The Crisis (21 page)

 

T
HE boy stands alertly next to the table, holding the steel bowl that from time to time the white man reaches down to dabble his shining knife or rubber-gloved fingers in. Each time blood uncoils in lazy spirals, until the clear fluid's red. The boy clears his throat and lifts the bowl like an offering. The surgeon nods curtly. “Throw it out,” he says, and the boy drags a foot as he ducks through the tent flap, into the insect-buzzing night.

The ten-year-old looks both ways. Satisfied he isn't watched, he squats. A plastic bleach bottle sloshes as he pulls it from its hiding place, pours the liquid into it, spins the top closed. In eight seconds he's back inside, blinking in the light, holding out the empty bowl to the aide. An exchange of glances, and the jug tilts a fresh dose of two-hundred-proof disinfectant.

Two hours later, Nabil stands behind the latrines. A girl holds a lantern while another trickles the fluid through layers of sanitary napkins. It comes out clear. Men and women fidget in line, waiting to trade coins and bills for
a paper cupful. Everything—alcohol, charcoal, napkins, lantern, paper cups—comes from the medical stores that, along with a little food, are all the regime allots to the orphan camps.

The camp hones every resident into a skilled thief, an expert at dissimulation, begging, strategic lying. With his boyish charm, round, innocent face, his dragging foot, Nabil's among the best, though not the largest or most powerful.

As he's reminded by a sudden dazzling slap on the back of the head. He scrambles up from the ground with stones in his fists. That too the camp teaches: to fight with whatever you have. You might lose, but drawing blood on the way down is the only way to keep your ration. In a camp of orphans, the meek inherit only the earth.

The shadow's larger than he is and carries a flexible hose. Before he can react the hose slashes out of the dark again and bursts across his face so hard his eyes scream in his skull. Down again, he rolls, hands over his head. But the blows keep coming, hollow thwocks of rubber on flesh. Between blows the squat man shouts. “No selling without Eyobed's cut!'

Eyobed's Habesha, like a lot of others in the camp. The Habesha kids stick together. Their older ones run the smuggling, the girls who suck town men through the wire, the games, and the burial insurance every adult in camp pays for—there's no worse shame than to die and not have proper burial. Eyobed's squat and ugly and his breath stinks, but up to now he hasn't interfered with Nabil and the old aide's sideline.

Now that they're making significant money, their exemption seems to be up. Nabil covers his stomach as the hose descends again, but it slashes his face once more. He screams into the night as his customers scatter, a woman scooping up the liquor on her way into the anonymous dark. This too the camp teaches: anything left unguarded's yours.

“Learned your lesson, dog turd? Stinking mouse? Half what you get belongs to Eyobed.
Say it.
Half.”

“Half my profit belongs to—”

The hose slashes again, across his stomach now he's covered his face. “Half the
gross
, licker of old men's dicks.
The gross
. Say it.”

“Half the gross to Eyobed,” he screams, loud enough the whole camp might hear, if screams in the night were rare.

The beating stops. Peering through his fingers he sees the figure tucking the hose under its arm. Its fingers fumble at its pants.

“Now you take a young, strong man in your mouth.”

 

HE crawls into the tent he shares with the aides, snuffling snot and tears and blood.

“He beat you?” comes a cracked whisper.

The old man who showed him the pleasures, when he first came to the camp. Who took him into the clinic, brought him food, held him when he raved in fever. He's very old now and shakes continuously, as if an off-balance motor runs inside him. They don't share pleasure anymore, but there's still respect and maybe even something like love. Nabil crawls over and presses against him, weeping softly, because it hurts, but not loud enough anyone else might hear. To be heard weeping is not good. Little by little, he tells him. The old man sighs.

Then he whispers, “Tomorrow the white doctor operates again. When he does, he gives me the key to the cabinet.”

 

THE next night Nabil waits behind the latrine, plastic bottle between his feet, a smaller, glass bottle behind it. The line forms. The women filter. Coughing men hand their cups to the next in line. The raw alcohol whets the air. The youth choir's practicing across the camp.

