Sand and Fire (9780698137844) (10 page)

The helicopter turned and passed off the port side, just meters above the sea. The aircraft flew alongside the
Tarawa
's wake, the crew probably hoping the path of churned water would lead them to their lost sailor.

The smoke float receded in the distance. As the smoke spewed into the air, wind snatched and scattered the wisps like sails torn from a yardarm.

Blount thought that if he were a superstitious man, he might have seen this accident as a kind of test, some challenge from a Neptune angered by the ship's presence:
You men of the
Tarawa
may pass no farther until you prove your worth.
He wanted to reply in defiance, to shout into the wind:
I got a score to settle and nothing's getting in my way
. Then he remembered his grandfather's words. Fight to protect, not to punish. Act from love instead of hate.

Try as he might, Blount could not see anything that looked like a man in the water. The Seahawk turned, crossed the wake, turned again. Then the aircraft slowed and hovered. Its main rotor whipped
the surface and slashed spray into a microstorm boiling beneath the helicopter.

Thank God, Blount thought. They found him. Just hope he ain't drowned.

A metal basket swung from the Seahawk's hoist. One of the rescue swimmers rode the basket to the ocean's surface, and the man kept looking down and pointing. The basket descended, disappeared into a trough. A few moments later Blount spotted the basket sliding up the shoulder of a wave, two men inside. Blount clapped and cheered along with the sailors around him.

The cable tightened, and the basket rose into the air, dripping. The rescue swimmer worked on the figure splayed beside him. Not a good sign. Blount wondered if the swimmer performed CPR.

The hoist reeled the cable until the basket dangled just outside the helicopter's starboard-side door. Gloved hands reached for the basket and cable, pulled the rescue swimmer and sailor inside. Closed the cabin door.

Sweet, Blount thought. He found it a pleasure to watch folks who knew what they were doing, whether they flew a helo, shot a rifle, or built a barn. A man could get real good at something and use that skill to make the world a better place, even if only for a little while in a little area. Blount worried about the condition of the sailor, but at least the guy was in good hands.

Rain stung Blount's cheeks. Gusts whipped the Oscar flag in new directions, and what looked like white stones began bouncing on the steel expanse of the
Tarawa.

Hail, Blount realized. He'd seen a hailstorm strip a field of tobacco right down to the stalks, and he wondered what the ice rocks would do to the helicopter's rotors. The shearing wind wouldn't help, either. Those pilots sure had their hands full; old Neptune was in a real bad mood.

The Seahawk accelerated out of its hover, dipped its nose, flew
straight on toward the
Tarawa
. Blount felt the ship turn a few degrees; maybe the skipper wanted to put the bow into the wind to make it easier for the chopper to land. Blount's Air Force friend, Colonel Michael Parson, had once told him everything that flies lands into the wind, from a sparrow to a space shuttle. Trouble was, the wind kept shifting.

The helo clattered alongside the ship, crossed overhead, turned and flew astern. Blount guessed the pilots were trying to get a feel for the wind. The aircraft lined up on final approach, grew larger as it descended toward the deck.

Gusts rocked the Seahawk. It banked, corrected, bounced some more. Wipers ticked a rhythm across the windscreen. The helo crossed over the stern and lowered itself toward the yellow and white lines painted along the flight deck. Almost home free.

Blount felt the wind against his face die away completely. Then a gust hit him from behind. Rain and hail lashed down in a torrent.

The Seahawk banked hard. Dropped to the deck like it forgot how to fly.

Rotor blades struck steel plating and shattered into shrapnel. The helo rolled onto its port side, tail rotor and stubs of the main rotor blades still spinning. Flames erupted from the engines. Cracks clouded the windscreen, but Blount could see the crew inside struggling with harnesses, pulling at latches.

Sailors ran for the downed chopper. Hoses appeared from everywhere, and a blast of foam doused the fire. Blount expected to see fliers piling out of their stricken aircraft, but all the doors remained closed. From outside the helo, sailors yanked at handles, but the Seahawk remained sealed.

Blount wondered why in the world they couldn't get that thing opened. Then it dawned on him. The chopper had hit just hard enough to bend the frame. The doors were jammed.

He charged toward the Seahawk, boots splashing through
pooling rain. Maybe the sailors had a hydraulic tool to tear into that thing like a can opener. That could take several minutes, though, and in the meantime Blount could lend them some muscle.

