Implant

by Jeffrey Anderson

  “You know what I think?” William said. “I think Charles will try something, and soon.”

  In fact, William thought as he looked to the east, where the sun lit the horizon in pink, he suspected that Charles had been busy throughout the night, preparing a counter punch. Where and how would it fall?

  #

  Malcolm Hathwell leaned back in his Broyhill Giannelli leather executive chair. To his left, Abe Goldberg studied a bank of monitors suspended from the ceiling that showed captioned video news feeds around the world and current valuations of handpicked equities updated twice a second. To his right, James Ivie sat before a solitary computer screen, which was hopelessly dwarfed by the table on which it sat.

  All three had been there all night. The room smelled like stale turnips. And yet, Malcolm was quite sure that either of his senior partners would happily wash his feet if he so much as suggested it. The atmosphere in the room was like a college frat party without the beer and women.

  The best part was that the financial markets were in such turmoil that nobody even knew yet what he had pulled off. There had been no calls from the Wall Street Journal, no congratulatory emails from Warren Buffett or Peter Lynch. Almost anyone who could have appreciated his triumph was either hungover or frantically trying to catch up.

  Within seconds of leaking the news about the Namibian oil field, Malcolm’s buying spree had begun. He had it timed perfectly. A frenzy ensued, and he was on the rising edge, pushing the price of over two dozen core equities higher and faster than anyone could have believed. And he kept buying.

  The acceleration in price started a panic. The key was to know when to stop. Only one man had done the calculations to predict the correct valuation of the companies in play given the suggested size of the new oil field. It would have been nice to have a week to run more rigorous economic forecast models, but his team of investment bankers had done a damn good job. No leaks.

  So when price of oil collapsed in the American futures markets and companies on his watch list in Hong Kong, London, and Tokyo exchanges approached three times his expected valuation, he flipped the switch. The last two hours had been all about selling.

  He’d started slow, trying not to be noticed among the buying that continued unchecked all around him. Then he started in earnest, shedding stocks as fast as he could and putting his profits into rock bottom oil futures. His partners had been more than skeptical.

  “Ride it further! Ride her like a bitch in heat!” had been Goldberg’s advice, but Malcolm had done the risk analysis – anything beyond three times valuation and he was likely to come down with the ricochet.

  Ivie had been on the brink of overriding Malcolm when the news feed came in, like an angel of God, riding in on gossamer wings. There was unrest in the Namibian capitol. Unconfirmed reports of violence. Malcolm’s partners had stared in shock at the unexpected news.

  “Get off your asses!” he shouted. “Sell everything, now!”

  Thank God they’d been selling already or they’d have been caught with their pants down, like everyone else. They liquidated every last share.

  It had been just in time. An hour later when it became clear there was a coup attempt underway, the market became violently erratic. Two hours later, it crashed. Now Malcolm watched with a grin as one by one, the stock prices overshot his valuation in a downward trajectory. News feeds all over the world were about one thing, the Namibian coup. Nobody had crews on the ground, but they would within hours. In the meantime, there were parades of experts and pundits, discussing every frantic phone call in pigeon English from Windhoek residents.

  And Malcolm had made more money in the crash than he had in the buying spree. Pure gold. He owed Terrance big time. Of course, “owed” was a term of art in his business. Like he owed his mother for washing his socks. It didn’t mean his mother would get anything but a nice birthday card and a phone call on Mother’s Day.

  When the news came that trading on American exchanges was suspended for the rest of the day, Malcolm was sitting on twenty billion dollars that hadn’t been there twelve hours earlier.

  Chapter Forty-one:

  Ian’s army approached Windhoek from the north. They seized the B1, which was the main trunk road into Windhoek, near the slums on the northwest edge of the city. There was an army blockade across the highway, behind which a long line of cars trying to flee the city had stacked up.

  Julia thought there would be a fight, but after a brief exchange of gunfire that sent civilians fleeing in all directions, the Namibian army forces retreated into the city.

