Firestorm

by Rachel Grant

  He looked across the dark landscape. They were parked in a thicket of trees, which protected them from the light rain. “I could see working here. Helping these people. But there are so many factions. It’s hard to know which one will actually do some good. The US has a shitty track record for picking indigenous leaders. Mobutu is exhibit A.”

  True. And Mobutu had arrived on the scene after the Congo Free State had already been brutalized by Belgium. King Leopold’s greed had fueled the first genocide of the twentieth century. Things improved marginally during the colonial period as the Belgian Congo, but it was after independence when the Republic of the Congo had had a chance, but then the rightful leader was taken out with help from the CIA and Belgian intelligence, opening the door for Mobutu.

  “Still, you should consider it. The plan for DRC isn’t to choose a new leader so much as remove men vying for the job who would be as bad or worse than Mobutu. Lubanga is exhibit B.”

  “Do you really think the kill order was legit? Do you believe you were supposed to take out Jean Paul Lubanga?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Does Lubanga own Seth? Was I sent in to botch the kill? Or did Seth make up the order so I’d take out his puppet master? Either way, I would’ve screwed up. Dead and/or disavowed.”

  She handed Cal a small pair of night-vision goggles. These weren’t the NVGs he was used to wearing on Special Forces ops. These were spy grade and could fit in a sunglasses case. They weren’t as powerful as the military-grade version, but they did have an infrared illuminator for navigating tunnels with zero ambient light, which they’d need tonight.

  In addition to NVGs and pistols, they had knockout gas disks, tranquilizer darts, and blowguns. This was a recon mission, and until they knew if people they encountered were friend or foe, they wouldn’t harm them. She tucked the small blowgun with seated dart into a specially designed quick access pocket above the breast of her catsuit and handed Cal his to do the same. The gas disks were tucked in an outer pocket of each of their packs for easy access. They would only be effective in small spaces and could be useless in the network of tunnels beneath the palace.

  She’d carefully packed her backpack with their electronics. Her new computer was thin and compact and stored in a specially designed pocket that would protect it from water and other hazards, important when it was impossible to know what they’d find in the tunnels. What she hoped to find could well be a unicorn: intel to feed CIA analysts.

  Her redemption wouldn’t come from killing the men who’d set her up, it would come from finding the intel that would expose their treason. She’d had plenty of time to think since facing Harry in Dar es Salaam, and one conclusion she’d drawn: her deep dive into Drugov’s business was the key. If she’d had time to keep digging instead of embarking on this mission, would she have found a connection between Seth and Drugov?

  Seth had set her up and sent Harry to take her out. He was in her crosshairs now, and she hoped to hell he was freaking out back at Langley, wondering if she’d return from Congo with enough to destroy him. Seth hadn’t counted on her having a Green Beret fluent in Lingala by her side. He’d underestimated her, as had Harry.

  She might not come out of this operation with her reputation intact, but she looked forward to facing down Seth just the same. And if she had her way, Cal would be long gone by then, and she’d be on her own, deep in the heart of darkness.

  She ran her hand over the pack to ensure everything was tucked away and invisible to the casual search. Their various passports were hidden within the padding of her backpack—it would survive all exterior inspections and X-ray, but a determined searcher would find them with a knife. The remainder of the money they’d gotten from Gorev was split between the two packs, unhidden. If they had to give up the money, so be it.

  She cinched the shoulder straps on the pack. “Ready?” she asked.

  “Let’s roll.”

  Skirting the main road, it took ten minutes to hike from the car to the palace perimeter. The townspeople didn’t expend much energy guarding the grounds, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t have guards on the ruins. And anyone could be in place in the tunnels.

  It took another ten minutes to cross the grounds and reach the door Amelie had taken them to earlier. Freya had plugged the latch when they left; now all she had to do was push open the door and step inside.

