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“I cannot do that,” Antangana said in his gravelly voice. “You all know why.”
Bolan didn’t know exactly why, and he knew the other Americans who had flown with him from Washington, D.C., to Cameroon didn’t either. But he could guess.
The Executioner was no medical doctor like Lareby. But it didn’t take an “M.D.” after your name to see that some form of cancer was eating Antangana down to the bone. Bolan guessed that the man viewed the unification of Cameroon under a true democracy with a fair and honest president as the last great deed he could perform for his homeland before he died.
Antangana seemed to read the soldier’s mind. Turning toward Bolan, he made the man’s suspicions a reality. “I am sorry,” the prime minister said. “For saying that everyone in this room knows why I cannot run for office. To our new friends from America, I have throat cancer. It has spread, and continues to do so at an alarming rate.”
Bolan nodded his understanding. “Have the doctors told you how long you might have?” he asked.
Antangana shrugged. “A few weeks. Perhaps a few months. No two cases, they tell me, are quite the same.” His words were becoming lower and more like growls than speech. The effort it took him to talk was obviously taking its toll. “I am due for another round of chemotherapy in a few days,” he managed to choke out.
Bolan stood up next to the man. “With all due respect, Mr. Prime Minister,” he said, “I think it’s time for me to take charge.”
Antangana nodded. Suddenly, he had run out of air completely and had to take in a deep, wheezy-sounding breath. Then, leaning low to speak into Bolan’s ear, he whispered, “I love my country. Please. Save it.”
Before Bolan could respond, Antangana had stumbled around him and taken the chair the soldier had previously occupied. Bolan watched him out of the corner of his eye. As he sat, the lapel of the man’s suit jacket rode up around his ears, making him appear to shrink and look even thinner and more worn out than he’d appeared when he’d stood.
“Gentlemen,” Bolan said as soon as the prime minister was seated. “A few of you I know, others I don’t. But during this time of peril for Cameroon, we’re all going to get to know each other as we go.” He leaned forward and pressed the palms of his hands on the top of the table. “As I see it, we’ve got two missions here. To keep the candidates alive, and to find former president Robert Menye and either deliver him to the International Criminal Court or kill him.”
“But what about the candidates?” the young soldier who had spoken earlier blurted out. “They are no better than Menye. Maybe worse. Why should we waste our time protecting them when either one would begin a genocide against the other’s followers as soon as he took office?”
“Because with our presence in your country,” Bolan said as he swept his hand along the line of chairs where the Secret Service men and Lareby sat, “the world will blame the United States for the assassination of either or both candidates. As to how to handle things once one of them is elected,” he went on, “I can’t answer that yet. Maybe NATO will send in peacekeeping troops until things stabilize. Maybe the International Criminal Court will sanction America to handle it. In any case, I can’t afford to worry about that yet. We’ve got to take things one step at a time, and that means making sure both candidates stay alive.”
“Pardon me, sir,” an older black man in a gray suit said, “but it is unclear to me exactly who you are.” He waited for an answer.
When he didn’t get one, he said, “Perhaps I was the one who was unclear. We would be in your debt if you would tell us what American law-enforcement agencies or espionage bureaus you represent.”
Bolan nodded. “The men in the dark suits are U.S. Secret Service agents. Every one of them has protected our own President at one time or another, and they’ll be split into teams to help cover the candidates.” He cast a quick glance at Lareby whose head moved slightly side to side. This was not the kind of situation where the CIA would want to be outed. So he left it at that, hoping the Cameroonians would believe Lareby was also a Secret Service agent.
“And you?” the same elderly man asked the soldier.
Bolan reached into the inside pocket of his sports coat and pulled out a badge case. “United States Department of Justice,” he said, holding up the phony credentials that identified him as Special Agent Matt Cooper. “My field of specialization is counterterrorism.”
That seemed to satisfy the men around the table.
All except for the same elderly black man.
“Thank you,” the man said. “But all but one of the men you have introduced are dressed in suits. Are we to believe that the gentleman in the khaki vest seated here is also Secret Service?” He paused a second, then added, “It is not just his clothing. There is something different about him. Something I cannot ‘put my finger on’ as you Americans sometimes say.”
Before Bolan could speak, Dr. John Lareby began patting his vest down like an underage kid looking for a fake driver’s license to buy beer. “Damn,” he finally said, “I know I had my credentials when we took off from Washington.” A sudden look of revelation combined with embarrassment fell over his face. “I must have left them in my carry-on on the plane.”
“Then the ID card is in cinders and the badge has melted,” one of the Secret Service men with a well-trimmed mustache said. Bolan could tell by his face that the man sensed Lareby was CIA, and was adding his own two cents to help cover the fact.
