“Because we’re so hard up for work we’ll take whatever scraps we can get.”
“Because we’re both black enough to blend in with the locals and because you’re supposed to be some kind of special operations super ninja.”
Trent stole a glance around the room to make sure they weren’t being watched. “We don’t exactly blend in with the Bantu.”
“Fuck the Bantu. And fuck the bright white, no neck Klansmen Trident normally loves to hire. The fact of the matter is if you do your job right, it will only take one person. You get in, you do the deed and you get the fuck out. You don’t need four people for that.”
“Yeah, I got it.” Trent stood up from the table, leaving his whisky untouched.
Tolbert leaned back with a confused look on his face. “Don’t you want me to deal with your other important concerns?”
Trent imagined grabbing the sweaty man by his lip and his cheek and dragging him across the table and out of the bar. Then he remembered the shit list. “No thanks. I think I understand how deeply you don’t give a fuck.”
“Good,” Tolbert stood as if he had achieved a moral victory. “I need to take a piss anyway…”
Chapter Two: The Road to Hell
The trip to the CNDP camp took three days, which gave Trent plenty of time to think about his mission, his life and the ironic futility of both.
Kolwezi was an industrial river town in the Democratic Republic of Congo and about as far from his old stomping grounds of Iraq and Colombia as you could get. But Trent went through great pains to ensure no admirers from his previous missions followed him. Before arriving, Trent wandered through several cities in Europe over a period of two weeks pretending to be a tourist. He took three indirect flights to Congo under two separate identities. He’d shipped his gear separately from Sali, Morocco under a dummy corporation Baker set up years earlier. He didn’t rent a car and he paid for his modest hotel room in Congolese francs.
Trent had no reason to suspect surveillance, but he still left his hotel after the sunset, going through and extensive SDR through the streets of Kolwezi to ensure he wasn’t being tracked before he left town. Who knows what men like Tolbert would reveal while having operational meetings over a few beers at the local bar.
The details of his mission would be interesting to several dubious parties. Laurent Nkunda was a former DRC Army commander who left government service to become a Tutsi warlord. Now, he led the CNDP against the government’s FDLR forces and the United Nations to take towns on the DRC Zambian border. No one in the real world cared which African factions fought each other or why, but they did care about the economic impact.
Nkunda’s war made mining diamonds and coltan difficult in the disputed areas. Several Chinese mining companies lost money because of Nkunda. They decided he needed to be stopped. But they couldn’t call in the Chinese military to solve their problems. That would be a breach of national sovereignty and diplomatic protocol. They hired Trident Security to do the job instead. Tolbert set up the operation, sent Trent into the wilderness and then went back to his beer.
Trent traveled northeast on foot towards the Lualaba River. He avoided the roads servicing the quarries and the security forces travelling on them. He couldn’t risk an encounter with either the rebels or the government forces. He had no identification to justify his presence out in the bush by himself. He didn’t have any plausible deniability for the high tech equipment he carried. If someone challenged him on the road, he’d be lucky if they stole all his gear and left him naked in the bush to die. The unlucky and more likely end to the encounter would include a bullet in the back of his head from his own gun.
If anyone did get his kit, they’d be able to sell it for a small fortune at the weapons bazaar Trent noticed on the outskirts of Kolwezi. He carried enough C4 to blow up a building. Trident intelligence indicated the CNDP purchased surplus weapons from arms dealers in Angola and South Africa. If those weapons got to the front lines, the FDLR might lose the battle and the Chinese would definitely lose more money. Destroying the weapons cache en route became the optimal solution. Trent could facilitate that happy ending, but only if he got to his destination in one piece.
So he moved at night, using his night vision goggles to avoid the roving packs of hyena, jackal, rhino, lion, lowland gorilla and bush elephant who called this area home. Noticing the multitude of snakes slithering in the high grass didn’t go as well because of their cold blooded bodies, but he trusted his thick combat boots and BDUs to protect him from incidental bites.
Trent marched towards an abandoned mining camp situated along the banks of the Lualaba River between Lac Nzilo and Lac Delcommune. If Tolbert’s intelligence reports could be trusted, and that was a big if, then the camp wouldn’t be abandoned. A CNDP force of undetermined numbers allegedly guarded the weapons shipment waiting for transport boats to arrive and move the materiel upriver to the warzone. Trent needed to insert himself into the camp, plant the C4, extract from the area and detonate the explosives before the boats arrived. The operation sounded simple on paper, but operations didn’t get executed on paper. Trent wondered what snafu he’d run into this time.
