Born of War (25 page)

“I
am Buckley Warren.”

“And that is not your real name.” William Parker said what everyone standing there thought. It was a group combined of the MarSOC major, Captain Tola, Moncrief, and Parker.

“No, it is not, Mr. Parker.” The slender redhead wore a black baseball cap, a long, curly beard, and a khaki tactical shirt with pocketed tactical pants. “And you know that.”

Moncrief slid in between Parker and the new arrival. He didn't want any blood, especially since it wouldn't be Parker's. The two had a long history, even if it wasn't with Buckley Warren and Parker. It was a history between the CIA and Parker.

“Something about you knowing my name and me not knowing yours is a problem.” Parker stared at him.

“Not for me.” Warren was a wiseass, to boot.

“Okay, we are on the same team,” the major intervened. There was a mutual distrust for new arrivals. It seemed that, at this point, “more people” were not so much a help as a hindrance.

“What do you have to add, Mr. Warren?” Moncrief asked.

“Faud is the money man for Al Shabaab. With Omar's rise in popularity they have raised a large amount of money and new recruits. They use the hawala system to run the cash.” Warren sounded like a former Air Force computer technician who had been recruited for the Agency. He rattled off the facts like he was rattling off the capabilities of a new piece of computer gear. “Hawala is a system of trust where legitimate money is transferred on an honor code. We just caught two in Virginia who were running money through Kenya.”

“So Omar is a problem on several fronts?” Tola asked.

“Several. He also is the poster child for recruits who are coming in from the United States, Britain, Australia, Sweden, and especially Canada,” Warren continued. “They come here, learn the trade, and then get a jet out of Frankfurt to New York with their legitimate, original United States passport.”

“It's very hard to stop them.”

“And our tracking of his cell phones tells us he has at least one more cell to activate.”

“Omar?” Parker clarified.

“Yes, sir.” Warren paused.

“Some records of Al Qaeda just surfaced in western Africa. The French made a raid on a village where the Al Qaeda cell left quickly and didn't burn anything.”

Parker continued to listen.

“It had payroll, recruitment instructions, and money to pay and convert the locals. Faud handled most of it. He runs it like a bank with expense sheets and reimbursement vouchers. It is amazing. They are going to spread this system across central Africa. It is a franchise of terror.”

“Neisseria, Ebola, and Al Qaeda. What next?” Moncrief asked.

“And like your medical diseases, this man-made organism learns from its mistakes. They figured out that the imposing of Sharia law came down too hard on the locals in Afghanistan. The cutting off of a common thief's hands isn't too bad, but when you start stoning the village elder's granddaughter for being caught with the local sheepherder, you start to lose the public.” Warren paused and looked around to see if anyone else was within hearing distance.

“It is the homeland that we have here. Omar is a threat to America.” Warren was outlining the priorities of the mission. “Your disease problem is tragic but Omar's recruitment of money and soldiers that come back to hurt America must be stopped at all costs.”

Warren crossed his arms as if to separate himself from loyalty to anything other than the mission given to him.

“Your point?” Parker asked.

“My point, Colonel,” Warren used the title to rely upon the man's reputation for following orders, “is that we have an MQ-9 sitting up top with a Hellfire missile and if it looks like Omar can't be gotten any other way, we will take him down.”

Parker stared right back at him.

“I am here to tell you,” Warren added, “that the MSF is getting ready to offer two million francs to get their French doctor out of here. It leaves your gal out there with no one thinking of paying that type of money.”

The major and Tola shook their heads.

“And our intercepts tell us that she is very sick.”

“S
o, you are from Atlanta?” Omar said.

Karen Stewart's back was killing her. It had gotten so bad that she had reached into Peter's pocket and pulled out the bottle of aspirin. More than half of the tablets were gone.

At least our heart patient hasn't asked for more.
She unscrewed the cap and took out two tablets that she chewed on. The continuing lack of water didn't help, but the bitter aspirin would ease her pain. She made a point of taking no more than two per day as her pain was shared with Peter's.

“I was raised there.”

“Pace Academy.” Omar sat across from her with his legs folded.

She couldn't fold her legs anymore due to the back pain and instead was lying on her side.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“There is nothing secret on the Internet.”

