Joint Task Force #1: Liberia (32 page)

“Joel Grayson, make yourself a peanut-butter sandwich,” Artimecy said, pointing to the open jar and moldy loaf of bread on the open tablecloth. “While we pack this stuff up. Ain’t much we can do even though you want to, Parker.” She looked at Victoria. “I’m sorry, child, but General Thomaston wouldn’t want you or us doing anything foolish that won’t change the outcome.”

Victoria opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it. She pinched off bread mold from a few places and took another bite of the sandwich.

“Seems pretty quiet now, but it won’t stay that way long,” Joel added.

“We’ve got to find help for them,” Victoria pleaded, her voice rising around words muted by peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth. She leaned forward, coughing to clear her throat.

“How we going to do that? We don’t have a radio and the nearest Americans are in the Ivory Coast—
where we need to be headed
,” Joel said, poking himself on the chest a couple of times.

Victoria swallowed hard, washing the concoction down with a mouthful of water. “I think we should stay here. Even if we can’t do anything now, we may be able to later. Maybe after dark, we can. . . .”

She fell silent. No one answered.

Joel shook his head and spoke up. “I saw another path a mile back on the other side of the hill. We could backtrack and work our way down to it. That will put the hill and the rain forest between the fighting and us. With luck, it will take us toward the border.”

Everyone exchanged glances.

“I intend to stay here,” Victoria said.

“We don’t know who or what is down there,” Jose said.

Victoria looked up as Jose spoke.

George nodded in agreement.

“Where are the boys?” Joel asked.

A sharp crack of a gun broke their conversation.

“What was that?” Mimy asked.

“Gunshot,” Joel Grayson said, tossing the half-eaten sandwich onto the tablecloth. He grabbed the shotgun from where it leaned against the back wheel of the tractor.

“Where’s Cannon?” Mimy asked.

“He’s up ahead along the road with Jamal,” Victoria said.

Parker walked toward the front of the trailer. “It sounded as if it came from that direction,” he drawled, using the end of the shotgun to point down the hill.

“Joel, you’ve got to find Cannon and Jamal,” Mimy pleaded.

“It was only one shot,” Jose said. “Probably doesn’t mean anything.”

Parker looked at the young man. “Boy, in the last few days, everything means something even if it’s only taking a leak.” He turned his head away and spit a long string of tobacco juice. “Ain’t been much that ain’t meant something.”

“Maybe we should back up the tractor and trailer?” Artimecy offered.

“We can’t,” Joel answered peevishly. “Whoever fired that shot will hear the engine and know we’re here.”

“Well, we got to do something,” Mimy said, her voice louder than the others.

“Not so loud,” Joel said, motioning downward with his left hand.

They argued softly among themselves. After nearly twenty minutes and with no other gunfire heard, they agreed to backtrack when the boys returned. The tablecloth, food, and eating utensils had been wiped and put away. Joel and Parker were heading forward to go search for the two boys when a shout from the left caught them.

“Drop those guns!” Mumar shouted.

The three Africans emerged from the bushes, their guns pointing at the group.

“Don’t even think it, old man,” said Mumar, motioning his pistol at Parker. “I don’t mind shooting you.”

Mumar’s eyes moved from one to the other. “Back up, all of you!” he shouted, motioning the group toward the rear of the trailer with his pistol. He couldn’t leave them here. They would interfere with his bombardment of the armory. His lips tightened. Deciding what to do with this group was easy, and he had no doubt the two men with him would do what he ordered. Killing them was easy, but he also knew Abu Alhaul wanted live Americans to videotape them having their throats cut. Videotapes that would be sent to the news services with the expectation they would be played to help the spread of terror.

“Nakolimia and Ougalie, take their weapons and tie them up. We will come back for them. We don’t want them running for help.”

Parker guffawed. “You’re really stupid, aren’t you? Don’t you think if there had been any help around, they would have already showed up?”

Artimecy put her hand on her husband’s arm. “Don’t, Parker.”

Parker put his arm around her and drew her close. “Don’t worry, honey. We’ll be all right. The man is stupid. I know what they intend to do.”

“We have so few white men in Liberia,” Mumar said, pointing his pistol at Joel. “We will have even fewer soon.”

Mumar waved Ougalie forward “Get their guns. You,” he said to Nakolimia, “see what’s on the trailer.”

“There’s a wounded black man here,” Nakolimia said as he approached the trailer.

