“And it didn’t occur to you, even then, that I might be innocent?”
“It occurred to me,” Markov conceded, “but that’s always a possibility with an extra-legal killing. I have to operate on probabilities.”
“Listen to yourself. Extra-legal killing? Probabilities? You’re cold blooded. Clinical.”
“The word you’re looking for is disciplined.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Ian said. “You tell yourself that and maybe you’ll feel better next time you hunt down an innocent man.”
“Innocent? I don’t think so. What you did in Africa was one thing, but what about all those guards you killed at the psychiatric ward?”
“Do you have any idea what those guards did to me? They drugged me, beat me, came in with tasers and shotguns and they were going to take me out one way or another. Talk about probabilities. Where’s the probability in that?”
Julia had hunched over the computer, absorbed in her work, but now she looked up and seemed to notice the tension between the two men for the first time. “Guys? Back off, will you.”
Markov said, “Everything is fine. Ian has some unresolved issues. It’s a good time to get them out in the open.”
“Doos,” Ian muttered.
Some part of Markov was enjoying the exchange. Physically, he was no match for Ian, but it was easy enough to provoke the man. Just don’t push too far.
Julia turned back to her work.
“There!” she said with a note of triumph. She stepped back from the computer. Progress bars streamed across the screen, one after another. “Now it’s just a question of sending it off to your friends in the NSA, see what sense they can make of the data.”
Markov had phoned a contact at an NSA data center in the states, called in a favor. The contact was every bit as good as Chang, but more trustworthy.
It would take about two hours until the data streamed back to their computers in Namibia. In the meanwhile, they retired to the veranda. Markov’s men waved Julia over to look for a rhino that they said they’d seen trotting through the brush about ten minutes earlier. It was amusing to watch them compete for Julia’s attention.
He spotted Ian on the far end of the veranda, ostensibly looking over the same expanse of brush and thorny trees, but to Markov’s eyes watching Julia and the three agents. Markov made his way over. Ian turned with a wary look.
“She’s a beautiful woman,” Markov said. “Bright, funny. Guy like Terrance Nolan doesn’t appreciate what he’s got.”
“Their marriage wasn’t so good,” Ian said, “but she’s pretty upset anyway.”
“A lot of people have bad marriages,” Markov said, “but most of them don’t end with one spouse killing the other.”
“Or passing information to a hired killer, in this case,” Ian said with a sideways glance at Markov.
“I guess he could say that it was his job. That’s my own excuse.”
The ranch was well-watered, which meant it teemed with bugs, especially as evening approached. One of Markov’s men turned on the bug zapper. It glowed blue and immediately began to collect a harvest of fried insects.
“It only kills the harmless bugs,” Ian said. “The biters aren’t fooled.”
“Maybe that isn’t the point.”
“Maybe you’re right. The thrill of the hunt and all that. Not exactly big game, though.”
“Are you sure?” Markov asked. “Look at that one. What is that, a beetle? Sounds like a helicopter. You could mount that on your wall and impress all your friends.”
Ian laughed and Markov found himself liking the young South African. It was the kind of easy camaraderie that came naturally to ex-military guys of the same rank, which, for the moment, they were. But when the time came to act, what then?
“Good thing my wife isn’t here,” Markov said after a minute of silence. “She hates bugs.”
“Ah, so you’re married. I was wondering about that.”
“Yes, I am. Seventeen years. Three kids.”
“What’s she like?”
“Realistically, my wife isn’t a head-turner. I think she’s beautiful, though. And she’s a gentle person, good mother, and very patient. And patient is good, because people find me a bit of an asshole at times.”
“No? Really?” Ian smiled. “Hey, at least you admit that you can be difficult. The true assholes never notice.”
Markov changed the subject abruptly. “Kendall Rose was a good man and a hell of an agent. You two had a great partnership.”
“I let him down. That guy saved my butt more than once. When it was my turn, I couldn’t do it.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You were stabbed in the back.”
