Hidden Empire

by Orson Scott Card

  Then she walked out of the nearest door, feeling Torrent's eyes burning into her back as she left.

  unccmoTion

  You have to have a plan. You also have to know when to throw it out and improvise. Even then you can only improvise on the basis ot what you're prepared to do. Pianists can improvise on the piano, jockeys on horseback, but don't expect them to swap instruments and make anything happen.

  Unfortunately, many a politician, because raw chance makes something come out well for him, supposes that he must be good at improvising, when his only skill is pretending that this is how he wanted it to turn out from the start.

  Some governments don't need to have an actual crisis in order to fall apart. They just have to believe there might be a crisis, and presto! The top government officials take off for other countries, where they have their money stashed; mid-level bureaucrats call in favors from friends and contacts in neighboring countries and get the hell out; and low-level government functionaries, fearing retribution from people who have had to bribe them in order to get a train ride, a ration book, or married, lie low and hope people won't notice them during the ensuing bloodbath.

  So it was that even before the first reported case of sneezing flu in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, the government was, to all intents and purposes, gone.

  The rebels and bandits who had been making life hellish, mostly in the north but also everywhere, suddenly found themselves, in a word, victorious. They all rushed to the capital in order to assert their claim to be the rightful rulers of one of the most miserable places on earth—a place whose economy had been wrecked by the actions of both government and bandits. Upon arrival, they started shooting one another and, of course, anyone within a half-mile of the shooting, since the bullets easily passed through the flimsy walls of the houses of the poor.

  The bandits and rebels from the north and west also brought with them the first cases of nictovirus. Just one more service of the new "government."

  Cole had been tracking all this from his headquarters in Calabar, Nigeria, where he had co-opted several abandoned university buildings as the base of operations for U.S. special ops in the region. Calabar was near the border with Cameroon, making it possible to hop from one country to the next if that became necessary; Calabar was also near the coast and nearly surrounded by rivers, for easy evacuation.

  "What is the State Department thinking?" he asked his few aides. "Our embassy staff should have been out of Bangui last week. Now there's no safe way to get them out of there."

  "Looks like a job for Iron Man," said Sergeant Jeep Wills, who was handling communications for Cole. When Cole was out on an operation, Wills was the one who decided which urgent information could wait till Cole got back, and which needed to be dealt with immediately through the Noodle. He had done a very good job and Cole was impressed, especially considering that Wills looked to be about fifteen, though his records indicated that he was twenty-one and had graduated from high school in three years and then did the same with college. Smart kid.

  "Iron Man has a suit that can deflect bullets," Cole pointed out. "We just have Kevlar. And we actually exist."

  "But I mean it," said Wills. "Just got this from State." He handed Cole a printout of an email and sure enough, one group of rebels had decided that the most useful point in Bangui to capture was the U.S. embassy.

  "Unfortunately," said Wills, "there were only four people staffing the embassy, so there was no realistic possibility of holding out against a serious opponent. Actually, no possibility of holding out against a troop of Boy Scouts going for their hostage-taking merit badge."

  "And what's the good news?" asked Cole.

  "There are only four embassy personnel to rescue and get out of the CAR and they don't have families in-country, so at least the State Department kept the number of hostages low."

  "That's it?"

  "Minor stuff. There are only about two hundred bandits holed up at the embassy, declaring themselves the legitimate government of the CAR, or Sangoland as they want to call the country. Naturally, this has drawn all the other bandit groups that don't already have their own captive embassy or government office building, and there's a lot of gunfire. Fortunately, they're so badly trained that nobody hits anything except windows."

  "You got all this from the State Department dispatch?" asked Cole.

  "Well, that and emails from Sergeant John Seibt, the token soldier and lowest on the four-man totem pole in the embassy."

  "He's a hostage, and they let him send out emails?"

  "He told them that he was the only one who could contact the U.S. government, and since none of them reads English he can pretty much write what he wants to whomever he wants."

  "Did you just use 'whomever' correctly?"

