by Mike Maden
“Even if they didn’t get off a message, the fact that none of them will be calling in a report will alert their command. Are there other army units in the area?”
“None more than a day’s journey away.”
“Then you’re right. We need to get rolling.”
“Any word from your pilot?”
“Not yet.” Pearce checked his watch. “She won’t be landing for another twenty minutes. I told her to maintain radio silence for security.”
“That is wise. Please be sure to inform me when you have news of my granddaughter.”
“Of course. But don’t worry, Judy is a great pilot.”
Pearce smiled to comfort the old man. He was telling the truth. Judy was a great pilot, but he was still worried. Murphy’s Law FUBAR’d more ops than he cared to remember. He wouldn’t relax until Judy and the girl were safe on the ground.
32
In the air
Mali–Niger border
7 May
Judy was still five minutes from the Niger border when the alarm blared. An air-to-air missile had locked onto the Aviocar. Her scope indicated the attack plane was some thirty miles behind her and closing fast. A military aircraft, no doubt.
She had no information at all about the Mali air force, but Ian had mentioned something about the Soviets earlier so she hoped that the jet behind her was just as antiquated, even if it was lethal. But even old, the jet behind her was still a heck of a lot faster than her two turboprops. She wondered how much time she’d have before it would launch its missiles. She guessed the military pilot probably required a visual confirmation. In her mind, that gave her thirty seconds, max.
Judy glanced over at the girl in the copilot seat. She was still out cold, which was good. Judy didn’t want the child awake, especially if things went sideways.
Judy stomped on the right rudder control and slammed the yoke into the firewall, banking the plane hard into a steep turning dive, hoping beyond hope that she could shake the radar lock. The negative g’s tingled in her gut and her rear end lifted out of the chair, pressing her small torso against the seat harness. Three seconds later, she reversed, stomping on the left rudder control and yanking the yoke as hard as she could toward her chest, lifting the plane in a steep left climb, pressing her hard against the chair at the same time her body rolled against the belts. She was riding the roller coaster from hell. Judy glanced over at the sleeping girl, her head pressed against the bulkhead. The alarm kept blaring. Not good. Maybe she deserved it, but the girl didn’t.
One last shot.
The Aviocar was a flying truck, nothing more. No weapons, and slow as molasses. Electronic countermeasures and chaff would be a waste. Any jet jock worth his salt would get a look at the old girl, flip on his gun switch, and have some target practice. A flying fish in a barrel. But Ian had devised a trick. He removed the active homing radar unit from a decommissioned AIM-54 Phoenix antiaircraft missile and installed it in the Aviocar. Maybe the old transport plane couldn’t carry a long-range antiaircraft missile like the Phoenix, but it had the wherewithal to carry a small, secondary radar, didn’t it?
Here goes nothing, Lord, was the best Judy could pray under the circumstances. She punched a button on her console, painting the jet behind her with her own air-to-air missile radar signal, just like the one she was experiencing. Now, as far as the pilot behind her was concerned, a U.S. Navy Hornet just locked on him with a Phoenix missile. There was only one thing he could do if he wanted to survive the engagement.
Run.
And that’s just what he did. The radar blip on Judy’s scope angled hard off her tail and reversed course, dropping altitude and picking up speed, racing away like a scalded cat, silencing the shrieking missile alarm in her cockpit ten seconds later.
Thanks, Ian, I owe you one, she thought. It had been a long time since she’d last seen him. Time to fix that. Maybe she’d even buy him a beer.
The village of Anou
Kidal Region, Northwest Mali
Pearce, Early, Mossa, and his fighters gathered up several cans of ammo and five machine guns from the dead Malian troops and loaded them into the Toyotas. But there were too many AK-47s to haul, so they spiked the barrels by bending them into right angles. Any pistols they didn’t take they disassembled, ruining the firing springs and tossing the rest of the gun parts in all directions. Anything else lethal or of use to the Mali army was loaded into the trucks and the trucks set on fire. The BTR was left intact, but Moctar rigged a booby-trap grenade beneath the driver’s seat. The first man who sat in it would trigger the spring-loaded mechanism.
