Force Protection

by Gordon Kent

  Alan was down, huddled over the helmet bag, and Craw was lying flat on the step, but Alan couldn’t stop raising his head to watch, despite the dreadful rattling of the incoming rounds all over the coral concrete of the shopfront. He had a gun in his helmet bag but couldn’t think how he could change the situation.

  A gasoline bomb arced over the crowd and exploded against the top of one of the GSU trucks. The wall of bodies hit the gun line and went over it, and all Alan could see of the action was a single reflection, a panga or a light ax, rise and fall, redder with every motion, set in isolation at the top of the carnage, and then the trucks were overrun. There were more trucks at the top of the square, and they were firing now, too.

  But there were no longer rounds slamming into the concrete around them.

  “Come on!” he shouted. Craw raised himself and followed.

  Right under the peach walls of Fort Jesus Alan saw a trio of foreigners, obviously sailors, with open-necked shirts, khaki shorts, hats. One was black and another lighter, maybe Indian, but all were clearly Americans. Alan’s mind started to work again. He thought that the inside of Fort Jesus, with its five-meter-thick coral walls, might not be a bad place to ride out the riot.

  Craw touched his arm and pointed wordlessly at the three sailors. Alan nodded and in that moment accepted responsibility for them. The sailors were huddled against a wall fifty feet away. The street in front of the fort was almost clear except for the dead and wounded, and blood was everywhere, running over the cobbles and pooling in the gutters. Alan stepped on several bodies as he dashed across the street and tried not to look down. There was a young woman dead; the bullet had entered her mouth and shattered her teeth, giving her face a feral look. Just beyond her lay one of the boys from the shop, gutshot, clutching his bowels and moaning.

  Alan made it to the three men, who were still under the wall of the fort, with bodies at their feet and desperation engraved on their faces.

  “Lieutenant-Commander Craik, Det 424.” They looked at him in shock. “You Navy?”

  “Merchant Marine!” the Indian said. He was green under his tan, young. He looked and smelled as if he had already vomited. “I am Patel.”

  Craw ran up and threw himself against the wall.

  “Kenyans have an APC!”

  Something burning hit Alan’s arm and tinkled to the ground, then another. Shell casings. There were twenty or more on the ground beneath his feet, and he picked one up. They were coming from the top of the wall.

  He looked up and saw the barrel of a rifle, matte black and hard to distinguish so far above his head. The shooter leaned out and again his casings fell at Alan’s feet.

  So much for hiding in Fort Jesus.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” All the men nodded at him. “Follow me!”

  Alan had a vague idea that the suburb behind the fort connected to the road to the port at Kilindini; anyway, it was the path of least resistance amid the chaos all around them. There were buildings on the other side of the square that were on fire now, and the wall of noise didn’t seem to diminish. He recognized the sound of a heavy machine gun; its bullets raked the wall of the fort and sent a spray of high-velocity coral fragments into the street. The GSU, he thought, had discovered the sniper above him in the fort.

  And then the earth shook.

  Alan never actually heard the explosion—the screams of the wounded and the long combat wail of the mob drowned it out—but within seconds a fist of black smoke leaped into the sky over toward Kilindini. In his gut, Alan knew immediately that it was the docks—either a ship or the fuel farms. He thought fleetingly of his orders about Mombasa and their vague reference to “dissident” elements who might resent the U.S. presence.

  “Craw, bring these guys along. We’re getting out of here.” His voice sounded absurdly steady. He thought again of the pistol in his helmet bag, but he was enough of a target now; he didn’t need to become a participant.

  The first part would be the worst—left along the wall of the fort, screened from the square only by an old colonial office building too lightly built to stop a heavy military round. Even as he began to scuttle along the front of the fort, he watched puffs of coral appear silently along the front like flowers opening. He went anyway, got to the end of the wall, and dove into the cover of a big acacia tree. Patel appeared directly behind him and stood, confused as to where to go at the end of the wall. Alan hauled him down. The black guy appeared with Craw, and then the white guy, sprinting, and they were a hot, sweaty bundle in the marginal cover of the old acacia tree.

