by Jack Ford
107
Ne3 Re1
Half way down the stairs which led from the Executive Residence to the ground floor of the White House, Jackson caught up with his Dad. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Not now you don’t, but believe me, we will talk.’
As Woods continued to quickly run down the marble stairs towards the sit room with his Assistant Chief of Staff, along with the two secret servicemen, Jackson grabbed his arm. ‘No, now! It’s got to be now.’
Seeing the fear in his son’s eyes, Woods nodded and turned to Maple, Wray and Jones. ‘You go down, I’ll be with you in a minute.’
Turning back to Jackson, Woods stared at him hard. ‘This better be good.’
‘The target you were talking about. Is the map on the USB key your target?’
‘Jackson, I can’t tell you that. Now I have to go.’
‘You have to listen to me, Dad. You said it was an operational target match. And Chris said something about approaching the target. Please tell me you’re not about to do some kind of strike there. Tell me anything but that.’
Woods looked at his son in a mix of confusion and exasperation. ‘I can’t tell you anything, Jackson, and you know that.’
Jackson dropped his Dad’s arm in shock, backing away, a look of horror crossing his face.
‘Oh my God! You are, aren’t you? You’re about to do an air strike. Dad, you have to call it off right now. It was Cooper who gave me the USB key. He’s there, Dad. That’s where he is. He’s there, right in the middle of your target.’
108
Nd5 Rg1
‘You got to stop the strike! Stop it!’
‘Sir?’
General Hawking stood up as Woods, red-faced, eyes wide, charged into the sit room. ‘I said stop it! Call it off!’
Lyndon P Clarke stared at Woods, ‘Mr President, I’m not quite sure what you’re saying.’
Everybody in the room looked at Woods, unable to process quite what was going on. He knocked the chair over, leant across the table and glared at Lyndon. He took a deep breath, wiped the sweat away and glanced at the screens. ‘What part of stop the Goddamn strike, don’t you fucking understand, Lyndon?’
‘Mr President, what I don’t understand is what has happened?’
‘You don’t need to understand, Lyndon, the General just needs to stop the strike.’
General Hawking walked around the table and spoke in a quiet voice. ‘Mr President, perhaps we should talk outside. Perhaps you need a bit of air.’
Woods pushed past and ran to the screens, which showed real time aerial shots. Banged his fist against the wall. ‘General, we don’t need to talk outside, we just need to stop this.’
‘Mr President, I can’t do that.’
‘You can and you will, General, Goddamnit! As your Commander-in-Chief, I am ordering you to stop the drone strike. Abort mission, now!’
‘Sir, I can’t, because it’s no longer a drone strike, we’ve sent targeted missiles.’
‘What? Why wasn’t I informed of that? Who the hell gave the okay for that?’
Brent Miller coughed and gasped for air. ‘The weather’s too bad for the drones… so we programmed the coordinates. They’ll strike in about two minutes.’
Woods pointed accusingly, his hand shaking. ‘You don’t think I know about Goddamn missiles? You can redirect them with seconds to spare.’
‘To where, sir? Where do you want us to redirect them to? There is nowhere. We can’t redirect hundred pound bombs to the surrounding areas. You got refugee camps and villages sir, that target’s happening and it’s happening right now.’
Woods spun round. ‘Give me your cell. Anyone, just give me your cell.’
Teddy Adleman, who’d been absent for most of Woods’ showdown, stepped into the sit room holding a can of Coke. ‘Mr President?’
With his voice breaking and his heart racing and his chest tightening, Woods yelled, ‘Give me your fucking phone, Teddy.’
‘Okay… okay… Here, what’s going on? John, talk to me.’
Woods ran out of the sit room, punching in a number from memory.
‘John, what the hell is going on?’
Ignoring Teddy, Woods spoke into the phone, ‘Coop… Cooper… Shit!’
‘John!’ Teddy said.
Still ignoring him, Woods pressed redial. ‘Come on… Come on… Coop!… Oh thank God. Coop! Can you hear me? Coop?’
A faint voice was heard on the other end of the line. ‘John? Is that you?’
‘Listen to me, Coop, you got to get out of there.’
