Enemy at the Gates

by Vince Flynn

  The CIA database had included a description of this place and anyone with the brains to access Ward’s file would also have the brains to understand the hangar’s purpose. If there was a problem on the mountaintop, Ward could be evacuated by chopper, brought here, and put on a plane to Johannesburg in less than an hour.

  If Rapp had been trying to get his hands on the world’s first trillionaire, the hangar would figure heavily in his plan. It was too risky to send a significant force to the compound. Even if it managed to arrive unnoticed and breach the fence, the fog of war could cause accidents. Ward wasn’t worth much full of bullet holes.

  No, the smart money was to send a small, disciplined team to kick up just enough dust to force Ward’s evacuation. Then it would be a relatively simple matter to ambush him and his minimal security team here.

  Or at least that was the theory.

  After spending four days shuttered up in this place, Rapp was starting to wonder. The much simpler theory of some CIA executive searching for insider investment information was looking more and more plausible.

  He heard the steady gait of someone approaching. They’d cut a few ports high in the hangar’s walls to provide enough starlight for night vision gear. Whoever was closing in on him would be using a monocular to avoid stepping on his sleeping comrades.

  The footsteps went silent when they were still a couple feet away and Rapp heard the rustle of cloth as someone crouched.

  “We’re all hooked up, Mitch. Everything’s operational.”

  The quiet voice was immediately recognizable. Levi Mizrah—a former Israeli operator whom Rapp had known for years.

  “Is it going to be enough?”

  “The cameras aren’t too bad a draw, but when you add in the night vision gear and communications, it’s tight. They’re calling for overcast on Thursday, but with backups and a little prioritization, we should be all right until we get full sun again on Friday.”

  “What if the cloud cover lasts longer than that?”

  “Unless we’re willing to risk bringing in precharged batteries, we’ll have to start conserving, including intermittently cutting power to the surveillance equipment. It’s a tolerable risk, though. Like you’ve said, anyone wanting to secure this piece of ground would probably just drive up the road like we did. There’s no reason for them to think anyone’s here.”

  “And the protocols for all this are worked out?”

  “Absolutely. Unless we get really heavy cloud cover for multiple days in a row, we shouldn’t see a significant impact to our readiness. We should all pray for sun, though. Because one of the first things that get cut is the latrine fan.”

  Rapp nodded in the darkness. “What’s the status of our air support? Any improvement?”

  The Ugandan air force had offered to loan Ward six Mi-24 helicopters based on the lie that they’d be used to relocate Chism’s research operations to the north. One small detail the government had left out, though, was that none of them actually worked.

  “Believe it or not, our guys have gotten two of the choppers flying by scavenging parts from the other four. They say that’s the best they can do until they get the shipment from Russia next week.”

  “Are they going to be able to get here from Mbarara?”

  “It’s about twenty minutes flying time, so yeah. But not much more than that. The mechanics say they probably only have about an hour of operating time before they start falling from the sky.”

  “Armament?”

  “Door guns. The sexy stuff is either broken or there’s no ammo. They’ll put on a good show, though. No one likes to see a Russian chopper bearing down on them. I figure you probably know that better than me.”

  It was a true statement. Those things made even the Afghans shit themselves.

  “Thanks, Levi. Why don’t you go get some sleep?”

  “Roger that. And don’t forget that it’s your turn on the surveillance monitors at noon.”

  Generally, Rapp would pass on staring at a bank of screens depicting empty roads and jungle. In the current environment, though, two hours of studying waving branches and blowing dust sounded downright thrilling.

  “I’ll be there.”

  * * *

  Rapp woke to a shrill tone in his earpiece. Normally, it would be Irene Kennedy checking up on him, but she’d lost confidence in electronic communications since the breach at Langley. Instead, his satphone displayed an alphanumeric code that corresponded to Claudia’s secure mobile.

  “Yeah? What’s up?” he said, connecting the call.

  Instead of Claudia’s elegant French accent, he was greeted with Anna’s increasingly South African one.

  “Mitch? Is that you?”

  “What are you doing on this phone?” he said quietly.

  She ignored the question. “Mom won’t let me ride my bike ’cause she’s sick and can’t watch me. But there aren’t any big trees in the yard. There’s nothing I can hit. It’s, like, totally safe.”

  Rapp stood and peered through a small peephole cut into the wall behind him. Outside, the moonlight illuminated a runway and the dark tree line exactly 133 yards beyond.

  “Back up. Did you say your mom is sick?”

  “Yeah. I think she got what Ahmale had. She says it’s going ’roun’. But I don’t have it. I could ride. And I want to be faster when you get back!”

  Shit.

  “Can you put her on?”

  “She’s asleep. Want me to wake her up?”

  “No. Do not wake her up.”

  They’d been there for days and there was still no sign of anyone moving against Ward. Everything was set up and now it was just a waiting game—something the men dozing around him were happy to do for the amount of cash Nicholas Ward was shelling out. He, on the other hand, didn’t need the money and had better things to do. Maybe it was time to tell Joe Maslick to get his feet out of the baby pool and come run this end of the operation. Or hell, just put Levi in charge. He’d proven himself a hundred times over during the course of his career.

