Conrad Tremaine cussed loudly in the passenger seat as Krelis drove the Toyota over the poorly kept dirt road that wound around the hillside. Tremaine’s anger wasn’t directed towards the Dutch mercenary’s driving but rather the winding road itself. It seemed like every thirty seconds a switchback halted progress towards their destination, sending the truck back the wrong way as they climbed or descended, as if the road itself was trying to keep them from their goal.
Krelis for his part just continued white-knuckling his way behind the taillights of a Ford pickup holding eight rebels, while squinting out the glare from the headlights of an identical rebel vehicle in his rearview mirror.
There were five trucks in all in the convoy; the Sentinel vehicle was sandwiched between the four squads of Second Platoon, two in front of them and two behind. Copper, the Liberian Sentinel mercenary embedded with Second Platoon, was in the lead vehicle, and he stayed in radio contact with Tremaine as they all neared the area where they thought they might find the helicopter crash.
This platoon was working off mission—Kang’s plan had them heading to Accra with their entire company, just behind another company taking the same road. But Condor’s updated orders were clear. They were to accompany him to the crash site and search for survivors.
All three of the Sentinel men in the convoy who worked under Tremaine were unhappy about where they found themselves at the moment. Copper, Junior, and Krelis had all been training for months preparing their missions, and none of them had planned on being hours behind the others on the drive to the capital.
They had targets to hit along the N2 highway to make the path easier for the Dragons, and now that they were east of the Volta and nowhere near where they were supposed to be, the three men all silently worried about the prospects of the coup succeeding.
Junior was the first to voice any concerns, from the back seat of the black Toyota pickup. “Boss, we’re off schedule, we’re out of radio comms with the other units, and we’re bloody vulnerable out here. I say we take the safe bet that everyone on board is dead, turn around, and get back on our mission. Send a squad from Second Platoon and let the rest of us just get on with it.”
Tremaine shook his head. “Getting our asses out of Ghana alive to enjoy our money is our mission, and if we somehow left Duffy in play with Belov’s computer, then we have to kill him and take it back, or we’re not ever leaving this shit hole. Just keep looking out the windows for any signs of a crash.”
“I can’t see a damn thing,” Krelis said.
“The lightning. Use the lightning strikes. There has to be smoke, broken trees, something. That helo was going down, one hundred percent. We’re high enough on a hill to where we should be able to see out from time to time.”
And with that, Tremaine reached down into his backpack on the floorboard of the front passenger seat and pulled out his Iridium satellite phone.
Kang Shikun stood on his balcony in the night as a warm rain began to fall on him. He wore no raincoat, just his shirtsleeves, but he didn’t move a muscle.
The power in the city had shut off again, not long after he last spoke with Tremaine, and at this he was pleased. The fighting continued across the capital; he could see flashes of light, hear the occasional siren or explosion far in the distance, but he wasn’t focused on this activity now.
Instead he held his Swarovski binoculars to his eyes and tracked the lone helicopter moving over the capital. Although he couldn’t see the aircraft itself, only its lights, he was certain he knew where it was going.
It flew near the airport, but Kang was correct in assuming it would not land there. Instead it continued on to the south for just another minute, then began to descend onto the grounds at Jubilee House, the presidential residence and seat of power.
The unrest in the city would be known to the pilots of the aircraft now, of this Kang was certain, so the decision to fly the president directly to his secure property, surrounded at all times by a company of the President’s Own Guard Regiment, was an easy one for Amanor’s security to make, and an easy one for Kang to anticipate.
The Chinese spy tracked back to the north now with the binoculars, searching the rainy night sky for the lights of the second and third helicopters.
But he saw nothing else in the air.
His phone buzzed in his pocket; he lowered the binos and put it to his ear. “Yes?”
Tremaine said, “It’s Condor. The enemy has taken back the dam.”
Only now did Kang turn around and step back inside and out of the warm shower. “How did that happen? Don’t they know you can blow the entire thing to—”
“We can’t blow it. Our Russian with the triggering device was overrun, and we lost control of it. I disabled the switchyard, shutting off the power to the grid again, and then I told our remaining forces to retreat from the dam and proceed south to Accra.”
