by Tom Kratman
"We know where the boy is now," Boxer said. He could barely restrain the laughter in his voice. "Shortly after the attacks began, the Ophiri chief and his minions started burning up the air waves by radio and cell. We were able to monitor and record those calls, though it took us a little while to filter through them. A set of them went to Suakin. They wanted to know if the ‘special prisoner' was still there and healthy. That's our boy."
"Suakin?" Waggoner asked. "As in, ‘He cut our sentries up at?'"
"That's the place," Boxer agreed. "It's nothing now but ruins . . . correction, knowing where to look and having looked, some of those ruins were recently refurbished . . . on an island in the Red Sea connected by a causeway to Sudan.
"So the question is," Stauer said, "what do we do?"
"We've been running the helicopters hard," Cruz said. "Not just mine, but also the MI-28's that are due in shortly with Konstantin's people; both sets need a serious bout of maintenance before they'll be trustworthy for another operation. The CH-801's are in better shape-fixed wing is always easier to keep flying than rotary wing-but they're something less than ideal for the purpose."
"Of special operations people," Welch said, "we've got or will soon have nine of mine, ten counting me, including my remaining translator but not Venegas. Little Joe's not up to it and won't be for a while. Plus Biggus will have five, including himself, and assuming no losses. Then there's Rattus and Fletcher. And Konstantin is coming in with five, inclusive, assuming he's willing to go. That's twenty-one, plus a translator who's proven he won't run around like a chicken with his head cut off when the bullets start flying. We might profitably add in two engineers, maybe Nagy and Trim. Twenty-four heavily equipped men is a fair load on a Hip."
"How soon until we can get the ship into strike range?" Stauer asked Kosciusko.
"It's eleven hundred miles sailing to fair strike range," the ship's captain said. "At max speed, that's still sixty-one hours. That's a long time for word to get around about who did what, where, to whom."
"Yeah, boss," Boxer said. "Secrecy is probably an unattainable ideal at this point."
Chin gave a little cough. "Without getting into details I am sworn not to reveal, let it be noted that there is a lot of regular, old, gray paint stored in one of the containers below. Sprayers in another."
"That's true," Kosciusko said. "If we weren't in a terrible hurry and could head to sea, there's no pressing reason we couldn't repaint the ship underway and just sail up the Red Sea once the paint's at least tacky.
"We'd have to seriously reconfigure to hide everything," the skipper added, "given what's gone down the last twenty-four hours and all. Might even have to dump some shit. And we sure can't have the flight deck assembled, or the loading and unloading platforms."
Stauer clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace.
"The problem is," he said, "and Boxer, you'll agree, that Sudan is an altogether different kettle of fish from Ophir. It's a real country. Maybe a fucked up one but a real one. With a real military."
"Their navy's for shit," Boxer said. "Their air force, on the other hand, is impressive for numbers if only a fifth of them worked. And their ground forces could walk over us with a rock in each hand and still beat the shit out of us. Not that they'd use rocks, given their very large tank and artillery park.
"I don't think we want a war with Sudan."
"No," Stauer shook his head. "Here's what I think. Our best bet at this point is what we planned on, ‘diplomacy.' Sorta. But that might not work. So here's what I want: Terry?"
"Sir."
"Collect your people, Biggus Dickus's pinnipeds, the Russians when they get here and assuming they agree to sign on, any other attachments you need, and Cruz. Waggoner, Boxer and Gordo, you go along, too. Plan an operation using nothing but helicopters and perhaps The Drunken Bastard, to go to Suakin, ‘cut their sentries up,' and retrieve our boy. Kosciusko, as soon as we're finished loading take us out to sea and reconfigure us to look like a normal, innocent merchie. Do the camouflage thing as Captain Chin suggested."
Chin's chest swelled a bit. While he was always "the captain" to his own crew, it was rather warming for the Yankees to agree.
