Dr. Cynthia Jones looked exactly like her picture. She stood on the sidewalk in front of the clinic talking to the locals who surrounded her. Lawrence couldn’t hear what she was saying but he could see the locals hanging on her every word.

Benny parked his car in front of the clinic. He jumped out, excited to introduce John Smith to the doctor.

Lawrence stayed in the car and scanned the street for any signs of danger.

“Dr. Jones,” Benny said coming around to the passenger side by the sidewalk, “It is my honor to introduce--” he turned and saw the man just now getting out of the car. He stopped talking for a few seconds, then when Smith was close enough, Benny continued. “Mr. John Smith. Mr. Smith, this is Dr. Jones.”

Lawrence stuck his hand out to be shaken. “Nice to meet you, doc.”

She shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Smith.” She recognized him from Miles’ description. She had asked for a picture and was told she couldn’t have one. It had been the first time Miles Devlin had ever said no to her.

“So, you about ready to go?” Lawrence asked.

She smiled at him and said, “Why don’t we go speak in my office?”

Her tone concerned Lawrence. It hadn’t been ominous in the least. To the contrary. It had sounded to him like it was more of a forced perkiness. Ed Lawrence hated forced perkiness even more than he hated actual perkiness.

Nonetheless, in the perkiest tone he could manage he said, “Absolutely.”

Neither of them said another word as she led him through the clinic’s various rooms. Finally, she brought him into her office and closed the door behind him. Lawrence set his backpack on the chair across her desk when she turned to face him. They were alone.

“What exactly are your orders?” she asked.

He decided to flip the order of importance to make her feel special. “To bring a doctor and her package to America.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Nothing about how you have to do whatever I say?”

He laughed out loud. It was a long hearty laugh from deep inside his belly. Apparently, she didn’t need any of his help to feel special. After a few more seconds of laughing, he said, “No, but that’s a good one, doc. Come on, we’ve gotta go.”

“We can’t. I haven’t gotten a final result on my second analysis.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know what that means. Do you have the package or not?”

She looked him over for a few seconds. “Mr. Smith, do you even know what the package is?”

“Dr. Jones, what the package is, isn’t my business. My business is getting the package, whatever it may be, and you back to America.”

She tried to think of an example to help make her point. “So… if I told you the package was… an elephant, you would bring me and an elephant back to America?”

“If the package was an elephant, Devlin would’ve gotten me a bigger plane.”

“So, if--”

“You lost the package, didn’t you?”

“I most certainly didn’t lose anything. The first results and the vial of blood are both in the safe. But with something like this, you must be positive so I ran a second test. I don’t have those results back, yet.”

“So… you decided to make a second package? Does Devlin know?”

“I haven’t had a chance to speak with him.”

“Uh, huh. Are you busy right now?”

“Am...?”

Lawrence pulled a satellite phone from the backpack’s side pocket. He punched a number he had memorized two years earlier and waited for the line to pick up.

The phone picked up halfway through the second ring. “Hello?”

Lawrence pushed a button and held the phone in front of him. “Mr. Devlin, you’re on speakerphone with me and Dr. Jones. We’re the only ones in the room.”

“Cindy, is everything all right?” Devlin asked.

“Everything’s fine, Miles,” Jones said. “It’s just that I’ve run a second analysis. I wanted to be sure because of the importance of the project.”

“And what did it say?”

“The results haven’t come in yet. I want to wait to see what they are before leaving. Mr. Smith disagrees with me. He wants to go now.”

“What’s the possible difference in the results?”

She smiled and shook her head. “Miles, it’s the difference between it being what we need and it not being what we need.”

“What is the security situation, Mr. Smith?”

“It’s Africa.”

There was a pause on the other end, then, “I’m sorry, you’ll have to be more specific.”

“It means we’re in a country that has multiple factions at war with one another. Everything is fine at the moment and it will stay that way until it isn’t. And then, it’ll be a bloody mess.”

Another pause. “Alright then, I’m not paying you for nothing. Keep the good doctor safe and bring me my packages. Cindy, get the results, call me, then come home. Any questions?”

“No, sir.” Lawrence said.

“Thank you, Miles,” Jones said.

“Aright then, good luck to you both,” Devlin said then hung up.

Lawrence beeped off the phone.

“Happy?” She asked him.