“I’m Secret Service, too,” Lareby finally said. “I’m just not as fancy a dresser as the rest of these guys.”
His remark brought another round of chuckles from around the table.
“Then we shall have to take your word for who you are,” the gray-haired Cameroonian said. Bolan read his face just like he had Lareby’s, and the thin smile told him that this man knew Lareby had to be with the Central Intelligence Agency. “I am sure when you are resupplied for the items you lost in the plane, a new badge and credentials will be included.”
Lareby nodded. “I’ll make sure of it,” he said with a straight face.
Bolan found himself impressed with both men’s performances. When working in any type of undercover capacity, it was the little things that counted. And although most of the Cameroonians obviously sensed that the Justice Department story for Bolan and Lareby’s association with the Secret Service were lies, their faces still looked sincere as a tacit agreement to keep playing this game fell into place.
Sometimes, it was more important not to know something than it was to know it.
“I’ll vouch for him until we can get duplicate credentials sent over,” Bolan said. “He’ll be working directly with me rather than being part of either of the candidate-protection details.”
“Doing what, exactly, then?” the older man asked.
Bolan looked the man directly in the eye. “While the rest of the Secret Service looks after your candidates’ protection, Dr. Lareby and I are going hunting.”
“Hunting?” another young soldier almost screamed from farther down the table. “At a time like this, when all of Cameroon depends on what happens in the election, you two are planning on taking an African safari?”
He was interrupted by the older, gray-haired man. “They are not planning to shoot wildebeest and lions, my young friend,” he said. “I believe what he meant was that they are going hunting for our former president.”
Bolan’s nod was slight, but everyone at the table caught it.
And understood what it meant.
3
The prime minister’s staff had arranged for three suites to house the Americans. They were located on the third floor of the Hilton downtown, and would be used as a meeting place for the entire team; a location where both interviews and interrogations could be conducted, and a site for the Secret Service agents to “crash” when they weren’t on duty.
Each of the two Cameroonian presidential candidates would have a pair of Secret Service agents by his side at all times. They would also be in charge of the Cameroon military protection agents who worked for Colonel Essam, and deal with the private bodyguards from within the two political parties.
As for Essam and his men, Bolan had assigned them to create an “outer circle” around the block on which the Hilton stood. They would be the first line of defense against perceived threats and, with luck, be able to end the problems before they got any closer to the men in the hotel.
Essam had not liked being so far away from the nucleus of the action, but Bolan had encountered his type before. It had taken only a few words to convince the colonel just how important the outer ring was before he puffed out his chest and agreed to the assignment.
As he shoved the key card into the door of suite 307, the Executioner wondered just how well it was all going to work. The colonel had left their brief encounter after the meeting with a smile. But the Executioner thought that smile had looked forced. It was clear that the colonel was more accustomed to giving orders than taking them, and Bolan wondered just how long it would be before his resentment overcame the thin flattery.
The light atop the lock turned green and Bolan twisted the doorknob open. His plan was a somewhat unconventional setup in regard to bodyguarding, or VIP protection, as it was commonly referred to these days. The U.S. Secret Service would be with the two presidential candidates in the suites and anywhere else they moved them, while Colonel Essam and his men ran a “roving guard” throughout the hotel’s halls and lobby, as well as circling the Hilton in unmarked street vehicles.
Bolan wasn’t crazy about the arrangement. It gave him no view of what Essam and his men were doing, and their abilities were a far cry from those of the expert Secret Service men. This meant the outer ring of protection was vulnerable to penetration, and assassination attempts that should have been seen and halted before they got anywhere near the two candidates might very well be executed.
But such was the game Bolan had walked into. And while his jurisdiction over the Secret Service and Lareby was a definite, it extended to the Cameroonian military only on paper. He had little doubt that if Essam contradicted his orders, the soldiers under him would obey their colonel.
The situation was “iffy” at best.
There was another aspect that troubled Bolan even more, and was constantly at the back of his mind. The enemy had known when his aircraft was landing, and how many men were getting off. And those two things spelled traitor to the Executioner. He was going to have to keep his eyes on his own men as well as those of the CPU and KDNP.
Lareby followed the soldier into their separate suite next to that of the Secret Service and said, “Which bedroom do you want?”
Bolan scanned the area, then said, “I’ll probably end up sleeping out here on the couch. If I get a chance to sleep at all. I want to keep one ear open for anything going on to our sides or in the hall.”
Lareby nodded. “We’ll probably hear Essam’s lackeys pounding up and down the halls most of the time,” he said. “But you think I should do the same? I could pull that other couch up near the door and—” he pointed across the room at a slightly shorter version of the sofa Bolan had indicated “—and I could rack out next to—”
The big American shook his head. “There’s no need for both of us to do that,” he said. “Besides, we’re going to spend a lot more time away from this room than in it.”
