WAR: Opposition: (WAR Book 3) (14 page)

Seth shook his head. “Kirra. Think.”

“What?” She frowned, then cursed. “The rebels know what I look like, plus they have my name because they took my passport.” She turned to stare at him in dismay. “The rebels now know where to find me.”

“Yeah.”

“Does this mean—”

“That they’ll give up the chase? No. They can’t risk you passing their missing item off to someone else. But it does mean that you’re not safe even once you reach the concert.” He scanned the heavy traffic around them. There was too high a possibility that someone might glance over, spot Kirra, and recognize her from the billboard. When he came up on a side road, he turned onto it. “Cancel. I’ll find you a safe place to hole up until the rebels have been dealt with.”

“Forget it,” she snapped. “I’m not backing out.”

“Kirra, be reasonable.”

“No. Absolutely not. The whole point of the concert is to prove to the rebels that the people of this region support peace. That they won’t be bullied or threatened by such violent attacks as the Hospital Massacre.” She jabbed her finger at him. “My parents died last year in the rebel attack against the peace summit in the Democratic Republic of the Ivory Coast.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry.” His heart sank. How was he going to convince her to go into hiding when she had such a personal reason to take a stand?

“My parents believed peace and reconciliation was worth the risk to their lives.” There was a tinge of bitterness in her voice. “If I let the threat from the rebels stop me from attending, then I’ll be undermining their work. I won’t do it.”

“Even if it puts your life and the life of everyone at the concert at risk?” The Range Rover hit a bump too fast and the impact jolted them out of their seats.

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” Seth muttered. He’d been so focused on his fear for Kirra that he hadn’t realized he’d pressed his foot harder on the accelerator, pushing their speed up beyond the point where the vehicle could comfortably handle bumps. He backed off.

“The event organizers already know that the concert will be a target for the rebels,” Kirra continued. “They’ve hired extra security, all ex-military. But I should let them know that I might specifically be targeted.” She picked up his phone. “I don’t have their number, but you at least have internet access on this, right?”

“No.”

She sighed in frustration and tossed the phone back onto the console. “We need to warn them.”

“Until we figure out what the rebels want and why they think you have it,” Seth said, “you’re not going to be safe no matter how much security the concert has in place. The rebels have sheer numbers in their favor.”

“And the concert has the weight of popular opinion behind it.” Kirra waved at the radio, which had switched to a highlife song.

Seth shut it off. The singer didn’t have nearly the voice that Kirra did.

“According to my research,” Kirra continued, “since the Hospital Massacre, people are less supportive of the rebels. They have to be careful not to conduct another mass killing or they’ll be hunted down and killed by angry mobs.”

“Yeah, nice pipe dream there. You’re forgetting that the rebels have already killed a number of innocent people in their search for this mysterious item. Their leader, Bureh, doesn’t care about public opinion. He wants to purge the region of anyone who opposes him. Wiping out the concert in full view of the media would be a coup for him.”

“The organizers have considered all possibilities,” Kirra insisted. “That’s why the extensive security presence.”

“All it takes is one man with a miniature bomb and the concert will turn into a repeat of the attack at the festival a few months ago.” He glanced at her. “You heard about that?”

“Yes. The rebels hid miniature explosives inside MP3 players, then passed the players out to children at a regional festival.”

“That’s right.” Guilt deepened his voice. “Rumor has it that some of the explosives haven’t been used yet.” Sani Natchaba had stolen the shipment of experimental explosives from his father, Jonathan Morenga. If the rumors were right, Morenga had stolen the remaining explosives back after his son’s death.

“Okay. I understand that there’s a real danger. But as I said, the concert organizers took this into account when they hired security. What I need to do now is get up there so I can warn them that there’s an additional risk.”

Seth shook his head and made a sound of disgust. “And you accused me of having a death wish.”

Kirra crossed her arms over her chest. “How is the danger from me showing up at the concert and potentially being attacked by the rebels any different from riding with you and hoping your assassin doesn’t kill me?”