The fire was out, thank the Good Lord. But if that boy they'd plucked from the water had suffered cardiac arrest, he needed to get to the medical bay right this minute.

Blount pushed three sailors out of the way, climbed up on the side of the helicopter. Rain streamed over the airframe, made for slick footing. The chopper's cabin door—aft of the cockpit—had two windows; he could see crewmen inside struggling with some sort of handle.

“Can you jettison these windows?” Blount shouted. He didn't know all the particulars of the Seahawk, but he knew every military aircraft was designed so you could get out of it fast.

A muffled voice inside answered, “We can't get the jettison lever unlocked.”

Blount placed his hands on the cabin door's exterior handle, turned it away from the position marked
CLOSED & LOCKED
. He braced one boot against a landing gear strut and pulled.

Every fiber of his muscles burned. His teeth gritted. He uttered a growl as he pitted bone and tendon against buckled aluminum. The door scraped open about two inches. More voices called from inside the aircraft.

“We're gonna lose this guy if we can't get him out of here.”

“Pop out that front door.”

A fist smacked against the window of the small cockpit door in front of Blount. The door detached and slid to the flight deck. Two gloved hands appeared at the edges of the door opening, and a pilot pried himself from the chopper, still wearing his helmet. All right, that was progress. Able-bodied men could scramble free that way pretty easily. But the cockpit door made a mighty small hole for pulling out an unconscious patient. Blount still needed to get the main door open.

He adjusted his footing, shifted his handhold. A sailor climbed up beside him and looked for a spot to brace himself. The landing gear strut offered the only good point for leverage, with room for just one man. Blount appreciated the help, but he'd have to do this alone.

“I got it, bud,” Blount said. “Just make sure this thing don't catch on fire again.”

“Aye, aye, Gunny.”

The sailor slid off of the helicopter, and Blount set himself for another try. He adjusted his feet. Gripped the edge of the door and pulled not just with his arms, but with his entire body working as a crowbar. A simple matter of raw strength multiplied by mechanical advantage.

Blount's whole frame tensed with effort. He felt his spine compress, the cartilage in his elbows stretch. Another growl escaped his open mouth, and raindrops flecked his tongue. The metal began to cut into his fingers, and he wished he'd worn gloves. The muscles in his face squeezed hard enough to force his eyes closed.

Just as he sensed his back had taken all it could withstand, the door screeched open about a foot. The sailors cheered.

“Hit it one more time, Gunny,” one of them cried.

Blount relaxed for a moment, took two deep breaths. Thought to himself, Please just gimme strength for another minute. Stiffened his body, and pulled again.

The bound-up rollers in the door tracks broke free. The door slid fully open with such force that Blount lost his balance and fell from the aircraft. Instinct took over, and he used a martial arts move to break his fall: he slapped his forearms onto the ship's deck just as his hips and back hit the wet metal. Banged his elbows, and that hurt something awful, but better than cracking his head.

Two sailors climbed inside the helo and helped the rescue swimmers lift their patient out of the aircraft.

“Will he make it?” a sailor asked.

“I think so,” one of the rescue swimmers said.

Blount lay on his back in the rain, spent. Blood trickled from shallow cuts in his fingers. Fender came over to check on him.

“I'm good, bud,” Blount said.

The men lowered the patient to the deck and took him away on a litter. A sailor ran up with a Hurst tool.

“Don't need it,” one of his shipmates called. “The gunnery sergeant kicked that helicopter's ass.”

Sailors laughed. Blount sat up and smiled, his uniform soaked. He thought of one of the stories his grandfather had read him when he was a child. Something about steel-driving John Henry outworking the steam hammer, but then dying of a heart attack. I beat the Hurst tool before it even got here, Blount thought, and all I got is cut fingers. He felt the pounding of his heart begin to slow to a normal rate. Fender helped him to his feet.

Blount rubbed his elbows. They still stung. Behind him, two petty officers spoke as if he weren't there. Perhaps they thought the wind covered their words, but Blount heard it all.

“That's one of the biggest dudes I ever seen in my life,” one of them said.

“Yeah,” his shipmate answered. “Seems like a real nice guy, but you don't ever, ever want him mad at you.”

