Hunt the Leopard

by Don Mann

  “Don’t stop now!” he shouted, pounding the wheel. “Keep going!”

  The firing above and to their right didn’t let up, and the ambulance simultaneously created more space between them and lost speed, producing a big cloud of white steam and gray smoke.

  Akil coaxed the vehicle forward, while Saliha lowered her head to her knees and dared not look.

  Crocker, in the passenger seat of a yellow Jeep 4x4, heard the massive firing ahead, and was calculating whether the Nigerian helicopters would spot the big orange, blue, and white Gulf logo on the roof and let them pass.

  “What should we do?” Alf, clenching the steering wheel, asked.

  It was a risk Crocker was willing to take. “Don’t stop! Keep going!”

  One of the plant managers on the backseat pointed ahead and shouted, “What the hell is that?”

  For the last twenty seconds Crocker had been wondering the same thing. Seconds earlier he had been focused on the attack helicopters and the firing from the technicals in front of the buildings to their left, but now he stared at the strange smoke-shrouded vehicle rolling toward them. Couldn’t tell what it was or if the occupants were friendly.

  “Stop!” he shouted, changing his mind. “Hit the brakes!”

  Alf applied them forcefully and the 4x4 skidded to an abrupt stop, burning rubber and sending the contents of Crocker’s stomach into his throat.

  Then he heard one of the managers in back express exactly what he was thinking.

  “You think it’s a suicide bomber?”

  If it was, they were goners.

  All of them watched, sphincters clenched, as the strange vehicle rolled within ten meters of them and stopped in a swirling brume of steam and smoke.

  When the cloud cleared for a moment, one of the plant managers noted, “It’s an ambulance! I saw a cross on the hood!”

  Alf responded, “So what?”

  The question in Crocker’s mind was what to do next. Turning to Alf, he said, “I’m getting out of here, then you quickly back up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Crocker wasted no time on explanation. Opened the passenger door, rolled out of the 4x4, and came up to his knees with the AK he was holding, aimed at the ambulance. In a crouch, he hurriedly circled right toward the fence, careful to maintain a distance of about ten meters between the vehicle and himself.

  It didn’t move.

  Making out the silhouette of a driver, Crocker gestured forcefully and shouted, “Come out! Get out now! Hands over your head.”

  “Fuck you, Crocker!” came the retort through the driver’s-side window.

  What?

  He tensed for a second, then his mind registered the identity of the voice. “Akil, you crazy bastard? Is that you?”

  “Sure is, motherfucker. Nice way to greet a friend.”

  At the other end of the compound in Company Town, CT and Sally had moved from the VIP dorms to the headquarters building known as 50 Main. There they joined a French plant manager named Paul Pagon, who was trying to locate a satellite phone to use to communicate with Gulf headquarters in South Holland.

  Terrorists had already searched the offices for hostages and money. Drawers were emptied and chairs overturned. They had just entered the Integrated Media Technologies (IMT) manager’s office when Sally heard footsteps outside.

  Turning to CT, she whispered, “Someone’s coming.”

  “Inside,” he said, steering Paul and Sally past a desk and toward a corner closet. When she started to resist, he held a finger to his lips and pushed her inside, followed by Pagon. Quickly covered them with a stack of boxes and shut the door.

  He crouched under the desk along the wall with his AR-15 and pushed a chair in front of him.

  All the time, saying to himself, I’ll be okay, baby. It’s gonna be okay…

  Wasn’t sure he was addressing God or his wife, Nasima, more than five thousand miles away in Virginia Beach. Last thing he wanted was to leave her with the burden of raising their three kids alone. Charles Jr. had just turned thirteen.

  Nasima, I got this…

  His heart skipped a beat when he heard the front door of the building crash in. His mouth turned bone dry, and he followed the sounds of the terrorists splintering wooden doors, starting with the first on the right side of the hallway. Heard every step and movement in detail thanks to the vent in the wall nearby.

