The Patriot
EPISODE 17
Samuel Cobby Grant
The President went home to a loving family after issuing the order for the implementation of Operation Dragnet to Rear Admiral Amoah of the Eastern Naval Command.
They knew exactly what to do and he had no doubt in his mind that it was going to be carried out with precision.
After the usual hugging and the opening of gift boxes by his kids and the daughter of the US President, who had fully recovered but had refused to go back unless her father came for her.
They had dinner and retired to the family room to have their usual quality time which they refer to as ‘family time’.
His wife, the First Lady, as was the norm sat beside him on the 2 seater sofa, her hand on his lap, his on hers with the kids engaged in their own devices, especially the twins who chose to sit on the floor.
“Daddy, Miss America wants to be a pilot when she grows up,” Kobina Panyin said in his cute tiny voice.
“She’s your sister. Don’t refer to her as Miss America. Call her by her real name,” Sekuwah his mother corrected him gently.
“Maria,” he said and smiled at the shy American who smiled back.
“That’s good,” his father said of Maria’s chosen profession.
“Please let her pilot the Air force fighter jet,” Kobina Kakra said and they all laughed together with amusement.
“I will also like to be a pilot when I grow up,” Kobina Panyin said, his face screwing up with resolve.
“Don’t you want to be a gynaecologist again?” his sister asked.
“I will first be a pilot and then be a gynaecologist when the women on the plane get sick,” he replied with all the seriousness he could muster.
Their parents gazed at them with love and amazement.
“Can I be a gynecologist too?” The President asked the First Lady when they finally went into their bedroom after the children had left for theirs.
“What for?” his wife asked with mock severity, when she saw that he was just jesting.
“To check you up,” he said.
“I’d rather you become a pilot in order for you to pilot me,” she said playfully, playing along.
“OK. Then I will be both a pilot and a gynaecologist,” he said and they both erupted into uncontrollable laughter that got tears streaming down their cheeks.
The love they shared was as strong as the day they first met when he had nothing to his name.
***
The Vice President was with a new catch. A lady he had met at a meeting with students of the University of Ghana.
He had given her his card and now she was in his bed.
He was done with Otubea. He had even had her ejected from her rented apartment when she became a rebel and refused with one reason or another to allow him to have sex with her. He was even contemplating firing her from her job as an Aide but he hasn’t yet come up with a plausible excuse.
He was embroiled in the ample arms of Esi Barnes when he received a call that changed his life.
He had cursed for forgetting to put off his phone.
“What is it,” he said gruffly with the intention to tell off whichever minion for disturbing him.
“I am a journalist and I need your reaction to a video of you having sex with Miss Abena Dompey before her demise,” the voice at the other end of the phone said casually.
A sharp pain hit his chest and all passion left his being. Esi Barnes, who wanted to please him in order for him to give her the insanely large amount of money he had promised her, tried to stimulate him into hardness but he pushed her hand away. She looked at him in surprise, her pendulous breasts inches from his face. He saw none of that. What he saw was imminent disgrace staring him in the face. The horrific image of having the said video published all over the world. He wore his trousers without remembering to wear his boxers. Silent tears filed down his face, his face slack with shock and the only sounds the journalist heard from his end were “please, please, please.”
“Can you also reply to the accusations of you accepting political donations from foreign sources?” the persistent voice of the journalist permeated through his shocked brain, but the only reply he got was”Please please please.”
He asked Esi to go away but she refused to do so unless he gave her what he had promised. He went on his knees to plead but she was adamant so there and there on his knees, he drew his briefcase nearer and signed a check for her.
She left but he remained on his knees, like a praying mantis.
The journalist, Kwame Barnes, who had just an hour deadline to submit his story, cut the call and went to the press house to submit the story which he knew was going to be a record Breaking News.
 That same evening, a Ghana Navy Submarine, The Oburumankoma, the largest submarine in the world left its dock at the Naval Base and slipped away stealthily into the sea with just one objective. It had been unleashed to implement Operation Dragnet and it had just one destination, to go and bring a patriot home.
Both Kofi Frimpong and the President were in the War Room of the Naval Base to monitor its progress. Kofi Frimpong had quickly gone there after getting David Muller detained. He had only left when he carefully removed pieces of glass from the back of a shell-shocked Ataa Adjoa’s calf. And had cleaned it with mentholated spirit.
He had promised to elucidate her on everything later but gave her the hint that David Muller, ‘Akpakye’ was responsible for her flat being bugged among other things though.
His eyes drifted to the green dot that moved slowly across a lighted screen covering the whole of the opposite wall. The green dot represented the progress of the Oburumankoma.
His restless eyes gazed at the President who needn’t have been there but his unique leadership style demanded that he be there.
He wondered about the heavy punches he had given to David Muller: was it because it was the standard arresting procedure or because he was jealous of his relationship with Ataa Adjoa.
He heaved a sigh and again looked at the screen and saw that the large sub was going at a much faster speed now; at a speed of 100 knots.
“At this speed, they wouldn’t know what hit them,” he mused, a sardonic smile playing around his lips.
His mind drifted to Ataa Adjoa, wondering about how she was coping.
The Oburumankoma cruised on, just below the surface of the rough sea. Though it had a radar evasion device, it sailed, as planned. at almost up sea level to escape an unlikely chance of the radars of the Fischjager picking it up.
It cruised on till it got to the exact location of the coordinates given to it as the Fischjager’s location. Its engines seized and it then dropped like a stone to the sea bed and its radar picked up the stubby Fischjager at once. Quickly, without hesitation, four men in diving gears, in wet suits and with oxygen canisters strapped on, smoothly shot out of the bow of the Oburumankoma which had opened up like the bonnet of a car and swam towards the unsuspecting German Sub. The men clamped steel ropes connected to the Oburumankoma to the Fischjager, and with two men at each side of the German Sub they carried out the task with synchronized finesse. They swam back to the big submarine and switched on a powerful motor that winched the Fischjager into the gaping jaws of the Oburumankoma with all of its occupants.
