“My God!” came the call from outside. “Is it all right to come in there?”
Ben recognized the voice as belonging to Stan Travis. “Come on. Stay low and get on the floor as soon as you enter the building.”
Jersey jerked open the door and Ben could almost see her smile in the darkness as Marilyn Dickson came crawling in on all fours. He braced himself for what he was sure was going to be a very caustic comment from Jersey.
She didn’t disappoint him.
“Damn,” the diminutive bodyguard said sarcastically. “Looks like a big-assed crab crawling in.”
Stan Travis came crawling in right behind Marilyn, then Ford McLachlan, and finally came Paula Preston, bringing up the rear.
“Four big-assed crabs,” Jersey said.
“Your people told us this area was secure!” Marilyn squalled indignantly.
“Funny thing about war,” Ben said calmly. “Things can and often do change very quickly. Get over against that wall to your left, people. And stay down. You’ll be reasonably safe.”
“You mean it isn’t over?” Marilyn asked.
“I doubt it, lady,” Ben told her. “It’ll probably break loose again in a few minutes.”
Ben cut his eyes, which were accustomed to the dim light, to Paula. The woman did not appear to be frightened or upset. Ben had him a hunch that Paula would stand up to a spitting cobra and face it down. She was one hell of an actress, probably trained by the CIA at The Farm down in Virginia . . . years back.
Paula felt his eyes on her and met his gaze with a level gaze of her own.
She knows I’m onto her game, Ben thought. Hell, it was only a matter of time before she figured it out. It just might get real interesting after this.
“Here they come!” Corrie called. “They’ve split their forces. I just got a flash from Lieutenant Scott. They took a prisoner and the prisoner blabbed. They’re after you.”
“My, my,” Ben quipped, seating a fresh magazine into the belly of the CAR. “All this great big fuss over little ol’ me. I’m flattered.”
Ben could hear Marilyn’s snort of derision at that. Marilyn shrieked as a burst of automatic gunfire shattered what was left of some of the windows and splintered the wall behind her, sending bits of plaster and wood raining down on her head.
“I believe they’re really going to get serious about it now,” Anna said.
“I think you’re right, baby,” Ben told her, and that got him a sharp look from Marilyn. “She’s my daughter, Ms. Dickson,” Ben explained the familiarity.
“Your daughter!” Marilyn blurted.
“Yeah, lady,” Anna told her. “But right now, we don’t have time to explain our family tree.”
“Daughter?” Ford muttered. “I didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t either,” Stan said.
“But she’s just a child!” Marilyn exclaimed. “She couldn’t be over eighteen years old!”
“Yeah; something like that,” Ben agreed.
“Something like that?” Paula got into the conversation. “You mean you don’t know how old your own daughter is?”
“Not really,” Ben admitted.
“That’s disgusting!” Ford said.
“Well, I can come within a year or so,” Ben replied, keeping one eye on the outside for any sign of movement while he had a good time putting on the reporters.
“Where is the child’s mother?” Marilyn asked.
“Damned if I know.”
“You mean you deserted her?” Paula asked.
“Well, not exactly.”
“You . . . you beast!” Marilyn said.
Anna started laughing softly and the civilians cut their eyes to her dim shape. “We had them going there for a while, didn’t we, General Ben?”
“We sure did, baby.”
“Heads up!” Jersey put an abrupt end to the game. “Here they come.”
“Stay out of the way, you people, and get belly down on the floor,” Ben ordered the reporters. “And stay there.”
Bullets ripped through the shattered windows and tore into the walls. The reporters hugged the floor as Ben and team returned their attention to the attackers, coming in human waves out of the darkness.
“I think they’re serious this time,” Ben muttered, raising the stock of his CAR to his shoulder.
Then conversation was impossible as gunfire roared.
SEVENTEEN
A piece of torn-off wood or plaster slammed into the side of Ben’s helmet and the force of it knocked him a half step to the side. He shook his head to clear it and looked up just in time to see a man trying to climb through the remains of the window. Ben gave him a quick burst of 5.56 rounds at very nearly point-blank range, the lead taking him in the upper chest and shoulders. The attacker screamed in pain and fell back, his weapon, an AK-47, Ben observed, dropped inside the room.
Another man climbed partway into the room and Anna shot him in the face, knocking him back outside into the gunfire-sparked darkness.
Jersey was staying busy with her CAR, spraying the movement-filled night with pain and death.
Beth cussed and stuck the muzzle of her CAR into a man’s face just as he leveled his weapon, preparing to give the room a burst. The 5.56 rounds dissolved the attacker’s face into a mass of blood and he was dead and cooling before he hit the outside ground.
Cooper was rapidly clearing his perimeter of all living things with his SAW.
Corrie was firing her CAR from the hip and talking into her headset at the same time, steadily receiving reports from all over the airport.
The attack broke off as suddenly as it began, the darkness-shrouded enemy running away, disappearing into the night.
“Hold positions,” Ben ordered. “No pursuit.”
Corrie instantly relayed the orders.
After a few seconds, Ben said, “Give me some prelims on casualties.”
