If the Reapers weren’t American, had some private entity somehow gained access to UAV technology? That did not seem possible. The heavily armed surveillance drone was the sharp end of an immensely complex weapon system dependent upon remote guidance via orbiting satellites. That was light-years beyond the abilities of a Nigeria or an Angola. It was hard to believe that even China could pull that off, yet, much less a private outfit.
Whatever it was, something—something else—was going down, some mission not apparent. Paul Janson vowed to find out what, because the Reaper gave whoever possessed it godlike power to observe and destroy.
* * *
BELOW IN THE clearing where the wreckage of Iboga’s army smouldered, FFM fighters began venturing in from the forest, awed at their sudden, astonishing turn of fortune. They wandered among the bodies of the soldiers who moments earlier had been intent on exterminating them and gazed in wonderment at the twisted steel that remained of the tanks. A man picked up an assault rifle only to drop it, crying out, burned by metal too hot to touch. A man laughed and then they began to cheer their unexpected victory.
From the forest above Janson heard a second wave of shouts and cheering—boyish cries of glee—and he looked up to see the youngsters racing toward him down the path carrying Ferdinand Poe’s stretcher. The rebel leader was conscious and propped up on one elbow, watching everything with burning eyes.
An anxious Terrence Flannigan ran alongside the stretcher, attempting without success to get his patient to lie back. They raced past Janson and down into the camp that they had fled moments earlier. Last to emerge from the trees above was Jessica Kincaid, MP5 at port arms.
“That looks even worse than it sounded,” she breathed, casting disbelieving eyes on the wreckage below. “Bad day for the bad guys.”
“Iboga got away.”
“Minister Poe just told his bunch to storm Porto Clarence.”
“That’s the right move. Take the capital before Iboga regroups and end it now.”
“What’s our move?” she asked.
“Stick close to our doctor,” said Janson. “Before a stray bullet saves ASC five million dollars.”
* * *
“YOU WILL DIE on the way to Porto Clarence, Minister Poe,” said Dr. Flannigan. “Please listen to reason.”
“No man enters the capital before me,” said Ferdinand Poe.
“You are leaking blood from every orifice. You have internal injuries. You cannot survive being carried twenty miles on a stretcher. Wait for your men to take the city and the airport so a helicopter can carry you to the hospital.”
“No man enters Porto Clarence before me!” Poe sat up on the stretcher and tried to push the doctor away. But despite a spirit reinvigorated by the hope of impending victory, Poe’s body was failing him. His round cheeks appeared to have collapsed from within. The deep hollows exaggerated the enormousness of his elephant ears and the length of his narrow nose, causing them to poke out of his head like cartoon appendages. His once-imposing crown of bristly dyed hair was matted to his perspiring skull.
Flannigan leaned closer to wipe blood from the corner of Poe’s mouth. “The glory will kill you, sir.”
“It is not for glory,” said Ferdinand Poe. “It is for order.”
Flannigan threw up his hands. “Talk sense to him!” he demanded of the commandos. By now he had named them in his mind. The woman was Annie Oakley for blasting Iboga’s tanks. Her expressionless, impenetrable partner was The Wall. Flannigan still had no idea why ASC was paying them to take him “home” and still feared the worst, but The Wall exuded the sort of common sense that might persuade his critically ill patient to see reason.
The Wall disappointed Flannigan. “You’re missing Minister Poe’s point, Dr. Flannigan. He knows that the victors of his long and brutal war could burn the city to the ground if he’s not there to restrain them personally.”
And Annie Oakley chimed in, “Doctor, his fighters have been living in the woods for three years. He can’t expect them to act like Boy Scouts unless he’s there to read the riot act.”
“Precisely,” said Ferdinand Poe. “Only I can restrain the impulse to vengeance. Only I, because they have all seen that.” He pointed a trembling hand across the clearing where ten men were struggling to lift a two-ton gun tank turret that had blown off by the Hellfires and crushed his son. “That gives me the moral right—the example—to demand that they do not violate their fellow citizens, that they do not throw our poor nation into even more horrendous straits. This war must end today.”
