Jessica Kincaid laid two of her launchers, an RPG-22 and the RPG-26, on the shooting perch she had climbed to in the treetops and shouldered the second RPG-22. She reserved the superior 26 for her second shot. She would need the best she had after her first shot exposed her position. Eyes locked on the nearest tank, which was grinding over a rock ledge, she tugged the launcher’s extension, which simultaneously lengthened the weapon to its full thirty-three and one-half inches and opened its front and rear covers. Then she raised the rear sight to cock it, found the tank, aimed for the seal between its turret and turret cavity, and fired.

The rocket’s solid-fuel motor ignited and burned fully in a flash. The fin-stabilized rocket leaped from the smoothbore barrel and drove a two-and-a-half-pound high-explosive anti-tank warhead at Kincaid’s target.

“Bull’s-eye,” she murmured under her breath.

It was a double explosion, the first burst at the bottom edge of the turret, the second an instant later as the ammunition inside the tank blew up, hurling the armored turret off the hull and onto the ground. Smoke billowed as if Kincaid’s grenade had transformed the tank into a boiling pot.

She grabbed the RPG-26. The backblast had ignited the leaf canopy behind her, flagging her position. Every tank in the ravine tried to raise its main gun in her direction. But to elevate so high, they had to maneuver onto a slope. She cocked the 26—no time-wasting extension on the improved model, thank you, Russians—chose as her target a tank climbing a steep slope to draw a bead on her, and fired. She heard a flat cracking sound. Instead of screaming at the tank, the rocket misfired, jumped ten feet from the barrel, and tumbled to the forest floor.

“Fuck!”

The tank she had aimed at was traversing its main gun at her. She grabbed the remaining RPG-22 and jerked open the extension. Something exploded. The tank was suddenly spewing smoke. Its hatch opened and three men tumbled out, rolling on the ground to douse their burning clothes. Janson, she realized, had nailed it. But the fire in the trees behind her had drawn the attention of another tank.

“Get down from there,” she heard him in her earpiece. She raised her sight and prayed this one wasn’t another dud.

* * *

INSIDE THE T-72 three small men—none taller than five feet, four inches, could fit in the tiny space—teamed up to obliterate the RGP-armed insurgent in the tree who had already destroyed one of the tanks. The driver manipulated his tillers and gear sticks to force the machine up the side of the ravine. The commander guided the main gun and shouted the order to fire, twice. At the first command, the driver stomped his clutch to steady the beast. At the second, the gunner fired. The commander saw the flash of the insurgent’s launcher. A HEAT projectile penetrated the armor plate with a burning jet of gas. There was a blinding light. Hot shell fragments ricocheted in the confined space like flying razors.

* * *

IN THE TREETOPS, the tank’s 125mm shell screamed so close by Jessica Kincaid that a shock wave knocked her flat. Then the tank she had fired at exploded. She threw herself over the edge of the platform before another got the range, and climbed down the makeshift rungs as fast as she could.

As she hit the forest floor she heard Janson’s voice in her earpiece, cold and deadly: “I believe I ordered you out of that tree.”

“Yes, sir.” She felt like a buck private chewed out by a full colonel.

“Pull another stunt like that and you’ll be looking for a job.”

“I thought I was a partner.”

“Then you’ll be looking for a partner,” Janson shot back, and suddenly exploded in a degree of emotion she had never heard from him. “Jesus H! Jesse, you’ll get yourself killed cowboying like that.”

“Won’t happen again, sir.”

“Fall back to the cave; we’ve got to get out of here.”

They ran convergent paths that brought them together at the hospital cave. Janson looked more himself than his voice had sounded on the radio, Kincaid thought, his usual cool, clear, alert, and focused like a blowtorch. “Iboga hid his presidential guard behind the tanks. They’re coming up with all four feet.”

“I saw him. Scary dude in a yellow scarf.”

The FFM insurgents were falling back.

Inside the cave Kincaid and Janson found a dozen boys huddled around Ferdinand Poe’s cot.

Paul Janson spoke in a loud, clear voice to rally Flannigan, Ferdinand Poe, and any of the kids who understood English: “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to put Minister Poe on a stretcher and spell each other carrying him, four at a time, two on each pole. The doctor will carry his medicine. You two boys—you and you—will carry water. This lady will lead,” he said, indicating Jessica Kincaid with her MP5 cradled in her arms. “Follow her. I will cover our rear. Stick close together and we’ll make it out of here. Quickly now, everyone, move!”

Flannigan supervised the shifting of the injured man from his cot to the stretcher, which was held by four of the largest boys. Seconds after the ragtag caravan exited the cave and started climbing a narrow path farther up the mountain, one of the tanks clanked into the clearing and fired its main gun into first the hospital, then the headquarters. Behind it double-timing squads of the presidential guard raked the area with automatic weapons.

Janson, covering the rear and last out of the camp, looked back and saw two FFM fighters spring up, aiming their unwieldy RPG-7s at the tanks. Both fell in a hail of gunfire as they triggered the weapons, but one landed a lucky grenade in the tank’s vision slit. The big machine veered into a massive boulder, grinding its treads and spewing smoke.

But more tanks and hundreds more troops were pouring into the clearing as Iboga’s powerful force overran the rebel camp. Janson saw Iboga himself, a dark-skinned three-hundred-pound giant with a bright yellow scarf wrapped around his head like an Arab kaffiyeh. Surrounded by his elite personal guard, signified by yellow handkerchiefs knotted at their throats, he appeared to Paul Janson to be the personification of the evil “big men” chiefs who had destroyed African nation after African nation. A well-placed shot could turn the tide of the battle. But the range, 150 meters, was extreme for his MP5, the dictator was shielded by his tall guardsmen, and a missed shot would bring them streaming after Janson’s charges, who had thus far not been spotted. Too risky.

He ran up the trail after his people.

Jessica had them down on their bellies, crawling and dragging Poe’s stretcher along an exposed ridge that could be seen from below. Janson waited until they had made it across before he followed, slithering low. He had just crossed the open space when a loud cheer erupted from the chaos below. It was a roar of victory. Janson looked down at the clearing and saw that the presidential guard had captured a tall, thin man who he judged by the cheering was Ferdinand Poe’s son Douglas Poe.

The cheers grew louder and louder as President for Life Iboga swaggered up to the prisoner. The dictator slapped his face. The thin man staggered. Soldiers yanked him upright and Iboga slapped him again. Then the dictator beckoned, and a pair of tanks clanked from the semicircle formation at the edge of the shattered forest, crossed the clearing, skirting the one the FFM fighter had set afire. Guided by Iboga’s impatient gestures, they swiveled on their treads and faced off, gun to gun, leaving twenty feet between them.

Soldiers tied ropes to Douglas Poe’s wrists, dragged him between the tanks, and yanked the ropes from either side, stretching his arms apart so that he stood as if crucified between the armored hulls. As the soldiers laughed, Iboga gestured for the tank drivers to move ahead, narrowing the space where the prisoner was held, creeping closer and closer until they pressed against his back and his chest. The laughter grew louder. Iboga whipped off his scarf and held it high over his head like a racetrack starter about to drop the flag.