by S A Gardner
“Is this static or are you stuttering?” His bark battered my cold-brittle eardrum.
“T-temperature t-took a d-dive.”
“And you’re waiting to hallucinate with hypothermia and take a dive yourself? Get back inside, St. James. Now.”
I did. My mind was fogging. What else would make me obey him without at least a comeback?
The men started the harnessing protocols all over again as the girls fussed over me with hot drinks and packs.
Then we were on our way again.
After twenty minutes, another explosion boomed.
I hoped this truck lasted as long as the first one. And that we’d have some left by the time we reached the camp.
Twenty-One
We reached the camp.
At least, we were in visual range of it. And we did have trailers left. The most important six.
All in all, we were five days later than projected, four trucks and twenty-million dollars’ worth of equipment poorer. But we’d made it to our destination in one piece. More or less.
Shad would be out of action for the rest of the mission. It would take at least two months for his neck fracture to heal, even with internal fixation. But his blast injuries were resolving, and he was out of danger. Pierro was almost back to normal, and so were the others.
Not bad after a massive raid and sixty miles of mines. Gotta hand it to us. The “us” our teams had become.
We were good. We were incredible, actually.
We were also clueless. We had no idea whether the minefield had ended, or if it continued up to the first tent.
Then we had proof that it didn’t. A convoy of gleaming vehicles was coming toward us. At least that path was clear.
Ayesha and I exchanged raised eyebrows.
She shook her head. “You’d think latest model SUVs are the camp’s standard-issue transportation. Or that this is a welcome mat.”
My lips twisted. “Since they’re not firing, it probably is. They must be our hosts, so to speak.”
“St. James.” Damian’s voice poured from the radio. “Stay put until they come right up to us.”
I agreed. Of course, I did. But I didn’t appreciate his insistence on giving me orders that assumed I was a harebrained idiot. When would I live down that near-tumble into a hive of land mines? I’d estimated my jump perfectly, for God’s sake.
To frustrate him as he did me, I said, “No, De Luna, I’ll go test the ground’s safety at the possible cost of my only pair of legs.”
He got off our private channel abruptly.
Loved it when I drove him to silence.
It took our inspection committee fifteen minutes to arrive. From their slow advance, I guessed there were still mines, and they knew exactly where.
They fanned out around us, jumped out of their vehicles and walked up to us. They laughed and called out to one another, pointing at our decimated trailer.
The maggots found our efforts to trudge through their mine-infested territory funny?
Yeah. But the maggots also looked impressed.
The one who walked with the assurance of the pack’s leader walked up to Damian’s truck, his gun swinging at his back. I grabbed our documentations and jumped out of my truck as Damian stepped out of his. A pack of militants flocked around me, escorting me up to their leader, looking me up and down. No insight needed to read their filthy minds.
They were letting rip a torrent of merry Russian. All amusement came to a sudden halt when Damian spoke up, his accent indistinguishable from theirs.
Dammit. He’d spoken too quickly. What had he said?
Whatever, he’d surprised the hell out of them, robbed them of the advantage of indulging in obscene commentary in our uncomprehending presence.
The leader’s pale eyes narrowed, a new consideration creeping there. He spoke slower this time, asking Damian if he was Russian. Yeah, sure. Everyone knew Russians had pure Latin lineage.
A ping pong match of Q&A followed, my Russian unable to keep up, leaving me in the dark. Raising my temperature. Damian was flexing his multilingual muscles, showing me who had more of a literal say now.
Fine, let him be our spokesman. I was the aid-mission leader, no co-leading involved there.
Turning impassive eyes on me, he made introductions. The leader actually made a bow then mutilated some English.
“Welcome to our beautiful and conflicted region, Doctor. It’s indeed noble of you to brave all this hardship to help our poor people. We are forever in your debt.”
Our poor people? Those they used as human shields and held hostage in an invisible prison of subterranean death?
But it wasn’t only common sense that doused the urge to punch his face in. It was also the chill that welcome speech gave me.
Someone with such horrendous pronunciation couldn’t have come up with that piece of consummate propaganda. Someone must have taught it to him. One of their hostages? Someone who could translate Russian that well?
Jake?
I didn’t want to think what else they made him do.
But what was this all about anyway? Why were they trying to paint us an honorable picture of themselves, after they’d reneged on their promise of clearing the mines? Did they or didn’t they want us here?
Seemed they did. So if it hadn’t been them who’d planted those mines, who else could have?
Damian extended his hand for our papers, avoiding eye contact. Wise. No reason to give them any insight into the dynamics governing our team. Our best protection was being faces and names with no personalities. Or connections.
The leader’s gaze ran over our extensive GCA documentation, issued in English and Russian, before he turned to our individual passports. He left Damian’s and mine for last. He dismissed mine sooner, lingered over Damian’s, as if trying to glean more insight into an entity that intrigued him. Not good, that interest.
Then I caught a glimpse of Damian’s reaction. It took a lot to stun me. And here it was.
