Sand and Fire (9780698137844)

by Young, Tom

  “Merci beaucoup. Perhaps I say too much, but we will fly out with drop tanks installed and a full load of BGLs.”

  Sounded good to Parson. The drop tanks would greatly extend the Mirage’s range. And the laser-guided bombs—BGLs, in the ass-backward French acronym—provided devastating firepower against enemy vehicles and terrorist hideouts. Such a configuration would allow Chartier and his squadron mates to fly deep into the Sahara and strike hard, if necessary. The Mirage also carried the Damocles laser designator pod. The name amounted to a bit of Gallic poetry—the sword of Damocles over the enemy, just waiting to drop. Combined with the BGLs, the Damocles enabled pinpoint accuracy with heavy weapons.

  “You boys are loaded for bear,” Parson said. “I just saw where the UN gave us the green light. Kick some ass.”

  “Bien sûr. The képis blancs are mobilizing, too.”

  Parson knew that phrase from recent briefings about allied militaries. Képis blancs meant white kepis, the iconic hats worn by the French Foreign Legion. To Americans, at least, they were the only French troops with a reputation for busting heads. Parson considered the Legion a singular and brilliant concept for creating a fighting team: Take guys from around the world, eccentric adventurers and cutthroats who wanted a new start in life. Tell this band of brigands they could have a clean slate as long as they behaved themselves, devoted their lives to France, and passed training that could make hard men cry. Such soldiers would bear allegiance to little but their units. Hence their motto: Legio Patria Nostra. The Legion Is Our Nation. Tough enough to get away with wearing goofy white hats.

  After Chartier hung up, Parson scanned the drone feeds again. He almost dismissed them as more of the same, but something at Tarhuna caught his eye. Three vehicles sat parked next to one of the buildings. Parson felt sure the vehicles had not been there before. He looked closer and saw they were flatbed trucks.

  “Son of a bitch,” Parson whispered. He lowered himself into his desk chair, not taking his eyes off the screen. Men swarmed around the trucks. They entered the building empty-handed and came out in pairs, struggling with large drums or barrels.

  Parson checked his computer. It remained logged in to a secure satellite-based text connection with the Mission Control Element at Beale Air Force Base, where the Global Hawk’s controllers worked. Normally, Parson’s duties wouldn’t put him in direct connection with Beale, but his bosses granted him access because he’d made the original suggestion to monitor the potential weapons storage sites.

  ARE YOU SEEING THIS? Parson typed. He didn’t even know the name of the officer on the other end. The names changed as shifts changed, but the duties remained the same. His answer came a few seconds later.

  AFFIRMATIVE. KASSAM AND HIS BOYS?

  Parson considered his answer for a moment, then typed NOT THERE TO PICK UP THEIR WIVES FROM WORK, I’LL WAGER.

  In fact, he could think of no legitimate reason for anyone to do anything at Tarhuna. He glanced up at the screen, then back down at his computer. Thought to himself: Wait a minute. He looked back up at the feed. What were those guys wearing? Parson typed as quickly as he could.

  CAN U ZOOM CLOSER?

  AFFIRM.

  After what seemed like a long wait, though it could have been no more than a minute, the Global Hawk zoomed in. The men working around the trucks appeared to move with ant-like motions, with one mind and one accord. They wore bulky suits, and something covered their heads and faces. Whoa, Parson thought. Chem suits.

  THEY’RE WEARING MOPP GEAR, he typed.

  Parson’s suspicions had turned out right. If those bastards were dressed like that, they were handling chemical weapons and they knew what they were doing. When it came to bad guys, Parson worried more about competence than fanaticism. You could take out a wild-eyed moron with relative ease. The job got harder if the jihadist had some skills.

  As Parson considered the problem, a reply came from Beale.

  IMAGERY CONFIRMS GAS MASKS.

  Yep, Parson thought, I could have told you that. So who are we dealing with here? Veterans of almost anybody’s military would have at least some training for work in a chemical environment. The governments of the U.S. and European countries mandated the training for fear their troops would get slimed by the other side. Other services trained because they might use such weapons. These dudes could have learned this drill in the old Libyan army. Or in Iraq, Syria, or Iran, for that matter. Sadiq Kassam probably recruited his motley little troop from all over.

