“...radios jammed...”
“Jammed where?”
“...town. There’s an attack...”
“What’s happening?” Jess waited. “Can you hear me?”
“...explosion...admin...compound...”
Through the tent flap, Jess saw a silent billowing cloud of smoke rise up on the horizon. An unmistakable tremor juddered the ground.
“Get out of there now!” Jess shouted into the handset.
The radio offered nothing but static.
“What going on?” Giovanni said sleepily from the depths of the tent.
“There’s been an explosion in Al-Jawf.”
“A what?”
“Wake up, dammit. An explosion. Massarra is in town.”
His eyes snapped open. “Is she hurt?”
“The radio cut out.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” She ran through possible explanations in her mind, none of them good. “Wake Raffa. I need to find Ufuk.”
She sprinted around their small encampment frantically, and finally found him near the edge of the camp, at the dune escarpment.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“You heard the explosion?”
“I just spoke to Massarra. She’s in town.”
“But you lost her. The signal is gone, yes?”
“How do you know?”
“Come with me.” He took her hand and led her up the escarpment.
When they reached the top, she understood. It took a moment to process the wide, billowing cloud of sand and dust, to realize that at its heart there had to be vehicles, a great many of them. Still some distance away—but fast approaching.
“We need to leave,” she said.
“We can’t abandon Massarra,” Ufuk said. “If she’s in town, she’s got the other truck. Besides, where do you propose we go?” He gestured to the southwest where another cloud had begun to form. Another formation approaching the town.
“How long do you think we have?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes. Maybe less. We need to stay together. We have to head into town and find Massarra.”
“She can take care of herself.”
“Which is precisely why we need her. Not to forget, as I say, we need the truck that’s with her.”
Automatic gunfire. Sporadic punches in the morning air, bursts of half-a-second. One after another. Another explosion shook the air.
“We can’t head into that,” Jess said.
The cloud of sand and dust swirled closer.
“Would you prefer they stay here?” Ufuk demanded, his voice rising. “Not doing anything is still doing something, but usually nothing good.”
It was a good point. Jess turned and made her way off the dune, back toward their camp. “We need as much information as we can. Can you get a few small drones into the air? The Predators?”
They were not alone in their understanding of what was about to happen. Many of those living in the camp had come from Libya, Egypt, Chad and Sudan. Many had witnessed attacks like this one before, just as Jess had in Afghanistan. They’d seen militia ride into towns from nowhere, shattering the calm with unrelenting violence. She recognized the panic in their eyes as they hoarded their meager possessions. Many had come on foot and were now leaving that same way, stumbling across the dunes, casting anxious glances over their shoulders as they fled.
“Who are they?” Raffa asked. “Who is it coming here?”
Ufuk answered: “My guess is the Toubou. Their approach from the south, from the direction of Chad, the hate between them and the Zuwayya, and their expulsion from Kufra. It seems the most likely explanation.”
“There were explosions in the center of the town,” Jess said. “Massarra was there. We heard gunfire before the trucks arrived.”
“You still want to go into all of that,” Giovanni said, “put us at risk with yet more coming behind to trap us?”
“Massarra is still there.”
“Massarra’s a big girl,” he replied, his anger rising.
“Could you just leave her there?”
“If it means protecting us.”
“We need her. Ufuk’s drones will give us real-time images. We can avoid the fighting. We can stay safe.”
She didn’t really believe that, that their safety could be guaranteed, but he started packing in silence anyway. Hector buzzed round Giovanni. It terrified her, the world this quiet, six-year-old boy had to face. The constant threat. She ducked down and gave him a hug.
They drove first to a small knot of closed compounds located close to the airport. A single engine plane buzzed into the air as they approached. There were only two other small planes on the tarmac, both of them taxiing to take off. To each side of the runway were clustered small, breeze-block houses on dirt streets. Massarra had said it had once been given the name the New Neighborhood of Kufra, but like everywhere else, it was just more shanty huts.
Jess checked her watch. Massarra had radioed just after six. They’d struck camp and been away by six-fifteen. The time now approached six-thirty. Thirty minutes or so for Massarra to make her way to one of the two, pre-arranged meeting places.
More than enough time.
The main road into town offered the clearest and most terrifying perspective of the unfolding chaos. One of the agricultural plots had already been overrun by desperate, fleeing people. The Zuwayya green-bands there were battered to the ground, their bloodied bodies scattered over what remained of the autumn crop. Others waited by vehicles parked in haste, weapons in skittish hands.
Dusty pickups and sedans tore past on the main route, barely missing the pickup as they did and causing Giovanni to swerve to avoid a collision. They were heading into the desert, terrified faces at the wheels of each hurriedly packed vehicle. In the distance, in the center of the town, plumes of black smoke rose, but Jess knew they were not from explosions.
“They’re burning tires,” Jess said. “Probably to signal whoever is coming from the south.”
Giovanni pulled the truck into a small lot, the first of two places they’d arranged to meet Massarra should they ever become separated.
