Doctors of Death

by Peter Nealen

  But now he knew who they were. And he was going to burn their whole damned house down.

  The small convoy of vehicles steered around the burning Hawkeis and turned to the northeast, heading for the rendezvous point with Flanagan and his team.

  ***

  Lung Kai blinked the dust out of his eyes. He felt like a man who had been buried alive and dug his way out. He couldn’t help but wonder, as he watched the vehicles leaving the compound below, if that wasn’t closer to the truth than he was comfortable with.

  He was out of position to ambush them. And he didn’t have the weapons to scratch that armored vehicle. He had no doubt that the target was in that convoy. Everything he’d seen, even when only vague impressions through the storm, told him that the target and his allies had taken the compound by storm.

  That did mean something good for him; it meant that his error in engaging the organization known to the MSS and the PLA only as Group 75 likely wasn’t going to be reported. In fact, he suspected that any survivors would have assumed that the Chinese soldiers shooting at them had been the target’s people.

  It still left the problem of catching the target. He was realistic enough to know that he wasn’t going to accomplish his mission from the ridge overlooking the camp. The enemy was out of range and rapidly opening that distance up. And he and his men were on foot, with dead and wounded.

  “Rally up,” he called in Mandarin. “We need to go back down and rendezvous with Goukouni.” He still had leverage on the General, and the Chadians’ trucks should still be running.

  They have to go back to Abeche. It’s their only way out of the country at this point, unless they decide to go overland to N’Djamena or Kyabe. A plan was forming in his mind. He didn’t know yet how the Chadians had fared in shutting down the target’s support network in Abeche itself, but even if they’d succeeded, he suspected that the target would try to slip out of the country via the airport. It seemed like the most likely course of action.

  And when they tried, Lung Kai would be waiting.

  Chapter 28

  Price’s backup camp was pretty austere. It wasn’t much more than a FARP for the helos with a couple of airdropped containers for supplies. There weren’t even any shelters to speak of.

  There were, however, two trucks that had carried Price’s react force from Abeche. One of them, a broad-shouldered man with a lumberjack beard spilling down his plate carrier almost to his mags, came out to meet them as they rolled up.

  Price swung out and shook the bearded man’s hand. “Damn, I’m glad to see you boys made it,” he said.

  “It was a little hairy,” was the reply. “But fortunately, Chadians can shoot and fight about as well as just about anybody else on this shithole continent, so we were able to break out and make tracks without too much difficulty. We had to kill a few of ‘em, but them’s the breaks when you start shooting at people who can shoot back.” He looked around the group getting out of the vehicles and frowned. “We seem to be a couple bodies light,” he observed.

  Price nodded, though he seemed just as cool and collected as ever. “Afraid so,” he said. “The Front had some better shooters than the Chadians. So did the Chinese.”

  The bearded man nodded solemnly. “Pretty sure it was the ChiComs who put the Chadians on us in Abeche,” he said. “We hadn’t given them dick for reasons to start shooting.”

  Price looked over at the two Bell helicopters. “How are the birds?”

  “They weathered the storm well enough,” was the reply. “Should be able to lift within the next couple hours.”

  “Good,” Price said, suddenly all business. He turned to Brannigan. “We can grab a little rest between now and then,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but it’s been a hell of a couple of days.”

  Brannigan nodded absently, but his eyes turned toward the truck where their prisoner was still sitting in the back, her hands tied behind her, now as dust-covered as the mercenaries. “We’ve also got to figure out what’s going to happen with her,” he said.

  Price followed his gaze, his eyes hooded. “Indeed,” he said. “I’ve got connections and facilities. I should probably take her. I’ll make sure to keep you in the loop; it seems that you and your boys are fully involved in this now.”

  Brannigan turned a cold stare on Price, who returned it, unfazed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Price,” he said, “but even after all of this, I’m not just going to settle for ‘the check is in the mail.’”

  “Have I lied to you?” Price asked. But there wasn’t the kind of intensity in his voice that had sold Brannigan on his intel about the Humanity Front. Brannigan realized that as a politician, Price actually made a pretty good mercenary.

  He thought back to all the stories he’d heard about the man, not to mention the fact that he’d managed to keep his activities in the Anambas ultimately secret from the Federal agencies that were investigating him at the time. Maybe he was only a rotten liar when talking to other soldiers.

  “Save the super-patriot act for the people who want to hear it,” Brannigan growled. “I know just how cozy you really are with the intel community, which is, ‘not very.’ They hate your guts. You’re not going to be talking to them.

  “And I know you think that you’ve got the US’ best interests at heart. I’m sure you even believe it. But I’ve seen that ‘smartest guy in the room’ syndrome before. And it doesn’t end well for anybody.”

  Price cracked a small smile, creasing the dust caking his face. “You know, Colonel, if I was the politician you almost accused me of being, that wouldn’t exactly be the response calculated to win my cooperation.”

  Brannigan snorted. “I had to deal with that sort for far too long,” he said bluntly. “I speak my mind. End of story.”

  Price spread his hands. “Fine. We’ve got a couple of hours. Shall we try talking to her?”

