Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 11
“Americans would never brave the Congo, Lieutenant,” the colonel said in a tone that could be confused with softness, which took the lieutenant aback more than if he had shouted.
“But he might. He just might…” The colonel was staring aimlessly back at the map, and talking to himself again.
The old, bearded man stared for a long moment, which to the lieutenant felt like a lifetime, before he finally spoke.
“If they followed their orders, where would the second half of our force be?” he asked, remembering the slower and more heavily armored half of his force he had split off from days before.
“They should have crossed the border into Zambia by now, and should be linking up with us in a day or two, sir.”
“Yes… should.” The colonel turned his icepick gaze on the lieutenant. “But the first rule of command is if you are not there to make sure it gets done personally, it won’t get done at all.”
Folding up the map, he stuffed it back in his pocket. “Get my phone, Lieutenant, and call those drunken tortoises in the second element. We are turning around and coming to them.”
The young man slithered along the flat, cement rooftop, trying desperately to stay invisible behind the low wall that topped the long building. The heat from the midday sun scorched the roof beneath him as he dragged himself into position. Pulling out his phone, he punched in some numbers. The gray screen displayed the message to his friends below. Friends… the young man thought. They were brothers in Islam against a common enemy, nothing more. Aside from that, they were as foreign to him as the American invaders that he had run away to fight.
Reaching his position overlooking the provincial government building, the young man scratched at his thin beard and thought of home. He had grown up in a war-torn village outside of Grozny, which except for the snow and cold was not all that different from the city through which he now crawled.
He had been merely a boy during the first Russian invasion. His old and established family, who were free of the bone-deep poverty that gripped most of his countrymen, had sided with the invaders and their promise of stability. He had supported his family then, but by the time the second invasion came years later, he was no longer the naive boy he had once been.
While his father and older brother had not only aided but been commissioned into the Russian Army, he had found friends and an allegiance all his own within Islam. They had fought the invaders long and hard but in the end they had been unable to recreate the magic of the first invasion. Their homeland had been folded back into the Russian Empire and his comrades scattered to the winds, or into martyrdom. It was only the influence of his brother and father that had saved him from prison, or worse. He thought of his brother, now a major in the Russian Airborne, the famed VDV. They were the best Russia had, and they were ruthless warriors. His brother was a real soldier, a leader, a hard man who never forgave a grudge.
But the young man was trying. Sending his brother pictures of the Americans they had been scouting, sending him updates on the American weapons and capabilities. Even if they had been enemies at home, certainly hatred of this common foe could repair the cracks in their family. His family was not so much different than his homeland, he thought. They both needed a common enemy to unite them.
The first notes of the Adhan sounded across the city. He could hear them clearly, the muezzin standing in this particular minaret was his favorite in the city, and only a few blocks from the rooftop where he lay now. He knew he should pray, and he cursed himself for missing it. But this was when the Americans would come. He had been in this country for about a month and on this rooftop nearly every day, and every day the Americans had arrived at the same time. Allah would understand this.
They had driven up to the government center in their HMMWVs, creaking and tottering under the weight of all the armor they had been required to add. All of that armor to cower behind, away from the superior weapons of Islam. The unit that came to the government center did not have the newer, bigger, almost impenetrable vehicles the young man had heard of that had started to appear in other parts of the country. But it did not matter. The bomb that they would put in the street tomorrow was merely a diversion for his rifle.
He would pray later. Now was the time to study his prey.
The Americans, clad in their gray camouflage, climbed out of the vehicle, heavily armed and armored like they always were. The gray squared camouflage had become a joke amongst his local hosts, but the young man kind of liked it. It reminded him of the sky at home. It was only broken in its beauty by the large red number “1” they wore on their shoulders.
The American leader climbed out of the second vehicle. Tall and strong, and with a radio antenna woven through the rear of his body armor, he was always easy to find, and he would lead the young man to the governor.