  Ian and Julia rode in a Jeep near the front of the formation and he stood to watch the retreat through a pair of binoculars. He sat back down as the Blackwing commanders shouted through bullhorns to clear civilian vehicles off the road.

  Once the road was clear, Charles Ikanbo and his Central Intelligence Service men streamed past in trucks armed with heavy machine guns, scavenged from Blackwing supply depots at Ondjamba. They exited the B1 a quarter of mile ahead of where Blackwing set about fortifying the roadside.

  “Where are they going?” Ian asked.

  Julia had a map spread in her lap. She glanced down, then up at the exit signs. “Hosea Kutako Drive. It will take Charles into Windhoek Central.”

  Ian pulled out his satellite phone and raised one of his commanders. “Follow Ikanbo. Go until you reach—” He tapped at an intersection on the map.

  “Robert Mugabe,” Julia filled in. She looked at Ian. He was sweating, uncomfortable, distracted.

  “The intersection with Robert Mugabe. If it’s occupied, back off and wait for reinforcements. If not, take it. If you can, send a recon force forward until the intersection with—” He looked down again. “—Nelson Mandela. We’ll need to hold it, too.”

  “You okay?” she asked once Ian switched off the radio.

  He shook his head, pointed to his chest. “It keeps going off – and not in a good way.” But when she opened her mouth to intervene, he said, “Not now. I’ll manage.”

  Ian’s Blackwing forces were only about two hundred strong so far, and they didn’t expect reinforcements until 1700 hours. They had to secure the northern edge of the city until then.

  Meanwhile, Ikanbo, who knew Windhoek better than Ian or the mercenaries could ever hope to, would follow back streets and make his way toward the airport on the southern edge of the city, avoiding firefights if at all possible. Two of Ikanbo’s men in the capital had avoided arrest and called earlier to report that Charles’s brother was holed up in the Presidential Palace near the airport, coup headquarters. Ikanbo hoped to cut the head off the snake, kill the rebellion before it could take root.

  Ian sent his fellow agent, Steve Billups, together with a pair of Blackwing officers—a Belgian and an American—to reinforce the bunkers they’d seized from the rebels. Men carried heavy machine guns and boxes of ammo. A truck mounted with rockets parked under hastily spread camouflage netting. Crotales surface to air missiles. They would be helpless against a serious American air strike, but more than enough to chase off Namibia’s own decrepit air force.

  It was already midday. Traffic was heavy leaving the city, light on the approach, as word no doubt spread about the coup, but even so cars came down the B1, maybe trying to reach family, or protect homes and businesses in Windhoek. Some cut across the other side of the highway and fled as quickly as they’d come, but others came to an abrupt halt against the blockade. Very soon the pileup blocked both the road and its shoulders on both sides.

  From the city came the sound of gunfire, and a heavier thump of mortars. Ian’s face turned grim. He turned to Julia. “It’s too early for a firefight. He’s nowhere near the palace.” Ian turned back to the jammed up road behind them. “We’ve got to keep it clear, or we’ll never get those reinforcements.” Sweat was pouring down his face now. He clutched at his stomach as though nauseous.

  “I’ll clear the road,” Julia said. “Give me some men with guns. We can route traffic to
the other side. I’m a civilian, they’ll trust me.”

  He looked her over, as if assessing her fitness for duty, then nodded. He grabbed several men, gave them curt orders to follow her.

  Julia made her way to the first car. Inside were two young men, dressed in blue overalls with hard hats and tools in the back seat. They must have gone to work as normal before someone told them about the coup. She tapped on the glass of the driver’s side window.

  “Can you turn the car around, please? We need the road clear.”

  “We not go nowhere until we get mother’s house,” the driver said.

  “Where is your mother?” she asked.

  “Wanaheda. I get off at Monte Christo, I be there in few minutes.”

  She looked beyond the car with mounting dismay. Even while she was arguing with this man more cars were joining the queue. Behind her, the Blackwing soldiers looked disgusted with the weak way she was confronting this man.

