Sand and Fire (9780698137844) (20 page)

So you wanna pull my chain for real, Blount thought. Just you wait.

The rings that anchored Blount's chains squeaked as they twisted with the motion Rat Face's yanking imparted. With each pull, they
flipped away from the wall and then dropped back down with a metallic clink.

The commotion woke Ivan. The Legionnaire levered himself with his arms to a sitting position. Wearing a puzzled expression, he regarded the scene for a moment. Then he barked out a phrase like he was giving an order.

“Ça suffit!”

Blount didn't know the words, but whatever the meaning, it had the effect of making Rat Face drop the chains. He stepped over Blount to kick Ivan's wounded leg. Through gritted teeth, the Legionnaire let out a combination of a groan and a hiss, leaned forward and put his hands over the bloody pressure bandage. Then he spewed a string of words that could only be Russian profanity.

Monkey Ears came from next door. He spoke in Arabic. Rat Face shrugged, laughed, left the room. Monkey Ears watched him go, fingered a cigarette from a shirt pocket, lit the cigarette with a butane lighter. Returned to the other room, left a swirl of blue smoke in his wake.

Blount turned to Ivan and mouthed the words
You okay?

The Legionnaire raised his eyebrows in a questioning manner. Muscles stretched tight across his jaw, and he pressed his lips together so hard they turned pale. Must have hurt pretty bad, then. Hell of a way to start his day. Blount didn't like the color of the blood seeping through Ivan's bandage, either. He was no medic, but he thought the blood should have flowed brighter red than the wine-colored stain spreading through the fabric.

Old Ivan had guts; Blount gave him that much. The dude had to know if he said anything he'd bring abuse on himself. Good thing we never had to fight the Russians, Blount considered. Though they served an awful system, they generated a tough breed of man. Blount had heard of Russian firefighters who parachuted into forest fires and battled flames for days while living on little but what they could hunt, catch, and forage.

Blount slid back against the wall and tried to settle his mind. In a way, Rat Face's effort to torment and humiliate him made his job easier. Anger motivated a man much better than despair. Thoughts of vengeance came in straight lines and tight channels, where sadness got all fuzzy. Yeah, Blount remembered his grandfather's advice about not letting hate take control. That guidance applied most of the time, Blount thought, but I'm hating right now and I ain't ashamed of it.

And Blount's thinking was getting clearer all the time. Maybe that poison was wearing off.

He leaned on his left elbow, just where his left chain hooked into the wall. The floor felt grittier than before. He looked at his arm and saw light-colored granules sticking all over his skin. Now where did that come from?

Underneath the metal ring cemented into the wall was a circle of what looked like white sand. Blount touched the sand with his index and middle fingers.

It was not sand at all but abraded cement fallen away from where it had been troweled into the wall to secure the rings. As Rat Face had yanked the chains, the motion had forced the rings and the bolts that held the chains to wear against the cement.

Blount put his hand on the ring and pulled. Nothing. Still anchored. Then he twisted it. The bolt holding the ring moved ever so slightly. Blount could not pull out the ring and bolt, but he could twist the bolt about a quarter of an inch. Maybe a flange or something on the other end of the bolt kept him from extracting it altogether. At any rate, the poor-quality cement had chafed and ground away while Rat Face played his little game.

Interesting. Blount had never worked construction, but he knew there was a little bit of art to building with cement. He remembered back when he was little and all the tobacco farmers modernized their operations. They stopped curing their leaf in log barns. In place of the log structures they installed big metal bulk barns, which sat on cement slabs. A farmer expected to use a bulk barn for decades, so he
didn't want it sitting on sorry, crumbling cement. He'd have somebody who knew what they were doing pour that slab. The men would wait for the proper temperature and humidity, and they'd mix the cement just right. They'd put some know-how into it.

But these jihadist thugs probably mixed cement the way they did everything else: hurriedly, stupidly, in the roughest manner possible. And that gave Blount an idea.

