“Yes.”
“Make them the hunters. We will escort and protect you personally. Guaranteed.” He glanced at Jessica, who fired back, “Guaranteed!”
“I am not important,” Poe protested. “It is not for me.”
Janson said, “A war like yours in Isle de Foree is like chess. When the king is lost, the war is lost.”
“I have no desire to be king. I am a democrat.”
“In a war like yours,” Janson repeated patiently, “it is the same thing. When the ‘democrat’ is lost, the war is lost. This is no time for false modesty, Minister Poe. There is no one who can save Isle de Foree but you, sir. We can help—for no charge, not a penny—by protecting you until your men take the city and arrest Iboga.”
“Why would you do this?”
“I believe,” Paul Janson answered sincerely, “that you are on the side of the angels.”
“And you will incidentally protect the doctor,” Poe shot back.
“I’ve already made that clear. The doctor is our obligation and responsibility. We have given our word to return him safe and sound.”
* * *
AS THE FFM
pursued Iboga’s forces it appeared, at first, that good fortune continued to smile on Ferdinand Poe. The FFM fighters who had been dispatched to the airport eight miles from Porto Clarence found it lightly defended by a demoralized unit that surrendered after a brief skirmish. No damage was done to the control tower and the hangars and little more than some bullet-pocked windows to the palatial President for Life Iboga International Passenger Terminal.
One of the nation’s last helicopters—commanded by the formidable Patrice da Costa, Poe’s spy inside the Iboga regime—swooped down to evacuate the injured patriot from the foot of Pico Clarence. Janson, Kincaid, and Flannigan accompanied Poe on the flight to the brand-new military wing of Porto Clarence’s otherwise-crumbling Iboga Hospital that had been equipped to serve the dictator and his friends.
The hospital occupied prime real estate, with a view across the hazy harbor of the Presidential Palace, a red-roofed two-story white stucco building festooned with balconies, pocked with recently added air conditioners, and crowned by a tall, square bell tower. Palm trees shaded its lawns. A long pier thrust into the water.
Poe informed his doctors that he would not submit to any operation or treatment that rendered him unconscious until the battle was won. The only weakness he showed was a plea to Terrence Flannigan to remain at his side.
“I’m not that qualified in internal medicine, sir.”
“But you were not given your job in his hospital by Iboga.”
“Good point,” said Jessica Kincaid. “He’s right, Doc; you’re the only one we can trust.”
Terry Flannigan saw that he was not going anywhere just yet, though one way or another he knew he was not going anywhere
ever
with the commandos hired by ASC. Although Annie and The Wall never let him out of their sight. He bided his time and stuck close to the crazy old patriot who insisted on his bed being cranked up into a sitting position so that he could watch events unfold at the palace across the water.
Poe’s presence seemed to have the effect the rebel leader had hoped for. Only thin, isolated pillars of smoke were rising from the city, and the scattered gunfire they heard sounded mostly like pistols. An hour from sunset, when there was still plenty of light in the sky, Iboga’s personal flag, a yellow banner adorned with a red snake, was lowered from the pole atop the palace’s tower.
Poe answered a cell phone. His face lit with pleasure. “Iboga is trapped,” he announced to the room. “Alone.
“Don’t kill him,” he ordered into the phone. “We must learn where he put our money. Take him alive.” Then he stared out the window at the pier and said to the American commandos, “You didn’t want to chase Iboga. You’re in the battle anyhow—box seats for the finale. Watch the pier. You’ll see him running onto it in a moment.”
Janson said quietly to Jessica, “War like Shakespeare wrote it. All the main players in the same room.”
As predicted, Iboga retreated onto the pier, his bulk unmistakable, but running like a man fully accustomed to his girth and strong enough to carry it. Nor was he alone, but flanked by two men with machine guns who alternated spraying the pursuit and reloading fresh magazines from a seemingly inexhaustible supply grabbed easily from each other’s rucksacks.
“Neat trick,” said Jessica.
Suddenly one went down, shot. Now it was only Iboga and one guard who kept coolly firing behind them as they retreated farther and farther out on the pier. Janson scanned the harbor with binoculars, looking for a boat speeding to the rescue, but saw none. The shooting had driven everyone from the water. The Porto Clarence harbor was nearly empty from the deteriorating oil storage facility to the fishing docks and freight piers. The only ship that had not fled the harbor was a rust-stained Bulgarian passenger vessel stranded at the cruise ship terminal, Janson guessed, by the absence of tugboats to escort her to sea.
