Visibility dropped to nothing, then the truck rocked and went airborne. For nearly two seconds, Zack was convinced it was going to overturn and roll. But it stopped shy of its center of gravity, came down on a couple of wheels, bounced, then settled on the all four. They shot out the back of the smoke cloud, Dugan swerved frantically around destroyed and displaced hulks of vehicles, and then gunned it in earnest.
They were free and clear, only open road ahead.
Zack made a mental note to send a thank-you card to General Motors, for the amazing ruggedness of their sport utility vehicles.
And another to General Atomics, for their unmanned aerial ones.
The Road
But it turned out the road wasn’t open, nor were they free. Instead, the road kept them as a captive audience and told them a tale of flight, and terror, and death. The majority in Hargeisa didn’t have a hardened safehouse to hunker down in, and many had tried instead to escape the gravity well of the sickening and imploding city. Some had probably made it. But many had fallen along the way, and it was through these lost souls that the four refugees of the safehouse had to make their way.
They passed the first accident scene less than a mile out of town. It wasn’t obvious what had gone down. The first two cars, one a cheap Chinese model, the other an ancient Eastern European one, both common in the region, were wrapped around a tree, and around each other, a few meters off the road. An ungainly cargo truck, probably originally of military issue, its bed now surrounded by crooked wood slats, lay on its side on the shoulder.
No one, survivors or dead, were visible as the Tahoe roared by.
But then came abandoned cars on the road itself. First, Dugan swerved around a newish looking Land Cruiser, the kind of vehicle most often driven by UN or foreign aid workers. All four of its doors were open, and it sat at an angle, at the end of a long double set of skid marks. Dugan didn’t slow down. No one said anything. You could hear the breathing in the cabin.
Finally, Dugan spoke over his shoulder. “Zack. What’s the remaining linger time of the Predator?”
“What?” Zack said. Bob had put the drone back on autopilot, and left the GCS in the back seat. Now Zack looked down to the mission status display. The MQ-1 Predator has a max endurance of 24 hours – and when they’d gotten control of this one, it had been in the air less than two. “Twenty hours and a bit,” he said.
Dugan nodded. “Get it scouting up ahead for me.” So far the Hargeisa-Berbera Road wasn’t a parking lot, except at the point where it started. Private vehicle ownership in Somalia was still rare. But Zack got Dugan’s meaning – they didn’t want to be surprised by any more roadblocks or pile-ups. Without the crisis and madness swirling around him now, he found he was able to control the Pred reasonably well with one hand. He got it out of its pattern, laid in a waypoint where they were on the road – then set a second one 20 miles further along.
When he looked up from this, and out the front glass, he could already see a new, bigger knot of vehicles up ahead. And a few seconds after that, he saw human figures, milling around it.
Dugan’s knuckles went white as he tightened his grip on the wheel. Zack could feel him peering into the tangle of cars, plotting a route through the hazard. He braked hard as they approached, jigged around one car, then a truck on the other side – and then immediately faced another truck, blocking both lanes. He twisted the wheel, taking them onto the verge. Not for no reason did people have four-wheel-drive vehicles in the developing world. As they rumbled over the dirt and rocks, and then back onto the tarmac, Zack twisted around in his seat, and saw two things behind them, each more disturbing than the other.
First was three figures, clearly sick people, who rose and moved to follow as they went by. Zack opened his mouth, instinctively, to at least throw out the idea that they should stop and help them. But his mouth stopped on the first syllable, frozen open and wordless, as he saw the second thing: bodies on the ground, lying between the standing figures and the truck. These ones were not sick, but butchered. His mind’s eye took a single snapshot of exposed organs, and protruding bone, and blood-slick muscle tissue.
He spent the next few seconds reviewing the picture, trying to make sense of it. And the rest of his life after that trying to forget it.
The next car they passed, a few hundred yards farther on, had the same scene – except inside the fucking car. Zack’s mouth went wider yet and his eyes slitted in horror, as they swerved around it and he made out a woman’s distorted face with wild hair, wiping away blood on the window to peer frantically after them.
