WAR: Opposition: (WAR Book 3) Page 6

  “Thanks.” He ended the call and set the phone on the console before starting the Jeep and driving down the road. He remained vigilant for any sign of Kirra. But she didn’t stagger up from the beach and throw herself into his path.

  He reached the outskirts of the first town, parked, then changed into more suitable clothing. As he headed into town, he vowed that as soon as he had Kirra back safely, he was putting her butt on a plane to Johannesburg. Then she’d better not attempt to leave the country again. Unless she planned to visit someplace free of violence.

  Like Antarctica.

  “How are the improvements to our security system coming along, Chief?”

  Wil Lansing bit back a sharp retort and continued to stare over the head of the man seated at the desk in front of him. Major Farrell wasn’t the one responsible for his frustration. No, that belonged to the men who controlled the budget for the base’s security upgrade. In typical Washington fashion, the brass in the Pentagon continued to ride his ass over the attempted bombing on base five months ago. Never mind that they’d denied Wil’s request beforehand to implement specific security measures designed to prevent such an attack. Once someone actually made it onto the base by hiding among the civilians evacuated from nearby hotspots, Washington had wanted Wil’s extra measures in place yesterday.

  “Now that the funding and the necessary equipment have finally arrived,” Wil said, “my team has started to implement the changes. We’ll be working triple-time on the upgrades for the foreseeable future.” Wil suspected that the major, who’d only been in the post a few months, didn’t pay much attention to the paperwork that came across his desk before signing it. He probably had no idea that Wil had been asking for the support to make these upgrades for months. When the major wasn’t dealing with the barrage of complaints from the remaining U.S. diplomats in the region, he spent his time in meetings with local officials or on conference calls with Washington. Not that Wil had ever seen anything productive come out of any of those meetings.

  The major nodded. “Good, good. Don’t forget that there will be a surprise inspection sometime in the near future. The sooner you finish, the better.”

  Frankly, Wil was surprised that the higher-ups hadn’t already scheduled a security audit. He knew that someone in power wanted his unit disbanded, but was prevented by a number of political factors from blatantly shutting them down. Since his team had been unable to do more than minor upgrades without the funding and equipment he’d requested months ago, scheduling an inspection now would have guaranteed failure.

  So maybe not everyone up above hated his unit.

  “I’m well aware of that, sir,” Wil said. “We are working as fast as we can without compromising the security of the base.”

  “Understood. Any progress on tracking down those missing diamonds? The Angolan government sure will be grateful if we’re the ones to hand them over.”

  Wil hid his sigh. “Not yet, sir.” He didn’t have the manpower to chase the diamonds across the region. That’s why he’d handed the search over to WAR. But he couldn’t admit that to his commander, because WAR wasn’t an approved contractor. Actually, Wil wasn’t certain who else on base paid enough attention to the local power dynamics to even be aware of WAR’s existence. Which was safer. Neither Wil, nor Kwame Azumah, the founder and leader of WAR, trusted the majority of the U.S. Military presence.

  “Very well,” the major said. “Keep me informed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dismissed.”

  On the way back to his office, Wil wondered how much the major knew about his workload. Wil’s unit was the poor stepchild of the military. With terrorists on the rise in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe, Washington had put West Africa at the bottom of its give-a-damn list.

  His team wasn’t snidely referred to as the Cripple Brigade just because Wil was a double amputee and several other team members were impaired by injuries sustained in the base bombing in Afghanistan two years ago. No, the name had stuck because everyone knew that Wil’s team was so poorly equipped they couldn’t function effectively.

  Only, they did. Innovation and need created miraculous, creative solutions. Wil and his team of misfits had not only managed to keep their unit running, but they’d done a credible job collecting intelligence and protecting U.S. assets in West Africa despite their limited resources.

  Without WAR’s help, though, their success rate would be considerably lower.

  He stepped out of the building into oppressive heat and humidity. Sweat immediately popped on his brow. The walk across the central square to his office would take less than two minutes. Not enough time for sweat to pool in the joints of his prosthetic legs. Still, he didn’t immediately seek the shelter of the covered walkway. Some days he craved the feel of the sun on his skin.

  Hearing boots pounding toward him from the rear, he gave up his sun-worshipping and moved onto the shaded path. A moment later a crooked line of soldiers ran past. Ashamed that standards had fallen so low, Wil straightened his own posture and clenched his jaw to refrain from issuing a setdown to the unit’s leader. But he’d been told repeatedly that troop discipline was none of his business.

  Wrong.

  If the men here had been up to standards, Wil could have used them in the fight against the rebels. He yanked open the door to his office building and stepped into the relief of modest air-conditioning. He’d rather see the money go toward ensuring that the base had a skilled, effective fighting force instead of cool air, but no one cared about his opinion.

  As it was, the understaffed military police force struggled daily to keep order on base. The military units that had rotated through here lately had been made up of unruly, undisciplined men who were on “shit duty” until they straightened out. Because those men would rather fight each other than put in an honest day’s work, Wil couldn’t count on them to help his team in securing the base and the remaining diplomatic missions. Forget helping with tracking down and eliminating potential threats. These men would paint their mother as a terrorist if it meant they didn’t have to break a sweat.