An American voice.
It was odd how the voice sounded so comforting after the time spent with Xasan and even Peter. Peter spoke English with his French accent, almost singing the words, while Xasan's pitch was choppy and made sounds like a telegraph.

“And you?”

“I am from Mobile.”

“Are you?” Somewhere in all the confusion of the last several days she remembered hearing of a church bombing in Mobile. It had struck her as odd that an attack had occurred in the Deep South. “That's where that terrorist attack recently occurred, isn't it?”

“Yes. Have you heard about Reagan?”

“The president?”

Omar laughed. He was not above bragging.

“No, the attack at Reagan National Airport in Washington. It just happened yesterday.”

“Why?” She asked the question as a scientist trying to understand why some diseases pick out children and not the old, who have lived a full life. It was the voice of the kidnapped trying to understand why someone would torment another.

“You are like the others. Allah has told us to not do drugs. Allah has told us to not fornicate. Allah has told us to not obey parents that do not obey His word.” Omar looked up at the sky. “Your whole Western lifestyle makes me sick. If I wear a beard with my turban, you look at me strangely. If I stop to pray, you send me to the back of the cafeteria and make fun of me. Your world is too different and has no meaning.”

“You mean our world of freedom?” she spoke in a voice of amazement.

“I
have some good news.” Paul Stewart was in the makeshift dining facility sitting across the table from Parker and Moncrief. He was in the white surgical suit that was commonly seen on the CDC side of the encampment. The DFAC, or makeshift cafeteria, was in the middle of the two encampments. Although Marine security extended around both camps, there was a dividing point. The only shared area was the DFAC.

Everyone took care to not cross over the middle ground, and even the DFAC was divided, with white suits sitting on one side of a partition. At the entrances on both sides were large metal sinks with bottles of soap. And in the middle there were plastic sheets that went from the ceiling to the floor with splits in the middle and wash sinks on both sides of the split. Signs everywhere reminded one to wash. Paper plates and plastic utensils were used and then destroyed.

“You have news?” Moncrief looked up.

“Yes, it is about your sick Marine.”

“Oh?” Parker asked, trying not to look Paul Stewart directly in his eyes. They had just come from the meeting with the CIA. Neither Moncrief nor Parker liked the idea of a Reaper strike.

“The Marine with your blood is doing better,” Stewart said to Parker.

“We have another survivor of the meningitis?” Parker asked.

“Yes.” The doctor had a white Styrofoam cup full of black coffee. He sat down at the table and sipped it. “His temperature has dropped and he can handle light in the room. He is also starting to eat.”

“Good.” Parker asked, “What now?”

“We try to pull a common factor out of your blood sample and his.” Stewart played with the coffee cup in his hand as he spoke. “It is what will lead to an antiserum that will stop this thing.”

“The International Red Cross has set up a camp south of here at Dolo Bay. We are trying to stop the spread of this disease now. It seems that even those vaccinated with our other, older vaccines are not getting sick.”

“Dolo Bay?”

“Yes.”

“It's near the Kenyan border.” Kenya had been waging war with Al Shabaab for well over a decade. Parker knew that if the Ethiopian Army was capable, it would protect the IRC clinic and help slow the surge of the disease. The two armies joining the fight against both Al Shabaab and the disease gave the locals a chance.

“Yes. We may be able to contain it on this side. Mogadishu is another question. They have over a million and a half people in the city with no clean water. There will be thousands at risk.”

Djibouti would help as well as the other nations trying to hold on to parts of Mogadishu. Like a fire through the savannah, it would take time and death for the flames of the disease to die out.

“The one benefit of war is that it hurts the exportation of the disease. There are few flights out of Mogadishu, unlike Cairo or Dubai.” It was a matter of statistics to Dr. Stewart.

“So I am not as indispensable as you once thought?” Parker smiled.

“No, you can go home.” Stewart issued the edict having no idea of everything else that was going on. “We have another donor. The Marine is O positive and has survived.”

“I like that.” Moncrief couldn't seem to help himself. “We can be in Djibouti on the next Osprey.”

I never thought of Djibouti as a place I'd want to escape to.
Parker shook his head and then gave Moncrief a look. It did tell Parker what he'd wanted to hear: he had his freedom back. Since healing the disease did not rely upon him solely, he was now free to chase someone he had wanted to find for some time.

