As soon as the first rounds impacted the hillside some dozen meters away from him, Conrad Tremaine dropped the RPG launcher, dove hard to the ground, rolled onto his belly, then began crawling on his hands and knees as fast as he could, leaving the weapon behind.
Tree branches snapped and cracked, and leaves and twigs fell all around him; bullets zinged in and then ricocheted off the rocks, sparking in the night and sending debris flying in all directions.
He made it the entire twenty meters back to the potholed dirt road before he realized his enemy didn’t have an angle on him here on the road, so all their shots were going high. He stood up, turned around, and found Krelis in the dark.
“Fuck me,” he said. “RIVCOM’s still in play down there, aren’t they?”
“You fired from the same spot four times. What’d you expect, boss?”
Tremaine ignored the admonishment from his underling, and he looked around in the near pitch-black darkness. “Where are the others?”
Junior appeared from the direction of the outcropping. He moved slowly in the dark, and soon Tremaine saw why.
The South African carried two rifles and an extra set of body armor in his arms.
He passed the other two men by, then threw the extra gear into the back of the pickup. While doing this, he said, “Baginski’s fucked.”
“Bloody hell,” Tremaine muttered.
“He ran over to return fire but caught one right in the top of the skull in front of me before he even got his fucking weapon hot.”
The shooters at the dam had stopped firing; the zipping rounds over the mercenaries’ heads diminished. Tremaine thought a moment, then clicked his radio talk button. “Copper, this is Condor, how read?”
The radio squawked. “Read you, Lima Charlie.”
“Do not go to the dam. Say again, do not attack the dam. There’s still significant resistance there, and they’re ready for a fight now. I’ve shut the power off, so our objectives here are met. Turn around, go back to the bridge, and cross to my side of the Volta. I’ll meet you there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Condor out.” To the two men standing on the road with him, he said, “Let’s move out.”
Neither man moved. Quickly Krelis said, “What about Baginski’s body? We gonna strap it on the hood like a bloody deer?”
“He’s a Pole, but he looks Russian enough to me. We left three dead Wagner men at the dam. If we do this right, then Moscow’s going to be blamed for this, not Sentinel.”
Krelis said, “Are we doing this right?” There was a critical tone in his voice. This wasn’t a military unit, these were soldiers of fortune, and this was reflected in the order and code of conduct between leaders and followers.
The Sentinel leader spit on the ground. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy. I always knew we’d hit snags, and we’ve certainly done that. But now our main objective is getting to that second crash site and checking for survivors.”
“And if there are survivors?” Junior asked.
“Then there won’t be when we leave.”
The men climbed inside; the pickup rumbled along the hillside, its headlights on now because the deeply rutted and pitted road would be impossible to navigate otherwise.
Josh Duffy lowered his rifle, turned around, and once again ran for the truck. Before he got to the driver’s door, however, Isaac stepped in front of him, holding a hand up as he spoke hurriedly to someone on his radio. A man replied, and as before, Duff couldn’t understand the language.
He didn’t want to wait around for the translation, so he tried to push by the police sergeant, but Isaac wouldn’t budge.
The conversation lasted another ten seconds; Duff was about to use real force to get behind the wheel of the truck to go to the crash site, but just as he was about to shoulder his way through the RIVCOM sergeant, Isaac put his radio back on his belt.
“I’ll drive.”
Duff didn’t understand why this man was going with him, but he ran around to the passenger side and climbed in.
Isaac fired the engine, then whipped a U-turn in the road on top of the dam and began racing to the east, leaving his other officers behind.
Before Josh could ask what was happening, the Ghanaian said, “The other shift has arrived at the dam. Twenty-four men, including the captain. They captured four rebels at the main gate, then a row of trucks approached from the south, so they got into defensive positions. He just told me the unidentified vehicles were turning around and heading away. I told him I’m going in pursuit of the rebels to the west.”
Josh sighed; this wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I’m not looking for rebels, dude, I’m looking for survivors.”
“Yeah? Well, my friend, so are the rebels. They went to the trouble to shoot that helicopter down. They must have really wanted to kill those inside. I’ll get us there first. I know this area; there is a road we can use that doesn’t show on any map, and it will take us over that saddle between the hills to a valley on the other side. If the helicopter crashed, it would have been somewhere around there.”
They drove in silence, leaving the now-darkened hydroelectric plant grounds and then taking the twisting road that led up the hill to the east. Finally, Josh said, “My wife was on one of those three aircraft.”
