by James Phelan
Fullop looked down at the table and shook his head, a touch of drama.
“I’m not sure the President would agree about sending US forces so deep into a potentially hostile country,” he said, clutching at a last straw. “And who knows, maybe this Achebe government will be better for us?”
“Well, right now I hold that office,” Jackson said. “And this is the direction we’re going in: Bill, Don, Pete—get your boys moving towards Abuja, whatever we’ve got spare that’s close. Buy us more time. Give us options.”
“That’s a green light to stabilise the government?” Bill McCorkell asked.
“Did he say that?” Fullop said, sensing a victory in this argument was still within his reach. “I think you need—”
“Look,” the VP said. “Move them to the area. Secure the elected government. Have the State Department let the Nigerian President know what’s going down in his backyard. And I don’t want us taking our eyes off the ball here at home. We’ve had an attack on American soil today that has taken innocent lives. Make no mistake: no one fucks with America tonight.”
42
PORT HARCOURT CITY LIMITS, THE NIGER DELTA
Fox had trained with the best military operators in the world. He’d seen action in Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan. He’d been shot at too many times to count, and hit twice, which was two times more than he would have liked. He also well knew that there is a sensation that comes with being under fire that one never gets used to. The sounds you can train yourself to cope with, to react the right way around. But it’s the randomness that you can never escape. The unpredictable nature of an unknown enemy. The chaos of munitions exploding around you. It leaves the best-trained weary, the untrained behind.
Fox ushered Gammaldi across the ground, pushing him towards the riverbank. The militia were responding with fire now, the deep crack-crack-crack of 7.62 mm rounds from the L1A1s, the fast staccato of AK-47s peppering the air.
“Boats, twenty metres!” Fox called to Javens, who had Rollins pinned to the ground by the back of his shirt collar.
“Got it, move in five seconds,” Javens said, getting ready to move. He grabbed his Walther from Godswill, who looked about himself in the darkness. The whites of his eyes were alive but calm—he was used to this, this was his kind of warfare and it was about to be fought on his terms.
A militia soldier fell by Fox’s feet and Fox took his L1A1 and passed Gammaldi a Browning High Power pistol.
“Let’s move!” Fox said, leading the way to one of several tin boats with outboard motors. Militiamen were lined up on the riverbank, hunkered behind sandbag cover as they fired up at the helicopters that were now making another pass. Several RPGs whistled into the sky, the dark night swallowing them up.
Fox had the outboard going and powered away from the bank as the three climbed aboard. The Honda outboard was at full throttle; the bow rose into the air and twisted with the torque pressure. As they rounded a bend away from the camp, several attack boats came in from behind them, the militiamen pouring fire towards them.
“Contacts ahead—get your heads down!” Fox yelled over the battle sounds. Two big watercraft with wind turbines on the back, like the airboats you’d see in the swamps of the US, came fast at them, machine guns mounted on the sterns spitting out long arcs of 7.62 mm tracer rounds.
“They’re militia!” Gammaldi said, as the two craft flashed by either side of theirs to go and join the fight in aid of their comrades under attack.
“Take this left—”
“I got it,” Fox said, rounding the bend. “I’ll take us back the way we came.”
It was eerie now. Fox’s heart raced at one-eighty as he navigated the river bends, the other men equally on edge as they scanned for threats. The sounds of dozens of firearms intermingled with explosions from RPGs and grenades. Fires licked into the humid air and smoke punched into the heavens with each explosion, the mushroom tops floating into nothing.
“I can see the boathouse ahead,” Javens said.
“Got it, cover our approach,” Fox replied. Both Gammaldi and Javens were in stable firing positions at the prow, while Rollins kept himself in a tight ball in the middle of the boat, clutching the briefcase that Godswill had given him.
Inside the boathouse Fox killed the engine and held the boat to the timber jetty for the others to jump off. They retraced their path through the courtyard, the bakery, and into the street. The firefight was still within hearing range, and the two militants had long disappeared from their post guarding the Range Rover.
