Implant

by Jeffrey Anderson

  Westhelle had a couple of artillery pieces that should be arriving shortly from the Ondjamba camp. He could target those tanks. Charles would need a spotter, too.

  He tried again. “Are you there? I need immediate assistance. Can you hear me? Blackwing One?”

  Fresh waves of gunfire and exploding RPGs pummeled their position. Charles looked over the cinderblock wall. Regular army forces were approaching the palace from the road he’d just taken. There were two APCs and a couple of trucks. He was now wedged between the enemies in the palace and the ones that had seized his escape route.

  An explosion rocked the city from the direction of Ian Westhelle’s forces. A column of smoke rose into the sky. One of the F-16s roared back over the city. A shell smashed the cinderblock wall. The air was alive with bullets and dust and screaming men.

  It was all falling apart. He needed help, and now, but it sounded like Ian was under attack as well, maybe even dead, since he wasn’t answering. Charles picked up the sat phone to try again, but without much hope.

  “Dammit Blackwing One, where are you? Westhelle?”

  Chapter Forty-two:

  Markov took the news calmly, but inside he was angry that Sarah Redd might be let off the hook. Lose her job, of course, but avoid criminal charges.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” he said into the phone. “I understand.”

  “We’ve got to contain the fire, that’s the most important thing.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “Good. She’s expecting your call.” He sounded tired, disappointed. It must pain him to have Sarah betray him and then escape punishment. The President hung up without saying goodbye.

  Markov understood the President was none too pleased with the turn of events. Even though Sarah had not been acting under presidential orders, the media frenzy would eat him alive. “Mr. President, don’t you think it shows bad judgment to appoint an intelligence director who started a war without your knowledge?”

  “Mr. President, how is it possible you had no knowledge of such a massive intelligence action?” It would turn ugly fast.

  The media hordes had arrived. Like locusts, they would devour everything and everyone involved, and then they would fly off in search of fresh stories to consume. Reporters from three dozen different bureaus, some even foreign, had arrived, set up crews shoulder-to-shoulder, and aimed cameras at the hotel room window of the Director of National Security. Sarah had not shown her face a second time.

  Markov stood by himself on the opposite side of the street. One of his men gave interviews across the street, acting as point man.

  He phoned Sarah. She picked up at once.

  “Hello Anton. How are your spirits holding up? It must be very painful to have lost.” She sounded gloating, in spite of having seen her plot crushed.

  “Cut the crap, Sarah. You’re the one holed up.”

  “Yes, but a year from now this will all blow over. You’ll still be laboring anonymously for eighty, ninety thousand a year. A nobody. Me? I’ll have a lucrative job as a consultant or on some board of directors.”

  “Only if you cooperate in full,” Markov said. “That’s the deal. You’re going to help me end this thing, and you’re going to start right now.”

  “Not yet. You haven’t heard my terms.”

  “Terms? What the hell are you babbling about? Terms? The president gave me terms already. You cooperate one hundred percent or spend the rest of your life in Leavenworth.”

  “I want the news crews gone, or I don’t come down,” she said.

  “You don’t need to come down. You’ll give me the info on the phone. Once I’ve taken care of business, then I’ll find a way to get you out without facing the press. Now start talking or I’ll come up and damn the consequences.”

  “Fine, whatever. What do you want?”

  “That’s better. For starters I need you to unwind whatever you’ve got going with military support for the rebels. After that, I want a written statement confessing everything you’ve done, tried to do, or would like to have done, and the names of anyone else involved. We’ll stop this thing fully or I will make it my personal mission to destroy you.”

  “You can’t do that. The President said—”

  “Watch me.”

  Sarah was quiet for a long moment and he thought she would balk again, but at last she sighed, “Fine. Here’s what you need to know about U.S. military resources in play.”

  #

  Ian rose shakily to his feet. He had that disoriented feeling that you got when awakened in the middle of the night after you’d had a few too many drinks.

  “What happened?”

