Peacemaker

by Gordon Kent

  Djalik had separated out the medical supplies and divided them into three; each of them took some. He brandished several at Harry. “Percodex. Tylenol with codeine. Seconal. We’re getting you off morphine before you turn into a junkie, Bud.” They both grinned. They had developed an odd relationship, Djalik and Harry.

  Djalik didn’t tell Harry what he’d already told Alan: they had to save a little morphine, in case somebody took a bullet.

  Alan got on the radio. One only received—weather, canned messages. It gave him codes for the two-way, and that told him the news that he relayed to the others.

  “There’s three possible extraction points ahead of us—twenty, fifty, and eighty miles. As of now, the BG’s out of the extraction business, but they’re trying to set something else up, but it’s gotta be rock-solid from our end—no hostile fire, good landing area, no witnesses.”

  Harry laughed. His speech was quite clear now. “Whom are they sending in, American Airlines?”

  Alan grinned. “Air France. Let’s go.”

  He wasn’t entirely kidding. The French evidently wanted the task. At that point, Alan thought he’d hop into the Red Baron’s Fokker tri-plane, if it could land near him.

  That evening, Djalik calmly reported the bad news.

  “We’re being followed. I kept thinking we were unlucky.”

  Alan felt his pulse race at the thought. Alan was tired, his knees and back hurt, and he wasn’t sure how many more small crises he could handle. He raised his head slowly and looked at Harry first. Harry was better, but he still wasn’t fast.

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I ain’t. But I’m pretty sure. I’d like to drop back tonight and check.”

  Alan wondered what Djalik was made of. He didn’t seem tired. He also appeared to do twice as much of the work and acted as scout, often traveling twice as far as Alan or Harry every day. Alan wanted to volunteer. He felt that as leadership had devolved on him, he ought to be in front. He was also realistic enough to realize that Djalik, and even Harry, had survival and combat skills he lacked.

  He hated to be in charge of people better at their jobs than he was. He had always led through energy and skill, his ability to learn any task swiftly. Now he was the leader by custom and assumption, but Alan knew that any of them could have led. Alan thought for a moment and looked out over the darkening forest canopy below them. The open country to the south was golden red in the setting sun.

  “Is it Zulu?”

  Djalik nodded. Harry’s head came up, fast.

  “If you have to go, do it. You don’t need me to tell you not to take chances, though. I don’t think we’d have made it this far without you.”

  Djalik merely looked at the ground for a moment and grunted.

  Djalik moved easily through the trees. He had expected dense vegetation and lush jungles, but this part of Africa seemed mostly dry red dirt and thorny, open trees with massive hills set in the plain. They were camped at the base of one of these hills. Djalik moved quickly down their back trail for almost a mile, making only a minimum effort at concealment. He had a pretty good idea where the enemy was. Novices spent lots of time sneaking in the woods. Djalik used speed first.

  He was surprised by Craik’s praise. Djalik had sized Alan Craik up and found him to be a glory hound, the sort of officer that got guys killed and got medals. Djalik shook his head minutely as he took a break in a small gully and pulled at his chin several times as if fingering an invisible beard. Craik hadn’t lived up to his glory-hound impression. He took a swig of water, rolled it slowly in his mouth, and spat. Then he checked his weapons and began to move. Now he was moving slowly and carefully.

  They weren’t as close as he had expected, and he still wasted almost an hour moving along slowly in the dark, moving from vantage point to vantage point to check the ground ahead as the darkness became total. He checked his map twice, but mostly he navigated by an internal picture that was seldom wrong.

  They had sentries out, but they were noisy and confident, and far too close to their camp. He moved up close to the sentries, close enough to kill one without making enough noise to matter, but he didn’t. He couldn’t understand their language, but he was damn sure it didn’t sound African, and when one man lit a cigarette, Djalik could see why. They were white. Despite their odd, foreign clothing and weapons, Djalik’s first impulse was that they had to be some kind of extraction team. Caution and experience warned him otherwise. He waited, lying silent, until the biggest man moved, breaking a branch and cursing. Djalik didn’t need to understand the language to get the gist. They were Serbs, the same Serbs as those at the airfield. They had fired on the helicopters, too. The big shape was the one Craik called Zulu. Djalik lay and listened.