“Can I borrow your glasses?” asked Flannigan.
Janson passed them to the doctor, who focused clumsily on the running men.
“Recognize someone?”
“No,” Flannigan answered hastily, and passed them back.
Kincaid nudged Janson. “Aircraft.”
It was a dot on the ocean horizon.
“They’ll make mincemeat of a helicopter.”
But the dot grew too rapidly to be a helicopter. In seconds they saw a jet fighter approaching at enormous speed. “Does the Africa Partnership Station have an aircraft carrier sailing with it?”
“Not that I heard of. Maybe it’s coming down from Nigeria.”
“They’ll get quite a reception at the airport.”
Traveling at six hundred miles an hour, the fighter was close enough in a few more seconds to reveal the distinctive drooping wings of a vertical/short takeoff and landing Harrier jump jet. Janson and Kincaid exchanged looks as the aircraft slowed abruptly from six hundred miles an hour and descended toward the pier on a trajectory that started steep and quickly became vertical.
“Iboga’s ticket out?”
Unlike the familiar sight of a helicopter floating down in a landing, what the vertical/short takeoff and landing Harrier was doing looked impossible. A jet plane seen streaking through the sky was suddenly hanging in the air like a noisy Christmas ornament balanced on a thick jet of brown exhaust gases.
“But it’s a single-seat fighter plane. They only have one seat.”
“Trainers have two seats,” said Janson. “Look at the size of that canopy.”
Sturdy landing wheels emerged from the front and back of the fuselage and thin struts levered down from its wings like walking sticks. The sound of its engine straining to defy gravity thundered through the hospital’s thick windows.
Ferdinand Poe snatched up his cell phone. “Stop him. Shoot him! Don’t let him land.”
A squad of soldiers burst from the palace firing machine guns.
“Lucky for them trainers aren’t combat capable,” said Kincaid.
“This one is,” said Janson. He passed her the glasses. “Gatling cannon, port side.”
The cannon spoke, even as the noise of the jump jet’s engine spooled down from a thunder to a scream. Twenty-five-millimeter shells swept the pier of the men with machine guns. The jet landed hard and bounced. Its tail dropped, then bobbed up. The front half of the big canopy sprang open. A rope ladder fell to the pier.
“Should be interesting, one empty seat, two bad guys.”
Iboga climbed the six rungs agilely and heaved his bulk into the front cockpit. The canopy closed. The engine thundered and the jump jet rose straight up on another column of brown exhaust, turning as it did until its nose faced the sea from where it had come. The column spewing vertically from its nozzles began to angle. Nose rising, the jet carrying the deposed dictator of Isle de Foree sped forward. In fifteen seconds, it was gone.
Jessica lowered the glasses. “Where’s the guy who was with him?”
“Dove off the pier.”
“Did you see any markings? I didn’t.”
“Just camo paint.”
“So who sent Iboga his ticket out?”
“Same folks who sent the Reaper?”
“But the Reaper almost killed him.”
“No, it didn’t,” said Janson. “Iboga ran way back behind the tanks, but he made a clear target wearing that yellow headdress. The Reaper’s sensor operator could spot him easily on his video monitors. The pilot would have killed him if that was their mission—Look at poor Poe.”
Ferdinand Poe was gaping at the empty space of sky where the jump jet had vanished, and Paul Janson saw all the hope and energy of his military victory drain out of the old man’s wounded body.
Terry Flannigan laid a hand on his shoulder. “Time to rest, Minister Poe. You’ve done all you could. Your men are in control; the city stands safe.”
It was hard to tell if Poe even heard him. But Poe did reach out and clasp ahold of Flannigan’s hand. His eyes were already closed. His head sagged on his chest. Flannigan beckoned the nurses hovering at the door in crisply ironed and laundered white uniforms. They glided in and took charge, gently straightening the old man on his back and pulling sheets to his chin.
Flannigan turned to Janson. “I’ll stay with him until we get some specialists in.”
“From where?”
“Lisbon seems to be their connection to European medicine. Listen, I know you’re supposed to deliver me to ASC, but it’s going to have to wait. You can tell them for me, thanks for the rescue. And obviously I thank you, too, both of you.”
