Countdown: The Liberators-ARC (10 page)

"Understand?" Labaan stood up and, using the bus seats to hold himself erect against the bouncing, walked to the rear where Adam sat. Abdi moved over to open a space for Labaan to sit.

"We are travelling on what is supposed to be an all-weather, asphalt highway. Money was budgeted for it, no doubt by a consortium of Europeans and Americans, governmental and nongovernmental, both. No doubt, too, a generous provision for utterly necessary bribes was built in to every bid . . . well, except maybe for the Americans. For that matter, probably no American concerns bid on the project, since their government is death on paying bribes if they catch someone at it. Such an unrealistic people."

If ever someone wore a smile that was three-fourth's sadness, that someone was Labaan. "Now let me tell you what happened with all the money that was supposed to go for the road. First, some very high ranking people in this country took the twenty or so percent that was factored into the bids for bribery. Then someone important's first cousin showed up, waved some official looking papers, sprouted something in the local language that the contractor couldn't understand. Then, in really excellent French, that cousin explained all manner of dire probabilities and suggested he could help. That cousin was then hired as a consultant. He was never seen again, except on payday.

"An uncle then showed up, in company with four hundred and thirty-seven more or less distant family members, every one of which was hired and perhaps a third of which showed up for work on any given day, except for payday."

The bus's right front tire went into a remarkably deep and sharp pothole, causing the metal of the frame to strike asphalt and Labaan to wince with both the nerve-destroying sound and the blow, transmitted from hole to tire to almost shockless suspension to frame to barely padded and falling apart seat to him.

"A guerilla chieftain," he continued, once the pain had passed, "perhaps of no particular relationship to the ruling family, then arrived, offering to provide security with his band of armed men. He was, at first, turned down. And then several pieces of heavy construction equipment burned one night. The guerillas were quickly hired. They never showed up either, except for their leader, at payday, but no more equipment was burned.

"Then came the tranzis, the Transnational Progressives, average age perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two, and knowing absolutely nothing about road construction. Indeed, most of them wouldn't have even known what it meant to work. Rich boys and girls, trust fund babies, out to feel good about themselves by saving the world. They filled up every hotel room and hired the few competent, and critical, local engineers to do important things like act as chauffeurs and translators."

The bus had now arrived at a washboard section of the road. Labaan kept speaking, but the steady thumpkareechsprong of the road and bus made his words warble almost as much as a helicopter pilot's over a radio.

"More cousins came, and they, of course, had to be hired as consultants, as well.

"At about this time, the accountant for the project arrived and explained that it could no longer be done to the standard contracted for. The substrate began to suffer and the thickness of the road to be reduced. The demands for money, for the hiring of spurious workers and spurious services, never ended. With each mile of road, that substrate became less to standard and that surface became thinner."

Labaan shook his head. "And then came the first rain . . . "

At that moment, both front tires went into a large, more or less linear hole, adding the screech of metal as the fender twisted to all the more usual sounds.

"As I said: ‘Foreign Aid.' And it doesn't matter a whit whether it come from NGOs, quangos, governments, or rock stars; it never does a bit of good. Never. Fifty-seven billion United States dollars come to Black Africa every year in aid, official and unofficial, Adam. Fifty billion is deposited to foreign accounts by our rulers."

D-148, nearing Abéché, Chad

"Fucking foreigners!" the bus driver exclaimed. The bus began to slow as the driver applied brakes. Pretty much unconstrained by asphalt at that point, a cloud of dust billowed upward.

"What is it?" Labaan asked. He didn't wait for an answer because when he looked out the large front window he saw half a dozen armed "men" standing in the road.

Labaan wasn't leader of the team merely for his age. "Abdi, Gheddi, get low, take your submachine guns, exit the back door. I don't think they'll see you with all the dust."

Abdi and Gheddi quickly pulled zippers, opening their cylindrical carry-on bags and removed from them submachine guns which already had magazines loaded in the pistol grips. Crouching low, they scooted to the rear door of the bus and twisted the handle to open it. One after the other they oozed out to the ground, hit, and rolled. In the dust raised by the bus they were not noticed. Gheddi took the time to run after the slowing vehicle to shut and partially lock the door behind them.

