Blood Diamonds, page 23
Boo Boo, while not carrying the biggest weapon like Navy corpsmen did, was probably gripping his MP5 with one hand, lobbing grenades with the other—and still proving that the best form of combat medicine was a massive, unadulterated display of superior firepower.
Pope was hosing down the trees with his submachine gun, pausing to throw a curve or breaking ball that would do a whole lot more than strike out batters. Twin booms shook the ground.
Drac was giving the rebels a little history lesson about weapons made famous in the Vietnam War. You could almost see Mick Jagger pouting, hear him wailing as Drac kept time, his Stoner glowing and smoking like an expertly rolled joint. Peace, man!
More grenades exploded between the ceaseless barrage of lead, punctuated again by Wolfgang’s big sniper rifle. Though Mad Dog couldn’t hear the guy growling, he knew he was. You couldn’t keep a good warmonger down.
But then again there was Rookie, whose ghost was watching over the entire scene, perhaps longing to take part, and maybe, just maybe, protecting them somehow, putting in a good word upstairs for some fellow brothers.
And if he didn’t, there was always Jack, good old Jack, who didn’t deserve to buy it in this shit hole. Good old Jack, who was gung ho till the end, a marine’s marine—a man who needed to be remembered.
“There they are,” someone hollered. Sounded like Pope, but Mad Dog couldn’t be sure.
The rain had tapered off for a few minutes, but the sky opened up once more, adding that racket to all the gunfire. Mad Dog’s legs were throbbing now, the imaginary knives poking every time Judas jostled him.
Abruptly, he was on the ground, rolling off the spook’s back and looking straight up into a face: yes, Pope’s.
“Jesus Christ, Bossman. Boo Boo, get the fuck over here! Bossman’s been hit!”
“Tell somebody to get Rookie’s body,” Mad Dog ordered Pope. “We ain’t waiting here.”
“Boo Boo has to look at you first.”
“Fuck that. I’ll live. Handcuff Judas to the truck. Leave him here.”
Hands seized his wrists and forced him up. The hands belonged to Judas. “Double cross again?”
“No.”
“Bullshit!”
“Kisantu had you. I took him out. I took out his buddy. Otherwise, you’d be eating lunch with them and al Qaeda.”
“And because I dragged you back here, we’re even—and you still want your money?”
“Very good. And even with Kisantu gone, these rebel fuckers will still take you back to the Congo as their prize. So you give Bibby what he needs, otherwise you’re staying here.”
“Fuck the money, Bossman,” said Pope. “We’ll make it up on another job. I say we leave this piece of shit.”
Judas lifted his voice: “This piece of shit just saved your boss!”
Mad Dog took a deep breath. God, even that hurt. “All right, Pope. You win. Cuff him to the truck. Forget the money.”
Boo Boo had just arrived and was already cutting open Mad Dog’s pants to inspect the wounds.
In the meantime, while the others still held the rebels at bay, Pope shoved his machinegun in Judas’s chest and ordered him to move. The spook refused.
“Bossman, can I shoot him?”
Mad Dog winced as Boo Boo applied gentle pressure to his leg. What had Pope said? The pain was excruciating. “Whatever you say, Pope. Do what’s best.”
“Did you hear that?” Pope asked Judas.
“Hertzog, you can’t kill me. I’ve already taken steps to ensure that if I die, you get the blame. You don’t want to test me on this one.”
“Move out! Otherwise, you’re dead,” cried Pope.
An RPG suddenly whistled in, Doolittle and Sapper screaming for everyone to get down.
The explosion lifted behind them, igniting a stand of trees for a few seconds before the rain turned the flames into hissing smoke. While that light vanished, Judas apparently saw his: the bright, flickering light emanating from the fires of Hell, where a platoon of marines with glowing red eyes were waiting for him.
“All right, Hertzog. You get me out of here, and I’ll give you the money back.”
“Oh, I think we can hold these rebel assholes for a couple more minutes.” Mad Dog got back on the radio, told Bibby to boot up and meet them by the truck. “Boo Boo, can you get me there?”
