by Todd Moss
“You’re watching too many cop shows on TV, Judd,” she said, turning her face to the window again.
Judd lowered his voice. “Why are you so hesitant, Isabella? That’s not like you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied.
“Come on, Special Agent Espinosa. Where is the fighter I know? Where is the pit bull criminal hunter I brought with me to Nigeria?”
She spun and looked him straight in the eyes. “I didn’t want to come to Nigeria.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “But you’re here now. You just called me partner. We’re in this together. So what’s the problem?”
“What do you want me to do, Judd?” she hissed.
“We’ve just been inside an underground criminal operation. We know it goes higher. We have some evidence. Okay, it’s not much, but the letterhead is something, linking their activities to a missing American. An American citizen that I’m trying to find. And you don’t want to do anything? Doesn’t add up.”
Isabella’s face gave nothing away.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Judd demanded.
She didn’t reply. But Judd could see the wheels turning in her head.
As the Nissan swerved away from a heavy fuel truck and up onto a bridge overpass, Judd narrowed his eyes. “Isabella, what is going on?”
“Stop the car,” Isabella ordered.
“Not here, ma’am,” the driver apologized.
She scanned the highway ahead. “At the end of the bridge, stop on the side of the road. Do it!”
The vehicle came to a halt and Isabella threw open her door. “Come on,” she said.
“What?”
“Move it, Judd!” Isabella grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the car. She led him down a gulley to a spot underneath the bridge.
“What are we doing?”
“We don’t have much time.” She checked over both shoulders. “You want to know what’s going on?”
“Yes. But here?”
“I can’t take the risk in an embassy vehicle. Not with a driver.”
“Can’t take what risk?”
“Shut up and listen.”
A crowd of onlookers noticed the huddled foreigners.
“We can’t hunt for the Oga,” she whispered.
“Why not? That could be the key to finding Saunders.”
“We can’t hunt for the Oga,” she explained. “Because the Oga . . . is me.”
“What?”
Isabella blinked.
“What?”
“I’m the Coyote’s boss,” Isabella said.
“What are you talking about?”
“The Coyote is mine,” she said.
“What do you mean ‘yours’?”
“He’s my guy. He doesn’t know it, but his team is my team. I’ve been working with Bola Akinola on a highly classified operation for months.”
“Your team? Months? What operation? What are you talking about?”
The crowd was gathering, people chattering and pointing at the two odd Americans arguing under the bridge.
“You’re right about the shadow list. You were right about the letterhead. The letter to Jason Saunders came from the Coyote. It’s no scam. It’s part of a major international sting operation. The operation that you pulled me off to bring me here. To Nigeria.”
“You kidnapped Jason Saunders?”
“Saunders is fine. He was never kidnapped. He’s at an undisclosed location in England. He’s being held there for his own safety. Until he can testify in court.”
“Testify? Against who?”
“I’ve already told you too much. You can see why I was so pissed off you dragged me here.”
“Wait a minute.” Judd’s head was spinning. “If you’re running a scam team as part of a classified sting, your mark has to be a pretty big fish.”
“I just said it was a major international operation.”
“Then who’s your target?”
“We have to go,” she said, taking his hand again and pulling him back up the slope, away from the swelling crowd.
“A Nigerian politician?”
Isabella placed a finger over her lips and shook her head.
“Was Saunders’ firm laundering money for a Nigerian politician? The President?”
“I can’t say. But that’s why I’ve got to get back to Washington as soon as possible.”
“Washington? Is it an ambassador? Is that why you can’t tell the State Department?”
“I’m not saying another word, Judd.”
“An international mob boss? Is that it?”
“I’ve said all I’m going to tell you, Judd. For your own safety, stop asking questions.”
“My own safety? Isabella, I’m dead in the middle of this.”
