The Crisis (31 page)

“Let's have another MRE,” the kid said, lying on his belly, feeling under the seat.

“Not now, Little Team. Big Team's gotta stay sharp. Hang loose and enjoy the view, ooh-rah?”

“Ooh-rah,” Nabil said, already incisoring open the green plastic as his eyes darted across a ragged copy of
Maxim
to the road. The pages were open to Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. Spayer wondered what a ten-year-old Ashaari orphan made of Angelina with nipples erect in a wifebeater T, cuntcrack shorts, and her trademark nine-millimeter Heckler & Kochs. “Ratfuck me the coffee out of that, Little Team,” he said, and without taking his eyes off the picture the boy flipped the envelope his way.

The instant crunched between his teeth like sand. The rising wind buffeted the armament carrier ahead nearly off the road. Something big and dark ahead. “What the hell are those?” he asked. The driver shrugged.

Nabil studied them through the glass. Finally he said through a full mouth, “Those are the mountains, Big Team.”

When Caxi looked back up the ADs were pointing their weapons at each other, giggling and kickboxing with those big bare feet. He started to yell, then pulled his head back in. If they shot each other, maybe it'd teach 'em a lesson.

 

DAN had lunch at the airfield. Each time he arrived another steel building had gone up, another line of tents, a new messing facility. Fencing sketch-lined away into the desert, cutting across untended fields. Gunfire snapped from a rifle range as he ate penne pasta with chicken, pine nuts, and tomato sauce, fried squash, and only slightly wilted Caesar salad, watching television with a tableful of contractors, troops, aid workers, and flight crews.

He was discussing the load capacity of Globemasters with a twenty-year-old loadmaster from the Eighth Airlift Squadron when a familiar shape caught his eye on the screen. For a moment he felt disoriented, before he recognized the pale green angles of the new cranes. A truck moved into the picture; a zoom shot centered a Niagara of hulled rice. “Look at that,” he said. “We made the news.”

The puckish face of a small boy filled the screen, the clamshell of the crane trailing rice behind him. The boy's eyes crinkled. He glanced up at a tall marine and saluted as the table erupted. Dan grinned too. So perfect it was parody. “The phones are ringing,” one of the aid workers said. “Want this cookie? Oatmeal raisin.”

“Sure,” Dan said.

Outside the heat pressed down as he waited for a scoop loader with a
Seabee logo to pass, then wended his way into a wilderness of modulars behind the terminal. Air conditioners whined beneath the rumble of arriving aircraft. Out of nowhere he remembered another airfield, another country, the chill nights of Bosnia. A dark-haired woman who'd called him
droozhe
. Friend.

But she'd died, shot at the order of a man who, last Dan had heard, was still barhopping in Belgrade.

He pushed that back, trying to recapture the morning's elation. He squeegeed his forehead and dragged off his cap as a door closed and cold air icepicked his sinuses. McCall looked up from a notebook from which a blue cable snaked. “LAN's up. Your password and user name's taped on the back of your monitor.”

“Good job.” He looked over her shoulder at the screen logo of a private company building an optimal routing system for aid deliveries. He'd asked her to validate their model, which it claimed had worked in Nepal. He wasn't enthusiastic about private contractors, but this one, staffed by former aid workers, had ideas like using local haulers from centralized distribution points, so cash went to locals rather than foreign contract movers, and involving the host country's tax officials in food allocation, so people associated paying taxes with getting a benefit.

He logged in and they sat back to back carrying on a sporadic conversation, mainly about the mechanics of routing downstream of the offload points. He checked his various sites and mailboxes, marveling at how many places the virtual Daniel V. Lenson resided. He was at TAG, he was still attached to Contardi's Transformational Task Force, he was getting mail from both CTG 156.4 and CJCS, Task Force Red Sea. The bulk of his traffic, though, carried the subject line COLLATERAL GRATITUDE. Certainly one was less isolated in the Web age than when naval message had been the only link to shore, but he couldn't say his level of global understanding was higher. Most of the time he was so far down in the weeds he had to look up at a centipede's belly.

Her computer chimed. “Mail,” she said, clicking the icon while he admired the back of her neck. The Japanese thought the nape peculiarly erotic. He could buy into that.