  “You can’t do that,” she said. Her exasperation was mounting. “If I let you past, everyone else will want to get into the city, too. The situation is too dangerous and—”

  “Who the hell you are anyway?” the man asked. “Where police? Who these foreigners?”

  “Get off the road!” she shouted, her patience suddenly broken. She snapped her fingers and waved for the Blackwing soldiers. They approached the car and lowered their weapons menacingly, as if waiting for Julia’s command to fire.

  The driver shrank back. “Okay, okay. Where I go?”

  She directed him to cut across the median, then turned to the next car. This time she started with the angry, demanding tone, and got better results. The third car needed only a gesture and it turned to follow the first two. Within minutes she had an orderly line of cars turning back from the city. Only a few holdouts required threats.

  There was a roar and two jets streaked overhead. Julia instinctively flinched, stunned by the noise from the concussion of air. Blackwing forces shouted, ducked for cover. In the city the fighting had intensified. And then, without warning, one of Ian’s heavy machine guns fired a volley toward Windhoek.

  Ian was on the ground, next to his Jeep. Had he been shot?

  Julia turned to the soldiers. “Keep this road clear. Just keep sending the cars back.”

  She turned and ran back to find Ian on the ground, completely still, his pupils pinpoint specks of black. Was he breathing? Slowly, she saw. His pulse was also slow, weak. Two men stood over him, helpless. One man shook his head, the other said, “I don’t know what happened, he wasn’t hit.”

  “Stand back, move. I know what to do.”

  They’d gone so long since the incident on the highway in Utah that she’d almost forgotten that the implant still could receive commands, and the CIA likely knew exactly where he was. Quickly, she took his left hand in hers and moved his fingers in sequence to restart the implant.

  “Come on, Ian. Come on.”

  There was no response. Panic rose inside her as Ian remained motionless. This was not post-ictal. No reason for his pupils to be so dilated. And why so much sweating? Something was going on in the implant. Ian had said as much, and she’d been stupid not to figure it out before now, when there was a crisis.

  Julia looked to the sky but saw nothing but clouds and the contrail of a distant commercial jet, well past the city and moving east. The war planes had left no visible mark in the sky, though she could still hear them roaring in the distance.

  A pair of armored trucks pulled in, part of the first wave of reinforcements. They immediately took fire from whatever force continued to gather against them. It was quickly turning into a major firefight. She had to get Ian up and back in service.

  “Who is in charge of that missile battery?” she asked.

  “The Crotales?” someone asked. “There’s a firing control specialist at the computers, but Westhelle said not to touch it unless those jets attacked.”

  “Yeah, well there’s a plane up there we need to take out. Maybe more than one.”

  “What is it? One of those F-16s?” the man asked.

  “No, a spy plane. I don’t know, could just be an unmanned drone,” she said. “But you have to find it and shoot it down, or at least chase it off. It’s the plane that’s doing this to Ian.”

  But she wasn’t as confident as she sounded. If it wasn’t a command from a plane, then what was going on? Had the implant fried his brain. No, or his pupils would be dilated. He’d be posturing. She forced herself to think systematically. Diaphoresis, constricted pupils, slow breathing and heart rate. It didn’t make sense.

  If she didn’t know better she’d think he’d been oversedated. He looked exactly like a patient who was coming out of anesthesia with too much fentanyl on board.

  Opiates. Of course! Ian had been talking about the feeling he was getting from the implant, a feeling he liked. The sweating, shallow breathing. She should have seen it earlier. The implant was triggering something that mimicked a response to opiates. Chang. Had to be. He’d switched out the energy stim program to one that stimulated brain regions loaded with endorphins. Frontal lobe, insula. They’d generated more than enough data during the weeks of training. And Ian’s brain had learned to autostimulate, essentially a reflex by now.

  Like a monkey pushing a lever for drugs as fast as it could go, his brain had overdosed.

  She was livid. Chang. How dare he… “Get me a medical kit. I need naloxone, now!”

