“As I remember, Mr. Ambassador, that would be Harry Truman’s Vice President, Alben Barkley. He was a real character.”
“Yes, I think you’re right. You must be a historian. Bring your boys in. I’ve got spots for them down on the second floor. Two to a room, but the beds are good. This will be your home for as long as you need it. Like I said, we’re not all that formal here.”
Two native men appeared and led the SEALs into the embassy and to the second floor, where they found the rooms and settled in.
One of the native men came up to Murdock. “Dining room on first floor end of long hall. We eat dinner at five-thirty. Okay?”
“Okay,” Murdock said. He found the ambassador in his office, which had been furnished recently and was still undergoing changes.
“Mr. Ambassador. I’d like a meeting as soon as possible with the top Army general here. Do you know his name?”
“Yes, that would be General Kiffa Assaba. A word of warning. He’s not a real general. He has the rank and post because he’s the hatchet man for the President. This is as near to an outlaw government as I’ve ever seen. But we have to live with it. I’ll phone him at once and see when you can get together.”
The general set it up for 6:30 that night at a downtown restaurant.
“That means he’ll want you to buy him dinner,” the ambassador said. “You know about money here? Probably not. Medium of exchange is mostly barter, but they also have paper currency called the dagnar. It’s fifty of the suckers to one U.S. greenback. I’ll give you a wad of five-hundred-dagnar notes. They are worth ten dollars each. Watch this sneaky little bastard. He’ll see how he can use you and your men to help his cause.”
“Be on my guard. Any more traffic on the SATCOM from the Vice President?”
“Yes, we did get a call he made to the White House. We have a recording of it on tape. Let me play it for you.” He took out a tape recorder, put in a small tape, and hit the play button.
“Yes, this is Vice President Adams calling the White House. I’d like to talk to the President or to Walters.”
“Mr. Walters will be right with you, Mr. Vice President.”
“Good. I’ve got lots to say. Where is he?”
“Right here, Mr. Vice President. How are you holding up?”
“Fine. About this situation. You must know what a rotten gang we’ve got here in this Sierra Bijimi government. Rotten right down from the fraudulently elected President to the political general of the Army and the police. Mojombo Washington is trying to get it fixed and he can use some help. What we need to do is send in a battalion of Marines and wipe out the current officials, but I know you would frown on that. How about some Special Forces to come in covertly and do some work down here?”
“Good thinking, Mr. Vice President. Fact is, we shipped out a platoon of SEALs almost twenty-four hours ago. They should be in country by now.”
“They are here on a covert basis?”
“As covert as hell.”
“That could be a start. I really think this young man has a magnificent project here. I’m going to try to help him in any way that I can. Oh, do we have any Navy in this area?”
“We checked that, Mr. Vice President. The closest asset is a task force off Portugal. Take them several days to sail down within striking distance of you. The unit has been ordered to move in that direction.”
“We aren’t going to blow this little nation off the map. Tell everyone to relax. I’m in no danger. The SEALs are here. I’ve seen them work before. Now I’ll try to send a runner to contact them. I think we’re through here, Walter. You take care.”
The ambassador turned off the tape recorder. “So, now you know as much about this situation as I do. The Vice President must be taken by this young man. Sounds like he wants to be one of the leaders in this battle coming up.”
“What else do I need to know about this General Assaba?” Murdock asked.
“That’s about it. He’s a former night club owner who went broke. Later he helped the President get elected. When the top general in the Army refused some of the President’s orders, Kolda had him tried and shot for treason. Then he moved Assaba into his place.”
“Sounds cozy. We’ll talk. Outside of that, I don’t know what we’ll do. Our CIA control should be arriving here today or tomorrow. After that we’ll get to work.”
* * *
The dinner meeting that evening went about as Murdock figured it would. General Assaba was a small man, slender, looked good in his uniform, had a wolfish face and overly large eyes that seemed to bore into everyone he looked at. Murdock tried an eye-to-eye contest one time, and lost quickly.
“My English,” Assaba said. “Many years ago we were a part of another country — we don’t mention that it was a British colony. So the British taught everyone English along with our native Wolof. Now English is one of two official languages of our nation.”
The restaurant was the most expensive in town, and the general ordered the highest-priced dinner and a bottle of wine.
“We know you are with the U.S. Navy SEALs, a Special Forces group, and we know that you are remarkably talented. Perhaps you can chase down this rebel Mojombo Washington. We have tried. We sent two gunboats up the Amunbo River to try to find him. The boats were heavily armed with machine guns and rifles. The men on the ship never saw a rebel. However, they took such heavy fire from the jungle cover that we lost ten men dead and six wounded, and had to turn around and power away before the boats had made it halfway to the suspected target.”
“He owns the river. How close to Sierra City did the shooting start?”
“About fifteen miles upstream they took the first rounds.”
“I’d like to talk to your G-2 man, your head of intelligence. Maybe by working together we can figure out a plan to move up the river at night, say, then hit the jungle and move around him and hit him from the rear.”
General Assaba put down his fork, which had just dipped a bite of lobster into the melted butter, and smiled. “Oh, yes, I like the way you think, Commander. I’ll set up a meet with our Colonel Dara for ten o’clock tomorrow morning at our headquarters in the Government Building.”
