by James Phelan
Ridley looked to Tony, who’d spent the past couple of months heading a team working through hundreds of reports to prepare the National Intelligence Estimate on Nigeria.
“Sir, what do you know about the price of oil?”
38
PORT HARCOURT CITY LIMITS, THE NIGER DELTA
The setting sun pierced through the rolling overcast clouds, the light that special hue of orange unique to this time of day. Every now and then there was a flash of lightning deep within the clouds, the puffy grey marshmallow cumulus nimbus lit from within as thunder rumbled some way off.
“Left here,” Rollins said from the passenger seat, watching the streetscape intently. “It’s up here, park at the end of the street.”
Javens parked the Range Rover in a neighbourhood that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the shanties of Mexico, Johannesburg or Cairo—anywhere with people on the downside of adversity, scratching a living from nothing. Most buildings were cinderblock, some rendered within colour palettes of yellow to red. Stray dogs sniffed at litter in the street, fighting over scraps. A few kids kicked a threadbare soccer ball against a wall.
Fox walked warily. His pistol was still in the Range Rover and a couple of armed men appeared from a building at the end of the dead-end street. Local militants. Rollins talked to them, each armed with old British L1A1 SLRs, and they nodded and stood sentry by the vehicle. Fox noted that they treated Rollins with respect—they’d met before.
“Through here,” Rollins said, leading the way. Fox walked at the rear as they entered a bakery. An old man sat behind a bread-laden counter; a near-empty cashbox that doubled as an ashtray. Gammaldi tossed him five dollars on the way through and picked up a loaf of bread. Fox pushed his back to keep him moving forward.
The rear of the building was a one-room apartment, and Rollins led them on through the beaded back doorway, into a walled courtyard where a baying goat was chained to a gnarled orange tree, and through to another building only accessible via this route.
Inside, it was a boathouse, two timber doors opening to a finger of water that was one of thousands where the Niger Delta fanned out to sea. An aluminium boat was tied up there, two militants waiting for them. Rollins greeted them, said a few words out of earshot of Fox and the others, and they were all waved aboard the craft by a man with two revolvers tucked into his belt, pirate-style.
“This looks like it will be a fun ride,” Fox said to Gammaldi out of the corner of his mouth. His mate grunted a reply through a mouthful of bread.
The second militant patted down the three arrivals although not Rollins. Fox and Gammaldi came up clean. They considered Gammaldi’s digital camera but Rollins told them it was okay. Javens’s Walther P99 9 mm pistol was removed.
“I want that back later,” the Englishman said in protest as the outboard engine roared to life and they set off into the river system.
“How far?” Fox asked Rollins. They’d settled into the bench seats that ran up each side of the boat.
“Five minutes,” he replied. “They keep moving their camps to avoid detection.”
“The baker?”
“You’ll find all the locals are supportive of the militants’ cause in any way that they can. They’ve all been adversely affected by the government and those in power in some way, through violence, neglect, poverty, appalling conditions. This place, this land, this history is their home, worth fighting for. This fight is their voice.”
“A war worth fighting,” Fox said.
“A just war, I would say,” Rollins responded. The two men shared a look that spoke of depths of understanding. “This country has been broken for too many generations, and too many generations have paid the ultimate price in this war against colonialists in some form or other. It’s so easy, though, as we know, for a just cause to be hijacked by thugs and men of opportunity.”
Fox thought about what Rollins said as he watched a few small fishing craft motor by, their occupants giving a wave to the two militants even with these Westerners in their boat. But although they traded in friendly gestures these people wore their pain and despair in the open, the looks on their faces haunted and hollow.
There were small shacks along the overgrown waterline, timber jetties where kids sat watching the world spin by. Steam rose from the water where the sun hit it, the whispers of the coming night rising as curtains of mist into the sky. Fox touched his hand into the water and rubbed the wetness between his thumb and forefinger—it left an oily residue.
“Pollution from the oil wells,” Rollins said, noting Fox’s action. “This is not a place where world’s best practice in extracting oil occurs. Here, they get it out as quickly and cheaply as possible.”
Fox looked about as they went from one tributary to another. All the fishing craft were returning from out at sea, none were fishing the local water.
“The area is too polluted to fish?” Fox asked. Kids with toy guns carved from wood were firing at them from the end of a jetty.
“Yes.” Rollins looked ahead as they motored into darkness. A canopy of vegetation grew over the waterway here, and the militant steering the boat navigated by experience. The other, by the bow, signalled ahead with a torch. Three flashes came back in response.
“Michael?” Fox said.
The English reporter turned around, his face visible from patches of dying light that stole in through the canopy above, giving him the appearance of camouflage from the silhouettes of leaves.
“You’re looking well … stronger. How have you been?”
“Much better since we last met,” Rollins said. “You, on the other hand, are not looking so sharp, my friend.”
Fox was silent for a moment. “I never thought to ask you … When you were taken—the rendition—what got you through?” he asked. “Your family?”
The smile on Rollins’s face came through in the dim light. It was the smile of a man who had worked it out. It was the content look of one who needed nothing else, of someone with nothing left to prove. A kind of half-smile that spoke of serenity, contentment, peace.
