Peacemaker

by Gordon Kent

“Why the James Earl Jones imitation?”

  “Instinct. I thought—Hide yourself from this guy.”

  “I thought you wanted to talk to him.”

  “I did, until I find he’s home when I can’t get him at the office. I don’t get it.”

  “He works part-time.”

  “No, no. This guy’s hot to go.”

  “He’s got another office.”

  “You mean—three? No, no, Bea, nobody has three offices—Unless—”

  Peretz called the government information number and gave Suter’s name. Two numbers came back. One was IVI. The other was not. He had Bea call it, and she reported that it was a number in the Operational Planning Directorate of the CIA.

  “Bingo.” Peretz made a wry face. “George Shreed’s bailiwick. Suter must be Shreed’s guy at IVI—but why?”

  The next day, he called Rose. He told her about the missing contracts and the apparent connection between Suter and Shreed. He repeated his suspicion that Peacemaker was a weapon. They didn’t talk about Alan. Neither of them knew that he had been missing for forty-eight hours in Zaire. They both thought he was at sea. Rose was in her final days at home before going to Naples to join the Philadelphia for the launch. She was busy, focused, and annoyed.

  She took Peretz’s questions to Suter.

  Suter called George Shreed.

  At sea, the NCIS office aboard the Jackson.

  Most carriers have two Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents, who are crammed into an office with their files and their computers and their worries, two civilian cops in a big military community. They are often harried by trivia.

  “Oh, shit,” one of the two on the Jackson was saying. “Oh, shit!” He held up a sheet of paper and shook it at his partner. “Guess what!”

  “You got a secret admirer in the marine detachment.”

  “We got another Christian-identity creep! Listen to this—‘I feel the Lord pushing me to reveal the satanic matchinations’—misspelled—‘of a mud-woman against a Christian white man.’ Oh, Jesus H. Christ and the Seven Fucking Dwarfs! We got rid of that Borne guy, I thought that was it!”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Chaplain.”

  The partner, a slightly older guy with a paunch and an air—not necessarily justified—of greater experience, said, “Cry for help, right?”

  “My ass.”

  “Yeah, well, we already got skinheads; let’s find the guy. It’s gotta be a guy; it’s always a guy—‘Christian white man,’ right?”

  The other was reading silently. “Hey. Listen to this—‘this female mud officer—’ Huh? Officer? How many black women officers we got on the ship? Huh? Should I check it out?”

  His partner nodded. “You check it out. Makin’ a list, checkin’ it twice—kinda an NCIS job description, isn’t it?”

  At sea, the bridge of the Jackson.

  Admiral Pilchard was on the bridge with the Jackson’s captain when the flag lieutenant grabbed his arm. There was damned little protocol to the gesture; the sailor at the helm nearby visibly flinched. The lieutenant put his mouth close to the admiral’s better ear and muttered something, and a quick, boyish smile flashed over the older man’s face, for a moment wiping away the wrinkles and the fatigue.

  “They sure?”

  “Absolutely. Scott’s down there now.”

  “Can they patch it through to here?”

  “Uh—it’s the INMARSAT telephone on the second deck, sir—they’re trying.” He smiled uncertainly. “It’s my understanding he’s in a tree.”

  “I don’t give a goddam if he’s in Disneyland! What’s the situation?”

  “Sir, I didn’t—”

  With that, somebody smacked a headset on the admiral, and he heard Commander Scott’s voice, tinny because of the double telephone-to-wireless transmission, and then Craik’s voice in a hail of static.

  “Craik! Craik—this is Admiral Pilchard! Do you read me?” He turned to the flag lieutenant. “Get Captain Parsills—patch in CVIC and get this on tape, every word—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The crackling got louder. There had been better transmissions from the moon, and that had been a quarter-century ago.

  “Craik, where the hell are you?”

  “I’m in clear, sir—I hate to give coordinates—”

  “Got you, okay—” He thought about it. “Fuck clear. How’s the other man—from the boat—?”

  “He’s good. Invaluable.”

  “Did you get what you went for?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s—we had to carry him the second day. We need morphine, sir. We need food, too.”

  Pilchard was writing—airdrop—morphine—MREs—radio—“What the hell happened?”