41
DELTA STATE, NIGERIA
THURSDAY, 11:50 A.M. WEST AFRICA TIME (6:50 A.M. EST)
Big Sammie sat on point. From the very front of the boat’s bow, he scouted the shoreline for police, the waterways for military patrols, the sky for surveillance drones. The boat’s pilot, who insisted on the nom de guerre Captain Wayne Rooney, banked sharply to the west. Sammie gripped the gunwale with one hand and his AK-47 with the other. The engine roared and the boat raced down one of the endless creeks that formed the impenetrable maze of the Niger Delta.
Big Sammie had small aspirations. He was a tiny boy, a runt among seven brothers and sisters, who originally just wanted to be a fisherman like his father and his grandfather. He dreamed of growing up to have a wife, maybe two wives if he was lucky, surrounded by big pots of food and lots of children. Sammie wanted to live the life he was born into, in the village along the creek, surrounded by family and the comfortable fate of his ancestors. Every weekday Sammie attended the Precious Child Primary School, learning how to read and write, to add and subtract, studying the basics of tropical agriculture.
On Sundays, Sammie liked to show off his education, reading aloud from the Bible, praying with his grandmother at the local branch of the Holy Church of Eternal Prosperity. One beautiful Sunday the week before Easter, a large box arrived from a church in Texas filled with stuffed animals. Sammie was given the honor of distributing the toys to the village children, keeping only a single small pink rabbit for himself.
The village’s house of worship was a basic structure of concrete walls and an asbestos roof, built with donations from some faraway place that Sammie didn’t know. The centerpiece of the church, a life-sized Jesus on a cross, was a gift from Eternal Prosperity’s world headquarters in Lagos. Sammie had seen on television pictures of the glass-and-steel structure that could seat two thousand parishioners. Maybe one day he would be able to visit church headquarters and read aloud on the big stage. Perhaps one day he’d even be on television.
At that time Sammie was focused on a more near-term goal. He read his prayers, he sang enthusiastically alongside his grandmother and his siblings, all to get ready for the day when the church leader, Pastor Emmanuel, the founder of the Holy Church of Eternal Prosperity, would come to visit his village. Sammie practiced and sang. His grandmother donated a few spare naira into the church collection plate every Sunday, for improvements to the church and to pay for preparations for the big visit. The anticipation of Pastor Emmanuel’s arrival, all the way from the big city of Lagos—an ambassador for Jesus Christ himself, from the heavens, coming to bless Sammie’s little village—was exhilarating. Sammie hoped and prayed that Pastor Emmanuel would bless him, too.
Until Sammie’s entire world came crashing down. It began with an explosion at an oil pipeline, not far upriver. The sky turned black and blocked out the sun. Within hours the fishing grounds were flooded with thick, oily poison. Sammie and his grandmother rushed to the church to alert the authorities of the disaster, to ask for fo
od, to seek help. But the church was locked.
It would be days before the news trickled back to Sammie’s village that Pastor Emmanuel had been arrested, his private airplane and antique Rolls-Royce collection confiscated, his bank accounts in Geneva and London frozen, his luxury villas in Lagos, Abuja, and Monaco seized by the authorities. The Holy Church of Eternal Prosperity, it turned out, had been built on thousands, perhaps millions, of people handing over a few naira to support a lavish lifestyle of one man.
Angry men in the village wanted to launch a protest against the church and the oil company. But the elders decided on a more cautious approach. A delegation from the village traveled by bus to the state capital at Asaba to plead for help. After waiting patiently for three days in the capital, they finally met with the assistant to the governor, whom they begged to approach the foreign oil company operating in the area. Their demands: Clean up the spill, pay restitution to those who lost their livelihoods, hire more local men for security, and make improvements to the church. The list of demands was politely accepted and the delegation returned to the village.
That’s when the answer arrived. The army swept into Sammie’s village, kicking in doors, searching for “troublemakers,” rounding up any able-bodied male. The Holy Church of Eternal Prosperity was burned to the ground. The only item Sammie had left from the church was his pink rabbit.
