Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (188 page)

She hung up and stood in the Mall with the Capitol Building lit up in front of her. A group of young men, laughing, brushed past on her left. A woman with two dogs on leashes came from the other direction. All around swirled people, while the glow of lamplight gradually replaced the light of the failing sun.

“Sounds like a difficult conversation,” a voice said from behind her shoulder. “From what I overheard, you’re in serious trouble.”

She whirled to see Markov standing just feet away. He wore a look of smug satisfaction. There was another man, to her right.

“I knew someone was following me, I just never thought it was you.”

“No, I haven’t been following you. Just arrived from Africa. Found you just in time to hear the tail end of your conversation.”

“Well what do you want?” she asked. “Where is Ian Westhelle’s body?”

“Ian’s in Namibia. Alive, I hope you’ll forgive my white lie. Seems he wasn’t the traitor everyone made him out to be, so I thought the wisest course was to leave him alive.”

“Whatever you’re doing, whatever you think you know,” Sarah said, “you’re wrong.”
“Am I? How so?”

“That’s need to know information,” she said. “You of all people should know that.”

Any hope that he would back off disappeared with the way his lips tightened and his eyes narrowed. “I’m not feeling in a chatty mood,” he said. “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll have a conversation somewhere more private.”

Sarah screamed at the top of her lungs. “Help! Somebody help me!”

She rushed forward, bumped into Markov, who may have been expecting her to run, to reach for a gun, to try to phone for help, anything but this.

Their limbs tangled and they went down, Sarah still screaming. There were other people there, some of them maybe Markov’s agents, but also a guy who stopped his bike and a big guy with a Redskins jersey. And a pair of police officers on foot patrol.

A man stepped in, tried to stop the officers. He was reaching for what looked like a badge to show the police, but they rushed past and grabbed at Markov, another stumbled into the guy with the Redskins jersey, thinking maybe he was involved.

In a moment it was a pile of bodies. Sarah broke free, scrambled to her feet. She stopped screaming and turned to run. Meanwhile, Markov disengaged from the police officer. He was shouting his credentials, demanding the man step back so he could show his badge.

Sarah kicked off her heels and ran, barefoot. For the moment, there was no pursuit, but she knew that wouldn’t last.

________

Li Hao started the meeting by blustering about American hegemony and CIA spies. Ian and Julia were the primary targets of his invective, but he delivered the occasional tirade against Charles Ikanbo, as well. It was Namibia’s fault, too, for being too weak to stand up to the Americans.

Ian saw Julia scowl, the color rise in her face. For his part, Ian had to bite back several snarky comebacks. But it was a victory that Li was willing to entertain their offer at all, or even that they’d made it through Blackwing security and into the Chinese headquarters.

From inside, the Ondjamba camp now looked like a small city, with new roads going down all over the place, its own power plants, stores, housing, and dozens of new buildings in every stage of construction from empty pits, to concrete and rebar shells, to rows of completed or nearly completed apartments for workers.

Trucks rumbled by, some the size of small buildings. Drilling rigs dotted the ground. Blackwing contractors were everywhere, heavily armed and alert. Even when they met the Chinese at the gates, they were still challenged every fifty yards.

Huge floodlights lit the camp; there was nowhere to escape it, not even inside Li Hao’s prefab offices. The light spilled through the blinds, stronger than the flickering fluorescent bulbs overhead.

After Li Hao finished his rant, he indicated that Ian, Ikanbo, and Julia take a seat on an expensive leather couch that seemed out of place in the bare meeting room. He walked to the window and parted the blinds, which let in a fresh glare of floodlights.

“I have eleven hundred men guarding this camp,” he said. “I know generals in the People’s Liberation Army who command inferior hardware.”

“Your own private army,” Ikanbo said. He did not sound pleased.

“It isn’t cheap. Blackwing charges a thousand dollars per man, per day. And that’s on top of what I pay the thousands of engineers, drivers, laborers, and what we’re paying for material. We work all day, every night, around the clock. We will spend roughly two billion dollars to build this camp over the next six months. We’ve already spent a billion and that number increases by ten million dollars a day.”

“You must think the rewards are worth it,” Julia said. “All that oil, it will make you very important in China, won’t it? And in Namibia, spending billions in such a small country, hiring thousands of employees, maybe tens of thousands. And with your own private army.”

“But what good does it do to have an army? Li asked. “Even now, there could be American bombers at sixty thousand feet and we’d be dead before we realized we were under attack.” He turned to Ian. “Will the Americans attack me if we stay put in the camp and wait for everything to play out?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Ian said. “But even if they don’t, what good will it do you? The coup will succeed, the new government will be beholden to the Americans, and they will kick you out of the country. Your billions of dollars will be flushed down the drain.”

“Flushed down the drain?” Li Hao said. “What does this mean, flushed down the drain?”

“Wasted,” Julia said. “Worse than wasted. All this infrastructure will be turned over to Chevron or British Petroleum. They’ll work out some agreement with the Namibians to pay you for it, but it will be pennies on the dollar. May as well steal it.”

Ian knew that it was just speculation on her part, but he could see from the angry expression on Li Hao’s face that her words had hit a nerve.

“What are you proposing?” Li asked.

“Help us defeat the coup,” Ikanbo said.

“Yes, but
how
?”

