Sand and Fire (9780698137844)

by Young, Tom

  The man lifted a hand mike from where it was clipped on his uniform, talked into a radio in Arabic too rapid and colloquial for Gold to follow. She could not understand the answer that crackled back, either.

  Ongondo found his AU identification card. He passed it to Gold, who offered it to the guard through the open door. Ongondo spoke in what Gold assumed was Berber. The guard read the ID, flipped it over, checked the back. Returned the card.

  “Go to there,” the man said. He pointed to a military hangar separated from the main terminal by an aircraft parking ramp. An aging transport plane—some kind of twin-engine turboprop—sat on the ramp. Whatever it was, it had remained there for a while. Oil stains darkened the pavement under its engines, and bird droppings soiled the windscreen. Gold had seen forlorn, disused airplanes like that taking up space at airports all over North Africa and South Asia.

  “We send medic,” the guard added.

  “Thank you,” Gold said. “Salaam.”

  “Salaam.”

  Gold tried to pull the Nissan’s damaged door shut, but it wouldn’t close all the way. She didn’t care. She tapped the accelerator with her foot and steered to the military hangar. When she parked the vehicle and shut off the engine, she puzzled for a moment about what to do with the keys.

  “I was going to leave you this vehicle to take back to the camp when you flew back here,” Gold told Ongondo. “But I don’t think you’ll want to be seen driving around in it now, with all the bullet holes.”

  “I’ll worry about that later,” Ongondo said. “Now we just need to get out of here.”

  Gold handed him the keys. He pocketed them and stepped out of the vehicle. Ongondo opened the Nissan’s side door and helped the Tuareg man get out. The man winced with every movement. He held on to his forearm while Gold, Ongondo, and the two boys escorted him into the hangar. Gold pulled on a corroded aluminum door at the back of the hangar, and the door squeaked open.

  Inside, pigeons fluttered and cooed in the rafters. The smell of oil and mold hung in the air. An Mi-8 helicopter rested in one corner, its rotors missing. A metal folding chair, its seat rusted through in places, leaned against the wall. Gold unfolded the chair, and the wounded man lowered himself into it. The Tuareg boys brought everyone’s bags into the hangar.

  Gold hoped fervently that the C-130 would arrive as scheduled. She had no backup plan. She dared not venture out onto the Algerian roads again; if the aircraft diverted for any reason, she and her group would remain stranded at a dust-blown Saharan airport with minimal security.

  She kneeled beside the Tuareg man’s chair. The man continued to grip his arm, and he bent forward with his eyes closed. Ongondo stood nearby. The hangar’s main doors were open, and Gold stared out toward the runway.

  “Please tell him I know he’s in pain,” Gold said. “I’m sorry we can’t do better for him right now.”

  “I did,” Ongondo said.

  “Thank you. I can’t believe we got clear of that ambush.”

  “You drove brilliantly. Where did you learn such driving?”

  “U.S. Army.”

  “Very impressive.”

  Ongondo strode over toward the Tuareg boys, spoke in their language. He huddled with them near the derelict helicopter and chatted in tones that sounded almost fatherly. The boys replied with what could have been pleading. When Ongondo walked away from the conversation, he wore a look of dissatisfaction.

  “Anything wrong?” Gold asked.

  “I tried to get them to tell me about this uncle selling food to Islamists. I think the older boy knows the most, but they all suspected something about his uncle. They don’t want to talk until they’re away from here. They are very afraid.”

  “They have reason to be, especially after what they saw today.”

  “True,” Ongondo said. “Do you think those men who attacked us have any connection with Sadiq Kassam?”

  “That’s certainly a good bet.”

  A man dressed in the same uniform as the gate guards came into the hangar. He carried a washcloth and a metal box with a red cross on the lid; Gold figured he was the medic. Ongondo spoke in Berber and pointed to the Tuareg man. The medic regarded the man’s arm and began to untie the makeshift bandage. As the medic worked, he continued talking with Ongondo.

  “He says it would be better to take him to a hospital right away,” Ongondo said.

  “I know it,” Gold said, “but not with bad guys out there looking for us.”

