by Vince Flynn
The conversation was carried out in Swahili but, as promised, Rapp got a real-time translation in his right ear. Mostly pleas to be commanded, assurances that it would be an honor to die for his lord and master. Yada, yada, yada.
Auma, for his part, didn’t respond—the man in front of them apparently wasn’t worthy of that. Instead, they followed in silence as they were led along a randomly winding trail that had been cleared of rocks but was still tangled with foliage. Likely designed to not create a pattern that could be seen from above and bring an attack down on them. Their survival depended entirely on the jungle’s ability to hide them and their proximity to the DRC border.
What the jungle couldn’t hide, though, was the smell. The unmistakable stench of human decay hit first, eventually combining with the duller odor of open latrines. Rapp couldn’t see much through the darkness, but human figures occasionally separated from the gloom on either side of the rudimentary path. Some were completely still—likely the source of the rot that hung in the air. Others moved silently, almost drunkenly, to watch them pass. Probably the girls they’d enslaved. Or what was left of them.
The hard angles of the crosses were easier to make out, as were the bodies nailed to them. One man—boy, really—was still alive. He choked out a few entreaties as they passed, all dutifully converted to English by the translator in Rapp’s ear. There was nothing he could do for the kid and he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted from studying his operating environment. If he had to run, shit was going to get ugly. Auma’s followers would know the terrain like the back of their hands and their lack of discipline would work in their favor. All they had to do was fill the air in his general direction with lead. He was fast, but not fast enough to outpace a bullet.
Rapp kept Auma in front of him, glancing back when a number of men fell in behind. He hated having people flanking him but there wasn’t much he could do. If Auma had managed to transmit some kind of signal that he’d missed, he was likely going to get shot in the back. It was Coleman’s greatest concern—that Auma had some kind of “all clear” sign and that, in its absence, his disciples would tear whoever he was with apart.
They crashed through a particularly dense section of jungle and then exited into a clearing that Rapp recognized from the overhead shots he’d studied. The rectangular object at the center was indeed an altar—complete with chains and streaked dark with what he assumed was dried blood. Behind was the muddy cliff and cave entrance that Auma had described. Next to that was something he’d thought was just a legend meant to scare the locals. A fucking iron maiden. Nothing fancy—little more than a simple coffin with a hinged lid and nails driven through it—but functional. The unit was open and leaned against the dirt wall with a body inside. Kind of like an Old West display but with a corpse covered in rotting perforations.
Auma climbed the mound that contained the altar as the clearing filled with his followers. Rapp, not sure what his role in this twisted ceremony should be, took a position on the other side of the stone structure.
The African raised his arms, feeding off the glassy eyes staring up at him. “We have him!”
The cheers were deafening, and Rapp didn’t need the earpiece to get the gist of what was being said.
Praise be unto Gideon Auma.
The cult leader opened his hands, silencing them. “Soon we will have the tools to take Uganda. And then Africa. And then the world. In the name of God and his one true prophet.”
The cheers erupted again as he slowly turned full circle and gazed out over his disciples. Rapp tightened his grip on the remote in his pocket. Better to err on the side of caution and blow this guy’s nuts sky high at anything that even hinted at betrayal. He might be able to disappear in the confusion that would ensue. If Auma called him out first, though, there was a good chance he’d be joining that poor asshole in the iron maiden.
When the clearing descended back into silence, Auma spoke again. “In celebration, we will all take the Sacrament.”
That brought a second round of cheers that went beyond enthusiastic and crossed into ecstatic. Rapp pulled the pack off his shoulder and was about to toss it on the altar, but then caught himself. Instead, he bowed his head and placed it there with exaggerated reverence.
The innocuous canvas knapsack was filled with a special batch of ajali produced by one of Ward’s pharmaceutical companies. Good stuff, they had assured him—better than anything cooked up in the region’s hidden jungle labs. It wasn’t the quality of the high he was interested in, though. It was the secret ingredient. Ricin.
The lab was experimenting with using the toxin to kill cancer cells, but it had another property that made it ideal for this operation: a delayed effect. Once inhaled, initial symptoms wouldn’t present themselves until well after everyone had partaken. Difficulty breathing. Fever. Nausea. Fluid would start to build up in the lungs and the victim’s skin would take on a bluish hue. Finally, the outcome he was interested in. Death.
“Take it!” Auma shouted. “All of you. And enter the presence of God!”
Rapp followed him toward the cave as his men rushed the altar. Their shouts became almost desperate as a few designated specialists began loading the ajali into devices designed to measure the dose.
A leafy barrier constructed in the cave entrance swung open when he and Auma got close. They passed into the darkness and it was closed firmly behind them before a single lightbulb flared to life.
A girl of around fourteen with close-cropped hair and elegant features secured the barrier in a way that wouldn’t allow light to bleed through and then dropped to her knees before Auma. She touched her head to the ground and then looked up at her master with a smile that revealed a stunning set of teeth.
She said something, but interference from the cave prevented Rapp from getting a translation. It was a situation that he’d discussed specifically with Auma. One word in anything but English while they were in the cave and he’d be chasing his balls around the floor like a couple of dropped marbles.
