Hail Warning

Two Years Ago Boat Ramp at Tarkwa Bay — Lagos, Nigeria

The next point of contact for Afua Diambu was anchored three miles out in the Gulf of Guinea. The young jihadi saw the boat long before he pulled up behind it.

After a big breakfast at McDonald’s in Lagos, Victor Kornev had driven Afua and his new small tri-hull boat to a small boat ramp in Tarkwa Bay. The bay was a good point to launch a boat because it opened directly into the Gulf of Guinea. No larger than a small fishing boat, Victor Kornev had concerns about the small boat making it that far out to sea, especially in bad weather. But the hot day offered very little wind and the ocean’s waters were calm.

Afua had waved to Kornev as the small boat pulled off the trailer, but the Russian had not returned the wave. Instead, the arms dealer simply stood there, waiting to hear the boat’s engine catch before getting back into the banged-up Peugeot. Kornev pulled the car forward to drag the trailer out of the water.

As Afua guided the boat into the deep water of Tarkwa Bay, he looked back to notice that Kornev had stopped his car. The arms dealer was watching Afua from his car’s side mirror. Afua waved again; it was met with no reaction from the Russian. Kornev drove off into the dense trees and disappeared.

Tarkwa Bay was 1000 meters of glassy water before it merged with the Gulf of Guinea. Kornev had informed Afua that the boat awaiting his arrival was very large and painted blue over white. He had indicated Afua should have no problems seeing the yacht anchored a mile from shore. The name of the boat was the Nigerian Princess. As with most luxury vessels, its name was written in English on the stern of the ship.

Once out on the open water, a steady breeze from the south was creating three-foot swells that made the little boat hop and skip. Afua had been in many boats during his lifetime, either as a passenger or as a driver. At one time, Afua had been a pirate and had preyed on tourists and smaller vessels that came too close to the Nigerian coastline. But those activities had normally taken place on the Niger or Benue rivers. The ocean was a totally different experience.

Even then, the ocean’s vastness had taken Afua’s breath away. It reminded him of his boyhood home of Batagarawa and the stark Sahara Desert. The ocean and

the desert shared many attributes. In both, one could die from dehydration, become lost, or become scorched by the sun. Both appeared infinite. The desert had never provided the jihadi with anything tangible, other than the motivation to get himself and his family away from it, and, of course, the loot when he was a pirate.

After this unsavory task was completed, Mohammed Mboso had assured Afua that he would own his own region of the Boko Haram territory. That would allow for him and his family to once again move up in the world. Instead of living in a large apartment, his family would own their own home situated on a large piece of private property. Maybe they would even have their own pool.

As he pulled back on the throttle and decreased speed, he smiled at the thought. He was now within 100 meters of the big boat. Or was it a ship? Afua decided it was probably a yacht — by those who cared about such trivial matters. The boat was sleek, smooth, and shaped like the tip of an arrow. The nose of the yacht was pointy. A graceful arch of tinted glass and Plexiglas formed a shape that would assist the yacht to effortlessly glide through the water and wind. The arch terminated at the back of the boat which was quite stubby in comparison to the front. The flat area on the back of the boat had some writing that spelled the words: Nigerian Princess.

Now, almost at a dead stop and turning sideways to the waves, Afua applied about half throttle. He pointed his boat toward the large vessel. He was told that he would be met by a man by the name of Isaac Obano. Obano was a big-time real estate broker. He worked on many commercial deals with foreign entities who wanted to buy a chunk of Nigerian land for business purposes.

Now, less than twenty meters from the stern of the ship, Afua saw no one. He saw no activity at all. The sun hit one of the yacht’s many glass windows and momentary blinded him. Then, a second later, the angle changed, and the ship came back into focus. Afua began to reach over to press his boat’s horn, but just as his finger was within an inch from it, he stopped and retracted his hand. He tried to recall the training the Russian had given him. Many of the buttons and switches on the console of the little boat did what they were supposed to do; however, a few buttons had been programmed to very specialized things. Afua looked over the buttons and switches, cataloging each one in his mind and matching them up with their true functions. Now, confident that the horn button would blast the horn, he pressed it. A nautical-sounding screech was emitted, and Afua once again eased off the throttle. Moments later, the sliding glass door on the lower deck of the yacht opened, and a well-built black man emerged wearing a yellow polo shirt, white tennis shorts and sandals. He walked to the stern of the yacht and gave Afua

a confirmative wave. Afua waved back and gently bumped the throttle forward a half-inch.

The man on the yacht began to unlatch a pair of karabiner eyehooks that had been secured to the ship’s cleats. The eyehooks were connected to cables threaded through a set of thick boom arms. Once the lines were freed, the man let them go, and the cables dangled out over the water. He opened a small control box, pressing a button that operated the boom extension. Afua watched the boom arms begin to grow and extend until they were hovering well out over the water. Once they were in place, the man on deck pressed another button and the cables with the eyehooks began to lower down toward the water.

