The Crisis

by David Poyer

  “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?

  16

  In the Southern Mountains

  THE 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 thei
r 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.

  The gun slams again, deafening. This time the shell bursts so close the lead truck plunges instantly into the dust-cloud, as if sucked in.

  When it emerges its wheels are locked. Gravel spits like bullets to rattle down far away. Ghedi slaps Juulheed’s head and the driver pants, hauling the wheel around so they almost topple. He brakes to a steelscreeching halt beside the cab.

  Ghedi points his rifle into an open window, into an astonished face. “Weapons out of the truck! In the name of God and the Waleeli!” Behind him come more shouts as each pair of vehicles closes on its target. Bursts stutter as some of his boys give vent to their excitement. “Who’s the convoy leader?”

  An astonishingly fat man squirms from the back of the cab. Ghedi grins. It’s easy to deal with those who wrap their souls in lard. The man blusters, “What do you want? We’re on World Food Organization business. Don’t molest us.”

  “ ‘Don’t molest us.’ I would not be here if you’d paid your taxes.”

  “Taxes? What taxes?” But Ghedi sees he knows. Before the trucks ever loaded, an agent of the Waleeli approached him. Money, arms, food, he could have paid in any coin, save the worn worthless notes with the hawknosed profile of the former president. They’re for lighting cookfires now, or cleaning oneself after sex with a prostitute. Using money for this, it’s well known, prevents the wasting disease.

  “What taxes? The ones you didn’t pay! Now you’ve lost your trucks and cargos. Out of the cab! On the ground, salaam to God for your worthless necks!”

  As they’re scrambling down firing bursts out at the rear of the column. Ghedi whirls. Sometimes one man resists, then his clanmates begin shooting. These don’t look aggressive, though. He calls to the ones atop the truck, “Throw down your rifles, O my brothers.”

  “We’ll keep these rifles, brother.”

  “It’s because you’re my brother I don’t kill you.” He points to the gun truck and a clamor of heavy bullets stitches the air. “Throw them down. Now!”

  The largest rider holds out his Kalashnikov and releases it. One after the other, the rest hit the ground in puffs of dust.

  “Now descend.”

  He eyes the lookouts. Their only duty during a raid is scanning the sky. If American helicopters approach he’ll take hostages. Scattering’s not a viable tactic. One band tried that and was nearly wiped out. But so far, the sky’s clear.

  His men are climbing into the trucks. Each is a treasure trove. Not only do they carry radios, money, guns, fuel, and food, but the crews’ own duffels are full. Much of this Juulheed makes a great show of burning, but somehow the magazines with pictures of women always survive. “All weapons into the Tiger,” Ghedi shouts to his men. To the fat one, whose face is running with sweat, he says, “You are in the hands of the Waleeli. Those who believe have nothing to fear, but they must give up that which is unclean. Where is this convoy bound?”

  “The camp at Malakat, on orders of the UN and the Alliance.”

  “There is no camp at Malakat. There is no Alliance.”

  “A camp is there. As to the Alliance”–the fat one shrugs—“if you say there is none, it does not exist.”

  Ghedi shoots him, there in the cab. His blood sprays on the faces of the others, who recoil but don’t try to shield him. “Push him out onto the ground,” he orders, and the wounded man tumbles like a sack of offal to the sand, where he lies moaning and weeping. “Thus to those who speak with contempt,” he shouts. “God is great. God is great. God is great.” They repeat his words feebly, echoing the fierce shouts and upthrust weapons of his men. “Now tell me what your clan is, and where you are to meet them.”

  He isn’t surprised when they hurry to tell him all he wants to know.

  THE tent’s stifling but Ghedi makes no show of noticing. Flies buzz above the dates and candies the women set out before they left. Across from him and Juulheed the graybearded elders wait. No one’s armed. The experience of centuries: all weapons, even knives, are left outside, jealously watched by guards from both sides. The youngest offers instant coffee, a mark of great respect. Ghedi sips, head bowed before the older men. But his attention’s on those standing behind them, against the tent walls. Those crowded outside, listening. Some, those whose weapons he took when he stopped the convoy.<
br />
  This is a subfamily of the Gilhirs, rife with pride and ferociously suspicious of outsiders. Above all, he must treat them with respect. One can honor a Gilhir, or kill him. There’s no third way.

  The elders he faces are southerners, like most of the ADA. But they’re far from the city, from the Americans and their tame dogs. He bows to a shriveled shifty-looking man with a sparse beard. At last the compliments ebb.

  The old man begins in the slow measured speech of the “pure” clans, descended from the ancient geelhers, the camel camps of the high desert. His tone’s that of an old man to a young one. Ghedi grows angry. He will not bear insult either. These men must be pruned out, to build a new Ashaara. They cling to the past: old stories, old names, old legends, old lands.

  For a moment he remembers orchards, a burning village. Orphaned children, stumbling through the corn. Then pushes the memory aside. His sisters and brother are dead. Those who ride with him are his family now.

  “Your young men are brave warriors. But they behave like bandits,” the old man mumbles.

  He fights to sound respectful. “We serve God, honored one.”

  “The foreigners also serve God in sending food. This does not disgrace, to accept help in famine and drought.”

  “My master is the blind and holy Sheekh Nassir of Ashaara. He speaks wisdom from the Book.”

  The old man makes a complex gesture with his right hand. “We have heard of the holy and wise Sheekh Nassir, peace be with him. I am not his equal. Just an ignorant toothless one. But surely stealing food from the hungry is not the way of the Prophet.”

  Ghedi explains the food is unclean. It can be restored to acceptability only by being used for God’s purpose. “Only in this way can God’s people be fed in a way pleasing to Him. This my men do to strengthen us against those who would destroy us and take our land.”