Chapter One
It was hours after midnight when the six men set off for their mission. Dressed in jungle fatigues, they moved in two dinghies, three to a boat. Their paddles sliced through the dark, swampy water as they moved farther along the near-pitch darkness of the river. Two men paddled in each boat while the third manned the front with an AK-47 assault rifle resting across a thigh.
Their leader, Bartholomew, a rugged, cold individual, crouched in front of the first boat, peering ahead. They passed several fishing boats and villages along the way, but the inhabitants were all indoors and asleep; no one took notice of them. Bartholomew thanked his luck. This was his mission from the start—one he knew he’d been destined to carry out. He’d personally hand-picked his men for the raid. They were tough, brutal, and merciless. They were all willing to go the distance with him toward shedding of blood, which was the purpose of this mission. Every man in his unit was sworn in blood to protect their land from being ridden into extinction by rapacious foreigners and conniving oil profiteers, the ones under the umbrella of the government responsible for raping their land. All other militant army groups had folded to the government’s laws and pressures, or fallen victim to their own capriciousness, but not them, the United Niger-Delta Brigade. Tonight, their action will justify to the world their unwillingness to cower from taking back what was theirs.
They came to the end of the brackish river, which opened into the expanse of the Bonny Estuary. Federal gunboats do patrol the area, but the decrease in militant activity since the previous year, when the government negotiated an armistice with the last remnants of militant rebels, had slackened their effort to the point of it being almost nonexistent. Budgetary cuts, too, had helped worsened their malaise. Bartholomew and his men took comfort in this; their attack would be a shocking surprise the likes of which no one would expect.
They followed the route of the tide, and three miles ahead entered an upstream river channel. They sighted their target—an oil jetty station, one of several located thirty miles from the city. The station stood on a wide concrete berth close to the river’s edge, a suitable location for small merchant ships coming from offshore oil production fields at Obudu, Ofon, and Amenam to unload their consignments—drilling rod pipes, cargo containers and generator equipments—before proceeding inbound toward Cape City or the shipyards located at Amadi Base. The nearest federal military base was stationed at Bonny—eighteen miles from the jetty—but the militants had the timing of their mission well set. It would take the authorities an hour or more to gather enough soldiers to respond to any threat occurring at this hour.
Bartholomew burned with raw hatred at the government, and everything it represented. All the years of growing up and watching his people being forced and beaten from their indigenous homestead to make way for the foreign companies to come and siphon their oil with them not having a say in the matter, of being chased by the navy gunboats, hiding whenever they sabotaged any oil pipelines with pittance effect had fueled within him the urgent call of taking the war to their enemy’s backyard, wanting them and the public to know what it feels to be afraid. He was confident he and his men would be gone before the military even showed up.
Bartholomew’s attention was focused on the large building situated twenty feet from the berth. From where he stood, he could make out a lone guard patrolling behind the wire-meshed gate of the compound; there were supposed to be two of them. He and his men had studied stolen blueprints of the building and knew where every office and door led, including the number of guards in the compound. Their target were some expatriate engineers residing in the building who had arrived two days prior to inspect some imported fuel pumps.
The militants hunkered in their boats as they approached the quay.
The lead boat came alongside the bushy coastline, away from the jetty’s bright lights. Bartholomew signaled his men to get ready. Each man appraised his weapon and flicked off the safety.
The six militants of the United Niger-Delta Brigade alighted and crept up the soggy ground until their feet touched dry land. They hid from the bright roving lights and scrambled across the concrete front of the quay, toward the east section of the complex. They were on enemy territory now. There was the distant throbbing sound of working generators that powered the complex building; everything else was quiet. Bartholomew led his men around the side of the compound toward the front gate where he had earlier spotted one of the patrolling guards. The gate was electrified; this they knew about already. They hid behind an embankment situated next to the compound and waited.
Bartholomew gave one of his men his assault rifle and took off his fatigue jacket and pants, which hid a blue coverall similar to one of any regular nightshift worker stationed at the jetty. He approached the gate and hissed at the lone patrol guard to catch his attention.
“Hey there, my man,” he lowered his voice as he called out in pidgin. The guard stopped and looked in his direction, his rifle slung behind his shoulder. He bore no alarm at seeing him. Bartholomew produced a hand-rolled cigarette from his coverall’s hip pocket. “How you dey manage? Me, I just dey fall in for night shift. Abeg, you fit assist me with lighter or matches?”
The guard seemed to contemplate for a moment then came forward, muttering under his breath. Bartholomew saw fatigue in the guard’s demeanor, no sign of being suspicious as to his presence, and knew he wouldn’t be a problem. The guard got to the gate and unearthed a set of keys to unlock it. Bartholomew entered the compound, still holding his cigarette in front of him, while his other hand held a pistol with a silencer behind his back. The guard was checking his pockets for a lighter and didn’t see the gun pointed at him. Bartholomew shot him twice. Aside from the dull phut–phut cough of the silencer, the only other sound was that of the guard grunting before falling to the ground dead; his lighter clattered beside his leg. Bartholomew scooped the guard up by his armpits, his eyes darting everywhere as he dumped the body inside the empty security house beside the gate. He glanced around, making sure he was in the clear before waving his men over. He shut the gate after his men hurried inside the compound and took back his assault rifle.