Sammie was thirteen. That’s when, for the first time, he saw the world for what it was. And that’s when he met a new friend who helped him to become big.
—
Now fifteen and many more years wiser, Big Sammie sat in the open bow of Captain Wayne Rooney’s boat, feeling the roar of the outboard engines in his bones, the wind rippling through his mask, the cold steel of the automatic rifle in his hands. On a lanyard around his neck, he hung the pink stuffed rabbit. It may have looked out of place on a heavily armed rebel fighter, but the toy had become part of Big Sammie’s persona.
The boat hugged another sharp corner and came upon a waiting Nigerian navy vessel. The twenty-five-foot American Defender Class response boat looked like an oversized Zodiac, with NNS Abiku stenciled in white on the gray foam collar.
Big Sammie heart jumped. He raised his AK and aimed, just as he had been trained, directly at the tallest skull in the boat’s wheelhouse. He was never told the nature of their mission that day; he didn’t know if this was a real Nigerian naval boat or a counterfeit. He learned to never assume who was friend and who was enemy.
Big Sammie fingered the trigger, narrowed his aim, and tried to slow his breathing.
Captain Wayne Rooney didn’t appear surprised. He slowed the engine to a crawl and circled the naval vessel. A man in civilian clothes, jeans, and a crisp white button-down oxford held up his hands and waved to them. The captain gestured to Big Sammie to throw a line to the man and lash the two boats together.
“Twelve o’clock. Right on time. High noon,” said the mysterious man.
The captain accepted a suitcase from the man with a grunt. The man flipped open a cell phone, spoke a few words, then nodded. Captain Wayne Rooney released the line, the engines thundered, and Big Sammie with his pink rabbit sped away, back into the creeks.
42
PULKOVO AIRPORT, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
THURSDAY, 4:13 P.M. MOSCOW STANDARD TIME (9:13 A.M. EST)
Jessica checked into the Emirates first-class departure lounge, accepted a tall flute of French champagne, and found her way to the private shower room. Once inside, she locked the door and turned the cold water on full blast. She opened the box of a cell phone she’d bought with cash at the Beeline airport kiosk, clicked a prepaid SIM card into place, and fired it up.
She didn’t want to make this call, but she knew she had no choice. She had done her job, dropped everything to take the crazy bullshit operation in Russia. She’d accepted the assignment to play the Deputy Director’s super-assassin Queen Sheba. She’d found the Bear. She’d gotten his next target. How could she have foreseen the target being a Nigerian judge? How could she have known the mission would cross paths with her husband, Judd? What were the chances?
The only escape now was to pass the target to the Deputy Director and bow out without jeopardizing the operation against the Bear. There was no other option. Most of all, she’d have to find a discreet way to warn Judd that Bola Akinola was in danger. That he was in danger. Dammit, this was becoming everything she had been trying to avoid. What had she done? What had Judd gotten himself into?
“Pan Western Logistics. How may I direct your call?” asked the nasal woman’s voice on the line.
“I’ve got a special order,” Jessica said. “Three hundred and six pounds. Overnight. San Diego to Anchorage.”
“Is that via Reno?”
“Las Vegas.”
“Please hold.”
Click, click, bleep, then “What the fuck phone is this?” barked the CIA’s Deputy Director.
“Burner,” she said.
“Christ,” he hissed. “No names on an open line. You have two minutes. Sounds like you’re inside a waterfall. Where the hell are you?”
“Airport. Plane leaves in twenty.”
“You see your man?”
“Affirmative.”
“You get your target?”
“We’ve got a problem.”
“Did. You. Get. Your. Target?” he repeated.
“Target acquired.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“It’s a judge,” she said.
“So?”
“A well-known foreign judge.”
“Where?”
“Nigeria.”
“Not a problem,” he said quickly. “Send the name and any details via text to the other system as soon as we hang up. Then get back here ASAP. Good work.”