The target location turned out to be more mining town than makeshift camp, and more bustling hub than abandoned facility. He positioned himself on a ridge overlooking the target and the river after dawn on the third day. He chose an observation point that gave him a wide view of his target and concealment from any sentries or foot patrols. The threat of animal attacks didn’t worry him now. The time he spent in the wild altered his form, color, texture and scent. The animals treated him like a natural part of the environment. Besides, animals were wary of troops in the camp and few of them came this close to a man-made outpost.
Trent watched the camp for the rest of the day, taking sleep in short snatches in case a patrol came too close. He examined each building, trying to determine which one of them held the weapons cache. He chose the best routes for insertion into and extraction out of the camp, as well as secondary avenues for escape if things went sideways. He assessed the size, skill and demeanor of the CDNP forces, trying to figure out the best way to avoid them if he could and evade them if necessary.
That’s when Trent found the snafu.
Chapter Three: Absence of Malice
“The camp is crawling with fucking kids.”
Talbot’s heavy breathing roared through the sat phone connection. Trent didn’t see him as a jogger. Drinking beer seemed to be Talbot’s only form of exercise. The man definitely sounded tired now. Trent wondered what he interrupted.
“Why the fuck are you calling me? This is a secure line for emergency transmissions only. What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about an emergency situation. The target site has a contingent of almost two dozen child soldiers. They’re moving freely through the camp. The adult commanders are forcing them to handle most of the security and the support functions. There’s no viable way to-“
“You mean you called me in the middle of the night to tell me you can’t get past a few toddlers playing war? What the fuck is your malfunction, Shadow?”
“I’m calling to let you know your opposition profile is flawed, probably like the rest of your intel. The mission brief didn’t say anything about child soldiers in the camp.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize Baker provided you with the age, gender and favorite color of your targets. Allow me to introduce you to the real fucking world. The CNDP has been accused of using child soldiers by the UN, Human Rights Watch and a dozen other useless monitoring groups. That doesn’t change the mission profile or the timetable. It also doesn’t change-“
“It changes everything. I didn’t come out here to kill little kids.”
“Killing kids is not the mission. Destroying the weapons cache is the mission. You’re supposed to be the spec ops super ninja, right? If you do what you’re supposed to do, you won’t have to kill anybody; get in, do the deed and get ou
t, remember? So why don’t you get the fuck off my phone and-“
“If you spent any time outside of a bar, you’d know contact variables can’t be predicted. There is no way for me to ensure zero casualties in an infiltration. Even if there was, the blast radius of the explosion is going to-“
“Shadow, I know it’s been a few days since we met, but you’ve clearly forgotten the extent to which I don’t give a fuck, so allow me to reorient you. Fuck you, fuck those little kids and fuck your bullshit guilty conscience. Those little shits probably killed their fathers and raped their mothers. Hell, maybe they killed their mothers and raped their fathers. I don't know and I don't care, so just do what I paid you to do. I don’t give a fuck if a few of them die. The ones that live will probably grow up to burn down villages or blow up markets or whatever the fuck they do in this backwater shit hole. The job is the job. You do it and then you shut the fuck up about it, the end.”
“This isn’t about what you want. This is about having professional standards that don’t include killing kids who got dragged into a war.”
“See, this is exactly what Shaw was talking about. You’ve had your head so far up Baker’s ass for so long that you don’t know your place. Well, this is about what I want. I want what the client wants and the client wants that fucking cache to disappear. Collateral damage is not a concern so-“
“Have you ever killed a man, Talbot? Have you ever killed a child?”
“I can’t say that I have. That’s what we have jarheads like you for. I get to give the orders. You get to worry about dead babies and shit.”
“Fuck you, Talbot. I’m-“
“Fuck you Trent. You are going to go into that camp and take out those weapons. If you don’t, I will order a drone strike and take out every fucking kid I find. Then I will make sure everyone from Al-Jazeera to the Washington Post finds out what you did in Karbala. I will then inform the client of your status as a financial loss leader and a tactical liability. I will recommend you be relieved of both your contract and your protected status in this organization. Then you and your bullshit guilty conscience can hold each other at night while you wait for someone to put a bullet in the back of your head. Do you understand me, marine?”
Trent shut off the sat phone. He knew enough about Talbot to believe his threats. He didn’t need to hear any more. He knew what he had to do to save as many of these children as possible. He just didn’t know if he could save himself as well.
Chapter Four: Becoming Shadow
Trent picked out the target building through a process of elimination. Several warehouses along the river were damaged from years of neglect and sporadic fighting. Holes in the windows, roofs and walls gave him the ability to peer in through his binoculars. Four structures sat empty. He couldn’t see into the other five, but three of them were too small to hold the alleged shipping pallets and one of them seemed too far from the river. If boats were going to come and haul the materiel away, it only made sense for them to be hidden in the last remaining warehouse. Trent based his infiltration plan off this logical analysis.
