The Liberian Agenda Read online

  That promise was only good if she was able to complete the mission undetected. If she failed at that, she was as good as dead. She’d be unable to protect her son. But what choice did she really have? She shook her head and started pacing again. “I don't know. I’d do anything to get David out of Liberia and to safety, but this seems so risky. What if Joseph or one of his guards catches me in the act?”

  “We’ll supply you with a communication device and be listening the entire time from a nearby location,” Tara said. “As soon as we receive the information, we’ll come to the mansion to take Joseph into custody. You will have to use your wiles to survive until then.”

  Sonia stopped pacing and turned to stare at Tara. Use my wiles? Is this bitch crazy? Her thoughts must have been all over her face because she could have sworn she saw Tara’s lips twitch slightly.

  “We’ll provide you with a weapon to use in case of extreme emergency,” Tyrone said. “Have you ever fired a gun before?”

  “I've been to a shooting range once or twice with friends and fired guns, but I never dreamed of actually having to use one in self-defense,” Sonia said.

  “We have a shooting range downstairs. You can practice there until you feel comfortable,” Tara said. “We’ll also show you some basic self-defense moves you can use if you get into a jam.”

  “You have a shooting range downstairs? Won't the driver and the guard hear the gunshots if we start shooting down there?” Sonia asked.

  “No. The room is soundproofed,” Tara said. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

  Sonia followed Tara out of the living room and into the study. Tara went behind the large mahogany desk, slid her fingers underneath and pressed a hidden button. The bookshelves on the wall to the left of the desk slid aside to reveal a set of stairs.

  Sonia’s jaw dropped. She’d only seen such things in spy movies. She followed Tara and Tyrone down the stairs which led to a hallway. Tara pulled a set of keys from the pocket of her skirt and inserted one into the lock in a door on the right-hand side. She opened the door, reached in, and flipped on a light switch. Inside was a firing range, complete with targets.

  Sonia looked around in astonishment. She followed Tara to a door on the far side of the room. Tara used another key on her ring to open it. It was closet holding a veritable armory. Guns ranging from small pistols to machine guns hung in slots in slots along the back wall of the closet. Boxes of what Sonia assumed was ammunition were lined up neatly on a shelf. What appeared to be hand grenades were stacked in a neat little row. Below that was what looked like a grenade launcher. Sonia couldn’t be sure since she’d only seen these types of weapons in movies. The reality was far different.

  Tara reviewed her choices, glanced back at Sonia and removed a handheld gun from its slot. It wasn’t the smallest of the handguns, but it wasn’t the largest one, either. She grabbed a box of bullets and turned back to Sonia.

  Sonia looked at the gun and swallowed in an attempt to lubricate her suddenly dry mouth. “Is that for me?”

  “Yes. This should do the trick,” Tara said. “Let’s load this puppy and see what you can do with it.” She led Sonia over to one of the stations. “Now, this is how you load the gun. She selected a clip from the box and slammed it home. She then pulled back the hammer, sliding one bullet into the chamber.

  As Sonia watched her, the reality of what she was being asked to do hit her. She felt her heartbeat pick up speed. Panic nearly closed her throat. She had to clear it twice before getting words out. “Oh my God. I’ve never shot a human being before. What if I freeze? What if I can’t do this? I’ll be caught and killed and David will grow up in Liberia without a mother – assuming he gets to grow up at all.”

  Tara put the gun down onto the counter, gripped Sonia by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “What will happen if you don’t? You and David will remain here, under constant danger, until you are eventually killed. Is that what you want?”

  Sonia shook her head. No. Hell no. Not if I can help it.

  She needed to be strong – to make the right choices this time. She didn’t know if becoming a CIA asset and taking on a task this dangerous was the right choice. She’d read too many spy novels and seen too many action movies to think she was anything but expendable to them. They’d help her as long as she was useful, but they wouldn’t blow their cover or compromise the mission to get her and David out. It wasn’t the best situation, but she needed all the help she could get. If they wanted to give her a weapon and show her how to use it, then let them. She might need it one day. She’d decide what to do later after she could think it through.

  She straightened her shoulders and nodded. “Okay, show me how to use it.”

  Tara nodded her approval. She picked up the gun and ejected the clip. “Okay. It’s your turn to load it.”

  Tara made Sonia load and unload the gun several times until she got the hang of it. She also showed Sonia how to lock and unlock the safety on the gun. Next, she had Sonia practice firing the gun at the targets. The first few rounds Sonia fired missed the targets altogether, but with Tara’s patient instruction and more practice, Sonia finally fired a few rounds into the target.

  ***

  Over the next few weeks, Sonia visited the Nkrumah family mansion and worked with Tara and Tyrone on target practice and basic self-defense. She thought for sure her husband would notice how sore she was from working out with them, but he seemed distant and distracted whenever he was around her, and, to her relief, not very interested in sex.

  “Today, I’m going to teach you about pressure points,” Tyrone said.

  “I’ve heard about that,” Sonia said. “They’re supposedly sensitive points on a person’s body that when hit, will disable an attacker, right?”

  Tyrone eyed her with approval. “That’s right. Where did you learn that from?”

