“I saw him. Scary dude in a yellow scarf.”
The FFM insurgents were falling back.
Inside the cave Kincaid and Janson found a dozen boys huddled around Ferdinand Poe’s cot.
Paul Janson spoke in a loud, clear voice to rally Flannigan, Ferdinand Poe, and any of the kids who understood English: “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to put Minister Poe on a stretcher and spell each other carrying him, four at a time, two on each pole. The doctor will carry his medicine. You two boys—you and you—will carry water. This lady will lead,” he said, indicating Jessica Kincaid with her MP5 cradled in her arms. “Follow her. I will cover our rear. Stick close together and we’ll make it out of here. Quickly now, everyone, move!”
Flannigan supervised the shifting of the injured man from his cot to the stretcher, which was held by four of the largest boys. Seconds after the ragtag caravan exited the cave and started climbing a narrow path farther up the mountain, one of the tanks clanked into the clearing and fired its main gun into first the hospital, then the headquarters. Behind it double-timing squads of the presidential guard raked the area with automatic weapons.
Janson, covering the rear and last out of the camp, looked back and saw two FFM fighters spring up, aiming their unwieldy RPG-7s at the tanks. Both fell in a hail of gunfire as they triggered the weapons, but one landed a lucky grenade in the tank’s vision slit. The big machine veered into a massive boulder, grinding its treads and spewing smoke.
But more tanks and hundreds more troops were pouring into the clearing as Iboga’s powerful force overran the rebel camp. Janson saw Iboga himself, a dark-skinned three-hundred-pound giant with a bright yellow scarf wrapped around his head like an Arab kaffiyeh. Surrounded by his elite personal guard, signified by yellow handkerchiefs knotted at their throats, he appeared to Paul Janson to be the personification of the evil “big men” chiefs who had destroyed African nation after African nation. A well-placed shot could turn the tide of the battle. But the range, 150 meters, was extreme for his MP5, the dictator was shielded by his tall guardsmen, and a missed shot would bring them streaming after Janson’s charges, who had thus far not been spotted. Too risky.
He ran up the trail after his people.
Jessica had them down on their bellies, crawling and dragging Poe’s stretcher along an exposed ridge that could be seen from below. Janson waited until they had made it across before he followed, slithering low. He had just crossed the open space when a loud cheer erupted from the chaos below. It was a roar of victory. Janson looked down at the clearing and saw that the presidential guard had captured a tall, thin man who he judged by the cheering was Ferdinand Poe’s son Douglas Poe.
The cheers grew louder and louder as President for Life Iboga swaggered up to the prisoner. The dictator slapped his face. The thin man staggered. Soldiers yanked him upright and Iboga slapped him again. Then the dictator beckoned, and a pair of tanks clanked from the semicircle formation at the edge of the shattered forest, crossed the clearing, skirting the one the FFM fighter had set afire. Guided by Iboga’s impatient gestures, they swiveled on their treads and faced off, gun to gun, leaving twenty feet between them.
Soldiers tied ropes to Douglas Poe’s wrists, dragged him between the tanks, and yanked the ropes from either side, stretching his arms apart so that he stood as if crucified between the armored hulls. As the soldiers laughed, Iboga gestured for the tank drivers to move ahead, narrowing the space where the prisoner was held, creeping closer and closer until they pressed against his back and his chest. The laughter grew louder. Iboga whipped off his scarf and held it high over his head like a racetrack starter about to drop the flag.
Suddenly he looked up.
The taunting grin slid from his face.
P
aul Janson heard the same distant sound they had heard last night, the growl of the Reaper. Iboga froze, scarf in the air, face locked on the sky. The hunter-killer combat drone had come back.
The soldiers and elite guard looked up, screaming, “Reaper! Reaper!”
Iboga whirled and ran, shoving men out of his way, racing through the armored semicircle formed by his victorious tanks. To Janson’s amazement, the dictator’s soldiers frantically gestured for the tanks to back away from Douglas Poe. They lifted him in the air and held him like a shield as if to show the lenses in the sky that if the Reaper fired its missiles it would kill him, too. The attempt was futile.