“Keep weapons hidden,” Jess said as she opened the door to the truck. “If the green-bands see them, they might think we are a threat to them.” All of them wore the Bedouin clothing in which they’d entered Al-Jawf. Jess hoped it would be enough to help them blend into the melee of fleeing people.
“Where are you going?” Giovanni asked.
She took out here pistol and checked the magazine. “To see if I can find her.”
“If she’s here, she can see the truck.”
Jess looked at Giovanni and tried to reassure him with a smile she didn’t feel. “Just give me a couple of minutes.”
“The approaching vehicles have reached the south camps,” Ufuk said without looking up from his tablet. “They’re fanning out, splitting up and moving through the camps. Another section has stayed on the main road and is heading north toward Al-Jawf.”
Jess nodded. “Two minutes,” she said, tightening the shemagh and keffiyeh wrapped around her face and head.
She moved quickly, pistol in hand but hidden within the folds of her coat. She searched every doorway for any sign of Massarra, hoping she had chosen to remain hidden rather than expose herself, hoping that was the reason she was not already at the meeting place, or at least was not immediately obvious to them.
At one end of the street, people loaded possessions into an already overfilled van. From behind her, in the direction of the south camps and echoing in the distance, came the crack of gunfire. Jess lifted the radio from her belt and tried again, but found only static.
She continued to search, but driven by a new urgency. She ran along the street, ignoring the glances thrown her way, knowing every second spent here made their escape from the town more difficult. She tried to calm herself, to keep her focus, but fear began to take hold. She pushed it roughly away and kept searching. Time str
etched, but only when she was certain that Massarra was not here, not waiting for them in the shadows or under cover in some discreet place, did she return to the pickup.
She shook her head to Giovanni as she approached and was about to go round the front of the truck to get in when something made her turn and look back over the desert, along the main street that ran from the south camps.
In the distance, but still discernible enough for its truth to be undeniable, came a long, heavy cavalcade. She knew instinctually what they were: pickups with fifty-caliber tactical machine guns mounted on the back and, following behind, vans and flat-bed trucks on which she could see the lean outlines of militia solders.
She got inside the pickup and shouted to Giovanni: “Get going now. Move! We need to get in town ahead of them.”
The Toyota lurched onto the main road and Giovanni had it surging forward, twisting between pedestrians and other vehicles. The tires whined as he swerved. More gunfire echoed in the distance.
“Where to?”
“The second meeting point,” Jess reached for the M4.
“You sure?”
“We give her as long as we can, then we leave.” She turned to Ufuk. “What can you see of Al-Jawf?”
“There’s fighting on the streets everywhere. I can’t tell yet who they are.”
“This is insane,” Giovanni said. “We don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
“I won’t just leave her, not after what she’s done for us.” Jess looked at Hector and tried to make herself still inside. Through the back window, she saw Raffa perched on top of their packed shelters and equipment, huddled low against a squall of sand-laden wind.
Chapter 16
Central Market, Al-Jawf, Libya
When the first explosion came, Massarra was away from her pickup. Ufuk had rushed her into the town, even before the early morning was touched by the thin light of dawn—but she’d been too slow to get here. What she told Jess when asked—that she made these forays into Al-Jawf in order to search for those who had been watching Jess and Hector—was partially true, yet her visits had another purpose.
Ain Salah.
And to protect the asset.
When the young man had first come to visit them at the camp, Massarra had been suspicious, but then she was suspicious of everyone. Ufuk hadn’t been, and was enthused for reasons Massarra couldn’t fathom. He took Ain Salah away when he could, and spoke to him at length. Only once had she been able to eavesdrop and discover they were discussing the telecommunications networks that had been in place in Libya before Nomad.
Ufuk expressed an interest in restoring an ad hoc cellphone service to the town when she’d pressed him about his relationship. She was skeptical. There was some mistrust. Something he wasn’t telling her. He’d told her that these were their people, that this was the real mission of the Levantine Council, to raise their people back up.
And Ain Salah could be useful for protecting the asset, he’d told her. They couldn’t keep the asset in the tent next to Jessica.
Massarra filtered through the crowded streets, head low, pistol tucked into her belt. The explosions shattered the morning calm of the market. Faces contorted, first into confusion, then disbelief, taking too long to reach the fear that came with understanding. Massarra understood faster. The sound of an explosion shearing apart a peaceful morning in a crowded place occupied a place of sad familiarity. Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beirut, Gaza. A bus torn open by a suicide bomber, gunmen opening fire in a synagogue. Retaliatory strikes by anonymous drones or jet fighters miles away, or mortars placed within range of a border, and the collateral cost in lives of those that might have had so much more of a life left to live.
More explosions, followed by sporadic gunfire.
Massarra was already running. She didn’t know what it meant, or who was responsible, but Ufuk knew it was coming, somehow, and that they had to leave. When she reached the Zuwayya administrative compound, the walled complex where Ain Salah worked, she saw the gates were breached and a gunfight had raged inside.
No sign of the man.
