by Jack Mars
Dunn made a brisk but sarcastic salute, and stayed in his slouch. “Dunn, Paul S. Born in Stockton, California. Thirty-two years old. Veteran, United States Navy, SEAL Team Six, Naval Intelligence. Combat experience in five theaters, on three continents. Former Private Contractor, Executive Outcomes, Advisor to Nigerian Special Forces. Current Private Contractor, United States Africa Command.”
“In what capacity,” Ed said, “do you work for the United States Africa Command?”
Dunn smiled, showing those teeth again. “Didn’t you hear your boss? I’m your guide. I’m going to help you find what you’re looking for.”
“When did they hire you?” Luke said.
Dunn shrugged. “Yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
“Affirmative.”
“What were you doing before yesterday?”
A burst of air escaped Dunn’s mouth. Maybe it was laughter. Maybe he was an uncannily realistic robot, and it was his internal hydraulic system.
“I was going into the bush. Killing Boko Haram.”
“With whom?”
“Just me.”
“Who were you working for?”
Dunn shrugged. “Nobody. The Nigerian contract with Executive Outcomes ended eight months ago. They didn’t renew. We had a unit of twelve guys. British SAS guys, Spetznaz from Russia, tough customers. A couple of guys from Sweden—their training was in the Parachute Rangers. We all used to laugh about that name. We were originally supposed to train and consult with elite Nigerian troops, but they didn’t give us any. So we weren’t really consulting with anybody. We were doing search-and-destroy missions in the Sambisa Forest. It’s hot in there, I can tell you that—we lost a couple of guys, guys that were hard to kill. Anyway, when the contract ended, everybody left. Back to England, Russia, I don’t know. Maybe back to South Africa for another assignment. But I stayed.”
“Because you had a girlfriend here?” Swann said. He was reaching. His face said he was honestly puzzled.
Dunn shook his head. “No. Because I don’t like Boko Haram. I don’t like what they do to people. I don’t agree with it. And the way things are in Nigeria…” He trailed off for a few seconds. “So I stayed on to keep killing them. It’s not a calling. God didn’t speak to me in the night, or anything along those lines. I just enjoy killing Boko Haram. It’s the right thing to do. And there aren’t really any laws against it. In fact, if I killed them all, I doubt anyone would complain. So I figured I’d keep going for a while.”
He unfolded his arms and swept his right arm in front of him, as though he was offering a tray of finger sandwiches. “And now here I am. At your service.”
“Let me get this straight,” Ed said. “Your unit of mercenaries was disbanded, and the rest of them left. But you stayed. And you’ve been going into the forest and fighting against Boko Haram for the past eight months…”
He paused, as if waiting for a drum roll.
“By yourself.”
Dunn glanced around at the group—at Ed, at Trudy, at Swann, and finally at Luke. Luke could easily see the crazy in the man’s eyes now. He had seen this type of thing before. Here was someone who had been trained to survive in extreme environments, who had been trained to kill without remorse, and who had been trained to keep going despite heat, cold, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and pain.
There was probably nothing for him at home anymore. Maybe there was no home at all. Maybe there never had been. So instead of going back, he went further, beyond what most people could imagine. He took his training to its most extreme expression—he lived to kill bad guys. Luke, who had gone to the edge and past it many times, could almost see the allure in it.
No attachments, no worries, no mundane concerns. No bills coming in the mail. No loved ones who were angry or resentful—no one who died or looked at you with big sad eyes. Nothing but you and the bad guys, hidden in the forest, silent, waiting… waiting… eyes so sharp that the world became bright and crystal clear, senses so alert that a breath, a footstep, a twig snap told you volumes—everything you needed to know.
Then the fighting started, and you moved on pure adrenaline, no thought, no ideas, a wild animal reacting—because reacting is faster and surer and freer than initiating—and you were that animal, processing movement and information almost before it happened.
