Professor Mamadou Addo arrived at Ankama Close just after nine thirty a.m. in a caravan of three civilian sedans and protected by a total of nine of his rebels. They were checked over by a pair of Chinese intelligence officers working as sentries at the front gate, then directed to leave their weapons before proceeding.
Reluctantly the ten men disarmed, then drove on through the hilly property and parked in the circle in front of the main entrance to the home.
Combat in the city was centered on Black Star Square on the coast and at the airport in the center of town; the sounds of the fighting didn’t reach this far to the north, but Addo had been on his satellite phone to the two commanders of his force who were still alive, and the reports he’d been getting during the half-hour drive up here to the hills had been nothing less than disastrous.
Addo and his men stepped up to the front door and were eyed by a pair of Sentinel men in masks standing there; then they were led through an entry hall by a female Chinese intelligence officer, and then down a corridor that emptied into a huge den with a kitchen attached to it.
The nine rebels the professor had with him were young, not one older than twenty-five. They were also from the Lake Volta region, not the capital, and they’d all lived their entire lives in various degrees of poverty. This multimillion-dollar property was like no place they’d ever seen, and they looked around with wide-eyed stares.
The professor himself was astounded by the opulence around him, but that did not divert his focus from his mission. He looked around the space at all the people here, saw the Chinese at their laptops and on their phones, saw the curved window looking out over the city, and then he saw the white men.
Three mercenaries, Condor included, sat around a dining table near the window, seemingly deep in conversation. Their masks were off, their weapons, body armor, and packs lay on the floor around them.
As soon as Addo saw the Sentinel leader, he stormed across the room, his men with him.
The two other mercenaries launched to their feet as the rebel leader and his entourage approached, but Tremaine just leaned back in the chair.
The much smaller professor stood over the South African, pointing a finger in his face. “Why are you here? Why aren’t you down at Black Star Square fighting with my troops?”
“Why aren’t you down at Black Star Square fighting with your troops?”
“Because Kang told me to come here.”
“Same,” Tremaine said.
“My force is being destroyed by Central Command. You and Kang both promised me Boatang would stay out of this fight.”
Before Tremaine could respond, Kang Shikun stepped out of his office. “Professor, Condor. Please join me in here.” He looked towards Jia’s workstation and remembered he’d sent her upstairs to watch over the American children, so he called to another woman working at her laptop. “Bai, make sure the professor’s men have something to eat and drink.”
The woman dutifully rose and headed to the kitchen, with the wide-eyed boys following eagerly behind.
Tremaine, Addo, and Kang entered the bedroom turned into Kang’s office and, as soon as they did so, Addo said, “Kang, your agents must be telling you that Boatang is here in the city with his tanks, and Sentinel is not even engaging them.”
Before Kang could say anything, Tremaine spoke up. “There isn’t a tank in this country, Professor. Boatang has light armored trucks. That’s all.”
Addo said, “That is a distinction without a difference, Condor. And what about the fact you aren’t helping us?”
“I seem to remember you saying something about you not understanding why my people were even here.”
“Well, you are here, and my force is being defeated by Central Command.”
Kang said, “Did you bring me the video of you in the square?”
Thrown off balance by the question, Addo recovered and pulled his phone out of his pocket, opened his camera roll, and began playing Kang a four-minute speech he’d recorded.
He said, “I had to cut off the last two minutes of it because the army showed up. My men were doing what they could to battle them back, but now more than half the Dragons have been killed or injured.”
Kang sent the video to his computer via Bluetooth, then handed the phone back.
Addo began berating both Kang and Tremaine, demanding they do something to support his troops, but quickly Kang held a hand up.
“Professor, you have done your part. Sentinel has done its part. And now it is time for me to do my part. I will send the video to Beijing via satellite Internet connection, and within thirty minutes the world will know you are in control of the city.”
“But I’m not in control of the city.”
“That does not matter. Professor, stay here, relax, and in just a few hours you will see our plan come to fruition.”
“Has the president left the capital yet?” Addo asked.
Kang held his gaze for several seconds, then said, “In good time, Professor.”
Tremaine wanted to smash his fist into the little man’s face. The last eighteen hours had been a disaster for him, and Addo here, bitching in his face as if he actually were the president of his nation, angered him to his core.
Junior had managed to get himself shot while kidnapping Josh Duffy’s kids; he was in a bedroom now being treated by another merc. The wound looked little more than superficial to Tremaine; his countryman should be back on his feet in short order, which was good, because Tremaine needed help with his inevitable showdown with Duffy.
Tremaine’s sat phone buzzed on his belt, and he unhooked it. “Yes?”
