The Crisis

by David Poyer

  Behind each stood a Waleeli, cloth wrapping his feet. They must have crept up step by step, noiselessly. Each aimed a rifle at his target’s head.

  If one of the PMCs looked around, he’d start shooting.

  A massacre was only a motion away.

  Without thought, she was on her feet. Her SIG was out, muzzle pressed to Al-Khasmi’s skull, which she cradled with her left arm. The nervous guy jerked back and scrabbled for his weapon, then froze at a glance from his chief.

  “Call them off,” she muttered. To Nuura: “He’s not taking any hostages today. Or he’ll be doing it without the side of his fucking head. Tell him!”

  The bandit chief sat motionless. “You’re a Muslim fighter,” he murmured.

  “No, I’m a fucking federal agent, with police powers through UN Resolution 610 to support humanitarian aid to this benighted shithole. Tell him that.”

  The tall one burst out with something violent, but his boss put out a weary hand. He called to his men, who began backing away. Whalen turned and saw them; he glanced at her but, to her relief, didn’t go off the deep end. He patted the air, signaling his personnel to stay cool. Then nodded at the smooth-faced, very young man who’d been covering him, as if to say, one professional to another, Yeah, you got the drop on me; nice play. Next time it’ll be the other way around.

  Al-Khasmi waited till she took the pistol from his head. Till she stowed it away inside her abaya. “Tell me something, Aisha Ar-Rahim. You say you are Muslim.”

  The voice in her ear said, “Jesus, Aisha. Don’t know what just happened, but I got a terrific shot of it.”

  She wondered how he’d missed four terrorists taking aim at their protective team. “Yes. I am,” she told the Ashaaran.

  “A convert, or from your birth?”

  “From my birth.”

  “But the true Muslim fights for victory of the faith and the restoration of the caliphate. Are you fighting for the faith?”

  She saw the trap and didn’t want to go there. Then steeled herself. “I am a good Muslim. But I won’t force others into Islam. I try to be the most generous and compassionate human being I can. If all Muslims showed the compassion of God, all those who saw them would want to follow God too.”

  “Sharia? You don’t believe in it?”

  “It was God’s way for us at that time in history. But He’s given us more knowledge since the days of the Prophet, peace be upon him. I believe in what sharia was meant to accomplish. An Islam of justice, not violence. One with its women’s faces uncovered, its daughters healthy, everyone educated and fed and at peace. That’s what I believe in, General.”

  He plucked at the tarp, studying her with narrowed eyes. “You have lived too long with the Jews and Christians. You are not a true daughter of God.”

  “I believe I am.”

  “Be silent and learn. This is His land, this desert. Here He spoke to Musa and Issa and Muhammad, may their names be blessed. Here He speaks to me, the Pruner. There are those who call me the Maahdi, the announcer. God in His time will confirm or deny.

  “Come back to Islam. It is not I who give you this chance. This is God himself stretching out His hand.”

  Nuura gasped and fell silent. Aisha nudged her. “What is it?” she hissed.

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t what? Tell me. It isn’t your water breaking, is it?”

  “He said . . . he wants you to marry him.”

  At the last instant she stifled her first reaction—to throw back her head and guffaw. An Ashaaran warlord was like a street punk in Harlem: One did not dis him in front of his men. She let her head covering fall forward to hide her eyes, as if deeply moved. At least, she hoped that was how he’d read it.

  The first time anyone had ever asked. One to tell her grandchildren. If she ever had any. Proposed to in the African desert by a crazed terrorist.

  One thing was for damned sure: She wasn’t ever going to mention this to her mother. In no way, shape, or form. She nodded toward the woman who’d served them. “You have one wife already. At least.”

  “She’s not my wife. She’s my sister.”

  Enough. She cleared her throat and stood again, and he stood with her this time, still smiling. She remembered to step aside from the line of sight from the van, in case Erculiano hadn’t gotten enough photos the first time around.

  “He asks: You are leaving?”

  “Yes. But the offer stands. About the police, the army. His men will be welcome. There’ll be food and steady pay.”