Rollins answered as the engine shut off and they bumped to shore at their destination. The others shuffled out, so only Fox heard him speak, and it touched his very core.
“I found God.”
39
WASHINGTON
“Subject is White House nurse Jack McFarland. According to the lead White House physician he hasn’t answered any phone calls for two days,” O’Keeffe told the FBI agent over the cell phone. “Called in sick and has not contacted anyone since. His landlord says he knows he’s in his apartment but he won’t answer the door. I have two agents in plain clothes at the scene, apartment has curtains drawn. They will wait for your all-clear to enter. Make it as soft as you can—we want to question this guy.”
“Thanks, we’ve got it. On scene in thirty seconds,” Duhamel said, and ended the call. An image of McFarland came onto the LCD screen in the car. He sat in the passenger seat of the lead Suburban, a DC police sedan clearing the way ahead as they wove through the Bethesda streets.
FBI Special Agent Jake Duhamel was a French-Canadian-born quarterback and grad student of law at North Dakota State. The thirty-five-year-old was among the best marksmen in the world; he had a silver medal in shooting from the Sydney Olympics to prove it. He had joined up with the FBI like so many young men and women in the patriotic aftermath of 9/11, which saw a massive influx of recruits outside its normal base of lawyers, accountants and ex-cops. He was now the poster boy for the FBI and their elite Hostage Rescue Team. HRT, part of the Tactical Support Branch of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, were the lead unit to respond to the most urgent and complex FBI cases in the US and abroad. They were more than just another specialist counter-terrorist tactical team: in the world of paramilitary police units, these guys were rock stars. Duhamel looked around in the car—all his guys had their game faces on. Each of them were hands-on cops who could
kick your ass with a look.
Duhamel certainly didn’t pack a match-grade air pistol into the field. He cranked the cocking slide on his silenced Heckler—Koch MP-5, chambering a 9 mm Hydra-Shok round. He thumbed off the safety, switched on the laser pointer.
“Weapons hot!” he called in the Suburban. Two other men readied their MP5s, a fourth pumped a ‘Master Key’ slug into his H&K Super 90 shotgun. These were close-quarter weapons, high stopping power with low velocity to minimise the collateral damage of going through residential walls. The ammunition loaded had a simple purpose. It would make a real mess of whatever tissue it impacted with.
The four special agents filed out the doors as the SUV was still rocking on its shocks and they split into two-man fire teams to enter the three-storey apartment block. The sound of fighter jets above the nation’s capital heightened their senses that this was a real op.
Duhamel followed ‘Brick,’ his shotgun-wielding door-opener, up a flight of stairs and waited for the other two HRT agents to enter the corridor via the rear stairs.
A nod of his boss’s helmeted head and Brick was through the front door with an ear-shattering boom from the shotgun. Duhamel was second through the door, splinters still in the air coating his clear goggles. Instantly he sensed things were wrong—he could smell death.
“Clear!” was called from the open-plan living area. “Bedroom clear!”
“Body in bathroom, unknown deceased,” called a special agent.
In the kitchen Duhamel knelt down to the form of Jack McFarland. Brick hovered a few feet back, his shotgun hanging by his side and his Glock 22 side-arm trained on the nurse, red laser dot on the subject’s head. Duhamel felt for a pulse—there but faint.
“Call in the bus,” Duhamel said. He checked McFarland’s airway was clear, then looked over his body for anything telling—he didn’t have any defensive wounds, just a slight bruise to one side of his face. The special agent stood and looked about the kitchen. Some pills were spilled on the floor—had the nurse tried to OD? The sink had a long knife in it that—yep, it was missing from the knife block. The blade was clean.
A siren announced the arrival of the paramedics, who had been on station around the corner.
Duhamel went to the bathroom. An agent hovered by the open door. The smell of death had come from here and had leaked into the rest of the apartment. A naked corpse of Middle Eastern appearance lay in the tub, his arms and legs straight. Dead a good forty-eight hours, a single stab wound to the sternum. Wound had been cleaned, there was some congealed blood around the drain hole.
“Killed out there, dragged in here and cleaned up,” Duhamel said to himself as he heard the paramedics enter the apartment and shake out their fold-away trolley. He stood at the edge of the bath and snapped away with a small digital camera, taking a dozen high-res shots of the man’s face.
“Question is, who are you?”
40
PORT HARCOURT CITY LIMITS, THE NIGER DELTA
“You will find no sympathisers for Al Qaeda here. Yes, some here may have their faith in common, but that is all. Do not make the mistake of labelling us terrorists. We are a mixed group with a single cause: we want a better life for our families.”
Fox shook hands with the militant commander, known as Godswill, and took a seat in the large military tent. These militants, most under the banner ‘Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta,’ were a motley crew. That said, they displayed every aspect of being as well-prepared, trained and staffed as they could be under the circumstances. Their motivation was immense and never-ending. Indeed, it was a perpetual state of growth—the more they struck at the government and private oil infrastructure, the more volunteers from the local populace came forward to join the fight. It was like throwing water on an oil fire.