Though inside the room he’d set up as his office now, Kang had turned back to the open door, his eyes still on the rainy night to the north. Where were those other helicopters?
Though distracted, he didn’t hide his displeasure and his confusion about what was going on. “This is not ideal.”
“Just a complication,” Tremaine countered. “I ordered the satellite jamming operations to cease.”
Kang let it go. “A helicopter just landed at the president’s palace; I assume the other two will go to the airport, but I don’t have visual on them yet.”
Tremaine said, “The other two won’t be going to the airport. They both crashed.”
The normally unflappable Kang squinted his eyes shut, then took a few breaths before speaking. “They what?”
“A rogue squad of Dragons with RPGs attacked the joint delegation as it took off. The first helicopter got away, the second helicopter was destroyed with all aboard, and the third crashed somewhere in the hills. We are trying to locate it now.”
Kang took a few more calming breaths now, thought about the peace that his tai chi practice gave him, and wished he could adopt a pose. Already he was thinking about the call he’d have to make to Beijing explaining that the plan he’d sold them on had now turned into an attempted presidential assassination, and the assassination or attempted assassination of an EU diplomatic team and an American ambassador.
“Why is there a ‘rogue squad’ of rebels? You trained them.”
“I’ll be sure to ask them for their reasons after I wring their fucking necks.”
Kang took a long moment to organize his thoughts, then said, “I need to know if there is any Sentinel compromise.”
“There was. I think it’s been taken care of, but I need to check the second crash site to make sure.”
“For what?”
“One of the American security men at the dam…he knew about my involvement.”
“How did he know—”
“I don’t have a fucking clue, but he’s either already dead or soon will be. We kill him, get the computer he took off of Bear, and then we’re golden.” When Kang did not immediately reply, he said, “The power is off, all troops are on the move to the capital minus two platoons. Three and a half companies of rebels and some sixty of my operators are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. We clean up this one compromise and we are back on track.”
Kang, for his part, had his own secrets. He wasn’t going to mention to Tremaine anything about the attacks going on around the city by the JNIM terrorists. The South African wouldn’t like being involved with Iran or the jihadis, and it wasn’t relevant to Sentinel’s mission.
Now the calm Asian man adopted a lower, more threatening tone. “We are both professionals, Tremaine. If you are compromised, if you can’t…extinguish this problem before it gets out to the wider world…I don’t have to tell you what is going to happen.”
“I don’t need your warnings to give me proper motivation.” Tremaine disconnected the call.
Kang put his phone back down on his desk, turned away from the window because he was no longer looking for two helicopters, and headed to the living room to check in with his staff.
Rain began to fall on the hill shortly before ten p.m.; the showers, though steady from the start, had trouble getting through the jungle canopy at first. But the weather was persistent, and eventually water dripped down through the trees and fronds and vines and then bounced off the aluminum frame of the gray Airbus helicopter that now lay on its starboard side.
The Akwapim-Togo Range was a two-hundred-mile belt of ridges and hills, actually a deciduous forest, between Ghana and the Togo border. The foliage here was impossibly dense, but the crash of the sixteen-thousand-pound helicopter with a fifty-two-foot main rotor had ripped a gaping hole in the forest. The aircraft had hit the treetops at eighty knots, then whipped and spun as it tore through the high limbs of African mahogany and cotton silkwood, propelled from west to east. The rotor had disintegrated along with a half acre of canopy, and then the twisted fiery wreckage slammed into the hillside and rolled end over end, back down to its side as it tumbled along, finally coming to rest partially twisted around a silkwood tree trunk the width of a car.
The helo had been on the ground for over an hour now, and still a small fire burned back where the tail rotor used to be, but as the fresh rain increased in intensity, the fire began to diminish.
The mean annual rainfall here was over forty-five inches, and the jungle floor was moss covered and soaked; the rain that made its way down to the wreckage quickly formed in pools and flowed through the moss and down the saturated hill in growing rivulets.
Soon the rivulets turned red with blood.