  The medic lifted the blue bandage to reveal the wound. The Tuareg clenched his teeth. Blood had begun to clot within the fabric, and the cloth stuck to the torn flesh. When the cloth peeled away, the injury began bleeding again. Red droplets spattered onto the dirty cement floor.

  The wounded man’s son moved closer to watch. At the sight of the blood, he began to cry. Despite obvious pain, the man spoke to the boy with what sounded like words of reassurance.

  Given the torn-up wrist, Gold wondered if the injured Tuareg would keep full use of that hand. Lots of small bones there to get shattered. The medic wiped at the wound with the washcloth, and the wounded man let out only the briefest cry of pain. The medic spoke again, and Ongondo translated into Tamahaq. The Tuareg nodded, kept his eyes closed and jaw set.

  From the first-aid kit, the medic withdrew a packet of Celox gauze. Gold had seen products like that in the military: the pad contained granules of a hemostatic chemical to aid clotting. For grievous injuries, a medic could pour the granules directly into a wound. But Gold had heard one resourceful pararescueman say that, in a pinch, you could accomplish the same thing with the dry flakes of instant mashed potatoes.

  The medic tore open the packet. He wrapped the Celox around the wound, and the fabric adhered as if glued. A crimson stain expanded into the dressing. The medic wrapped conventional gauze over the Celox. Uttered a few words in Berber.

  “Our injured friend is very stoic,” Ongondo said.

  “He would make a good soldier,” Gold said.

  She checked her watch, walked to the hangar’s main entrance. Shaded her eyes with her palm, scanned the sky. Puffy cumulus scudded above, backdropped by pure blue. The sight implied serenity not at all in accord with events around her.

  The turboprop grumble of a C-130 told her she wouldn’t have to wait much longer. She’d jumped out of C-130s often enough to distinguish their sound from any other plane. The grumble grew to a low growl, and in the distance Gold spotted the airplane churning through the scattered clouds.

  “Our aircraft is here,” she said.

  Eventually the Herk turned onto final approach, its propellers appearing as translucent discs. As it glided toward the runway, the Tuareg boys joined Gold at the front of the hangar. They watched the airplane in silence, and Gold wondered if they felt frightened about flying for the first time. They showed no fear, only mute curiosity. The attempted ambush had likely reset all their calculations of risk.

  The C-130 settled onto the runway, wings rocking slightly. Gold noticed a horizontal green stripe painted on the tail fin below the American flag. Black lettering within the stripe read THE ROCK. An aircraft out of Little Rock Air Force Base, Gold surmised. She had never been there, but Parson had told her about his tactical airlift training in Little Rock: challenging sessions in the simulator, low-level runs through the Ozarks, post-mission debriefs over beers in the club, days off spent hunting deer and ducks. She wondered if Parson knew any of this Herk’s crew.

  After taxiing onto the ramp, the C-130 shut down. Its propellers slowed to a stop, but its auxiliary power unit kept howling. Gold resisted the temptation to walk toward the aircraft. She operated under different rules now, out of uniform, and she didn’t want to make the crew nervous. Eventually a loadmaster emerged from the plane and strode to the hangar. He looked young, in his early twenties. Lanky guy in beige desert flying gear, almost an image of Parso
n twenty years younger. From the name tag on his flight suit Gold saw he was an airman first class, a very junior enlisted rank.

  “Ma’am,” he asked, “are you Ms. Gold?”

  “I am. Thanks for coming to get us.”

  “No problem, ma’am. Colonel Parson’s orders. Before we left Mitiga, he said, ‘If anything happens to her or her people, I’ll beat you like you owe me money.’”

  Gold smiled. “That sounds like him. I’m sure he was kidding.”

  “Uh, probably.”

  At the airplane, the loadmaster helped the wounded Tuareg aboard, and the boys followed close behind. The loadmaster then gave a passenger briefing, explaining how to buckle the seat belts, where to find the exits.