Rollins was the last to greet Godswill. The Nigerian took off his sunglasses to reveal burn scars down his face and hands. They embraced like long-lost brothers, talking close and quietly. Fox thought nothing of it until Rollins handed over a thick envelope. There could be fifty grand in there.
“We actually have a righteous cause that we are pursuing,” Godswill said.
“I’m sure Al Qaeda feel their cause is pretty righteous,” Gammaldi replied as he took a seat.
“You see good in all people—a good quality to have,” Rollins said to Gammaldi.
“A quality that gets you killed, in my line of work,” Javens said.
“We’re here to talk about the bombing of the oil building in Port Harcourt,” Fox said, getting back to the point and breaking the ice with a smile. He looked to Godswill. “We need to know what you know.”
“It was not us,” Godswill said.
“The world thinks differently,” Fox replied. “Every news cable and television outlet, every—”
“That came directly from the office of Brutus Achebe,” Godswill said. “His advisor is responsible, the American.”
“Steve Mendes?” Fox asked.
Godswill nodded.
“We met him in Abuja,” Fox said. “What’s his involvement?”
The Nigerian laughed, then said to the two Englishmen: “You want to tell him?”
Javens turned to Fox and Gammaldi.
“A little background on your American friend,” Javens said. “Ex-CIA turned gun for hire. He was responsible for providing much of the info that led to Charlie Wilson and co. to up the US funding against the Soviets in Afghanistan.”
“Yeah, right, Operation Cyclone,” Fox said.
“He’s one smooth operator,” Rollins said. “He gets the job done, and it’s the main reason why Achebe is seen as a contender for the Nigerian presidency. Steve Mendes is driving a revolution in the economy of this country; it will be the better for it.”
The MEND guy shook his head.
“You don’t agree?” Rollins asked. “He has been instrumental in reforming the oil industry here—he’s kicking out the Western companies in favour of those who will put back into communities.”
“We’ve heard all this talk before, Michael,” Godswill said. “It never changes. One man is as corrupt as the next. I didn’t think you would sympathise with him.”
Rollins didn’t respond.
“Well, if it weren’t for nine-eleven,” Javens said, “Mendes would still be a CIA poster boy.”
Fox could sense the Nigerian had more to say about this. Perhaps he didn’t because the sympathetic ears he had been expecting from them were not evident.
“What’s he done to put you off?” Fox asked.
“He has in his direct employ thousands of private security contractors. Russians,” Godswill said. “They came with Russian oil money, all the new production areas and contracts are going to them. They planted this bomb, and then Achebe went before the media and pointed the finger at us minutes later. Yes, what Michael said has some truth—Mendes wants a revolution. But at what cost?”
Rollins was still silent.
“Do you have any proof of their involvement in the bombing? Anything that we can use as a source?” Fox asked. He noted for the first time that the smell of marijuana was faintly carried in the wet air.
“You have my word.”
There was a brief pause. Fox took measure of the man’s pride. Palpable but frail.
“I’m sorry, but we need more than that,” Fox said. “Sir, I appreciate your struggle. We need something that we can show the world, contrary to what they’re reading and hearing. We need something to back up the truth, to tell your story.”
The man looked Fox in the eyes. He was Fox’s age, living in a part of the world that should be as rich as Saudi Arabia, yet the wealth bypassed them all. Instead, they bore the worst that producing oil had to offer. They watched wealth literally being bled from the veins of their land and they were left with a rotting corpse.
“You will all follow me,” Godswill said, and stood, moving out the rear door of the tent.
Ro
llins led with Fox close behind, walking past a platoon of resting militants under netting.
“My men are active every night, policing the streets against soldiers’ attacks and rogue militia groups,” Godswill said. “We own the night in these delta states, like a community police force, and the people are thankful for it. We are provided with food and supplies from the locals, who see it as a small payment for the safety of their women and children at night. Violence, particularly against women and among young men, is—it’s so high in this area.” That frailty was there again—it was a sense of hopelessness that he tried so hard to cover.
Fox and Gammaldi nodded in understanding. The group continued on and they entered another large mess tent. Here, it resembled a military hospital, smelling of disinfectant. Cots were littered with wounded militia, each covered with bandages soaked through with blood. Doctors and nurses in makeshift scrubs were attending them as best they could.
They walked through the tent, the moans of wounded men mixing with those of women and children: this was also a civilian hospital.
“We treat over a hundred people a day,” Godswill said. His face remained passive, as if emotion had left him a long time ago. This man had forgotten how to smile as much as he had learned to cope with violence and despair. “More than half are from local communities, victims of police and soldiers. There is a civil war going on here, and it’s not over religion like in the northern and middle states. Here, it’s over the basic rights to live. What these people seek is no more than the most basic living conditions found in any Western country.”
Gammaldi signalled he wanted to take some photos. Godswill nodded his consent.
“Here, you have over a hundred people who will tell you where the evil lies in this country,” Godswill said. “They will tell you who bombed that building.”
“This won’t change anything abroad, I learned that long ago,” Rollins said to Fox. “You have to go bigger in scope, something political. These small human stories get lost. Look at Sudan. Look at Somalia. Chad.”