When the squat shadow approaches, Nabil bends, then backs away. “Need another lesson?” the Habesha grates. “Where are you? I can't see you.”

“Over here.”

“Got my money? Half. Now.”

“I have it,” Nabil says. He comes to the wooden box behind the latrine and climbs onto it. He lifts the small bottle and unscrews the top. “Here it is,” he says. “Up here.”

Eyobed looks up as Nabil tilts the glass. It gurgles and for a moment that's the only sound, the acid gulping as it comes out. Then the night's shattered by a horrifying scream.

He and the old man have discussed it. He can't stay, after blinding Eyobed. The other Habesha will kill him. Nabil's old enough now to leave the camp. Those who don't shape their lives are already dead. He must go to the city, where in the stories clever orphans become rich, make fortunes, marry princesses. The old man cried, holding him, last night. Then blessed him and bade him go with God.

There's water and food in a plastic bag by the gate. The guard's left the gate unlocked. The old man bribed him, with his burial money. The gate squeals as it swings open. The desert night's dark, but the stars pour down light.

His breath catching in his throat, dragging his crippled foot, Nabil runs.

T
HE thunder began before dawn, shaking windows, bringing those barricaded in their homes out onto rooftops. The rumble came from all around the seaward horizon. No one in the city had heard anything like it before.

The machines hurtled out of the darkness.

They weighed 150 tons fully loaded and were ninety feet long. They flew two feet above the water, lifted by gas turbines on rubber skirts filled with air, propelled by giant pusher fans. At sixty miles an hour they trailed a fifty-foot-high roostertail, their fanfare a full orchestra playing Wagner on nothing but kettledrums. They came from forty miles out, launched from the cavernous bays of vast ships. Their decks were packed with Humvees, tanks, light armor, trucks, artillery, weapons, and troops; combat ambulances, fuel, ammunition, water, repair parts, and food.

The machines were landing craft, air cushion. Instead of dropping ramps at the beach for troops to wade ashore, their pilots nudged back on throttles. They double-checked their positions on screens in cockpits wrapped in shatterproof glass. Then increased the pitch rate on their lift fans, and drove in over the surf line and up between the dunes, out onto the dry mudflats south of the city.

In the dark they flew across dried-out fields, rutted roads, and wadis filled with the smoothed pebbles of ancient watercourses. They blew down the tents of panicked nomads, crushed homes, crossed ditches, uprooted and blew away small trees, leaving an emptiness as if a janitor's broom many meters wide had been pulled across the land.

From the guard tower Aisha Ar-Rahim heard the thunder and said a short
du'a
that all would go well, for American and Ashaaran alike. The embassy's reinforcements had stopped two more attacks by looters, but anarchy rocked the city. More asylum seekers had been allowed in. Their
stories made her shudder: home invasion, rape, torture to extort money. Hundreds more had been turned away.

Lying atop a rise overlooking an intersection to the south, heads and M249s wrapped in dull-colored
shemaghs
, Teddy Oberg and Sumo Kaulukukui were trying to make radio contact with the lead LCAC. Teddy had thought the point was still miles away when suddenly the terrain lit up. Something enormous thundered toward them, lights like the landing lamps of a 747 blinding them before they could duck, clawing at their night vision goggles.

“Holy
fuck
!” the Hawaiian shouted over the annihilating roar of sixteen thousand horsepower as a wall of sand, wind, and noise rolled over them, tearing at their clothes. “Son of a bitch is like
Close Encounters
. And they go
uphill
?”

Even far out in the foothills of the Western Mountains, nomads woke to the airborne rumble, wondering what new thing had invaded their land.

The machines roared inland, ponderous beasts romping free at last. Each cost millions and burned fuel in torrents, but moved too fast for an enemy to stop. Occasionally as they swept by an Ashaaran emptied his rifle in unreflecting terror, but they never bothered to return fire. The bullets caromed off armor. The machines swept on.

 

ABOARD
Mount Whitney
, Dan watched bright pips cross a pulsating line representing the mean low-tide mark. They sped up, drawing together to wheel northward in an immense hook, covering in minutes distances exhausted dogfaces had taken weeks to fight their way across at Anzio and Normandy.

