Worthy gave a slight shake of his head as he watched the men approach on their way to the table.
“Shift lead doesn’t trust his guys—he’s paying more attention to the diners than his own formation.”
Cancer seemed concerned only with his ability to kill the principals, noting after another second of evaluation, “We could take them.”
As if he’d heard the comment, the last bodyguard in the procession happened to clip the toe of his shoe on the leg of Cancer’s chair. Whether the move was accidental or an intentional response to the team’s more than casual observation of the bodyguard procedures, Worthy couldn’t be sure. But he cringed nonetheless, keenly aware that he’d never met anyone so eager to incite conflict as the teammate who’d just been provoked.
Cancer, for his part, didn’t disappoint. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “Watch where you’re going, asshole.”
The bodyguard stopped abruptly and turned to face him. “What did you say to me?” he asked in a thick Russian accent.
It was less a question than a threat, and given his size, one that would probably make most men on the planet mutter an apology. But Cancer wasn’t most men, and he draped an arm across the back of his chair and clarified, quite casually, “I said watch where you’re putting your size thirteens before I take this chair and break it over your face.”
The Russian took a step forward, an action that caused Cancer to stand and with him the entire team, each ready to intervene in the upcoming brawl. At the instant this occurred, the bodyguard seemed to forget about Cancer altogether; his focus was drawn to sizing up Reilly, by far the largest member of the opposition. There wasn’t much of a disparity in terms of muscle mass, but Reilly stood perhaps an inch taller than his Russian counterpart, and that miniscule difference was exacerbated by the cool confidence with which the medic approached, his smiling eyes imparting a silent dare for the bodyguard to go ahead and try throwing the first punch.
To Worthy’s surprise, Ian pushed his way between the two men and said, “Bez problem, drug moy. Pozvol’ mne kupit’ tvoim druz’yam raund.”
The intelligence operative snapped his fingers at the waiter, who was standing at a distance, watching the scene unfold with wide eyes. Then Ian pointed to the table of Russians and said, “Another round for my friends, please. On my tab.”
The burly Russian remained focused on Reilly; then, determining that discretion was indeed the better part of valor, he broke eye contact with the medic to give Ian a nod before departing.
Cancer turned to Ian with disgust. “Well look at the happy little diplomat. What’s the matter, you don’t feel like throwing down?”
“Have a seat,” Ian said firmly, finding his chair as the team returned to their places at the table.
Worthy narrowed his eyes at Ian. “I didn’t know you spoke Russian.”
“A little bit.”
“So,” Worthy asked, “who are those guys?”
Lowering his voice, Ian replied, “The guys at the main table are oil executives from a company called Gradsek. They’ve got onshore and offshore drilling operations. With all the multinational oil companies pulling out of Nigeria, Gradsek has been acquiring market share. They’ve got a lot of economic and political pull around here, and are too high profile for us to be messing with. It’s not worth it.”
“Yeah?” David asked. “What about the four gorillas they brought with them?”
“Chalk them up as the only reason why Gradsek can continue expanding—Nigeria produces two million barrels of oil every day, and 300,000 of them are illegally siphoned. Then you’ve got pirates and vigilante groups hitting the oil companies however they can, on top of prices per barrel falling almost every year. Private security is the only reason there’s any foreign investment left in Nigeria.”
Ian sighed and turned up his hands. “So they’re assholes, yeah. But necessary assholes.”
8
Duchess strode down the hall at a determined gait, narrowing the distance between her office and the OPCEN as a pair of staffers jogged past her on the way back to their workstations. Her duty staff had been reduced to a skeleton crew overnight; after all, there was no need for everyone to be present with the Nigeria operation officially being shut down. But the one a.m. call with a single brevity code—Lovelace, shorthand for “all personnel required”—had resulted in a full spin-up that was still in progress.
She watched the staffers run past, resisting the urge to match their pace. No one wanted to see the boss moving at a panicked run, a lesson she’d learned over and over in her many years at the Agency. When the winds were changing, it paid to be viewed as the center of the storm. The very fact that she’d been selected to head the fledgling Project Longwing was testament to her career to date—they needed someone who wasn’t afraid to play in the mud, someone possessing both the operational experience to lead and the expendability to be cut loose if this preliminary foray into targeted killing went politically awry. And given Project Longwing’s short and inordinately volatile history, that latter eventuality had very nearly come to pass several times already.
But the call summoning her back to the OPCEN brought with it the certainty that after two years of her program operating in the shadows, she was about to be thrust into the political limelight whether she wanted it or not.
She badged herself into the OPCEN to see the newly arriving staff getting hasty backbriefs by their colleagues. Jo Ann was already seated at her desk, feverishly typing an encrypted chat exchange with, Duchess presumed, the Joint Special Operations Command. Lucios was also at his station, and Duchess called out to him as she approached her seat.
“J2, what do we have?”
The intelligence officer didn’t shift his eyes from the computer screen before him. “ExxonMobil got hit last night in Lagos—three security guards killed, six oil executives kidnapped. All Americans.”
She lowered herself into the chair, considering this for a moment before asking, “Location of the hostages?”
“Unknown.” He turned to face her. “No one’s claimed responsibility yet, and the media is assuming this is the work of pirates or a vigilante group such as the Niger Delta Avengers. Both have kidnapped extensively for ransom in the past.”
“And your assessment?”
“The scope and planning of this attack exceed what either group is historically capable of. That being said, Lagos is well outside Boko Haram’s area of influence, so if they are responsible, this indicates a major shift in their tactics. But given what we know of Usman’s movements over the past 48 hours, I simply can’t believe this is a coincidence.”