Like his subordinates, Labaan opened the small carry-on bag at his feet and removed a firearm, in his case a pistol. He looked to the opposite side of the bus and saw that Delmar was doing the same. Both men held their weapons low, where they wouldn't be seen until the last minute. "Delmar, you work from the rear," Labaan added, "I'll work from the front."

"What is it?" Adam echoed Labaan, except that the captive sounded hopeful.

"Guerillas, rebels, bandits . . . hard to say. Driver?"

"I don't know that there is any difference," said the driver without turning his head. He continued to apply the brakes until the bus came to a full stop amidst a self-generated cloud of dust and a concert of squealing brake pads and rushing air.

"And don't think they're here to rescue you, boy," Labaan said. "Look at the scruffy bastards. They don't even know of your existence."

The bus door opened. Three "men" boarded, all in civilian clothes. One carried a Kalashnikov. The other two had bolt action rifles of considerable antiquity. The rifles were longer than their bearers, who looked to be twelve or thirteen years old. The Kalashnikov carrier seemed older, perhaps nineteen or twenty. All were dirty, shoeless, and in near rags. And the weapons looked worse than they did. With the bus so close to the three who remained outside, Labaan couldn't see the tops of their heads, though he could see rifle muzzles pointed at the driver. More children, he assumed. The three on board joked and laughed among themselves in a language Labaan didn't know.

God, Labaan asked silently, why do you hate Africa so?

The elder, and obvious leader, stepped up to the top of the step and, without a word, cuffed the driver across the face. He then grabbed the driver by the back of his shirt and threw him down the steps and onto the dirt and chunks of disassociated asphalt outside.

Men normally helpless against fate, suddenly given the power of the gun. How many places have I seen this?

Labaan tried to put a look of fear on his face. He wasn't sure he was succeeding. Then again, acting was never my discipline. It was no matter, though; looking around he saw that Delmar looked afraid and Adam seemed absolutely terrified. Labaan cast his own eyes down, lest eye contact reveal to the gunman that Labaan was not precisely a helpless civilian.

For a moment Adam thought about shouting out who he was and what his father would pay for his return. Labaan won't kill me; neither will he let Delmar. They need me alive. But . . . that man and those boys just might, on general principle. They've that look of the hyena about them, rangy, mangy, feral, and hungry. He shivered.

Labaan trusted Delmar enough not to make that confirming look. He kept his eyes downcast until the eldest of the bandits was no more than six feet away. Then, wordlessly, Labaan raised his pistol and opened fire.

Adam screamed aloud as the first shot was fired. From his vantage point, he saw a spray of blood erupt from the back of the bandit with the newer and more evil looking rifle. The bandit began to fall backwards. Even as he did, two more sanguinary fountains sprayed out of his back.

Delmar stood to his full height at the first shot, his pistol gripped in both hands and rotating downward to target the other two. That these were children mattered not a bit. Adam saw the one nearest the front, the one farthest from him, frozen in shock. The shock ended when a single bullet exploded the boy's head like an overripe melon.

The middle boy dropped his rifle and turned to run, screaming and throwing his hands into the air. Both Labaan and Delmar turned their pistols on the boy's back, firing so close together that Adam couldn't tell whose shots were whose. The boy was flung downward over his erstwhile friend, bleeding and ruined.

Down below, from the rear of the bus where Abdi and Gheddi had taken firing positions, an altogether more violent firing burst out. In less than a second, so it seemed to Adam, the muzzles that had been visible ahead of the bus disappeared. There was a brief pause and then his two submachine gun bearing captors appeared ahead. They aimed downward. With three more bursts of fire, it was over.

Adam, trembling, pushed his head out an open window and threw up.

"And that's foreign aid, too, boy," Labaan said.

Adam was back in his chair, still trembling and gone comparatively pale, as Labaan and Delmar dragged the two boys' bodies out. A few minutes later the driver reboarded the bus and grabbed the feet of the only bandit who had been of age and fully responsible. That gunman, as had the children, left a trail of blood along the tattered rubber matting of the floor.