Javens opened it and they piled in, Fox up front in the passenger seat this time. He tossed the L1A1 to the ground, as it was far too long a rifle to use within the car. Climbing in, he unholstered the snub-nosed MP-5K strapped to his side of the console. Ejected the clip, checked it was full, rammed it back home and chambered a round.
No sooner was the last door shut than Javens had the black beast roaring down the gravel road. Only the under-bumper driving lights lit the way ahead as the MI6 man navigated the streets, with a couple of near misses as two vans loaded with militia raced past.
“Buckle up,” Fox called, doing up his own seatbelt.
They passed scores of locals running—men and women, old and young, kids even. Running towards the firefight. Almost all were unarmed.
“Why are they heading towards the trouble?” Gammaldi asked.
“They’re going to help in any way that they can,” Rollins replied. They rode in silence for a few blocks, watching the crowds race past them. Fox watched them move by as if in slow motion. The faces were those who had seen violence their entire lives, possessed of the type of psyche that has built up a tolerance to what most people could never fathom as bearable.
“Where’re we headed?” Fox asked.
“Over land, the airport is too choked up with oil companies leaving, this is a city tearing itself apart,” Javens said. “We’ll make for the Deputy High Commission in Lagos, we’ve got regular airlifts out—”
“Helo just buzzed overhead!” Gammaldi said, the aviator craning to look out the side and back windows.
“He see us?”
“Don’t think—”
Machine-gun fire tore up the road to their left and pounded a row of storefronts, concrete and glass disintegrating in showers of dust and debris that they drove through like a sandstorm.
Fox watched as the helo zipped overhead and made a banking manoeuvre—heading back, straight at them.
“You got anything else in this rig?”
“Two smoke grenades in the glove box,” Javens said, taking a hard right as two tracer streams tore up the road ahead like laser beams. Despite the low-profile tyres and super-low air suspension, the Range Rover threatened to roll in protest of taking a sharp corner at eighty clicks an hour. “This baby is armoured, but anything heavier than rifle rounds and I’d rather not be in here.”
“You read my mind,” Fox said. He pulled out the smoke grenades, and passed one over his shoulder to Gammaldi. Normally used for signalling to aircraft, in this case they might provide some cover.
Javens noticed Fox contemplating the grenade.
“Sorry, old chap, but 007 beat me to the garage; he took the Rover that had the heat-seeking Stingers built into the roof.”
“Fucking Bond,” Fox said, smiling as a plan formed. “Take a hard turn behind some buildings and come to a stop—we’ll release the smoke and fire through it with the MP5s.”
“Got it,” Javens said, squinting ahead. “Hard left, five seconds!”
Fox nodded to Gammaldi in the back and both men pressed “down’ on their windows. The thick bullet-proof glass slid away as they pulled the pins on the grenades.
“Now!” Fox yelled. He and Gammaldi tossed the grenades, the orange smoke billowing into the sky. In moments they were surrounded by it, the plumes twice as high as the two-storey buildings that made up the street canyon they were in. The Range Rover skidded to
a stop under ABS—Fox leaned out of his open window and looked down the sights of the MP5K. He flipped the switch on the submachine gun, just forward of the pistol grip—FULL AUTO. He took a sniper’s breath—measured, calm, steady. The sound of the helicopter thumped down on them, appeared for a brief moment—entering the space that Fox pre-sighted. Wild shots sprayed the buildings as the helicopter pilots juggled shooting with this new surprise ahead of them, as Fox let rip the entire clip perfectly. It was a couple of heartbeats before the helicopter was in the space he’d just fired into, and every bullet hit home, the left-side canopy becoming spider-webs as it shattered. Something bright red painted the interior while Gammaldi’s MP5K clip hit home along the length of the fuselage as it passed close overhead, the sound like hail on a tin roof.
