by Dick Couch
“This way,” he said without preamble. “I want to watch them at the extraction site.”
The three of them headed off at a trot to a jeep parked a short distance from the contact area. After a fifteen-minute drive they arrived at an open area dotted by low brush and hackthorn bushes. AKR parked the jeep well away from the clearing, and they walked to the edge and settled in. They waited in absolute silence under a quarter moon, AKR handing Garrett and Bijay each a pair of night vision goggles. They carefully surveyed the edges of the clearing but could see nothing. Garrett glanced at AKR. He could see the flash of his grin in the moonlight. A moment later they heard the rotor beat of an approaching helicopter. A single man moved into the clearing. With the low-light optics, Garrett watched as the man brought the H-60 in for a safe hover using infrared wands. Then an orderly file emerged from the bush and quickly boarded the helo. The captives each had a prisoner handler assigned to him. They handed the bound and gagged prisoners up to waiting hands in the hovering helo. The chopper lifted a few feet, then nosed over and began its run away from the clearing.
“Well,” AKR said after the helo had cleared off, “what do you think of my guys now?”
Garrett smiled. “I’m going to reserve comment until after the debriefings and hot washup, but I haven’t seen a thing I don’t like. How were they on patrol?”
AKR had initially patrolled in with them, as they moved six miles over rough ground as a part of the exercise. “They moved well, and their noise discipline was excellent. They were rucked up with about sixty-five pounds per man, and I was clean. I had to work to keep up. They move through the brush like puffs of smoke.”
“I too was very impressed,” Bijay said. “I know you are working to build them into combat teams, but as your training permits, I would like my men to begin accompanying them when possible. There is much each can learn from the other.”
The following evening, Garrett, AKR, Bijay, and Tomba sat around one of the outside tables after dinner. Bijay melded into the group with ease; they were professional warriors, and that cut through all cultural dissimilarities. But Bijay was held in a special regard by AKR and Tomba, who by virtue of his service with the Rhodesians was also a product of the British military. Bijay carried a distinction that merited him this special reverence: the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for bravery. He had won that honor while serving with a Gurkha contingent assigned to the SAS during the first Gulf War.
That morning and afternoon had been spent on the rifle and grenade ranges, and now the men were busy cleaning weapons. A few of Bijay’s Gurkhas had been pressed into duty as shooting instructors. The rest of the Gurkhas were high up on Mona Kea, practicing rappelling. They would make an overnight mountain bivouac and return the following day. Garrett and AKR had wondered how the Africans and the Gurkhas would react to each other—would there be jealousies; would there even be racial tensions? Bijay and Tomba had talked for a long while when the Africans arrived, then each had spoken to their men. Both had tremendous sway with their men; there had been not so much as a hint of a problem. There was little interaction between the two groups, but Garrett noticed that there was much curiosity on both sides, for these were two very different kinds of warriors. He was relieved to see that there was also respect and acceptance. The two groups had never trained together. They were being groomed for work on two different continents. But it was a unique opportunity for them to learn different techniques from one another.
It was a soft evening, with the sweet smell of plant decay pushed up from the lower elevations by a gentle onshore breeze. They were four veterans, men who had known fighting in one form or another for several decades. In the case of Tomba and Bijay, due to their cultures, it had begun at a very young age. Both had been warriors for more than three decades. They had all fought different battles, taken life in the name of different causes, and believed in different deities—or no deity. But at this moment, they were four warrior leaders in garrison after a day in the field with their men, and that made them brothers. Each savored the moment in his own way. They were drinking warm beer that Tomba’s men had begun to brew soon after their arrival, a thick, bitter-sweet, malty concoction with a delicious after-taste. Garrett and AKR relished it, and Bijay sipped it with polite enjoyment. One of Tomba’s men brought them a fresh pitcher and shyly retired.
“They are shooting much better, Tomba,” Garrett said, placing his hand on the big African’s shoulder. “I think we are ready to move Konie and Mumba to the sniper weapons. They are steady and seem to have a good shooting eye. They’ll make excellent snipers.”
Tomba nodded. “I agree,” he said in his precise, halting English. “They are good with their assault rifles, and they pride themselves on their marksmanship. They will be honored to carry the long guns. Neither of them will disappoint you.”
“And it is not just Konie and Mumba who are doing well. All your men are performing well.” Garrett searched for the right words to frame his compliment. “We knew you were great warriors when you came to join us. But our ways and cultures are different, and our way of fighting is different. What I mean to say is that we appreciate their hard work, as well as your own. You have learned our ways of battle very quickly.”
Tomba smiled and lowered his head in thanks. “Nkosi, I appreciate your words. But it is I who should thank you—all of you—for you have allowed us to continue to follow the path of a warrior. For us, it is a path of honor. Our homelands are not what they were. The whole of Africa is in constant change. We are moved about, made to live away from our tribal lands, and made to serve men who are not our tribal leaders—often men who have never tasted battle. We were warriors, but without a warrior cause, so we were without honor.”