  Julia held his arm with a worried look. “Chang messing with the implant again. That feeling you were getting – it was the implant triggering a response like you get from morphine. I gave you a drug that blocks the opiate response.”

  There was still shooting from the APCs, but the action had subsided somewhat. He’d also gained fresh men and materiel from Blackwing forces streaming down the B1, which he still held. Chief among them was a top of the line Caesar truck-mounted mobile artillery unit.

  To the right, the Crotales missile battery lay in smoking ruins and several dead men lay nearby.

  He took in the scope of the loss of men and equipment. “Jesus.”

  “They fired their battery and it came under attack by American jets,” Julia said.

  “They fired at the Americans?” he asked. He looked around for one of the commanders to get an update, but they were busy with the new forces or trying to dislodge the last of the Namibian soldiers from the buildings on the far side of the intersection. “That was stupid. An invitation to attack.”

  “I told them to do it,” she said. She chewed on her lower lip. “I needed to drive off anything that might be sending signals to your implant. I wasn’t sure…”

  Ian nodded. His head was clearer now and he could see the thoughts that had led her to that reaction. “That’s fine, I understand. Where are the Americans now?”

  “They flew north about five minutes ago. Charles was trying to get you on the radio, but it stopped. I tried to reach him, but couldn’t.”

  He rubbed his head, which throbbed as if he’d taken a blow to the skull. He went to the Jeep, picked up the radio. “Blackwing One, calling CIS Main.”

  “Westhelle, is that you?” Charles asked. It was hard to hear him over the sound of explosions and gunfire coming from his end. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Took incoming fire. Clear now. Status?”

  “I need backup, now. I’ve got a pair of T-55s to the front, one to the rear. Incoming fire from all directions. There’s got to be half a battalion. They’re kicking our ass.”

  “Give me coordinates. I’ll hit those tanks from here.” The Caesar would prove its worth in about two minutes.

  “Can’t. I’ve lost my spotters. I need ground assistance.”

  Ian hesitated, frustrated. He reviewed the size of the newly arriving forces, reconsidered. “I can push through. Opposition is limited, reinforcements have arrived.”

  “Make it quick,” Charles said.

  He told Julia to open the map again, then called his forward position. “Blackwing One, calling Blackwing Two.”

  “Blackwing Two,” said a man with a French accent.

  “Position secure?”

  “Barely. We took a hit from those jets. We’ve got casualties. They coming back?”

  “Don’t know.” Ian said. “What else?”

  “We’re taking fire from down the road and there are a couple of enemy platoons holed up in adjacent buildings. I’m hunkered down, returning fire, but not advancing.”

  “I need a clear route to the airport, which means I need those buildings emptied.”

  “I can do it,” the commander said, “but it will be ugly.”

  “Civilians?”

  “They’ve fled, for the most part. But we’ll have to destroy some of these buildings to clear them.”r />
  “Do it,” Ian said. Buildings could be repaired, rebuilt. “Feed coordinates to Blackwing Three. We’ve got fire support.”

  “You got it.”

  Ian took a moment to reinforce their position at the intersection with the newcomers. He set up the Caesar in the center, where it suffered the least obstruction from surrounding buildings, then ordered the position fortified with APCs and sandbag bunkers. It could fire better than six 155 mm rounds a minute in sustained combat or a snapshot barrage of three rounds in fifteen seconds. Placed at the intersection it could provide support all the way to the airport, the palace, and beyond. Unless the American jets returned, and then it was dead.

  “I need you to stay here,” he told Julia. “You’ll be safer.”

  “I don’t want to be safer, I want to be with you.”

  The barrel of the Caesar lifted skyward. It recoiled with a deceptively quiet thump. Moments later, an explosion echoed farther into the city.

  “There are people dying out there, I can’t risk it.”

  “It’s no safer here,” she said. As if to emphasize her words they took fire from the north. “Besides, there are medics here to look after the wounded. I can be useful up there, save some lives. Let me get some bandages and morphine from the medical stores. And if you go down again. I’m the only one who can help.”