  They’d fit in perfectly at the Conclave.

  Wil scowled and unlocked his office door.

  The Conclave was an annual meeting of mercenaries and criminals where new alliances were formed and old ones torn apart—usually by death. A sandstorm had postponed this year’s meeting for several months, which had come as a great relief to Wil. When he’d learned that Azumah had asked Kristoff Wren, the head of WAR’s military wing, to join him as he traveled the region drumming up financial support and military recruits, Wil had believed that Kris had finally given up on the idea of going undercover at the Conclave.

  Nope. Kris still had the idiotic notion that he alone could waltz in there and get critical information relating to the man who’d sponsored Dietrich—a man Wil now referred to as Bogey One, using an old air force term for an unidentified aircraft on radar. Bogey One was believed to have been behind most of the more violent recent attacks through additional financial support of Morenga, Natchaba, and Bureh.

  And Kris thought he could play spy at the Conclave and get the information needed to take the man down.

  Suicidal fool.

  Nope. Not thinking about that. No sirreee.

  Wil entered his office where the message light on his phone blinked accusingly at him. He pressed play and was hit by a long line of creative curses from the head of the military police force. Then the man launched into a report of the latest incident involving the troops on base. Since Wil hadn’t been available when the man called, he explained that he would contact Wil’s second-in-command next.

  Wil checked the time. The message had been left over an hour ago. Probably the matter had already been cleared up, but Wil put in a call to the man anyway. He confirmed that the matter had been handled with the help of a couple of Wil’s teammates.

  Because the MPs were so short of staff, Wil and his team assisted whenever a serious probl
em erupted on base. Of course, that put further strain on Wil’s timeline for completing the security upgrades. And it left him next to no time to support WAR and other regional players in their fight against the rebels.

  But he’d rather handle the issues with the undisciplined soldiers than be the one responsible for dealing with the complaints of the civilian personnel. The personnel of several of the diplomatic missions in the region had been relocated here after their facilities had come under rebel attack. About a third of the people had been rotated back to the States when Washington decided to abandon the permanent diplomatic missions located in the most violent areas. Other people were stuck in limbo, waiting for approval from both the local governments and Washington to return to their posts and begin cleaning up and rebuilding.

  Wil had been forced to take temporary command of the base before the major had arrived. After a week of listening to the petty gripes, he’d been tempted to blow up the base just to shut them up. You’d think that people attached to a diplomatic mission would have more compassion and patience than the average person. Yet Wil hadn’t seen any sign of it. They complained about the quality of the food. They demanded faster, more reliable internet. They wanted a greater variety of movies, books, and magazines.

  Now that the major had taken command of the base, none of those complaints were the responsibility of Wil’s team. But someone had leaked the fact that Wil’s team had a reliable, relatively fast IT system, which resulted in constant requests for time using Wil’s team’s computers and for help with the daily IT issues that inevitably arose.

  Since Wil’s team worked with top-secret information, he denied all requests to gain access to his team’s system. And the major had just approved the hiring of a local IT support group, highly recommended and thoroughly vetted, to handle the day-to-day problems.

  In the meantime, Wil had posted throughout the base memos listing the newly assigned phone number for the Washington-based IT support team. The memos included a reminder that his team was responsible for base security and that any interruptions could result in an attack that cost lives.

  That had cut the requests down to near zero, thank God.

  Wil had put the one or two remaining troublemakers at the top of his list for extensive background checks. Since the attempted bombing, Wil’s team had been running checks on each and every person on base. He didn’t believe the two men who’d been charged as accessories to the attempted bombing had been the extent of the network. If he was correct, then Bogey One was behind the attempted attack. And Bogey One had shown that he played a long, complicated game.

  The attack had been very similar in setup, although on a smaller scale, to the bombing of the base in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan attack had killed three of Wil’s teammates, plus his lover; and injured seven more, including Wil. Why Bogey One had turned his attention shortly afterward to West Africa was something Wil wanted to find out. But more critical was determining how many other potential attackers were in hiding, waiting for orders to cause chaos.

  Since Bogey One supported various rebel factions, Wil also needed to keep intel coming in so that should Bogey One finance a rebel attack against the base, or against any of the few remaining U.S. businesses in the region, Wil’s team could take preventative measures.

  Another voicemail confirmed that the extra military police soldiers Wil had requested would be arriving on time next week. It remained to be seen if they’d be an asset or if they’d be as unruly as the soldiers. He suspected that Bogey One had been taking advantage of Washington’s disinterest in West Africa to undermine Wil’s team and the overall effectiveness of the U.S. presence here by sending troublemakers and losers. This was the only U.S. military base still active in the region. Without the military’s flights to evacuate citizens in jeopardy, and without the diplomatic mission next door that allowed displaced persons to file for new paperwork and go home, the region would become much less safe for Americans.

  Which was, presumably, what Bogey One wanted, along with all of the rebel groups.

