Blue Warrior (24 page)

Mossa led them to a perch overlooking the desert floor below.

“What are your plans now, Mr. Pearce?”

“I need to contact my people. Arrange for a flight out of here. I’m guessing I can’t leave from the same place I arrived.”

“The army will be here in the morning at the latest. There won’t be any place for that plane of yours to land.”

Pearce turned around. Pinpoints of campfires and firelight all across the mountains. In the distance, a small valley.

“What about over there?”

“The army is like a tide. It can’t wash away this rock, but it will crash against it. They will bring in their jets, also. Shoot down any plane they see.”

“Any suggestions?”

Mossa thought about that. “The army won’t cross into Algeria, not even for me. There is an airfield not far from here on the other side of the border. It should be safe to land your plane there.”

“Can you show me on a map?”

“Of course,” Mossa said. “But who needs a map?”

“I do. Better yet, GPS coordinates.”

“As you wish.”

Mossa showed Pearce the journey they would take. Turned out, “not far” meant a six-day journey. Distance, like time, had a different meaning out here. He wondered how many bones were buried in the sand.

37

Adrar des Ifoghas
Kidal Region, Northeastern Mali

8 May

A
megaphone barked in French in his dream. Distant, echoing. Strong mint tea made his mouth water. He woke. Pearce was on his feet before his eyes were fully open. It was dark in the cave, save for the fire pit and one lantern. He glanced up at the chimney hole. Still dark outside. Checked his watch. An hour until sunrise.

“No worries, Mr. Pearce. Just our friends announcing their arrival,” Mossa said. He was pouring tea. “Still time to eat.”

“What is he saying?”

“An invitation to surrender peacefully. If I refuse, he will come and seize me by force.”

Early was rummaging through the food crate. “How in the hell am I supposed to know what’s in these things?” He pulled out a black plastic bag. “It’s all in Turkish.”

“Think of it as a box of Cracker Jack.” Mossa laughed. “Take what you can get.”

Early grabbed three bags and hustled back over to the fire. “How do you know about Cracker Jack?”

Mossa feigned personal injury. “I may be a desert brigand and a feared terrorist, but I am not uncivilized.”

Pearce scanned the darkened corners of the cave. “Where are the others?”

The electronic voice echoed again. Pearce didn’t need to know French to hear the anger and fear.

“Balla and Moctar are out there, preparing to greet our friends. The women were moved to another cave further back for safety, along with the boy. When this is all over, there is a village that will take them in until they can return to their families.”

“How did you convince the boy to go with the women?”

“I gave him my pistol and told him to guard the women with his life. The best way to cure a young boy’s fears is to give him a man’s duty. Even at his age he feels the power of caring for those he loves.” Mossa nodded, agreeing with himself. “Yes. He will be a fine warrior someday.”

“And Cella?”

“Worried about your ‘friend,’ Mr. Pearce? Don’t. Early has his eye on her. So do I.”

“She’s doing one last check on the women before we haul out of here,” Early said. “Then she’ll come with us.”

“Us? It’s just me, remember?” Pearce had called Judy earlier with the map coordinates for the Algerian airstrip.

“It’s a dangerous journey alone,” Mossa said. “I will take you myself.”

An explosion in the distance.

Pearce knew the sound all too well. “Mortars.”

“And so it begins.” Mossa smiled, holding out a glass of tea to Pearce.

“And where he goes, I go,” Cella said, dashing into the cave, breathless. She dropped down next to Mossa, threw an arm around him in a brief hug. He patted her hand, handed her a tea.

Another explosion.

Pearce felt the earth tremble slightly under his ass. Medium mortar round, a hundred yards downslope. Closer. Still finding the range.

Early cut open the pouches. “Bingo. Looks like crackers, a bag of apricots . . . and chocolate.”

Three more explosions walked up the mountain, each closer than the last.

Mossa laughed. “You see? Just like Cracker Jack.”

—

T
he mortar rounds fell like hailstones on a tin roof. Lots of noise, little effect. Sheltered by tons of granite, most of Mossa’s people were hidden in mountain caves or natural spider holes. Heavy weapons opened up below. Diesel engines raced. The symphony of death. Pearce knew the tune well.

“What about aircraft?” Pearce asked. His stolen M4 was slung over his shoulder.

“They know we have missiles, so they will stay above twenty thousand feet. If they drop bombs from that height, they are more likely to hit their own troops. Useless.” Mossa burped, checked his watch. “They will begin their advance any minute now.” He glanced up at the cave ceiling, listening. The mortars stopped. So did the machine guns. The last echo of gunfire faded into silence.

“This won’t take long,” Mossa said. “You are welcome to remain in here and have some more tea.”

Pearce held out a hand. “After you.”

