Task Force Desperate (11 page)

The Colonel just nodded. “I’ve been harping on half of that list for the last week, Alek. But I’ll try again, and see if I can get something more substantial than the bureaucratic runaround I’ve been getting. I’ll call you guys back when I’ve got something.” The link went dead.

Things were getting worse out in the city. The Islamist militias were now openly attacking government forces wherever they could be found, which was fewer and fewer places as they went to ground and hunkered down behind walls and barbed wire. The president was running scared, especially with few of his European backers even bothering to return his calls. Given what we had heard of the chaos in Europe after the collapse of the euro and the subsequent disintegration of the EU, that should have come as a surprise to no one.

It had turned out that the Sudanese butcher, Omar Sadiq Hasan, had insinuated himself into the opposition to such a point that he was being put forward as the next leader of an Islamic Djibouti. This was bad news, especially as we suspected, from what Imad had heard, that he had had some part in the attack on Lemonier. The question was, did we risk taking him out? We needed more information.

Meanwhile, refugees were fleeing the city, and militia checkpoints were going up. The government only owned the port area now, and the Legion’s 13
^th
Demi-Brigade was still staying put.

Imad had slipped back out into the city. He could pass for Afar or Issa if he liked, and was gregarious enough that he could easily slip into just about any group of people and be accepted. I hoped that he wasn’t trying to infiltrate any of the militias, but gathering information was his primary task right now, and he’d do what he thought was necessary to accomplish that.

The rest of us stayed in the compound. The streets were even more dangerous for Westerners now, and all but the hardiest aid workers and journalists had run. Almost overnight, the tourist industry in Djibouti had been extinguished. We could handle ourselves, but Alek had decided that it was going to be more productive to hold tight, and wait for word from Imad or the Colonel, whichever came first.

Of course, given our cover, we qualified as one of those particularly hardy groups of aid workers. There was almost constantly a line outside of Dave’s aid station these days.

As it turned out, the Colonel beat Imad to the punch.

We rolled through the darkened streets in the brown Range Rover, lights out to avoid attracting attention. There weren’t many people out on the streets after dark lately, aside from militias, but there were checkpoints, and we wanted to avoid those at all costs.

Colton was driving, weaving a serpentine route through the streets and back alleys of the city, heading southeast toward the coast. He had his FAST helmet on, his NVGs clipped to them, and his rifle jammed between the seat and the gearshift next to him. Hank was sitting in the passenger seat, similarly kitted up, with his Galil ACE 53 across his lap. Alek and I were in the back seat, fully geared up with vests, helmets, and rifles.

Nobody talked. We didn’t have much to talk about, anyway, and everyone was a little on edge. The reason why became abundantly obvious when we rounded a corner, and abruptly slowed. Colton muttered, “Oh, fuck.”

Alek and I leaned forward to see past Colton and Hank, and saw the checkpoint in the middle of the street. It didn’t look like much, just a pile of junk and old tires across the road, with two gomers lounging next to it. Neither looked to be all that alert; in fact, one looked like he was asleep.

“Plan B,” Alek hissed. He and I immediately bailed out, leaving our rifles. We hoped to get past this without any shooting.

I went left, while Alek went right. I soft-footed it down the side alley, trying to avoid kicking any of the cans or other detritus, and looking for the next break in the haphazard shacks. I found it in seconds, and started working my way around toward the checkpoint.

A dog started barking to my left, and I froze, looking around, but I couldn’t see it, even with the thermal imagery turned on. Whether it had smelled me, or was just barking, I couldn’t tell. Oh well, nothing to do about it. I kept going.

After a moment, I heard the crunch of gravel and trash as Colton started rolling again. I was getting closer; I could hear the two gomers at the checkpoint chatting quietly in Afar. Just as well we were trying to go nonlethal here; from what we’d seen, most of the Afar were miserably poor, and just caught in the middle of the crapstorm that was enveloping the city. These guys were probably just neighborhood militia trying to defend their families.

I turkey-peeked around the corner, and could see the checkpoint. I was about four long strides from them, and they hadn’t heard shit. Plus they were smoking, so there went their night vision. It went away even further as Colton flipped on the headlights.