“Okay,” the CIA man said and headed for the nearest bedroom.
Bolan walked to the phone on a nightstand next to the couch and lifted the receiver to his ear, at the same time pulling a business card out of his jacket pocket. A moment later he had punched in the number printed on the card, and a moment after that the hospital answered.
“Jack Grimaldi’s room, please,” Bolan said.
As he waited, he caught himself grinning. Grimaldi had awakened before the ambulance could arrive and, still under the influence of the morphine Lareby had administered, tried to get out of the jeep just as the meeting had broken up. He was raring to go after the men who had shot him, and it had been difficult to get him to go to the hospital. Just as the ambulance had arrived, Bolan had finally convinced him by saying, “Look, Jack. It doesn’t hurt to be careful. Besides, you’ll just be hanging around, waiting for our folks to send one of the other jets. Just do it for me, okay? I can’t afford to use a pilot who isn’t running at one hundred percent.”
Even under the drug’s influence, Grimaldi had seen through the ruse. But he had finally nodded in agreement.
The phone buzzed in Bolan’s ear, and a second later he heard Grimaldi pick up the receiver next to his hospital bed. “It must be you, Sarge,” the pilot growled. “Nobody else knows I’m here.”
“Ease up, old buddy,” he said. “Actually, everybody back home at the Farm knows where you are. I told them when I called for another plane to be sent over. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” Grimaldi said. “Got a few stitches is all. But they want to keep me overnight for observation. Frankly, it all makes me feel like something growing in a test tube. There’s only one reason I haven’t already walked out of here.”
“And I’ll just bet she has a name,” the Executioner said with a chuckle.
“As a matter of fact, she does.” Grimaldi laughed back. “Although I can’t pronounce it. In any case, she’s promised me a sponge bath as soon as her shift is over.”
“You get well,” Bolan came back. “There’s no telling when we might need you.”
“Affirmative, big guy,” the pilot said.
In the background, Bolan heard what sounded like a hospital privacy curtain closing.
“Gotta go,” Grimaldi said. “Got a visitor. And she’s armed with a sponge.”
The Executioner was still smirking as he hung up. But his momentary light spirit disappeared when he heard the sudden knock on the door to the hall. It came in the form of five strikes with little-to-no pauses in between.
It was not the two knocks, pause, and then two more raps that he and the Secret Service men had agreed upon as their “code knock” when visiting one anothers rooms.
From beneath his torn and battle-rumpled sports coat, the Executioner drew the sound-suppressed 9 mm Beretta 93-R.
Then he walked toward the peephole.
Bolan held the 93-R in front of the peephole for a good three seconds before dropping the Beretta to his side. More than one man had been shot through a peephole when the gunman on the other side saw it darken, and the Executioner had no intention of joining that club. Finally satisfied that it wasn’t a ruse, he stuck an eye in front of the hole.
A moment later, he opened the door. “What are you doing here?” the soldier asked bluntly. “You should be in bed. Or getting your chemotherapy.”
A brief expression of sadness covered Antangana’s face. Then it switched almost magically into a knowing grin. “I do not restart my treatments for another couple of days,” he said. “So I thought I would come to assist you.”
Bolan opened the door wider and let the man into the room.
The soldier had barely recognized Antangana. The man had changed out of his suit into a pair of worn brown slacks, sandals and a brightly colored dashiki. The loose garment—like the suit coat before it—seemed to emphasize his emaciation.
“I was President Menye’s prime minister,” the man said as soon as Bolan had swung the door closed and replaced the Beretta in his shoulder rig. “And no one knows that evil man better than I do. I will help you find him, and I will help you kill him.” His grin seemed to take up all of his face, and Bolan saw a perfect row of gleaming white teeth behind his upper lip.
Bolan looked the man up and down. He was still getting into this mission, and the one thing he’d learned so far was that he couldn’t be certain who could be trusted and who could not. Antangana’s multicolored African-patterned dashiki was so large on him it could have hidden any number of weapons.
“Don’t take this personally,” the soldier said as he reached out, twisted the man to face away from him and patted him down. The closest thing to a weapon he found was an Okapi folding knife in the man’s right front pocket. Opening the folding blade, he looked down at the inexpensive steel. Patterned loosely after the centuries-renowned Spanish navajas, the Okapis were manufactured in South Africa and although nonlocking and difficult to sharpen, they could be deadly in the hand of a man who knew how to use them.
Antangana’s knife didn’t look as if it had been used for much more than peeling apples or cutting vegetables. Bolan folded the knife closed again and dropped it in his pocket for the time being.
“With all due respect, Mr. Prime Minister,” the soldier asked, “exactly what is it you think you can do to help, considering your health?”