Mossa snatched up his automatic rifle and dashed through the low-ceilinged entrance, Pearce close behind and Early in the rear. They had all helped themselves to ammo and hand grenade stores in the caves. For the first time since he had arrived in Mali, Pearce felt ready to go.

Mossa led them to a covered lookout nestled in tall stones and pointed out the battlefield, then the sky. Vultures circled overhead in the early-morning light. He pointed them out. “They always know, even before the first shots.” Three lines of black Malian soldiers in camo threaded their way up the hill behind three BTRs just like the one back in Anou, each line about a hundred yards apart. They met no resistance.

The southernmost APC was the first to broach the deep trench,
taking a steep angle of attack to minimize the downward slope. When the front wheels crested the far end of the trench, the nose of the vehicle pointed nearly skyward, like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean.

Shhhhttt—BOOM!
An RPG slammed into the bottom deck of the personnel carrier, easily penetrating the thin armor. The vehicle erupted in flames. Even up here, Pearce could hear the screams. The soldiers who followed too closely behind were killed by the explosion or burned, too, and the others farther back driven away from the intense heat. A few still had their wits and fired in the direction of the RPG smoke trail. The other two columns fired wildly at the rocks in front of them, too, hoping to hit something.

The big 14.5mm machines guns on the surviving BTRs opened fire. They stopped short of the trench line, waiting for their accompanying troops to clear the way of other RPG teams hiding up ahead. Officers and sergeants shouted at the cowering troops, who finally pressed on, pushing through the trench first, then up into the steeper inclines, throwing grenades, firing rifles.

Meeting no resistance, they advanced more confidently up the hill, but the BTRs stayed put, offering covering fire with their heavy weapons.

Mossa let the soldiers climb farther up the hill. Towering piles of granite and basketball-sized stones broke up the neat columns, and the geologic formation of the mountain face gradually funneled the Malians into a centralized mass in the middle.

When they reached the halfway mark, Mossa called in to Balla and Moctar on his radio as he activated a remote-control switch.

The ridgeline opened up in a volley of machine-gun fire, tearing into the front rank of troops, dropping them. The others hit the deck or stepped back.

The ground erupted behind them as an electronically activated land mine exploded, mowing down a half-dozen men in the rear. The mass of soldiers instinctively surged forward. Another explosion tore into the squad in front.

They were trapped.

Panicked shouts as bullets tore into their ranks. The big diesels on the BTRs roared to life, belching smoke as drivers threw them into reverse.

A Mali soldier jumped up and ran back down the hill with long, determined strides, bullets spanging on the rocks around him. Miraculously, he didn’t hit a mine. Another soldier leaped up without his rifle and followed suit, but bullets stitched across his back and he tumbled into the sand, triggering an explosion.

Mindless panic erupted as the soldiers leaped up and scattered, mines exploding, bullets flying. One by one they dropped as they fled, or were ripped apart by the explosions at their feet. Shards of granite swept their ranks like shrapnel.

Mossa watched the carnage unfold, emotionless. Like killing a goat for supper.

CRACK!
A bullet exploded against the rock just above his head.

Pearce knocked the Tuareg down and covered him with his body.

“Where?” Pearce asked Early.

“Eight o’clock, about five hundred yards up on the ledge.” Early hunkered down behind a boulder, signaling the direction with a stab of his finger.

“You all right?” Pearce asked Mossa.

“Still alive.”

Now Tuareg mortars opened up. Sand geysered on either side of the fleeing BTRs. Gunfire raked the sand and rocks around the few remaining soldiers still able to run, fleeing for their lives. Corpses littered the mountainside along with the wounded.

Another sniper round smashed into the stone above their heads. They were out of his sights now, but he was still on the hunt, hoping for a random strike.

Malian soldiers down the hill who had found enough cover feebly fired back up at the rocks. Enough fire, though, to keep everyone’s head down.

Pearce had only one 40mm grenade for the M4 in his hand, but it
had only a four-hundred-meter range. And there was no way he was going to get into a pissing match with a trained sniper, swapping five-hundred-yard shots with a gun ill-suited for the purpose.

“Sit tight,” Pearce told Early, then dashed back into the cave where he’d spent the night. A minute later, he emerged with the unopened Pelican case he’d been hauling around since he’d arrived in Anou. He popped open the lid.

More rounds cracked into the rocks above Early and Mossa.

“What new toy do you have now?” Mossa called out.

Pearce uncrated an electrically powered Hybrid Quadrotor, modified for the South African Recces. With four rotors for vertical lift and one for pushing like a plane propeller, the HQ didn’t need a runway. Pearce pulled out the controller tablet and hit the auto-launch button. The vertical rotors fired up, kicking up sand like a leaf blower, blasting the drone into the sky. It hit the preprogrammed altitude of five hundred feet in seconds. The onboard camera automatically activated and streamed a live image onto the controller tablet. Pearce quickly found the sniper on the ridge and tapped his image. A red box overlay indicated that the target had been acquired.