"Meanwhile," Stauer said, "I'm going to try the sweet light of reason. Cruz, get me a CH-801 ready to go before we take down the flight deck. And I need a volunteer pilot. Shouldn't need a translator. Gutaale allegedly speaks good English. And Boxer? I need a group portrait of all of our captives."
"Don't sweat the runway," Cruz said. "The two medevac birds are outfitted either for runway or water landings. We'll just have Mrs. Liu hoist one over the side when the time comes."
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
George Clemenceau made the remark that ‘War is too
serious a business to trust to generals.' Well, judging
from the one he made at Versailles in 1919, peace is too
serious a business to trust to statesmen.
-H. Beam Piper
D+1, Bandar Qassim, Ophir
The more he'd looked at it, the more his men had looked at it, the more Stauer thought that a hostage rescue at Suakin was a forlorn hope, to say nothing of an excessive risk to both his men's lives and his ultimate objective. He still had them planning it, back on the ship, even as Kosciusko's people repainted the hull and Mrs. Liu worked overtime to reconfigure the containers to look purely innocent.
Stauer mused, If we'd known the boy was at Suakin, we could have done the job with a sixth of the manpower and at a tenth of the cost. He smiled. Damned good thing we didn't know.
The pilot, McCaverty, now that the wounded were stabilized, tapped Stauer on the shoulder and pointed down at a port devoid of floating ships. There were a couple of larger ones-tied up, mind-but those were sunk.
Stauer could not help but laugh with pride at a job well done. Be nice if we could get the fucking sub back, though, he thought. Hmmm . . . I wonder . . .
"You sure they're willing to parley and not just string us up from the nearest lamppost?" McCaverty asked.
Stauer hesitated a moment before answering, "I'm sure they'd like to string us up from the nearest lampposts. But I'm even more sure that their chief doesn't want his entire family to feed the sharks. We should be safe enough. In any case, once I step off, you maneuver to a position from which you can do a quick take off. If they do grab me, just go. Fast."
That subject, safety, had led to a hell of a row with Phillie. Hope we can make up, he thought. She'd be a hard girl to replace. What am I thinking? At my age she'd be an impossible girl to replace. Fortunately, I do have her example, insisting on getting on one of the medevac birds, to argue for me. I think it will work out.
"I sincerely hope you're right," McCaverty said, as he circled the plane down to the now nearly vacant harbor. It touched down lightly, with only a minimal amount of splashing. He steered it for the docks where a small party of unarmed men, and a somewhat larger one of armed men, were waiting under a broad, fringed awning.
"I want to murder the filthy bastard," Gutaale said, quite despite the smile plastered across his face.
"You'll do no such thing," said Taban, standing beside him. Taban's tone carried the authority that came from speaking for the entire council of elders for the tribe. "I warned you months ago that the precedent you were setting might come back and bite us all in the ass. That has happened and it is your fault. It is going to take years to undo the damage you have caused us, if it can be undone. If you harm this man, his followers will then execute your entire family-which, I remind you, is also closely related to the rest of us-and then proceed to destroy the rest of us. In short, old friend, no."
"But he robbed me," Gutaale pleaded, his smile disappearing in a hate-filled grimace. "Virtually every cent I had to my, to our, name has been taken. All we have left is a couple of tons of melted gold bars under the ruins of the palace outside Nugaal. We are not only under the gun, we are now poor."
"There are other NGOs," Taban said. "Pl
enty of Europeans and Americans you can pick the pockets of. Plenty of roads to be badly built. Plenty of food aid and free medicine that can be taken and sold. And we can rebuild our fleet of naval mujahadin, in time. But for all that we must be alive. Harm this man and, based on what his group has done so far, we will no longer be alive. So forget it. And get a smile back on your face."
Stauer opened the door and was standing on the float even before McCaverty brought the plane to the edge of the dock. He made a little jump, trying hard not wince at the arthritis pains that shot across his knee, and landed well enough for a man in his fifties.
