The Crisis

by David Poyer

  The ten-year-old looks both ways. Satisfied he isn’t watched, he squats. A plastic bleach bottle sloshes as he pulls it from its hiding place, pours the liquid into it, spins the top closed. In eight seconds he’s back inside, blinking in the light, holding out the empty bowl to the aide. An exchange of glances, and the jug tilts a fresh dose of two-hundred-proof disinfectant.

  Two hours later, Nabil stands behind the latrines. A girl holds a lantern while another trickles the fluid through layers of sanitary napkins. It comes out clear. Men and women fidget in line, waiting to trade coins and bills for a paper cupful. Everything—alcohol, charcoal, napkins, lantern, paper cups—comes from the medical stores that, along with a little food, are all the regime allots to the orphan camps.

  The camp hones every resident into a skilled thief, an expert at dissimulation, begging, strategic lying. With his boyish charm, round, innocent face, his dragging foot, Nabil’s among the best, though not the largest or most powerful.

  As he’s reminded by a sudden dazzling slap on the back of the head. He scrambles up from the ground with stones in his fists. That too the camp teaches: to fight with whatever you have. You might lose, but drawing blood on the way down is the only way to keep your ration. In a camp of orphans, the meek inherit only the earth.

  The shadow’s larger than he is and carries a flexible hose. Before he can react the hose slashes out of the dark again and bursts across his face so hard his eyes scream in his skull. Down again, he rolls, hands over his head. But the blows keep coming, hollow thwocks of rubber on flesh. Between blows the squat man shouts. “No selling without Eyobed’s cut!’

  Eyobed’s Habesha, like a lot of others in the camp. The Habesha kids stick together. Their older ones run the smuggling, the girls who suck town men through the wire, the games, and the burial insurance every adult in camp pays for—there’s no worse shame than to die and not have proper burial. Eyobed’s squat and ugly and his breath stinks, but up to now he hasn’t interfered with Nabil and the old aide’s sideline.

  Now that they’re making significant money, their exemption seems to be up. Nabil covers his stomach as the hose descends again, but it slashes his face once more. He screams into the night as his customers scatter, a woman scooping up the liquor on her way into the anonymous dark. This too the camp teaches: anything left unguarded’s yours.

  “Learned your lesson, dog turd? Stinking mouse? Half what you get belongs to Eyobed. Say it. Half.”

  “Half my profit belongs to—”

  The hose slashes again, across his stomach now he’s covered his face. “Half the gross, licker of old men’s dicks. The gross. Say it.”

  “Half the gross to Eyobed,” he screams, loud enough the whole camp might hear, if screams in the night were rare.

  The beating stops. Peering through his fingers he sees the figure tucking the hose under its arm. Its fingers fumble at its pants.

  “Now you take a young, strong man in your mouth.”

  HE crawls into the tent he shares with the aides, snuffling snot and tears and blood.

  “He beat you?” comes a cracked whisper.

  The old man who showed him the pleasures, when he first came to the camp. Who took him into the clinic, brought him food, held him when he raved in fever. He’s very old now and shakes continuously, as if an off-balance motor runs inside him. They don’t share pleasure anymore, but there’s still respect and maybe even something like love. Nabil crawls over and presses against him, weeping softly, because it hurts, but not loud enough anyone else might hear. To be heard weeping is not good. Little by little, he tells him. The old man sighs.

  Then he whispers, “Tomorrow the white doctor operates again. When he does, he gives me the key to the cabinet.”

  THE next night Nabil waits behind the latrine, plastic bottle between his feet, a smaller, glass bottle behind it. The line forms. The women filter. Coughing men hand their cups to the next in line. The raw alcohol whets the air. The youth choir’s practicing across the camp.

  When the squat shadow approaches, Nabil bends, then backs away. “Need another lesson?” the Habesha grates. “Where are you? I can’t see you.”

  “Over here.”

  “Got my money? Half. Now.”

  “I have it,” Nabil says. He comes to the wooden box behind the latrine and climbs onto it. He lifts the small bottle and unscrews the top. “Here it is,” he says. “Up here.”

