by Mike Maden
“I want to thank you for saving my life today, Mr. Pearce. Twice.”
“I was just trying to save my own neck. And please, call me Troy.”
Mossa held his takouba up, examining the fine edge he’d just put on it. “You have amazing weapons in your arsenal. Did you invent them yourself?”
“No. I have a research team that sometimes creates new systems, but mostly we take existing technologies and modify or combine them. The grenade launcher you saw me use in the village was off-the-shelf technology, and so were the MetaPro glasses. We just wrote a piece of targeting software to link the two, and to make them function better together.”
“You saved many lives today,” Mossa said. He laid the blade back down across his knees, put the whetstone away.
“And took many more,” Cella added.
“Hardly seems kosher,” Early said. “All this new technology has too many advantages over us mere mortals. Might even make wars obsolete someday.” Early recalled the slaughter at the village, but he’d seen plenty of other examples of technology-induced carnage on too many other battlefields.
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Cella said. “It can’t happen soon enough.”
“Your machines will change wars, but not the men who fight them. There will always be wars, until there are no men,” Mossa said. “When all men are dead, then their machines will still keep fighting for them, because they will have been programmed by the men who made them.”
“It’s Terminator and Skynet,” Early mused.
“I loved that movie,” Mossa said.
Early burst out laughing. Cella and Pearce did, too, infected by Early’s loss of control.
“I said something funny?” Mossa said.
When Early finally recovered, he wiped the tears from his eyes. “No, I’m sorry. I meant no offense. But you look like an ancient warrior from the distant past. The thought of you sitting in a movie theater with your sword, watching a futuristic sci-fi movie, well, it just seemed funny.”
“I watched it on a DVD, actually. At my son’s home in Tripoli, years ago.” Mossa’s eyes misted into a memory. Cella took one of his hands in hers, squeezed it. The others stared into the crackling fire.
Pearce wanted to know more about Cella’s husband. How they met, how he died, and how Cella of all people would be caught up in a genocidal war like this. But now was not the time.
Mossa returned to the present, to his guests. “You two met in your war, yes?”
Pearce nodded.
“In Afghanistan, or Iraq?”
“Iraq,” Early blurted after an uncomfortable silence. “A joint mission, helping the Kurds in the north.”
“You were both CIA?”
“Me? Hell no. U.S. Army Ranger.” Early threw a thumb at Pearce. “He was the spook.”
“A spy. Interesting. I don’t think of spies as fighters.” Mossa flicked his cigarette into the fire.
“I was with the Special Operations Group, part of the CIA’s Special Activities Division. Sort of like their own little army.”
Mossa brightened. “So you were a soldier?”
“Yes.”
“But not now?”
“No.”
“And yet here you are, fighting.”
“That’s different.” Pearce pounded Early on the shoulder. “I came for this knucklehead. But now, no more wars.”
“What did you learn about war in Iraq?”
“He also fought in Afghanistan,” Cella said. “That is where we met. A long time ago.”
“What did I learn? I learned that war is too important to be left to the politicians.”
“And yet they are the ones who want them. But it has always been that way. What else?”
“I know that I fought with good men, mostly.” Thoughts of Annie washed over Pearce. “And women.”
“Women fighters?” Mossa was incredulous. “What a waste.”
“Yes, a few women back then. More now, these days.”
“Why did you fight in Iraq?”
“For my country.”
“What changed?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you stop fighting? Did you stop being an American?”
“The war was voluntary. Most Americans didn’t fight in the war. Almost none of the politicians did—neither did their children.”
“You got that damn straight,” Early said. His face soured. “Funny how the guys that never fought are the first to want to fight.”
“That is true everywhere,” Cella said. “Politicians want the votes. They get votes when they bomb other people.”
“We call them ‘chicken hawks’ back home,” Early said.
Mossa lit another cigarette. Pointed at Pearce. “But I asked about you, not about the chickens. Why did you stop fighting?”
“We started two wars we didn’t know how to finish. Too many people I knew got killed waiting for my government to figure that out.”
“We have a saying: ‘It’s easier to fall into a well than to climb out of one.’”
“We jumped into two of them,” Early said. “Now look at them, now that we’re gone.”
“But you had the best weapons. Did your technology fail you?” Mossa asked.
Pearce shook his head. “No. The technology worked fine. We killed many, many more of them than they killed of us.”
“And yet you are the ones who quit the war. You, yourself, left. So your technology did fail.” Mossa pointed at Moctar, head devoutly touching his prayer rug. Mossa whispered. “Moctar loves his people, but he loves Allah even more. Such men are more dangerous than drones.”
“Even to you?” Pearce asked.
“Yes. Even to me. He is al-Qaeda Sahara.”
“What?” Early couldn’t believe it. “Then why is he here?”
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Mossa winked. “He will only put a bullet in me if he is ordered to. He loves me like a father, and his people. He is a good man, as well as devout. Besides, even the prophet Jesus had his Judas, did he not? Not that I am a prophet or even the son of a prophet.”
