'A' for Argonaut (8 page)

Eight

Kinshasa‌—‌Months earlier

P
anic raged outside Faisal’s store. A large black Humvee materialized from the smoke. Several armored personnel carriers followed it. They pulled up through the dust and mayhem and gangs of men and boys piled out, pouring into the street. They were armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, automatic rifles, spears and machetes.

She stood, mouth agape, nowhere to flee. Momentary relief passed through her body as the rebel terrorists barreled past.

Devils!

Crocodile skin capes adorned with small cowbells and gourd rattles flapped from what she recognized as U.S. Army multi-cam battle uniforms they were wearing, their bodies protected by U.S. body armor, rifle-bullet-proof vests with armored neck-nape pads. They ran around the shops and through the street in front of her.

Shouts of fear turned into screams of pain all around her. The street was overrun with military vehicles, armor, and ordinance. The crazed invaders fired automatic weapons and slashed with machetes through the crowd of people who were fleeing in every direction. The mutilated bodies of old men, women, and children lay splayed in the mud. One small child threw himself on his mother’s corpse, his arms encircling her, pleading for her to get up. The screams pierced Amber’s heart.

Amber knew who they were.

Vangaler’s Ninjas branded themselves as crocodile devils and zombies. Ostensibly, they were freedom fighters demanding independence for the Cabinda exclave which was still shackled by the Angolan government and its army. In fact, they were just an organized gang of savages who wreaked horror for profit on superstitious natives from Kinshasa to Cabinda. The tactic worked. The entire region lived in the fear of a visit from them. It was so bad that villagers under threat would sleep in one of the missionary churches. That worked until the Ninjas caught on and began burning those down.

Amber turned back to the dealer. A hulking Ninja appeared, gold-framed mirrored sunglasses on his flared, diamond-studded nose. Packed in combat gear with an H-harness over his shoulders draped with grenades and flares, he held a machine gun aloft, waving it around over his head with one huge hand. Two full cartridge belts crisscrossed his chest. Several heavy diamond-encrusted gold necklaces played alongside them as his body moved. Most noticeable, however, was the cape of crocodile skin, knotted with a gold clasp at the neck and draped over his shoulders. He had rolled up the sleeves of his camouflaged combat jacket. Ropy muscle rippled along his arms like writhing adders. Splashes of blue, white, and crimson grease paint warped his dark features into a gargoyle-like grimace.

He reached for Amber’s bag containing her stones.

Instinct triggered her adrenaline, overcame her fear.

She crouched and spun into a serpentine curl.

“
Yi!”

The skills Amber had employed in
Xing Yi Quan
were passed on through her family roots from the great sifu father Xu Shih Sheng of the
Jai Song Lan
Mountain Temple in Northern China. The practice was just one of the many martial arts skills she had learned.

Her snarl exploded with the first Cantonese word of the
Yi Quan
fighting count. Her right arm shot in the air; her left hand gripped her upper right arm around the biceps as she used all her force with both arms to smash her right elbow across the man’s forearm.

“Er!”

She swiveled her torso to her left, leaned as far over her left foot as she could, cocked her right leg, her knee folded against her chest and jackknifed a fierce Yoko-geri side kick with her right foot. The kick caught the man under the breast bone and blew the wind out of him. He crashed into the cluster of dealers crowded behind him.

“San.”

She completed her maneuver and crouched, poised in the Fighting Dragon position.

A man sauntered over from a Humvee that had pulled up. “That’s enough. You’ve proven your worth, Miss Chu. He’s
bosbefok
, a madman,” the thick-bodied man said, broadcasting his authority. His lips were rubbery; a thick, wide, black mustache covered the upper one. Odd that he is white, she thought. His stride was accented by the shine on his shell cordovan hunting boots. Amber noted the pistol on his belt. She recognized it from her father’s manuals as a Russian PSS silent automatic, used by GRU and STASI agents in the old days of the Cold War. He stopped to look at her with an eerie calm.

“Nothing turns me on like an Amazon.”

“What the fuck do you want, pigface?” she snapped with the same apparent fearlessness she had just displayed. In fact, she had used every fiber of conviction to squelch an urge to throw up.

The man’s eyes threatened, fiery embers of coal. He stuck out his hand, smiled.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Grigol Boyko, Grigol Rakhmonov Boyko.”

Amber looked straight at him. Recognition formed. A cloud of uncommon fear enveloped her.

“Russian?”

“Georgian. Tbilisi‌—‌but, I like to remember my Russian ancestry.”

“I know who you are. Strategic Solutions International.”

He smiled, an attack dog sizing up fresh meat.

“You’ve done your homework.”

“The U.N. is onto you.”

“Hah!” he laughed. “That is the joke. My partners? Whom do you think supplies the U.N. in West Africa? You forget, as trade attaché to Angola, the DRC, and Yemen, I have multiple passports, total diplomatic immunity. The International Criminal Court in Holland can indict all they want. They can send out their Interpol agents. I’m untouchable. They know it. Bad publicity? Window-dressing. Good for business.”

The ICC investigation had identified Boyko as an escaped rogue agent from Russia’s military spy agency who had been promoted up the line and transferred to STASI, East Germany’s Ministry for State Security years earlier. The indictment charged that he now ran a band of rebel fighters under the corporate veil provided by Strategic Solutions International. Amber had read the ICC report. According to that report: “Boyko’s Strategic Solutions is known to employ a terrorist net, the Ninja Crocodile Cult, to dominate illegal activity throughout the region.”

“They say nothing gets into or out of Africa, not a single smuggled diamond that you don’t own a piece of,” she said. “They say you also run the Ninjas.”

“Enough!” Boyko barked. “What happened to your hand?” He pointed to her left hand. Only a thumb and forefinger remained.

