Joint Task Force #4: Africa

by David E. Meadows

  Behind Lacey, the ensign leaned forward watching the sailors check their shoes.

  “Not me, Chief,” one of the operators said.

  “Me either, Chief,” the other echoed.

  “And, as I told you, Chief,” Lacey said, drawing out his words. “It ain’t me, either.”

  The new flight engineer bunched up against the ensign and Lacey. She leaned around the two, forced her way to the right near the boarding hatch, stopped, and watched.

  Razi noticed her breasts first, but that was his job: Notice the finer details of his fellow chief petty officers and make sure they appreciated it. He glanced up at her face to meet hooded lids over sparkling eyes. She smiled. Well, at least she knows she got my attention.

  “Chief, you haven’t checked your flight boots. You must have stepped in it.”

  Razi sat back down on the arm of the chair. First, he lifted his right boot, showing everyone there was nothing there.

  Then, he slowly lifted his left flight boot, the sole facing toward the Lacey, the ensign, and the female flight engineer.

  Lacey burst out. “There! I told you so, Chief. You’ve got dog poop all over the bottom.”

  Razi raised his hand and waved Lacey down. “Now, now, now,” he said patronizingly. “Just because you say it is doesn’t necessary mean it’s dog poop.”

  “I can smell it. Can’t you?” Lacey asked the ensign.

  The ensign shrugged. “I don’t smell anything.”

  By now, others in the aircraft had gathered to watch.

  Razi leaned forward, getting his face as close as he could to the offending boot-bottom. “Well, Lacey, it does look like dog poop.”

  A chorus of agreements came from the onlookers and Razi smiled when he heard the ensign agree. Wow! This is going to be the best one this year.

  With great show, Razi raised his right hand, held up his index finger, and ran it through the pasty, brown peanut butter, coming up with a large dab of it on the end of his finger.

  “Looks like dog poop.”

  A chorus of “It is dog poop” and “What the hell did you think it was?” and “Damn it, man, don’t put your fingers in it” roared from the growing number of aircrew who were working their way aft. Laughter filled the fuselage.

  Razi looked around the aircraft. Lieutenant Reed opened the door to the head, stepped inside, and pulled it shut. Aircrewmen in the back, stretched their necks, trying to watch. Most of the eyes were on the ensign. The ensign stared directly at Razi’s finger.

  Razi raised the stuff near his nose. “Lacey, you may be right. I’m not wrong often, but it sure smells like dog poop.” He looked at the two sailors manning Dragnet. One grinned while the other looked awfully pale. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the new flight engineer move toward him, easing past Lacey and the ensign, but not blocking the ensign’s view.

  Razi opened his mouth, moved his finger down with its offending dab, and suddenly the new flight engineer leaned over with her finger, swiped the dab off his, and jammed it into her mouth.

  The ensign’s eyes widened and “Oh, my God’s” filled the air as she rolled the stuff around her mouth a couple of times. Razi turned toward the NRL sailors just as the palefaced one power-vomited, the mixture hitting Razi in the chest, splattering some on his face. The other sailor dove toward the mess area away from the follow-up heaving erupting from his partner. Aircrewmen pushed and shoved to get away from the sick sailor.

  Razi jumped up. “What the hell!” He glanced at Lacey who had tears rolling down his cheeks. The first-class fell to his knees, clutching his stomach and lightly hitting his head against the back of a nearby seat. “Did you see that?” he gasped between laughs to the two sailors sitting in the console seats.

  Razi looked down, his hands spread out to the side, staring at the yellow bits of half-eaten food that stained his suit.

  The ensign shoved past the kneeling Lacey, knocking the leading petty officer into on opening between the two seats. The ensign reached the door to the head and snatched it open. Lieutenant Reed stood there peeing into the large urine container.

  “What the—”

  The ensign pushed Reed aside and vomited into the quarter-full container while Reed fought to zip up and mold himself to the backside of the head at the same time.