  “If your mom says to stay off the bike then stay off it. And you should be helping out around the house. But don’t get too close to her. And wash your hands.”

  Was he really doing this? Was he really standing in the middle of nowhere Uganda, surrounded by mercenaries, lecturing a seven-year-old about personal hygiene? This family man crap was getting out of hand.

  “I’m being careful. And I am helping. I made soup all by myself. And crackers. Well, I didn’t make those, but I opened the box. And I took them up to her. But that doesn’t mean I can’t—”

  “You heard what I said, Anna. The bike’s off-limits. Your mother has enough on her plate without you running over one of the dogs and going over your handlebars.”

  “Fine.”

  He grimaced. She’d picked up that response—and the pissed-off tone that carried it—from him.

  “Look, I’ve got a couple things to tie up here and then I’ll get on a plane home.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Probably sometime tomorrow. Just hold down the fort until then. Can you do that?”

  “Sure,” she said with the unshakable confidence of someone who had less than a decade under her belt. “Easy.”

  25

  SOUTHWESTERN UGANDA

  THE day that had been foretold was finally here.

  After more than forty-eight hours trudging through the forest, Sanyu Nabirye was now crawling. Not because of exhaustion, though. For stealth.

  He had become part of the darkness, part of the jungle around him. Like he always did. Never once had his victims seen him coming. He appeared in their villages like a ghost, moving among them as their screams filled his ears. As the heat from their burning villages warmed his skin and the smoke burned his throat.

  Such was God’s glory. Such was the glory of Gideon Auma.

  Three days ago, Nabirye had been called into the great man’s presence. He had been a disciple for years, listening
to his sermons, kneeling before him, giving thanks to him for their victories. But this had been different. The great man had spoken to him directly. Called him by name. Touched his shoulder. And given him a sacred mission.

  Nabirye inched forward, staying beneath bushes that were in turn hidden beneath the jungle canopy. It was a gift from God that neutralized the Whites’ aircraft. And without their machines, they were nothing. Weak. Cowardly. Faithless.

  Gideon Auma had told him so.

  The force behind him—seventy men in all—would hold their positions, following the plan Auma had devised. He, on the other hand, would continue forward, privileged to carry out the most critical part of the mission.

  He glanced at the GPS in his hand, following the course it laid out for him. Only ten more meters, but he didn’t let his pace increase with his growing excitement. Auma had warned against that. Discipline. God was watching. And God could be trusted to guide the faithful.

  Even without the Sacrament—what the rest of the world disparagingly called ajali—his senses heightened. The scent of the trees and mold became overwhelming. He could discern the scrape of individual rocks beneath his stomach and chest. Differentiate the buzz of the insects around him.

  Two more meters.

  He almost laughed when he saw the obvious line of churned earth and chopped roots. The Whites were even stupider than Auma had prophesized. Dependent on their technology, but not the masters of it. He would turn it against them. He would gouge their eyes out and leave them blind.

  Nabirye fantasized about his reward as he slipped a small spade from the thigh pocket of his fatigues. It seemed almost certain that he would be brought into Auma’s inner circle—the small group of disciples who had personal access to the man. Would there be more, though? Rumors were endless. Some said these men had been given the power to read minds. To conjure storms. That they could meld with the souls of animals to gain their strength. Some even said they could fly, but he wondered if Auma would gift such an ability even to his most trusted followers. It seemed something that he would reserve for himself.

  Nabirye chose a place in the disturbed earth that seemed free of rocks and began to dig. The wire he was looking for was hidden only a few centimeters beneath the surface. Sheathed in black plastic, it looked like nothing. But that was deceiving. In fact, it was everything.

  His fingers trembled as he typed a text into the phone he’d been given.

  WIRE FOUND

  The response was almost immediate and likely from Gideon Auma himself.

  CUT IT

  He did as ordered and then sent a confirmation. In the fortress above, the Whites would be scrambling, frantically trying to discover why their sophisticated early warning system had gone dark. According to Auma, they would initially assume it was a malfunction. That would be the time to strike—before they realized they were in danger.

  There was a quiet rustling from behind and he quickly found himself surrounded by the men under his command. The Bearer of the Sacrament stopped next to him, taking off his backpack and removing various purpose-built containers. They were fashioned from local trees, intricately carved with magical symbols. Nabirye accepted one and shook it before removing a small lid. Beneath was a tiny chamber containing the proper dose. As commander, it was his honor to be the first to be blessed.

  He leaned forward and breathed it in, feeling the familiar surge. The blood throbbed at the base of his skull. The strength in his limbs became infinite. Any hint of uncertainty, fear, and compassion slipped away. All that remained was a blinding, ecstatic rage.

  26

  SCOTT Coleman tried to ignore the voice and hang on to sleep. In his dream, he was driving a tractor through an endless field of wheat. Complex patterns came and went across it, written by an intermittent breeze that also tossed the hair of the woman riding next to him. Sonya Voronova spoke, but not in the bland midwestern accent she’d worked so hard to perfect. And not in the Rocky and Bullwinkle Russian accent that she reverted to when she was joking. Instead, the sound that came from her was the gruff southern drawl of Joe Maslick.

