Covert Kill: A David Rivers Thriller

Worthy moved to a side table, lifting a framed photograph and examining it.

The backdrop was a dramatic rock formation rising against a cloudless sky, and Worthy recognized the monolith as Zuma Rock. In the foreground was a teenage version of Tolu—or at least Worthy thought it was Tolu. The younger boy he had his arm draped around could have just as easily been him as well, the resemblance uncanny between the two kids.

Before he could ask the question, Tolu snatched the frame away from him, pulling open a drawer in the side table and depositing it before slamming the drawer shut.

“I’m sorry,” Worthy said, taken aback by the first sign of aggressiveness he’d seen from the otherwise lackadaisical driver. “Didn’t mean to go through your stuff.”

Tolu drew himself up to his full height. “But that did not stop you, did it?”

Nodding toward the drawer, Worthy asked, “That your brother?”

“Yes. Yewande, my little brother.”

Ian took a step forward and asked, “Is he in Lagos?”

Worthy heard the concern in his teammate’s voice, and felt his own stomach tense with the same recognition. As an Agency asset, Tolu was vetted with a thorough background check; at least it was supposed to be thorough. In truth, that job was well outside his team’s purview, and all they ultimately received was a basic profile.

But Ian had clearly remembered the line of Tolu’s profile that read SIBLINGS: NONE.

Now there was a discrepancy between Agency and asset information, and that presented a security issue that needed to be resolved at once. Because if their driver had lied during the vetting process, it could indicate any number of unenviable possibilities.

Tolu seemed to realize this at the same time, and rather than answer Ian’s question, he replied, “I did not report having a brother because I do not anymore. He is gone.”

Worthy asked, “What happened?”

Tolu lifted his chin, cutting his eyes to them and then David, who had come to a stop a few feet away. Then he spoke unrepentantly, as if to make it clear that he was judging the team and not the other way around.

“Yewande became an addict. The people he ran with, they introduced him to some very bad men. And through this…” He paused, then injected a measure of forcefulness to his next words. “He joined Boko Haram.”

Ian cocked his head, genuinely curious. “I thought they recruited from—”

“The north?” Tolu said. “Yes, mostly. But they also send preachers to the cities. To find the lost souls, the most poor. The boys from broken families.”

The driver suddenly appeared self-conscious of the admission, and hastily added, “This was not the case with Yewande. We had a good family, and he was smart smart—never needed to study. But when he started using, my father was too hard on him. I was too hard on him.”

After a beat of silence, Worthy asked, “How did he die?”

“I did not say he died,” Tolu snapped. “I said he was lost. Yewande left for the north almost ten years ago. He asked me to go with him, and I said he would burn in hell for what he was about to do. That was the last I saw him. Probably he is already gone, but I will never know.” Then Tolu swiftly reappraised the men standing around him, his shoulders tense, as if prepared to come to blows at the first sign of irreverence toward his brother.

But he found none among the three Americans, each of them rendered silent by the admission. Tolu relaxed somewhat, his voice low and measured as he continued, “So I help you people because it is the right thing to do. Also for the money, of course.”

After a slight shrug, he added, “But mostly, I help because I hate Boko Haram. They took Yewande, and for that...the more of them you kill, the better.”





28





The blast of a ship foghorn echoed across the dock, causing Reilly to strain to hear David’s transmission.

“Loading crew is still in the area. Stand by.”

Kneeling in the shadows, Reilly kept his gaze fixed to the front, toward his destination.

They’d packed night vision, but it appeared they wouldn’t need it much tonight; the ambient glow from various security lights around the massive facility provided more than enough illumination to guide their movement.

It also, regrettably, made them highly visible during this particularly painstaking endeavor. The air was thick with the smell of petroleum, corroded metal, and seawater; that latter scent, however, wasn’t as desirable as Reilly would have wished. His initial hopes of a sexy and glamorous coastal raid with a view of the waves were dashed the moment he looked at a map.

The Duniya Port Complex was nowhere near the Gulf of Guinea—incoming ships had to travel north along the Lagos Lagoon, passing several miles of beaches and mangrove swamps before reaching the cluster of ports on either side of the harbor. That meant the scenery was more industrial than anything else, and even if Reilly had a view worth enjoying, it was disrupted by the near-paralyzing fear of getting caught.

The shipping port where his team now staged was the biggest and most active in West Africa, utilized not just by Nigeria but also the landlocked countries of Chad and Niger beyond its borders. Every shipping company and maritime logistics organization for thousands of miles had a facility along the harbor, where loading and unloading occurred 24/7, 365 days a year, under the scrutiny of Nigerian Customs officers who had free rein to conduct random inspections. That meant a free-for-all of dock workers and security personnel moving at all hours of the day and night, and Reilly—the first of the team to expose himself in the coming fiasco—was flying blind, at the mercy of radio transmissions telling him when to move.

And with little more than a suppressed pistol, a backpack, and a gear bag slung over his chest, Reilly felt particularly vulnerable.

David’s next order was spoken with the urgency that indicated the window of opportunity was short.

“Doc, you’re clear to set up on Crossing Point Alpha—get moving.”

Reilly didn’t reply, instead darting across the open space toward the evening’s first obstacle: a twenty-foot-tall chain link fence topped with a roll of concertina wire. He moved to the corner post, glancing with dismay at the pinnacle where a quartet of CCTV cameras were angled to cover both sides of the fence as well as the perimeter in between. Coming to a stop at the base of the fence, he unfolded the metal device in his hand.

The two metal slats slid apart, forming an inverted V with a footpeg at each tip. Reilly slid one footpeg through a gap in the chain link and then lowered the device until it sat flush. Stepping atop the newly emplaced foothold, Reilly pulled himself up the fence and withdrew a second step from his gear bag, then unfolded it and slipped it through the chain link a few feet above the first.

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