Sand and Fire (9780698137844)

ALSO BY TOM YOUNG

FICTION

The Mullah's Storm

Silent Enemy

The Renegades

The Warriors

NONFICTION

The Speed of Heat: An Airlift Wing at War in Iraq and Afghanistan

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

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Copyright © 2014 by Tom Young

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Young, Thomas W., date.

Sand and fire / Tom Young.

p. cm.—(A Parson and Gold Novel; 5)

ISBN 978-0-698-13784-4

1. Parson, Michael (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Gold, Sophia (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. 4. Soldiers—Fiction. 5. Africa, North—Fiction. 6. Suspense fiction. I. Title.

PS3625.O97335S26 2014 2014012102

813'6—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For my parents, Bob and Harriett Young

T
he fine sands of the Sahara Desert lifted into the sky and crossed the Mediterranean. Scirocco winds whipped the dust over miles of water, and the particles in the air added a golden tinge to the twilight's glow. At Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, Gunnery Sergeant A. E. Blount took a deep puff of his Cohiba, looked up at a blood-red moon.

Blount sat at a table outside the base coffee shop. From across the street, just outside the air station, he could hear the thump and pulse of music. Some of his Marines, along with sailors and Air Force fliers, were starting the evening early at the Route One nightclub. Blount cared little for the crowds, the dancing, the hookups of the nightclub. And, anytime he entered a club or restaurant anywhere in the world, his size invited stares. Blount stood six feet, eight inches. Two hundred and forty-five pounds, close to the USMC's max weight for his height, but with the body mass index of a creekbed stone.

The big Marine did not begrudge the loud partying. Those boys needed to have fun while they could, because they might go into action any day now. The hopes of the Arab Spring were curdling into despair as terrorists took town after town in Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. Where unsteady administrations lacked control, Islamic militancy rushed into the vacuum. Revolutions had led to coups, and coups had led to chaos.

Blount, however, was going home. He had just wrapped up an exercise at Sig as a team chief with his unit, Fox Company, Second Marine Special Operations Battalion. His uniform bore the golden
wings and canopy of a parachutist, and he held a hard-earned military occupational specialty: MOS 0372, Critical Skills Operator. Blount had put in for retirement with an effective date in three weeks. His twenty years of service had taken him through firefights in Fallujah, sniper duty in the Korengal Valley, even hand-to-hand combat in an Afghan cave. He still carried scars on both hands and under his right arm from the cave fight.

Those battles had earned him the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star with a combat V, the Purple Heart, and every right in the world to spend the rest of his days in peace. Tomorrow, the freedom bird would take him to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina. From there, he'd make his way to that big country house he'd bought on ten acres outside Beaufort for his wife and two baby girls. The girls didn't like it when he called them babies. They were eight and twelve.

They'd like it when he got them that pony, though. He had a plan for those ten acres, and most of it involved a pasture. The rest he'd plow into a great big vegetable garden. As he'd sweated in the Sunni Triangle or shivered in the Hindu Kush, Blount had planned every square foot of that garden: two rows of sweet corn, a row of Irish potatoes, a row of yams, two rows of tomatoes, two of okra, along with rows for black-eyed peas, butter beans, string beans, bell peppers, and hot peppers. Squash and cucumbers, too. Of course, his family could eat only a fraction of that. Bernadette would freeze and can some of it. The rest he'd place in baskets, load into the back of his Dodge Ram, and donate to the local A.M.E. Zion Church. The church held suppers for the homeless every Wednesday night.

The sound of a door squeaking open behind him interrupted his thoughts of home. A young corporal, Tony Fender, came out of the coffee shop with a steaming paper cup.

“May I join you, Gunny?” Fender asked.

Blount blew out a long plume of cigar smoke. “You may,” he said.

With the tip of his boot, Blount shoved a chair out from under the table. He sat up straighter in his own chair and adjusted the blouse of his MARPAT camo. The tip of an aged and cracked leather knife sheath showed from under the blouse. The knife hung on a black web belt earned in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. A vertical red stripe on the belt indicated Blount's status as an instructor trainer.

“Still got that old KA-BAR, Gunny?” Fender said as he took his seat. “They could have issued you a new knife, you know.”

“I'll keep this one.”