  Alan looked for the next cover and their best path to a concrete building some meters off to the left. The effort of lifting himself from the ground seemed to take forever, and more willpower than the actual run. The storm of stray rounds was abating here; there were only a few marks in the stucco of the building’s wall. After him, the white guy came first, and then there was a pause so long that Alan feared he was going to have to go back. Then the black guy. Then, almost immediately, Patel and Craw. Craw was bleeding from the crease a bullet had cut in his head, a long tendril of blood that ran over his face, dividing it, and down the neck of his shirt, making his head look like a Mohawk mask.

  They crossed the open ground and reached the edge of a neighborhood of lost affluence. Once the place had been for British civil servants and their families, later for Indian shop owners; now it was up-and-coming Kikuyu. The little cottages had yards and trees and bushes, although the grass was gone now, worn dead by thousands of feet over the years, and the houses were so widely separated that each one offered a line of vision—and fire—back to the park. There was some cover, and a screen of big trees divided the neighborhood from the park and the square where the shooting still went on. Alan expected to start moving quickly here, but Craw grabbed his shoulder and pointed north, where a knot of men with weapons was moving parallel to them. Even as they watched, another knot left the cover of an old gazebo in the park and ran almost straight toward them.

  Either the firefight with the GSU was lost or, worse, the wave front of the violence was spreading. Alan suspected the latter; there were still bodies in the road beyond the house where he was crouched, and the wailing noise seemed unabated.

  “We have to stay ahead of that,” he said, pointing, and led them to seaward of the first house. There were pilings and a heap of concrete rubble, then a mudflat. The tide was down. Alan thanked heaven for a small miracle. He crawled down the concrete on to the mud, and found that it was firm and held his weight.

  “Smells like the ocean,” Craw said. His Mohawk-mask face was strained. Alan had never seen him afraid. He wondered what he looked like himself. Don’t stop to think. When they had all scrambled down, they began to jog along the mudflat. Mombasa was fifteen feet above them, and it was not until they had gone several hundred yards that Alan realized that he could hear again. The screaming was still there but distant, and his feet made little splashing noises as they slapped down on the wet mud.

  Above them was a low cliff topped with trees. He didn’t know where they were; couldn’t remember having seen trees on this part of the island before.

  He looked seaward and across to Likoni; he must be at the southern tip of Mombasa. He clambered up the low cliff, raising his head slowly, but there was no motion at the top except the slow flapping of a flag in the wind. He was looking over a sand trap at a fairway stretching off north; the grass was mostly brown and there was garbage everywhere, but no people. The crowd, far away now, sounded like breakers on a distant beach.

  Alan waved the rest of his party to follow him up to the golf course.

  He hadn’t even remembered that there was a golf course, and he was disoriented by the discovery. None of them had any water and there was none in his helmet bag, but the mental search for water reminded him of other things he did have: a hotel-supplied map of Mombasa and a tiny compass in his Swiss Army knife holster. He shook his head, reached into the side pocket and retrieved them b
oth. He opened the map and laid it in the dirt, placed the little compass beside it. He watched it steady down and resolve his problem. North. What he didn’t like was that in forgetting the golf course he had forgotten another mile of open ground and residential area before they could reach the water at Kilindini.

  “If we go that way”—he pointed north and west—“we should cross Mama Ngina Drive and then Nyerere just above the Likoni Ferry. We can catch a matatu there for the airport.”

  “You’re the boss,” Craw said. The map seemed to steady all of them. Alan noted that it seemed to resolve any doubts the three merchant marine sailors might have had about his leadership.

  “Why the airport, sir?” the white sailor asked. “I’m Matt Jagiello, sir. Engine crew.”