“It's General Ahearn.” She turned to catch him examining her and he dropped his eyes, clearing his throat. What did that look mean?

“Uh, what's he want?”

“Pin a medal on you, I think. No—I'm joking. He wants a brief on distribution. Sixteen hundred.
Nicht
PowerPoint.”

“Got it,” Dan said, back at the screen. He could update the daily logistics sitsum and be reasonably ready, he hoped, for any question the task
force commander could throw. “Oh, just remembered. Got any bridge-inspection results?”

“Saw an Army message on that. Here it is . . . coming your way.”

The information age. He had to love it. He only hoped all this data he was transmitting, reading, summarizing, had some vague resemblance to the reality, out there where the dust met the sky.

 

THE convoy had climbed for an hour since Spayer had first glimpsed mountains through the mirage. According to the route map, one laser-printed sheet per vehicle, Refugee Camp Five was 175 miles from the city, 115 miles west of Haramah, and 8 miles west of Malaishu, on the south side of the road through the Malaishu Pass. At 20 miles an hour, a nine-hour trip. At 15, it'd take them into the darkness.

So far, though, they were holding 20 to 25, with bursts as high as 30. The road was arrow-straight between sparse, dead-looking bushes, but obviously hadn't been graded for years. It alternated between jagged rocks and sandy patches. Bare poles stood at intervals, wire missing, many hewed down to stumps. Buzzards watched from the crosspieces as the convoy neared, rising to flap a few times and then circle. The dust the point Humvee kicked up hung motionless, making it seem like they were driving through chocolate milk. They went through villages, mud walls crowding the road on either hand, shadowed alleys down which lay compounds, the occasional parked car, hanging laundry. Caxi blinked sleep away. They were pulling one in three at the port and nobody on the fire team was getting enough bivvy time. A weight slumped against him: the kid, out like a light. The ADs, lashed to the truck with their headcloths, were asleep too. The growl of the engine and the clatter of rocks in the wheel-wells melted into a seamless black.

 

CAXI jerked awake to the radio crackling, the unmistakable rattle of fire.
“Motherfucker, we're takin' small-arms hits,”
Fire was yelling from the lead Humvee, voice gone high and fast. Something struck the truck's windshield, glancing like a rock flung up off the highway. It barely cracked the glass, but the snap, the sonics wiping off on the flat surface, said it was no rock. He ducked for his rifle, down by his boots on the floorboards.

The quarter of a second he had to make a decision stretched out like a quarter hour while his brain shifted into megaflop overdrive. He straightened and charged his weapon, peering out into the boiling cocoa.

Behind and above him the ADs were shouting, then shooting. Through the dust glimpses assembled themselves into a canted, broken surface
that might once have been a road. A collapsed culvert, dry as dust. Past that, above, to the right, a rise. Rocks vibrated through the mirage. A human figure against the sky? Quick reaction drills, you turned into an ambush and charged through it. But it depended on your adversary, how well they knew marine tactics, how far ahead they thought. If you guessed wrong, you died.

Turn in? Away? Keep going? They were just escorting food, right? But
was
this an ambush, or just shepherds taking potshots?

Suddenly the radio was solid noise. Instead of molasses, time blurred.
“From the right, from the right,”
Fire was yelling from the point Humvee, which was accelerating, spewing dust.
“Hostiles at three o'clock, effectives four, five, six. Team, copy?”

Spayer was on the channel, but broke transmission to shout at the driver, who'd let up on the accelerator and was drifting toward the roadside. “What the fuck . . . don't
slow down
, dude! We're in the kill zone!”

“Six motherfuckers in those rocks—”

The motor roared. He charged his rifle, jerked up his goggles, cranked down the passenger window, and craned out. “Over there. See? Past the washout. Pull off there and hairpin back.”

“Off road?” The guy stared as if he were crazy.

“Fuck yeah! This is a six-by, right? Fuckin ay, get off the road.”

“Truck three stalled out. Truck three stalled out! Team, you copying this?”

“Shit gaw-damn. Shit gaw-damn.”

