by Todd Moss
Everything was in place for the takedown. Eight red lights in a tight circle around the green one. Eight SUVs packed with highly trained tactical officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Bell Jet Ranger helicopter ready with its massive spotlight to turn the night into day and lead a hot pursuit if the target somehow went on the run.
And, most important of all, the single sheet of paper tucked into her inside jacket pocket: the arrest warrant, covertly signed by a federal judge only minutes earlier in a tightly choreographed dance to ensure no leaks. And no time for any political objections to be raised over what was about to happen.
“Viper One, you are the lead team going in through the front,” she said into the radio. “Viper Two, you have the back door. All other Vipers, move on my orders. We need this quick and clean, everybody. No time for the target to call backup. No time for any evidence to be destroyed. Quick and clean.”
She released the radio mic. “This is for you, Espinosa,” she whispered to herself.
Donatella pressed the button on the radio again and heard the familiar crackle. She licked her lips. “Light it up.”
51
LAGOS, NIGERIA
FRIDAY, 11:47 A.M. WEST AFRICA TIME (6:47 A.M. EST)
Judd, Isabella, Bola, and Tunde all sat quietly in the back of the consulate van waiting for the phone to ring.
The silence was broken by the diplomatic security officer, sitting up front with the driver. “Dr. Ryker, I need to call this in. We can’t just do nothing.”
“Negative,” Judd said.
“Sir, we’ve diverted from our planned route to Murtala and now we’re just sitting here. No one knows we’re here. I don’t even know where we are.”
“We’re waiting for new instructions. Give me five minutes.”
“My orders from the Regional Security Officer are to escort Mr. Babatunde to the airport. I’m already breaking protocol by allowing Judge Akinola to join us. The ambassador’s going to have my ass. And now this.”
“Your orders are to support me and Special Agent Espinosa. And our orders have changed. No calls.”
“Dr. Ryker, if this has become an intelligence operation, then the station chief should have relayed this to the RSO, who would have given me the green light to change course. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it, either—” Judd was about to lose his cool when a noise outside stopped him cold.
“What was that?” Isabella held up both hands.
“I’m not sitting here any longer,” the officer said, drawing his weapon. “We’re checking it out.” He and the driver stepped out of the van. “Everyone, stay here.”
Come on, Sunday, Judd thought. Call me back already.
Judd and the others listened as the officer and the driver circumnavigated the van in opposite directions. Then the sound of their footsteps stopped.
Judd and Isabella looked at each other for a long minute.
“I’m going out there,” Isabella whispered, pulling her handgun from behind her lower back.
“No, let me go,” Judd said.
“You’re not taking my Glock,” she said.
“I’m coming with you,” Tunde said. “You’re all in this mess because of me.”
“No—”
The back door of the van was flung open and the four of them spun around. “It was just a dog,” the security officer said, standing there with the driver.
Judd let out a deep breath.
“Gracias a Dios,” Isabella said with relief. She reholstered her gun at the small of her back and crossed herself.
“What about your phone friend?” the officer asked. “Where the hell is he?”
Judd fingered his cell, trying to decide whether to call Sunday back or just wait.
“We need to get Mr. Babatunde to the airport and Judge Akinola to a safe location,” the security officer said. “The first thing we need to do is—”
A flash of light blinded Judd, followed half a second later by a deafening ka-boom. He shut his eyes tight and covered his ears. The next few moments were a blur, a high-speed whirlwind of noise, light, and total confusion. Smoke, shadows, the outlines of a masked man. Judd felt strong arms shove him to the ground. His hands were tied and a hood was slipped over his head. It’s happening again.
“Isabella!” he shouted. The only reply was the sound of men fighting and muffled yelling. Then three gunshots. Bang! bang! bang!
Judd twisted his neck in futility. His mind raced with fear and adrenaline. Who did they shoot? Did the gang come back for Tunde? No, that doesn’t make sense. . . . It must be assassins for Bola. . . . Sunday must have been right about the intel. . . . Someone was tracking us. . . . Sunday was trying to help us escape, but . . . he never called back. We almost got Tunde and Bola to the airport but . . . we failed. The killers got Bola. The officer and driver must have been the first shots. . . . That makes three. . . . They will kill Tunde, too. . . . And Isabella. And . . . This is it, he thought. I’m going to die in an abandoned factory in Nigeria.
Judd’s thoughts jumped to his wife, Jessica—amazing, brave Jessica—on a mission somewhere on the other side of the world. Would she ever know what really happened to him? And his beautiful, innocent children, Toby and Noah, home with yet another babysitter while he was off globetrotting, on some half-baked assignment for who-knows-what, far away rather than home with his family. Would the boys understand? How would they remember their father? Would they remember him?
Judd felt a surge of guilt and remorse. Why hadn’t he spent more time with his children instead of so many long hours in the office? How had he so often allowed work to come before family? How could he not have seen it? It was all so clear now. Judd felt sick. Helplessly facing the end of his life, his deathbed regrets were . . . a Hollywood cliché. Pathetic. A pitiful end to an unfinished life, he thought. Full of regrets. No inner bravery. Jessica would not be proud. Jessica was wrong.