  Eyobed looks up as Nabil tilts the glass. It gurgles and for a moment that’s the only sound, the acid gulping as it comes out. Then the night’s shattered by a horrifying scream.

  He and the old man have discussed it. He can’t stay, after blinding Eyobed. The other Habesha will kill him. Nabil’s old enough now to leave the camp. Those who don’t shape their lives are already dead. He must go to the city, where in the stories clever orphans become rich, make fortunes, marry princesses. The old man cried, holding him, last night. Then blessed him and bade him go with God.

  There’s water and food in a plastic bag by the gate. The guard’s left the gate unlocked. The old man bribed him, with his burial money. The gate squeals as it swings open. The desert night’s dark, but the stars pour down light.

  His breath catching in his throat, dragging his crippled foot, Nabil runs.

  9

  The Assault

  THE thunder began before dawn, shaking windows, bringing those barricaded in their homes out onto rooftops. The rumble came from all around the seaward horizon. No one in the city had heard anything like it before.

  The machines hurtled out of the darkness.

  They weighed 150 tons fully loaded and were ninety feet long. They flew two feet above the water, lifted by gas turbines on rubber skirts filled with air, propelled by giant pusher fans. At sixty miles an hour they trailed a fifty-foot-high roostertail, their fanfare a full orchestra playing Wagner on nothing but kettledrums. They came from forty miles out, launched from the cavernous bays of vast ships. Their decks were packed with Humvees, tanks, light armor, trucks, artillery, weapons, and troops; combat ambulances, fuel, ammunition, water, repair parts, and food.

  The machines were landing craft, air cushion. Instead of dropping ramps at the beach for troops to wade ashore, their pilots nudged back on throttles. They double-checked their positions on screens in cockpits wrapped in shatterproof glass. Then increased the pitch rate on their lift fans, and drove in over the surf line and up between the dunes, out onto the dry mudflats south of the city.

  In the dark they flew across dried-out fields, rutted roads, and wadis filled with the smoothed pebbles of ancient watercourses. They blew down the tents of panicked nomads, crushed homes, crossed ditches, uprooted and blew away small trees, leaving an emptiness as if a janitor’s broom many meters wide had been pulled across the land.

  From the guard tower Aisha Ar-Rahim heard the thunder and said a short du’a that all would go well, for American and Ashaaran alike. The embassy’s reinforcements had stopped two more attacks by looters, but anarchy rocked the city. More asylum seekers had been allowed in. Their stories made her shudder: home invasion, rape, torture to extort money. Hundreds more had been turned away.

  Lying atop a rise overlooking an intersection to the south, heads and M249s wrapped in dull-colored shemaghs, Teddy Oberg and Sumo Kaulukukui were trying to make radio contact with the lead LCAC. Teddy had thought the point was still miles away when suddenly the terrain lit up. Something enormous thundered toward them, lights like the landing lamps of a 747 blinding them before they could duck, clawing at their night vision goggles.

  “Holy fuck!” the Hawaiian shouted over the annihilating roar of sixteen thousand horsepower as a wall of sand, wind, and noise rolled over them, tearing at their clothes. “Son of a bitch is like Close Encounters. And they go uphill?”

  Even far out in the foothills of the Western Mountains, nomads woke to the airborne rumble, wondering what new thing had invaded their land.

  The machines roared inland, ponderous beas
ts romping free at last. Each cost millions and burned fuel in torrents, but moved too fast for an enemy to stop. Occasionally as they swept by an Ashaaran emptied his rifle in unreflecting terror, but they never bothered to return fire. The bullets caromed off armor. The machines swept on.

  ABOARD Mount Whitney, Dan watched bright pips cross a pulsating line representing the mean low-tide mark. They sped up, drawing together to wheel northward in an immense hook, covering in minutes distances exhausted dogfaces had taken weeks to fight their way across at Anzio and Normandy.

  Behind and above him in the darkened theater of the CACC brooded a spectacled, scholarly looking one-star marine general with six fingers, named Cornelius DeRoberts Ahearn. The task force commander had flown in with his senior staffers while the main amphibious element was three hundred miles distant. He’d merged Dan, McCall, Henrickson, Goya’s people, and the One-Five MEU staff, when it arrived, into a forward element of a joint task force—a standard way of dealing with an emergent crisis, until the other supporting elements could be stood up—and immediately begun planning the follow-on to the embassy relief.