  The Combined Forces Air Component Commander needs to know about this, Parson thought. Put some steel on that target if possible.

  HAS THIS BEEN UPCHANNELED TO CFACC STAFF? Parson typed. His answer came quickly.

  AFFIRM. STRIKE AIRCRAFT UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME.

  That was too damned bad. To an airman, this was a target begging to be hit. But the Air Force didn’t have fighters or bombers ready at a moment’s notice all over the world.

  Barrel by barrel, the worker ants down there loaded all three trucks. When finished, they spread tarps over the barrels and secured the cargo with tie-down straps. Yeah, Parson mused, you probably wouldn’t want a drum of concentrated mustard agent rolling off your truck and breaking open all around you. Parson typed another message:

  YOU’RE GOING TO FOLLOW THESE GUYS, RIGHT?

  Parson wanted to blow away the insurgents right now, but with no fighters on alert close by, that wasn’t an option. The Global Hawk itself carried no weapons. But it could see where the bastards went. No reply came for a while. Parson wondered if something was wrong. Finally, the text box read BEALE MCE IS TYPING. Then the answer popped up.

  WE’LL TRACK THEM AS LONG AS WE CAN.

  What? Why wouldn’t they stay on the trucks indefinitely? This is what AFRICOM had been looking for. Parson tapped at his keyboard.

  WHAT DO U MEAN BY THAT?

  This time the reply came quickly.

  HAWK IS ALMOST BINGO FUEL. VERY SORRY, SIR.

  You gotta be kidding me, Parson thought. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, quivering just a little because he was so ticked off. If we lost the insurgents’ trail, when would we ever find them again? When these trucks blended unobserved with the flow of other traffic, they would effectively disappear. Parson stopped himself from writing his natural response, clenched his fingers into fists. “Damn it,” he muttered. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.” Other officers in the room glanced up from their computers. Parson shook his head. Mind your own damned business.

  He took a deep breath, calmed himself enough to write something reasonably professional. Parson typed HOW MUCH MORE TIME ON STATION?

  FIFTEEN MINUTES AT BEST, came the answer.

  We’re going to lose them, Parson thought. He tried to come up with a way to salvage the situation.

  CAN WE REDIRECT THE PREDATORS TO TARHUNA? he typed.

  He got the answer he expected.

  THEY CAN’T GET THERE IN TIME.

  Parson massaged his temples, sighed hard. He pushed his chair back from his computer and looked up at the feed. One of the trucks began to roll.

  “We had you,” Parson whispered to himself. “We had you dead to rights.”

  Nothing left to do but suggest the obvious. Parson typed again.

  FOLLOW AS LONG AS YOU CAN. AT LEAST WE’LL KNOW WHAT DIRECTION THEY WENT.

  His answer came quickly this time:

  YES, SIR.

  The first truck began moving along a narrow paved road, and the other two vehicles followed. Parson checked the data displayed along the edge of the video screen. The information included altitude, speed, heading, and other flight information. Based on the Global Hawk’s heading and sensor orientation, he determined the trucks were rolling south.

  So that narrows it down, Parson told himself. South into the vastness of the Sahara.

  The Hawk followe
d the trucks for a few miles but then veered away. The vehicles disappeared in the upper left corner of the screen as the drone broke off its surveillance.

  Figures, Parson thought. I have millions of dollars’ worth of high-tech hardware at my disposal. But I’d settle for a Piper Cub and a pilot with a Kodak if I could put them over those trucks.

  Lacking even that, Parson decided he’d ask if the CFACC could send an eval team to the site later on to see what evidence might remain there. But more than likely, he knew, the team would find nothing to indicate where the chemicals had been taken.

  Once terrorists took weapons from a central location, they could hide them so easily. Back during the Iraq War, the bad guys broke into stocks of hundreds of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. Damned things plagued coalition airplanes and helicopters for the entire conflict. Parson could recall spiraling down to landings in Baghdad and Balad, wondering when the next rocket would come burning up from the ground.