The shots merged into the clatter of AKs. As he talked Fire through the plan another hit clanged behind him. Their riders were firing nonstop, busting a lot of caps up there, but he doubted they were getting any just spraying and praying. Through the rolling dust a fraction of a second's glimpse of Assist standing in the lead vehicle, the muzzle flash of his SAW bending fiery sickles as he put out short bursts.
He
should be up there. He'd meant to go, but he'd put it off, doped off. Now his guys were up front and he was back here with the kid.

Who was standing up on the seat, staring through the cracked window. Caxi hauled him down and folded him under the dash. The wheels hammered over the culvert. Had the Ashaaran army stockpiled mines?

Dismounting didn't sound smart. Whoever was up there knew the terrain and he didn't. Keep pushing? Maybe, but taking fire and not returning it wasn't Semper Fi. They'd be safer off-road, and though the ground was rising, it ought to be flat enough for trucks.

The first rule of combat, shouted into his ear by an enraged DI at Parris Island: If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.

“Go get 'em, I said,” Spayer shouted, cuffing the driver to make sure he had his attention. He looked shocked, but obeyed, hauling the wheel over and downshifting as the big front wheels lurched down the bank. The load swayed, springs protesting as they hit bottom and then came through the stream bed and almost floated, but not quite, not with all those tons of rice weighing them down. The engine roared like a constipated dragon as the crest of the rise grew over the hood. Caxi caught the sparkle of muzzle flashes. Bushes snapped and flew as the bumper bulldozed them.

He should call this in, but through the seething dust and flying brush he caught Fire's Humvee pacing them on the left flank and the middle one pulling off to charge uphill on their right. It was the fucking Charge of the Light Brigade, motors roaring, spewing dust and the
brrp, brrp, brrp
of Fire's SAW ripping off six-inch bites of belted 5.56. The ADs' Kalashes went silent as they changed magazines. Then the heavier, slower note of the 7.62 got going, and mixed in with the rest of the noise the clatter of the hostile AKs. He slapped his magazine to seat it and leaned out the window, trying to aim.

This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine
. . . .

But the dust blinded him and the truck was jouncing so much he'd put a bullet in the tires or the hood. Not to mention his militia blasting away above him. He d be lucky if he didn't catch a bullet in the top of the skull. He pulled back inside.

“Breakin' out to the left—”

“Get some, baby. Get some.”

“Cap the motherfuckers. Light 'em up.”

“This is Team. Circle behind them, dismount your skinnies, and provide covering fire.” He reached for the wheel and jammed it left. The driver fought him, cursing shrilly. Something snagged his boot. Caxi kicked something soft before remembering the kid was down there. Another bullet cracked into the windshield. If the glass hadn't stopped it he'd have taken it in the chest. Something black was sticking there. “The fucking bullet,” the driver said as a lean form materialized from the dust. An armed man half turned, eyes widening as he took in six-wheeled Fate bearing down.

The front end jolted. Only the briefest glimpse but Spayer could replay it like it was on tape: a spindly stick-figure with a cloth around his head, the end whipping free as he vanished under the wheels.

He got the muzzle outboard again and searched the ocher murk vainly for a target. He'd lost his bearings. Had no idea where the road was, the top of the rise, anything.

Then the wedge of a Humvee with a roof weapon shadowed the dusk
like a shark in murky water. The driver slewed to miss it as the M60 slammed out a long burst. Cases clattered across the hood. Spayer couldn't see what they were firing at but sent a half mag in the same direction.

Deafened, he pulled his head in as the truck burst out of the cloud. They were half a mile from the road. The driver locked the brakes and they skidded on gravel to a sloppy, rocking halt. He yelled up to the riders, pointing. They leapt off, hit and rolled, then gathered themselves and charged, yelling and spraying bullets wildly. They assaulted to the top of the slope, then slowed. On the far side, barely visible, he made out Assist and Fire dismounted, checking out something on the ground.

When he got there the guy was obviously about done breathing. The gravelly sand was dark scarlet. “Femoral,” Fire said, keeping him covered. Spayer kept his rifle handy too, but this ambusher was past being dangerous. Nineteen or twenty, emaciated under a dirty white robe. He panted, eyes closed. They opened to look at the faces peering down, but didn't seem to register anything before the lids sank again. The ADs were shouting abuse, shaking their weapons. Spayer looked at them, then at Nabil, who'd come with him. “What're they saying, Little Team?”