  "Yes, sir," said Wills. "That's why it sounded so wrong to you."

  "I guess the State Department wants us, at great risk to life and limb, to extract people they could have brought out peacefully last week."

  "That is the gist of their communications. Seibt, however, says that it's going to be complicated because these clowns are so undisciplined they might be anywhere at any time doing anything. But whatever they do, they do it with weapons in hand, which are always going off, sometimes to their surprise and sometimes not."

  "The embassy staff is kept where?"

  "Wherever his royal highness, King Idi Amin Muhammad Jesus Buddha de Gaulle, happens to be at the moment."

  "Oh, please," said Cole. "That's really his name?"

  "He wanted to honor all his heroes. This is really funny stuff, General Coleman, sir, as long as you don't actually have to go in there and get them out."

  "Which I have to do."

  "You could send one of the other teams."

  "No," said Cole. "As somebody pointed out, this is a job for the Tin Man."

  "I said 'Iron Man.' Can't be the Tin Man, cause you got such a big heart, General Coleman, sir."

  "Thank you for setting an example of respect toward a brevet general who is probably going to get killed in this operation."

  "So take a look at the embassy on the Google-maps satellite view," said Wills.

  "Are you kidding?" asked Cole.

  "The Army has access to much better pictures," said Wills, "but this isn't the Pentagon and we're not picking bombing targets, we just want to know where the streets and buildings are. Our software is based on Google-maps anyway, so it's pretty much the same thing."

  Cole hunkered down next to the computer screen and looked at the layout. "Can we zoom this image any closer?" he asked.

  "Close as it gets," said Wills. "State is emailing us PDFs of the fioorplan and elevations of the embassy building. The Google satellite map lets you see how the town is laid out."

  "Looks like it's a navigable river," said Cole. "I wonder if we should come in wet so we can make it, like, a surprise."

  "Of course, sir. Having captured the U.S. embassy, they will certainly not be expecting a military foray by American troops."

  "I'm not looking for strategic surprise, Wills, just tactical. The river?"

  "The Ubangi. Or, since they spell in French there, the Ouban-gui." Wills gave the French version an Inspector Clouseau pronunciation. "But really, sir, if you just come in with a chopper up the river and set it down in any of these fields and parking lots along the river, it'll be surprise enough. The guys who have the embassy are surrounded now by everybody else, so anything that happens six blocks away, they don't know about it."

  "This is such a Keystone Kops situation," said Cole. "Somebody's going to get killed."

  "Yes, but probably not any of ours," said Wills. "If you're careful."

  "How dangerous is this Idi de Gaulle guy?"

  "Sort of medium dangerous, for Africa. Meaning he kills anybody he feels like killing, as long as they're unarmed or he has the drop on them."

  Cole took the mouse, backed the satellite map out to a wider view, and then pointed to a little "thumbta
ck" with the letter A on it. "Since the embassy has the letter B, what's this place with the letter A?"

  Wills laughed. "That's a special feature of Google Maps, sir. The 'A' is the pushpin marker for the whole Central African Republic, because that was my first search."

  "And they have it pointing to this dirt patch surrounded by warehouses or shops or whatever?"

  "A place of absolutely no significance. Maybe on that spot there's a sign that says 'welcome to the CAR.'"

  "I'll take it as a sign. The patron saint of directions, Google, has told us where point A is. We only have to fly low up the river, come to ground there, and then move as quickly as possible to point B."

  "And then come back again?"

  "No," said Cole. "We'll extract to the shoreline right here, in this jumble of barges at the end of Avenue Colonel Conus."

  "Um, sir," said Wills, "these barges were here when the satellite picture was taken, but—"

  "Wills, if there's one thing I've learned in my travels across Africa, it's that once a bunch of anything gets piled up somewhere, it's pretty much going to stay there until somebody steals it."

  "Just my point, sir—barges are portable and can be stolen. Therefore, until we can get a UAS in there to keep watch—"

  "Or until somebody blows it up," said Cole.