Less than ten meters away from the yacht, Afua turned the wheel sharply to align the side of his fishing boat with the stern of the yacht. As he passed under one of the two cables, he popped his boat into idle and grabbed the hook. On closer inspection, he noticed that there were two eyehooks. Each hook was connected to its own short length of cable that made a “Y” and connected to the main cable. Before he could drift away, Afua quickly made his way to the front of his boat. He clipped one eyehook into a cleat on the portside gunwale of his boat. He then clipped the other eyehook to a cleat on the starboard side. Behind him, he located the other greasy thick cable with the shiny eyehooks. He passed between the split windshield walkway of his boat and grabbed the line. He connected this new set of eyehooks to the cleats on the backend of his boat. With his boat secured to the yacht above, he then sat back down in the driver’s seat and turned off the key.

The man on the boat yelled, “Welcome aboard!” to Afua in his native Nigerian tongue. Instead of yelling back to the man, Afua waited until his boat had been lifted out of the water, and pulled up to the same level as the man. Then without the need to yell, Afua said, “Thank you,” using his best English.

Over the last ten years, ever since Afua had been with the current Boko Haram leader, Iniabasi, his teacher had spent a great deal of time and effort teaching him English. During this time, Afua hadn’t understood why he would ever have a use for the language. Even though the official language of Nigeria was English, it was most often spoken in the large cities. Out in the urban areas, and even further into the sparsely occupied areas where Afua was born, it was seldom used. Even so, if Iniabasi told him that he would need to learn English, then Afua understood to move up in the organization, he would need to learn the language.

The Russian had warned him that if the yacht was boarded by the Coast Guard, or any other contingent of officials, Afua was to pretend not to understand anything officials asked him. He was to act as if he didn’t understand any language other than his own native Nigerian tongue. Isaac Obano would pretend to translate any information of any importance to Afua, but no one anticipated that would happen. There was a good chance that the yacht might be boarded when they reached the Caribbean Sea, but the Nigerian Princess was a “pleasure boat” or a rich man’s toy.

Diambu’s boat was now suspended five feet above the ocean, parallel with the deck of the yacht. Afua stepped effortlessly stepped over the railing of his little boat and did a little hop onto the deck of the ship.

Obano held out his hand, and Afua shook it.

“Nice to meet you,” the realtor said.

“Nice to meet you as well,” Afua responded warily.

Obano stepped over to the controls that operated the tender launch. He pressed a button, and a hydraulic pump began to moan. The boom arms started to retract that pulled the boat into a hollow built into the stern of the yacht — an area designed to accommodate small boats such as this.

“No,” Afua said. “Let it stay extended. We can tie it off so it doesn’t sway, but it needs to be ready and out over the water.”

The big black man shrugged and released the button. “OK,” he said, closing and latching the control panel’s watertight cover.

“One line there and another there should do the job,” Afua said, pointing at tie down points on the swaying boat.

Obano went over to a storage hatch and retrieved a few selections of rope. It took the men less than five minutes, and the little tri-hull boat was tied off and secure.

Afua tested getting in and out of the dinghy, making sure that it would not be a problem if they were interdicted at sea. Confident that he could get to the little boat’s controls very quickly, he did a visual inspection to make sure the detachable middle hull was securely attached and would not be noticed during a search of the Nigerian Princess. The Russian had told him to check the third hull for gaps between it and the boat. Inspectors would look for anything that made the third hull look like it was not part of the boat’s manufacturing process. Afua looked at the third hull from different angles. If he didn’t know it could detach, he would have assumed that it was fused into the fiberglass.

Obano had been standing next to Afua waiting for the tall jihadi to finish his inspection of the tender.

Afua finally turned toward Obano, and the realtor motioned toward the glass doors that led into the main cabin of the yacht.

Obano took the lead and slid open the doors, and both men went inside.

The first thing Afua noticed was not the handcrafted teak wood that paneled what looked like a large living room. Instead, he noticed the temperature. It was so cool inside the core of the yacht, and it was even a little cold for him. Over the years, as Afua had climbed the ladder in the Boko Haram terrorist cell, he had been collecting more money and the spoils of their operations. And with that money came better living quarters for he and his large extended family. They had moved from something that resembled a wooden hut in Batagarawa to the city of Kano, where he had rented a small apartment that lacked air conditioning. After a few more years, marked by more kidnappings, stealing and murdering, he and his family had moved once again. He moved them to the city of Abuja, but just a month ago, Afua and his family moved to the city of Lagos where he rented what was considered a large air-conditioned apartment. Yet, Afua was still fully acclimated to Nigerian daytime temperatures of 100°F. Thus, he found air conditioning to be uncomfortably cold.

Inside the yacht, with the temperature hovering around 72°F (22°C), he was downright cold. The sweat on his body quickly cooled, and the drop in his core temperature registered in his brain.

“It’s cold in here,” he told Obano.

Obano walked over to thermostat and said, “No. It’s only 72°F.”