“
W
hat do you mean
, Kirra’s with Seth Jarrod?” Dev demanded. “I thought she was with some pilot named Michael Hughes.” He tightened his grip on his satellite phone as he walked through a neighborhood not far from one of the underground network’s contact points. He’d once again missed his sister by hours.

“Aye,” Lachlan said. “Hughes is the alias Jarrod is using here in West Africa.”

Dev swore. “Isn’t Jarrod the guy Marcus calls his evil twin? You’re saying he’s the same guy who’s been flying for Morenga and the like? I thought Marcus respected Jarrod.”

“Correct. According to Wil, the lad has already saved your sister from one attempt by the rebels to grab her. He thinks Jarrod will keep her safe.”

“He’d damn well better,” Dev grumbled. “Because if he harms so much as one hair on her head, I’m going to tear him apart.”

“Have you any idea where she is?”

“No. Our contact from the underground saw a woman who sounds like Kirra duck between two buildings when the rebels turned onto the street. The rebels gave chase, but that hunting party is long gone and I have no clue where she went from here.” He scanned the street, careful to stay out of sight of the police who had cordoned off a driveway. Dev spotted the glitter of shattered glass. Since none of the garage’s windows appeared broken, Dev figured some vehicle had lost a window. But was it the rebels, or Kirra and this Jarrod guy? Skid marks at the end of the driveway and further down the street indicated at least two vehicles had taken off quickly.

“Knowing that she’s hooked up with Jarrod explains why she keeps eluding me.” His sister wouldn’t have been able to stay hidden without Jarrod’s help. She had the survival skills of a newborn. So there was no way she could have avoided being found by Dev, let alone the rebels, without help. Particularly since there were so few white women in the region these days.

“Aye, well, if you don’t find her, there’s always the concert,” Lachlan reminded him.

Dev groaned. “A concert which is already under the threat of annihilation from the rebels.”

“I know, mate. We’ve alerted the security forces that there’s a potential threat specifically to your sister and to notify our team if they hear from her. But Helen and the other organizers agree that they’re still going to hold the concert.” Lachlan did not sound happy about that.

“Azumah still won’t release you to provide personal protection for Helen?” Lachlan’s wife, Dr. Helen Kirk, was an American trauma surgeon. Helen had a very personal reason for wanting public opinion to remain against the rebels. She’d been working at the hospital the day of the massacre. The video that had been briefly released by the rebels had shown her and the other foreign staff on their knees, guns to their heads while they screamed and begged for the lives of their colleagues. The rebels had laughed and continued hacking the local staff apart, then left them to die.

Dev understood why Helen wanted to go ahead with the concert. A successful show would raise not just regional awareness of the crimes of the rebels, but international awareness. Such publicity would increase financial and material support for those fighting the rebels.

But he also knew Lachlan would rather his wife stay far out of reach of the rebels.

“Aye,” Lachlan said. “With Kris accompanying Azumah on this trip, he wants my focus completely on WAR. As if continuing to run missions is going to stop me from worrying.”

Dev winced. The tension between Azumah, the founder and leader of WAR, and Kris, the man in charge of WAR’s military teams, had been growing for months. As a former politician, Azumah often put priority on things that made no operational sense. And he expressed little sympathy for Kris’s frequent requests to give his men time off to deal with psychological or physical wounds. Never mind that the teams wouldn’t operate effectively against the rebels if the men weren’t performing at peak capacity.

Azumah only cared about results he could parade in front of potential financial donors.

Which is why Kris had authorized Dev’s vacation without letting Azumah know.

“Has Helen told the concert organizers that Kirra is missing?” Dev asked.

“No. Apparently your sister failed to mention she was coming in early. So no one is expecting her until Thursday night. If you can’t find your sister by then, Helen will notify the organizers so they can adjust the program.”

“All right.”

“There’s just one additional complication,” Lachlan said.

“Of course there is,” Dev grumbled, keeping to the shadows as he continued through the neighborhood, searching for additional skid marks. “What?”

“Based on the ammunition found in the hangar, Wil thinks there’s an American military assassin on Jarrod’s tail.”

“What?!” All right. That did it. He wasn’t sleeping until he found his sister and beat the shit out of Jarrod. Then he’d lock Kirra away where she would never be in any danger ever again.