The face was human in shape only.
* * *
Zack sat in silence, thinking: Jesus Christ, that happened fast. One minute they were sitting pretty in their high-tech safehouse, serenely monitoring the region in safety and comfort. And then what felt like minutes later, the safehouse was in flames, Hargeisa was consuming itself, and the four of them were running for their lives. SERIOUSLY fucking fast…
As much to fill the silence as to start thinking critically and working proactively, Zack leaned into the front passenger compartment and spoke. “Hey. Guys. So… Do you think Lemonnier is really our best play here? It’s a hell of a long drive.”
Not turning around, Dugan said, “Normally three hundred kilometers and a bit. Maybe twice that via Berbera.”
Maximum Bob twisted around to face Zack. “At least we know Lemonnier will be safe. Hell, it may be the only safe spot in the region.”
“That’s if we can make it there…”
Dugan grunted and tossed this over his shoulder: “Hey, you gotta better hole, you go to it.”
“Decent point,” Zack said. “I guess, whatever else, we know Lemonnier will stand. Not to mention let us in.”
Bob looked thoughtful, then said, “Though, no point in making assumptions.” He pulled the hand mic from the truck radio under the dash, changed frequencies, and hailed the TOC at Lemonnier. What came back in response was: “Silo X copies your last. Wait out.” Bob stared at the radio ruefully for a couple of seconds, then pulled his phone and speed-dialed a number. His expression didn’t change as he held the little phone to his huge head for 15 seconds. “Yeah, Ski, mate. It’s Bob. Call me when you get this. We’re headed toward Lemonnier, my whole group from Hargeisa, four pax in one Victor. Don’t know what your intel situation is, but Hargeisa’s in flames. Need to know your status there. Out.”
He ended the call and speed-dialed another number. And another. The others sat in silence while he left four more messages like that one. Nobody said anything after. Zack almost piped up to say that could mean anything. Spec-ops and intel guys were busy people. Everyone in the HOA was busy. But everybody in the truck already knew all that. And Zack decided pointing it out would only make the mood in there more grim, not less.
He pulled out his own phone, and opened the contacts. He scrolled through a few names and considered making his own calls. He decided not to, convincing himself it wasn’t the biggest priority right now. On some level, though, he knew he just didn’t want to know. That he feared the answer. That it was intel better not known.
Instead, he said, “Hey, I think Baxter and I ought to do a manifest of all the supplies in the truck, okay?”
“Yeah, good idea,” Bob said. It was true, and they all felt it to be true, that the truck, and the supplies in it, were all they had. And perhaps all that stood between them and the madness engulfing Somalia. “Though, as soon as we stop,” Bob added, “I need to check you out properly. That was a hell of a lot of weight that fell on your head back there.”
Zack nodded, then got busy making the manifest, while Baxter dug around in the back – rooting through the emergency survival stuff they always kept there, supplemented by the contents of ISUs – mainly more food, fuel, water, and ammo – that they had ferried out of the burning safehouse.
In the end, it stretched to dried food, mainly MREs and protein bars… jugs of purified water… fuel cans full of diesel
for the Tahoe’s 6.5-liter turbo diesel engine… magazines and boxes of ammo… high-power flashlights and boxes of batteries… two radios and yet more batteries… two sets of NVGs in their hard cases… two handguns and a shotgun in their Pelican cases… a solar charger, magnesium fire starter, spare tire, jack, tire iron, two cans of tire inflator, rubber siphon hose, lantern, tarp, flares, blankets, ponchos, spare wool socks, 300m length of high-tensile rope, hand ax, machete. And medical supplies – the big med ruck, plus a good-sized vehicle first aid kit, and also three fat boxes of antibiotics, packed into one of the ISUs.
“Good thinking,” Zack said. “Cipro, streptomycin, and azithromycin.”
“Yeah, Z-packs rock,” Dugan said, referring to the azithromycin. They all knew that when you really needed a broad-spectrum antibiotic, absolutely nothing else would do. They were a must-have when trapped and wounded behind enemy lines or in a denied area for weeks at a time.