The gracious terrorist I took in my stride, but an affable Damian? There was no other adjective for how he looked, what he projected. A hulking teddy bear.
The leader asked him many questions, and he answered them all in perfect geniality. Then he said something that made every militant within earshot burst out laughing.
My mental jaw hit the ground as the leader patted him on the back, then ordered his men to tow the destroyed trailer away. While they did, he and Damian plunged into a nonstop overlapping exchange I doubt even they fully heard.
After it was done, the leader handed me our papers, shook our hands with great cordiality, turned on his heels and signaled for us to follow their procession.
“That was so sweet,” I mumbled, keeping my face expressionless as we moved toward our respective trucks.
“Yeah, wasn’t it just?” Damian answered, doing his ventriloquist thing again. “But what was really sweet, and surprising as hell, was you keeping your mouth shut.”
I let my voice make a face. “The fluency barrier, you understand. And then you yapped enough for the whole team.”
“They were impressed with our method of getting through the minefields to the point of suspicion. Any other aid operation would have turned back and filed a complaint with the UN or something. I had to allay their suspicions.”
“And you did that—how?” I was dying to know what he’d said, especially what had made them dissolve in laughter.
“With the best kind of lie, the truth-mixed variety.”
“Whoa—this is so enlightening.”
“Some things are better left unexplained.” But he knew I’d drill him for details until he told me, so he sighed. “I said we tried to go back and got hit again, tried to call for help and no one answered, so we had no choice. I made a few jokes about desperation being the mother and father of ingenuity.”
From the way they’d laughed, it must have been something dripping in obscenities. Hmm. Hard to imagine the Damian I knew spewing male vul
garities, and so fluently, in another language no less.
But then he seemed to have a different personality for each occasion. So which was the real him?
Was there a real him?
We reached his truck and he jumped up while I continued on my way. There’d be no radio communication until we made sure no busy ears were eavesdropping.
Once we were on our way, my mental mouth dropped open again. For the past days, my eyes had been either glued to Matt’s bumper or shut while I slept until it was time for one of my many chores. When we’d stopped, it had been at night. Now I looked around…and wow!
“Holy moly, Cali.” Ayesha whistled, echoing my thoughts. “That’s one stunning sight.”
Stunning was too mild to describe the scene in the distance. Presiding over it, Mount Kazbek, a sixteen-thousand-foot potentially active volcano, rose majestically from Georgian soil, its extensive Russian side cascading toward us, rugged and verdant and poetic. Brooding and snowcapped, it kept looming closer, as if on the verge of engulfing existence.
“Are the borders close?” Ayesha asked.
“Yeah. As is the ancient Georgian Military Highway.”
“What’s that?”
“Ayesha!” I exclaimed. “You didn’t read the brochures.”
She chuckled. “When would I have done that?”
I pursed my lips in mock severity. “There was plenty of reading time after searches and incursions, not to mention between emergency surgeries and detonations.” I elbowed her affectionately. “But just because you’re my favorite person, I’ll give you a free guided tour.
“The Georgian Military Highway runs from Tbilisi in Georgia to Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia, Russia, and though it was Czar Alexander the First who named it, it dates from before first century BC. It’s still important as a link to Russia through the Caucasus Mountains, winds through towering peaks, climbing to seven thousand six hundred feet at the Krestovy Pass. Its condition is horrendous, and its hairpin bends and sheer drops made it feature in the grim stories of Tolstoy and Dumas. Not that being considered one of the most dangerous mountain roads on earth stops trucks crossing from Georgia to Russia from clogging it when it’s opened from the Russian side. It certainly doesn’t deter foolhardy tourists and herds of sheep.”
And I didn’t know all that from Damian’s brochures. Since Jake had disappeared somewhere in the Caucasus, I’d studied the area obsessively. I was brimming with endless trivia about the region. Data I’d thought would remain forever useless.
Ayesha whistled. “Shades of National Geographic, Cali. All this knowledge should come in mighty handy.”
My visualization of the region was becoming multidimensional now I was here. Maybe it would count for something.
“You think it’s how the militants get to their base?” she asked.
“Not if they have any hope of remaining hidden. They probably forged their own road up the mountain.” My eyes strayed to said mountain. “I’ll also have you know that Mount Kazbek isn’t just a pretty face. It’s a holy mountain, according to the Georgians, where Amirani, the Georgian Prometheus, was chained in a cave as punishment for giving mankind fire. Some claim it’s where Christ was buried, or even where he was actually born.”
Something occurred to me as I said those words. Had this mountain been chosen by the militants for more than convenience? For its theological claims and influence? Were the militants playing a modern-day Prometheus, hunted and self-banished for their holy cause? Were stories of their being God-chosen circulating among the simple people, finding resonance, inspiring allegiance?
Whatever, Damian had been right. It would be impossible to find them in the extensive and inaccessible mountains by intelligence or technology. This was a hands-on investigation.
Before we could start one, we had to establish ourselves, have the militants cooperating and unsuspecting. Damian had started us on the right track, painting us as a bunch of fumbling bleeding hearts who escaped their death trap by sheer luck and desperation.