"I'm Wes Stauer," he introduced himself. "I am given to understand that you speak English. And I believe you have something that doesn't belong to you."
"How do I know," Gutaale asked, "that you will release my family if I give you the boy?"
Stauer shook his head. "You don't know. You can't know. But you can know that I've no personal reason for keeping them. And you can know, because I tell you so, that if you do not release the boy they will be turned over to Khalid. Khalid is much too personally involved in all this for you to expect the same kind of evenhanded, gentle treatment your family has received from me."
"And if I say that I will have the boy put through a wood chipper?"
Stauer sneered, snorted, and then shrugged with practiced indifference. "Then I say, so what? My contract was an either-or proposition. Either I get you to release the boy or I get Khalid the means of vast revenge. I get paid either way and, frankly, don't really care one way or the other."
"Speaking of pay, I want my accountant back and I want my money back," Gutaale said.
"No, and no. The money is now mine," which Stauer considered the truth. He then lied, diplomatically, "And your accountant, sadly, died under interrogation. You would be proud of the way he resisted us. Proud of the way he died with a blessing for your name on his lips and a plea for your forgiveness." The colonel's face grew icy and hard, "But it didn't stop him from shitting us everything you own. Several other members of his family, even more sadly, died, too." My obligation to speak truthfully to an enemy is nonexistent until we make peace.
Gutaale shivered. This American bastard is even more vicious than the Arabs say they all are. Torturing to death a harmless accountant? Innocent family members?
"You killed my people!" Gutaale shouted, mostly to cover his own fear.
Stauer smiled again, saying, "Yes, I did. Lots of them. If you think I regret that, you've been spending too much time surrounded by transnational progressives. What do I care how many I killed, or how, or even why? They stood in my way and they died. In droves."
I have been spending too much time surrounded by progressives, Gutaale silently agreed.
"I told you you've been spending too much time around the NGOs," Taban said in the local language, which he assumed, correctly, Stauer would not understand. "I mean, steal from them? Sure. That's all they're good for. But eventually you lose sight of the fact that they're freaks, off key notes in Allah's great orchestra, and that the world is absolutely nothing like the fantasy they portray and think they live in."
Stauer understood Taban's tone well enough, even if he didn't know the words. He consulted his watch, neither subtly nor ostentatiously. "Look," he said. "I really don't have a lot of time for this. You've got forty-eight hours to have the boy here, ready for pick up. At that time I'll have our captives in boats standing offshore. A single plane will come for the boy. If he's here, and gets on the plane safely, then the boats holding your people will drop them off somewhere within five miles of here, unharmed. If the boy is not here, however . . . but why go into detail? The boy will be here, won't he?"
"He will be here," Gutaale conceded, without a trace of good grace. "Unharmed."
D+1, Suakin, Sudan
Labaan found Makeda before he found Adam. The girl was washing clothing by hand in a tub. Bent over and concentrating, she didn't see him or hear him until he announced himself. "Woman, have you seen your man this morning?"
"He went for a walk," she replied, without bothering to look over her shoulder. "He does that a lot since he agreed to your ‘parole.'" There was something in the keeper's voice that seemed to her to indicate a terrible upset. That, once she realized what it was, caused her to leave off her washing and turn around.
Yes, Labaan, for all his dark features, had gone pale.
"What is wrong?" she asked, immediately worried for both Adam and herself.
Labaan shook his head. "Nothing that need concern you." He shook it again, amending to, "Nothing that will cause either of you any harm. But finish up your chores as quickly as possible-no, just forget them and go pack. You and he are . . . moving. Today. As soon as possible."
"Moving?" she asked. "To where?"
"Bandar Qassim," he answered. "From there . . . well . . . to Adam's home, I suppose."