A short time later the dinners and desserts were finished, and the men shook hands and left the restaurant.
Murdock took a taxi back to the embassy. He had a strange feeling about General Assaba. The man did not even sound like a military man, which he wasn’t. His uniform fit, but any tailor could manage that. There was something about the man that hit Murdock the wrong way. Was he as corrupt as the ambassador said? If so, there might not be much value in helping him. What confused Murdock more than anything was the radio talk he had heard between the Vice President and the White House. Mr. Adams sounded like he had adopted Mojombo Washington and swung completely behind him in his try to overthrow the elected government and establish a real democracy.
If that were true, Murdock pondered, why should the SEALs do anything to help the forces of the fraudulently elected government?
9
Back at the embassy, Murdock, Gardner, Senior Chief Sadler, and Jaybird traded faxes as they again read everything they had about the country and the situation.
“Looks like we just stepped into a large pail of shit,” Jaybird said. “No way we need to help these crooks steal more money.”
“We’re here to get the Vice President out of trouble,” Lieutenant (j.g.) Gardner said. “If we have to help them a little to get the job done, then we do it.”
“From what the Vice President himself said, he doesn’t consider himself a captive,” Murdock said. “He says he wants to help this rebel all he can. I wonder what he means by that.”
They were in Murdock and Gardner’s room, and they heard a commotion in the hall. Then a familiar voice came through the noise.
“Damnit, Murdock, come out of your hole. I’ve had enough trouble today without playing fucking hide-and-seek.”
Murdock stepped into the hall grinning. “Well, if it isn�
�t the wonder boy of the CIA, the next candidate for deputy director, your friend and mine, Mortimer J. Stroh.”
“That’s Snerd, Mortimer J. Snerd, and Edgar Bergen would sue you if he was still around. Murdock, you horse’s heinie, how the hell is it hanging?”
“Long and lean. Glad you finally made it. You have lots of direction for us in this snake pit of a country?” Murdock saw the exhaustion showing in the CIA man’s face. At forty-eight, he wasn’t slowing down any. His brown hair was thinning a little, but his blue eyes still had a snap to them. His round face made his ears look too big for his face. Don Stroh was definitely not the fade-into-the-background type.
“Not a lot of direction for you. Our job is to rescue the Vice President without throwing a few million dollars to each side.”
“Big-budget job, I’d say,” Jaybird cracked.
Stroh grinned. “They still putting up with you around here?”
“Till death do us part.”
“Might be sooner than you figure, Jaybird,” Sadler growled.
“So what the hell we gonna do about the Vice President?” Stroh asked.
Murdock chuckled. “Great. No directives, we get to figure it out ourselves. The way it usually goes. We’ve found out this country is about ready to go down, from ignorance and bad government if nothing else. A bunch of official crooks and killers run the place.”
“That’s the way I hear it, too,” Stroh said. “How do we get the second highest man in our government out of the jungle?”
“I’m talking to a colonel tomorrow and I should have some ideas after that. Off the top, it looks like a river cruise would be in order. A recon, done at night so we don’t draw a lot of rebel fire. The river is theirs.”
“What can we find out at night?” Gardner asked.
“Plenty,” Jaybird said. “First we slip up on a village and grab a couple of men and ask them some questions. We can find out if the peasants out there in the boonies really like this guy the way some people say. If so, maybe he’s not as bad as the government thinks. You hear Adams’s last talk with the White House?”
Stroh hadn’t. They let him read the transcript. He finished it and looked up. “Sounds like he’s signed on as a rebel.”
“Which means we can’t go shooting up the rebel camps,” Murdock said. “We have to contact them, but it has to be a soft contact, with no gunfire.”
“We’ve already got contact,” Gardner said. “He has a SATCOM, we have a SATCOM. Why don’t we just talk to him?”
“Because we don’t know when he might turn his set on,” Murdock said. “Most embassies don’t have SATCOMs. They have more sophisticated radio equipment. So we can’t just ring him up like he had a phone. We can try, but don’t expect much.”
Ten minutes later Bill Bradford had the SATCOM antenna lined up with the satellite and Murdock made a call.
“Sierra City calling Vice President Adams. Do you read me? Sierra City calling Vice President Adams.”
There was no response. The ambassador had been told of Stroh’s arrival, and came onto the balcony where they had set up the dish antenna.
“We tried six times to call him, but evidently he had turned off the receiver,” the ambassador said. “He’d probably worried about the life of his battery.”
“We may have to send a man up there to contact them and get the radio signals worked out,” Murdock said. He turned to the CIA man. “Now, Stroh, give us the rest of the dope on this strange little country and what the CIA and State has to say about it.”
“State hardly knows it exists. The African desk has a thin file on this place, but nobody there has been here or knows much about it that isn’t in the file. Basically stolen elections, bad people probably robbing the treasury and the country blind. Foreign intervention is their answer to every criticism. It’s a small cancer on the world order. Nobody knows much about it or cares.”
“Except our Vice President by the sound of him,” Gardner said.