  With a look that promised that the question was far from settled, Brannigan turned and started for the truck.

  ***

  “It’s time we had a chat,” he said. The woman was still sitting in the bed of the truck. Brannigan was standing at the tailgate, both hands on the folding buttstock of his rifle.

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you,” she said. Her voice was raspy from the dust. None of them had seen fit to give her water.

  “You might not have anything to say to me,” Brannigan said. “But if I call Wade over here, that might change. I’m pretty sure he’s got no trouble with pulling fingernails out if I tell him that the gloves are off.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she snarled.

  “For somebody caught red-handed testing biological weapons on refugees, you’ve got an awfully high opinion of your rights, lady,” Brannigan said grimly. “You see any insignia around here? You think we’re playing by the usual rules?” He leaned closer. “After the Tourmaline-Delta, the gloves are off.”

  She jerked a little at the mention of that name, and glanced up at him. But she masked it quickly.

  A real true believer. But a true believer in what? “You’re going to talk eventually,” he said. “Whether it’s now, or after a long time in a very deep, dark hole, is up to you.”

  “I won’t be in any hole for very long,” she sneered. “You have no idea who you’re up against.”

  “Oh, I have some idea of the resources your people have at their disposal,” Brannigan said. “Masquerading as a humanitarian organization was brilliant, in a scummy sort of way.”

  “We are a humanitarian organization,” she said, her eyes blazing. Here we go. The true believer is offended. Huh. Never thought that would work. “The world can’t survive, going on the way it has been. The future is one world, one humanity.” She stared at him defiantly. “We’re just doing what needs to be done to get there.”

  Brannigan’s eyes narrowed. He’d heard that sort of thing before; in fact, it was part of the Humanity Front’s public rhetoric. But cast in the light of terror attacks, assassinations, and biol
ogical weapons… “And just how are you going to accomplish that? By killing humanity off with a new pandemic?”

  “Not all of humanity,” she snapped. “But sacrifices have to be made. Evolution won’t happen while we stand still.”

  He frowned. It fit with some of the things he’d heard muttered over the years, only in this case, it wasn’t coming from jackass college students with more learned nihilism than brains. It was coming from people with the wherewithal to try to make it happen.

  “Was that what this project was about?” he demanded. “’Evolution?’”

  “Of course,” she replied, lifting her chin. “Evolution doesn’t happen without stressors. And if we can tailor those stressors to select for or against certain traits, then we can accelerate the process.”

  Holy shit. It’s worse than I thought. Because they’re not going to stop. Even if they somehow, miraculously, manage to attain the sort of impossible control that they want, they’re going to keep tinkering.

  “Where else is this project happening?” he asked.

  “You’d like to know that, wouldn’t you?” she asked acidly. “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.” She stared at him. “I’m going to be back to work in a month, and you’re going to be in a cell or dead. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you can have some role in fixing the damage you already did.”

  He knew she was threatening him with being a human guinea pig. He just snorted. “Somehow I doubt it,” he said. “If you think you’re going to a regular civilian prison, or even a military detention facility, you’re sadly mistaken. You see, I’m the one who gets to decide what to do with you. And I know of some great black sites where you can disappear for a very, very long time. And nobody’s even going to have any idea where to start looking.” He knew of more than a few ghost towns and old mine shafts that would do nicely. Van Zandt could bring in a generator and a porta-john. With only one prisoner, keeping it hidden would be easy.

  She stared at him, her defiance melting a little bit. She might have been thinking of the fact that her previous threats hadn’t deterred him from killing the Front’s base security and burning the lab. That so far none of her confidence in the superiority of her position had gained her anything.

  “So,” he said, “let’s try this again. Where else is this project running?”

  ***

  “Either she’s more of a true believer than I suspected, and she’s had some serious resistance training,” Brannigan said, “or she really doesn’t know shit.”

  “Which would make some sense,” Flanagan mused. “Operation like this, they have to have it compartmentalized to hell and gone.”

  “And it’s going to make it damned hard to root it out, at least before a lot more people get killed,” Price said grimly. “At least tearing the mask off the Humanity Front should be a step in the right direction.”

  “If it works,” Brannigan said. “There are a lot of people who won’t want to believe it.”

  “And with the connections they’ve got in government and industry?” Vernon said. “There are going to be as more or many willing to cover it up.”

  “Didn’t say it would be easy,” Brannigan said. “War rarely is.”

  Behind them, the faint whine of starting engines began, and the first of the Bell 412s started turning its rotors. Price stood up. “Looks like we’re loaded and ready to go,” he said. “At least the first trip.”

  Brannigan looked at Flanagan, who shook his head. They’d already had that conversation. It had long been Brannigan’s personal standard that he was the first one on the ground and the last one off. But Joe had argued that in this case, he needed to go on the first lift, to make sure that Price didn’t leave them high and dry. They’d be leaving together on the bird Van Zandt already had in the air, anyway.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  The birds pulled for the sky, leaving Flanagan’s element and part of Price’s react force on the ground, still holding security. The storm had passed, leaving a faint haze of dust in the air, but the Sahel around them was empty and still.

