Kincaid dropped the running end of the fast rope, which was coiled around a length of firewood, out the door. The thick, braided line uncoiled down to the roof of the wheelhouse and snaked around violently, whipped by the rotor wash. Janson took it in his rope gloves, clutched it to his body after running it between his thighs and around his right calf. Assault rifle hanging from a strap over his shoulder, barrel down, face turned aside, he swung away and slid down, controlling his descent on the rough surface by squeezing the line in his gloves. His weight straightened the rope. Sixty feet under the helicopter he landed on the roof.
Kincaid tipped the heavy RIB pack out the door and lowered it with the electric cable winch. Janson guided it to the deck beside him, signaled for her to crank the cable up, then steadied the fast rope for Jessica. She came down in three seconds and touched lightly beside him. He signaled the pilot to go up, and let the rope ease out of his hands.
They climbed down the ladder behind the house, stepped into the wheelhouse, and greeted their reluctant hosts.
* * *
THE CAPTAIN WAS so nervous that his small store of English deserted him. His first mate, a Congolese, spoke no English at all. Janson’s French was not up to the task. Kincaid took over and the captain quickly calmed down.
“Nicely done,” said Janson. “How’d you get him smiling?”
“He likes my French accent. He thinks I live in Paris. He wants to have dinner next time we’re both in the city. But we’ve got a problem. There’s a U.S. Coast Guard cutter patrolling between us and Isle de Foree.”
“I’ve been watching him on the radar,” Janson replied. The screen beside the silent helmsman showed a large ship twelve miles to the west. They had not seen her through the haze from the helicopter.
“What’s our Coast Guard doing six thousand miles from home?”
“Must be part of the Africa Partnership Station, maintaining a ‘persistent presence,’ as they call it. In other words, showing the flag in the oil patch.”
“Yeah, well, the captain’s concerned they’ll board us. Particularly if they spotted our helicopter on their radar. He wants to stash us in a hidey-hole down in the engine room.”
“Ask him where are the gunrunners?”
“Already hiding.”
Janson nodded to the captain and said to Jessica, “Assure the captain that we, too, have no desire to explain our presence to the United States Coast Guard. Tell him we’ll hide if the cutter decides we’re a Vessel of Interest. Let’s hump the boat undercover.”
The captain ordered seamen to help and they got the RIB pack onto the main deck under a blue tarp. The radar target drew nearer. At eight miles the cutter appeared as a light dot on the horizon. At five miles she raised a tall, knife-like narrow silhouette. At four miles a helicopter took off from her, circled out around them, and went back.
Then the cutter radioed a boarding hail identifying herself as the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Dallas, asserting their authority under the African Partnership Station. The captain answered requests for his ship’s name, cargo, port of departure, and destination.
Janson could hear chatter on the cutter’s bridge. It sounded like a lot of people were gathered around the radio. The captain muttered to Kincaid, who translated, “He says it’s probably just an exercise—they’ve got local sailors visiting.”
The Dallasannounced their intention to board and requested the captain to heave to.
“ Merde!” said the captain.
“ Merdefor sure,” said Janson “All right, let’s check out the hidey-hole.”
They put on their packs. The Congolese first mate led the way, down four deck levels of stairs, at the bottom of which he swung a heavy door on the deafening roar of two three-thousand-horsepower 16-cylinder Electro-Motive Diesel engines. He led them through the engine room and out the back into a quieter, dimly lit tween-decks space. Halfway to the stern, he rapped his knuckles on a gray-painted bulkhead, waited thirty seconds, and rapped again. The bulkhead, which appeared to be an immovable slab of steel welded to scantlings, slid aside with a grinding of metal on metal. Janson was relieved to see that the gunrunners knew their business.
Two men stepped into the light, a black Angolan and a mulatto South African.
“What is this?” asked the South African in nasal English. His eyes widened at the sight of Jessica Kincaid, who had stepped back and drawn a pistol to cover Janson.
“Room for two more?” asked Janson.
“Are you the bloody American mercs?”
“We are the bloody American mercs,” said Janson. “You are our bloody highly paid guides, Agostinho Kiluanji and Augustus Heinz. And the bloody Coast Guard is boarding. Why don’t we continue this conversation undercover?”
The Congolese mate who supposedly spoke no English nodded emphatically.
The South African asked, “Any chance of the crumpet putting away the artillery?”
“Soon as we are all inside.” Janson stepped past them into a gleaming stainless-steel chamber six feet in diameter and thirty feet long. He realized it was a tank originally installed to transport drilling mud.
“Clear!” he called to Kincaid. It was just the two men and a heap of gear, no one else holding a weapon. She and they stepped inside. The door slid shut with a clang that echoed. A single electric lantern provided light.
* * *
THE CONVERTED OSV stopped briefly ten miles offshore to hoist first the gunrunners’ heavily laden rigid inflatable and then Janson and Kincaid’s smaller RIB over the side. Then, as the ship hurried on toward Porto Clarence, Janson and Kincaid and Agostinho Kiluanji and Augustus Heinz paid out a long line between their boats so they would not get separated in the dark and motored toward the invisible coast. They navigated with handheld GPSs, but with no lights marking the channels, Janson and Kincaid would have to rely on the experienced gunrunners ahead to find their way in the swampy mouth of the shallow river.
The shore was dark, devoid of lights, apparently uninhabited, which was to be expected, as 90 percent of the population lived in Porto Clarence. The outboard motors were relatively quiet at moderate speed and their noise would be blown away from the shore by the land breeze descending from the mountainous interior, but not quiet enough to hear surf pounding the beach. Instead, the warning they were near came in the form of the seas steepening as the water grew shallow. Janson shortened up the line, while Kincaid drove, until the lead boat was only a few meters ahead and he could see the silhouettes of the men steering for the river.
Suddenly they could hear the surf. The water grew violent, tossing the rubber boat, and just as suddenly the sound moved to either side. They were inside the mouth. The gunrunners throttled back, quieting their motor. Kincaid followed suit, swearing quietly under her breath as she shoved the motor left and right, trying to follow the twisting route of the boat ahead. Then they were under trees, out of the wind, and the warm air grew warmer and gathered like soap on the skin. Mosquitos descended, buzzing angrily around the repellant they had slathered on their necks and faces.
Pale lights shone through the trees—oil lamps, Janson guessed by their yellowish glow. If their owners heard the mutter of the slow-turning outboards, they did not come closer to investigate. After what his carefully shielded GPS showed was a mile of movement inland, the boat ahead stopped and the engine went silent. Kincaid immediately choked their engine. In the quiet they heard insects sing and then the hollow grating sound of rubber on gravel as the boats drifted into a bank.
Moving quickly, they pulled the boats inside a cave-like space that the gunrunners had cut under mangrove knees that arched into the water. Janson sensed more than saw men waiting there and for an awful split second thought they’d been discovered. Instead, whispered greetings were exchanged and the men started unloading the gunrunners’ boat.