A familiar voice spoke in a very dark and unfamiliar tone. “You didn’t have to take them, Tremaine. They’re just kids, they have no part in any of this.”
“Good morning, Duff. You must be tired. More than twenty-four hours with no sleep, is it?”
“I have your computer. I am willing to trade, but I need to know that my kids have not been harmed.”
“They are fine.”
“An assurance from you isn’t going to get it.”
The South African sighed. “All right. Give me a minute.”
He walked alone through the big house, climbed the stairs, and headed down the hall. On the way he passed the open door of a bedroom. Junior was standing, and a mercenary from Austria everyone called Graz was wrapping fresh bandages around his waist, leaving bloody dressings on the carpeted floor.
Tremaine just kept walking down to the end of the hall where Yuri, one of the Russian contractors, stood in front of a door.
Yuri didn’t speak English, this Tremaine knew from the months of training the rebels, so he didn’t bother speaking to him.
Tremaine opened the door and stepped into the bedroom; he saw the woman who was watching over the kids sitting in a chair against the wall, her head in her hands, while both of Duffy’s children sat on the bed silently staring at the television. A cartoon in French played, and it didn’t look like the Americans spoke French.
Tremaine walked over and handed the phone to the little girl. “Be very careful about what you say.”
She took the phone and held it to her ear while her brother looked on. “Hello?”
Duff said, “Hey, squirt. Your mommy and I both miss you.”
“I miss you, Daddy.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m…I’m scared.”
“I know, sugar. Is your brother with you?”
“Yes.”
“Huck?”
The little boy took the phone now. “Hi.”
“I love you, son.”
“I love you.”
“Everything’s going to be fine. Hand the phone back to the man who gave it to you so I can talk to him, but I’ll see you both very soon.”
“Okay.” Huck passed the phone back, and then Tremaine turned to leave the room.
The Chinese intelligence technician stared at him. Her face was white, and she looked distressed about what was going on.
The South African left the room without another word.
Walking back up the hall toward the stairs, he said, “We need a time and a place to meet. I’ll bring the kids, you bring the tablet.”
“The tablet is damaged, like I told you. My children better not be.”
“I have people who can evaluate that computer to make sure you haven’t pulled a bait and switch.”
“Good. Have them with you when we meet.”
“Do you know where the Aburi Hills are?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Call me back when you’re heading up into those hills.”
Duff hesitated, then said, “Tremaine. I’ll give you what you want. Just give me what I want.”
“See you soon, troublemaker.”
Tremaine hung up the phone just as he made it back to Kang’s office.
The Chinese intelligence officer said, “You have a plan for the Dragons?”
He nodded. “I’ll get the laptop back, kill Duffy and whoever he brings with him. Then me and my boys kill Addo, the kids, and the Dragons. You need to make sure your people are in line, though.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that bitch up there with the kids. She looks like she’s about to puke from the stress of all this.”
“She’s looked like that since I met her. I think she has malaria.” Before Tremaine could respond, Kang waved a hand in the air and went back to his original subject. “There are ten Dragons here, including Addo. How are you going to—”
“Ten unarmed Dragons,” Tremaine said.
“Who aren’t going to just stand there while you’re slitting their throats. You have, what, nine, ten mercenaries here? You need to bring some more men. This needs to be done quietly.”
Tremaine nodded and pulled out his phone again. “I’ll get a couple more trucks of guys here in fifteen minutes, so when we kill Addo and his boys, we can do it quickly and cleanly.”
Isaac Opoku pulled the Toyota into the parking lot of Legon Botanical Gardens in the northern part of the city. No one was around; the fighting was well south of here, but some of the extremist attacks of the previous day had happened nearby, and the citizens were staying indoors out of an abundance of caution.
Isaac came to a stop in the center of the lot, and then Duff climbed out of the front passenger seat, pulled out the tablet computer he’d taken from the embassy’s information resources department, and placed it on the ground.
Retrieving his AK from the truck, he aimed in on the tablet from fifteen feet and fired a round. The device flipped up into the air and then came back down again. Once it stopped moving, Duff shot it again.
Looking over the device, he made sure that it would not turn on, and then he carried it back to the car and they drove on towards the hills.
Duff’s sat phone rang almost as soon as they got back on the road.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Gorski.”
“If you don’t have an address for me, then I don’t want to talk to you.”
The man on the other end of the connection hesitated, then said, “One Ankama Close. Agents in the neighborhood confirm the black van entered about thirty minutes ago. They weren’t close enough to see any occupants of the van.”
Duff looked to Isaac behind the wheel. The man just nodded, indicating he had heard the address, and he continued driving north.
“Opposition?”