  Zulu was not just a big man, he was a killer. Djalik had seen it at the airfield. A trained partisan. Djalik just couldn’t see Craik coming up against this guy in the dark and getting away alive, but clearly he had. And at the airfield, Craik hadn’t been brilliant, but he hadn’t been dumb. He’d created a big ruckus jumping the guys behind the table. Not a shooter, but good enough, as long as his luck held.

  Djalik heard the big man speak several more times. He was thorough, checking where his men were sleeping and chatting with each one. He visited the sentries, approaching each one as silently as Djalik. He was too good to be some typical merc. Zulu’s apparent contempt for his quarry had clouded his group’s wariness, but otherwise they were a pretty good outfit, for mercenaries, a group for which Djalik had a special contempt. There were no more than fifteen of them, and they carried only light weapons. Djalik toyed with trying to take them. If he had one more shooter …

  With a jerk, Djalik realized that there were other men moving. He lay very still, listening to the sound of his heart in his ears, and heard the movement. It was over to his left. Djalik began to inch backwards, cursing that his rifle was strapped to his back.

  Then the man moving called something and rose to a crouch. The nearer sentry whispered a reply. They were changing their sentries. The man who had called out had clearly missed the post in the dark. Djalik turned his head to make sure no one had moved behind him and began to move backward again.

  Djalik extracted himself very slowly. It took him more than an hour to get out of earshot of the two men watching the camp, and almost as long to get a safe distance away before he could trot. Then he moved quickly. He missed his way twice, but never for long. Before the moon set he was back in the camp.

  Craik was still up, sitting with his back against a tree and his weapon across his lap.

  Djalik moved until he was breathing in Craik’s ear before whispering.

  “Fifteen men. Serbs. That guy who tried for you at the airfield.”

  Craik’s thin face was relaxed. He had been tense before he knew Djalik was there; the prospect of fifteen men out to kill him seemed not to bother him. Djalik watched him for a moment. Craik was silent, looking out into the night.

  “I think we should ambush them right here. It’s a good place. They’d hit us about half an hour past light. If they thought we were dangerous, they’d have kept a better watch.”

  “Is that really better than just heading out right now?”

  “I think so, sir. If we can knock three or four down, they’ll stop. Whatever the hell they’re after, it won’t be worth taking real hits. If you and I and Harry can each get one right away, that should do it.”

  Alan shook his head. He smiled crookedly, still not looking at Djalik, but the smile was gone when his head turned back and his eyes were dull in the dark.

  “He’s after me. Because I can finger him as a war criminal. Lousy break for us. Okay, we’ll try it.”

  Djalik smiled invisibly in the dark and moved away to plan.

  30

  End of November

  Washington.

  Adams-Morgan is an urban Washington neighborhood that tries to be the Greenwich Village of the capital. It is multi-ethnic, edgy, artsy. It is a relief f
rom the suburbs for people who don’t like to live in their cars. It is interesting and exciting—and, sometimes, dangerous.

  Abe Peretz lived in Adams-Morgan, the choice Bea’s. They had most of an old house on a side street that was always lined with cars, theirs included. They had Latino and Oriental neighbors and rented their top-floor apartment to a dour Ethiopian. Every morning at six, Abe came out the front door, checked his car to see if the tires had been slashed or the wing window broken (both things had happened in the two years they had been there) and then turned left and started jogging toward DuPont Circle. He wore running shoes and green shorts, a zippered purple nylon vest, and a red-and-white hat with a small visor. He had forgotten his gloves, which he should have worn because the temperature was in the forties. Checking his watch, he crossed the street and turned south.

  Five blocks south, two men lounged on a corner. The corner was usually empty at this hour, he knew, because he ran the same route every day and could have been clocked at points along it. The two men did not seem to be waiting for him, but when his distant figure appeared, bobbing past the trashcans in front of a Brazilian restaurant, one of them muttered something and stirred.

