by Seeley James
“What was that?” Tania asked Pia. “Was that your Bantu?”
“No, sounds like Pidgin English. I think he said he doesn’t have bosses for a reason. Guess that means he doesn’t know who’s in charge.”
“Who was he calling then?” Tania waved the gun at him. “Hey, you. Who were you calling then?”
“Not knowing. Call for we side, she answer.”
Pia drew her gun and pulled the trigger.
“Yeah,” Tania said, “he was getting boring.”
“He was saying he just called in and spoke to someone without knowing who.” Pia patted him down.
She found a phone in his pocket and pressed the redial button. Three rings later, a woman’s voice offered a quick and curt allo. The voice sounded familiar. Pia waited, hoping the woman on the other end would repeat the greeting or ask something, anything that would help her identify the voice. Without another word, the woman clicked off. Pia called her back. This time the woman played Pia’s game—she picked up the call but said nothing.
After a couple beats, Pia said, “This is Pia Sabel, who are you?”
On the other end, Pia heard a surprised intake of breath. The line went dead. It had to be someone Pia knew, or she would have responded with “wrong number” or made some lame excuse for the boys. That didn’t narrow it down much—people speaking French included the maid, the bishop’s wife, guests at the hotel, and countless others.
She copied the phone numbers involved and returned the phones to the boys. She and Tania dragged them into the jungle, then propped them against a tree to keep their airways open. They administered the injectors.
“How come you hit that guy with your hand open?” Tania asked. “I thought you were a boxer or something.”
“With gloves on, you’re protected,” she said. Pia made a fist and pointed to her knuckles. “Lots of little bones in there. If you’re street fighting without gloves, use the heel of your hand or your elbow. Fewer broken bones that way.”
Satisfied the boys would wake up safely in a few hours, they wiped the sweat from their brows.
“Interesting solution.” The Major stepped from the dense foliage an arm’s length away.
“HOLY SHIT, Major!” Tania shouted. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“Reassuring to know you’re guarding the boss.” The Major turned to Pia. “You’ve now shown an adversary what kind of weapons we use and how willing we are to use them. Nice. Remember when you asked me to be your mentor?”
“Yeah.”
“Remember when we came up with a plan to interrogate the boys: lead them to me and let me use my twenty years of experience to question them?”
“Um.”
“What happened to the plan, Pia?”
Chapter 16
* * *
26-May, 3AM
The room swirled around Pia before coming into focus. It was dark, nothing familiar in sight. Her dream still echoed in her head, her mother saying, You hired the Major. Why don’t you listen to her?
Pia shook her head, pushed herself out of bed, stretched and glanced at the clock. Three hours of sleep. She looked for a light switch. A silhouette outside, backlit by moonlight off the ocean, caught her eye.
Her breath stopped. It looked distinctly human but short. Either someone crouched or was seated on the porch. She reached for her gun on the nightstand. When she reached, whoever it was moved. Was it one of the boys from the beach? She couldn’t tell which way it faced, in or out. Were they watching her? Or looking out to sea? Impossible to tell. Who had watch at this hour, Jacob or Ezra? Didn’t look right for either.
She tightened her hold on the gun and considered her next move. Opening the sticky wooden door would alert the lurker. Darts couldn’t penetrate the glass. Bluff? Scare him off?
She stepped closer to the window. A board creaked under her foot.
The figure outside spun into a standing position, gun drawn. For a full second they aimed at each other. Then the figure relaxed, lowering the gun.
“Jesus, Pia,” the Major said. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“We’re even, then.” She started breathing again.
“The manual says you don’t sleep much, but I didn’t expect you up this early.”
“What are you doing out there?”
“I sent Marty in and took his watch overnight. Did I wake you up?”
“No, come in, Major.” Pia opened the door. “I was just going to check out what our experts back home could learn from the phones.”
“You can call me Jonelle when we’re alone.”
“I call you Major out of respect. Doesn’t matter who’s around.”
The Major bowed her head a moment. Then she said, “There’s one thing that kept me up, Pia. You brought us to Cameroon because of a pack of matches and a bus ticket. I thought we were wasting resources. Now I realize you were on to something—you hit a nerve somewhere. Those boys might have been cheap amateurs, but someone sent them to watch you. Which means you have us in the right place.”
Pia stared at her for a beat. “Thank you, Major. I appreciate that.”
“It also means we’re in greater danger than I thought.”
The Major nodded and walked outside to keep the watch.
Pia’s phone buzzed, caller ID showed Dad. As much as it pained her, she let it roll to voicemail.
She pulled up the report. The boys’ phones originated in Vienna. Someone had converted them for use in Africa on an anonymous pre-paid plan over the MTN network. The phones had no GPS location capability. The woman who answered could have been anywhere from Ghana to Gabon. The two recorded conversations between the boys and their handler revealed nothing but whining about the tedium and lack of things to report. They wanted to leave.
They got even less from the woman’s end of the conversation: Allo and Non.
Pia slumped back in her chair and heard the Major’s words echo in her head. What happened to the plan? Caught up in the euphoria of domination, she’d picked up on Tania’s impulsiveness. She darted the boys because it seemed like fun, like something within her power to decide. It was irresponsible. An opportunity lost.