He gazed for a long moment as they levered the turret off his son. Then he spoke softly. “Doctor, I appreciate your concern, and professionalism. But in this case professional soldiers”—he nodded at Janson and Kincaid—“even professionals who land on our island for reasons not entirely clear, are better qualified to diagnose a military situation.”
“I’m not diagnosing the situation, goddammit. I’m diagnosing you.”
“But I am not the patient, Doctor. Isle de Foree is the patient and Isle de Foree is in critical condition—Stand aside, sir. I must speak with my commanders.” He gestured for Janson and Kincaid to stay with him in the hospital cave.
Janson assessed the men who clustered around Poe’s stretcher. He had a dozen commanders who ranged from very young to very old. They were steady, tested soldiers, revered Poe, and had done a superb job of reforming their battered forces and rallying the men streaming in from the forest. But none displayed the charisma of their leader.
Poe addressed them in Portuguese. He spoke forcefully and fired them up with a fist pointed at his son’s body even as tears of grief streamed down his face. When the army started down the trail at a quick pace, with Poe’s stretcher in the lead, he beckoned Janson alongside.
“I’ve impressed upon my commanders the need to protect the city from unnecessary destruction while capturing the Presidential Palace. But it is not only for order that I rush into the capital. We must seize Iboga. He’s looted the treasury, sent millions abroad. Without it we will start our new nationhood bankrupt. We cannot permit him to escape. Now I gather from the doctor that you and your associate are mercenaries paid to rescue him after he was kidnapped by what appeared to be a renegade faction of my movement. Is that correct?”
“Essentially, Minister Poe,” Janson answered. This was no time to debate the fine line between mercenaries and security consultants.
“Judging by your ability to penetrate both the enemy lines and my lines, I assume that you and your associate are expert commandos.”
“We plan such penetrations intensively and thoroughly,” Janson answered, putting strong emphasis on the word “plan,” for he saw that Poe was going to offer them the job of capturing Iboga and he did not want it. The cardinal rules of survival included no off-the-cuff operations, no decisions on horseback, no flying by the seat of the pants, no winging it. Besides, he and Jessica were on the edge of total exhaustion. Even were they fully rested, kick-the-door-in assault work was for younger, dumber types and he had already put that time in when he was younger and dumber. But mainly, he had taken a job and given his word to rescue the doctor, and abandoning the doctor in the middle of a shooting war was not his idea of rescue.
“We plan operations well ahead of time,” he explained. “Our planning—all of our planning—is designed to maintain the advantage of presenting a small, unexpected, moving target.”
“Small, unexpected, moving targets that destroy tanks?” Poe asked drily.
“We plan for a variety of events,” Janson replied, as drily. “Listen, sir, I know what you want, but I cannot do it for you. Your own men know their city, know the palace, and are fully capable of grabbing Iboga.”
“I fear this is easier said than done. Iboga is treacherous and deeply experienced in warfare. He fought in Angola. On both sides.”
“Yours is an island, sir. I presume you’ve instructed your forces to seize the airport and the harbor. If no plane or boat can g
et out of here he is not going anywhere.”
“Of course I’ve done that. Picked men are heading that way as we speak, and spies I’ve kept in the city will watch means of egress. But I know Iboga. He will have a plan and he will escape if he sees we are winning. I need your help. I am asking to hire you. I will pay you what you ask.”
Janson shook his head. “You’re a brave man, Minister Poe. I respect that. Here is what we can do for you: We can free up a dozen of your guard—who I imagine are your elite men. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Make them the hunters. We will escort and protect you personally. Guaranteed.” He glanced at Jessica, who fired back, “Guaranteed!”
“I am not important,” Poe protested. “It is not for me.”
Janson said, “A war like yours in Isle de Foree is like chess. When the king is lost, the war is lost.”
“I have no desire to be king. I am a democrat.”