P
arson sat on a cot in a rec tent the French had put up in their section of the base at Mitiga. The Americans had already dubbed that area the French Quarter, and the French masseuse, Michèle, had set up shop in the rec tent. Michèle's iPod, connected to a speaker, played Edith Piaf at low volume. Chartier lay on a padded table, wearing only shorts. Hot stones lay across the small of his back. Michèle pressed her fingers against the blades of Chartier's shoulders, kneaded his muscles. Parson remained fully clothed in his flight suit and boots, and he fidgeted as he chatted with Chartier.

“You really should try this, sir,” Chartier said. “It will help you think.”

Parson shook his head. “No, thanks, Frenchie. Got no time.”

The very suggestion annoyed him. How could he relax and get a massage, for heaven's sake, while Blount and the others were still out there, going through God only knew what? The rational part of his mind didn't resent Chartier having a massage. The man had just returned from a long sortie, and other Mirage crews would soon take to the skies. But part of Parson wanted to grab Chartier's flight suit—now draped across the back of a chair—wad it up in a ball, throw it at him and yell
Get your ass back in the air!

Instead, Parson controlled his frustration and said, “Frenchie, we got everything from Libyan puddle-jumpers to satellites looking for those boys. The Joint Personnel Recovery Agency is coordinating all that now. But if there's anything else we can do on our end, I want it done. If you have any ideas, let's talk about them.”

Michèle removed the black stones from Chartier's lower back, worked the base of his neck with her thumbs. She wore a white pullover that highlighted her figure, and she smelled vaguely of coconut. Massage oil, perhaps, or sunscreen to protect her skin from the Saharan sun. The scent put Parson in mind of beaches and bikinis, an image all out of accord with the problems at hand.

He liked attractive women as much as the next guy, and Michèle was as hot as the igniters in a Pratt and Whitney. At the moment, however, he saw her as a distraction. He even wished she were off his base, but the French had their ways. As long as the Mirage drivers got things done, he had no right to object.

“Hmm,” Chartier said. “Perhaps I have an idea.”

That piqued Parson's curiosity. He wanted to hear any input that might help. The Air Force had taught him to lead that way; the Crew Resource Management program encouraged aircraft commanders to listen to suggestions from even the lowest-ranking loadmaster or gunner. You never knew who might have noticed something or thought of something that would prevent disaster. Parson considered CRM just plain old common sense, and he tried to apply it not only in the cockpit but in everything he did.

“Then let's get back to ops for a little conference,” Parson said.

“Yes, sir,” Chartier said. He spoke in French to Michèle. She gave a mock pout as he sat up. She tied her black hair in a ponytail, went over to the chair, and handed him his flight suit.

As Chartier got dressed, Parson thought of the book the Mirage pilot had given him. The author, Saint-Ex, had once crashed in this same desert, miles from where anybody would have looked for him. He described the ordeal in a chapter titled “Prisoner of the Sand.” Saint-Ex and his mechanic, Prévot, wandered the Sahara for days before getting rescued by a Bedouin. The French airman wrote of the thirst that swelled his tongue, the visions of water sources that broke his heart as they evaporated into vanishing mirages. And now Blount
had become a prisoner of the sand, one way or another. Was he going through something similar to Saint-Ex's ordeal, or worse?

Parson recalled when he'd rescued Gold years ago in the mountains of Afghanistan. He'd used a combination of blunt force and precision. Strong will, and violence of action. But he'd started with a trail to follow, a set of footsteps in the snow. Parson remained a navigator at heart; he attacked problems in terms of getting from point A to point B. That required data, a fix on point B. But now he had only hundreds of miles of sand, and complete radio silence from the missing men.

What if Blount and the others turned up far away from where they'd gone missing? They could be anywhere by now. No solution but to keep as many aircraft aloft as possible, over the widest range possible.

