The Crisis (32 page)

“He's bad dude, Big Team.”

“No shit. Where's he from?”

“They say, Sudan. Bad dude from Sudan.” The boy kicked the dying man and the militiamen laughed. Spayer took his shoulder and eased him back.

Caxi halfheartedly got a battle dressing on him, just to be able to say he'd tried, but a few minutes later the wounded bandit stopped breathing. The other prisoner—the one they'd run over with the six-by—couldn't walk, but he wasn't bleeding, at least externally. Caxi put him in the back of the second Humvee with Ready to keep him away from the ADs, who seemed eager to put him out of his misery.

He walked over to the Humvee, feeling lightheaded. Its interior was acrid with sweat and dust and burnt powder. Sucking air, he got on the radio back to the Three Shop. Fire taken, fire returned, no friendly wounded or KIA. (A miracle, considering the DAs' frenzied barrage.) Fire hand-signaled from where the militia was policing up. Another dead hostile. The rest had scattered. He asked for disposition of the wounded man and got a
“Wait, out.”
He hung up the handset and swapped magazines, in case Bad Dude had buddies on the way over the hill. But he didn't think so. These were random bandits, nothing more.

When he got out again Nabil was still hanging with the ADs, the boy chattering as they regarded him with bemused astonishment. “Thought these assholes was supposed to be friendly,” the truck driver said, looking
up from where he knelt beside the front wheel. “We're fuckin' bringin' 'em food, for Chrissake.”

“Not all of 'em, I guess.” Spayer flexed his fingers on the pistol grip. “You fucking totaled that one motherfucker, all right. Ran his ass down.”

“Nah, I missed him,” said the driver, but his voice shook and he was as white as a white guy could get.

“Raven Eight, Red Raider, over.”

He jogged back to the Humvee. “Raven Eight, over.”

“Confirm location and distance from offload point
.”

“Uh, not too fucking clear on that. Ten grid squares past that road, goes north to Fenteni? Stand by. Checking GPS.” He read off the coordinates.

“Roger, copy, you're still sixty klicks out from Camp Five. On your prisoner: render first aid, load under guard, turn over to camp security element. Leave dead for local disposal. Over.”

He copied and signed off. Cleared his throat and rinsed his mouth from a bottle of the crated water and spat the sick taste into the dirt. Held it out to the kid, whose bright black eyes tracked every movement.

“Let's get back on the road, Little Team.”

 

NIGHT at the airfield. Dan stood with other midgrade and senior officers, hands locked behind him. General Cornelius DeRoberts Ahearn didn't live in a modular. He had a tent behind the terminal. That was his bunk in the corner, with his ruck, camelback, and holstered Beretta on it. The only other furniture was a folding map table, field desk, folding chair, and computer. The tent was deathly hot, despite two huge fans that made it a canvas wind tunnel.

Ahearn conducted morning and evening briefs with everyone standing, to discourage long presentations. An Army captain was briefing on the convoy attack. “A counterambush was decided on. The escort element and one of the six-bys went off-road and flanked the snipers, then overran their position. No friendly casualties, two unidentified dead, possibly Sudanese, one wounded and captured. The convoy reached Camp Five and turned over cargo to WFO personnel on scene.”

“ADs involved?”

“They made the final capture.”

“Good. OIC convoy?”

“A Lance Corporal Spayer.”

“Commend him. Interrogate the prisoner. I want the report in the morning. Hold him until we clarify his affiliation. Where's my JAGman?”

“Uh, not here, sir.”

“I want him or a rep at the brief morning and evening. I don't want us
accused of heavy-handed treatment.” Ahearn turned to the rest of the attendees. “Gentlemen, our mission may be about to change.”

He paused as jet engines screamed overhead and thundered down on the runway.

“The UN message, sir?” the N3 said.

“We're to organize a transition government based on the ADA. Disarm the militias and set up a police force. Distribute aid, run the camps, but number one, prepare for an early election. The Sudanese are just one hostile element out there. The Eritreans have always claimed the fertile land in the upper Tanagra.”

Dan saw the map in his head. In the Darwinian environment of East Africa, without an army or functioning government Ashaara was prey. He wished they hadn't let the army disintegrate. It could've held the borders, while the JTF protected the relief distribution. He raised a hand and Ahearn nodded. “What about the Governing Council, sir? Have they come to an agreement with Dobleh? That's the main fault line, seems to me.”

“Me too, Commander. The northerners resent losing power. But so far we've been able to buy them off. Not to put too fine a point on it . . . if we can get Dobleh to include Assad in a national unity party, maybe as chief of staff of a reconstituted army. . . .” He lifted his chin. “But for now, the camps are secure. We're getting wells drilled, generators installed. Food's on its way, thanks to Commander Lenson and his port team. Keep pushing and finish the job. That's all.”

The ranks broke. Dan stayed in front of the fan, letting the hot but moving air dry the sweat. He'd pass on Ahearn's praise to Buntine. Maybe in not too long they'd have a functioning government, food distribution organized. They could start thinking about extracting.

He realized suddenly he was the last man in the tent, aside from the general, who was sitting at his computer. He put on his cap hastily and left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE CRISIS

T
HIS was Dan's first time, but everyone who visited the Mideast had heard about Dubai. The luxury hotels. The fantastic shopping. The desalinization plants that made the city a jeweled garden in a barren desert.

The stories were understated. He felt like a nineteenth-century time traveler as he followed his “butler” through the seven-hundred-foot-high atrium of the Burj al Arab, the world's most luxurious hotel.

