Blood Oil

by James Phelan

  “Okay,” Fox said. “I believe you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I believe you.” Fox stood up and pocketed the pepper spray. He picked up the Five-seveN, his finger through the trigger-guard. Onouarah’s expression said that he knew what was about to happen.

  “No—no, my friend—I have money, in the drawers, the bedroom, fifty thousand—”

  “It’s off to the next life for you,” Fox said. Onouarah’s eyes were wide, realising now that Fox could not be bought. The inevitable would roll on. “But I promise you won’t be lonely.”

  Before Onouarah could speak Fox had put the bag over his head again, pushed him over the edge of the bath and applied enough pressure on the trigger of the Five-seveN to paint his brains into the bag and watch them pool into the water of the bath. His fat body shook for two seconds and then collapsed with the dead weight.

  Fox turned, washed his hands in the basin, soaping them hard, scrubbing off blood, imagined and real. He looked up into the mirror. His blank stare finally focused on his reflection. He wasn’t sure who the face in the mirror looking back at him was—didn’t have time to consider it either—as he felt a presence at the door. He reached for the pistol but it was too late—the door was open.

  The three young women were standing there. Each wearing shirts from the guy’s wardrobe, swimming in them like oversized night-dresses. They clung to one another for security. Their eyes were wide and they settled on the lifeless form of Musa Onouarah. A curious if welcome sight for them.

  “It’s okay, he’s gone,” Fox said. He didn’t know what to say beyond that. He picked up the pistol, the P90 still slung over his shoulder. Their young eyes still didn’t move from the corpse.

  Fox went into the bedroom, took Onouarah’s wallet from the dresser, and emptied out all the cash—about ten thousand Nigerian dollars and a grand in US bills. He rummaged through the drawers, finding thick wads of used US bills.

  He handed all the money over to the girls. Then departed without a word.

  60

  CITY MARKETS, DOWNTOWN LAGOS

  Steve Mendes cracked his knuckles, shifting his weight in the chair at the outdoor bar. The afternoon crowds of dockworkers were arriving to drink, and there were even a few tourists, by the look of them. He had a quick scan to make sure his six security guys remained alert. They were tough characters, all hand-picked by himself from a friend’s private security firm in Moscow. Not the gun-shy suited types, these guys wore military pants, boots, Kevlars over T-shirts, submachine guns ready in their hands. All ex-para somethings, who would kill as soon as speak.

  Mendes checked his watch, looked up and right on cue his guest arrived. Thirty-something American, sweat beading across his brow. This was the US Assistant Deputy Chief of Mission, the embassy’s third-in-command, stationed to Lagos. A nothing-man with just enough seniority to be heard properly by his superiors. Lowly enough to be sure he’d turn up at this meeting with eleventh-hour notification.

  Mendes waved the State Department guy to take a seat. He looked around himself like a startled animal, unsure of this habitat. He had a look that said What the fuck have I got myself into here?

  The guy put a digital voice recorder on the table between himself and Mendes.

  Mendes picked it up and passed it to his closest security guy who pocketed it for safe-keeping.

  “You can make notes,” Mendes said.

  “Okay.” The State Department guy was sweating hard. He looked like a guy who knew he was in over his head. He ran a hand through his prematurely grey hair. Knew he was just a messenger in this case. Hoped that would get him out of this meeting alive.

  “You okay?” Mendes asked. He waved a waiter over. “You want a drink?”

  “Water.”

  “Two bottled waters,” Mendes said. The waiter disappeared. Mendes shot the State Department guy a look that read Calm the fuck down.

  “I’m the team you want to be behind. Brutus Achebe now has the backing of a clear majority in both houses. He will be forming a government and standing as interim president until the next election. I expect the US administration won’t interfere with this internal political matter.”

  “Yes—I’ll pass all that on.” The man made notes.

  “Good,” Mendes said. “And make no mistake. You guys fuck us, we’ll fuck you.”

