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“It’s me, Dave.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Stop dicking around,” Riley said.

Comsky slid the liner down and sat up. “So you decided to come along anyway. Didn’t you get enough of this shit when you were active duty?”

“The pay’s better on this side,” Riley said.

“Really? They need a medic at SNN?”

“You know a good one?” Riley asked as he squeezed into the hole and sat next to Comsky.

“Very funny,” Comsky said.

“You still work under the proven medical theory that you’re only sick if you’re bleeding?” Riley asked. It had been a standing joke on the team they had both been on.

The smile left Comsky’s face. “Not on this trip. You got all your shots?”

Riley pulled out a yellow card from his pocket and handed it to his former teammate.

Comsky read down. “Yellow fever, anthrax, botulism, Q fever, tularemia. Yeah, they gave you the works. Have you had your hepadds series?”

“Yes.”

“Then they’ve given you everything they could give you.”

“You worried about something?” Riley asked.

“Every time I go to Africa, I get worried. Man, we’re just south of the Kinshasa highway. Know what they call that? The AIDS highway. And there’s no inoculation for that particular bug.”

“I’ll keep my dick in my pants,” Riley said.

“Yeah, well you’d also better watch whose sucking chest wound you try to bandage up, too, if there’s blood all over the place. And AIDS is a level three bio-agent. They’ve got shit over there that would make you wish you had AIDS.”

The first sentence brought to Riley’s mind the flight out of China years ago with Comsky desperately trying to stop both the air and the blood from flowing out of a wound in Riley’s torso. He rubbed a hand across the scars knotted on his chest. “I owe you.”

“It was my job. Still is. Besides, you were bleeding, so I knew you were really hurt, not like some of these wimps that are always complaining about something or other bothering them.”

“What else are you worried about, besides little bugs?” Riley asked.

Comsky wasn’t done with his warnings. He wouldn’t be a good medic if he stopped here. “Don’t drink the water if I or another medic haven’t specifically cleared it for consumption. And don’t eat any local meat. Anything that might have blood in it, human or animal, stay away from. Stay with MREs the entire time.”

Comsky shook his head. “First time I deployed to Africa I thought I knew my stuff. Hell, I’d been to the Far East and South America and seen some bad things. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening. I got told, but I didn’t quite believe it. It was a year and a half ago. I went to Liberia on a MEDCAP.”

Riley knew a MEDCAP was a peaceful mission where Special Forces medics worked with aid agencies on health problems in the country they were deployed to. It was SF’s way of waging peace.

“We went in there with big hearts,” Comsky said. “You know, save the children and all that. And we did save a whole bunch of people. But after a while, man, you just can’t take it anymore. Don’t shake hands.” Comsky didn’t smile at the sudden change in his speech. “I’m serious, Dave. You get to the point after watching all your buddies get the cruds that you don’t even want to shake hands anymore and catch something from that. I triple-gloved every time I had to give a shot or work around blood.

“It’s a fucking mess. And the people, I hate to say it, but they’re used to it. A lot of them don’t give a fuck. You teach them proper sanitation one day and walk down by the river the next and there they are letting their animals take dumps and urinate in the river while they’re drawing water to drink not ten feet away.”

Riley was quiet. He’d never seen Comsky so animated and emotional. That MEDCAP must have been a traumatic experience. It was one aspect of all these missions that the media hadn’t caught on to yet—the emotional toll on the peacekeepers who had to live among the death and dying that the rest of the folks back in the states got in thirty-second clips every night on the news. It was something he wanted to impress upon Conner. When they got on the ground, he needed to have her interview Comsky. Of course, they’d have to clean up his language and some of his slant. Riley had been around Washington and Atlanta enough to know what was politically acceptable and what wasn’t.

“I tell you,” Comsky continued, “it’s a damn mess. I can blame some of the adults, they should know better—at least after we teach them, they should—and choose not to, but it’s the kids that get to me. They didn’t ask to be there. And they’re the ones that get it worst. You know how many amputations from mines I had to do? Kids out playing and they blow themselves up? You know how many millions of mines are out there all over the world, just waiting to get tripped? Hell, I could go to work in any emergency room in the United States with my experience.” He lapsed into silence and Riley let it ride for a little while before pushing on.

