Colonel Chutani took half a step back, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.
“The Lord will protect Dhubbato,” Alejo heard Pim Visser say. “And we will be his instruments.”
Alejo ground his teeth and focused on the Pakistani colonel. He wanted to insert some backbone into the man by sheer will power. He also knew that if he turned around, he’d try to inset his walking stick into Pim Visser in a very unusual and unsanitary way. And that wouldn’t help matters.
The thin Dutchman continued to speak over Alejo’s shoulder. “All I want are those vehicles. We have our own ammunition.”
Alejo jutted his chin at the neat rows of military vehicles. “You’re leaving them there?” he asked Colonel Chutani.
“Do you think we have petrol to drive them all the way to Ethiopia?” The colonel retorted. “Such costs are prohibitive. Extraneous to budget.”
Alejo took a deep breath. “You hired a fleet of civilian trucks for your men. Why not load them into the vehicles and drive them?”
The Pakistani colonel gathered his broken composure. “The disbursement of United Nations funds is not for you to question!” He swelled out his chest like a dumpy, dun-colored rooster. “It would look like an invasion, like a war, if we crossed the border in armored vehicles.”
“There is a war on,” Alejo said evenly. “The reason your vehicles are painted white is to distinguish them from local combatants. The Ethiopians won’t fire on a U.N. convoy.”
“I’m familiar with United Nation Recognition Procedure,” Colonel Chutani snapped. “The color is a deterrent.”
Pim Visser spoke up in an oily voice. “Then give Mr. Garcia and me the padlock keys and the master switch codes.”
Alejo bristled inwardly at the Dutchman lumping the two of them together, but he kept silent. As much as he disliked the thought, Visser was right: they needed those key codes. If the Blue Hat guards were bailing, the sight of armored vehicles stationed around the camp would go a long way towards keeping the jackals at bay. Alejo lofted a quick prayer. Those keys needed to end up in his hands rather than with Visser.
The crazy Dutchman had drawn too much attention to the camp already by ambushing the government army convoy the previous week. God only knew what he’d try with a two dozen APCs and up-gunned jeeps.
“You ask me to break the law! How can you be so bold?” Colonel Chutani feigned shock. “I won’t leave United Nations equipment in the hands of civilian personnel. It’s against regulations,” he pronounced haughtily.
Alejo heard Pim Visser mutter, but a thought dropped into his mind. “I’m U.N. personnel. You can leave them with me.”
“You are civilian—” the colonel began.
“My wife and I are designated medical service providers with the U.N. Dhubbato Refugee Mission, listed in section seventeen B of the staff roster. And as the primary physician at the clinic and head of the local medical staff. I’m officially requesting access to those vehicles.”
“On what grounds?”
Alejo’s mind churned, then it hit him. “Well… you’ve hired all the local trucks. I might need emergency medical transport. So I am requesting you hand over those vehicles to the medical staff.”
Colonel Chutani fish-mouthed once again, and Alejo had to bite back a grin. Medical personnel had no authority to requisition military assets; he hoped Colonel Chutani didn’t know that.
Alejo tightened his eyes and held out his hand. “I’d hate to report to the U.N. East Africa Mission that the refugee casualty rate was compounded by lack of transport.”
For a bureaucrat, procedure is everything, outcome is nothing. But covering your ass is above all. Colonel Chutani loathed the thought of negative marks in his file come the next annual evaluation.
A Peacekeeper NCO jogged up and whispered something in the colonel’s ear. All the soldiers were loaded, and the trucks were ready to roll.
Alejo gestured with his open hand and raised an eyebrow in expectation. The colonel glared at it, at him. Alejo could almost see his wheels spinning furiously.
He could call my bluff and walk away, Alejo thought. Please God, don’t let him grow a brain now.
Suddenly Colonel Chutani dropped a ring full of barrel keys and radio fobs in Alejo’s palm, turned on his heel and stomped off. “I’ll be inspecting every centimeter of those vehicles when I return. Every scratch, every dent, every liter of petrol will be accounted for,” he called over his shoulder.
“Of course, Colonel,” Alejo said. “Thank you.”
