The Devil's Horn

by David L. Robbins

  While the South African remote pilots were scrambling to figure out what was happening—had their Denel gone down, was it flying blindly somewhere over the park—the drone was winging east with new hands on the stick, soaring high over the Mozambique Channel to a waiting US Navy aircraft carrier.

  The navy had been experimenting with drones taking off from carriers. Once flattops became mobile UAV bases, the reach of unmanned military flight would be, for all intents, global.

  “Navy landed a drone,” LB said.

  “They did.”

  “Oh, man.”

  LB was of mixed opinion about unmanned warfare. On the one hand, battle by remote control limited the casualties on the field. For a combat-rescue special operator, this was a good thing. But man’s abhorrence for bloodletting was usually what stopped the fighting in the end. LB and all professional warriors feared the day when war was taken away from the men and women on the battlefield and handed over to geeks in a bunker a thousand safe miles away. What would stop them? Not what they could see, hear, and smell up close. Certainly not their own peril.

  Now drones were combining with sea power. That meant the planet had just become smaller and a little less safe. Taking lives was doing a booming business. Not for the first time, LB was glad to be among the ones saving them.

  After the Denel was safely on the carrier’s deck, the navy’s armorers had gone to work. They’d bolted pylons beneath both wings. Secured to each pylon was a rocket launcher loaded with two Hellfire AGM 114 missiles apiece. All four air-to-ground missiles had been armed by the carrier’s munitions men with tritonol charges wired near the warheads. This self-destruct capability was typically reserved for training, not live-fire combat ops. But this was a covert, high-priority mission, and all fingerprints had to be wiped. No one on board the carrier knew the destination for the drone or the missiles.

  With its new payload secured, the flight crew wheeled the Denel to the catapult and slingshot it back into the sky. The drone was flown at ten thousand feet for five hundred miles, taking it into Mozambique’s northern highlands.

  A local tribesman—paid off by the CIA or Maputo—was there on the ground with a laser pointer, waiting to paint Al Shabaab’s remote meeting place with the lethal dot. The plan was to fire three Hellfires, make the kill, then turn the Denel back out over the ocean with one Hellfire still on board.

  Once the drone reached deep water, the carrier was to beam a coded radio signal into the tritonol charge, detonating the Hellfire’s warhead, splashing the Denel. Evidence gone, case closed, mystery unsolved.

  The strike went off exactly as drawn up. The Denel arrived high above the Al Shabaab meeting in Mozambique, right on time. The laser tag was confirmed, the fire order issued, and someone somewhere pushed a button.

  One, two, three Hellfires streaked down out of the blue.

  The mud hut disintegrated, all direct hits.

  The remote pilots aimed the drone away, turning east for the Mozambique Channel.

  LB had seen this part of the story coming.

  “But she didn’t turn.”

  “Nope.”

  “Malfunction.”

  “Yep.”

  This was all part and parcel of unmanned combat. Ghosts in the machine. What caused them was anybody’s guess. More than likely in this case, the South African drone wasn’t designed to land on a carrier, then be slung back into the air by the ship’s huge catapult. A Denel wasn’t built to be a launching platform for Hellfire missiles, either. Or maybe this was just crap luck. Regardless, there’d been a short in the Denel’s guidance. One small flash from a loose wire caused another in a second wire, then a third; the controls burned out, then the comm; and next the CIA had a blind, dumb, and deaf South African drone with an American missile fixed to it flying by its stupid self. LB pictured a crew of remote pilots, somewhere in the States or Djibouti, seated at a computerized cockpit, hitting buttons and switches, flipping furiously through manuals, calling supervisors, saying, “shit, shit, shit,” many times.

  Wally continued.

  “Apparently, the one thing that kept working in the drone was the GPS. After everything went blank, all the Denel had the sense to do was go back to the spot where it got hijacked.”

  “Over the Kruger.”

  “CIA has a fix on where it went down. They’ve got it pinpointed in a clearing in the northern part of the park.”