“Doc, have you seen the video?” Parker knew that he couldn't hold the truth back. The father needed to know what was going on.

“No.”

“She's fine.”

“Really? Can I see it?”

“We got a guy here from the Agency. Let's go see him.” Parker stood up. It was important that he learn what both the father and the doctor thought.

 

 

They used the same secret communications bunker, or SCIF, as it was called, that the satellite feed came in to the day before. Stewart, Parker, Moncrief, Tola, Warren and the MarSOC major crowded into the SCIF's small space.

Stewart was given the main seat.

“This was posted on the Internet just a few hours ago.” Warren pulled up the screen through a feed directly from Langley. It showed the close-up of a man sitting in front of the trunk of a small tree. He was holding his Kalashnikov in his hand like a small flag, with the butt on the ground. He had a peculiar smile.

The man spoke: “Al-salamu alaykum.” He paused for effect.

“Greetings from the war to create a true Islamic state. Our jihadists have responded from around the world. They have all taken the tests from Allah and understand that to obey Allah is the only way. We have two friends here that want to go home.”

The cell phone panned to both Karen and Peter, who were sitting on the ground next to Omar. Karen was covered with a turban wrap that showed her face from the forehead to just below her nose. She didn't look directly into the cell phone. Peter was white, with sunken cheeks, and swayed as if he was trying to hold on to his balance.

The man in the video continued: “Our representative has suggested the ransom we require for their chance to go home to their families. Monies from the MSF and Dr. Stewart will allow them to go home today. We look forward to your response soon.”

Paul Stewart trembled. He was mentioned by name. It meant that they knew they held a hostage who was the daughter of a leading scientist in the field of infectious diseases.

“Why did I let her go?” He looked down for a moment.

“Doctor, what is her condition?” Parker needed to know.

“He is in the early stages of malaria.” The scientist and physician took over. “My guess is that she has a urinary tract infection that may lead to kidney issues.”

“So they have some time?” Tola asked.

“No.” Stewart looked at the frozen screen. “As she becomes weaker, she will be more at risk for the meningitis bacteria. He may as well. They both may have hours and, at best, a few days. If they only had some antibiotics, it could buy some time.”

Parker looked at Moncrief and then towards Tola.

 

 

“Well, gentlemen, it has been a pleasure serving with you.” Tola extended his hand as they stood in front of the tent. The others had gone their separate ways. “You two are out of here. I can tell our JTAC guy to get you two seats on the next bird.” The Joint Terminal Air Controller ran the coordination of men on the ground and aircraft in support.

“Yeah.” Parker stood there in thought. Then he asked. “Skipper, how is this going to end?”

The Marine captain hesitated.

“Oh, we will get him, yes sir, whether it is today or tomorrow or next week.”

“But what about her?”

“I don't know, sir. We will keep sending out patrols, but I get the sense that with every minute she is getting farther away. And if she gets deep into the bowels of Al Shabaab, extracting her will be a problem.”

“Okay, thanks.” Parker didn't say more. He shook hands with Tola, and he and Moncrief headed back towards their tent.

“You know, it is like painting half of a house.” Gunny Moncrief sat on the end of the bunk putting his clothes into his tactical bag. “Hard to do.”

Parker packed his own gear and listened as Moncrief continued to rattle on. He pulled out his HK automatic and dropped the clip. He pulled back on the action, making sure that the chamber was empty. The pistol's barrel extended half an inch farther than the slide. The barrel over the last half inch was threaded like a pipe that could be screwed into a joint or coupler.

“She seemed nice,” Parker heard Moncrief say.

“You never met her.”

“Well, her father is a good man. He saved your life once.”

“He had to.”

“He did.” Moncrief pushed on.

“It would help to have another doctor back here.” Parker said.

“They have plenty.”

“He's the son of a bitch that blew up those kids in Mobile.”

Parker put the clip back in the pistol, pulled back on the action, and let a round go into the chamber. He reached back into his bag and pulled out a round black tube and began to screw the suppressor onto the end of the barrel.

“Okay, got it.” He stood up. “There is only one way to do this. Let's go talk to Tola and see if he is as crazy as you are.”