Alejo, Korfa, and Wonli stepped back as the first of the civilian trucks pulled forward. Pim Visser and his men stepped to the other side of the roadway. Clutches banged and growled as the motley convoy picked up speed. Colonel Chutani leaned out a window and shouted as his truck rolled past. His words were lost in diesel growl and dust clouds, but Alejo waved, nodding solemnly.
Between darting trucks, Alejo spied Pim Visser staring at him. He surreptitiously passed the key ring to Wonli. “Take these and find me two hundred good men. Former soldiers would be best. Tell them to be here in thirty minutes.”
Wonli nodded and vanished back toward the camp. Korfa stayed at Alejo’s side.
Sure enough, Visser strode over in the dust wake of the last flat-front Iveco. “Where are they?”
“Sorry?” Alejo blinked.
Visser made an approximation of an indulgent grin, drum-skin stretched over a skull mask. His ice-blue eyes shone. “We both want the Lord’s will: Dhubbato protected from the forces of darkness. My men and I are called for such a time as this.”
“His ways are mysterious,” Alejo conceded and turned toward the main camp.
Pim Visser lifted his voice. It was thin, almost reedy, but an underlying edge snagged Alejo’s attention back.
“We are a covering for this flock.” The Dutchman spread his hands toward his men. “Jehovah Jireh—the Almighty Provider—has granted those vehicles to us, his willing warriors. The Scriptures declare ‘The LORD thunders at the head of his army; his forces are beyond number, and mighty are those who obey his command. The day of the LORD is great; it is dreadful. Who can endure it?’ Do not oppose His will, Señor Garcia.”
Alejo cocked his head, puzzled by the man in front of him. “Psalm Seventy-One says, ‘Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man. For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.’”
The Dutchman grimaced again. “See? We do want the same thing.”
“Yes, but we’re coming at it in two very different ways,” Alejo countered.
“Brethren should dwell in unity under their Lord. You know and serve the Lord Jesus.”
“I do.”
“Then give me those keys.”
“No.”
The gaunt Visser raised his voice and pointed a bony finger in Alejo’s face. “The Lord has need of them.”
Alejo smiled, but his dark eyes sparked hard as flint. “I’ll make sure He gets them.”
The Dutchman flushed, but Alejo hardly noticed. His attention was suddenly drawn to the faces of the Somalis behind him. They were watching him duel verses with their self-styled guardian. Dirty, thin. desperate, it was easy to pick out the thugs, the bullies, the opportunists who wrapped their avarice in religion, their cruelty in combat. But most were ragged men clinging to old rifles and fresh anguish: fathers crushed by loss, teens swayed by rhetoric, blinded by revenge. Human beings lashing out against misery, terror and prejudice.
The flotsam of war; the damaged and despairing, clinging to whatever scrap they could find… like everyone in Dhubbato.
Alejo Garcia, former smuggler, murderer, alcoholic and blasphemer saw himself reflected in their faces. And he was startled by an abrupt reminder of grace.
God have mercy.
God have mercy on us all.
Visser gaped as Alejo turned away with Korfa and walked back into camp. No one called out. No one pursued.
The two of them
entered the sea of tents wrapped in silence. Finally Korfa broke the spell. “That was close.”
“Yes, it was,” Alejo agreed. “Between the Dutch nut and the robbery at the clinic, would to God today’s trouble is over. I’ve had enough.”
Korfa smiled and began to recite in a singsong lilt. “‘By the morning hours and by the night when it is stillest, thy Lord hath not forsaken thee nor doth He hate thee; and verily the latter portion will be better for thee than the former, and verily thy Lord will give unto thee so that thou wilt be content. Did He not find thee an orphan and protect? Did He not find thee wandering and direct? Did He not find thee destitute and enrich? Therefore the orphan oppress not; therefore the beggar drive not away; therefore of the bounty of thy Lord be thy discourse.’”
Alejo gave him a wry grin. “I know that’s not in the Bible.”
“It’s the Quran. Sura 93. Right now, I think it speaks of you,” the Somali said softly.
Alejo stopped suddenly. Korfa pulled up beside him, troubled, but Alejo reached out and embraced the younger man. “Thank you, Korfa.”