“Here goes nothing,” Pearce muttered, and tapped the strike button.

The HQ didn’t hesitate. It raced another thousand feet higher, paused at the apex, then dove headlong toward the clueless sniper, exploding on impact. Five pounds of ultra-high-explosive material vaporized the shooter. The “suicide” drone had worked perfectly.

Pearce scooted back over to Mossa and Early. “All clear, but keep covered up. There might be another one.”

“Not likely,” Mossa said. “Look.”

The three men surveyed the battlefield. The two BTRs were long gone, while the third still roared with flames, black smoke boiling into the morning sky. The few survivors on the mountainside were badly wounded, clutching their guts, moaning, bleeding, dying.

Another goddamned killing floor, Pearce thought, and there he stood in the middle of it. Again.

Pearce glanced up into the sky. Those birds circling high up on the thermals had seen it all before, too. Thrived on it. He’d seen them everywhere he’d ever been in a fight. Maybe they were following him, like gulls after a fishing boat.

Pearce had no idea how right he was.

38

Adrar des Ifoghas
Kidal Region, Northeastern Mali

9 May

W
hat Pearce failed to notice was that not all of those birds circling overhead were the same.

One of them belonged to Guo. It was a hawk drone, covered in lifelike plastic feathers. An amazing example of bio-mimicry at its best. The hawk drone’s high-resolution cameras had captured the entire battle, as well as the men who had fought it. The Tuaregs, of course, had their faces covered by their distinctive indigo
tagelmust
s, but the hawk’s cameras had captured parts of the faces of two
guılao
s. The images were being fed into JANUS, DARPA’s latest facial-recognition software, recently stolen from the Americans. JANUS focused on facial and skull morphology—pieces of faces, or faces contorted by smiles, shadows, frowns, et cetera—rather than on perfect full-face captures. It took only a few moments for the software in Weng’s computer to identify Troy Pearce and Mike Early.

Suddenly, Guo’s mission had become exceptionally interesting. He called in the failed battle and the discovery of the two Americans to Zhao, still in Bamako.

Zhao residence
Bamako, Mali

Zhao thanked Guo for his report and the two formulated a revised plan. With any luck, it just might work.

Unfortunately, Zhao didn’t believe in luck and he couldn’t afford to take any more chances. Failure was not an option. An avid martial artist, Zhao studied the greats. One of his favorite fighters, Mike Tyson, once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Zhao felt like he’d been punched by Mossa in the face now. Twice.

He picked up his secure phone and called an old friend in the United States, a very well-connected man who could help him solve his problem—for a price. A man who was in desperate need of something Zhao could offer him. A man who preferred to be called The Angel.

L’Argent Bar
Washington, D.C.

Jasmine Bath played dumb. Funny how easy it was to do. A change of tone, a furrowed brow. A lie becomes the truth. And the truthfulness of the liar, once established, never questioned. People wanted to trust her, to believe she was on their side always. She was happy to oblige.

No, of course I will never monitor your calls. Your privacy is important to me. Trust is important in this business. You know that. Without it, we’re both dead.

That’s how the first meeting always went with a new client, even one as powerful and savvy as The Angel. But that had been a while ago. They hadn’t had a face-to-face since then, so when he called and asked for a meeting, she obliged. It would go one of two ways, and one of them might prove fatal to her.

The Georgetown bar he picked was one of the oldest in town, and one of her favorites. Low light, high-backed leather chairs, wood walls,
and superb yet unobtrusive service. It was a public meeting in an intimate, exclusive setting. That was a good sign.

Jasmine sipped her WhistlePig straight rye on the rocks, listening attentively. She pretended she hadn’t parsed every syllable of Zhao’s recorded phone call to him demanding to know why Americans were protecting the Tuareg terrorist Mossa. Pretended that she hadn’t recorded his postcoital bedroom chat with his wife, asking her who Troy Pearce was, what Pearce Systems was all about, and why Pearce was in Mali. Bath just smiled and nodded and sipped and listened. Waited before asking the obvious questions.

“And what did your wife say about Pearce? I mean, who is he, really?”

“She pled ignorance because she really doesn’t know anything about him. She tried to explain Pearce’s connection to Myers, which, frankly, I never fully understood.”

Neither did Jasmine. Pearce was an open secret, hiding in plain sight. The few times she tried to access data on him, she was either shut down or sidetracked. At the time, it was interesting but not important.

“It’s a damn shame we never got to those impeachment hearings on Myers. Probably a lot of things got swept under that rug,” he said.

“No doubt.”

“Do we know if Myers has any interests or concerns in Mali?”

