Platt realized that if he hadn’t stopped, he might have run right into them, and with four guns against his one, that could have been real bad–especially if they had seen him first, which they would have probably done, since they were looking and he wasn’t.
He hadn’t figured on a border patrol.
He revised his opinion up a little. Maybe these jungle bunnies were sharper than he’d thought. Bad idea to underestimate the other side.
After the truck had time to get a couple of miles away, he went back to the Rover. Better take it slow and careful from here on in.
He figured he needed to get fairly close to the city, then find himself a place to hide the Rover, “cause he’d need it to leave. And he’d have to hole up for a day, until tomorrow night, because he definitely didn’t want to be moving around during the day, disguise or not. Tuesday night, good and dark, he’d mosey on in and do his business.
As he drove through a field of high grass, the damp and heavy air rumbled with distant thunder. He could smell the approaching rain.
Oh, good. A storm, just what he needed to slow him down even more.
On the other hand, a thunderstorm would probably keep the local militia inside drinking bull pee or whatever it was they drank, and that would be good.
He wasn’t lookin” to get shot if he could help it.
He wiped sweat away from his forehead with the back of his right hand.
Damn, but it was muggy here.
He saw a cloud of mosquitoes or flies or some thing buzzing in the air ahead of him, and he reached for the bug dope spray in the bag on the passenger seat. Be another good thing the rain would do, keep the bugs down. All he needed was to catch sleeping sickness or malaria or elephantitis from all this crap.
No two ways about it, he was gonna take a little more than the twenty million when he talked to Hughes. He sure had it coming.
Monday, January 17th, 9 P.m. In the air over the Atlantic Ocean “Banjul, huh?” Joanna said.
Seated next to her in the seat of the team’s 747, Fernandez said, “Yep. It’s in The Gambia, kind of an insert around the Gambia River, runs right into the lower half of Senegal. A little farther away than we wanted, right on the coast, but it’s the only airport south of Dakar where we can put this bird down and not be noticed. The Company has a store there-we’re switching to a couple of Hueys for the rest of the trip.
So we’ll go in at treetop level Tuesday night, land, do our thing, then come out. It worked great on that Chechnya caper, it sure ought to work out here in darkest Guinea-Bissau. I don’t think their radar is exactly state-of-the-art. Even if they see us, they don’t have much to throw at us or chase us with.” “Heads up, here comes the colonel,” Joanna whispered.
“Sir,” Fernandez said as John Howard stopped next to their seats.
“Sergeant, Lieutenant.” Howard looked at them for a couple of seconds, then smiled.
. “Something funny, sir?” Fernandez said.
“Not really. You know that joke you were remembering when I called you on the way back from Washington State?
The one you laughed at?” “I remember.” “I do believe I get it now, Sergeant Carry on.” After the colonel left, Joanna looked at Fernandez.
“What was that all about?” Fernandez grinned widely.
“I expect the colonel knows that you and I have been, ah… intimate.” “How would he know that? You bragging?” “No, ma’am, as proud as I am of it, I didn’t say a word.
But I’ve been working for the man for a long time. He doesn’t have a dull edge, and he knows me too well. Any time a man feels as good as I do, it shows. And I expect that it shows more when you’re around, seeing as how you’re the reason, Is this a problem?” “Not for me. In fact, I’m going to take a run to the head.
You want to come along?” She waggled her eyebrows like Graucho Marx in an old black-and-white movie.
“You know, you are an evil woman. Lieutenant Winthrop, teasing a man that way.” “You don’t know the half of it. Sergeant. I’m just getting warmed up with you. Besides, who said I was teasing?” “Brought your wavy knife, I see,” Alex said.
Toni looked up and nodded. She had the kris in its wooden scabbard on her lap.
“Guru is convinced the kris is magic. I figured it wouldn’t hurt.” He nodded, then said, “I’m just going to have a few words with the colonel. Looks like everything is on schedule. We’ll be at the airport in a few more hours.
We’ll transfer stuff to helicopters there, then on to the target.” “You couldn’t talk the colonel into letting you go into the city on the mission, could you?” He smiled, shook his head.
“No. And the truth is, I’m not unhappy with us staying with the pilots at the copters until they get back. My recent success as a soldier in the field was more luck than skill. This is what Howard and his team do. I don’t want to get in the way.” “We could stay in Banjul,” she said.
“Do that, and we might as well have stayed in Washington.” “Didn’t I say that in the first place?” “Yep. But look, we came this far, we might as well go along for the ride.” “As long as we both go along for the ride,” she said.
He smiled at her.
So far, he hadn’t said anything to her about that other thing she had said. The “I love you” part. It had seemed the right thing to her at the time, but after she had done it, she’d been almost sick with fear. They had kissed each other for a few minutes in the front seat of a very small car, that was all. It was maybe too early to be hitting him with some thing that heavy.
What if he didn’t feel anything for her other than lust?
She knew that was there, there wasn’t any way to hide the evidence of that. And she wanted it, sex with him, and she would settle for that, for now, but she also wanted a lot more.
Then again, he hadn’t said anything about it, and that meant he hadn’t rejected it either. Or maybe he hadn’t even heard it.
No news was good news–or at least it wasn’t bad news.
She wouldn’t push it. She would see what happened. The magic in the kris had gotten her this far. Maybe it would help take her the rest of the way.
Chapter 39 Tuesday, January 18th, 6 p.m.
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
Domingos had some pressing state business he had to attend to–probably a ribbon cutting at a new bodega or some thing-so Hughes enjoyed his cigar and brandy in solitude. Well, save for the brief appearance of a messenger who informed him that the five o’clock plane had come, and that once again Platt was not on it.
This was worrisome. Platt certainly wanted his money, and the only reason Hughes could imagine that he hadn’t hurried here to collect it was that some thing had prevented him from doing so. And the only things that came to mind that were capable of stopping Platt from doing anything were serious injury, death, or being arrested. And Platt hadn’t called, another thing that bothered Hughes.
What if somehow Platt had run afoul of the law? What if he had been captured?
Hughes held the cigar in his mouth without puffing on it.
He had considered this before, of course, although he had to admit to himself he hadn’t really thought it likely.
And even if he had been caught, Hughes did not think Platt would say anything about their venture; it would hardly be in his best interest to do so. Still, what if somehow he was made to speak? If the feds had Platt, and if they had squeezed him, then that would alter Hughes’s plans considerably.
Going back to the U.s. would be out of the question. As soon as he stepped off the plane, the feds would swoop down on him like a hawk on a chicken, and he’d be in real trouble.
What to do?
The least risky proposition was simply to sit tight. Wait until Platt showed up here, or called. If he didn’t do either in the next week or so, Hughes would have to risk some long distance research and see if he could figure out what had happened to his operative. If Platt was in a hospital from a car wreck or some such, or even dead, well, so much the better.