The American Mission

by Matthew Palmer

“You too.”

  “Next to him,” Spence continued, “is Deborah Fessler, our Defense Attaché.” The Attaché was a brassy blonde with the broad shoulders and compact build of a power lifter. The eagles on her shoulders marked her as a full colonel.

  “On the other side of the table, we have our Station Chief, Jonah Keeler; our Regional Security Officer, Rick Viggiano; and Henri Saillard from Consolidated Mining.”

  Keeler was a slim black man who looked to be in his mid-forties. He wore stylish tortoiseshell glasses that gave him a vaguely professorial air. In contrast, Viggiano looked like an enforcer for the mob, with thickly muscled arms, slicked-back hair, and a bushy mustache that was vintage seventies. His hands were the size of dinner plates. Saillard was the dandy in the white suit. He sported a carefully trimmed goatee, and his dark hair contrasted sharply with his Nordic blue eyes. His presence in the conversation was something of a surprise. Not only was he an outsider, he was clearly a foreigner, French or Belgian Alex guessed by his name. His presence would necessarily restrict what it was that the group could discuss.

  Spence no doubt had his reasons for wanting him in on the conversation. It was his mission and therefore his call. Alex moved to stand behind the one empty seat at the table. “Looks like I’ve arrived at something of an interesting time.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Deborah Fessler said without irony.

  “Alex, I’m glad you’re here,” Spence said, as he sat back in his seat at the head of the table. “We’ve got a problem that we need your help with. Seems a survey team working with Consolidated Mining got jumped out in the bush by the Hammer of God. They’re holding hostages, including as many as six Americans.”

  “Hammer of God? Pretty theatrical name,” Alex commented. He had never heard of the group. The international press rarely covered developments in the Congo, and the Hammer of God had yet to make the New York Times. Alex had his clearances back, but it would still take time to get up to speed. There were new players on the scene since the last time he had been in the country.

  “Maybe a bit self-aggrandizing,” the colonel replied, “but not entirely undeserved. The Hammer is the private army of Joseph Manamakimba, who is a no-fooling sociopath with a history of murdering hostages. His soldiers don’t just follow him, they worship Manamakimba as a living god. They are supposed to have some kind of magical protection in combat, and they win most of the time so who’s to say it isn’t true? In all seriousness, Manamakimba has some skill. The Hammer is still a paramilitary and its organization is somewhat ad hoc, but the officers seem to know what they’re doing. We think Manamakimba has had some professional training, maybe from the Cubans in Angola.”

  Spence motioned for Alex to sit. “Colonel Fessler and Jonah can bring you up to speed on the situation.”

  The colonel pointed to a spot on the map near a bend in the Congo River. This is the last known position of the Consolidated team. Intelligence from intercepts of Hammer of God communications indicates that the hostages are being held in the same area.

  “We can’t get any pictures through the jungle canopy, but the level of chatter is consistent with a force of approximately thirty fighters. If Manamakimba himself is there, and we’ve listened in on a couple of conversations that lead us to believe he is, this is likely a group of some of his toughest, most experienced jungle fighters.”

  “What do we know about Manamakimba? What kind of man are we dealing with here?” It was essential, Alex believed, never to forget that you were negotiating with a person, not an organization or a country. Understanding that individual, what he valued, how he viewed the world, and what kind of personal stake he had in the discussions was often the difference between success and failure. Spence had taught him that.

  It was the CIA Station Chief who responded. “In truth, Manamakimba is something of a cipher. He’s been one of our top targets for intelligence gathering over the last couple of years, but we haven’t been able to get close to anyone close to him. The intelligence is almost all second- or thirdhand. We don’t know where he’s from, what his goals are, or even what he was doing before the Congo went to hell. We do know that he’s smart, ballsy, and successful. This war was made for a guy like him.”

  Keeler was refreshingly matter-of-fact about what he did not know. This was not a common attribute among station chiefs.

