by Steve Richer
Again, Hewitt forced himself to smile as broadly as their host.
“Glafkos Kranidiotis,” Hewitt said in greeting. “Long time no see.”
The old man shook hands with his guests.
“Indeed. You have a new partner?”
Preston nodded and began, “I’m Pres... Pressman.”
He almost bungled and gave away his real name but he was proud of his last-minute recovery.
“If you don’t mind, we’ll conduct this business quickly. My granddaughter is supposed to be here any minute now and I promised her we’d go sailing.”
Kranidiotis motioned for his guests to sit and he did the same.
“All right, we shall be quick. We need weapons.”
“Of course you do. No one ever visits me for my spanakopita. What do you need?”
Preston produced a list from his pocket.
“AK-47s, Colts 45, fragmentation grenades, Claymores, ammunition, C-4, night-vision goggles. We need radios, maybe Clansman PRC-23 or PRC-319.”
“I can take care of some of these but forget about Kalashnikovs.”
“Why? They’re durable and easy to use. They’re my most important item.”
There was a reason why the Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle was the most popular in the world. You could drive a tank over it or immerse it in sand and it still fired accurately. Made cheaply with steel and plywood, they were some of the most enjoyable weapons to operate.
“I lose money with Kalashnikovs. If your order is worth more than ten million euros, I will provide Kalashnikovs free of charge. Under that amount it is impossible.”
That was bad news. Along with Carver, they had decided that these weapons would be ideal for their troops. Their African mercenaries were bound to already be familiar with the AK and it would therefore ease their preparation phase.
“What kind of assault rifle do you have to offer then?”
“I have come to have in my possession some wonderful Croatian surplus APS 95s. For pistols, I have some reliable FEG P-9s. Can I see your list?”
Preston handed him the sheet of paper and said, “Can you handle these quantities?”
Kranidiotis went over the list and pursed his lips, deep in thought.
“I can get you this for say, eighth hundred thousand.”
Ouch.
“That much?”
“This is not stolen equipment. I have to pay my people, I have to pay for transport. I don’t sell junk.”
The young American looked at Hewitt who nodded discreetly.
“All right, it’s a deal.”
“Give us a few days to provide payment and the end-user certificate,” Hewitt pitched in. “As always, it’s a pleasure doing business with you, Glafkos.”
They shook hands but all Preston could think about was about the newly inflicted large dent in his bank account.
Chapter 42
The monkeys had to feel invaded because they were howling madly this evening. The sun was in the final stages of setting down for the night and this far into the jungle it was already pretty dark. The high canopy was the only thing exposed to the dying orange light.
William Carver might have been a Marine and a soldier of fortune – and those guys weren’t typically prone to complain – but he hated standing where he was at the moment. There was a reason why the word jungle was often associated with chaotic situations.
There was The Asphalt Jungle, that movie about criminals and a jewel robbery. The inner-city was often referred to as the jungle and so was the Wall Street boardroom.
Most of Katoga was geographically comprised of a vast savanna, grasslands plains with small trees dotting the landscape. The trees were scattered enough so that the canopies never touched and this allowed the sun to penetrate all the way to the ground, making the grass grow tall and strong.
The south part of the country was different. The land rose steeply and the higher altitudes meant more humidity and therefore lush vegetation. It was a genuine rainforest and it was what kept the Albreda River from drying out, small streams running down the mountains to feed it.
Carter didn’t like this environment. He wasn’t by nature claustrophobic and technically he wasn’t in a confined area. However, the jungle made it seem like one was imprisoned as there wasn’t much breathing room. The howling monkeys did nothing to calm his nerves.
He was with six of his mercenaries, his sergeants. This wasn’t a typical military organization but he insisted on keeping the standard ranks as everybody was already familiar with this system. He also had two captains acting as officers. There were no lieutenants.
They had driven their two trucks as far up into the jungle as the narrow trails allowed them. The dirt road had finally stopped at a small shack which, Carver had been told, had once housed a detachment of wildlife protection officers before the Katogan government had proceeded with budgetary cutbacks.
It didn’t matter. They knew where they were going and the place was deserted. They had to walk half a mile through the jungle before they would reach a wide clearing. Carver had found the place on Google Earth and had then flown over the area to make sure, having rented a Cessna plane in Cameroon.
It got darker with each passing minute. It got spookier. As his ears adjusted to being in this foreign environment, he heard more than monkeys. There was the rustling of woody vines against the trunks of the tall, emergent trees.
There were chirping frogs leaping through the epiphytes, those vegetal which grew on other plants. Carver tried to divert his mind but he could swear he heard the hissing of a snake that was way too close for comfort.
He wasn’t the only one growing nervous. His sergeants, all native West Africans, would also rather have been with civilization. Just because they were from Africa, people often thought they were used to chasing lions and running with gazelles. It was not so.