  The sounds formed a pattern—boots to door, doors breaking, and thirty seconds of lowered voices as the terrorists searched the room before the process started again.

  Said goodbyes in his head to his loved ones.

  Nasima, you warned me years ago that wherever I deployed, to never go to Africa. You had an intuition that night, and, baby, you were right…

  CT heard the terrorists kick in the women’s bathroom door. Now there was only one door left between it and the IMT manager’s office at the end of the hallway, where he, Sally, and Paul were now.

  Charles Jr., I know you’re still a kid, and this isn’t fair…But I need you to look after your brother and sister, and help your mom…

  The footsteps approached the next office and stopped. Tears filled his eyes as he addressed his daughter. Alyssa, my little angel…The moment I first saw you in the delivery room was one of the happiest in my life…

  He expected to hear boots against the door, and moved his finger to the trigger and prepared to start firing as soon as the terrorists entered the room. Instead, the footsteps turned right into the other hallway and continued out the back of the building to the exit.

  It felt like a minor miracle.

  Thank you, God…

  CT counted the seconds of silence in his head. At twenty the trembling started in his hands and moved up his arms to his shoulders, and from his shoulders into his chest and torso, until his entire body was shaking and releasing tension.

  Not only was he thankful to still be alive, he also had hope that now that the terrorists had searched the building a second time, they wouldn’t return anytime soon.

  Tiny Chavez sat propped against a wall in the Building A expat dorm lobby, his wrists chained behind him and a circle of C4 around his neck, trying to stop the stream of thoughts hurtling through his head, when he was jolted to attention by the sound of big guns firing, and men shouting. Glanced at the brown-haired woman named Zoe trembling and talking to herself.

  He wanted to tell her not to worry, that thinking about the possible outcome would only make it worse. But last time he had spoken to her, the jihadist who he had dubbed Pinche (“dumb asshole” in Spanish)—round, nearly bald with dead eyes, had kicked him in the chest.

  Through the cacophony outside he heard helicopters approaching and their cannons firing in a continuous stream. Wobbled between hope and dread.

  Seconds later, the wiry, wild-eyed leader of the terrorists, who he’d dubbed Chingado (“crazy motherfucker”), burst in the front door, waving his arms and shouting. And Pinche and another guard pulled Tiny up from under his arms and dragged him through the lobby, and outside into the hellacious racket.

  What now?

  The sound hurt his ears. Cordite clogged his throat. The tops of his feet were raw from being scraped across the packed dirt and cement.

  A woman beside him screamed, “Lord, have mercy!”

  With difficulty, Tiny craned his neck up, and squinted into the early dawn light at a helicopter bearing down on them, smoke and sparks flying out of cannons below the cockpit. He wanted to wave at them or shout that he was an American, but his wrists were chained behind him and the noise was deafening.

  Managed to take a deep breath, which he imagined would be his last. Then at the last second, the cannons stopped, and the helicopter passed overhead.

  Mancini had spent the last fifteen minutes in the ceiling making a list of his favorite foods:

  1. His wife’s handmade manicotti.

  2. Grilled rack of lamb with garlic and fennel.

  3. Tom yum goong lemongrass Thai soup.


  4. His grandmother’s spaghetti and meatballs.

  5. Fried calamari.

  6. Lebanese fattoush salad.

  7. Grilled New York–cut steak.

  8. Chicken cacciatore.

  9. Eggplant parmesan.

  10. Broccoli rabe.

  Imagined the taste of each in his mouth. When he finished that, he circled his feet and flexed his wrists to keep the blood moving. Felt like sausage meat stuffed in metal skin. Listened to make sure no one had entered the locker room below.

  Whispered, “What are your names?” to the men above.

  The Asian man answered, “Me? Haru.”

  “Haru, I’m Mancini. Call me Manny.”

  “Okay, Manny.”

  “You having fun?”

  “Fun, not exactly. I’m thirsty.”

  “Me, too. In a few minutes I’m gonna climb down and get us some water.”

  “Too risky.”