“In a war like yours,” Janson repeated patiently, “it is the same thing. When the ‘democrat’ is lost, the war is lost. This is no time for false modesty, Minister Poe. There is no one who can save Isle de Foree but you, sir. We can help—for no charge, not a penny—by protecting you until your men take the city and arrest Iboga.”
“Why would you do this?”
“I believe,” Paul Janson answered sincerely, “that you are on the side of the angels.”
“And you will incidentally protect the doctor,” Poe shot back.
“I’ve already made that clear. The doctor is our obligation and responsibility. We have given our word to return him safe and sound.”
* * *
AS THE FFM pursued Iboga’s forces it appeared, at first, that good fortune continued to smile on Ferdinand Poe. The FFM fighters who had been dispatched to the airport eight miles from Porto Clarence found it lightly defended by a demoralized unit that surrendered after a brief skirmish. No damage was done to the control tower and the hangars and little more than some bullet-pocked windows to the palatial President for Life Iboga International Passenger Terminal.
One of the nation’s last helicopters—commanded by the formidable Patrice da Costa, Poe’s spy inside the Iboga regime—swooped down to evacuate the injured patriot from the foot of Pico Clarence. Janson, Kincaid, and Flannigan accompanied Poe on the flight to the brand-new military wing of Porto Clarence’s otherwise-crumbling Iboga Hospital that had been equipped to serve the dictator and his friends.
The hospital occupied prime real estate, with a view across the hazy harbor of the Presidential Palace, a red-roofed two-story white stucco building festooned with balconies, pocked with recently added air conditioners, and crowned by a tall, square bell tower. Palm trees shaded its lawns. A long pier thrust into the water.
Poe informed his doctors that he would not submit to any operation or treatment that rendered him unconscious until the battle was won. The only weakness he showed was a plea to Terrence Flannigan to remain at his side.
“I’m not that qualified in internal medicine, sir.”
“But you were not given your job in his hospital by Iboga.”
“Good point,” said Jessica Kincaid. “He’s right, Doc; you’re the only one we can trust.”
Terry Flannigan saw that he was not going anywhere just yet, though one way or another he knew he was not going anywhere ever with the commandos hired by ASC. Although Annie and The Wall never let him out of their sight. He bided his time and stuck close to the crazy old patriot who insisted on his bed being cranked up into a sitting position so that he could watch events unfold at the palace across the water.
Poe’s presence seemed to have the effect the rebel leader had hoped for. Only thin, isolated pillars of smoke were rising from the city, and the scattered gunfire they heard sounded mostly like pistols. An hour from sunset, when there was still plenty of light in the sky, Iboga’s personal flag, a yellow banner adorned with a red snake, was lowered from the pole atop the palace’s tower.
Poe answered a cell phone. His face lit with pleasure. “Iboga is trapped,” he announced to the room. “Alone.
“Don’t kill him,” he ordered into the phone. “We must learn where he put our money. Take him alive.” Then he stared out the window at the pier and said to the American commandos, “You didn’t want to chase Iboga. You’re in the battle anyhow—box seats for the finale. Watch the pier. You’ll see him running onto it in a moment.”
Janson said quietly to Jessica, “War like Shakespeare wrote it. All the main players in the same room.”
As predicted, Iboga retreated onto the pier, his bulk unmistakable, but running like a man fully accustomed to his girth and strong enough to carry it. Nor was he alone, but flanked by two men with machine guns who alternated spraying the pursuit and reloading fresh magazines from a seemingly inexhaustible supply grabbed easily from each other’s rucksacks.
“Neat trick,” said Jessica.
Suddenly one went down, shot. Now it was only Iboga and one guard who kept coolly firing behind them as they retreated farther and farther out on the pier. Janson scanned the harbor with binoculars, looking for a boat speeding to the rescue, but saw none. The shooting had driven everyone from the water. The Porto Clarence harbor was nearly empty from the deteriorating oil storage facility to the fishing docks and freight piers. The only ship that had not fled the harbor was a rust-stained Bulgarian passenger vessel stranded at the cruise ship terminal, Janson guessed, by the absence of tugboats to escort her to sea.