In the ops center, Parson found that the comms people had continued making improvements. They'd set up a satellite dish and installed a video screen. Parson could use the screen for teleconferences, but for now someone had tuned it to CNN. A crawl at the bottom of the screen caught his eye:
Search continues for Marines missing in action.
Parson sighed, led Chartier into his office. Parson took the folding chair, and Chartier sat on a stack of Meals Ready to Eat. One MRE lay on Parson's desk. He unclipped his boot knife and sliced open the meal pouch.

“Not exactly French cuisine,” Parson said, “but I'm hungry. You want part of this?”

“Sure,” Chartier said
. “Merci
.
”

Inside the pouch, Parson found a packet labeled
MEDITERRANEAN CHICKEN
. Oddly fitting. Parson raised his eyebrows, handed the chicken packet and a plastic spoon to Chartier. The Frenchman tore open the pouch and started eating the chicken cold. Parson opened a packet of dried fruit for himself. Ate the contents one item at a time, like eating from a bag of peanuts.

“If I could,” Parson said, chewing a raisin, “I'd put up enough planes over North Africa to make an aluminum overcast.”

Chartier thought for a moment. “Well,” the French pilot said, “I think I know where to start with that.”

Parson stopped chewing. “I'm all ears, Frenchie,” he said.

“We have eight Mirages we can send up as four pairs, one pair at a time. With tanker support, we can fly six-hour sorties. We're already flying a lot, but if we can get the tankers, we can keep jets up twenty-four hours a day.”

The idea improved Parson's mood immediately. He fished a dried cranberry from the packet and popped it into his mouth. Talked as he chewed.

“I like the way you think, Frenchie. Let's tell the joint recovery folks we can offer that if the tankers can support it.”

“D'accord
.
”

The 24-7 Mirage flights would supplement the AWACS bird, the Pave Hawks, and all the other aircraft on the lookout for the MIAs. The jets might get pulled away for other missions from time to time, but that was okay with Parson. The pilots would still keep their eyes peeled, they'd still monitor the emergency freqs, and they'd hear if somebody called. And of course, they'd always go out armed, in case the chance presented itself to put fire and steel on bad guys.

Parson opened his secure e-mail. He tapped at his keyboard for a few minutes, considering how to word the idea to send it up the chain of command. Finally, he addressed the message to AFRICOM headquarters and to Chartier's bosses in the Armée de l'Air, and he copied in the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Clicked
SEND
.

“Can't promise anything, Frenchie,” Parson said, “but I imagine they'll approve it. Your idea makes a lot of sense.”

Parson knew the old joke about Air Force Regulation 1-1: Common sense equals insubordination. But over the course of his career, he'd found his Air Force superiors usually put politics aside when things got this serious.

Chartier left to brief his crews on the change in their mission. Parson got up from his desk and went to the newly installed refrigerator for a soft drink. He found Gold at the front of the operations center, watching CNN.

“Didn't want to interrupt your meeting,” Gold said. “What's new?”

She wore the khakis that had become her new uniform, along with her ever-present green-and-black Afghan scarf. Tiny tassels dangled from the edges of the scarf. Though blondes usually had light complexions, her face had taken on an almost permanent tan. Sophia still kept herself Army fit, and she looked like a woman who'd spent so much time afield that deserts and mountains had become her natural element. She was in her early forties now, and Parson thought she actually became more attractive as she aged.

He took two Dr Peppers from the fridge, gave one to Gold. He told her about Chartier's idea for round-the-clock flights in the Mirages.

“Sounds like you guys have things covered pretty well from the air,” she said. “I'd like to think of something more I can do from the ground.”

“Just staying available as an interpreter helps a lot. Maybe we'll capture one of these bastards and ask him a few questions.”

“That worked out well last time.” Her eyes glinted with an unusual coldness.

Never once had Parson heard Sophia speak sarcastically. She must really feel duped or used, he thought, though nobody could reasonably blame her for what had happened. Maybe she was blaming herself.

Parson put down his Dr Pepper and placed both his hands on her shoulders. Gold leaned in, let him hold her for a moment. Her body relaxed against him as if to let go of all her tension for just an instant.