Isaac turned to look at him as he drove, his eyes wide. “Your wife?”
“Yeah,” he said softly.
“Why?”
“She works for the ambassador.”
It was silent a moment more save for the squeaking suspension of the truck as it bounced onto a gravel road. Finally Isaac said, “I’m sure she was on the first one. She’s fine. On the way back to Accra by now, where it’s safe.”
The sergeant was just trying to keep Duff positive, and he appreciated the gesture, but Duff had a feeling she had either been on the Caracal that augered into the river at maximum velocity while burning like a campfire, or else she was on the stricken helo that disappeared into the hills, because it made sense to him that the president and his people would be on the first bird out of the kill zone.
Soon they were climbing higher into the hills, the sky blocked out above them by trees as they bobbed over the impossibly bumpy dirt roads below them.
Duff took the time to check his sat phone, finding it still out of commission. Isaac saw him doing this, then took his own cell phone out of his pocket and checked it for a signal. When he put it back into his pocket without making a call, Duff knew he didn’t have to ask.
The DS special agent looked over his rifle now, using the interior lighting, making sure it remained in good condition. He realized he only had one spare magazine left, and this caused him to check around in the truck to see what equipment was available. “Any more guns in here?”
Isaac shook his head. “Just mine and yours. I’ve got a pistol, too.”
Duff nodded. He still had the Russian’s Beretta stuck in his belt since it didn’t fit in his Glock holster. Looking around, he asked, “What about a trauma bag?”
“Yes, all our vehicles have them. You hurt?”
“It’s for what we find where we’re going.” He looked out the window. “How many did you lose?”
Isaac said, “Of my men? At least twelve. Maybe more. How about you?”
“I…I don’t know. A lot of fine people lost their lives today.”
The sergeant asked, “What is this all about? A presidential assassination?”
“Doesn’t look like it. They brought bombs to blow up the dam. I think we just happened to come at the wrong time, and someone took a shot at Amanor because he was there.” He thought a moment. “Something bigger is going on, but I don’t know what. One of the Russians said the army would take a long time to respond to this attack at the dam because they would have ‘bigger problems.’ I don’t know what he meant by that.”
“Those rebels,” Isaac said. “I think they’re Dragons of Western Togoland. It’s the only non-Muslim insurgent group anywhere around, but nobody thought the Dragons were real. Just some make-believe group that only existed on the radio and the Internet.”
“They seemed pretty real to me.”
“Yeah. But…I don’t know who these Russians are. Wagner Africa Corps is all over West Africa, but we’ve never seen them in Ghana. This is Chinese territory,” he said, somewhat sarcastically. “Or it was until you all showed up.”
“They’re not Wagner,” Duff clarified. “It’s a private military corporation called Sentinel. South Africans, too. They’re working with the rebels.”
This surprised the police sergeant. “Why?”
“Haven’t got a clue, man. I just got to your country a week and a half ago.”
Isaac chuckled a little, then turned off this bad road and onto an even worse one. Here weeds and brush had grown in between two tire tracks that wound around at a steep incline like a goat trail, but the Toyota was up to the challenge. He said, “This isn’t the welcome I would have wished for you.”
“Makes two of us.” As Duff watched the road, he rested his rifle on the seat between his knees, barrel up, so he could point it out the open window quickly in case they managed to run across the person or persons who’d been operating the RPG launcher up here.
He said, “I actually know the man in charge of the mercenary force. He used to be my boss.”
“You were a mercenary?”
Duff thought this question over. “I didn’t think so at the time.” With a shrug he said, “He’s here. Talked to him on the Russian’s radio when I was inside the dam.”
“You still have that radio?”
“Yeah.” Duff unhooked it from the strap of his rifle and stuck it in his backpack.
“Why don’t you call him?” Isaac said. “Ask him what his plan is.”
Duff just shook his head. “Tremaine probably thinks I’m either dead or else a survivor of the second crash.”
“Why wouldn’t he think you were in the one that got away?”
“Because I talked to him just before that one took off. No, as far as he knows, I was in the second or third. I don’t want him to know I’m still around.”
“Well, if you see him, maybe you should use that rifle to let him know you’re still around.”
“Damn right I will.” Duff looked to the man behind the wheel now. “Where’d you learn to shoot?”
“I was in the army, special forces unit, eight years. You? You are former military, for sure.”
“For sure,” Duff said softly, still looking out through the thick dust.