The ground shook. Thunder rippled. Iboga’s tanks began to explode, one after another, in balls of fire. His soldiers’ bodies and those of his guard who hadn’t run after him were flung in the air. The attack by the unseen, unmanned aerial gunships lasted less than thirty seconds. And when the smoke had cleared, every man left in the clearing, including Douglas Poe, was dead.
Paul Janson was stunned. Who but the Pentagon or the U.S. State Department could have unleashed the Reapers? Theoretically, the motive for involvement would have been West African oil. But in reality, Isle de Foree’s corrupt government’s wells and pipelines and refineries were decrepit, and the nation’s oil reserves, like Nigeria’s, were dwindling. Any potential new oil reserves were already spoken for in deepwater blocks off Angola, a thousand miles to the south. America embroiling herself in chaotic West African tribal wars seemed like a risky venture for little return. Unless, of course, Doug Case had lied when he claimed that the assignment to rescue the doctor had nothing to do with oil reserves.
If the Reapers weren’t American, had some private entity somehow gained access to UAV technology? That did not seem possible. The heavily armed surveillance drone was the sharp end of an immensely complex weapon system dependent upon remote guidance via orbiting satellites. That was light-years beyond the abilities of a Nigeria or an Angola. It was hard to believe that even China could pull that off, yet, much less a private outfit.
Whatever it was, something—something else—was going down, some mission not apparent. Paul Janson vowed to find out what, because the Reaper gave whoever possessed it godlike power to observe and destroy.
* * *
BELOW IN THE
clearing where the wreckage of Iboga’s army smouldered, FFM fighters began venturing in from the forest, awed at their sudden, astonishing turn of fortune. They wandered among the bodies of the soldiers who moments earlier had been intent on exterminating them and gazed in wonderment at the twisted steel that remained of the tanks. A man picked up an assault rifle only to drop it, crying out, burned by metal too hot to touch. A man laughed and then they began to cheer their unexpected victory.
From the forest above Janson heard a second wave of shouts and cheering—boyish cries of glee—and he looked up to see the youngsters racing toward him down the path carrying Ferdinand Poe’s stretcher. The rebel leader was conscious and propped up on one elbow, watching everything with burning eyes.
An anxious Terrence Flannigan ran alongside the stretcher, attempting without success to get his patient to lie back. They raced past Janson and down into the camp that they had fled moments earlier. Last to emerge from the trees above was Jessica Kincaid, MP5 at port arms.
“That looks even worse than it sounded,” she breathed, casting disbelieving eyes on the wreckage below. “Bad day for the bad guys.”
“Iboga got away.”
“Minister Poe just told his bunch to storm Porto Clarence.”
“That’s the right move. Take the capital before Iboga regroups and end it now.”
“What’s
our
move?” she asked.
“Stick close to our doctor,” said Janson. “Before a stray bullet saves ASC five million dollars.”
* * *
“YOU WILL DIE
on the way to Porto Clarence, Minister Poe,” said Dr. Flannigan. “Please listen to reason.”
“No man enters the capital before me,” said Ferdinand Poe.
“You are leaking blood from every orifice. You have internal injuries. You cannot survive being carried twenty miles on a stretcher. Wait for your men to take the city and the airport so a helicopter can carry you to the hospital.”
“No man enters Porto Clarence before me!”
Poe sat up on the stretcher and tried to push the doctor away. But despite a spirit reinvigorated by the hope of impending victory, Poe’s body was failing him. His round cheeks appeared to have collapsed from within. The deep hollows exaggerated the enormousness of his elephant ears and the length of his narrow nose, causing them to poke out of his head like cartoon appendages. His once-imposing crown of bristly dyed hair was matted to his perspiring skull.
Flannigan leaned closer to wipe blood from the corner of Poe’s mouth. “The glory will kill you, sir.”
“It is not for glory,” said Ferdinand Poe. “It is for order.”
Flannigan threw up his hands. “Talk sense to him!” he demanded of the commandos. By now he had named them in his mind. The woman was Annie Oakley for blasting Iboga’s tanks. Her expressionless, impenetrable partner was The Wall. Flannigan still had no idea why ASC was paying them to take him “home” and still feared the worst, but The Wall exuded the sort of common sense that might persuade his critically ill patient to see reason.