“Long story short, Jarrod is wanted alive and well by the United States military,” Lachlan continued.

“Then why is an assassin after him?”

“If you’ll let me finish, mate, I’ll explain the rest. Jesus, you’re getting to be as bad as JC or Hoss.”

“Hey. No need to get nasty,” Dev grumbled. The two smart-mouthed Americans had a bad habit of interrupting people and of horsing around. Although, to their credit, they both worked as hard as any men on the team. Still, as second-in-command, Dev had no desire to be compared to those two clowns, no matter how skilled or experienced they were in the field.

“Are you ready for the rest or not, lad?”

“Yes, sir.” No. Not at all. He did not want to hear that his sister was being targeted by some damned American sniper because she was hanging around with Jarrod.

“Confidentiality issues prevented Wil from telling me the exact situation, but Jarrod’s military records are no longer missing. As I said, the Americans want him back alive and unharmed. Wil believes someone else sent the assassin to prevent Jarrod from talking to the Americans.”

“So, faction X wants to question Jarrod and faction B wants to shut him up. Do you think this has anything to do with the lack of American action against the rebels?”

“Nay, something Wil said makes me believe it goes back farther than that.”

Dev thought back to the hangar and Jarrod’s shot-up plane. “If Jarrod wasn’t in the hangar at the time of the shooting, why would a trained assassin bother destroying his plane? Yet if Jarrod was there, how did he survive? Any skilled assassin would have taken him out and left the plane alone.”

“I don’t know, lad. Perhaps the assassin is supposed to frighten Jarrod into a particular behavior.” Lachlan paused and Dev imagined him shrugging. “It’s not our job to analyze the assassin’s motives.”

Dev didn’t like the unpredictability of the assassin. The sooner Jarrod was handed over to the Americans, the safer his sister would be. “When are Wil’s guys going to join in the search?”

Lachlan cleared his throat. “Wil doesn’t have men to spare. So—”

“No. You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m not even American!” Realizing he’d raised his voice, Dev glanced around. But all the police were several streets over and none of the neighborhood’s inhabitants were outside. “I’ve never known the Americans to play nice with others. Wil and his team excepted.” WAR and Wil had a mutually beneficial relationship, but Kris had made it clear that Wil’s superiors would not approve of his unconventional allies. “Isn’t Wil trying to keep his association with WAR a secret?”

“Aye, but you’re on the ground and already in pursuit of your sister. Since Wil believes that Jarrod is still with her, he passed this on to us.”

“Meaning me.”

“Aye.”

Dev swore.

“Jarrod was a special ops helicopter pilot, Dev. He fought in the air, not on the ground. Are you saying that you can’t find him and bring him in?”

Dev got more creative with his curses, this time directing them at Lachlan in both English and Afrikaans. “
Ja well, no fine
,” he grumbled. “All by myself I’ll find Jarrod and my sister and make sure they both stay safe from the rebels and this damn assassin and everyone else who wants the diamonds.” He rolled his eyes.

“I knew we could count on you, lad.”

Right. He was so reliable, he hadn’t been able to catch up with Kirra yet.

Dev ended the call and headed back toward his Jeep. There was nothing to be gained here. Maybe one of Rene’s informants would know what the police had learned about Kirra’s location, but he wasn’t counting on it.

Slipping his hand in his pocket, he fingered Kirra’s burned cell phone. At least he understood why she hadn’t called or texted him since the attack. They spoke so rarely that he doubted she’d memorized his number. And with their parents dead, she had no one else to ask for his information.

How had it gone so wrong? How had his parents, two generous, intelligent, anti-apartheid activists ended up losing touch with their only daughter to the extent that they hadn’t been notified about Kirra’s attack? Hell, Dev hadn’t spoken to Kirra for several months at that point, but he’d received a call shortly after she arrived at the Accident and Emergency unit. Apparently she’d listed Dev as her sole emergency contact. So it had been up to him to notify their parents.