“An officer?” Isaac asked, but before Duff could respond, a crashing noise outside the vehicle caused him to hoist his gun up and shove the barrel out the window to hunt for targets. Isaac grabbed his arm, stopping him. “Relax, man. Relax. It’s just thunder. It’s going to rain.”
“Rain?” Duff sighed, putting the butt stock of the gun on the seat in front of him again. “Yeah, that’s what we need right now.”
“It’s fine. We’ll find the crash site first and get them out of there before the rain gets too heavy. We’re on a road now that almost nobody uses.”
They slammed down into a pothole and bounced up on the other side. “I never would have guessed.”
“The main road has about one hundred switchbacks, but this one goes right over the hill, down into the valley. We’ll have a place where we can stop and look out over the valley for any wreckage, smoke, or fire, but we need to get there before the rain.” Isaac sped up, and Duff bounced around even more in the front passenger seat of the pickup.
Isaac added, “Where that RPG fire came from, they shouldn’t be able to get there before we do, but they won’t be far behind, so we’ll have to pick up any survivors and go quickly.” The sergeant seemed to remember that Duff’s wife might have been on board, because quickly he added, “Rescue everyone, I mean.”
“Where were you when the attack happened?” Duff asked, desperate to both change the subject and get intelligence on just what was going on.
Isaac said, “Me and three others went to a limestone mine to check on a suspicious vehicle. We were attacked by a Russian and a group of rebels. They had vehicles like ours. Apparently they had uniforms like ours, too.
“All three of my colleagues with me were killed, I was shot, and then I borrowed a motorcycle to get back to the dam.”
“You got shot?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
Duff tried to check the wound on the right side of the man’s torso but found it impossible to do so while crashing over thick brush, rocks, and potholes.
After a moment he gave up and said, “So…is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“Are you really a super dad?”
Isaac appeared confused as he drove, but only for a moment. He looked down at his shirt, covered in sweat and blood from the bandages above his right hip. “A gift from my wife when my son was born. She bought it before I was a dad, and Kofi is only four months old, so it’s a little early to say if I am a good father yet.”
Duff nodded. He thought about telling the man about his own children, but he couldn’t. Knowing that there was a statistical probability that their mother was dead would make talking about Huck and Mandy more painful than he could deal with at the moment, so they just drove on in silence.
Nearly twenty minutes later Isaac parked the pickup, and then Duff followed him down a narrow pathway through some trees. It was impossibly dark here; Isaac’s flashlight led the way, but occasionally lightning flooded the pathway with light. The flashes came just before the cracks of thunder, telling Duffy there was a storm cell virtually right on top of them, and the warm, moist, and windy air indicated the rain could come at any moment.
Eventually Isaac turned off the light, stopped, and grabbed Duff by the left arm. “We have to wait here. Can’t reveal our position in case any rebels got ahead of us.”
The two men just stood there in the pitch black.
“What are we doing?” the American asked after a moment.
“Just wait.”
Soon another flash lit up the sky.
Now Duff could see why Isaac had brought him here. As the thunderclap pounded his already damaged eardrums, he saw that they were on a hill over a narrow valley, a vast unbroken canopy of green that stretched from east to west. Duff even caught a glimpse of the saddle between the two hills he’d seen from the dam back to the east, where the third helicopter had disappeared about forty minutes earlier.
And in just that instant of light, Duff saw what he needed to see. A cloud of smoke hung in the air over the trees not more than a thousand meters southeast of their position.
Isaac saw it, too. Both men turned and ran for the truck, and Isaac flipped his light back on so they didn’t snag on any low branches or vines.
The RIVCOM sergeant jumped back behind the wheel just as the wind began to pick up in advance of the approaching storm. He said, “There is a good road down there, but we’re going to have to go off road to get to it. It’s going to take a while.”
Duff sat down on the passenger side. “We haven’t been off road this whole time?”
Isaac sniffed a laugh, then began driving wildly forward, almost daring rocks and ruts to flip the vehicle as the rain beat down on the hood. He said, “There’s a stream. It will be impossible to use once the rain comes, but now it should be almost dry. We’ll use it as our own road through the jungle.”
To Duff this felt like he was back in Mexico, in a damaged armored personnel carrier taking accurate fire from an army of sicarios. He held on and prayed for two things: one, that Nichole was still alive, and two, that Isaac knew where the hell he was going, because Duff could only see dust, foliage, and darkness on the other side of the windshield.