  “Meeting went bad, sir.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Near Kisangani, sir. I can provide UTM or LAT LON coordinates.”

  “Can you get to the FAZ base in Kisangani?”

  “Sir, I’d rather not do that. The folks who were holding our friend had the same boss. There was some shooting.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Not on our side, sir.” More trouble with the embassy, Pilchard was thinking; he’s shot up the local troops; all the embassy will see is in-country criticism. “Is the shooting over?”

  “We think there’s pursuit. Hard to tell—we have refugees all around us—”

  “Craik, I understand that this is an open line. Tell me anyway what happened.”

  “The people holding the American citizen were Hutu soldiers. They shared a camp with a lot of refugees and some white mercenaries and Zairian regulars. The exchange went bad, we think because the mercs and the Hutus had a falling-out. We had to shoot our way out.”

  “Wait one.” Somebody was gesturing to him, and he was handed another headset; it was Parsills, passing on a message from the Rangoon. “Craik?”

  “Sir?”

  “Find a good extraction point and give us coordinates and time. Can you do that? Is your SAR card up to date?”

  “Roger that, sir. Sir, the white mercs are a Serb outfit led by a wanted war criminal called Zulu. Please pass it, sir.”

  “I will. Now get moving.” A tone, less stern, crept into his voice. “Take care of yourselves.”

  He handed back the headset. “Get the chief of staff. My office, five minutes.” He apologized to the ship’s captain, said he’d get back to him, and hurried out. Going down the p’way toward blue-tile country, he was dictating orders to the flag lieutenant, on one side, and the flag captain, who had appeared on the other. “I want air cover for those poor bastards, get on it! Harriers from the Rangoon are closest, get ’em in the air, but they’re short on range, so fire up our CAG and get him moving. I want a flight plan for a three-day air cover; if we extract tomorrow, as we goddam well ought to, we’ll pull it back, but tell CAG we gotta be ready to push this thing through.”

  “The embassy, sir—”

  “Fuck the embassy! These are our guys in there, they’re not keeping us out!” He turned back to the lieutenant. “Tell the Zairian Air Force or whatever the hell they’ve got to stay out of the air. Don’t put it just that way, but—clear this with Parsills and CAG AI, Christ! I wish I had Craik here to do this—make it clear that we’re going to shoot to protect our people, so they’re not gonna go in and do air strikes within fifty miles of our guys, okay?”

  They were in the flag suite by then, and the admiral led them to his office, waved Parsills to his side, and said, “Coordinate this with the French. They’ve got air assets in-country; tell them the situation—the truth, the truth, it’s their intel people started this—and tell them not to mess with us. Just stay the hell away, got it? And let’s get a message off to the Agency. Put in this Serb mercenary report, but use it as a vehicle to convey that we have contact with their guy and we may need to take action. Those guys can be good allies, even if we have to ruffle some feathers.” He looked up. A determined-looking EM was standing in the doo
rway.

  “Well?”

  “Sir, ASW reports possible submarine contact from the Melward. Russian Akula-class grams, sir.”

  Pilchard looked at Parsills and suddenly laughed. “Well, of course! What else would it be?” He clapped Parsills on the shoulder. “Get on it, Jack. Gentlemen, we have work to do! I want those guys out of Zaire by this time tomorrow, or else!”

  As the flag captain and the flag lieutenant left, they heard him say, “What’s one Akula-class sub between friends, anyway?” He sounded twenty years younger.

  “There’s that ghost again,” WO Hamilton said, chewing on an unlit cigar and crouching forward over his tiny light table. Displayed on it were the sonograms from the SQR-19 tail of one of the fig-seven frigates, as well as two of the battle group’s S-3s, taken that day. Hamilton traced two lines with his thumb and forefinger for the Tactical Action Officer and his flag counterpart. Both craned over the table to see what he was showing them because the lines did not leap to the eye.

  “Here and here. This was 0920 this morning. Then the FFG-7 has it at 1140, here.” Hamilton peeled the sonograms off the table to reveal a stained chart with dozens of marks and erasures. Hamilton had a computer that supposedly did all this, but he stuck with the technologies he understood.

