by Gordon Kent
Djalik sounded mad as hell. And with good reason, Alan thought. This wasn’t what he’d signed on to do—none of it. He wished he could wash Harry, but there was no water. The little flashlight gave a white, harsh light in a one-foot circle; the picture of Harry’s terrible eye in its light was too much for him. “Anything we can do for this eye?” he called. Djalik was prone by the opening. Djalik rolled toward him, said, “Tube of three-way antibiotic; squeeze half of it all over the area,” and rolled back. By the time Alan was through doing that and giving the second shot of morphine, Djalik was there.
“All hell broken loose out there, Commander. I don’t know the players, but I’d say the white guys are trying to take the helicopters and leave and somebody else is shooting things up over there east. Couple good thumps, sounded like mortars.” A nod toward Harry. “He conscious?”
“Now and then.”
“Shot of speed. It’ll either kill him or get him on his feet. Those bastards really worked him over.” Djalik was containing his anger better now. “Scout a back way out of here.”
Alan moved toward the door, turned back toward the little circle of light. “Why didn’t you tell me you had another gun?”
Djalik paused, but only for an instant. “You might have acted different, let them know.”
“What the hell did you take my gun for, then?”
“For them to find.”
The amphetamines had had an effect, because when he had been around the shed, Harry was sitting up against the wall and shouting, the words muffled and tangled by his battered lips, “Fuck you! Lousy cocksucking Hutu bastard, fuck you!”
They watched the airfield in moonlight, with fireworks laid on by several sides. They saw several white men and quite a few black soldiers, some running, a few dying, several dead. The other troops he assumed to be Ntarinada’s “Grande Armée Rwandaise.” They had full camo, full webbing, good hats and boots.
Another hangar stood almost two hundred yards down the field. Figures kept flitting past them; they could hear shouts, even babies wailing. The refugees were being driven in by some attacker, he guessed. Three Russian Mi-8 helicopters stood near the other hangar, two with their turbines singing, one on fire, illuminating the whole scene down there.
They watched white soldiers emerge from somewhere beyond the northern hangar, carrying rucksacks and duffel bags that they began to load into the helicopters. Others, in camo, stood watch and continued to exchange fire with the GAR troopers out in the dark.
“I could get hits from here,” Djalik said, sighting down his AK-47. Alan looked for Zulu. Alan felt a new feeling; the desire to kill. He had never felt this personal need to kill a particular man before, not even with the traitor who had betrayed his father to his death. He wanted Zulu. But the range was long, and the light uncertain.
“Are any of the whites the officer who started shooting in the hangar?”
“Nope. Something about him I should know, Commander?”
“He’s a wanted war criminal in Bosnia. I shot at him, once.”
“You do get around. No, I don’t see him.”
“We won’t get out alive if we shoot, anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m not doing it. I figure we’re not their main concern tonight.”
“Djalik, I think the white guys are pulling chocks.”
Djalik watched the drama below through the iron sights on his rifle.
“Good time to go.”
“They say I was a slave and the child of slaves,” O’Neill said out of nowhere. His voice was thick, and his consonants were slurred by his beaten mouth: s sounded like sh, th like h. “That my ancestors were slaves. Fuck them. White fucker!”
“Yeah, Harry, fuck them. Harry, we need to be quiet right now.”
“Yeah, right, quiet.” He was quiet for about three seconds, and then he screamed, “Foutez le camp, salauds!”
Djalik laughed. “It’s the speed. What’d he say?”
“‘Fuck you, you bastards.’”
“Yeah, well, I’m with him there. Okay, you ready?”
“Ready.”
“You’re recon.”
That was the agreement—Djalik commanded any fighting, Alan picked the route and did the recon. They both supported Harry.