She picked up her e-reader and went outside. The Major returned, sat in one of two chairs next to her and watched the beach. Moonlight between the clouds occasionally lit a wave, all else was blackness.
“What are you reading?” the Major asked.
“The Memoirs of Jack Reacher.” Pia looked up from her book. “Hey, he was an MP too. Did you know him?”
“I was a new recruit, he was my CO. Worked for him on and off over about five years. He taught me everything I know.”
“Did really he do all this stuff?” Pia held the book up.
“Never read the memoirs. But if he said he did—he did. That’s for damn sure.”
“Pretty violent guy.”
“He never hurt anyone who didn’t have it coming. Keep reading, he’s a good role model.”
She put the book down. “I need a plan for today.”
“You have great instincts, Pia. Have confidence in that. But, in front of the others, everything has to come from you. I’ll only jump in to prevent a serious mistake. Now, let’s start with the goal.”
They talked for thirty minutes. When they were done, Pia changed into her running shorts and shirt, grabbed a pair of water runner shoes, and headed back outside. Ignoring the Major’s security protests, she did her ten-kilometer warm-up. In the dark, with only a small headlamp for guidance, she had a chance to clear her head and plan her day. Thirty-five minutes later, she was back in the hotel’s gym lifting weights.
When she finished, she found a text from Alphonse: call me.
“I was not certain when you wake,” he said.
“I told you, I’m an early riser.”
“I like that in the woman.”
“Easy there, Romeo,” she said. “Hey, I found two teenagers following me yesterday.” She explained the phone source and the French
woman’s voice.
“Vienna?” he said. “Perhaps stolen from tourists? Or is that where the pirates live?”
“Their attacks came from a pretty nasty area of swamps and jungles. No electricity or running water, so they probably live somewhere else between attacks. But Vienna? Kind of land- locked for a bunch of pirates. Anyway, we’re heading up the coast for some recon. Hopefully, we’ll know something by this time tomorrow.”
“We have found little on our end. Capitaine Villeneuve has ordered me to interrogate the wives. She thinks perhaps there was the love triangle. But, this is not possible. It would have to be the love pentagram.”
Pia laughed. “Orgy, maybe? You know how wild bankers are.”
“It makes me ill to think. Mme. Marot is difficult to question. She is superior, only speaking to le Capitaine, and even then she is quite rude. Sandra Bachmann lived with the sister who knows nothing of banking. Eren Wölfli’s wife, Ramona, would be the suspect in my mind. She has the questionable past, some arrests before she married Wölfli. But why kill so many? It makes no sense. Sara Campbell’s husband, drunk at every interview. Reto Affolter’s wife, Antje, was most devoted.”
“Did you find anything on the accomplice?”
“Affolter’s murder in the parking garage was on video, but there is not much to see. Two men beating him before shooting him. Faces are not visible.” His voice perked up. “Oh, and the gendarmerie in Lyon has made identification of your attacker. A soldier from Norvège, no past, no records. He went to Cameroon a year ago and came back the day before the killings.”
“Sounds like assassins to me.”
“Even le Capitaine admits you could be correct about this. Is your offer to have Sabel Security help us still open?”
“Absolutely. I’m already trying to find them, may as well join forces.”
“I will mention it again. She is most insistent now that I find something new.”
“What about the money at Banque Marot?”
“Quoi? What money?”
Pia relayed what Sara Campbell had told her about having too much money. For a while, Alphonse was silent.
“This is most interesting,” he said. “It is unfortunate that she was killed before…”
As his voice trailed off, Pia understood the implication.
“You should go, Alphonse. Follow up on that one.”
“Oui, au revoir.”
She’d expected the police to make more headway, at least a few clues for her to follow in Cameroon. So far, they were living up to her original assessment of them. Were they ever going to start investigating?
Chapter 17
* * *
26-May, 6AM
As the sun rose into another gray haze, Pia showered and dressed for the day in black compression shorts, sports top, and her water runner shoes. She joined her agents and Monique Tsogo on board the Limbe Explorer.
They headed north, swinging wide around the massive Limbe tanker pier, where two tethered tankers were being filled with crude oil.
Captain Whittier, the Limbe Explorer’s proud captain and a California expat, insisted on giving Pia a personal tour of his Dvora class patrol boat. Capable of forty-five knots should Pia wish to pay for the extra fuel consumption, the twenty-seven-meter boat had a low radar signature and a draft of only one meter. Captain Whittier beamed as he showed her the open-air bridge up top. Below was the main control room, an armored pilothouse that allowed him control in adverse conditions. They had enough supplies to last three days, plus a water filtration system. Four Zodiacs were stowed for side trips.
Captain Whittier rattled off several oil companies as his primary clients. He said, “Their geologists and oil hunters often required the Limbe Explorer’s speed for escape in case of attack.”
“Attack from whom?”
“This isn’t the Great Lakes, Ms. Sabel. There are desperately poor people living in this region.”
“Have you been attacked?”
“Oh no, ma’am. But I’ve left in a hurry quite a few times. Don’t worry, if I see anything dangerous I’ll get you out of there before the shooting starts.”