***
Since being captured, the only thing Makeda had ever been able to associate with automobiles was being carted off to market, or transferred from one owner to another. As such, she found the whole idea of riding in one most distressing. Indeed, it was distressing enough that she shook while standing next to the vehicle that had come for them, Adam's near presence notwithstanding.
"What's wrong, love?" he asked. When she told him, he said, "I could tell you that I understand. Perhaps in some way I even do. But the deeper part of the thing? No, that I would have to experience myself to tell you I honestly understood it. A captive I have been. A slave, never."
He grew quiet for a moment, before continuing, "And neither shall you be, from the moment we leave this place. I don't know how to free you legally, since the whole thing is extralegal everywhere I know of. I can tell you that you are free. You can come with me. You can stay here-"
"Not on your life," she said.
"I didn't think that was an option. Or you can come with me to my home and then go wherever you wish."
"What do you want?" she asked.
He sighed. "Me? I want you to stay with me."
Labaan, at the wheel of the car, overheard. He is a good boy, he thought. And always was. If I had had a son . . .
"Come," the old former captor insisted, pushing the thought away. "We must hurry or terrible things will happen. Come."
D+3, Bandar Qassim, Ophir
"I've never been in an airplane before, Adam," Makeda said. If the auto sojourn had visibly upset her, the prospect of actually leaving the Earth's surface looked to have her ready to vomit.
"It's fun," Adam assured her. "Really, I've done it many times."
"How many?" she asked.
"Ummm . . . twice," he admitted. "Not counting changing planes and brief stopovers. On my way to America to go to school and . . . ummm . . . on my way back to Africa. Ot maybe it was three times. But it will be fun."
"I would never personally describe flying as ‘fun,'" Labaan said. "Though I know people who enjoy it. Some of them"-he immediately thought of Lance- "are idiots in my opinion. But it will not be so bad, girl. You'll be safe."
Makeda chewed her lower lip for a moment, then lifted her chin proudly and said, "If I knew for a fact that the thing was more than likely going to crash, and that chance was my only chance to be my own property again, I would still get on it."
Labaan and Adam exchanged glances. Labaan's glance translated as, "keeper." Adam's was more accurately described as accusatory: "And you knew I would find myself tied to this girl when you gave her to me. Bastard."
Labaan laughed and took Adam's hand. "You are a good boy," he said, "and have every prospect of growing into a good man. Try to be a better one than my chief or yours."
"I will," the boy answered. "I promise." Taking the girl's hand, he led her to the airplane that floated to meet them at the dock.
The small floatplane came to the dock and twisted a bit. The engine's roar dropped off to a mild hum. Then the door popped open and a kindly faced man introduced himself. "I'm McCaverty," he said, "an
d I believe you people ordered a taxi."
"What if they take the boy, and that skinny slave he's acquired, and then don't release our people?" Gutaale fretted.
Taban shook his head. "You've not only been spending too much time with the bleeding hearts, chief, you've been listening too much to your own conniving heart. There is no reason, none, for the American not to give you back your people once he has what he came for. Besides," he pointed to sea, "there are the boats bringing them."
Past the landing craft and their escorting patrol boat that Taban had pointed to, the big boat, the one that had launched the others, had its crane over the side. A slack line ran into the water. Nobody on shore had the faintest idea why.
"Now show some manners and wave your former guest goodbye."
EPILOGUE
D+5, MV Merciful, South Indian Ocean
Kosciusko had left the bridge under his XO's command. Now he, like all the other company commanders, the staff, the sergeant major, and pretty much everyone else who could be fitted into the chapel cum recreation cum planning area, sat or, in many cases, stood, to hear what Stauer had to say. Only a few key players, notably the mess sergeant, were not in attendance. Neither was Wahab, as he had to go drop off Adam and Makeda and then retrieve his wife and family before Khalid discovered some things were not quite what he thought they were. The Chaplain, Wilson, had just finished the memorial service for the slain, every one of whom was laying in a refrigerated container somewhere forward. They'd be buried later, somewhere to be determined.