  The flight engineer brought her finger out of her mouth. “Nope, peanut butter, Chief. Nothing but peanut butter.” She reached inside a flight-suit pocket on her chest and pulled out a wad of napkins. “Here, Chief. You probably can use this.” She smiled, leaving him looking like a wet dishrag as she continued to the mess area, stepping over the heaving sailor. She patted him on the head as she passed. “There’s more fun later, sailor,” she said.

  A series of beeps from the Naval Research Laboratory position sounded over the noise of the crowd dispersing, as they returned to their mission positions. The sailor on the deck pulled himself up and slid back into his seat. The other sailor reached over and handed his shipmate a wet rag from the galley. The recovering sailor wiped his face before placing the wet handkerchief on the console table so he could press the computer-image icons on the data screen.

  “Looks good,” the other sailor said. “Gotta tweak it a little.”

  The sickened sailor acknowledged with a slow nod, grabbed the handkerchief, and wiped his face again. “Good God,” the man muttered.

  “Peanut butter.”

  “I didn’t know it was peanut butter.”

  Razi watched the two as he wiped the mess off of his flight suit. The beeping continued until the sailor to the left pressed an icon and the beeping stopped. Razi started toward the mess area. He needed more water to get this smell off of him. This isn’t the way I planned it. That sailor wore wings, what in the hell kind of aircrewman is he who gets sick over a little practical joke? As he crossed into the lighted area of the galley, he realized the laughter was more on him than the sailor and the ensign. Oh, well, you win some and you lose some. He wished he had brought along another flight suit. Staying in this one for ten hours wasn’t his idea of a good flight.

  The new flight engineer turned as Razi entered.

  “Good job, Chief,” he said to her.

  “Couldn’t have done it without you,” she said, then she started laughing as she held out her hand. “Anita Jennings, Chief.”

  “Bad”—He couldn’t say Badass to her.—“Will Razi,” he said gripping her hand and shaking it.

  “Funny, I thought they called you ‘Badass’?

  “They do,” he replied, then, holding his hands out and looking down at the mess on the front of his flight suit, “but after this, I think I’m going to need a new handle for my flying days.”

  “How about ‘vomit man’?” said Lieutenant Reed from behind him.

  “Chief!” one of the NRL sailors shouted. “You better come here.”

  “Good to meet you, Anita. Great job, once again, but if we’re going to work together on things like this, we need to coordinate our actions.”

  She smiled.

  She does have a nice smile, Razi thought. It’s the dimples in the cheeks that make the smile look wider and friendlier than she probably means.

  “Sounds like we will have to get together after the flight, Chief, and develop our coordination.”

  He felt a slight blush, but didn’t understand why— unless it was the quick image of her spreadeagled and moaning that was zipping through his thoughts.

  She laughed. “No, not that type of coordination, Chief.”

  “Chief!” the sailor shouted again. “We’ve got something.”

  “Excuse me.” Razi hurried toward the prototype system. “What have you got?”

  “This.” The screen on the CRT display flickered for a moment and then a graphic display of heat signatures appeared. Immediately, small computer-generated figures of men replaced them. “We have just flown over a group of about twenty to thirty humans.”

  “How you know?”

  “The comput
er knows.”

  “Chief, I’m sorry for puking on you,” the other sailor said.

  Razi patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. If you get hungry later, you know where you can find some food.” He turned to the sailor in charge. “How do we know the computer is right?”

  The other sailor turned pale again.

  The sailor shrugged. “It hasn’t been wrong yet when we’ve tested it.”

  Razi moved to the other side. “Don’t puke again, son. You’ve done enough damage,” he said, frowning. “Lots of difference between testing it in the field and testing it in the laboratory.”

  “Chief, while we argue here, the aircraft is getting farther and farther away. We need to turn back.”

  “If we turn back are we going to get anything more than we have people below us?”

  “Well, Chief, we also have a magnetometer on board EP-3Es. The magnetometer has a similar database concept as Dragnet. The magnetometer can tell, by the intensity and density of the metal below, what type of weapons may be there. If we consolidate the intelligence from Dragnet and the magnetometer, we might be able to determine what is below us.”