  Parson decided to give himself a break from all this frustration. He got up, left the ops center, and walked down the hall to the snack room. Took a Dr Pepper from the refrigerator, cracked off the cap. A few sips of the cold soft drink settled his nerves just a bit. His eyes wandered across a poster from Dassault Aviation that someone—probably Chartier—had taped to the wall.

  The poster showed a Mirage in flight. The delta-wing jet banked hard to the left with its afterburner lit. Cool.

  Parson took the Dr Pepper bottle with him as he returned to the ops center door and punched in the security code. He swung the door open and returned to his desk.

  In the short time he’d been gone, a new e-mail had popped up on his computer. He opened the e-mail and saw the attachment was a set of orders. When he read the orders, his mood improved immediately. The text read:

  MEMBER IS DIRECTED TO PROCEED AT EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY FOR TEMPORARY DUTY AT MITIGA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, LIBYA. . . . TDY PERIOD NOT LESS THAN 90 DAYS. . . . DUTIES ENTAIL COMMAND OF 401st AIR EXPEDITIONARY GROUP. VARIATIONS IN ITINERARY NOT AUTHORIZED. . . . MEMBER WILL CARRY WEAPON. GOVERNMENT TRAVEL CARD USE MANDATORY.

  Parson clicked to print the orders, sat back and smiled. This wouldn’t get him back into the cockpit, but at least it would get him out into the field. This day didn’t suck so bad after all.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sea breezes washed over Blount on the flight deck of the new USS Tarawa. The amphibious assault ship foamed through the Med at about twenty knots, steaming toward the Gulf of Sidra, off the Libyan coast. On the vessel’s superstructure, a sign painted in three-foot-high yellow lettering warned BEWARE OF JET BLAST, PROPS, AND ROTORS. But the Tarawa would conduct no flight operations today. Its armada of helicopters and Osprey tilt-rotors sat silently on the eight-hundred-foot deck, so the Marines took advantage of the long steel beach to conduct some training.

  A squad stood around Blount and Corporal Fender. The men wore desert combat boots and digital camo trousers, but above the waist they’d stripped to green T-shirts. Fender held a nonfiring handgun made of yellow plastic.

  “Y’all might see me use moves a little different from what you’ve been taught,” Blount said. “Don’t get me wrong; I like the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program just fine. But I also studied Krav Maga and some other styles on my own. Bottom line—use what works for you.”

  Blount and Fender stepped onto a rubber mat. Fender pointed the pistol at Blount.

  “Fender, the gunny is gonna feed you that pistol for lunch,” one of the Marines called out. His buddies laughed.

  “Nah, I ain’t gon’ hurt him,” Blount said.

  In fact, he had never injured a fellow Marine in training. That would have harmed a brother devil dog, shown bad form, and displayed a disregard for government property. Blount went on with his lesson.

  “Now, more than likely you’ll shoot him before it ever comes to this,” he said. “But suppose you got no weapon of your own, for whatever reason. You’ll want to disarm him quick as you can.”

  Blount stood about five yards from Fender. He raised both hands to shoulder level.

  “This is about the worst place to be,” Blount said. “At this range, I can’t reach him and he can’t miss. I might say ‘whoa’ or something, and with my hands up maybe he’ll think I’m surrendering. I just want him to hesitate for half a second. And I want to get off his centerline and close that distance right now.”

  Blount paused, eyed Fender’s hand. With a lowered voice, he addressed the corporal: “Hey, bud. Make sure you got your finger outside that trigger guard. I don’t want to break it.”

  “Aye, Gunny.”

  “All right,” Blount continued. “I’m gon’ use my whole body to get control of that weapon and knock him off his feet.”

  In two strides, Blount sidestepped, advanced on Fender. Blount’s right hand shot upward, grabbed the pistol by the barrel, and pushed it away. His left hand curled around the other side of the weapon and he cupped it over the hammer. Arms outstretched, Blount pushed Fender off balance. He delivered a kick toward Fender’s groin, but he pulled his foot back before he made contact. Otherwise, the blow surely would have crumpled Fender to the deck.

  Then Blount yanked with his left hand and pushed with his right. The motion put Fender on his knees and forced his wrist at such an angle that he could do nothing but let go of the pistol. If he hadn’t, his wrist would have broken. Fender kept his finger away from the trigger as warned. He released the handgun and stood up, rubbing his wrist.