It seemed like a long time to Adam before everyone reboarded. The four captors sat and began to disassemble and clean their firearms, taking care to reload the magazines as well. The driver took a broom out from somewhere under the bus. He gathered some dirt in his hands and, reentering, began to spread it over the blood stains. With the broom he spread the dirt around, collecting up the blood.

"It attracts flies," the driver explained, unnecessarily. He then swept the dirt forward and down the steps.

When he looked down, Adam saw that indeed flies were beginning to settle on the remnants of the blood. He looked up and out the window, mostly to avert his eyes from the sight. This was worse, as vultures were settling in a mass not so very far away. Once again, Adam stood and stuck his head out a window to vomit.

Gheddi laughed at the captive, earning a sharp rebuke from Labaan.

"I remember you, cousin, the first time in action. Be polite, lest we bring up things better left forgotten."

With a scowl, Gheddi turned back to his firearm.

When he'd finished, and resumed his seat, Adam gasped, "They were just children and you shot them in cold blood. Like animals." He seemed to have forgotten his own earlier comparison to hyenas.

"They were animals," Labaan answered. "Feral," he added, unconsciously voicing Adam's own, earlier thought. "Clan- and tribe-less. No one will miss them. And the world is better off without them. I don't know their precise crimes, yet that they had a lengthy list of them I have no doubt."

"I doubt they had kidnapping on those list of crimes," Adam said, raising a grin from Labaan.

"No, probably not kidnapping, unless you count temporarily, for purposes of rape. And what I do for my tribe is not a crime."

CHAPTER NINE

Courage is the greatest of all the virtues.

Because if you haven't courage, you may not have

an opportunity to use any of the others.

-Dr. Samuel Johnson

D-120, San Antonio, TX

Warren Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns, and Money" was playing from the computer's speakers as Phillie walked into the office.

"Is what we're doing legal?" Phillie asked of Bridges. "I asked Wes and he said you used to be a lawyer and I should talk to you."

Matt Bridges, late forties, balding, glasses, pushed himself back from the computer where he'd been working on the standard enlistment contract, and setting up dummy corporations for the procurement of everything from land, to ships, to aircraft, to rubber boats. He rotated his chair and began drumming the fingers of his right hand over and around his mouth. He actually knew the answer, already, but this delay gave him a chance to appreciate the sheer good looks of Philomena Potter, something all the crew liked to do when chance offered.

"Have a seat, Phillie," Bridges said, indicating with on hand the chair normally used by Ralph Boxer. When she'd sat down, he continued, "The answer is yes, in part, and no, in part. It's complex.

"The overall operation is legal. We are hired by a foreign entity that has practical sovereignty over a part of the Earth's surface to accomplish a hostage rescue. That's legal. Not even in violation of sundry treaties against the use of mercenaries, since it's more a police function than a military one. To that end, we are buying a ship, aircraft, arms, equipment. That's all legal.

"Moreover, while that entity has practical sovereignty over an area, nobody recognizes anyone as having legal sovereignty over what used to be the overall country. The former state has no diplomatic presence anywhere. It has no national government. No one accepts passports from there. Pirates operate from there and no one local even tries to control them. International law-wise, it's a black hole and anyone can do pretty much anything there.

"However"-Bridges's chin went up on the how and down on the ever-"Terry is taking a team day after tomorrow to Myanmar, to spring a legally held prisoner from custody. That's illegal. Biggus Dickus Thornton is going to pick up a patrol boat for sale in Finland, which is legal, but then intercept a merchant vessel at sea, and either interrogate and release the crew or kill them and sink the vessel. That's illegal."

Phillie suddenly had a sinking feeling. She'd been so caught up the excitement at first, the air of sheer energy as Wes' apartment turned into a headquarters, that she hadn't thought enough about it.

"It was also, for example, legal for us to buy that old missile complex. It will be legal for us to assemble some light aircraft there. However, it is illegal for us to transport a couple of dozen bright looking Mexican illegal immigrants there to put those kit planes together."