  “I have a detachment, a naval detachment, at the airport,” Alan said. He looked at the others. “I need to know your names. You’re Patel,” and he motioned at the other man.

  “Les,” the black man said in a curiously high voice. “Les White. I’m a cook.”

  Alan subvocalized White, Patel, Jagiello. “Glad to meet you.”

  Craw took out a somewhat mangled Snickers bar and cut it up into five sections with his big folding knife. They sat for a moment and chewed. It tasted like heaven but left Alan thirsty. They would need water soon, and reliable water was not easy to find in Africa. It was almost funny, to be lost and without water in a major African city. Burton would not have been proud.

  “Okay, we’re under way.” Alan rolled to his feet and started to walk. Jagiello bounced alongside.

  “I can read a map and use a compass, sir. I mean, if you wanted me to. I taught orienteering. . . .” Alan spared the energy to turn and look at him and noted that his face was very white. Still a little shell-shocked. Every time Alan stopped concentrating on the problem at hand, he saw the broken teeth of the dead girl in the square, so he knew that they were all suffering from it. Too much violence with too little warning.

  They needed water. It was easier to concentrate on that. Experience didn’t make violence any easier; it just gave the veteran an idea of what to expect, from his own body and from the violence. Alan was a veteran. He forced his mind to dismiss the broken girl and moved on.

  They crossed the pale tarmac of Mama Ngina Drive almost immediately and were back on the short brown grass of the golf course. Alan could see that there were squatters under some of the bushes, but they were not moving much. The crowd noise in the distance was getting close, he thought. Alan suspected that they were moving down Ngina from the park and hoped that the Likoni Ferry wasn’t jammed.

  It was. Nyerere Avenue was packed with burning cars, many turned on their sides or rolled right over, and men and women running. They had to stop at a gap in the fence as a knot of schoolgirls in tartan skirts and white shirts pushed past them into the golf course, clearly frightened.

  “We’re going right across. Don’t stop and don’t get separated. If you lose the party, stay on the coast and look for the Yacht Club.” He didn’t stop to argue, although he could see that none of the men wanted to cross the road. Alan reached into the helmet bag and slipped a clip into his nine-millimeter, then cocked it.

  “Ready?” He forced a smile. “Here we go.”

  He swung himself over the golf course fence and waited until he heard the thump of Jagiello’s landing behind him, and then he threw himself toward the road. Nyerere Avenue was thick with people; some seemed to be refugees from the rioting, while others seemed anxious to take part. They weren’t Muslims at all but day workers or unemployed men. There were fewer women. Alan and his group hit the street in an open spot between two burning cars and, choking on the fumes, plunged across. Alan could hear sirens. He didn’t look up or back but kept his legs moving.

  They were not going to catch a taxi here for the airport.

  There was a small wooded area hard against the Nyerere traffic circle, and Alan pushed into it past squatters, rioters, and refugees. Only when he was safe among the branches did he look back. The rest of his people were right behind, with Craw bringing up the rear.

  “This whole city is a war zone,” Craw said.

  White shook his head. “Just a riot,” he said. “Seen ’em before. Looks worse ’n it is.”

  Alan suspected that it was worse than it looked, but Patel and Jagiello seemed to brighten up at White’s suggestion. He held his tongue.

  “How far to this Yacht Club, sir?” Jagiello asked. “I’m kinda thirsty.”

  “We all are.” Alan pointed at the sparkle of water ahead. “That’s Mbaraki Creek. Yacht Club’s right there.” His mouth felt as if it was full of sand, and he wanted to sleep. He was worried about Craw’s head wound, too; it was seeping blood again, and he didn’t have a first-aid kit.

  They left the wood and came out in a residential area that was obviously still prosperous. Hundreds of people were on the street and on the bare lawns, most sitting or lying down, none armed. Alan’s group attracted their notice, however, and people trailed along after them, asking questions in Swahili and English. They were desperate: he was white and looked like authority. Most of them shied away from Craw and the blood.

