Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

1

Niger, Africa

Present Day

The long convoy of armed Toyota pickups loaded with Nigerian troops raced north in a line through the desert on a hardpacked road bracketed by thick stands of gnarled acacia trees. A howling wind clouded the air with fine powdery sand, red as rust in the late-afternoon sun.

The column was still three hours away from the village where the regional commander of the Islamic State faction was reportedly hiding. The Nigerian soldiers were far beyond the safety of their fortified base, but they were coming in force. The local fighters were armed with little more than AKs and rode air-cooled motorcycles. Their preferred targets were unarmed villagers and helpless farmers, not soldiers.

"C'est comme la surface de Mars," said the driver, a first sergeant. He wore the scorpion patch of the 1st Expeditionary Force of Niger (EFoN). His American military surplus camouflaged uniform was covered in dust.

Lieutenant Wonkoye, the mission leader, grinned at the sergeant's comment.

"So you have been to the Martian surface, Sergeant?"

The sergeant flashed a blindingly white smile beneath his oversized helmet and shook his head.

"It's what the Americans used to say."

"Americans used to say a lot of things."

Wonkoye instantly regretted his comment. He actually liked the Americans, especially the operators he trained with. But American soldiers were mostly gone, thanks to the military junta that now ruled his nation. The only Yanks left occupied the massive American-built drone base in Agadez, but its personnel were forbidden to leave it.

The American Special Forces trainers were fearsome warriors with great knowledge and combat experience, yet they were humble, unlike the French paras who had fought alongside them over the years. Wonkoye remembered the big Americans training them hard, but still coming down to the Nigerian camp and playing le football with them-unlike the swaggering French who, despite their easy smiles and common langue, held the Nigerians in quiet contempt.

No matter, Wonkoye thought to himself. Those days are long past. The Americans and the French had been expelled on the orders of Niger's new president, himself an Army general. Wonkoye, a fervent patriot, quite agreed with that decision, perilous as it was.

The Islamist plague was exploding across the region. Over the years, both the Americans and French had spent a great deal of money to fight the jihadis in Africa. Their efforts were nationalistic, not humanitarian. They fought the terrorists in Africa so that the war would not be brought to their own homelands.

Both Western countries had partnered with Niger, one of the poorest nations in the world, in the long, bloody struggle. It might have been better if the West had sent aid instead of guns, Wonkoye had often thought, but those were matters for his superiors. He was a warrior and his only duty was taking the fight to the Islamist enemy, whose numbers grew daily.

Rumors of a grand alliance between competing Al Qaeda and Islamic State factions swirled in the capital, Niamey. Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Gabon had all fallen to military juntas in recent years, all driven to act by the corrupt and incompetent governments supported by Western powers in the name of security. Other African governments were on the brink of toppling as well, including mighty Nigeria. The jihadists were poised to exploit the pending chaos.

So were the Russians.

Now the precarious future of all of Africa lay increasingly in the hands of Africans. Even Mali-now also led by military men-had expelled the fifteen thousand UN peacekeepers based there. Niger's fate would be determined by Nigerians, and the EfoN was the tip of his nation's spear in the war on jihadi terror. The proud young lieutenant well understood the risks. He was a professional soldier.

Wonkoye turned around and peered at the young faces on the other side of the pickup's small rear window getting jostled around in the truck bed. Their eyes were shut tight against the choking dust, their bare faces raw from the sting of the whirling sand. The back of every other pickup was crowded the same way save for the one hauling spare tires and ammo. Each man clutched an AK-47 or RPG launcher. With their free hands they held on to whatever they could, including the bed-mounted Russian machine guns, as they bounced along.

"Do you hear that, Lieutenant?" the sergeant asked.

Wonkoye paused. Over the roar of the Toyota's diesel four-cylinder engine he could barely make out the familiar sound of helicopter blades beating the air. He had put in a request for air cover, but it had been denied due to the shortage of aircraft.

Wonkoye stuck his head out the window. The stinging sand scoured his face and watered his eyes, but he could still make out the form of a helicopter in the distance to the east, high above the tree line. It was heading north, but circling back around.

"That's a Black Hawk."

"Americans!" The sergeant laughed. "I thought they were all gone."

"They must have seen my request." Wonkoye brimmed with pride. He had been a star pupil of the American operators. Perhaps his reputation was even greater than he knew and his old friends had decided to join the fight after all, even against their orders.

