Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 1
Print Copyright © 2025 Wargate Books
Text Copyright © 2025 Mark Sibley
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
All rights reserved. Version 1.0
Edited by David Gatewood
Published by Wargate Books, and imprint of Galaxy’s Edge, LLC.
Cover Design: M.S. Corely
Website:www.wargatebooks.com
Contents
DEDICATION
MAP
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
EPILOGUE
To Us
The man stared out the window, comfortable in the safety and tranquility of the airplane as he watched the ground, and the war below, move ever closer. Free from concerns over passenger comfort, the roaring cargo plane descended towards the runway quickly, as if it and its crew could not wait to get back to the war. In the light of the early morning sun, the man could see the silver glimmer of Lake Kivu disappear beneath him. He watched and sighed to himself as the beautiful silver sheen was quickly replaced by the thick life-giving green of the African jungle.
The plane’s spartan interior was filled with the refugees from every friendly nation who had escaped Libreville. Beside him sat a French captain, a scarred Legionnaire whose French, even in its most guttural Foreign Legion variant, bore the unmistakable telltale signs of German. The Legionnaire had greeted the man when he sat down, and then quickly fell asleep. He undoubtedly had been up for days putting this escape together and now, finally without any control over his circumstances, blacked out.
The Americans the man had escaped with were strewn across the plane. He spotted the Air Force major who had led them to the safety of the French-controlled airport. The short, balding major was talking to a British officer in the front row of the plane. That they had escaped the embassy at Libreville through the besieging Chinese forces was nothing short of a miracle, but any euphoria they had as a result of their escape was short-lived.
The news that the United States, along with Europe, was at war with Russia, Iran, and the Chinese was almost too much to process and had sat with them like a dark companion for the entire flight. To make matters worse, no one had heard from either the United States or Europe since Christmas. They had simply vanished and there was no way to know how the war was progressing. The British commander had received a satellite phone call from a Royal Navy ship which alerted them to the state of war, but details were exceedingly sparse.
The man looked out the window again as the plane finished its descent.
It makes sense, he thought. The Chinese are as strong as they’ll ever be. One or two bad harvests, a declining population… it was bound to happen. I just wonder how they did it.
However they had done it, one thing had been made perfectly clear: no help from either Europe or the United States was coming. They were on their own here in Africa.
Behind him a child kicked his crude seat. The man closed his eyes and went through the list in his mind again. It was a trick he had learned long ago. Besides, you couldn’t blame this kid. He opened his eyes and saw the French officer staring at him.
“Good morning, Captain,” the man said in French he’d picked up in college and then perfected in a lifetime of work in central Africa. He had to nearly shout over the drone of the two propellers outside; military cargo planes were not known for their soundproofing.
“Good morning,” the captain replied plainly. His words lacked the usual aristocratic flair common amongst the French officer class.
“We are getting ready to land,” the man said, knowing all too well the disorientation of waking up when flying.
“Yes, I know,” the officer replied, looking out the window. “But I fear our problems are only beginning.”
“What will you do, when we land in Rwanda?” the man asked.
“I am sure our ambassadors will talk, establish a chain of command, and then we will find a way to fight back.”
The man nodded, as if he was taking it in, but it was exactly the non-answer he expected. This captain had no more idea what was about to happen than he did.
“Where are you from?” the man asked.
“A soldier is from where he slept the night before. He has only this day, and the next day. Only what is in front of him. To think on anything else, to worry about what can’t be controlled, is to invite disaster.”
Any further conversation on the matter was halted by the sudden slamming of tires on pavement as the plane touched down. A short cheer went up from the back of the plane, but it lacked the strength to carry to the front.
The American major stood up as the plane taxied off the runway.
“Alright, all Americans, find Captain Anderson once we get off. He will get a head count and then everyone hold fast for orders.”
Throughout the plane, the Americans nodded. The man was impressed by the major, who just days before had been a nervous staff officer. Since then he had defended the embassy and led all of them to safety.
Perhaps war does bring out the best and worst in people, he thought.
But the man knew this order didn’t apply to him. He was not going to meet up with Captain Anderson. He was going to get off the plane and find his boss and finally let out all the information he had been repeating in his head for days now. And then he would find a bed. He hadn’t slept more than a few hours in nearly a week and his mind was beginning to slip.
Similar instructions were given to the French, British, Polish and Germans onboard. No one was certain what they would find on the ground in Rwanda, but it couldn’t have been worse than where they had just fled.