Pia managed not to ask, What about getting into the shooting? Instead, she looked around at the decks and the thick metal shielding. She asked, “Bullet-proof?”
“Grenade-proof.”
Sunrise broke over Mount Cameroon into a cloudless sky. The early fog burned off quickly, leaving a hot unfiltered sun. The smell of warming beach and fish filled the air. She watched the endless jungle pass by and felt the salt-water breeze rough her skin like fine sandpaper.
They stopped off the coast of Idenao to pick up Calixthe Ebokea, the villager from the delta. She had a triangular face and sharp eyes that assessed everyone with quick, stabbing glances. Gray streaks peeked out beneath her gele and she wore a dark dashiki and leggings with threadbare sneakers.
Shaded from the intense sun by a large awning, they grouped around a table with a map in the center they weighted with handguns laid on each corner.
As Pia joined her agents on the spacious aft deck, Monique glanced up.
“Calixthe is from Bekumu, here at the end of the river,” the investigator said. “She says the pirates are deep in the mangroves in this area.” Her hand swept over a featureless area to the north and west. “She can lead you to their general vicinity, within a mile. But she wants your help first.”
Calixthe showed them where a river ran parallel to the coast for nearly ten kilometers before turning into the ocean. A wide stretch of land and mangroves separated ocean and river.
“Slavers,” Calixthe spoke with a hard voice and an African cadence. “Europeans with big promises. They say our women will have jobs in Belgium or France or Denmark. The women are forced into prostitution. These men have been here before. We know their lies. This time they come to Bekumu and take many women by force. I come to Limbe yesterday but the authorities, they do not listen. The police work only for bribes. You help me get the young women back. Then I help you find the white men you seek.”
“Not a problem,” Tania said. “How many men?”
“Three, maybe four.”
Pia held up a hand and eyed her people quickly. No one spoke. She turned to Calixthe.
“Where are they?”
“Here, an abandoned village called Boa.” She pointed to a bend in the long coastal river.
“How long ago?”
“A week.”
“Where are the men from your village?” Pia asked.
“Mostly at sea. They work the drilling rigs for two weeks, maybe three. Others are out fishing. They will not be back for another week.”
Pia nodded in the direction of the wheelhouse. Monique led Calixthe away, giving Pia privacy with her team.
“Perfect,” Tania said. “We do a good deed and get—”
“Whoa,” Jacob and Ezra said at the same time.
“Bad idea,” Jacob said. “Really bad.”
Pia frowned. “Why?”
“We need to keep focused,” he said. “We stick to our mission, obtain our goals. Traffickers in drugs, guns, women, whatever, are not our problem. We start down that path and every village will want us to run off their criminals. We’ll have to pull a coup d’etat and run the country.”
“Ezra?” Pia asked.
“What he said.” Ezra pointed at Jacob.
Pia looked to Marty next.
“I say it’s a win-win,” Marty said. “We take down some slavers and we have jungle swag. Villagers all over the delta will love us. This is something we have to do.”
Pia read the faces of the others. Miguel, indifferent. The Major, waiting for a decision. The others had spoken.
“Three or four men in the jungle,” she said. “How dangerous is it from a tactical standpoint?”
Jacob rubbed his jaw. “A couple of us do a quick recon to verify the target, shouldn’t be a problem. If she’s right about the numbers. If she’s wrong, we could be in deep.”
“R
isk for the recon trip?” Pia asked.
“Low,” Ezra said. “We swing around wide, in and out in a couple hours.”
“If recon shows three men, ten hostages, what’s the risk of going in?”
“Still low,” Jacob said. “Tania can take down three men after an all-night party. I’ve seen her do it. I just don’t like straying from the mission.”
“I can live with it,” Ezra said.
“We should stick to the plan,” Jacob said. “Get the pirates. Find ’em and take ’em down. None of this save the world crap. That kind of thing gets you killed.”
“We’re doing it,” Pia said. “We can’t buy information so we have to work for it.”
Everyone stared at Jacob. He shuffled from foot to foot.
“Ah, screw it,” he said. “You guys want to go, I’ll go. Marty snipes, Ezra contains, Miguel and I take the recon.”
“No,” Pia said. “I’ll work the recon trip with Miguel and Marty. Everyone else gets ready for a quick trip up river if and when we confirm the enemy numbers.”
Everyone grunted agreement and headed toward the coffee bench. Tania watched Pia intently until Ezra handed her a cup.
Pia stepped to the Major, who leaned against the railing.
“You handled that well,” the Major said.
Pia nodded and looked out to sea. “Thanks. Good idea?”
“No. I’m with Jacob—stick to the mission.”
“Should I—”
“You should never second guess an order.” She straightened. “Make sure you have it right the first time.”
Pia went back to the map and looked it over. Her finger traced the river from its source near Bekumu, down the coast, until it swept into a broad P-shaped curve, with the P lying on its back. Boa stood at the top of the curve. From the village to the coast was three kilometers of open beach with a broad channel. A quick trip for the Limbe Explorer if the recon confirmed things, a quick evac if it didn’t.
A couple yards away from her, Monique answered her cell phone. “Allo?”
