Final Coup

“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 just bet she has a name,” the Executioner said with a chuckle.

“As a matter of fact, she does.” Grimaldi laughed back. “Although I can’t pronounce it. In any case, she’s promised me a sponge bath as soon as her shift is over.”

“You get well,” Bolan came back. “There’s no telling when we might need you.”

“Affirmative, big guy,” the pilot said.

In the background, Bolan heard what sounded like a hospital privacy curtain closing.

“Gotta go,” Grimaldi said. “Got a visitor. And she’s armed with a sponge.”

The Executioner was still smirking as he hung up. But his momentary light spirit disappeared when he heard the sudden knock on the door to the hall. It came in the form of five strikes with little-to-no pauses in between.

It was not the two knocks, pause, and then two more raps that he and the Secret Service men had agreed upon as their “code knock” when visiting one anothers rooms.

From beneath his torn and battle-rumpled sports coat, the Executioner drew the sound-suppressed 9 mm Beretta 93-R.

Then he walked toward the peephole.

Bolan held the 93-R in front of the peephole for a good three seconds before dropping the Beretta to his side. More than one man had been shot through a peephole when the gunman on the other side saw it darken, and the Executioner had no intention of joining that club. Finally satisfied that it wasn’t a ruse, he stuck an eye in front of the hole.

A moment later, he opened the door. “What are you doing here?” the soldier asked bluntly. “You should be in bed. Or getting your chemotherapy.”

A brief expression of sadness covered Antangana’s face. Then it switched almost magically into a knowing grin. “I do not restart my treatments for another couple of days,” he said. “So I thought I would come to assist you.”

Bolan opened the door wider and let the man into the room.

The soldier had barely recognized Antangana. The man had changed out of his suit into a pair of worn brown slacks, sandals and a brightly colored dashiki. The loose garment—like the suit coat before it—seemed to emphasize his emaciation.

“I was President Menye’s prime minister,” the man said as soon as Bolan had swung the door closed and replaced the Beretta in his shoulder rig. “And no one knows that evil man better than I do. I will help you find him, and I will help you kill him.” His grin seemed to take up all of his face, and Bolan saw a perfect row of gleaming white teeth behind his upper lip.

Bolan looked the man up and down. He was still getting into this mission, and the one thing he’d learned so far was that he couldn’t be certain who could be trusted and who could not. Antangana’s multicolored African-patterned dashiki was so large on him it could have hidden any number of weapons.

“Don’t take this personally,” the soldier said as he reached out, twisted the man to face away from him and patted him down. The closest thing to a weapon he found was an Okapi folding knife in the man’s right front pocket. Opening the folding blade, he looked down at the inexpensive steel. Patterned loosely after the centuries-renowned Spanish navajas, the Okapis were manufactured in South Africa and although nonlocking and difficult to sharpen, they could be deadly in the hand of a man who knew how to use them.

Antangana’s knife didn’t look as if it had been used for much more than peeling apples or cutting vegetables. Bolan folded the knife closed again and dropped it in his pocket for the time being.

“With all due respect, Mr. Prime Minister,” the soldier asked, “exactly what is it you think you can do to help, considering your health?”

“I know this country,” Antangana stated. “I know it as well as I know myself. And I know the people and our customs. I can help you deal with them without accidentally offending them and turning them to stone.” He paused to catch his breath. “I believe you Americans say something like I can ‘cut through the bullshit.’”

Bolan had to fight to keep a smile from forming on his own face. “Well,” he said, “have a seat.” Unleathering the Beretta again and gesturing with it at the couch.

Antangana dropped down on the couch as Bolan took a padded armchair. A second later, Lareby came out of the bedroom. The CIA man had taken off his vest and rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. He was drying his hands with a white towel as he crossed the threshold. “I see we have company,” he said.

Bolan kept his eyes on the man in the dashiki. “Yes, we do,” he said. “You remember him, I’m sure. Antangana— Jean—Antangana. Unfortunately at this point, he belongs to the group of men I trust the least in the world.”