He walked towards the back of the plane, and down the long cargo ramp that doubled as the rear of the plane. The cargo was already being unloaded by a ground crew, and the man could see a long line of men, both white and black, scurrying around the plane. Everything that could aid in the coming fight had been brought from Gabon and was now being added to the inventory of this makeshift force assembling in Rwanda.
He turned to see the French captain standing behind him and extended his hand.
“Bis bald, Herr Hauptmann,” he said with a smirk.
The captain looked at him, surprised, before the faintest smile teased his taught lips.
“Goodbye and good luck, Mr. Placher,” he replied in English.
Turning his back to the group, the man walked off towards a long row of single-story builds opposite the control tower. He carefully found the propellers. They were slowing down, but could still be lethal. He spotted his man instantly, wearing the traditional short sleeve white button-down shirt and khakis. His eyes bore the unmistakable yellowish tint of a local, and which stared right at the American as he approached.
The men stood mere feet from each other, and the American looked at his watch. Tuesday.
“Is there a bus to Kigali from here?” he asked.
“From here, it only comes on Tuesday,” the man answered stoically before adding, “They have changed the codes, but come with me. Do you have any bags?”
“Just this,” the man said, holding up a jacket.
He touched his front pocket where his phone was. He supposed he could finally use it again and access the pictures he had saved on it. For security reasons the phones never backed up to a cloud. They were the last vestiges of non-networked technology.
The pair climbed in a car, a yellow Peugeot that seemed at least a decade old, and drove off through the waking African city. The sun had risen and the city was shaking off the night and starting its day. As they passed by the buzz of opening shops, commuters, and the tiny goods ferrying trucks that flooded third-world cities like locusts, the man had to remind himself that the outside world was at war. To him, nothing in this city seemed out of the ordinary. Maybe the outside world was on fire, but this city just kept living.
This is Africa, the man thought.
They drove through the city quickly, enough so that someone would have to speed to keep up with them. And it was something both driver and passenger looked for. In an era where any school kid could buy a drone, the art of the tail was less practiced, but old habits died hard to both men in the Peugeot.
They pulled up outside a small mini-mart whose owner was just sliding the metal protective door up into the ceiling. It would open for business soon, the customers would come in and out, the owner would sit behind the counter like he always did, and the world, at least here in Rwanda, would continue to spin.
But the man wasn’t interested
The man pushed through the beaded doorway, and walked up the back stairs. The hallway stunk like most things that weren’t properly ventilated in Africa. It reeked of humidity and sweat and whatever the shopkeeper was burning in an attempt to bewitch his customers to part with their money. The man stank too; it had been over a week since he had showered, a condition he intended to remedy soon.
He reached the office door on the second floor, and typed in the code to the electronic lock. The lock was an anatopism in a place like this, but the man figured if someone made it this far, they knew why they were here. The lock flashed red and beeped as he entered the final number, and he remembered what the white-shirted driver had said. They had changed the codes. He sighed and knocked on the door quickly, looking over to his right, where a camera was nestled in the corner above him.
It wouldn’t take long; they would have seen him pull up and seen him enter the market and watched him climb the stairs. But still, they had made him enter the wrong code first, just in case. The door beeped, and then the lock turned green and swung open revealing a small lobby, which to the casual eye would look like any of the millions of small offices just like it throughout the world. A small reception desk sat in the middle of the tiny lobby, and a lone female receptionist seated behind it greeted him. She was older, in her 60s, but in a place with such poor health care and nutrition as Rwanda, it could be difficult to judge.
“Good morning, sir. He is already out back waiting,” the woman said, smiling politely and handing him a cup of coffee as he walked past. It was her way of saying that there was nothing that happened here that she wasn’t prepared for.
“Keurig?” the man asked.
“Never!” the woman spat, shaking her head, as if the mere insinuation she would ever make coffee from a plastic pod was the deepest insult imaginable.
Behind the lobby sat three rooms side by side. Habitually, the man walked to the room on the left. The room on the right had a window to the outside, and the room in the center was not a room he ever wanted to be in. He knew what the people who worked here used it for, and he wanted no part of that in his life or on his conscience.
Pushing open the door, he was greeted by a younger blond man in glasses, someone who looked as if he could either be selling solar panels door-to-door, or working in a clandestine office halfway around the world. Nothing in between. Behind the first man sat a second. A local, quietly scrolling on his phone.
“Did you find them?” the first asked, eschewing the usual pleasantries. To some, this might have seemed discourteous, but they were after all at war.