They both started, and threw up their hands against the glare, squinting and yelling in Afar. I came around the corner and started moving.

I got to my target a second before Alek. I came in low and fast, just behind him as he started walking toward the Defender, loosely cradling an ancient, battered Mosin-Nagant. I wasn’t subtle. I came up and hammer-fisted him at the base of the skull. Lights out. I caught him as he crumpled, and dragged him over to the side of the street. Alek was down on the ground, choking out his gomer. The Afar twitched and struggled a little bit more, then went limp. Alek gently moved him out of the line of traffic, as Colton turned the headlights off again. We got back in, hastily closing the doors, while trying not to make too much noise. Colton was rolling before the latches clicked.

We got the rest of the way out of the city without incident and headed for the open desert.

After about another fifteen minutes, Colton brought the vehicle to a stop and shut off the engine. We sat there for a few more minutes, watching and listening. A hyena trotted by a few hundred yards away, followed by what looked like a jackal a minute later. There was no sound but the wind and the pinging of the engine as it cooled.

Once we were satisfied that we were alone, Alek and I got out, pulling our rucks out of the back, and each pocketing several IR chemlights. We staged the rucks next to the vehicle before starting to set up the LZ, marking a T with the chemlights.

Soon we could hear, faintly, the sound of the Bell 407, coming in from the ocean. Alek was on the radio with Sam, murmuring quiet instructions, as the two of us waited on a knee, next to our rucks. I held my rifle at the alert. We were pretty sure we were alone out here, but you never really knew.

The low roar of the helo increased, and I spotted it, low and fast over the horizon. We hadn’t heard of any SAMs being used out here, and the rebels didn’t seem to be organized enough to have coast watchers to keep anybody out, but complacency gets you dead, especially when you’re working on the shoestring that we were on.

Sam brought the bird in hard and fast, flaring at the last second and kicking up a shitstorm of dust, sand, and gravel. I ducked my head to avoid the worst of it, but it got in my eyes and teeth, and down the back of my shirt, anyway. Par for the course. He could have brought it in gentle as a lamb, and the rotor wash still would have sandblasted us.

Alek and I grabbed our rucks and ran, hunched over, for the helo. The side door was already open, and Fig was leaning out, rifle leveled, watching the surrounding territory for threats. I beat Alek to the bird, tossed my ruck onto a seat, and clambered in after it. Alek was only a few feet behind me. No sooner were we both on the bird, than Fig was pulling the door shut, and Sam was pulling pitch.

We banked hard, still less than one hundred feet above the ground, and then we were moving, the nose pitched hard forward, screaming out toward the Gulf of Aden at barely 150 feet.

He kept it low and fast, dipping even lower as we got out over the water. The rotor wash kicked up a wake, which glowed faintly with bioluminescence as it churned beneath us. The sky was clear, the moon nearing its zenith, and reflecting off the mild waves.

Sam didn’t take a straight course, but followed more of a long J-hook, coming around and approaching the
Lynch
from the north. It had been over a week, but Van Husten was still steaming racetracks in the Gulf. I hadn’t heard what excuses he was making to his employers, but we rather appreciated it.

Somebody was on the edge of the helipad, guiding Sam in with a handheld light, just as I had done earlier. He drifted in from the port, sidling in to land directly on the H. Sam was nothing if not a perfectionist when it came to his flying.

The skids settled and the rotors started winding down. Fig led the way off the bird, and started lashing it down as Alek and I collected our rucks and headed for the superstructure.

Matt was waiting in the team room, along with a slender man with salt-and-pepper hair, who grinned as he saw us. Matt took his leave as soon as we walked in, muttering something about having to get some sleep before he took over watch again.

“Well holy shit,” Alek said. “Good to see you, Danny. Didn’t know you were going to be the one they sent out here.”

The graying man’s grin turned slightly sheepish. “Well, as it happens, I’m the sacrificial lamb who’s been made responsible for this goat rope.”

Alek got serious at that. We dropped our rucks at the hatch and went to sit down at the table in the middle of the compartment. “Tom didn’t mention that you were the guy who called.”

