by Tim Heath
An old tanker, probably milk or some other dairy product, sat rusting in the forecourt, in front of one of the large warehouse buildings, there were in the area. Moving along the front of the building, a stripe of blood ran along the dirty ground, from the side of the tanker where Gudu was now standing and in through the door. He bent down, seeing it was reasonably fresh. He looked around again, still very much alone.
There was a significant shutter in front of him, probably locked from the inside, with no keyhole visible from the front. He tried the main door, therefore, gently pressing his shoulder into it, the door opening without any resistance, the lock no doubt rusted away years before.
In front of him sat a van, beside it, three bodies lay face down on the concrete. Instinctively, he picked up a metal pole and moved swiftly over towards the corpses, continually circling to check if anyone was waiting for him. There wasn’t. The bodies weren’t yet cold––the kill had been within an hour, he’d been around enough bodies to have learnt that by now. The van was open, inside it some tools and a bin bag. He looked around the rest of the space, leaving the truck for a moment. In the back was the one other room, a bucket of human urine and blood, sitting next to the wall. There was no Elizabeth.
Running back to the van, he went through things a little more carefully, grabbing the black sack. Once he had emptied it out his heart sank, jeans, a top, underwear and her shoes falling to the floor. He picked up the right shoe, finding the device he’d put there himself, in what seemed like another life compared to where he was now. They’d taken her, and now he had no idea where they had gone.
For a second, panic set in, but it was not in his nature to allow it to linger for too long. Counting to three, the fears and thoughts arriving like rush hour trains, he breathed out, already determined that this was not the end. They couldn’t have gone far. But he would need a new way of tracking them and knowing that she had almost certainly been handed over to Boko Haram, he would have to call China for some help.
His focus returned. Anger, too, but it was controlled, channelled, constructive. He would pull them apart, destroy anyone involved. He wouldn’t stop until she was free. For the first time in days, Gudu pulled out the satellite phone. He left the damp and blood-soaked warehouse and walked out into the hot sunny midday light. He kept to the shadows, staying close to the wall, and the slightly lower temperature it momentarily offered.
“Hello?” came a clear voice. Gudu spoke his confirmation code and waited for about ten further seconds. He was then given the all clear.
“I need help. Boko Haram fighters in Nigeria have captured Elizabeth,” he said, filling in the gaps he had with plausible likelihood. They didn’t need to know it was anything else. “It’s highly likely these are the same people that are holding Jianguo Ming. I’ve lost the ability to track them as they’ve disabled my tracking device. I’m not letting them get away with this, despite what you might say.” He remained quiet while he knew the General, who would be listening over someone’s shoulder for sure, would no doubt be processing and thinking through his response. It was the General’s voice, in fact, that spoke the reply.
“We have their location and are happy for you to proceed. Just be careful. You should be aware that they are expecting many high profile visitors at any moment now, certainly over the next two days. These will be very hostile to our cause and should be treated with care. We also think the Americans might be aware that this get together is happening. You could be walking into a trap.”
“Thanks for the information, just send me the coordinates through to this device, and I’ll get moving. They can’t be far ahead of me, and maybe I can intercept before they reach the others.”
“Keep us informed. You need to know Jianguo is probably very seriously injured. He’s indicated some level of discomfort.”
Gudu didn’t care much about the retired diplomat, though he would do what he could. There was just one person he was doing this for, and the longer he waited, the further they got away with her. The longer the delay, the more time they had with her, and that thought sickened him; he knew very well of what such men were capable.
“Just send me the information, straightaway, and I’ll work it out from there.”
“It’s on its way to you now,” and the device let out a sound confirming a message had been received. “If you need any help, let us know.”
Quite what they could do, he didn’t know. He left that thought there, ending the call and taking a look at the coordinates. “Fantastic!” he exclaimed, his rough calculations judging the base camp to be somewhere around eight hundred kilometres to the east, in a very barren and isolated section of northern Nigeria. They must have flown across, or they’d be on the road for a long time, the mountain passes and unmade highway meant getting any speed up was a challenge. Still, his map confirmed there were some roads, and while he didn’t like the prospect of driving that far in one day, he didn’t have a choice. If the others were flying, they’d almost certainly have a day there before he could hope to be on the scene. A day with Elizabeth in their midst was already twenty-four hours too much. Now back at his vehicle, he loaded it up, pulling away at speed, and started the chase once more.
28
Northern Nigeria
At Boko Haram base camp, the guests were already reaching the gathering. Both Middle-Eastern based al-Qaeda groups had arrived, as well as a third team sent from the Grand Council in Europe. The Taliban was about six hours away, and Daesh due later that afternoon. The Commander had received news that the team in the west had picked up the girl. They had flown the day before and were due at any moment. In the meantime, he had some high profile guests to welcome, and he couldn’t escape the sense of importance it gave him that they’d come to his territory, at his command. Power and influence that he'd rarely seen before. It felt good. The next two days were going to be very interesting indeed.