“Shit, Zog, we have to carry you back to Tongaso. You’re a liability now. I say we cuff you to the truck, too.”
Before Mad Dog could answer the wiseass, Boo Boo was hauling him across his back, doing a much more professional job of the fireman’s carry than Judas had.
And off they went, toward the truck, with Mad Dog calling out to Judas, “You give Bibby the name and password right now.”
The spook closed his eyes for a moment, but then they snapped open as a sudden wave of incoming fire sent everyone to the ground except Boo Boo.
“Drop me,” Mad Dog hollered.
“Shit, it was hard enough getting you up. I ain’t putting you down. Besides, those assholes couldn’t hit the broad side of a fat lady.”
“What about a stubborn medic carrying his stubborn boss?”
“Well, the boss makes a good target. They could probably hit him pretty easy.”
It hurt to smile, but Mad Dog did, anyway. Boo Boo broke into a half jog, splashing through shallow puddles and nearing the hill where the pickup truck lay within a river of clay washing down from the ridge. Mad Dog always insisted that everyone do lots of hard PT and weight training so they could, among other things, haul his fat ass out of the fight.
Boo Boo lowered himself to one knee, then eased Mad Dog down from his shoulders. Biting his lip against the pain, Mad Dog rolled over and sat up as Boo Boo returned to treating the wounds. The bullet was still in Mad Dog’s calf, but the other one had entered and exited. Boo Boo didn’t believe any of the major arteries had been struck, but they’d need to get Mad Dog to a hospital to be sure. He did, however, believe he could remove the bullet on the spot.
Behind them Bibby had placed his laptop on his ruck and was typing furiously, despite the rain. “Okay, I’m ready!”
“Get back up there, hold them off,” Mad Dog told Pope as he came forward with Judas. Mad Dog withdrew his .45, the one with the correct firing pin. “I got the spook.”
“Okay, but not for long. We’re going to shift north, then come back around to throw ’em off.”
“Good. Get going. Uncle Jimmy? Get over here.”
“Hertzog, I changed my mind. I’m keeping the money.”
“User name. Password.”
“Adios, motherfucker.”
“You don’t think I’ll shoot you?”
“I’m willing to take that risk.”
Mad Dog smiled broadly. “No, you’re not.”
Judas turned away. Took three steps before Bibby called out, “Oh, Mr. Moody? Your user name is JamesR, all one word with a capital R, and your password is Spooky 9947.”
Judas froze.
“I’ve made a sizable withdrawal, left the minimum hundred grand and transferred sixteen million into one of IPG’s accounts,” Bibby went on. “Your bank will blame this on fraud. You, unfortunately, will be out all of that money unless you follow our instructions to the letter. Once we’re safely back in Tongaso, I will return the money to your account, sans our four million. At that time, we’ll all be square. If you don’t believe me, you can check for yourself on your own computer, once we get back to the village.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care.” Bibby lifted his head to Mad Dog. “Mr. Hertzog, you can kill him with impunity now. We have Dan. We have our money. Hell, we have his money, too.”
There was something not quite right in Bibby’s tone. Mad Dog wasn’t sure what it was, but he’d have to ask the Brit about it later, in private. If they survived.
“All right, you heard him, Jimmy boy. You’re either coming with us to get your money back, or you’re staying here to die broke. I’m thinking this is a no-brainer.”
Judas roared, and somewhere within that scream was the word Fuck, drawn out so much that it was almost unintelligible.
Mad Dog winked at Bibby. “He’s coming.”
A second later, Mad Dog roared himself as Boo Boo dug deep into his calf and removed the bullet.
What do you know about the dialectics contained within the Aesopian language relative to the Marxist-Leninist theory?
Mr. Bibby was trying to answer that question, or, more precisely, predict what Mr. James Moody’s answer was to that question.
It was a bizarre question, no doubt, culled from some academic text or exam or some legal proceeding—
But obtaining its answer was vital.
In truth, Bibby had hacked into the spook’s account, and he had been able to view the account’s balance, but he still was not able to make the transfer without the answer to that security question, which was part of a secondary software package Judas used for added protection. Even the bank geeks themselves were unaware that Judas had modified his account in such cunning ways, the bastard.
