The American Mission

by Matthew Palmer

  “All of the lights are fucking green in this scope.”

  “Well, wait for any old light then. You’ll know it when you see it. Remember to really jump out that door. If you pussyfoot around, the tail is likely to slice you in half. We’re not all that high, so make sure that you’re clear of the aircraft and then pull that goddamn ripcord. Got it?”

  “Yeah. I’m ready. Mostly.”

  In between the two front seats was another makeshift control panel with several buttons, dials, and switches that Sykes called the Jumpmaster. He flipped two of the switches and the side cargo door of the aircraft opened up. There was a loud rush of air. Alex took a deep breath and looked out. He tried not to look at the jungle canopy a mile or so below. Grabbing the smooth steel bars welded to the sides of the door frame with either hand, he crouched down like a sprinter on the starting blocks. He had practiced this on the ground in Kinshasa. It had seemed easy. Over the door was a series of three lights. Alex knew that they were red, yellow, and green, but they all looked about the same color through his scope. The middle light was lit. Yellow. They were approaching the drop zone. Alex felt himself tense.

  The middle light went dark. The third light went green. He launched himself into the void.

  He sensed more than saw the tail of the aircraft whip by overhead, and then he was falling toward the forest floor, his body twisting violently in the air. Sykes, who had spoken with remarkable authority for a man who now claimed never to have jumped himself, had told Alex to focus on a single spot on the ground. Free-falling in the dark, however, he was having trouble even telling the ground from the sky. Without waiting to count to three, he reached across his chest and pulled the rip cord. Almost instantly, he was jerked roughly upright and the scene before him stabilized as the horizon seemed to reemerge from the jumble of images that had threatened to overwhelm him.

  The bright beacons of the Sammies’ infrared signals stood out in sharp contrast to the surrounding jungle. They looked to be less than half a mile away. Sykes had dropped him right on target. The parachute he was using was military grade and intended for jumpers with vastly more experience than Alex. Sykes had taught him the basics of steering and warned him that the controls for the rectangular airfoil were extremely sensitive. One thing they had not had time to practice was landings. Alex grabbed on to the two toggles that controlled the pitch of the canopy. It took a moment or two to get a feel for it, but the steering was surprisingly intuitive. There was no wind to speak of, and Alex was able to guide the parachute until he was almost directly over the signals from the twin Sammies. Then he pulled on the left steering line and started a corkscrew descent that he hoped would bring him down right in the center of Busu-Mouli.

  According to what Sykes had told him, it would take about four minutes to reach the ground from five thousand feet. It seemed to happen much faster than that. From about one thousand feet, Alex was able to make out the outlines of the buildings in Busu-Mouli and the layout of the central square.

  It was difficult to judge distance through the single lens of the Night Hawk. Alex concentrated on keeping the Sammies directly underneath him, making delicate adjustments with the unfamiliar steering controls. The Sammies were embedded in the ground just a few feet apart in an area about forty feet on a side that looked to be mostly clear of debris. That was where Alex hoped to land. For the last two hundred or so feet, the ground seemed to rise up at him with dizzying speed. At what he guessed was about fifty feet, he pulled down hard on the toggles to flare the chute and slow his descent before impact. He must have applied the pressure unevenly, however, because the chute slipped suddenly to the right, and instead of coming down in the clear area, he landed on the sloped corrugated tin roof of a house. The crash of his body against the metal made a terrible noise, but the tin roof was flexible and helped cushion his fall. He did everything he could to protect the equipment in his belly bag. Then the chute dragged him off the roof and he fell in an awkward heap, landing hard on his left side and smashing his head against a fence post. Even with the helmet, the blow left him dizzy and he struggled to strip off the chute before a gust of wind could pick it up and drag him across the courtyard.