  “And all we have to do is take the orders of the infidels.”

  “No. Of the democratic government of Ashaara, representing all the people.”

  Even as she said them the words tasted like cardboard. She believed them, but on another level, maybe she didn’t. And he must have sensed that uncertainty, because he moved a step closer, till she could smell him again, as she had when she’d held his head against her chest. Nuura coughed. “He says: Perhaps he will attend one of these conferences. To see what it is you bring. Will you arrange that? If he sends a man to you?”

  “I’ll be happy to,” she said, surprised.

  “He also says: ‘Sooner or later you will realize no one can be Muslim, and fight against Islam. When you realize you are on the wrong side, come and join me.’ ”

  “I’m on the right side already.”

  “Be silent. God knows you better than you know yourself. Join your Muslim brothers and sisters. Only then will you know true peace.”

  “It is Shaitan who lies,” she told him, and turned and headed back to the van as the guards wheeled and pulled in.

  She slid onto the hot leather seat as the engines started, the air-conditioning came on. As she returned to the metal electrical womb of America. She’d made her words loud, confident. He was a head case. A bandit with delusions of Apocalypse. But was she as confident as she’d pretended?

  It would bear thinking about.

  23

  Ashaara City

  DAN swung down out of the white Suburban, bewildered. Who could have done this? He’d thought they were making progress with the population.

  The Humvee had been traveling unescorted, but there’d been no trouble in the city. Tension, perhaps, in neighborhoods where the black flag flew. Disquieting preaching, in the mosques and new madrassas being set up with Saudi grants. That had been reported by the NCIS agent in her security updates. But the attack hadn’t occurred in those neighborhoods, but at the Nakar roundabout, where the ring road—the route the Thunder Run used—branched off to points north.

  As he circled it the vehicle was still on fire. The smell of burning diesel was varied by upholstery and insulation, cloth, the roast-pork odor of charred flesh. Blanketed bodies lay on the concrete. The response team had established a perimeter, and corpsmen were working on the survivors.

  He lifted one of the blankets. A dark-skinned man, perhaps American but more likely Ashaaran. He dropped it, lifted the other. Stared at a familiar face, red-skinned, with blotches of sun freckles and incipient melanomas.

  Buntine. The harbormaster.

  “Come from that ghostville, sir,” a lance corporal said, not saluting, which was SOP under fire. He pointed to an abandoned building surrounded by junked cars. His face was dirty but very young, raccoon-sunburned behind pushed-up ballistic goggles. He was chewing something crunchy. His name tape read Spayer. “Junkyard, far’s I can tell. Blast marks on the back wall.”

  “Any trace of ’em?”

  “Long gone, sir. Motherfuckers jerked that trigger and didi’d. Nabil here talked to the neighbors, but they didn’t see anything.”

  Dan glanced at the kid. Black hair, buzz cut. Outfitted in size-small camo gear and women’s combat boots, but they were still too big for him. He grinned up at Dan, favoring one foot.

  “Your translator?”

  “Translator, ambassador, gofer. We take care of him and he takes care of us.” Spayer reached out to tousle the kid’s hair. T
he boy submitted, then pushed his hand off. He ran off, limping, toward the garage. Spayer watched him go, shaking his head.

  A chime; Dan’s cell. They were depending more on cells than on VHF, at least around the city, where an overachieving Korean company had set up service. Dan was still wary of discussing movements on them, though it was hard to believe anyone in Ashaara had the equipment to break a call. “Lenson.”

  “Pride here. What’s it look like?”

  “Two dead, two wounded, sir. RPG from an abandoned junkyard west of the Nakar roundabout.”

  Colonel Pride—what a name for a marine—had arrived at the head of the Joint Interagency Coordination Group team Leache had promised/threatened them with in Dubai. Dan had had to submit to Pride’s quickly famous interviewing technique, which consisted of long lists of questions asked in a monotone like that of a computerized Verizon operator, but less cheerful. It all came out of sleep time, which had been short even before Pride arrived. Now he asked in that same monotone, “What is the reaction of the local populace?”

