The Depository

by E Y Mak

  “When was this?” asked Candice.

  Bob responded instantly. “It was 96. The year of the last Bulls championship. I remember reading about their glory season and win over the Supersonics on the plane ride over.“

  “I’m sure the country has changed since then,” she said. “I’ve never been to Africa, let alone a small village in Cameroon.”

  “It’ll be okay. Most of the Phineas guys will be there by the time we get in. We’re staying at a military base in Doula before hopping onto personnel carriers taking our entourage to Debundscha the next morning.”

  After three more hours, their Gulfstream landed in the Cameroon capital city Yaoundé. Since the same plane was going to take them the rest of the way, the three of them elected to stay on the plane. After a thirty-minute layover, the Gulfstream took them the rest of the way to Douala.

  After gathering their gear, they left the Gulfstream and walked over to their military escort, a Humvee driven by a tall Cameroonian soldier who introduced himself as Patrice. Patrice was a friendly man and gave them a short tour as they drove towards the military base, offering recommendations on food, lodging, and entertainment, as though the Phineas agents were not here for a paramilitary operation.

  On arrival, Candice saw that the town itself was one of the more prosperous cities in the region and had a full gamut of five-star business hotels. Patrice drove right past all of them, ending at a large nondescript building at the edge of town surrounded by a chain-link fence and secured by a manned checkpoint.

  They were greeted coldly by a regiment captain, a portly mustachioed man who let the party know he was not happy with having to spare soldiers and vehicles to a foreign private investigative agency. Nevertheless, he introducing Petri and Bob to a shared room and Candice to her own segregated quarters.

  After entering her room, Candice immediately began sweeping for surveillance devices using her phone. Nothing seemed to be amiss. Satisfied in the sanctity of her room, at least for the time being, she stepped into the hallway and walked over to where Petri and Bob were quartered, knocking three times. Petri came out first before Bob and together the trio walked down to their assigned meeting room, where two Phineas agents stood sentry outside.

  One of them, a short Frenchwomen that Candice recognized from her briefing materials as Aimee Defreine, stood at the entrance to the sparsely furnished meeting room. As Candice passed her, they exchanged nods. One agent was already in the room, a wiry man from the Paris office called Special Agent Connelly. Candice had begun walking towards one of the vacant seats at the far end of the table when she heard a voice behind her.

  “Is the room secure?”

  All eyes inside the room turned towards the source of the voice. It was Ricardo. He had already set his Phineas phone to begin scanning. He walked immediately to the center of the room and held the device face up about six inches from the bottom of the table.

  “I’ve already completed an initial sweep and Agent Connolly did a secondary,” said Aimee. “You’re welcome to conduct a third, but we should get started.”

  Ricardo spoke without looking at Aimee. “Begin the presentation, I’m just going to finish this.” He continued his sweep of the room.

  “Alright,” said Aimee. She closed the doors and stood at the head of the table. “At zero eight hundred hours today,” she said, “we got a call from Cameroon Airspace Authority. They reviewed the flight plans for the incoming Mercs and have granted permission for their helicopters to enter Cameroon.”

  Ricardo stood up beside an artificial plant he had just finished scanning and joined Aimee at the head of the table. “In addition to the seven of us here right now, we have three more joining us on this mission. Benita Sato, from Yin-Lok Investigations in Hong Kong, managed to get on the same flight from Cairo as me. She will join us shortly. Also, Agents Yaakov Schmidt and Noah Mueller from the Tel Aviv office have joined us as well. They will actually head there in advance to set up drone operations and develop a tactical map. This will give us situational intelligence for both the Mercs and our recovery mission.”

  “What about our military escort? Regiment Captain Bisset seemed quite upset when we spoke earlier,” said Bob Regan.

  “Unfortunately, the military escort for this mission has been scaled back. There have been some Boko Haram insurgents nearby diverting the resources earmarked for us. We were only given four soldiers and three Humvees,” said Ricardo. “Our orders are still to proceed. They come from John himself. The Mercs will engage any defenses. The job of this recovery team and any other technicians that arrive with the Mercs will be to clean up, recover Russell, and electronically and physically destroy the data centre.”

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  After the group had discussed a few more details on the mission, Ricardo dismissed the group. It was about 8:00 p.m. when Candice went back to her hotel room, somewhat concerned with the ragtag makeup of their recovery team. The tactical experience of the six agents was mixed at best. Ricardo was reckless and his recent experience was mostly in urban environments. Petri had no combat experience, Bob was aging, and Benita was a wildcard. Detectives Defreine and Connelley were adequate representatives from their countries’ field offices, but they didn’t seem like top-notch athletic specimens. And could they even trust the four soldiers that Cameroon had provided?

  Candice herself had trained at FBI Academy primarily for close-quarter combat. Her training focused on apprehending potentially armed and dangerous suspects, not exchanging gunfire with trained soldiers. Useful for the typical assignments tasked to an FBI special agent, but a much different skill set than what was needed to survive in a jungle.