All mental debates froze as the camp materialized out of the obscuring fog, trembling in the lap of all that indescribable grandeur. At once an embodiment of human suffering and a testament to human depravity.
On a now grassless meadow, as far as I could see, ragged rows of flimsy tents flailed in the wind. People of all ages, in colorful tatters, huddled in lines, waiting their turn for rations or latrines.
Then the masses began taking individual shape and form.
True heartache began right then. When faces started leaping at you, when personal despair and degradation bombarded you, when snatches of their debased lives started seeping into your consciousness.
My heart fisted over rending pity. The ache to run to them, to contain them in a collective hug, spread in my gut…
No. No useless sentiment. I wouldn’t surrender to or indulge in any. I wasn’t here for this.
I was here to make a real difference.
Twenty-Two
“Stop!”
Ayesha’s cry made me brake. Hard.
I hadn’t noticed I’d been accelerating. Or that Matt was double-flashing me as he slowed down. It would have been beyond ironic, to survive all those catastrophes without a scratch, only to get mangled in a rage-caused MVA.
Get a grip, moron.
Starting our mission with an emotional overload was against all we were here to accomplish. Letting our hosts detect any antagonism would be another sort of minefield. No time to let my demon out.
She still rattled her chains.
Soon, I told her. Promise.
We’d stopped at the camp’s edge. There were no fences or barbed wire. Why build a barricade when you had a force field of certain death?
I jumped out of my truck and strode toward the militant leader, falling into step with Damian.
The lanky man was waiting by a large tent at the camp’s entrance, a reception center. In normal refugee camps, those were vital to gather new refugees while awaiting registration. Keeping track of demographics was how aid workers assessed the needs of the population. Registration documents served as refugees’ entitlement to food rations, shelter and other relief items like blankets, clothing and cooking utensils if they’d arrived without their own.
None of that applied here. If there’d been registration, it had been for the militants’ benefit, to keep track of the ones already here, not of new arrivals. They expected none.
As we approached, I knew I shouldn’t look around, but my eyes knew no such thing. They kept succumbing to the pull of hundreds of other eyes. Mostly women’s and children’s.
Desolation was a symptom I’d become too familiar with. I should be used to it. I wasn’t.
Promising the eyes seeking mine with quaking questions and cowering hopes a continuation, I escaped them, entered the tent ahead of Damian.
A dozen refugees, equally male and female, were waiting inside, nothing in common between them but that spark I knew so well. That of competency. They must be those elected or assigned to be camp leaders.
They came forward, expressed their gratitude for our presence. Clearly thoroughly subjugated, and beyond trying to hide it. That amiable creature Damian had become made a little speech accepting their welcome, then gave me the floor.
It took all I had to curb my hostility as I turned to the militant leader. “Thank you very much for escorting us,” I carefully articulated my prepared Russian speech. “If it’s possible, we’d really like to get to work. The sooner we start the better.”
The militant leader barked a surprised laugh. “Do you all speak Russian?”
“I speak it very badly, compared to Mr. De Luna.” I flashed him a smile, devoid of anything feminine. “But enough, I hope, to get by.”
“We’ll leave you to your job, then.” He made a gesture to his men to get out. “If you need anything to make your stay here more comfortable and your job easier, a patrol comes here twice a week. Report any needs to that day’s leader.”
The moment they left I turned to the camp’s leaders. I was surprised to see no change in them with their oppressors gone. Seemed this subdued state had become their natural condition. Or the militants’ presence lingered, through insiders. I didn’t have enough intel to form an opinion. Not yet.
During the next hour, we got a comprehensive assessment of what we were up against, the humanitarian catastrophe that this camp was. It was even worse than what my eyes and senses had initially told me.
There were nine people in each three-person tent, one rations outlet for every two thousand, one tap of purified water for every thousand and one pit latrine for every hundred. That was five times more people than the minimum requirements for health and sanitation. And that was after the recent aid missions’ efforts.
As usual, shortages and overcrowding spawned more festering problems. To get around the dearth of facilities, the refugees engaged in practices that only increased their plights. With latrines and clean water being so inadequate, most wandered to the river to meet their needs, polluting the water source. And that was only one facet of the vicious cycle of deterioration that was their existence here.
Heart-itching eagerness to intervene propelled me out of the tent. Damian and the others followed.
I surveyed the camp, mind filling with countermeasures to fix the diseased entity, not only while we were here, but until their chronic crisis was permanently resolved.
Catching Damian’s arm, I made him rush through concluding his exchange with the refugees. “I need the field hospital set up where we parked, so we can have full access to the STS.” His eyebrows rose at my tone. Oh, give me a break. He sounded imperative all the time. He’d better get used to it. In the medical zone, I was his undisputed boss. “I also want a cholera camp two hundred feet away, for segregation of cases. Over there…” I pointed to the middle of the camp. “I want vaccination tents. Every one of the nine thousand children below five needs a full schedule.”