  She and Cal paused and listened. Silence answered. A minute later, she heard small scurrying sounds. Rodents, most likely. She’d seen droppings earlier in the day. The heat in the narrow chamber was oppressive. Not surprising given that they were a mere three hundred miles north of the equator.

  What other critters inhabited this underground network? Given the jungle setting, it wasn’t farfetched to think they could run into exotic animals. They were on the northern edge of the northeastern Congolian lowland forest ecoregion, and the list of animals that thrived in the tropical broadleaf forest was vast. The jungle surrounding Gbadolite was home to okapi, various bat species, owl-faced monkeys, swamp rats, and dozens of other rat species. Eastern lowland gorillas lived in the biome as well, although those apes lived more to the southeast.

  Before her parents died, she’d planned to study wildlife biology. She’d dreamed of being the next Birutė Galdikas, Dian Fossey, or Jane Goodall. Now here she was in Congo, and it wasn’t until this moment that she realized she was finally fulfilling a childhood dream of visiting great ape habitat. Sort of.

  They set out down the long corridor, footsteps silent with soft-soled shoes and careful placement as they navigated debris that had accumulated over the years since Mobutu’s ouster. They didn’t waste time exploring corridors they’d passed earlier in the day. That would come later. For now, they went straight to the locked metal door. It was as good a starting place as any, and it had those intriguing electrical conduits. Electricity was everything here.

  The gutted palace didn’t have power, but the tunnels did? That meant something. And she and Cal would find out what.

  At last they reached the door, a slower journey than earlier in the day with the need for silent footsteps. While the lack of guards made the journey easy, it also filled her with disappointment. Surely if there was something here, guards would be posted.

  Were these tunnels no longer used? That made no sense given that Kawele and Gbadolite had infrastructure that most of Congo did not. One of the failings of the various warring factions to the east was that they had no infrastructure or technology with which to wage their war. If one wanted to truly take over—or liberate, as the rebels would argue—DRC, this would be the ideal place to set up shop. The locals were sympathetic, they had reliable electricity, a decent runway, and even underground bunkers and an escape route into the Central African Republic, all courtesy of Mobutu.

  The roads were passable, making it possible to drive from Gbadolite to the port city of Businga just a hundred and thirty kilometers away. From Businga, one could travel on the Mongala River to the Congo River or simply pass through and continue another two hundred kilometers by road to Lisala and the Congo River.

  Basically, if one wanted to stage a coup, Gbadolite was the perfect staging point. With a rapidly beating heart, she pulled out her set of lockpicks and made quick work of the mechanism, a soft click telling her they were in.

  Cal leaned down and whispered directly in her ear. “Nice work.”

  His breath on her ear sent a small frisson through her. Even now, as her heart raced as they stepped into the unknown, he affected her.

  This attraction was insane. And dangerous.

  She stepped back and waved toward the knob. They’d agreed he’d enter first. He’d done this sort of blind entry far more often than she had. Right about now, she was wishing she hadn’t insisted they leave body armor in Djibouti. She’d figured if they got this far, it would be a situation where they’d have gone through customs and items like that would be confiscated and raise unwelcome questions. She could pass off the small NVGs as sunglas
ses, but body armor and M4s were a lot trickier. As it was, they’d been lucky to smuggle in handguns.

  Cal silently pushed the door inward. Well-oiled hinges gave not a hint of sound. Good. But it also meant someone was very careful of this door.

  Cal slipped through the narrow opening, and Freya followed, silently closing the door behind them after seeing a dark, empty corridor ahead.

  They were in unmapped territory. She crouched low and followed Cal. She hadn’t done an op like this in a long time and was dangerously rusty, unlike that door hinge. She didn’t squeak, but she feared the sound of her heart was just as audible.

  Special forces were smart to continually train, even when deployed. Any day they weren’t fulfilling their assignment of training locals or off on an op, they were practicing. Day in, day out, she saw SEALs, Special Forces, and Delta operators running drills to hone their already razor-sharp skills.