S
ophia Gold worried as soon as the helicopters thudded overhead. The United Nations refugee camp expected no visitors today. Outside the UNHCR tents, she squinted, shaded her eyes with her palm, and recognized three old Soviet-designed choppers of the Kenya Defence Forces, flying on behalf of the African Union. The aircraft carried the red, green, and black roundel of Kenya's air force, along with the emblem of the AU: a gold-colored map of Africa that showed no national boundaries.

The aircraft approached to land at the camp's makeshift helipad, a few hundred yards away from the camp. Rotors churned the warm air, and the helicopters seemed to crawl through the sky. As they descended, dust erupted beneath them, kicked into the air by downwash. The sand swirled against the billowing tents, and Gold clamped her eyelids shut. When the gritty gale subsided, she opened her eyes to see Major Ongondo emerge from the lead helicopter.

The Kenyan officer did not have on a MOPP suit today. Instead he wore camo fatigues in the British style for temperate weather: a green-dominated pattern of black, beige, and brown. Not ideal for the desert, but certainly more comfortable than full chem gear. His shoulders sagged under the weight of a flak jacket stiff with ceramic plates, and he carried a Heckler & Koch G3 rifle on a sling over his shoulder.

The helicopters shut down, and men jumped from the crew doors. They opened the rear clamshell doors at the back of the choppers, and Ongondo and his men began unloading patients. Nurses and
medics ran to help, and Gold went with them. Wounded men, women, and children lay on stretchers. Some of the men wore uniforms; the others were civilians. They seemed to have been evacuated hurriedly; a few of the injured had not even received first aid. A small boy in a blood-spattered Pokémon T-shirt uttered moans that sounded more like the screech of an animal than any sound a human would make. Something, probably a high-velocity bullet, had torn through his hand and left a bleeding mass of tendons and splintered bone.

Gold climbed aboard one of the helicopters and took one end of a stretcher by its wooden handles. Ongondo lifted the other end, and they carried an injured woman out through the back of the chopper. A bandage filthy with blood and dust covered the woman's shoulder.

“Ah, Ms. Gold,” Ongondo said as they shuffled toward the medical tent. “I remember you.”

“Yes, sir,” Gold said. She looked down at the woman, who called out in Arabic and pointed to the boy with the mangled hand. Her son, perhaps? “What happened to these people?” Gold asked.

“The bandits attacked a village on the Algerian side of the border,” Ongondo said. Keeping both hands on the stretcher, he blew a droplet of sweat from the end of his nose. “Here is the result,” he continued. “One of my patrols was wiped out before the bandits withdrew. Your camp was the nearest hospital.”

“I'm so sorry about your men,” Gold said.

Though the Kenyan officer spoke with command presence, his eyes glistened.

“I am, too,” Ongondo said. “And it pains me just as much to see more civilians hurt. What wrong have they done?”

“Nothing,” Gold said, “except live in territory the terrorists want.”

“My people have a saying,” Ongondo said. “‘When elephants fight, the grass suffers.'”

An important moral in a very few words, Gold noted. Ongondo
seemed to fall back on his learning whenever he struggled with emotion—just the way Gold did.

Lambrechts met Gold and Ongondo when they entered the med tent. The doctor wore light blue scrubs, and a stethoscope hung from around her neck. The woman on the stretcher did not speak, but after looking around, she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Relieved, apparently, to find herself at a hospital, however primitive.

“This woman has suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder,” Ongondo said. “Most of these people have been shot. Some have stab wounds. There are eight of my own men. And one prisoner.”

“Prisoner?” Lambrechts asked. She kneeled to examine her new patient.

“Yes. We wounded and captured one of the bandits.”

“Is this the same group that attacked the village outside Ghat?” Gold asked.

“We believe so,” Ongondo said. “Sadiq Kassam's terrorists.”

Lambrechts looked up from the wounded woman. “Are there injuries from chemical weapons?”

“None that we have seen.”

Gold looked out through the tent flap and saw medics and soldiers bringing more patients. Some of the wounded cried out in pain; others stared with dull eyes at things far beyond the horizon. Gold had seen all this before, too many times. But she never got used to it.