Mumar moved sideways, keeping his pistol trained on the group. His eyes returned to Parker every few seconds even as he worked his way to the end of the trailer. The old man was the unpredictable one. Mumar reached forward and touched the unconscious soldier’s chest.

“What happened?”

“Found him alongside the road early this morning,” Parker said.

Mumar nodded. “Still alive, eh? I figured he’d be dead and some animal would have dragged him off into the jungle for a quick meal by now.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Victoria saw Joel take a tiny half step closer to the man who was taking their guns.

Mumar grinned. “Guess Mother Africa didn’t have feeding the animals in store for you, boy,” he said to the unconscious American. He looked at the others. “I shot him this morning when they refused to stop at our roadblock,” he lied, grinning at the shock on their faces. He extended the pistol forward, aiming it at Parker.
If I shoot this old man, the others will stay in line.

The single shot hit Ougalie in the back, sending him flying into Victoria. A spray of blood shot out of the man’s mouth, flooding across her thin blouse as his body hit her. Reflexively, she reached out and shoved him aside. The guns fell in a heap onto the ground.

Mumar jumped to the side as another shot rang out. The bullet caught Nakolimia in the head, spinning him around. Mumar scrambled behind the trailer, leaned up, and fired blindly toward the group.

Benitez leapt toward Victoria, hitting her in the small of the back, knocking her against the trailer, her head striking a piece of the frame. The bullet hit Benitez in the right side of his head, killing him instantly.

“Take cover!” Joel shouted, pushing Mimy to the ground. He jerked up his shotgun, squatting alongside the large tractor wheel.

Two more shots came from the bushes, sending bits of soil into the air where they hit.

Mumar peeked around the edge of the trailer. Everyone had disappeared. Probably at the front of the tractor. Nakolimia was crawling into the brush on the other side of the road. Mumar pulled his head back, but not before he saw a slight movement by Ougalie. The spreading blood beneath the coward meant he was dying. Even if he wasn’t, Mumar couldn’t do anything to save him. He pulled back, glanced around the other side of the trailer. Saw no one and dived into the bushes, only to discover a steep drop. Somewhere in the tumble through the rough bushes and briars, he lost his pistol. His
AK-47 was ripped off his shoulder. A sharp pain struck the left side of his head, and the last thing Mumar remembered before he blacked out was a cascade of green as he rolled down the steep grade through the African bush.

Cannon and Jamal emerged from the side of the road.

“You okay, Daddy?”

“You two do this?” Joel asked, pointing to the two dead rebels.

“Yes, sir,” Jamal said. “We killed them. They needed it.”

Artimecy pulled Victoria’s head into her lap, lightly slapping her cheek and calling her name. Victoria’s eyes opened for a second and then shut again. Several seconds passed before she opened them again. Blood flowed down her left arm.

Parker and Mimy rolled the dead Benitez off her.

“You all right, honey?” Artimecy asked.

Victoria’s mouth opened and closed, but no words emerged. “She’s bumped her head on the trailer wheel,” Artimecy said.

Joel reached forward and touched the side of her head. “It ain’t too bad.”

“I’m all right,” Victoria mumbled, allowing herself to be helped up by Artimecy.

Parker and Joel grabbed Ougalie’s legs and pulled him off the road. Ougalie’s hands waved feebly in the air. A bubbling moan emerged from the dying African as Ougalie continued to drown slowly from blood filling his lungs.

Parker stood over the wounded African. He spit to the side of the man. “Boy, looks as if you gonna die. Give God our compliments and tell him you be sent by us,” he said before turning around and walking back to the group. “One’s dead. The other’s dying.”

A low moan came from the trailer.

It was Selma. She was rocking back and forth on her haunches, moaning as she stared into the sky.

“He saved your life,” Jose said to Victoria, pointing to Benitez. “That man shot at you and he jumped between you and the bullet.”

Victoria looked down at the body. “Why would he do that?” she asked.

Jose shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? Maybe he was
trying to dodge the bullets and jumped in front of them.”

Jose laid the pistol on the back of the trailer, reached down, grabbed Benitez under the arms, and pulled him to the side of the road.

“I think he’s dead now,” Parker said, jerking his thumb toward the dying African. “If he ain’t, he gonna be.”

“Think we ought to take him with us?”

“I think we ought to leave him, Joel. We ain’t no ambulance service and he ain’t no friend.”

Mimy hugged Cannon, running her hand through the young man’s hair and holding him tight.

Joel walked over and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Good job, son.”