Carver had spent the last two months going through Sierra Leone, Cameroon, and Liberia to recruit soldiers. Most of the men who had signed up had already served with him in the past.
The others had been recommended, having been deemed consummate professionals by men he trusted. It helped that Carver was himself African-American; his soldiers were much less suspicious of a foreigner who shared their skin color.
Following recruitment, a training camp had been established in a remote area near Yokadouma, in Boumba-et-Ngoko. They didn’t have weapons yet, aside from a few AK-47s provided by a couple of the sergeants, so marksmanship training was out.
Carver wasn’t disappointed for two reasons. First, these men were already soldiers and had performed mercenary work in the past; they knew weapons. Second, the operation they were planning didn’t rely on firepower so much as on stealth of movement and surprise.
So instead of spending days trying to hit the bull’s-eye on a paper target, Carver organized deployment exercises according to McSweeney’s instructions. They studied maps, estimated enemy response times.
Of course, they did calisthenics and practiced drills to keep disciplined and in shape, but mostly they spent weeks preparing for what they hoped would be a bloodless coup.
The great thing about walking through the rainforest was that the floor was almost clean. Sure, the underfoot was moist and soft but there weren’t any shrubs or bushes to impede the walk since the sun didn’t breach this far through the foliage cover. Finally, they found the glade, slightly brighter, though the sun was almost gone.
Oh shit, Carver almost shouted.
Right there, in the middle of the clearing was a beast. It was in the middle of ripping to shreds the carcass of a dead monkey. The body was slender and powerfully built. Its eyes were ferocious as they looked up from the feast to inspect the intruders.
Carver was the only person armed in the group. He had his personal Colt 1911 pistol which he’d had since becoming an officer of the Marine Corps decades before. He took it out of his holster but didn’t aim it at the creature which he could now identify as a leopard, notici
ng the dark spots on its yellow skin.
He was considering what to do about the animal. He had spent enough time in Africa to know that the leopard killed its prey by biting the throat, suffocating it. If he just scared it away, it was likely to come back and this could be deadly for him and his mercenaries. The leopard runs as fast as 36 miles an hour, way faster than him.
They wouldn’t stand a chance.
Then again, they were at a critical phase of their operation and they couldn’t risk a gunshot jeopardizing their success.
Carver aimed his sidearm to eliminate the leopard, hoping that the .45 caliber would be enough to stop the animal, when his mind was made up for him. The leopard, took a last bite of his meal, shook its head nonchalantly, and sprinted into the jungle.
The soldiers approached the carcass cautiously and when they were close enough Carver noticed that there was no more meat on the bones. They had stumbled upon the leopard as it was finishing up dessert.
“Looks like he’s already been fed. We should be good for now, as long as that little cat doesn’t have any relatives nearby.”
They fanned out and inspected the clearing which was shaped like a triangle with the base measuring 20 yards and the two other sides being twice as long. There were no other threats that they could see and they sat down to wait.
An hour went by.
Two of the sergeants got into a conversation, arguing over the merits of carnal relations with older women as opposed to inexperienced teenagers. Each was unable to understand the other one’s point of view.
A third sergeant eventually joined the conversation and accused the both of them of actually being virgins and a fight nearly broke out.
Carver was about to intervene when the unmistakable sounds of a prop airplane became audible. Everyone stopped bickering, they knew what they had to do. Infrared strobe lights were produced and turned on. They were military grade and designed for marking airstrikes.
Using sighting equipment, the people on the plane would know where the people on the ground were and when to send in the equipment.
As if on cue, the airplane became visible overhead, flying at only a thousand feet off the ground. A dark shadow in an even darker sky, movement was seen behind the aircraft. It was boxes, entire pallets in fact, being thrown out of the plane. They were tethered by parachutes.
While the cargo was falling, the plane went further up the mountain and made a U-turn in order to perform another pass. Once it was over the clearing again, another set of pallets was dropped. This time, the aircraft continued on and didn’t turn back. They had delivered the whole load.
Carver and his men stood clear as the boxes landed. He had to give credit to the pilot and his loadmaster as every pallet ended up in the glade. Only one parachute got tangled in a tree on the edge of the clearing but the box was well within sight and only rested six inches off the ground.
As the sound of the propeller engines died away, Carver stepped closer to one of the pallets which had landed sideways after having hit another box. It was comprised of metal crates stacked three high by two deep and a heavy nylon net kept everything together.
Carver produced a flashlight to inspect the cargo. There were Cyrillic markings painted on the side of the crates. He could read APS-95 - Končar-Arma d.o.o. They had finally received the weapons needed to conduct the overthrow of the government of Katoga.
The relief and satisfaction Carver was feeling was dampened by the fact that now they had to carry all this equipment half a mile through the jungle to their trucks.
This would be an interesting night.
Chapter 43
The flight came in late although by this time Jasmine couldn’t really tell anymore. Her system was out of whack, caught between jetlag, fatigue, and apprehension for what was coming.