  “Did the missile blow?”

  Wally shook his head. “CIA thinks it didn’t. The GPS is still transmitting. That last Hellfire has an incendiary warhead. If it had blown, there’d be nothing left but hot dust.”

  A South African drone with an American missile attached to it was a major diplomatic breach. South Africa was going to scream bloody murder if this got out, and so would probably a dozen more Muslim countries on the continent. Mozambique would be humiliated, America tarnished again.

  LB counted the violations on his fingers: “We hacked another country’s drone, put our missiles on it, flew it into a third country to blow up nationals from a fourth country, then tried to splash the drone to get rid of the evidence.”

  “That’s what Torres told me. I assume with a straight face.”

  “Now you and I got to go clean it up.”

  “Not the first time.”

  It wasn’t. The ruses, gamesmanship, sleight of hand politics, these were always the handiwork of people far from the explosive reality of their schemes. Politicians, ambassadors, spies, sometimes even top military brass, like the drone operators, they stayed far out of harm’s way. At least the UAV pilots had their hands on a trigger. A senator, a general, or an intel analyst couldn’t even say that.

  “Who else knows the drone’s on the ground? Who are we racing?”

  “No way to know. The Kruger’s pretty huge. Probably no one. Maybe someone.”

  “Threat level? Hostiles?”

  “Don’t know. Lions.”

  The urgency on this job was high, the intel lousy. Drop into a massive African game preserve, locate the downed drone and destroy it, then get out. With no weapons, provisions, transportation, maps, the list of what they lacked for this op was just shy of everything. They had parachutes.

  “Assets on the ground?”

  Wally hedged again, this time with no hint of laughter behind the pause. LB knew him well enough to spot the signs of bad news.

  “Really?”

  “Torres says a park ranger will pick us up.”

  “A park ranger. Like a Smokey-the-Bear kind of ranger? Has this guy got clearance?”

  “I assume so.”

  “When?”

  “Don’t know. Tonight, maybe morning. We stay out of sight and wait by the drone.”

  “We got a cover story for everyone else?”

  “We did a SERE training exercise in the bush.”

  SERE meant survive, evade, resist, escape, a standard exercise for all Special Operators.

  “That works. I assume Smokey’s bringing a picnic basket.”

  “LB, quit. I’m not thrilled with this, either. You know everything I do, which isn’t much. I get it. We’ll jump in, put eyes on, then wait for the ranger. Torres will send us the radio code to blow the warhead. After we do it, Smokey drives us back to Waterkloof. That’s the plan.”

  “That’s it. That’s the best we got.”

  “LB.”

  “Get on the horn and tell Torres this is fucked up.”

  “I don’t tell Major Torres anything.”

  “Sure you don’t.”

  “LB.”

  “Fine. Rules of engagement? In case we bump into someone.”

  “Evade.”

  “And what if someone’s got big teeth?”

  “I just need to outrun you.”

  “You would, too.”

  “Without question. Okay. We got two hours’ flight time. We jump from twelve thousand nine.”

  That altitude was one hundred feet below the level where they’d need to be on oxyge
n, why the HC-130 had been climbing so steeply. LB had figured they’d fly nap of the earth, below radar, then he and Wally would bail at eight hundred over the Kruger. But it seemed getting down fast was being set aside for secrecy. At that great height, no one on the ground would hear the cargo plane coming. Just a blip on the South African radar, Kingsman 2 was going to sneak in on a commercial airline route, hiding among the eastbound traffic out of Johannesburg and Pretoria.

  Wally got to his feet.

  LB stayed seated. “I hate this part.”

  This was going to be a covert mission with political ramifications, and he and Wally couldn’t be ID’d as Americans if something went sideways on the ground. Every warrior shared this fear of dying in a forgotten field, an unclaimed body, nameless.

  Wally began. He ripped the Velcro-attached American flag off his breast, the first step in cleansing his uniform and himself. Next came his unit patches and name tape. He dropped them all on the cloth seat, along with his wallet. Finally, he left behind his Air Force Academy ring.

