Duff, Ben, Malike, and Isaac made it to the clearing cut by the helo crash, and they spread out at the northern edge of it, each finding a tree to hide behind. Duff looked around the side of the meter-wide trunk and down the hill in the pouring rain.
The approaching flashlight beams danced through the trees, glistened off wide palm fronds, sparkled the water that had pooled here and there on the green jungle floor. Duff could tell the enemy was close, just ten yards or so from making it into the clearing. In seconds the rebels would see the helo, and then all hell would break loose.
He counted four distinct beams, and he hoped that meant there were only four shooters here to investigate the crash, although he knew he couldn’t count on that.
The four defenders had no way to communicate with one another other than by gunfire; the rain made whispering impossible, but Duff knew there wasn’t really anything left to coordinate. He’d established himself and Isaac as one fire team, responsible for covering for one another during reloads, and Malike and Ben constituted the other fire team. Everyone was separated with five yards or so between them, and Duff thought this was just about as good an ambush as anyone could form in these conditions and with this amount of time.
At the last moment before the lights made it into the clearing, Duff tucked back around his tree. He assumed the other men would do the same, and they would wait for his first shot to begin their attack.
He heard voices; they weren’t speaking English or Russian, that much he knew, and he focused on them, waiting for them to get as close as possible.
A flashlight beam shone right on the opposite side of the tree he was using for cover, its flood sending long shadows deeper into the jungle behind him. He stayed frozen in place until the beam moved on, sweeping over towards the downed aircraft.
Finally, Duff shouldered his rifle, stepped out from behind the tree just far enough to get his weapon up, and dropped to a knee. Aiming at the closest light, he thumbed off his safety and opened fire.
Almost simultaneously the other three men did the same. The reports rocked the jungle hillside, return fire sparked, and Josh just tucked tighter behind the tree while still revealing the right side of his body so that he could fight effectively.
Isaac’s AK’s lower report told him his new friend was using disciplined fire, and the two M4s held by Ben and Malike spit out three-round bursts.
He saw one flashlight beam spin in the air and then extinguish, and then a second beam and a third fell to the ground and remained on, but the man with the fourth light turned his off as he got behind the helo.
He was invisible now, and Duff knew he’d have to turn on his own weapon light to find him, but before he could do so, more shooting erupted.
Quickly Duff realized there were more than four men down there. Several muzzle flashes came out of the dark, away from the light beams.
Isaac called, “Cover!” indicating to Duff that he needed to reload, but Duff’s weapon ran dry at the same instant, so he dropped the weapon, pulled the Beretta, and kept shooting into the clearing below him.
He’d expended almost an entire magazine when Isaac opened up with his AK again, giving Duff the opportunity to reload.
He spun behind the tree to do so, then shifted to the opposite side, dropping to his left knee now and leaning out around the trunk.
He saw one muzzle flash behind the helicopter, detected movement through a broken window, and realized the shooter there hadn’t positioned himself behind the big engine of the machine for cover.
Duff flipped his selector switch to fully automatic fire and sent a spray of rounds into the soft skin of the aircraft. After he stopped, he detected no more return fire coming his way.
Duff flipped on his weapon light, swept it over the clearing, and counted five dead. There had been more than five shooters, of this he was certain, so he ducked back behind the tree, knowing if anyone still alive had remaining ammunition they would fire at his new light source.
But no one shot back.
In under sixty seconds it was over. Duff turned his light back on and took in the entire scene. He didn’t see any more bodies but imagined the others might be tucked into the opposite tree line, dead or incapacitated, and he didn’t want to go looking for them.
He pulled the Russian’s radio from his belt and turned it on with the volume low, then held it close to his ear.
Tremaine’s voice sent a chill down his spine. “Bravo squad, report.” When no response came, he transmitted again. “Alpha squad. You’re up.”
Ben and Malike rejoined Duff and Isaac, and together the four men headed into the clearing to collect as many of the enemy’s guns and ammunition as they could grab before hurrying back to the others. Duff stepped up to the first body and used the barrel of the rifle to jab the man in the solar plexus to check for movement.
Once he’d confirmed the man was dead, he knelt over him and took his AK off his neck and the two full magazines from his rack. He was about to stand back up when he realized the man had a high-explosive frag grenade attached to his vest.
Duff took it off, then went around to the others, collected ammo and frags, and soon the men were leaving the scene of the carnage, heading back up the hill.
Conrad Tremaine had just ordered Copper to send eight more men up to the crash site, but then a thought occurred to him. He turned to Junior in the back seat. “I want you to go find Copper on the road here, tell him to turn to channel forty-four. Tell all the squad leaders left.
“Fucking Duff is up there,” Tremaine explained, “and he’s still got Belov’s radio.”
