“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Hans Berger, the oil consortium representative, said. “I don’t think they’ll be able to hit them any better than you could.”
Again, the men gathered round the table laughed. DeLuca smiled, though his instinct told him the best thing he could do, at this point, would be to pick up Hans Berger and Wes Chandler and throw them over the side of the ship. The waters were shark infested, he’d been warned, but the sharks could take care of themselves.
“General LeDoux will brief you further after we’re done here,” Kissick said. “Does anybody have any questions or comments? Now’s the time to brain-dump.”
“General Denby will be CCed as to all of this?” Lionel Ayles-Kensey asked. Kissick nodded.
“What is the situation on the ground, as we speak?” Hanson Sedu-Sashah asked.
“Better than it was six hours ago,” Kissick said. “General Emil-Ngwema’s forces re-entered the city shortly after today’s raid by Agent DeLuca and his team. As I understand it, the rebel forces have pulled back, with heavy fighting still at the soccer stadium and at the airport. I gather the Ligerian air force finally figured out where they’d hidden their airplanes and managed to get a few of them in the air. President Bo has already gone on national television to declare victory and urge everyone to stay calm, so one may surmise from that that the Presidential Guard managed to hold the palace.”
“Slippery fellow,” Ayles-Kensey said. “Like father like son.”
“Anything else?”
“Just one,” DeLuca said. “What do you want me to do, once I find Dari?” He was tempted to say if I find Dari, but he didn’t dare express a lack of confidence, not when everything was going so swimmingly well.
“Report in,” Kissick said. “The course of action will be determined at that time.”
At that time, DeLuca had no doubt, there would be, at the very least, a UAV armed with a Hellfire missile already overhead or a pair of Super Hornets scrambling into the air from the deck of the Lyndon Johnson to take Dari out.
“If there are no further questions, then I’ll leave you to your individual preparations. CENTCOM will be here, with myself and Admiral Webster, until such time as we can establish something on the ground. We’re calling this Operation Liberty, by the way. Please refer to it as that, should any of you become authorized to speak to the press. Seven days, gentlemen. My aides will be happy to help you with any questions you might have once you’ve read the briefing report.”
“Wanna take a walk?” LeDoux asked DeLuca.
“Yeah,” DeLuca said. “Cocktails on the poop deck.”
“Not here,” LeDoux whispered. “Let’s take it offline, as General Kissick might say.”
Chapter Three
DELUCA FOLLOWED LEDOUX OUT ONTO THE flight deck, where they found a seat on a blast deflector. LeDoux handed DeLuca a cigar.
“We’re not allowed to smoke,” he said, “but I thought you might want something to chew on, other than my ass.”
It was a moonless night, but there were so many stars in the African sky that it felt almost bright enough to read by. DeLuca gazed toward shore, watching a faint orange glow on the horizon, where an unknown number of buildings burned in the city of Port Ivory.
“If you’re standing on the beach,” LeDoux said, “the surf here glows a bright blue from microbial aquatic organisms that turn phosphorescent when they come in contact with the air. Bright blue. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”
“On a positive note,” DeLuca said.
“On a positive note,” LeDoux agreed.
“Permission to speak freely?” DeLuca asked.
“You need permission?” LeDoux replied.
DeLuca unwrapped his cigar and bit down on it, breathing through his nose for a moment before looking his friend in the eye.
“I know you’re coming up with the best possible response,” DeLuca said, “and I suppose I should feel honored. But this is one solid hundred-ton brick of horseshit. And you know it is, so I know you wouldn’t be part of it unless there was no alternative.”
“Fuck it,” LeDoux said, glancing around to make sure there were no munitions or spilled pools of jet fuel nearby before pulling out his lighter and lighting his cigar. LeDoux clicked the lighter shut. “I’m a general. I can smoke where I want to.”
“Damn straight,” DeLuca agreed, lighting his from LeDoux’s lighter.
“I figure we have about three minutes until some irate ensign comes out to tell us to extinguish, and then another five until he goes away and gets someone of a high enough rank to come back with the same request.”