  News from the city was limited to cables via Washington and Bahrain from the embassy and what one wire service stringer holed up in the Hotel des Vacances reported. A drone from Tarawa had sent back video of parts of the city burning, but its lens didn’t reveal who led the mobs roaming the streets.

  The Joint Chiefs had phrased Joint Task Force Red Sea’s mission as “establish and promote peace, stability, and the efficient and fair distribution of humanitarian assistance to the People’s Republic of Ashaara, in cooperation with United Nations agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and such elements of government as shall remain or be reconstituted.” Centcom interpreted that as “As rapidly and peacefully as possible, relieve and reinforce the U.S. Embassy in Ashaara, disarm or neutralize such forces as may prove hostile, and secure ports, airfields, and roads to facilitate humanitarian assistance operations.”

  Over two days the combined staff of JTF Red Sea and CTG 156.4 had translated this into Operation Collateral Gratitude. It began with a seaborne feint around midnight north of the port, while special operations forces moved to overwatch positions near both bridges over the Durmani to detect any repositioning by the Ashaaran army. It then landed the Fifteenth Marine Amphibious Expeditionary Unit by LCAC over the beaches south of the port. The MEU’s first objective was the Ashaaran Twenty-first Armored’s camp at Darew. After either confirming the Twenty-first wasn’t a threat or neutralizing it, the marines would continue across the downstream bridge, hook right again in a shallow envelopment, and link up with a helicopter-borne assault at the international airfield.

  If this went well the feint force would land in a second assault, taking the port area of Ashaara City to handle the relief supplies Dan had requested in a message for COMJTF’s signature. Once the airfield and the port were in his hands, Ahearn would fly in to meet with the ambassador and discuss what remained of the government and whether it could help distribute food aid.

  Dan felt uneasy. The plan depended on rapid movement and no interference from any Ashaaran force. The LCACs were fast, but if the lift fans got damaged there was no way to tow them; they’d have to be repaired where they sat down, left under guard, or blown in place. Once they debarked vehicles—tanks, light armor, amphibious assault vehicles, fuel and ammo trucks—he wasn’t sure what speed of advance to expect over unimproved roads.

  But the big question was how they’d be received. They were trying to take over a whole country with two thousand marines and limited combat support. Even if the Ashaarans cooperated, the JTF would be stretched thin. If they fought, things could turn ugly indeed.

  Dan got up as Ahearn lifted a little finger, all that remained on the right hand. Ahearn had lost the rest at Hue City to a 106 recoilless. He wore a heavy gold ring with the palm tree of The Citadel on his left hand. “General?”

  “Hard to believe there’s no air activity.”

  The Ashaaran air force had one fighter ground attack squadron and one counterinsurgency squadron. Dan massaged a tension headache. “We keep pulsing the AWACs and surveillance people, but there’s no sign of activity, either from the aircraft or that SA-7 battery at the airfield.”

  “Nothing yet about the Twenty-first?”

  According to CIA studies and attaché’s reports, the Ashaaran army had five regiments. The president garrisoned two near the capital. The others were posted north, west, and south, covering invasion routes from Eritrea and Sudan. Ahearn was asking about the Twenty-first Armored Brigade, with surplus Egyptian and Polish tanks. The DIA called it an elite unit devoted to the president. Its camp was south of the international airfield. The Seventeenth Mechanized was north of the river, less worrisome, since Dan had surveillance on the only two bridges, Oberg’s SEALs on one and a Marine recon team to the north, at Fenteni.

  “No movement from their laager, General,” Dan told him.

  “Last update?”

  “Imagery two hours ago, sir. We’ll have the UAV refueled and back at dawn to confirm.”

  The general’s screen showed the disposition off the beaches. Ashaara had no navy, but Shamal and Cyclone were on station off the main port and Firebolt off the delta at R’as Zalurah, to intercept any speedboats or dhows that might interfere. Oldendorf was covering the amphibs—Tarawa south of the islands and shoals of the Ashaaran delta, Duluth and Anchorage to the north, all under way at bare steerageway—from air attack.

