From this angle they saw a second cave spilling the same steady glow of electric light. Headquarters or hospital? In which cave was the doctor and which contained the FFM leaders, who would be heavily armed?
Janson and Kincaid had reached a critical point in their operation. They had no desire to get in a shoot-out with the doctor’s captors. Cross fires were indiscriminate and could get the man whose life they were attempting to save killed. Equally problematic was the effect killing the leadership would have on the revolution. While he was not interested in taking sides between the vicious Iboga and the insurgents who had slaughtered the crew of the
Amber Dawn
, it was clear to Janson that if there was a right side in the bloody civil war it was FFM, and he did not want to do anything to tilt the balance against them. Success would demand speed and stealth, in and out quickly and quietly.
The wind was growing stronger, which would help. Sleeping men would not hear them over the constant rustle of millions of leaves. They waited, spelling watches. An hour before dawn, the lights in one cave went out.
“Bosses turning in,” Janson whispered. “Give them a few minutes to fall asleep.”
Ten minutes passed.
“All right, let’s do it.”
* * *
IT WAS NOT
the first time that Terry Flannigan had awakened in dreamy disarray as a woman covered his mouth with her hand, pressed her lips to his ear, and whispered, “Be quiet.” Husbands on business trips had a way of coming home early.
“We’re getting you out of here,” she whispered.
He’d heard that before, too. Into the bathroom and out the window. Or the guest room. Or, God help him, once in the closet, like in a
New Yorker
cartoon.
“Open your eyes,” she said, “if you understand me.”
Whatever groggy dream he’d been having came to a crashing halt when he saw the low rock ceiling of the FFM cave on Pico Clarence. A woman in commando gear was crouching over him, her face darkened with camo paint, her eyes intense.
“Who?” he whispered against her hand.
“Friends,” she whispered, and Flannigan knew fear. No “friends” knew he was here. With Janet murdered, only her murderers knew he had been captured when they killed her and sank
Amber Dawn
.
“What friends?”
“ASC,” she whispered, “your employer. We’re taking you home— You awake?
Snap out of it!
”
ASC? What the hell was going on? How the hell did American Synergy know he had been on the boat? He had doctored for oil companies long enough to respect and fear the enormous power they wielded in West Africa. He had seen what they were capable of. In remote places they were above whatever law existed. No way he could trust them.
Afraid she would see his confusion, Flannigan turned his face, only to see more death—a sentry sprawled on the stone floor. She raised her hand so he could speak again and he whispered, “Did you kill him? He was just a kid.”
“Animal trank dart,” she snapped. “Two cc’s carfentanil citrate.
Get up!
”
Terry Flannigan’s gaze shifted to the pool of light cast by a bulb over Ferdinand Poe’s cot. He shook his head. “I can’t leave him.”
“What?”
“He’s a mess. I’m the only doctor.”
She rocked back on her heels and Flannigan got a better look at her. Skinnier than he usually went for, but a fine face and incredible lips. He had never seen eyes so focused, bright as ball bearings. She shot a glance across the cave, and a commando broad in the chest and light on his feet materialized at her side.
“He won’t go,” she whispered. “Won’t leave his patient.”
To Flannigan’s astonishment, a smile crossed the guy’s stern face. “I’ll be damned,” he said, and thrust out a powerful hand. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Doc.”
“Can we take him with us?” Flannigan asked.
“No way,” said the woman.
“They’ve got some lightweight stretchers, here,” Flannigan persisted. “How many men do you have?”
“You’re looking at it,” said the woman.
“
Two
of you?”
Suddenly both looked sharply toward the mouth of the cave, heads cocked like animals. A moment later he heard it, too, the hollow thudding sound of helicopters. In seconds they heard yells in the camp and pounding feet as the insurgents ran to their treetop machine-gun emplacements.
“Three machines, maybe four,” the man said.
Janson and Kincaid exchanged puzzled glances, hurried to the mouth of the cave, and peered out.
Paul Janson said, “Something’s up.”
“It’s suicide to attack.”
Already the machine guns farther out were chattering—quick, expert bursts—and Janson and Kincaid could picture the hail of heavy slugs shredding a helicopter’s thin skin. Rocket fire
whooshed
and the rotor thudding changed timbre as the slow-moving helicopters shot back and tried to maneuver for advantage.