  "And that would be you," said Wills.

  "A spectacular exit," said Cole.

  "Go out with a bang."

  "Or at least a puff of smoke. But only if we have to."

  "I'll alert the chopper kids that their skills are going to be wanted … about when?"

  "About fifteen minutes after we get those floor plans from State. And wake up the Navy and ask them to give us air cover on about one minute's notice, if we need it. It's okay if they're seen, but they should hang back till I call for them. They're basically the failure scenario—if we get taken, their job is to blow the hell out of the embassy."

  "Very dramatic," said Wills. "But that isn't going to happen, right?"

  "We just got our third software update on our Noodles and Bones," said Cole. "We're one step away from having the ability to think ourselves through walls."

  "You can already leap small buildings in a single bound," said Wills.

  "The embassy is a large building."

  "With lots of flat roofs at lots of different levels," said Wills. "And you'll have the codes to open all the doors."

  "So I shouldn't go crashing through walls?" asked Cole.

  "Just on the off chance that someday we want to go back and re-embassize it, sir, it's probably better to blow up as little as possible."

  "State asked you to say that, didn't they."

  "Very respectfully, yes, General Coleman."

  "A bunch of bunnies with spectacles, that's what the State Department is, Sergeant Wills."

  "Well said, sir."

  "Nearsighted bunny rabbits," Cole repeated, doing his best avuncular general imitation.

  Wills chuckled. "It's such a pleasure sucking up to you, sir."

  Cole nodded benignly. "Carry on, Sergeant."

  "Ay-ay, sir." Of course Wills had to use old-fashioned Naval language, even though nobody would laugh. It all came from letting soldiers get away with nicknames like "Jeep."

  It took about two hours to get all the information together and brief the jeesh. Then they put on their Bones, got into a chopper with a nice assortment of lethal missiles attached, and headed almost due east. Just before refueling in midair outside CAR airspace, their chopper would loose four Preds to take up their coverage zones over the target.

  It was less than five hundred miles to Bangui, and they spent the time talking through their assignments. It was such a luxury to work with a team like this. Every one of them was capable of leading the mission, and if something went wrong, they'd all react intelligently.

  "You're all aware of the software updates?" asked Cole.

  "Did they erase my cookies?" asked Drew.

  "You know they didn't, or your Bones wouldn't recognize you when you put them on," said Cole.

  "Then I'm fine. You know all these updates are for is to fix bugs that might get us killed, and then replace them with new code which is full of new bugs that can get us killed."

  "But differently," added Mingo.

  "So you didn't read the read-me file?" asked Cole.

  "I never do," said Drew.

  "Yes we did," said Load. "All of us, even Drew. We're not stupid, sir."

  Sir, not Cole. That had been happening more and more. Not a big deal, and maybe it was just because they saw how Cole's major-general stars had everybody else groveling. But Cole thought it was because whatever these guys were into, Cole had failed their test and he was not one of them anymore. He could still trust them in combat, because they were great soldiers. But he wasn't in on their secrets anymore—if he ever had been. He was just another "sir" now.

  Well, no, he was certainly more than that, after all their combat together, but still: He was outside the circle.

  "Here on the map, sir," said Benny. "There really is a town named 'Bimbo'?"

  "Looks like," said Cole.

  "And a few miles south," said Benny, "a town named 'Yabimbo.' He put on a fake gruff voice. 'What're ya talkin' about, ya bimbo!'" Then a girly voice. "No, sir. Bimbo's about ten miles north of here."

  Just precombat clowning. They all knew this was a stupid, stupid setup with almost nothing under control. But winging it was what they were good at, so of course they got the assignments where too little was known and the timetable was urgent.

  They came in low up the river, but high enough they could see their landmark, the big stadium. When they were opposite the road that came straight south from that, the chopper swung in and moved up a little stream that fed into the Ubangi next to the road. It took about two seconds to realize that the "stream" wasn't exactly a babbling brook—it stank like raw sewage and lots of dead things in various stages of decay.