“About that,” DeLuca said.
“It’ll have to do,” the general said. “Remember those old Mission: Impossible shows, at the beginning, where the voice on the tape recording always said, ‘Your mission, Mr. Phelps, should you choose to accept it… ’? Just once, I wanted to see him throw his envelope full of photographs in the fireplace and say, ‘The hell with it—I’m going fishing.’ Too bad it doesn’t work that way.”
“Too bad.”
“If it makes it any better, I only found out myself this afternoon while I was watching the Dave DeLuca show on satellite television.”
“But they knew before they brought us here,” DeLuca said.
“They probably did.”
“Probably?” DeLuca said.
“Tell me what you think,” LeDoux said.
“Here’s what I think,” DeLuca said. “I think the White House is trying to cover its ass after the whole WMD intelligence fiasco in Iraq. I think they want to say they had boots on the ground in Liger, so with a week to go, they send in the boots and they don’t really care who’s wearing them or what happens to the people who lace ’em up. They just want to say they tried. Why else would they give me my assignment in front of a goddamn congressional delegation? What kind of bullshit little performance was that?”
“You kids these days,” LeDoux said. “You’re so cynical.”
“They don’t really give a shit about the mission—they just want to say they sent the most elite team they had,” DeLuca said. “Am I wrong?”
LeDoux didn’t correct him.
“This is horseshit. You and I both know how much can go wrong, even with months of planning. We were lucky today. Everything went to shit in no time, and the next thing we know, we’re careening down the alley on two wheels with people firing rockets at us. I don’t think it’s possible to be so lucky, twice in a row.”
“It probably isn’t,” LeDoux said.
“Here’s what else I think. I think Kissick is angling to be the first Marine to chair the JCS, and this is his ticket, so he’s covering his ass. He sounds like a fucking CEO, not a Marine. No wonder he’s the Sec-Def’s favorite little leg-humper. The mission is lame. We’d need at least three days to work up our covers, for chrissakes,” DeLuca said.
“They’re actually not half bad,” LeDoux said. “I had a chance to look at ’em. DIA is doing much better work in that department since we increased their budget. The bottom line is, this came from the White House. End of the day, we have to send someone. CI’s always been who they send when they don’t have a plan yet. You know that. I’m sure we can both see the dangers that present themselves. It’s ad-lib as hell. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.”
“Ad-lib is another word for half-assed,” DeLuca said. “I signed on for added risk. What I mind is chaos and stupidity. I’ll take my people into harm’s way in a heartbeat, you know that, but I also consider part of my job is to keep them from the kind of harm perpetrated every day by goddamn Pentagon planners and PlayStation generals and standard Army-issue Remfro rear-echelon motherfuckers and shit-for-brain congressional armed forces committee pissants and all the other flaming dickwad assholes who don’t have the slightest idea what it means to walk across a road while somebody is aiming his rifle at you.”
DeLuca drew on his cigar until the ember glowed, holding the smoke in befo
re letting it out slowly.
“You done, or do you need more time?” LeDoux said.
“I’m just getting started,” DeLuca said. “But go on. I guess I needed to vent.”
“I know,” LeDoux said. “Why do you think I asked them to leave the blast deflectors up?”
“Just tell me why I’m really going back in,” DeLuca said. “I don’t want to hear about the president’s guru or whites or Christians or for that matter oil. Been there, done that. I don’t want to hear about terrorists or making the African continent safe for democracy because I’ve been there and done that, too. Why am I going?”
