Three armored vehicles containing the U.S. ambassador to Ghana as well as the others rolled through the Front Gate Access Control Port of the U.S. embassy after a quick inspection by the Local Guard Force there, and then all three vehicles pulled up in front of the chancery at seven thirty a.m.
Multiple times along the way the small caravan had been forced to hide behind buildings or in quiet residential neighborhoods while military and rebel forces passed or fought nearby.
The CIA operations officer named John who was in charge of the convoy had seen it as his main mission to avoid detection by the enemy, and with three large newer-looking armored vehicles traveling together, this had been hard to do without a lot of detours, a lot of waiting, and some measure of luck.
Still, twice they’d rolled into intersections and were met with small-arms fire, peppering both Yukons with bullet strikes but causing no major damage.
Fighting in the city and the motorcade’s attempts to steer clear of it had caused the drive from the Volta River area to take three times longer than it should have, but now, seven and a half hours after leaving Isaac Opoku’s driveway, Duff stepped out of the lead SUV and onto the pavement in front of the chancery building.
The sun shone bright; it was already warm.
John had called ahead, and now four young Marine Security Guards stood out in front of the chancery in their pixelated camouflaged combat utility uniforms, carrying two aluminum and nylon litters. Other staffers had come out to assist the wounded, and the embassy doctor was out here, ready to examine the injuries to see who needed the fastest treatment in his clinic.
For his part, Duff was in a lot of pain from cuts, bruises, exhausted muscles, and the intense mental strain of a dozen hours of either combat or the threat of combat. He was also stiff and sore from the combination of all the action and then all the sitting around in the SUV.
He helped Nichole out of the Yukon, and then they both walked over to the van and saw that Isaac was the first out the back door. He’d been rebandaged, his wound had been well cleaned, and some mild painkillers had reduced some of the stiffness he’d developed after his tumble down a wall of limestone rock the day before.
The men shook hands, and then Nichole hugged him.
“They take good care of you?” Duff asked.
With a smile, he said, “They did. The nurse wants the doctor to look at my wound before I go home.”
Nichole said, “You’re not leaving till the fighting stops. You’re staying with us.”
Isaac said, “Thank you.”
Ambassador Jennifer Dunnigan was placed on a stretcher, and the Marines brought her into the chancery. While Nichole helped with the other wounded, Duff and Isaac followed the ambo inside.
Dunnigan looked over her shoulder at Duff as the Marines carried her towards the embassy clinic. “Good job, Josh. Thank you.”
Duff didn’t feel like he deserved praise, but he said, “Thank you,” anyway.
She then looked to Isaac. “And thank you, sir. God bless you.”
“God bless you, Madam Ambassador.”
Duff had had time in the SUV to think about it, wondering about how his nightmares in the coming years would involve helicopters crashing, his wife in mortal danger right next to him, and rain-soaked African jungles.
He didn’t feel like a hero. Somehow, he just felt more damaged.
But he pushed this out of his mind because all he wanted to do right now was get home and see the kids.
Duff was about to go back outside to help his wife with the others, but the man behind the thick bulletproof glass in Marine Post One on the far side of the small lobby used his PA system to call out to him.
“ARSO Duffy? Can I speak with you?”
Duff walked up to the glass and saw the gunnery sergeant manning the post. “What’s up, Gunny?”
“Welcome home. I’m sorry, sir, but I was told to bring you right in to Mace’s office.”
Mace was the CIA chief of station, and Duff realized he should have expected this.
He said, “Look, I have to get home and check on the kids. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Nichole entered with Arletta James; she was being carried on a stretcher by two more Marines. She saw her husband talking to the guard, so she walked over to see what was going on.
Gunny was twenty-seven, by far the oldest of the seven Marines here at the embassy. To Duff he said, “Your kids are fine, sir. We live two doors down from you guys at Iris Gardens, and I just walked over from there thirty minutes ago. Everything’s quiet, the guard force at the gate’s been beefed up, a police car is out front. No activity has been reported in Cantonments at all.”
Duff sighed. “How insistent was Mace?”
“I would say very insistent, sir. He said that if you and your wife were on your feet, then he’d have my ass if I didn’t send you both right up the second you walked through that door.”
Duff looked to Nichole, she nodded reluctantly, and then the two of them entered the chancery, heading for the offices of the CIA station.
Nine-year-old Mandy Duffy looked out through the closed and barred window overlooking the second-story balcony of the family apartment, out past the green grass of the courtyard and beyond to the front gate.
Everything was quiet for now, but the occasional crackle of gunfire or loud low booms of explosions told her something was indeed wrong.