“Right,” Junior said. Tremaine himself got out and stood in the rain a moment, seething with rage.
He should have been on the way to Accra by now, coordinating with his other forces, doing his best to keep the Dragons intact until they got to the capital.
But instead he was here, standing in the mud, looking up at a black hill and wondering how the hell he had the misfortune of running into Josh Duffy tonight of all nights.
Tremaine was angry, but he wasn’t overly concerned. Belov losing the computer had been a fuckup brought on by a series of unfortunate events, but there were twenty-four rebels and four mercs here, and no matter who Duff had with him at that crash site, no matter if a couple of RIVCOM guys made it up there to support them, no matter what—Tremaine knew he’d be standing over Duff’s dead body soon enough, holding the computer in his hands.
Junior returned a minute later. “Copper, Charlie, and Delta have all changed channels. Alpha is on the hill, still using the old frequency.”
Tremaine clicked the mic. “Charlie, this is Condor. Follow Alpha up the hill, double time. Move through their trails, and you’ll catch up to them. When you do, tell them to change to forty-four.”
“Charlie understands.”
Then Tremaine clicked the talk button again. “Copper, I want everyone else pulling security on this road. Whoever is left up there might try to make it back down to score a vehicle.”
When Copper confirmed the order, Tremaine looked to his two men standing by the truck with him. “You guys keep monitoring forty-four for updates, I’m going to stay on twenty-four and talk to Duff.”
“Talk to him?” Junior asked, but Tremaine turned away and began walking up the road towards the RIVCOM car on the other side of the bridge.
All five survivors of the helicopter crash who weren’t ambulatory had been placed on makeshift stretchers made from limbs and vines from the forest floor and cordage and netting and tarps pulled from the helicopter. There were a few ropes, nets, hand tools, and other items left over, and Duff told Martin they couldn’t leave anything behind that might make it easier for the enemy to track them. The deputy plant operator and several of his employees hung equipment over their shoulders, crammed tools into their pockets, and stuffed more into Duff’s backpack, and even blood-soaked discarded bandages were scooped up and stowed, and soon everyone was ready to move.
Normally there would be one person on each of the four ends to lift and carry each stretcher, but Duff didn’t have twenty people, he had thirteen, so he put four women on a litter carrying a wounded plant worker, Ben and Malike took the ambassador, two dam workers carried Chad Larsen, and Nichole and Duff carried Foreign Service Officer Arletta James. Another plant worker was carried by the remaining three of his colleagues.
All the badly injured except for Larsen had been given morphine, and now most of them were unconscious.
They took off to the east, moving parallel to the highway, and Isaac led the way, with the flashlight in one hand and his machete in the other. Duff trudged along just behind him at the front of the litter.
He’d heard the transmission between the rebels and the mercenary commander down at the road, and this had told him he had about ten minutes before the second wave of attackers would make it up to the crash site. He knew his entourage wouldn’t be able to move fast at all, but he hoped ten minutes covering as much ground as possible would put them fifty yards away or so, and if the attacking rebels had trouble finding their trail in the darkness, it might just buy them some time.
In front of him, Isaac swung the blade as hard as he could, chopping his way through vines and leaves. Duff himself stamped down on more brush to clear the way at least a little so that everyone carrying wounded would be able to pass without stumbling.
After five minutes Duff decided to check the Russian’s radio to see if he could tell how far away the enemy were, so he put down the litter, pulled the walkie-talkie from his pack, and turned the volume up.
Almost immediately, he heard a familiar voice. “Condor for Duff, over. Condor for Duff.”
Fuck, he thought. Tremaine knew, or at least suspected, that he was here.
“Condor for Duff, over.”
He began moving again, but faster, hooking the radio back on his sling by his face so he could keep the volume low.
Tremaine said, “I know you are out here and in transmission range.” When Duff did not respond, the man said, “You’ve been listening to us, haven’t you? Bloody good job.”
Duff told himself not to respond, though he felt the urge to press the talk button and scream at the South African.
“Crazy day, eh?” Tremaine said. “You’re racking up one hell of a body count tonight, brother. Must feel like the Middle East. Or Mexico.”
Still, Duff did not respond, he just followed Isaac and led the others.
“You always were an odd one. A nice bloke, a people pleaser, but a killer, as well. And kid, from what I just heard up there, you haven’t changed a bit.”
He was trying to bait Duff into a conversation for some reason, and Duff told himself he wasn’t going to oblige him.
Behind Duff, Nichole said, “Just ignore him, Josh.”
But Tremaine’s words were as unrelenting as the rain. “Don’t go quiet on me, mate. We had ourselves a good chat earlier.