Dev shuddered at the memory. That had been one of the worst conversations he’d ever held in his life. He’d been so furious over the way his parents had failed Kirra after Kyle’s death, that he’d told them they were partly responsible for the attack on Kirra. If their parents had bothered to talk to Kirra before she ran away from home; if they hadn’t always been negatively comparing her to Kyle; hell, if they’d given her a few hugs and a fraction of the support they’d given strangers during the apartheid years, then maybe Kirra would have been able to pull back from the edge. Maybe she wouldn’t have accompanied Franz across the country and become embroiled in the underworld of Cape Town.

And maybe Franz and his vicious friends wouldn’t have nearly killed her.

But his parents had been too wrapped up in their own grief over losing their precious Kyle to recognize that Kirra was floundering and being sucked into a dangerous crowd.

Dev swiped his hand over his hair and wished he could grab his surfboard and head back to the waves. He shared part of the blame for not helping Kirra through her grief, but he’d had a commitment to the military. He’d only been able to get a few days of leave for Kyle’s funeral. If he’d been home more often, or even kept in touch by email, maybe Kirra wouldn’t have turned to that asshole Franz for comfort.

Having reached his Jeep, Dev slipped behind the wheel.

Since those gut-wrenching days sitting by Kirra’s hospital bed, praying for her to live, he’d done his best to let his sister know that he loved her. But he had to admit that he still didn’t really know her. Because if he had, he would have known she was heading to that damned concert before he received her text. He could have taken action to keep her safe.

Instead, he was stuck chasing after her and this damned Jarrod fellow.

At least now that he knew Kirra was traveling with a former U.S. military guy, Dev had a better idea of how to think. Before, he’d been trying to think like a twenty-something girl with no survival skills and no strategic training. Knowing that Jarrod was former military meant Dev could think more like himself in trying to figure out where they’d go next and what safety measures they’d be taking.

Given Kirra’s flighty, temperamental nature, he kinda pitied Jarrod. Keeping her safe wouldn’t be easy.

Yet you haven’t found them yet. So he’s doing something right.

Or I’m doing everything wrong.

“
I
told
you to call off your pet assassin.” The man now in charge of the cabal’s Africa sector stared out of his office window, keeping his back turned to the speakerphone on his desk.

“We cannot afford to have Jarrod testify,” the head of the Southeast Asia sector said patiently, as if Africa were a child who did not have the intelligence to understand the full extent of the matter.

“Nothing has changed,” Africa stated. “Jarrod is too afraid of what I might do to his family to defy me. If I order him to say nothing to the investigators, he will refuse to testify.”

“We do not believe that is sufficient incentive. Should the CID team pick him up, surely he will tell them about the hold you have on his family. They will arrange for protection. Unless, of course, you have managed to secure his family so that no one can rescue them?”

“The Americas section head is supposed to ensure that the CID team does not reach Jarrod,” Africa replied. “Why are they not being called to task? I have plans for Jarrod. In a few weeks, he will be dead, implicated in an attack that will outstrip any that have come before. Could you not allow my plan to play out instead of rushing in and creating unnecessary complications?” Of course the man couldn’t. The head of Southeast Asia was a self-centered, short-sighted man. He’d made the mistake of picking General Sandberg as an ally and that had turned into a disaster. The attack on the American military base in the region had prompted an investigation that had nearly led to the discovery of the cabal, which spent considerable time and effort hiding all records of their existence. Only quick thinking by the head of the Pacific Region—he’d staged a series of attacks that had diverted the military’s attention away from the destroyed base—had prevented their connection to General Sandberg from being uncovered. Africa wished Southeast Asia had not been related to the founder of the cabal, because he was more of a liability than an asset.

“We have a man on the inside,” Americas said. “If Jarrod is picked up, we will be able to find him and eliminate him. Do not fear. What is more important is your lack of progress in destabilizing West Africa.”

“You have failed to meet our goals.” The voice belonged to the one in charge of the Middle East.

“Yes, I realize that.” Of course, they ignored his successes, such as the nearly successful attack on the American base in the Greater Niger Republic. If he had not already suspected that his transfer from being in charge of the Middle East to Africa had been a demotion, he was certain of it now.