“I know this country,” Antangana stated. “I know it as well as I know myself. And I know the people and our customs. I can help you deal with them without accidentally offending them and turning them to stone.” He paused to catch his breath. “I believe you Americans say something like I can ‘cut through the bullshit.’”
Bolan had to fight to keep a smile from forming on his own face. “Well,” he said, “have a seat.” Unleathering the Beretta again and gesturing with it at the couch.
Antangana dropped down on the couch as Bolan took a padded armchair. A second later, Lareby came out of the bedroom. The CIA man had taken off his vest and rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. He was drying his hands with a white towel as he crossed the threshold. “I see we have company,” he said.
Bolan kept his eyes on the man in the dashiki. “Yes, we do,” he said. “You remember him, I’m sure. Antangana— Jean—Antangana. Unfortunately at this point, he belongs to the group of men I trust the least in the world.”
“Oh, yeah?” Lareby said as he finished drying his hands and arms. “And what group might that be?”
“Volunteer informants,” the Executioner replied. “They’re almost always playing both ends against the middle.”
By this point, Antangana had bent one knee beneath him and was sitting on his own foot while his other leg extended to the floor. In spite of Bolan’s words, the smile he had entered the room wearing never left his face. “I understand your logic,” he said. “And I must admit I would probably distrust you if our roles were reversed. But I promise you I am an exception. So. What can I do to gain your confidence?”
“You can start by telling us why you didn’t volunteer your help earlier at the meeting.”
“Because there were men present who I do not trust,” Antangana said simply. “And I did not want them to know any more about your plans than necessary.”
The man’s sickly appearance seemed to loom even larger as he tried to take a deep breath. There was something about him—something Bolan couldn’t put his finger on—that made the Executioner believe he was sincere in his desire to assist them. “Who don’t you trust?” he asked.
“There are several I suspect of sympathizing with the KDNP. Others with the CPU. And one or two, I am relatively certain, are still loyal to President Menye.”
Bolan thought about the man’s words for a moment. His gut still told him that this man was telling the truth. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to grow up in a country such as Cameroon without taking on prejudices of one sort or another. While the remaining leaders of the nation might not be actual members of the KDNP or CPU, they would likely lean one way or the other.
“Assuming I believe you,” Bolan finally said. “What would make you want to help us at this time? Particularly since you were one of Menye’s top men before he vacated his little throne.” The Executioner rarely used sarcasm, but when he did, it cut all the way to the bone.
Antangana shrugged. “The answer to your question is really not very complicated,” he said. “When he first took office, Menye was not the self-inflated potentate that he gradually became. I was proud to work for him then. But, little by little, he began to change. A small lie here. An execution carried out for personal reasons there. Before long, he had created a regime far more remorselessly cruel than Cameroon had ever known in the past.” Antangana paused and drew in another deep breath. “And so I was stuck.”
“You tried to resign?” Bolan asked.
“I did,” Antangana said. “I do not remember Menye’s exact words, but they included that my head might look attractive on top of a spear stuck into the ground.” He paused and traded legs beneath him. “That dampened my enthusiasm for resigning rather quickly.”
Lareby had pulled one of the chairs away from the dining-room table, flipped it backward, then sat with his arms crossed over the back, his chin resting on them. “I can see how it might,” the CIA man said. “But why didn’t you just leave the country and seek asylum in America or somewhere else?”
“Because by the time I realized how power-crazed he had become,” Antangana said, staring hard at the man, “too much had already occurred. I was afraid any country in which I sought refuge would consider me as guilty as Menye himself. Besides, the man had already murdered two of his staff who he only suspected of plotting against him. I had no desire to be the third.”
Lareby and Bolan exchanged glances and nods. The story sounded believable. The soldier turned back to Antangana. “All right,” he said, standing up. “I’m going to give you a shot. And you can take that statement both literally and figuratively. If you’re on the level and really want to help us, great. But if it turns out that you have your own personal agenda that conflicts with ours, all I can promise you is a faster and more humane death than your old boss would have given you.” He reholstered the Beretta and pulled the Okapi out of his pocket, flipping it across the room to Antangana. “Try to use that piece of steel on me or anyone else, and I’ll kill you with it,” he said. “Understood?”
“Quite well,” the prime minister said. “And please believe me when I tell you I have no hidden agenda of any sort. My only goals are to save my country and pray that my chemotherapy is successful. If I cannot be successful with the second goal, I hope to see my country become a peaceful democracy before I die. And, oh, yes…I want to see Menye caught or killed, of course.”
Bolan and Lareby remained silent.
“May I assume, then,” Antangana said after another breath, “that we are all in agreement?” He rocked forward and came back to his feet, pulling the leg on which he sat out from the couch and returning it to the floor.