  Cal was on his game as he led the way through the dark. She hadn’t exaggerated her abilities when she’d first discussed this mission with him, but she had to acknowledge that her work at Camp Citron didn’t keep her as mission-ready as she should be. Not for this anyway. She’d taken on the acting required on Gorev’s yacht without a hitch. This was different.

  The paved floor gave way to dirt, and before long, it was clear they were descending. The air was oppressively hot, and sweat dripped down her neck and pooled between her breasts.

  PVC pipe ran along the ceiling. Conduit for electrical wires. The PVC was the Yellow Brick Road leading them to the Emerald City.

  She and Cal both suspected the door led to Mobutu’s renowned nuclear bunker or the tunnel to the Central African Republic—or possibly both—but neither of them had been ready to put money on finding a train down here. The descending corridor only confirmed this pessimism. It felt like they were descending into a mine.

  As far as she knew, this part of Congo didn’t have the range of mineral deposits found farther east and south. But then, Congo’s vast wealth of resources underground made it easy to believe that when this palace was constructed, the workers could have come across valuable veins of ore.

  It was even possible that they hadn’t reported the find, preferring to tap the resource themselves. After all, artisanal mining was common in DRC, and few minerals were sold legally through the government. Much of the country’s coltan supply was sold through Rwanda or Burundi, while diamonds were sold through CAR and the Republic of the Congo.

  Had the locals mined under the palace without Mobutu’s knowledge, or was this a private operation by Mobutu?

  It was possible these tunnels had been dug even while Mobutu entertained Pope John Paul II and televangelist Pat Robertson in the palace above. But were the diggers working for the dictator or against him? Given the local attitude toward the despot, she would guess they worked for him. But everything had changed since the palace’s heyday.

  They reached an intersection marked with an assortment of symbols and words. Cal studied them. He spoke softly, breaking their operational silence. “One of the tunnels collapsed ahead. Proceed with caution.”

  “I want to keep going.” She pointed up to the PVC pipes. “Follow the electricity.”

  She braced for an argument, but Cal nodded.

  They followed the path where the PVC led, forced to crouch due to the low ceiling. Their packs made it hard to fit through the narrow spaces. Were they risking everything for nothing?

  After a set of serpentine curves, the space widened and the ceiling rose. The corridor spilled into another tunnel, this one wider, taller, and extending far into the darkness in two directions. And in the center lay narrow-gauge train tracks.

  Operational silence was the rule, but in her mind she was whooping and maybe reeling with surprise.

  An old mine cart lacking the front axle sat next to the track, but the rails themselves were clear. The room had a faint exhaust smell, as if an engine had run earlier in the day.

  Amelie didn’t know about the train because it was deep down, far past the locked door that fed her fantasies. Freya hoped the girl never made it past that door, because her mother was right, she shouldn’t follow the kite symbol without an adult.

  The tunnel disappeared in two directions. A glance at a compass showed it ran north-south at least for this small stretch of rail.

  Looking to the south her NVGs presented a crisper image. A light source was ahead, about thirty feet. They headed toward the light, walking on the tracks to avoid the debris that lined the tunnel wall.

  The source of the light became clear. In a shallow alcove, was a door with an inset window. Light shone through the window, and the whirr of air-conditioning emitted from behind the door.

  They crouched low, out of sight of the window. Cal extended a mirror from a telescoping rod to see into the room. She removed her NVGs so she could see the reflection. A bank of computers—ancient ones, that took up the entire wall—in a climate-controlled room. But more important, a man wearing headphones sat in front of a modern desktop computer, tapping buttons as he stared at a large screen.

  Cal pulled out a knockout-gas disk. He hoped the room was small so the gas wouldn’t disperse too much—the window was narrow and didn’t offer a good view of the room.

  The disk was too thick to slide under the door, but the floor was dirt, so he cut a gap with his knife, making a silent prayer that the headphones the man wore were noise cancelling, the air-conditioning would cover the sound, or that it could be mistaken for rodent activity. Any excuse would do.