“Suicide,” said Janson. “Unless—”
“It’s a feint! Iboga’s attacking on the ground.”
They heard a tremendous explosion. A ball of fire crashed through the leaf canopy. A helicopter had blown up. A pillar of white smoke shot from the forest floor. The thudding noise grew more urgent. The guns fired longer bursts. A second explosion sent a shock wave through the canopy. It was followed by a moment of eerie silence. Then the silence was broken by a concerted roar of powerful engines and the clanking of steel tracks.
“Tanks!” said Janson. “The T-72s.”
H
eralded by the deafening roar of their 125mm main guns, tanks climbed the mountain firing four rounds a minute. High-explosive fragmentation projectiles cut broad swaths of blasted wood through the forest. Toppled trees ripped enormous gashes in the rain-forest canopy and crushed the encampment’s makeshift shelters.
Surprise was total; the noise of the forty-ton armored monsters creeping into position to attack had been muffled by the rotor thud of the daring helicopter attack and the guns of the defenders. Machine guns churned from the steel hulls, raking the panicked FFM troops who were fleeing for their lives.
Janson gauged the range of the muzzle flashes through the trees to be less than a quarter mile. “We promised not to start a shooting war. So a rumble in the jungle comes to us.”
“Run or fight,” said Kincaid. “We have about ten seconds to make up our minds.”
On their own, two operators trained in evasion and escape tactics could calculate the flow of battle and get away. The odds would shift against them if they took the doctor. If they took the doctor’s patient, too, they would all die.
Flannigan darted up behind them. “Give me a gun.”
“Do you know how to use one?”
“Hell no. It’s for Minister Poe. He cannot face being captured again. He wants to go down fighting and save the last bullet for himself.”
Janson and Kincaid shared a grim glance. Janson said, “The Russians export their crappiest tanks. ‘Monkey models’ with light armor, lousy sights, no infrared, no laser. And they carry their ammunition inside the crew compartment. Hit them right and the entire turret flies off like a jack-in-the box.”
“Otherwise they’re still tanks?”
“ ’Fraid so.”
Kincaid said, “Your call.”
Janson told Flannigan, “Tell your patient he will not be captured.”
They opened their packs without another word and unlimbered the disposable single-shot preloaded Russian rocket launchers. Five RPG-22s and one more-advanced RPG-26.
“Take the 26,” Janson told Kincaid. “You’re better with it.”
They headed down the hill toward the sound of the guns. Men were running past scrambling up the hill the other way, wide-eyed with shock. Acrid smoke swirled so thickly it blocked the early-morning sun. The ground was littered with rifles, helmets, even shoes thrown down by the stampeded troops.
An eighth of a mile from the firing, Jessica Kincaid spotted a tall tree to which wooden cross slats had been nailed as crude rungs that led up to one of the anti-helicopter machine-gun platforms. She climbed with three of the thirty-inch launcher tubes slung across her back, a load that added twenty-five pounds to the MP5 submachine gun, M1911 pistol, spare magazines, knife, Kevlar helmet, ceramic vest, GPS, spare batteries, medical kit, knife, and water she was already carrying.
As she caught her breath on the platform, cannon fire brought down another clump of trees, which opened up a half-mile view of the tanks and a mass of ground troops behind them. A flash of yellow caught her eye. She found it in her binoculars and cursed that there had been no room for a real sniper gun on this incursion. The yellow was a scarf as big as a blanket wrapped around the head and neck of President for Life Iboga. The man was enormous. If she had her Knight’s M110 the dictator would be dead and the tank attack would end.
Paul Janson sought a flanking position on the ground, slewing to one side, then racing ahead through the trees. Two hundred meters from the tanks he saw that the dark green armored behemoths had bogged down trying to cross a ravine, suggesting that the FFM camp was not as vulnerable in that direction as Iboga’s troops had supposed.
Emboldened, FFM troops who had not fled rallied to take advantage of the temporary setback. They fired assault rifles from behind boulders and hurled hand grenades. One tank stopped moving as a torrent of lead breached its commander’s vision slit. But the rest kept trying to climb the steep slope as the bullets bounced off armored hulls and the grenades fell short.