Damn, if Bibby outright asked Judas, the guy would catch on. The remark had to be carefully constructed to elicit the answer while not revealing Bibby’s ignorance.
And worse, Bibby needed to hack in and make the transfer before they got back to Tongaso. It would all need to happen while they were running through the jungle, trying to flee from the rebels, in a torrential downpour.
Yet a strange little miracle did occur. Seven local men from Tongaso, including Friday, whose brother Bibby had beaten to death with his laptop, came sidestepping and sliding down the hill, AKs in hand. Initially Bibby thought they would shoot him and the rest of the team as they were preparing to leave.
But Doolittle spoke quickly with them. Kisantu’s name came up several times, and suddenly they began holding off the rebels, allowing the rest of the team to fall back. Judas added something about paying all of them handsome bonuses.
So reinforcements had arrived. Boo Boo carried Mad Dog, while Pope slung Rookie’s body over his shoulder. That meant Bibby, Doolittle, Drac, Wolfgang, and Sapper were responsible for security on the way back. Sapper and Wolfgang took point. Boo Boo and Pope remained in the middle of the line. Drac, Bibby, and Doolittle brought up the rear, keeping Judas just ahead of them, squarely in their sights.
“I still can’t believe you got in,” Judas told Bibby. “Im-fucking-possible.”
“So where’d you hear that question?”
“My grandpa told it to me. During the McCarthy era, when the witch hunts were on to find communists, he was a juror, and he heard a lawyer ask that to a defendant.”
“Because the Aesopian language is all about covert communications. It’s all about hidden meanings. Isn’t that what you’re about, too?”
“No shit. I didn’t know that.”
Bingo. Thank you, Judas, you ignorant fool.
Five minutes later, as Bibby and the rest of the team continued picking their way parallel to the riverbank, AK fire cracked behind them. Drac and Doolittle broke off from the line and began to return fire, the latter calling on the radio to say that it appeared the local guys from Tongaso had been overrun.
Meanwhile, Pope and Boo Boo were exhausted and had to stop, so Wolfgang and Sapper were directed by Mad Dog to fall back down the line and help out.
As they charged by, Bibby couldn’t resist the temptation to open his laptop, establish another connection with the bank, and test out his theory.
An RPG struck the large boughs of a tree not three meters away, the explosion sending Judas into a fit of screaming: “I want a weapon! I want a goddamned weapon right now!”
“Shut up!” Bibby cried, just as the screen showed the prompt to answer Judas’s question.
What did Judas know about the dialectics contained within the Aesopian language relative to the Marxist-Leninist theory?
Bibby typed in the word nothing.
ACCESS DENIED
Shit. He typed in absolutely nothing.
He typed in jack shit, squat, fucking nothing, not a goddamned thing, as Judas kept screaming, the gunfire rattled, brass thumped into puddles, and voices blared in his earpiece: “Get me some suppressing fire up here, goddamn it! Four, I need your ass up here now!”
“Give me your sidearm!” Judas demanded.
“Shut up!”
“Your sidearm!”
ACCESS DENIED
Bibby’s face didn’t just warm, it ignited as he burst to his feet, slammed shut the laptop, and reared back, ready to repeat his performance in Murder by Computer, only this time Judas would play victim.
But as he looked into the spook’s eyes, the answer to the question came to him, accompanied by an amazing chill that began at his feet and spread across his shoulders, making him feel as though he had just grown magnificent wings.
He whirled back, reopened the computer while ducking behind a tree. “Come on, come on,” he grunted waiting for the damned thing to wake up.
What do you know about the dialectics contained within the Aesopian language relative to the Marxist-Leninist theory?
Bibby typed in the answer to the sixteen-million-dollar question:
Ask grandpa.
ACCESS GRANTED
“What would I like to do today?” Bibby read aloud, then whispered, “Make a fucking transfer. A big one.”
“Get off that goddamned computer!” cried Judas. “What are you doing?”
Bibby allowed himself a smile. If Mr. Spooky only knew. In fact, Bibby now felt so cocky, so giddy, that he pulled out his Browning high-power 9mm pistol and proffered it to Judas. “Here, asshole. Defend yourself.”