The lieutenant's radio crackled with a message from the lead vehicle.

"Sir, a Humvee is up ahead."

Wonkoye and his sergeant shared a confident look. With the Americans at their side the jihadis stood no chance whatsoever.

Capturing the bloodthirsty enemy commander might even earn Wonkoye a promotion.

The lieutenant raised the handset to his mouth.

"Attention convoy. This is Wonkoye. Everybody come to a halt. The Americans are here. We will break for ten minutes. Food, water-whatever you need. I will confer with the American commander. Wonkoye out."

The lieutenant pointed up ahead. The brake lights of the lead vehicle flared as soon as Wonkoye had given his order and skidded to a stop in the road. The vehicles behind Wonkoye had done the same.

"Go around him," the lieutenant ordered. "I want to parlay with that Humvee."

"Yes, sir."

Just as the sergeant eased the wheel left to leave the road, the lead scout truck erupted in a ball of flame and shredded steel. A burning body leaped from the bed and dashed blindly toward the tree line to the west.

Before Wonkoye could process the fiery image, the same stand of trees erupted in a stream of streaking rocket and machine-gun fire.

Instantly, half the vehicles in his convoy were shattered. Heavy 7.62mm rounds thudded into Wonkoye's truck. Blood splattered the rear window, his soldiers' screams muffled by the adrenaline flooding his system.

The sergeant jerked the steering wheel hard right and headed for the opposite tree line for cover as Wonkoye shouted orders into his radio.

"Head east for the trees. Get to the trees!"

But it was too late. More anti-tank missiles mounted on Humvees hidden in the western tree line had already turned nine of the eleven trucks into burning hulks. The other two were riddled with gunfire and stood dead in the sand, their tires shredded as badly as the thin steel of their doors. The few men who survived the initial attack were cut down in their tracks as they ran for cover.

The sergeant's boot mashed the throttle to the floorboard. His skillful driving avoided hitting the flaming wreck in front of them, and the shattered truck behind them blocked the rocket targeting their vehicle. Wonkoye turned around to see the bloody face of a young private now pressed against the window glass, his lifeless eyes accusing him of utter failure.

Wonkoye watched a corporal in a blood-soaked uniform rack the Toyota's Kord 12.7mm heavy machine gun with its T-shaped handle and open fire just as their pickup dove into the tree line.

Wonkoye shoved the door open and dashed for the trees just as the bleeding corporal was tossed from the truck by a burst of well-aimed machine-gun fire. The lieutenant caught a quick glance of the six lifeless bodies heaped in the truck bed like canvas sacks of butchered meat. He bolted away, his face streaked with tears of shame and rage, his sergeant hot on his heels.

Fifty feet above the treetops the hovering Black Hawk's deafening rotor blades threw blinding clouds of choking sand. Wonkoye screamed as machine-gun bullets stitched into his spine, but it was a skull-shattering round that killed him, plowing his corpse into the sand at a dead run.

2

Aboard the Oregon

The Gulf of Oman

Juan Cabrillo stood on the Oregon's deck, his clear blue eyes fixed on the distant speck in the achingly bright cobalt sky, one hand upraised to shade his face from the searing sunlight. The Oregon's thundering tilt-rotor aircraft, an AgustaWestland AW609, had begun its descent.

A gusting wind suddenly nudged his strapping six-foot-one-inch swimmer's frame. The blast of wind ran its fingers through his closely cropped sun-bleached hair and his vintage 1950s Hawaiian shirt snapped like a flag in a hurricane.

"Where's that wind coming from? No storm in the forecast," Linda Ross said in her high-pitched voice. Her green, almond-shaped eyes were hidden behind a pair of oversized aviator glasses and a black ball cap. Though strong and lean, she was battered so hard by the breeze she had to grab on to Juan's thick bicep for stability.

"Came out of nowhere," Juan said. "I don't like it."

★


Callie Cosima’s tall, athletic frame sat comfortably in the tilt-rotor’s copilot seat. Her shoulder-length honey-blond hair was pulled into a ponytail to accommodate the tilt-rotor’s headphones and Oakley wraparound sunglasses protected her eyes from the sun’s harsh glare. She wore her natural beauty with an unadorned and easy grace and her toned body bore the healthy glow of a woman who had spent a life outdoors, especially on the water.