  “Pole, tafadhali,” he repeated over and over. And kept moving.

  It took them almost an hour to reach Liwatoni Road and the entrance to the Yacht Club, over two ravines and through a crowd of refugees from the fighting. They could still hear long bursts of automatic-weapons fire and see fire and smoke coming from the town center, but the greatest pillar of smoke Alan had ever seen was rising from the docks at Kilindini, which were closer here. He could see now that the smoke was rising from one of the piers. And then it struck him, for the first time, that the Harker and Laura and Admiral Kessler were all supposed to be pierside at Kilindini.

  Alan had visited the Mombasa Yacht Club twice for functions, and he recognized it as a haven for oddball expats and round-the-world cruisers. Now its parking lot was packed with refugees, squatting on their heels and watching the smoke rise from the port. Alan crossed through them and pushed the door open and led his group inside.

  Hundreds of photos and plaques adorned the walls, memories of happier days and more robust times. Two terrified black kids were behind the bar, and there was a handful of patrons, two with guns, all drunk. One rose from his chair and pointed a revolver at Alan.

  “Members only, old chap.” It must have been a rehearsed line.

  “U.S. Navy.” Alan glared at the idiot, a fat man whose whole arm shook. He retreated. “Put the gun down, mister.”

  The fat man looked at the gun as if it had just grown out of his fist.

  “We can’t be too careful—”

  Alan ignored him and the other whites, and focused his attention on the two Kenyans behind the counter.

  “I need water and a first-aid kit.” Alan spoke to the nearer one. “Baridi, tafadhali.”

  Both Kenyans vanished and then bottles of water appeared as if by magic. Alan handed them around, watching to see they all drank before he took one for himself, although the plastic Evian bottle was cold and he wanted it with a passion bordering on lust. For a moment the club was silent except for the sound of five men guzzling water. Then a big, sunburned man leaned past the fat man.

  “Wha’ the fuck is happening out there?” Aussie accent.

  Alan finished his water.

  “Bad riot in Old Town. Lot of dead.”

  “Fucking Muslims.”

  “It was provoked.” He realized that this sunburned Aussie was used to getting his way, but the man’s manner drove Alan to antagonize him. “The Muslims seem to have taken all the casualties, over in Old Town. Seems pretty convenient.” He looked around.

  “Any of you here own a boat?” The fat man raised his hand. A woman pointed at the sunburned man. “I need a motorboat that will carry five men.”

  The Aussie looked away, but the fat man pointed to him. “Dirk, here, has a sweet little inflatable.”

  Alan looked at him. “Good,”
he said calmly. “We’ll take it.” He raised his hand to stifle protest. “Listen up, folks. There is a bit of rioting in Old Town. I need to get these men back to their ship. I’m an officer in the U.S. Navy and I’d like to borrow the boat, and stock her up.” He looked around, unaware that he looked as if he had been through a battle or that he was radiating focus and energy. No one in the bar would have stood up to him, anyway.

  “I’ll help you get ’er started, then,” the Aussie said.

  Alan collected another bottle of water from the bar, zipped his helmet bag, and followed Dirk outside to the club dock. Dirk kept up a constant stream of surly comments while Craw checked the inflatable, and it took the combined efforts of the Aussie and all three merchant sailors to get the engine to come to life.

  “I know all about guns,” Jagiello said.

  “That’s great,” Alan said, “borrowing” some sandwiches.

  “No, really. I can shoot. I hunt deer. Well, my dad hunts. I mean, I’ve been with my dad—”

  “Sure,” Alan said, now carrying the box of sandwiches out to the boat.

  He needed to get going; the pause was costing him his edge. He couldn’t lose his own worst-case scenario that the Harker was the target of an attack.

  Two minutes later, they were in the boat and headed down the creek to the harbor, the inflatable low in the scummy water, with five of them filling every inch of her hull and her little engine pushing them along.