Mossa dismissed Early and Pearce for the last bit of business. As non-Muslims, they were forbidden to touch Muslim corpses, and Mossa assumed that most or all of the dead Red Berets were Muslim. Besides, Westerners already had a grim view of his people, perhaps especially of Tuaregs, so he didn’t want the two Americans around to watch. Mossa and his men gathered up each of the Red Berets and sat them up against the wall, facing away from the city. Then they placed the spiked AK-47s in each of their laps. Now the Red Berets formed a gruesome palace guard for the massacred village. If nothing else, Mossa hoped the image would strike dread into the next column of Mali soldiers who dared approach.
—
Pearce and Early found Cella in one of the houses tending to one of the raped girls lying on a bed. Cella rung out a wet cloth and set it on the girl’s forehead, then motioned for the two men to follow her.
“How is she doing?” Early asked.
“Not well. She lost a lot of blood.” Cella pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered them. Early took one, and Pearce passed. Cella flicked a Zippo and lit Early’s, then hers.
“Judy called in. They landed fine, no problems. Holliday will be picking up your daughter soon.”
“Who is Holliday?”
“A friend. The chargé d’affaires at the American embassy in Niamey. He’s making all of the legal arrangements, and he’s already contacted your father.”
“Please thank him for me.” Cella took another drag.
“Why don’t you thank him yourself? Let’s get out of here.”
Cella shook her head. Her thick honey brown hair was shiny with oil. Pearce could only imagine the last time she’d bathed. “I’m needed here. These are my people now.”
Pearce glanced at Early. Help me out here.
“Don’t look at me. I came here to bring her home. That was three months ago.”
“You’re running around in the middle of a civil war. You’ve got no business being here, especially now that your daughter is gone.”
“My husband is dead, but Mossa remains my father-in-law. He is good to me and good to his people. But they have no access to medical care, and that is what I can give them. You of all people should know this.”
“And your daughter? Doesn’t she deserve a mother?”
Cella’s blue eyes flared. “She deserves a father, too.” She took a last drag, dropped the cigarette, and crushed it under her boot. “Look what happened to him.”
—
Thirty minutes later, Mossa, Cella, Early, and Pearce gathered at Ibrahim’s store. The boy was carefully folding his grandfather’s map into a square for safekeeping.
“We’ll leave very soon. It will be crowded in the jeeps with you two new men, and the five women—”
“Four. We just lost one,” Cella said. She turned to Pearce. “The one you asked about.”
“Daughter, you decide where the women ride. It will be a long journey and with few stops.”
“What about me?” the boy asked. He kept folding the yellowed paper.
“You will ride with Humaydi. He has two sons your age.”
The boy shook his head. “I will ride with you.” His fingertips carefully pressed the ancient map creases.
Mossa stared at the boy, unused to such defiance. He g
ave orders in battle, men obeyed, men died. But this child?
The boy looked up at him, his eyes wounds.
Mossa nodded. “You will ride with me.”
The boy made the last fold, forming a neat square, not saying a word. It was settled, then.
Pearce’s phone rang. It was Judy. They chatted briefly, but his phone died. No charge.
“My daughter?” Cella asked.
“She’s fine. With the ambassador now, heading back to the American embassy.”
“Thank God,” Mossa said, shutting his eyes briefly.
“Your father is scheduled to arrive late tonight on a chartered flight. If everything goes well, he’ll depart again with her back to Italy in the morning. Judy will only call back if there’s a problem. That is, if I can get this charged up.”
“They’ve got universals in the trucks. You can charge it up on the way out,” Early said.
Mossa turned to Pearce. “Thank you, Mr. Pearce. For everything.” He extended his hand.
“Glad it all worked out.” They shook. “Now we need to get you to your mountain.”