Tomba looked at each of them, holding each with his gaze, his eyes dark pools of intensity. None of them, save for perhaps AKR, had heard him speak with such emotion. They said nothing, waiting for him to continue.
“You see, my brothers, my men and myself are warriors without land—without a home. I fought in the colonial wars, and most of my men were orphaned by them. I am Turkana. Among the fourteen men who left Africa with me, there are Masai, Luo, Samburu, and Turkana from the north. There are Matebele, Shangere, and Zulu from the south. And of course, our single Somali. They are all men who were born in the bush or on the veld, served in some national army with officers of a rival tribe, then were discharged to find their families scattered and their lands confiscated. We are warriors in search of honor; you have provided that. We will serve with you; our allegiance is yours. My men will save what you are paying us, and someday, they will return to their various homelands with wealth and honor. As a group here, you call us Africans, and we are that. But we are more, and we each have our place in the land you call Africa. My men want to find their tribes and clans, or what is left of them, when they return. It is then that they will be able to buy wives and cattle and have the comfortable life of an old warrior. Or they will perish in the process. Both are worthy goals. You have given us much.” He sipped his beer. “You have given me much. We will not disappoint you.”
“And what about you, Tomba?” Bijay asked quietly. “Will you save your money and return to buy wives and cattle?”
He looked at Bijay, and a smile cut his handsome features. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Or perhaps, like you, I am at home only when I am in the company of other warriors, preparing for the next battle. Only the gods know for sure.”
For some time they remained in companionable silence, sipping African beer and watching the Hawaiian dusk turn to night.
4
Preparations
The sun had just cleared the lower reaches of Mona Kea when Janet Brisco strode into the operations office and tossed her handbag onto the chair by her desk. Steven felt the African issue could move easily from the assessment phase to the planning phase, so he had asked that she come to the Kona facility as quickly as possible. Brisco had taken a late-afternoon flight from St. Louis to Chicago
and the last flight out of Chicago the night before, waiting out the early-morning hours in the VIP lounge at Honolulu International. During the four-hour layover, she had poured over the intelligence summaries and classified reports that streamed into her notebook computer, a secure, encrypted machine with a state-of-the-art wireless modem that connected her to the Kona facility’s local area network. She caught the first Aloha Airlines flight over to the Big Island. Steven had offered to send the Gulfstream to pick her up, but she had declined. A single black woman climbing onto a corporate jet was not a common occurrence in St. Louis, so she elected to travel by commercial jet—first class, of course. What she really needed most was time to read herself into the problem, and she could do that on any airplane. Janet Brisco was known in the St. Louis area, and for that reason, she had always been careful to keep her family segregated from her work. She had done this well before terror came of age in America—well before 9/11.
Janet Brisco now stood behind the desk, hands on her hips, surveying the maps and current message traffic that had been laid out for her attention. She was a tall, imposing woman, and strikingly beautiful. Janet was forty-six, brilliant, impatient, and aggressive. These gifts did not always endear her to those around her. She was often a source of exasperation to her parents, teachers, coworkers, and an ex-husband from a brief and stormy marriage. But it was her uncompromising attention to detail that had made her the best tactical special operations planner in the free world. Those who had worked with her on an operation were forced to overlook her abrasiveness because of what she brought to the mission. Unconsciously, she lit a cigarette and began to reorganize the paperwork on her desk.
“Are these the most current overlays?” she asked, not looking up.
“Just over six hours old, and I’ve annotated them. As you can see, we’re focusing on the hotel complex. There were a few changes since the last satellite pass, but not many. Mostly vehicle location changes. If there is anything going on there, it’s inside, where we can’t see it.”
“How about the cell phone and land line intercepts? Any unusual activity? Patterns?”
“None that we can detect. There is far more encryption than would be normal from some hotel in the bush. The open conversations we’ve monitored are businesslike and guarded. They’re not giving us much, but I have to believe that something is going on there.”
She put down one report and took up another. “Okay, how about that contact with the regional power company?” She finally looked up. “Are they going to be able…Say, what in the hell happened to you?”
Dodds LeMaster was IFOR’s chief technician, a Cambridge-educated electrical engineer who had made a fortune designing video games and interactive Web sites. Dodds was also responsible for the design and construction of many of the military information systems that allowed tactical controllers real-time interaction with units in the field. He had fashioned the same command, control, and communications suites for IFOR that he had built for the military. Only given IFOR’s requirements and near-unlimited funding, he had been able to dramatically miniaturize these systems. Thanks to Dodds LeMaster, they had a portable, flyaway tactical control package that was well beyond anything in use by any nation’s armed forces.
LeMaster could be described as a super-geek, and a very patriotic one. He was also something of an Anglophile, but knowing that the defense of the free world rested squarely on America’s shoulders, he had left England a decade ago. He had placed his genius at the disposal of the U.S. military, and now IFOR, because he believed in what they were doing—that they could make a difference. Janet Brisco’s arrogance and intelligence often made her short with others, but that was seldom the case with Dodds LeMaster. If not her tactical peer, he was her intellectual equal, and then some.
