by Young, Tom
The airplane’s four turboprop engines thrummed in ground idle, the black exhaust smoke whipped by spinning propellers. The Herk had flown in from Sigonella with five pallets of rice bound for a refugee camp outside Illizi, Algeria. As Gold took her seat made of nylon webbing, she noticed lettering on the rice bags: UN WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME.
The C-130 crew had originally planned to shut down engines to board their passenger; their regs allowed engines-running onloads only for military personnel trained to avoid dangers such as prop arcs. But Parson had radioed to them that their civilian guest was a free-fall-qualified parachutist and a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division. Gold had stood beside Parson in the operations center as he made the call. The pilot just laughed and said, “Yeah, we’ll do an ERO.”
Inside the cargo compartment, Gold took in the sights, sounds, and smells as if returning home. Burning jet fuel fumes combined with grease and mil-spec paint to form a metallic odor common to all warplanes. She eyed the two steel cables that stretched from the forward bulkhead to the troop doors near the tail. How many times had she clipped a static line to those cables—maybe in this very airplane—and waited for the green light?
Gold’s past informed her present, gave her the qualifications for her current job. But now she felt a strong sense of the passage of time. It seemed just yesterday when she’d first received the order to stand up and hook up. She’d exited the airplane with feet and knees together, looked up to the reassuring sight of a fully inflated canopy. That sight had become so familiar, yet she knew she’d never see it again.
The loadmaster closed the ramp, and the Herk began to taxi. Fog spewed from the air-conditioning plenums; from experience Gold knew C-130s did that while on the ground in warm, humid air. The cargo compartment filled with mist until the flight engineer found the right setting.
She looked out the small porthole-style window as the aircraft lined up on the runway. The sound of the engines magnified, and so did the vibration throughout the cargo compartment. The C-130 began to accelerate. Distance markers ticked past, and the aircraft lifted into a smooth desert sky.
After the aircraft had cruised for only a few minutes, the loadmaster shouted over the engine noise.
“Ma’am,” he said. “There’s a call for you on the radio. It’s from Kingfish. You can use my headset.”
Kingfish? Oh, yes, Gold thought. The call sign for Mitiga operations. Probably Parson himself. The loadmaster took off his headset, unplugged it from one interphone cord and connected it to another. Gave the headset to Gold.
“Our call sign is Reach Eight-Six,” the loadmaster told her. “You’re on secure voice.”
Gold donned the headset, pressed the talk switch, and said, “Kingfish, Reach Eight-Six. Gold here.”
“Sophia,” Parson said, “we just got some bad news, and I didn’t want you to hear it thirdhand. They’ve executed one of the prisoners.”
Gold closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath. Despite all her hopes, she’d known this was likely. And she could well imagine all the horrors Parson’s words implied. Static sizzled over the channel as Parson released his mike switch. Gold pressed her own switch to ask a question. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
“Who was it?”
“Sergeant Daniel Farmer. A Marine.”
Gold offered a quick and silent prayer for Farmer and all those who loved him. Sorrow churned within her amid all the anger she carried. She tried to focus on her job; that was the best thing she could do for Blount and the others in enemy hands.
“Any changes in the mission?”
“Negative,” Parson said. “I thought you should know. Sorry to have to tell you this way.”
“It’s okay, Michael.”
“Be careful, Sophia. Kingfish out.”
Gold gave the headset back to the loadmaster. She tried to hold back the brimming in her eyes, but lost the battle and had to wipe tears. A short time later, the loadmaster spoke up with another announcement.
“You might want to buckle in tight, ma’am,” the crewman said. “We’re gonna do a tactical arrival.”
Gold pulled her seat belt tighter, nodded.
“I’ve done them before,” she said.
After a few minutes, the engines hushed as the pilot pulled back the throttles. Clanks and hydraulic hisses signaled the gear and flaps deploying. The Herk rolled into a steep bank, and Gold felt the airplane spiraling down. Thousands of feet below, the blue tents of the refugee camp rotated in the window.