  “Then at 2135 AG 707 has this contact here. These are the strongest lines.”

  The flag TAO ordinarily deferred to him. “Hamilton, you know your business. But, er, I don’t see anything.”

  “Hell, I’m not sure, myself. I’ve never worked a third-generation Russkie before. But that’s what it ought to look like, I figure. Look, this is a 688-class, a quiet one, taken from an S-3. We got this cut during Fleetex. What do you see?”

  “Nothing,” said the TAO, who couldn’t read a sonogram, anyway.

  “Exactly. Not much to see.”

  “But you think something’s out there.”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Okay, Hamilton, I’ll tell the admiral. And we’ll lay on some more S-3s and alert the helos. Has this ever happened before? Soviet subs in the Bight of Benin?” Like many sailors of a certain age, he always thought of things Russian as Soviets.

  “I got the S-3 AI looking at it. Ms Nixon. She’ll brief you.”

  They finished their coffee and left through the undogged hatch to CIC. “Do you buy it?”

  “Fuck, yes. Fort Klock got a cut on something third-generation last week. They must have a couple of subs out.”

  “It’s like the eighties!” He didn’t sound particularly unhappy.

  He was not happier after the dapper and competent Ms Nixon had reviewed Russian naval deployment history for him. The Russians had visited the area before, but not in many years. Not since the wall fell and Glasnost changed the balance of power. The TAO ordered Christy to polish her information to brief the admiral and the captain, wrote a long note in his actions log, and spent the rest of his watch wondering what the hell the Russians were doing. Was Newman right? Everyone said the Russians were dead. That brand-new, very quiet ghost contact was probably one of their best subs.

  The Russians were flat broke. They didn’t have money, or power, for wild adventures. They were smart, too. He knew that. They weren’t following him around the Bight of Benin for nothing.

  What the hell were they doing?

  27

  Zaire.

  “Last one.” Djalik tossed the MRE to Alan. “Sir, if you get the soup and ham hot with the heating packet, I’ll see to Mr O’Neill’s eye.”

  “Right.” Alan didn’t mind being reduced to cook. He was tired, more tired than he could ever remember, but he had Harry and he hadn’t lost anybody. Yet. He used the water bottle in his helmet bag to start the heater in the MRE. In seconds the soup packet was hot, and then he heated the ham. He poured the rest of the water into his stainless-steel cup and made coffee. It wasn’t great, but it was hot and sweet.

  The three of them shared the soup, and Djalik fed O’Neill the ham a bite at a time. Harry had lost three teeth and had two broken ones in front, which Djalik had patched up from a dental pack in the first-aid kit. Today, he could totter along on his own, but he was still bad.

  Djalik gave each of them a Snickers bar. Harry looked at his with his one good eye, then put the candy in his shirt pocket. He was still filthy, still smelly. Djalik had covered his lidless eye with Second Skin and gauze, which at least kept the flies off—and made it invisible to the others.

  Alan and Djalik ate most of what was left. They ate every cracker, finished the thick peanut butter, ate the jelly, and rifled every packet of the MRE until there was nothing left. Djalik produced more water and made the Kool-Aid and poured some into the foil pack Harry was using as a cup. “Poo—poo—” Harry tried to speak through his battered lips. “Poo—yee—” He swallowed. “Poo-yee Foo-wee-say.”

  “What’s he say?”

  “He made a joke. About wine. He’s feeling better.”

  Alan buried the plastic wrappers.

  Around them, the forest was moving.

  28

  The End of November

  Sarajevo.

  Mrs Obren came in from Republika Srpska by bus. Dukas had her tailed from the station. She came straight to their meeting-place in the park; he embraced her, smiled, chatted, and she smiled the smile that enchanted him, and he wanted her and knew he was never going to have her again.

  He drove to the flat in Radovan Street and told her they had to go in for a moment, something about her check. She seemed unusually happy; maybe it was the money. Dukas took her up, holding her wrist in one big hand, apparently a gesture of affection. He got an “Okay” sign from the woman who had tailed her, meaning there had been no counter-surveillance.

  Pigoreau and two Brits who had done anti-terrorism interrogation in Ireland were waiting inside the flat. Dukas felt her try to pull away and heard her changed breathing, and he knew she understood. He didn’t look at her face.

