“Not really.”
“Hitch a ride on a cargo flight?”
“No, civilian aircraft – but military charter. They normally would have flown me commercial through London. But the UK seems to be shut for the duration.”
“Right,” Elijah said. “11/11.”
Kate got the vague impression he might actually have forgotten about the worst terror attacks since 9/11, what with all the local madness here. Two BA 777s fall out of the sky over London, and they hardly notice here… For her part, the attacks did at least underscore the immediate importance of everything she was doing – why she was serving in combat overseas in the first place.
She asked, “Did they put the base on heightened security?”
“Sure. But with the entire region going up in flames, it’s kind of a distinction without a difference.”
Kate nodded tiredly.
Elijah looked back over at her. “So help me out – what do CSTs do again?”
“You really don’t know?”
“I don’t have the mental bandwidth to know half of what I need to know for my job. Plus nobody tells me anything.”
Kate nodded again. “The Cultural Support Teams were brought in to do things that were awkward or impossible for male soldiers. Frisking women in burqas, for example. But the work expanded fast. Locals resented night raids, in which foreign men entered and searched homes – the traditional realm of the women. So they brought us in. We were trying to apply COIN principles – protect civilians and get them to reject the insurgents – but we weren’t reaching seventy-one percent of the Afghan population: women and children. Once I took off the helmet and put on the headscarf, all their fear would dissipate.”
“Sounds like missionary work.”
Kate smiled. “It kind of is, but for a secular religion. When women and girls in a traditional society see a professional woman carrying a rifle, their sense of the possible is expanded. And they also see us practicing what we preach. I’m like a walking, Pashto-speaking, gun-toting Statue of Liberty. But we could also identify insurgents disguised as women, or figure out when women were being used to hide weapons or explosives. And we could fight.”
“How often did that come up?”
“More often than you’d think. First Lieutenant Ashley White died on October twenty-second in an IED blast that also killed two Rangers. I was in the vehicle right behind her. We had to shoot our way out and push through that kill zone.”
Elijah nodded respectfully. “What did you do before the military?”
“I was a paralegal, looking to go back and study for a BA in Criminal Justice, and joined the Army Reserve to help pay for it. Maybe law school after that. But when I put in for the CST program, that pretty much guaranteed I was going to be called up and deployed.” She didn’t add what her ultimate motivation was in all this, and almost everything she did: the belief that she could do more. “After my first deployment, I felt like I had a place here, I was just getting good at it – and I was needed. So I stayed.”
Their breathing had only just started to get back to normal when two guys in scrubs with large sheets of plastic shoo’d them off their spot. “We’re setting up a quarantine area here. Move on.”
They both rose, Kate too shocked to act like she wasn’t. “What – because of the epidemic? We’ve got guys who have been exposed to it?”
Elijah shrugged, and found them another wall to hold up.
* * *
Five minutes later a big East Asian dude, tooled up and heavily armed, powered through the swinging doors, spotted Elijah, and made a beeline toward their spot on the floor. They could still hear the chaos outside, crescendoing when the door opened, but they were largely shielded from it in there.
Towering over Elijah and Kate, the newcomer was a solidly built 6’1”, lanky and muscular, with dramatic features and short dark hair, neatly trimmed. Kate figured he was Japanese, maybe – no, Korean, she thought. She wasn’t sure. Whatever his ethnicity, he looked extremely serious, and totally squared away. Looking down, he said:
“You okay, dude?”
“Fine. Kwon, this is Kate, our second CST. Kwon’s our junior Bravo.” This meant he was an 18B, or weapons sergeant.
The two shook hands. His grip was like death.
“Rage Boy posted a new video,” Kwon said.
“They put it up on the big screen?” Elijah asked.
“Naturally. Wanna see it?”
“Yeah. Why not. You won’t leave us alone until we do.”