  Ongondo translated for the Tuaregs, who sat in their seats in the cargo compartment and looked around in rapt silence. The crew offered Gold a seat on a bunk at the back of the cockpit. As the fliers prepared for takeoff, Gold watched the navigator, seated at a panel on the right side of the cockpit, aft of the pilots and flight engineer. That had been Parson’s station, she knew, before he became a C-5 pilot. Charts covered the nav table, along with a laptop computer running some sort of navigational app. The screen read FALCON VIEW. LIMITED DISTRIBUTION. A little icon in the shape of an airplane rested at a point that represented Takhamalt airport, and a dotted line stretched across the Algeria-Libya border and back to Mitiga.

  These charts and maps reflect our need to impose order on the world, Gold mused. They showed borders of our own invention, latitude and longitude, grid coordinates and aircraft identification zones. They implied more order than really existed.

  The crew began their checklist for starting engines. They spoke in clipped phrases, flipped switches and pressed buttons with a practiced confidence that Gold found reassuring. In a few minutes all four propellers spun. The flight engineer tweaked knobs and checked needles on the overhead panel, pronounced the checklist complete.

  The copilot called for taxi clearance, and the pilot in the left seat released the parking brake. The C-130 lumbered across the tarmac, turned onto a taxiway, rolled along until it reached the hold-short lines.

  “Reach Two Four X-ray clear for takeoff,” the tower called in accented English.

  “Two Four X-ray clear for takeoff,” the copilot answered.

  “Lineup checklist,” the pilot ordered.

  The crew ran another quick checklist, and the pilot steered the Herk onto the runway. Without ever stopping, he advanced the throttles. The acceleration pressed Gold’s back against the cushion behind her. The noise and vibration doubled, tripled. When the copilot called, “Go,” the pilot pulled back on the yoke, and the Herk climbed away from Algeria’s sands. Gold closed her eyes, allowed herself a moment of relief.

  About fifteen minutes later, the aircraft leveled off at altitude. When the chatter on the radios quieted, Gold ventured a question. She pressed her talk button and asked, “Anything new about those missing Marines?”

  “Not a word,” the pilot said. “But the terrorist sons of bitches released a video of the one they killed.”

  “I heard about that,” Gold said. “Horrible.”

  She felt a hollowness that went beyond disappointment into something like grief. She had hoped this crew would bring word of progress of some kind.

  “I understand you and Colonel Parson know one of those guys,” the navigator said.

  “We do. Gunnery Sergeant A. E. Blount.”

  “Very sorry to know your friend’s in trouble, ma’am.”

  Gold nodded, choked back the emotion.

  “We worked with him in Afghanistan,” she said. “Wish you could meet him.”

  Gold described the big Marine, so hard-muscled and imposing that he looked like something manufactured and up-armored rather than born. An unholy terror in combat, yet such a gentle giant with his friends that even Afghan children drew to him as a source of protection and security.

  “Not somebody I’d want to fool with,” the navigator said.

  “No,” Gold said.

  Blount’s strength and resourcefulness gave her the only anchor for what little hope she maintained. But no matter how powerful, he was still human. Still vulnerable to bullets, toxins, thirst, hunger, and all the other ways a person could die in a desert combat environment.

  For a few minutes no one said anything else. Gold appreciated the crew’s concern and courtesy, but she knew what they were thinking: The odds looked bad and only worsened with time. The fliers turned their attention back to their instruments and charts.

  “Look at that,” the copilot said. Pointed a gloved finger toward something on the ground.

  The pilot leaned to his right, peered out the copilot’s window.

  “Shit, the forecast was right,” the pilot said.

  Gold unbuckled her seat belt, stood to look. Miles to the south, along a distinct line, the desert turned to khaki-colored vapor. An invisible rope seemed to drag across the desert and lift the fine sands into the air, obscuring the roads and dunes. The scirocco winds again.

  “Hope we get into Mitiga ahead of that,” the copilot said.

  “Me, too,” the pilot said.

  Gold didn’t worry about her own safety; she’d heard Parson talk of making instrument landings through clouds of dust. But the dust storm would make it hard, if not impossible, for aircraft to continue searching for Blount and the others.

  She turned away from the cockpit windows, descended the three steps to reach the cargo compartment. In the back of the airplane, Ongondo had gotten out of his seat, as well. He kneeled on the steel floor, speaking with the Tuaregs. The refugees chattered in excited tones, especially the boy who’d been in the fight. She wanted to know why they’d become so talkative, but as a professional interpreter she considered it bad form to interrupt in a moment like that.