And then the killing…
Dunn nodded, as if he could read Luke’s mind, and it was the first time he demonstrated something like enthusiasm.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I do.”
* * *
“I need to know everything about that guy,” Luke said.
They were in the small office that would serve as Swann and Trudy’s command center. It was the same drab green as the mess hall. One desultory fan spun overhead. There were a couple of ancient metal desks, also green. But the electrical outlets would accept modern, three-prong plugs, American style, and there was a high-speed network router on the floor in the corner, all lights showing green.
Swann was unpacking computer equipment from leather satchels and setting up Toughbook laptops in a row across one of the tables. Trudy stood nearby, scrolling through her tablet.
“Where he was born, where he went to grade school, was his dad an alcoholic? What sports he played, what disciplinary problems he had, did he ever work in a grocery store. Who the hell is he? Was he really even in the SEALs? When we get to Diffa, Ed and I are going to be very close to the action, and we’ll be relying on this guy. If he really is who he says he is, then Boko Haram know him by now and are keyed in on killing him. We don’t need that kind of attention.”
He stopped.
“Listen, how’s the set-up?” he said.
Swann shrugged. “It’ll work. Be nice if they installed some AC in here.”
Luke looked at Trudy.
“I’m on it,” she said. “Grade school, Navy SEALs, the whole nine. I’ll start pulling it down as soon as Swann gets me some encryption. I don’t know how secure the base network is, what kind of local people work here, and what they have access to.”
“We’ll have a secure satellite uplink in probably fifteen minutes,” Swann said.
Luke nodded. “Good. Keep me updated. And keep us alive out there.”
Swann nodded. “We always do.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
11:40 a.m. West Africa Time (5:40 a.m. Eastern Standard Time)
The Skies Above the Desert
Diffa, Niger
“Where’s the border?” Luke shouted.
They were in the hold of an ancient Huey helicopter, crouched by the open bay door. Dunn was giving Ed and Luke the lay of the land. They had taken the SRT jet to a landing strip near a little slice of nothing called N’Guigmi, not far from the border with Chad, then choppered down here to Diffa.
Standing above them, an impassive Nigerien soldier in Oakley sunglasses and a brown beret manned the door-mounted machine gun. From the corner of his eye, Luke watched the man target people—mostly women and children—in the vast, sprawling refugee camp passing below them. Luke knew what the man was doing. He was practicing.
Dunn’s thick wrist and hand extended out the door. “It’s close. You see that line of green about two clicks south of here?”
Luke and Ed both nodded. “See it.”
“That’s trees and marshes growing along the river. The river itself is about thirty yards across, maybe waist-deep right now, but there’s a couple hundred yards of muck on either side as well. The other side of that river is Nigeria. You see the darker green in the far distance? That’s Sambisa Forest. That’s where they are.”
He gestured at the camp just below them. It was a mad jumble of tumbledown shacks, tents, lean-tos, bright green and purple tarps and bits of red and blue and yellow canvas and wood scraps fashioned into tiny, wretched homes for the forgotten of the Earth, the throwaways. People moved along the dusty orange brown roads between the endless rows of shelters. In the near distance, a large crowd of pe
ople were gathered around some trucks with green canvas tops.
“They’re down there, too.”
“In the camp?” Ed said.
Dunn nodded. “I kill them if I find them in the camp, but they know that, so they hide. There are three hundred thousand people in this camp, and that’s an estimate. Nobody knows for sure. They came across the border to get away from Boko Haram, but they draw Boko like flies. Except for the river, the border might as well not exist. They cross at night, rape the women and girls, kill people they’ve targeted for murder, steal food and water. Then they go back to the forest. Sometimes they get too comfortable and stay. And that’s when I catch them, man.”
Sparks lit up in Dunn’s eyes.
“What about security?” Ed said.