Both his insertion and extraction called for zero contact with the CNDP force. Sabotage ops avoid enemy contact by definition, but this assignment represented the worst of both worlds. He didn’t have room in his moral code to slit the throat of every twelve year old sentry who might stumble across his path, but the same child might put a bullet in him without a second thought. He didn’t want to risk contact by going into the camp, but he knew aborting the mission meant all the boys would die. He knew his instincts and his training could handle contact with the child soldiers. He just didn’t know if his mind could deal with the image of killing someone the same age as his daughter.
With those thoughts churning in his head, Shadow crept down the side of the hill towards the southern edge of the town. He waited until three in the morning to move. That made it more likely most of the sentries would be asleep and it coincided with one of the darkest hours of the night.
His low stance obscured him from anyone roaming through the makeshift streets and altered his shape so anyone who did catch a glance of him in the shadows might not recognize his shape as human. He kept his cadence to a slow, steady pattern to avoid the natural tendency of their eyes to fixate on sudden movement. His deep blue battle dress uniform blended into the darkness and the face paint on his head and face didn’t reflect any ambient light. Shadow wasn’t invisible when he reached the edge of the mining town, but he couldn’t be seen or heard by anyone near him.
The low squat buildings of the mining town cast broad shadows on the dirt roads weaving between them. A few naked bulbs hung outside the three buildings Shadow identified as the command quarters. The rest of the streets were only lit by faint stars. Trent slipped into the shadows, avoiding the road and slipping among the discarded creates and industrial equipment left on the side of the road to rot.
Shadow's eyes scanned in every direction as he crouched. The electric green glow of the night vision goggles painted the whole town as an alien landscape. Trent took in the images with the comfort of an experienced operator, but he didn't rely on his equipment alone. He didn't just focus on what he could see. His ears took in the hum of distant machinery and the buzzing of the insects. He took note of the scents floating into his nostrils, trying to detect anything beyond the smell of grease, dirt and brine pervading the camp. He attuned all his senses to detect threats that might be anywhere.
His first contact with the CNDP came with the acidic sharp smell of urine. Trent froze behind a large metal crate. The rude splash of a hasty stream rained down a few feet away from him. A guard relieved himself just around the corner. He might have only been a few feet from Trent's hiding place. A dark trail of piss pooled around the corner and under the toe of his boot.
Trent hid close enough to hear the boy pull up his zipper. If he came around the corner, Trent wouldn't have time to access a weapon. He decided to drag the man or boy into the shadows, smother him and break his neck if he came any closer. But he didn't. Trent listened as footsteps hurried away. The feet hit the road with a speed and a weight of a child. Trent wondered if the boy had sensed something dangerous in the shadows or if he just lived his whole life running away from danger. Trent continued towards the warehouse, careful to make sure he didn't leave wet footprints as he moved.
A burst of nervous laughter pushed Trent down into a prone position. The sound repeated, coming from Trent's left. He angled his head towards the noise in slow motion. He wanted to see the laughter, but he didn't want to create a sudden movement and draw attention to himself.
They stood at his ten o'clock next to one of the command houses. Two boys wearing nothing but sandals, shorts and AK-47 assault rifles smoked cigarettes under the faint light of a naked bulb. Trent stayed down on his stomach and leaned into a slow log roll underneath a transport truck away from the boys. He didn't want to disturb the commander or his personal guard. He'd let the C4 wake them up.
It only took ten more tense but uneventful minutes to sneak around to the rear of the warehouse. He had to pass the front door to reach the rear window, but using the front door created potential problems. He didn't know if they locked the door or what kind of lock they might have used. He didn't have a lot of skill picking locks and he certainly couldn't open a lock in the dark. He couldn't just go up to the door and hope for the best. He felt better about using the window, although it could have an alarm.
Trent didn't think the door or windows were protected by electronics. He didn't see any indication of alarms during the day he spent watching the CNDF camp. But even if the only valuable thing in this place sat in an opened and un-alarmed warehouse, the rickety front door and rusted rolling gate still might make enough noise to wake the dead if he tried to open it.
All those variables made the window a better option, until Trent turned the corner and almost ran into a wandering guard.
The boy staggered through the darkness mumbling something in a language
Trent didn't understand. He walked away from Trent with his rifle resting across his shoulder blades like the horizontal bar of a crucifix. His head hung low and the mumbling might have been a prayer. Maybe Trent found the boy asking God for deliverance or rescue or just release from the torment he suffered every day. Trent curled his fingers around the handle of his Zero Tolerance knife and released the safety clasp holding the blade on his leg. If this boy turned around, Trent would slit his throat and make sure he never suffered again.
Smoke and Shadow Page 4