Javens planted his foot and spun the wheel, and they were out of there as he did a one-eighty on a dime. Fox and Gammaldi pulled themselves in and pressed the windows back up.
All occupants scanned the sky, even Javens as he navigated the streets. The massive supercharged engine was roaring.
They travelled ten blocks before anyone was game to call it.
“We’ve lost them,” Fox said. He turned in his seat and punched fists with Gammaldi.
“Victory!” Gammaldi mock-yelled like a Viking.
Javens settled to a more sedate driving style, more rally-driving through city streets rather than driving for the last few miles of the Dakar with another team on your tail.
“Clutching on to that briefcase pretty tight,” Fox said to Rollins. “Checked it out yet?”
Rollins audibly exhaled, then loosened his grip and popped the clasps.
“I think—” Rollins was looking forward and his eyes went like saucers. Fox tensed at the look and spun around in the seat—
“Hard left!” Rollins yelled.
Two MOPOL police vans were ahead, and an unmarked Toyota Land Cruiser. A dozen guys with guns let fire, bullets sparking as they struck the Range Rover.
“RPG!” Fox yelled.
The world seemed to halt in Fox’s point of view. The flaming rocket-propelled grenade corkscrewed its way straight at them.
Javens hit the brakes and yanked hard to the right but it was too late, the RPG struck the rear of the Range Rover and took out a back wheel and the rear-window. The interior filled with dark acrid smoke.
Fox looked out the back-window hole—their rear wheel was bouncing down the street. They were still travelling at sixty kilometres per hour on three wheels.
“Lost the brakes!” Javens said.
They were lame ducks in the long expanse of street ahead, with no turn-offs visible.
“Hold tight!” Javens said, taking another hard turn that took them straight through the glass front of a bookstore—and he kept the accelerator to the floor, the three wheels driving the three-tonne tank through stacks of shelves and right out through the back wall—all twelve airbags deployed—and into the next street where they T-boned into a row of parked cars and came to a smoking halt. Bricks and debris covered the windshield.
Fox and Javens were out in a flash, guns drawn, scanning for threats. There was banging from the inside of the car—Gammaldi on the glass of Rollins’s side window.
“Door—open!”
Fox slung the strap of the MP5K across his shoulder as he placed a foot on the side of car and yanked on the door handle. It wasn’t going anywhere, jammed tight.
“Climb through the front!” Fox yelled, as bullets tore up the road behind him.
Javens was at the back of the Range Rover for cover, firing from one knee at the approaching MOPOL sedan.
“Clip!” Fox yelled—and caught a fresh mag in one hand from Javens as he ejected with the other. He reloaded like a pro, military training coming back to him in the well-drilled precision that never leaves a Special Forces soldier.
The attacking sedan had a passenger and back-seat gunner, both with pistols. Javens and Fox let rip with two clips on full-auto—the interior looked like a bomb had gone off. The siren stopped but the remaining red light still swirled as the lifeless car passed them and continued on down the street, carried by inertia.
Javens ran across and checked for survivors. He reached in, retrieved something, came running back.
Rollins and Gammaldi were out of the Range Rover, and they scanned the scene. A few civilian cars had stopped farther up the street; the occupants had run from the mayhem when the bloodied police car ambled past.
“They’re after you, all of you,” Javens said. He presented what he’d taken from the police car—photocopied pictures of the three of them. All taken from a long-lens camera.
“They’re from the airport earlier today,” Rollins said. “Why would they be after us?”
“Cars, let’s move!” Fox said, and led the way to the deserted vehicles. It was a two-hundred-metre dash that felt like two kilometres by the time they got there.
“The Jag!” Javens said.
Bullets ricocheted off the bitumen at Fox’s feet, a couple more disintegrating the side windows of the Jaguar. He drew his Five-seveN pistol from his backpack and fired two double taps at the approaching Land Cruiser—its driver swerved into a side street, the mortally wounded gunman almost falling out of his open passenger window.