Judd shut his eyes tight and waited for a bullet in the back of the head, an explosion followed in an instant by darkness, by total silence. But it didn’t come. Instead he smelled . . . gasoline.
52
WASHINGTON, D.C.
FRIDAY, 6:49 A.M. EST
Light it up,” Viper One team leader repeated into his earpiece.
Battering rams simultaneously blew open the front and back doors of the target’s house. Flash-bang grenades were tossed inside each entrance, which exploded with harmless pops intended to blind and confuse. Next came a flood of officers in midnight-black assault gear, pouring through the doors and windows like a mudslide swallowing a house.
“Lower floor clear. Moving to the second level,” the Viper One team leader announced into his headset. Then “Go, go, go!” directing his team up a grand winding staircase.
Once on the upper floor, the team leader silently pointed for two men to position themselves at each of the six bedroom doors. Once they were all in place: “Go!”
Six bedroom doors blew open in unison. Five were empty. But in the main master bedroom, officers found the target sitting up in bed, furiously trying to punch numbers on the bedside phone.
“Target acquired,” the radio reported.
The officer snatched the phone from the target’s hand and set it down gently in the cradle.
“This is an outrage!” the target fumed. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with! You have no right to be here! I’m calling—”
The assault team silently swallowed the noise with a hood over the head. Hands bound behind the back. Body shuffled quickly downstairs and bundled into a black van with blacked-out windows.
“Target in custody,” the Viper One team leader reported. “Quick and clean, ma’am.”
“Move the target to location Foxtrot. We’ll take over from there.”
53
LAGOS, NIGERIA
FRIDAY, 11:51 A.M. WEST AFRICA TIME (6:51 A.M. EST)
The gasoline fumes burned inside Judd’s nostrils. Then he heard a whoosh and, a second later, was hit by a blast of searing heat.
The terrorist group Boko Haram was known to lock people in buildings and then burn the whole place to the ground. No, no, he told himself, this wasn’t Boko Haram. Maybe it was a militia? He knew gangs in South Africa killed their enemies by forcing a fuel-filled rubber tire around a victim’s chest and arms before setting it on fire. They called it “necklacing.” But he’d never heard of the practice used by Niger Delta militants.
It must be a criminal gang, he decided. They were notorious for pouring diesel fuel on rivals, lighting a match, and then videotaping their victims as they sizzled to death. The attackers must have poured gasoline. They must be torching the van, he thought. Was Bola inside? Tunde? And, he gulped, Isabella? Was he next?
As the thought made him nauseated, Judd was yanked to his feet and dragged away from the fire. He tried to resist but was pushed into another vehicle and the door was slammed shut.
Judd felt a guilty rush of relief. Maybe they weren’t going to kill him after all. At least, not yet. But the relief was temporary. As the engine started up, a wave of new questions hit him. Where were they taking him? Was he being saved for a grisly video? Would he wind up on the Internet, an embarrassment to the government? A horror for his family?
Judd blocked out these questions. It was all speculation until he knew their intentions. Their motivations. He couldn’t possibly know what would happen next until he knew: Who was taking him?
54
WASHINGTON, D.C.
FRIDAY, 6:58 A.M. EST
The black van peeled off from its SUV escorts and veered down a tree-lined residential street. At the end of the block, it took a sharp left into an alley, then another left into an open garage. A plainclothes officer with a coil wire in his ear checked both sides of the alleyway and pulled the garage door shut.
The target kicked and yelled as the van door slid open. The hooded body was gently carried down a hallway and set in a chair in an otherwise empty living room.
“You’ve made a huuuuge mistake,” the hooded voice raged. “You have no idea what you’ve done. You’re all going to pay!”
Special Agent Donatella Kim checked that the camera was on, that the video was recording. She plucked the hood off the target’s head.
Congressman Shepard Truman blinked a few times, then narrowed his eyes at Donatella. “Who the hell are you?”
55
LAGOS, NIGERIA
FRIDAY, 12:00 P.M. WEST AFRICA TIME (7:00 A.M. EST)
As the car pulled away, Judd decided on his next move. If they were going to kill him, whoever they were, if they had already murdered all the others, then he was going down fighting. That’s the brave thing to do. That’s what Jessica would do. Yes, once they take me to their hideout and stop the car, I’m going to—
The vehicle suddenly skidded to a halt. They hadn’t traveled far.
Judd was yanked out of the car and pushed onto the ground. His hands were untied and the hood whisked off his head. Judd recoiled from the light and covered his eyes.
But then slowly things came into focus. He was . . . in some kind of an abandoned warehouse. . . . Rows of steel pillars soared up high. . . . Bright midday light was pouring in through the holes in a crumbling ceiling. . . . There was an old white car and . . . Bola and Isabella! The two of them, sitting on the ground, also dazed and readjusting to the light. A wave of relief swept over him. He was alive. They were all alive.
“Isabella! Are you okay?”