“Checking now,” Corrie said. “Be another minute or so.”
“Is it all right to get up now?” Ford asked from his position on the floor.
“Not yet,” Ben told him. “A couple more minutes.”
“But you’re standing up,” Marilyn protested.
“I never got down there.”
Marilyn muttered something under her breath, too low for Ben to hear, but he had a pretty good idea of the content. He smiled in the darkness.
“Half a dozen wounded, no dead,” Corrie reported. “We have a number of prisoners.”
“And we won’t get a damn thing out of any of them. Okay, people. You can get up. But don’t go outside and stay ready to hit the floor again.”
“Why won’t you get anything out of them?” Marilyn asked, brushing herself off.
“Because they don’t know who they’re working for,” Ben replied.
“What do you mean?” Stan asked.
“Just that. They’re mercenaries. Only the people at the top know who’s paying them.”
Vehicles were being pulled around to Ben’s CP, headlights on bright, illuminating the area all around. The bright beams picked up dozens sprawled in death and several trying to crawl away, too seriously wounded to stand up. Rebels were already moving among the dead, gathering up weapons and ammo. The weapons would be given to the newly formed police of the city. The bodies of the dead would be tossed into the beds of trucks, trucked away and stacked up in a field away from the city, and buried in a mass grave at first light. The wounded would be taken to the MASH tents and treated. Then they would be turned over to the civilian police. What happened to them after that was of absolutely no concern to Ben.
But it was to the press. “What will happen to the prisoners?” Ford asked.
“After we’ve treated them, they’ll be turned over to the local police.”
“And then?” Marilyn asked.
“I don’t know. This isn’t my country. It’s theirs. Ask them.”
“I shall.”
“You do that. And while you’re doing that, ask who is
paying these mercenaries to attack us. And find out why they’re so interested in killing me.” Ben turned away from her and met the eyes of Paula Preston. He held his steady gaze on the woman until she dropped her eyes. “I’d like to know. Wouldn’t you, Paula?”
The question seemed to startle her. “Ah . . . of course. Yes. Certainly.”
“I thought you would.” Smiling, Ben walked outside. He had planted the seed. Now he would wait to see how his garden grew.
There were no more attacks against the Rebels while they were in Conakry. The prisoners the Rebels captured that night knew nothing about who was in charge beyond their immediate officers. The Rebel doctors tended to their wounds and then turned them over to local authorities. If the press ever found out what might happen to the prisoners, they did not inform Ben as to their findings. Ben suspected the locals told the press to go suck an egg . . . or words something along that line.
Ben prepared to pull his 1 Batt out and continue south.
Next stop, the country of Sierra Leone.
Nick’s 18 Batt was only a day’s drive away from the west coast of Africa, his doctors seeing to the needs of the people in Mamou and Dabola, and Paul Harrison’s 17 Batt a day’s drive from Nick east at Kouroussa and Kankan. Ike was a continent away in Somalia, in what he described as the shithole of the world. There weren’t that many people left in Ike’s sector, for a decades-long civil war, drought, famine, and disease had just about wiped out the entire population of the country. Ike reported that the wild animals were once more reclaiming the land.
“You sure you people wouldn’t like to travel with Ike for a time?” Ben asked the press, a hopeful note in his words.
“Thank you, no,” Marilyn replied, speaking for the entire group.
“It was just a thought.”
Ben and his 1 Batt moved out just as the rainy season struck the land with full fury.
“Shhittt!” Jersey summed up the feelings of everyone as she stared out the window of the big wagon at the silver torrent hammering at the countryside.
“How long is this mess supposed to last?” Cooper questioned.
“Months,” Beth informed them.
“Double shit,” Jersey said.
“Well, we can take some consolation in the knowledge that it isn’t that far to Freetown,” Ben said.
“The country is a mess,” Corrie said. “Civil war still raging all over the place. Same with Liberia, the Ivory Coast, and Ghana.”
“It’s going to be heads up time for all of us from now on,” Ben warned the team. “We’ll be under threat of attack every hour of every day for our food, our supplies, our equipment and our weapons. We’re not going to be able to let down for an instant, for any reason.”
Anna muttered under her breath.
“What’d you say, Anna?” Ben questioned.
“I said, ‘then why bother with it?’”
“Because it’s on the way,” Ben replied. “We can’t very well avoid it.”
“Well, we don’t have to stop except to bivouac,” Anna persisted.
“And that may be all we’ll end up doing,” Ben told her.
“Even with the press along?” Jersey asked.
“I think the press is going to get very weary of being shot at, Jersey. And if several of them get wounded, or killed . . . well, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Won’t make any difference,” Anna said. “If they see one hungry child or sick person, they’ll immediately start pissing and moaning and demanding we do something.”
Ben didn’t reply, but he silently agreed with his adopted daughter, and knew the team felt the same way. They’d been putting up with liberal reporters for years and could just about predict their every move . . . or thought.
The reporters from the SUSA, on the other hand, realized that fate often dealt good people a lousy hand in this card game called life, and sometimes one just had to look away and keep on walking, for there reaches a point in the human condition where any kind of help is only a stop-gap measure; a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound. Giving a tetanus shot to a person who is dying of starvation is a waste of time, money, and supplies. Realists understand that; idealists never will.
