Chapter 16

Palm Tree Villa, Saddle Bay Point, B.V.I.

The Palm Tree Villa was a sprawling eight building complex, just off the sandy drive at the end of Mountain Trail that wound up the hill overlooking Saddle Bay Point on the west end of Jost [pronounced ‘yost’] Van Dyke, in the British Virgin Islands. In the past two weeks after Armis’ invitation to join, half a dozen members of the security group had found their way to the property that Io owned.

The head comms rang in all six of their heads on Jost Van Dyke at 0830 on a Thursday morning. It was a voice message: “Arriving in 30 minutes. Can we meet in the main room? Local staff need not be present. Armis”

Carolyn Osgood, the second in charge of this little group, notified the local staff – a cook and a handyman – to take the day off.

The group had organized itself once they were all in place. The senior member of the group was Billy Joe Hawkins, a former SEAL Master Chief – a senior non-com position. Osgood was a non-com in the Recon Marines; she was senior to the others by length of service only. All the others were also members of special services. They were: Sam Kennedy, a former Recon Marine and the fellow that Armis took to Mexico. Avis MoKenna, a black, female former U.S. Ranger; a large, heavily muscled woman whose expertise in unarmed combat outshone the others. Jarvis McCutcheon, formerly a member of Britain’s SAS. And Devon Stormwinder, a former SEAL; this relatively small, wiry man was an explosives expert.

At 0859 Armis blipped into the room, and she immediately greeted the six former special operators by name. She handed out a packet of maps of the off-shore facility near the southern coast of Nigeria.

“I’m sure,” she began, “that you’ve all heard about the take over of the Nigerian off-shore oil facility by the remnants of Boko Haram. As you’ll remember, the main Boko Haram group was operating in the Nigeria/Niger/Chad tri-state area, but was demolished in the 2030’s by a military group led by the French Foreign Legion.”

“Tough bastards, they are, even though they’re Frenchies,” said Jarvis McCutcheon.

“Most of ‘em ain’t French,” said Avis.

“Yes,” agreed Armis. “The Boko remnants have now taken over the oil facility, taken some hostages and have now been holding out for several weeks. But the Legion has declined to intervene in storming an offshore facility.”

“I take it that you want us to undertake storming it?” said Avis. Her accent had the broad vowel sounds of the upper mid-west U.S. She popped the top of a can of Diet Coke and took a long slug of the carbonated caffeine fix.

“Well ... we’re going to take it over from the bad guys. We can kill them as we encounter them, I don’t care about that. But we don’t have to go in the front door. We can drop in at any place in the compound ... or several places at nearly the same time ... You just need to figure out where.”

“That’ll kinda depend on where they are, yaknow?” said B.J. Hawkins.

“You pussy. You wanna know where they is?” That was from Devon Stormwinder, the explosives man. “I don’t figure we can know that.”

“Do you mind?” Armis asked Osgood, pointing to the laptop in front of the former Recon Marine.

The lady in the white gown opened the laptop, called up the secret and secure website that Io had created. It took a couple of minutes to establish the link, then a map appeared on screen. On the left margin was a series of numbers, starting at 1 and ending at 5; ‘1’ was backlit. There were a few little red dots here and there, a smaller number of white dots. The map showed walls, doors, openings and windows where appropriate.

“This,” explained Armis, “is from a satellite over West Africa. The red is bad guys, the white is captives -- all an estimate, of course. Unfortunately, they don’t identify themselves. You can zoom in and out, getting more detail. The numbers on the left are for floor numbers, going down. 1 is at the top of the building.”

“No shit!” mumbled BJ. He had taken the touchpad and zoomed in. “I’d guess those guys with the rifles are bad guys.”

“Wow!” That was from Sam Kennedy, one of the two black members. “I’d’a figured that with a hill-billy accent like that, picking out the bad guys was ‘bout at the limit of your smarts.”

“Shut the fuck up, you damn Recon nigger,” BJ threw, but there was no malice in his voice.

“I didn’t hear no nigger-callin’ when we pulled your sorry ass out of Borneo, few years back.”

“Yeah, well ... you were lucky then,” said BJ, throwing a pen at Kennedy.

“AHHHEMMM!” said Carolyn Osgood. “Why don’t you both just pull ‘em out and lay ‘em on the table here, so we can measure. And then shut up...”

“We know how that’s gonna turn out,” laughed Kennedy, quietly.

“Armis, this is from a satellite? Is it a live feed?” Osgood continued.

“Allowing for transmission delays from Nigeria to here, it’s live.”

“We going to be able to get live feeds during the op?” Osgood asked. Armis nodded affirmatively.

“Can we get left- or right-eye D.B.O. feeds through E.C.U.?” asked Jarvis McCutcheon.

“I have no idea what you just asked, but if it’s currently available technology on this planet...”

‘The answer is yes. If they have a comm updated on or after last December, ‘ Io patched an answer through to Armis’ text/comm unit.

“ ... then the answer is yes.”

Jarvis: “DBO is double-blink on/off. And ECU is an enhanced comm unit. I was an electronics geek in SAS.”

Armis: “Okay. Who has an ECU in place.” Only Jarvis raised his hand. “Whose comm unit was updated on or after last December.” The two SEALs raised a hand. “That leaves you three...” she pointed at Kennedy, Osgood and MoKenna “ ... needing an update ... Well, assuming that we want to have lefty-righty-DBO.”

Jarvis: “Not a geek, huh? Since we have the live download, it’ll be a big help on the op.”

‘I can have a comm surgeon at the old Bethesda in 24 hours, ‘ Io beamed to Armis. ‘They’ll be back same day.’

Jarvis: “It will provide a map in one eye or the other, you can turn it off or on with a double-blink. The data comes in from the ECU.”

Armis: “I can have a comm surgeon in the eastern U.S. by tomorrow. You three will be back here by tomorrow night.”

MoKenna: “There’s no connection to the U.S. from Jost Van Dyke. Just the flight time alone will...”

Kennedy: [laugh] “You haven’t seen how having Armis as a travel agent works ... I’m in.”

Osgood: “Okay with me.”

MoKenna: “All right. I’ll go get the update.”

Armis: “Great, we’ll leave at 0600 tomorrow. Between then and now can we – you actually – come up with a plan to retake the off-shore facility.”

Kennedy: “I thought we had to see the doc early tomorrow. This could take more than a few hours.”

Armis: “You can sleep under anesthesia.”

Kennedy: [laugh] “Okay.”

Armis: “Oh. I don’t want to keep anything from you. The facility is half owned by Royal Dutch Shell, and half by the Nigerian government. Now you’ve heard of the electric power generation discovery in Canada.” [There were nods around the room.] “I have a financial interest in that. And that was piggy-backed into a controlling interest in most oil companies ... including Royal Dutch Shell. If anybody has a problem with that, now’s the time to say so.”