Or, Zack thought darkly, when trapped in the time after civilization collapses… and for God knows how long.
But he tried to put those thoughts out of his mind. Somewhere, though, always lurking out at the periphery, like wolves outside the ring of light of a campfire, was that same abiding thought he never managed to shake: I’m never getting out of this place alive.
Silence descended on the group again. Zack and Baxter could now make out, from up front, a faint glow from the passenger seat. Baxter stuck his head forward – and saw that it was Maximum Bob’s e-book reader, with its backlit screen. Baxter paused only very briefly to be knocked out that Bob would be reading at a time like this. Instead, he asked him what it was.
“The Looming Tower,” Bob said. “Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.”
Baxter sniffed. “The Pulitzer winner, right? I almost, but didn’t, have to read that at Georgetown. Any good?”
“Eye-opening,” Bob said. “It’s amazing how much you can miss when you miss a few things. You should read it when I’m done.”
“Okay,” Baxter said. “If we both live long enough.”
Bob smiled. “Don’t worry, buddy. You’re gonna be fine.”
Baxter paused. “Okay. I’ll take it on faith for n—”
“Wait, what the fuck’s that?” Dugan interrupted, leaning forward over the dash and peering into the distance.
The shadows had gotten long, and the sun was now setting over the tops of the trees to their left. Rich, orange, autumnal light slanted over the road, along with spindly tree shadows – and all of it falling on the crashed and abandoned vehicles and the sick, dying and dead people they had to navigate around. The crash sites had not really thinned out as they got Hargeisa further behind them. Whatever had stopped these vehicles, or caused them to crash, and whatever had befallen these would-be refugees, it had kept on happening – maybe all the way to the coast and the Gulf of Aden.
But now there was something else up ahead.
They heard it before they saw it. And they felt it before that. It was like a rumbling storm, which slowly resolved into individual little thunderclaps. As the light faded, this also presented as little flashing ripples of glowing lightning on the horizon. These appeared and disappeared as the road curved then straightened again. And the sound of it continued to grow. Dugan let the speed bleed out of the truck. “Get the drone to the front…” he said, still hunched forward.
After scouting the immediate stretch of road ahead, the next thirty miles or so, Zack had put the Predator into another holding pattern, to hang out for the time being and wait for them. But he’d forgotten all about monitoring the video while they’d been making the supplies manifest. Now he took it off autopilot and, with a single click, had the aircraft head straight to their current location. Within half a minute, it was in view of the source of the lightning and thunder ahead of them. Zack spun the case around in his lap. From the front seat, Bob stared long into the screen, and then Dugan stole a glance.
“Well, shit,” Bob said.
Dugan hit the brakes and cast around urgently for an exit.
There was none.
The Forest
Don’t look at what you don’t want to see.
Someone had told Zack that once, somewhere along the line. It had been a useful concept, particularly in a long intel career that often involved staring deeply into very disturbing places, people, and situations. He had a feeling it was going to become an even more essential formulation now.
“Is that SNA?” Baxter asked.
“Yeah,” Bob said, taking up his assault rifle from where he’d laid it in the footwell alongside him.
The thunder and lightning had now resolved into firing – both of small arms, and of heavier guns. And they could clearly see from the video, even in the settling dusk, that what they were approaching was an armored column: trucks, armored personnel carriers, and even a couple of medium tanks. The APCs were old Soviet BTR-50s; and the tanks absolutely ancient Soviet T-54s. But they all had pretty big guns, as did the people riding on them.
And they were all just schwacking the fuck out of everything as they rolled with impunity straight down the highway, or what passed for a highway in Somalia. They were lighting up everything. Zack guessed maybe they’d had a bad experience giving somebody the benefit of the doubt somewhere along the line.
Baxter said, “It’s SNA, so they won’t fire on us, right?”
Dugan had braked them to a near stop, and now wrestled the truck onto the shoulder and took it off-road. Ahead of them, thirty meters from the roadside, was a sparse treeline. He was making for it.