“Oh, yeah?” Lareby said as he finished drying his hands and arms. “And what group might that be?”

“Volunteer informants,” the Executioner replied. “They’re almost always playing both ends against the middle.”

By this point, Antangana had bent one knee beneath him and was sitting on his own foot while his other leg extended to the floor. In spite of Bolan’s words, the smile he had entered the room wearing never left his face. “I understand your logic,” he said. “And I must admit I would probably distrust you if our roles were reversed. But I promise you I am an exception. So. What can I do to gain your confidence?”

“You can start by telling us why you didn’t volunteer your help earlier at the meeting.”

“Because there were men present who I do not trust,” Antangana said simply. “And I did not want them to know any more about your plans than necessary.”

The man’s sickly appearance seemed to loom even larger as he tried to take a deep breath. There was something about him—something Bolan couldn’t put his finger on—that made the Executioner believe he was sincere in his desire to assist them. “Who don’t you trust?” he asked.

“There are several I suspect of sympathizing with the KDNP. Others with the CPU. And one or two, I am relatively certain, are still loyal to President Menye.”

Bolan thought about the man’s words for a moment. His gut still told him that this man was telling the truth. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to grow up in a country such as Cameroon without taking on prejudices of one sort or another. While the remaining leaders of the nation might not be actual members of the KDNP or CPU, they would likely lean one way or the other.

“Assuming I believe you,” Bolan finally said. “What would make you want to help us at this time? Particularly since you were one of Menye’s top men before he vacated his little throne.” The Executioner rarely used sarcasm, but when he did, it cut all the way to the bone.

Antangana shrugged. “The answer to your question is really not very complicated,” he said. “When he first took office, Menye was not the self-inflated potentate that he gradually became. I was proud to work for him then. But, little by little, he began to change. A small lie here. An execution carried out for personal reasons there. Before long, he had created a regime far more remorselessly cruel than Cameroon had ever known in the past.” Antangana paused and drew in another deep breath. “And so I was stuck.”

“You tried to resign?” Bolan asked.

“I did,” Antangana said. “I do not remember Menye’s exact words, but they included that my head might look attractive on top of a spear stuck into the ground.” He paused and traded legs beneath him. “That dampened my enthusiasm for resigning rather quickly.”

Lareby had pulled one of the chairs away from the dining-room table, flipped it backward, then sat with his arms crossed over the back, his chin resting on them. “I can see how it might,” the CIA man said. “But why didn’t you just leave the country and seek asylum in America or somewhere else?”

“Because by the time I realized how power-crazed he had become,” Antangana said, staring hard at the man, “too much had already occurred. I was afraid any country in which I sought refuge would consider me as guilty as Menye himself. Besides, the man had already murdered two of his staff who he only suspected of plotting against him. I had no desire to be the third.”

Lareby and Bolan exchanged glances and nods. The story sounded believable. The soldier turned back to Antangana. “All right,” he said, standing up. “I’m going to give you a shot. And you can take that statement both literally and figuratively. If you’re on the level and really want to help us, great. But if it turns out that you have your own personal agenda that conflicts with ours, all I can promise you is a faster and more humane death than your old boss would have given you.” He reholstered the Beretta and pulled the Okapi out of his pocket, flipping it across the room to Antangana. “Try to use that piece of steel on me or anyone else, and I’ll kill you with it,” he said. “Understood?”

“Quite well,” the prime minister said. “And please believe me when I tell you I have no hidden agenda of any sort. My only goals are to save my country and pray that my chemotherapy is successful. If I cannot be successful with the second goal, I hope to see my country become a peaceful democracy before I die. And, oh, yes…I want to see Menye caught or killed, of course.”

Bolan and Lareby remained silent.

“May I assume, then,” Antangana said after another breath, “that we are all in agreement?” He rocked forward and came back to his feet, pulling the leg on which he sat out from the couch and returning it to the floor.