  Wil sighed. As long as the media kept the public’s attention focused on other parts of the world, then the politicians received no pressure from their constituencies to do the right thing in West Africa. Despite horrors such as the Hospital Massacre, the media remained focused on the larger war effort in the Middle East and elsewhere, and on the celebrity gossip of the day.

  It infuriated Wil that Americans were being captured and killed by the rebels, but Washington refused to take action against the rebels. If not for WAR, the rebels would control much more of the region than they already did.

  But, as history proved, it would take hundreds of American deaths to engage the public’s outrage enough to force Washington to act. It made Wil sick. He’d rather have no funding than have to live with the knowledge that innocent people died because he hadn’t been able to convince his superiors that the threat here was larger than they wanted to believe.

  In the meantime, Wil and his team would work their fingers to the bone trying to protect the people under their charge.

  Chapter Six

  Sunday

  The next night, Seth settled deeper into the shadows of the front patio at the local bar and took a long drink from his bottle of beer. After a long day that had started before dawn and involved flying rebel-supported businessmen between three countries, he just wanted to relax. But as he stared glumly out at the dark street and the irregular patches of lantern light, he couldn’t stop thinking about the assassin. He supposed that if his damned blackmailer had managed to make the connection between Seth Jarrod and Michael Hughes, then the assassin’s boss, General Sandberg—the corrupt American general who’d destroyed Seth’s life—could have discovered the link as well.

  Wasn’t that just his luck?

  He took another deep swallow of his beer. No matter how the assassin had ended up in the same market as Seth, the man’s appearance was the answer to his dilemma. After a lot of thought, he’d concluded that his blackmailer’s rules had a loophole. Suicide was out, but not death by a third party. So Seth simply had to allow the assassin to kill him. Preferably near a public place so that someone would find his body quickly. That way, word would reach his blackmailer before Seth was due to show up at Bureh’s airfield. And his family would be safe.

  He hoped.

  Seth didn’t care if his reputation remained tarred. He’d worked for some of the worst scum of the earth since fleeing Southeast Asia. Death seemed a fitting, long overdue respite from the guilt that tore him awake at night, his throat hoarse from silent screams and shudders wracking his body as he relived the moment when the helicopter carrying his teammates plummeted out of the sky and exploded, shot down by men from their own side.

  His fingers trembled and he set the bottle down. He’d carry those deaths with him into hell. If he hadn’t been so ambitious maybe he’d have questioned the general’s offer of a special deployment for him and his team. If they’d remained at the main base, his men would still be alive and Seth would still be flying the helicopters that had been his passion and his life.

  So yeah, death didn’t scare him. Better to go out now, when his death would protect his family, than wait for the inevitable double-cross that would make his death less meaningful.

  Wiping the condensation from the bottle off of his hand and onto his pants, he picked up his pen. He hadn’t been in contact with his mother or his sister since before that disastrous day. He assumed they thought he was dead. And part of him thought that was probably the best solution. Yet another part of him wanted closure, for himself and for them. Knowing the truth would help them come to terms with his death. Or so he hoped.

  Or maybe he was just being selfish, because he simply couldn’t leave this world without letting them know why he’d stayed away. How he’d loved them too much to put them in danger and regretted that he couldn’t be the man they’d wanted him to be. Needed him to be.

  Squinting in the faint light from the lanter
n hanging off the wall to the bar two tables over, Seth added a few lines to the letter for his mother, then signed his name before folding the special airmail paper that doubled as an envelope. For something this sensitive, he didn’t trust email.

  He didn’t put a return address on it. What was the point? His mother would recognize his handwriting.

  Seth reread the letter to his sister, then signed and folded it. He didn’t seal either envelope yet, in case he decided there was more he wanted to add. Leaning back in his chair, he raised the beer bottle to his mouth again, but movement at the end of the street snagged his attention.

  A heartbeat later, a white woman limped into sight.

  He blinked. What. The. Hell.

  He set the bottle down on the table. How much had he had to drink? He’d thought this was only his second bottle. Had he lost count and was already drunk? Or had Komi, the bartender, spiked the bottle with something stronger? Something had to have triggered this hallucination, because no white woman, particularly not one with a profusion of wild blonde hair and enough seductive curves to make his libido sit up and take notice, would be stupid enough to walk through West Africa alone. After dark.

  Setting the bottle gently on the table, Seth closed his eyes, massaged his temples, then once again looked out at the street. Either he was still hallucinating, or the woman was headed right toward him.

  The closer the woman drew to the bar’s front gate, the more the lanterns set at the edges of the open drainage ditch illuminated her.

  A bedraggled angel. That’s what she looked like, with a pixie’s face and a wide mouth drawn down in exhaustion. A dark scarf covered the front of her hair, leaving the rest of her hair to form a crazy cloud behind her. The tank top she wore underneath a dark, unbuttoned shirt barely contained her generous breasts, and the strap of her backpack cinched the shirt tight against her narrow waist. She wore thin, khaki pants that thanks to the humidity clung to her curvy legs in a way that would have offended the more conservative locals.