Nichole Duffy walked past Marine Post One with a wave at the gunnery sergeant, then exited the front door of the chancery and headed towards the CAC, the compound access control point, the guarded entrance and exit of the U.S. embassy. She’d had the guard radio for an armored car to take her on the three-minute drive back to her apartment, and when she stepped out of the front gate she found her driver, an LGF man, waiting for her in a beige Mercedes idling in the driveway off Fourth Circular Road.
She waved to the man and had taken only a single step towards his car when a woman rounded the corner into the driveway in front of her in a frantic sprint.
Nichole hurried back towards the door to the guardhouse, thinking an emotionally distressed person intended to do her harm, but when she focused on the woman, she realized she was looking at the kids’ nanny.
Portia was hysterical, crying. A panic overtook Nichole; her knees weakened and she froze in horror.
Guards inside saw the rushing woman; they ran from around the desk towards the door, ready to tackle her before she got inside or harmed the embassy employee at the door.
But the young woman collapsed in Nichole Duffy’s arms.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“They…took them! They took Huck and Mandy!”
“Who? Who took them?”
“A…a van.” She sobbed, then said, “Four men.”
Nichole took her in her arms and rushed her back inside.
By the time Nichole left Portia at the cafeteria tables on the ground floor of the chancery and ran up the stairs to the offices of the CIA station, Duff was still in the conference room, standing there, white as a sheet, on the phone with Henry Djangba. The wounded lead guard had radioed Richard Mace immediately, informing him of the kidnapping, and Mace had run here from his office.
Husband and wife made eye contact, and Nichole saw both a panic and a vulnerability in her husband like she’d never seen in her life. She ran to him and clutched him tightly, afraid that he would fall to pieces now, but when she looked back into his eyes, she noticed a marked change.
A look of fixed determination blanketed his face. He’d gone, in seconds, from terrified to resolute. He had a mission now, the most important mission of his life.
Djangba was still talking on the radio. Nichole heard him say that his daughter was missing, as well, so she grabbed the radio from her husband’s hand. “Henry, it’s Nichole Duffy. Portia ran here after chasing the kidnappers. She’s inside the embassy and safe.”
Henry groaned a little into the phone; he was obviously in pain, and he said, “Thank you, Mrs. Duffy. A police car went after the van. I don’t know if they are still in pursuit. One of our LGF men was killed…but he might have been in on the kidnapping.”
Mace leaned in. “In on the kidnapping? What do you mean by that?”
“He showed up fifteen minutes ago, said he’d been instructed to pick up the children and bring them to the embassy to see their parents.”
Duff said, “We didn’t ask anyone to do that.”
Henry said, “I was afraid of that. Well, if he was working with the kidnappers, he’ll never tell.” After a moment he said, “I think I hit one of the men in the stomach. Didn’t kill him, not immediately, anyway.”
“How do you know?” Nichole asked.
“He shot me after I shot him.”
Duff looked to Mace and Gorski, and then he just looked at Gorski. In a grave tone he said, “You and me, Bob. We need to talk, now.”
Mace stood and said, “I’ll be in my office talking to the ARSO and trying to get the local police on the radio.”
When Mace left with the radio, Nichole said, “It was Tremaine.”
“Did someone specifically identify Tremaine?” Gorski asked.
“Portia said at least one of the four masked men was white. They were all wearing masks.”
To this Duff said, “Just like most of the Sentinel men I’ve run into.”
Gorski looked like he was going to push back on the conclusion Nichole had drawn, but after staring down both of the Duffys’ hard glares for a moment, Gorski just nodded. “Yeah, okay, good enough for me.”
He said, “I have agents out in the field. I’ll get everyone looking for that van.”
“Where are your agents?” Duff asked.
Gorski made a face as if he was considering the question. Then he said, “We’ve got people in the streets. We’ve got feelers out. That’s all I am prepared to say. If we get any information about—”
“No,” Nichole said forcefully.
Gorski cocked his head. “No?”
“No,” she repeated. “You know where they took the kids.” When Gorski said nothing, she looked to Josh. “He hesitated when you asked him where his agents were. He doesn’t want to tell you.”