Late yesterday afternoon she’d been shocked to hear what she thought to be fireworks, and she’d wondered at the time if there was a holiday here that she didn’t know about.
But then the gunfire began. It was distant, as well, but near constant, and it seemed to come from multiple directions. She’d never heard gunfire in real life, but she watched enough TV to know what it was.
Mandy was a curious girl, all the time, and in addition to the sounds she heard, she’d also been very dialed in to the demeanor of the adults around her.
Especially Portia Djangba, her nanny for the past three months.
The evening before, Portia had seemed different; there was a concern on her face, and she kept leaving the apartment and walking across the courtyard to the front gate of the complex, where she talked with the guards.
Portia’s father, Henry Djangba, was the lead guard here at Iris Gardens, and Mandy knew that since the phones and the power were down, Portia had no other way to get information other than through her father, because he had a walkie-talkie that he could use to talk to the police, the embassy, or any of the other residences around.
This morning they’d learned there was no school today, but no one had told them why.
Now, while Huck played with his toy truck behind her, Mandy stood at the window, looking out at the view in front of her.
There were usually two guards at the front gate house. This morning there were five. A police car was parked out front, as well, and it had been for most of the past day.
As Mandy watched, another policeman appeared, walking along the sidewalk from the parking lot outside the apartment’s outer wall. He strolled up to the front gate and waved to the men in the small guard shack just inside the bars.
Mandy squinted, thought she recognized the officer as one of the guards who often patrolled the complex. Apparently she was right, because the other guards on duty let him in through the pedestrian gate, where they all continued talking.
While Mandy had been focused on this activity, Portia stepped up behind her here in the living room. “You ready for breakfast? Your brother says he wants pancakes again.”
Mandy kept her eyes outside. She’d asked Portia what was happening the night before but was just told not to worry because everything was fine. She’d asked again this morning when the nanny informed her there was no school, and again she’d not received a direct answer. Since then, Mandy had kept her concerns to herself, not wanting to either scare her brother or have Portia lie to her again, but now, she couldn’t take it anymore. “Miss Portia, can you please tell me what is going on?”
“Everything is fine, Mandy.”
“I’m not a little kid,” she answered back. “You can tell me.”
The twenty-four-year-old nanny put her hands on the girl’s shoulders and rubbed them gently, and they both looked outside. The policeman who’d just entered was now walking in this direction, past the swimming pool, apparently on his way to this row of apartment buildings.
After a long sigh, Portia said, “Okay, little one. The army and the police are out in the streets trying to stop some bad people from taking over our government. But I do not want you to worry. It is in another part of town, we are safe, no one is coming here.”
Mandy didn’t feel particularly safe if bad people were here trying to take over the government, but she didn’t say this. Instead she said, “Are my mom and dad coming home?”
“Yes. I checked with my father a little while ago; he has a radio to talk to the embassy. Your parents and the ambassador are on the way to the embassy now. They will go there first, then I’m sure they will come here to be with you.”
Mandy heard a knock at the door downstairs, and the nanny stopped rubbing her shoulders to go see who it was.
Josh and Nichole Duffy stepped into a conference room right next to the office of the CIA’s chief of station.
Bob Gorski was there, sitting at a table with COS Richard Mace.
Both men stood when the couple entered. Gorski said, “Damn good to see you both. Jesus…Duffy, you look like you’ve been wrestling in razor wire.”
“You should see the other guy,” Duff said dryly.
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Gorski looked to Nichole now, focusing on her badly bruised face. He said, “I can’t imagine what all you’ve both been through.”
Duff introduced his wife to Gorski; she already knew Mace, though not well.
“What’s the latest?” she asked the COS.
Mace said, “Estimates of six to eight hundred rebels, hitting on two fronts. So far there’s no sign of mercenary support.”
Duff said, “They definitely had the support of mercenaries outside the city. If we don’t see them here, that’s either because we’re not looking in the right place or—”
Gorski interrupted, “Or Sentinel’s mission did not include an attack on the capital.”
Duff nodded, thinking. “Right. But…why wouldn’t it?”
Mace said, “Maybe the Chinese who hired Sentinel want this to look like an organic grassroots revolution, as opposed to…as opposed to whatever the hell this is.” He added, “At the dam we’re getting reports of dead whites with Slavic features, Cyrillic text in their phones and on their person.”
Duff said, “I could have told you there were Russians at the dam.”
Mace nodded. “You did, or you told Bob, anyhow. We just like to confirm.”
“Understood.”