“How do you feel about this mission? You shouldn’t have much contact with the natives.”

Comsky sighed. “Ah, I don’t know, Dave. Captain Dorrick’s been kissing everyone’s ass who outranks him. Lome just joined the team about three weeks before this mission. He was in training group with the Camp Mackall survival committee before this. He’s got a good rep but we don’t know him. We don’t have a warrant officer and our top two guys are question marks. Doesn’t it give you a warm and fuzzy feeling on the inside, especially when you’re getting ready to go on a live mission?

“The recon mission looks pretty simple on the surface, but you and I know that simple on the surface gets pretty deep if you break through the ice,” Comsky continued.

“You’ll have air superiority,” Riley noted.

“Yeah,” Comsky said without much enthusiasm.

Riley waited, but there wasn’t any more forthcoming. “Listen, Ski, I haven’t had a lobotomy. That briefback was a bunch of bullshit. There was no mission there. You’re just going in to look at what specifically? And what are you going to do about what you’re looking at?”

Comsky looked at him. “Between you and me? No forwarding this info to the news lady?”

“You got my word.”

“Okay, the big thing is the first two days of this operation. These UNITA guys got armor and artillery. They have some air assets. Hell, they control a good portion of the country. We’re going in to put them on their knees before the infantry guys come in to do the cleanup.”

That confirmed what Riley had read in the classified operations plan that a friend of his had allowed him a brief look at. He had not told Conner what he knew because that would be violating the trust his friend had put in him. He had read it in order to be prepared for whatever might be coming. “The air force sold a bill of goods on this one, didn’t they? They’re still thinking Desert Storm and smart bombing.”

“I hope it’s a real bill of goods,” Comsky said, “because our butts are going to be hanging in the wind.”

“They can’t be totally counting on knocking out all that equipment from the air,” Riley said.

“Well, actually, Dave, I think they do believe they can do it. You and I know better, but the people up in the big house—well, it’s a lot nicer to bomb from ten thousand feet than to have to send in the poor bloody infantry to dig the bastards out at the tip of a bayonet. But that’s the way it’s going to end up. We just hope the flyboys take out all the major stuff and break down the rebels’ infrastructure so the Eighty-second can take them down piecemeal.”

“And if some of the rebels’ armor survives?” Riley asked.

“You know that the Eighty-second with air assets from the Eigteenth Airborne Corps is doing the majority of the groundwork, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What you don’t know is that they got elements of the Twenty-fourth Infantry on a ro-ro off the coast with the carrier task force.”

Riley knew what a ro-ro was—a roll on, roll off cargo ship, capable of rapidly landing armor. And the 24th Infantry out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, was mechanized. “Bradleys?” he asked, referring to the army’s top-of-the-line armored personnel carrier.

“A mechanized battalion—two companies of Bradleys and one company of Abrams tanks.” Comsky shrugged. “It’s a nice thought— I guess the secdef doesn’t want to catch any shit after the stink about ignoring the armor request from Mogadishu. But the terrain isn’t favorable for cross-country movement to our AO. Maybe if they get into a firefight in Luanda, which ain’t likely.” He chuckled. “Maybe they could airdrop one of those Bradleys in our AO.

“What does make me feel good, though, is that they got a Ranger task force on the Abraham Lincoln. That’s real hush-hush, but they told us on the teams that in response to the overall feeling that our dicks were going to be hanging out in the wind until the Eighty-second landed. If the rebels get together in more than squad size, we could be in deep shit, but knowing those Rangers can fast-rope in makes it a bit better.”

“Why is it hush-hush?” Riley asked. “I understand keeping the air strikes secret so the rebels don’t hide their equipment, but it seems like they would publicize the Rangers and the armor to the max.

Make the rebels worry and maybe even fool them into forgetting about the air stuff.”

Comsky didn’t say anything.

“You were going to say something about another mission during the briefback and the Group S-3 cut you off,” Riley said. “What were you going to say?”

Comsky shook his head. “Just rumors that I heard around Bragg before we went into isolation. You know how people talk.” He shook his head. “Nothing, really.”