  Something landed nearby, exploded. She shielded his body from the rain of dirt and asphalt. The Blackwing soldiers were in full battle mode now. One man went down, screaming and clutching his leg. She had a hard time seeing the incoming fire, but she could hear it chew up the pavement and ping into vehicles. And every man or machine she could see was returning fire.

  The radio in the Jeep started to squawk. “Blackwing One, come in.” It sounded like Charles Ikanbo. “Are you there? I need immediate assistance. Can you hear me? Blackwing One?”

  Three missiles screamed skyward from the SAM battery. They raced off in different directions.

  Two of them disappeared to the east, but the third veered toward the bush-coated hills on the west side of the city. The two F-16s broke apart, dropped something that flashed behind them, and then veered back toward the city.

  She didn’t see it coming, didn’t hear it. Just one moment she was looking at the two American fighter jets, then the next moment they banked sharply away. And then the explosion.

  It lifted the truck with the missile battery high into the sky. A clap like a lightning strike, inches from her head. She fell back on the pavement, stunned. Secondary explosions. Ian lay next to her, unmoving.

  Ikanbo was shouting on the other end of the radio. “Dammit Blackwing One, where are you? Westhelle?”

  #

  Charles Ikanbo led his security forces almost to the edge of the airport before he found himself in trouble. Platoons of regular army troops patrolled the streets. The first two platoons fled when they saw his force approach, more than a hundred and fifty in number, equipped with RATEL and VAB armored personnel carriers. Whatever they’d signed up for, it hadn’t been to get slaughtered in a firefight with superior forces.

  The road to the palace would be well defended. The palace sat near the airport and this gave Charles an idea. Rather than try to blast his way through the road he could cut across the airport tarmac and then slice through open country and knock holes in the fence to approach the palace from the rear.

  At the airport they took fire from a .50 caliber machine gun and small arms from men in sandbag bunkers. By the time Charles took out the .50 cal, a T-55 tank rumbled into view from across the airport tarmac. The tank fired once, missed, but before Charles could bring his anti-tank guns to bear it had taken better aim and fired a second shell. This one hit one of the RATELs and punched through its armor like it was made of cardboard.

  His men fled the burning wreckage. Others screamed as they burned alive. A pair of Namibian army A
PCs sped in to join the tank, together with trucks, further to the rear, loaded with Namibian regulars. Meanwhile, Charles’s men bunched up behind him, unable to spread out and bring all their firepower into the battle.

  He didn’t need the airport and he couldn’t take it. He’d have to attack the palace directly.

  “Pull back!” he shouted, then again into his radio, “Pull back to Mandume Ndemufayo.”

  The enemy forces didn’t follow, perhaps worried that he was trying to lure them into a trap. The RATEL continued to burn behind them, sending a column of smoke into the air. Their first engagement and a clear loss.

  He pulled back to the intersection then cut around the airport. As he’d expected, there were Namibian army forces on the road that led to the palace, but they were few in number. The RATELs and the HUMVs opened fire. The army forces returned fire. An RPG screamed past Charles’s Jeep. He pulled behind one of the RATELs, which pinged with small arms fire.

  The road was wider here and he was able to bring more of his forces into the action. Soon the enemy was either dead, dying, or in full retreat.

  They surged toward the palace and were forced to pull short again. Two T-55s flanked the entrance, additionally protected by concrete barriers, and his brother William had dug in with dozens of men in sandbagged positions. Charles ordered his men to take cover among the trees and attack the fortified positions.

  Progress was agonizingly slow. He knocked out two of the bunkers and several mortar pieces but couldn’t dislodge or destroy the tanks. Meanwhile, he lost another APC and half a dozen men. He took a pair of outbuildings on the opposite side of the street and used them for cover. One was nothing more than a cinderblock foundation, and it was here that he made his headquarters.

  Two jets streaked over, American F-16s. He watched them with dismay. He had to get in there and end this thing.

  Charles got on the MILSATCOM satellite radio phone. “Blackwing One, come in.”