Janet had finally looked up from her desk to see that LeMaster had a huge shiner.
“Billy and I were acting as role players in a training exercise a few nights ago. I was part of a body-snatch scenario, and I got a little banged up when they tossed me into the helo.”
She came around the desk and gently removed his glasses to better inspect the damage. “Look at me,” she commanded.
LeMaster was reedy thin, with a deceptively round face and reddish brown hair. He wore glasses that perched on top of his head when not in use. His left eye now had a fleck of blood next to the light green iris, and the skin around it and along his temple was blue-black. Janet’s head snapped to look over at where Bill Owens sat at a computer console. Owens was older than LeMaster, and seemed to have a perpetual sickly pallor. He was an unkempt man with a sparse mustache and a bad complexion, one of those people who always looked anemic. All the fresh air and sunshine in the world could not make him look healthy. A master forger, he created all of IFOR’s documents. Fortunately for the U.S. Treasury, he had used his exceptional skills in the service of the CIA. Within the Directorate of Science and Technology, he had been known as an artist of rare talent. When the Agency put him out to pasture, Steven Fagan immediately snatched him up.
Janet Brisco stomped over to where Owens sat, and he looked up owlishly from his computer screen. He had a swollen lip.
“You too?”
“Yeah.” He grinned. “Me too.” Owens wore the fat lip as a badge of honor. It was probably as close as he would ever get to being one of the boys. He sucked on the stub of a cigarette pinched between a nicotine-stained thumb and middle finger. “But we were volunteers.” He leaned back in the creaky swivel. “It gets a little boring around here, and we wanted to get out and be with the operators, just for one night. Right, Dodds?”
LeMaster reached over to toggle the ventilation system, which was quite sophisticated and efficient. Both Owens and Brisco were chain smokers.
“That’s right. We may not get a chance to volunteer again, but it was kind of fun, except for the blindfolds and getting drug around.”
Owens and LeMaster watched as she came to a full boil. “You two hear me on this,” she said in a low, menacing voice. “You are my technicians, and you work for me. You are far too valuable to be out playing cowboys and Indians. From now on, you are restricted to the office. If I ever catch you out in the field again, God help your sorry butts. Do you get my drift?” Owens swallowed hard and bobbed his head; LeMaster just shrugged. “Did Steven know about this?”
“Well,” LeMaster hedged, “he may have known that we were going to help out, but I’m not so sure he really knew what we would be asked to do.” His voice trailed off as Brisco glared at him.
“A bunch of goddamn adolescent schoolboys. Well, I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
She stormed out of the ops building just in time to see Garrett going into the armory. There he joined AKR and Tomba, who were prying open two crates that had just come in from the mainland. These contained the new sniper weapons. GSI had contracted with Knights Manufacturing for specially built Stoner SR-25 semiautomatic sniper rifles matched with Leupold 10X scopes. The rifle could send a heavy .308 round downrange to kill a man at half a mile. They were anxious to take the new weapons to the range and get them sighted in.
“All right, I want to know who was in charge of the operation that got my two techs roughed up. Which one of you is responsible?”
“C’mon, girl,” AKR replied, “it was not intentional, and the guys were okay with it. I mean—”
“Don’t you ‘come on, girl,’ me, Mr. Hyphenated-Last-Name. Those men are absolutely critical if and when we mount an operation. They are way too valuable to be out serving as training dummies for the likes of you and your ruffians.”
“Hey, Janet, take it easy,” Garrett interjected. “We thought it might be good for their morale to get out and—”
“Morale! Don’t hand me that crap. Did you see their faces? They were brutalized!”
“Look, Janet—”
“Were you in charge? Were you?” Garrett took a deep breath and looked away. “I didn’t think so.” She wheeled on AKR. “What gives you the r
ight to take my people and use them like that? Answer me that?”
AKR shot Garrett a glance. It was the look of one truant to another, just after they had been hauled into the principal’s office. He quickly assumed a penitent look as Janet Brisco continued to reprimand him. This was not the first time that she and AKR had clashed. When AKR was hired, Garrett was curious how the two might take to each other. Janet was older, but not by much. They were both single, AKR being a lifelong bachelor. They were both outgoing, intelligent, cultured, and in Garrett’s judgment, two of the handsomest black people he had ever met—make that two of the handsomest, period. But from the first time they met it was fire and ice, oil and water. Janet Brisco, along with an off-the-chart IQ, was born with a chip on her shoulder. AKR could be charming and urbane, and could turn every woman’s head when he walked into a room. But not Janet Brisco’s. She was about to launch another verbal attack when Tomba stepped forward. He did not speak; he simply waited until she noticed him. Tomba was not a man who was all that easy to ignore, but she was so focused on venting at AKR that his presence failed to register until he had moved close beside her.
