Dawson nodded. Frimpong took a folded sheet of paper from his top pocket and smoothed it over the hood of the SUV.
“So, we are here,” he said, pointing to the diagram. “We will go through the tip of the forest, here. At the other side, we will come to the American man’s site first, and then the first of the Chinese illegals at this site.” He circled it.
The Lius’ site, Dawson thought.
“Now,” Frimpong said, “I understand you are familiar with these two spots through your investigations of the murder of the Chinese man. What do you know that might help us?”
Dawson produced his own sketch from his pocket and went through it with the DSP.
“We will first arrive at Chuck Granger’s mining area, sir,” Dawson said, circling his finger around the spot. “He has a cabin concealed by the trees over here to the left as we approach. It’s a potential hiding place, and a sniper could shoot at us from there and then disappear into the forest.”
“I appreciate that piece of information,” Frimpong said. “I wasn’t aware.”
“The mining pits on Granger’s property are very deep,” Dawson continued, tapping each one, “and the tops and sides are muddy and slippery. In other words, we should proceed with caution, sir.”
Frimpong nodded and pointed to the second set of pits on the diagram. “And these shallow pits are on the Chinese man’s site?”
“Yes, the Chinese guys never had as much machine power as Mr. Granger,” Dawson explained, “so their pits are shallower to enable the workers to get in and out.”
“Got it.”
“However, sir,” Dawson said emphatically, “Mr. Liu does have one pit that is deep. That’s this one with the bridge over here to the right. It’s off this bridge that Amos Okoh fell-or was made to-and drowned. Again, sir, the men must tread with caution. Now, the shack you see over here on the Liu’s site, sir, is on higher ground than the pits; therefore, our men running up to it could be subject to gunfire.”
“Thank you, Dawson,” Frimpong said, sincerely. “This is really good work. I will put in a good word about you to your superiors.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Dawson and Kobby followed the military and police units, the 4th Battalion taking the lead through the dappled shade of neat rows of cocoa trees fringing the southern portion of Dunkwa Forest. All this could disappear and give way to mining grounds, Dawson thought. All it would take was a bulldozer-with or without the permission of the cocoa farmer.
As the forest ended, the cocoa farm trailed off and gave way to banana trees, oil palms, and shrubbery. The procession stopped for a moment. They could hear the drone of excavators in the distance. Dawson and Kobby were in the back of the pack, so they never saw the sergeant’s signal to begin the raid. The units exploded out of the trees with a swiftness and ferocity that startled even Dawson, and he burst into a run himself to keep up, Kobby right at his side.
Dawson saw Chuck Granger’s site ahead. It was deserted. Tipped off by someone, Dawson thought. Who? Approaching the ridge between two of Granger’s huge pits, the men fell back to single file, slowing their pace slightly because of the risk of falling. Now the Liu site was coming up, but Dawson couldn’t see all the way to the front until the men spread out and charged into the area, separating off into sections. One group charged up to the shed, kicking the door open and entering. But they came out empty-handed. Other soldiers went on to the bridged pit, as Dawson had suggested to Frimpong, but they found no one.
Dawson turned in a circle, searching for some sign of life. The rusty sluice boxes were still there, sad and lonely, and so was the excavator. But no illegal miners were in sight anywhere. Frimpong and the sergeant gave instructions and the units dispersed into the surrounding forest. A lot of thrashing around and yelling followed, but minutes later, the men came back reporting that nothing and no one could be found. Dawson beckoned to his constable to follow him as he went into the shed. Apart from a few mud-caked rags, it was empty. No machetes, firearms, or spent shells.
“Nothing here, boss,” Kobby said, standing arms akimbo. “Do you think the miners have abandoned the area and gone to another site?”
Dawson shook his head. “No, they would not have left the excavator here.” Clearly, someone had tipped off Wei and his crew as well, but Dawson kept that to himself. They left the shed and went back to the units where Frimpong and the sergeant were conferring and making phone calls. The guys stood around waiting for orders, many of them looking disappointed at how this so-called operation had come to nothing, ending as quickly as it had begun.
Dawson joined the two leaders in discussion.
“We’re moving on to the next mining site,” the sergeant said. “It’s over that hill.”
Dawson followed his pointing finger across the ravaged landscape.
The men fell into formation and the procession went at a steady trot up the rough incline. The drone of the excavators, now an all too familiar sound to Dawson, became louder. Just over the hill, he saw a site below them that was severalfold larger than the Lius’. It sprawled within a valley up to the Ofin River, which they could see now. Four excavators were at work scooping up enormous heaps of earth from the edges of the pits and swinging around to drop the payloads into the washing trommel, which processed a thousand times what manual washing with a sluice box could handle.
Ghanaians were working the excavators, while seven Chinese men supervised. One of them spotted the invading troops above them as the ambush commenced. He shouted out and began running in the opposite direction. The other six Chinese men scattered, and the Ghanaians leapt out of the excavator cabs. One of them lost his footing and slid down the side of a pit, clawing at the wet mud as he tried to stop himself plunging into the milky water below. He stopped barely a foot before the water’s edge.
With Kobby next to him, Dawson followed the military and police part of the way as they swarmed in and chaos erupted. Two Chinese men slipped and fell and were set upon by the men of Bravo. One tried to run to the forest but was intercepted by a soldier who clubbed him on the side of the head. He went down like an axed odum tree.
Breaking up into smaller groups, the men of the 4th attacked the four shacks dotted around the property, pulling out bewildered Chinese men and one woman, all of whom were made to lie prostrate. But some of them didn’t understand the shouted orders, causing more confusion and resulting in their being shoved to the ground.
Dawson never saw anyone setting the shacks alight, but they were ablaze in short order, and Dawson felt the heat from the closest one. DSP Frimpong appeared from the other side of the blaze.
“You and Kobby should retreat a bit,” he warned. “You are too close.”
“Yes, sir.” Dawson beckoned to Kobby to pull back with him.
As he turned, his blood turned to ice as he saw a Chinese man appear from the forest with a pump shotgun held at waist level. He brought it up, and Dawson heard the crisp metal click of the fore-end as the man pulled it back and forward again.
“Gun!” Dawson screamed, and dived.
He heard the initial crack of the shot, brief and sharp, followed by the reverberation swelling and ricocheting as light as air throughout the valley. Two meters away, Kobby went to the ground, and at first Dawson thought that he was scrambling for cover. But the way he collapsed and flipped over said everything: he had been hit.