You told me that there was some trouble, but you never told me that it was blown up.”
All eyes shifted to Kotto, who squirmed under the sudden spotlight. “I wasn’t keeping it from you, Edwin. I was just waiting for the appropriate moment to tell you. I didn’t want to tell you on the phone. We’ve already discussed the danger of that. Besides, I wanted to design a backup plan and have it in place before I broke the news to you. I figured it would ease the shock of it all.”
“Actually, it did quite the opposite. Instead of having time to make preparations, I am now forced to deal with everything at once. The Plantation, the missing slaves, the murdered guards! That is a bloody lot to recover from.”
“I see that now. But obviously I couldn’t have foreseen the incident at Ibadan. There was no way of knowing that they would find us so quickly.”
Drake winced at the statement. “What do you mean by
? Who are
?”
“They,” Holmes answered, “would be Jonathon Payne and David Jones. They single-handedly wiped out the Plantation. Once I heard the details of Ibadan, I assumed that they were behind that as well.”
“I really doubt that,” Drake uttered. “Maybe they were behind things at the Plantation-you were there, so you would know-but I don’t see how they could’ve handled the Ibadan massacre. There was a variety of shell casings found, not just from one weapon but from several. And unless these are the type of men that would tote five weapons apiece, they couldn’t have done it alone. They needed plenty of help to pull that off.”
“Damn,” Holmes mumbled under his breath. “I hope . . .”
“What?” Kotto demanded. “What do you hope?”
Holmes glanced at Kotto, then at Greene, and both of them were surprised by the look in his eyes. The air of confidence that used to ooze from Holmes was gone. No longer did he carry himself like he was invincible. In fact, his face seemed to suggest fear.
“I hope I’m wrong about this, but this sounds like the MANIACs.”
THE semitropical landscape gave the soldiers many hiding places as they made their way across Kotto’s yard. They had already eliminated a few of his guards and several of his security cameras; now they were going for his power supply. Once the electricity was cut, they would storm the house under a cloak of darkness.
“What can you see?” Payne asked Sanchez through his headset.
The captain of the MANIACs was in the midst of an infrared scan of the house, trying to determine the current number of occupants. When he was through, he lowered the high-tech device and spoke into his radio.
“I can’t see anyone, sir. It’s like the place is empty.”
“No one?”
“That’s affirmative, sir.”
Payne and Jones winced, trying to figure out where everyone was. The house had been under surveillance for the last several hours, so they knew there should be people. A lot of people.
Jones whispered, “If you can’t see anyone upstairs, scan the basement. Maybe there’s someone down there.”
“I’ll try, but the moat around the house might interfere. It doesn’t see well through water.”
Payne crept closer to the house, trying to stay as low as possible. There was no sense risking his life before they knew if Ariane was inside. “Try closer to the drawbridge. The water might be shallower there.”
“You got it.”
Payne and Jones waited patiently while Sanchez attempted to get a better reading. After more than a minute of scanning, he gave them the bad news.
“He’s got something in the basement, but I can’t get a readout on this thing. It might be a vault or a bomb shelter of some kind, but whatever it is, it’s too thick for me to see through.”
“Keep us posted if anything changes.”
“I will.”
After switching channels on his radio, Payne tried to get an update from Shell, who was in charge of knocking out Kotto’s power lines with a small explosion. He remained silent until the device was set and he had repositioned himself in the nearby trees.
Once there, Shell turned his radio to an all-inclusive frequency and spoke to the entire squad, using the tone and mannerisms of a commercial airline pilot.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your lieutenant speaking. In exactly thirty seconds, we will be experiencing some violent turbulence, so I would advise you to prepare your night vision and put your firearms into their locked and loaded positions.” Shell smiled to himself before finishing. “And as always, thank you for choosing the MANIACs.”
Twenty … fifteen . . . ten . . . five . . . BOOM!
The earth shook as the explosion ripped through the power station, tearing the generator to shreds in one blinding burst of heat and light. Payne and Jones were tempted to glance at the display of sparks but realized it would ruin their night vision for the next several minutes. So they waited patiently, until the shower of orange light subsided and Kotto’s entire estate fell under the blanket of darkness.
When the moment felt right, Payne pushed the button on his transmitter and growled into the microphone. “Gentlemen, don’t let me down.”
With phenomenal quickness and stealth, the soldiers converged on the stone mansion and crawled across the structure’s moat in groups of two and three, using wooden boards that they carried with them. Windows, doors, and skylights were points of entry, and the MANIACs breached them effortlessly in a series of textbook military maneuvers.
“So far, so good,” Payne muttered as he watched the assault from Kotto’s yard. “I’d like to be inside, though, where all the action is.”
Jones nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, but there’s no way you could’ve climbed over the moat with that arm of yours. And you know it.”
“Actually, I
know it. I think if I was given the chance, I could’ve-”
Jones squeezed his friend’s injured biceps in order to prove his point.
“Jesus!” he grunted in agony. “You didn’t have to do that!”
But Payne was thankful that Jones had, because it reminded him that he’d made the correct decision by sitting this one out. If he hadn’t, he would’ve slowed down the team, and that was something he wasn’t willing to risk. At this point the only thing that mattered to Payne was Ariane, and everything else-his soldierly pride, his lust for action, and his desire for revenge-paled in comparison.
“I hope you realize there’s no reason to feel guilty. We’ve accomplished more in the last week than anyone, including myself, could’ve ever imagined.”
Payne didn’t respond, choosing to keep his attention on the mission instead.
“Plus, you set a good example for the squad by letting them take over. A man has to know his limits, and when he reaches them, he shouldn’t be ashamed to ask for help.”
“I know that. In fact, I might ask for some more help right now.”
“Really?” The comment surprised Jones. “Why’s that?”
Payne took a moment to adjust his night vision, then calmly pointed over Jones’s left shoulder. “If I’m not mistaken, I think our targets might’ve found a way out of the house.”
Jones turned in the direction of Payne’s finger and had a hard time believing what he saw. Levon Greene was standing outside Kotto’s iron fence, helping Octavian Holmes climb out of a well-concealed passageway-a tunnel that wasn’t mentioned on the blueprints Jones had downloaded from a local database.
“Get on the comm,” Payne said, “and tell Sanchez to send half the team out to secure the periphery. Have the others continue their sweep for the slaves, but warn them about the tunnel. I don’t want Greene doubling back inside if we can help it.”
Jones nodded as he reached for the radio. “And while I do this, what are you going to do?”