“It was Jamal who did it. We saw four men lugging weapons up the hill. I wanted to come back and warn you, but Jamal said we couldn’t get here before them. They were ahead of us, so we watched. They had an argument, and the one who escaped killed this big man. Then we followed them. They heard your voices because we could hear them too. When they started sneaking up on you, we just followed, and when it looked as if he was going to shoot Mr. Parker, Jamal shot him. I shot at the other man and Jamal got the one with the guns.”

Fifteen minutes later Joel, Parker, Jose, and the two boys had recovered the mortar, the shells, and the M-50 machine gun. Ten minutes later, the weapons that weighed so much and had been carried so far were on top of the trailer beside the unconscious militiaman.

The men took deep drinks of water and wiped sweat from their faces. Tired and unable to argue, they listened as Victoria proposed a plan to help the armory, but Joel and Parker’s thoughts were on their family. They sympathized, and although both Jamal and Cannon thought the idea glamorous and exciting, the two older men shook their heads. Jose remained silent.

Victoria’s voice rose. She angrily called them cowards, only to apologize. Finally, she insisted they leave her behind with the mortar and machine gun. The men looked at each other. Victoria crossed her fingers and waited. She draped her hand across Jamal’s shoulder. He stood straighter, holding his rifle by the barrel with the stock braced against his hip.

He had no intention of leaving and he had no idea what to do with Selma. Jamal had promised his mother to take care of her. Down there was General Thomaston. Down there was the safety his uncle Nathan had promised. So, down there was where they had to go. Maybe—just maybe—his mom and dad were there too.

CHAPTER 13

DICK HOLMAN LEANED AGAINST THE GRAY STANCHION
that encircled the port bridge wing. This was where real Navy leaders should fight battles, he thought.
I would have made an outstanding Navy warrior in the early twentieth century—even during Vietnam
. Today’s Navy warriors fought their battles entombed inside darken spaces artificially lighted to protect their vision and the fighting scenarios unfolding on giant computer screens.
Shit!
His electrical engineering degree from the Academy was ancient compared to the information technology that drove warfare today.

He blew out a cloud of smoke that the wind across the bow of the ship quickly dissipated. Reaching below the top of the stanchion, Holman flicked ashes into the brass bottom of a five-inch 62-shell casing. Once you fired an artillery shell, the gun ejected the spent casings onto the deck. Boatswain mates, or deck apes as they were fondly called, used them for everything from storing bolts, nuts, and nails to artistic endeavors involving elaborate macramé designs. The two casings on the bridge wings had none of the accoutrements of at-sea art. They were just two empty shell casings put there by some enterprising young sailor who probably was tired of cleaning up after the admiral. It never occurred to Dick Holman that the
shell-casing ashtrays were tokens of respect from the men and women who worked for him. He made sure he used them. He wouldn’t want to clean up after a messy slob like him. He looked at his cigar for a moment before shoving it between his lips. He enjoyed them, but was conscious of public opinion that regarded most smokers as being inconsiderate bastards screwing up the atmosphere and surrounding those nearby with secondhand smoke. He did not intend to be an inconsiderate bastard—
a considerate bastard seems okay.

The screeching sound of the forward elevator drew his attention.

“That should be them,” Upmann said, standing to the right and upwind from the cigar.

A couple of seconds later, the four Unmanned Fighter Aerial Vehicles appeared over the edge of the flight deck.

“How could we ever give up manned aircraft for something like that?” Holman asked.

“Sometimes technology and society don’t give us many options.”

“And don’t forget politics. We got one political party viewing us as cash cows and the other knocking on the door shouting
‘We’re here to help,
’ and ignoring anything we have to say. Sometimes, I don’t know how we survive.”

The screeching stopped as the elevator reached deck level. A large group of sailors swarmed across the deck, dividing into individual working parties for the four UFAVs.

“If it hadn’t been for the war in Afghanistan, we’d be without aircraft carriers today,” Upmann added thoughtfully.

Holman shook his head. “Oh, I don’t agree with you, Leo. I’ve always questioned that opinion. Aircraft carriers will be around as long as America needs to control the seas, protect our interests abroad, and project power when needed. What worries me is this idea that unmanned aircraft can replace manned ones. You can’t fight a war through the eyes of a camera. You need the man—
or woman
—on the edge of their seats piloting that fighter or bomber, making snap decisions that mean the difference between life and death. Not piping signals back to a bunch of information jocks who will analyze the situation to death.”

“And the Air Force?” Leo asked, grinning.