Kwon produced a smartphone swaddled in several inches of protective rubber, pulled up the video, then palmed it out and down toward the two on the floor. A YouTube video filled the little screen showing a clerical-looking guy in a black robe and turban, with a sparse but long black beard, and wild eyes behind metal-rimmed glasses. But he seemed young for the role. He held a gold-plated AK in one hand, and wore a vest full of banana magazines.
He was lecturing in Somali and waving his index finger around a lot. An elaborate and overwrought logo – flames, birds of prey, and Arabic writing – was plastered on the screen below. There was somebody else visible in the background of the shot.
When Elijah realized Kate didn’t speak any Somali, he translated a few bits: “Just as the knights of Libya gave glory to God by killing the U.S. Ambassador, so the faithful of Somalia will follow in their glorious et cetera et cetera bullshit. This plague sent down upon us is Allah wiping out the unfaithful, laying waste to the Umma because of its ungodliness, wiping out our shame from the fall of the Caliphate, yadda yadda, bullshit bullshit. This dude’s completely full of shit.”
Kwon shrugged in his fully loaded tactical harness. “He’s also up to something. Out there, right now. I can smell it.” The three exchanged a heavy beat of silence. “Gotta bounce,” Kwon said. With that, he was back out the door.
Kate said, “If we can get his YouTube channel, why the hell can’t we put some Predator-launched Hellfires on his ass? It worked for al-Awlaki.”
Elijah shrugged. “He’s already survived two airstrikes and a snatch’n’grab, which has buttressed his claim to most-favored-by-God status.”
“Rage Boy?” Kate asked, trying not to smirk.
“Sheik Ali Rage Godane. Leader of al-Shabaab – since Delta took out the last leader of al-Shabaab. We call him that because he’s always outraged by something, and generally looks really irate.”
Kate nodded. “What’s his deal?”
“Fancies himself both a sheik and a mujahid – a warrior of God. In fairness, he does some of the shooting himself. Just usually at defenseless people. He’s beaten more than a couple to death – on camera – and beheaded a few others. Then again, SNA had him cornered one time, and he shot his way out.”
“Jihadi gunfighter.”
“He wouldn’t have gotten away if it had been us outside.” Elijah took a breath, and took a look around the calming chaos of the hospital. “They say he was a child prodigy at Islamic school, but then went to Afghanistan to fight. More recently, he planned the suicide bombing on the Somalian presidential palace – which killed thirty people, almost including the President. Much worse, he was the mastermind behind the four-day Nairobi shopping mall atrocity – he didn’t like that the Kenyan military had been kicking al-Shabaab’s ass all over Somalia. And they didn’t just kill seventy-two people and wound 200 – they tortured, raped, used pliers to remove eyes, ears, genitals…”
Kate blinked and shook her head.
“Since taking power, he’s killed his number two, who wanted to pursue peace talks – then disbanded the relatively moderate Shura Council, and killed half of them when they objected. He was credited for al-Shabaab surviving in the bush, reportedly based out of some huge and secret Stronghold, after they were driven out of the cities. Under his leadership, a-S has become one of the most brutal militant groups in the world – with stonings and amputations for anyone who defies Godane’s edicts banning music, dancing, watching soccer… a lot of what g
ets us up in the morning is protecting regular Somalis from that. He’s also been turning Somalia into a base for global jihad, recruiting hundreds of foreign fighters. Basically, this is the kind of guy who puts five-year-olds in suicide vests.”
“Secret stronghold?”
“I don’t think it exists. I think they’re sleeping on dirt.”
“What was that crap about God wiping out the unfaithful?”
“I don’t know. He’s nuts. He also said something about being the cause of the plague. Controlling it.”
“Are all your Islamists this batshit crazy?”
Elijah squinted his eyes, parted his mouth, and looked thoughtful. “No,” he finally said. “Not all of them. I’ve actually met a number of their foot soldiers.”
“What – how?”
