by Tom Young
After a while, Parson noticed a faint buzz, barely audible. He wondered if the sound came from a drone overhead, perhaps the Predator he’d seen on his departure from Djibouti. An academic question; the thing could do him no good now.
Gunshots registered in the distance, so far away they sounded like the cracking of twigs. The reminder of firefights going on around him made Parson feel impotent. He knew nothing about the tactical situation, so he had no information on which to base a plan. As a senior officer, he was used to having all kinds of data at his fingertips: intel reports, drone feeds, radio and sat-phone calls from the field. A commander seldom possessed all the information he wanted, but he always had something. Maybe he could try calling Ongondo again, after everybody woke up.
Depending on what Ongondo might tell him, Parson seemed to have two options. He could stay in one place and wait for rescue. Or he could try to move and link up with Ongondo or some other friendlies.
The second plan seemed pretty impractical. Evading capture by yourself was hard enough; with a whole crew moving together it was probably impossible. And you needed to know which way to go.
The first plan sucked, too. Waiting for rescue could amount to waiting for capture. Survival depended on whether AMISON or al-Shabaab came this way first. Fifty-fifty odds, at best.
Did other options exist? The DC-3 had carried a spare tire. If they could get back to the airplane, could Geedi change the tire?
Now you’re thinking crazy, Parson told himself. They probably couldn’t reach the airplane without running into more bad guys. And by now the bad guys had probably stolen everything in the airplane, including the tire. Jacking the plane and changing the tire would take a lot of time in an exposed location. And the sons of bitches had blown holes in at least one of the fuel tanks—the aux tank. Parson would have only whatever fuel was left in the mains: flying time measured in minutes, not hours. Once he and his group got airborne, where would they go?
As an aviator, Parson wanted to get back to his element, the sky. That’s where the bulk of his knowledge, training, and experience gave him the advantage. For the same reasons, a Navy SEAL might head for water when in trouble. An Army Ranger might go for steep mountains or thick jungle. Parson’s natural refuge seemed completely out of reach.
In the pool of darkness at the foot of the steps, someone stirred. Parson looked down and saw Carolyn Stewart waking up. She rubbed her eyes, sat up with her arms around her knees, and glanced at Parson. By now, with her mussed hair, dirty clothes, and circles under her eyes, she hardly looked like a celebrity.
“Good morning,” Stewart whispered.
Parson gave her an amiable nod. Figured he’d keep the truce going. He needed no more complications.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m just so sorry about sending that tweet. I was trying to make things better by coming here. But it doesn’t help to make stupid mistakes.”
Parson shifted his legs to avoid getting too cramped. He stood the rifle on his thigh, resting it by the heel of its stock. After a few seconds, he said, “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never made a mistake.”
His attempt at humor seemed to affect the actress like a painkiller. The lines around her eyes softened, and her drawn expression gave way to a hint of a smile.
“Thank you,” she said.
In reality, Parson wondered if he was making a much bigger mistake than Stewart’s. By showing mercy to this boy terrorist, was he putting his crew in more danger for no good reason? Kindness was a beautiful thing, but toughness had its place. Parson had certainly seen the truth of that during his years in the military.
More movement interrupted Parson’s thoughts. Geedi woke up, covered his mouth with his palm as he yawned, and rose up on one knee. Fingered the corners of his eyes to clear the sleep.
“Shall I take watch for a while?” he whispered. “You look tired, sir.”
I am tired, Parson thought. Still, he wanted Geedi to save his strength.
“I’m good for now,” Parson said. “I’ll hand off the rifle to Frenchie here in a bit.”
Though Parson could not bring himself to say it out loud, he knew why he wanted Geedi well rested. As much as he hated the thought, he’d have to send Geedi out again.
In the cellar, they were just too vulnerable. They couldn’t keep a proper watch, they couldn’t defend themselves, and they probably couldn’t even make a radio call. Parson planned to give the radio a try when everybody woke up, but he doubted the signal would go through. And if the group stayed, things probably wouldn’t end well for Nadif and his wife. Holing up here had always been a temporary solution.