He’d commanded his torturers to go hard again on the Chinese prisoner, who’d still not given them anything concrete regarding the blueprints. He’d merely stated he didn’t have that authorisation, though the Commander wasn’t accepting that. Brutality was the only way, and he saw no issues with beating someone who was in a wheelchair. It made it easier to hurt him.
Tents were being set up to house the guests. Naturally, the groups formed their own communities. Not that al-Qaeda all knew each other, but they settled on the same bit of land, the best piece available for a temporary home, and put up their various coverings. A fire got lit, men sitting around it, swapping war stories. Many had fought in Afghanistan, often alongside their Taliban brothers, who’d yet to arrive. Some had recent experience in Syria and Iraq, though not many. As a result, Daesh was the unknown entity. More successful, arguably, than any of the other groups, in the fact they’d taken significant land across various borders. They had oil resources, too. Their end game agenda was still something of a mystery, and it was assumed two days altogether, and each of the groups would start to understand one another a little more. They did, in theory, share the same overall goal, but they all knew in reality that it would be a fragile alliance, not a time for any one group to come across too dominant, which primarily went for the hosts.
Little had been said so far.
Just before twelve, the convoy pulled into the camp with the woman. She seemed to be in a bad way, little food or water for the last twelve hours and the drugs they had given her leaving her in a very sedated state. The leader of the group got out of the car, stretching as much as he could. The Commander came over to him, and they embraced.
“Did everything go according to plan?”
“Yes, it was as much as we imagined. The militia was preparing for a hostile exchange, so we beat them to it. It wasn’t even a fight.”
“Very good, so the money you took wasn’t needed at all. Make sure it finds its way back into the safe, now.”
“Of course.”
“Let me see the woman.”
The team leader turne
d and opened the rear door. Elizabeth, conscious but only just, blinked as the light filled the car. He held out his hand for her, pulling her out of the car when she failed to comply.
“Here she is, sir. As promised.”
“Very good. We’ll share her with our guests first.”
“Is that wise, sir?”
“Nonsense, they’ve been on the road for days. We’ve done nothing for them yet. A little female…entertainment…would go down nicely, I’m sure. Strip her and send her in. Oh, and I want it recorded. It might come in useful with the British later on.”
She was led over to the tents where al-Qaeda had gathered their group together. A bottle of water was placed in her hand.
“Drink!” the leader of the convoy said to her, which she didn’t take a moment with which to comply. When she’d finished the bottle she dropped it to the floor, aware of what was coming. Her clothes were cut from her, until she stood before the tent naked.
“In you go!” came the order from behind. She paused, was prodded with the end of a gun in her back, and stepped into the tent, darkness initially enveloping her.
There was a roar of delight heard from within the tent.
Washington DC, USA
In Washington, an NSA listening station picked up a call which bounced through one of their satellites, the Chinese unaware that their own orbiting ears were not the only ones over that part of Africa when Gudu had made his call.
“We have an intercept, sir, coming from eastern Nigeria. A call was made thirty minutes ago to China. It must be the man we are looking for.”
A transcript was placed on his desk. He glanced through it briefly, a scribbled translation roughly filling the left-hand column.
“Do we have the coordinates as well?”
“Yes, they were sent through by message towards the end of the call.”
“And where do they correspond to?”
“Also Nigeria, but to the north-east corner of the country. We are getting a bird to fly over there now for a closer look. We have sixty more minutes before it loses its positional fix. If that happens before we can get a detailed look, it’ll be evening before we can try again.”
“Okay, do your best. And alert the Navy.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man who headed up that unit picked up the phone, thinking through what he was going to say. After a brief pause, he tapped out the shortcode and waited for the connection.
“We have a certain location for the Boko Haram gathering, taking place in north-eastern Nigeria. Satellite confirmation expected to follow shortly.”
“Very good. I’ll alert the President. We’ll have the Navy made ready for action. Excellent work.”
The call went dead. So, they had finally managed to track the location. The device they had found planted on Elizabeth had remained in the west of the country for nearly a day, though from the transcript, it would imply the Chinese had known it had been dumped. The fact the Chinese base camp already had the coordinates ready at hand was a little odd. Why had they not already done something about the fact their former ambassador to the United Kingdom was still missing, well over a month already, and held by Boko Haram? Maybe that was why they knew the location; maybe there was another reason?
It was possible the Chinese would know the Americans were listening in, wanting to send them once more in the wrong direction. But the call had been genuine, the fact it had bounced off their satellite just fortuitous. Their own imagery would soon be able to confirm the accuracy of the information on the ground. If there were a build-up of activity happening at these coordinates, then the photos would show it. They’d focus their attention, initially from the edges of the earth’s atmosphere, on this location, seeing how things changed over the next crucial hours. They might even be able to spot the approaching convoys, knowing now where they were heading. This would confirm the accuracy of the information, though nothing about it seemed out of place, inaccurate or staged, the more he looked at it. It appeared genuine.