  “We don’t even have a particularly good picture of him,” Keeler continued, handing Alex a red folder with a SECRET cover sheet. Inside was the standard Agency bio on Manamakimba with a slightly blurry head shot that looked like it might have been a passport or visa photo. Even in the fuzzy photo, however, Alex could see that Joseph Manamakimba was strikingly handsome. He did not look like a mass murderer, but the scant text of the biography painted a different picture.

  “The guy hardly looks like Genghis Khan,” Alex observed.

  “No contest,” Keeler replied. “Manamakimba would make the khan look like the social secretary at a church picnic.”

  “Has he made any demands at this point?”

  “Yes, he’s asked for thirty-five million dollars and the complete withdrawal of UN forces and all Western oil and mining companies from eastern Congo.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Ain’t it?”

  “Is it possible that Manamakimba was deliberately targeting this group? That he didn’t just stumble across them in the jungle by chance?”

  “What are you getting at, Alex?” Spence asked.

  “What he’s asking for is impossible . . . and all out of proportion to the leverage he has,” Alex explained. “According to our Agency friends, Manamakimba is smart and effective, so it seems unlikely that he doesn’t understand that.”

  “So?’

  “So, it means that this is a political act and not opportunistic blackmail. It sounds to me like he’s trying to draw attention to a cause rather than effecting a particular outcome.”

  Alex looked across the table at Henri Saillard. “Have you had other run-ins with the Hammer of God recently? Consolidated Mining is the largest operator in eastern Congo. It’s logical that you would be a magnet for Manamakimba if he’s targeting the extractive industry.”

  “No,” Saillard replied dismissively. “This is an isolated incident perpetrated by a greedy thug. This is a criminal not a political act.”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” Jonah Keeler chimed in. “What Alex is saying makes a lot of sense to me. There have been a spate of attacks on mining operations in the same area where the Consolidated team was hit. Nothing definitive links the other attacks to the Hammer of God, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they were responsible. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough what Manamakimba’s after.”

  “How so?” Alex asked.

  “They’ve asked for a parley,” Fessler explained. “Based on the demands on the table, we don’t think that there’s a deal to be had, but there may be a chance to buy some time. There’s a group of Pakistani UN peacekeepers moving into position to execute a raid to secure the release of the hostages. They need at least twenty-four hours to deploy, however, and Manamakimba is threatening to shoot one hostage every hour beginning at dawn if we don’t meet his terms. We’re hoping negotiations can go on long enough for us to get the Pakistanis in position. It’s a gamble, but it’s likely the only chance this group has.”

  Alex could envision the risks, not only for the hostages but for the negotiating team as well. A hostage rescue operation was complex and difficult under the best of circumstances. Factor in the lack of operational intelligence and the peacekeepers’ lack of experience and appropriate training, and the most likely outcome of this exercise would be massive loss of life on all sides. It could work, though, with the right negotiator. The negotiator would need to string Manamakimba along, selling him on the idea that there was a deal on offer if he kept talking a little longer. It was a dif
ficult and dangerous task that fell somewhere between the role of bait and sacrificial lamb. Alex did not envy whoever drew the short straw for that assignment.

  “Who’s doing the actual negotiations?” Alex asked Spence. “The mining company or the UN?”

  “I thought that was clear,” the Ambassador replied. “You are.”

  7

  JUNE 20, 2009

  BUMBA

  The first obstacle was the helicopter. The Congo was vast, about the size of Western Europe, and there were few paved roads. Air transport was the only practicable means of traveling the long distances. In central and eastern Congo, most of the air links were controlled by UNSAF, the unfortunate acronym for the UN Security Assistance Force that was inevitably mispronounced “unsafe.” An UNSAF charter plane flew Alex, Jonah Keeler, Rick Viggiano, and a few of the RSO’s local security people to Bumba in north central Congo. From there, they would have to take a Russian Mi-8 helicopter to the UN resupply base near the confluence of the Congo and Aruwimi Rivers. The tough and reliable Mi-8 was the workhorse of African air transport.