  Razi stared at the man for moment, his eyes looking at the second-class crow. How in the hell did he put this together? Razi slapped the sailor on the shoulder. “Damn, you’re good. I was thinking the same thing.”

  Five minutes later, the aircraft was in a turn heading back to where Dragnet had detected the warm bodies. In the front end of the aircraft, the magnetometer operator, a sailor trained as a cryptologic technician in the technical rating—a former electronic warfare technician—energized the magnetometer database. They hadn’t planned on using this system while flying over the jungles of West Africa. It wasn’t as if they were searching for tanks or submarines.

  “Chief, I have another contact!” the NRL sailor shouted.

  Razi leaned over his shoulder. Numerous contacts speckled the 360-degree screen, icons popping up all over it, indicating humans. “What the—”

  “Look here, Chief,” the sailor said, tapping a readout above the screen. “Over three hundred contacts and growing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we have a small group—twenty miles away from this group.”

  “Or, they could be together,” the other sailor said, color returning to his face.

  Lieutenant Reed appeared beside Razi. “What have you got, Chief?”

  Razi pointed at the display screen and the readout. “Looks as if this prototype is picking up a large number of people below the jungle canopy.”

  “Which way are they heading?” Reed asked.

  Razi shrugged.

  The lead sailor from NRL replied, “Don’t know, sir. We’re in a turn and this system has problems determining direction and speed of movement unless we stay straight, level, and keep our speed steady.”

  “We’re already in a turn, Chief, to go back to where the first contact was made. We’ll get another chance to look at the large contact.” The mission evaluator looked at the two sailors. “You have confidence this system is working— functioning properly.”

  “Yes, sir,” they said in unison. “We have put this system through rigorous testing, Lieutenant, and it has been one-hundred-percent accurate.”

  Reed pursed his lips. “Then, I’m going to be hard-pressed to trust it, sailors. Haven’t seen anything in the Navy during my short career one-hundred-percent anything that wasn’t as hosed up as Hogan’s goat.” He turned and walked back toward the front, disappearing into the dark shadows of the fuselage, lit by the soft green of the various displays on the consoles.

  “Chief, we have two groups of people down there,” the lead sailor protested. “Not one, but two groups and this system—Dragnet is one-hundred-‘by-God’-percent accurate, and I don’t care what that VQ lieutenant says.”

  Razi put his hand on his shoulders. “Don’t worry about what he thinks, worry that your data is refined, accurate, and there’re no problems caused by the electronics in this aircraft. Then, we’ll let the system prove itself.”

  The EP-3E Aries II aircraft leveled itself. Razi glanced at the digital compass on the main console. It showed two-eight-five. They were heading back toward the first contact. He bent his head, the odor from the vomit along the front of his flight suit wafted through his nostrils, nearly causing him to heave. Serve the sailor right if I puked on him.

  CHAPTER 4

  OJO NODDED. “GENERAL EZEJI, THE AMERICANS ARE HERE again,” he said, nodding upward. “You hear the airplane?”

  “They will never leave us alone, General. One month ago, they sent a team to kill you. And, when they failed, they continued the hunt. It is good that we have friends in Monrovia keeping watch so we are aware of their plans.”

  Ojo glanced down at the heavyset Nigerian and smiled. “The Americans are never satisfied unless they know everything that is going on around them. They trust no one and verify everything.” He reached out and touched General Ezeji. Ezeji was the only general in the African National Army with military experience, experience much broader than his own. Ezeji said he was a former general in the Nigerian Army, but Ojo had never been able to confirm the information. It would be too much to push an inquiry in Nigeria, for if the man is what he says, then his value is so great that to endanger him to the Nigerians would be regrettable.

  When the rotund man appeared a year ago at their encampment, Ojo believed him to be a member of Nigerian intelligence. The angry Kabaka warned that Ezeji had been sent to spy on the ANA and report everything to Nigeria, the regional West African power. The months had been kind to Ezeji in Ojo’s eyes. Ojo valued the insight and suggestions from the Nigerian, and if Ezeji was a member of Nigerian intelligence, then his worth-for-the-moment outweighed the risk. The sound of the aircraft grew. “Stop the men,” Ojo said, raising his hand.

