Mission Liberty (35 page)

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Liger has a new government. President Bo flees. Asabo and Dari announce copresidency. Elections promised.

◊ In a surprise move, a new government was formed peacefully last night in the war-torn West African nation of Liger. Rebel
factions (more →→)

◊ Ex-Liger president Bo flees to Libya and seeks asylum when USS
Johnson
refuses landing (more →→)

◊ Asabo president, Dari vice-president. Former high school friends to lead nation. “This is not the monarchy…” (more
→→)

◊ Instead of expected violence, Port Ivory sees joy, dancing in the streets (more →→)

◊ Nation lays down arms as rebel leader throws weapons into sea through “Door of No Return.” Widespread disarmament (more
→→)

◊ Free elections in six months, monitored by the UN, ECOMAG, and AU (more →→)

◊ Celebration (see pix →→)

◊ Royal robe (see pix →→)

Related stories:
* Oil prices fall; * Relief floods into country as U.S. troops, aid workers assist; Asabo’s father freed; * Evidence of
atrocities as Adu flees; * Adu caught in firefight?

DELUCA WAS STANDING WITH SYKES WHEN HIS SATphone rang. It was Scottie, telling him he needed to check his CIM. On the screen,
DeLuca saw a red H2 Hummer leaving town as part of a caravan of trucks and SUVs. It was confirmed that the H2 contained Samuel
Adu.

He consulted briefly with Asabo, who requested any assistance the U.S. could give. DeLuca said he needed transportation. Dari
summoned his number two in command, a man he introduced as Captain Oscar Kudzimtuku, and told him to give DeLuca whatever
he needed.

It took a while to clear the crowds still thronging the castle, and a while to pass along the streets where the citizens of
Port Ivory were celebrating, dancing, holding signs, Christians and Muslims alike, playing loud music and drinking beer, now
that the war was over. DeLuca watched a real-time data feed of video footage from the UAV flying above Samuel Adu’s caravan,
clicking between that and a map showing the road Adu was on and where it led. When Adu turned north onto the Baku Da’al highway,
DeLuca saw a shortcut and showed it to Captain Kudzimtuku, who got on his radio and told two of his trucks to take the shortcut
and set up a roadblock. The two leaders watched the real-time feed as, fifteen minutes later, Adu’s red H2 stopped short of
the roadblock, where a firefight broke out. They watched as Adu’s driver wheeled the H2 around and sped toward a cinderblock
building, just as DeLuca and the remainder of the SJD forces arrived. Scott told his father that a biometrics analysis confirmed
that Samuel Adu had fled the H2 and had taken refuge in the cinderblock building, an abandoned warehouse, Scott said, perhaps
twenty by thirty feet, not large. Inside it, thermal imaging revealed, were perhaps fifteen or sixteen men. The terrain was
flat, with little to take shelter behind, forcing Kudzimtuku’s men to find cover at a greater than desired distance, but at
least Adu wasn’t going anywhere, with SJD troops surrounding the building. Adu’s men fired from the windows, and SJD forces
fired back. Adu was trapped, and he knew he was trapped.

DeLuca phoned General LeDoux, who said he’d call Washington and get right back. When LeDoux called back, DeLuca listened,
then got Scott on the line. Scott said he had the scene from the UAV but wanted to know the situation on the ground.

“It’s a standoff,” DeLuca said.

“Well then,” Scott said. “You going to turn it over to the locals or stick around?”

“Washington thinks it’s best if we finish it. I’m sorry to have to ask you to do this, Scott,” DeLuca said. “We need to take
the building down. We might take casualties if we do it from ground.”

There was a pause. DeLuca knew what he was asking his son to do, pull the trigger on a man who wasn’t going anywhere and was,
if not defenseless, and hardly innocent, then more or less a sitting duck. This was not an American court of law, where a
person was presumed innocent until proven guilty. This was war, where threats were assessed, and then countermeasures were
taken. Sometimes, one arrived at a “gray area” where the distinctions between right and wrong were blurred, at which point
men could exempt themselves from responsibility or recuse themselves from living in a moral universe and say they were just
following orders, and then, like Captain Ernie Tibbets and the crew of the
Enola Gay
, the airplane that dropped the first atom bomb on Nagasaki, or any number of military men in similar but less notorious roles,
a man could do harm in the name of preventing greater harm and live with a clear conscience for the rest of his life. Yet
every officer knew how difficult it was to tell someone to kill someone else. It just was, despite the adrenaline rush of
combat, or the obvious need to protect one’s friends, or one’s country, or the idea of freedom itself. Even if Scott was sitting
at a computer screen five thousand miles away, DeLuca was still asking his own son to kill someone, to “lose his cherry,”
as some said. It was why DeLuca had been less than overjoyed when Scottie told him he’d been promoted. He’d hoped it wouldn’t
come to this. Samuel Adu was as bad as they come—there was no gray area there. Samuel Adu had literally butchered people in
Sierra Leone and in Liger, and he’d commanded parents to eat their own children—it was as black and white as it got, and still
it was hard.