“Doing outreach clinics in the bush or in the smaller townships, helping out the medical expeditionary teams – sometimes doing my own clinics. You set these things up, and sometimes al-Shabaab or other militia dudes, guys who were shooting at us twelve hours earlier, will walk right in.” Kate looked disbelieving. “They know it’s our policy to treat anyone – as long as they’re not visibly armed. They also know it’s the only place in the region they’re likely to get a decent standard of medical care – particularly for something like a gunshot wound, or soft-tissue damage from blasts.”
Kate shook her head. “Doesn’t it clue you in when they stroll in with a gunshot wound?”
“Hell, we know already. And lots of innocent people come in with gunshot wounds. Basically, it sucks here. And it’s not black-and-white. Some of the militia guys are basically okay. I’ll say this: at least they’re God-fearing types. Which is more than you can say for a lot of the fornicators on this base.”
Kate honestly couldn’t tell whether that was a joke, so she kept silent as a slight chill ran up her neck. She didn’t like the parallels between the Islamists here and the fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. Instead she changed the subject. “Hey – who was that other guy? The huge jacked one in the background of the video.”
“That was al-Sîf – Godane’s lieutenant and enforcer.”
Kate blinked heavily. “What the hell was that weapon he had?”
“The one that looks like a medieval halberd crossed with a giant meat cleaver?”
“Yeah. That one.”
“Moorish scimitar.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s why they call him al-Sîf – “the Sword.”
“No points for creativity.”
“Yeah, well, you tell him that. And you do not want to see what he does with that thing. C’mon.” Elijah started to climb to his feet, saying “Back to wo—”
—but he was instantly knocked straight back onto his ass as an explosion of gut-shuddering magnitude shook what felt like the entire side of the base. As Elijah got up onto his hands and knees, while Kate reached over to help him, the sound of gunfire ramped up outside, a lot of weapons in various calibers discharging, swaddling the building in buzzing and racket.
It was obviously game on.
Inside the Wire
Camp Lemonnier - Med Shack
They had both just gotten to their feet when the outside door banged open and in surged some kind of vengeful god.
Kate took a second recognizing him as Jake, the team sergeant. Like her, he wore only a t-shirt underneath his tactical vest, and his muscles looked like they were trying to muscle their way out. He was square-shouldered, well-built, fierce-eyed, and didn’t look like he had skipped a workout in his entire life. His head was bare – even SF guys tended to wear ball caps or something – revealing a full head of wavy black hair, again not quite military short, and as she’d seen before, graying slightly at the temples. He also had an extremely intelligent cast to his glinting eyes, which wasn’t the smallest surprise to Kate.
As he spotted them and trotted up, Elijah looked up, still steadying himself, and said, “What the heck was that?”
“107mm rocket,” Jake answered, his voice exactly the right volume for the environment. “Probably shot out the back of a pickup truck.”
Elijah hefted his rifle. “Can’t they get some counter-battery fire on that crap?”
“Expect they’re doing it now.” That this man did not rattle was the most obvious fact in an entire extreme and complex situation. He spared a half a glance for Kate, who stood ready and – she hoped – alert-looking, with her rifle cradled, then looked back to the medical sergeant. He said, “Everybody with a working trigger finger is being called out to defend the perimeter.”
Kate nodded and hefted her rifle.
“Not you,” Jake said.
“Where are we?” Elijah asked.
“We think a-S might be making a play. There’s been coded radio chatter.”
Kate knew this meant the base was at risk – that the bad guys were going to try to overrun it. Or at least blast their way in and go on a shooting spree. That kind of thing had happened often enough in Afghanistan, though usually to smaller and more isolated combat outposts. But not always.
She took her right index finger from her trigger housing and squeezed it several times in open air.
Jake pointedly didn’t look at her as he kept talking. “The base is already weakened with so many teams outside the wire trying to help the civil authorities.” The sound of a belt-fed machine gun started up, chattering dully from outside somewhere.
“Me,” Kate said. “I’ve got one. I’ve got a trigger finger.”
Jake blinked once, slowly. “They’re trying to bring all deployed units back in now, but it’s not happening fast enough.”