  The only saving grace was Special Agents Schmidt and Mueller, two former Israeli special forces operatives. They had arrived two days earlier and had gone ahead of the rest of the group to initiate reconnaissance on the compound. Luckily there were Mercs to engage the defenses, as the odds were stacked against this under-equipped and inexperienced group. It almost felt like John Phineas wanted the smallest group of agents possible to get the job done while protecting leaks.

  Candice looked out the window, trying to allay her concerns about the mission. The area surrounding the military base was urban, and she could see the street vendors and pedestrians across the street and hear the sounds of cooking, drinking, and laughing. The ambiance intensified her unease with tomorrow’s mission. She prepared for bed, knowing that the journey out to Mauritius’s compound would be long and bumpy. Twenty minutes later, she was curled up on the lumpy mattress in her room, trying to put her mind at ease. She closed her eyes, trying to force herself to sleep. But hours later, she was still awake, staring at a blotchy dark stain on the ceiling. She glanced at the mid-1970s digital alarm clock set on the nightstand. The split-flap display presented 12:00.

  She had been frozen in bed for the last three hours. At first, she was thinking of the mission that lay ahead. Her anxiety about how ill-prepared they were continued to unsettle her. Soon, however, the emotionless face of the Phantom crept into her psyche. It already had been almost a week since her captivity, but the quiet and familiar confines of her home had given her comfort. The hustle and bustle of New York City were gone. Out here, in a foreign country, the strange room intensified her loneliness and fears. Insomnia served to give her time to relive her Hoboken nightmare over and over again.

  The Phantom’s voice pierced the mental confines of the darkness surrounding her.

  I’m going to enjoy you.

  She remembered him whispering into the darkness.

  She remembered him searching for her in the black of the school gym.

  She remembered the coldness of the cell in the Hoboken school.

  She rolled around in bed again and walked to the window overlooking the street. By now, the street vendors had packed up and the pedestrians were all gone.

  She imagined the Phantom walking alone in the middle of the darkened street.

  Looking for his next prey.


  Looking for her.

  She ducked down under the window, curled up into a ball and started crying.

  Who was she kidding?

  She wasn’t a fighter.

  She was in over her head.

  What was she doing here?

  She stood back up to look out the window, gazing into the cloudless sky. Without the bright lights of New York, she could see the masses and masses of stars twinkling in the distance. Looking like little airships and drones, but not moving.

  Out here, there was no one out to watch over you.

  Enough was enough.

  She wasn’t going to let this be the event that changes her.

  She needed to deal with it.

  Her father had once said to her that the best antidote for insomnia is to embrace it. A practical man, he simply put his mind and body to some productive use when he was unable to sleep.

  Tomorrow was going to be long and uncomfortable, but then they would need to adjust to the assault very quickly. She would spend the night preparing to meet Mauritius. Perhaps he would simply surrender without a fight and leave peacefully with the soldiers that enlisted to help legitimize the presence of Phineas. Maybe he would fortify himself in his stronghold, hiding behind a hired militia.

  She began her preparation by checking her secondary sidearm. Seeing there was no ammunition in her Glock 17, she dissembled the weapon and began meticulously preparing the gun for cleaning.

  Two hours later, she was still awake. Still unable to sleep, she started catching up on her email and reviewing her notes. She managed to slog out another hour reviewing all the additional information that Phineas had sent over at midnight.

  The first thing she noticed was that Phineas had obtained more detailed imagery demonstrating the location and exterior layout of the compound. It appeared to be at the top of a mountain range with a cliff on the northeast side. The other three sides were surrounded by dense forest. A single road snaked its way through the trees on the southwest side of the building. A helicopter pad dotted the landscape near the edge of the cliff.

  Less than two inches away on the map, square patches of cement dotted the land in a closely lain grid pattern.

  The land-drilling rig sites for Tim Butler’s mining project.

  Ricardo had made some minor tweaks to the tactical plan for their final approach to the compound. Two of the Cameroon soldiers, together with Agents Defreine and Connelley, would approach from the main road. Special Agents Schmidt and Mueller, both avid mountain climbers, were going to scale the cliff behind the Compound. Bob, Ricardo, Candice, and Benita would come in from the jungle to the south to flank, if necessary.

  With this additional preparation, Candice felt better. She eventually was able to get some shut eye.

  Eventually, morning came and so began the road to the repository.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Their soldier guide from yesterday, Patrice, was now driving the Humvee that Candice, Ricardo and Benita were in as it weaved its way through the jungle. Their vehicle had taken point and was leading the way through the thick brush, with two more of the carriers following behind at fifty feet intervals.

  Phineas HQ had provided another update in the morning. Schmidt and Mueller had already made it to compound without being detected. The first thing they did was surreptitiously launch three drones to get a bird’s-eye view of the compound’s activities. The drones had already been aloft for a full twelve hours. Unlike typical aerial drones, these surveillance devices stayed afloat through helium-filled reservoirs, only using propellers to provide lateral mobility. This gave the drone the ability to remain virtually silent. The three drones then worked in tandem using advanced digital triangulation to generate a three-dimensional map of the exterior of the compound.