Gorski said, “My guess is the Chinese used Sentinel to prop up the rebels, probably train them, and give them support on the way to the capital. Once here, Sentinel was probably told to slip away. The fact that the dead bodies left behind all appear to be Russian is interesting. My guess is Kang Shikun hired Russian mercs so that if they turned up dead Moscow would be implicated, not China. Once we get pictures of the dead and are able to, we’ll run their faces. Bet you a dollar to a donut all those guys are Wagner Africa Corps, or else they used to be before Tremaine contracted them for this.”
Mace said, “What do you think is on that tablet?”
Duff pulled it from the dead Russian’s backpack and handed it over the table. “Proof of Sentinel involvement, probably. Maybe even something on there implicating the Chinese, if your theory about this Kang guy is right.”
Mace looked over the ruined device. “Did you really have to shoot it?”
“I shot the guy carrying it. The computer was collateral damage.”
Mace put it down on the table. “We’ll have to have it couriered to Langley. They’ll pull any intel off it that they can.”
Now Nichole asked, “What about U.S. military assets in the area?”
“President Amanor is refusing help from the West. He sees it like this: Central Command is attacking from the north. Southern Command is keeping the rebels out of the airport and Jubilee House. The president thinks his army has this under control.”
“So…we’re still on our own?”
Gorski said, “Your State Department is sending an aircraft to pick up the injured and deliver them to Sigonella, but we’re not getting any fighter jets, aircraft carriers, or Navy SEALs.” He looked to Duff, then said, “Nichole, your husband is officially the baddest hombre in this country.”
Duff shook his head. “The other side has some pretty formidable motherfuckers themselves.”
“That is true,” Gorski allowed.
Nichole said, “What about the Marines here? Can’t they help us?”
Mace shook his head. “The average American thinks there’s a company of Marines at every embassy, maybe with a couple of Ospreys sitting on the roof, ready to respond to any issue that may come up. The truth is, we’re a big embassy, and we have seven Marines in total; usually one is on leave, so six, really. The average age of these men is about twenty-three. And they have absolutely no role outside the fence line. They aren’t a QRF, they don’t go out and help Americans in need. Their number one job is to destroy classified material in the case of an attack on the embassy. Their number two job, and it’s a distant second, is to protect people inside the chancery.”
Now Mace looked out the window. “A coup. Here. Who would have believed it?”
To Duff’s surprise, Nichole let out a little snicker. Mace turned to her. “What’s that?”
“Nothing. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“It’s just that I seem to remember that the CIA attempted a coup here once. Unsuccessfully, I might add.”
The COS nodded. “Yeah. Not exactly our finest hour.”
“What went wrong?” Duff asked.
Gorski answered Duff’s question. “It was eighty-five, even before my time. The short answer as to why it didn’t work was this: Godfrey Osei, the guy we were trying to put in power, was an idiot.”
“What was the problem with Godfrey?”
“Well, for starters, he began strutting around with a walking stick and a Nazi SS emblem on his arm. The American mercs delivering weapons into Ghana thought that was a bad sign.”
“Shit,” Nichole said, shaking her head.
“And the mercs had their own issues. One of them was a drug dealer who had worked for the Agency.”
Duff rubbed his tired eyes. “Christ.”
“Yeah. As Richard said, not the Agency’s brightest moment.”
Now Mace said, “Okay, Duff. Bob is going to debrief you. Everything you saw and did over the past twenty-four hours, your thoughts about it all.”
Nichole said, “If you don’t need me, I’d like to get home to check on the kids.”
Mace nodded. “We’re not letting anyone out in the street in a thin-skinned vehicle till this is all over, so get one of the LGF drivers to take you in one of the armored vics.”
“Thanks,” she said, and then she kissed her husband and headed for the door.
“Tell them I’ll be home as quick as I can,” Duff said, before turning back to Gorski, who now had his phone recording their conversation in advance of the debrief.
A quarter mile away at Iris Gardens, Mandy and Huck Duffy, along with their nanny Portia Djangba, walked across the grassy courtyard towards the front gate of the apartment complex, following Botwe Brima, a Ghana city police officer and part-time Local Guard Force employee that Portia had known for over two years.
Five minutes earlier, Officer Brima had rung the Duffys’ doorbell and told Portia he’d been ordered to drive the kids over to the embassy because their parents wouldn’t be able to leave. He spoke in Twi so that the kids couldn’t understand, telling Portia that both parents had been injured and would likely spend most of the day and perhaps even overnight in the chancery clinic.
Portia had insisted on going with the kids; she wasn’t going to let them out of her sight, not even to go with a policeman in a police car, with the ongoing sounds of distant fighting in the city, and Brima finally agreed to her demand with a shrug.
As they walked towards the front gate of the apartment complex, Portia stepped up next to the officer and spoke to him, again in Twi. “Are the roads safe?”