* * *
TERRY FLANNIGAN OFFERED
his hand, desperately trying to conceal his belief that not knowing who to trust, he would be wise to run for his life.
It worked, Flannigan saw. The commandos exchanged a look. Then each shook his hand and they left, Janson punching numbers into a miniature satellite telephone.
M
ario Margarido, Ferdinand Poe’s chief of staff, whom Janson had seen that morning in a flak vest bulging with AK-47 magazines, was waiting in the hall in a suit and tie. “We are grateful for all you did for Minister Poe.”
“You’re welcome,” said Janson. “I wonder if you could arrange clearance for my plane to come in from Libreville? We want very much to go home.”
“Please be our guest in Porto Clarence.”
“Thank you. You are very kind, but it’s been a long trip and we would like to sleep in our own beds.”
Janson watched Mario Margarido ponder his request as it dawned on the man that the sudden acquisition of a nation gave him powers large and small. As the president’s chief of staff, he could allow an airplane the right to land or he could close the skies. Heady stuff, the right to grant people permission to come and go.
“I wonder whether your airplane would have room for several of our agents stationed there to come join our celebration.”
“It would be our pleasure.” Janson smiled.
“Of course your plane is welcome to fly in from Libreville.”
Janson raised Mike and Ed on the sat phone, and three hours later the Embraer touched down at the newly renamed Isle de Foree International Airport, where celebrants had pulled down every enormous letter that had spelled “President for Life Iboga.”
“Leave your motors running,” Janson called. “We’re out of here, now.”
They boarded and pulled the door shut and Janson said, “Go!”
“Seat belts, sir.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. What’s for dinner?”
“What do you think? Lobster.”
“And?…”
Ed grinned proudly. “Texas dry-aged porterhouse steak, Angolan arugula, Gabon tomatoes, French bread, and Italian pastry. We traded lobsters with every charter pilot in Libreville. Even got champagne.”
“We’ll start on it as soon as we get a shower. I’m going first, Jesse. I’ll be quick.” He knew if he stopped moving he would fall asleep standing there. He shaved and showered quickly, luxuriating only briefly in soap and water, and stepped out to dress in slacks and an open shirt. “All yours.”
Janson grabbed a phone and paced the small space. He called Zurich, Cape Town, and Tel Aviv and left succinct messages: “How can I get my hands on a jump jet?”
Trevor Suzman called back instantly from Cape Town, asking with a self-satisfied chuckle, “A two-seat trainer, perhaps?”
“I’m not surprised you already heard,” Janson answered, smoothly flattering the deputy national commissioner of the South African Police Service, who was very proud of the fact that his duties overlapped, deeply, into foreign intelligence. “Did you happen to hear where it came from?”
“Only rumors.”
“Care to share them with me?”
“No. For the simple reason that they are all nonsense. But I would remind you that the Harriers have a very short range. He couldn’t have come from far.”
“Nine coastal nations and a small ship are all within range,” said Janson. “Tell me about those rumors.”
“I’ll know more tomorrow,” said Suzman.
“I will call you back, tomorrow.”
Janson kept pacing—wide awake now—driven by the bigger question: Who sent the Reaper? But he had no idea who in the world to telephone to ask how to get his hands on an attack drone. There were people he could try, of course, but the question itself would bring down all sorts of unwanted scrutiny.
The U.S. Air Force had fighting drones. The CIA had them. The Army and the Navy had them. Could one of those American services hire itself out to secretly intervene in the Isle de Foree war? He shivered at a sudden terrible thought. Did Cons Ops have the Reaper? What an unholy alliance that would be—spymasters with the hubris of gods made strong as gods.
He was forced to concede that tackling the Reaper question would take some careful thinking. No one who had acquired its power to destroy would give it up without a fight.
* * *
JESSE JOINED HIM
at the table as Ed laid out the first course, cold lobster mayonnaise. “Thanks, Ed. I’ll get the wine.” Janson popped the cork and filled their glasses.
“Before we toast victory, a quick mea culpa.”
Janson and Kincaid’s mea culpa review of what went right and what went wrong was an operator’s custom. Their Delta Force friends called it a hot wash, others called it a debriefing, or a wrap, but whatever the name, it was a way of rehashing an action in hopes of not making the same mistakes twice.