  “Get everything. I want it all—every detail, every name, every word that was said. Break her.”

  She started to weep and spoke his name. He let go of her wrist and went out. Down on the street, he leaned against his car and gulped in big breaths to keep from being sick.

  At sea, the flag deck of the Jackson.

  They didn’t make the extraction within the twenty-four hours that the admiral had demanded. They had aircraft over the area, and the embassy was screaming about it, but they couldn’t find their people. The pilots who went low reported seeing hundreds, maybe thousands of people. If there was pursuit of the Americans, it was impossible to recognize it. The few roads were clogged; there was no transport—half a million people were moving through the forest down there.

  One F-18 locked on a French Jornada, but the E2 Hawkeye told him to for God’s sake back off; the guy was flashing NATO IFF. A little late, but he was flashing.

  Admiral Pilchard demanded to know why Craik wasn’t in touch. Commander Scott, who had taken Craik’s phone call before the admiral got on, explained that Craik had a cell phone, and Zaire didn’t have coverage outside the cities. That was why he had gone as close as he had to Kisangani—to get within cell-phone coverage. “Now he’s on the move again, sir.”

  “On foot,” Pilchard said, as if being on foot was a moral failing.

  “I guess so, sir.”

  The admiral threw a pen.

  Zaire.

  They had come to a deserted village. Alan walked past the first hut with his rifle up, then a second, and a third. He looked in each door. In the third, an old woman was sitting on the floor. The banda smelled pleasantly of smoke. Alan remembered that smell from the past. Smoke and unwashed bodies. Smoke and urine. Smoke and smoke. He smiled at the woman.

  “Habari ya leo. Bonjour? Uh—bei gani?” He tried various combinations. She sat on her haunches. She still didn’t say anything. Alan pulled his head back outside and approached the other bandas, looking past the hide flap of each one. Nobody.

  Djal
ik was waiting in the center of the hamlet. “All clear,” he said. “I walked all the way around. Tracks goin’ off north. What’d you find?”

  “One old woman.”

  “What the hell’s she doing here?”

  “Left behind.”

  These little villages emptied ahead of the refugees. The refugees were scared, hungry, angry. They came like locusts.

  Djalik went back and helped Harry up to the village.

  Alan descended to the pragmatic.

  “There’s a good aluminum pot in that banda. All we need is a chicken.”

  Harry’s chest moved. He seemed to be coughing; then it appeared he was laughing. “Ev-er—” he started. “Ever—eat—rat?” He actually smiled. His voice got stronger. “I did. Caught it, smashed it, skinned it, ate it.” The words were mushy, but his mouth was not so swollen today. “Not so bad.”

  Alan tried to keep him going. “Patrick O’Brian always has the midshipmen catching rats as a treat.”

  Harry’s chest heaved again with what was probably laughter. “Yeah, but—but—they get to—cook them.”

  Djalik nodded down the ridge toward the river. “There’s a Gould hand pump, product of the USA, just over the hill. I’ll fill the canteens. Put in purification.” He looked at Alan. “We’re running low.” He glanced at Harry significantly. “On lots of stuff.” He meant the morphine.

  Then they heard the chicken. She croaked more than she clucked, but she was an actual chicken. Possibly a sick chicken, because Djalik caught her after one run around a banda.

  Alan shook his head. “These people are poor as dirt. I hate to take their chickens.”

  “This chicken is a fucking miracle. You believe in miracles? After this chicken, I do.” Djalik held its neck and spun the chicken’s body, and it was dead.

  In the end, Alan cooked and Harry watched. They tried to share the bits of tough meat with the old woman, but she didn’t have teeth and she simply looked at the food. They left her the aluminum pan with some of the broth in the bottom; Harry begrudged her even that, because he said she was going to die, anyway. Alan cut some sisal rope from the back of the banda and rigged straps to carry his helmet bag. When he was done, he had both hands free for the first time in three days. Out of guilt, meaning it the way Africans mean gifts, he put three fishhooks and some line on a mat, as a kind of payment, or maybe propitiation. He picked up the rifle and left the old smoke of the hut. The woman was still staring at the untasted chicken broth.