Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (36 page)

KHORUSEPA LODGE, NAMIBIA

R
ené monitored Effrem’s condition through the night and shortly after dawn proclaimed him fit to travel. To assuage his conscience, Jack tried to convince Effrem to take the Hilux back to Windhoek for medical treatment, but Effrem dismissed the idea even before all the words had left Jack’s mouth.

After stripping the two dead Germans and their Hilux of anything of use, Jack and the others piled back into the Land Cruiser, left the lodge, and made their way back to the Western Bypass.

According to the coordinates in the Hilux’s navigation system, Kavango Dam lay 110 miles to the northeast, but neither Jack’s phone map nor René’s paper map showed any sign of the structure, or of any body of water. Worse still,
though the dam lay just thirty miles west of the Western Bypass, the only access road snaked its way through 150 miles of Otjozondjupa Region’s most rugged terrain.

By mid-morning, having traveled as far north as possible on the Western Bypass, Jack turned off the blacktop and headed east on a dirt track that was little more than twin wheel ruts worn into the earth. After four hours they’d covered only eighty miles and the road was worsening as it zigzagged deeper into the hills. By nightfall they were still forty miles from their destination. The road narrowed until the view out Jack’s window was blocked by a sheer rock face.

From the backseat Effrem said, “The other side’s even worse, Jack. About three feet from our tires there’s a drop-off. I can’t even see the bottom.”

René asked Jack, “Push on or stop and set up camp for the night?”

“Push on,” Jack replied. “Möller has a good eight-hour head start on us. For all we know, they’re already at Kavango.”

“Yes, but doing what?” asked René.

“Effrem, check your phone,” Jack said. Since they’d left Khorusepa Lodge, their reception had been wildly sporadic. Any headway Effrem made into researching Kavango Dam was maddeningly short-lived. Despite the pain, he had been working hard to assemble these information snippets into something cohesive.

So far all they knew was that the Kavango Dam had
been completed just two months earlier at a half-mile-wide section of the Omatako River. Since then a massive reservoir had been filling behind the dam. Downstream from the dam were nearly twenty villages and farms.

Effrem said, “I’ve got a bit of signal. Let me see what I can do with it.”

After another ninety minutes and ten miles the road widened and began descending. Jack was able to pick up some speed. By midnight they were within eight miles of the dam.

“It turns out Kavango’s a regulator dam,” Effrem said from the darkness of the backseat.

“Which is what?” asked Jack.

“Regulator dams are built upstream from hydroelectric dams. They’re designed to control the volume of water flowing into a hydro.”

“Is there a hydro around here?” asked René.

“Not yet. Evidently Kavango’s a sort of trial balloon for something called the Otjozondjupa Renewal Project. By 2028, the Namibian government wants to be exporting electricity to its neighbors. If Kavango works, they’re planning to build a hydro a mile downstream.”

René said, “What’s that mean, ‘works’? Either it holds back the water or not, yes?”

“No. Apparently, regulator dams require some pretty sophisticated hydraulic control systems. They’re due for a ‘proof of concept’ test in two days.”

Effrem’s words struck a chord in Jack’s brain. “Systems,” he repeated. “As in computer-controlled systems?”

Effrem was silent for a few seconds. “Shit, that’s it.”

“What?” René said. “I don’t understand.”

“Effrem, who installed the Kavango control systems?”

“Uh . . . a British company called Mondaryn Engineering.”

“Was it an open-bid process?”

“I don’t know for sure. Probably so.”

That was the connection, Jack realized. Rostock had been hired by one of Mondaryn’s competitors to sabotage Kavango’s flow-control systems. Jack explained it to René, who asked, “Effrem, how many people live downstream from Kavango?”

“Hundreds, maybe a thousand.”

—

J
ack steered the Land Cruiser over a rise and stopped. He shut off the headlights.