  “But, General, they cannot see us through the canopy nor hear us from their aircraft.”

  “I know, but it gives us an opportunity to reconstitute our forces so that when we reach the Arabs we will be ready. It would be incompetent for us to stumble into them and have them kill our soldiers before we were ready.”

  Ezeji passed the word to the runners who fanned out in all directions to stop the movement of the army. Cellular telephones were useless in the absence of towers and the fledging army could ill afford satellite telephones, so the poverty of their fighting force hid them from their adversaries who would remotely exploit their activities. Their own human intelligence networks had reported newspaper articles telling of how Western governments had reached the conclusion months ago that only humans interjected into the ANA could provide any real information on this growing, mysterious African army. Intelligence abhors military and political mysteries. The lower the technology capability of an adversary, the more important human intelligence gathering becomes.

  Ojo lifted his khaki hat and ran the back of his hand across his forehead. It was a Western misconception that Africans were unaffected by the high humidity and heat of the jungle—that dark skin and generations of living here protected them. What a lie! Heat was heat, and it could kill an African as quickly as it could kill a white man. The interlocking leaves of the jungle canopy hiding them from the reconnaissance aircraft trapped heat, turning the shaded jungle into a sweaty cauldron of fatigue and dehydration. Every night, his generals brought new stories of missing and dead soldiers. The missing, most tired of constant marching and fighting the deadly heat, had simply slipped into the bush to return to dust-ridden patches they called farms. Dead did not necessarily mean dead. For the army to keep moving, it was sufficient for a soldier to lie down and refuse to go on or become unresponsive. Ojo had little doubt that many of them waited until the army had moved on before they miraculously recovered and disappeared into the jungles to join the more adventurous “missing” ones.

  Ojo overheard Ezeji direct a runner to locate Kabaka and to return with the news. Ezeji’s actions had either
proved Ojo’s surmise that the man was loyal to him, or that the Nigerians wanted the ANA to succeed. Someday, he would figure out why the Nigerians would allow the ANA free reign in West Africa. Even America checked with the Nigerians before they did anything in this part of the world. Could the Americans be afraid of the Nigerians? No, Ojo thought, shaking his head. The Americans needed the Nigerians. Needed them to patrol and pacify this volatile area of Africa. It was an American strategy to use regional powers to promote stability for failed states, and areas of instability provided sanctuary for terrorists such as Abu Alhaul.

  “It is hot,” Ezeji said, his voice soft.

  Ojo acknowledged the comment, slid his hat back on his head, straightening it so the brim rode above the eyebrows. Ezeji seemed as dedicated to the cause as he did. Maybe he was too paranoid. Then again, sometimes a cause and a person are one in the same. Early causes must be explicitly linked to a personality. He was the personality. Only when the turmoil of birth was over could a cause stand alone. Sometimes he wondered what causes ANA fought, other than to rid Africa of foreign intervention. He must not fall for the trappings of power, but it was a grand feeling to raise one’s hand and watch others wait for his words. Ojo had a far-off goal he wanted to achieve. Someday, when he handed over power, a power he hoped would be far-reaching over an independent Africa, he would be allowed to gracefully rock away his older years watching his child grow. Most African futures seemed filled with violence and death.

  “General Ojo, we are stopped,” Ezeji said. “I have talked with General Darin, and he is aligning his soldiers along our left flank. They will move parallel with us. The scout who returned an hour ago reported finding a fresh trail of our quarry, turning north.”

  “How old?”

  Ezeji shrugged. “One day, possibly two. It is hard to say without stumbling onto a campsite, and it looks as if the Arabs are fleeing. It is easy to say they know we are pursuing them. Our village visits have told us that. What I don’t believe they know is how far back we are. As long as they think we are close, they will continue to hurry away, sapping their strength, until we finally catch up.”