The Crisis (34 page)

This was the guy who'd spoken up back at the embassy. Who'd seemed like a pain in the ass, a non–team player. But Dan Lenson had that rep himself in certain circles. He'd always wondered what he was being paid for, if he agreed with whatever his seniors proposed. Fortunately, there was still room for an attitude like that in the United States Navy.

Finally he leaned over. “How's it going? The pledging?”

“Biggest was the Saudis. A million dollars.”

Dan thought he'd misheard. “Doesn't sound like much.”

“It isn't, and that lets the rest of the Gulf off the hook. Who's going to pledge more than the House of Saud?”

“Who else is in?”

“Oh, everybody's
in
. Nobody actually says no, even if they have no intention of following through. So far we've got Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The British, of course, and the Italians. The Japanese and the Dutch haven't stepped up yet, but they usually do.”

“The Iranians?”

“Not invited.”

“Chinese?”

“Couldn't make it. Heartfelt regrets.”

“Meanwhile, they're buying oil leases in Khartoum,” Dan muttered, remembering that dismal city, the thugs struggling over that blasted land. Sometimes he thought the greatest curse that could come to Ashaara would be to discover something valuable there, diamonds, gold, oil. Her very poverty protected her from the worst scavengers. “How about security? Anybody volunteer troops or police?”

The tech eyed him as if he'd said something peculiarly fatuous. “No.”

No question, this was a poisonous guy. “You know, I heard what you said to Ahearn at the conference. You really think we shouldn't be feeding starving people?”

“You heard that? 'Cause I never said don't feed them if they're starving. But one reason, maybe even the main reason they're starving now, is because we fed them before.”

Dan couldn't believe the guy's cynicism. “Because they're still alive?”

“No. No! Because every time we ship in millions of tons of aid, their agricultural sector crashes. Nobody buys local, and the farmer has to go to the camp with everybody else. Pretty soon he figures, why bother. Ashaara fed itself once. The south was covered with orchards, truck farms, vineyards.”

“Yeah, but the drought—”

“There's always been drought. It's cyclical. You see those canals they dug? The ones that are blowing away? You need to realize a couple things about this ‘food aid' business.”

The man was hissing, he was so agitated. “First off, only half the food aid budget actually buys food. The rest goes to transport it, because we can only buy U.S. We can't purchase in Thailand when they have a good crop, and ship it to Burma; has to be American rice. And the big one: almost everything we buy comes from the Big Four agribusinesses. They own USDA and the farm state congressmen.”

“People are still getting fed.”

“Yeah, they eat, but we could be doing it a lot cheaper. Or feeding a lot more. And if we actually helped them farm, we could get out of the aid business eventually. But that wouldn't be so good for Archer Daniels Midland, would it?”

Dan sat back. The guy sounded like a conspiracy Web site. Some of the NGO people were way out there.

He was checking his watch again, thinking Blair should be on her way
from the airport, when his cell vibrated. The German representative was speaking; Dan went into the hallway before flipping it open. “Lenson.”

“Dan? I'm in Lisbon. I'm sorry, I won't be able to make it.”

“What's wrong? You said you could—”

“I have to go to Budapest. Trouble with the NATO accession. We have to be responsive or the European Union could look like a better bet. Szábo's got us in to see the defense minister. I'm sorry, I thought I could break out a day in Dubai.”

He leaned against a marble column barnacled with gold leaf. “Actually, you said three days.”

“That was probably never going to work, but I got overexcited.”

“Can't you stop on the way back?”

“I have more commitments on the way back, Dan. We'll just have to keep trying to connect. How's your conference going? Are the Saudis ponying up? The emirs? The Kuwaitis?”

“The Saudis committed for a million. That's the most so far.”

“Be lucky if you get half that. They love jet-setting to conferences, making bighearted gestures, then not coming through.”

“We can't point fingers.” He sucked a breath, suddenly angry. “We've got trillions to fight wars, but we can't spend a few million to prevent them.”

Her voice grew careful, slightly distant. “But you know why that is, right, Dan?”

“Because we'd rather buy weapons?”

“And that's because?”

“Because . . . foreigners don't contribute to reelection campaigns?”

