Читать книгу Seducing the Mercenary - Лорет Энн Уайт, Loreth White Anne - Страница 5

15:00 Zulu. Friday, November 8. Ubasi Palace. West Coast of Africa

“The American embassy is being evacuated—all

U.S. citizens are being advised to leave the country at once.” The general paused. Silence permeated the room and hung heavy in the equatorial heat.

Jean-Charles Laroque nodded at his aide and walked slowly over the vast stone floor of his war room, toward the long arched windows cut into the walls of the palace he’d called home since he’d taken Ubasi by force just over a year ago. His leather boots squeaked softly, and his black dog, Shaka, moved like a shadow at his heels.

He clasped his hands behind his back and surveyed the dense jungle canopy that undulated for miles beyond the walls of his fortress, toward distant mountains shrouded in afternoon haze.

Four Americans had been killed in Ubasi, allegedly geologists with a Nigerian oil concern.

The killings had occurred simultaneously in different parts of Ubasi. The bodies had been gutted and strung from trees, left in the steaming sun for predators, exactly the same way his father used to exhibit his kills as warning to his foes.

Laroque’s mouth turned bone-dry.

This had clearly been a coordinated operation, and it had clearly been intended to frame him.

As hard as he’d tried to shed the stigma of being the son of infamous South African-born mercenary Peter Laroque, the notoriety of his late father proved impossible to shake. And it followed him now with this gruesome display of bodies.

He pursed his lips in concentration.

On the heels of these murders had come even more disturbing news. His rebel allies who controlled the northern reaches of the Ubasi jungles had crossed into neighboring Nigeria, where they had raided the barracks of a U.S. oil corporation security outfit and captured five employees. Laroque’s rebels maintained these captives were the killers of the Americans. They also maintained that the four dead geologists were in fact CIA agents who had been poking around Laroque’s oil concessions in the north.

Laroque had been given nothing to prove this, just the word of his rebel leader with whom he had now lost contact as the cadre had entered the dense jungle at the foothills of the Purple Mountains. When the rebels reached base camp in a few days, word would be sent to Laroque and he could go and interrogate the captives himself. But until then, he had nothing.

He cursed softly in his native African-French.

Ubasi had just been welcoming back tourists. The U.S. embassy had recently reopened with two officers offering basic emergency service. Foreign currency was trickling in again. Telecommunications were gradually being restored. Even the electrical supply was becoming slightly more reliable. The war-torn economy was actually picking up for the first time in fifty years.

Now those same tourists were being told to evacuate.

And if those dead Americans were indeed CIA operatives, and if Washington thought Laroque was personally responsible for their deaths, that he had killed them as some kind of warning to the superpower to stay out of “his” country, and away from “his” oil, then some major form of retaliation was certain.

Ubasi was set to blow.

Adrenaline hummed through Laroque’s blood as he turned to face the general, his dark mahogany skin gleaming in the equatorial heat. He touched Shaka’s fur as he spoke.

“Contact every single foreigner who obtained a visa from the immigration office within the past six months,” he commanded his general. “Order them all out. Shut the borders. I want as few innocent lives lost as possible.”

Innocent lives like his sister’s. Like her small children.

Bitterness filled his throat. It was always the innocent who suffered in this business of war. His business.

“There is also that science team sponsored by Geographic International—”

The image of the woman he’d seen in the street earlier that day once again took haunting shape in Laroque’s mind. She’d stood out like a siren among the crowds that had gathered to greet him. Something about her had unsettled Laroque deeply. It was the way her violet eyes had looked at him, right into him. Cool fingers of warning raked through him, indistinct like mist over a jungle swamp. He blew them off sharply.

Perhaps she was part of the science team, perhaps not. It didn’t matter. Either way she and every other foreigner would be out of his country by nightfall.

Laroque checked his watch. “The team should have landed in Ubasi nine hours ago. Turn them round, tell them they no longer have my sanction for their study.”

“If they refuse?”

“Anyone who has not left for the airport by curfew hour tonight is to be brought here to the castle. Tell them it’s for their own safety—Ubasi could turn into a war zone at any moment.”

Laroque watched the heavy doors swing shut behind his general, and he clenched his jaw.

Someone was trying to manipulate him into a violent confrontation with the United States. He needed to know who and why, and he needed to know ASAP. If anyone defied his orders to leave Ubasi, he wanted them in his palace and under his watch, because it might just give him a lead, some small clue as to what the hell was going down.

And God help anyone trying to undermine him. Laroque would sacrifice nothing for his dream of freedom now. Because he had nothing left to lose.

And that made him the most dangerous kind of man.