  After using her fingerprint to unlock her tactical tablet, PhineasNet presented the three-dimensional live rendering of the compound. She could zoom in, zoom out, pivot and swivel the rendering. Moving green humanoid wireframes represented the position of human sentries. There didn’t appear to be many sentries defending the compound. She continued to manipulate the model, trying to learn as much about their target as possible to pass the time.

  “Candice?” a deep, feminine voice with a Spanish accent asked. Candice turned to where Benita Sato was seated.

  “Did Phineas receive any further information on the compound?” Benita asked.

  “We received a live map,” Candice said. “The Israelis started the rendering last evening.” She passed over her tablet to Benita and watched as Benita spun and manipulated the model.

  “Interesting. So this slider at the bottom actually shows the exact locations of each guard in the last twenty-four hours. Helpful information, but since we only have one night of it we can’t really extrapolate a pattern.” Benita squinted at one of the corners of the tablet. “Hey, it looks like there’s a secondary entrance here.”

  Benita pointed to a door hidden behind a boulder in the back of the building. Candice squinted and zoomed in on the door. It did appear to be an entrance. She slid the slider back and forth several times. No green humanoid wireframes walked near the door.

  Without turning around, Ricardo chimed in. “I saw that too. It seems like a good place for entry if the Mercs damage too much of the front entrance. I’ve shared that entry point with the rest of the team. We also got a message from the Chinese. They have someone on the inside,” said Ricardo. “I’ll keep you posted once I know more about that.”

  Candice turned to Benita and decided to get to know her seatmate better. “So, how well do you know Russell?”

  “Very well,” the Asian-Spanish girl said with a huge smile on her face. “We worked together for many years but met for the first time when he came to Hong Kong. I was with him the day he was captured. I wish there was more that I could have done,” she added with sadness in her eyes. “How well did you know him?”

  “We were just starting to work together at Phineas,” said Candice. “He was a good mentor, brilliant at investigations, but really hard to read. I don’t know if he thought I was doing well or not at Phineas.”

  “He did. He spoke of your work ethic and your ability to just get it. He thought you would go far there,” Benita said. “He was distraught when he found out you were missing. And now he’s missing. Dangerous life that we have.”

  Candice was touched by Benita’s words. Russell had been quite stoic at times, but she was happy about the compliment.

  “I miss him,” Benita suddenly whispered to Candice.

  “We’ll get him back,” Candice quietly replied. “Russell will find a way out of this mess.”

  After the Humvee convoy passed Debundscha, it turned right onto a small service road. It was a beaten road, the surrounding trees and brush creeping in on both sides. After about two miles, the road became significantly more vegetated. Patrice, who was driving the Humvee, turned and smiled to his occupants.

  “It’s going to get, how you say, bumpy,” Patrice said in his heavy French accent, laughing.

  Their journey continued unabated, the road jostling and shaking the Humvee and its occupants with increasing discomfort. The jungle had become so thick that when Candice looked out the window, she could see no more than a foot in any direction. Her stomach churned as the Humvee continued to rattle and roll unrelenting through the brush, crushing bushes, knocking down branches, and kicking up dust and dirt.

  After another two hours of slow traveling, Candice looked out the windshield as her Humvee approached a tree that had fallen in the middle of the road. The Humvee stopped, and Ricardo, together with all of the soldiers in the convoy, exited the vehicles and walked over to inspect the tree. After a couple of minutes of discussion, they lined up around the tree, vainly trying to lift it out of the path of the road. It didn’t budge. Another five minutes of discussion ensued before the group came back to the vehicle.

  Ricardo spoke as he approached the Humvee. “It looks like we’re going to h
ave to backtrack a bit. One of the soldiers had traveled this road before and said this tree fell is new. He does know an alternate route to get to our destination, but we’re going to have to go back about an hour. There’s a fork that takes us onto an old logging trail. It’ll drop us into the valley. Unfortunately, we’ll be out in the open and Mauritius will have a view of us coming.” Ricardo paused and said ominously, “By the looks of the tree fell, it was likely done on purpose to discourage visitors.”

  One of the soldiers said something in French that Candice didn’t understand. As he walked away, Candice said out loud, to no one in particular, “I wonder what he said.”

  “He said to watch out for landmines,” said Benita grimly. “Much more effective than a tree fell.”

  Everyone reentered their own vehicles, and Candice looked out the back window as the Humvee reversed. After about fifty yards, the road widened just enough for the vehicles to do a three-point turn and they were driving back the way they had come. After about an hour, the convoy came across the fork that the soldier had mentioned and did a quick U-turn.

  As they went on this new path, Candice could feel the elevation dip. After they had dropped into the valley a bit, Ricardo pointed ahead.

  “Look, I think that’s the compound.”

  Candice squinted. In the distance, she could see what looked like a massive concrete building perched at the top of the forested mountain in the distance.

  Patrice said with a French accent, “the leaves of the ayous trees should cover the approach.”

  It did so for the next ten minutes. The elevation continued to drop, but then they arrived at a clearing. Without the tree canopy, Candice could see much farther in the distance. Ricardo used the opportunity to look at the compound through a set of binoculars.