  “I’m—I’m not sure I—”

  “If there’s a US military presence in Nigeria that in any way opposes the Achebe government, there’ll be no Nigerian oil powering the SUVs of soccer moms in Houston. No more Nigerian sweet crude to help power the US economy. That’ll hurt. Feel me, champ?”

  “Um—right.” More notes. His expression saying Why the fuck can’t the ambassador be here with a SEAL team behind him.

  “Relax, sport,” Mendes said with a smile as their waters arrived. He held his glass up in a toast, and the young State Department guy clinked glasses with an unsteady hand. “The US is going to have a friend in Brutus Achebe. And you have got a friend in me. This is going to be a great opportunity for everyone. More oil will flow, more money will change hands, more security will be seen in the Delta.”

  Mendes stood, and put a few bills on the table to cover the drinks.

  “But how do we contact you?”

  Mendes smiled. There was not a chance he was giving him a cell phone or pager number. He knew the targeting capabilities of the US intel agencies as well as anyone. Put your voice on the air, and be prepared to have a cruise missile come through your bedroom window at night.

  “You don’t. I’ll contact you.”

  He moved away with his bodyguards in tow.

  As he got into his car, a big blacked-out Mercedes G-Wagon, his pager beeped.

  Musa Onouarah. Meeting confirmed for this evening. Mendes checked his watch, and signalled to his guys to get the convoy on the move.

  61

  LAGOS, NIGERIA

  Fox carefully planned his assault. He had just over an hour until Mendes would show up.

  The meeting place was a gravelled lookout that turned off the main road. About the size of a basketball court. A good vantage point to see the sealed road leading up through the neighbourhood, and the road that continued out beyond and rounded the hill. A couple of gravel tracks led off from here too, back into the suburban jungle of cinderblock homes and corrugated-tin roofs.

  Crouched down at the end of the lookout, Fox studied the landscape below. The convoy would be coming from Lagos city, which was via the major sealed road that led up through this outer neighbourhood. he’d place some IEDs to take the vehicles out down below this point, engage them in the narrow streets where there was no room to turn around in the canyon of cinderblock houses with messes of cars and trucks parked each side of the two-lane road.

  He went to the back of the Land Rover. The tailgate was open, displaying a couple of plastic tubs of gear: a pair of 9 mm Glocks, plenty of spare mags, the P90, which was down to its last twenty rounds, and an M4 with underslung M203 grenade launcher. Two flash-bag grenades and two frag grenades. An AK-47 from the guys back at Musa’s, one full mag spare. And the heavy firepower: an AT4-CS: a US-made rocket launcher specially designed for urban warfare. This version used a saltwater countermass in the rear of the launcher to absorb the back blast. It was a one-shot weapon, the tube being discarded once it was used. he’d leave it locked and loaded as a fall-back defence option

  Then there was a timber box. Inside was something that Sir Alex’s contacts had no doubt built rather than bought—a couple of remote-controlled IEDs. They were made out of sawn-off pieces of steel pipe, about seven centimetres in diameter and fifteen centimetres long. One end was a thick welded plate, the other, the blast cap, was a concave brass top glued into place. When the bomb went off, this would form a projectile that would pierce through heavy armour, adding to the lethality of the explosive blast itself.

  This box he took out carefully. He strapped a
black thigh holster on, inserted a Glock and two spare mags. Then he shut the tailgate, got in the Land Rover and tore off in a cloud of dust.

  Fox drove down to where he had a good line of sight. From here, he had glimpses of the road as it turned around towards him, framed through gaps between buildings. he’d watched about twenty vehicles pass, and counted the travel time from between the gaps. he’d have a five-second window from seeing Mendes’s vehicle to trigger the remote-controlled IEDs, which at this distance would have less than a second’s delay in detonating. To be safe, he was going to place them a second’s drive-time apart.