“Simmer down, Dan. Deep breath, okay? Are you saying America's become . . . what? Some kind of military-industrial dictatorship?”

“Not really. I'm just tired and kind of pissed off. Were you?”

“No. Not really . . . but, back to the emirs. To be fair, the GCC's never considered the Red Sea part of the family.”

“Maybe not, but we need help. Centcom's hardly got time to read our sitreps. We don't have the forces to maintain security. So far the militias haven't realized that, but sooner or later they'll wise up.”

“Are we overreaching? Should we pull out?”

“The mission's worth doing. I'm just saying, we're accepting risk.”

“Is there a national interest at stake?”

“Is keeping people from starving a national interest? If it isn't, then I guess not. But the civilian government's about to stand up. We've got the elders working together. If we let another country go down the tubes, nothing good's going to happen.”

“I hear that, but we can't redeem the world. Not the way our economy's
going, and not with November so close. This one's going to be a cliffhanger. But I could talk to the SecDef. Do you want me to try to—”

“No, Blair. No. His office gets our reports. But thanks for the offer.”

“Gotta go, calling the flight. Love you.”

Just two words, but they made the difference. “Love you,” he said. “Love you a lot.”

He hung up and stood looking down at the figures woven into the luxurious carpet, up at the golden chandeliers. Well-dressed men in suits and robes moved past, murmuring and chuckling. He rubbed his face. Which was the dream? And which, the nightmare?

This, or the horrific camps of Ashaara?

 

 

T
HE trucks roar and rattle as they jolt over rocks and gravel. A miles-long cloud of tangerine dust drifts shadows across slopes dotted with the tormented yearning of acacias. The very sky's orange, the glaring sun a brilliant bronze.

Standing erect in a mufflerless cut-down Land Cruiser, gripping the windshield frame, Ghedi sweeps his arm in the signal to advance. His bare chest is coated with dust like bright rust. He wears goggles and camouflage pants and a Chinese tanker's helmet with earflaps. He carries a shortened AK over his shoulder and wears boots taken from an Eritrean soldier after a skirmish thirty miles south.

From that border to the southern river, the Waleeli hold sway.

His men have cleared the mountains of anyone who opposes them, all but one village to the west, which had enough rifles to drive them off. The rest have fled to the camps. The few families left offer water and what little food they have. Ghedi accepts the water, but executes any man who
accepts food. He executes any man who offers insult to a daughter, disrespects an elder, doesn't pray five times a day, or is found drunk. Smoking he overlooks, since men are men, but he's told the foreigner who travels with them not to point the video camera at any Brother when he's smoking or he'll be killed.

He stands erect, scowl pasted to his lips, but trembles within. Who is he to lead these warriors? A farmer. An orchard tender. What if he fails, and they're defeated? Yes, he'll take death before that.

Death, in the name of God; he'll take that.

The voice of the blind sheekh whispers in his ear.
This world's not ours to determine. It's His
.

With that thought comes peace. Juulheed, his second in command, wrenches the wheel to miss a termite mound twice the height of a man. There's the top of the hill. Ghedi signals to slow, waving the line of vehicles out in a hawk's wing.

His force is larger than ever, twenty-two trucks and two hundred men. More join every week. They arrive on foot, on horseback, in rattling wrecks. Juulheed interviews them. He shoots those he doesn't trust. Ghedi and Juulheed were bandits together. He's very tall and very thin and talks incessantly. His thoughts go in circles. Some say he's possessed by a demon. Ghedi leans past him and points to the two trailing trucks, gesturing them to stay back, while he waves the heavies up. He works fast, sorting things out before the cloud of dust arrives.

Behind the Toyota is a Pegaso with a heavy machine gun mounted in the bed. There are Land Cruisers and Land Rovers taken at gunpoint from aid compounds or hijacked on the road. Most have had their roofs cut off after having been rolled. They're stacked with young men, weapons, spare barrels, food, water in jerricans, and ammunition. They're painted in complicated patterns that owe more to artistic improvisation than uniformity. There's a Mercedes with drums of diesel and hand-powered pumps with hoses hanging from booms so vehicles can refuel even while they're rolling. The last truck is the “Tiger,” a Russian behemoth stuffed with tanks of welding gas, parts, tow chains, jacks, and tools, taken in a cross-border raid targeted on an Eritrean motor pool. He doesn't want it or the fuel truck anywhere near the fighting.

