“Yeah.” Christine nodded, her eyes thoughtful. “And between the aerostat radar, my recon drones, and the British patrol helicopters, we can probably spot any shift of Union naval westward in time to head them off at the pass.”
“Exactly. And with the Union navy out of the way, we can turn the Guinea East barrier patrol over to the Guinean navy and Maritime police. We’ve got a chance now, Chris. For the first time, we’ve really got a chance.” Reaching across to the stack of intelligence hard copy, Amanda selected and opened the first folder.
“It’s going to be a whole new ball game,” she continued, flipping open the file, “and we’ve got to develop a whole new mission profile to deal with these smugglers of yours.”
Christine tilted her head and examined her friend’s face. “Uh, that’s all well and good, boss ma’am. But fa’sure, don’t you think that getting horizontal and catching a few zees might also be in order?”
Amanda chuckled softly. “Oh, I daresay it would. But I need at least an outline of a valid search and intercept doctrine for Frenchside, and I need it by that O Group meeting this noon. I want our people out there and hunting effectively by tonight. We’ve given Belewa one shock already, and I intend to give him another nasty surprise just as soon as I can. You go ahead and turn in. I want to tinker with this for a while.”
Christine sighed. Rising, she went to the small corner table that held Amanda’s one-burner hot plate and put on water for tea. Returning to her deskside chair, she reached for a second file. “Okay, I think the place we should start is with the primary Union reception and departure points…”
The Union army helicopter settled onto its skids at the edge of the wasteland. Its two passengers disembarked and carefully began picking their way into the cratered and smoldering devastation.
A scattering of others were present. Army sappers posting warning flags around unexploded munitions. Aid men carrying in bodies and pieces of bodies. Union navy survivors, shocked and trembling and not yet quite believing that they had indeed survived.
Obe Belewa and Sako Atiba paused beside the crushed and riddled hulk of a Boghammer gunboat, blown a full two hundred feet away from the water’s edge.
“You were right, Obe,” Atiba said quietly. “She is a witch.”
Hands on hips, Belewa scanned the ruins of the naval base. “No, Sako,” he replied after a few moments. “For us, she is something far, far worse. She’s a warrior.”
And the new war began.
A war not of guns and missiles but of guile and wile, of invention and unconventionality, of slender dark hulls slinking through the night and a handful of vigilant and sleepless hunters.
“Okay, Johnny Bull Lead, he’s just about a quarter mile off your nose. Bearing 310 degrees true.”
The whup-whup-whup of helicopter rotors sounded in Christine Rendino’s headset, backdropping the voice of the British aviator. “Acknowledge that, Floater. We do have a young-fella-me-lad out there. Single man in a small pirogue. Moving in.”
Seated at her workstation in the TACNET trailer, Christine shifted the aerostat radar display to tactical ranging. Contentedly munching a Milky Way bar, she watched as the transponder hack of the Royal Navy Merlin crawled closer to the anonymous blip centered in the screen.
“Over the little bugger now, Floater. I say again, single party, very small boat. Looks to be just a fisherman. If he’s smuggling any petrol, he must be carrying it in a hip flask. You sure this is the chap we’re looking for?”
Christine activated a second display screen. For the past two hours she and her people had been monitoring a raft of Côte d’Ivoire fishing craft working the waters just short of the Union’s territorial waters. Now she called up and replayed the recorded radar imaging from those past two hours, running it at fast forward. Among the Brownian motion of the circling fishing boats, one blip stood out. At the enhanced replay speed, it could be seen following a meandering but intent course to the northwest and toward the borderline.
“Roger that, Johnny Bull. This is the dude we want. Are you sure there isn’t anything unusual at all about that boat?”
“Now that you mention it, Floater, the chap does have a whacking big motor on that thing for the size of the craft.”
“All right! Here we go! Betcha this guy is playing tugboat. Spiral slowly outward from his position and vertical search. I suspect you will find a pretty present.”
“Rog, Floater. Doin’ it.”
Christine took another bite of her candy bar and awaited developments.
“Right you were, Floater,” Dane’s pleased words came back a few minutes later. “Four oil drums, ballasted to float just under the surface. We’re hovering down over them now. Our lad must have cast off his tow when we popped over the horizon.”
“Too bad. He’s not hands-on with the stuff. We don’t get to bust this guy.”
“But he doesn’t get to make his deliveries, either. My door gunner is preparing to open the tins now.”
The sound of four short, precise machine-gun bursts leaked back over the circuit.
“Good heavens, Floater, I do believe the rude fellow is making a gesture.”
“Hey, Scrounge, what did you find over there?”
“Looks like about forty jerricans of diesel under the deck boards, and a dozen cases of motor oil.”
“Does the Captain have an explanation for it?”
“Yeah, Chief. He says it’s all for his personal use. He says he’s going up the coast to visit his mother.”
“Where’s his friggin’ mother live? Norway?”
Lounging in the side hatch of the Queen of the West, Stone Quillain eyed the deck of the heavily laden pinasse as it drifted alongside. Cases of brown bottles jammed its narrow deck, hundreds of cases.
“Howdebody, Captain,” the pinasse’s skipper called cheerfully from the tiller station at the stern.
“Real good, son,” Quillain called back. “Where you from and where you bound?”
“Half Cavalla, just short of Frenchside. Goin’ up to Fishtown for the coast trade. No law against that.”
“Depends on your cargo, son. What you carrying?”
“Nothin’ but beer, Captain. No law against beer. We make it good beer in Half Cavalla. You want a case?”
Quillain shook his head. “Thank you kindly for the offer, but no thanks. But tell you what. Since it’s a hot day out here and all, and you’re working so hard and everything, why don’t you drink one for us.”
The Union boatman grinned back and stepped up to the rear tier of stacked cases, reaching for a bottle. However, as the bottle came up, so did Quillain’s shotgun.
“Uh, not one of those, son. Why don’t you take a bottle from one of them cases up forward there.” Braced against the Marine’s hip, the barrel of the Mossberg described an arc and pointed like a grim and insistent finger.
The grin froze on the face of the boatman. Hesitantly, he went forward and selected a bottle. As he popped the cap off, the “beer” displayed a decided lack of effervescence.
“That’s it, son. You just take a big old drink now.”
Resolutely, the Union boatman lifted the bottle to his lips. Bubbles appeared within the container, the boatman’s cheeks bulged, and then came the explosive retch that ended the charade. He collapsed to the low rail of his craft, vomiting helplessly. The stench of gasoline and gastric distress issued across the few feet of water that separated the pinasse and the hovercraft.