Riley looked him in the eyes and Comsky returned the look. Riley nodded and tapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

Comsky pulled his poncho liner back over his head. He was snoring before Riley got out from between the pallets.

Luia River, Angola, 13 June

“We got a reply,” Trent said, handing Quinn a piece of paper with a string of letters on it.

“Put out a perimeter,” Quinn ordered. “We’ll spend the night here.”

He sat down and pulled out his code book to break the message. When he was done, he handed it to Trent.

TO QUINN FROM SKELETON

VICINITY CHILUAGE ACROSS BORDER IN ZAIRE AT COORDINATES SEVEN TWO THREE SIX FOUR EIGHT—DATE TIME SIXTEEN JUNE ZERO NINE ZERO ZERO GREENWICH MEAN—LINK UP WITH PARTY—FOLLOW ALL ORDERS OF PARTY TO BE MET—PARTY TO BE ONE MAN TO BE TAKEN TO LOCATION NORTHEAST ANGOLA THEN BROUGHT BACK TO PICKUP POINT—YOUR CONFIRMATION RECEIVED—BONUS ONE MILLION TOTAL HALF ALREADY IN YOUR ACCOUNT OTHER HALF WHEN YOU RETURN PARTY END

“A million? They already put half in?” Trent whistled. “They must want us to do this job real bad.”

Quinn pulled out a match and burned the paper with the message on it. “Skeleton’s never been stingy. A million isn’t that much to him or the man he works for.”

“It’s a lot to me,” Trent said. He looked over at the men spread about the area. “How about them? What do you want to tell them?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Quinn said.

“You mean we’ll destroy that bridge when we get to it,” Trent said with a smile.

“Maybe.”

“Some of ’em are good men,” Trent said. “We could let the rest go when we get to the border. Just take a couple with us and that will increase the shares on the million.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Quinn replied. “Like I said, we’ll deal with that when we have to. We’ll need a few of them to do this. We might run into some of Savimbi’s boys.”

“So what do you think this fellow is going to do in northeast Angola?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“Can’t be diamonds,” Trent said. “We’ve got that base covered already. And that’s the only thing in this whole stinking place that’s worth that much money.”

“Well, obviously there’s something else to be done or found around here that’s worth a million now.”

“I wonder if Skeleton’s boss is behind this whole Angola thing,” Trent said. “I’ve got my theories about—”

“You ought to be keeping such talk to yourself,” Quinn cut in, looking around. “Skeleton and his people would as soon kill you as look at you. You and I both know he works for Pieter Van Wyks, and you should know even better than me that he don’t like people talking about him.” Quinn leaned closer to Trent. “I wouldn’t doubt but that one or two of these fellows we’ve got with us answer directly back to Skeleton. Making sure we don’t keep any of the diamonds and go into business for ourselves.”

The look on Trent’s face told him that his top NCO had not even considered the possibility of a double agent in the patrol. “You have any idea who the bastards are?” Trent asked, his hand slipping to the butt of his knife.

“I don’t even know for sure there is a spy or spies, but I wouldn’t put it past Skeleton. He’s a mean dude.” Quinn tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s just watch each other’s backs, right?”

National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland, 13 June

Tim Waker carefully dipped the tea bag in a mug of hot water. He placed it on a spoon, then wrapped the string around, squeezing the last drops out, and discarded the bag into the waste can next to his desk. He cradled both hands around the mug and leaned back in his large swivel chair, staring at the oversized computer screen in front of him. He had six programs accessed and his eyes flickered from one to another.

The NSA was established in 1952 by President Truman as a replacement for the Armed Forces Security Agency. It is charged with two major responsibilities: safeguarding the communications of the armed forces and monitoring the communications of other countries to gather intelligence. The term communications had changed from the original mandate in 1952. Back then the primary concern was radio. Now, with the age of satellites and computers, it involved all electronic media.

Waker had been “given” Angola yesterday. Normally, the NSA didn’t invest much time in the entire continent of Africa, never mind a single country. There just wasn’t that much being generated there to zoom in on, besides the relative lack of strategic interest in the area. But with the recent deployment of U.S. forces, the NSA director had passed the order down and it had stopped at Waker’s desk. Waker, and the two men picking up the other shifts, were to keep the NSA’s electronic eye on Angola.