  The noisy landing had alerted the village to the intrusion, and by the time he was free of the chute, Alex found himself staring through his eyepiece at the glowing green barrel of a Kalashnikov. Someone pointed a flashlight in his face, overloading the night-vision system, which flared white and then went black. It would reset itself eventually, but Alex simply flipped the goggles up onto his forehead. His left side and his left arm hurt like hell.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light. The man training the rifle on him was Jean-Baptiste. Three of his guardsmen stood behind him. Alex undid his chin strap and dropped the helmet and the Night Hawk to the ground.

  “Didn’t we do this the last time, Jean-Baptiste? You point a gun at me. Someone tells you that there’s no percentage in shooting me and we kiss and make up. Let’s skip ahead. Can you take me to the Chief? There’s something he needs to know. If you can’t tell by my entrance, it’s urgent.”

  Jean-Baptiste lowered the rifle grudgingly.

  Only now did Alex begin to realize just how terrifying—and exhilarating—the drop had been. Part of him wanted to scream into the night sky for the sheer joy of being alive, or at least not being dead. Sykes had clearly soft-pedaled the number of ways he could have killed himself on this jump.

  “I didn’t expect to see you back here,” Jean-Baptiste said.

  “I didn’t expect to be back, at least not so soon. I thought I might even show up on a boat or a plane, maybe even in the middle of the day. But I’m here now and I need to see Chief Tsiolo. Can you take me to him?” The rush from the jump had him keyed up and he was ready to pick a fight with Jean-Baptiste, even though the man was armed with a Kalashnikov.

  “The Chief is dead.”

  Alex felt like he had been kicked in the stomach.

  “What about Marie?”

  “Chief Tsiolo now.” It was Marie’s voice and Alex experienced a moment of pure relief as she stepped out from the shadows into the now torch-lit courtyard. She was dressed in khaki cargo pants and a black T-shirt. A long knife protruded from a sheath on her dusty work boots. A wide leather belt with an oversize gold buckle was the only truly feminine touch.

  To Alex’s surprise and pleasure, Marie hugged him, and he winced from the pain in his side as he tried to return her embrace.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  “Not seriously. This was my first and, if I have anything to say about it, last parachute jump. I’d say that I need to work on my landings, but if I never do this again then that’s really not true.”

  “You couldn’t have flown to Goma and taken the ferry downriver? That’s what most people do.”

  “I was in kind of a hurry, and it’ll likely be a while before I can take any commercial flights. It’s complicated.”

  They stood face-to-face for a moment, letting the silence speak for them.

  “I’m sorry about your father, Marie. He was a great man.”

  “Yes, he was. His death is a loss to us all, not least of all to me.”

  Suddenly Alex felt dizzy and he put out a hand to steady himself on the wall of the house. Marie took his arm and gestured for Jean-Baptiste to help on the other side.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get him up to the house.

  “I’ll give you one thing,” she added, with a hint of mischief.

  “What’s that?”

  “You do know how to make an entrance.”

  “Just wait until you see me leave.”

  After a few stumbling steps, Alex shrugged off the assistance. “I’m okay,” he said. “I can walk.”

  He smelled it before he saw it. The acrid odor of smoke seemed to permeate the village. When they arrived at the place where the
Tsiolo house had been, there was only a burned-out shell. A few charred beams were all that remained of the Chief’s home . . . of Marie’s home. Even without the night-vision scope, Alex could now see a number of buildings in the village that had fire damage. Some were still standing, others had burned to their foundations. A few were being rebuilt or repaired.

  “What happened?” Alex asked. But he knew the answer.

  “Genocidaires,” Marie replied. “They attacked us twice since you left. The first time they took my father from me. The next time they took my home. We beat them back both times . . . but the cost was terrible. With time, we can rebuild what was burned. The lives lost can never be replaced.”

  “I’m so sorry, Marie. What about the smelter?” Alex knew how important that building was to Marie’s plans for the future.

  “It survived. And we guard it very closely now. Come. I am staying in a house just up the road from here. Jean-Baptiste, why don’t you go settle down the guard. We don’t want the boys to start shooting at shadows.”