Holman nodded. “Nice try, Chief of Staff. Won’t work. I’ve got enough on my plate here without worrying about what the Air Force is trying to do to the Navy this week. Besides, we need the Air Force. I know getting a bunch of Air Force pilots and Navy pilots in the same room to argue the merits of airpower versus carrier power is like a meeting of the Hatfields and McCoys, but we both know that without their bombers and tankers, we’d’ve been severely restricted in Afghanistan. Might have taken four months instead of three to conquer the country. Same goes for Iraq.”

The first UFAV, attached to a yellow deck cat, moved across the gray flight deck, heading aft toward the stern of the USS
Boxer
. Though it weighed only a thousand pounds, it still needed a runway to get airborne. Beneath each wing, two air-to-ground missiles protruded. Holman did not intend to engage the French fighters. He mentally crossed his fingers.
What gave him the idea that just because he’d fooled a bunch of electronic-configured mines in the Strait of Gibraltar, he could fool a bunch of Frenchmen?
He chuckled.
Because the mines were smarter?

“What’s funny?”

Holman shook his head. “Nothing, Leo. I was just thinking of the thoughts that might go through the head of Admiral Colbert when our little charade begins.”

“He’s French. Don’t have to worry too much about anything going through his head.”

“Wish you were right, but I’ve worked with the French and while they’re very nationalistic, they’re good fighters. I discovered during Afghanistan that when the French set an objective, they tend to follow it to the end.”

Upmann leaned forward, bracing himself against the waist-high stanchion. “If that’s right, Admiral, then we won’t fool them.”

Holman took a puff on his Cubana. “No, you’re right, Leo. I don’t think we’ll fool them completely. But if we keep them confused long enough to land the Marines at Kingsville, then we’ll be ahead of the game.”

The second UFAV jerked as its wheels rolled across the slight bump between the elevator and the flight deck. The driver of the deck cat spun the steering wheel slightly to align
himself about twenty feet behind the first one. The third and fourth UFAVs followed, with the drivers pulling into a parade heading toward the stern of the amphibious carrier USS
Boxer
.

“Has the
Mispellion
reached its position?” Holman asked.

Upmann nodded. “She is thirty nautical miles southwest of us.”

“Her team knows what they have to do?”

“Admiral, we gave them a script, but you know it was hastily written and it may be hastily executed.”

“All
Mispellion
has to do is give us one hour. If the old ship can give us an hour, we’ll have Marines far enough inshore that the French will be hard-pressed to stop them before they reach Kingsville. And they would never dare to act hostile to returning helicopters full of civilians.”

Holman turned slightly so he could see the CH-53 helicopters parked along the port and starboard sides aft of the forecastle. Two of them had their rotors turning. Marines with full packs, guided by their gunnery sergeants, boarded through the lowered back ramps. A new whine of engines straining to achieve RPMs joined the cacophony of air operations as the rotors on the other two CH-53 Super Stallions started to rotate. He looked over his shoulder at the two tilt-rotor V-22A Ospreys parked directly across from each other near the bow of the ship.

“They’re turning them around, Admiral,” Leo said, pointing toward the UFAVs.

Holman looked. Sailors who had walked alongside the procession now crouched between the noses of the twenty-eight-foot-long UFAVs and the deck tractors, working quickly to disconnect the tows.

A blast of gray smoke from the exhaust of an Osprey trailed as it spread toward the stern, wrapping around the forecastle in its passage. Painted parking areas kept them out of the way of flight operations.

Near the UFAVs, the sailors finished picking up the towing gear and tossed it onto the deck cats.

Flight operations should never work. It was an impossible task. You take an 888-foot floating airport with twenty helicopters, two Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, being operated by many who had never seen an aircraft until they joined the Navy.
Since the Navy rotated its personnel every three years, the ship lost one third of its experienced workforce annually, making the evolution a training continuum where what has been found to work is passed on to those who follow. You could read all the damn publications you wanted, and they wouldn’t teach anyone what they needed to know to make an aircraft carrier work. Holman shifted the cigar to the left side of his lips. Complicating the challenges of flight deck operations were things such as fueling aircraft with running engines and Marines boarding. Within feet of these operations, various armaments either waited to be loaded or rested a few inches above your head beneath a wing or along a fuselage.

Holman watched stoically as the working parties aligned the unmanned Navy fighters. This had better work.

A whistle disrupted his thoughts and drew his attention. Holman twisted his head a couple of times before he spotted the yellow jersey of the master chief petty officer in charge of the working parties standing on the starboard side. The man held his whistle to his lips with his left hand, while his right waved the sailors away from the area.