There was no movement inside the still aircraft, and outside the sounds of the jungle had returned after the disruption that came along with a helicopter crash into terrain.
But then a new sound emerged in the dark. A tinny, metallic click, a brief squawk, and then a man’s voice. “DS? DS, come in, over.”
The radio that emitted the voice lay next to the thick roots of the giant silkwood that had stopped the helicopter’s forward progression.
The voice spoke again. Urgently, plaintive. “Jay? Chad? Ben? Malike? Anyone up on this net, come in. Over?”
The small black walkie-talkie lay alone for a moment; its earpiece cable had been ripped out, its battery slowly draining, the rain saturating it.
“DS? Anyone, how copy?”
A hand wrapped around the radio now, lifted it out of the bloody rainwater, and clicked the push-to-talk button.
“Josh?” The woman spoke through sobs, her voice weak. “Josh…is that you?”
“It’s me! Are you okay, baby?”
Nichole Duffy began crying, but quickly she asked, “Where are you?”
“We’re on the road, not sure of your location, but we’re close.”
Nichole put an unsteady hand against the trunk of the silkwood tree, then leaned against it to pull herself up to a standing position.
“What…How do I find you?”
“We’re in a technical…a pickup truck. We’re going to honk the horn, be listening for it.”
“Josh…it’s raining, there are birds, there’s so much noise.”
“Stand by,” he said. Duff’s voice was professional and clipped, and it told her she needed to pull her shit together.
Seconds later, the sound of frogs, birds, crickets, all life forms, suddenly stopped. Her husband spoke into the radio. “You hearing us?”
“No,” she said. “But the animals do. Keep honking.”
For ten seconds she heard nothing but the unceasing rain thumping against the ruined helicopter, pattering on the moss and brush and the leaves above. But then she detected a new noise, a faint car horn in the distance. She clicked the mic. “I hear you. You are off to my right, but I have no idea which way I’m facing.”
“That’s okay. Just keep listening for the horn. Is it getting louder or softer?”
The horn made short bleats, and in seconds she could tell it was nearing her position. “Okay, you’re coming the right way. I don’t see a road. I don’t see anything, really, except for jungle. You are downhill from me, I can tell that much.”
“Okay, that helps. You’re on our left. Tell me when the horn starts to pass.”
It took another minute, but then she clicked again. “Too far. Back up, maybe one hundred yards, you should be right below us.”
“Okay.”
“Josh,” she said. “We have dead, and nearly everybody alive is injured.”
“I understand. We’ll have to scoop the survivors somehow and run; we figure we’re not the only ones looking for the crash.”
Nichole looked down at her hand; it was wrapped around the grip of the Browning pistol that had somehow managed to stay in her waistband through the impossibly violent crash. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Isaac Opoku had just driven over a tiny wooden bridge only a couple of car lengths in size when he slammed on the brakes of his pickup, sliding on the wet moss underneath the wheels. He shoved the transmission into reverse, but before he could hit the gas, Duff put a hand on his arm.
“If we go back there in the truck we’re going to give the exact position of the crash away.”
Isaac said, “There’s nothing but this road all the way to the N2 highway, no place to hide the truck that I know of. We’ll have to leave it here.”
Duff nodded. “That might buy us some time, anyway. Let’s carry as much out of the vic as we can in case it falls into enemy hands.”
Duff leapt out of the passenger seat with a flashlight in his hand that he’d found in the glove compartment. He slung his rifle around his neck, put his pack on his back, and turned on the light. While Isaac went to the tailgate to grab the trauma bag and more gear, Duff began moving as quickly as possible in the rain, stumbling over ruts in the muddy road.
Running across the bridge, he heard the sound of rushing water below, but it was too dark to see what was down there.
The two men ran about one hundred yards, then left the road, heading uphill. Duff was in the lead at first, picking his way through the dense jungle while he shined the light forward.
He struggled for over a minute; the foliage was so thick, the hillside so slippery, and he had to pull his way up through branches with one hand. The prosthesis was a hindrance on ground this unstable, and he knew he was only slowing Isaac down. Soon, though, he heard Isaac coming up behind; he had a light, as well, and two more things that Duff did not: a machete, and the skill to use it to slice a path through the jungle.