“Not a problem,” Scott said. “Bringing the bird around. What’s he doing now?”

As Scott spoke, Adu emerged from the building with his shirt off, a machete in his right hand, which he held high above his
head as he danced in a circle and sang. Captain Kudzimtuku told his men to hold their fire.

“I’m going to kill you all!” Adu shouted, laughing. He was clearly insane, DeLuca realized. “I’m going to fuck your wives
and eat your babies. I am Samuel Adu…”

DeLuca had seen it before. In police parlance, it was called “SBC” or “suicide by cop,” behavior some criminal suspects exhibited
when they realized they were surrounded with no way out, one last fantasy about going down in a blaze of glory, in hopes of
becoming famous in death if not in life, or, sometimes, in hopes of taking somebody else with them.

“I will slaughter you all,” Adu said, dancing, laughing. Were it a betting matter, DeLuca would have bet money Adu was high
on something. “Man, I the baddest killer you ever seen! I am…”

“Making it easy for us,” DeLuca said, as if to finish the man’s sentence, in more ways than one. “Hold off, Scott. He’s out
in the open. We’ll take it from here.”

There was no reason to make anyone else do it, and every reason to do it himself, to rid the world of someone who didn’t belong.
He drew his Model 66, aimed carefully, and fired a bullet that struck Samuel Adu between the eyes. The man dropped where he
stood, and DeLuca knew, without having to inspect the body, that the man was dead.

On their way back to Port Ivory and the Castle of St. James, hoping to make better time through the crowds by taking a broader
street, they found themselves on Presidential Way, passing the presidential palace, where DeLuca saw, somewhat to his surprise,
a fleet of white SUVs. He asked Captain Kudzimtuku to turn in the drive, and to block any of the SUVs from leaving. Two soldiers,
both white, stood guard by the vehicles but made little effort to halt or challenge the visitors. DeLuca got out of the truck
and was met on the steps of the presidential palace by Hugh Lloyd and by a man DeLuca assumed was Simon Bell, an assumption
confirmed when Lloyd made introductions.

“Though by the look of you,” Lloyd said, “I gather your name isn’t Donald Brown and you do not actually work for the World
Bank. Correct?”

“What are you doing here?” DeLuca said. As he spoke, he glanced up to a second-floor window where he saw a man, catching a
brief glimpse, but it was enough to see that the man had duct tape across his mouth, and that his hands had been bound behind
his back. It was enough of a glimpse to know, as well, that DeLuca had met the man somewhere before.

“Waiting to leave this godforsaken country,” Lloyd said. “In which case immediate would not be too soon. To what do we owe
the pleasure of your visit, Mr. Brown?”

“Why are you waiting here?” DeLuca asked, ignoring Lloyd’s efforts to charm him. He remembered where he’d seen the man in
the window before. “And why do you have Hans Berger upstairs with duct tape across his mouth?”

Lloyd looked at Bell, who looked at Lloyd.

“That is an excellent question,” Lloyd said. “It really cuts to the heart of the matter. You see, some of our South African
colleagues seem to feel it’s quite urgent that they be paid now, before we leave the country, and not later. Seems the person
who was going to pay them is no longer able to. I’ve been trying to arrange for funding, but they’ve asked Mr. Berger to stay
with them as collateral until I accomplish that task.”

“Here?” DeLuca said. “At the presidential palace? Was Daniel Bo…” Then he put it together. “Not Bo—Ngwema. He was paying
you. He hired you to help him overthrow the government. Your job was to secure the palace.”

Lloyd said nothing.

“And Ngwema was in bed with the West African Oil Consortium,” DeLuca said. “That’s why your men are holding Hans Berger. They
want WAOC to make up the difference.”

“I think you’ve read too many Tom Clancy novels, Mr. Brown,” Lloyd said.