For the uninitiated the noise, equipment, aircraft, oily smell, and intense movement of sailors across the flight deck appeared a disorganized jumble of unrelated events. And it was. Holman tried to recall if he had ever seen or read a book on the management theory of flight deck operations. He shook his head—
only official Navy documents.
Even aircraft and amphibious carriers of the same class had differences in how they conducted flight deck operations. It took experience. Experience on the ship and actually flying off a flight deck, before the epiphany of at-sea air operations fell into place.

“You know, Leo, this scene has to confuse anyone who sees it for the first time.”

“I don’t know, sir. I think Dante was the first to recognize it,” Upmann replied. After a couple of seconds, he continued. “I know it confuses me and I see it nearly every day. It took me nearly a month to figure out different jobs had different sailors wearing different-colored jerseys.”

“Kind of reminds me of a beehive.”

Upmann chuckled. “I was thinking more along the lines of Dante’s Inferno. You could be right. We got workers, we got
royalty, and we definitely got stings. Probably a bunch of drones too.”

Holman winked at Upmann. “I won’t ask who you think the drones are.” He turned back, observing the activities below. “When you see all those different-colored jerseys running about the flight deck wearing cranials with different designs on top—”

“Maybe a paintball derby. Yes. That’s it; a paintball derby could describe it.”

Holman shook his head. “Leo, don’t you have something you need to be doing?” Holman asked jovially. “Maybe a few hours working alongside the Air Boss would give you a better feel for the artistic professionalism we witness every day from up here.”

“Oh, no, sir. No, thanks, Admiral,” Upmann protested. “I’ve been there and I’ve watched him. It only took that one visit to figure out why there are no chubby Air Bosses.”

Two decks below the starboard bridge wing where Admiral Holman and his Chief of Staff stood, a small compartment jutted out slightly from the side of the forecastle. Windows tilted at twenty-degree angles with windshield wipers locked in place to give the occupants a clear view of every inch of flight deck space. This was the sacred place of the Air Boss. The mystical sorcerer of flight deck operations whose every desire or command produced dread and fear in those singled out by a speaker system designed to be heard over any flight evolution ongoing at the time. The Air Boss, a senior commander or junior captain, was directly responsible for everything that occurred within this nearly three acres of United States real estate floating on this vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. For anyone on the flight deck, the Air Boss’s word was law, his justice swift, and his punishment irrevocable.

The
Boxer
Air Boss, Commander Scott Proudfoot, native Cherokee, tight end for Naval Academy class of 2001, watched the flight deck. The familiar set of binoculars swung like a pendulum from his neck as he moved from window to window, watching the evolution below him. Around the top of the compartment above the windows, rows of speakers broadcast the walkie-talkie conversations from the flight deck.

Behind Proudfoot, on top of the familiar gray Navy metal
table was a facsimile outline of the USS
Boxer
flight deck and hangar deck. The flight deck got most of his and his team’s attention. Hangar decks changed little. But regardless of where a piece of equipment or aircraft was located, nothing moved without the permission of the Air Boss. To do otherwise meant finding yourself back in Kansas for, as Commander Proudfoot enjoyed telling everyone, he owned the power of the red slippers.

On top of the facsimile, scale models of the V-22A Osprey and CH-53 helicopters reflected their true positions. Each model had corresponding tail numbers to help the Air Boss direct deck crews to specific aircraft. Someone had made cardboard cutouts to represent the four UFAVs taking up valuable real estate on
his
flight deck, for Commander Proudfoot wore the wings of a Navy pilot. If they could do this to the fighter jocks, how long before his EP-3E was replaced by robots?

On the flight deck, every sailor and officer wore a protective helmet with goggles and earmuffs to protect their head, ears, and eyes from the myriad of things that could go wrong in such a confined area. Sailors called the helmets cranials because unlike standard helmets, they were a mixture of cloth and hard plastic built with sufficient flexibility to be folded and carried. The helmets reminded Holman of the heads of beetles. Different colors, stripes, and emblems on top of the cranials told the Air Boss, and anyone else watching from above, the position of authority and skills of the wearer. To the starboard side of the UFAVs stood a tall officer wearing a yellow jersey with a cranial bearing three orange stripes identifying her as an Air Department officer. Proudfoot made a mental note of where she was standing. If she were still there when he came back to her, he’d jerk the handset up and ask her if she knew
what in hell
she was doing. Anyone standing still on a flight deck had no business being there.
If you want to watch, watch from somewhere else and get the hell off his flight deck.