“Can I borrow your glasses?” asked Flannigan.
Janson passed them to the doctor, who focused clumsily on the running men.
“Recognize someone?”
“No,” Flannigan answered hastily, and passed them back.
Kincaid nudged Janson. “Aircraft.”
It was a dot on the ocean horizon.
“They’ll make mincemeat of a helicopter.”
But the dot grew too rapidly to be a helicopter. In seconds they saw a jet fighter approaching at enormous speed. “Does the Africa Partnership Station have an aircraft carrier sailing with it?”
“Not that I heard of. Maybe it’s coming down from Nigeria.”
“They’ll get quite a reception at the airport.”
Traveling at six hundred miles an hour, the fighter was close enough in a few more seconds to reveal the distinctive drooping wings of a vertical/short takeoff and landing Harrier jump jet. Janson and Kincaid exchanged looks as the aircraft slowed abruptly from six hundred miles an hour and descended toward the pier on a trajectory that started steep and quickly became vertical.
“Iboga’s ticket out?”
Unlike the familiar sight of a helicopter floating down in a landing, what the vertical/short takeoff and landing Harrier was doing looked impossible. A jet plane seen streaking through the sky was suddenly hanging in the air like a noisy Christmas ornament balanced on a thick jet of brown exhaust gases.
“But it’s a single-seat fighter plane. They only have one seat.”
“Trainers have two seats,” said Janson. “Look at the size of that canopy.”
Sturdy landing wheels emerged from the front and back of the fuselage and thin struts levered down from its wings like walking sticks. The sound of its engine straining to defy gravity thundered through the hospital’s thick windows.
Ferdinand Poe snatched up his cell phone. “Stop him. Shoot him! Don’t let him land.”
A squad of soldiers burst from the palace firing machine guns.
“Lucky for them trainers aren’t combat capable,” said Kincaid.
“This one is,” said Janson. He passed her the glasses. “Gatling cannon, port side.”
The cannon spoke, even as the noise of the jump jet’s engine spooled down from a thunder to a scream. Twenty-five-millimeter shells swept the pier of the men with machine guns. The jet landed hard and bounced. Its tail dropped, then bobbed up. The front half of the big canopy sprang open. A rope ladder fell to the pier.
“Should
be interesting, one empty seat, two bad guys.”
Iboga climbed the six rungs agilely and heaved his bulk into the front cockpit. The canopy closed. The engine thundered and the jump jet rose straight up on another column of brown exhaust, turning as it did until its nose faced the sea from where it had come. The column spewing vertically from its nozzles began to angle. Nose rising, the jet carrying the deposed dictator of Isle de Foree sped forward. In fifteen seconds, it was gone.
Jessica lowered the glasses. “Where’s the guy who was with him?”
“Dove off the pier.”
“Did you see any markings? I didn’t.”
“Just camo paint.”
“So who sent Iboga his ticket out?”
“Same folks who sent the Reaper?”
“But the Reaper almost killed him.”
“No, it didn’t,” said Janson. “Iboga ran way back behind the tanks, but he made a clear target wearing that yellow headdress. The Reaper’s sensor operator could spot him easily on his video monitors. The pilot would have killed him if that was their mission—Look at poor Poe.”
Ferdinand Poe was gaping at the empty space of sky where the jump jet had vanished, and Paul Janson saw all the hope and energy of his military victory drain out of the old man’s wounded body.
Terry Flannigan laid a hand on his shoulder. “Time to rest, Minister Poe. You’ve done all you could. Your men are in control; the city stands safe.”
It was hard to tell if Poe even heard him. But Poe did reach out and clasp ahold of Flannigan’s hand. His eyes were already closed. His head sagged on his chest. Flannigan beckoned the nurses hovering at the door in crisply ironed and laundered white uniforms. They glided in and took charge, gently straightening the old man on his back and pulling sheets to his chin.
Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Command Page 9