His grandfather had carried that knife in the Pacific. Grandpa had served as a Montford Point Marine, one of the first black men to wear the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor. The knife had a more recent history, too. Not a lot of people knew about that. Just the Marines who were there at the time and a couple of folks from other services—an Air Force flier named Michael Parson and a real sharp Army interpreter named Sophia Gold. But Blount didn't like to tell war stories.

“We're gonna miss you, Gunny. You sure you can't stay with us a while longer?”

None of your business, Blount thought. This boy Fender wasn't a bad Marine; he just talked too much. Hair cut in a proper high-and-tight. Small tattoo on the inside of his left wrist—nothing badass, just a girl's name.
Anne
.

Blount took another pull at his cigar. The tip reddened like the moon above, and he held the smoke long enough to make it clear that was the only answer Fender would get. In the distance, twilight blurred the outline of Mount Etna's summit. Blount had heard the story of some ancient philosopher who threw himself into the mouth of Etna, an active volcano. Maybe the dude just got tired of dumb questions.

“Didn't mean to pry,” Fender said. “Sorry about that.”

Blount exhaled, tapped away a round of ash the size of a shot glass. “It's all good,” he said.

“If you don't mind my asking, Gunny, I've always wondered what your initials, A. E., stood for.”

“You can keep wondering, Corporal.”

Before either man could say anything else, a loud crump sounded from across the street. The thud came almost in time with the thumping of music. But it stopped the music. A power failure, maybe? Then Blount heard screams.

The two Marines looked at each other. Blount dropped his cigar and crushed it out with his heel.

“Let's get over there,” he said.

With a clatter of overturned chairs, Blount and Fender sprinted for the front gate. The German shepherds in the K-9 compound just inside the perimeter fence began barking; even they knew something was wrong.

Blount ran up to two Navy MPs manning the gate, flashed his ID. Both MPs held rifles and stood guard behind concrete barriers. One spoke into his radio, called for backup. Blount understood why they held their position instead of rushing to help at the nightclub. Whatever had just happened at Route One could serve as a diversion for terrorists trying to get inside the base.

“What's going on?” Blount asked.

“Don't know,” one of the MPs said. “Some kind of blast, but it sounded weird.”

More screams came from inside the club. Blount could see people stumbling out into the parking lot.

Blount charged across the road. Fender caught up behind him. Some of the victims pouring out of Route One had bloodied faces and arms. Blount saw no serious injuries like limbs torn off; perhaps it was worse inside. He forced his way through the door as nightclub patrons staggered past him.

Inside, at least twenty people lay on the floor amid shattered furniture and spilled beer. Some wailed and writhed while others lay
silent. Some moaned and cursed in English and Italian. The air smelled of explosives, sweat, perfume, and . . . feces. Somebody had lost control of his bowels. Blount looked around, still saw no one with severe trauma. But some of the people on the floor weren't moving at all. A couple others were twitching uncontrollably. Blount kneeled beside a man suffering from convulsions, placed a hand on the man's shoulder.

The man rolled over and tried to look at Blount. He wore black jeans and an Under Armour polo shirt. Anchor tattoo on his bicep. Young guy, maybe twenty. A sailor out on a Saturday night.

“Where are you hurt?” Blount asked.

The sailor shivered and arched his back. Mucus ran from both nostrils. The man's eyes looked strange; his pupils had shrunk to pinpoints. He tried to speak.

“Can't . . . can't.”

“You can't what, bud?”

“B-b-b . . . breathe.”

Just a few feet away, Fender tried to help an Italian girl. Her black dress clung to her thighs, the fabric wet with something. Blount caught a whiff of urine. On her knees, she pitched forward until she went down on all fours.

Fender put his hand on her back. “What's wrong?” he asked.

The girl muttered something in Italian, and then vomited onto the floor.

Blount put it all together.

“Nerve gas!” he shouted. “Fender, get out of here!”

The corporal looked over at Blount, glanced around the room.

“I ain't leaving without you, Gunny.”

Blount thought for a second. If they'd gotten exposed to nerve gas, it was already too late. He felt all right, though. If he'd inhaled sarin, he'd know it. But he could still touch a droplet of it and get exposed through his skin. Didn't matter. These people needed help. And he did not have the only thing that could help them.

“Go to the fleet warehouse and tell 'em you need all the auto-injectors they can give you,” Blount ordered. “I'll check the clinic. These folks all gon' die if they don't get some antidote.”

“Aye, aye, Gunny.”