The plane completed one turn, then two and three before the wings leveled. The ground loomed close, and then came the soft bumps of touchdown on a dirt airstrip.
When the propellers entered reverse pitch, Gold felt her torso yanked forward by the rapid deceleration. Dust enveloped the C-130, beige powder obscuring the view out the windows. The airplane slowed to walking speed. The dirt maelstrom cleared immediately when the prop blades returned to a pitch setting for forward thrust.
After taxiing off the rough strip, the Herk crew opened the ramp and shut down the engines. The smell of the desert rolled into the airplane: dust baked by the sun, and air oddly laden with moisture. The loadmaster pushed the pallets of rice one at a time onto a waiting forklift, aided by African Union troops. Gold recognized Major Ongondo supervising the effort. She thanked the crew for the ride, hoisted her overnight bag, and hopped out of an open troop door. Ongondo noticed her, came over with an outstretched hand.
“Ah, the ubiquitous Ms. Gold,” Ongondo said.
From his sunny demeanor, Gold supposed he hadn’t heard the news.
“Major,” Gold said, shaking his hand.
“I presume you came to help run this camp. This one is quite new.”
“Actually, no. I’m looking for any kind of information that might help us find our missing personnel. This is not a good day.” Gold told him about Farmer’s execution.
Ongondo placed his hands on his web belt, lowered his chin. Behind him, his men broke down the pallets of rice. One by one, they carried each bag into a mess tent.
“I am very sorry to hear this,” Ongondo said. “I imagine you have come searching for facts.”
“You could say that. I need to see if anyone has seen or heard anything that might lead to Kassam.”
Gold wiped her face with her checkered scarf. The morning sun had risen higher now, and the temperature climbed with it. The day promised to be warm for fall in North Africa.
“I’ll try to identify some refugees willing to speak with you. We do have some clans here that have done business with Islamists. Things are a little tense, in fact.”
The major led Gold into one of the blue tents. The temperature inside felt only slightly cooler than outdoors. No air-conditioning units, but an industrial fan whirred in a corner. An orange electrical cord as thick as Gold’s thumb curled between the fan and a generator that hummed outside. The fan’s breeze flowed across a row of empty cots, and the tent’s interior glowed with the watery light of sunshine filtered through blue fabric.
“Perhaps you can use this as an office for a few hours until more refugees arrive,” Ongondo said. “Some of the other tents have already filled.”
“Thank you.”
Gold opened her duffel. She had packed clothes and toiletries on the bottom, tools on top. She sat on a cot, pulled out her notepad and pens, her sat phone, and two bottles of water. Placed everything beside her on the canvas. Ongondo left and came back several minutes later with two refugees: a man and a boy.
Each wore a blue cheche, the traditional headgear of the Tuareg people. The headgear looked much like any other turban, except its wrappings also covered the lower part of the face. The presence of Tuaregs surprised Gold. In some of the conflict that had seared North Africa in recent years, the nomadic Tuaregs had allied with Islamists. Together they had fomented a rebellion in Mali, and Tua
regs had also fought on behalf of Gadhafi in Libya. Mixing Tuaregs with other refugees fleeing jihadists seemed like a recipe for trouble. No wonder Ongondo had spoken of tension.
Why had these guys fled here, anyway? Perhaps the new brand of Islamist represented by Kassam did not respect old alliances. Also, many Tuaregs’ interpretation of Islam did not support the strict sharia law that jihadists imposed. No telling how alliances were shifting in the chaos all around.
A more immediate problem occurred to Gold. She did not speak their native language. She tried a greeting in Arabic.
Blank stares.
She seldom felt stumped, but she felt that way now. She wondered if she could find an Arabic speaker out here who also spoke one of the Tuareg dialects.
“I speak some Tamahaq,” Ongondo offered.
Gold turned toward him, mouth open slightly.