The whole operation had taken just ten minutes. The Fischjager, as if it was Jonah who had gone to where he wasn’t supposed to go, found itself in the bigger sub, all of its communication lines immobilized.
They sat in the War Room with bated breaths. They had seen the two green dots on the screen indicating that a submarine, possibly the Fischjager had been found.
They watched, eyes transfixed as the two dots got closer and closer till they became one; just like the eclipse of the moon.
The fax machine pinged and a sheet of paper rolled out. Navy Captain Ampah, in a white shirt over white shorts picked it up and seeing that the messages were encrypted, pulled out a codebook and deciphered it but instead of him handing it over to the Admiral, he with excitement read it to them himself.
” Jonah is in the belly of the whale,” he announced with a deep emotional outlook.
The Admiral, unmindful of this breach of protocol kissed him on both cheeks amidst back-slapping. The men, President included embraced each other. A bottle of wine materialized and the clinking of glasses became the order of the night.
 Kofi Frimpong observed them for a while and left to prepare for the arrival of the Oburumankoma with its precious cargo.
***
Corporal Adu stood in the shadows and constantly rubbed his palms together then placed them flat against his cheeks. It was a time-tested technique to keep himself warm.
He had earlier driven the President to the Naval Base and as he was feeling restless, he had gotten out of the car to enjoy the sea breeze.
He soon found himself thinking about Otubea. She was like a breath of fresh air. He found her amazing and irresistible. She was an enigma, yet she was like an open book to him. Those passionate nights he had shared with her had been revealing and rewarding. Her bewitching smiles were a sight to behold and she had sincerely apologized to him for ever associating herself with an older man like the Vice President.
“It was all due to my desperate search for employment,” she had explained with her head on his chest.
He had rubbed her upper arm then to assure her that he understood her perfectly and drew her closer to him. He counted himself lucky to have her.
“Corporal! Be alert. You are lucky that I am a friend, not a foe,” Kofi Frimpong said behind him and he stiffened to attention.
“Come with me,” he told him and led him to a part of the base he had never been before.
There were about ten ambulances parked at the dry docks area of the base. They waited for God knows what though the Squadron Leader seemed to be in charge of the situation at hand issuing curt commands to the Navy personnel and they seemed to obey him without question.
Adu observed all these, his eyes missing nothing and he knew that whatever it was, he was soon going to find out.Â
Later, with the Squadron Leader and the President by his side, as they stood by the metal railings protecting the quayside, there was a sudden whoosh sound and what seemed to him to be the largest submarine ever, jumped, literally out of the sea and there was a collective gasp from the men around except Kofi Frimpong and the President.
It slowly opened up, horizontally like an Oware or a book and a much smaller submarine was in it, like a baby in the belly of its mom. Its hatch was opened expertly and armed men dropped down into it. They were out within three minutes carrying an unconscious man who was placed on a stretcher and swiftly taken away by an ambulance.
Other men were also taken away but in handcuffs. They were also put in ambulances and driven away to a highly fortified house in Jamestown to be dealt with later.
Adu did not really know what it was all about but he was smart enough to know that it was hush-hush stuff and he needed to have his mouth shut if he wanted to go far in his profession.
He then drove both the President and the Squadron Leader to the well-equipped military hospital where they went in to consult with the doctors.
The news broke a while later after all the happenings at the naval base. The nation’s Vice President in a sex scandal! He was also accused of illegally receiving money from questionable sources to enrich himself.
He came out boldly to hold a press conference with his unsuspecting wife by his side to deny all the accusations.
“This is a setup. I am a law-abiding citizen. I have never gone to bed with any woman apart from my loving wife. My lawyers are going to sue everyone involved in this character assassination. This is an attack on my person and on the Office of the Vice President. Whoever is involved should be ashamed of himself,” he had said before storming out of the hall refusing to respond to the myriad of questions posed to him by the journalists around.
His next step was to tender his Letter of Resignation to the President.
Barely had the hullabaloo about the Veep died down did the news about the Party Chairman of the ruling party also broke.
His sex video surfaced and he was in bed with the same woman the Veep had had sex with. There was an uproar. His shady deals were also made public but unlike the Vice President, he took it in another way. He took it hard. He lost weight and his BP shot up alarmingly. He knew at once that nemesis had caught up with him and that he was being punished for his greed.
He vanished from public view. He knew that he had broken a lot of laws, notably, the Political Party’s laws on donations and also the Financial Transactions Law and was prepared to pay for his crimes as it was inevitable that he was soon going to be hauled before the courts. He felt that the right thing to do in those circumstances was to own up and come clean.
He felt remorse which was so unlike him.
He wrote a short letter to the President, copied to all the major news outlets of the nation of his deeds.
“Dear Mr President,” it said “I am very sorry for my unsavoury conduct that has tarnished the image of our great party. Yes, I slept with the Vice President’s girlfriend before she was murdered but I have no hand in that.
I also engaged myself in financial malpractices which were driven by greed and love of the flesh, and so I feel it is only proper that I pay for my crimes.
I, therefore, resign from my position as the Chairman of our Party. Yours Faithfully, KWAME SIRIBOE.”
President Awuku read Siriboe’s letter in astonishment. He was of the view that it should have been the Vice President who ought to have come clean but he perfectly understood his reasons for coming clean. People change under pressure and whether it was a genuine change should be left with time to tell.
He put the letter down beside that of the Vice President and rang this Secretary.
“Find me the one who leaked the news to the press.”
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