Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (186 page)

The agent Markov sent with Ian and Julia was a quiet man named Steve Billups, and he was given to staring out the window into the darkness for long stretches without comment. He wore headphones and listened to his ipod from the back seat, which gave Ian and Julia some privacy in front.

“Do you think it’s too late?” Julia asked.

“To prevent a coup? Probably. To prevent a civil war, maybe not.”

He squirted wiper fluid to clear the windshield of the dust kicked up by the trucks in front of them. He could smell the dust even through the filter of the air conditioning.

He’d never asked the obvious question when he and Markov made the decision to split, with Markov returning to the States to deal with Sarah Redd and Julia staying with Ian to help Charles Ikanbo restore the rightful government of Namibia.

Why is it our responsibility?

He hadn’t needed to ask.
Because we broke it.
Because the two of them—Julia as chief investigator for the DARPA implant project and Ian as a CIA operative tasked to infiltrate and ultimately destroy an oil camp on Namibian soil—had set in motion a chain of events that would lead to the destruction of a democratic regime.

“You know what I keep thinking?” Julia asked.

“Don’t worry, everything will turn out okay. I’ll do my best to keep you out of the fighting, and it should be over very quickly.”

“No, I’m not thinking about that. Well, sure, I’ve wondered if I’m going to die here, that’s only natural. But after that horrible thing in Utah, those dead guards, the look on the Almighty’s face when he went down. And Gandhi too, dead. And I was pretty scared when Ikanbo was interrogating us. I thought they were going to...well, I’m not embarrassed to say that I was scared out of my mind.”

“You shouldn’t be embarrassed.”

“So no matter what happens, it can’t get any worse, can it?”

Ian thought about the interrogation with Henri Dupont at the Blackwing headquarters, and about the firefight on the hill during that horrible moment when he realized that he and Kendall were the targets of the American air strike. He thought it definitely
could
get worse.

“Is that what you’re thinking?” he asked. “That you’ve gone through the worst?”

“No, I’m wondering what happens to me when we go back to the States.”

“You’ll be safe. Markov will straighten it out.”

“Will he straighten out my marriage?”

He felt a twinge of discomfort. Of course she would be thinking about that, even if Ian had had begun to move beyond her marriage in his mind. He started to respond.

“No, don’t answer,” she said. “That was rhetorical.” Ian saw her glance in the rear view mirror to check on Steve Billups, who still looked out the window with his headphones on. “It’s over,” she said, more definitively this time. “And even if it wasn’t, even if I could somehow forgive Terrance for trying to get me killed, I’m guessing that he’ll be going away for a long time.”

“You’ll still have your job, if you want it,” Ian said. “Markov will go to bat for you, I’m sure. I will too. You’re a good doctor, the best I could have hoped for.” He hesitated. “And you’ve been great since that moment you came for me at the psych ward. Great in every way.”

“Thank you.” Ian felt her tense next to him.

They lapsed into silence and Ian thought about that moment at the guest house in South Africa, where he’d awakened to find Julia touching his lips with her fingers. And then he’d pulled her in and they’d kissed. He could still feel the weight of her body, her breath on his face, feel her rapid pulse. She’d pulled away, but the moment had lingered between them ever since.

And that was before she found out that her husband had betrayed her. What had started as a weak moment, aroused by shared danger and natural chemistry had only stoked Ian’s interest.

No, it was earlier than that. It was in the Namibian jail cell. Half conscious. drugged and beaten down in every way possible. And then she was there. Caring, helping. He remembered her eyes, choked with tears. He could never forget how it had felt to see her right then.

The truck in front of Ian stopped so suddenly that he had to slam on the brakes. Through the dust and in the darkness, he almost hadn’t seen the red brake lights of the other vehicle.

Julia slammed tight against her seatbelt. “What?”

In the backseat, Steve threw off his headphones and grabbed his M16. He was out of the Land Rover and crouched behind the truck in front of him before Ian even realized they were being shot at.

Ian reached back to grab his own weapon, then shouted for Julia to get down and out of the way while he joined Steve. As he jumped out of the car he almost lost his footing as a wave of vertigo passed over him. Then a sense of energy swelled up in him as the adrenaline kicked in.

The night sky lit up with small arms fire. The burr of a heavy machine gun answered. Tracer bullets tracked into the front of the caravan. The firing came from a berm to the north, set back from the road about a hundred yards and about two hundred yards further along the road, near as Ian could tell in the darkness. If the gun had only waited a few more seconds, the entire caravan would have come into its view. As it was, the front-most truck in Ikanbo’s caravan burned while the machine gun continued to riddle it with ordinance.

Three of Ikanbo’s Namibians joined Steve behind the truck and the CIA agent shouted instructions to move around the gun in a flanking maneuver. They crawled away on their bellies, with Steve at the lead.

Ian glanced back to see Julia flat on the ground behind the Land Rover. He gave her a stay down gesture, then ran to the next truck in the caravan. There were half a dozen men here and they ducked around and fired with their AK-47s whenever the machine gun fell silent.

He waited until they were shooting, then ran forward to the next truck. Here he found Charles Ikanbo with several more men. He was shouting orders, helping them unload ammunition from the back of the truck when he spotted Ian.

“Just one gun,” he said, “but I can’t match that firepower.”

“Some of the men, including my guy, went around to attack it from the rear.”

“Good,” Ikanbo said. “Do you know what kind of gun that is?”

“12.7 mm, I’d guess, either a Kord, or more likely, an older NSV, by the sounds of it. Hard to tell the difference without getting closer, which I’d prefer not to do, brother.”

There had been a lot of the older model Soviet NSV machine guns in Afghanistan and no doubt would be for generations, as tribal chiefs treated their prize weapons with the same love and care they would shower on a favorite son. It was a basic, but dependable gun.