  He backed the Land Rover into an alley off the main road, took the IEDs from the box and went out to the street. He looked up and down—deserted—then a bus came up the road. He walked away from it, to shield himself from the view of the passengers onboard. They’d just see the back of a guy walking. He waited until it left just a trail of diesel exhaust smoke behind. The only thing around now was dozens of birds sitting on a power line, backlit by the sun. They squawked and took off too.

  He walked along the urban street, between apartments mostly two or three storeys tall. A few people ambled past, and a couple of cars went by that blew out black-blue clouds of smoke like they were running more on oil than petrol.

  He went back to a spot where there was the wreckage of a three-tonne truck, placing an IED under the tray atop the carriage that would have held a spare wheel. The concave brass disc that formed the blast area faced out onto the road. He walked up the road ten metres and placed the other charge on the same side of the street, again the brass top facing in towards the traffic, this time among a pile of garbage. He made sure it was hidden from casual view, and secure in place. Then he put a sheet of cardboard over it to finish the job and went back to the Land Rover.

  A noise startled him. Ringing—his cell phone, on the passenger seat. He reached in, answered it:

  “Yeah?”

  Static.

  “Hello?”

  “Lach—it’s Al,” Gammaldi said.

  “This is a bad line—I can hardly hear you.”

  “I’m in the Airbus—we touch down in … minutes.”

  “Say again, Al?”

  “Touch down Lagos in forty minutes,” Gammaldi said. “I got Sefreid and Gibbs with me. Where are you at?”

  “North-west Lagos city,” Fox said.

  “Wallace and McCorkell have been trying to reach you.”

  “Been a little busy.”

  “There are some US boys heading your way. Just a couple of Humvees. They want to know where Achebe and Mendes are at.”

  “What for?”

  “Don’t … you’ll have to … McCorkell.”

  Fox thought about it. They wouldn’t be going to go and arrest them. Could they be heading there to ensure the safety of Mendes and Achebe? Did they, the US government, want to back these guys? Had Mendes sucked them in?

  “McCorkell? What do they want with Achebe and Mendes?”

  “I’ll … soon…”

  “Al—you’re breaking up. Al?” Fox shouted, a finger in his other ear as a truck rumbled by.

  “Keep this line open,” Gammaldi said. “Don’t hang up the connection … track it…”

  So they could track it?

  “All right, Al, I’ll leave it open.”

  Fox put the phone in his Kevlar vest pocket, could still hear the faint crackle of static over the line. Much like the AT4 rocket launcher, having either Gammaldi or a US team closing on his location could prove useful in evening out the odds later on. He squinted up at the lookout. It was hard to make out details as the afternoon sun kept hiding behind dark clouds. Good conditions for hunting.

  This neighbourhood was like a ghost town. An occasional car rumbled by but this was the tough outer limits of a big city like the worst you’d find in old-school South Central LA. There was even the occasional posse on foot or in cars wearing gang colours. Only the roots of many of those colours went further back than any US street gang. These were tribal colours, from all over the Niger Delta, come together to claim this cesspool of a location. It was one of those places you wouldn’t go without serious firepower and back-up. Most streets that led off this main thoroughfare formed cul-de-sacs nestled among rundown cinderblock houses and apartment buildings. If it got to a street chase, there were far too many dangerous dead-ends to turn down.

  An old Merc sedan pulled up hard next to Fox. Bald tyres squealed on the bitumen, leaving rubber tracks behind.

  Five, six males were crammed in tight. Teenagers, twenty at the oldest. One rear occupant had an AK-47 in his lap, pointed the other way from Fox. It would be a hell of a thing to have to turn that assault rifle around in the confines of the car.

  The kid gave Fox an unsettling mad-dog stare. Fox was in a face-off with a carload of thugs. Before they had a chance to get out of the car he’d pointed a Glock in the driver’s face and aimed the Five-seveN into the back window.

  He saw their minds ticking over. Should they reach for their pieces? Should they make a move on this guy?

  One started to move. “I wouldn’t do it.” Fox’s voice was monotone, matter-of-fact. These kids could see there was no bullshit here. This was big-dog work.