33
Tamanghasset Province
Southern Algeria
7 May
The French Foreign Legion patrolled the barren stretch of desert with the permission of a reluctant Algerian national government. Cocaine shipments from Bolivia had been making their way into Europe through the porous sands of the Algerian Sahara, an ironic twist to the Americans’ War on Drugs. The Algerians appeared helpless to stop it, though the French government suspected that certain corrupt officials in Algiers profited by the venture. The French decided to take matters into their own hands.
The French government generally, and the French army in particular, had been stretched beyond the breaking point since the Great Recession began in 2008. But the French Foreign Legion had a long history in this desert and, despite their limited resources, volunteered a section of their best. Working from incomplete Interpol reports and questionable intelligence from Algeria’s security service, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité, today’s patrol was heading for a stretch of remote highway that was reportedly used as a temporary airfield for drug shipments.
First Lieutenant Pyotr Krasnov rode at the head of his small column of five Renault Sherpa 3As, low-profile trucks that looked like aerodynamic Humvees. A Russian national, he previously served with distinction in the 98th Guard Airborne Division as a sergeant in the South Ossetian War, but he was put under house arrest pending a court-martial after assaulting an officer he considered cowardly. He avoided prosecution only by escaping the camp and fleeing the country.
Now Krasnov proudly wore the kepi of the French Foreign Legion. A tattoo of huge block letters ran the length of his muscular right forearm that read LEGIO PATRIA NOSTRA—“the Legion is my Fatherland.” He was willing to fight and die for France because the Legion had given him a home, no questions asked. Bald and thick like a power lifter, the two-meter-tall ex-paratrooper was as tough as they came in one of the world’s toughest fighting units. He was one of the few foreign nationals to fight his way up into the officer corps, making him an even rarer breed of elite warrior.
Lieutenant Krasnov hated the jihadists. He had had a bellyful of them on his tour in southern Afghanistan, and he’d seen the carnage they wrought over the years in suicide bombings in his former country, particularly the fanatical Chechens and their murderous assaults against hospitals, theaters, and even schools. He was happy to be chasing the scum today, but if the intel wasn’t any better than what he’d received over the last several weeks, he expected this to be a another waste of time and fuel. His column raced along the flat paved road at 120 kph just in case any IEDs were deployed and his Sherpas blasted out electronic jamming signals to prevent remote IED detonations. A large IED could tear even armored vehicles like his in half like a soft baguette.
“Lieutenant, do you see that?” His driver, a lanky American kid, pointed at a man in the road far up ahead waving a white cloth vigorously over his head.
Krasnov pulled up a pair of field glasses. The man in the road was obviously an American or European. His long blond hair was matted with sweat and tucked under a salt-stained ball cap. His big, bushy beard made him look like a Viking, even from this distance, and he wore a civilian uniform of some sort, but Krasnov couldn’t quite make out the logo. A Nissan pickup was parked near him on the side of the road in the sand, its hood up.
Krasnov radioed the rest of the convoy to prepare to stop. His driver tapped the brakes and began to slow, downshifting as the tachometer drifted toward zero. The driver eventually stopped, pulling even with the broken-down truck. Krasnov radioed to the other troopers to remain in their Sherpas, but he dismounted along with the two privates riding in his command vehicle, a dour blue-eyed Pole and a hawk-faced Spaniard. The American driver remained seated, engine idling.
“Hey! Thank God! You speak English?” the man said. His white teeth smiled through his wild beard. His name was stitched on the sweat-soaked shirt of the faded British Petroleum uniform: “Magnus Karlsen.” The accent sounded Nordic to Krasnov. The man certainly looked the part.
“Yes, I speak English. What are you doing out here?” Krasnov smiled behind his dark wraparound sunglasses, but his suspicious eyes darted all around the scene.
The Pole and the Spaniard kept their automatic rifles slung low as they casually circled around the truck, checking for weapons and drugs.
“Stupid GPS! It sent me the wrong way. And then this piece of shit”—Karlsen kicked the Nissan’s fender hard—“decided to run out of petrol on me.”
“Swedish?” Krasnov asked.
“Norwegian. I think we are both far away from home.”