“The Colonel doesn’t really know me,” the man called Danny replied. “At least not by sight. And I’ll admit, I didn’t really go to any great lengths to fill him in on our past association.” I thought I remembered who Danny was, now. He had been one of Alek’s platoon commanders, one of the better ones, who had gotten out and disappeared into Special Activities. “It wasn’t really relevant to the job.”

“The job, I should tell you,” Alek said bluntly, “is a clusterfuck.” His ham-sized fist hit the table. “What the fuck, Danny? No info, no support, just, ‘Here’s what happened, oh by the way there are maybe as many as two hundred hostages in the middle of this shitstorm, go find ‘em.’”

Danny didn’t flinch at either the blow to the table, or Alek’s outburst. “I know, Alek, I know. You think I didn’t try to push for more? You think I liked throwing you guys to the wolves? Hell, I’m not even supposed to be here, right now, and I’m sure as hell not supposed to get on that helo and go ashore with you.” He took a deep breath.

“Look, here’s the deal.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “The administration is in panic mode right now. Ordinarily, something like this would be responded to with drone strikes. It’s how they like to do business. It’s something pretty risk-free that they can point to in press releases to show they’re tough on terrorism. Doesn’t really do much, but they’re politicians, they don’t give a fuck about results, they just want the
appearance
of results.

“Trouble is, Lemonier was
the
drone base in the region. Most of the rest that were started up got shut back down for one reason or another. Sure, there’s a small one up north, near the Eritrean border, but they only have a couple of Reapers.

“Not only that, there are hostages. They can’t just start throwing Hellfires around without risking dead hostages as a consequence. Their main action item has been effectively taken off the table.”

“So what?” I asked. “There’s still the rest of the military.”

Danny looked over at me. “I wish that was the case, brother,” he said. “But the budget cuts, the collapse of the dollar, and all of these bullshit interventions in the last five years have spread things way too thin.” He pointed in the general direction of the Indian Ocean. “That MEU out there? I guaran-damn-tee that half its helos won’t fly, mainly from lack of parts. They’re pretty short on fuel, too. They have to gas up at each port, just enough to get them to the next one.” He shook his head. “The greatest armed force in the world is a hollow shell of itself. It’s worse than the Clinton years. Training is lacking, too. Oh, there are some outstanding NCOs who are still hanging in there, in spite of what’s looked like a concerted effort to force out the experienced ones, and they’re doing their damnedest to get their boys trained up, with or without equipment, fuel, or ammunition. But there are fewer of them every year.

“Let’s face it, guys; you are the best equipped and trained force for the job, as few of you as there are.”

For a long moment, Alek just looked down at the table, at a loss for words. When he looked up, his voice was quiet. “It’s really that bad?”

Danny nodded sadly. “It is. We’re as bad off as the Russian Army in the ‘90s. You’d weep to see how many of our guys are either on welfare, or missing training to moonlight for enough money to feed their families.

“There’s more. They’ve realized that they can’t let people know that they’ve essentially left us defenseless, while assuring everyone that they were just ‘trimming the fat,’ and that what would be left would be a leaner, ‘smarter’ force. It’s dawned on them that if they try to intervene in Djibouti, and get stomped by a Third World force because their troops are now under trained and equipped with poorly maintained crap, the cat is out of the bag. They’re panicking about it.”

“So you’re saying that we’re not getting any support because there really isn’t any support to be had?” I asked. The true horror of what was going on was starting to set in, and I was starting to feel a little sick.

“Mostly.” Danny’s face was grim. “I’ve managed to persuade the powers that be to let me go in-country, along with some electronic eavesdropping gear, and a few small surveillance UAVs that you guys can’t get on the open market. I also brought about two million, in Australian Dollars and the new Reichmarks.” I knew that those two represented pretty much the strongest Western currencies at the moment. “And, I’ll be your interrogator if you do take detainees.”

“Danny,” Alek said slowly, “what about the hostages? If the military is in as bad shape as you said, how the fuck are we going to get them out when or if we find them?”