Thunder rolled low over the city as dark clouds gathered over Kinshasa. The rain had not yet fallen, but the air was heavy, electric—charged with anticipation. It mirrored the unease in the capital, where riots simmered in the slums and whispers turned into war songs.
Michael lit his last cigarette of the day and stared at the dossier in front of him.
Operation Zakar.
The file was unmarked and untraceable. Within it were kill orders, forged military movements, and coded audio files—some captured from Russian wiretaps, others leaked from within the DGSE. At the center of it all: a black op designed to collapse the Congolese government from within by fracturing its inner circle, isolating N'Shonda, and flooding the streets with chaos.
It was a masterpiece of psychological warfare. And it had Michael's fingerprints on every page.
But now it was out of his hands.
Abuja had greenlit the next phase.
The Kestrel Unit had arrived.
They didn't travel by plane or car. They came through aid convoys, disguised as engineers, field doctors, and logistics consultants. They carried no identification, spoke little, and trusted no one. Their leader, codenamed Falcon, met Michael in a disused cathedral outside Kinshasa—its pews shattered, icons burned, and walls covered in bullet scars from conflicts long forgotten.
"Two weeks," Falcon said, pulling off his hood. "That's all we need."
Michael nodded. "There's one problem. The French know. They're sniffing around the eastern corridor. DGSE has a signal team embedded with MONUSCO."
"We'll handle them."
"Quietly."
Falcon smiled. "Always."
Meanwhile, Mireille Nkulu had fled the capital. She hadn't told Michael where, but he knew it was Bukavu. She sent encrypted updates via satellite relay every 12 hours, and her last message hinted at a breakthrough.
"He meets the Chinese at the Villa Rouge. They've offered asylum. And something called Project Banyan. Find out what it means."
Michael did. Banyan wasn't a Congolese project. It was Chinese military code—referencing joint infrastructure-for-arms trade zones. If N'Shonda accepted it, Beijing would effectively colonize the Congo under the guise of development.
Nigeria wouldn't allow that.
Michael passed the intel to Abuja. The directive came back brutal:
Kill the deal. Kill the intermediaries. Silence the diplomats.
Michael delegated none of it.
That night, a convoy headed to Villa Rouge was ambushed on a rural road outside Kisantu. It was fast, precise, and bloodless—until Falcon slit the diplomat's throat in the back seat and whispered, "This is Nigeria's century."
But the operation wasn't invisible.
CIA Director of Operations in West Africa, Charles Morgan, intercepted the body count. He didn't have names, but he had patterns. And Morgan had history with Michael.
In fact, years ago, he had offered to recruit him. Michael had declined—with a smile, and a veiled threat.
Morgan poured a glass of bourbon in his Dakar office and picked up a satellite phone.
"Activate Shadow Protocol. Task Wraith Cell. High-priority Nigerian asset in Congo. Directive: Contain or capture."
Wraith Cell was a CIA ghost squad. And unlike the Kestrels, they played dirty.
As power shifted on the continent, the streets of Kinshasa burned hotter.
Protests outside Parliament turned into riots. Someone—Michael's team, naturally—had released edited footage of N'Shonda's son assaulting a young girl in Brussels, followed by financial records from Seychelles banks. The president was scrambling to respond, but the more he spoke, the more the people turned against him.
Inside his palace, his paranoia grew.
He no longer trusted his vice president.
He replaced his chief of staff with a distant cousin.
He began importing Belarusian guards who didn't speak Lingala or Swahili.
Michael watched it all through surveillance feeds routed to his encrypted tablet. He took notes. Smoked in silence.
The president had begun to rot from the inside.
But the real turn came from within Michael's own web.
At 2:04 AM, Syren sent an emergency ping.
"Compromised. They got Mweze. They're coming for me."
He tried calling her. No response.
At 2:10, her GPS vanished.
At 2:13, he watched a feed of her safe house erupt in flame.
Michael stared at the screen.
Cold.
Still.
Then he stood up, grabbed his pistol, and walked to the window. Rain was finally falling—slow and relentless, like time itself.
Mireille was still alive.
The coup was still possible.
But now, it would be personal.