“She was. She left to each of the men in your jazz band fifty thousand dollars.”
“Now I know this is a prank call. Nobody ever left me anything. Who are you really?”
“Would the master chief play a trick on you, Senior Chief?”
“No, guess not. Wow. Well, all I can say is that I had no idea. I bet the other three guys didn’t either, right? Hey, wait a minute. Are you implying that one of our band guys had anything to do with the girl’s OD just because we were in her will?”
“Had crossed my mind. What I haven’t told you is that Shortchops Jackson gets the balance, something over three-point-five-million dollars.”
“That I don’t believe.”
“Believe it. Billy Ben earned millions and knew how to keep his cash.”
“What does Shortchops say about this?”
“I’d like to find out. We haven’t seen him or talked to him. He vanished the same night the girl had the overdose. You know where we can find him?”
“No idea. But you’re crazy if you think any of the other four of us had anything to do with that OD.”
“Where did you go during the break when you left the back room just after Shortchops and Joisette left?”
“So that’s it. I had the opportunity and now the motive. Sorry to bust up your case, but I went to the john. People have to do that, you know. And no, I don’t have any witnesses. I don’t need any help quite yet to take care of my own basic bodily functions. Now, if you don’t have any more sensible questions, I have work to do. We’re getting busy here today, so I’m signing off.”
The speaker on the SATCOM went dead.
“You must be through,” the Master Chief said to Petroff.
“Evidently. Trouble is, I don’t know a damned thing more now than when I came out here. Thanks, Master Chief MacKenzie. I still want to hear from you the minute Senior Chief Sadler hits your Quarterdeck.”
It was night. Mojombo Washington had twenty men crammed into the powerboat that had come down the river on low power to cut down on the noise. He pulled in at a small village fifteen miles north of Sierra City, and almost five miles upstream from where they usually landed with the boats.
The men formed into a column, and Mojombo led them out at an easy jog toward the city. At the first small village they borrowed two trucks that they promised to bring back before sunup. Both were small vans with twelve-foot-long bodies, which would hold a lot of goods.
They rode the rest of the way to the northern part of Sierra City, and left the trucks a block from their target. It was a large warehouse in a section not far from the river. Originally it had been used to keep merchandise and goods coming into the country via the river on small boats. Now it had been sealed, and there were two guards pacing in front of the big truck door.
Mojombo and his best marksman settled in the grass in the prone position and aimed their AK-47’s. Both were pleased with the field of fire and the one-hundred-yard distance.
“Do it,” Mojombo said, and they both fired. The sharp crack of the rifles jolted into the quiet night and stilled a dozen nighttime insects and a nighthawk in mid-cry. They waited a moment. Then a squad of six men rushed the building, dragged the dead guards out of the light, and opened the big door. The first truck was ready, and was backed into the warehouse. Then the door was closed. Two men took the place of the guards, using their weapons and hats. In the poor light outside, they were hard to tell from the government troops.
Inside the warehouse, the men turned on the lights, and Mojombo whistled in amazement. “He’s got everything here. Food, TV sets, video players, and cases of liquor.”
He did a quick survey and marked things to take. “All of the canned food, the packaged food. Anything we can eat,” he told the workers. The eighteen men rushed around loading the truck. To one side he found two new Honda 500cc motorcycles. He pushed them on board the truck himself. Most of what he saw he couldn’t use. Dozens of pieces of furniture, recliners, dining-room sets, bedroom sets. There was nothing perishable. He found a dozen five-gallon cans of gasoline. He took those for the bikes and his generator at the camp.
When the first truck was filled, they drove it out and backed in the second. Just then a jeep rounded a corner a block away. They pulled the door closed and waited. The men in the military jeep evidently were checking on the guards. The rig didn’t stop. The man in the front seat simply waved at the two soldiers in front of the warehouse walking their posts. Then the jeep drove on.
The men inside filled the second truck with more of the food.
“Should we burn it down?” Lieutenant Gabu asked Mojombo. The leader frowned. “No, all of this can be given to the people when we take over. Let’s leave it here. Let’s move out now.”
Mojombo’s second in command closed up the second truck. They looked outside, had a go from the two guards, and drove out, with the men inside and hanging on the sides and backs of the two trucks as they moved quietly through the dark streets north.
They drove to the end of the road at the ten-mile point from the city, and there the men began carrying the goods off the trail into the edge of the jungle, just out of sight. When everything was hidden, two men drove each truck back to the owners and thanked them with three cases of food each. Then they hiked back to the cache of food.
Mojombo took his men into the jungle another two hundred yards and let them go to sleep. They would be up at dawn to greet the people taking goods to market, telling them that when they came back there would be a surprise for them.
“It will be with the goodwill of the Bijimi Loyalist Party,” Mojombo told the people who began streaming by with their carts and wagons loaded with goods to sell at the open market.
Just after midday, some of the farmers began moving back up the trail. Mojombo stopped them, and his men piled cases of food on their empty carts and wagons and one small truck. He told them they could have one case for every three they delivered as far north as possible. The farmers were delighted.
“We will remember you, Mojombo,” one elderly farmer said. He had twelve cases of food on his horse cart. “We will help you however we can.”
One of Mojombo’s men went with every four groups taking food up the trail.
Just before nightfall, Mojombo’s men had moved more than two hundred cases of food up the trail. The carts were used up to the twenty-mile mark. Then it was a walking trail. They hid most of the food off the trail and carried the rest to their camp. The hidden food would be used as needed, or it would be taken downstream to their next camp when they moved toward the city.
At Camp Freedom, Mojombo went at once to the Vice President’s tent and found the strangers. All the men stood at once.
“I’m Lieutenant Commander Murdock,” one man said. “You must be Mojombo Washington. I’m glad to meet you. This man is my good right hand, Jaybird, and over there is our motorcycle specialist, Luke Howard.”
“Yes, I’m Washington, and I fully intend to lead my people out of this wilderness of graft, corruption, and murder the present government is riddled with. I want you and your SEALs to help me.”
“Our primary mission is to aid and protect the Vice President. I don’t imagine that you’d let us take him back down the trail tomorrow morning?”
“I can’t let you do that. As you see, I have the guns and the men to stop you. No sense in your dying here in a foreign land. I want you to listen to me. Hear the plans I have for my people. You already know about the murdering, rotten, criminal element we have running our nation. I want you to help me with some ideas and strategies so I can move into Sierra City and take over the government and hold free and honest elections.”