The Hunters

by Tom Young

  With no trees to block the view, Hussein saw the full extent of that chaos. Smoke as black as a vulture’s feathers churned into the air from three different spots, all in the general direction of where the sun goes to set. The fast airplanes—Hussein could now tell there were four of them—turned and climbed and zoomed in a pattern that made no sense to him. The smell of frying meat had faded, but now the landscape stank of burning oil.

  Something on the ground exploded; Hussein had no idea what it was. One of the three columns of smoke grew larger. The smoke towered into the sky and bent with the breeze toward the ocean. Someone on a ship, Hussein imagined, would think all of Somalia was burning.

  From somewhere between the fires, a rocket speared into the air. Gray smoke trailed behind the weapon as it cut a path toward one of the attack planes. The airplane turned hard and the rocket missed. Another of the flying machines rolled onto its side, curved around, and dropped nearly as low as the treetops. It dropped a hell bomb where the rocket had come up. Flames leapt from the ground as if Allah himself had pointed a finger that cut a long trench in the earth and brought forth fire.

  An explosion sounded from behind Hussein, in the direction of the village. He turned his head and saw men with guns running through the trees. Some stopped to fire—at what, Hussein could not tell. Another blast boomed, and he recognized the sound: a mortar, one of those little bombs that you dropped into a tube. The battle seemed to swirl on every side with no shape at all. If he could have jumped from the stretcher to find al-Shabaab, he would not have known where to go.

  This is hopeless, Hussein thought. Infidels or Muslims, sinners or righteous, we are all going to die.

  36.

  Parson had counted on an air strike. But he hadn’t counted on fucking napalm. This wasn’t the laser-guided, thread-the-needle close air support he’d seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was fury set afire, and he prayed the next shower of flaming jellied gasoline didn’t fall on him and his people.

  There was no turning back. Parson could only look for the DC-3 and hope to get into the sky before the bad guys recovered from the air strike and regrouped. Where was the damned airplane? He thought he remembered landing closer to the village. Maybe he should have backtracked up the creek bed, but now with gunfire behind him, turning around and starting over was not an option.

  Of all things for that damned bullet to hit, Parson thought, why did it have to nail my GPS? Better to lose his radio or even his pistol than to lose his main tool for land navigation.

  In the dry brush and sparse trees, flames ignited by the napalm began to spread. What had started as three distinct fires in the trees beyond the grassland now melded, and the grass at the tree line began to burn and send up gray smoke. The wind caught the smoke and carried it across the ground toward Parson and his crew.

  Parson stopped and tried to scan his surroundings. Chartier and Gold came up behind him, and Geedi and Stewart put down Hussein’s stretcher. The boy looked alarmed but not panicked. He observed with wide eyes, apparently trying to take everything in.

  “I can’t see shit now,” Parson said. “Frenchie, do you think we’ve come too far?”

  “I do not remember the grass field being this big,” Chartier said.

  Parson didn’t, either. But when they’d come through the grass before, they’d crawled along the ground, keeping as close to the dirt as possible while bullets sang overhead. Hardly a good way to get the lay of the land.

  The last thing Parson had seen while standing up was the landing field itself: a clearing not as wide as this grassland, with woods and thickets to the west and sparser trees to the east and north. Maybe he’d passed a little too far to the right of his intended course—which would mean he’d erred to the north.

  He gazed toward the south, trying to see if any of that landscape looked familiar. The gray smoke lifting from the grass fire obscured his vision—and raised another worry: The breeze was blowing from the west. What if that damned napalm started a wildfire that took off with the wind? Spreading in that direction, the fire might burn across the field where the DC-3 was parked. Wherever the hell that was.

  A gazelle came bounding through the smoke, fleeing the fire. The animal ran toward the village. Carolyn Stewart took out her video camera and began shooting. Parson couldn’t tell if she’d moved quickly enough to get footage of the gazelle, but then she panned across the grassy, smoking expanse. He didn’t yell at her for taking the time to shoot. He needed to pause anyway, because he needed a moment to think.