  Three huge screens constituted the display area. The leftmost showed operations ashore; the middle, the amphibious operating area proper—the one Ahearn was toggled to at his chair—and the right, the air picture from the Nile deep into Saudi, a fused display from AWACs, Oldendorf, and Centcom. An unidentified air contact to the north showed 420 knots at twelve thousand feet on course 167. As he watched, the symbol blinked from unidentified to friendly. A B-52 with IFF turned off, headed for the secret but hard-to-disguise U.S. air base in Saudi.

  He thought they were doing it right. For a moment he let himself hope this might work out as planned.

  The general picked up a phone and a light colonel rose from his terminal. The J-2, the task force’s intel officer. Ahearn sucked on his glasses’ earpiece. “So, why are they not moving? Did we miss a dispersal? A redeployment, before we got eyes on them?”

  The J-2 said, “We saw some movement of light units yesterday, General. Jeep size, trucks. Consistent with troops loading up what they can steal and deserting. No value in a tank to a looter.”

  “The next decision’s at Point Y,” Ahearn said. Y was the remote wadi where the LCACs would turn off their fans and drop ramps for the tanks to trundle into assault formation. “We’ve got better night fighting capability. But if those T-55s get hull down behind a ridgeline, with infrared spotlights, they can cream us. I don’t like these ROEs.”

  “They’re definitely restrictive, sir,” said the J-2.

  “How’s it go again?”

  “Return fire only in the event of armed resistence. Fire will not be initiated; no interdiction or prep fires authorized.”

  “If we see movement to contact, we can do an air strike?”

  “That’d stretch the ROEs, sir, but I don’t see how anyone can reasonably object.”

  “Lenson, you worked in the West Wing. Can they reasonably object?”

  Dan rubbed his face. Coffee wasn’t working anymore. “Sir, without meaning to be cynical, from the point of view of the president’s people, all those ROEs are for is to absolve them of responsibility if you drop a laser-guided bomb on a school. Failing that, the op order clearly gives you own-force self-protection. If interdicting an armored column en route contact isn’t force protection, I don’t know what is.”

  “But those could be dummies, or target hulks. Hal, you sure they haven’t already redeployed? Waiting to kick the shit out of us when we drop ramps?”

  The intel officer wiped his palms. “Based on the best recon av
ailable, it’s our opinion the Twenty-first never left laager. But since we don’t have before and after photos—”

  “Then it’s possible.”

  “Yessir. Not probable, but . . . possible.”

  “Which is one step above vomiting in a bucket.” Ahearn waved impatiently and they moved off as the general reached for his phone again.

  “I remember where I saw you before,” the intel officer muttered. Dan lifted his eyebrows. “In Eritrea. With the briefcase, the nuclear codes, behind the president. Wasn’t that you?”

  “The emergency satchel. Yeah, that was me.”

  “I saw you in that video of the shoving match with the troops. In the mess tent? The Secret Service using you for a battering ram. Didn’t take, huh?”

  “Sorry, I’m a little slow right now. What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’re back in the field, right?”

  Dan shrugged, unwilling to explain how protecting the president had gotten him exiled. “Can we check if those tanks are still there? Send that UAV back at low altitude, take a look infrared? Or get some recon-type eyes out there? Right now all we’re doing is guessing.”

  The lieutenant colonel said he’d find out, and headed off. Dan stopped at the coffee mess in the back of the space and just stood, aching back pressed to the black-painted bulkhead. Ahearn was getting bent out of shape over nothing. Everything he’d heard about Ashaara portrayed poverty and social disintegration from decades of revolution, war, and mis-government. If the president had flown, why should the army fight?

  But the Twenty-first was an elite formation. If the whole army crumbled, evaporated, that might be convenient for Collateral Gratitude. But what about the follow-on relief effort? How did you maintain security with no host nation army? A hell of a lot easier to use troops people were at least used to, one they shared a language with, than try to rivet down order with a foreign force. Especially in a largely Muslim country.