  “We need water.”

  “We need food, too.”

  “We can go without food for more than a week. Water is more critical.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Haru, I’ve been thinking about food and decided it’s a bad idea. I need to focus on something else.”

  “What?”

  “I’m thinking…women.”

  “You like women?”

  “Food and women together, even better. A delicious dinner, a good bottle of wine…”

  “Woman? I thought you prefer Jani…”

  “Johnny? Who’s he?”

  “Jani is Japanese term for slim, good-looking man.”

  Mancini chuckled. “You’re making me laugh, Haru.”

  “I think you like my joke…”

  “Yeah, and when we get out of here, I’m gonna kick your ass.”

  “You get us out of here, you can kick my ass all you want.”

  “You’re funny, Haru. What do you do when you’re not hiding in the ceiling?”

  “I’m a metering engineer.”

  “How’s your friend?”

  “Jamisen isn’t my friend. He’s my boss. Very difficult man.”

  “All right, then fuck him.”

  “No, Jamisen is good friend. He’s sleeping.”

  “Sleeping? That’s not good…”

  Mancini wasn’t a corpsman, but like all SEALs he’d received trauma medical training. Now he squeezed his big head into the ventilation duct and past Jamisen’s feet. Reached up, found his wrist, and took his pulse. It seemed normal. So did his body temp, as far as he could tell. The towel he’d wrapped around Jamisen’s head had stopped the bleeding.

  Running his hand along Jamison’s chest as he squirmed down to where he had been before, Mancini discovered the phone in the chief engineer’s pocket. Saw that it still had fifty percent charge.

  Whispered to Haru above Jamisen, aware once again that the only thing he had on was another towel. “You know the password for Jamisen’s phone?”

  “Try his wife’s name, Patricia.”

  Manny punched it in. “Doesn’t work.”

  “Try his birthday, eleven twenty-four sixty-one.”

  “Nope.”

  “Try Barcelona FC. It’s his favorite football team.”

  “No.”

  “Try Rambo. It’s his favorite movie character. He named his dog after him.”

  “No shit?”

  “His dog does shit. I hope so.”

  Mancini heard footsteps approaching in the hallway below. Whispered urgently, “Quiet, Haru! Someone’s coming!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “He who will hold another in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”

  —Igbo saying

  Colonel Nwosu sat in the same Black Hawk helicopter he had flown to Yola two days earlier. Watched as the sun spread its glow across the eastern horizon. An hour ago, shortly after he had landed in Abuja and was about to leave for home, he was informed of the attack. Climbed in the same Black Hawk, and was now on his way to a town near Utorogu.

  It was 0748 on Friday the twentieth. In less than five hours he was scheduled to be at National Christian Center in downtown Abuja to attend his granddaughter’s christening. He clearly wasn’t going to make it back in time, not given the current national crisis.

  With the presidential election one year away, and his cousin President Muhammadu Buhari planning to run for reelection, he knew that the attack on the gas plant was a potential disaster that could undermine his and his cousin’s future.

  Hundreds of text messages and calls had already arrived at military HQs from people who escaped from the Utorogu Gas Plant, relatives of workers trapped inside, and even those still hiding in the plant. As he traveled east, Colonel Nwosu read them on his laptop and tried to put together a coherent picture of the situation. He couldn’t.

  A SINCGARS Airborne radio beeped, and the aide seated next to him reported that the deputy commander of the Nigerian military outpost at Utorogu, Captain Tayo Contee, was on the line.

  “We know anything about him?”

  The aide shook his head. With his hand over the receiver, he said, “Speak loudly, Colonel, because the captain says he suffered some hearing loss in the assault.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  Colonel Nwosu took the receiver and covered his right ear to muffle the noise from the engine. “Captain,” he asked. “Where’s your commander?”

  “Dead, sir.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Many dead. Very many, but it could be worse. Many men and women had gone home for the weekend.”

  “What’s the situation now?” Colonel Nwosu asked.

  “Which particular situation, Colonel?”