  Both men were black, both in their thirties; both wore the urban uniform of oversize pants, oversize sweatshirt, untied basketball shoes, and backward-facing baseball hat. They were supposed to look like locals, but something indefinable about them was not local, just not quite right. Maybe they could have walked the walk and talked the talk, but Mike Dukas, could he have seen them, would have known they were out of place.

  Abe Peretz came closer. When he had glanced to his left and started across the last side street before their block, one of the men plunged across the sidewalk and leaned against a telephone pole with a peeling poster that said March to fight oppression in——stry!

  Abe came up over the curb and jogged down toward them. He was breathing easily, running a little hunched. As he came close to the two men, he smiled. He started to run between them.

  “Hey, m’man!”

  Abe turned his head.

  “Hey, man, you got the time?”

  Abe did not quite stop running as he raised his left wrist and stared at it. He swung toward the man to give the time.

  Behind him, the second man stepped away from the telephone pole and raised a sawed-off baseball bat.

  Zaire.

  Alan had started at so many nature noises that the sound of voices and the soft crunch of a boot on a rotten stick came as a relief. Now it was real. It was just after dawn. His AKM, with a fur of orange rust down the receiver, was balanced on the branch in front of him. Alan sighted down the barrel and saw a figure in a dark green coat of rags with bright brass buttons crouched on the trail. FAZ. The army of Mobutu Sese Seko. Officially, the US Navy and the FAZ had nothing against each other. Did this guy know that?

  The first figure crept back up the trail and Alan lost him. The voices were renewed. His heart began to pound, a mixture of fear and anticipation. The voices went on. Wait for Djalik to shoot.

  Another figure moved up the trail with the first, the FAZ guide. Alan’s eyes widened over his gun sight. Should he lean out? He had only thirty rounds. Wait for Djalik to shoot first.

  A long braaat from his right answered the question for him. Harry had an M-10. They had picked spots after Djalik had gone over the ground in the dark. Now, maybe Harry had panicked, or maybe his hate was too powerful. At any rate, Alan recognized the sound of the M-10, then Djalik’s AK. The newcomer spun to the side, maybe hit. The guide was clearly out, knocked back by the hits, and he plunged backward, disappearing out of the patch of light on the trail that was Alan’s chosen sighting area. Other weapons were firing, then stopped; the shooting had lasted only seconds. The man behind the guide had been white. Alan tried to pant silently and looked for something to shoot.

  Movement in the trees to his left, somebody attempting to get behind them on the north of the trail. He rolled over a downed log. One shot. He lay still and listened. Then he wriggled down the log. Two men were moving slowly, parallel to the trail, nearly invisible when they stopped, only their movement betraying them. His rifle was trapped against the log, and it took him slow, panic-edged seconds to move it, a fraction of an inch at a time, up his body, over his head, and into sighting position, waiting for them to see him, shoot him. He was hyperventilating. He was drenched in sweat and the red dust and bits of the log stuck to his hands, his face, and the rifle.

  Good sight picture crack and the rifle tore at his shoulder. The man closer to the trail grunted and slammed into the tree beside him. His partner looked around wildly. Crack. This man screamed when he was hit and kept screaming. The forest seemed full of yelling and then there was a long yell and a burst of fire from the south, on the other side of the trail, and then there was more movement. Sweat flowed from Alan’s forehead, pumped from his chest and ribs, and he could feel his heart beating fast, heavy hammer blows. He rolled swiftly to his right and tried to point his rifle down the log to his left flank.