Alan duck-walked out and stood against the building, accustoming his eyes to the starlight. His groin was a large, dull ache, but adrenaline was keeping him up. A great many people seemed to be moving around him. When he could see as well as he ever would, he moved forward until he found a thorn fence, the wall of the enclosure. He began to trot down the outside of the boma. When he reached the corner, he turned north and continued to follow it. Occasional firing came from within the boma, and random shots whispered through the thorny wall beside them. Alan felt very exposed, but logic told him that they weren’t shooting at him—not much help if a stray bullet hit him.
Beyond the boma was a field where plastic tents flapped like ghosts. People were running past them, and he watched them clump up and then disappear into the forest. There had to be a trail there, and it was going in the right direction, west. He retraced his route back to the hangar.
Djalik had Harry on his feet.
“Can he walk?” Alan said. Even in the dark, he was shocked all over again by this stinking hulk.
Djalik put a surprisingly tender arm around O’Neill’s waist. “Sure he can, can’t you, Bud.” He moved Harry a step. “That’s the way—that’s the way—there we go—” O’Neill began to totter forward.
Part Three
The Ignorant Armies
26
Late November
At sea, the flag deck of the Jackson.
Captain Parsills didn’t wake Admiral Pilchard early to tell him that Alan Craik and Dave Djalik hadn’t made it to the COD they’d laid on for Kinshasa. The matter wasn’t yet a crisis—less than twenty-four hours late—and Pilchard was weary; let him sleep. The COD pilot was apparently testy about lying over in Kinshasa, but that’s what he’d been ordered to do. They’ll come in tonight, Parsills thought. Hoped.
He told the admiral over breakfast. A spasm of concern passed over the tired face and then was gone. “I hope I didn’t make a mistake there,” he said.
“We’re trying to find out from the embassy what happened. They’re not right quick about responding.”
“Those—!” Pilchard waved a hand. “You know my views.” He turned his attention back to breakfast. “Better have Rangoon prepare an extraction plan, just in case.”
“We don’t know where he is.”
“Well—some radius from Kinshasa. Shit, Jack, do it!”
The flash of old-man’s temper was briefly ugly, then gone but not apologized for. Parsills’ manner didn’t change; he remained cheerful, solid, maybe a little unimaginative. As he was leaving, he said, “I’d already got on the Rangoon for an extraction plan.”
Pilchard nodded. “Stay on it.” He was going through message traffic.
That afternoon, they got a message from the embassy: their man had come back because of “unacceptable risks and threats;” the two naval personnel—no names, probably in fact forgotten by whoever wrote the message—had got into an unidentified aircraft with “unknown and unverified local militia without authorization or embassy clearance” and disappeared.
Parsills asked for clarification and passed the message to the Rangoon so that they would expand the radius from Kinshasa for possible extraction. The chief of staff rejected the idea of informing the missing men’s families. It was too soon.
Sarajevo.
It had taken five days to lure Mrs Obren out of Republika Srpska. Not that she was suspicious, but their system was not very fast. Somebody had to go over the border and leave a message; she had to see the sign, wait until it was safe to pick up the message, then make arrangements to leave.
Dukas worked on what he had come to think of as the “other two”—her husband and the man called Zulu. He had sent a priority message to th
e States for the file on Craik’s raid, when the Serb had gone out the window into the snow and he had found the photo with “Colonel Zulu at the Battle of the Crows” on it. Dukas had gone to intel at NIS to request searches for any contacts or reports on a Z or a Zulu. He had remembered talking to Craik about Serbs in Africa and had put that together with Pigoreau’s information that Zulu was “away.” Could that be why he had been recruiting, even after the shooting in Croatia and Bosnia was over?
Dukas called Pigoreau into his chilly office two days after they had sent for Mrs Obren. Pigoreau had been avoiding him, came now with obvious reluctance, his head down like a dog’s who expects to be scolded. The weather had broken, something like a thaw setting in; the office was damp and dead, but Dukas felt energized, maybe because he was drinking in the morning again and had a false sense of himself.
“Sit,” he said. Pigoreau sat. Pigoreau was tough and never took any shit from anybody, but this was different because they were friends. Dukas looked straight at Pigoreau until he looked back. “Okay?” Dukas said.