“I should have known. Things went wrong from the moment the implant told us to get up and leave our tent. That wasn’t in the plans and I knew it was wrong.”
Markov cringed as he remembered how events had unfolded in the operations room. He’d known about the modification to the implants, known about the order to leave the camp. It had been Deputy Director Nelson’s call. Markov had raised an eyebrow, but figured there must be a good reason. It had seemed rushed, careless. After that, things turned chaotic in a hurry, with contradictory pieces of information coming back about a battle, casualties. Nelson immediately called CIA Director Price, and rushed to the Director’s office, who in turn brought in the Director of National Intelligence, Sarah Redd.
Meanwhile, Markov was out of the loop. It was hours before they briefed him on what had happened and now he was pretty sure a lot of what they’d told him was a lie.
“Why did you come back, Ian?”
“I want to know the truth.”
“Of course,” Markov said. “But then what? Say you find out Sarah Redd is responsible, or that I’m lying and that I’m behind it. Or maybe it was just a screw up.”
“I want to find whoever is responsible and make it right.”
“Kill them, you mean. Revenge.”
“No, not that,” Ian said. “I’ve killed people before, but not like that. Revenge isn’t my thing.”
“Then what?”
“We send it up the chain until we find someone who can punish the people responsible.”
“Unless the conspiracy goes all the way up. What then?”
“The newspapers. CNN.”
Markov nodded. It was clear Ian hadn’t thought this through all the way. He was still hurting and angry, and in spite of his assurances Markov wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t go rogue and look for justice from the barrel of a gun.
“What about you?” Ian asked. “You’re not following orders anymore. What are you hoping to do?”
“I am following orders. My orders are to serve my country. You get out here, where the rules don’t apply, sometimes you have to follow your gut.”
“Your gut? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Okay then, your conscience. And common sense. I’m not the one who has gone rogue, it’s the people who screwed up your mission and have been furiously trying to cover up their mistake ever since. Here’s the thing, Ian,” Markov continued. “I’m not in the CIA because I like cloak and dagger stuff. I’m here to advance the legitimate interests of the United States. You get out here—Africa, Middle East, especially—and there are no rules. Terrorists are everywhere, constantly scheming to attack our country in one way or another.”
“Only this isn’t an Al-Qaeda camp,” Ian said. “We attacked some commercial venture. Oh, and a couple of American operatives.”
“Exactly. I don’t care about the Chinese or the Namibians. But go after my men and I start to get annoyed. I’ve got your back.”
“I’m touched.”
“I thought you would be. Do you want to hug now, or wait until Julia isn’t watching?”
Ian laughed. “I’ll take a rain check.”
Julia had gone back inside in any event. She came back a few minutes later and approached Markov and Ian. “Looks like your friend at NSA delivered. We’ve got
video, a transcript, some audio files.” She smiled broadly. “Jackpot.”
________
Charles Ikanbo looked through his binoculars at the farm house. There were two men on the veranda, one white, one black. He couldn’t tell if they were locals or foreigners, or if they were armed. Another white man stepped onto the porch a few minutes later, lit a cigarette and gestured at something to the north.
Charles had been watching for ten minutes and hadn’t seen anything to definitively answer his doubts. It had taken twenty minutes of edging forward on his hands and knees from brush to brush until he found a good vantage point to study the house.
There were animals on the ranch, and he didn’t feel overly comfortable lying on his belly, waiting for something to come along and find him. It reminded him of a boyhood spent with his brother, William, herding goats. Two skinny boys, armed with nothing more than a pair of sticks. There had been some thrilling moments in the bush. At least this time he had a gun.
Charles lowered the binoculars, wiped sweat from his eyes, then tried again. He still couldn’t decide.