  With her home destroyed, Marie had moved into the second largest house in the village. The family that lived there had insisted on moving in with relatives so Marie could have the house to herself. Although sizable by village standards, the house was still only a single room with four sleeping pads on an elevated platform covered by mosquito nets. Near the door there was a kitchen area with a wood-burning stove that vented directly through the wall. A table made of rough-hewn planks and some empty crates served as both a living and dining area. A pair of oil lamps cast enough light to read by. Alex sat in one of the chairs while Marie poured him a generous glass of palm wine. The wine was too sweet and violently strong and exactly what he wanted.

  “How is your arm?” Marie asked in her South African–inflected English. Alex liked that she had chosen to speak to him in his own language.

  “Pretty banged up,” he admitted.

  “Let me see it.”

  Alex hesitated.

  “It’s either me or the traditional healer in the next village. I think you would call him a . . . what’s the word . . . witch doctor? For a few francs he’ll mix up a poultice of cow dung and bloodwort that he guarantees will work. For a few dollars he’ll break the wing of a chicken and then wring its neck. It’s supposed to be powerful magic. So what do you say? Your friends at Consolidated Mining have given me the finest first-aid training available in a five-day course.”

  Alex unclipped his belly bag and carefully stripped off his jumpsuit. He was wearing a dark blue T-shirt and a pair of tan pants made of some rip-proof but breathable synthetic fabric that Keeler had given him. Zippers along the legs of the jumpsuit made it possible for him to take it off without removing his heavy boots. His rib cage protested the effort and his arm was throbbing by the time he was finished. Marie’s touch was gentle and it was clear to Alex that she knew what she was doing. She checked for range of motion and probed his forearm to see how far up the pain went.

  “There’s no way to be certain without an X-ray, but I don’t think it’s broken. It is at least sprained, and we should splint it up and maybe put it in a sling for a while.”

  She put a simple splint on Alex’s wrist and gave him a few non-narcotic painkillers from the small stock of medicines she kept in her rebuilt first-aid kit.

  “Now let me take a look at your ribs,” she said.

  “I’m okay. Really. I just got the wind knocked out of me.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  She had to help Alex remove his shirt. Very gently, she explored the muscles and bones along his side with the tips of her fingers until she found a spot that made him flinch.

  “I think you may have cracked at least one rib and you’re going to have a very large bruise. But it doesn’t look serious.”

  Ignoring the screaming protest from his ribs, Alex struggled back into his shirt. He was still feeling a little light-headed as he sat back at the table. Marie poured herself a glass of the home-brewed palm wine from a plastic bottle that still bore the label of a popular cooking oil.

  “Thanks, Doc. I’m glad someone’s still making house calls.”

  “It’s not every day that a representative of the all-powerful United States government parachutes into our village in the middle of the night. Onto our village, really, if you think about it.”

  “I’m afraid that I no longer represent the U.S. government. I’m here on my own.”

  Marie raised an eyebrow. “What happened?” she asked. “Did you kill someone?”

  “Not yet, but I’m seriously considering it.”

  Alex told her what had happened and about his suspicions regarding Consolidated Mining and Henri Saillard. He told her about his dissent channel message, being framed as a spy and a diamond smuggler, his escape, and the murder of his friend Antoine. He explained what Jonah Keeler had told him about the shadowy Africa Working Group. And finally he told her about what he had found in Spence’s safe—the epitaph for Busu-Mouli. Marie asked no questions, but when he described Antoine’s death she reached across the table to take his hand in her own.

  There was a brief hint of fear in her eyes when he told her about the contract with Executive Solutions that was quickly replaced by a look of grim determination. Marie Tsiolo was a Luba chief from a long line of chiefs, and her people needed a leader.

  Her first question took him by surprise.

  “Do you want to tell me about the scar on your chest? The circular one. My father had one just like it.”

