The Janson Command (40 page)
The Buddha’s old, yellowish eyes fixed unpleasantly on Case. Nearby executives and reporters pretended not to be trying to hear, which they could not, as the CEO of American Synergy Corporation was an expertly quiet mutterer and his words did not carry. “You did not predict this, Douglas.”
“No, Mr. Danforth,” Case admitted with a sinking heart. Acting President Poe’s hotly fought defense of the prison was not in the plan. At this moment Iboga’s freed officers were supposed to be welcoming him at the airport for a triumphal march to the Presidential Palace.
“Nor did you, Kingsman.”
“No, sir.”
Buddha’s dry, cracked lips barely moved. “What the fuck are you going to do about it?”
Kingsman Helms looked stricken. As well he should, thought Doug Case. The oil executive had never been in a gunfight. Case had. He took charge.
“I had hoped that Iboga’s advance party would wrap things up before he landed, Mr. Danforth. But I guarantee that the moment Iboga himself steps off that plane with fresh men and weapons, he will turn the tide.”
I
boga, who had purchased every seat in the Business Class section of the TAAG 224 from Luanda, spread out a topo map of Porto Clarence and rehearsed the run from the airport to Black Sand Prison. Nine mercenary commandos sat nearby, paying close attention to the returning dictator. Victory, the release of Iboga’s officers, would depend on disciplined adherence to his bold plan. None of this small force doubted it would work. Regardless of rumors of drug-addled cannibalism and his almost comical rolls of neck fat bulging from his yellow kaffiyeh, it was immediately apparent that Iboga was first and foremost a soldier who knew his business.
The snipers were first off the plane when they landed.
Their mission was to break up checkpoints and ambushes with long-range fire. While the rest of the assault force bullied the ground crew into quickly unloading their rocket launchers from the cargo hold, a waiting taxi raced the marksmen through the empty streets, dropping one at a key intersection with the beach road and delivering the other to Parliament House, a neoclassical building with a tall, spindly clock tower. The clock read ten minutes until midnight. An Iboga loyalist pointed the way to circular stairs. From the open belfry the sniper could cover the last mile of the beach road that Iboga would travel to Black Sand Prison.
The tower was a hundred feet tall, the stairs steep. The sniper was sweating in the humid night air and his weapon case was growing heavy when he reached the four-sided clock. One more story to the bell. He dragged himself up that last flight and stepped into the open. It was pitch-black. In the distance he could see the front of Black Sand Prison harshly bathed in floodlights. He scoped it through binoculars. Dead soldiers were scattered on the ground in front of the walls. The walls themselves were pocked by hundreds of rounds of assault rifle fire and scorched by grenade explosions. But the gates were still closed.
The defenders, who were sure to be spooked and bloodied from repelling the first attack, were in for a shock when Iboga’s force attacked with rockets. The sniper pulled down his night goggles and knelt to open his gun case.
“This seat is taken.”
He whirled toward the sound of a woman’s voice and pawed his pistol from its thigh holster.
“Don’t,” she said.
He had missed her in the dark before he donned his night gear. She was crouched like an elf, close enough to touch, an eerie vision tinted phosphorus green. She had light-enhancing glasses, too. Panoramics that covered most of her face. She had a pistol with a noise and flash suppressor in her hand and a Knight’s M110 SASS on a bipod. The semiautomatic sniper rifle was pointed at the prison.
Stupid woman. What the hell did she think she could hit at a thousand meters? Excellent gun, though, better than his; excellent night glasses, too, far better than his. An unexpected opportunity to upgrade. He faked a clumsy lunge at her to force her off-balance and sprang sideways, drawing his pistol. His last sight on earth was a flash from hers.
* * *
JESSICA KINCAID LISTENED
until she was sure no one else was coming up the stairs. Then she lay prone on the stone floor of the bell tower and zeroed her rifle in on the prison’s iron doors. In five minutes she heard a car on the beach road moving at high speed. Headlights flicked through the palm trees that lined the road. A second vehicle was right behind it. And then a third. They passed her position and kept going.