“What okay?”
“You know what, for Christ’s sake. It’s done, Pig. You did the right thing. It’s hard on me—she really got to me. You know. But you did right and it’s over. Okay?”
Pigoreau looked wary. “Okay.” He began to burrow in his chest for a cigarette.
“How I read it, Pig, it’s the husband. She’ll do anything, fuck anybody, to get the husband back. Zulu’s using the husband, just like I was, I guess. So run a check on Serb militias and see what officers’ names come up with Z.” Pigoreau groaned; they had done that twice already. “I know, I know; try it again. Run it past somebody who knows what the hell is going on in Belgrade. French intel—can you trust French intel?”
Pigoreau made a mouth for whistling and blew out smoke. “They are sorting that out, Michael. I think I have a contact guy who is okay.”
“We want to know who’s been recruiting and who went from Belgrade to Zaire via Libya. Your guy got contacts in Libya? If not, go to the Italians. I wanta know what the Yugos got there—maybe an office? They flew in and out—they keeping aircraft there? Servicing them? Friend of mine said it was weird the Libyans supported anybody going to help What’s-His-Name—the dictator with cancer—?”
“Mobutu. Yes, peculiar but not impossible; money talks, plus we got old friends in Libya.”
“We?”
“France.” Pigoreau put his elbows on the desk. The cigarette dangled from a corner of his thin mouth. He was enjoying himself, Dukas realized—two cops, two friends again. “Where does Mobutu go when he gets sick? France. Where does he look for help when his pathetic dying dinosaur of a country is attacked? France. But France says, ‘Well, Sese Seko old friend, you are welcome to bring your cancer here because of old times, but not your dinosaur. Times have changed. We don’t take pet dinosaurs any more. Sorry. Your dinosaur is dying; let it die.’ So Mobutu goes to certain particular old friends in France and he says, ‘Boo-hoo, my dinosaur is dying, help me! You owe it to me because of old times.’ And these particular friends, because they do not want to admit that times have changed, and because they believe that saving dinosaurs is what the French gloire most requires, they say, ‘Sese Seko, copain, your cause is my cause, we will save your dinosaur.’ And they take a few millions from Mobutu and send him back to his luxury clinic, and they put out the money in Belgrade and Tripoli, where they have other old friends from the days of the dinosaurs, and Voilà!, Serb mercenaries appear in Zaire.”
“I think one of them may be our man Zulu. Just a hunch.” They looked at each other. “We’ll ask Mrs Obren.”
Later, he thought of trying to contact Al Craik, who knew a lot about Africa. He rejected the idea because he was sure Craik was sitting on a boat somewhere, far from the actualities of Zaire.
At sea, the flag deck of the Jackson.
On the second morning after Alan Craik and Dave Djalik had disappeared, Parsills watched as Admiral Pilchard drafted a harsh message to the Kinshasa embassy. It demanded details of what he called the “abandonment” of his men by the embassy; it demanded current intelligence information from the chief of station. It threatened reporting of non-cooperation via the Chief of Naval Operations to the White House.
The embassy, however, had the fine-tuned diplomatic art of ass-covering on its side. The embassy’s version of the matter was that an uninvited military officer had pushed himself in where he wasn’t wanted and had disappeared as a result. That was the classified story they had already begun to spread through channels in Washington. There was no press reporting on the matter.
Washington.
Ever since he had left IVI, Abe Peretz had been thinking about Rose and Peacemaker, even as he went about his normal work at the FBI. The abrupt end of his own time at IVI had angered him: what had seemed a pleasant two-week reserve duty had turned into one pleasant week and one wasted and stupid one sitting at a temporarily empty desk at the Air Medical Evacuation Training Office at Fort McNair. His objections that he knew nothing about air medevac and was a Naval intel specialist, not an Army doctor, took three weeks to resolve, and by then of course he was back at his regular job. The only answer, given to him over the telephone by a foolish-sounding lieutenant, was that somebody had been needed in a hurry at Fort McNair. Otherwise, it was shut up and do as you’re told.