“Ah, that’s helpful, sir. Where did you learn that language?”
“University of Nairobi. I majored in African Studies.”
Well, that explained his broad knowledge of folktales, proverbs, and languages. On a better day she would have asked Ongondo more about his schooling, but now was not the time.
“Can you ask them how they wound up here?”
Ongondo nodded and began speaking. His questions and the Tuaregs’ answers carried vowel sounds that sounded vaguely like Arabic. That made sense; the Tuareg dialects were part of the Berber languages—which were part of the Afro-Asiatic languages. And the Afro-Asiatic tongues included Arabic.
Understanding the classifications was one thing; understanding the conversation was quite another. Gold had to wait for Ongondo’s translation. She could, however, read the fatigue and fear in the Tuaregs’ eyes.
“Their clan had camped south of here,” Ongondo said. “I am not sure exactly how far south. Some of the Tuaregs still spend a lot of the year on the road as traders.”
Ongondo and the two refugees continued speaking in the Tuareg dialect. While they talked, Gold twisted open the two bottles of water she’d placed on the cot and handed them to the Tuaregs. The refugees paused in their chatter to take long swallows and to make hand gestures Gold interpreted as thanks. The boy closed his eyes and let the fan’s breeze flow over him as if someone were rubbing his face with satin. Gold wondered how often he’d felt a fan, let alone air-conditioning.
“Bandits raided their camp,” Ongondo said. “Burned their tents, stole goats and bags of millet. Shot anyone who resisted. These two are father and son. The mother and another son were killed.”
Gold regarded the two. She had seen that glazed look of grief and suffering too many times, mainly in Afghanistan, and she never got used to it. She didn’t want to get used to it. To become emotionally calloused could lead to accepting violence and abuse as normal.
“Please tell them I am so sorry for what happened to them,” Gold said. “Do they know who did this to them and why?”
More conversation in Tamahaq. Tears ran from the boy’s eyes, down his mocha-colored skin until they disappeared under the folds of his face covering.
“They say the bandits called them kafir, unbelievers,” Ongondo said.
These are Muslims, too, Gold thought, but jihadists would declare kafir anyone who got in their way. These people had supplies the terrorists wanted. That made them unbelievers.
“Pretty ironic, since some of the Tuaregs once aligned themselves with jihadists,” Gold said.
“Like aligning with an adder,” Ongondo said. “If you let it into your house it might kill the rats. But it would just as soon bite you.”
“Can they identify any of the attackers?”
Ongondo translated the question. The refugees shook their heads.
“Do they know where their attackers came from?”
Same answer.
Gold considered what else to ask. These two seemed to know nothing that might lead to Kassam. Or if they did know, they were afraid to talk. A dead end either way. She hoped conversations with other refugees might prove more helpful.
The Tuareg father began speaking. Not in response to a question from Ongondo, but something he volunteered. His eyes brimmed as he talked. Ongondo nodded slowly, as if moved by the words. While he listened, Ongondo crooked a finger and pressed it to his lips. Gold thought she recognized the situation: The Tuareg man was expressing a complicated idea, and Ongondo had to put some thought into how to translate it.
When the Tuareg finished, Ongondo paused for a moment. Then he said, “This is hard to convey in English, but he says earth and heaven and hell have spun out of their orbits. Demons from hell have been flung to earth.”
So it seemed. Gold had received evidence of that over the radio a short time ago.
“Wow,” she said. “That’s poetic and heartbreaking at the same time.”
The poetic part didn’t surprise her. Though she did not speak this language, she knew the Tuaregs had a strong oral tradition: adventure poems, love poems, war poems, folktales and legends passed down for uncounted generations. Recent events would give them more stories to recount, and not the good kind.
Before Gold could think of any words of solace, a commotion interrupted her thoughts. Shouts came from outside, angry voices in at least three languages. Was this a terrorist attack within the refugee camp? But she heard no gunfire, no explosions.