Geedi could scout for a better hideaway, maybe talk to locals and get an idea where the al-Shabaab fighters had gone. Act as a spy, basically. Parson knew it wasn’t fair to ask a flight mechanic to be an intel spook, but the situation denied him the luxury of fairness.
Such decisions, Parson believed, were the hardest part of leadership under fire. The old cliché said you shouldn’t send somebody out to do something you wouldn’t do yourself. But sometimes you had to send a guy out to do something you couldn’t do yourself.
Parson also had a more immediate problem. He had to piss something awful, and he supposed everybody else did, too. He wished he’d thought to ask Nadif for a chamber pot or something.
“See if you can find an empty container,” Parson whispered. “When Hussein wakes up, we’ll use his blanket as a privacy screen and we’ll rig us up a latrine.”
“Good idea,” Geedi said.
“A very good idea,” Carolyn Stewart said.
Geedi searched the shelves and found a couple nearly empty glass jars, about the size of Mason jars back home except the glass was smoked nearly to black. He passed them to Parson, and Parson looked inside. Just some dirt and dried roots. He shook out the debris; the jars would serve his purpose.
Gold and Chartier woke up. With everyone awake except Hussein, Parson no longer worried about keeping his voice at a whisper.
“Good morning, guys,” he said. “Something tells me this joint doesn’t serve a champagne brunch.”
“Bonjour,” Chartier said. “Were you on watch the whole time?”
“Yeah,” Parson said, “but I couldn’t sleep anyway. I’ll give you the weapon now.”
“D’accord.”
Chartier took the AK from Parson and checked its fire selector. Parson had left it on safe. Gold tugged at her sleeves, tucked her shirt.
“Good morning, Michael,” Gold said. “Any plan for today?”
Parson sighed. “I got a plan,” he said, “but I don’t like it.” He explained what he wanted Geedi to do, and why.
“Don’t worry, sir,” Geedi said. “I got this.”
“You’re a good dude, Geedi.”
Hussein slept for another hour. By the time the boy woke up, Parson was tapping his foot in impatience to urinate. He grabbed a corner of Hussein’s blanket and motioned for Hussein to slide off it. Parson took the blanket and strung it across a corner of the cellar. When he finished, the blanket and jars made for a makeshift latrine only a little less primitive than the urinals in the cargo compartments of old C-130s.
Parson started to unzip his flight suit, then had a second thought: Better let Hussein go first. Otherwise, the little bastard might throw a full jar of urine on somebody.
“Tell him to go to the bathroom behind the blanket if he wants to,” Parson told Geedi. “And when he’s done, he better not do anything with the jar except put it down.”
Geedi spoke in Somali to Hussein, and he helped Hussein get to his feet. The boy took a jar and limped behind the blanket. Parson heard the trickle of liquid spilling into the jar. He thought about pointing his pistol at the boy to discourage any mischief. But after Hussein finished, he just left the jar on a shelf, came out from behind the screen, a
nd sat down.
Parson and everyone else took a turn behind the blanket. The end result was two foul-smelling jars, filled to the brim.
“I’ll get rid of those,” Geedi said, “and I might as well get started on another look around.”
“Wait,” Carolyn Stewart said.
Geedi looked at her with a puzzled expression. Parson wondered what the hell she wanted. Hadn’t she already done more than enough to complicate things?
“Your watch,” Stewart said, pointing to Geedi’s wrist.
“Oh, I forgot,” Geedi said. “Guess I wouldn’t look much like a local, wearing a Bulova.” He took off the watch and stuffed it into the pocket of the trousers he’d borrowed from Nadif.
“Ah, good catch, Carolyn,” Parson said. “How did you think of that?”
“He’s playing a role,” Stewart said. “His costume needs to be right.”