It was decision time. Fox looked up and down the street. It was deserted for the moment, but not for long. Four empty cars still had their engines running. The Range Rover was now on fire down the road and the dead police car was stopped at about the same distance down the other end of the street, its light still slowly revolving. In an instant the heavens opened up and rain belted down on them in a wet-season downpour.
Fox moved to Javens. The intelligence man knew the plan.
“I’ll head the chase off,” Fox said.
Javens shook his head. “I’ll do it. I’ll take the Jag and lead the chase elsewhere,” he said. He ran a hand through his wet blond hair. “Take the highway to Lagos, Rollins knows the route. I’ll alert the Deputy High Commission that you’re on your way.”
“You know the way better than me. I’ll spread the chase around here,” Fox said. But he knew that the Englishman was right.
“I know these roads, and I know people around here. Take the others and get in that Golf and drive as fast as you can,” Javens said. He didn’t bother with handshakes or goodbyes. He got in the Jaguar and gunned the old V12 engine. “Besides, I work better alone.”
43
THE WHITE HOUSE
McCorkell left the bathroom and walked into his office. He entered his password into his computer and scanned the emailed information on former CIA agent Steve Mendes. Within seconds he had his phone on his shoulder, waiting for the White House operator to connect him through.
“Ridley, Bill McCorkell.”
“Get the info on Mendes?” the DDCIA asked.
“Just reading it now,” McCorkell said, scrolling down the CIA personnel file on his screen. “He left the agency in a mess. Suspension of duty, that’s what was suppressed in his file?”
“That, as well as some deniable ops stuff in Iran and some erroneous rendition details. The previous director cleared his slate after a bargain: Mendes gave us a Taliban leadership cell and nearly got himself killed in the process. Evidently it worked in his favour too, as that cell was in opposition to the forces he had allied himself with in the north of Afghanistan. Seems he had two employers for a while at the end there.”
“The agency and who?”
“Whoever paid the highest,” Ridley said. “I’ve got an FBI counter-espionage agent on my other line who has an ongoing investigation on Mendes, he seems to know this guy inside-out.”
“Patch him in,” McCorkell said.
“Andrew, you there?” Ridley asked.
“Yep,” the voice said. “Mr McCorkell, Special Agent Andrew Hutchinson.”
“Ridley was just telling me that Mendes went gun for hire.”
; “That’s right,” Hutchinson said. “Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan—”
“Right, got it, all the ‘Stans’,” McCorkell said. “I suppose Uzbekistan is on that list?”
“Yep,” Hutchinson said. “Worked with the richest guy there, I’m talking serious oil money, then helped him make a push for presidency.”
“What happened?”
“Two weeks before the polls he was assassinated by his own brother,” Hutchinson said. “Poisoned.”
McCorkell chewed the info over for a moment.
“Mendes ever do anything to connect him to the IMU?”
“IMU were the eastern franchise of Al Qaeda at the time he was in the country. He was known to those guys, and they had a price on his head—probably still do,” Hutchinson said. “He worked on their turf for a few years, hunting Al Qaeda mainly, then not long after the US invasion he called in a Predator strike against a known IMU leadership meeting with senior Taliban in northern Afghanistan.”
“Right, I got that one,” McCorkell said. He read over the file. “He called them in as KIA from a Hellfire strike launched from an Agency Predator UAV. My problem is, Al Jazeera have just announced two of those listed as KIA as those responsible for the LOOP attack.”
“They what?” the FBI agent said.
“Al Jazeera called it not ten minutes ago,” McCorkell said, checking his watch. “Look, both of you go over this stuff and get back to me with a total file on this guy, the short version. Ridley, get any and all assets you can into Nigeria—”
“Most people are headed back Stateside, the oil industry—”
“Just get assets in there.” McCorkell noticed another line still blinking on his phone. “We got some DoD cavalry inbound to play, possibly to take Mendes and Achebe out if it comes to that.”