  LB followed suit. Every bit of identity he tore away dug a shovelful out of his anonymous grave. He lay down all his patches, his name, his papers, all except the Guardian Angel patch. This he wore last and longest before taking it off.

  Finished, Wally set a hand on LB’s shoulder. The gesture said, We know who we are.

  “I don’t like it, either. Okay?”

  Wally shot LB an encouraging smile, which LB did not feel or return. Wally sighed, having done his best, then took in the emptiness of the cargo bay.

  “Let’s scavenge.”

  While Wally climbed the steps up to the cockpit, LB dug through the HC-130’s few cabinets. He grabbed the plane’s small first aid kit, designed more for household scrapes than a mission in the bush. Wally returned with the flight engineer, loadmaster, and copilot. The three airmen combed through their own day bags. From the loadmaster, LB and Wally took a book of matches and an empty canteen, but turned down magazines and wool sweaters. The copilot handed over a satellite phone. The flight engineer gave up a pair of NVGs, light-amplifying night-vision goggles. Then he produced a black Pelican case. The engineer opened it in an unenthusiastic way that said this contained his pet—a Beretta M9 pistol with an extra loaded magazine.

  The engineer offered them up, but not without a reluctant tug. LB made a sheepish face and took them.

  “Sorry. Lions.”

  Chapter 10

  Allyn’s phone fluted during the squash game. His opponent, a fat Pretoria banker, put his hands on his hips and waited, red faced and jowly. Allyn left the court for the vestibule to open his gym bag, find the phone, and silence it. He apologized for his carelessness, then three points later drilled the man in the leg with a forehand.

  In his day, the banker had been a nationally ranked player. Now he wore the anchors of his success and years in his waist and chin; Allyn won the best-of-five match three games to one, and the thousand-rand bet with it. This he spent at the bar on the banker.

  On the club veranda, in the shade of an umbrella, Allyn checked his calls. His son had rung from London, one time zone behind Pretoria. The boy worked for an English mining firm; Allyn had used his connections to set him up. The long-term hope, a father’s wish, was that the son would come back a man, an engineer, and take over Ingwe from Allyn. The call from London, in the late afternoon, would be business. The boy likely needed money, advice, or both. In the rare times he called at night, he was drunk. Allyn set the phone on the tablecloth. It rang under his fingers. The number came up private.

  “Hello?”

  “Mwanganani, shamwari.”

  “Ndara, Juma.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The club.”

  “Can you talk?”

  Allyn made sure no one was in range of his conversation.

  “Ja. Is something wrong?”

  “No. Something has fallen into our hands. Actually fallen.”

  Allyn motioned for a waiter to freshen his seltzer. He palmed one of his damp wristbands. The sweat in the cloth came from play, not a pick or a pushcart of coal. A blond and shapely woman walked past the picture window, off for a game of racquetball in whites.

  “Tell me.”

  Juma described a drone that had crashed in the Kruger. One of his lookouts in the park had called him ten minutes ago to tell him the location, a northern sector of Shingwedzi, eight kilometers west of the Mozambican border.

  Allyn sipped his seltzer and, though no one was close enough to hear him, asked only generic, careful questions.

  “Whose is it?”

  “The contact cannot say.”

  “Do you think it has value?”

  “The drone, no. It’s a wreck. Maybe some of the electronics. But there’s something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “A missile.”

  Allyn nodded but had no notion of what a missile might sell for on the black market. His expertise was world markets for ore and diamonds; with Juma he’d only traded in horn. But after their meeting at Allyn’s house days ago, they both had agreed to bring Allyn in deeper—a little more risk for a lot more profit.

  “What will that bring?”

  “Eighty to a hundred thousand American.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Macandezulo.”

  “How fast can you get there?”

  “One hour.”

  Allyn swiped some of the dew from the cold glass at his hand. He touched the chill of the glass to his forehead to cool his brow.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “Nothing. But we agreed to expand your role, yes?”