“You’re going,” LeDoux said, “on the very real chance that you can make a difference. The fact of the matter is, we don’t have any good intelligence on John Dari. CIA makes him a warlord. I think that’s too easy a label, and I think this administration prefers labels to complexities, so that’s what the CIA gives them. You, on the other hand, don’t. This guy could well be the African Osama bin Laden. If he is, then it’s best we’re rid of him. And if he isn’t, we need to know that, too. It could mean millions of lives, and I’m not talking about suitcase nukes or dirty bombs or nerve agents. I’m talking about good old-fashioned hunger. This country is a fucking mess, and it’s going to stay that way until somebody straightens things out. In the meantime, the food can’t reach the camps, and every day, thousands of people die. Saddam put people in mass graves and tortured them once in a while for kicks, so we stepped in. Here, they just walk off into the sand and fall down, or go to bed and don’t wake up. We’ve got more food and medicine waiting to ship from our bases in Cape Verde and Diego Garcia than this country could use in a year, tons and tons, and we can’t get it on the ground or in the hands of the people who need it. Everybody says we didn’t plan on how to win the peace once we occupied Iraq. That’s the mistake they’re trying to correct this time. It’s going to be like the Oprah Winfrey show—we’re going to give everybody a new car and groceries for a year.”
“Well that ought to make ’em happy,” DeLuca said. “I have a good idea—why don’t we just skip the war and go straight to the peace?”
“Gee,” LeDoux said. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
“I just hope nobody makes soup out of my head,” DeLuca said.
“It would be so bitter I don’t think anybody could swallow it,” LeDoux said. “Come on. I have somebody I want you to meet. Plus I think the hall monitor finally caught us.”
“Stand to!” a young member of the Shore Patrol said, approaching at a brisk pace. “No smoking on the flight deck, goddamn you…” He stopped in his tracks when he saw who he was talking to. “Oh. Excuse me, General. I didn’t… I mean . . .”
“At ease, sailor,” LeDoux said, handing him his cigar as DeLuca did the same. “Just testing your battle-readiness. Did you see me or did the bridge send you?”
“I saw you, sir,” the young sailor said.
“Excellent. I was afraid they might be sleeping up there,” LeDoux said. “What’s your name, sailor?”
“Ortega, Luis, sir,” he said. “Seaman first class.”
“Good work, Ortega,” LeDoux said. “I’ll put a commendation for you in my report. Please toss these overboard, if you will.”
LeDoux led DeLuca to the guest officers’ quarters and knocked on one of the doors. A soft voice said, “Come in.” DeLuca saw a black man lying on the bed, reading a book, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose. He was dressed in a white shirt and black pants, barefoot. He got to his feet and offered his hand when Phillip LeDoux introduced him. DeLuca put him at six foot two and two hundred pounds and handsome, a bit like a young Muhammad Ali, back when he was known as Cassius Clay, but without the brashness.
“Paul Asabo,” LeDoux said, “this is Agent DeLuca, U.S. Army counterintelligence.”
“Call me David,” DeLuca said.
“Please, sit down,” Asabo said. There was, however, only a single chair in the room, which was ample for naval quarters but less than half the size of a small motel room. LeDoux gestured for DeLuca to take the chair. Asabo sat on the edge of the bed. LeDoux closed the door behind him, then leaned against it.
“Paul is going to be going with you,” LeDoux said. “He was helping us today with our translations. Last I checked, David, none of your people speak Fasori, right?”
“You’re a translator, then?” DeLuca said.
Asabo looked up at LeDoux.
“Paul is the son of Kwame Mufesi Asabo.”
“The king?” DeLuca said, remembering Kissick’s briefing. “Deposed 1972. See, I was listening. I just looked like I wasn’t.”
“Paul also went to school with John Dari. He might be the only one on our side who can identify him. Paul?”
“John was my roommate at Mill River. I was sent there by my father when it became unsafe for me to stay in Liger. We had little in common, but they decided because we were both African, we would get along.”
“Dari is Da. Is that right?”
Asabo shook his head.
“John is Somalian. He was born in Mogadishu but he lost his parents in the war. He was a ‘Lost Boy,’ as they called them. He was found by a doctor in Sudan and went to a missionary family in Baku Da’al, and they sent him, their church did, to Mill River because he scored so high on the tests he’d been given.”
Asabo spoke English without an accent. Most people who learned a language without an accent did so only if they began to study it before they reached puberty.