Two white men and a black could be right—that was the makeup of Anton Markov’s team. But he couldn’t see weapons, and no sign of the short Markov himself, or of Dr. Nolan or the South African who started this whole mess. Just three guys on the porch as the shadows grew long, watching a bug zapper and smoking an occasional cigarette.
Was it possible the information was wrong? Maybe this was just a tourist farm and private game preserve. There were dozens of them around the country.
It would be dark soon and he had to make a decision.
Charles waited until it looked like all three had turned their backs, then he scooted away. A few minutes later and he was walking toward the truck. He dusted himself and tried to look confident as the two men at the truck straightened to attention.
“Well?” one of them asked.
“It’s them, I’m sure of it.”
“Then we’ll move in?”
“Yes.”
They’d cut an entrance in the barbed wire fence on the south side of the ranch. In the near dark, with no headlights, it took a few minutes to find. Meanwhile, Charles called the rest of his men on the radio. They met him on the road within half an hour.
It was a well-trained, sober group. Most of them were older and had once served in the army before joining his security forces.
Samuel Ubo voiced the question all of them must have been thinking. “And what if we approach the house and find out we’re outgunned?”
Ubo was a tall, intense man and one of the brighter, more loyal men under Charles’s command. It wasn’t a question backed by cowardice, but caution. Charles would rather have a dozen cautious men than the kind of guy so common in the army, full of false bravado but likely to turn tail and run when faced with organized resistance.
“If I’m right, they only have five men, maybe six,” Charles said. “We’ve got thirty two.”
“What about what happened in Kaokoland?” Ubo asked.
Charles had arrived on the scene with his men only to find himself outgunned by the Blackwing mercenaries—who could have annihilated him in minutes, had they not cooperated. And a single CIA agent, holed up under a burned-out APC, had killed two of his men, only given up when he exhausted his ammo.
The problem was that his intelligence forces were limited in what they could carry. The thinking was that the intelligence services, secretive by nature, posed a threat that could only be neutralized by imposing limits. One of those limits meant that his men were only armed with semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, or handguns like the Glock that Charles currently wore at his side.
He needed some RPGs and heavy machine guns.
“We’ve got more than enough firepower,” Charles said. “And it will be easy enough to exaggerate what we’ve got, anyway. We’ll circle the trucks around the ranch house, turn on the lights. We’ll come in from every direction.”
“There’s no cover out there. What if they start shooting?” someone else asked.
“There’s cover. There’s the dry wash, and that outbuilding. And the berm on the north side, we’ll set up some men behind there.”
They were right, Charles knew. A couple of guys with fifty caliber machine guns could keep them pinned down almost indefinitely. He couldn’t afford a siege, or to have to call in the army. Not when the army itself was suspect.
In the end, he decided to call in more men. Fifty should do it, he thought, which meant he needed twenty more. He had that many watching outlets from this spot, most within fifty kilometers of here. Bringing them in would leave him blind outside the confines of the ranch.
But better to be sure here, take the risk. Fifty men would give him enough to approach the building in overwhelming numbers while still holding back enough in reserve to open fire on the building should things turn ugly.
Meanwhile, night fell and his men grew anxious to move. After he made the calls, Charles waited, impatient, for the others to arrive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Julia put the footage from Kendall’s implant on the largest monitor. Markov and Ian leaned in for a closer look.
Markov’s friend from the NSA had decompressed the data stream, then returned it as video footage with audio spliced in. There was a strange, dreamlike quality to the footage, as if that dream had been filmed through an ancient video camera. The focus jumped around, and looked as if someone had set the zoom on maximum and forgotten about it.
That camera was Kendall Rose’s eyes. She couldn’t see him, just his arms, shoulders, hands, depending on where he was looking. Kendall turned his gaze to Ian, then looked out the windshield. Armed men flanked the car, dressed in dark uniforms with berets. The truck was moving.
A mechanical voice came through from off screen. It was stripped of normal inflection and tone, as though played from an old phonograph at the wrong speed. The audio cut out frequently with a hiss of high-frequency static. “Drive until … the water tanker. Park …”
“Who is that?” Julia asked.