  Sonia waved a hand at him. “You know, from watching action movies and such. Also, after September 11, I went a little insane and bought a battery-operated stun gun and some self-defense videos. I don’t know what I thought I was doing. I guess I needed to take some measure of self-control to make sense of what happened. I figured if we were going to be attacked by foreigners, I needed to know how to defend myself. That didn’t last long. I watched the videos but I didn’t practice or take any self-defense courses. I kept the stun gun though,” she said. “I kept it in the nightstand drawer next to my bed.”

  “Good girl.” Tyrone grinned at her.

  Sonia wondered why the idea of her keeping a stun gun in her nightstand drawer would cause him to grin at her like that. He was probably having kinky thoughts about stun guns and sex games. She needed to put an end to that. The last thing she needed was for him to be distracted during her training. She stared back at him with a serious expression on her face.

  He cleared his throat and got back to the matter at hand. “Anyway, there are certain pressure points on a person’s body you can access during an attack. For example, if someone grabs you from behind, you can stomp on the instep of their foot to distract them and then slam your elbow into their ribs right here.” He pointed to a location on his body.

  Sonia raised her eyebrows. “This could come in handy one day.”

  “Yes it could,” he said. “There are also some pressure points in the head and neck areas. For example, if you take the heel of your hand and hit someone as hard as you can on an upward angle under their nose, you can do a lot of damage. You’ll certainly cause pain and watery eyes. If you hit hard enough, you can break their nose or even kill them by pushing the bone and cartilage up into their brain. In any event, a good hit there should stop your attacker long enough for you to get away. If you can’t get away, it will give you an opportunity to do further damage. You could, for example, follow up with a blow to the top of their head here with a heavy object or kick them in the groin.”

  Sonia shook her head. The thought of actually killing someone made her feel queasy. This was real -- not some action
movie. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

  “I guess you guys have to learn this stuff in your line of work. It just seems so violent,” she said.

  “Sonia, if you get cornered by an attacker and have to fight your way out, this stuff could very well save your life,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “I guess the truth of what I’ve gotten myself into is finally coming home to me. It’s one thing to watch spy movies and fantasize about being the heroine. It’s another thing altogether to know that I could be in harm’s way any moment now and that it’s my choices that put me and David there in the first place.”

  Tyrone gave her a sympathetic look. “This is not your fault. It Joseph’s fault for putting you in the midst of this mess.”

  “But it is my fault,” she said. “I knew better than to get involved with Joseph. I never trusted him completely. I should have trusted my instincts.” She shrugged. “Looking back, I guess I was attracted to his bad boy persona. He always seemed exotic and sexy and powerful to me. I had no idea that he would turn into a megalomaniacal dictator of a third world country.”

  “The Saytumah family has been into gunrunning for generations,” he said. “Although we had our suspicions, we’ve never been able to gather enough evidence put them out of business. Every agent that has tried to infiltrate their organization has been caught and killed. The shipping company acquisition gave them a new way to transport their weapons. It also helped them to expand their business operations. We believe that they’re now transporting shipments for other gunrunners. That’s the information we’re hoping you’ll be able to retrieve from his computer. If we know when the next shipment will take place, we can intercept it and have the proof we need to shut them down.”

  Sonia rolled her eyes. Just great. The fact that every other fool they’d sent in to get this information had been captured and/or killed made her feel much better about the assignment. Maybe she should rethink this. She couldn’t protect David or get him out of the country if she got caught and killed. She didn’t doubt for a moment Joseph would kill her if he ever found out she’d been the one to give this information to the CIA.

  But she’d thought it over thoroughly over the past few weeks and had come to the conclusion that she didn’t really have any other option. Helping the CIA and going into witness protection was really the best way to protect David. What she needed to do was to make sure David would be safe no matter what happened. She turned to Tyrone.

  “Listen,” she said, “I’ll do this. I’m willing to take this risk. But the CIA has to promise me something -- and I want it in writing. You have to promise me that no matter what happens, if I try and get you this information and get captured and/or killed, the CIA will take David out of Liberia, give him to my parents, and put them all into witness protection.”

  Tyrone nodded. “You’re a very brave woman, Sonia. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “You do that,” Sonia said, “because those are the terms of my agreement to help the CIA. If I don’t get that, we’re all just wasting our time.”

  She knew she was asking for a lot. She was basically asking the CIA to kidnap the son of a foreign dignitary and to hide him from his father for the rest of his life. It was illegal and possibly immoral. But it was for his own good. The CIA would balk, but they would eventually give in. By Tyrone’s account, they’d been trying to bring the Saytumahs down for more than twenty years. They needed her as much as she needed them.

  Chapter XV

  Two weeks later, Tara and Sonia got in some target practice.

  “That's good,” Tara said. “Just relax your shoulders and visualize the bullet going into the target. You want to squeeze the trigger. Don't jerk the gun, just aim it, hold it steady and squeeze the trigger.”

  Sonia barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. Tara had been saying the same exact words for weeks. At least now Sonia was starting to get a feel for what the words actually meant. She focused her mind on the target, visualized the bullet hitting it, aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger while holding the gun as still as possible. The bullet hit the center mass of the target. For the first time in weeks, Sonia began to feel a measure of confidence in her shooting.