As they neared the medical clinic, Alejo spotted a boy weaving his way expertly among the people, the tent lines, debris of the crowded path. He was hard to miss, this boy with a bright red shirt. He was nimble, fast, and running straight towards him.
Ghedi? Alejo thought. No… Abdi. His name was Abdi, and he lived with his grandmother in section five.
Abdi ran right up to him. “Boss Doctor, I have a message.”
Alejo knelt down.
“You son is here. Him say to tell you he’s here with friends from Belf-ast.”
Alejo felt the world stop. “My son? Curro is here in Dhubbato?”
Abdi shook his head vigorously. “Up on the mountain. Well hidden. Them asks for meeting today.” He handed Alejo a slip of paper with a series of numbers scrawled across it.
Alejo stared at the GPS coordinates. Eshu International was here, here in Somaliland. Tam and Jace and Poet9 had come with the Triplets back to Africa. And they had put his son smack in the middle of a civil war.
Abdi tugged Alejo’s shirt. “I tell them you come?”
Speechless, Alejo nodded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN – Off the Leash
Hargeisa International Airport, Somaliland
The handwritten sign tacked over the door read, “Dawson-Hull Corporate Security Services: Tech Support, Field Division. We keep your shit together.”
Inside the doublewide door, four men and three women were in the middle of a battle a hundred kilometers away.
Ajeet Chandra jammed the joystick down and left, the ochre and rust of Somaliland scrub blurring on his tri-screen display. “At my four o’clock!” he yelled. “They’re running. Hit the trees, the trees!”
Beside him, Chris Mansfield thumbed the 20mm cannon button on his controller. Puffs of dirt geysered in a line on the center monitor, a faint burping audible through the speakers in his headset. “Scratch two. Kibbles and bits, baby!” he shouted. “We’re having pizza for lunch.”
“I gave you them,” Chandra whined. “They don’t count.”
“Hell yes, they do! That’s eleven confirmed so far, right W.O.?”
Watch Officer Penswick surveyed the numbers at the bottom corner of the screen in front of him. “Sausage and pepper this time, Mansfield. I hate pepperoni.”
“It’s my choice. That’s the rules!” he called back. “I like the spicy pepperoni.”
The tall officer looked up over the top of his glasses. “Tough to confirm those last targets. There’s a lag in the real-time feed. Gun-cam was blurry too.”
“Sausage is good though,” Mansfield noted brightly. He thumbed the cannon again. “Ohhh. Twelve.”
“KBR pizza tastes like burnt cardboard drenched in power-steering fluid,” Chandra said.
Mansfield’s brow furrowed. “No, it doesn’t. Besides, crunchy is better than limp. Nothing worse than a slice you’ve got to roll up like a burrito just to keep all the cheese from sliding off.”
The burp-burping sound came from his headset again. “Infantry count?”
“Only in groups of ten or more,” Penswick answered.
“Damn.”
Watch Officer Penswick surveyed the interior of what was euphemistically termed ‘Regional UCAV Command.’ Twenty-four ‘pilot’ stations, twelve on each side, stretched down the narrow confines of the trailer. Like the weird hybrid offspring of dentistry and video arcade, each station featured a leather recliner perched in front of a three-screen home theater display. With a joystick and multifunction console in each armrest, each station allowed one ‘pilot’ to control one of the new Nemesis unmanned combat aerial vehicles.
Developed in the early twenty-first century, remote drone control gave the term ‘stand-off combat capability’ a whole new twist. Connected via real-time satellite link, the technicians under Watch Officer Penswick’s command could just as easily have been flying their drones and destroying targets from a different time-zone.
Eighteen of the stations sat empty and dark, but the six nearest to him were frenetic with activity. Delta and Gamma flights were engaging suspected SPLM units in the rocky scrub near the Somaliland/Ethiopian border.
Officer Penswick glanced down at one of his own displays, then focused at the pilot at the end of the Delta row. “Nguyen, you going to hit anything or just burn fuel and ammo all morning?”