  They didn’t relax. Too much had happened to remind them that nowhere in Chad was really permissive. They waited, hands on rifles, and watched.

  ***

  Lung Kai sat in the truck, watching the Abeche airport, trying not to fidget. He was a Shao Xiao in the People’s Liberation Army. Such men did not fidget.

  But the more time dragged on with no sign of the target, the more nervous he became. He did not want to report failure to the Central Committee. After what the target had already done, there would be no forgiveness for failure.

  It was possible that they had simply taken their time to reconsolidate. He’d rushed straight back to Abeche after linking up with Goukouni, and if they were being careful, they might move much more slowly. But at the same time, he had seen no aircraft land that might be theirs.

  He was already planning his story if they did not reappear. He would not simply go down like that Jiaolong commander had. He had plans in place to attempt to pick up the trail elsewhere if the target had slipped the net. And he had a story forming in his mind. And he thought that he could leverage his earlier mistake to his advantage.

  After all, if not for Group 75, he would have had the target pinned down and flanked. They had interfered. It wasn’t a difficult story to tell; he already knew that the MSS was suspicious of Group 75, and wary of their strategic usefulness. Most of their targets appeared to be in the West, which made them valuable to the strategic long game played by the Central Committee, but they were definitely not welcome inside the Chinese sphere of influence.

  The more he thought, the more he remembered reports and photos that he could use to bolster his case. He had nearly had the target. Only Group 75’s interference, pushing into Chinese interests in Africa, had stopped him.

  If he hadn’t already been warned about them, it might not work. As it was, he was increasingly confident, as the sun went down with no sign of his quarry, that he could survive to hunt Mitchell Price another day.

  ***

  Van Zandt had sent a Casa 235 to pick them up. It was already sitting on the end of the dirt strip outside Biltine as Price’s Antonov An-148 landed in a cloud of dust. Brannigan watched the plane slow, wondering at the choice of aircraft. The An-148 didn’t look like it was normally used for these kind of austere landings.

  Price just shrugged. “What I had available on short notice,” he said. “And Kolya’s an excellent pilot.”

  Brannigan nodded. They were all holding security, weapons ready, waiting for the aircraft to be ready for departure. They’d gone to Biltine instead of Abeche since the attack on Price’s react force had made it abundantly clear that taking their chances there wouldn’t work out very well. None of them were eager to fight the Chadian National Army. That wasn’t why they were in Africa.

  The An-148 reached the end of the strip and turned, short of the Casa. There was no fuel truck, but both birds had been sent out with enough fuel to make it to another airport outside the country and refuel before making the longer trek out of Africa.

  Price turned to Brannigan and held out his hand. “It was good working with you, Colonel,” he said. “I don’t get out on these little adventures enough anymore. Hopefully we can work together again.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that information-sharing about her,” Brannigan said, jerking his head in the direction of their detainee as he shook Price’s hand.

  Price smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’d expect nothing less,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.” Slinging his rifle, he turned and started for his plane.

  Brannigan and the Blackhearts watched them go for a moment, before starting toward the Casa in a rough wedge. The crew chief was standing in the hatchway, surveying them as they approached.

  “There’s water in the front, gents,” he said, as they climbed aboard. “Looks like you could use it. You weren’t out in that storm that ble
w through here, were you?”

  “Yeah, we were,” Brannigan said, as he stepped aboard, the last one to take his boots off Chadian soil. Well, the last one except for Don. “And I’ve had a bellyful of this country. Let’s get out of here.”

  Epilogue

  “The fucking Humanity Front,” Van Zandt said hollowly. “Holy fuck.”

  That kind of language coming from the normally clean-cut retired General was a good indicator of how rattled he was. And Brannigan couldn’t blame him.

  Humanity Front movers and shakers had been guests at the White House, hobnobbed with European and Asian Prime Ministers and Presidents. The organization, which never made its books public—for obvious reasons, now—was estimated to be worth trillions.

  Even aside from their material resources, the sheer moral capital they possessed was enormous. Support for the Humanity Front was the new hotness, the penultimate virtue signal for the rich and powerful.

  Even though their actual work was rarely public, and the amount of actual humanitarian aid they provided was quietly doubted in many circles. None of that mattered to the “right” people.

  “It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it?” Brannigan said, taking another pull of his beer. It almost seemed like beer just wasn’t strong enough, but he wanted a clear head. “How’s Sam?”

  Van Zandt grimaced. “He’s alive,” he said. “We’ve got him in a secure facility, under armed guard 24/7. Same for Hancock and the rest. We don’t dare put him in a regular hospital for a while. They found him too easily.” He ran a hand over his face and took a stiff gulp of his own drink. “And now that we know who we’re up against, that probably shouldn’t be surprising.”

  “No, it probably shouldn’t be,” Brannigan agreed. “And ‘alive’ is only half the answer.”

  “He’s in a coma,” Van Zandt said heavily. “No telling yet when he’s going to wake up. Or even if. They worked him over pretty good. The good news is, the guy who did it is dead. Unfortunately, we still don’t have an ID on him. Because somebody who looked a lot like the FBI swooped in and cleaned the place out before the cops could get there.”