by David Poyer
And both times, white men. She wasn’t shooting any women. Not unless they fired first.
“Miz Rahim,” the corporal said. “Your magazine. It was on the deck?”
“Sorry. Thank you.”
“We’ll fire over their heads first. A warning.”
She wanted to ask how, if they were firing downward, but only nodded.
The first face showed above the wall. A young man, but not the angelic one. A narrow-faced, pinch-jawed individual with wild eyes and cheek bulging with the local herb. He threw a carpet scrap over the jagged glass, then followed with a leg. He held a machete, rusty, but no doubt sharp enough to kill.
“Off the wall, man!” the corporal yelled.
The Ashaaran looked up. His eyes met hers as the corporal’s rifle cracked and brick split and flew. The man’s hands flew up to protect his eyes. He lost his balance and tumbled backward.
“That’ll make ’em think twice,” said the Gulf War vet.
She lowered her weapon, wondering how much longer it would keep them pondering.
TWO miles offshore, Teddy Oberg crouched in the RHIB. The others were crowded around him, all four men exposed in the waning afternoon light. SEALs hated going in in daylight. In fact, this was the first time he’d done it, other than in exercises. But Firebolt hadn’t gotten to Ashaara till noon, and then there’d been disagreement about whether they should go in over the beach to the embassy, as planned, or secure the port area instead. For three hours they’d sat in the boats, until finally word had come to execute the original plan; looters were coming over the walls. Now they crouched in two inflatables as the PCs turned as one and ran at flank speed toward the beach.
“Stand by to launch,” the petty office yelled. Teddy braced. The POIC’s hand chopped down, the bowhook yanked the line, and they slid back and down in the dizzying release the SEALs referred to as being shit out of the boat. Behind him one man yee-haa’d, others gave rebel yells, as the engine gunned and the boat spun into a turn so hard she nearly went over, then headed for putty-colored dunes below the ruby ball of the setting sun.
Geller had taken them in until his keel had scraped sand. Teddy fingered the night vision goggles pushed up under his helmet. He didn’t like the sun in his face, but couldn’t object to the insertion. The PCs had roared over the horizon on diverging courses, to confuse any radar, before suddenly echeloning and spitting out the RHIBs. Even a well-honed coastal defense would find it hard to get a reaction force to the landing point before the team would be dug so deep into those dunes it would cost heavy casualties to dig them out. Especially with the direct fire of the PCs’ guns on call.
The hard spot would be if they got stuck short of the embassy. It’d be only eight men and their rifles, grenades, and a single light antitank weapon. If they met determined resistance, they’d just have to haul ass back and try to swim out before they got rolled up.
He checked the men. They were goggled and black-uniformed, strapped with gear, fins lashed over their shoulders. Their eyes met his, then slid back to the beach. They’d all made insertions before. The one thing you could count on, it wouldn’t be what you expected.
Smoke off to their right. Black, which probably meant either vehicles or fuel. Two hundred more yards, no time to change the plan now. The surf lifted the boat, the motor changing pitch as they planed. Two-foot seas a mile out, but bulging now as the bottom climbed to three-, four-foot waves. RHIBs weren’t great surf boats, not great beaching boats either, but they were a hell of a lot faster than swimming.
The boat lifted again, coasted forward, and the coxswain yelled something. The motor whirred as it pivoted up. Teddy gave the signal and bailed out over the side. His boots hit bottom four feet down. The water was warmer than blood, the bottom hard sand and pebbles.
He glanced up, and his heart slammed to a stop.
Not at the danger; at the sheer fucking beauty. He’d never seen water so clear, sand so bright, a sky dimming so ravishingly toward dusk. To the east Venus glowed bright as a smaller moon. Tiny fish darted around his boots, pale as the sand. He stared, lost in the shimmering loveliness.