“The muj always knew that they would win simply by not losing,” Pearce said, using the pejorative slang word for mujahideen. “They were willing to die by the tens of thousands. They bought time with their blood. But I agree. Technology is never a substitute for the will to win.”
“So many needless deaths,” Cella added. “On both sides.”
“They started it,” Early said. “I’m just sorry we didn’t finish it.”
“And how would you finish it?” Cella demanded.
“Kill every last motherfucking one of them,” Early said.
“‘Them’?” she asked.
Early’s eyes narrowed. “The muj. The crazy bastards. The terrorists.”
“They call us terrorists,” Cella said. She meant Mossa and her adopted family.
“I don’t know who ‘they’ are. But I know you. You’re the good guys.”
“And if you didn’t know us?”
“But I do. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Imbecilli!” She flipped a dismissive hand in the air.
“Daughter, please.” Mossa raised his head. “These are our guests.”
“I’m sorry.” Cella wrapped her arms around her raised knees and buried her face, hiding from the conversation.
Mossa turned back to Pearce. “So you stopped fighting the war, and yet you are still a warrior. Both of you.”
“Not for America.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t understand. Our politicians are corrupt.”
“You Americans. You are so quick to change everyone else’s government. Perhaps you should change your own.”
“That’s called treason where we come from,�
�� Early said.
Mossa smiled. “Truth is always treason to the wicked. Was not George Washington a traitor to the British Crown?”
“I’m no politician,” Pearce said. “And the country is divided.”
“Ha!” Mossa laughed. “You don’t know the Imohar, do you? We have a little unity now because everyone else is trying to kill us. When the outside threat is gone, watch what my people will do to each other again.”
“What do you mean?”
“The MNLA wants Azawad—a separate Tuareg nation. But Ansar Dine wants sharia law, not Tuareg law, al-Murabitoun wants to wage jihad against foreigners, and AQS wants a West African caliphate. But worst of all, most of our people have settled in the cities driving trucks or in the villages raising sheep and selling tires and tobacco, and are forgetting our ways altogether.”
“So why do you still fight? Every government around here wants the Tuareg fighters to surrender, and want you dead.”
Mossa ran his fingers along the takouba blade, his fingertips gliding over carved images in the metal.
“The men who make our swords are called Ineden. Do you know this term?”
“Blacksmith?” Pearce offered.
“Yes, that is what they do, but Ineden are also a separate caste of people. They have their own special language and, it is said, their own magical powers, which they breathe into these swords as they make them. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“The Ineden are forged, by God, to make swords. I am Ihaggaren, forged in God’s furnace to wield the sword. Like you, I am a warrior. Do you not see? The warrior is given by God to serve his people. I win my war by being faithful to God and to my people. What they do with their victory, inshallah, is up to them. That is why you are miserable, Troy. You are a ronin, a masterless warrior. You know this term?”
“I’m surprised you do, but I don’t know why I’m surprised by anything you say anymore,” Early said.
“When a samurai no longer had a master, he sold his services or turned to crime,” Pearce said. “Or killed himself.”
“No. When a samurai no longer had a master, he was no longer a samurai. He lost his purpose.” Mossa turned to Early. “A samurai is devoted to his master, not to war. Serving his master was his true purpose. Did you know this? Or have you not read The Hagakure?”
“When did you read it?” Pearce asked. He had been assigned it as a text at The Farm years ago.
“When I was a young man, younger than you. It meant nothing to me at the time. But my Russian instructor had insisted on it, despite its being a ‘remnant of bourgeois classism,’ or some such nonsense.”
Pearce couldn’t help but smile. Had the Soviets copied the CIA curriculum, or the other way around?
“How long were you in the Soviet Union?” Pearce asked.
“Not the Soviet Union. Benghazi, at the military academy, for six months. We had several Russian instructors. Gaddafi was a socialist, besides being a Pan-Arabist.”
“You fought for Gaddafi?”
“I was recruited into the Islamic Legion in 1971. He recruited many poor fighters, but especially Tuaregs. He favored us, and gave us the chance to fight. Good money, homes. My two sons were born there.” He nodded at Cella. “Her husband. He became a doctor.”
“And your other son?”
“A fighter, like me. With his brother, in Paradise. I hope to see them both soon.”
“Don’t say such things,” Cella said.
Mossa ignored her. “Libya was good to me. But it all came at a very high price. A price I was willing to pay for too long.”
“What was the price?”
“To forget my people, my fathers, my tribe, my chief, in order to serve Libya and the Pan-Arab movement. But Gaddafi forgot that Tuaregs are not Arabs. We are Berbers, and we were here in the Sahara before the Arabs. And, inshallah, we shall be here long after they are gone.”
Mossa drew a big circle in the sand with his finger, then split the circle into parts and named them. “Libya here, Niger here, Mali here, Algeria here, Burkina Faso here. Do you see what these nations all have in common?”
“Sand,” Early said. He never missed the obvious.
Mossa laughed. “No. Not even that.” Mossa wiped the borders away with his hand. “They are merely lines in the sand. Meaningless. The Sahara is the Sahara, and the Imohar are its masters, without borders.”