Isabella, rubbing her newly freed wrists, stared back at him but didn’t share his relief. Her face was full of fear. And anger.
That’s when Judd noticed a single masked man standing over them. He was thin and shorter than Judd expected. A makeshift hood covered his face, with two jagged eyeholes.
“Who are you?” Judd demanded. “Where are the other men?”
“It’s me,” said a soft, familiar voice.
Judd winced in confusion.
The attacker slipped off the hood and . . . it wasn’t a man at all.
“Jessica?”
Isabella was in shock. “I . . . don’t understand.”
“How are you . . . here? In Nigeria? Why are you kidnapping us? What . . . is going on?”
“I can’t explain right now,” Jessica said quickly. “We’ve got to get all of you out of here. Without being seen. We’ve got to go now.”
“Where’s Tunde?” Judd asked. “And the security officers?”
“They’re back at the fire,” Jessica said. “Let’s go!”
“What?”
“Someone had to see the van go up in flames. I had to have witnesses. It had to be credible. I needed the assassination to be convincing.”
“Whose assassination?” Bola asked.
“Yours,” she said.
“Qué jodienda!” Isabella was furious. “What is going on here?”
“I—” Judd wasn’t sure what to say.
Isabella turned on Jessica. “We’re not going anywhere until you explain!”
At that moment a fat bald head stepped out from behind a steel column. “Yes, love, do explain,” Mikey said.
56
WASHINGTON, D.C.
FRIDAY, 7:02 A.M. EST
I’m Special Agent Kim, with the Special Investigations Unit of the Department of Justice,” she said. “Uncuff the Congressman. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Where the fuck am I?” Shepard Truman demanded as his hands were released.
“You are at a safe location,” Donatella said. “We brought you here first to avoid the television cameras parked outside FBI headquarters.”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? I’m a United States congressman!”
“That’s why we brought you here first, sir. As a courtesy.”
“A fucking courtesy!”
“You’re welcome. I think you meant to say thank you.”
“I’m going to fry your ass over this. You know I’m on the House Oversight Subcommittee, for fuck’s sake!”
“We’re well aware of who you are, sir. That’s why you’re here and not being frog-marched in front of the Hoover Building and CNN cameras.”
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”
“Funny,” Donatella said, deadpan. “That’s the exact question I was about to ask you, Congressman.”
“I want my lawyer.” Truman sat up in his chair. “I’m not saying a word without Fred Faulkner.”
“We can play it that way, Congressman. But before you make any more rash decisions, why don’t you have a look at this?”
Donatella slid a stack of paper in front of him.
“What the hell is this?” he said, looking down at a government form.
“These are the FEC filings for the Friends of Shepard Truman Political Action Committee. Your PAC.”
“So what?”
“Turn to the next page. That’s the bank records for the PAC. At the bottom you’ll see we’ve marked three transactions from a bank account in the Cayman Islands.”
“You’ll have to ask Fred Faulkner about those. I don’t have anything to do with the PAC. That’s the whole point.”
“Bear with me, Congressman. I think you’ll want to follow this trail,” she said, flipping to the next page and pointing to a yellow circle around an address. “Here. We’ve identified the owner of that account as Harvey Holden. Do you know Mr. Holden?”
“Of course. Harvey’s an old friend and a longtime constituent of mine. So what?”
“Mr. Holden is the senior partner at Holden Harriman Quinn. He’s also a minority owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team.”
“Ev
erybody knows that!”
“I’m just establishing some facts, Congressman.”
“Whatever Harvey’s done has nothing to do with me. Nothing at all.”
“What do you know about Turkish bonds?”
“Turkish bonds? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What about Indonesian currency swaps? Or Ukrainian debt?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Do you know Mr. Holden’s business partners?”
“I have no idea who Harvey does business with. How could I?”
“You’re welcome to flip through the next few pages, Congressman. But here’s what you’ll find. Or, rather, here’s what we’ve discovered. HHQ was in financial trouble. Big trouble. Despite the fancy offices and glowing news profiles, HHQ was technically bankrupt after overpaying for distressed assets, such as Wildcat Oil. Then they doubled down on petroleum and got caught over-leveraged in oil price futures.”
“This has nothing to do with me.”
“Have you ever heard of the Bolshaya Neva Fund?”
“No.”
“Bolshaya Neva is based in St. Petersburg. That’s Russia,” she added, just to annoy him. “The fund rescued Wildcat Oil and HHQ by taking a silent majority stake.”
“I still don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”
“To make Wildcat Oil profitable again, the plan was for Bolshaya to bring the cash. HHQ brought the political connections. That was you.”
“Me?”
“Did you call the U.S. ambassador in Manila on behalf of Harvey Holden on January fourth of last year?”
“I don’t recall.”
“On February twenty-second, did you contact the Commerce Department seeking information on oil contracts in Indonesia?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“Did you call the Justice Department the following month to urge them to open investigations into Chinese companies that were in direct competition with Wildcat Oil?”
“I just want a fair playing field for American companies. That’s all. I’m ensuring that American business can operate around the world free from the tyranny of corruption.”