  He knew he had to correct course to the left or right, because nothing directly in front of him looked like the landing field. To the right, or to the north, he saw more thickets and trees. Yeah, he probably had come too far north. He sure as hell didn’t want to go any farther that way; Ongondo had warned about enemy in that direction. To the left, or to the south, Parson saw little but drifting smoke. He pulled the lensatic compass from his vest and checked it—but with no map and defined course, he could confirm only that the bombs had fallen pretty much due west.

  “Son of a bitch,” Parson muttered. “I think we need to take a dogleg to the south. Sophia, what’s your gut telling you?” He closed the compass and tossed it to her. She caught it one-handed while holding the AK. Opened the compass and watched it spin and settle down.

  As a former soldier, Gold had land nav skills herself, and Parson wanted a second opinion. But without a topographical chart, neither of them could do better than make an educated guess. Parson’s SD card contained all the nav data he needed, but with his GPS receiver destroyed, the SD card was useless.

  “I think you’re right,” Gold said. She closed the compass and gave it back to Parson. “Pretty rough dead reckoning, though.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Parson said. He hoped dead wasn’t the operative word.

  Hussein raised himself up onto his knees so he could look around. He shaded his eyes with his hand, looked at Parson. The boy pointed to the south and said something in Somali.

  “What’s he saying?” Parson asked.

  “He saw you two looking around,” Geedi said. “He says the airplane is that way.”

  Parson considered that for a moment. He still didn’t trust Osama Junior, but the boy had probably gotten a better look at the terrain than anyone else. And Hussein was confirming what Parson thought, anyway. Hell, maybe Hussein had actually decided to make himself useful.

  “Tell him thanks,” Parson said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Geedi and Stewart lifted the stretcher, and Parson led the way again, this time angling to the south. All the while, he kept a wary eye on the thickets to the north. He thought he saw men moving among the brush, but at a distance of a thousand yards he couldn’t be sure. Though the L-39s had lit up bad guys to the west and back toward the village to the east, the planes had dropped nothing to the north. If there really were enemy in that direction, they were still very much alive.

  As Parson slogged through the grass, a butterfly flitted in front of him. Its wings were mainly white, but the tips sported a burnt orange nearly the same color as the flames crackling in the distance. The insect flew in crazy dips and climbs, as if its flight augmentation computer had gone tango uniform. Eventually it decided on a course and zipped to the east aided by a tailwind. Parson wished he could take to the air that easily. Even if he did get the damaged DC-3 airborne, he’d be flying a craft almost as fragile as that butterfly.

  The smoke grew thicker and stung his eyes. Oddly, the woodsy smell reminded him of pleasant things: campfires, cookouts, venison roasting on a spit. But that meant bad news. If he’d smelled petroleum, that would be napalm burning itself out. This was dry vegetation burning, so the fire was growing instead of dying.

  Parson looked around and realized he could no longer see a horizon in any direction. In fact, he could see nothing beyond forty yards—only his crewmates, Husse
in, and smoke swirling on all sides. Almost as if he’d flown—or, in this case, walked—into a cloud of smoke. Fliers would call it IMC: instrument meteorological conditions.

  No choice but to fly on instruments. Parson cradled the RPK across his elbow, fished out the compass, and opened it again. He took a bearing to the southwest, about two-three-zero degrees. Nothing to do now except walk in that direction and hope for the best. And pray the fire didn’t get close enough to force him in a direction he didn’t want to go.

  That would happen, too, if the smoke got any thicker. Breathing became more difficult by the minute, and Parson wondered how long it took to suffer permanent damage from smoke inhalation. He began to cough, and his crewmates started hacking, too. He recalled a story about a smoke jumper somewhere in Montana who had been fighting a wildfire when flames overtook him. The guy used his emergency shelter to keep from burning to death, but three days later he died from lung damage.