“Unknown. I’m keeping my people back as far as possible so we don’t spook Kang and cause him to flee. I’ve got John heading up there; he’s got a drone and a house he can use a few blocks away. We should get more of a picture soon.”
“Who else knows?”
“About twenty minutes ago we informed the Ghanaian Bureau of National Investigations about the place.”
“Shit!” Duff exclaimed. The national spy shop knew the location of the HQ of the coup attempt. They’d send the military, and the military would kill everything there that moved.
Gorski understood what Duff was thinking. “Look, it will take them some time to set something up.”
Duff looked at the phone, then brought it back to his ear. “I’m not a fool, Gorski. Tremaine isn’t looking to trade, he’s looking to fix me and the tablet in the same place at the same time, so he can deal with us both. After that…there’s only one thing he can do with the kids, isn’t there? They’ve probably seen his face.”
After a time, Gorski said, “I wish I controlled some group of snake eaters I could send in.”
“Me, too.” Duff thought a moment. “I just spoke with Tremaine; he told me about the hills, but not the address. I’m supposed to call him back when I get to the area.”
“Looks like his plan is to bring you straight to their safe house.”
Duff had been wondering about this. He said, “All the more reason to assume this is a double cross. He wouldn’t give me that intel and then just let me leave.”
From the back seat Nichole said, “We roll up on the property, find a way to make access, and then call him. As he’s getting ready for us, we hit the house from behind.”
Duff thought the plan was thin, but he had nothing else. They drove on, each mentally preparing as best as possible, though there were nothing but unknowns ahead.
Chen Jia stood in the kitchen heating hot chocolate in the microwave. The American children—she didn’t know their names—had told her they weren’t hungry, and they’d turned down her offer of soft drinks. But when she remembered there were some packages of hot chocolate in the kitchen, the little girl looked at her younger brother and they both nodded.
Jia leaned against the counter, taking her weight off her legs a bit, and it felt good to do so. Her roiling nausea had abated—for now, anyway—and she actually thought she’d come back down here and find something to eat once she had seen to the kids.
But what would she eat?
She didn’t want chicken, didn’t want meat of any kind; the thought of it nauseated her anew.
It wasn’t that Jia was a vegetarian. No, the problem was, Jia was pregnant.
She’d told no one here. No one anywhere. She’d received the news from her doctor ten days after agreeing to this two-month contract in Africa, and just four days before leaving Beijing to head to Ghana. She’d almost revealed her secret to her employer before she got on the plane, but her mission had been described as one of vital national security importance, and she was certain she would be relieved of her duties the second she mentioned that she was pregnant.
There were others out there who could do her job, and they could do it better without morning sickness.
Jia wasn’t married. She’d left her boyfriend over a month earlier after an argument, and she’d almost immediately begun looking for a contract job with the Ministry of State Security. This top-secret operation in Ghana had been pitched to her as a cyber influence op, and that was really all the big picture she knew about it to this day, but it was clear to her that her nation was orchestrating either a real coup or some sort of faux coup for the purpose of strengthening the military here in Ghana.
Her job was almost over, she knew this much, and it couldn’t end soon enough. The morning sickness seemed to be getting worse. She could feel her body changing, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to hide her pregnancy for much longer.
The microwave dinged; she took out the two cups of cocoa and began stirring them to cool them.
She thought about everything going on. She was a contracted intelligence technical specialist, with advanced degrees in information technology and computer science and a top-secret security clearance with the Chinese government, and she was spending her morning catering to a couple of children who had apparently been kidnapped by the mercenaries wandering around the safe house.
It was a job that would have infuriated her if she’d been assigned it a few weeks ago, but now that she knew she was six months away from motherhood, the idea of caring for these kids had interested her from the start.
Two of the mercenaries entered the kitchen, took bottled water out of the refrigerator, then stood next to her at the island.
One of the men was wounded, with bandages around his waist and no shirt. He was covered in tattoos, and when he spoke he sounded South African. She’d heard him called Junior by the leader of the mercenary force when he’d entered with the children earlier.
The other man had an accent she couldn’t place, but she thought it to be European of some kind.
She tried to dial in on the man’s origins. She’d spent eight years in college, most of it in Singapore, and she’d had classmates from all over the world. She’d gotten good at discerning accents, and it was something of a pastime for her.
As she picked up the two mugs and passed by the men, she listened to a short snippet of their conversation.
The man whose accent she hadn’t been able to determine said, “We just have to kill the dad; Tremaine will do the kids himself.”
Jia wasn’t certain she understood; she didn’t understand the idiomatic expression “do the kids,” but still she felt an unmistakable pang of dread, and her queasiness instantly returned.