“NSV, then,” Ikanbo said. “Namibian regular army. Damn it.”

The firefight continued for several more minutes, then there came the rattle of the AK-47s and the slightly higher pitched sound of Steve’s smaller caliber M16. The machine gun went silent. A moment of shouting back and forth between the men who’d stormed the machine gun and the main forces, then it was clear the battle was over.

Ian followed Ikanbo to the machine gun entrenchment. Steve and the Namibians stood with flashlights over the body of the dead soldier, who slumped over his gun, now pointed skyward.

“We were saved by incompetence,” Ikanbo said. “Only lost one truck and nobody died.”

“Except this guy,” Ian said.

“That’s right. Except this unfortunate man.”

“Problem is, you can’t count on incompetence next time.”

“No, and what if there had been ten men, or twenty, instead of just one? Bet he radioed in already. They’ll know where we are.” Ikanbo turned to his men. “Get this gun and its ammo back to the truck. And find out who this man is. Cover him up.” He gave a shake of the head as if disgusted by the waste of it all. Ian could empathize.

“This is the problem,” Ikanbo added. “We’re undermanned and poorly armed. Man for man, any of my men is more than a match for Namibian regulars. But half my forces are scattered throughout the country and most of the rest will be pinned down in Windhoek or under arrest by now.”

“Surely not everybody in the army is in on the coup,” Ian said. “We could find a base, organize a resistance.”

“There’s an army base about a hundred kilometers from here,” Ikanbo said. “Of course, this fellow might have come from there. Probably did, in fact. I know another base, up near the border, with Angola—” He stopped and a thoughtful expression passed over his face.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking about your old enemies.”

It took Ian a moment to realize what he was getting at, since his first thought had been the CIA, and specifically Sarah Redd. And then it came to him. “You mean Blackwing?”

“They’ve got everything we don’t have—men, weapons, a secure base. They are professionals.”

“They’re contractors. They don’t expect to go to war.”

“They’re mercenaries,” Ikanbo corrected. “Under orders from their Chinese masters. If Li Hao is at the camp—that’s ChinaOne’s director of this project—then he could send them into combat.”

Ian didn’t like it. And not just because of the ugly way things had played out last time he was in the Ondjamba camp.

“You’d be putting yourself under control of a mercenary army,” Ian said. “Who’s to say they don’t help you defeat the rebels then decide to stick around and keep running things?”

“They couldn’t do that.”

“Of course they could. You think the Germans or the British or the South Africans ever needed more than a few thousand soldiers, plus some collaborators? And how do you think they got a toehold? They were invited by local leaders to solve some tribal conflict or other.”

“But this is the 21st Century. What about the international community?” Ikanbo asked. “Even the Americans would have something to say if these mercenaries occupied our country.”

“Didn’t you hear me? You invited them in. ‘Namibia is weak,’ people would say. Better to have Blackwing stabilize the situation—as no doubt some people in the Namibian government would demand. And then—”

“Enough. I’m convinced.”

“Better try our luck with the army.”

“No, I’ve got a better idea,” Ikanbo said. He gave Ian a sharp look, as if examining him for weaknesses. “
You
could take control of the Blackwing forces.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. I’ll convince Li to hire you as a consultant. He’ll like that, he won’t want Blackwing to take control of the country either. What he wants is stability and a way to pump all that oil back to China.”

“But I’m the guy who attacked his camp.”

“You’re South African by birth,” Ikanbo said. “That will make a difference. And he’ll forget about what happened earlier. These Chinese are nothing if not practical.”

“And what about the CIA connection?” Ian asked.

“You’re a rogue agent,” Ikanbo said. “You’re fighting off the coup. If you were to show up, demand control of the Blackwing forces, of course he would balk. But I’ll be leading you into Windhoek with my men. We’ll take control of the police, mount rescue operations and the like while you pin down the regular army. I will make it very clear to Li that my only goal is to restore the rightful government of Namibia. And the government will honor all contracts with the Chinese.”

Ian was quiet for a long moment, thinking. Ikanbo’s men put out the fire of the burning truck, transferred supplies, then pushed the truck off the road to get it out of the way. Julia sat with two men nearby, treating their injuries. Ikanbo stuck a cigar in his mouth and lit it. He offered one to Ian, who declined.

“Question is,” Ikanbo said between puffs, “can you do it?”

Ian had led troops into battle in Afghanistan. The Afghan forces arrayed in opposition to the Taliban were battle-hardened, ferocious fighters, but they lacked tactical training. Excellent at ambushes, terrible at mounting a sustained offensive. Men like Ian and Kendall had filled in the gap in leadership and sent the Taliban fleeing across the border into Pakistan.

“I can do it,” he said. “But I have one question of my own, first. Why do you trust me to lead these guys? How do you know I won’t do the same thing and try to take control of the country once I’ve defeated the rebels?”

“You came right past my men, I can’t believe how easily. So I know you’re good, and I know you’re not going to shoot me in the back, or you would have done it already.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m on your side though.”

“You were drugged,” Ikanbo said. “When my men captured you, you were battle shocked, with a concussion, but otherwise lucid. Someone, somehow, gave you something when you were in that cell. Even then, I thought you were a pawn. I don’t blame you for what happened.”

“I’m glad, but if I were you, I’d still be suspicious. Whatever you know, or think you know, the CIA could still be manipulating events.”

“No, I don’t think so. I think you came back to make things right. You’re an African, like me. You might also be an American, but you’re one of us, too. You know the kind of problems we face.”

“I do, but I’m not sure being an African is a good thing in this case,” Ian said. “Not from your perspective. There are plenty of white South Africans who think whites should still be running the continent.”