  The driver nodded, a sign of peace. Fox took the pistols down and they drove away down the road. He watched them until they disappeared up the hill and around a corner. His heart rate was pumping fast, it felt like he’d just sprinted a couple of hundred metres.

  He scanned around for any other threats. Some kids played in a bare dirt yard across the street. A rake-thin dog was chained to a tree. Women hung washing to a line that stretched between two apartment blocks. One old woman with a laundry basket looked at him oddly. He crossed the road, away from people.

  He walked around the block, got into his Land Rover, drove up the hill and backed it into an alley. He could see, down below, the spot where he’d placed the IEDs. He had the radio transmitter to remote detonate, in his hand, ready to rock.

  62

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  “FBI Hostage Rescue Team is twenty minutes out of Naval Air Station Key West,” McCorkell said. “They’ll meet local teams on the ground for an assault on the house.”

  “And they’ve got Navy and Coast Guard back-up, Mr President,” Vanzet said. “Thermal imaging has confirmed that there’s a target in the house. We will have real-time video feed from the raid.”

  “And we’re gonna take him alive,” McCorkell said. “If he’s got any playmates around the country, we’ll get him talking.”

  The President took it in. He was in the eye of the storm of National Security aides in the room.

  “Where’re we at with the price of oil?”

  “Down almost ten dollars per barrel in the last hour and holding. EU and APEC countries are releasing their individual reserves, and all OPEC countries are coming to the table with some measure of ramped-up production,” McCorkell answered. “It will relieve some price pressure and should see it dip back to pre-LOOP attack prices by tomorrow, and it will keep falling from there over the coming days as more production comes out of Qatar and the Kingdom.”

  “And Nigeria, where’re we at with the convoy?”

  “True Target is on track to reach Lagos momentarily,” Vanzet said. “But we still don’t have a designated target location.”

  “My guy got one of Mendes’s security guys to take a tracking device,” Baker said. “Hidden in a voice recorder.”

  “We’re working on that,” McCorkell said. “We’ll have something soon.”

  “And if we strike against Achebe, where are we legally?” the President asked.

  “All clear, Mr President,” the White House counsel said. “Considering the data we’ve received, we know that both Mendes and Achebe were in materiel support of terrorist activities. They are designated enemy combatants, and can be treated as other precedents have set.”

  “And who
will do the strike?”

  “There are a couple of options, Mr President, depending on when the targeting coordinates come through,” Vanzet said. “We’ve got a Reaper UAV currently on-scene. It’s armed with four Hellfire missiles, more than capable of doing the job—you’ve seen what they can do. In three hours we will have four F-22s within strike range, and we also have the Wasp steaming towards Lagos with a full MEU aboard, along with Harrier aircraft and strike helicopters.”

  “And a couple of Los Angeles class subs with tomahawks in range by tomorrow too,” McCorkell said. “This is not a matter of not having the firepower on hand, it’s just a matter of getting a confirmed target, which we’re working on.”

  “And once we get the targeting coordinates,” the President said, “and we take them out with a missile strike, what kind of civilian losses are we talking about?”

  “Minimal if any, if we get our best-case scenario of striking at night, wherever they sleep,” Vanzet said. “It’s dark there in about an hour. If we have to strike in the daytime, whether at a Nigerian government installation or in a civilian neighbourhood, there’ll be a lot more people moving around the target area.”

  “How we gonna find him?”

  “We’ve got the Nigerian President’s security force working on the location,” McCorkell said. “And our own local humint assets are working hard.”

  “So I rely on their say-so to order a strike?” the President said.

  “We’ll get you an accurate ID,” McCorkell replied. At the back of his mind he was thinking of Lachlan Fox. he’d try contacting him or Gammaldi again from his office asap. “Operation True Target, made up of US Army personnel, will laser designate any final target, so we are waiting on their visual confirmation from the field. Make no mistake, Mr President, when we give you the option to strike, we will have the target there in front of you.”

  63