Dunn shook his head. He glanced at the gunner above them. “There is none. Niger is an idea, not a country. It’s lines on a map, drawn by Europeans. There’s some kind of government in the capital, but the capital is eight hundred miles from here. It could be on Mars, for all anybody cares. Nigerien soldiers don’t want to die over Boko Haram, and I don’t blame them. It’s not their problem. The soldiers are kids taken off the street, or out of the desert. Half of them don’t even have bullets in their guns.”
He shrugged. “Everything’s a payoff around here, and a shakedown. Grease a few palms, and people look the other way. That’s everybody. The soldiers from Niger are outgunned by Boko, mostly because the Nigerian soldiers are actually issued decent weapons, and they sell them to Boko. Boko then comes back and kills the Nigerian soldiers with their own guns. The guys from Niger are smart to keep out of it.”
“Why don’t the refugees go deeper into Niger?”
“Where?’ Dunn said. “Look out there, man. It’s nothing but desert. The vultures would be picking your corpse clean in a day, maybe two. No. You’re a refugee, and you want to live? You stay here and take your chances.”
Up ahead, well beyond the edge of the camp, Luke recognized the familiar outlines of an American forward operating base coming into view—a maze of passages and shelters, flanked by sandbags and a long wall of wire-mesh sand-filled Hesco bastion portable barriers, stacked two up. The Hescos were like giant sandbags, each one four feet high and just as wide. Lookout nests were perched on the second and third levels, with heavy guns and spotlights. Hurricane fencing with razor wire circled the perimeter, with an open area of hard, beaten down sand as a chopper pad. Sand, sand, and more sand.
“What about our guys?”
Dunn shrugged again. “Army Special Forces. They’re all right. They’ve got about a dozen, maybe twenty guys here at any given time. Their orders are to hold that patch of dirt. Monitor the situation, and do not engage unless attacked. At night, they button up tight. Boko crosses the river to the west after dark, stays low, and avoids the fire base. They come into the refugee camp from the far side, and keep their dirty dealings away from the Americans. Out of sight, out of mind.”
The chopper hovered for a bit and came down slowly to the pad.
“That’s the kind of thing that makes me glad I’m a freelancer,” Dunn said. “If I don’t like the orders, I make new ones.”
The chopper touched down with a THUMP, bounced, then landed softly the second time. Dunn was already out the door, followed closely by Ed and Luke.
Dunn gestured back at the massive refugee camp.
“You guys want to take a little walk around out there?”
Luke glanced that way. A gate to the camp was right behind them, flags blowing in the hot wind on posts flanking the entrance. Luke fancied he could make out a few of the flags from here. Even if he couldn’t see them, he could guess what they were—the United Nations, the European Union, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, probably some others—the organizations that had come together in a great and proud endeavor to pay for, build and staff the camp.
Luke had seen refugee camps before, too many of them. He felt bad for the people, but international aid was not his department. He could save more lives, and make sure fewer people became refugees, by focusing on the matters in front of him.
There was a weapon on the loose, no one even knew what it was, but it was a possible threat to the United States. He felt that he and Ed were very close to it. Boko Haram’s stronghold, the Sambisa Forest, began just a few miles to the south. Luke almost felt like he could just reach out his hand and grab hold of that…
“I’ll take a look,” Ed said.
Luke’s shoulders almost slumped. Refugees? It was sad, it was horrible, and it was not part of this mission.
“All right,” he said. “But let’s make it quick.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
5:50 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
The White House Residence
Washington, DC
There was no sleeping tonight.
She stood in the darkened room, staring out the window, the heavy curtains thrown wide. From here, she could see the narrow tower of the Washington Monument almost directly in front of her, lights flashing at the top. A light snow swirled around it, driven by the wind blowing across the National Mall. To the far left was the Capitol Building, and to the far right was the Lincoln Memorial, all visible from her bedroom window.