“That’s cold to me,” Afua replied.

Obano shrugged and adjusted thermostat until it was set to 77°F.

From further back in the ship, a wood door opened, and an attractive black woman in her 30s entered the room. She was holding a stack of folded clothes; atop the clothes were new brown sandals.

“Ah, there she is,” Obano said with a smile.

“Honey, this is our new passenger,” Obano said, gesturing toward Afua. “And his name is—”

Obano looked at Afua, raising his eyebrows, waiting for Afua to fill in the information.

“Jesus,” Afua offered, blurting out the first name that popped into his head. Diambu hadn’t considered that his contact, Obano, would not know his name. But then, when he thought about it, it was best his real name wasn’t known. The less information they knew about him the better.

“Your name is Jesus?” the pretty lady asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Afua responded softly.

“And what is your last name?” she asked.

Afua almost said Christ but quickly modified that to the name Savage.

“Jesus Savage,” the woman said, as if she were trying the name on for size. “Those two names don’t really fit together, if you know what I mean.”

Afua just smiled, deciding that he had talked enough about his fictitious name.

Obano said, “Well, Jesus, this is my wife, Essie.”

Instead of a handshake, Essie handed Afua the clothes she had been holding.

“Why don’t you follow me, Jesus, and I will take you to your quarters. You can change there. I’m sure you can’t wait to get out of… of… whatever you are wearing there.”

Afua looked down at his dirty tan cargo pants and black T-shirt. He didn’t often give much consideration to how he was dressed. Most of the time, he was in the jungle with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. The long pants were good for protecting his legs from all the creepy-crawlies that inhabited Nigeria and the northern desert. There were some wasps as big as his hand that hunted and killed tarantulas. Sometimes, if Afua was going deep into the jungle and would be in the thick of it for days, he would wear a long-sleeved shirt or a light coat. But most of the time, it was simply too hot for additional clothing.

Instead of going out the same door in which she had entered, Essie Obano began to descend a narrow stairway to the right of the door.

Afua followed, allowing his eyes to wander, drinking in the opulence of the yacht. He didn’t know if the yacht belonged to the Obanos. It had been rented in Lagos from a high-end dealership that catered to those who had made their riches by serving either by the blood diamond trade or feared the Boko Haram. Both situations were equally as compelling.

Isaac Obano was a prosperous realtor and worked almost exclusively for both clienteles. The blood diamond industry was still big business, and Isaac sold multimillion-dollar villas to those who were at the top of the diamond heap. They were those individuals who bought, sold and smuggled diamonds out of Africa. He also purchased land, warehouses, homes, apartments, farms and islands for members of the Boko Haram. It had taken him from the rank of a low-level realtor, who peddled ramshackle dwellings to those who could barely afford them, to a rich and powerful businessman. And once he had hooked up with diamond smugglers and terrorists, his bank account bulged as did his zest for life.

Isaac Obano had been approached a month ago by a man named Victor Kornev. The big Russian informed him the Boko Haram would like him to go on an all-expense-paid Caribbean trip. The only thing he had to do was take along a stowaway. The extra person would help pilot the vessel and with chores. Initially,

Obano had declined. But a day later, Obano met a man who walked into his Lagos office. He introduced himself simply as Iniabasi, who had brought several of his soldiers with him. As he explained what he wanted Obano to do, his soldiers stood quietly around the room pointing their automatic weapons at him. Iniabasi didn’t have to talk very much or for very long before Obano agreed to take the proffered trip. Isaac had been assured that no harm would come to he or his wife. But, if he didn’t go on the trip, Iniabasi could not guarantee that the length of Obano’s life would be as long as he would like. Neither could he guarantee the lifestyle he had become accustomed to would continue.

Taking a boat trip didn’t bother Isaac Obano in the least. He was an experienced navigator and captain, owning a much smaller yacht in addition to a large sailboat. He understood the complex systems embedded and threaded through the Nigerian Princess like human veins. He was also competent with the complex navigation instrumentation. This trip would not be complicated. It was pretty much a straight shot across the Atlantic Ocean, staying directly parallel to the equator. And that was a big old fat line to follow on any navigation system.

What bothered Isaac Obano was the man who joined him on the trip across the ocean — the man who called himself Jesus. From all outward appearances, the tall lanky Nigerian did not appear to be dangerous. He was not boisterous or overly talkative — that he could detect. He appeared soft-spoken and courteous, but he was aboard the yacht for a reason. And if Jesus Savage was part of the Boko Haram, that reason probably meant that someone would die. All Obano could do was hope, other than getting Jesus to Venezuela, he and his wife did not factor into their plans. The flipside was Isaac knew for sure they would both die at the hands of the Boko Haram if they didn’t agree to make the trip. People like Isaac were a dime a dozen to the jihadis. But if he did their bidding, Isaac was worth saving, or at least not worth killing. It was as simple as making a deal with the devil. But, in this case, the devil’s name was Jesus.