George "Gomez" Adams piloted the AW609 tilt-rotor, currently configured in helicopter mode. The three touchscreen cockpit displays were straight out of a video game and provided anyone in the dual-control pilot seats complete situational awareness. They'd been in the air nearly two hours.

Gomez had picked Callie up at the private jet terminal at Dubai World Central airport-one of several with which the Corporation had long-standing, discreet arrangements. With piercing brown eyes and a stylized gunfighter's mustache, Gomez was roguishly handsome, but it was his charming cocksureness that cut most women to the quick.

Callie frowned as she pointed through her side windscreen. The Gulf of Oman was dotted with cargo vessels and oil tankers.

"Hey, Gomez. Is that the Oregon?"

A pale blue freighter with a white stern superstructure was anchored several hundred feet below. She saw a 590-foot break-bulk carrier with four pairs of yellow cranes towering over five large green cargo hold doors. She'd seen dozens of such vessels over the years. It wasn't at all what she was expecting.

"Yup. That's the Oregon." Despite the electronic microphone, Gomez's voice was deep and smoky as a plate of West Texas barbecue brisket.

"Doesn't look like much."

"That's kinda the point." He flashed a leather-soft grin as he eased the aircraft into a gentle descent.

"Hate to ask but . . . Where are you gonna land this thing?" Callie asked.

Gomez opened his mouth to answer, but alarms suddenly screamed in their headphones.

Callie's eyes widened like dinner plates. Her blood pressure spiked into her skull as her stomach puddled in her boots.

They were plummeting out of the sky.

"Wind shear," Gomez whispered calmly in his mic as he simultaneously advanced throttles, mashed rotor pedals, and worked the cyclic and collective to generate massive lift without stalling-and yet, still maintaining control. The twin Pratt & Whitney turbines screamed as the tachometers crashed into the red zone.

The sudden burst of power pinned Callie into her seat as the AW's nose launched skyward. Skeins of high clouds sped across the windscreen.

The aircraft yawed and bucked in the turbulence, but Gomez never broke a sweat. His deft handling of the controls was deceptively fast.

The wind shear alarms suddenly cut off as the tilt-rotor stabilized. Gomez eased the big bird back into a landing approach. Callie sat upright in her seat, a little green around the gills.

"You good, miss?"

"Been in worse situations. Just not up in the air."

Gomez smiled. From what he'd heard about her, that was true enough.

★


The tilt-rotor’s three small wheels touched down on the disguised cargo hold door that served as the Oregon’s helipad as gently as a feather on a velvet blanket. The whining turboprops cycled down as two aircraft technicians-”hangar apes” in Oregon parlance-scurried to secure the vehicle before it descended belowdecks on the elevator.

Juan pulled the cabin door open and Callie descended with a large waterproof duffel in hand. The two had never met, but there was an instant affinity between them, like twins separated at birth.

And maybe something more.

Cabrillo noted the copper tan of her skin, like the Hawaiian surfer girl she was-at least in her spare time. Cabrillo had the same kind of tan when he surfed the beaches up and down Orange County, California, years ago. He still got a lot of outdoor sun, but surfing wasn't the reason.

He extended his hand. "Welcome aboard. Juan Cabrillo."

Callie took it. "Callie Cosima."

Juan felt heat pass between them-and it wasn't from the warm weather.

"I see you bought the e-ticket up there," Juan said. "Heck of a ride."

"We hit a downdraft-or it hit us. By the way, your pilot was truly amazing."

"Gomez is a decorated combat flier. He flew AH-6M Little Birds with the U.S. Army's Night Stalkers-the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment-before he came to us. He's the best of the best."

Callie frowned quizzically. "I know his name is Gomez, but the tag on his flight suit read 'Adams.'"

"Gomez is his nickname," Juan said. "He has a certain effect on the ladies. Well, one of the many ladies unable to resist his considerable charms was the courtesan of a Peruvian drug lord who looked a lot like Morticia from The Addams Family TV show-"

"And Gomez Addams was her husband." Callie grinned. "Got it. Better than getting called 'Lurch.'"

"True that." Juan gestured toward Linda. "This is Linda Ross, my Vice President of operations, and third in command on the Oregon."

"It's a real honor to finally meet you," Linda said. She and Callie shook hands.

Callie noted Linda's shockingly bright mane spilling out beneath her ball cap. "Love the neon hair."

Linda pulled off her sunglasses, revealing a spray of freckles across her petite nose.