“No,” Lawrence said. “But I’m not paid to be happy. I’m paid to follow orders.”

“We’re all paid to follow some sort of order or another. The real question is, are you good at it?”

“I’m the best.”

She looked him over. Clearly, he believed he was every bit as good as he thought he was. And this was no time to start picking arguments with the man whose job it was to protect her. “Excellent,” she said with a smile. “I’m feeling safer already.”

His satellite phone rang. Only one person other than Devlin had the number. Lawrence beeped the phone on and raised it to his face. “Yeah?”

He listened for a few seconds. “All right, I’ll get back to you with an extraction point.” He beeped off the phone.

“Problem?” Jones asked.

“Someone’s attacking the airport. The jet took off and will pick us up somewhere else.”

A wave of fear came over her. “Where?”

He shrugged his shoulders. When he saw the look of apprehension on her face he said, “Don’t worry about it. Like I said, I’m the best.”

☣

Dubaku was very proud of himself. The warlord and his men’s attack on the city of Otieno had started late in the day, but with still enough daylight so everyone could see it and call their relatives and the news media in other cities. The army would have to wait until the second dawn to try to take the city back. By then he and his troops would have secured strong defensive positions. In theory.

In actuality, under the second night’s cover of darkness, he and his troops had escaped and driven all night the long way around, looping around the road the army would use on their way to take back the city that dawn.

Now, the capital of Jelani was undefended while the army was two hundred miles further away than they would have been under normal circumstances. And in this part of Africa, an extra two hundred miles was a very long way indeed. The army wouldn’t just need an extra day to travel; they would also need a second extra day to set up their attack on the country of Berhanu’s largest city.

While Dubaku didn’t realistically have enough troops to control the whole of the capital, he had more than enough for some of the key areas: the banking center, the airport, government offices, the television stations, and the presidential palace.

This time, he’d waited for the middle of the afternoon, keeping his troops miles from the capital so no one would suspect. This time, his troops would be working well into the night to set up their defensive positions. This time, he and his men would stand and fight, not scurry off into the dark.

Dubaku’s plan was the kind of plan made by a man with more confidence than experience. After taking over the capital, he would ask the President to leave office peacefully. Then, Dubaku would take over the army and use the extra troops to wipe out Tumelo, the country’s second biggest warlord.

After that, he would make peace with Sefu by letting him keep all of the land by the desert the third warlord already had. His territory had almost no practical value and wasn’t worth the bullets it would take to conquer.

Dubaku’s men had used overwhelming force to take the airport. There had been a small firefight but the soldiers that weren’t killed had surrendered when they’d seen enough of their comrades die. Those men would be spared, unarmed, and drafted to help with logistical matters like controlling traffic, helping to construct bunkers, and being used as human shields when the army made their counterattack.

A jet had managed to take off but as long as it wasn’t the president running off, Dubaku didn’t care. He knew it wasn’t the president’s plane because the plane the president used had four propellers and was still in its hangar.

Dubaku had to keep the president from escaping. If he got away, the man could make an unholy alliance with the leaders of neighboring countries, use large chunks of their armies to conquer back his own country, and use any surviving former rebels as slave laborers who worked in mines to send back untold millions of dollars in natural minerals to the neighboring countries’ leaders as repayment. Just like he had done the first time he’d come to power.

Dubaku had given strict orders not to shoot any civilians or even police officers if they didn’t shoot at his men first. While his decision was partially public relations driven, it also had a more practical aspect to it. Even after raiding the police armory in Otieno, he and his men only had so many bullets. And they needed to save as many as they could for the army who was coming for them in approximately three days.

Dubaku knew the presidential palace was an extremely well-fortified structure and taking it by force would be hard, bloody, work. That was why he was going to the television station with the strongest broadcast signal that also had a sister station on the radio instead.

He would get on the air and broadcast that he had taken over the country. If the president wanted to come out of the fortress and refute Dubaku’s new position, he was welcome to. Otherwise, he and all of his men who were armed to the teeth could stay in the palace and starve to death, come out one at a time, or commit mass suicide; whatever, Dubaku didn’t care.

“I want five jeeps with me!” Dubaku yelled out of the bed of his pickup truck. “The rest of you, to your positions!”

His men gave a mighty cheer that was quickly drowned out by revving engines, peeling tires, and more than a few wasteful celebratory gunshots that absolutely infuriated their leader.