Below them, running from east to west, was a curved line of pole-mounted sodium-vapor lights. Beneath these Jack could make out the dam’s faded ochre-colored concrete parapet. Rising from its midpoint was a bunkerlike structure that Jack assumed led to the dam’s interior.

Jack got out his binoculars and scanned the length of the parapet. At the far end, barely visible in the shadows, was a
trio of black pickup trucks. Jack handed the binoculars to René, who looked and then nodded: “Möller’s Hilux.”

“Yes, that’s them. I don’t see anyone about.”

“You think they’re already inside?” asked Effrem.

“I’d put money on it. Klugmann has to work his voodoo from the control room or else he wouldn’t be in Namibia.”

Jack put the Toyota in neutral, took his foot off the brake, and let gravity carry them down the hillside to the dam’s access road. When they were fifty yards from the parapet he braked to a stop.

René said, “I wish we had more time to plan this, Jack.”

“If wishes were horses we’d have an Apache providing air cover for us. Effrem, get out and come around to my side. You’re driving.”

“What?”

“You’re going to find some high ground and start video recording.”

“What good will that do?”

“Maybe none, but you’re doing it. If René and I don’t come back out, you need to get to Windhoek and contact Mitch. He’s got an e-mail address you’re going to need. Tell the person on the other end the whole story and they’ll take it from there.”

Jack felt a vibration rising through the Land Cruiser’s floorboards.

“What is that?” asked René.

Down the length of the dam, red strobe lights began flashing.

A pair of men emerged from the parapet’s access bunker and began jogging toward the Hiluxes at the far end.

“Time’s up,” Jack said.

KAVANGO DAM, NAMIBIA

W
ith Jack in the lead, they sprinted onto the parapet.

“Keep an eye out for Klugmann,” Jack called to René.

“How will I know it’s him?”

“Whoever hasn’t got a gun doesn’t get shot.”

“Right!”

Jack glanced over his shoulder. Effrem was standing beside the Land Cruiser’s open driver’s door. Jack stopped, turned back.

“Get moving, damn it!” he shouted.

He waited until Effrem climbed into the Toyota and started backing down the access road before he started running again. René was fifty yards ahead. Two more men
emerged from the control bunker’s door. Neither one was Möller, but Jack had no way of knowing whether one of them was Gerhard Klugmann. Both were carrying FAMAS assault rifles.

René opened fire. One of the men went down. His partner ducked back through the bunker’s door and swung it shut behind him. René peppered the door with his AK. The rounds sparked on the steel.

Jack caught up with René and jogged the remaining distance to the door. It suddenly opened and a FAMAS barrel emerged. Jack dodged right and René dropped flat. Jack dropped to one knee and sprayed the door’s gap. The FAMAS disappeared back through the door, which swung open to reveal a body lying across a steel catwalk landing. Jack sprinted toward the door. He called, “René, you good?”

He got no answer. He glanced over his shoulder. René was lying facedown on the concrete. He wasn’t moving. A pool of blood spread beneath his body.

I’m sorry, René,
Jack thought, and kept running.

At the door he pressed himself against the bunker wall, took a breath, then peeked through the door in time to see two men rushing up the steps. Jack shot the first one twice in the chest, then dropped to one knee, and stitched the second man’s legs out from under him. The man tumbled back down the steps. Jack followed him. The man was stunned as
much by the fall as by the damage to his legs. He had lost his rifle, but Jack frisked him anyway. Once he was sure the semiconscious man posed no further threat, Jack turned down the next set of steps to a concrete alcove. To his left and right were two royal-blue steel doors.

Jack flipped a mental coin and opened the door on the left, revealing a maintenance tunnel no wider than his shoulders and dimly lit by overhead fluorescent bulbs. Electrical conduits lined the concrete wall. The hum of machinery was thunderous and rhythmic; Jack could feel it in his belly.