  Parson realized the smoke presented another problem, too. If they managed to reach the airplane without getting shot or burned to death, and if they managed to get it fixed, and if both engines started, he might not be able to see to take off.

  He shook his head and cursed under his breath. His brilliant escape plan had turned into a total, absolute, maximum-effort, high-performance, redline RPM goat fuck.

  Through the smoke, Parson pressed on toward the southwest. The jet noise faded to a low and constant rumble; apparently the L-39s had paused their attack and started orbiting at a higher and safer altitude. Or maybe they’d gone Winchester: in fighter pilot parlance, that meant running out of ordnance.

  Every few seconds, a fit of hacking seized Parson. After one especially wracking cough, he spat phlegm and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his flight suit. His chest had hurt to begin with, still sore from the bullet that had whacked his body armor and destroyed his GPS. With each ragged breath, his armor grew heavier and his body more tired. He knew he and his friends could not last much longer in this smoke. In Afghanistan all those years ago, Parson had not been able to save his crewmates. Would he lose crew members again, this time amid fire instead of ice?

  The thick grass tangled around his legs as he forged ahead. The effect put him in mind of wading through a fast stream; in fact, the entire scene seemed a perversion of a peaceful memory: Parson recalled fishing for trout in the Firehole River at Yellowstone National Park. He remembered the way the current surged against his knees while steam—like this damnable smoke—rose from nearby geysers. Instead of terrorists stalking him, bison grazed placidly along the riverbanks. Instead of an RPK machine gun loaded with 7.62 millimeter, he’d carried a bamboo rod loaded with five-weight fly line.

  Surrounded by fires and threatened by the enemy, it seemed to Parson that the evil in this tormented country had risen to a whole new dimension. Somehow it had found a way to get inside his head, invade his best memories, and play them out in hellish interpretations.

  Time to get out of this place, Parson thought. Or die trying.

  He halted for a moment and turned to look at his crew. Gold and Chartier had tied handkerchiefs across their faces to filter some of the smoke. For a moment Parson considered stopping to let Geedi, Stewart, and Hussein do the same, but he decided the best thing he could do for them was to keep moving. Chartier coughed despite the handkerchief, and each time he did, the fabric puffed out in front of his nose and mouth.

  “You guys all right?” Parson asked.

  Chartier tried to answer, but coughs overwhelmed his words. Parson bulled through the grass faster, kicking at the vegetation. His inability to ease his friends’ suffering did more than frustrate him; it angered him. An officer’s most sacred duty was to those under his command.

  In an airplane, he could have done something about the smoke. For an aviator, smoke and fire ranked among the worst of emergencies, but you had procedures: Order everybody on oxygen, open the safety valve and depressurize the airplane—which would suck out the smoke in an instant. Keep the plane on autopilot, spin a lower number into the altitude selector. Chop the throttles back to idle and let the autopilot take you down low enough to breathe without oxygen.

  But here, on the ground, the best of his knowledge did not apply, and the best of his tools no longer worked. He had no option but to keep putting one boot in front of the other—through this damned burning grass. Parson found himself looking straight down as he struggled with the ensnaring blades and vines. That’s why it came as a surprise when he tore his boot free one more time—and placed it on bare, dry earth.

  Parson scanned around and realized he’d come to a shallow depression in the ground. He blinked, rubbed his watering eyes. When a gust thinned the smoke for a moment, he realized this wasn’t just a depression but a wide, shallow spot in the creek bed. Sure enough, they had strayed north of the objective. But now they were back on track. His gut—and Hussein’s sense of direction—had been right.

  “Hey, guys,” Parson said. “I think we’re getting close.”

  “Dieu merci,” Chartier said, coughing.

  Geedi and Stewart brought Hussein to the edge of the creek bed. Stewart’s eyes streamed, and they looked an unhealthy shade of red. Mucus ran from Hussein’s nostrils, and he wiped his nose on his sleeve. Chartier tore the handkerchief from his face, spat into it, and stuffed it in a pocket.