“I’m trying,” the Vietnamese technician muttered. He yanked back on the joystick and put his drone in a high-g barrel roll that would have jellied the guts of a human aviator. His screens lurched sickeningly, then the brown horizon snapped into place. A line of olive-drab trucks filled the lower portion of his center screen, coming head on.
Nguyen mashed the cannon button as the trucks whipped out of frame. The last vehicle in the convoy came apart. “Fuck…”
“Your C.A.T. on?” Penswick asked.
The remote pilot toggled a switch on his left side armrest with a loud click.
“I heard that,” the Penswick said. “Millions of euros in computer-assisted targeting is there for a reason, you Muppet. This isn’t X-Box. You can’t twitch fast enough in real-life remote combat.”
“Got it, sir.”
“You better. Someone lase a target for him or he won’t make quota.”
Remote Pilot Chandra pulled on his controller again. “Bakrichod… C’mon, you guys. Call targets for me too, will ya? I’m not losing to Mansfield.”
“Again. You’re losing to Mansfield again,” Nguyen said absently.
“Piss off! Pizza sucks.”
Lee Stephen, one of the Gamma flight pilots spoke up. “Don’t be hating. Nothing wrong with pizza. It’s the cook’s fault.”
“How do you screw up frozen pizza?” Chandra enunciated, making each word a question. “You have to try. I mean follow the damn instructions.”
“No speakee Engrish,” Stephen mimicked. “You wan nother slice peppaloni?”
Light laughter rippled through the trailer. Penswick grinned, then went back to monitoring the battle.
The flight command station sat on a raised deck at the head of the trailer by the door. A multi-panel flatscreen filled the wall, capable of displaying camera views from all twenty-four Nemesis drones in their air wing. Currently six panels were spastic with tilting, rushing images of the dusky Somaliland countryside blotted with tiny fireballs and fingers of smoke. Every few seconds, a screen would focus on a cluster of burning vehicles and figures scattering like ants. Five minutes into the engagement, the combined kill-tally of the two flights stood at twenty-one confirmed, five probable.
Pilot Stephen flipped the cover off the arm missile switch as he angled for a wheeled vehicle hiding in a wadi. The box-reticle went from yellow to white to green. He stabbed the launch button. “Hellfire away.” Light bloomed on his right-hand screen three seconds later, a burst of white noise coming through his tiny console speakers. “Gamma’s gaining. That was a Centauro.”
<
br /> “Noted.”
“Officer Penswick?”
“Armor’s not double points, Stephen.”
“No, not that.” The pilot paused, then added, “Not that I’m complaining, but what’s the deal?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ve been short-leashed since we deployed, gazing from the haze, reporting the SPLM build-up for weeks. Hargeisa and London did squat about it. Hell, we had to jump through flaming hoops every time we needed to paste a hostile who fired on us. And we lost ’em half the time because it took so long to get the nod. Now this morning, it’s like open season. What’s up?”
“Maybe it has something to do with a bazillion Skinnies coming over the border, numb nuts,” Chandra sniped. “Militia cadres up the ass, technicals, tanks, IFVs.”
“Could be probes. Recon in force,” Mansfield said.
“Bullshit. I hear Hamid and that blind guy Ghotta have hired war dogs out of the Euro-zone and Federation. Stone-cold mercenary muscle. These ain’t minor incursions. If they were, why we suddenly off the leash? I’ll bet you fifty the Professor is trying to give Dhul-Fiqaar his final exam.”
Mansfield launched a Hellfire of his own, then smiled at Chandra. “Careful. You’ll pull a muscle trying to be clever.” He pulled the joystick right as an explosion flared center left. “Thirteen.”
Chandra slumped in his seat with a sigh. “Fucking Filipino mechanics screwed my calibrations.”
“That’s gotta be it,” Stephen smirked. “They love pizza.”
Nguyen frowned, eyes glued forward, swaying in his seat as he slipped around a stream of anti-air fire. “I say it’s about time. I mean, why have us bring our toys if we can’t play?” His head jerked toward the empty stations beside him. “Whole ass-wipe country is infested with rebels, Somaliland armed forces are folding like a bunch of little girls… We should have brought more pilots.”
Shift Tense: Eshu International Book 2 Page 21