At the first moments of confirmation, and by the directive from the White House itself, they’d focus their attention from the skies much nearer earth, with two aircraft carriers on their way to the region, over one hundred F18s ready to be used at a moment’s notice. They could be in and out before the enemy would know what had hit them, setting the main terrorist groups on the planet back a long way, cleaning up some loose information, and traitors, in the process.
Two KC-135s were also on their way, large military aerial refuelling aircraft that the Americans had used many times before. The run from the ship to the location, coming from the south of Nigeria as they would have to, was well over one thousand miles, which would mean the planes would run out of fuel just a third of the way back. The giant Boeing aircrafts would, therefore, follow the fighters used in the attack, some refuelled before the airstrikes began, some after, to make sure there was enough time to get every jet back. Calculations were being worked out on board both ships, which would limit the number of F18s used, as pilot safety was uppermost in their thinking.
The one thousand miles they would have to fly over Nigeria was a hazard in itself. It had already been reasoned that the White House would need to speak with their Nigerian counterparts in the moments before the operation started, to alleviate any resistance they might otherwise have from the government in that nation, alarmed at the sight of dozens of foreign aircraft once again claiming their skies.
The key to a successful operation was the element of surprise. It was unknown what surface to air weapons Boko Haram had in their possession, but with their repeated attacks, on both the Nigerian and Cameroonian military, it was highly likely they’d acquired at least some of this type of weaponry along the way. The last thing the Americans needed was some downed planes, pilots paraded before cameras before being beheaded, giving more power to the Jihadists, more division at home. The American people didn’t need that. The President didn’t need it, either.
Sharing with the Nigerian government was a risk, though they too would benefit from Boko Haram being beaten back in the north. The country was in a fragile place, and for too long the terrorists had been allowed almost free rein to come, kidnap people at will, causing fear and death to spread. So the airstrikes by a Western power would most probably be welcomed, this time, unlike when the British attacked five years ago. Modern day Nigeria was a result of those dark days. That was why the British had no voice in this latest situation, and why they needed the Americans to do it for them.
Washington knew this, too. It suited their agenda, however, to go a long way to eradicate these extremist groups with their death and glory mindsets.
It was an hour later before they had photos from the area. A meeting was called, various agencies connecting in via a live video feed, which included the President’s closest advisors, though the man himself was seeing to other business.
“Confirmed, camps being set up in this remote part of Nigeria. These were coordinates intercepted between two known Chinese Secret Service agents, the one man on the ground only known as The Shadow Man. He was responsible for a recent attack at our facility in Guantanamo Bay.” No one needed a reminder of that, they were all aware exactly who was involved, but it helped to settle the flow of the conversation that would follow. “This photo,” he said, dropping another image onto the table for those present, the digital version of it appearing on the screens for those who were not, “is of the same facility last week, which was the most recent image we had on file.” There was a significant difference, with several more vehicles present, dwellings of some form erected on land beside the permanent compounds. “We also think we have confirmation of at least two more convoys approaching,” he said, pulling up another image for them all to see. “As we were losing visual access to these first coordinates, we scanned the areas further north, and spotted these.” He used laser light to show up two multi-vehicle convoys, the roads ahead of them heading in the direction of the Boko Haram camp.
&nbs
p; “Do we strike these convoys while we can?” one person said.
“No, that would only give them warning of the situation. We don’t want any of them getting wind of what we are planning to do.”
“And you still intend to send in the bombers?” Tod, a retired fighter pilot with combat experience, sat on the President’s advisory board. He’d been anti the whole idea of sending American pilots into what could easily become a fatally flawed mission. “Medium range ballistic missiles would be able to handle both convoys and the camp without risking the lives of any of our pilots.”
“Tod, we’ve assessed this option, and it won’t work. The convoys are moving, and we would need accurate real-time intel as to where they are for us to know where what to aim. We would prefer to have them in one place and then use our planes to accurately take out the target and any vehicles that might try and make an escape. We don’t know what we’ll be faced with.”
“Which is precisely my point. If I’m to square this with our Commander in Chief, I need to be able to tell him this isn’t going to end in a bloodbath. Not to mention the deaths of untold numbers of civilians.”
“Airstrikes have a greater chance than just launching missiles of making sure we keep any civilian casualties to a minimum.”
“So you aren’t ruling out the possibility?”
“Come on Tod, and we’ve all been around long enough to know that you can never say you aren’t going to involve civilians for sure. As far as we can tell, especially where this camp is situated, it’s only the militants. There are no towns or cities near enough to risk getting caught up, though they’ll certainly see the columns of smoke so will be well aware of what has happened.”