He'd stared astonished as they approached over a causeway curving into the tranquil Gulf from a palm-dotted beach. The hotel bellied like a spinnaker, modeled on the mainsail of a dhow. Flickering lights gave its immense fabric the appearance of being on fire. It towered above bungalows, cottages, and fishing piers on the glowing white beach. It seemed less welcoming than out of scale, a titanic monument to unlimited money and unrestrained architects. And to judge by the construction sites along the coast, it was only the first of dozens in a city trying—literally—to build itself into nationhood.

The lobby was curved marble, deep carpets, gold leaf, and dramatic lighting, but the effect was less luxurious than nouveau riche kitsch. Still, no one in the JTF party said a word as the escalators glided upward between walls of gigantic aquaria teeming with reef fish.

Along with Ahearn and other military and State personnel, he'd left Ashaara on a C-17 direct to the Gulf. A separate aircraft had been dedicated to the new Provisional Government: Dr. Dobleh and eighteen other former exiles and tribal sheikhs deemed the most promising candidates to reestablish order.

The Dubai Conference on Red Sea Affairs had been convened by the United Nations' undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator. Its goals were to “raise consciousness” of famine
in Ashaara, Eritrea, Sudan, and throughout East Africa; raise funds; coordinate relief operations; and reduce tensions. The special representative, Shinichi Kazuma, would announce the “Hundred Day Program” of accelerated relief and recovery assistance.

Unstated, Dan had thought as he read the program, was that participating in a high-level conference would raise Dobleh's profile both internationally and in Ashaara. The diplomatic issues seemed obscure, but the meeting had been preceded by weeks of maneuvering about who would attend and who wouldn't. Also, whether JTF Red Sea would fund their trip, since prices in Dubai were beyond astronomical.

Finally orders had been cut, and State had reserved a block of rooms. But that wasn't why he kept checking his watch. In only a few hours Blair would be here, flying direct from DC.

Actually they'd met not far away. As the escalator ascended and the Gulf dropped away he could see far out to where he'd once gotten off a bicycle on a sandy deck so huge the crew used bicycles to get from one end of the ship to the other . . . and first seen her. Now in the falling dusk he counted eighteen tankers from horizon to horizon. To the east, cranes and dredgers were building new islands where open sea had stretched.

His room was jaw-dropping. Surely someone had screwed up. This wasn't just a “suite,” but two stories high, with cream carpeting, damask wall coverings, green and rose marble, tilework, huge televisions, French colored-glass chandeliers, and enough gold that it no longer looked precious. Each of the four bathrooms was more outrageous than the next. Someone was busy in the kitchen; sizzling and good smells drifted out. He climbed a curved staircase to more white and scarlet, white and green. In the master suite he gaped up from a bed big as a tennis court to an enormous gold-framed ceiling mirror.

He grinned. When Blair got here . . . She looked passionless, but only till the doors closed. On that bed, under that mirror . . . tonight . . .

His per diem would cover about half an hour of this place. He walked from room to room, trying to enjoy it, apprehensive instead. At last he decided to say nothing. At least, he and Blair would have a time to remember.

 

TONIGHT'S get-together was to coordinate the military message before the conference convened. Ahearn was to brief Centcom himself, General Leache. Dan had McCall confirm the meeting room was commercial secure. She reported back that it held twenty seats, shielded from external signal reception by wire mesh in the walls, with a separate cubby for guards with metal detectors.

But when they got there a technical security countermeasures team was finishing its own sweep to the accompaniment of rock music from a player. They had to be body-scanned and take their notebooks apart before they could go in.

Sweeping consisted of a frequency tracker/analyzer that picked up emissions from sending devices. A tech noticed his interest and pointed to the player. Some devices went active only when they heard room noise, he said, so they played music while they worked. Dan wasn't sure he bought that, but didn't voice his skepticism.

General Steven P. Leache was due at 2000. At 2015 McCall pointed out a window at the helipad atop the sail. Someone called “Attention” in the hallway.

Americas's viceroy from the Red Sea to Asia Minor wore BDUs and subdued stars. His hair was silver and his lean face ascetic as an aging pastor's. Two troopers with hip holsters preceded him. With Leache was a man Dan recognized with a shock as Brent Gelzinis. The deputy national security adviser was in sport coat and open-necked shirt. He wore rimless spectacles, and his jet-black hair was slicked back like Robert McNamara's, but his smile was more photogenic. If you considered hammerhead sharks photogenic. Dan had worked for Gelzinis, or more accurately, several layers below him, at the National Security Council.

Their relationship hadn't been friendly. Gelzinis stopped in front of him, not offering to shake hands. “Lenson. There you are.”

“Mr. Gelzinis. How's Mrs. Clayton doing?” The national security adviser.

Gelzinis smiled but didn't answer. Leache nodded to the rest of the room and took his seat at the head of the table, pulling another chair over for the deputy.

“Cheerful faces. I like cheerful faces,” Leache began, in sudden near darkness. His aide had dimmed the overheads at his end, leaving him in gloom, the rest in brightness. “I pulled in the deputy national security adviser to get his read on realities on the ground. I have only one question, Corny. Can you feed these people? That's the end state, from the highest level. Get them fed, hold an election, then extract. No lingering presence. No continuing mission. We're spending four million a day in Ashaara, but there's nothing we need there, and to be painfully frank, I have more strategically vital sore points. So tell me you have a road out, and how many weeks we are from it.”

Dan couldn't help agreeing the long-term goal had to be to leave. The trouble was, once you started to help, in this part of the world, you became part of the problem.

“We can feed 'em,” Ahearn said. “But only so long as we can maintain security.”

“Local forces?”

“No army. No cops. When the president left, every man took his gun and went home, after he stole everything he could pull out of the wall. What's left's clan militias. At best.”