Teddy gestured to Woods. ‘What the hell are you doing, John? You’re breaking every security rule there is… John!’
‘Coop, can you hear me? Coop?’
‘… Just.’
‘I haven’t got time to explain, Coop, but there’s going to be an airstrike. In thirty seconds we’re going to hit with vengeance… We are sending hellfire.’
Cooper’s voice screamed down the phone. ‘You got to stop it, John! There are kids here. Do you hear me? There are kids here… Send a plane, anything, but do something.’
‘I can’t, Coop.’
‘Then damnit, I can’t just leave them here.’
Woods gripped the phone with fury and fear and love and pain. ‘You’re breaking up… Coop, are you there?’
‘I’m not leaving them here, I can’t do that.’
‘Listen to me you stubborn son-of-a-bitch, I love you and… Coop!… Coop!… Shit!’
And as the phone cut off, Woods ran back into the sit room and looked at the screens, then he dropped to his knees as he watched the missiles carpet bomb the targeted area with screaming accuracy.
*
And on the other side of the world the missiles began to drop. Cooper, Maddie, Rosedale and Moussa scrambled back but there was no place to hide, only the barren lands which were being hit mercilessly and unforgivingly, as red and orange flames mushroomed and black smoke plumed, as they darted and ran blindly, unable to see through the sandstorm.
‘Get the kids! The kids!’ Cooper towards the tents in front of him whilst Maddie called to Rosedale and Moussa.
‘I’ll take these tents with Tom, you guys stick together. Search the tents over there. Okay?’
And without another word Cooper and Maddie ran.
Cooper charged ahead, he could hear the sounds of trucks speeding past and hear the sounds of the soldiers running and shouting, mixed in with the tormented cries of children, but he couldn’t see them through the curtain of sand.
As he ran he tripped over the countless dead. Bodies of soldiers. Bodies of kids. The young and innocent who lay burnt on the ground.
He felt the heat of the crackling fire and faster and faster he ran as another missile impacted, picking him and Maddie off their feet, sending them twisting and turning on the ground. And they scrambled back up, battling against the maelstroms of emotions and chaos, whilst darkness descended from the skies, thick and black and choking.
‘I can’t see anyone!’ shouted Cooper. ‘Maddie, can you see anyone? Is anyone alive?’
She shook her head as she stared at the dust-covered dead. Children whose bodies were veiled in sand, looking like they lay in ancient graves, stretched out in front of her.
‘Keep looking, Maddie, we’ve got to keep searching.’
Tent after torn and twisted tent.
Dead body after dead body.
Children burnt alive by the oceans of flames.
An atmosphere of panic sat in the air along with the smells and screams as torn body parts were scattered around like raindrops in the desert of the dying.
‘What are we going to do? Maddie, what are we going to do? Oh my God, did you hear that?’
Maddie swirled towards the noise and immediately the two of them set off running in the direction of the sound of coughing.
On the ground lay a little boy no older than eight. Quickly Cooper knelt down, holding the boy’s head up and feeding him the
bottle of water Maddie had hurriedly given him.
Cooper spoke softly, gently to the boy. ‘Don’t move, sweetie. Try not to move.’ And he watched the tears run down the boy’s face and the fear fill up in the child’s eyes. His flesh hung off, ripped away from his tiny body, and the wounds were so deep Cooper could see the bone. His life, slowly ebbing away.
Cooper held him, and Maddie knelt by him, and Rosedale, who’d just appeared, crouched next to him and watched as he shook as shock set in.
Maddie looked up at Cooper. ‘He’s in so much pain, Tom.’
‘My tablets. Give him my tablets. Quick!’
‘They’re too strong, Tom!’
‘He’s dying, Maddie, let him at least die without pain.’
Nodding her head, frantically, Maddie rummaged into her rucksack, pulling out a blister pack of pills. She passed it to Cooper and, his hands red from blood, he broke one out. Gently he placed it into the boy’s mouth, then gave him water.
‘I’ll go and see if there’s anyone else,’ Cooper said.
Moussa shook his head. ‘No, you stay here, I’ll go.’