The policeman said, “In Cantonments, they are. There’s fighting around Black Star Square, more fighting somewhere to the east, I’m hearing, but it’s totally quiet here.”
At the gate Portia left the officer’s side and stepped into the guard shack where her fifty-six-year-old father worked. With the kids at her side she asked him in Twi, “Do you know if Nichole and Josh made it back to the embassy?”
She’d known Brima for as long as he’d been part-timing for the Americans, and she had no reason to doubt him, but the children were her responsibility and she wanted to be certain.
Her father said, “They got back twenty minutes ago.”
A police cruiser was parked right outside the gate, and Portia had assumed it to be Brima’s car, but the officer just waved to the cops in the front seat, then began walking up the sidewalk.
Brima continued on, the kids and their nanny following him.
Quickly Henry Djangba stepped outside the gate. “Hey? Brima? Where’s your car, man?”
The officer looked back over his shoulder. “I parked in the lot over here.”
“You should have just pulled up to the gate.”
“It’s fine, boss. No one is around.”
The four walked up the road, and the sound of a low boom in the distance turned everyone’s head.
Everyone except for Officer Brima.
They reached the intersection with the parking lot; it was only twenty meters from the front gate. Portia looked for the police car but didn’t see it.
As if he could anticipate her question, Officer Brima said, “Actually, it’s in the next lot. Just this way.”
Portia found this odd, and she looked him over. Sweat had formed on his brow; his eyes were wide and searching, his fists balled, the fingers of his right hand squeezing hard against his car keys.
Behind them, Henry Djangba had stepped out into the street, still watching his daughter go with the others, his hands on his hips. Once they passed the first parking lot, he motioned for another guard to come out of the shack and onto the road, and then they began walking after the group.
A string of gunfire to the south continued for several seconds; Portia held the kids’ hands, and she began to slow.
Behind, her father shouted out. “Brima! Where are you going? Get them back here, and go get the car yourself!”
Brima did not turn around. He just walked towards the next intersection. Turning to Portia, she noticed he did not look into her eyes as he spoke. “We’re almost there.”
Just as the words left his mouth a black van raced up the road from the west. It slammed on its brakes and a man in a mask leapt from the front passenger seat.
Brima raised his hands at the man. “No!”
Portia moved herself in front of the kids to shield them.
Mandy grabbed her brother, turned, and began running back towards the apartments, but another man in a black mask leapt from the rear of the van, came around, and cut off their escape. Mandy began to turn away from him, but he was too fast, too strong, and he scooped both her and her brother up. Their feet left the pavement, and they were hauled into the back of the van.
Mandy and Huck both screamed.
Outside the van, Portia Djangba was slammed to the ground by the big man from the passenger seat; she saw he had a pistol in his right hand and, as she began to get up to rush to the vehicle and pull out the kids, the masked man raised the weapon.
Behind her, Portia heard Officer Brima. “No! Don’t shoot!”
She looked back to see that Brima had pulled his own weapon; he lifted it up towards the attackers, but a gunshot rang out and Brima’s head snapped back. He fell into the street just a few meters from Portia.
She screamed now, then climbed back to her feet, but the man in the mask had already jumped back into the van.
Gunshots rang out behind her; either her father or the other guard was shooting back at the attacker, and she saw the man buckle slightly, as if he’d been hit.
But he did not fall; he lifted his arm, aimed his pistol from his seat, and pointed it out the open door.
She thought he was aiming right at her, and he fired twice in quick succession.
Portia dropped down into a crouch and covered her head in a vain attempt to protect herself.
The van sped off; she rose back up and began running for it.
The back door was closed by a masked man, but not before she caught a glimpse of the two kids held by yet another masked man. In the melee Mandy had pulled on the man’s long-sleeve shirt, breaking buttons and opening it at the neck, and Portia could see that the man holding the children was white.
She kept running after the speeding vehicle, as panic like she’d never felt in her life coursed through her.
Behind her, Officer Botwe Brima lay dead in the street. Henry Djangba, Portia’s father, a senior employee of the U.S. embassy Local Guard Force, was in the street as well, sitting down, with blood pouring from his left leg. He held his pistol up with both hands unsteadily and pointed it at the fleeing van, but he wasn’t going to fire again and threaten the kids.
Portia Djangba did not see that her father had been injured; she was too focused on the children. She ran after the van as fast as she could, but still it pulled farther and farther away with every step she took.
The squad car that had been in front of the apartment complex fired up behind her, then did a U-turn before driving around Henry Djangba and racing off in pursuit of the van. It passed Portia by, but she continued running, because she did not know what else to do.