  “Ja.”

  “I’ll need to transport it. I didn’t want to put a missile on one of your ships without telling you.”

  Allyn needed to do nothing, only get a little richer. Perhaps play some racquetball.

  “Alright.”

  “One more thing. My contact in the Kruger, the one who called. I’ve told the contact to stay with the drone until I get there.”

  Allyn couldn’t fathom why this was important.

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “The contact is not alone.”

  As if the phone had snapped at him, Allyn yanked it from his ear and held it at arm’s length.

  “Stop talking.”

  Slowly, Allyn brought the phone back to his ear. Juma loosed a long breath, letting Allyn be the one to speak next, or not.

  Here was the boundary. The gate that would lock behind him. Juma had already warned him the money was not easy or bloodless, no matter if it seemed to be. But until now the blood was at a remove. Poachers were shot by rangers, eaten by beasts, these were the natural risks of going into the bush for horn. Fair enough, they were paid to go. But this? The contact was not alone. By telling him, by seeking his permission, Juma bound Allyn in blood.

  Allyn peered at a shining, tall, bustling Pretoria. East, over the government buildings and office high-rises, far beyond the green horizon to the bush where life and death were the lone currency, Juma would go on his word.

  What did Allyn have left but life and death? Life handed you a bill, it needed to be paid. Life required money. Death was free.

  “Juma.”

  “Allyn.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “We said we would share.”

  “So we did. Good-bye.”

  Chapter 11

  The drone had crashed in a dry and dusty spot. The few stunted trees nearby, either withered or picked clean by giraffes and elephants, offered no shade, just sticks against the sun. The only shadow lay beneath the wings of the wrecked drone, and neither Wophule nor Promise would sit so close to the thing and its rocket. The glassy eye under the drone’s belly stared blankly, but the two sat where it could not see them, should they be wrong about it being dead.

  Wophule squatted on his haunches in the way of a villager; Promise rested her rear on the ground, a township girl.
Her rifle lay across her folded knees; Wophule’s gun remained across his back. The bush buzzed with bugs and the crackling of heat. The metal drone baked in the brightness. The air above it shimmied.

  Juma had told her to wait there. She said she had her partner with her. Juma told her to make up whatever lies she needed, but the partner must stay. Promise didn’t like this, but Juma was her great-uncle and a rich man, and she could not earn Gogo’s house without him. Juma said he would bring money. She asked how much? He replied only that he would be there in an hour, then hung up. When Wophule asked what was happening, she told him she’d spoken to Shingwedzi headquarters and they knew about the crash. She said the drone and missile were from Mozambique and someone was coming to claim them. That way when Juma showed up, he’d at least look the part. Juma would pay them both as a reward. Wophule listened, then pointed east; the drone had come from that way, from Mozambique. She countered that the drone had gone crazy; that was why it crashed. Then Promise spit, beginning the vigil and ending the boy’s questions.

  Wophule tried to be quiet. He could not for long, so he began to chat by himself about the waitress Treasure, the day’s heat, how much he wanted to become one of the extended patrol rangers, how good he would be at disappearing into the bush, how much he hated poachers and wanted to shoot one.

  Promise kept an eye out for anyone approaching. What if a tourist had seen the drone zoom in over the road and phoned it in? Or what if the sector ECP was in the area and headed this way right now? Promise couldn’t keep track of the scenarios in her head—rangers and Juma and her and Wophule, the drone and rocket, all in one place—she couldn’t concoct enough lies.

  Wophule chattered on, circling back to the drone. He speculated where it had been, what it had been sent to do. The first animal came within sight; a warthog scuttled out of the thorns into a thicket of prickly pear. Disappearing, it gave an indignant grunt.

  Promise lifted her gaze to the immensity of the sky, sorry that the drone had fallen out of it, sorry for her choices, and frightened. Perhaps it would be better to leave, as Wophule had asked an hour ago.