. “Do it carefully. The pistol, too.”
Duff used his left hand to pull the Beretta from his waistband, and he tossed it down onto the street, then used his boot to scoot the R5 rifle to the edge of the roof until it, too, fell to the ground. He knelt and grabbed the pack, then dropped it over the side, and finally he climbed down from the roof, dropping the last three feet to the ground.
With his hands still up, he walked over to the person in the middle of the entourage to whom he’d been speaking. He noticed that the man had a bandage around his waist, blood seeping from it, and his clean-shaven face was covered in sweat and showed signs of exhaustion.
“I’m going to reach for my wallet,” Duff said.
Guns remained trained on him while he pulled out his diplomatic credentials.
The man took them, looked them over, and handed them back.
He lowered his rifle and waved for the others to lower theirs.
“Who the fuck are you guys?” Duff now asked.
“I’m Sergeant Opoku. We’re River Command.”
“You lose your uniforms?”
“We know the rebels copied our uniforms. Didn’t want to start shooting each other.”
“Where’d you get those rusty Kalashnikovs?”
“The rebels stole our guns. We stole theirs.” Opoku looked up, and Duff followed his gaze. The helicopter that had just passed them climbed as it gained speed, and it headed south over the river.
As the EU helicopter disappeared over the top of the dam, Nichole Duffy helped Benjamin Manu up through the hatch of the third helo, then climbed aboard herself. She strapped into a rear-facing bulkhead seat next to Dunnigan and looked over her shoulder into the cockpit, and her eyes immediately went to the fuel gauge. She was pleased to see that the helo had at least partially refueled since landing in Akosombo earlier, and she assumed its crew chief had at least a few small bladders or tanks in the storage compartment along with the luggage, because she knew they hadn’t flown to any airport around here during the firefight.
She turned her head to look back out the open starboard-side door. She was hoping to see her husband running towards her in the night, but he was not there.
Costa made sure everyone was on board, and then he strapped in using an eye bolt and a harness, buckling the canvas apparatus around his waist so he could remain in the open door with the M4 rifle he’d been carrying since the power house.
It was a tight fit, but he motioned to the pilots that they were ready to go, and then the helo lifted off into the night.
Conrad Tremaine watched the second helicopter cross the top of the dam and begin heading his way, increasing in altitude as it did so, but he didn’t aim at it. Instead he used his radio. “Copper, this is Condor. Over.”
“Go for Copper.”
“You’re in position?”
“In position.”
“Second helo passing you in thirty seconds, flying a river heading, two hundred meters and climbing.”
“We’re lined up and ready.”
“Good. Drop it.”
“Yeah, boss.”
Tremaine did not fire on the second helo as it passed under him, because if he fired then, the pilot of the third aircraft would simply turn and head off to the north. If Tremaine waited for the second helo to make it a couple of kilometers to the south, however, right at the bend in the river, by then the third helicopter should be in the air and flying over the dam.
All his hopes to take out Duffy and his evidence of Sentinel involvement in the operation rested on knocking both of these helicopters out of the sky.
Tremaine watched as the second helo all but disappeared in the dark, and he waited expectantly for the fireworks show to begin.
Sergeant Opoku pointed to Duff’s left, towards the helicopter now lifting off the parking lot by the reservoir some three hundred meters away. “Are those your people down there?”
“They’re in one of the helos, don’t know which, I don’t have comms.”
“Well, no matter which one they’re in, you missed your flight.”
“Not the first time.”
The sergeant nodded. “We can arrange for you to get a ride back to Accra, but first we need to clear this entire facility of any enemy.”
“I’ll help you, Sergeant.”
Opoku said, “Our president, do you know if—”
“He was alive the last time I saw him.”
The RIVCOM man put his hand on his heart. “Thank God. I’m Isaac.”
“Call me Duff.” The men shook hands.
“Let’s get in the truck.”
Duff reached to pick up his bag and his rifle, but as he did he looked to the south, and he saw a small flash of light coming from the western bank down below, nearly a mile away from where he stood.
Isaac followed his look just as a second flash came, and then a third.
A fourth sparkled in the evening.
All four pinpricks of light rose skyward towards the helicopter.
Duff rose back up, terror on his face. “Oh my God.”