“Hey, do you know how I know you can hear me? What just happened up there on that hill…that wasn’t the work of diplomatic security, presidential troops, or EU bodyguards. No, mate. That was a full-on ambush planned by and carried out by a cutthroat killer. An old-school merc. Maybe you had help, but your devil brain is running this. And if you’re up there, you are definitely listening to our radio comms.”
The Americans and Ghanaians kept trudging along. A howler monkey cried higher on the hill; Isaac moved a huge spiderweb covered with raindrops out of the others’ path with the tip of his machete.
Tremaine continued. “There was that time in J-Bad…you, me, Gordon, Caruth. Remember? The Tali had us cornered, a technical with a mounted PK taking shots at the wall we hid behind. Chewing it into nothing. We were about to be overrun, I was about to put my fucking pistol in my mouth, we were done for. You, alone, made it across open ground to another PK. You turned those motherfuckers to paste like it was no big deal.
“You wasted half the lot. We lost Caruth…a tough break, but you got us out of there.”
Duff did not respond. He remembered that hot afternoon in Afghanistan; variations of it still showed up in his dreams from time to time.
“And still,” Tremaine continued. “Duff…that evening, after we got back to the compound…you were like it never even happened. You acted like the easiest-going bloke back in the team room. No thousand-yard stare, no fifth of Jack, no crying into your pillow. You were mad at me, we’d had ourselves a row back at the sight of the firefight, but later on? I watched you pig out on red beans and rice and enjoy a sitcom on the telly, just another day.
“Everything you did…that day and a dozen others just like it. You bottled that shit up, compartmentalized it, forced it down, deep in your belly, so people would think you weren’t the sick fuck that you are. But I saw it. I know what you are.”
Duff was painfully aware that Nichole was just a couple of yards behind him and she could hear every word.
“Tell me, mate,” Tremaine continued. “You over the night sweats from what happened in Afghanistan? In Syria? In Lebanon? Maybe that shit that went down in the Sierra Madres has replaced the Middle East in your nightmares, eh? Maybe what happened tonight will cover up Mexico?”
Isaac kept chopping, and Duff kept tamping down limbs and vines and brush as he carried the stretcher. The work focused Duff, pulled at least a part of his conscious brain away from the man on the other end of the radio.
“I know guys like you,” Tremaine continued. “Good at their jobs, but not cut out for this work. You’re kicking some ass in some African backwater, and if you walk out of here, which you won’t, you’ll have a lot of people buying your beers and slapping your back.
“But what comes after, mate? Blokes like me…we like the memories. We live for the memories. But you, Duff? You aren’t cut out to handle the repercussions of all your bloody killing. You’re not an assassin. You’re just a man in over his head.”
Duff kept walking; he winced thinking about the decision he was making, but then he stopped. “Isaac. Switch with me.”
Behind him, Nichole just said, “Josh. No.”
Isaac took the litter; Duff took the machete with one hand and pressed down on the mic button with the other. “Thanks for the therapy, Tremaine. Why don’t you come up here and I’ll give you some treatment?”
Nichole called to him. “Josh. Stop talking to him. It’s what he wants.”
A flashlight’s beam danced through the trees from somewhere far behind them, breaking Duff out of his momentary lapse of reason. He continued moving forward.
Tremaine said, “There’s a way out of this for you and anyone with you. I want that bloody computer. You find a way to give it to me and I’ll leave.”
Duff kept trudging through the brush in the rain. He said, “I’ve got bad news, Condor. Your Russian was carrying the tablet in his admin pouch on his chest. When I put a dozen rounds in him I shot right through it, destroyed it.”
“That’s too bad. Come show me and we’ll have a laugh about it.”
The light moving behind them seemed to increase, as if the enemy had found their trail and were pursuing faster now.
“Going to have to pass. Look, man, the CIA knows about your Chinese friend, your jihadists attacking in Accra. They know you are here. If I were you, I would worry less about this computer and more about getting the fuck out of Ghana.”
The pause was longer this time, and through it Duff thought he heard a new sound ahead. Water, but not just the rain. Flowing water, like a river.
Finally Tremaine spoke again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Duff. There’s no Chinese, no jihadis. It’s just you and me here.”
Duff stopped the ragtag column, and they all put down their stretchers. He pulled out his flashlight, put his hand over the lens, and turned it on. Via the glow through his fingers he could see a powerful stream running downhill. It was maybe forty feet wide, swiftly moving, as if it were an existing creek carrying extra runoff from the storm from higher on the hill.
“Duff?” Tremaine said. “You receiving? Listen up, I need you to write a phone number down.”
Duff clicked the mic. “Gotta be honest, man. I don’t have a pencil.”