Baxter persisted. “C’mon, they’re our allies. And we’re not sick. Or dead. Or whatever.”
“Yeah, well,” Dugan said, as he steered around a stump, and then over a large fallen log. “You try getting their attention and explaining all that to them.”
The vehicle continued to turn and buck over and around fallen trees, stumps, and underbrush, also running down several small saplings. Soon, but not soon enough, they had some forest between them and the road. By this time the firing of the SNA column had grown all the way to shit’s-getting-real volume.
“Everybody out,” Bob said. “Get down behind the truck.”
They piled out and complied. The sun was nearly down now, and the foliage of the trees made it even darker where they were. Zack realized he couldn’t draw his handgun – it was on his left side, underneath his slung and useless left arm. He reached around and teased it out of his holster with his right hand. Spec-ops badasses, he knew, often trained for thousands of hours to shoot ambidextrously. But he sure hadn’t.
By now the storm was nearly on them, and the first few stray rounds started zipping by. One thwacked audibly into a nearby tree. Another caused that characteristic snap noise of an air pocket collapsing as a supersonic round passed just a few feet over Zack’s head. When one hit the truck with a loud clang, Zack bent over and covered up his head with his pistol and good hand. But he could see that the two SEALs, one at the front of the truck, one at the back, were still holding their rifles in the low ready position. And, mainly, they were maintaining situational awareness.
The noise was huge and terrifying now. There was the starting and stopping chatter of three or four medium or heavy machine guns, probably mounted on the BTRs. They traded off lines like soloists in a jazz concert in hell. Underneath that were lots of single shots, from personnel with rifles most likely. And all this was punctuated by the periodic boom of the tanks’ big three-inch guns.
Zack didn’t know what the fuck they were shooting at – everything? Nothing? He recalled they had passed one tangle of vehicles shortly before this point, and there had been a few more visible up ahead. But it had been easy enough for the Tahoe to just go around them. Rather than blowing the fuck out of everything.
Maybe the Somalis were shooting at something Zack and his team couldn’t see? Something on the road – or, shit, off in the treeline? Zack swiveled his head, left and right, up and down, peering into the dark tangle of woods
around them. But he saw nothing – nothing but gnarled limbs and trunks, bushes, knots of thorns, and deep shadows spreading as the last of the light bled away.
After the eternity that being under fire always feels like, the bee-swarm racket of zipping rounds passed away down the road, growing quieter, and finally fading out. The four men stood up, still looking over one another’s shoulders, peering into shadows. Dugan and Maximum Bob pushed out a 20-meter perimeter, and did a walk-around to secure the immediate area.
Zack leaned up against the truck, holstered his pistol, and felt up his own arm. It was tender as hell and didn’t want to move. Baxter stood nearby, his breathing slowing and quieting down. And Zack realized that the silence now was worse than the shooting had been. The silence here was like the sound of the darkness flooding in.
It was like that of the grave.
* * *
The devil and the deep blue sea.
Everyone knew that one. They now had a fateful decision to make. The four squatted or knelt in a small circle, facing in, a few feet from the Tahoe, in what was near total darkness now. Baxter had flicked on a flashlight, but Dugan had immediately doused it. It was much more important that they not be seen, than that they be able to see.
“I think we’re better off holing up for the night,” Dugan said.
“The question is,” Zack said, “is it safe here?”
Dugan tossed his head toward the road. “Safer than trying to navigate that junkyard in the dark.”
“What about your NVGs? Might actually be safer moving at night.”
“We’ve got NVGs,” Bob said, “but they’re only the two-tube ones. The viewing angle and depth of field are a bit crap.”
“Too crap for dodging wrecks at speed,” Dugan said. The two operators looked at each other, ruefully remembering the four-tube, $65K NVGs they’d had to abandon in their burning ready room.
“And we’ve only got one spare tire, plus fix-a-flat,” Bob added. “One too many flats, or a bent rim, and we lose our mobility. Lose that…” He mercifully didn’t finish the thought.
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