  It was a convincing argument. Never mind, there was a part of him that wanted her nearby, too. Keep her safe by keeping her close, though he knew well enough that there were no guarantees on that score. Ask Kendall.

  Once Ian was satisfied he could hold the intersection, he led a thrust down the road in a convoy that was maybe two hundred and fifty strong.

  The crack of small arms fire filled the air as they passed a wall of sandbags a quarter mile down the road. “Get down!” Ian shouted.

  Julia was already on the floor of the APC.

  With one hand on the radio, Ian directed the driver to accelerate with the other. He screamed the coordinates from his handheld GPS. “Twenty-five meters northeast!”

  A massive explosion shook the air. A plume of dust hung in the air above the bunker. The artillery strike from the Caeser had been a bullseye.

  He made about a block a minute at first, then picked up speed. Within twenty minutes he was at the airport. There he met a T-55 and a pair of APC carriers. The tank, foolishly, had fortified itself behind a pair of overturned trucks. It kept it immobile. Ian fed its coordinates the Caesar.

  The first artillery shell missed by a few feet, but exploded with enough strength to rock the forty ton tank on its treads. The second shell—a moment later—slammed into the tank with unbelievable force. The turret went flying end over end like it was made of Styrofoam. The enemy APCs retreated, but RPGs from Ian’s forces disabled one of the vehicles. It was abandoned on the tarmac and soon destroyed, with its men cut down as they poured out.

  The airport was littered with wrecked airplanes and shattered terminal windows. A fuel truck burned with a heat that rolled across the tarmac. They cut through William’s troops staggering along the path and soon pushed toward the battle that raged on the far side, near the Presidential Palace.

  The enemy had dug in at a ditch and concrete wall at the edge of the airport and fired with what looked like 60 and 120 mm mortars, as well as heavy machine guns. Ian’s spotters radioed a strike from the Caesar before they attacked.

  By the time the first shells hit, the Namibian army troops had completely turned around and now directly faced Ian’s forces.

  Chapter Forty-three:

  Charles Ikanbo felt the pincers close in and saw everything falling apart. He had little cover, he was outgunned and outnumbered. Every Central Intelligence Service man was worth two Namibian regulars, but they were outnumbered three, four to one.

  The Presidential Palace was tantalizingly close. He could see men coming and going with his naked eyes, once even saw a man directing the battle who yesterday had been one of his CIS agents. His snipers almost took the man down. Almost, but not quite.

  He listened to part of a Namibian Radio broadcast during a brief lull in the fighting, when he tried, but failed to raise Ian on the radio.

  It was the craven Prime Minister, urging all Namibians to unite behind the unity president, William Ikanbo, while the crisis resolved itself. “You may have seen mercenaries and spies in the city, as well as a few traitors,” he said. “Do not give them aid. Their goal is to recolonize Namibia and put the country under control of a new Apartheid government. Brave patriots are resisting this enemy and will soon drive them from our country.”

  Charles turned it off in disgust. If only he’d moved more quickly. If only he hadn’t lost his spotter before Ian Westhelle got the Caesar artillery ready for fire support. If only the presence of the American jets dropping bombs in support hadn’t stiffened the rebels’ resolve.

  The enemy renewed its attack. They drove Charles into a tighter circle, protected only by a few trees, some smashed buildings, and whatever return fire he could direct to hold them off. For almost an hour he had been fighting the losing struggle. Another twenty, thirty minutes and he would have to surrender. Save some of his men.

  Suddenly, the enemies at the airport stopped shooting in their direction. It took a moment to realize what was happening, even as the sounds of battle—grenades, the heavy thump of machines guns, together with the lighter chatter of small arms—increased in that direction.

  Ian Westhelle’s voice came over the radio. “Here I am. Better late than never.”

  “Get those tanks,” he said. “They’re killing me.”

  “Where?”