She and Ongondo raced from the tent. The Tuaregs stayed put, the man shielding his boy with his arms.
Outside she found a melee. Young men ran between the tents, armed with whatever they could find to throw. Some carried rocks and water bottles. One yanked at a tent stake, perhaps to use it as a spike.
“Stop!” Gold yelled. Then she shouted in Arabic for him to leave the stake alone. Unaccountably, he obeyed and ran on.
African Union soldiers sprinted toward what seemed the nucleus of the fight, a knot of men and boys at one end of a row of tents. Inside a circle of bystanders, fists and elbows flew.
“Hold your fire,” Ongondo barked to his men.
A good call, Gold thought. So far this looked like only a fistfight, but it could turn into a full-blown riot in an instant. If the AU troops resorted to deadly force, a bloodbath might result. This could get ugly if not defused quickly, Gold knew. Along with the troops, she waded into the scuffle, grabbed a boy by his right arm just as he cocked back to throw a punch.
The boy whirled and flung his other fist. Gold tried to block it but the blow caught the side of her head. The whack disoriented her for a second, and silver dots swam into her vision. The kid looked about fifteen, and he swung almost as strongly as a man. Gold grabbed him by the left arm, too.
Apparently the boy had thrown the punch blindly. He looked confused when he saw a blond woman had hold of him. He let Gold pull him away from the scuffle.
“Khalass,” she said. That’s enough.
He started to jerk away, but he stopped struggling when he saw the AU troops breaking up the fight. Most of the refugees offered little resistance, though one of them slammed the heel of his hand into a soldier’s jaw. Bad move. The soldier responded with an elbow strike that bloodied the man’s nose. Reddened mucus streamed from the refugee’s nostrils.
Gold noticed no injuries worse than that. As the troops extracted men and boys from the fight, they found a teenage boy at the bottom of the pile. A Tuareg, evidently. His cheche lay on the ground, blue fabric smeared with dirt and a few bloodstains. The teen had suffered a split lip; blood dribbled down his chin. One of his eyes appeared swollen. Two soldiers helped him to his feet, brushed sand from his shirt.
Thank God nobody pulled a knife, Gold thought. This could have become so much worse. Even without guns and knives, rioters could have stabbed with tent stakes, wrapped a tent rope around someone’s neck, crushed a skull with a rock.
Ongondo moved among the refugees and soldiers, speaking in English, Arabic,
and Tamahaq. He seemed to lecture some of the males who’d been fighting. He shook his finger at one boy, who folded his arms and lowered his eyes to the ground. The sight put Gold in mind of a school principal dressing down a student involved in a hallway fracas.
Ongondo turned to one of his soldiers and said, “Very good. I was so afraid someone would shoot unnecessarily.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Third World soldiers were not known for their fire discipline. Gold figured these served under better leadership than usual.
Gold turned her attention to the teenager rescued from the center of the fight. He shook grit from his cheche, wound the fabric around his head with a look of wounded pride.
“Let’s take him inside,” Gold said. “I’ll see if a nurse can look at his lip.”
Ongondo steered the boy into the tent where they’d interviewed the first two Tuaregs. Gold found a medic who said he came from Italy. Inside the tent, Gold pointed to the injured teen, and the medic pulled away the boy’s face covering. The medic dabbed a damp washcloth at the teen’s injured lip as the other two Tuaregs looked on. The white washcloth came away with red stains.
“He needs sutures,” the medic said, “but I have no anesthetic to deaden his lip. Not all of our supplies have arrived yet.”
The medic opened a tube of Brave Soldier. He took a cotton swab from a first-aid kit and squeezed some of the antiseptic ointment onto the cotton. “Tell him I will put medicine on his lip. It may sting.”
Ongondo spoke in Tamahaq. The teen cut his eyes toward the officer and nodded. The medic used his thumb and forefinger to pull the bloodied lip into an exaggerated pout, and he rubbed the swab over the gash.