“Works fine, looks just like yours.”
“And we’re Alamo’ing the fuck up until they do.”
“Master Sergeant,” Kate finally said, her own voice rising to the occasion.
Jake finally deigned to look at her. “It’s Jake.” He sized her up. “What kind of tactical training do you gals get?”
Not pausing to be outraged by the casual sexism – which she figured was an attempt to wind her up and see if she’d react emotionally – Kate reeled it off: “CQB, combatives, small arms and crew-served weapons systems, tactical movements, reflexive fire drills, SERE school, squad designated marksman – I was the only female DM in my battal—”
She nearly choked on the final syllable as another explosion, like the first but closer and louder, shook the floor.
Jake looked seriously at Elijah. “She stays in your back pocket.”
“Check,” Elijah said.
“I’m serious.”
“When are you ever anything but?” Elijah cracked a smile, then pointed two fingers at Kate’s eyes, pointed them at his own, then pointed at his back pocket.
Jake was already leading the way out, rifle up.
* * *
The matter of pockets almost instantly became moot. This was a firefight, and everybody’s equal and on their own in a firefight.
When the three of them stormed outside, Kate and Elijah found that full-on night had fallen on the camp, while they were inside and elbow-deep in blood, camped out under the hot surgical lights.
But the darkness was also alive and malevolent with its own lights – muzzle flashes, firing from up on the walls, in the guard towers, and from out in the town. Fires blazed in at least a couple of different impact points, as silhouetted figures raced at them with handheld fire extinguishers. Most breath-stealing of all were the bright and angry streaks of tracers lacerating the darkness – both red and green, coming and going in both directions.
Kate heard a jet-powered, fixed-wing aircraft blast by at low altitude – and then a rotary-wing one lift off, further in the distance. Thank God they had some air up. Apaches, she hoped. Those guys had been like the finger of God, and had saved her own personal ass more than once in Afghanistan.
She shook her head now, realizing she was already trying to do two difficult things at once: keep up with the other two, who were running straight
toward the sound of the guns – and also figure out what the hell was going on around her, which was usually the key to staying alive in combat. She worked out, firstly, that they were heading north, toward the fence on the side of Djibouti Town; and secondly that she was falling behind.
Kate sucked wind and dug down deep to pick up her pace.
And that’s when she heard the new sounds, even more ominous than the chaos going on all around her. The first was that of a big, low-pitched, straining engine – rising in pitch and then falling again, as someone up-shifted and accelerated. The second was a medium machine gun going cyclic. The engine noise was approaching from somewhere out beyond the wire, and still out of sight. But the machine gun was in that tower where she’d seen the SEALs.
Looking up now, she could just make out that reversed ball cap in the rippling, non-stop muzzle flash of the machine gun. The dude wearing it was standing upright now, with this heavier weapon braced on the railing before him, and he was tracking with the bucking and discharging beast, its angle seeming to follow that of the rapidly crescendoing engine noise an—
And then Kate’s feet were yanked out from under her, and she found herself actually eating dirt as she sprawled out face down, her body pummeled and her senses overloaded.
Whatever had just exploded made the earlier rocket hits seem like Fourth of July Roman candles. It seemed to shake not just the whole camp, but the entire Horn of Africa, and sent a pillar of fire hundreds of feet into the black night sky. It was almost immediately followed by a shitload of small-arms fire, full-auto 7.62 from AKs and maybe PKP machine guns, all of it coming in from the north.
Kate rolled onto her back, trying to get back her wind, which had been completely knocked out of her. Her eyes were wobbling, but she locked onto that shearing muzzle flash up in the tower as a visual, and emotional, anchor. Good old SEALs, standing tall and banging away.
And then a barrage of RPGs, at least half a dozen of them, went streaking through the darkness and up toward that tower, which erupted in a giant gout of flame that went shooting out the back for at least fifty feet.
Arisen : Nemesis Page 3