  “I didn’t use a lot of strength here,” Blount said, holding the yellow pistol. “You little guys can do this, too. Now, in the real situation, you’ll do this so fast you’ll break his wrist no matter what he does. And you can expect that gun to go off, whether he means to fire or not. Don’t worry about it; you got control of the muzzle. And it’ll be the last thing his trigger finger does before it breaks, too.”

  More laughter. Blount enjoyed instructing in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program—“semper fu,” as they called it. The program’s motto: One Mind, Any Weapon. Just an ancillary role to his main job as a special operations team chief. Though he missed Bernadette and the girls already, it felt good to teach and lead Marines again.

  Still, something about this mission seemed different from all his previous deployments. The chemical weapons threat had a lot to do with it; anybody who said he wasn’t scared of nerve gas was either lying or stupid. But the chem threat alone did not explain why this trip felt . . . otherworldly. Maybe it was because the enemy this time—that new terrorist leader Sadiq Kassam—was such a weirdo. Orange beard, stolen flintlock, and all that. Maybe it was because Blount couldn’t get that image of Kelley’s last minutes out of his mind. Or maybe things felt strange because Blount had nearly settled into home for good, then made a real conscious decision to venture into danger again. As the Tarawa pitched through blue swells, the journey seemed almost mythic, as if he were crossing a threshold into some new realm with hazards and trials he could not imagine.

  The very sky seemed to threaten. To the east, off the bow and in the direction of Libya, thunderheads loomed over the sea. The clouds strobed with internal lightning. The effect made Blount think of watching a distant battle at night; you couldn’t see the mortars exploding, but you could see the flashes reflected against a mountainside. Godlike threshold guardians seemed to give Blount one last warning to turn back.

  Stop thinking nonsense, he told himself. You wanted this.

  Blount watched the squad of Marines practice the moves he’d shown them. Then he dismissed them; he’d give another lesson to a different squad tomorrow. No use trying to teach this stuff to too many guys at one time. If they couldn’t see what he demonstrated with his hands and feet, they couldn’t learn much. He loved this part of his job. You never knew when you’d give a Marine a tidbit of information that would save a life or win a battle.

  He gave the yellow
pistol back to Fender to put away. Then Blount buttoned on his uniform blouse and made his way to the TACLOG, the Marines’ shipboard nerve center. He found Captain Privett monitoring radio and computer traffic. Coffee mugs and sticky notes littered a room filled with electronic gear. A map of North Africa hung on one wall. The other walls displayed topographical and aeronautical charts of various sections of the Sahara. Shades of brown and gray depicted the terrain; almost no green appeared anywhere. The isogonic lines and contour markings implied an ordered world, a direct contrast to the mayhem that existed on the ground. Above the North Africa map, some Marine with a literary bent had posted a quote from a Roman poet, a line that rang true for the Corps: What coast knows not our blood?—Horace, 23 B.C.

  “Anything new, sir?” Blount asked.

  “Yeah, check this out.” Privett turned up the volume on one of the speakers. “An African Union patrol is going into a village somewhere in Algeria. Sounds like the bad guys got there first.”

  Blount listened hard, easily imagined the scene as troops entered an urban hostile fire zone. Their weapons at the ready, each man would scan his sector, primed to make instant decisions on whether to fire. Their radio procedures differed slightly from those Blount knew, but the cross talk sounded like squad leaders checking in with a platoon commander. The signals came in weak but readable.

  “Simba,” a voice called. “This is Piranha One. I have eight bodies on the western edge of the town. Each one has been shot in the back of the head.” The soldier spoke English with an accent, maybe that of Kenya or Nigeria.

  “Roger, Piranha One. Do you see enemy activity?”

  “Negative. But these wounds look fresh. The bodies are not cold. Whoever killed these people cannot be far.”

  “Acknowledged. Keep me advised.”

  Monitoring foot-mobile troops from a warship in the Mediterranean might have felt odd to some folks, Blount realized. But to him it seemed perfectly natural. Fit right in with the role of the Marines: to come in from the sea and project power ashore. Those men on the radio weren’t Marines, of course, but he hoped they knew what they were doing and stayed safe.