“Part of my contract with you is to monitor all of President Myers’s communications—”

“Just ‘Myers.’” The Angel visibly stiffened, took another sip of his Old Fashioned. “She’s a former president who quit the office. She doesn’t deserve the title.”

“It’s funny you should ask me about Myers and Mali. She made a recent phone call that seemed harmless enough.” Bath had run a search of all of Myers’s e-mails, calls, and texts, sniffing out references to Pearce and Mali after The Angel’s little bedroom chat with his powerful wife. It paid to be on top of these things, to appear omniscient when really one needed only to be proficient. Only one reference popped up a few days ago.

“A call to whom?” he asked.

“Pearce. He was in Mozambique when he took it. Sounded like he was in the cockpit of a plane when he spoke with her. Myers was sending him to exfil Mike Early out of Mali. That’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Nothing about Mossa?”

“No.”

The Angel jiggled the ice in his glass, thinking. “The call makes sense. Myers would send Pearce to Mali to fetch Early, because Early worked for Myers, too. One of her security advisors, as I recall. But Pearce never left Mali.”

“How do you know he’s still there?” Bath knew the answer was Zhao. She had to feign ignorance; otherwise, The Angel might suspect she’d listened in on his call.

The Angel smiled. “I have my sources.”

Bath frowned, thinking. “Maybe Myers was speaking in code. Maybe she wasn’t really sending Pearce in to rescue Early, but was really sending him in to
help
Early.”

“Help Early with what?”

“Mossa.”

“If that’s the case, then they’re both in Mali at Myers’s behest and now they’ve both been seen helping Mossa. That means she must have ties to Mossa, too. When you find out what those ties are, let me know. But for now, at least, I’ve got Myers connected to Mali and to Mossa. That’s all the ammunition I need. One more thing: I want you to begin seeding the blogosphere with stories and pictures about Mossa, the Tuaregs, terrorism, Africa—you get it. I want to push the themes the senator raised on Finch’s gawd-awful show last Sunday. In fact, here—”

The Angel forwarded a video from his phone sent by Zhao. It was an edited version of the video shot by Guo’s hawk drone, showing Tuaregs shooting helpless, wounded Mali soldiers.

Bath pulled it up. “Oh my God. This is terrible.” Of course, she didn’t tell him she had already seen it, having captured it from his phone earlier.

“Use it. Turn it viral.”

“No problem.” Bath wasn’t kidding. She ran one of the world’s largest virtual click farms. Her operation could generate up to three million fake “likes” per day on any given YouTube or Facebook page by deploying malware that hijacked legitimate IP addresses and using them to “like” the page, thus making the fake “likes” look real to the site managers. She justified her actions, in part, because she didn’t resort to the click-farm “sweatshops” in Third World countries like Bangladesh, where human drones pounded away for hours at keyboards registering thousands of “likes” per night for a dollar or two. Thanks to The Angel, the Department of State recently paid her $630,000 to get over two million automated fake “likes” on its Facebook pages.

For a hefty fee, Bath could turn almost anything into a viral hit. It was well known that Twitter and Facebook had millions of fake users, so she clearly wasn’t the only one doing this kind of thing, but nobody did it better. Her malware programs could also boost the “star” ratings of products offered by online vendors like Amazon or iTunes, blasting her clients’ sales through the roof and tanking their competition with equally bad reviews. Two best-selling authors and one Grammy-nominated musician had hired her in just the last year. For wary consumers of all stripes, it was becoming increasingly difficult to trust the ratings systems.

“You saw my e-mail about Myers?” Bath asked. “That she’s still sniffing around the Tanner issue?” Bath saw Myers’s pursuit of Tanner’s suicide as a far greater threat to both of them than the sideshow in far-flung Mali.

“Yes. That’s a problem.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

Bath wanted Myers dealt with, soon. She wondered if The Angel had the guts to pull the trigger if it came to that. If killing an ex-president had to be done, she preferred his fingerprints be on the corpse, not hers. But then again, it might provide CIOS with a very lucrative billing opportunity.

“I want you to dirty the water,” he said. “Let’s roll out a campaign
against Myers and her lapdog Pearce. Link them to Mossa and AQS, but discreetly. That should keep her distracted, and keep her away from Tanner.”

“Audience?”

“The national security establishment, of course. The usual suspects. CIA, NSA, FBI. But do that thing you do. Make it look like legitimate chatter from the bad guys.”

Bath hid her rage. She knew damn well how to plant false information on the web to impugn people. She’d practically invented the NSA’s handbook on the subject.

The Angel smiled. “I want to put Pearce and the others on Greyhill’s radar, too. I need Greyhill sweating every second that he doesn’t do something about this new ‘threat’ we’ve just uncovered.”

“Not a problem.” Bath was happy to oblige. People might get killed if Greyhill overreacted, but that was on him, not her. She was just the messenger. In her line of work, morality was a fiction she could ill afford.