  “They say they didn’t see anybody.”

  “What is the reaction of the engaged troops?”

  “I don’t know. They’re either dead or being treated.”

  “What is your reaction, as first on the scene?”

  “Well, I wasn’t first on the scene,” Dan said, then paused. What was his reaction? Seeing Buntine dead was like saying farewell to some force of nature, like the wind. “But my reaction is, uh—”

  “Go ahead, Commander.”

  “I don’t have one yet. I’ll have to call you back, Colonel. Casevac’s here.”

  Spayer was too. Beside him the kid panted, head down, gripping his ankles. “Look what L’il Team brought us. He talks to ’em and suddenly those folks remember seein’ them throw this away, and where it went.”

  He held up a curiously grooved wood-and-metal tube Dan’s tired brain took a moment to identify. “Great,” he said, though unsure what good an empty RPG-7 launcher would do. He doubted whoever had fired it had his fingerprints on file. Still, he accepted it. Then felt in his pockets. “Would he take a PayDay?”

  It was mashed flat and melted, but the kid had the wrapper off and most of it in his mouth in eight seconds.

  The helo flared out above what might once have been a planned access ramp, kicking up a roiling cloud that when it reached them filled mouths and noses with the sick savor of pulverized dung and shrouded everything in a chaotic haze of flying sticks, smoke, and the ever-present filmy plastic bags. Dan waved the driver in the SUV off, and climbed in with the bodies.

  AT Rowley he walked into the JOC to find the noise level high and confusion level higher. The Joint Operations Center had opened adjoining the CACC. It wired highly secure, mission-tailored communications and intel modules into a common network linked by broadband to Centcom and intel sources. There were three dozen flat-panel displays with men and women in shirtsleeves and headsets, and a larger one up front for the commander. The watchstanders murmured into throat mikes at their keyboards. Dan found it creepy and unsettling. Were they here to feed people, or push the cutting edge of high tech?

  General Ahearn, his deputy, and Colonel Pride were watching footage from security cameras on the ring road. A petty officer pointed out landmarks. A flare bloomed in the corner of a frame.

  “That it?” said Ahearn, adjusting his glasses.

  “That’s the firing, General, affirmative,” the petty officer said.

  The general thanked her gravely and said she could leave. He swiveled, taking his glasses off, and saw Dan. “You were just there.”

  “Yes sir.” He expanded on what he’d told Pride. Ahearn listened without expression.

  “So we have no idea what faction they represented?”

  Dan set the launcher on the table. They looked at it. Then Ahearn said, “The NCIS woman,” and the deputy picked up a phone.

  Pride was staring at Dan as they waited for the call to go through. “Commander, tell me again exactly who you are and what command you’re from.”

  Dan did, but Pride didn’t look satisfied. “What’s a Navy tactician doing in Ashaara?”

  “TAG doesn’t only develop tactics. I was originally here on a transformation project for Admiral Contardi. From Naval Education and Training.”

  “He’s made himself useful,” Ahearn put in. “I asked for his attachment pending more personnel. Does Centcom intend to send me some staff reinforcement?”

  Pride didn’t pursue that, just picked the launch tube up and looked through the bore. “Did you have this checked by EOD? In Vietnam they left ordnance items with grenades wired under them. It’d be easy to pack explosives in this and wire them to the trigger.”

  Dan had to admit that though he didn’t much like the guy, and no one else seemed to either, he had a point. He shouldn’t have just handed it to the joint force commander. He cleared his throat. “You’re right. I should have done that.”

  From now on, they were going to have to question all their assumptions about Ashaara.

  HE had a bunk now, in a “choo” shared with three other men. The Containerized Housing Units were the size of a singlewide, with cheap vinyl tile floors, cots, and flimsy steel lockers the color of old vomit. No shower, no head, no air-conditioning, so it was uninhabitable during daylight hours, but it was only a short walk to the latrine area. It did come with power, light, and an office-sized fridge, so he could work at night, recharge his computer, and drink chilled water. The day before he’d scored a six-pack of soft drinks and a box of PayDays from an AAFES outlet in the terminal building.