  “The overall situation at the plant.”

  “Hard to know precisely, sir. We are about a hundred meters away. It’s pretty clear that the terrorists have complete control. The men I have with me…I have roughly fifty soldiers, local policemen, guards, and volunteers. I have deployed them around the perimeter of the compound to help those who are able to escape.”

  “How many have there been?”

  “People who have escaped? I would say more than a hundred. Mostly Nigerians.”

  “Any foreigners?”

  “Very few.”

  The copilot, seated directly in front of Colonel Nwosu, indicated that someone wanted to speak to him over the helicopter’s air-to-air communications system.

  Colonel Nwosu, starting to feel overwhelmed, said into the SINCGARS receiver, “Hold on the line, captain. I’ve got to take this call.”

  Then he took the headset from the copilot and fitted it over his ears.

  “Colonel Nwosu speaking. Who is this? Over.”

  “Colonel, Tiger-Delta-One, sir. NAF Makurdi. I’m the pilot of AH 7-2. We just completed our first series of passes over the Utorogu compound. Over.”

  “What were you able to observe, Tiger-Delta-One? Over.”

  “Colonel, the terrorists are everywhere. It’s hard to tell how many. They engaged us with heavy machine guns that were stationed in front of two buildings at the north end of the compound. The map we have indicates that is where the expat dormitories are, sir. It seems that the terrorists are holding hostages there. Over.”

  This information jibed with other reports he had read.

  “Tiger-Delta-One…Did you observe any hostages? Over.”

  “Yes, we did, sir. We saw several placed around the main building as human shields. Over.”

  Colonel Nwosu considered the bad press he and the government would get if his pilots gunned down foreign gas plant workers.

  He said into the radio. “Tiger-Delta-One, suspend any attacks until further notice. Do you read me? Over.”

  “I read you, sir, yes. Over.”

  “Tiger-Delta-One…Stay airborne and circle the perimeter looking for survivors. Are you in communication with Captain Tayo Contee? Over.”

  “Captain Tayo Contee…No, sir. I don’t know who he is. Over.”


  “Tiger-Delta-One. Continue looking for those who manage to escape the compound and communicate their location to the TOC in Abuja. But do not fire at any targets in the compound until you hear directly from me. This is important. Do you read me? Over.”

  “This is Tiger-Delta-One. I read you, Colonel. Over.”

  “Good work, Tiger-Delta-One. Over and out.”

  Some light from the locker room leaked into the ventilation vent. Manny checked Jamisen’s phone and saw that it was down to thirty-eight percent power. Cell reception had wavered from one bar to none. Now it held at two.

  He tried punching in another code: Rambo.

  This one worked.

  Excellent!

  He took a deep breath and calculated that eastern Virginia was five hours behind. So at 0750 where he was in eastern Nigeria, it was 0250 that morning there. Dialed the country code, number, and access code from memory.

  A voice answered, “Emergency desk? Who’s this?”

  “O43-6-BCT.”

  “Mancini?”

  “Correct.”

  “Mother’s maiden name?”

  “DiVincenzo.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I need you to patch me in to Captain Sutter at ST-6 headquarters. It’s an emergency.”

  “Hold on.”

  He heard footsteps resounding in the hallway below. Half a minute later, Sutter’s Kentucky-accented voice came over the line.

  “Mancini, where are you?”

  “Sir, I’m currently hiding in a ceiling at a Gulf Oil plant in a place called Utorogu. I’m hiding, sir, because the plant is under siege by what I believe to be Boko Haram terrorists.”

  He heard Captain Sutter exhale hard on the other end.

  “Did you say Boko Haram?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “We just received a report about an attack on a Nigerian gas plant. But I didn’t expect you would be there. You alone?”

  “No, sir. Crocker, Akil, Chavez, CT…We’re all here. We came to drop off some equipment from a group of Brits who helped us and spend the weekend. It’s a long story. Suffice it to say that as I was getting ready for bed, the compound we’re in was attacked.”