Ninety minutes after leaving the property at 1 Ankama Close, Josh Duffy was stretchered into the clinic of the U.S. embassy in Accra by four Marines. Nichole had redressed his neck wound on the drive from the hills, and the bleeding had almost stopped, but his face was pale and he was barely conscious, and this indicated to her that he needed a transfusion as soon as possible.
About halfway through the drive Isaac realized he’d been shot again, this time on his right thigh just above his knee, and he bled like a stuck pig, but Nichole managed to tie a compression dressing onto his leg as he drove.
Mandy and Huck were silent for the first ten minutes of the drive, and then they began talking, relaying every single thing that had happened to them as the adults listened.
Here in the clinic, the Marines put Josh down on a table, while Nichole helped Isaac into the room and lowered him onto a chair. While a doctor brought in to help the ambassador treated Duff, the same nurse who’d accompanied them into the city the night before began treating Isaac’s new wound.
The Chinese woman, Chen Jia, had been put in a conference room with Bob Gorski and COS Richard Mace, and Nichole didn’t think she’d be coming out of there until she’d given a complete accounting of everything she knew.
As the doctor began working on her husband, Nichole left his bedside and walked back into the atrium of the chancery to check on her kids. When she got to the café tables, she found Portia on her knees hugging Mandy and Huck. The young woman looked up and saw Nichole, and Nichole saw that Portia was crying with joy.
Nichole did not interrupt the moment, she just smiled, and when she caught Portia’s eye, she mouthed the words Thank you, then headed back to check on Josh.
Five days later, all four Duffys were back in their apartment at Iris Gardens, and Mandy stepped out of the little kitchen with a tray of cupcakes that she had personally decorated.
Huck snagged the first one right at the door to the kitchen, much to his sister’s disapproval, but she made it into the living room with the rest, and she took them over to the Ghanaian couple, their guests.
Abina Opoku shifted her baby from her left hip to her right so she could take a cupcake from the little girl, and then Isaac picked one as well, took a bite, and pronounced it the best thing he’d ever tasted in his life, to Mandy’s pleasure.
Isaac had a cane near his chair, a temporary accoutrement and a reminder of all he’d been through. Across from him, however, Duff’s injury was more readily apparent.
A thick white bandage was wrapped around his throat like a turtleneck. He looked ridiculous, but everyone had declared it a small price to pay for walking away from a knife fight with his life.
Nichole poured more coffee for both of the Opokus, and then more for herself, and just as she began to sit down, a knock at the door came.
She left, then returned with Bob Gorski.
The older man wore an open-collar white dress shirt, black slacks, and a dusty blue sport coat, and he moved into the living room with an apology. “Sorry to intrude, I just thought I should drop in and tell you the latest.” He saw Isaac, walked over, and shook his hand. “America owes you a debt of gratitude, sir.”
“Thank you.”
He was introduced to Abina and Kofi, and then Duff had him sit down.
Mandy brought him a cupcake, and he took it with a smile.
After Mandy and Huck wandered out of the room, Gorski said, “Kang Shikun was arrested at the border with Togo last night.”
Duff put his hand on his throat to talk; putting some pressure on the wound kept it from hurting as much when he spoke. “I thought the border with Togo didn’t exist,” he said, parroting something he’d said to Gorski the first time they met.
“Yeah, that’s what Kang thought, too. John and Travis were able to follow him with the drones the day of the battle in the hills, at least long enough for us to get a team of agents on his ass. For the past three days we’ve tracked his movements to the east, and we had BNI officers at the border there to pick him up when he tried to cross.
“We have Chen Jia at the embassy still; she’s been very helpful explaining everything she knew about the operation here. We’re going to give her a visa to come to the U.S. to have her baby there.” He looked to Nichole. “She’ll never go back to China; they will hold her responsible for everything that’s happened after the failed coup.”
Duff cocked his head. “What’s happened?”
“Well, President Amanor is still in power, and General Kwame Boatang is in the stockade. From what we’ve pieced together from Ms. Chen and other physical evidence left at the home in the hills, the Chinese set up the rebel coup d’état, as well as an extremist terror attack, as a ploy for the leader of Central Command to come down to the capital and take over the streets. Boatang had promised the Chinese they’d kick out the West and give them a couple of diamond mines in the process.”
“Is Kang talking?” Isaac asked, and Gorski just shook his head.
“He claims he’s a political prisoner, unjustly detained.” The man shrugged. “All the usual claptrap from a senior intelligence officer.”
Gorski said, “The tablet computer was able to show us all the names of all the Sentinel operatives; looks like about twenty-one of them died over the course of the operation, but that means there’s another fifty out there, mostly Russian. We’ve got their names; they’ll turn up down the road.”
Mandy and Huck came back into the room; both of them were eating cupcakes, and they sat on the couch with their mom and dad.
Nichole hugged them both, then turned her attention to Isaac. “I know I’ve said it already, but I want to thank you again, not for what you did for the U.S., for the ambassador, but what you did for my family.” She clutched Huck tight now while he played with his toy truck on the floor in front of her. She said, “I can never repay you.”
Isaac smiled. “I did it for Duff…because Duff would have done it for me.”
Nichole looked to her husband. He couldn’t really turn his head in her direction without shifting his hips, so he just moved his eyes to hers, and they smiled at each other.
“You’re right,” Nichole said. “He would have.”
Duff shifted back to Gorski now. “Did you hear we’re being recalled?”
Gorski nodded. “I did. It sucks, but it’s the right move.”
“I know it is,” Duff said. “But we really don’t want to leave Ghana.”
“Why would you?” Gorski asked. “It’s the most stable nation in West Africa.”
Everyone laughed, the Opokus included. Isaac said, “It was…it will be again. Hopefully long before Kofi here grows up.”
Gorski looked at Isaac. “With less international meddling and more good people like you, I’d bet on this nation to turn out just fine.”
Mandy said, “I don’t want to leave, either.”
Nichole wrapped her arms around her daughter now. “They will send us someplace nice, I promise.”
Duff said, “They’re sending us back to Washington. Not so nice, but at least it’s familiar.”
“Just until you’re one hundred percent,” Nichole said. “Then…who knows?”
Gorski said, “That’s the life.”
“What about you, Bob?” Duff asked. “You caught Kang. What will you do now?”
He shrugged, as if he’d never asked himself this question. “I don’t know. Is it too late for me to pick up golf?”
Duff laughed. “No…but I don’t see it.”
“Me either.” He shrugged. “I’ll stick around Africa awhile. This is a job where you never actually finish your work, you just move on to the next problem. There are other Kangs out there. Other Tremaines. Other Boatangs. Other Addos.”
Duff said, “Well, one thing’s for sure. There’s only one Gorski.”
The conversation went on a while longer, and then Nichole tried her hand at grilling smash burgers for everyone out in the courtyard while Duff sat convalescing at the picnic table, talking to Isaac, Abina, and Bob, while Mandy and Huck played with Kofi.
It was a good day, Duff told himself as he looked at his beautiful wife at the grill. He only hoped his dreams would start chronicling the good days and not the bad.
He hadn’t had a nightmare in the past three nights, and he wondered if that meant something other than the fact that he’d been on heavy painkillers.
Nichole wiped sweat from her brow and took a sip of wine from a plastic cup, then caught her husband watching her. She stepped over to him with the tongs and the wine in her hands, and she sat in his lap and kissed him.
“How are you feeling, sergeant?”
“Never better, captain.”
“That’s what I like to hear, soldier,” she said, and they kissed again.