Juulheed cranks the wheel, muttering so loud Ghedi can hear him even over the blasting muffler. They must know by now someone's coming. They've lost surprise. So there must be shock, force, overwhelming numbers.

When he looks up and down the line faces turn to him. He straightens his back, feeling their strength become his. Feels God's strength pouring into
him too. Uncertainty departs. He points to the truck with the recoilless rifle. Inaccurate on the move, but their heaviest weapon. Then spins his hand in the air like a cavalry commander, and points over the hill.

Juulheed slams his sandal down. The worn engine barks, then yowls. The windshield jerks out of Ghedi's grip and he sits hard as the truck leaps off a shelf and lands with a rattling crash that makes the ammo boxes in back leap up and slam down again. The wheels dig in and they bound ahead. The crest rolls into them, and as they mount it the valley beyond comes into view, the riffled writhe of the desiccated riverbed, for all the world like the cast skin of some desert viper. The paler etch of the road.

And on it, copper dust staining the sky, the convoy.

The huge silver trucks are commercial, not military. Only the riflemen atop the trailers give any clue this is precious cargo. Chrome sparkles from bumpers. Blue flags ripple atop square radiators.

Ghedi hauls himself to his feet again, flexing his knees as the vehicle bangs over the desert, gathering speed downhill. Each time it leaps he's nearly thrown out. But he's got to see. He shades his eyes to one horizon, then the other. Below him both passengers are searching the sky too. “Nothing,” says one.

“Sidna.”

“Qufna.”

On his wave Juulheed cranks the wheel over and the attacking rank opens up. The Toyota and every odd vehicle behind it turn right and race toward the column. The second vehicle back and every even vehicle back from it pivot in a buttonhook and in an immense cloud of ocher dust echelon to the left. After three hundred meters, when they cross the highway, they'll execute another turn to the right.

The outcome in sixty seconds is two flying columns of technicals, one on either side of the lumbering roadbound column. Ghedi and Juulheed have arrived at this over hours sipping coffee by campfires, arguing over rows of pebbles and sticks, the pebbles their vehicles, the sticks those of their prey. Now in the massed snarl of engines, the chatter of mistreated transmissions, the high-pitched battle shouts, masses of steel wheel across the desert like wolves behind trotting prey. And like panicked prey the enormous trucks accelerate, black smoke blasting from stacks, dust and grit whirling in their wake. One weaves from side to side, ludicrously ponderous, as if to throw off their aim. Ghedi shouts, filled with the glory of battle, the translucent joy of being one with the will of God.

The recoilless truck skids to a stop. A thud, thunderously loud, and a cloud of back-blast. Without haste a red-orange hibiscus flower of rock and dust erupts fifty yards ahead of the lead tractor-trailer. The Toyota tears
past as sweating men reload, stripped to their waists, rags wrapped around their palms. The smells of burnt powder and dust and sweat thrill his heart. The smell of battle, where man reaches the border of Heaven. Had not the angels themselves, led by Jibril, fought at the battle of Badr long ago? The chamber clangs shut, the driver stomps the gas, and they're off again, loaders clinging for dear life as the tube sways crazily back and forth.

Then they're alongside the trucks, floating when they're not crashing through brush and hammering over rocks. The transmission whines as Juulheed screams without pause and hurls them back and forth. Ghedi nods to Hasheer. The boy stands, unstrapping the flag. Hasheer's his youngest deputy, a slim youth who reminds him of himself. Some say he's from the north, even a Xaasha. This Ghedi knows isn't true, the lad's a Diniyue, but he wouldn't care even if he were of the president's clan.

Jet-black, with a green fringe and the holy name of God inscribed in gold, the flag snaps in the breeze as it did for those warriors of the Prophet long ago, fighting against the idol worshippers and Jews who wished to kill him. The men in the cab stare. Ghedi gesticulates ferociously. This is the moment all turns on: whether they'll stop, or fire, whether they'll all live or die.