Outside, flashing blue lights of military police cars and ambulances pierced the deepening twilight. Sirens split through shouts and screams. Blount and Fender pulled out their ID cards, held them aloft as they pushed their way to the base gate. No sense getting shot by an excited cop. MPs now swarmed the guard post. Some headed into the nightclub.

“Looks like a nerve gas attack in there,” Blount told an MP. “They show all the symptoms. I'm coming back with some antidote kits if I can find 'em.”

One of the cops started to ask a question, but Blount ignored him. Blount ran past a sign that read
NAS SIGONELLA. THE HUB OF THE MED.

At the clinic, Blount gripped a door handle, pressed his thumb on the latch release, pulled. Locked tight. He shook the door in frustration. But he saw a light on in an interior room. Someone moved around inside. The gunnery sergeant banged on the door and began yelling.

“Open up!” he shouted. “Open up!”

A woman in Navy fatigues came to the door and unlocked it. She wore the insignia of a lieutenant commander in the Nurse Corps. Black hair tied in a bun. Rimless glasses.

“Ma'am,” Blount said, breathing hard. “We got a mass casualty event right outside the gate, and I'm pretty sure it's nerve gas.”

“I thought I heard something,” the nurse said. “How do you know it's nerve gas?”

“Symptoms,” Blount said. “Drooling and twitching. Ma'am, we gotta get out there with some antidote. You got any?”

The nurse frowned. “Wait a minute, Gunnery Sergeant,” she said. “Atropine is a controlled drug.”

Blount felt a surge of impatience. People were dying out there.

“Sweet Jesus, ma'am,” he said. “You folks gave it to me to carry in Iraq. I didn't need it there but I need it here.” He used to keep doses right in his pocket. Why couldn't he have it now?

The nurse picked up a phone and dialed a number, maybe the main hospital on the other side of the base. When someone answered, she said, “I have a Marine here who says that incident off base involves chemical weapons. You might want to get your chem response ready in case he's right.”

In case I'm right, Blount thought. The Marine Corps taught me those symptoms. She thinks I'm just some dumb bruiser.

Blount followed the nurse down the hall and into a storage room. She unlocked a cabinet and began searching, but not nearly fast enough for Blount.

“Where is it, ma'am? Can I help you look?”

The woman unlocked another cabinet, motioned across its shelves. Blount rummaged, knocked over bottles and boxes. He found a case of the old Mark 1 kits, pairs of injectors stored together in vinyl pouches.

“Wait, Gunnery Sergeant,” the nurse said. “I have to . . .”

Blount didn't hear the rest of the sentence. He grabbed the Mark 1 kits and a box of medical gloves, took off at a run.

A memory of childhood came to him. Back on the farm, in the summer of his tenth year, his beagle puppy was bounding around the trash barrel. The pup carried something white in its mouth. Young Blount called to his dog and took away the object, a screw-on cap from a plastic jug. Around the trash barrel lay several empty jugs, each bearing the label of an insecticide used in the tobacco fields.

“Stop it, Digger,” Blount said. “You ain't supposed to play with that.”

Young Blount walked back to the weathered frame house where he lived with his mother—and his father, whenever the man wasn't off on a drunk. The puppy followed him home, playful as ever.
Blount went inside and turned on the television. After the old set warmed up, Blount tried all three channels but couldn't find any cartoons. So he went back outside to play with Digger.

He found the pup lying in the weeds, trembling. Vomit covered its front paws. Green diarrhea issued from the other end. Digger looked up with misty eyes. He didn't have the strength to wag his tail.

Blount wrapped the puppy in a burlap sack and ran down the dirt road to the most reliable source of help he knew—his grandfather. He found Grandpa on the porch, smoking a Camel and reading the newspaper.

“Grandpa,” Blount called. “Digger's real sick and needs to go to the vet.”

The old man folded his paper, crushed out his cigarette in a beanbag ashtray.

“What's wrong with him, boy?”

“He's throwing up and going to the bathroom. He's shaking all over.” Blount thought for a moment. “He poisoned hisself.”

“What did he get into?” Grandpa asked. “Show me.”

Blount handed the puppy to his grandfather and ran back to the trash barrel. He returned with the empty jug. By then, Grandpa was getting into his pickup; Blount jumped into the truck's passenger side. Grandpa looked at the jug's label, started the engine. He'd placed the dog in the middle of the bench seat, right where duct tape covered a rip.