“We were both headed for Bennington when he was expelled,” Asabo continued, “so I went and he came back here.”
“And you’ve spoken to him in the interim?”
Asabo shook his head.
“We exchanged letters.”
“E-mail?”
Asabo shook his head again.
“He wrote me about becoming a Muslim. Returning to the religion of his father, of his early childhood, after temporarily adopting the religion of his sponsors. He did not consider it a conversion. But in one of his last letters, he said he could not do e-mail because he’d decided not to own a computer. He felt that the Internet and the pornographic images that Islamic youths were downloading across the Arab world has meant the death of Islam as anybody has understood it historically.”
“I’d have to agree with him there,” DeLuca said. “And you think you’d recognize him? We were told he’d altered his appearance.”
“He underwent scarification,” Asabo said. “On his face. Most African men who do it have it done when they’re young, as a rite of passage and progressively of manhood, but John had missed the opportunity.”
“But you don’t have it,” DeLuca said.
“It’s not a Fasori custom,” Asabo said. “But it’s quite widespread throughout West Africa. It shows a sense of piety. And ethnic unity. I think John wanted to be accepted among his people.”
“And who does he consider his people?” LeDoux asked.
“Black African Muslims,” Asabo said. “He’s traveled too much and lived too many places to narrow how he identifies himself. So he is Somalian, he’s Da, he’s Kum, he’s Muslim. I think he might even say part of him is American, but I don’t know. He was bitter about how he left.”
“And he’s charismatic?” DeLuca said. “People follow him?”
“People always followed him.” Asabo smiled. “He was the star on the soccer team. Quite popular among all the boys. And the girls, too.”
“He was expelled because of a girl,” DeLuca said. “Do I understand that correctly?”
Asabo shook his head again.
“Are you keeping score?” DeLuca said to LeDoux. “Is this three major things the CIA report got wrong, or four?” He turned again to Asabo. “What exactly did happen, then? You can speak freely—we were all teenage idiots at one point ourselves.”
“And everybody is,” Asabo said. “I know. I don’t know how they did not understand that. There was a girl who perhaps lacked s
elf-esteem. I don’t know. I think her name was Karen. Or Kari. What I know is that one night at a party, she performed oral sex on three boys.”
“On Dari?”
“Not that time. But a few days later, she was asked to do it again and she agreed, this time with five boys, in the locker room, after soccer practice. Again, it was consensual, but this time they were caught, and because the girl was only fifteen, it became a legal matter.”
“Where were you?” DeLuca said.
“I was studying,” Asabo said. “In the library. I was not athletic.”
“So they expelled him?” DeLuca asked.
“No,” Asabo said. “John and the other boys were suspended for a week but not expelled. John left school because the church that was sponsoring him financially decided they could not support such behavior. They were a conservative Baptist church from Oklahoma and they said John had betrayed their moral values. I told him he was the one who was betrayed. I think for all he knew, he was just being an American. When he followed the others, that was why. To fit in. I’m not sure he even knew that this sort of behavior was even unusual. He was just finding his way. As we all were.”
“And you got along, personally?” DeLuca asked.
“Yes. Though we were quite different in our upbringings. He used to tell me how I came from privilege and wealth. I told him it wasn’t like that but he could not believe me. When I was quite young, perhaps, but my father was overthrown well before I was born. He was only a figurehead after that. It became a kind of house arrest. And then when I was a senior, President Bo considered him a threat, because my father was speaking out against the things the government was doing, and put him in prison. And killed my brothers, Thomas and Daniel, because he was afraid of them, too. That they might overthrow him. But by then, John Dari and I were no longer in touch. I was in college. I don’t know what he was doing.”
“And you haven’t been back?” DeLuca asked. “To Liger?”
Asabo shook his head again.
“It would not have been safe, I think. I work in Washington, for Conservation International,” Asabo said. “They tell me when we go in, you will be posing as my colleague.”
Mission Liberty Page 5