Beth jumped in verbally between Ben and Anna, before Anna could say more. “This month we’re going to have twenty days with rain—of the monsoon type, remember—next month twenty-five days, and the next two months it will rain every day. Isn’t that something to look forward to?”
“You’re a real bringer of joy, Beth,” Cooper said, squinting his eyes, trying to see through the deluge that hammered at the wagon.
“I do try!” Beth replied brightly.
“I roger that,” Corrie said, then leaned forward. “Boss, flybys confirm that the bridges connecting Lungi and Freetown have been destroyed.”
“Damn!” Ben muttered. “How about the city itself? Are we getting any last minute reports out of there?”
“Nothing since last week, when we intercepted that radio transmission about Freetown being under siege and not being able to hold out much longer.”
Ben rode in silence for a few slow miles, the only sound the drumming of the heavy rain on the roof of the big wagon. Finally he sighed and said, “We’ll bypass Freetown. We already knew that Lungi has been sacked and looted so many times there is nothing left. Corrie, bump the Scouts and advise them to avoid Freetown.” He opened a map. “Where are the Scouts?”
“Waiting on the north side of the Little Scarcies River.”
“The bridge still intact there?”
“Affirmative to that.”
“Tell them to hold the bridge open for us and wait for us there.”
“Yes, sir. A reminder that what is left of Kambia is a ghost town.”
“Yes. I remember that transmission. Cooper, stay on this road, the Port Loko highway. We’re not going to get within a hundred miles of Freetown. I’m not going to get us involved in some damn civil or tribal war if I can avoid it.”
“The press is going to love this news,” Jersey warned.
“Fuck the press,” Ben said. “I’m going to tell them when we stop that if they wish to go to Freetown, they are certainly free to do so . . . on their own.”
Cooper cut his eyes to Ben for a second. “They just might take you up on that, boss.”
“I sure as hell won’t make any attempt to stop them.”
The weather probably had much to do with it, but the column came under no hostile fire on the way to what was left of Kambia. The column picked their way through the ruins of the town, seeing no signs of life, not even a dog or a cat, and continued south toward the Little Scarcies River.
“Nothing happening here, General,” the Scout in charge of the detachment told Ben when they arrived late that afternoon. The roads were terrible and getting worse the further south they went. “We haven’t seen anybody.”
“As soon as we get some shelter up, you people will be relieved so you can relax a bit. Thanks, gang.”
“No sweat, General.”
That evening, the cooks prepared only coffee and kept huge urns of it hot all night. The Rebels, including Ben, ate field rations. There was no point in cooking, for by the time anyone carried their trays or mess kits away from the mess line, the food containers would be filled up with water.
And the rain continued to come down in silver/gray sheets with no signs of abating.
“Screw this,” Ben abruptly said, when the column was only a few miles from Port Loko. “Corrie, tell the Scouts to hold up and wait for us. We’re going to get out of this damned rain for a change.”
Port Loko had been the scene of many battles, that was evident by the bullet and shell pocked buildings, but there were enough structures left standing to afford some welcome shelter from the rain and for the cooks to serve up a hot meal.
The Rebels took turns standing naked in the rain, soaping up and rinsing off, then the welcome feeling of dry clothing, at least for a short time. Then a hot meal. Even if t
he beef was canned, the potatoes were fresh, the bread just baked, and the gravy hot and good.
But what bothered them all, even though it was mentioned in quiet whispers, was the absence of people.
“Scouts report they found a boneyard,” Corrie told Ben softly, after moving to his side. “Just outside of town. Hundreds of skeletons. Men, women, and children.”
“Let’s go take a look.” Ben struggled into his poncho and picked up his CAR.
“All of them shot, General,” the doctor said, standing up from his inspection upon Ben’s arrival. “You can see the slugs in some of the skulls.”
“Tribal warfare,” Ben said softly, squatting down and sticking the muzzle of his CAR into a gaping eye socket. He shook the skull and the slug rattled about. “Probably. But I don’t imagine we’ll ever know for sure. How many you estimate here, Doctor?”
“Five or six hundred, give or take a hundred. Hard to tell the way the bones have been scattered by foraging animals.”
Ben stood up. “Well, at least here we know what happened to the people. Perhaps never the why, but at least the what.”
Ben walked off, muttering about ignorance, butchery and barbarism. For once, the press had nothing to say as they gathered around in the rain, standing silently, filming the scene for their viewers back home.
EIGHTEEN
At Port Loko Ben told the press about the conditions in Freetown. “Any of you who wish may go to Freetown if that is your desire. I won’t stop you.”
“You will provide escort?”
“No. I will not.”
A silence greeted Ben’s statement, then a few members of the press protested. But the older hands said nothing. They understood that Ben was under no mandate to provide them security. He had not asked for the press and considering that, Ben and the Rebels had been very accommodating thus far.
Four members of the press stood up, one stating, “We feel it is our obligation to visit the city and report on the events here.”
“Good luck,” Ben told them.
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