“You think so?” Krasnov pulled his glasses off and wiped the sweat off his face with his gloved hand. He glanced up at the Spaniard, who shook his head no, indicating nothing unusual about the truck.
“You need some water, Mr. Karlsen?”
“Yes, please. I ran out.” He pointed at half a dozen small empty bottles littering the sand around him.
Krasnov reached into the Sherpa cab and pulled out an unopened liter bottle of water. He tossed it to the big Norwegian.
“Thank you.” He cracked it open and drained it in one long chug, the water dribbling down the sides of his mouth onto his beard and shirt. He finished and grunted like a sated Viking would, then crushed the bottle in his thick fist and tossed it. “How about some petrol? Can you spare any?”
Krasnov nodded. “A little. Ten liters should be enough to get you back to town.”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
Krasnov nodded wordlessly to the Pole, who crossed to the Sherpa and reached for the jerry can.
“You want me to call you in?” Krasnov asked. “Your bosses must be worried.”
Karlsen grinned again. He pulled out an old cell phone from his pocket and waved it at Krasnov. “Called in two hours ago, before the battery died. They should have been here by now. You didn’t pass them on the way here?”
Krasnov shook his head and said, “No,” still scanning the horizon. In the far distance, high in the hazing blue sky, a plane. The Russian shielded his eyes with his gloved hand but couldn’t make it out. Too high up. Probably nothing. The windless air stank of diesel fuel now.
The Pole set the jerry can down after filling the Nissan’s tank. “Finished, Lieutenant,” he muttered.
“Secure that can, and the two of you load back in.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Norwegian folded himself into the cramped pickup cab and turned the key. The engine coughed for a couple of revolutions and then sputtered to life. “Excellent!” The bearded man threw a big thumbs-up at Krasnov.
“Better get going,” Krasnov said. He shut the Nissan’s door, leaving his hands on the sill.
Karlsen held out a big,
sweaty hand. “You saved my life. I can’t thank you enough.”
Krasnov hesitated, then shook his hand.
Karlsen nodded his thanks again, slammed the truck into first gear, and sped away past the convoy of Sherpas. Krasnov watched him for a few moments, then keyed the radio mic on his shoulder. “Time to get back to work, gentlemen. And keep the music off. I want everybody on high alert.”
The big Russian tapped on the driver’s window. It rolled down. “I want you to call that guy in. Have someone run a check on those plates, too.”
“Already did, Lieutenant.”
Seven hundred meters away, Karlsen slammed the brakes. The rubber squealed on the asphalt.
Krasnov glanced toward the noise. He raised himself up on the Sherpa’s step to get a better vantage. Saw Karlsen’s truck parked on the road, driver’s door open. Where did he go?
Krasnov glanced down at the road beneath his feet, then the sand by the side of the road. He saw it. There.
Too late.
One hundred feet of C4 erupted. Even half a mile away, Karlsen felt the pressure wave. It rocked his truck and spattered sand in his face like buckshot. The earplugs hardly helped, but he covered his ears with his hands, too, and opened his mouth. The air sucked out of his lungs so hard he thought they’d come up through his mouth. But a second passed and he gasped for air and knew he’d survived. His nose was runny. He pinched it with his fingers. Blood. His ears rang and his head ached. His pagan forefathers would have said that Ragnarök had begun—the end of the world. But, inshallah, not yet. At least not for him. Not for Al Rus. Not for the Viking.
The big Norwegian muttered a prayer of thanksgiving to Allah, then stood and brushed himself off. He crawled back into his Nissan and sped back to the scene. Smoke and dust boiled over the explosion site like a fog of doom. On the far side of the road, the Sherpas were gone. A debris field of twisted steel littered the sand. Clearly, no one had survived.
He stopped the truck where the MICLIC had been planted. The mine-clearing line charge was a hundred feet of C4 block assemblies strung together by nylon rope. The deadly charge was given to him by brothers from Fallujah who had retaken that city in 2014. The city was full of U.S. Marine Corps ordnance left behind for the worthless Iraqi army and police—tons of it. Guns, grenades, radios, claymore mines, and even MCLC.