On the makeshift flight line, soldiers who'd flown in on the helicopters gathered around one of the aircraft. They formed a knot at the back of the chopper and began escorting a walking patient. Gold could tell from the way the men handled him that they felt little sympathy about his wounds. Two soldiers pulled him by the front of his shirt, and the man stumbled to keep up. He wore green cargo pants that looked vaguely military, along with a checkered scarf around his neck. The man's hands were tied behind him. Blood soaked one sleeve.

“Our prisoner,” Ongondo said.

“What will you do with him?” Gold asked.

Ongondo placed his hands on his hips, regarded the captive, bit his lower lip. “Not kill him, if that's what you mean,” he said. “As much as he deserves it.”

“We will treat him here,” Lambrechts said. “You must promise you will not abuse him in any way.”

“You have my word, ma'am. Technically, the Geneva Convention does not apply to terrorists. But my orders are to treat him as a legitimate prisoner of war.”

“Please do.”

Gold understood Lambrechts's concern. A UNHCR camp must remain a place of refuge and relief. Ongondo had just lost men under his command; such a situation would test anyone's judgment and professionalism. But perhaps an officer who quoted proverbs about the ravages of fighting would think before pulling a trigger or swinging a fist.

The medical staff triaged the patients. The prisoner, suffering from an arm wound, had to wait because his injury wasn't life-threatening. Lambrechts asked Gold to keep an eye on the AU soldiers and their captive.

“Make sure no one does something I'll regret,” Lambrechts said. “We can't let a war crime happen under our noses.”

“I'll stay with them,” Gold said.

Lambrechts turned her attention to the wounded soldiers and civilians. The most seriously injured troop had taken a round at the bottom edge of his body armor, and the bullet had ripped through his lower abdomen. Others suffered from embedded shrapnel, and one had lost an eye.

Ongondo and his men stayed in the rec tent, waiting for word on their wounded comrades. They glared at their prisoner, seated on the floor. Three soldiers kept rifle barrels trained on the man, and Gold could see how this could go very bad very quickly. Just one
undisciplined troop with an itchy trigger finger could murder the prisoner and claim the man tried to escape.

Gold tried to think of what she could do to ease the tension. Food and drink, perhaps? At least that would give the men something to focus on other than vengeance. She went to the mess tent, which offered little between meals. But she found cans of Pepsi and Sprite labeled in English and Arabic, along with apples and oranges. She took the soft drinks and fruit from the refrigerator case and brought them to the soldiers. The soldiers cracked open the cans, which dripped with condensation. They ate and drank, and they glared but offered no protest when Gold held a can of cola to the prisoner's lips. He drank in deep gulps, foaming liquid running from his mouth.

The scirocco subsided, and scattered puffy clouds scudded over the desert. Late in the day, as sunset reddened the clouds, a medic called for the wounded prisoner. Gold and Ongondo helped the man to his feet and escorted him to what passed for the camp's operating room—just a smaller tent off the main medical tent, staffed by Lambrechts and an anesthesiologist.

The Swiss anesthesiologist, a female physician in scrubs identical to Lambrechts's, clipped away the flex-cuffs that bound the prisoner's hands. Then she helped him remove his shirt and lie down on the table. Blood soaked the pressure bandage around his arm. But the bullet had not struck bone, and Gold supposed the man would keep the limb. Still, the wound looked ugly enough when the bandage came off. The round had left a ragged tear in the muscle tissue; a gobbet of flesh hung down from the bicep like a misplaced tongue.

With a small hypodermic, the anesthesiologist injected something just under the skin of the prisoner's good arm. After a few minutes, she inserted a large-gauge needle at the injection site and connected an IV drip. Ongondo watched with little apparent emotion.

“He does not warrant such care,” the Kenyan officer said.

“Our oath requires us to help anyone in need,” Lambrechts said. Blood had spattered her scrubs. A smeared red handprint marked her
sleeve. Gold wondered whether the print came from Lambrechts herself or from the flailing hand of a patient.

“I understand. And I thank you for treating my men.”

“All of the wounded you brought here will survive, if luck is with us.”

The prisoner began to mumble. Gold leaned in close to listen.

“Ash-hadu anla ilaha, Muhammadan abduhu wa rasuluhu.”

“You can understand him?” Ongondo asked.

“Yes, sir,” Gold said. “I speak Arabic, though not as well as Pashto.”