An insurgent stood up balancing an ancient RPG-7 on his shoulder. The heavy warhead protruded from a long, unwieldy launcher. As he tried to aim the weapon, a tank cut him in half with a sustained burst of machine-gun fire. Triggered by a dead hand, the rocket-propelled grenade flew over the tanks on a tail of white smoke and detonated in a tree. The backblast that roared behind the launcher tube threw an insurgent in the air and dropped him in a smouldering heap.
Jessica Kincaid laid two of her launchers, an RPG-22 and the RPG-26, on the shooting perch she had climbed to in the treetops and shouldered the second RPG-22. She reserved the superior 26 for her second shot. She would need the best she had after her first shot exposed her position. Eyes locked on the nearest tank, which was grinding over a rock ledge, she tugged the launcher’s extension, which simultaneously lengthened the weapon to its full thirty-three and one-half inches and opened its front and rear covers. Then she raised the rear sight to cock it, found the tank, aimed for the seal between its turret and turret cavity, and fired.
The rocket’s solid-fuel motor ignited and burned fully in a flash. The fin-stabilized rocket leaped from the smoothbore barrel and drove a two-and-a-half-pound high-explosive anti-tank warhead at Kincaid’s target.
“Bull’s-eye,” she murmured under her breath.
It was a double explosion, the first burst at the bottom edge of the turret, the second an instant later as the ammunition inside the tank blew up, hurling the armored turret off the hull and onto the ground. Smoke billowed as if Kincaid’s grenade had transformed the tank into a boiling pot.
She grabbed the RPG-26. The backblast had ignited the leaf canopy behind her, flagging her position. Every tank in the ravine tried to raise its main gun in her direction. But to elevate so high, they had to maneuver onto a slope. She cocked the 26—no time-wasting extension on the improved model, thank you, Russians—chose as her target a tank climbing a steep slope to draw a bead on her, and fired. She heard a flat cracking sound. Instead of screaming at the tank, the rocket misfired, jumped ten feet from the barrel, and tumbled to the forest floor.
“Fuck!”
The tank she had aimed at was traversing its main gun at her. She grabbed the remaining RPG-22 and jerked open the extension. Something exploded. The tank was suddenly spewing smoke. Its hatch opened and three men tumbled out, rolling on the ground to douse their burning clothes. Janson, she realized, had nailed it. But the fire in the trees behind her had drawn the attention of another tank.
“Get down from there,” she heard him in her earpiece. She raised her sight and prayed this one wasn’t another dud.
* * *
INSIDE THE T-72
three small men—none taller than five feet, four inches, could fit in the tiny space—teamed up to obliterate the RGP-armed insurgent in the tree who had already destroyed one of the tanks. The driver manipulated his tillers and gear sticks to force the machine up the side of the ravine. The commander guided the main gun and shouted the order to fire, twice. At the first command, the driver stomped his clutch to steady the beast. At the second, the gunner fired. The commander saw the flash of the insurgent’s launcher. A HEAT projectile penetrated the armor plate with a burning jet of gas. There was a blinding light. Hot shell fragments ricocheted in the confined space like flying razors.
* * *
IN THE TREETOPS,
the tank’s 125mm shell screamed so close by Jessica Kincaid that a shock wave knocked her flat. Then the tank she had fired at exploded. She threw herself over the edge of the platform before another got the range, and climbed down the makeshift rungs as fast as she could.
As she hit the forest floor she heard Janson’s voice in her earpiece, cold and deadly: “I believe I ordered you out of that tree.”
“Yes, sir.” She felt like a buck private chewed out by a full colonel.
“Pull another stunt like that and you’ll be looking for a job.”
“I thought I was a partner.”
“Then you’ll be looking for a partner,” Janson shot back, and suddenly exploded in a degree of emotion she had never heard from him. “Jesus H! Jesse, you’ll get yourself killed cowboying like that.”
“Won’t happen again, sir.”
“Fall back to the cave; we’ve got to get out of here.”
They ran convergent paths that brought them together at the hospital cave. Janson looked more himself than his voice had sounded on the radio, Kincaid thought, his usual cool, clear, alert, and focused like a blowtorch. “Iboga hid his presidential guard behind the tanks. They’re coming up with all four feet.”