A cobbled pathway led to the three-floor company building; three white trucks were parked beside the front entrance. Bartholomew and his men huddled behind one of them. He could see through the glass-fronted door of the building into the lobby; there weren’t any guards positioned there. He sent two of his men to scout around the building for the other patrolling guard. They returned two minutes later and reported no sight of him.
Bartholomew decided to chance it. He and his men approached the front door of the building’s lobby, and he held it open for his men to slip inside. Past the lobby was a wide corridor with numerous offices, all of which would be locked and deserted. A center stairwell led to the second and third floor; the nightshift workers were quartered on the second, while the expatriates on the third. Lambs gathered together, waiting to be slaughtered.
“It’s time, my brothers. Time to make our people proud.” Bartholomew whispered to his men.
The six-man team divided. Bartholomew took two of his men and signaled the other three to take care of the nightshift workers. He crept up the stairs leading to the third floor with his men trailing behind, cradling their weapons.
The sound of gun fire coming from the second floor was instantaneous, sounding like exploding firecrackers, and reverberated around the building. Bartholomew and his men had just stepped off the stairs onto the third floor landing when a door down the left corridor opened and one of the expatriate engineers—a middle-aged Briton who’d been finding it hard to fall asleep—stepped out wearing a shirt and a pair of briefs. He was the first to see the armed militants and only had time to mutter “Dear God” in shock, before catching a hail of bullets fired from Bartholomew’s assault rifle.
The bullets tore through the Briton’s torso and limbs like a razor. The force of the bullets threw him against the far wall before falling to the ground.
Another door opened just as Bartholomew and his men rushed forward, their hearts beating with adrenaline and excitement as one by one, they emptied their magazine rounds at the engineers.
An alarm sounded as Bartholomew took one last look at the other dead corpses his men had killed, lying sprawled on their beds. He and his men returned to the second floor, leaving behind a scene of death. The second floor bore similar deathly scene as the one upstairs. They met with their other colleagues and trooped down the stairs together.
The second guard whom the militants had failed to spot, having sounded off the building’s alarm, entered the building doorway with his rifle drawn, afraid. One of Bartholomew’s men racing down the stairs saw him in time and opened fire. The guard screamed aloud as bullets tore into his flesh, some of it shattering the glass doorway. The guard crumpled to the ground and Bartholomew and his men raced past him out of the building. They ran down the quay toward the direction they had come. They jumped into their boats and started paddling back the way they had come. The sound of the alarm grew fainter, so too the sight of the jetty.
An hour later after they’d gotten lost in one of the tributary rivers and were safe on dry land, Bartholomew slapped his men’s shoulders, congratulating them on a job well done. They laughed and joked about their kill. They had accomplished what no militant group had dare attempt before—murder a group of foreigners. He could just picture the headlines once news of their action become known to the world in the morning.
As dawn broke and a horde of taskforce military soldiers with emergency vehicles descended upon the oil building, the smell of gun smoke, dead bodies, and blood was what they saw. Two guards, four nightshift workers, and three expatriates were found dead. One of them was Italian, and the other two British.
The taskforce army sealed off the compound upon their arrival. Their movement awoke inhabitants of nearby villages. The news hit the streets and airwaves of Bonny and Cape City with mind-numbing shock, all the way to the seat of government in Aso Rock. Reporters raced to the scene in droves, setting up camp in and around the confines of the port, scrambling for anyone with further insight into the tragedy. Military ambulances arrived to claim the bodies and were accorded full escort to Cape City.
In a quiet neighborhood in Cape City, Kingsley Azobi sat with his wife, Hillary, watching the 9:00 P.M. news as further details into the diabolical action unfolded. All over the city, almost everyone attentively watched the chief inspector-general of Cape City Police give a quick statement to a cluster of reporters regarding the raid; nothing was said regarding who was responsible for the massacre, but without a doubt, everyone knew it was the work of militants. Which group responsible was yet to be ascertained.
Kingsley was just under six feet. Early forties, slender with intense features.
“My God,” Hillary moaned against his arm. “This is horrible. You’d think we’d be done with these militant crazies already. Who do you think could have done it?” she asked him.
“Hard to say. There’s so many break-out factions, all of them staking their infamous claim, it’s hard to keep up with them.”
“They’ve degenerated into evil. They’ve gone from sabotaging oil installations to murdering armed soldiers, and now foreigners.”
“They’ve learned the hard way, I guess.”
“They’ve gone insane, that’s what they’ve learned. Didn’t the government grant them some form of armistice?”
Kingsley nodded. “All a bunch of words and no substance. Half of these militants are kids, young illiterate punks who want money and nothing to do with education. The government came up with that armistice crap because they just don’t know how or what or to do. Their options are useless.”
“The military will find them,” Hillary affirmed. “They can’t murder innocent people and expect not to be caught.”
“That what happens when men start loving guns,” Kingsley murmured. “They become almost invincible.”