  But she could surmise a little just from the context: Now that the plane had safely departed Algeria, the Tuaregs had a story to tell.

  CHAPTER 31

  An ocean of sand stretched before Blount, Fender, Grayson, and Escarra. Guided by his DAGR, Blount led the de facto squad north. The coordinates displayed on the device told him the terrorists had driven him and the other captives farther south than he’d realized. But his position almost didn’t matter. He just wanted to get as far away as he could from where they’d been held, and to make contact with friendly forces as quickly as possible.

  The hills and hummocks of sand made for slow going; the SPEED portion of the DAGR screen read 4 KPH. Now that the sun had climbed high, it created mirages wherever the terrain lay flat: Silvery water glistened in sheets, only to evaporate when the men approached.

  Water wasn’t the problem, though. Grayson carried the CamelBak, and it still contained drinking water. Blount worried most about getting recaptured. Only a matter of time before Kassam returned to see his prize hostages had escaped. With trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles, Kassam and whatever henchmen he had left could catch up pretty quickly. Blount doubted he and his sleep-deprived, malnourished team would win the resulting firefight, especially with just the little bit of ammunition they’d scrounged. Best thing would be to get a helicopter ride out of here, so every few minutes Blount made a call on the PRC-148. So far, no answer. He decided to try it again, using the call sign he remembered from the comm card issued to him aboard the Tarawa. The ship and the original mission now seemed decades in the past.

  “Any station, any station,” Blount transmitted. “This is Havoc Two Bravo.”

  Nothing but hiss.

  “Seems like they forgot about us,” Fender said.

  “I’m sure that ain’t the trouble,” Blount said. “We just need a plane to fly near enough to hear me on this thing.”

  “I just can’t believe we’re out of there,” Grayson said. “God Almighty, Gunny, you kicked some ass.”

  “All
you boys did your part,” Blount said. “But now you gotta keep doing it. Keep your eyes open, and scan three hundred sixty degrees. If the dirtbags catch up with us, only hope is to see them first and get low.”

  “Aye, Gunny,” Fender said.

  A three-hundred-sixty-degree scan showed sun and blue horizon in most sectors but revealed a strange sight to the southeast. In that direction the sky darkened to the color of dried blood.

  “What is that?” Grayson asked.

  “Dust storm,” Blount said.

  “God, I hope that doesn’t keep a helo from getting to us,” Grayson said.

  “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  Escarra glanced back at the red sky, began mumbling in Spanish.

  “Dios te salve, María,” Escarra said. “Llena eres de gracia.” Escarra continued murmuring to himself as he walked.

  “What are you saying?” Grayson asked.

  Escarra stopped talking in Spanish. Looked at Grayson and said, “Is Hail Mary.”

  “Ah,” Grayson said.

  “That’s good, bud,” Blount said. “We’ll take all the help we can get.”

  To Blount, a Hail Mary meant a long forward pass, but he’d heard of the Catholic prayer. Something about “pray for us now and in the hour of our death.” Blount wondered if “now” and “the hour of our death” would turn out one and the same. Those dust clouds sure didn’t look like a good sign. The Tarawa had steamed through a storm right before this mission, and now weird weather loomed again. Blount thought that if he were a superstitious man, he’d believe he’d passed through storms to the underworld, or maybe to another time.

  Sure did seem like they’d come from the land of the dead. Blount had even brought back a two-hundred-year-old pistol in his pocket. He felt the weapon’s lock rubbing against his leg. That would more than likely leave a sore spot, but Blount had no intention of ditching the flintlock. He kept it as a symbol of victory. Besides, it was still U.S. government property.

  As the men walked, Blount looked them over to assess their condition. Everybody seemed reasonably strong, considering what they’d been through. But he doubted any of them had enough gas in the tank for a long battle if the enemy caught them again. As Blount regarded the men, he noticed a pouch on Grayson’s rig: an Individual First-Aid Kit. Blount couldn’t be sure, but it looked like his own.