Gorski said, “We are pursuing leads. That’s all I can say until we—”
Duff advanced on the smaller man. “Bob. If you know something, you need to fucking tell me right now.”
Gorski looked back and forth between Duff and Nichole, then let out a long sigh. “We think we’ve fixed the Chinese intelligence operation to a location in the city. That does not mean we think Tremaine is there. In fact, I’d be very surprised if that’s where he went.”
“He’s got an injured man. Where else are they going to take him? The hospital?”
Gorski thought a moment more. “I’m not going to give you the address. There is an ongoing intelligence operation there, and we can’t compromise it by having you go—”
“We’re talking about my kids!” Duff shouted, his fists balled.
“Not yet, we’re not! I have people watching the location, and they haven’t reported anyone coming or going.”
“How did you find it?”
He sighed. “I sent a team of locals and an Accra station S&T tech out into the city with some signals intelligence equipment, thinking that wherever Kang is working out of would probably have one of the largest electronic signatures in the city considering the fact that power is off. Satellite Internet, high-power radios, shortwave. Kang always has a technical team supporting him, and I figure they must put out a lot of wattage.”
“It’s a big city, Bob,” Nichole said.
“Yeah, but the locals started in the Aburi Hills, north of town. Big estates up there, good line of sight for radios and good visibility over the entire city. Kang sees himself as a general looking out over his battlefield.
“It’s the same thing he did in the Central African Republic a couple years ago, but we never busted him, so he doesn’t know that finding a hill to overwatch the scene is a compromise to his operation.”
“And you found something in the hills?”
“About an hour ago, yes.”
Duff said, “Other than strong radio signals, do you have anything else tying him to the location?”
“There’s a security presence at the villa.”
“It’s West Africa, Bob. There’s a security presence at every rich person’s house.”
“Our people saw Asian security when they got there, and a group of masked men in pickups arrived shortly after.”
Duff raised an eyebrow. “Okay.”
“We looked into the property. It was rented four and a half months ago. The renter’s agreement doesn’t tell me anything, but you’d expect the Chicoms to hide their attachment to a covert safe house. I wanted to fly a mini drone over it, but Mace denied the request. Still, our team on the ground nearby is reporting massive amounts of data still moving into and out of the house.”
“You have people with eyes on the place right now?”
“My surveillance detection team is still nearby in a house. As soon as John gets something to eat downstairs I’m going to send him up there, as well. My instructions are for them to see who comes and goes, but not to try to get eyes on the interior. Kang will have his own surveillance detection out in the neighborhood; that’s how he burned me once in Sierra Leone.”
Duff said, “They took the kids because they want that tablet back.”
Gorski and Duff just looked at each other for a long moment. Finally, Gorski said, “Look, Josh. I’m sorry. I can’t give it back to you.”
Josh nodded. “I’m not asking you for that computer.”
Nichole said, “But we can give him another tablet. You told him last night that you shot it and it was broken.”
Duff nodded. “We’ll go by IRM when we leave here. See if they have any Getac tablets we can have.”
Gorski said, “Josh…he’s not just going to take a broken computer and hand you your kids back. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know that. I just need it to get close enough to him to get to the kids.”
“To do what?”
Josh looked at Nichole, then back at the CIA officer. He said, “Bob, just tell your people to be on the lookout for Tremaine, the black van, the kids…anything. I won’t step on the toes of your operation to bring down the Chinese, but you’ve got to help me here.”
“I will,” Gorski said.
Duff looked to his wife again, because he trusted her intuition. “Is he lying?”
She looked at Gorski hard. After a moment she said, “I believe he understands what we’re going through right now, and I believe he will do the right thing when the time comes.”
Duff didn’t know if that was real intuition or if she was just trying to guilt Gorski into helping them, but he didn’t care either way. The only thing that mattered was that Gorski give him the info he needed.
Finally, Duff said, “Who else knows about this location?”
“So far, no one but us. But Mace will probably tell Ghanaian intelligence pretty soon so that they can get troops up there to raid the place.”