“My hand? Wrong place. Wrong time,” Amber answered. “They said they’d take off the rest if I wasn’t careful. Anyway, they chose the wrong hand. It’s my right hand I use to look at diamonds.”

“Smart. I myself am a pragmatist. That’s why I’m interested in you. Your many contacts. It appears that you’ve broken my friend’s arm.” He gestured to a group of men clustered around a vehicle. The truck was marked with a large red cross. It was duplicated on armbands the men wore. Boyko directed the medics to take the injured disciple to a hospital.

Amber watched as he spoke with the diamond dealer. The dealer nodded. Boyko shoveled the diamonds on the table into his hand, filled an envelope he took from the dealer and handed it to Amber.

“They’re yours,” he said.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Amber asked the Animal.

“The pleasure, as you say, is all mine. You are coming with me. Just as soon as we pick up your son, Tony. He will come along as well.”

His words struck her like a blast of sudden reality. They stirred a torrent of hate. He took her arm and forced her into his waiting vehicle. Resigned, helpless, she entered the Humvee.

Nine

Fort Bragg, Special Operations Command

M
aran sat at the defense table in the courtroom at the Army’s Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. It was just a week since his release from the hospital.

In his hand, he held his Airborne maroon beret adorned with the SOCOM crest. The Army had wasted no time. They charged him with multiple violations against the Uniform Code of Military Justice. His lawyer, an expert on the fraternal code of the military tribunal system had succeeded in getting the hearing classified to a top secret level. No one at the Pentagon wanted to risk their futures by embarrassing the White House with such a mission failure, worse than President Carter’s 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The attorney also rescued Maran from a negligent homicide charge and a possible death sentence that would have exposed the case to public scrutiny, including closely-held TTP, classified Techniques, Tactics, and Procedures methods training.

The hearing was held by a military tribunal comprised of three general grade warfighters.

Maran’s unit, the Special Action Warfighter Command, or SAWC, was known officially as the “Center for Information Control‌—‌Army Signals Systems.” Its acronym‌—‌CIC-ASS‌—‌was a big joke for the SAWs, as the unit members called themselves secretly. For years, it had been clear that the military needed its own special action force. The Pentagon was tired of relying on the CIA. They had botched too many rescue missions. SAWC was the Army’s own black ops element, secret from everyone outside the tightly controlled “Need to Know” loop. Command, control, communications and intel‌—‌C3I‌—‌all took place from the isolated, self-contained 1200-acre subdivision at Fort Bragg. The area was cordoned off with access-controlled signals equipment, CCTV, and electrified razor wire, off-limits to all but the SAWs.

The arrangement satisfied White House demands for “plausible deniability,” which meant that Maran was on his own. He knew it and he knew he would prepare for it, adjust his plans, adapt‌—‌
Victoriae
!

A court officer read the charges.

“In that Lieutenant Colonel Mack Maran, while commanding a mission code-named Taxi Home under Task Force 9909, Special Action Warfare Command of the Special Operations Command Forces, did order the men under his command to advance on enemy positions in a point one-hundred-twenty miles East of Cabinda, Angola, in territory owned by the sovereign nation of the Democratic Republic of Congo on or about December 23rd, in violation of a lawful order from Major General Randy Baltimore, to wit: Abort the mission and withdraw your men to be evacuated on the beach below the oil installations at Cabinda.

“Also that Colonel Maran responded to that order in that locale on that day in a manner unbecoming an officer, to wit: he willfully and with criminal negligence terminated the call thereby countermanding a direct order under combat conditions. Furthermore, Major General Baltimore, Director of Counterterrorism at the OPP will testify that Colonel Maran, apparently unaware that the line was still open responded to his direct order: ‘You can go and fuck yourself. We won’t need choppers until we rescue those hostages.’”

I thought the radio was off,
Maran thought to himself.

Maran gripped the wooden rail, stood as tall as he could. It was clear that the effort took all his strength. Outside, through a dirty wall-to-ceiling window on the south side of the security compound, he could see a fine drizzle of rain just beginning to drift down from a graying sky.

Panel Chief General Fahnestock sat at the center of the board. He looked to Maran like a giant redwood that could withstand a tornado. His tailored Class A Blues tunic displayed the Congressional Medal of Honor and he ruled the Army’s European Command as the four-star Commander in Chief. The White House, because of the political sensitivity of the case, insisted on his taking charge, skirting protocol that called for a lower-ranking general in the role.

Maran’s lawyer had hammered out the agreement that resulted in this three-man panel of warfighters or operators like himself, which is the way members of the most elite units of the Joint Special Operations Command referred to themselves. The last thing Maran wanted was to pin his fate on a decision by a military judge from JAG, someone who would, in all likelihood, never have seen a battleground. His training had taught him that the strength behind the military code of justice came from the bond shared, the complete and utter loyalty developed, between combatants in fighting units and their fellow soldiers. He knew men fought better because of the respect built on the battlefield, a bonding that could not be equalled. He expected his combat peers to be tough but fair.

General Fahnestock addressed the prosecutor.

“Colonel Maran was listed on the manifest as being with the Center for Information Operations-Army Combat Applications Group out of JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. But in fact, he was a commander with SAWC and led Task Force 9909, assigned by Brigadier General Luster to carry out this hostage recovery mission, code-named Taxi Home, with total autonomy. Is that correct, Major‌—‌The Special Action Warfare Command is not even listed on the units manifest at Bragg‌—‌or anywhere else?”

“Correct, sir,” prosecutor Major Andy Rojas snapped.

Maran glared at the man whose watery, pale yellow eyes squinted over a long, pinched nose. He looked like a weasel.

“Who is privy to the existence of Task Force 9909?” Fahnestock asked.