  “This rag isn’t doing me any good,” Chartier said.

  Parson crossed the creek bed, climbed the opposite bank, and entered the grass once again. The smoke thinned further; apparently, Parson’s heading had taken them away from the fire—at least for the moment. With visibility now perhaps a hundred yards, he could see trees in front of him. Not a forest, just three acacias appearing ghostly in the haze and smoke.

  Rifle fire echoed from somewhere—four evenly placed shots on semiauto. Listening to the gunfire, Parson realized he no longer heard the jets. So they probably had gone Winchester—or bingo fuel. He drew a breath and it went down clean, the first clear air he’d inhaled in several minutes.

  Peering through the smoke, Parson kept moving along that same two-three-zero course line. He glanced at the compass from time to time to keep his heading true, hoping he’d soon see something he recognized. This is why you trust your readings, Parson thought to himself, because memory is unreliable.

  He recalled his stint as an adviser to the Afghan air force, and how he always preached proper use of current charts. Some of those guys wanted to navigate from memory. At night or in marginal weather, that was a good way to fly into a mountain.

  The smoke cleared enough to reveal the sky overhead, clouds in white patches. One of the patches obscured the sun. After several seconds, the winds aloft pushed the clouds enough to expose a rind of sunfire. That’s when Parson noticed a glint on the ground.

  It was back to the east, not as far west as he’d expected. But he could not mistake the source of the reflection. Through another small stand of acacias, he recognized the aluminum sheen of the DC-3.

  37.

  When the infidels spotted their airplane, they rushed to it in such haste that they nearly dropped Hussein. He hung on tight to the stretcher, grateful finally to have better air to breathe. Geedi thanked him for helping show the way. Hussein’s assistance had convinced the infidels he’d come over to their side once and for all.

  But he had not.

  Hussein had merely wanted to move things along. He still did not know how best to use this situation, what course to take. But he’d needed to escape that burning field. No good plan involved choking to death on smoke.

  He recalled Geedi’s words back at the bunker: “Perhaps you will know what to do when the time comes.” Maybe a sign would present itself, some signal from Allah. Hussein knew he must remain alert to find his moment of opportunity.

  Geedi and Red Mouse put him down behind the airplane’s left wing, where his grenade had done most of its dam
age. Hussein saw the flattened tire and holes torn by shrapnel. In his mind’s eye, however, the destruction had been worse; he thought he’d nearly blown the wing off. Now he felt a little disappointed to see that his deed—while certainly effective—had somehow grown in his imagination.

  The one called Parson and the other white man, the one called Shartee, talked in excited tones. They walked around the airplane, pointing at the engines and other parts, examining everything closely. Parson still carried the machine gun taken from the al-Shabaab brother killed in that firefight near the bunker. Yellow Hair kept Hussein’s AK-47; the sight of a woman holding his rifle gave unending offense.

  Hussein sat up on the stretcher, supporting himself with his arm. A coughing attack came over him until he spat smoke-darkened mucus, and then the hacking eased. The injured foot throbbed. Hussein placed the wounded foot on the ground and tried putting weight on it. That worsened the pain, though not more than he could endure. And it told him what he wanted to know: If necessary, he could take a few quick steps on his own. Such a move might tear open the wound, but he could do it if he had to.

  In the distance, across the grass field, a wall of smoke rose from the ground. The gaalos pointed and seemed to talk with some concern—and Hussein could see why. The fire was burning its way toward them. The smell of charred brush hung heavy in the air.

  As the fire spread, so did the firefight. Gunfire chattered all around, though smoke obscured the shooters.

  Parson handed the machine gun to the one called Shartee. While Shartee and Yellow Hair stood guard, Parson disappeared into the flying machine. Geedi climbed in after him and came back out with a metal box. When Geedi opened the box, Hussein saw it was filled with tools.