“I don’t read Tom Clancy. And you’re an asshole,” DeLuca said. “You had an opportunity to save your ex-wife’s life and you
didn’t lift a finger, because you were too busy guarding a bunch of gas pumps. You kill people for money. You’re also an international
criminal for participating in a coup d’état. Your father will be so proud of you when he learns what you’ve been up to.”

“I’d prefer to keep my father out of this,” Lloyd said.

“Then tell him not to watch the news,” DeLuca said. “Especially your ex-wife. She’s going to love this.” He glanced up at
the second-floor window again, where he saw a rather mean-looking merc with a machine gun. “But you’re busy now, so I’ll leave
you to your negotiations.” He turned to Simon Bell. “They just don’t have the same level of commitment as real soldiers, do
they? Nice to see how you’ve whipped them into shape. By the way, you all should smile,” DeLuca said, pointing up in the sky.
“You’re all on satellite cam. And stand up straight, Hugh—it looks better on the nightly news when you don’t slouch.”

Back aboard the
Johnson,
DeLuca and his team were finally able to ramp down. They showered, changed, called their families, ate. In the conference
room, DeLuca learned that Wes Chandler had been canned as the head of CIA operations in Liger and that Robert Mohl had been
appointed in his place. Mohl appeared to be taking his new responsibilities seriously. His dress was sharper, his shirt tucked
in now, his shoes polished, and there was more evidence of the keen intelligence DeLuca had sensed lurking beneath his furrowed
brow.

DeLuca found a private moment with Mohl and congratulated him.

“It’s a big job,” Mohl conceded. “Maybe more than I can handle, just between you and me. Given all the new changes.”

“You’ll be all right,” DeLuca said. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Certainly,” Mohl said.

“How long has it been since you had a drink?”

“Two days,” Mohl said. “Almost exactly.”

“How long before this that you’d gone two days without a drink?”

“I don’t remember,” Mohl said.

“So you’re what, sixty-two or -three?”

“I’m fifty-one,” Mohl said.

“Sorry,” DeLuca said. “So you started drinking when? When you were eighteen or so?”

“About that,” Mohl agreed.

“And how many drinks a day have you averaged?” DeLuca asked. “Be honest. I don’t give a shit, so don’t lie.”

“Six?” Mohl said. “Some days more, some days… Maybe six.”

“Let’s say six,” DeLuca said. “Thirty-four years, times 365 days, that’s 12,410 days, times six, that’s about 75,000 drinks.
I don’t know about you, but 75,000 drinks is over my limit. You gotta know when to say when.”

“I’ve said when,” Mohl said. “I’m not drinking anymore.”

“Probably a good plan,” DeLuca said. “Just remember—you were born sober. You know how to do it.”

“Ambassador Ellis is looking for you,” Mohl said. “He seems pretty upset about something.”

“You piece of shit,” were the ambassador’s first words when he managed to take DeLuca aside, confronting him on the flight
deck. He was wearing his traditional red bowtie over a short-sleeved white shirt and linen pants held up with suspenders.
“Who the hell do you think you are? Who gave you the authority to tell President Bo he could come here? Or to tell Ngwema
we’d be dropping bombs in ten minutes?”

“Did he think I said ten
minutes
?” DeLuca said innocently. “I told him ten
days.
No wonder they were acting so nervous. Did I say
minutes
? Well that explains it.”

“Don’t be coy with me, Agent DeLuca,” Ellis said. “I was going to go easy on you because you saved my life, but who do you
think you are? You think you’re a one-man regime change? On whose authority did you—”

“Mr. Ambassador,” DeLuca said, “blow me.”

Ellis looked shocked.

“No one speaks to me like—”

“And shut the fuck up, while you’re at it. I found a videotape in your office. I know you thought you shredded or burned everything,
but you missed one. Guess what’s on it? Did you know they passed a law to prevent sexual tourism that says an American citizen
can be tried under American age-of-consent laws for acts committed abroad where the age may be lower or nonexistent?”

To DeLuca’s knowledge, they hadn’t, but it was something he’d always thought would be a good idea. When he’d seen the videotapes
burned and melted in the wastebasket in the ambassador’s office, he’d thought little of it. When Preacher Johnson told him
the rumors that Ellis had made tapes of himself having sex with young girls, he dismissed it, but when he saw with his own
eyes how widely the moral decay emanating from the Bo administration had spread, reaching from top to bottom, he reconsidered
the rumors. He was bluffing now, because he had little to lose, but he could see by the look on the ambassador’s face that
he was guilty of something.