  He activated the gas and shoved the disk through the gap with his knife. He peeled off a glove and used it to plug the hole, then stood to look through the window. White gas clouded the room but cleared quickly, revealing the man slumped forward at his desk.

  “Nice,” Freya whispered.

  They waited the required ninety seconds for the gas to disperse before he turned the knob. If the room was big and there were others in the space, they might meet someone conscious—and very angry—on the other side.

  He pulled his gun and entered the room, Freya crossed behind him in a practiced law enforcement maneuver that covered his back while he covered the unknown room.

  He knew she was trained, but moments like this, where it showed without the need to communicate, made him acknowledge just how much he’d underestimated her.

  The room was both small and empty except for the lone unconscious man. Cal approached the computer monitor from the side, making certain he wasn’t in view of the built-in camera. He pulled the headphones off the man and placed them over his own ears, relieved to hear Congolese rumba music. The man hadn’t been chatting online with another person.

  Freya put a piece of tape over the camera and muted the microphone as Cal moved the man from the seat and bound and gagged him. He should remain unconscious for at least forty-five minutes, but they didn’t want to take any chances should he wake early.

  While Freya worked the computer, Cal returned to the outer tunnel. The tunnel and tracks extended deep into the darkness to the north and south. He stood guard in front of the open door to the computer room. No one would sneak up on them like they had the bound man sleeping in the corner.

  A slight sound from Freya caught his attention, and he entered the room, stepping up behind her but keeping his gaze moving, alert for movement on the tracks even as he glanced at the screen. As far as he could tell, she was uploading files to the cloud, just as she had with Lubanga’s computer. “Everything working?” he asked in a whisper.

  She said nothing, her gaze fixed on the screen, so he read the text, glancing up frequently, keeping his attention divided between computer and tunnel. It took him a moment to realize what he was reading with each quick glance.

  The file open on the desktop was a document with instructions for moving money around. Similar to the file Freya had found with income and expenses, this was a list of instructions, but with much more detail. The other file had probably been an early draft, bef
ore Lubanga had dollar amounts to plug in. Here was a list of money transfers from Russian and German banks. A large payment—income—from an account called “Mission School Fund” was to be turned into bitcoin.

  The school was a fraud, then—that wasn’t a surprise, except for the fact that it was so blatant. If these were charitable donations from Fitzsimmons’s ministry to fund a school, was it possible the reverend didn’t know the school didn’t exist?

  But the fake charity probably wasn’t what had Freya so upset. She’d suspected the school was a fraud all along. He read on and came to the important part.

  Millions of dollars were to be funneled through several accounts. The money needed to be dispersed quickly to obfuscate the trail. Dozens of transactions were required to shift the money. Cal guessed it was so Russian Bratva wouldn’t find it, because this had to be Drugov’s missing money.

  The entire half billion had been moved to one account and was being dispersed from there. Freya had explained how Lubanga moved his money around. The most secure method of transfer was to load the money onto a USB drive. The money couldn’t be accessed without the physical drive and a password, and sometimes even biometric security like a thumbprint. Odds were, the flight that arrived this evening had carried a USB drive containing a half-billion dollars, ready to be transferred into Lubanga’s accounts, and from there be dispersed to dozens of other accounts.

  According to the instructions on the screen, ten million of that money was to be deposited into a holding account in Kinshasa. The name on the account: Freya Lange.

  Freya stared at the screen. She’d heard Cal’s question, but her brain was buzzing, her skin flushed. She could spare exactly five seconds for a freak-out, then she had to get to work. She checked the open internet portal. It was a bank. The man at the computer had been moving money into different accounts, as instructed.

  He’d dropped the entire bundle into a dozen accounts and now was dispersing those funds. It looked like…three hundred and fifty million remained of what had been about a half billion.