  Alan crawled in short bursts, expecting each move to be answered by a hail of shots. He stopped when he could see along the trail again. It was a short distance, but his intense concentration gave him a giddy sense of disorientation. He had no sense of time, didn’t know where he was or where to expect movement. Then he saw the guide, who lay a few feet from him, the exit wound in his back huge and glistening and already covered in flies. Somebody moved in the forest, coming up the ridge, and Alan saw him and shot too quickly, missed, and Djalik’s AK barked almost from his feet; there was return fire from three places and Djalik grunted and stopped shooting. A flash of green. Alan couldn’t remember firing fifteen, but when he pulled the trigger there was no shot. He had to change magazines, and the whole time he forced his trembling hands through the process he watched a pair of legs sticking out behind a mound of earth, tried to ignore his gut-wrenching knowledge that he was out of ammo and Djalik was hit. Take your time. Alan brought the rifle down too quickly and a shot hit his tree. He moved the sight picture up the legs and fired. There was a cry, a horrible, pitiful mewling cry and the legs flopped, and fire tore up the ground near him. Alan did not twitch away from the fire. He watched and returned a single shot. His hands and feet were cold, and he could taste salt running off his unshaved face and into his mouth.

  Djalik had been covering Harry. Alan could see Djalik now, only feet away, blood pumping from his left hand. If you leave me face-down in Africa, Commander—He saw Djalik draw a pistol with his right hand, work the slide one-handed against his hip, and place it near him. Then he started to work a tourniquet on his left arm. Harry was pumping shells into a shotgun, the M-10 exhausted beside him.

  A face flashed around a tree he had been watching, but much lower than he expected. Alan fired. Nothing. Several of the downed men were screaming or moaning. Alan thought that at least four were down. The man behind the tree swung out at ground level and fired a burst. The man was big and his hat was gone and it was Zulu and he fired without aiming, wasted shots throwing clods of red dirt in the air. The man twisted wildly and got back behind his tree.

  Zulu. Alan waited for the head to appear. Instead, he saw an elbow materialize slowly, right down near the ground. Alan shot once. There was a long red smear on the tree. Should have waited for the head. Zulu, if it was Zulu, made no sound. His heart crashed in his chest, seeming to pound against the huge tree he was pressed against. Zulu who tortured. Zulu who tortured Harry.

  Alan watched the forest, tensed, his reason and his hatred perfectly balanced. Reason said that he was the only man firing, that he was responsible. Hatred pushed him, hatred and rage, to rush the tree. Zulu had to be hit. Maybe down. Alan wanted him dead and he crouched, his breath seeming a great shout against the silence, his mind stretched in indecision. Nothing was moving, and the wounded made the only sound. Harry crawled to Djalik and twisted the tourniquet. The wrist had been smashed by a large-caliber round. Djalik was bleeding heavi
ly, and Harry finally gave up on the tourniquet and simply lay in the red dirt, holding the veins with his thumbs. Alan knew his duty then, and he did it. He waited.

  After two minutes, nobody more came. He heard movement from the tree he thought was occupied by Zulu, and then behind it. After more long minutes, he thought the patrol had fallen back. He hoped so. He knew that really good soldiers would simply wait. Alan didn’t know when he would have waited enough, and he made the decision coldly, weighing further silence against the need to tend to Djalik. He moved. There was no fire and he joined Harry.

  “They may get reinforcements,” he said. Harry nodded and crouched there until Alan came and tied the tourniquet Harry was holding.

  “They were Zulu’s.” Alan was suddenly gulping air. He had just killed three men. He was very, very glad to be alive.

  Harry nodded. He was choked with emotion, and his face twisted with hate, the same hate as Alan showed.

  “I saw him and I couldn’t … I just shot and shot. Like a green kid. He cut my eye.” And Alan could see that all of it, rage and hate for the humiliation and the pain, had poured out of the barrel of the M-10 with the bullets. Harry looked better.

  Djalik gave a croak meant as a laugh.

  “Arrogant bastards. We downed what, five? Maybe ten?” His voice died away in mutters.

  Alan could only hope that it would be enough to stop the pursuit. He looked at his watch, thinking it had stopped, but the second hand was still moving.

  “We’ve got to break off, sir,” Djalik said, clearly. The words had some special meaning to him. Harry looked at Alan over Djalik’s head.

  “He means that if we move fast now and lose them, they have to fear another ambush because they lost us and that will slow them. I learned that much at the Ranch.” Djalik nodded, too used up to speak. Alan socked back some water and moved carefully down the trail. No shots were fired. Then they began to limp away as fast as they could. Now Harry supported Djalik.