Fair enough, Parson thought. This lady had screwed up real bad, no doubt about that. But maybe she wasn’t a total idiot.
Without another word, Geedi took the urine jars and placed them on the top step. He climbed up and pushed open the door a few inches. He reached up, took hold of the tarp that covered the door, and slid it out of the way.
Geedi peered outside in all directions. The light pouring down from the entrance made Parson squint.
Apparently satisfied that no enemy lurked close by, Geedi pushed the door all the way open. For a glorious moment, full daylight flooded the cellar. The flight mechanic took the jars and climbed outside.
“For God’s sake, be careful,” Parson said.
Geedi poured the urine onto the ground. Then he closed the door, and the cellar went dark again.
28.
While waiting for Geedi to come back, Parson tried to make a radio call. He climbed to the stop of the stairs with his nav/com radio, and he slid the antenna through a crack in the door. Plugged in the earpiece and inserted it into his ear. He turned the volume knob to click on the radio, and he turned the squelch control until he got a constant hiss. Pressed the transmit key.
“Spear Alpha,” Parson called, “World Relief Airlift.”
No sound but the sizzle of static.
“Spear Alpha,” Parson repeated, “World Relief Airlift. Do you read?”
Within the static came a slight warble, and Parson tweaked the volume a little higher. The sizzling rose to a surf’s roar, and the warbles became coherent enough to recognize as words. But the words were not in English, and definitely not from Ongondo. Just the tailings of a stray transmission that had somehow bounced through the sky and snagged Parson’s antenna on the way to infinity.
Parson cursed under his breath and turned off the radio. Yanked the earpiece out of his ear, descended to the bottom of the stairs. Transmitting from a hole in the ground, he hadn’t really expected to make contact with Ongondo. But he had thought it worth a try. Learning otherwise put him in a worse mood.
Even if the sat-phone battery hadn’t died, help still might remain out of reach. Given the drawdown of American forces, there might be no rescue helicopter available from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. Parson did not remember seeing one there when he first left on this godforsaken mission.
He felt completely isolated. Getting help would first require getting a message out, and even that seemed impossible now. Then he’d have to wait for a transport helicopter to come from God knows where. Maybe Nairobi. How long would that take?
Parson blamed himself for getting everyone stranded. A good pilot always has an out, he thought. You never put yourself in a situation where you have only one option. If fog socks in your destination, you fly to the alternate. If the weather really sucks, you file two alternates. You plan for reserve fuel. You carry spare parts and extra fuses. You don’t get down to where Plan A has to work because there’s no Plan B.
But in my eagerness to get supplies to the AMISOM troops, Parson thought, that’s exactly what happened. Like arriving over the airfield with minimum fuel and finding the weather down to zero-zero.
He had nothing to rely on but his crew and whatever resources he could scrounge. If we’re ever getting out of here, he realized, we’re going to have to get creative. And damned lucky.
Parson began to worry about Geedi. He checked his watch; the flight mechanic had been gone nearly two hours. What the hell could Geedi be doing out there for so long?
Hussein sat up and stared at the dirt floor. Gold and Stewart sat close to him, and whenever he looked up, Gold tried to give him a nod or a smile. As far as Parson knew, she didn’t speak Somali, so she couldn’t communicate with the boy in any meaningful way. Hussein never smiled back at her, but neither did he glare. Chartier leaned against the shelves with the AK-47 cradled in his arms.
After a time, Gold moved over to Parson at the foot of the stairs. As she settled back to a sitting position, she leaned her head on his arm. Her hair smelled of shampoo, sweat, and smoke. She said nothing, but her touch took the edge off his anxiety. He’d hoped this trip would involve more quality time with her in Djibouti, but now he felt grateful for this brief moment—even in a hole in the ground in Somalia. He placed his hand on the back of her neck, let his eyes close for a few seconds.
“You should get some sleep, mon colonel,” Chartier said. “I have the watch now.”