“I did,” the man said, “in the eastern Congo outside Kampulu.” He paid the African in the back no attention. The white man to whom he was speaking was no idiot. If he had brought up the subject in front of the African, then the African could be trusted. In the man’s experience, all US government employees sent to Africa—whether they be from the military, the state department, or the Company—fell into one of two categories: exceedingly competent or exceedingly awful. There was no in between. Despite his youth, the man who sat in front of him was squarely one of the former.
“You’ve got grid coordinates, pictures, names?” the man behind the desk asked, holding out his hand.
The man reached into his coat and pulled out the phone, looking at it one last time before handing it over. “Everything you need is in here, plus a few local contacts. They have a couple hundred Wagner troops for security.”
“Outstanding,” the bespectacled man said, quickly unlocking the phone, seemingly unfazed at the report of the private military company. “Has the general sent his dispatches out?”
“Not until tomorrow,” the African man replied, never once looking up from his phone. The war and the unreliability of their traditional communications networks meant secure messages were being encoded and hand delivered by motorcycle courier.
“Even better.” The man pulled a map from his desk and pointed to a spot in the eastern Congo. “It isn’t far from here, but I doubt he will spare any troops for this. It is a long shot and pretty well defended… but there is…” He dragged a finger south of the Congo.
The bespectacled man behind the desk quickly pulled out a piece of paper and began to write. He looked back at the phone once to check a number, before sliding the piece of paper and the phone’s memory card into an envelope.
He handed the envelope to the African man sitting behind him. “Take this over to the embassy. Don’t let any of the general’s staff read it. Our people only. Make sure it gets added to the dispatch rider’s bag.”
Hesitating, the African man looked at the envelope. His mouth opened as if he were about to say something, but it closed just as suddenly, and he walked out the door.
“You want to go get some sleep, and, if I may, a shower?” the man asked from behind the desk, looking up at his visitor.
“Yeah, I might wanna oughta,” the visitor said, his exhaustion causing his carefully practiced accent to slip. “You are sending that to someone good? It cost a few men’s lives to get it here,” he said, pausing at the door.
“Don’t worry, Placher, it is going to the best we have,” came the reply.
Day 1
Embassy of the United States of America, Lusaka, Zambia
Planned Route: Lusaka to Mpika, Zambia
1,365 Miles to Rwanda
There’s a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There’s a grave on the Pabeng River…
“Sir?”
The nervous voice came from the doorway of the converted bedroom as the harsh hallway lights spilled into the room.
“Sir… it’s, uh… it’s time.”
Major Alex Frey’s eyes slowly opened as his dream faded away… Get up, soldier, he said to himself as he rolled his feet to the floor. Looking around the tiny room at the embassy, he came back to reality… You are in Africa. Amanda and the kids are here. And the world has ended. Get to work.
“Thanks, Marine,” he said, having no idea what rank the person dragging him out of his dream wore, but knowing he had to be one of the embassy’s Marine guards.
“Tell Lieutenant Betz and Sergeant Major Sweeney to meet me in the main conference room in five minutes, and tell Gunny to start breaking out the ammo and weapons from the armory.” The major smiled to himself as he pulled on his freshest Army uniform, remembering his favorite war movie as a kid. It had featured the Marines, and now he too finally got to call someone Gunny. All it took was for World War III to break out.
The room was small and dark, but it at least had a window. Rain pattered against the glass as he laced his boots. It was the rainy season in this part of Africa. It had been raining for days and no one knew when it would stop. He pulled a small chain from the table next to the bed and felt its familiar weight. He had brought it with him on every deployment he had ever done. It was his totem that reminded him of home and had gotten him through years of war. He ran his fingers over the smooth metal and remembered his life from before, so distant now, it almost seemed irrelevant.
He looked down at his wife, awake in the tiny bed. Her long brown hair was strewn across the pillow that she had stuffed with T-shirts in an attempt to make it thicker. On mattresses on the floor, his two children slept soundly. He had reluctantly brought them down to Zambia from their home in Germany for Christmas. It felt like a lifetime ago instead of the three weeks that had passed since they had lost all communication with the rest of the world.
“I’ll meet you by the vehicles. You know which one you are in,” Alex told his wife, kissing her forehead as he stood and walked towards the door. He paused to look back at his kids and grabbed his pistol belt which hung from the hook on the door. He loved watching his kids sleep. They were quiet then, and he hoped they were dreaming the kinds of dreams that only children could.
“You worry about everyone else, Alex, I’ll worry about us,” Amanda scolded him gently, pulling her hair back into a ponytail as if she was getting up to go to a workout class back home. She knew after all those deployments, all those years apart from her and the kids, that her husband had kept a wall between his work and his family, a wall that now had been shattered.