Cooper handed the rest of the pills to Moussa. ‘Here take them, you might need to give them to the others.’
Moussa looked at Cooper doubtfully. ‘If there are any others.’
With that, Moussa left. Cooper continued to hold the boy’s head in his lap. He held him closer. Rocking him as the boy shook with pain. ‘My daughter’s name is Cora. She’s five years old, and when she gets scared, she likes me to tell her about the man in the moon and how the man in the moon came tumbling down too soon and…’
A gurgling sound from the boy stopped Cooper’s next words, and he watched as the child’s eyes rolled and went back into his head, as blood filled his mouth and his face turned white. Knowing that this was the end, Maddie leant across and kissed the boy’s cheek before she looked up at Cooper. ‘He’s dead, Tom.’
Placing the boy gently on the ground, Cooper refused to feel what he was drowning in.
‘I’m going to see if there are any more.’
Rosedale kept the emotion away from his voice. ‘I think Bin Hamad’s men have rounded most of the kids up and driven off in the lorries… They’re either gone or dead.’
‘Then I have to know that for certain, and for myself.’
Speeding off, Cooper charged back through the burning camp, stumbling and tumbling over tent ropes, banging into objects he didn’t know were there, whilst waves of heat and sand hit his face.
He was hurting now and his body tiring, but he kept pushing forward, trapped in a sea of sand with no escape.
Pulling back the flap on another tent, Cooper froze.
A little girl stood at the back, her eyes wide with fear.
Slowly moving towards her, Cooper’s voice was soft and warm. ‘I’m not going to hurt you… I promise… Please, take my hand.’
The girl said nothing and Cooper edged slightly closer, which made her stand further back, pushing herself into the walls of the tent. Cooper knelt down and put out his hand, urging her to trust him. ‘Please. Come with me.’
Trembling she shook her head and pointed, but Cooper turned around too late.
The Commandant came in, holding a machete, and he lunged at Cooper. With the benefit of surprise, the Commandant was able to wrap his arm round Cooper’s neck. Pulling him backwards in a tight choke hold. Forcing and pushing the blade towards his face.
Struggling, the men continued to fight. Cooper tried to break free but as he gasped and fought for air the chokehold was getting tighter. The whites of his eyes becoming red.
Cooper fought hard, trying to push off twenty stone of weight, but he was held down. Pressed down. His strength giving way as the blade came ever nearer to Cooper’s face.
In the corner of his eye, Cooper spotted something.
Urgently, he slid his hand towards the knife to the side of him, stretching and straining his fingers, but it was too far away. Too far out of his reach to get it. And then… then like magic, he felt the round leather handle of the knife placed gently into his hand. Quickly he looked up to see the girl crouching, gently pushing the knife towards him as fear engulfed her eyes.
Cooper exchanged the briefest of glances with her. He held the knife tightly before driving the blade hard into the Commandant’s neck. Thrusting it in. Forcing it into the thickness of muscle. Tearing the flesh as he gouged the blade in. Round and round. Blood oozing and pouring as the Commandant let out a gruesome scream, his body falling hard on top of Cooper.
Rolling from underneath the Commandant, red with blood, Cooper looked at the girl and smiled. ‘Thank you… You saved my life… My name’s Cooper.’
In a hushed voice the girl whispered, ‘My name’s Amira.’
He crouched down and the warmth of his gaze held in his voice. ‘Hello, Amira. It’s good to meet you.’
She held out her small hand which Cooper took. ‘I want you to trust me. Do you think you can?’
She nodded her head.
‘Okay, great, well, let’s get you out of here.’
*
They ran together holding hands to where Rosedale and Maddie and Moussa were standing with ten other children. Cooper smiled at them but spoke to Moussa. ‘Is this it?’
He nodded. ‘That we can find. The others are all dead or loaded up onto the trucks already. They must have used the trucks we heard to take them out of here. Part of me hopes the lorry carrying them wasn’t blown up by the airstrikes, but the other half of me thinks maybe death for those children was the kindest option. Their only chance of freedom.’
Cooper put his head down at the enormity of Moussa’s words. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘It’s tragic, but if we want to get out of here alive we need to go ourselves. Once the sand storm drops we’ll be seen. We have to go.’