  For Alex, the challenge was not a fear of flying, or even a fear of crashing. It was a fear of ghosts. Since Darfur, the sight and sound of helicopters had been enough to trigger panic attacks and flashbacks to the butchery in Camp Riad. Dr. Branch had helped him understand these episodes as symptoms of an underlying condition rather than as a sign of weakness or moral failure. PTSD was a subtle disease that responded to changes in the environment. It was possible to identify the triggers, however, and develop effective coping strategies. Yoga was part of Alex’s regimen. So was avoidance. The Sea Knight flight out of Western Sudan was the last time he had been on a helicopter.

  Deplaning, he could see three Mi-8s clustered on the runway. In repose, the massive rotor blades drooped precariously close to the tarmac. It was only when they were spinning that the blades would straighten out and stabilize into a flat disk. As the team walked across the tarmac toward the helicopters, the rotors of the lead Mi-8 began to turn, cutting through the humid air with a characteristic rhythmic thrum.

  Alex’s heart rate soared and a trickle of sweat ran down the back of his neck. He could hear his breathing grow heavier and faster, and he made a conscious effort to control it. The yoga was supposed to help with this. He tried ujjayi pranayama, a technique that integrated breath control with low-frequency vocalizations. It was almost a humming sound, and Alex hoped that the rotor noise would mask it from his colleagues. The breathing exercises helped. His pulse rate dropped slightly, and the surging sense of panic began to recede somewhat. Just in case, he patted his pocket to make sure that the plastic bottle of Zoloft was still there. That was his insurance policy.

  As Alex climbed through the narrow hatch into the Mi-8, his chest tightened and it became harder to concentrate on the pranayama. It felt as though there was not enough oxygen in the aircraft’s cramped interior.

  The Mi-8 was primarily a cargo carrier, and seating was limited to a bench made of canvas-strapped aluminum tubing welded to the hull. Alex took a seat and buckled up the restraints. He concentrated on his breathing and struggled to maintain an outward appearance of equanimity. Jonah Keeler leaned over in his direction and said something that Alex did not catch. He nodded in agreement, hoping that the Station Chief would leave it at that. It was evidently an adequate response, as Jonah turned to his other side to talk to one of the UNSAF officers traveling with them.

  The rotor volume increased, and the aircraft shuddered slightly as it lost contact with the ground. As they rose up, Alex looked out of one of the small portholes at the ground below. Rather than verdant jungle, his mind’s eye saw a blood red desert and Janjaweed horsemen riding with leveled lances. He knew it wasn’t real, but the image below him was so powerful and haunting that he pulled up hard against the restraints. The webbing dug into his shoulders.

  He looked away from the window and bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. The pain helped to beat back the vision of the past. Without conscious thought, he reached for the bottle of Xanax in his pocket, grasping the top lightly with two fingers. The flight would be so much easier if he was mildly sedated. The side effects of the drug included irritability, memory problems, and drowsiness. None of these were particularly attractive attributes to acquire in advance of negotiations with a homicidal sociopath. Instead, he took a picture of Anah out of his shirt pocket. It was her most recent school picture, and she was sitting in front of a plain blue background smiling at the camera.

  Alex held his daughter’s picture in the palm of his hand, stealing occasional glances at it throughout the eighty-minute flight. But it was not until he was back on solid ground at the UN peacekeepers’ advance base on the shores of the Aruwimi River that he felt fully in control.

  • • •

  The normally sleepy outpost was bustling. The UN soldiers had already exchanged their sky blue berets for jungle-pattern Kevlar helmets. The young Pakistani conscripts who had arrived in the Congo as peacekeepers had been told to prepare for war.

  This was as close to the rendezvous point as they could get by air. Manamakimba had been clear that he would shoot at any helicopters approaching his camp. According to the CIA assessment, the guerillas had collected just enough shoulder-fired missiles to make the threat credible.

  There was only one road upriver, and it was about an eight-hour drive from the UN camp to the bend that Manamakimba had identified as the meeting place. The peacekeepers-turned-warriors would give the negotiators a two-hour head start and a total of six hours from first contact in which to make a deal. At zero hour, and assuming as nearly everyone did that the negotiations would fail, the Pakistanis would assault the camp in strength and, at least according to the plan, secure the freedom of both the hostages and the negotiators.

