Mike Maden - River of Gods

Maputo International Airport

Maputo, Mozambique

1 May

The gusting wind battered Troy Pearce’s bearded face. He didn’t care. It kept the humidity low and the stink of jet fuel at bay while he and Johnny Paloma finished loading up the last of the gear into a rented Toyota Land Cruiser pickup. They had two drone contracts to fulfill this trip.

Johnny hardly said a word. Unusual for the former LAPD detective.

“Something on your mind?” Pearce asked. A pair of dark aviators hid his world-weary blue eyes.

“Been meaning to ask you something.”

“So why haven’t you?”

“Seems like the last couple of weeks you haven’t been yourself.”

More like a couple of months, Pearce thought. He didn’t think it showed.

Even though Pearce was the CEO of his global contracting firm, he liked getting his hands dirty out in the field. Didn’t believe in leading from behind. He slammed the truck gate shut. “So ask.”

“How about I run this first training consult by myself?”

Pearce liked Johnny a lot. He was street smart and fearless, a real door buster. Proved his worth last year in the ops they ran against the Mexicans and Iranians. Since then, Johnny had picked up on the basic technical aspects of drone operations and proved himself a decent small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) operator.

Pearce Systems specialized in drone operations. Their first gig this week was an sUAS delivery and training consult with Sandra Gallez and the World Wildlife Alliance. Four days from now, they would deliver a security package to the South African special forces training center at Fort Scorpio.

For the first time in a while, Pearce smiled. “You want that Gallez woman all to yourself.”

“She’s a friend, that’s all. I just think I’m ready to lead the training. Don’t need you to wet-nurse me.”

Sandra Gallez had flown up to Addis to sign the WWA contract three months before. The two of them obviously hit it off.

“I call bullshit.” Pearce saw the way he looked at her when she came into their office.

“We’ve stayed in touch.” Johnny grinned. “By phone, mostly.”

Pearce couldn’t blame him. The Belgian wildlife conservationist was a real looker, and bright. It was a good match.

“Maybe it is time you took point.” Pearce tossed him the truck keys. “No point in wasting that picnic basket, either.” He’d seen Johnny sneak it into the pickup that morning. “Unless you packed it for me.”

Johnny smiled. “Not exactly.”

“I’ll secure the Aviocar.”

Pearce was glad to let Johnny do the training. Their destination today was the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, but Lake Massingir bordered the wilderness reserve. Pearce had fished all of his life, all over the world. He thought he wouldn’t get a chance to bait a hook this trip, but now Johnny made that possible. Maybe things were looking up after all.

He headed back into the rented hangar. Pearce and Johnny had arrived with Dr. Rao’s shipment last night from Addis in the Pearce Systems C-212 Aviocar, a boxy, top-winged, twin-propped STOL cargo plane. Pearce was doing most of his own flying these days now that his personal pilot, Judy Hopper, was gone.

The South African equipment was stowed away in a secret, locked compartment under the deck. Pearce shut and locked the plane’s cargo door, then shut and locked the hangar doors. Determined thieves could still break in, but he hired an armed security service to keep an eye on things while they were in the field.

Pearce climbed into the truck cab on the passenger side. The a/c was blowing good and cold.

Johnny checked the map on his satellite phone. Didn’t look at Pearce.

“You see those two jokers in the silver Mercedes G-Class, by the fence?”

“They picked us up back at the hotel an hour ago,” Pearce said.

“You could’ve said something.”

“How’d you manage to survive in LA with eyes like yours?”

“High-capacity magazines.” Johnny chambered a round into his Glock 19 pistol. “Any idea who they are?”

“SVR. Russian intelligence service.”

“What do you think they want?”

“My head.” Pearce had killed Ambassador Britnev for masterminding the plot that murdered President Myers’s son last year and nearly drew the United States into a shooting war with the Russians.

“I thought you got away clean on that one.”

“So did I.”

“What do you want to do?”

“They had a clear shot at me. So taking me out isn’t the objective.”

“An exfil back to the Motherland? They must be really pissed.”

“Britnev was a douche bag, but he was their douche bag.”

“Two against two. We can take them.”

“Too risky.”

“Got a better idea?”

“I always liked the G-Class. Reminds me of a Tonka truck.” Pearce pulled out his smartphone. “Let’s roll.”

Johnny pulled away from the hangar and through the fence gate, heading for the road exiting the airport. The boxy German SUV sat tight as Johnny passed by their parking place, just as Pearce instructed.

By the time Johnny cleared the airport, the Mercedes was in his rearview mirror, keeping a discreet distance.

“The driver’s good,” Johnny said.

Pearce tapped keys on his phone screen. “The SVR only sends the best. They won’t try anything until we’ve cleared the city.”

Thirty minutes outside of Maputo, traffic disappeared. The highway was an empty straight line for miles. The silver Mercedes glinted in Johnny’s rearview mirror a mile back. Couldn’t miss it.

“That G-Class AMG is a sweet ride,” Johnny said. “Hundred thirty grand plus, just to drive it off the lot.”

“It’s an amazing piece of technology. All the latest bells and whistles.”

“Ready?” Pearce asked.

Johnny smiled. “Say the word.”

“Red-line it,” Pearce said.

“God, I love this job.” Johnny mashed the gas pedal to the floorboard.

The Toyota rocketed forward, but the straight-six engine was topping out at 180 kph. Not good enough.

Pearce glanced in the side mirror. “He’s coming on, fast.”

The Mercedes’s thundering 5.5-liter turbocharged V-8 was still accelerating. They were just a quarter mile back.

Shooting distance.

Pearce tapped his phone screen, capturing the Mercedes Distronic Plus radar-controlled cruise control. Ran his finger along a slider. Told the radar unit that an object was just one inch away from the Mercedes’s front bumper.

The power disc brakes locked. Pads and rotors screamed.

The big Mercedes tumbled end over end on the asphalt, glass flying, steel crunching, doors exploding. On the third rotation, a body flew out, cartwheeling on the asphalt. Four more devastating rotations, and the crumpled Mercedes finally landed in a shattered heap on the side of the road.