  “In front of the palace.”

  “Got it. Give me a sec to pinpoint their location.”

  The shells seemed to come from nowhere, and arrived at such velocity that he neither saw nor heard them come. A flash of light and heat and the turret flew off the first T-55, with the second knocked back a good five meters, disabled.

  For a moment, the sounds of battle seemed to cease, and then the fighting grew more furious than ever. He caught his first glimpse of Ian and the Blackwing troops. They had the enemy on the run, but there was nowhere to retreat. Some rebels squirted out to the west, but the rest emerged from their protective ditch or behind the concrete wall. Exposed, they were easy targets.

  Ten more minutes of fighting and the CIS and Blackwing forces merged. Charles couldn’t see Ian, but he didn’t wait to regroup and make plans for a counterattack. The rebels at his back along the airport were gone, the forces that had pinned him onto the road seemed to be pulling back, uncertain, and the enemies guarding the palace had lost their two tanks.

  Ian wasn’t done calling in artillery strikes. Shells blasted enemy APCs, machine gun nests, mortars, enemy-controlled buildings, and any other target that showed itself.

  Charles led a group of two APCs, a Humvee, and two trucks to assault the palace itself. Within minutes he was at the front doors. He directed gunfire, RPGs, and small mortars at the walls, doors, and windows. Small arms fire cut down two of his men as they set up a .50 caliber machine gun, but he returned better than he got.

  As soon as he had the grounds reasonably secure, he jumped down from his vehicle and gathered a small force to assault the palace. The Blackwing troops were still engaged with rebels on the road and mop up actions near the airport.

  Charles entered the building with twenty men. It was less than half the force he’d taken to assault the farm house, and he felt a hint of the old caution returning. But he didn’t dare wait. Their advantage might be temporary; if the American jets returned, they could annihilate his forces, destroy the Caesar artillery. He had to end this, now.

  He didn’t like the Presidential Palace, never had. It represented everything wrong with Africa. It was gaudy, ornate and oversized. Built by the North Koreans (now there was a model for Namibia to follow) at a cost of a billion Namibian dollars (officially), and dedicated with great fanfare. It was a monument to a glorious so
cialist future and freedom from imperialism.

  Stepping inside, he was shaken by the destruction. The art and cultural icons on display had been looted or destroyed. Cabinets lay on their sides with doors smashed to splinters. Bullet holes tore up plaster and marble tables lay in pieces. The paintings were gone from the wall, every niche that had once held a pot or basket—Namibian heritage—had been emptied. Some of these things lay broken on the ground. Most were simply gone.

  A half dozen rebels made a stand in the hallway off the cabinet meeting rooms. Charles lost one, killed three, took three more captive. He lay the prisoners side by side on their bellies, had his men jab them with gun barrels.

  “Where is he? Your so-called president?”

  They were quiet.

  “It’s over, he’s lost. And you are the traitors who supported him. Speak up or I’ll line you up against the wall and execute you for treason.”

  “End of the hall. Last room on the right. He’s trying to call an American helicopter to send a rescue.”

  Charles left two of his men to guard the prisoners. He led the others down the hall. They kicked in each door in turn, to guard against ambush, but most of the rooms were empty. He took two more prisoners, but avoided more firefights.

  There were only two men in the last room, William and a single bodyguard. William was speaking on a cell phone, pleading with someone on the other end. He turned as Charles entered and his face fell.

  The guard threw down his weapon and lifted his hands. He stepped away from William, distancing himself from the former Minister of Mines and Energy, the self-proclaimed president of Namibia.

  William dropped his phone and bent as if to grab for the man’s gun. Charles didn’t shout a warning, just waited with a feeling of grim satisfaction for his brother to make the move. He had a dozen men in the room already, each with a weapon pointed at William Ikanbo. Let him do it, let him pay for his crimes right here and now.

  But his brother seemed to think better of the move, no doubt making the same calculation. He stopped, straightened and lifted his hands to put them over his head.