  “Scott! Wake up!”

  He finally opened his eyes to see the former Delta operator’s face hovering above him.

  “What?”

  “We’re picking up something on the cameras.”

  “Let me guess. Down in that death gully to the east.”

  “Yeah. How did you know to pump up our capability there?”

  Coleman threw the blanket off and stood. “A little bird told me.”

  “Mitch,” the big man grumbled.

  Getting dressed wasn’t particularly time consuming. In situations like these, Coleman tended to sleep in his fatigues. He slipped into a pair of boots carefully lined up near the bottom of the bed.

  “What’re we looking at?”

  “At least fifty men. The one in the lead dug up and cut that wire you had us bury and now the rest are forming on him.” He glanced at the real-time image on his phone. “Not sure what’s going on. Visibility’s shit because of all the trees. They seem like they’re in a huddle or something.”

  Coleman reached for his own phone and scrolled through various video feeds and sensor logs. It was indeed hard to figure out what they were doing. Passing something around maybe? Assault rifles all around, but nothing heavier visible. Bunched up like amateurs.

  “So, they’re basically sitting on top of that wire?”

  “Right. At the bottom of the gully.”

  The steep two-hundred-meter climb ahead of them had taken Charlie Wicker seven and a half minutes to cover, full-gas and under ideal conditions. But the assholes weren’t Charlie Wicker and Coleman had the power to make conditions less than ideal. A lot less.

  Maslick touched his earpiece for a moment, listening to someone talking over it.

  “We have more contacts west.”

  “How many?”

  “Looks like four. A hundred yards out. They might have handheld rockets. Hard to tell for sure.”

  A diversion. They’d make a lot of noise while their main force attacked up that gully. Or so they thought.

  “Pull our guys off the west wall. Those berms should be enough to handle a few rockets. Tell Wick to take a few men outside the perimeter and get in position to neutralize those assholes. Not until I give the signal, though. I want them to do a little shooting first.”

  When Coleman reached the east fence, Maslick had already climbed to the top. Dirt had been tamped into a path behind it that allowed fast movement from sandbagged gun placements set up every twenty feet.

  Not that they’d likely be necessary.

  Coleman jogged to something that appeared to be a massive chain gun but was actually a water cannon. They had good flow from a well at the center of the compound and the diesel pumps they’d brought in were capable of blasting a jet seventy-five yards down the gully in question. Like the gun placements, though, that would probably be overkill. Unless things went very wrong, it would be the mines that Nicholas Ward hated so much that would do the majority of the work.

  “Should I give the order to evacuate Mr. Ward and the rest of the civilians?” Maslick asked, though his tone suggested the question was just a formality. Of course he should.

  Coleman didn’t answer immediately, instead staring out into the moonlit trees. The air was barely moving, highlighting the rhythmic drip of a loose fitting on the water cannon. He’d always loved the calm before battle. It was a moment of serenity with an intensity that was impossible to reproduce in civilian life. These were the rare moments that he could fully clear his mind of all the garbage that had piled up over his half century of life.

  “No. Not yet. We’ll wait for the shooting to start.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I’m not sure I did, Scott. You’re saying you want to wait until people are shooting rockets at us before we put our client on a chopper?”

  “Correct.”

  “Our client, w
ho happens to be the richest man in the world, and might be able to make disease a thing of the past?”

  “Yes.”

  Maslick let out a low breath. “You know what you’re doing, right, boss?”

  Coleman kept scanning the trees despite the fact that there was nothing to see. “Probably.”

  * * *

  They didn’t have to wait long. The sound of an explosion along the west wall was quickly followed by two others and a barrage of undisciplined automatic fire. As expected, the men at the bottom of the east gully started to move—climbing toward the compound at a pace that was a little shocking. He’d assumed Charlie Wicker’s time was on the edge of what was humanly possible. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  “Can I evacuate them now?” Maslick said.

  Coleman gave a short nod and toggled his throat mike. “Wick. Give me a sitrep.”

  “Three rockets,” came the reply. “All hit the fence. The berm held in two places, but in another there’s a viable incursion point. They don’t seem to be interested, though. They’re just shooting at nothing from the jungle. I’m saying this is just a diversion and the main force is coming in from somewhere else.”

  “Copy that. Unless you’re in direct danger, let them run through their ammo and then take them.”

  “Roger. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  By the time Coleman toggled his mike off, all the east gun placements were manned and Maslick was dispersing the rest of their men. In less than a minute, the breach Wick had noted would be secure and evacuation protocols would be under way.

  Coleman stepped behind the water cannon and pulled the trigger. The pumps came on and a moment later a thick stream of water began arcing into the forest. When the dirt got wet in this part of the world, it turned into something with a viscosity midway between motor oil and snot. In a few minutes, the attacking force would arrive at an overhanging rock wall that was conveniently missing from the map Irene Kennedy had created. At that time, they’d have no choice but to try to go up the steep sides of the gully—now being turned into something akin to the Slip ’N Slide that Coleman had loved so much as a kid.