Mossa turned to Pearce. “I was miserable when I came home. I thought it was because I was a warrior without a war. But in truth, I had become a ronin, like you. It wasn’t until I took up the rifle on behalf of my people that I became human again.” He slipped his takouba into its leather sheath. “If you don’t mind my saying, you are like a sword without a sheath. You, too, Early. Do you understand my meaning?”
“No,” Early said.
“The best sword remains in its sheath so that it is ready when it is needed. A sword outside of its place will rust and break and become worthless, only to be tossed into the fire.”
Cella shook her head. “You men and your talk of war and borders and killing. If you made life inside of you instead of taking the lives of others around you, you would hear how foolish you sound.”
Mossa laughed. “You should talk, daughter! You are the fiercest warrior of us all. You fight for those you love, too. Only not with bullets.”
The camel driver called out, lifting the great round wheel of bread out of the hot sand.
“You see? All your talk of war, and you should have been making tea!” Cella stood up and headed over to the camel driver to help.
“She is worse than two generals,” Mossa said. “But she has a good heart.” The Tuareg glanced at Pearce. “But you already know this.”
“She saved many lives in Afghanistan, including mine, I think.”
“And yesterday you came here. Perhaps she is the one I should thank for our lives.” Mossa stood. “But first I shall make the tea.”
Pearce scanned the wide horizon. If the Malian army decided to come after them here, nothing could save them. He was all out of tricks now and there was nowhere to hide.
47
Maersk Oil Pumping Station
Tamanghasset Province, Southern Algeria
11 May
Lieutenant Beaujolais kneeled down to get a better photo on his cell phone. The Danish woman was beautiful. Such a waste. He pressed the button. The cell phone camera flashed. The woman’s face appeared on the small screen. Blond hair, brown eyes, a mouth twisted in a rictus of terror.
He pressed SEND. The message was addressed to the French Foreign Legion command. He stood. The rubber soles of his boots made a crackling sound as he moved. The floor was sticky with blood. He took a photo of the Danish woman’s twisted body, three feet away from her head.
“Lieutenant!” The shout came from outside.
The lieutenant pulled his pistol and dashed outside. The corporal’s voice came from around back.
“Lieutenant! Here!”
Beaujolais ran to the far side of the building. The corporal, a wiry Haitian, pointed in the distance. A man stumbled around in the distance on a low dune, like a drunk.
“You! Stop!” the lieutenant called. But the man stumbled on.
Beaujolais fired his pistol in the air. “STOP!” But the drunk plodded on.
The lieutenant and the corporal ran the distance, their boots marching a straight line through his wobbly footprints. They were both in fantastic shape, but sprinting uphill a hundred meters in the hot sand left them both exhausted, thighs and calves throbbing.
The lieutenant’s eyes stung with sweat. He wiped it away with his free hand, afraid he was seeing things.
Mon Dieu.
The wide-eyed Haitian corporal saw the same thing.
The two soldiers raced the last few meters, shouting for the man to stop in Fr
ench, English, and Arabic. He didn’t.
The Haitian dropped his rifle and tackled the man from behind. He didn’t resist. They rolled him over. The drunken man held up his two arms, raising blackened stumps to heaven, crying out, I am no thief! in Arabic, blood and tears streaming down his lidless eyes. He wasn’t drunk.
He was out of his mind.
No question. This was the man on the AQS video beheading the Danish woman in the pump house posted just hours before.
The Haitian opened his canteen and tried to give the man water, but he spit it out. The corporal dumped it on his face to cool him and relieve his sun-scorched eyes.
The lieutenant shot a cell phone picture of the man’s blistered face for confirmation from HQ, but he was certain it was him, the killer in the video. But this wretch wasn’t AQ Sahara. They wouldn’t do this to their own kind. Besides, he had no beard, no weapon, and they left him behind—unlike the other two masked butchers in the video holding the girl. Maybe they forced this man to behead her?
“Who did this to you?” the lieutenant asked in Arabic.
The man wept and burbled.
“I can’t understand you.”
“Al Rus,” the man finally muttered.
The lieutenant cursed. They had just missed him. But at least they knew he was in the area. Maybe headquarters could do something with that.
The Oval Office, the White House
Washington, D.C.
Diele poured himself another scotch. Without asking.
Again.
President Greyhill was coming to regret his arranged marriage with the esteemed former senator from Nevada. Diele had helped broker the deal that got Myers to resign her office in exchange for blanket pardons for Pearce and his friends. The broker’s fee Diele charged was the vice presidency. The exchange gave Greyhill the big desk in the Oval Office, but he could never shake the feeling that Diele had one hand on the doorknob, ready to shove him back out.
But Diele had his uses. He was a formidable ally to have in his corner—the kind of bare-knuckled street fighter who would gleefully kick an unsuspecting opponent in the balls before the fight even began. The kind of fighter that would rather kick an opponent in the head when he was down on the ground clutching his scrotum than actually get in a ring and prance around for ten rounds. That made Diele extremely valuable to Greyhill.