Fifteen kilograms of C-4 exploded in a blinding fireball, sending shockwaves through the hull of the Lilliana when the tender and its passengers vaporized. Chunks of the shore boat pelted the cruise ship’s steel plating as the roar of the blast carried to the deck, where another contingent of Ukrainian military was signing off on the captain’s documentation in preparation for the vessel’s departure.
Two hours later, a previously unknown faction of the pro-Russian insurgents issued a statement claiming responsibility for the atrocity, which had taken the lives of seventy-three tourists, five crewmen, three soldiers, and the pilot of the hapless tender. The statement warned that there would be more attacks on foreign-flagged vessels unless the Ukrainian administration immediately stood down and abandoned its claims of being the nation’s legitimate government. Horrified international reaction to the atrocity was immediate, while the Russians insisted they had no part in the terrorist action and joined with the international community in condemning it.
The U.S. and the European Union dismissed the Russian statement as a ruse to distance itself from the reprehensible behavior of its cohorts, and announced that a new set of harsh sanctions would be enacted to punish the Russians for their barbaric aggression. An op-ed piece in one of the U.S.’s premier papers called for American troops to be sent to help battle the new terrorist threat that had surfaced on Russia’s southern border, and the German chancellor announced that the actions of the insurgents would be considered to be actions of Russia, in spite of that country’s insistence that it had no relationship with the new group.
Tour companies cancelled all visitations to the region, and lawsuits were filed on behalf of the dead passengers within hours of the disaster, claiming that the cruise line had been negligent in protecting them and had risked the lives of everyone aboard by choosing to stop in Odessa.
Tensions mounted as the rhetoric grew more heated, until the threat level of nuclear war escalated to the highest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis – a development that would have been considered impossible only a few years earlier, with the Soviet Union a faint memory and the specter of nuclear Armageddon an archaic footnote in mankind’s foolhardy history.
Chapter 2
One week ago, 110 miles NE of Sangba, Central African Republic
Two Toyota Land Cruisers and four Hilux trucks, their green and beige camouflage paint slathered with red mud, bounced down a rutted jungle track, a long shower having turned the ordinarily terrible road virtually impassable. The engines labored as the four-wheel-drive vehicles slipped and slid on their way east, toward the no-man’s land that was officially national forest but was in reality rebel territory on the border of Sudan. The truck beds were full of heavily armed soldiers with resigned expressions and uniforms sopping from sweat and the last of the rain.
The ragged convoy had left the military outpost south of the little village of Bamingui two hours earlier and was behind schedule, the downpour having slowed its progress to a crawl. Their destination was a remote airstrip still another eighty miles away, and the driver of the lead vehicle’s face twisted in frustration at the slop the vehicles were fighting their way through. A radio crackled to life on the seat beside him, and the captain in the passenger seat reached for it with his free hand, the other gripping a battered AK-47.
“Osprey, this is Henri. Do you copy?” a deep baritone voice asked in French, an artifact of the French and Belgian colonization that many of the nation’s historians argued had amounted to slave labor for those countries’ mining efforts during the last century.
“Oui, Henri.”
“Your transponder shows you haven’t made much progress,” Henri said accusingly.
“The road is a disaster. We’re lucky we’ve gotten this far, sir.”
“Your rendezvous wants confirmation of when you’ll make it.”
Claude, a captain in the armed forces and the leader of the unofficial task force code-named Osprey, checked his watch. “Figure two hours late. Maybe three.”
“It will be getting dark. He’s afraid that if it takes too long, he won’t be able to take off.”
“Worst case, we can park along the airstrip with our lights on so he can see the runway.”
“Anything you can do to speed things up?”