He shut the door and tried the other one, which opened onto a catwalk lit by pendant lights. Jack stepped to the handrail and looked down. He saw nothing but blackness and billowing mist. He could hear the roar of gushing water. The air smelled of ozone.

To his right the catwalk ended, so Jack turned left and jogged fifty feet until he reached a set of steps that took him down to another catwalk. At its far end, a set of short steps led to a glass control booth. Through the windows Jack could see flashing red and orange lights.

He started down the catwalk.

In the control booth two figures rose up and began shattering the glass windows with the butts of their rifles. Moving at a sprint, Jack opened fire on the booth. The two men ducked out of sight. Jack reached the steps. He crouched
so his head was below the door’s lower edge, then ejected the AK’s magazine and inserted another. He then reached forward, tapping the AK’s barrel against the door.

A horizontal line of bullet holes appeared in the steel.

Jack rolled back on his heels, then onto his back, and took aim on the control booth.

Wait, Jack. Wait . . .

A figure appeared in the window. Jack pulled the trigger. The man’s head disappeared in a halo of red mist.

There was at least one more man on the other side of this door, and unless Jack was willing to backtrack and look for another way into the control booth, his only option was to suck it up and go.

He stood up and pressed himself as tightly against the handrail as possible, then mounted the steps and grabbed the doorknob.
Stop.
He needed a little misdirection. He pointed the AK up at the control booth window, fired a short burst, then swung open the door and charged through. He found himself in a short passageway of white-painted cinder blocks. At the end was an open door. He headed for it. Halfway there, a figure dashed past the opening from right to left. Jack almost opened fire, but caught himself. The man hadn’t been armed. Klugmann, maybe?

At the door Jack peeked left, saw a set of steel steps that led to what he guessed was the control room. To his right
was a yellow door with black lettering that read
MAINTENANCE LADDER
. Jack stepped left, crept up the steps to the control room door, where he paused.

Don’t stop, don’t think,
he told himself. Giving himself a chance to weigh the odds and rethink tactics would consume time he didn’t have.

He swung himself through the door. The room was empty.

The wall to the left of the windows was dominated by a long control console, its buttons and built-in screens a sea of flashing warning lights.

Too late,
Jack thought.

Whatever was happening was beyond his abilities to control. Clearly the dam’s flow control systems had already fallen prey to Klugmann’s virus. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water were already gushing down the Omatako River toward the farms and villages downstream.

If he couldn’t stop it, he needed to at least be able to prove who started it.

—

J
ack left. As he turned onto the stairs, he saw a rifle butt plunging toward his face. He jerked his head to the side, and the butt slammed into his cheekbone, then slid down the side of his head and clipped his ear. He heard rather than
felt the tearing of cartilage. Blood gushed down his neck. He stumbled sideways. His AK fell through the railing and crashed to the floor below. Blind in his right eye, Jack reached up, bear-hugged the figure standing there, then pushed off, sending them both down the stairs with the man’s rifle sandwiched between them. As they fell Jack caught a glimpse of the yellow maintenance door swinging shut.

Still entwined, he and his attacker smashed into the floor, with Jack on top. He raised himself, gaining some maneuvering room, and slashed the point of his elbow across the man’s nose, breaking it, then into the side of his neck, and continued punching until the man went still. His face was a mask of blood.

Jack got up, grabbed his AK, and headed toward the yellow door. On the other side was a ladder leading up to a fluorescent-lighted opening. He was at the opposite end of the tunnel he’d found on his way in.

At the top of the ladder he crawled into the tunnel. He stood up and started running. Ahead of him, two figures disappeared around a curve in the tunnel. Jack was there a few seconds later, just as the second man stepped left through a door. He was unarmed.

Jack lifted the AK, took aim, fired. The bullet punched into the back of the man’s right thigh. He collapsed through the door and out of sight. Jack sprinted ahead and peeked around the corner. A stocky, bald man with a pasty face lay
on his back, both hands clutched around his bleeding hamstring.