“I . . .” Jessica hesitated.
“Spit it out.”
“I need out.”
“Out of what?” he snapped.
“The operation.”
“This operation? No. You aren’t out. Just the opposite. I’m bringing you in.”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“We’ll discuss it face-to-face. I’ll want you to help run it from HQ. We’ve got lots of work left to do.”
“There’s no time for that,” she said.
“We’ve got time. You send the name and I’ll have surveillance on the judge by end of the day. We’ll have a team in-country within forty-eight hours. Execution and exfiltration will be ready to roll by late next week. Nigeria’s a tricky environment, but we’ve done it before. It’ll be quick. You’ll see.”
“Sorry, sir. It’s got to happen tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? What are you talking about?”
“Your man insisted it happen tomorrow. And that it has to be public.”
“Why the fuck would you agree to that?” the Deputy Director fumed. “We can’t pull off a credible decoy kill in one day.”
“You wanted him convinced I was the Queen. I did that. You wanted the target. I got it. But that’s the price. It has to happen tomorrow.”
The Deputy Director paused on the other end. Jessica could hear him breathing, could feel the wheels turning. “Fine. Tomorrow. I’ll make sure of it. Now get on a plane and get back here.”
“If there’s no time for a decoy kill, sir, what’s the play?”
“I’ll improvise.”
“You said there’s no time for a decoy kill.”
“That’s correct.”
“Sir, are you saying—”
“The world is messy and dangerous,” he said without emotion.
That’s exactly what I told Judd, Jessica thought. She felt sick to her stomach. “But, sir—”
“You’re a big girl. Put on your big-girl pants. We’re too close to go soft now. This is too important. I sh
ouldn’t have to explain this to you.”
Jessica listened to the shower run as she thought through the implications of what she was hearing. Was the Deputy Director planning an assassination to protect his operation against the Bear? Of a foreign judge? A judge she now knew was working closely with her husband? Jessica’s neck ached.
“He’s got a family, sir.”
“If one crooked Nigerian judge has to—”
“I didn’t say he was crooked,” she interrupted.
“A judge in Nigeria?” the Deputy Director scoffed. “That’s somehow found his way onto your man’s target list? Get real.”
“He’s surrounded by civilians. You don’t want to do this.”
“You don’t have the big picture.”
“It’s going to be impossible to keep it clean. There could be collateral damage.”
“There’s too much at stake. I don’t need kosher. I just need this to happen. I’m hanging up now.”
“Sir, don’t do it.” Motherfucker, she thought.
“Not your call. You are the one who agreed to the deadline. This is actually on you. It’s going to happen tomorrow, one way or the other.”
Jessica rolled her head from side to side and felt the vertebrae in her neck crack back into place. Motherfucker.
Then she heard herself say, “I’ll do it.”
43
CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
THURSDAY, 7:03 P.M. EST
Fifteen hours, Sunday thought. I’ve been at this desk for fifteen long hours.
He’d given up finding anything more from his data collection on oil facility attacks. Then he’d swept every last corner of the intelligence vault to find anything and everything that the U.S. government had on Judge Bola Akinola. There he’d found circular reporting of rumors, but nothing incriminating. And nothing clearly exonerating.
Sunday was no closer to having solid answers. For Judd Ryker, he still had nothing. For Jessica Ryker, he still had . . . nothing.
Several times over the past few hours, Sunday had logged off, shut both his computers down . . . and then had one more idea. One more rock to turn over before calling it a day. He tried looking into patterns of security contractors for the oil companies. He searched a database of oil licenses to analyze the structure of the joint ventures. He tracked the principal shareholders for each of the oil companies that had been targeted with violence and come up with long lists of pension and hedge funds but nothing obviously suspicious. No apparent links to terror groups. No obvious connections to international criminal syndicates. No clear national security implications that would need to be sent upstairs or to the DNI. Nothing to set off alarm bells at the White House. Sunday found . . . nothing.