  “That’s it. Yes! Good girl.” Tara clapped her hands together, drew them under her chin and beamed at Sonia. “Your shooting is getting so much better. You’re now consistently hitting the target.”

  Sonia shot for a while longer until Tara signaled for her to stop. “Okay. Today, we’re going to let you take the gun with you. Here are two extra clips. We’re also going to give you some equipment you’re going to need to download the information from your husband's computer.”

  Tara handed Sonia two gun clips and a tiny plastic-covered gadget. “This is a disc drive. It’s loaded with a special program designed to both upload and download the contents of your husband’s hard drive. Just plug it into a USB port on the computer. The drive will do the rest.”

  “How long will it take to finish downloading the data?” Sonia asked.

  “That depends on how much data is on the computer. No longer than twenty minutes though,” Tara said.

  “Twenty minutes? That's a long time to be hanging out in the presidential office waiting to get caught,” Sonia said.

  Tyrone walked into the room. Apparently, he’d heard Sonia’s remark because he responded. “We're going to be right there with you all the way.” He held up something that looked like a tiny hearing aid. “This here is a communication device. When you hit the little button here and put this in your ear, we'll be able to hear everything you hear. We'll also be able to talk to you.”

  Oh great. So they’d be able to listen to her get caught and killed.

  Stop that. Focus, she reminded herself. This is the job she’d signed up to do. And she’d do it well. She had to -- for David’s sake.

  After some back and forth, she’d finally wrangled a written agreement from the CIA. Her father helped secure that, no doubt. Tyrone and Tara had allowed her to contact her parents to explain everything to them.

  Sonia grimaced. That had been a mess. It was all she could do to convince the senator not to send a private hostage rescue team to Liberia to escort her and his grandson back to the U.S. But that would cause an international incident, at best, and Joseph would still have the better side of the argument in any custody battle over David.

  In a way, her mother’s reaction had been even worse. She’d just kept crying and saying: “I knew it. I knew something would go wrong if you went to live in that godforsaken place.” Eventually, her parents had calmed down enough to hear the plan. They weren’t happy about the risk she was taking, but they understood she had few options. Still, that didn’t stop them from doing all they could to help. Her father had all but threatened to hunt Tyrone and Tara down and take them out himself if anything went wrong with the operation and she or their grandson were harmed. Maybe the CIA wouldn’t be so quick to deem her expendable now.

  Sonia brought herself back to the present. “When do you want me to get this done?” she asked.

  “That's entirely up to you. We’ll keep an ear out for the triggering of the listening device and be ready to enter the mansion and make the arrest as early as tonight. Assuming all goes well, you and your son could be on the Red Cross flight to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday morning,” Tara said.

  “To think that I could be free from this nightmare as early as Wednesday morning. It just seems unreal. That's assuming I don’t get caught in the act and killed, of course,” Sonia said.

  “You’re a smart, strong, and resourceful woman. I have no doubt you can get this done. Just have faith,” Tara said.

  “Tara will give you a bag with a hidden compartment in which to carry those supplies. If anyone looks inside the bag, they’ll only find scarves and other items easily passable as gifts,” Tyrone said.

  “That's good. Well, we'll see how this turns out. Thank you both for everything,”
Sonia said.

  “No. Thank you. Both Liberia and the American government will be in your debt when you pull this off and give us the evidence we need to put the Saytumah family out of business,” Tara said.

  It was strange. The weeks she’d spent training with Tyrone and Tara had made her feel like she was part of something larger than herself. It gave her a respite from wanting to pull her hair out in the presidential mansion. A part of her felt a little sad that the training had come to an end. This is not the time to get irrational and emotional. You’ve got a mission to complete.

  She glanced at her watch and, to her surprise, saw that it was nearly dinnertime. “It's getting late. I'd better get back before Joseph gets suspicious.”

  “Good luck and be careful,” Tara said.

  “We have faith in you,” Tyrone said.

  Sonia took a deep breath and pushed it out. “Thank you. Let’s just hope your faith in me is justified.”

  ***

  A few hours later, Tyrone and Tara reported to their handler by teleconference.

  “We’re ready to mobilize as soon as we get a signal from Sonia’s earpiece,” Tara said.

  “Are you sure she’ll be able to pull this off?” the handler asked.

  Tyrone shrugged. “She’s a resourceful woman. Her husband may believe that she’d try to smuggle their son out of the country, but she hasn’t given him any reason to believe she’d help us spy on his operations. That should give her an advantage.”

  “Well, she’s going to have to move soon,” the handler said. “The Saytumah family is expected to receive a large shipment of weapons in the next few days. We need to wrap this up before then.”

  Tara nodded. “We understand. If Sonia doesn’t activate by tomorrow, we’ll visit the Presidential mansion and pass on the message.”

  ***

  The next evening, Sonia lay on the bed in the master bedroom of the Presidential mansion. Joseph and the Saytumah family doctor stood beside it.

  “What is wrong with her?” Joseph asked.