Maybe this view was designed to keep a President humble. After all, it reminded her of the two greatest Presidents, looming over her from the past. It also reminded her of the seething mass of double-talking, money-grubbing, backroom-dealing, pandering, flattering, insulting, grandstanding maniacs that served as her counterweight—the Congress. Heck, she had been one of them once upon a time. And it had been fun, a lot more fun than this job.
A fleeting image of a hallway on fire reminded her that half of those fun-loving maniacs had died in the Mount Weather disaster.
She shook that image away.
“Stone,” she said. She sighed and shook her head.
Her life had been a whirlwind since that horrible night. They had nearly killed her along with everyone else, but she had survived. So she became President, and she and the country had weathered one crisis after another. The Ebola crisis, her daughter’s kidnapping, the North Korea crisis, and all the rest. She had almost been murdered a second time, witnessed one of her best friends dying, and had to go into hiding. And now, the culmination of all of it, was Stone. The man who had saved her bacon again and again, her own in-house special operator, was now her lover.
His job was to put himself in harm’s way, and it was becoming harder and harder for her to see him do that. She had been nearly exhausted yesterday from lack of sleep, and then she lost another night’s sleep tonight. Not because an airplane was shot down, and not because of some amorphous threat from a stolen weapon which may or may not exist.
She didn’t sleep because Stone had gone to Africa to find that missing weapon, and that frightened her. She wasn’t psychic. She knew that about herself. If anything, she was the opposite of psychic. Things came out of the blue and hit her on her blindside. She was resilient, she was a fighter, but she couldn’t see the future.
Even so, she seemed to have a premonition about Stone. Maybe it was just worry, but it seemed that—
The phone started ringing, its hideous buzz tearing through the stillness, its blue strobing light giving the room a sudden circus atmosphere.
She went over and picked it up. “Hi, Kurt.”
“Susan. Hi. Did I wake you?”
“No,” she answered honestly. “I was up.”
“Good. We’ve got some developments. Agent Stone and his team arrived in Niger a few hours ago. He and Agent Newsam have moved on to the forward operating base on the border with Nigeria, while Agents Swann and Wellington have set up a command center in Agadez. I’ve spoken personally with Agent Swann and facilitated his acquisition of a surveillance drone in your name.”
Susan nodded. “Good. Has he seen anything with it?”
“He’s watching troop movements near the border between Nigeria and Chad. Chadian milita
ry are bringing tanks, heavy guns, and helicopters to the edge of the Sambisa Forest where it crosses into Chadian territory.”
“Do we think that has something to do with us?”
“We don’t know,” Kurt said. “More likely, there is a Boko Haram presence there, which Chad is repelling. Swann says he’s going to keep an eye on it.”
Susan rubbed her head. “Why don’t we just ask Chad what they’re doing?”
“Chad is a funny place, Susan. You don’t just ask them what they’re doing. We consider Chad a failed state, and the government both kleptocratic and non-functional at the same time. They might know what their military is doing, they might not. If they do, they might tell us, or they might lie to us.”
“Okay, okay, Kurt.” He was the man who knew too much. Did he ever give it a rest? “What else?”
“I’m anticipating fast movement now that Stone and his team are in place. If he finds the weapon, we may need to authorize an immediate incursion into Nigeria. So I’m convening a meeting in the Situation Room for seven a.m. Sound okay?”
Susan glanced at the clock. Seven? It was an actual civilized time to meet. She had a bit more than an hour to shower, get dressed, eat a little breakfast, and drink a lot of coffee. The schedule seemed almost too luxurious to contemplate.
“Sure. I’ll be there.”
“This could be a long one, Susan.”
“Well, we’ve had long ones before.”
“Good,” Kurt said. “I’ll see you soon.
After she hung up, she stood for another minute at the window. Far to her left, the first light of day was beginning to appear. She was past tired, at that point where a person stopped being tired and simply started over.
“Stone,” she said again. “Don’t die out there.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
12:35 p.m. West Africa Time (6:35 a.m. Eastern Standard Time)