“Dupont,” Ian muttered. “He was sitting in the truck behind us.”
“Henri Dupont,” Markov said. “He supposedly died in the attack.”
“He did,” Ian said. “I saw his face come off. Killed by that C-130. You’ll see. You’ll see it all.”
They led Kendall in for a strip search while Ian waited outside. Julia found it hard to watch, but Kendall bore the abuse calmly, seemingly unconcerned as the woman passed over his body with latex gloves while Dupont made rude comments, many of which were unintelligible. Kendall and Ian passed each other, then Kendall went on to get something to eat from the mess while Ian went to his inspection.
“Let’s skim this part,” Markov said. “I’ve seen it all from Ian’s implant. Go forward to the part where Kendall and Ian get their orders.”
“Right,” Ian said, “the part where you make us twitch and dance. Like a puppet on a string.”
“Not my choice. I voted against the optional functionality and I wasn’t the one who sent you those orders.”
“Convenient.”
“Shh,” Julia said, hunched over the computer. “I need to pay attention.”
Julia tried to concentrate, but she was watching Ian out of the corner of her eye. The footage had apparently brought back all the memories, the feelings of betrayal. She wondered how deep those feelings went, how long the scars would take to heal. He looked distracted, in his own world.
The two men shut up while she worked. It wasn’t quite like fast forwarding a DVD, and not all of the footage was in the same file.
Quieting them down proved to be a mistake. Ian’s anger reminded her of Terrance. Why would he do it? They had so many years together, so many shared memories. She could find the good ones without much trouble, buried like nuggets in all the drudgery and strained moments of their daily life.
He’d all but signed off on her death. No, he’d as good as pulled the trigger himse
lf by sending her that Trojan Horse.
She scanned through the footage until she got to the point where Ian and Kendall were in their tents, lying on their cots. Kendall lay down, closed his eyes and the image of the tent slipped in and out of focus, then was replaced by darkness. Ill-defined swirls of light played along the contours of the afterimage of the tent.
“That guy could sleep anywhere,” Ian said. “Rocks, sand, scorpions, bombs, didn’t matter. He wouldn’t even so much as ask for a pillow.”
Suddenly, Kendall’s eyes flicked open, or that’s how Julia saw it as the monitor went from black to gray with dim outlines.
“Get dressed, leave tent, go left and walk until you reach the cistern.” The words sounded mumbled, like they’d gone through a voice distorter.
“Is that it?” Markov asked. “Is that the command?”
“Yes, that’s similar to what I heard,” Ian said. “Haven’t you seen this part already, just from my perspective?”
“Not this part, no. I’ve got the transcripts of what you heard from the engineers when you were crouched on the other side of the wall.”
The command came a second time and Kendall walked out while the Ian on the screen sputtered something incomprehensible.
Ian was intent now. He leaned over Julia’s shoulder to see what his friend had seen in those last minutes before the air strikes.
Kendall passed a bunker, then crept near a truck with a box mounted on a column. There were tubes with what looked like missile tips poking out.
“Is that a mistral?” Markov asked.
“Looks like it,” Ian said. He turned to Julia. “French surface to air missiles. Portable. Wait, freeze it there.” He pointed to something on the edge of the frame. “Is that a tank? No, wait.”
“Giat 155 mm mobile artillery,” Markov said.
“Ah, yes.” He let out a low whistle. “Wow, and this is a private army. They answer to a corporation?”
“Welcome to my world. Some days I feel like the whole CIA is obsolete,” Markov said. ‘”It used to be that the United States spoke and the world at least listened. Now wars are fought by private companies. They have their own spies, their own economies as big as some nation-states. They send men to die, and it’s not about freedom or even power. It’s as simple as protecting the bottom line to stockholders. Guys like us have been outsourced.”
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