He was staring at the TV screen, but his eyes saw beyond it. He saw a younger version of himself armed like a militant years before the word ever existed in the Nigerian lexicon. He and his vigilante squad were robbing banks, murdering public officials, and selling weapons to whoever afforded the price.
Hillary shook his arm. “Honey, are you okay?”
Kingsley looked at her. His eyes were still faraway, still looking at his past, and it took another arm shake before he awoke in the present. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. I said this was bound to happen, Hillary. This is just the beginning.”
In an office located in an undisclosed government building in the heart of central London, two senior officials from the Foreign Office were having a chitchat regarding the Niger-Delta turmoil in Nigeria. A month had passed since the jetty massacre, and both men were formulating a reckless and daring plan they reckoned would take advantage of what was happening in the turbulent oil region. The decision wasn’t a unanimous one amongst their peers, some seeing it as a bit over-gallant and utterly preposterous. Yet matters had successively pushed the idea forward amidst grumblings from other higher offices.
“It’s quite obvious when you look at it from the easy side, from our side.” Sir Edward Mulberry remarked to his colleague, Harrington. “A single asset is what’s required. We need a man on the ground to be our eyes and ears, and if possible, our principle. Other than that, I can’t see otherwise.”
He stood before one of the large, bulletproofed windows and gazed down at the afternoon London streets with his hands clasped behind his back. He thought he looked like an ebullient Churchill in this mode. Mulberry would have been pleased beyond anything to be compared to such a man.
The sky outside was turning bleak; an onslaught of rain was soon to fall upon the city he loved and cherished. Mulberry despised the weather on such occasions. He despised anything taking away a bright-looking day such as this and turning it into a rain-soaked one.
“I told those buggers upstairs that all that we need is one soldier,” he continued. “Ingenious and ruthless enough to get what needs to be done. Unless, of course, we’re missing the big picture.”
The big picture, yes, that always was a conundrum. Where the might of British clandestine affairs began and where they ended in the world. Mulberry was such a fan of the British Empire of yore. How it was that Britain’s indefatigable stand in world affairs had reached an all-time low since canoodling with the Americans to get rid of Saddam Hussein was too much for him to comprehend. It was a sanctity that needed to be addressed. Something that was lacking in Britain’s might since her Majesty’s armed forces took the Falklands.
Hugh Harrington, his deputy, closest friend, and confidante, sat in front of his desk, staring at the back of his boss’s frame. He was a student to his boss’s sagacious words. He knew when to step in and when to enter into his intuitive conversation, such as Mulberry was having now.
“I think so, too,” Harrington agreed. “As long as he doesn’t get exposed. We’re taking quite a risk.”
“Risk,” Mulberry scoffed. “Such is the price you pay for something bigger than we both are, my friend.”
“I suppose so.”
Harrington pinched his cufflinks out of his jacket. He prided himself on being a meticulous chap with a dapper, charming personality. Blessed with the prominent features of a would-be Hollywood star, now in his early forties he was a suave politician under the Tory umbrella, fond of the glitzy flash of a reporter’s camera, unlike his boss who was the near opposite. Mulberry was in his late fifties, taciturn and difficult and easily irritated when it came to office politics and wheeling and dealing.
“Our Americans aren’t going to find it funny if they get wind of this,” said Harrington. “You are aware of that, of course.”
“True.” Mulberry pursed his lips and turned away from the window. “This will remain a closed-office affair. Ears and eyes only and few people included. I can’t stand any bloody meetings concerning this. The Americans have got their own problems than to worry about us, I believe.”
Harrington reached for a file on his boss’s desk that contained old newspaper clippings, fragmentary surveillance reports, and photos. He picked one of the photos and admired the features of the man on it. He had gone through the contents of the file over and over and knew everything by heart.
“He’s got quite a history, this Nigerian fellow. I’m still surprised all of this went unnoticed.”
“Not Interpol’s fault. He was small pickings at the time, and still is. A good thing he steered clear of the UK.”
“You’re still sure this could very well be our man?”
“I know it as well as I know my own heart.” Mulberry returned to his chair facing the large desk. “He’s been off the radar for years now, living the family life. Still, he can be of some use to us. With the right type of persuasion, I think he’ll fold.”
“That’s if he’ll fold,” Harrington countered. “You’ve never dealt with Nigerians before, but I have. Intelligent and tenacious, especially when their backs are against the wall. He’ll take some effort to convince, if not a lot.”
“Two choices, Hugh. We either get him to be polite, or we twist his tail and burn him, which we’ll eventually do once this is over. Personally, I’m more in favor of a twist. He’s going to put up a fight. If I’m in the bastard’s shoes, I definitely will.”
“It’s going to be a hard sell. Something our asset will need to be careful about.”
Mulberry shrugged. “A good lad he is—our asset, I mean. I’ve read his dossier and seen what he’s capable of doing. I think he’ll make things happen.”
“Has he being briefed?”
Mulberry smiled approvingly. “Even as we speak. Downing Street doesn’t want to know about it until it is successful, and I want it that way. Quiet and smooth. In the event that things don’t work out, our asset will make sure nothing else does.”
Harrington closed the file and dropped it back on the table. Such is how secret wars are begun.