“You gone fucking tourist?” Kaulukukui grunted. Obie flinched and began wading shoreward, kicking up fine powdery white that swirled under the surface. He squinted through his Oakleys, tracing the tops of the dunes with the sight of his M4. They’d be easy meat from up there. Just lie in the dunes and take them down one by one, not a thing to do about it . . . He caught a stir, jerked the barrel around, but found only the wind-tossed sway of beach grass, the furtive flurry of some small creature making its escape.
Enough thinking, asshole, he told himself. Pulling the hot weightless air into his lungs, he burst out of the sea, sprinting with all his might.
THE sergeant came up a little after six, bringing corned beef sandwiches and more water—they’d gone through the crate, and she wasn’t peeing, it was sweat. She’d long ago given up on keeping halal, and bit into her sandwich with relish. No one else had tried to scale the wall. Erculiano complained bitterly about the heat and asked why they couldn’t take a stint at the gate, or even in the chancery. The generator was still running over at the GSA Building. She kept thinking of the air-conditioning there. She felt dizzy from time to time, but bending over for a few seconds helped.
The sun dropped fast. The sky turned dusty salmon and hazy tan. So weary she could barely keep her eyes open, she slumped in a plastic lawn chair someone had carried up from the chancery.
As the sky dimmed, the breeze rose again. She’d yearned for that all day, but when it came it was scorching, the air like sandpaper rubbed fast against her skin. She laid her head back and closed her eyes.
She started awake with someone shaking her. “Better listen up,” the Viet vet muttered.
The corporal was on the radio. “Right, down the southern avenue,” he was saying, holding the binoculars steady with one hand. “These guys are armed. . . . Yeah, could be . . . big crowd tagging along behind. Over.”
He set the radio aside, lips grim. “Could be it,” he said to the Desert Storm vet, who he seemed to resonate with.
“More looters?” Aisha rubbed her face.
He nodded, slinging up. “Same as before. I fire a warning shot. If that doesn’t stop them, a volley over their heads. Then shoot to kill. On my order, understand? Nobody thinks for himself.”
The crowd noise swelled, as did the smoky pall. Shots began cracking out. She hugged her knees in the chair, fear warring with fatigue. She didn’t care anymore. Except when she recalled how bravely her roommate had translated the huge soldier’s threats.
She picked up her rifle. They stood looking down. Past their section of wall she saw only part of the road. For a time it lay empty. Then dogs raced by, raising puffs of dust, the starved mangy pariahs she’d glimpsed on the ride in from the airport.
Then men, many men, in colorful shirts or bare-chested, marching with fists raised, chanting. Some carried large sticks she realized after a moment were unlit torches. The light was going, the stars coming out. Some wore green trousers beneath civilian shirts. These were the ones who carried rifles.
Warning shots snapped from the gate. The radio spoke. The lance corporal rested his elbows on the parapet, checking his sights.
A shattering double crack echoed from below, followed by screams, yells, a burst of automatic fire. Then the growing surf roar of a chanting crowd.
“Say again, over,” said the Viet vet, manning the radio as the corporal kept his sights on the wall.
When he set the radio down he looked shocked. “Explosion at the front gate. Two jarheads down.”
“You, Agent, and you”—the corporal pointed—“reinforce the gate.”
The concrete stairwell echoed as they hurried down. She lagged, her legs shorter than the others’, and broke into a run as she emerged to try to catch up. At the gate embassy staff were lifting the wounded onto litters. The nurse knelt by one, shaking her head.
Aisha
stared. The chest was torn open. Blood spattered the gate, the concrete arch above, to either side. Dark pools soaked into the dusty ground. It was the young marine who’d doubted she was American. Another sat propped against the guardhouse, face a bloody gristle, still gripping his carbine. His helmet lay beside him, Kevlar cracked open in a white star. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” he kept saying. He tried to stand, but Kaszyk eased him back down.
“Where’d it come from?” the gunny asked, but the marine just wagged his head. “Sounded like a grenade or a LAW. But there wasn’t anybody near the gate.”
A flash lit the scene. She was astonished to realize it was from the evidence camera in her shaking hand. No one looked up. They were staring down the street, to where the mob shouted, waving lengths of cloth spiraling in the air.