  He popped a Diet Coke and sat down at his notebook and logged on, first to the Rowley LAN, then through a portal back to his mailbox at TAG.

  The first e-mail was from Monty Henrickson. The analyst was reporting on a project he’d been working on with one of their contractors. Best known as a supplier of financial-data-mining services, they’d come up with software that integrated gigabytes of data to pinpoint hidden investment opportunities. But the commercial fishing industry had picked it up to locate tuna, and both political parties were using it to spot clusters of swing voters for the November election. Marty’s version integrated hydrographic conditions, electronic intercepts, passive listening arrays, and TAG’s tactical database to locate submarines in shallow waters. Dan read through his notes, frowning over autonomic variable selection, nonnegative matrix factorization, orthogonal partitioning clustering. He wasn’t stupid, but the analyst’s mathematics left him feeling like a second-grader confronted with calculus.

  Blair said she might have good news. The undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics had announced his retirement, and Jack Weatherfield’s executive assistant had called her to schedule an appointment.

  He stopped typing as the implication sank in. There were ten assistant secretaries, Blair’s current position. But there were only four undersecretaries, with acquisition probably the most powerful. If the secretary promoted her, and the Senate approved, she’d essentially move up to number three at the Pentagon.

  Great news for her. But would she have any time left for him at all? He sent her a long e-mail back saying he still wished she could’ve made it to Dubai, and how much he missed her.

  But he was putting off what he knew he had to do. Finally his trailer-mate came in. “We made the news,” he said, unbuttoning his BDUs as he went through the common area into his cube.

  “What do you mean?”

  “First U.S. fatalities in Ashaara. Big play.”

  Dan called up MSNBC and then ABC online. Both carried the story. One even had video of the burning Humvee. He wondered how, he hadn’t seen a camera, but there was the junkyard behind it. “Thanks,” he mumbled, but his roommate had already gotten whatever he’d come back for and Dan was alone in the trailer again.

  He rubbed his eyes, wondering what this would mean. Remembering all Parker Buntine had done for the relief effort. He’d never seemed
to like Ashaarans. He might even have been a racist. But he’d worked for them, fed them, and in the end, died for them. And for what reward?

  But he was still putting it off. A commanding officer’s toughest job. He hadn’t been Buntine’s CO, not directly. But the grizzled harbormaster had worked for, or at least with, him. Whatever family he had deserved something better than a form letter out of the Military Personnel Manual.

  The final would be handwritten, of course. But he drafted his on the screen first, weighing each word for as much truth as could be tolerated, as much praise as could be justified. A compressor stuttered outside. Sweat ran down his face. The computer whined, its fan struggling in the heat. He opened a new file, took a deep breath—remembering a rugged, weatherbeaten face, a misanthropic snarl that had somehow helped bring hope to thousands—and started drafting the condolence letter.

  24

  The Presidential Palace,

  Ashaara City

  GHEDI catches the glances as they pull up in their battered trucks. The mufflerless engines make old men cover their ears. Even beggars cower against the walls, or duck away, averting their faces.

  He clenches his remaining teeth and winces at a sensation like a hot iron skewer being pounded into his jaw. All his lower teeth have come out on that side and he feels something hot and hard forming where the bullet hit at Uri’yah. Fiammetta sewed the flesh together but something isn’t right.

  A man lives with pain. But when his hand goes to his shoulder and encounters an emptiness like the missing teeth he feels not like a man at all. He’s gotten used to the gun’s weight, the way a man’s used to his legs. But Juulheed, who made the advance arrangements, made it clear: no weapons would be allowed into the jirga.

  “I want our people outside, though,” Ghedi had told his deputy.

  Today Juulheed’s even more on edge than usual. The night before, when they camped outside the city in a wadi, he didn’t sleep, muttering to himself and then shouting until Ghedi had yelled at him to go away, they had a big day tomorrow. For answer he’d gotten a stare emotionless as that of a locust.