She waited, debating whether to run inside or find another way in. She needed to know what was happening. Was Al-Jawf the subject of a militia assault? Or was this something different? Desperate people refused entry to the town, seeking revenge?
She took out her pistol and ducked inside.
The compound was as lavish as the first moment they had arrived and been allowed to eat as Ain Salah’s guest. From the relative poverty of the southern camps, she’d forgotten how green the grass was, even salted with ash. Ornamental carvings and sculptures stood proud in the gardens.
More gunfire from within the main building, sporadic flashes seen through the barred windows. Evidence of explosions across the charred walls. Another explosion shook the ground somewhere blocks away, but it felt like another piece in a coordinated plan. Not desperate people seeking revenge, but something more precise.
She sprinted across the gardens, gun out but down, keeping to the edges, close to walls where she could, or to the scant cover offered by palm trees and the foliage of wiry shrubs. When she reached the steps leading up to one of the side entrances, she took them at a sprint and flattened herself against the wall beside the door. Testing it with one hand, it opened easily.
The lock had been forced.
She went in, gun just beneath the line of her vision. Moving fast, soundlessly, not distracted by the chattering bursts of gunfire resonating outside. The gun moved with her head, went where her eyes went, as she tried to clear every corner, each doorway and sightline. Lights blazed at the end of the hallway. When she couldn’t clear a room without turning her back on another, she did it rapidly, at a run. There were always risks; no way to avoid those.
She checked every room.
Beyond each door there might be someone cowering with a weapon. Her eyes wide open, taking in every detail, analyzing instinctually. Dead bodies were strewn across tables, over radio equipment, or amongst sheets of bloodied paper.
None was Ain Salah.
She reached the end of the corridor when a green-band stumbled through a half-open door. In one slick, red hand he held an AK. The moment he saw her, his eyes darted to her weapon. One-handed, he raised his own gun and pulled the trigger, but he was unable to control the weapon’s recoil and staggered off balance.
Massarra fired twice, both head shots. A fine spray puffed into the air. The man bucked and twisted, then fell.
She picked up his AK and slung it over her shoulder.
Kept moving fast.
The final room on the main building’s ground floor lay behind two, tall doors: the dining room in which they’d eaten when they had first arrived. Braced against a wall, heart pounding and her breath ragged in the choking dust from ruptured stone, she covered the doors. Gunfire came again, still upstairs. A scream echoing, sweeping through the air. A woman’s terrified pleas cut off mid-stream.
With one hand she reached for a gilded knob and tested it gently. It was unlocked. She held the pistol close to her torso, in the close contact position, and turned the knob, quietly but slowly as though time stretched and waited for her.
Then she pushed the door hard, bringing her pistol up and stepping away. She took the room in increments, moving across the doorway, revealing herself only in tiny sections. Seeing into the room along the sight lines of her pistol.
And there he was.
Ain Salah cowered under a table, between the legs of a chair. She knew it was him, the tone and hue of the keffiyeh he wore specifically so she could tail him through the market.
“Ain Salah?” she whispered.
He looked up and saw her, eyes going wide as he took her in.
“Massarra?”
“Do you have it?”
With one shaking hand he tugged on a green rucksack. Massarra crossed the room and checked it, verified the sleek gray metal box within, that the glowing filaments were green. That it was plugged in. S
he cursed Ufuk for trusting it to this man, but then hiding it in the camps was not a better solution. “Come on. Out.”
Massarra half-wondered at the luck of finding him there when no one else had. Ain Salah clambered to his feet. She grabbed the rucksack from him and hefted it over her shoulder. It had to be fifty pounds.
She grunted and said: “Let’s go.”
Chapter 17
Al-Jawf, Libya
Perhaps it was foolish, a breach in their security measures, but desperation seized Jess. She had Raffa cycle through channels on the VHF radio repeating Massarra’s name and waiting to see if any response came. She covered the front windscreen with the M4, the passenger window wound down. Ufuk and Raffa and Hector were jammed in the back seat of the pickup as they roared into town. The southern camps had already been overrun.
Finally, the Israeli’s voice crackled beyond the static. Raffa handed her the radio.
“Where are you?” she shouted.
“I’m with Ain Salah. I’m on the edge of town.”
“Are you in the truck?”
“It’s nearby, but I’ll wait for you.”
“I need a point of reference,” Ufuk said. “Something I can see from the air. Describe your surroundings.”
Massarra did so, and Ufuk searched images on his tablet from the drone aloft. When he found what she was describing, he zoomed in the image.
“That’s her.”
Jess yelled at Giovanni, pointing out the window. He slammed on the brakes and the truck ground to a stop in a haze of dust. Massarra and Ain Salah emerged from the shadows of an alleyway. She had a huge green rucksack slung over one shoulder.
“We have to go. Right now,” Jess said. “An attacking force entered the town to the south. Streets are jammed. What happened this morning?”
“Phased attacks on the Zuwayya militia barracks,” Massarra detailed. “Tactical explosions laid by professionals. Planned and coordinated.”
That didn’t answer Jess’s question, but there was no time.
Resistance (Nomad Book 3) Page 22