“I know, Frenchie,” Parson said. “I don’t know if I can sleep. Wish I could make contact with Ongondo or somebody before I try to rest.”
“I understand,” Chartier said. “A fighting man hates getting cut off from help. It happened to my grandfather more than once.”
“Your grandfather?”
“Oui. He fought in Indochina.”
Chartier explained how his granddad served with French forces in Southeast Asia during the war that raged from 1946 to 1954. The war led to the partition of North and South Vietnam, and that division set the stage for the American war a decade later. As the Frenchman began his story, Stewart took out her video camera and held it up with a question on her face. Chartier nodded.
“Thanks,” Stewart said. “It’s too dark for good pictures, but I might use the audio.” The actress recorded as Chartier told of his grandfather’s service.
“My pépère was a sergeant,” Chartier said, “and they often left him in command of a post kilométrique, a kilometer post along a road. Just him and nine men in a bunker.”
Surrounded by jungles or mountains that hid Viet Minh guerrillas, Chartier explained, the French soldiers would string barbed wire around their perimeter. Along the wire, they hung empty ration cans that would rattle to warn of an insurgent’s approach. Sometimes the troops didn’t have enough wire to encircle their position, so they’d resort to sharpened stalks of bamboo.
“These PK posts were often too spread out for any kind of mutual support,” Chartier said. “When one got hit, the men were on their own. And that’s what happened when my grandfather’s post was attacked.”
One night, Chartier said, Viet Minh “Death Volunteers” blew through the wire with Bangalore torpedoes. They charged into the perimeter screaming Tiên-lên! or Forward! The Frenchmen popped parachute flares to see the attackers, and the otherworldly glow revealed dozens of insurgents armed with rifles and grenades.
The elder Chartier opened up with an FM 24/29 light machine gun, while his men fired their MAS-49 semiauto rifles. The bodies of the first wave of attackers weighed down the barbed wire, and soon the Viet Minh could cross the barrier on the backs and stomachs of their fallen comrades.
“For some reason,” Chartier said, “I still remember how my grandfather said the FM 24 had two triggers—one for full automatic and one for semi. He burned through several magazines on full auto.”
Eventually, one of the Viet Minh got close enough to put a grenade through the bunker’s embrasure. The blast killed three Frenchmen, disabled two others, and sent a shard of hot metal
ripping into Sergeant Chartier’s thigh. Despite wounds that caused severe blood loss, the sergeant kept firing along with his men. And they held their position at the lonely post kilométrique.
“My grandfather received the Croix de Guerre des Théâtres d’Opérations Extérieures,” Chartier said with obvious pride.
“Had no idea your granddad was such a fighter,” Parson said.
“We prefer to talk about him rather than the distant cousin who collaborated with the Vichy government,” Chartier said.
“Every family tree has a nut,” Parson said.
“So your grandfather went home a hero,” Stewart said.
“Oui, but not then. They sent him to a hospital in Hanoi, and—”
Before Chartier could finish his story, the thud of footsteps sounded from above. Parson and Gold moved away from the steps to make room for Chartier to point the AK up toward the door. Then Parson pulled his Beretta and aimed it in the same direction. Unless this was Geedi or Nadif coming, Parson knew he might be about to make a last stand much more hopeless than the one Frenchie had just described.
Two coughs sounded from above.
“Don’t shoot,” someone said from up top. Geedi’s voice. “I’m back.”
Geedi opened the door, and once again light flooded the cellar. Parson squinted and turned the muzzle of his pistol toward the floor. He kept a close eye on Hussein to make sure the boy didn’t try to bolt for the exit. Hussein only shaded his eyes, and Parson realized he was probably in no shape to bolt for anything.
The flight mechanic descended the first two steps, then reached up and closed the door behind him. He paused on the steps for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Hopped down the last steps to stand on the floor.
“Talk to me,” Parson said.
“I found an old bunker,” Geedi said. “It’s about a mile from here, and nobody seems to be using it.”