Behind and above him in the darkened theater of the CACC brooded a spectacled, scholarly looking one-star marine general with six fingers, named Cornelius DeRoberts Ahearn. The task force commander had flown in with his senior staffers while the main amphibious element was three hundred miles distant. He'd merged Dan, McCall, Henrickson, Goya's people, and the One-Five MEU staff, when it arrived, into a forward element of a joint task force—a standard way of dealing with an emergent crisis, until the other supporting elements could be stood up—and immediately begun planning the follow-on to the embassy relief.

News from the city was limited to cables via Washington and Bahrain from the embassy and what one wire service stringer holed up in the Hotel des Vacances reported. A drone from
Tarawa
had sent back video of parts of the city burning, but its lens didn't reveal who led the mobs roaming the streets.

The Joint Chiefs had phrased Joint Task Force Red Sea's mission as
“establish and promote peace, stability, and the efficient and fair distribution of humanitarian assistance to the People's Republic of Ashaara, in cooperation with United Nations agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and such elements of government as shall remain or be reconstituted.” Centcom interpreted that as “As rapidly and peacefully as possible, relieve and reinforce the U.S. Embassy in Ashaara, disarm or neutralize such forces as may prove hostile, and secure ports, airfields, and roads to facilitate humanitarian assistance operations.”

Over two days the combined staff of JTF Red Sea and CTG 156.4 had translated this into Operation Collateral Gratitude. It began with a seaborne feint around midnight north of the port, while special operations forces moved to overwatch positions near both bridges over the Durmani to detect any repositioning by the Ashaaran army. It then landed the Fifteenth Marine Amphibious Expeditionary Unit by LCAC over the beaches south of the port. The MEU's first objective was the Ashaaran Twenty-first Armored's camp at Darew. After either confirming the Twenty-first wasn't a threat or neutralizing it, the marines would continue across the downstream bridge, hook right again in a shallow envelopment, and link up with a helicopter-borne assault at the international airfield.

If this went well the feint force would land in a second assault, taking the port area of Ashaara City to handle the relief supplies Dan had requested in a message for COMJTF's signature. Once the airfield and the port were in his hands, Ahearn would fly in to meet with the ambassador and discuss what remained of the government and whether it could help distribute food aid.

Dan felt uneasy. The plan depended on rapid movement and no interference from any Ashaaran force. The LCACs were fast, but if the lift fans got damaged there was no way to tow them; they'd have to be repaired where they sat down, left under guard, or blown in place. Once they debarked vehicles—tanks, light armor, amphibious assault vehicles, fuel and ammo trucks—he wasn't sure what speed of advance to expect over unimproved roads.

But the big question was how they'd be received. They were trying to take over a whole country with two thousand marines and limited combat support. Even if the Ashaarans cooperated, the JTF would be stretched thin. If they fought, things could turn ugly indeed.

Dan got up as Ahearn lifted a little finger, all that remained on the right hand. Ahearn had lost the rest at Hue City to a 106 recoilless. He wore a heavy gold ring with the palm tree of The Citadel on his left hand. “General?”

“Hard to believe there's no air activity.”

The Ashaaran air force had one fighter ground attack squadron and one counterinsurgency squadron. Dan massaged a tension headache. “We keep pulsing the AWACs and surveillance people, but there's no sign of activity, either from the aircraft or that SA-7 battery at the airfield.”

“Nothing yet about the Twenty-first?”

According to CIA studies and attaché's reports, the Ashaaran army had five regiments. The president garrisoned two near the capital. The others were posted north, west, and south, covering invasion routes from Eritrea and Sudan. Ahearn was asking about the Twenty-first Armored Brigade, with surplus Egyptian and Polish tanks. The DIA called it an elite unit devoted to the president. Its camp was south of the international airfield. The Seventeenth Mechanized was north of the river, less worrisome, since Dan had surveillance on the only two bridges, Oberg's SEALs on one and a Marine recon team to the north, at Fenteni.

“No movement from their laager, General,” Dan told him.

“Last update?”

“Imagery two hours ago, sir. We'll have the UAV refueled and back at dawn to confirm.”