Peretz had been suspicious. He got an excellent fitrep for the week at IVI, but he still smelled a rat. The rat looked like the guy who had come to the table while he and Rose were having coffee—the ex-Nav named Suter.
So, Peretz had started to do some checking. Peacemaker’s interest in targeting data would have remained only an anomaly if he hadn’t been so abruptly transferred. Now, he was curious—real curious. On his lunch hours, on odd times when he could work by telephone or the internet from his office, in the evenings at home, he began to examine IVI and some of the people who worked there. Suter particularly interested him.
A surprising amount of information is available in a free society. Much of it is buried in government documents. Some of it is on the web, often in the form of self-puffing web sites for agencies. A lot of it is in Congressional documents, which the Congressional Record Service will cough up if you have a Congressman who will front for you. Peretz could do even better than that: one of the people he played tennis with was a senior congressional staffer. She also liked Peretz a lot—enough to worry Bea Peretz.
“What’s on between you and Mindy Goren?” Bea said. It was a challenge; Bea spoke mostly in challenges, proclamations, and outraged denials.
“I’m meeting her twice a week at the Quick-Fuck Motel.”
“Abe, I’m warning you—!”
So he had told her. Bea was outraged for his sake, had been outraged for his sake by the transfer from IVI, now was outraged for his sake that he suspected something behind the transfer. For both sympathy and self-protection, Bea joined the quest and became his go-between with Mindy and the Congressional Research Service.
Two lines of investigation had quickly emerged. They would sit by his computer or at her desk after dinner, their daughters’ rock CDs thumping down the stairs as background; each would nudge the other or grunt when something good came up. First, it was the contracting history for Peacemaker; then it was the committee hearings where Peacemaker was discussed. Abe learned to track Peacemaker through classified hearings by looking for General Touhey’s name; often, to his surprise, George Shreed’s would be there, too.
“What the hell has Shreed got to do with Peacemaker?” he grumbled.
“Who?”
“Shreed, Shreed—the Agency guy Alan got into trouble with in Africa a couple of years ago—remember?”
“Oh, that shit.”
Bea had taken on the contracts. They were an interesting relief from the homework assignments of her fifth-grade class. There were hundreds of them. But they were on the record—or most of them were. They all had numbers, very long numbers, and one night Bea
shouted “Gotcha!” when she found a nineteen-digit gap in the number sequence.
“Got what?”
“I don’t know, Dummy, I just found it!” But the gap was real, and more searching didn’t fill it.
“Secret,” she said. “They’ve got secret contracts.”
“Lots of contracts are secret.”
“No, asshole—lots of contracts have secret contents. A bunch of these are just marked ‘Classified,’ but their numbers are there. This is a gap in the numbers—they just aren’t there!”
“Clerical error.”
“Come on—!”
Abe was still working on the committee hearings. Armed Services, Intelligence, Appropriations—those seemed normal for a standalone entity like IVI. He could see in the pattern of Touhey’s testimony that IVI was a one-man monolith, carefully crafted by somebody who knew Washington’s civilian and military back rooms. IVI also seemed to have its own lobbyist. Peretz wanted to get him on the phone, but Bea wisely dissuaded him and reminded him that before you went behind somebody’s back, you first exhausted legitimate resources.
“Maybe I ought to call that bastard Suter.”
Now it was late in November. Peretz debated a couple of days and then called Suter at IVI. He wasn’t there, a crisp female voice told him; he was at the Washington office. Peretz called the number she gave him, and a Southern female voice told him that Mistah Sutah wasn’t theyah; had he tried the Maryland office? He played this game of telephone tag for two days and then decided that Suter was out of town, until he found a Ray Suter in the Virginia telephone book and called that evening, and that remembered, arrogant voice answered.
“Sorry, wrong number,” Peretz said, automatically dropping his voice an octave.