  The negotiating team traveled in a convoy of five lightly armored Toyota Land Cruisers. The UN’s fully armored Humvees were significantly heavier and tended to sink up to their axles in river mud.

  Alex rode shotgun in the lead vehicle. The driver, Nduku, was a shift supervisor on the Embassy’s local guard force and a former paramilitary from an outfit that had battled frequently with the Hammer of God. Viggiano liked to have at least a few people on his payroll who knew something about killing. Two armed Pakistani soldiers sat in the back, Sergeant Irfan Chaudry and Private Ali Sharif. To Alex’s chagrin, the head of the UN operation had assigned them to Alex as his personal bodyguards. Neither looked old enough to shave, and their oversize helmets merely exaggerated their youthful appearance. The Pakistanis were armed with wicked-looking Heckler & Koch G3 assault rifles. On the seat next to him, Nduku had an auto-racing magazine and a chocolate bar. In a fight with the weapons at their disposal, Alex would have put his money on Nduku.

  Chaudry and Sharif took their responsibilities seriously, however, and Alex was glad of the company. It kept him from brooding too much about either the upcoming encounter with Manamakimba or the unsettling vision of Sudan he had seen through the helicopter window.

  Alex popped Miriam Makeba’s jazzy Pata Pata into the Land Cruiser’s CD player. Pretty soon, Chaudry and Sharif were bobbing their heads in time to the rhythms sung in the soft but powerful voice of South Africa’s folk legend.

  For the next few hours, the conversation wandered widely over the usual topics of general interest to young men: family, sports, food, and girls. Even as he was chatting idly with Nduku and the UN soldiers, however, a good part of Alex’s mental energy was occupied with the task in front of him. He sifted through the variables, looking for an angle or an edge, anything that might improve the prospects for success. Risk could not be avoided, but it could be managed. Having a daughter, he discovered, had changed the way he thought about risk. The risks he took for himself he was now taking for Anah as well. If the worst came to it, his brother had agreed to be Anah’s guardian, and Alex’s will was up-to-date and on file with the S
tate Department’s central personnel office. It would be better for all concerned, he reasoned, if that option remained theoretical.

  The road they were traveling followed a rambling route through mostly dense jungle. When the road intersected a river, there was often a small village, usually nothing more than a scattering of huts. Twice they drove through villages that had been pillaged by one or more of eastern Congo’s multitude of armed groups. One village looked as though it had been abandoned for months. The jungle was already moving in to reclaim the land that had been cleared for crops. In the next village, however, thin wisps of smoke wafted into the air from huts that had only recently been burned to the ground. There was a lull in the conversation as Alex and his companions considered the significance of this particular portent.

  • • •

  About a kilometer from the rendezvous point, an armed soldier stepped into the middle of the road and waved for the convoy to stop. Alex had to look closely to see the other paramilitaries waiting expectantly in the jungle on either side of the road. This was the first potential tipping point. If Manamakimba was intent on provoking a major confrontation with the UN, wiping out the convoy would be a good place to begin. The soldier standing in the road with his arm outstretched like some kind of traffic cop had his rifle slung across his back. He was wearing a black tank top and jungle camouflage pants tucked into heavy combat boots. The handle of an impressively large knife protruded from one of the boots. Sweat glistened on his shaved head.

  Most striking, however, was what seemed to be a kitchen faucet dangling around the guerilla’s neck from a piece of manila rope.

  “Nduku, what’s with the plumbing supplies?” Alex asked the driver. Having fought for years in the jungles of eastern Congo before deciding to peddle his trade to the other side of the security equation, the former irregular was a wealth of information on the Congo’s myriad paramilitary outfits.

  “Magic,” Nduku answered. “All the Hammer of God fighters wear them. Manamakimba himself has blessed each totem. It makes the wearer immune from bullets. This is true. I swear it is. I have seen it myself. The bullets go right through them and leave no mark.”