  “I know. He gave me this.” Alex touched his chest where Marie’s father had carved the ritual symbol. “He also made me a citizen of Busu-Mouli and a member of the Luba tribe, which I suppose makes you my chief now.”

  “So he brought you into his little club, did he? He and Katanga were very secretive about it. What do they call it? The Brotherhood?”

  “That’s what I understand. You probably know more about this than I do, even though I’m guessing that there are no women in that particular club, chief or otherwise. For one thing, they’d have to change the name and that would mean getting new stationery.”

  Marie smiled at that, and Alex felt the pain in his side ease as her evident pleasure released a few endorphins into his system.

  “You’d be right about that, although I think my father was thinking about making me an exception to the rule.” She pointed at his chest. “Is that the reason you wrote that message to Washington, the one that got you in trouble?”

  Alex had to think about that. “Maybe in part. But mostly because of what’s happening here. Because of what’s happening to you and, if I’m honest about it, because of something I did in the past. I had to speak up.”

  “Thank you for what you’ve done,” Marie said. “We owe you a debt. You have sacrificed a great deal for our village. Your chief . . . your people . . . will look after you. I would tell you that you can stay here for as long as you wish, but Busu-Mouli may not be here much longer. I don’t see how Jean-Baptiste’s village guard can stand up to helicopter gunships.”

  “So what are you going to do . . . Chief?”

  “Evacuate the town. If we can’t find another place to settle, we may become refugees for a while. If I can hold our people together, we will survive, and when the mining company is done with our land, we will return.”

  They both knew that what the mining company would leave behind would bear little resemblance to the lush green hills of Busu-Mouli. It would be a no-man’s-land of broken rock and slurry with acid and poison leached deep into the soil. Nothing would grow here again for generations. Moreover, Alex had the additional perspective of having spent considerable time in a UN refugee camp, and he was not as sanguine that the Busu-Mouli community would emerge from that experience intact.

  “There may be another way,” Alex suggested. He had not thrown himself out of an airplane simply to tell the Tsiolo f
amily that their village was doomed.

  “What are you thinking about?” Marie was curious but wary. “We don’t have the training or weaponry to deal with the helicopters. Between the Afrikaners from Executive Solutions and Innocent Ngoca’s killers, we’d be slaughtered.”

  “You don’t have the weapons, but we know somebody who does.”

  “Who?”

  There was a pause.

  “Our friend Joseph Manamakimba.”

  “He certainly knows something about burning villages.”

  “He’s no saint,” Alex agreed, “but you don’t think the label he’s been saddled with is true or fair any more than I do.”

  Marie looked briefly down at her hands and then directly into Alex’s eyes.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I think Manamakimba was on the wrong side of a smear campaign organized by Consolidated Mining. The company sees Manamakimba as a convenient fall guy for some of the atrocities their own forces have committed.”

  “Nothing that company does would surprise me,” Marie responded vehemently.

  “According to your friendly neighborhood Central Intelligence Agency, Manamakimba has access to surface-to-air missiles, the portable kind that one man can fire from the shoulder. They’re not great against jets, but they’re death to helicopters.”

  Marie was quiet for a while as she weighed the options.

  “There’s not enough time,” she observed, after at least five minutes of deep thought. “The attack is set for just four days from now. We don’t even know where Manamakimba is.”

  “No. But we do know how to reach him.” Alex pulled a somewhat tattered business card out of one of the deep side pockets of his pants and dropped it on the table in front of Marie.

  “He gave us his card.”

  27

  JULY 20, 2009

  BUSU-MOULI

  Predictably, Jean-Baptiste and some of the more headstrong members of the village guard were opposed to asking Manamakimba for help in defending the village, arguing that they could stand up to both Executive Solutions and the Rwandans without outside assistance. Katanga had been the one to bring Jean-Baptiste around. In his idealistic youth, Marie’s uncle had spent some time with the armed wing of the African National Congress. He knew what the Afrikaners and their helicopters were capable of.