Favreau shook her head in a mockery of long-suffering. “General, you do not understand the Western mind. They see you as a thug. Useful to them for clearing away the old regime, but not someone with whom to conduct respectable business. The United States has paid a heavy price for supporting ruthless dictators in the past. The eyes of the world are on them now, and they do not wish to be perceived as fomenting bloody civil wars as a means to securing natural resources and building their empire — especially if it’s true. They will recognize your government only if you give them no choice. They would prefer to cast you as the villain, ride in as the benevolent savior and install their own puppet regime. That is why you must be here. They will not attack here for fear that you will make good on your threat to destroy Lake Kivu.”
Velle grunted, then turned away, joining a group of his toadies. Favreau assumed they would be more sympathetic to his complaints. That suited her purposes as well. There was a lot to do.
She watched as the rest of the passengers debarked from the Mil Mi-8. The Russian-made helicopter could carry up to twenty-four people, and on this trip, every available seat had been filled. In addition to a handful of Velle’s senior officers, she’d brought what was left of her ESI contingent. She had lost some in Kinshasa — killed by the resourceful American operative. She had sent two more to escort Senator Marrs to Mombasa, where he would deliver her demands to his colleagues in the US government. Those men would almost certainly learn that Favreau had been disavowed. The mercenaries still with her — a random draw of Hearts and Clubs — had no idea that they had been declared a rogue element. They probably wouldn’t have cared.
The next to last man out held no allegiance to her or to Velle. Gerard Okoa stepped down from the open hatch and looked at the wrecked camp in dismay. He had said very little during his captivity, which pleased Favreau. Between Velle and Marrs, she’d had her fill of impotent men blustering about not getting the respect they deserved.
She looked past the interim president to the last man off the helicopter, the leader of the Hearts team. “Find a nice safe corner to hide Mr. Okoa. He still has an important part to play.”
As Ace Hearts moved off, she instructed the rest of her men to procure a boat, then went back aboard the Mil to finish her own preparations.
She knelt beside the olive-drab canvas pack that covered the RA-115 and opened its flap, revealing the smooth metal housing of the bomb. It was connected to the helicopter’s electrical system to maintain the quality of its fission core, but its battery backup was fully charged. If it became necessary to deploy the bomb in the lake, it would be fully operational. In its present configuration, however, it would not operate as needed. For the one-kiloton-yield device to ignite the submerged gas deposits, it would have to be at the bottom of the lake. The problem was the signal from the dead-man switch, which had served her so well, would not reach through the four hundred odd yards of water in between.
As she delved into the device’s electronic guts, her satellite phone rang. She glanced over at the caller ID display and saw that it was the phone she’d given to Lance Marrs. She picked up.
“Bon jour, Senator.”
Marrs did not bother with salutations. “Let me talk to General Velle.”
“Whatever you have to say, you may say it to me. We both know that the General is not the one you need to be negotiating with.”
A growl came over the line. “All right, damn it. Look, you’ve got us up against a wall here. We can’t just give in. Our position has always been that we don’t negotiate with terrorists—”
“Please, Senator. We both know that is not true.”
“Yes, we both know, but Joe Public doesn’t, and we have to keep it that way. People are going to ask why we decided to support an illegal military dictatorship over the legitimate democratically elected president, and we can’t very well tell them that it’s because you are threatening to nuke the natural gas reserves, can we?”
Favreau sighed, though in truth, she had anticipated this. “What if President Okoa signed an order, granting General Velle emergency powers?”
“It’s shaky. When Mulamba shows up, that emergency order won’t be worth spit.”
“Senator, I don’t think you fully appreciate the situation. I have given you an ultimatum. Convince your colleagues to do what must be done. I assure you, any political embarrassment will be minor compared to what you will suffer if you fail.”
Favreau ended the call, and stared at the phone for a moment, wondering whether Marrs believed that she would follow through on her threat. It was doubtful that he did. His experience in politics had probably convinced him that no one ever kept their promises, and that threats and ultimatums were almost always a bluff.
Marrs struck her as the sort of man who was foolish enough to think that she was bluffing. As she went back to work on the bomb, she found herself hoping that she would get the chance to show him just how wrong he was.
King studied the military camp, tagging targets and assessing the weaknesses in the perimeter. The enemy forces were clearly not expecting an attack, but what they lacked in discipline, they made up for in sheer numbers. There were more than a hundred of them, and he had just six Republican Guard soldiers.
He recalled something Queen had said. We’re a team. That’s how we win.
She had known as well as he that situations like this sometimes required them to operate independent of each other, but even separated by vast distances, they were still a team, still working together like the pieces on a chessboard to execute the winning strategy. Right now, though, the team — his team, the Chess Team — was exactly what he needed. When the five of them were together, they were unstoppable.
He willed his thoughts back into the moment.
Crescent II had rendezvoused with the patrol boat on the river, much to the astonishment of the soldiers and crew who wondered aloud if the dark boomerang-shaped craft was Kongamato come to destroy them. In a way, he supposed it was true. The stealth plane had shuttled them to a battlefield where the odds of survival were extremely low. If they did survive, they would certainly have one hell of a story to tell.
Crescent had delivered them to a jungle clearing about twelve miles from Lake Kivu, as close as they could get without being detected. A thermal sweep of the area had revealed the location of several rebel patrols. The stealth plane had stayed on station, conducting high-altitude reconnaissance to guide King’s team around enemy forces, until they were within sight of the camp, but it had since been forced to break off for refueling. King had debated waiting for the plane to return to provide surveillance, and if necessary close-air support and a quick exfil, but he had ultimately decided there was nothing to be gained by waiting.
He studied the camp a few moments longer, then outlined his plan to the rest of the team. It was a quick, brutal plan, and if it worked, he would find himself face-to-face with Favreau and her backpack nuke.
She had asked what he was willing to sacrifice to win, and now he had his answer.
He was about to give the order to move out when Deep Blue’s voice filled his head.
And gave him hope.
46
With a bone-shaking jolt, Bishop slammed into the cavern floor amid a flurry of claws and jaws. He felt a flash of something that might have been pain, but his nearly overloaded neurons could no longer distinguish one sensation from another. The strange vegetation that grew right up to the base of the cliff had cushioned his fall, but something hard and heavy had slammed into him. It was his M240; its sling, frayed by the onslaught, had come apart during the fall, and turned his best weapon into a gravity powered projectile. More raptors tumbled down from the ledge. A few actually appeared to be running down the nearly vertical cliff face in defiance of gravity. They landed all around and atop him, and scurried away.