The self-proclaimed prophet had apparently gotten the message because he ignored her, instead continuing deeper into the cavern. It seemed to be as described—living quarters first, followed by something that passed for a war room. After that, just darkness. According to Auma, it went back a ways and then dead-ended. Rapp assumed that was a lie. Someone as smart as Auma wouldn’t pick a lair that lacked a back door. Probably more than one.
The African used one of the keys hanging around his neck to open a filing cabinet and dug around inside. Rapp tensed, but the man didn’t pull out anything more dangerous than a flip phone and an iPad.
“This is the phone I use to contact the Saudis,” he said, handing it to Rapp. “The tablet has pictures of him.”
They weren’t particularly good as it turned out—taken surreptitiously by his followers in bad light and from less-than-ideal angles. What they lacked in quality, though, they made up for in number. Enough that a good composite could be stitched together, he guessed.
“Where’s the information you were given on Ward’s compound?”
Auma retrieved a large envelope as the shouts of the people outside intensified. It sounded like Ward’s scientists weren’t bullshitting—they really did know how to turn out some high-grade product. Rapp ignored the din as he shuffled through the photos of Ward’s compound, schematics on his defenses, and detailed attack strategies written in English but sprinkled with grammatical errors common to native Arabic speakers. There was no question that these had been downloaded directly from the CIA’s secure database. By whom, though, was still a mystery.
* * *
Rapp had insisted that the light remain on and was sitting with his back against one of the cave walls. Gideon Auma was lying on a bed fifteen feet to his left, fully clothed, motionless, eyes closed. Given his dire situation and the party exploding outside, though, it was unlikely he was asleep. Screams, singing, and the shouts of people goading on hand-to-hand combatants bounced around the co
nfined space with no sign of abating.
Gunshots, though, were conspicuously absent. Rapp had peeked outside earlier and discovered that all weapons had been caged up and were being guarded by two men who didn’t appear to have joined the festivities. Of course, the drug-frenzied mob could have easily overwhelmed them, but so far there had been no attempts to do so. Their prophet had undoubtedly laid out the safety protocols for these events long ago and the penalty for not following them would be sufficiently biblical as to discourage noncompliance. A rare stroke of luck in Rapp’s favor.
He lifted his head and looked into the confused eyes of the girl sitting in a similar position across from him. Auma had refused her desperate attempts to provide him sexual favors and she now looked even more terrified than when they’d arrived. It seemed likely that she was thinking that he’d become bored with her. That after barely making it into her teens, she was going to end up nailed to a cross or tossed to his men.
Rapp let his eyes go out of focus but remained alert. He hated everything about caves. The darkness, the smell, the thick, still air. While he had learned to control his claustrophobia, it was still there, scratching at the back of his mind like a cornered rat. If he had any aspiration for his death, it was to go down in an open desert beneath a blanket of stars. He had the next billion years to lie in a hole.
* * *
A sliver of light flashed in Rapp’s peripheral vision, suggesting that the sun had risen sufficiently to beam directly on the makeshift blackout shade covering the cave entrance. The girl had fallen asleep a while back and was slumped in the dirt, moaning quietly as she navigated a dream that didn’t sound much better than her reality.
Now just over twelve hours since Rapp’s arrival, the party outside had gone more or less silent. The few cries that occasionally rose up sounded as though they were motivated more by terror and suffering than bloodlust or ecstatic vision. All were weak and most ended in uncontrolled coughing fits. Still, no one had ventured to the cave entrance to seek help from their messiah. Incredible. They were still more afraid of Gideon Auma than they were of what was happening to them. Maybe they thought it was a punishment he had brought down on them for some unknown transgression? Or that they were on their last, painful journey to paradise?
“Get up,” Rapp said as he pushed himself to his feet. Auma did as he was told, face blank, eyes wandering around his familiar surroundings. By the look of him, he’d spent the night trying to make sense of what was happening. He’d almost certainly thought that the purpose of the ajali was just to create confusion—to provide cover for their departure after Rapp got what he wanted.
And that would have been the smart move. In fact, it was the move that Rapp would have made only a few years ago. The mole was the mission, and the job was to complete the mission in the most efficient way possible. All other considerations were irrelevant.
The more gray hair he got, though, the more relevant those other considerations became. While he hadn’t had the power to completely shut down ISIS, the Taliban, or al-Qaeda, that possibility existed here. He’d seen what Auma and his followers were capable of. What they’d done. And that made it hard to ignore that he had a shot at stopping them. Not winning a skirmish. Not taking out a few high-level leaders who would be immediately replaced. Not stemming the flow of blood but shutting it off forever. A first in what had been a sometimes frustrating career.
“What’s happened?” Auma mumbled as he moved to the middle of the cave and awaited further instructions. There had likely been similar ceremonies in the past and this wouldn’t be what they sounded like when they finally died down. He knew something was wrong.
“A deal’s a deal,” Rapp said, ignoring the man’s question. “Let’s go.”
He kept Auma in front of him as they exited into the sunny clearing. The girl leapt to her feet and followed, eager to prove her continued value. Not ideal, but it was easier to let her do what she wanted than to convince her otherwise.