Sadler rubbed his chin. “Looks like our first job is to get upstream and make contact with this rebel. It might be a simple matter of promising him some covert guns and ammo for his little rebellion here. He’d probably shout hosanna for two hundred M-16’s and five thousand rounds of ammo.”
“Could be that simple, but Mojombo Washington could get that for any American he captured,” Stroh said. “The Agency feels that he has much bigger demands that will be coming. That should be the second thing we do, wait to see what those demands are.”
Stroh stood. “I’m so damn tired I can’t even see straight, let alone think in a straight line. Let’s pick this up tomorrow right after breakfast. I hear the food here is great. I’m hitting the old feather bed.”
“Dream on those feathers,” Jaybird said.
“Hopefully.”
“We’re in no shape to do anything tonight,” Murdock said. “Let’s get some sleep and grab it by the balls first thing in the morning. Then maybe we can work up a mission for tomorrow night. No sense in going up that river and getting our skulls blown apart by friendly fire.”
* * *
Breakfast was served from 0600 to 0900, and all the SEALs ate until they exploded. Six of them gathered around a conference table on the first floor and welcomed the ambassador. The general tone of the meeting was that they should get upriver and try to make contact. At the least they could talk to the villagers they found.
“Have to be a night mission,” Murdock said. “I talk to Colonel Dara at 1000. He might help us without knowing it. We’ll need a boat that can swim upstream. Dara might be our supply.”
“We kept the SATCOM on all night, but the Vice President didn’t transmit on the White House frequency,” the ambassador said. “We’re hoping he’ll call this morning. If he does, we’ll break in and let him know we can talk with him here and maybe help him.”
Murdock checked his watch and headed for the Government Building, where the general said his G-2 would be. A young girl at a reception desk on the second floor took him to Colonel Dara’s office. The man who held out his hand to Murdock looked like a soldier. He was five-ten, slender, with a firm grip and what looked to be a hard body toned by many workouts. His face was longish and he had a close-cropped haircut. He took off reading glasses as they met.
“Yes, the American SEAL. I know a lot about you people and your exploits. I’d like to get some Special Forces established here, but I’m having enough trouble holding together what Army we have left. It’s my responsibility, General Assaba keeps telling me.”
“Good to meet you, Colonel. We are an action-oriented force. Right now it looks like a trip up the Amunbo River would be the best move.”
“We tried that. Got shot to pieces.”
“I heard about that. I’d want to go up at night as quietly as possible. Then we could stop along the way at the villages and settlements and talk to them about the rebels. Someone might tell us where his stronghold is.”
“We’re pretty sure we know where it is. The trouble is, it’s so far upstream and so well defended that we don’t seem to be able to attack him with any success.”
“I understand he’s made some guerrilla raids lately.”
“Yes, caught us by surprise both times. Night attacks. We haven’t been on a wartime footing. Maybe it’s time we go to that.”
“Does he have any popular support?”
“Not much that we know of. Almost none here in the city. He’s looked on as an educated outlaw by most people.”
“Is he a real threat to your government here?”
“Not really. But we are concerned with the worldwide publicity that he’s getting by kidnapping your Vice President. This is unforgivable. Because of that alone, we are obligated to put on a drive to eliminate him and, we hope, release the Vice President.”
“Do you have any definite plans?”
“We hope your government will lend us five thousand Marines and helicopters so we can move in with them and wipe out the rebels, killing every
man they have.”
Murdock grinned. “We both know that isn’t going to happen. Are there any roads up along the river?”
“The only jeep road goes up about ten miles. From there it’s a horse trail that some two-wheeled carts can get by on to bring produce and crops into the city. There’s quite a bit of boat traffic on the river. It’s the best highway into the interior.”
“Colonel, I need to do some recon. Could you supply me with a boat and crew to take a trip up the river tonight after dark? It would be a no-firefight-type situation. We’d go slow and easy and talk to as many of the local people we find as possible. This Mojombo might have set up a camp much closer to the city now that he feels he’s getting stronger and has the Vice President as a hostage.”
Colonel Dara frowned, then stood and paced his office for a minute. At last he sat down again and nodded. He made a phone call using the Wolof language. When the call ended he smiled.
“Yes, Commander Murdock. We’ll have a boat and crew at your disposal at Dock Six, this afternoon at 1800. How many men will you take with you?”
“Alpha Squad will make the probe. Eight of us altogether. I’ll try to bring your boat and crew back without taking a single enemy round.”
“I’d appreciate it. Is there anything else? Weapons, ammunition?”
“We tend to travel with all our supplies so we can land and operate quickly. But thanks for the offer. I’ll be back to make a full report on what I find upstream.”
That afternoon Murdock sent his men and ten workers from the embassy into the city to interview the public and to take a poll about their feelings toward the government and Mojombo Washington.
They all came back early. When they tallied up their results they discovered that ninety percent had heard about the capture of the United States Vice President. Eighty percent had a favorable image of Mojombo Washington, calling him a patriot who was trying to help the common man. Only ten percent thought of him as a criminal and a kidnapper. The ambassador was surprised, and pleased.
Alpha Squad had an early supper at the embassy cafeteria, and then checked their equipment and weapons for the mission.
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