“What does he say?”

“The Muslim profession of faith.”

“In case he does not wake from surgery, I suppose,” Ongondo said.

“Perhaps.”

Ongondo thought for a moment. “If you speak his language,” he said, “then perhaps you can help us. We will need someone to interpret when we question him.”

Gold hesitated before answering. She did not relish the idea of taking part in another interrogation; she'd done more than her share of that in the Army. As Gold considered how to respond, the anesthesiologist opened a valve on the IV drip. The prisoner's eyelids fluttered, and he went unconscious.

“Let's talk outside, sir,” Gold said.

Gold and Ongondo left the operating tent, stepped out under a dusky Saharan sky. The sun had slipped below the horizon.

“I gather that you are reluctant to take part in the questioning,” Ongondo said.

“I am,” Gold said. “I'm not sure it's appropriate for me to do that.”

“I will respect whatever you decide. But we may have to wait a while for another interpreter. And the prisoner could have time-sensitive information.”

A good point, Gold had to admit. After all, if this guy was
involved with Kassam, maybe he'd have information about the chemical attacks.

“All right, sir,” Gold said, “I'll help. But please promise me you won't put the prisoner under any duress. I'll have to walk away—and report it—if you do that.”

“I gave my word before,” Ongondo said, “and it still stands now.”

When the prisoner came out of surgery, Lambrechts insisted that they let him sleep through the night. That suited Gold. It gave her a little more time to prepare herself mentally.

The next morning, Ongondo and three of his men woke the prisoner. Gold watched them emerge from the sleeping tent and march him to a storage shelter. In the shelter, surrounded by crates of canned food, Ongondo made the man sit on a folding chair. The soldiers pointed their weapons at him. No one moved to strike him, but Gold wondered what would have happened if Ongondo hadn't been there. One soldier took out a set of flex-cuffs.

“He's not going anywhere,” Gold said. “May we leave him untied?”

Ongondo waved his hand, and the soldier put the cuffs away. Gold hoped the small kindness might make the prisoner more likely to talk. The man wore the same bloody shirt and cargo pants he'd had on yesterday, except a sleeve had been cut away from the shirt before surgery. The blood had dried and darkened on the wrinkled clothing. Gold found a bottle of water, twisted off the cap, handed the bottle to the prisoner.

A breeze carried the coolness of dawn and flapped the blue polyethylene of the shelter walls. Still, sweat trickled down the man's brow. He fingered his pockets and sipped from the bottle. From time to time he squeezed his eyes shut as if he were concentrating on some mystery, working out some puzzle in his head.

“Are you in pain?” Gold asked in Arabic.

“A bit,” the man said.

“Should I call the doctor?”

“No. I can bear it.”

That surprised her. Most people facing interrogation, even without the threat of torture, would take any opportunity for delay. But Gold had long since given up trying to fathom the terrorist mind. At best, she could recognize certain patterns, anticipate typical attitudes.

“What is your name?”

“Ahmed.”

“And family name?”

“Bedoor.”

“Ahmed Bedoor,” Gold said. “Where are you from?”

“Egypt.”

Hmm. Gold pondered the answers, given promptly, conversationally. Ahmed Bedoor, if that was really his name, veered from the typical in more ways than one. She had seen men in his place spit and curse, call her an infidel harlot. Vow retribution and hellfire. Or refuse to speak at all.

“And you are one of Sadiq Kassam's men?” she asked.

“I serve the pasha of Tripolitania.”

The title Kassam claimed, the one Gold had seen in graffiti in the village hit with the chem attack. Gold translated the statements for Ongondo, then regarded her strange charge and considered how to proceed.

“In what capacity do you serve him?” she asked.

“I am a mere foot soldier.”

Bedoor's bearing puzzled Gold. He seemed almost . . . professional. He had to know, or at least suspect, that he faced long imprisonment or execution. Perhaps this was a kind of resignation; Gold had seen unexpected attitudes displayed by prisoners on a few occasions, sometimes when they were under the influence of narcotics. Insurgents often went into battle stoned out of their minds to bolster courage or dampen pain. Some American soldiers told stories of putting five, six, eight rounds into a jihadist to take him down, and they attributed such superhuman resilience to PCP or LSD. But if Bedoor had taken anything, it had probably worn off by now.