In daylight, the place had an even stronger resemblance to hell. The shadowy figures he’d seen the night before were now in stark focus and full color. Worse, the climbing temperature was raising a translucent mist that seemed to magnify the stench of excrement and death, now joined by an acidic hint of vomit.
Most of Auma’s followers were down. Some already dead from the ricin, the others were on their way. Girls—badly broken versions of the one trailing Auma—surveyed the scene from the trees. A few that had started to venture out retreated at the sight of the cult leader.
Rapp turned his attention to the two armed men guarding a wooden cage full of weapons. They glanced at Rapp but were much more interested in Auma. Despite everything they’d just witnessed, their eyes still brimmed with an odd mix of terror, adoration, and gratitude. Did they think he had saved them? That God had deemed them his only worthy followers?
An interesting question, but not one Rapp really needed answered. He pulled his Glock from a holster in the small of his back and fired a single round into the forehead of each man. Both collapsed unceremoniously to the ground.
Auma apparently saw that as his moment. He grabbed the girl, pulling her to him in a way that would both shield him from Rapp’s bullets and cause the explosives glued to his genitals to kill her if detonated.
The African backed toward the cave as Rapp tracked him lazily with his Glock. In truth, he was more concerned with the surviving men strewn around him and even the girls in the trees. In a situation like this, it was hard to know how people would react and who might attack.
In the end, the answer was no one. While some of the boys on the ground still had the energy to writhe around a bit, they no longer seemed to have any idea what was going on around them. And the girls just inside the tree line seemed content to stay there.
“Tell them I’m dead!” Auma said as he continued to pick his way through what was left of his disciples. “You got what you came for.”
Rapp didn’t react, even when Auma dragged the stunned girl back into the cave. There was no reason to. The cult leader was playing checkers while Joe Maslick was playing chess. While there was indeed a detonator button in Rapp’s pocket, it didn’t send a signal as Auma assumed. In fact, the opposite was true. The remote was in constant communication with the bomb placed on the man and the button shut down that connection. More simply put, the explosive wasn’t designed to go off when signaled. The signal was what kept it dormant. Once Auma moved out of range, he was going to get a very unfortunate surprise.
It didn’t take long. There was a dull bang—not much louder than a couple of firecrackers—followed by inevitable screams. The girl’s were like breaking glass and Auma’s, if anything, were even more piercing.
She appeared first, splattered with blood, but sprinting with an athletic grace that suggested it wasn’t hers. Auma staggered from the cave a few seconds later, crimson from mid-thigh to mid-belly. No weapons were visible on him and there were none accessible beyond the two AKs tangled up in his fallen guards. Gideon Auma—the terror of Africa—now posed so little threat that Rapp turned away and started toward the chopper.
He paused just inside the trees when he heard the quiet voices of young girls. They were starting to inch into the clearing and he couldn’t help but watch.
He missed his guess as to who the instigator would be. She was smaller than most of the others, wearing a tattered dress that had probably once been a floral print. Rapp saw her pick up a hefty rock, stare at it for a moment, and then bring it down on the skull of one of the boys who was still breathing.
And that broke the dam.
There were more of them than he’d first estimated. A good twenty came flooding out of the trees, picking up rocks and going to work on the survivors. When no live victims were at hand, they went after the corpses. Auma tried to make it to cover but was slowed by blood loss and what looked like a badly damaged pelvis. Four girls tracked him like lions trying to decide whether a wounded buffalo was still capable of defending it
self. When the man stumbled and dropped to his knees, they swarmed him.
It was only then that Rapp continued toward the chopper. Hopefully, they wouldn’t let that iron maiden go to waste.
34
THE dirt track turned steep enough that even the Land Cruiser was struggling to hold traction. There was a landing zone near the camp they’d stashed Nicholas Ward in, but it was a little tight for Rapp’s piloting skills. Coleman had suggested that he put down in a clearing near the base of a mountain and had left the vehicle there for him.
Rapp knew he was being watched from the trees on either side of the road, but never saw any evidence of it. Any unwanted guests trying to take this path to the lodge would find themselves caught in a withering crossfire. Anyone coming through the jungle would be picked up by sensors and die never even having laid eyes on Charlie Wicker’s team. And, finally, anyone coming in from the air would face a state-of-the-art SAM battery purchased with Ward’s inexhaustible checkbook.
When Rapp came around the last turn, he saw Coleman waiting at the open gate. Surprisingly, Nicholas Ward was standing next to him, hands shoved in his pockets and a deep frown on his face. Or maybe it wasn’t so surprising. He was probably getting pretty bored at this point. Going from running the largest private empire in history to wandering around looking at the bird life was a pretty stark transition.
“I can’t believe that worked!” Coleman said as Rapp stepped from the vehicle. “I bet Mas ten bucks you’d be hanging from a cross by now.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Rapp said.
He shrugged. “I’ll win it back.”
“Is he dead?” Ward interjected.
“Auma? Yeah.”
“What about his people?”
“Same. And by now the girls will be on their way back to their villages. Congratulations, Nick. Your first field operation was a spectacular success.”