“Let them get close,” she muttered, but Freddy and his boys were pumped by the first fight to defend the prison. They opened fire too soon on the lead car.
Sure enough, the car stopped in time. Three guys with guns piled out, unscathed, and dove for cover in the trees. The second car stopped behind the first, the third behind that. Three more men tumbled out of each, professionals moving fast and low.
Iboga appeared brighter in the thermal-enhanced panoramics than the commandos around him. The fat man emitted more heat. His kaffiyeh headdress showed up darker than his skull, as did the rocket launcher that he was waving like a drum major’s mace to rally his men and coordinate their attack.
Using the first car for cover, two aimed rocket launchers at the gates. Others flitted through the trees to fire from flanking positions. Kincaid could see Iboga’s plan clearly in her mind. It was neat, clean, and ballsy. Freddy and four operators and Poe’s old men were now trapped between a potent assault force outside the prison and a mob of army officers inside who were primed to attack their jailors at the sound of rocket fire.
D
oug Case’s phone vibrated. He checked the screen: Paul Janson, enabling his phone to prompt caller ID—the sort of thing you would do if you were calling for help from an Italian jail.
“I better answer this,” Case said.
“Don’t roll off,” said the Buddha. “Stay right here.”
“Hello, Paul. How is sunny Italy?”
“Bring the reporters up to the bridge to meet President Poe.”
“What bridge—
What?
Are you on this ship?”
“Bring the press up here to meet President Poe or I will disable the dynamic positioning units. Both of them. Do you understand what that means?”
Case had trouble catching his breath. “Yes.”
“Do you also understand what a blood-soaked catastrophe it would be if you brought your shooters?”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand that I feel betrayed?”
Case steadied himself. This situation could be dealt with. “Yeah,” he said. “I understand you feel betrayed, but you don’t know by whom.”
“No witness, no crime?”
“I’m not the villain.”
“Is Helms there?”
“Right here.”
“Put him on.”
Doug Case did not bother covering the phone as he whispered, “It’s Paul Janson. He’s here! On the
Vulcan Queen
, demanding we bring the press up to the bridge—
of this ship—
to meet Ferdinand Poe.”
“The bridge? The DP is up there.”
“He figured that out. Here!” He offered the phone. “Try not to piss him off.”
“Janson,” Helms said smoothly. “I hope you are in your right mind and not about to do anything rash.”
“I’m staying alive by threatening rash. I am not sure who is behind all this. I will find out. In the meantime, I have stopped you cold.”
“Surely we can work something out.”
“Is the Buddha there?”
Kingsman Helms pressed the phone into the CEO’s wrinkled hand.
* * *
BRUCE DANFORTH HAD
heard a helicopter land a minute ago and had wondered who was on it. Now he knew. He put a smile on his face for the benefit of the reporters and executives and muttered so they could not hear, “Bruce Danforth here, Janson. You know I always wanted to shake your hand back in the day. But your old boss, Derek Collins, informed me that the lawyers said that we were better off never shaking hands in the event I had to deny your existence.”
“I learned to trust Derek,” Janson said coldly.
“I was Derek’s boss.”
“That’s news to me.”
“Way back in the day. By the time you came along I had retired into the private sector. But I keep up with the top people, the best. Perhaps I’ll get my wish tonight.”
“I can’t shake your hand. I’m holding a weapon.”
“You could put it down.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You could name a price to leave quietly.”
“You could name who murdered my pilots and Dr. Terry Flannigan.”
“I do not know what you are talking about.”
“You could also tell me who called in the Reaper attack on Pico Clarence.”
“Now I’m truly baffled,” the Buddha said smoothly.
* * *
PAUL JANSON KNEW
that he was beaten, for the moment, in his desire to connect crimes perpetrated by faceless minions to the masterminds on high. He had just
proven
that private jets, fleets of helicopters, and giant ships made corporation men feel safe, even when they weren’t. But the sense of entitlement bestowed by those layers upon layers upon layers of separation from ordinary people empowered the corporation with the mighty strength of bland denial. Janson could rail at ASC’s CEO until he was blue in the face, but Bruce Danforth and Kingsman Helms and Doug Case could shelter for years in a castle built of layers and layers and layers of hidden truths, half-truths, and unknowable lies. For years. But not forever, Janson promised himself. To attack the masterminds on high, he would have to dismantle their castle stone by stone.
