nodded. “I’ll make sure of it,” he said with a straight face.
Bolan found himself impressed with both men’s performances. When working in any type of undercover capacity, it was the little things that counted. And although most of the Cameroonians obviously sensed that the Justice Department story for Bolan and Lareby’s association with the Secret Service were lies, their faces still looked sincere as a tacit agreement to keep playing this game fell into place.
Sometimes, it was more important not to know something than it was to know it.
“I’ll vouch for him until we can get duplicate credentials sent over,” Bolan said. “He’ll be working directly with me rather than being part of either of the candidate-protection details.”
“Doing what, exactly, then?” the older man asked.
Bolan looked the man directly in the eye. “While the rest of the Secret Service looks after your candidates’ protection, Dr. Lareby and I are going hunting.”
“Hunting?” another young soldier almost screamed from farther down the table. “At a time like this, when all of Cameroon depends on what happens in the election, you two are planning on taking an African safari?”
He was interrupted by the older, gray-haired man. “They are not planning to shoot wildebeest and lions, my young friend,” he said. “I believe what he meant was that they are going hunting for our former president.”
Bolan’s nod was slight, but everyone at the table caught it.
And understood what it meant.
3
The prime minister’s staff had arranged for three suites to house the Americans. They were located on the third floor of the Hilton downtown, and would be used as a meeting place for the entire team; a location where both interviews and interrogations could be conducted, and a site for the Secret Service agents to “crash” when they weren’t on duty.
Each of the two Cameroonian presidential candidates would have a pair of Secret Service agents by his side at all times. They would also be in charge of the Cameroon military protection agents who worked for Colonel Essam, and deal with the private bodyguards from within the two political parties.
As for Essam and his men, Bolan had assigned them to create an “outer circle” around the block on which the Hilton stood. They would be the first line of defense against perceived threats and, with luck, be able to end the problems before they got any closer to the men in the hotel.
Essam had not liked being so far away from the nucleus of the action, but Bolan had encountered his type before. It had taken only a few words to convince the colonel just how important the outer ring was before he puffed out his chest and agreed to the assignment.
As he shoved the key card into the door of suite 307, the Executioner wondered just how well it was all going to work. The colonel had left their brief encounter after the meeting with a smile. But the Executioner thought that smile had looked forced. It was clear that the colonel was more accustomed to giving orders than taking them, and Bolan wondered just how long it would be before his resentment overcame the thin flattery.
The light atop the lock turned green and Bolan twisted the doorknob open. His plan was a somewhat unconventional setup in regard to bodyguarding, or VIP protection, as it was commonly referred to these days. The U.S. Secret Service would be with the two presidential candidates in the suites and anywhere else they moved them, while Colonel Essam and his men ran a “roving guard” throughout the hotel’s halls and lobby, as well as circling the Hilton in unmarked street vehicles.
Bolan wasn’t crazy about the arrangement. It gave him no view of what Essam and his men were doing, and their abilities were a far cry from those of the expert Secret Service men. This meant the outer ring of protection was vulnerable to penetration, and assassination attempts that should have been seen and halted before they got anywhere near the two candidates might very well be executed.
But such was the game Bolan had walked into. And while his jurisdiction over the Secret Service and Lareby was a definite, it extended to the Cameroonian military only on paper. He had little doubt that if Essam contradicted his orders, the soldiers under him would obey their colonel.
The situation was “iffy” at best.
There was another aspect that troubled Bolan even more, and was constantly at the back of his mind. The enemy had known when his aircraft was landing, and how many men were getting off. And those two things spelled traitor to the Executioner. He was going to have to keep his eyes on his own men as well as those of the CPU and KDNP.
Lareby followed the soldier into their separate suite next to that of the Secret Service and said, “Which bedroom do you want?”
Bolan scanned the area, then said, “I’ll probably end up sleeping out here on the couch. If I get a chance to sleep at all. I want to keep one ear open for anything going on to our sides or in the hall.”
Lareby nodded. “We’ll probably hear Essam’s lackeys pounding up and down the halls most of the time,” he said. “But you think I should do the same? I could pull that other couch up near the door and—” he pointed across the room at a slightly shorter version of the sofa Bolan had indicated “—and I could rack out next to—”
The big American shook his head. “There’s no need for both of us to do that,” he said. “Besides, we’re going to spend a lot more time away from this room than in it.”
“Okay,” the CIA man said and headed for the nearest bedroom.
Bolan walked to the phone on a nightstand next to the couch and lifted the receiver to his ear, at the same time pulling a business card out of his jacket pocket. A moment later he had punched in the number printed on the card, and a moment after that the hospital answered.
“Jack Grimaldi’s room, please,” Bolan said.
As he waited, he caught himself grinning. Grimaldi had awakened before the ambulance could arrive and, still under the influence of the morphine Lareby had administered, tried to get out of the jeep just as the meeting had broken up. He was raring to go after the men who had shot him, and it had been difficult to get him to go to the hospital. Just as the ambulance had arrived, Bolan had finally convinced him by saying, “Look, Jack. It doesn’t hurt to be careful. Besides, you’ll just be hanging around, waiting for our folks to send one of the other jets. Just do it for me, okay? I can’t afford to use a pilot who isn’t running at one hundred percent.”
Even under the drug’s influence, Grimaldi had seen through the ruse. But he had finally nodded in agreement.
The phone buzzed in Bolan’s ear, and a second later he heard Grimaldi pick up the receiver next to his hospital bed. “It must be you, Sarge,” the pilot growled. “Nobody else knows I’m here.”
“Ease up, old buddy,” he said. “Actually, everybody back home at the Farm knows where you are. I told them when I called for another plane to be sent over. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” Grimaldi said. “Got a few stitches is all. But they want to keep me overnight for observation. Frankly, it all makes me feel like something growing in a test tube. There’s only one reason I haven’t already walked out of here.”
“And I’ll