The Wall disappointed Flannigan. “You’re missing Minister Poe’s point, Dr. Flannigan. He knows that the victors of his long and brutal war could burn the city to the ground if he’s not there to restrain them personally.”
And Annie Oakley chimed in, “Doctor, his fighters have been living in the woods for three years. He can’t expect them to act like Boy Scouts unless he’s there to read the riot act.”
“Precisely,” said Ferdinand Poe. “Only I can restrain the impulse to vengeance. Only I, because they have all seen
that
.” He pointed a trembling hand across the clearing where ten men were struggling to lift a two-ton gun tank turret that had blown off by the Hellfires and crushed his son. “
That
gives me the moral right—the
example
—to demand that they do not violate their fellow citizens, that they do not throw our poor nation into even more horrendous straits. This war must end today.”
He gazed for a long moment as they levered the turret off his son. Then he spoke softly. “Doctor, I appreciate your concern, and professionalism. But in this case professional soldiers”—he nodded at Janson and Kincaid—“even professionals who land on our island for reasons not entirely clear, are better qualified to diagnose a military situation.”
“I’m not diagnosing the situation, goddammit. I’m diagnosing
you
.”
“But I am not the patient, Doctor. Isle de Foree is the patient and Isle de Foree is in critical condition—Stand aside, sir. I must speak with my commanders.” He gestured for Janson and Kincaid to stay with him in the hospital cave.
Janson assessed the men who clustered around Poe’s stretcher. He had a dozen commanders who ranged from very young to very old. They were steady, tested soldiers, revered Poe, and had done a superb job of reforming their battered forces and rallying the men streaming in from the forest. But none displayed the charisma of their leader.
Poe addressed them in Portuguese. He spoke forcefully and fired them up with a fist pointed at his son’s body even as tears of grief streamed down his face. When the army started down the trail at a quick pace, with Poe’s stretcher in the lead, he beckoned Janson alongside.
“I’ve impressed upon my commanders the need to protect the city from unnecessary destruction while capturing the Presidential Palace. But it is not only for order that I rush into the capital. We must seize Iboga. He’s looted the treasury, sent millions abroad. Without it we will start our new nationhood bankrupt. We cannot permit him to escape. Now I gather from the doctor that you and your associate are mercenaries paid to rescue him after he was kidnapped by what appeared to be a renegade faction of my movement. Is that correct?”
“Essentially, Minister Poe,” Janson answered. This was no time to debate the fine line between mercenaries and security consultants.
“Judging by your ability to penetrate both the enemy lines and my lines, I assume that you and your associate are expert commandos.”
“We
plan
such penetrations intensively and thoroughly,” Janson answered, putting strong emphasis on the word “plan,” for he saw that Poe was going to offer them the job of capturing Iboga and he did not want it. The cardinal rules of survival included no off-the-cuff operations, no decisions on horseback, no flying by the seat of the pants, no winging it. Besides, he and Jessica were on the edge of total exhaustion. Even were they fully rested, kick-the-door-in assault work was for younger, dumber types and he had already put that time in when he was younger and dumber. But mainly, he had taken a job and given his word to rescue the doctor, and abandoning the doctor in the middle of a shooting war was not his idea of rescue.
“We plan operations well ahead of time,” he explained. “Our planning—all of our planning—is designed to maintain the advantage of presenting a small, unexpected, moving target.”
“Small, unexpected, moving targets that destroy tanks?” Poe asked drily.
“We plan for a variety of events,” Janson replied, as drily. “Listen, sir, I know what you want, but I cannot do it for you. Your own men know their city, know the palace, and are fully capable of grabbing Iboga.”
“I fear this is easier said than done. Iboga is treacherous and deeply experienced in warfare. He fought in Angola. On both sides.”
“Yours is an island, sir. I presume you’ve instructed your forces to seize the airport and the harbor. If no plane or boat can get out of here he is not going anywhere.”
“Of course I’ve done that. Picked men are heading that way as we speak, and spies I’ve kept in the city will watch means of egress. But I know Iboga. He will have a plan and he will escape if he sees we are winning. I need your help. I am asking to hire you. I will pay you what you ask.”
Janson shook his head. “You’re a brave man, Minister Poe. I respect that. Here is what we can do for you: We can free up a dozen of your guard—who I imagine are your elite men. Correct?”