“Bring the media,” he told Danforth. “You, Helms, Case, and the reporters only. No one else.”
* * *
KINCAID RESTED HER
cheek against the M110’s stock and searched for Iboga in the night scope’s circle of fire.
The commandos had crept within a hundred yards of the prison gates. Iboga was in the lead. She wondered why they were waiting so long to fire their rockets. Iboga signaled with his, waving them ahead, urging them even closer, and Kincaid realized that he wanted them so close that they could storm the gates the instant they blew them open.
Iboga commanded like a born leader. For what had to be a quickly thrown-together unit, their discipline was impressive. Only if they saw him dead would they give up the attack.
Iboga crouched behind a palm tree eighty yards from the gates.
He had finally stopped moving.
Nine hundred meters was a very long shot.
Kincaid aligned her rifle on him. She moved her heels to lie straight with the gun. She held her head upright. She peered with her right eye directly behind the night scope. She closed both eyes, took several measured breaths. She opened her eyes. The crosshairs were on the tree an inch from Iboga’s head. She moved her heels a quarter inch, lined up, and lay still. She found her point of aim three inches below the
agal
cord that tied his kaffiyeh to his skull.
She inhaled. She exhaled. She touched the trigger. The crosshairs drifted right. She released pressure on the trigger, inhaled, exhaled, and regained her point of aim. She touched the trigger and pulled it steadily back, back, back, back—
The clock tower bell pealed the first stroke of midnight. It clanged thunderously and shook the stone floor.
Miss!
She could hear her daddy laughing like he was sitting on her shoulder. Eight years old, practicing and practicing to show him she could shoot as good as any damned son he never had.
Lookit, Didder.
She hadn’t yet overcome the speech impediment that made her mispronounce certain words, so she made up words, “Didder” for “Daddy.” “Squirrel” was “skizzy.”
Skizzy up a seventy-foot oak tree. Lookit, Didder!
The damn squirrel zigged when it should have zagged.
Miss
. Didder laughed.
She’d practiced loading, too—loading quick and firing fast till her shoulder ached from the recoils. Bolt-action .22. She popped a fresh round in the chamber faster than that little sucker could climb and at least on that one day won her father’s heart. “The second shot,” he told her proudly that night, scrambling eggs and squirrel brains for their supper, “the shot after you missed,
that shot
separated the men from the boys.”
Iboga must have felt the bullet pass. But he didn’t know from where, assumed it came from the prison instead of half a mile in back of him, and stayed behind his tree while the parliament clock boomed twelve strokes and Kincaid lined up her second shot.
* * *
PAUL JANSON CROUCHED
in shadow at the front of the bridge with his back to a steel bulkhead and his eyes raking the doors and windows in case someone in ASC security planned to be stupid. The
Vulcan Queen’
s DP controllers that flanked the helm were so critical to the deepwater drilling operation that there were redundant units in the event of system failure. Janson aimed his MP5 at the one on the left, which was currently offline. Swiveling the barrel would take out the one on the right.
Kingsman Helms came first, bounding up the stairs. The captain intercepted him, as Janson had instructed, and kept him by the elevators. Both elevator doors opened simultaneously and an old man who had to be Bruce Danforth stepped out of the first one, followed by Doug Case in his wheelchair, which he immediately raised to full height. The other elevator delivered the reporters. Janson counted three men and two women, one of whom he recognized as a brave and beautiful NPR correspondent he had slept with years ago in Afghanistan.
Those wielding mini video cameras for their Web sites suddenly focused on Ferdinand Poe, who walked slowly in from the bridge wing. He looked tired and weary and too old to be cradling an FN P90 personal defense weapon.
“There you are, Mr. Acting President. Everyone wants to meet you, sir.”
Helms reached out to sling a comradely arm around Ferdinand Poe. The old man eluded him and stood aloof for his introduction. Helms uttered the bare minimum.