“Cute. Well, then, scratch it on your arm with Belov’s blood.”
“Why? What number?”
“A number you are going to want to have in your possession come tomorrow, just in case you make it off that hill.”
Duff pulled out his phone and jotted the number down in his note app. He didn’t want to give the man any ammunition, didn’t want to indicate a vulnerability, so he made no more threats. He just said, “Does this mean you’re going to stop chasing us tonight?”
“No, it does not. You know what I want. If you somehow get clear of the men I have after you here, if you get away, you might want to call that number.”
“Why?”
“So you and I can have a private conversation, and you and I can come to an agreement.”
“What agreement?”
“You give me what I need, and you never hear from me again.”
“There’s no way I’m giving you the detonation codes back.”
“You will if the price is right.”
“No amount of money will ever—”
“I’m not talking about money. Condor out.”
An icy chill went up the back of Duff’s neck. He didn’t know what Tremaine knew, but if the Chinese were involved, he was certain they would be able to find out he had children living here in Ghana.
Duff thought about his kids, and he looked back to Nichole. It was obvious she was thinking the same thing.
Gravely, she said, “We’ve got to get home, Josh.”
He stowed the radio, went back to Chad, knelt down next to him, and saw the lights from behind getting closer still. He said, “There’s a stream running down the hill, a strong current, but maybe not too strong. Those rebels are going to overrun us in less than five minutes unless we do something crazy.”
“Like what?”
“I want to try to use this water to get us out of here.”
“Do we know where this stream goes?”
“We left the truck next to a little bridge. I’m hoping this takes us there. If not…well…at least it will take us away from here.”
Martin Mensah had overheard. “It could kill us all.”
Nichole said, “Even if it does take us to the road, there will be rebels down there. Mercenaries, too.”
Duff nodded. “That’s true, we’re going to have to fight to get out of here, but I’d rather fight down there.”
Lightning flashed and Nichole saw the stream for the first time now. Softly, she said, “You make it sound so easy.”
He whispered to her, “That’s because I don’t fucking know what I’m doing.”
Nichole put her arm around him as they both looked at the rushing water. “You’ve got this.”
To her alone, he shook his head and whispered, “I really don’t know what the fuck I am doing, Nik. I just can’t think of anything else.”
“I believe in you.”
Everyone else gathered around closely now, with Ben and Malike each holding their rifles up to their shoulders, pointing them back in the direction of the flickering lights. Duff said, “We’re going to have to get in the water and take the current down the hill. It doesn’t look too rough…not here, anyway. I’ll go alone first, try to put a line up just on the other side of the bridge, maybe two hundred yards or so down the hill. As close to the surface as I can. Once you pass the bridge, grab the line and get out of the water.”
Duff sighed and looked at the lights coming his way. It seemed as if they were spreading apart, like the approaching shooters were now finding different routes through the jungle so they could attack on a wider front than just the tiny broken trail this group of thirteen had created.
To the others he said, “This is going to suck, but it beats the alternative. Everybody hold on to the injured on the litters, or hold on to each other. I’m going to go first, along with the flashlight.”
The ambassador seemed to wake up a little, and she looked up at Duff. “What if I can’t see the bridge?”
Duff smiled a little. “When the rain stops for about two seconds, that means you just went under it.”
Dunnigan nodded. “Got it.”
“But ma’am, you got some medicine for the pain, and that’s going to make you sluggish. Ben and Malike will be with you; let one of them worry about the line, you just try to stay on that stretcher.”
To the group he said, “Once we get down there, everyone needs to remain quiet. There will be rebels on the road. We can deal with them, but not if we don’t have surprise working for us.”
He looked to Martin. “I need some rope.” The deputy plant manager pulled a coil of nylon cordage from the duffel bag and handed it over.
Nichole said, “Josh, what about your leg?”
He took out his knife and cut about six feet from the end of the cord. This he wrapped tightly around his left leg, just below the knee. Tying it off, he looked back up to her. “That should hold. Not much else I can do for now.”
To the group he said, “Give me about a thirty-second head start so I’ll have time to secure the line down there.” He looked to his wife. “Good luck.”
The sound of shouting came from the west; the lights were bright now, the enemy was closing, not more than a couple minutes away.
Nichole mouthed, I love you, and then he stepped in. He had to work to find his balance; this was made all the more difficult because of his prosthesis.
He got about a third of the way across the stream; the water was to his waist there, then he turned around. He could see the silhouettes of the group through the approaching flashlights through the trees. He tried to hold his ground a moment more, to make it to the center of the stream, but just as the others began pulling the litters made of netting in, a heavier gush of rainwater from higher on the hill knocked both his legs out from under him and he began drifting quickly to the south.