Isaac passed Duff the trauma bag so the Ghanaian would be able to blaze the trail more quickly, and soon they’d gone thirty or forty yards up the hill.
Duff understood now what his wife meant when she said how loud it was. The animals were quiet at the moment, but the incessant rhythm of the heavy rainfall drowned out any other sounds. Still, Duff took a chance, left his team radio on his belt, and shouted, “Nikki? Nikki?”
He heard no response, so they went a minute more, and he called out again.
He heard his wife’s voice over the rain. “Up here!” They still had some ground to cover, but both Isaac and Duff could tell they were heading in the right direction.
Five minutes later, and some ten minutes after leaving the truck, Isaac slashed through a cluster of thick liana vines, revealing an open space in the jungle just in front of him. He shined his light to the left, saw broken tree limbs and the rain pouring down where the canopy had been disrupted, and then shifted the beam to his right.
Josh shouldered up to Isaac just as the light revealed Nichole Duffy, standing alone by the twisted remains of the Caracal. She wore a gray top that was torn and blood smeared, and mud-covered and ripped off-white linen pants, and her right eye was almost swollen shut.
Josh climbed up to her through the broken and torn foliage. “You’re hurt!”
“It’s not bad.” They embraced, and she winced with pain.
“What is it?”
“Left shoulder. Just banged up, not broken…I don’t think.” She embraced him again. “Thought I lost you.”
“I thought you went down with the other helicopter.”
“Aldenburg?” she asked.
“Was she in the second one to leave the dam?”
Nichole nodded.
“They’re all dead.”
She shut her eyes now. “What about Amanor? He was on the first helo.”
“He made it out, as far as I know.”
Isaac scanned around the wreckage with his light. Josh didn’t bother with introductions, not yet, because he had a very obvious question. “Where is—”
“Those of us who could moved the other survivors away from the crash site in case the bad guys came. We had to drag most of them on cargo nets, plus a couple of tarps from the emergency kit. I just came back down here to try and scavenge more equipment and I heard you on Chad’s radio.” She looked back over her shoulder. “Everyone else is higher on the hill behind a big tree…I don’t know…twenty-five yards that way.”
“Good thinking.”
Isaac’s light flashed through the front windshield of the helicopter; it faced in the same direction as the tail because the machine had wrapped around a tree trunk. Blood glistened on the inside of the broken glass, and inside, both French pilots remained strapped in their seats.
Nichole said, “No pulse on either of them. Dunnigan is alive, though. She might have a broken ankle, foot, leg…I don’t know, it’s swollen. Chad has a broken kneecap and some lacerations; his back is sliced open bad. We got the bleeding stopped, more or less. Benjamin wasn’t badly hurt…Well…he was shot earlier, but he wasn’t badly hurt in the crash, thank God. He’s back on his feet, guarding the ambo now.”
“Jay?”
Nichole bit her lip, then motioned to the helicopter.
“Jay’s gone, Josh. He was in the door when we hit; I think the impact broke his neck. He’s under the helicopter, but I was able to check his pulse at his ankle. Scott’s dead, too; he’s still in there, strapped in. Malike was knocked out, but he’s up and walking around now.”
“And the crew chief?”
“The crew chief fell out of the hatch when we were still airborne; I don’t see how he could have survived, but I can’t say for sure.”
Duff didn’t think there was a chance in hell anyone could have lived after falling out of a crashing helicopter at the speed it was obviously going to cause all this destruction.
“Shit,” he said. “Okay. Take us to the others. We’ve got to haul ass.”
Nichole looked past him now. “Where are the rest of you?”
Duff realized she had expected him to come with a much larger search party. “Sorry, babe. It’s just me and my friend Isaac here, from the real River Command police. We’ve got a truck.”
“A truck?” she said, a sound of disappointment in her voice, but Duff was already moving up the hill, nervous because he knew every second they spent here was another second Tremaine and his rebels had to look for them.