“I need an address, Bob.”
Gorski said, “You are white. You will stand out in that neighborhood, and if you were thinking about just going in there with guns blazing, you’ll die before you get through the front gate. You go there and you will endanger everything.”
Nichole put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “He’s right. We have to think of something else.”
Duff and Nichole left Bob Gorski and headed to IRM, the Information Resource Management department. In just a couple of minutes they had their hands on a Getac tablet computer. It was a newer model than the one he’d gotten off the Russian, but it was the same size and had the same black rubberized skin.
The tech who passed it over to the Duffys then pulled a sign-out sheet for him to sign. Duff just looked at the young man like he was going to smash his head into a wall, so Nichole pushed by him and signed with a flash of a smile.
Walking out of the room, the tech said, “Y’all take care of that, okay?”
“I’m going to fucking shoot it,” Duff muttered.
“What?”
Nichole looked back at the man as the door closed behind her. “He’s just kidding.”
In the atrium of the chancery, she asked, “What is your plan, Josh? Are you going to call Tremaine and set up an exchange? You know that’s not going to work.”
Duff said, “Right now, I’m going to the Aburi Hills.”
Nichole said, “We don’t even know for sure that’s where he’s going.”
“I think he will. And even if he doesn’t, the Chinese operation is our only connection to Tremaine.”
Nichole said, “How are you going to put bullet holes in that thing?”
“Just like I told that guy. I’m gonna shoot it.”
They went down to the ground floor of the chancery and found Portia walking alongside her father, who was being carried into the clinic on another stretcher, a white bandage wrapped around his left thigh.
Nichole ran after them to check on both Portia and Henry, and Duff continued walking towards the front of the chancery.
But passing the café on the ground floor, he stopped abruptly.
Isaac Opoku stood there in his RIVCOM uniform.
In the last half hour, Duff had forgotten Isaac was even here.
The Ghanaian stepped up to him. “More wounded are being brought in, security is running around, the Marines are at the front gate. What is happening?”
“Tremaine kidnapped our children.”
Isaac put his hand on his heart. “My God. Do you know where he took them?”
Duff said, “We think the Chinese intelligence officer in charge of this entire coup is at a house up in Aburi Hills. Do you know where that is?”
“Of course. When I was in the army I was with Southern Command for a couple of years before I was stationed in the north. I know Accra very well.” Without hesitating, he said, “I can take you there.”
Duff put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Thank you, my friend. But we don’t have an address yet, and we don’t have any official backing. Our intelligence agency found the place, and they’re going to tell the Ghanaians about it shortly.”
Isaac’s eyes widened. “That is very bad. When I was in SF we were a very good combat force, but we weren’t trained on hostage rescue.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“What do you want to do?”
Duff thought a moment. “I want to go up into those hills, get as close as I can, and then, when the Ghanaians come to raid the place, I’m going to slip in and get my kids.”
Nichole came back to the atrium, and she’d heard her husband’s words. “Not without me, you won’t.”
Duff shook his head. “You need to stay behind to—”
“No. I don’t have anything to stay behind for. Everything I love is going to be at that location, and I’m not going to just sit here while you and the kids are in danger.”
Isaac said, “Duff…I will go with you, too. These people attacked my dam. Killed my friends, tried to kill my president. I mean, I didn’t vote for him, but that doesn’t matter.”
Duff nodded. “Okay, we need a car. Can’t take armor, we have to stay low profile.”
Isaac cocked his head. “I’m sorry to tell you, but you and your wife are not going to be low profile in the Aburi Hills.”
“Okay, that’s a fair point.” He thought a moment. “Unless…I’ve come across four Sentinel contractors since yesterday afternoon. Three Russians and an African. They’ve all been kitted up pretty much the same.”
Nichole said, “You want to dress up like contractors? To wear masks?”
He shrugged. “It’s our best option. We need to find a Toyota pickup, too.”
Nichole said, “Henry has a Tacoma. I can go to the clinic and ask for his keys. But…where are you going to find clothes that look like what the contractors are wearing?”
Duff said, “Both of you, follow me.”