‘Back to Gorom-Gorom? That would be too dangerous and too far for the kids,’ Cooper said.
‘I know… but if we can manage to get them to walk a bit, we might have a way out… I’ve got a plane. A small one. I haven’t used it for a while but it’s about an hour’s walk from here. Maybe more in this weather. We could fly it across the border to Nigeria. There’s Embassies in Abuja, and good hospitals. I think it’s the best place for these children…’
One of the children wailed. Cooper turned to see blood pouring out from the shoulder of a small boy, who collapsed in pain. He ran to him. Scooping him up into his arms as Maddie encouraged the other kids to follow her.
To keep on going.
To keep on running.
Faster and faster.
Rosedale turned to Cooper as he ran, looking at the child in his arms, screaming with pain.
‘Thomas, give him the pills for God’s sake! Give him some of your pills!’
‘I haven’t got any left.’
‘What?’
‘Moussa gave them all out.’
‘What about your spare ones? The ones Maddie doesn’t know about. Have you still got them?’
Cooper shook his head as he stumbled through the sand, trying to ignore the weight of the boy in his arms. ‘No.’
‘Well, where the hell are they?’
‘They’re finished. I took the last ones ten –’ Cooper stopped suddenly. Without words he gave Rosedale the boy to hold. Quickly he ran a few paces away from them, before turning his back and crouching and thrusting his fingers hard down his throat to retch and vomit up the pills.
His stomach lurched up its contents and Cooper hurriedly searched through the watery vomit.
A few seconds passed then jubilantly Cooper was able to recover three, still-whole green capsules from the yellow bile. Quickly pouring some bottled water from his rucksack over the tablets, to clean them of vomit, Cooper ran back to where Rosedale was standing, and gently gave them to the boy. ‘They should help him with the pain, at least for now.’
Satisfied, Rosedale nodded. ‘Come on, Thomas. We have to keep going… Come on, kids.’
<
br /> But they were young and little and traumatized and tired, and the sand and the wind blew, and Rosedale looked down at the child who ran by his side. And in that moment he threw his rucksack down and leant his six-foot-five frame towards the boy and smiled the biggest smile.
‘Here, kid. Get on my back. Jump up. I’ll give you a ride.’
With the injured boy in his arms and the other little boy on his back, Rosedale, along with Cooper and Moussa and Maddie, carried the children, stopping every so often to change and swap, to let another child take a rest from the relentless desert storm.
They gave encouraging words to the children as they battled through the rough terrain and the heat of the desert, whilst their vision was nothing but sand. They sang and talked and hoped somehow their journey would soon be at an end.
Finally, exhausted and having travelled for over two hours, Moussa shouted to the others.
‘The plane, it’s over there by the hut.’
Squinting through the storm, Rosedale stared in dismay at the old plane, which stood covered in sand, looking like it hadn’t been flown for years. ‘Jesus, Moussa, I thought you said you had a plane.’
Running up to it with one of the children on her back, Maddie quickly scanned the plane.
‘It’s fine. It’s a way out of here. We’ll have to instrument fly, the vision’s non-existent. It’ll be dangerous to take off, and in a plane like this the sand will seriously affect the flight, but what other choice have we got? For all we know there’ll be another air strike, and we’ve no idea if Bin Hamad’s men are still in the surrounding area. Plus, some of these children need urgent medical attention. So, given what we’re up against, it’s our best chance of getting out of here alive.’
‘That’s if we can even get the plane off the ground. It’s only meant to carry four, maybe six people at the most. There are fourteen of us,’ Rosedale said.
‘Yeah, but it’s our chance.’
‘I don’t think it’ll even be that. Seriously, Maddie, the engine will be totally damaged by ingesting all the sand, once we’re up in the air.’
‘Let’s at least try.’
‘And what if we crash, Maddison? What then?’
Maddie stared at Rosedale. Behind them they heard the plaintive wails of the wounded children. ‘Better to crash than be killed here… Come on, Rosedale, will you go with me on this? It’s a chance, however slim to get those kids out of here.’