“If you gentlemen will allow me to get out of the way,” he began.
“Sure, take all the time you need,” Hayes said, already reaching for the STI.
The towering Frenchman saw the move and was reaching for his pistol when he realized that with his boss standing in front of him, there was no way he could draw and fire without hitting him.
He cursed and moved to shove his boss out of the way, but it was too late.
10
ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST
General Joseph Dábo was sitting at the breakfast table with his wife, half listening while she went on about the drapes she was planning on buying for the living room.
“At first I thought beige would match the décor,” she said, flashing the smile that came anytime she was talking about spending his money.
“Hmm,” he said, absently taking a battered cigarette case from the chest pocket of his BDUs.
“But I was wrong.”
“Wait, what?” he asked, plucking a Gauloises from the case.
“I said I was wrong about the drapes matching.”
“A Soro . . . admitting they were wrong? Now that’s something you don’t hear every day,” he grinned, snapping the case shut.
“I thought you were quitting. Does Laurence know?”
“No,” he said, getting to his feet and moving around the table, his six-foot-three frame dwarfing his diminutive wife as he bent to kiss her forehead. “And don’t you go telling him, either.”
“And why is that?” she asked, a coy, mischievous sparkle in her almond eyes. “You worried he will sack you again?”
“President Soro, fire me?” Dábo laughed. “He wouldn’t dare.”
“Because you control the Republican Guard?”
“No, because I told your brother the next time he fired me, I’d send you back to live with him,” he grinned, ducking out of the kitchen before his wife could throw something at him.
Dábo was still smiling when he stepped out the front door and returned the salute of the two guards posted on the porch on his way to the up-armored Mercedes G-Class waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He climbed into the backseat, nodded to the driver, and leaned back, the custom Corinthian leather seat conforming to his frame.
The Mercedes glided away from the curb and Dábo pulled a pair of gold-rimmed Versace aviators from his pocket, slipped them over his intelligent eyes, and turned his gaze to the window.
The view took him back to 1999 when he was just another illiterate son of a farmer from Doropo hoping to make it in Abidjan. If someone had told him, back then, that one day he would be living in a three-thousand-square-foot villa in Cocody, the upscale enclave that housed Ivorian cultural elite, prominent expats, and foreign embassies, it would have seemed impossible. He’d come to the capital not to make it rich, but because he wanted to be a pilot. Unfortunately, the army had other ideas, sending him to the motor pool instead of flight school.
Being a mechanic was boring work, but he didn’t mind; after all, he was getting paid. But that changed in 2002 when troops from the northern provinces staged an armed uprising and stormed the capital.
Sensing an opportunity, Dábo resigned from the army and joined the rebels, who were now calling themselves the Ivorian Popular Front, or FPI.
While there was fighting all over the country, the rebels’ main goal was to take the capital. During the first few months of close and brutal fighting, Dábo showed natural aptitude for the ruthlessness and tenacity that would earn him the attention of Laurence Soro—the leader of the FPI.
By the end of the year, Dábo was promoted to captain and six months later he was made an area commander. Soon he established himself as one of Soro’s most able commanders, a role he ultimately used to bring his now brother-in-law to power.
Which was how at the young age of thirty-seven General Joseph Dábo became commander of the Republican Guard, a position that made him the second most powerful man in the country, but it also put a target on his back—especially among the groups that had broken off from the FPI and continued to fight Soro’s government from their strongholds in the north.
It was this continued hostility and the rebels’ willingness to try and kill Dábo at home that explained the blast-resistant gate at the bottom of the hill. The driver came to a halt next to a pair of concrete pillboxes and two soldiers stepped out. One of the men flashed a salute, then hustled to open the gate while the machine gunners on the roof swiveled the barrels of the belt-fed PKMs toward the street, ready and willing to kill anyone stupid enough to try and enter the compound.
The gate slid open on well-oiled rollers and the driver was pulling onto the street when Dábo’s satellite phone chirped to life. He pulled it out, ready to ignore the call until he saw the number on the screen.
Cabot, Jesus, why is he calling me? he wondered before answering.
“Yes, sir?”
As usual, Cabot cut right to the point.
“The airfield in Korhogo, I need it opened.”
Since President Soro had taken power, he’d authorized Dábo to use the Republican Guard to stamp out the opposition, but his brutal methods had garnered unwanted attention and the general had been told to stand down. In fact, the president had been adamant that no additional incursions would be made without his direct authorization.
“General, are you there?” Cabot asked.
“Y-yes . . .” Dábo stammered, “but you know the president’s orders.”
More than anyone else who he’d met during his journey from lowly private to commander of the Republican Guard, Dábo was in Cabot’s debt—the man had literally saved his life.
Even now he could remember every detail of that day, the convoy leaving the presidential palace and turning onto Boulevard Clozel, driving south, through the rain, toward the Heden Golf Hotel—and then the ambush.
The IED blew his truck off the road, killing the driver and mangling the armored Mercedes. He could still remember the caustic burn of the smoke in his lungs, the flames licking at his clothes.
By the time he got out, crawled free of the burning truck, Dábo had second-degree burns on half of his body and his left arm was broken. He managed to roll into a ditch, the rainwater extinguishing the fire as the attackers raked the area with machine gun fire.
He killed three of them with his pistol, saving the last bullet for himself, when Cabot and his squad of French paratroopers arrived and saved his life.
Dábo owed the man, that much went without saying, but this . . . this was impossible.
“General, are you there?”