She was also surprised, rather unpleasantly in fact, that she’d been able to listen to almost an entire audio book during the flight between Los Angeles and Katoga. She only had one chapter left from the latest Dan Brown novel and now that they were on the ground there was no telling when she’d be able to finish it.
She had to wake up Gervasi when they landed. The man was a machine; he had slept all the way from California, waking only for meals and plane connections. She wondered how he did it and was jealous. He would be all fresh and rested, ready to track down their suspect, and she would slow him down—perhaps even be a liability.
They went through customs and it did nothing to reassure Jasmine about the world’s prospects for global peace. The customs officer was barely out of his teens, his uniform was badly stained and missing two buttons, and his idea of good posture was to plant his elbow on the counter, cradling his chin in his hand.
He barely looked up at Jasmine as he stamped her passport. She could have been Osama bin Laden’s twin and he never would have known.
Another thing that got on her nerves was how Gervasi was dressed. He was wearing jeans and an Aloha shirt over a white T-shirt. Sure, they weren’t here in an official capacity, legally speaking, but they were here for work.
This warranted upholding decorum. She had dressed for a tropical climate with beige pants and a white blouse yet she still appeared respectable, not like she was on vacation.
They each carried their luggage – one suitcase for her, two for him – out of the main airport building, a relatively tiny structure the size of an American supermarket which housed the customs office and various service counters. They headed for a small parking lot in the back after having been directed by the car rental agency.
“Jesus it’s hot,” Gervasi complained.
“That’s why they call it Africa.”
Jasmine was glad for her hairstyle choice. Her hair was in a high ponytail, allowing a good airflow around her neck.
“You have any idea how we’re going to track McSweeney? If he’s not staying in a hotel, I mean.”
“He is a white man on the dark continent. How hard can it be?”
Once in the parking lot, Gervasi inspected his rental car key ring and led the way to a Mitsubishi SUV. Jasmine got behind the wheel while her partner loaded up their luggage. Gervasi sat in the back and Jasmine noticed that he had no intention of moving up front.
“You think I’ll be your chauffeur?” she asked with no small measure of accusation.
“You hate it when I drive.”
She pondered this for a moment as she was about to retort. After a second of hesitation, she conceded with a shrug. He did drive too fast and braked too hard. She wasn’t about to give him the wheel on these unknown roads.
In the back, Gervasi dug into the bigger suitcase and produced his pistol and holster which he proceeded to clip to his belt. It would be concealed by the Hawaiian shirt. Then, he pulled the second, somewhat smaller case closer.
He popped it open and removed black steel pieces. Jasmine was intrigued by the movement she caught in the rearview mirror. She squinted and that’s when she realized those metal things were actually rifle parts.
What the...
Gervasi continued assembling the pieces and a few seconds later they became a HK G36C carbine.
“What are you doing?” she asked with concern. “You brought a tactical rifle here? We have no jurisdiction in these parts.”
The assembling was now complete, the sleek German weapon gleaming in his hands.
“Just drive,” he answered grimly.
He inserted a full magazine and cocked the weapon.
Jasmine had been working with Special Agent Paul Gervasi for over two months and he’d always been relaxed around her. Today he was completely different, with a glint in his eyes she had never seen. There was an intensity on his face that suggested focus, coldness, and determination.
For an instant, Jasmine was scared.
Chapter 44
The place was remote enough so that Preston McSweeney and his guys didn’t have to worry about being stumbled upon. They were in a lowland area in the northwest of the country.
A dozen trucks – everything ranging from small pickups to 2.5-ton vehicles – were parked to one side. The mercenary sergeants were gathering their men together, speaking in French, English, Krio, Lingala, and Swahili.
Everyone was dressed in work uniforms which could make the men pass for anything, from janitors to mine workers. That was precisely the point. Military uniforms had to be avoided as to not scare the populace and give themselves away.
The crates of weapons collected the other night were in the middle of the group, ready to be distributed. First, William Carver needed to finish doing the inventory. It was standard operating procedure, he’d done it countless times before.
He never forgot that the word mercenary meant doing something for money and he didn’t put it past his men to steal the equipment for their own benefit. He trusted these men with his life, not his money.
At long last, Carver nodded at Preston who was standing nearby. The job was done and the weapons could be issued to the soldiers. They had 24 hours left before the operation was triggered and it was time to get ready. Carver flashed the OK sign to one of his two captains and he in turn motioned the sergeants to come and get weapons.
“We’re cutting it a little close, don’t you think?” Preston asked.
“My men are well trained, they know the operation inside and out.”
Preston nodded and said, “I trust you.”
And he really did. The mercenaries had spent weeks rehearsing their assignments. They had just crossed the border into Katoga less than two days ago. It was a little last-minute for Preston but Carver was adamant it wouldn’t be a problem.