“Hand me that bullhorn,” Kaszyk said, straightening.
“STOP WHERE YOU ARE,” the bullhorn echoed. The gunny muttered, “Take a knee. We’re through fucking around. Take the ones with the AKs first.” He spotted Aisha and his gaze narrowed. He pushed her into the gatehouse. “Put that camera away. Stay here. 240 crew, above their heads, fire.”
The machine gun let rip between the gate bars. Through the plate glass window of the gatehouse she saw the marchers duck away. The crowd scattered, screaming.
A tremendous bang. Something racketed smoke and fire over the gatehouse, over the compound, and burst with a plume of dust near the school. “RPG!” a marine yelled.
She followed the smoke trail back to a man bending down on a rooftop across the avenue. He straightened holding a tapered tube with a bulging head. She yelled to the gunny, but realized they couldn’t see him from their angle.
Just like the drills at Glynco, and she smashed the muzzle of the rifle through the window, breaking the glass out so it couldn’t deflect the bullet, and got the butt to her shoulder as the man leveled the tube. He was looking along it directly at her, but then the shooting and yelling seemed to stop. Her vision tunneled in as if she were a telescope and at the end of it was that dark face, fitting itself to the sight. She put her front post on his nose and pressed the trigger. The gun jolted and sproinged and he whirled and went down. The tube fell into the street and bounced, but didn’t go off. She put her sights back on the rooftop, waiting for someone else to stand. Within seconds another man did, but she lowered her sights this time and shot him in the legs.
All the marines were firing but the sergeant was pulling them back. Incoming blew craters out of the brick walls. Bullets clanged off the gate. She stepped back, fighting panic. Muzzle flashes lined every alleyway across the street.
A rough hand on her shoulder. “Falling back. Can’t hold here.”
“These aren’t looters,” she yelled. “They’re troops.”
“Can’t hold the perimeter,” Kaszyk yelled back. “Not with the bodies we’ve got left. Fall back on the chancery.”
He propelled her across the yard. It blazed with blinding light. The generator throbbed at full speed. Flashes darted from atop the tower. Return fire hissed and snapped, blowing saucers out of the stuccoed concrete. She panted, throat dry as the dust she ran through. The fence loomed, the brilliant lights rose above. She staggered through the inner gate like a marathon runner finishing, and collapsed into Nuura’s arms.
Behind her the marines leapfrogged back. Another tremendous explosion sent a jet of fire right through the outer wall. Bricks flew. The shooting built to a deafening clamor. Through it the gunny wheeled, pointing here and there as he positioned his remaining shooters.
A bottle of something pressed her lips and she gulped at it, choking as the soft drink welled into hot foam. She pushed it away, then pulled it back.
“You keep us safe?”
“We’ll protect you,” she said, hugging the slight woman. “But get inside.”
“Agent! Behind the barrier. Anybody comes through that gate, take ’em down.”
But solid masses were already streaming in. She saw with a sinking heart that those in front were women. The troops were behind, driving them with gun butts. She fired a burst over their heads but still they came.
“Light ’em up,” the gunny said, behind her. He leveled his rifle and a woman screamed, gripping her shoulder.
“What are you doing? Stop. Stop!”
“If they get in here they’ll kill us all.” Kaszyk reloaded, face smeared with soot. “It’s a lynch mob. Understand? We warned them.”
Beside her Erculiano was on a knee, firing. Someone shouted by the gate, and the women broke into a run. They hit the chancery fence and swarmed it. AKs cracked behind them. Another woman fell, but Aisha couldn’t tell if it was from an American bullet or an Ashaaran one.
Bursts walked up the tower and rattled on the steel roofing. The higher-pitched cracks of the 5.56s snapped above the deeper barks of the Kalashnikovs as the overwatchers fired down. She glimpsed a man with a pistol and fired, but wasn’t sure she hit him. The lance corporal turned astounded to her. A hole pocked his forehead. He toppled into the dust, legs jerking like a galvanized frog’s.