Frowning, the spook accepted. “You play games with this weapon, too?”
Bibby wriggled his brows. “Put the barrel in your mouth, pull the trigger, find out.”
“Blackhound One, this is Two,” called Bibby, keeping his voice down.
Mad Dog was waiting for this call. “Go ahead, Two.”
“We weren’t good to go before. I was bluffing to get one more piece of data. I have it now. And the money, over.”
“Roger that. I knew something was up. Just take the four million now, over.”
“How ’bout six, just in case the diamonds turn out to be fake.”
Pope had given Mad Dog the gems, which he now kept in his breast pocket. He patted them gently and nodded. “Okay, I like your style. Take six. If Kidman tries to fuck us over, we’ll still have our reward, courtesy of Uncle Jimmy. By the way, you got eyes on him?”
“Roger that. Gave him my pistol. He’s taking pot shots at those meatheads behind us, over.”
Mad Dog swore under his breath. “Well, that was a fucking mistake! Why’d you arm him!”
“To shut him up, over.”
“Well, get that weapon back. I don’t care what you do. And find out how Dan’s doing, out.”
Perhaps that whack in the head had knocked all reason from the once-reasonable Brit.
Or perhaps the entire place had been sucking the life from all of them, and now they were weak and hallucinating in the desert—or drugged up and hallucinating in the jungle from painkillers given to them by sour-faced medics. The puddles were, after all, turning into amoebas, beating like hearts extracted from dying men.
Boo Boo set down Mad Dog, propped him against a tree, and shoved a pistol into his hand. Mad Dog raised the weapon, tried to aim at a fallen tree, his vision blurring.
Oh, this would be fun.
“What do you think?” Pope called to Wolfgang as the rebel fire began to die. “They’re moving?”
Wolfgang, binoculars in hand, was spying two stands of trees about fifty yards off. “I see a couple of guys. One’s on the phone. Maybe they found Kisantu. Maybe they’re getting called back.”
“That’s enough for me. Let’s move! Blackhound team, this is Four. Ready to move out!”
After the other replied, Wolfgang said, “Give me a minute.”
“What? To be sure?”
“Uh, yeah, right.”
Wearing a smirk, Pope jogged off, back up the line to fetch Rookie’s body.
Wolfgang was still suffering from sniper’s withdrawal caused by a vivid fantasy: his taking aim at Kisantu, the perfect headshot ringing out, and the envious looks from his colleagues at the assassination party. That’s right, an assassination party—that’s what snipers threw.
Hearing that Mad Dog had taken out the rebel leader was a major letdown for two reasons: the glory would not be Wolfgang’s, and he’d have to carry out more large-caliber ammo than he had anticipated. That shit was heavy!
To compensate, Wolfgang knew he had to kill someone. Anyone. Well, maybe not anyone. Bad guys would be nice.
So he had two of them. Could he possibly get off a shot, taking out one guy, then nail the second one before he could react? Be fun to try. Wolfgang raised the rifle and thought of the rain, the wind speed, of becoming one with his bullet, imagining his hand reaching out toward the target.
Strangely, he began trembling, couldn’t get a bead. What the hell?
The guy lowered his phone and turned. Wolfgang relaxed into his weapon, told himself to concentrate.
Pope called on the radio. Asshole.
Come on, what’s wrong?
Wolfgang couldn’t stop the trembling. He swore aloud, then suddenly lowered the rifle and realized he was losing his breath. He glanced up at the rain, then back toward the others, who were just moving off. He turned toward the rebels.
They were gone.
He sat there a moment, raised his jittery hand, stared at it as though it belonged to someone else.
Lack of sleep. He hadn’t lost his edge. It was just lack of sleep. He rose quickly and tore off after the others.
Tongaso, Angola
Near Congo Border
1145 Hours Local Time
Mad Dog had ordered Pope and Sapper to go back for the Delta team. They had turned the bodies over to Morstarr reps, who would hold them for SoCom. Judas had wanted no part of that, saying that their presence in Angola was just another bad example of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing…