On the television, a map of North Africa appeared over the anchor's shoulder. Gold pushed away from Parson's grasp. She hunted for the remote and found it on a flight scheduler's desk among half-empty water bottles, Styrofoam coffee cups, and a booklet of
approaches for Mediterranean and North African airports. She aimed the remote at the screen and pressed a button with her thumb until the newscast became audible:

“Terrorist leader Sadiq Kassam says he is holding the six Marines and French Foreign Legionnaires who have been missing since Thursday. In a statement delivered to Arab news agencies, Kassam vows to begin executing the prisoners one per day unless coalition forces withdraw from North Africa immediately. Kassam's group, now calling itself Holy Warriors for the Caliphate of Tripolitania, released a photo purportedly showing one of the missing Marines.”

The television switched to a full-screen image of the photo. Though video editors had blacked out the prisoner's face, Parson immediately recognized Blount. The gunnery sergeant lay in the back of a Toyota pickup truck, bloodied and beaten. Insurgents sat around him, wielding pistols and AK-47s. He appeared to have vomited down the front of his MOPP suit, and he looked unconscious.

“Oh, God,” Parson said, “that's Gunny Blount.”

Gold's back straightened and her mouth dropped open. She placed the fingers of her right hand across her lips as she watched the video.

“No,” she whispered.

Parson tried to process everything he'd just learned. First, the six missing men were in the hands of an enemy who intended to kill them. Second, the vomit suggested Blount had suffered from chemical exposure. And if Blount had gotten slimed, the rest probably had, too. All this bad news came straight from the news media instead of intel channels because Kassam had delivered the statement and photo directly to media outlets. Everybody was seeing it, both here and back home.

Apparently, a similar thought occurred to Gold.

“I hope Blount's family doesn't see that,” she said.

“They almost certainly will.”

Parson had known Blount and the others faced dire circumstances. But the visuals brought home the horror in the starkest way. Parson's Marine Corps friend now rode the thinnest edge of existence, with a life expectancy likely measured in hours. The leering captors in the photograph filled Parson with rage. If not for your damned poison toys, he thought, that man would have broken all of you in half with his bare hands.

Before Parson could finish getting his mind around what he'd seen, the newscast cut to a related story:

“The captured military members served with a coalition battling jihadist insurgencies across North Africa. The fighting has created a humanitarian crisis as villagers flee towns attacked by terrorists. The United Nations says its refugee camps have become crowded, and officials are opening new camps in Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. Our correspondent visited one of those camps. . . .”

The screen displayed a row of blue tents set up in the desert. After the story ended, the anchor interviewed an analyst who discussed the difficulties in supplying remote camps, and the risk of disease caused by overcrowding. Parson wondered how much TV analysts got paid for pointing out the obvious.

“Looks like your UN people have their work cut out for them,” Parson said. “We all do.”

He didn't know if Blount and the rest of the captives stood any chance at all, but he'd marshal every resource at his disposal. One of those resources stood next to him now. At the moment, Sophia looked more pensive than horrified. Parson's first instinct called for him to keep her out of harm's way. But she had come to help, not stay safe. Once she took on a mission, you couldn't stop her; he'd seen that before.

“I'm almost afraid to ask this,” Parson said, “but what are you thinking?”

“I'd like to tour all of those camps. Talk to as many people as I can. Maybe somebody saw something or knows something about where the insurgents hide between attacks.”

Parson liked that idea. With Gold looking for human intelligence on the ground and the aircraft watching from the air, it amounted to a two-pronged stab at the problem. Though he'd spent his career as an airlifter, he knew enough about battle to understand the concept of combined arms: Bring to the fight as many different ways to hurt the enemy as possible. A task force might hit them with naval gunfire as well as airplanes. A division might hit them with attack choppers as well as mortars. A platoon might hit them with a .50-cal as well as an antitank rocket. A single infantryman might hit them with his rifle or a grenade. When one thing didn't work, another might. Maintain your options.

“Just tell me when and where you want to go,” Parson said.