They were at the top of the fence, tearing at the razor wire with bare hands. Battering with a bench from the waiting area at the chain-link gate that was the last barrier around the chancery. An Ashaaran fired a burst into the lock, then staggered as someone in the tower shot him. Grenades lobbed out from the tower, exploding with cherry-bomb flashes and cracks that sounded puny amid the noise, but Ashaarans reeled and dropped. Another RPG’s launch motor banged outside the compound. It flew over her head, wobbling in its ridiculous slow motion, and exploded below the parapet of the tower, blowing out chunks of concrete block and shrouding the chancery in choking smoke and dust. Steel sections slid down from its roof.
A man stood by the outer gate, pointing at the chancery. Two more ran in with RPGs. They squatted and rocked back on their heels, aiming up. She screamed, “Gunny!” but he wasn’t there. She aimed and pulled the trigger but nothing happened. Her magazine was empty. She stared frozen as the conical noses of the rocket-propelled grenades searched, then steadied.
A sudden bursting-out of dust and smoke walked across the men from left to right. The hailstorm of metal chewed apart the bricks behind them, making them hop and wriggle before collapsing. The storm of impacts kept on, mowing down women and men alike. She crouched, squinting, to see men in black uniforms and blackened faces run from behind the generator building. They fanned out into a line and swept forward, a steady flashing and roaring from weapons held to their cheeks sweeping across the dusty field into the crowd.
At the same moment a deeper beat sounded under the rattle of gunfire, the cracks of grenades. Slapping her clothes for another magazine, she looked up only when Kaszyk and Erculiano lifted their faces. “Here we go,” the other agent said, voice raspy but relieved.
From a black form swimming through the dimness above the lights poured a great howling and a brilliant light, turbulent wind and the stench of combusting kerosene. Dust and leaves exploded from the ground and tarantellaed through the air. The chain link shook and bodies rained from it. A thin screaming came from outside. Forms staggered through the roaring dust, visible to her only now and then in the seethe, under the pinning light.
The helicopters slid down beams of glaring brilliance. The night became murky clouds as they descended between the chancery and the shed she’d woken in that morning. Blazing lights grounded and began strobing, illuminating everything. Through the murk the crouched shapes of the uniformed men who’d appeared from seaward closed remorselessly on the gate. The lead figure motioned briskly with one hand, gripping a short weapon with the other. Two split off and made for the chancery. They wove among dead and wounded like broken-field runners, pointing weapons at each as they passed. One bent for an AK, smashed it against a wall, threw the parts spinning into the dark.
Kaszyk opened the inner gate and they sprinted through. The lead one spotted her as she rose clutching her rifle, and whipped his weapon around. Light sp
eared through the darkness at her. Then darted upward, as the gunny knocked the barrel up, mouth open in an explanation that did not reach her through the roar of turbines but must’ve made sense because the man turned away.
Out of the whirling dust trotted more bulky figures, bent under heavy-looking packs and the Waffenamt helmets of the U.S. military. They jogged past toward the walls and she felt relieved, but also sad, as if what she’d just lived through had violated her in some worse way than death.
Kaszyk, holding out a filthy hand. She opened the bolt to check it was empty, and handled him the rifle. “Good job,” he shouted into her ear. “Couldn’t have held ’em without the two of you’s help.”
She doubted that but ducked her head, not speaking. Behind him was a white man in blackface with bright blue eyes and scars radiating across his cheeks like the rays of a crater on the moon. “Sorry I keyed on you,” he shouted. “You didn’t look like ours. With the head rag and all.”
She didn’t respond. He shouted to the gunny, “Nonemergency personnel on these birds. Twenty pounds personal gear each. Pass the word.”
“We closing the embassy? You evac’ing us?”
“No. Nonessentials only, like I said. We got enough troops and ammo to hold until the task force gets here. Which way to your security officer?”
She sank to her knees, close to fainting from the terrible weakness that came from being so afraid for so long, as the sergeant pointed and the soldier ran past and out the gate, to become one more seeking shadow in the whirling murk.
Nabil
THE 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.