  "At least we won't have any trouble finding this place again," said Arty.

  "Yes we will," said Cat. "Because now we and everything we own smells just as bad."

  They found a good spot to land the chopper, a grassy field with no buildings facing them. Not that they didn't have observers—quite a few workmen looking over fences in the middle distance. But no kids—it wasn't a residential area. And in a way, it was nice to see people who weren't hiding in terror from all human contact. Sure, there might be rebels shooting one another all over town, but out here they were beyond the range of bullets with enough force left in them to do much damage, and the nictovirus had not yet settled in to stay and kill.

  So they were watching the Americans arrive and maybe some of them were thinking, Damn Yankees, and maybe some of them were thinking, Hurrah, the Yanks will save us now! Sorry, folks, Cole said silently. We're just going to pick up our package and run like hell. You'll have to live with your new government as best you can. And the sneezing death that's right behind them.

  They hit the ground, offloaded a couple of generous-sized supply packs just in case—they included collapsible stretchers because you never knew what condition the embassy staffers would be in—and the moment the last pack cleared the deck, the chopper was up in the air and moving off, back down the river. When Cole called, the chopper would come back, but this time farther upstream at the rendezvous point—whether there were any barges there or not.

  They were all experienced with their Bones now, and they kept good time, running parallel about fifty yards apart from one another. Leaps and bounds, that's how they traveled, but popping up and down at random intervals like the moles in a whack-a-mole game. Sometimes one guy would be going over a building, or hopping up onto it and then off the other side, if he thought the roof would hold his weight, while the rest were only having to leap fences or hop over parked cars. Then it would be another guy's turn to be most exposed to enemy observation and fire.

  Over the intercom in the Noodle, Cole heard Arty say,
"Donnie Darko Street is getting closer to the river and I'm running out of room."

  "It's 'Avenue David Dacko,'" Cole said, with all the patience of an older cousin. "And it's time for the backdoor team to head up the Rue de l'Industrie and cut over on Victoire. Seeya, guys."

  Cole led the three who stayed with him—Cat, Babe, and Arty—along both sides of some big warehouses. Cole was on the riverside of the buildings, and sure enough, all the barges seemed to be there, just like the satellite picture. Then they got to the place where Avenue Colonel Conus came down to the river and followed it away from the river for about thirty yards before turning left to go into a weedy vacant lot that led straight toward the American embassy, which they could see towering over the street.

  This is where they stopped to drop off their supply packages in the lee of a high wall surrounding an even more depressed-looking weedy lot.

  "You in place?" asked Cole, and the other team said yes, and that was it. Except that Cole thought to check the drones and saw something he didn't like.

  He saw nothing.

  Not five minutes ago, as they were coming in on the chopper, the press had shown Avenue David Dacko crowded with bandits. Now there wasn't a soul there.

  Cole gave the command to share the image with the others. "You getting that?" he said.

  "Looks like everybody went home to get ready for the birthday party," said Mingo.

  "Has our plan been compromised?" asked Cole.

  "I'd say yes, if we had a plan," said Arty.

  "I think we were spotted coming in and the other bandits took off," said Mingo. "We weren't trying to be invisible."

  "You'd think they'd stay to take a few shots at the evil Americans," said Cole.

  "Maybe they have friends in Nigeria and they've heard about us," said Drew.

  "Whatever it is," said Cole, "we still have to do it. The backdoor team had better hold off and let us see if it's a trap coming in the front."

  He heard assent from both teams and then he said to his guys, "Gentlemen, start your engines."

  They bounded over a couple of fences and then leapt Avenue David Dacko. A very empty avenue, except for a couple of thoroughly shot-up cars. No time even to tell the other guys that it gave him the same kind of uneasy feeling that Butch and Sundance had before going out to get shot to pieces in the plaza. It was just another bound and Cole and Cat were up in the air soaring over the embassy wall, looking down at the embassy grounds, with Arty and Babe right behind.