“A two pronged assault on Windhoek,” Ian said. “Your mercenaries will be safer away from Ondjamba, and Ondjamba will be safer without the mercenaries to make it a target. Keep a skeleton crew here, a few dozen who stay indoors, out of sight of American spy planes and satellites. I’ll lead the Blackwing forces into Windhoek, with your authorization.”

“Into battle?” Li asked. “And when you lose my army, and I have to pay a huge indemnity to Blackwing, and they break their contract. Who will protect me then?”

“It won’t come to that,” Ian said. “I’ll set up perimeter on the outskirts of Windhoek, defensive positions only. We’ll respond only if attacked.”

“What good will that do?”

“The rebels need to take control of the army if they’re going to make the coup last,” Ikanbo said. “My brother will be securing the capital tonight, but by tomorrow he’ll send his men to take control of the army bases. We’re not trying to keep the rest of the army out, so much as trying to keep the rebels pinned down inside.”

“I’ll use the Blackwing contractors to cut off Windhoek,” Ian said. “But we’ll be in the city, where it will be hard for the Americans to bomb us.”

Li Hao shook his head. “They’ve got laser guided bombs, missiles. They can hit you wherever you are. Doesn’t matter if you’re in a church, next to a school.”

“You are absolutely right, if you were fighting American troops,” Ian said. “The rebels won’t have direct communication with the Air Force to pinpoint our locations. Those so-called smart bombs are only smart if you’ve got adequate intelligence. Which they won’t have. It takes time—days, really, to identify targets from the air.”

“By then it will be over,” Ikanbo said. “While Ian and your contractors control access to Windhoek, my CIS forces will find my brother, confront him, and arrest or kill the coup leaders. With the help of a few heavy weapons, of course, which we will borrow from Blackwing.”

Li Hao steepled his hands. He turned back to the window, glanced through the blinds again and muttered something in Chinese.

At last he turned, nodded. “Yes, I am in agreement.”
“We’ll need to leave as soon as possible,” Ian said. “Take as many civilian trucks as you can spare, filled with ammo, supplies, whatnot.”

“Militarily, we’ve been on high alert since the last attack and we’ve got drivers, vehicles available at all times. You’ll have to work your arrangements with the Blackwing commanders themselves, but I can’t imagine it would take more than an hour or two to get everything ready.”

“I’ve never seen that happen before,” Ian said, “but we don’t need a complete mobilization. If we can send out a hundred, two hundred men within, say, two hours, the rest can reinforce us throughout the day.”

Li nodded and the three others stood from the couch. “Make it happen.”

The Blackwing contractors would be a formidable opposition to the Namibian rebels. Presumably, Ikanbo’s brother had chosen his best men, who would be loyal, well-armed and brave. They would surely outnumber the Blackwing mercenaries, too, even when you weighed in Ikanbo and his CIS forces.

The wild card was the Americans. In spite of his talk about protecting himself within Windhoek, American military intelligence was very good. American air power could not be resisted, not here, not anywhere. If Markov couldn’t neutralize Sarah Redd, call off the dogs, the rebels would win.

And most of the men under Ian and Ikanbo’s command would die.

CHAPTER FORTY

The phone rang. Sarah picked up.

“Hello, Sarah.”

“Anton.”

“Nice work there, evading me on the Mall.”

“Thank you. I’m not just a desk jockey, you know.”

“I didn’t underestimate you. I was short on time and did the best I could under the circumstances. You got away, you outsmarted me, at least momentarily. The problem, from your perspective, is that I know where you are. I’ve got the approaches to the building covered and have called in more men.”

“And what? You’re threatening to storm my room? You know that isn’t possible, not with this hotel, not today.”

The hotel had its own security, and police and other law enforcement were not allowed to enter except under extreme circumstances. It served visiting dignitaries and even now an emir from the UAE was staying in the suites opposite her. The emir had his own security who took up residence in the hall outside. If Markov’s men came in with guns drawn there would be trouble.

“No, that’s not my plan,” Markov said.

“Then why are you calling, if not to negotiate a surrender?”

“I think we both know the answer to that.”

She allowed herself a smile. “Because you know I’ve called my own resources, and my resources are superior to yours. I am the Director of National Intelligence. You are nobody, you son of a bitch.”

“You’re arranging to have
me
arrested instead, aren’t you?” Markov asked. “And you’re counting on the expectation that by the time I extricate myself from that situation, you plot will be a
fait accompli
. Or rather,
coup d’etat accompli
.”

“Almost, Anton, almost. The only modification I would make is that you will not actually extricate yourself. I have to remove you. You know too much, you have gone rogue.”

Markov chuckled. “I know you’re just trying to convince me to run, save myself. And if not, you’ll lock me up in a psych ward, right? Except there’s no way you could do that.”

“Isn’t there?”

“No, you couldn’t, but it doesn’t matter, because it won’t come to that. Look out the window, Sarah.”

She walked to the window, stood to the side in case Markov had a sniper waiting for her to show her face. She switched the cell phone to her other ear, parted the curtain and glanced out.

Markov stood below the window, down three stories, with his cell phone at his ear, waving up. She couldn’t see the other agents anywhere; they might be trying to negotiate with hotel security.

An NBC news van sat in the street behind Anton. Workers unloaded equipment, cameras, while a female newscaster attached an ear piece and held a camera. Another van pulled up to the curb, this one CNN.