How these heavily burdened Americans survived in the hellish heat, the young man couldn’t even begin to imagine. He wore a thin cotton shirt and matching pants, and even he was sweltering in the hot Arabian sun. He raised his head up towards the brilliant sun, cursing its oppression before scolding himself. He could not weaken his eyes now. The Americans were here; it was time to focus.
He had been close enough to see the enemy’s face and read their names on their uniforms. He didn’t speak or read English, but that didn’t matter. His older brother did. His father had tried teaching him and had made it as far as the alphabet. He had studied the tall American’s face. His long (by American standards anyway) dark hair, and hard eyes and face. The American was young, like him, and had a single gold bar on the front of his body armor. A lieutenant, the young man thought. He had sent a picture of this officer to his brother. He had used the camera he’d bought in Damascus before his trip to fight the infidels. The picture was so clear, he knew his brother could read the lieutenant’s name. All on an encrypted sim card smuggled home with some journal entries, the pictures, and a joke about this young officer.
He texted his allies again, Infidels arrived, rifle in place, detonate on command.
The young man put the phone down, crawled towards a hole in the roof, and slid his rifle forward. This was where he would take the shot, as soon as they tried to put the governor into the American vehicle. He saw the swirling dust and sand in the street below, making notes, trying to determine what effect the wind would have on his bullet. The range was not long; this should be an easy shot. The young man smiled. Finally, a chance to strike a blow for Islam. The Islam this governor had betrayed by working with the infidel Americans. He would die here on the street, for everyone to see. Not by some cowardly bomb or long-range mortar. No, it would be a rifle, to show everyone that the Americans could not protect the traitors.
His phone vibrated. Picking it up, he looked at the screen. Inshallah, no other infidels in the area, it said in Arabic. This was too easy, he thought. He had never seen an American in person before coming here. He could not believe the American complacency was as real as he had been told.
His fingers typed fast as he replied to his allies. Location perfect. Tomorrow with Allah’s will, we will prevail.
As he was texting, he did not notice the tall American officer answer his own phone and glance up at the sky.
The young man turned his eyes from his phone and back towards his prey and saw the Americans setting up a perimeter around the government building. Their armor made them slow, and they looked like Christian crusaders in their clanky metal costumes that Muslims had slaughtered centuries before. As he scanned back towards the tall American lieutenant, he froze.
The tall American officer was staring right at the spot on the roof where the young man was hiding. It was impossible for the American to know he was here, he thought. He had even covered himself with some trash he had found on the roof to hide from the American drones. He called his allies, going through the rehearsal of the attack. They could not risk the operation on the spotty local cell phone towers, despite how much the Americans were improving them. So they had decided to call one another to coordinate that actual attack, and the young man wanted to rehearse how he would fight.
“It is me,” he spoke in broken Arabic. “Targets assembled, governor is coming out. Allah be with us… Detonate. Allahu Akbar,” he said into the phone. They would need his eyes tomorrow. The men who would trigger the device were located two streets over to not arouse suspicion, but could not see the target.
Down on the dusty street, the American lieutenant, still with the phone to his ear, nodded, then leaned over and grabbed the handset of the radio. The young man watched as the American spoke a single word into the radio’s handpiece.
A strange staccato noise chattered above him. It sounded almost like a machine gun, but it was deep and far away, so it could have been anything.
Ignoring it, for who knew what these Arabs did in this city, he peered through his scope one more time. He noticed something odd about the Americans. They were either ducking their helmeted heads into their armor like turtles or staring at his rooftop.
Puzzled, the young man looked back at the American officer, and tried to recall all of the English his father had once forced into his brain. He got as far as F-R-E, and was trying to recall the last letter, when a whistling sound came screaming out of the sky and punched a giant hole in the roof next to him. Another whistle came a millisecond later and his world went dark.
The lone HMMWV sat hidden behind a row of single-story brick buildings that dotted the side of the red dirt road. They had been shops at one point. Somewhere for travelers to stop at but they had been long abandoned. Another casualty of the narrow margin between success and failure in Africa.
Inside one building, John sat in a broken swivel chair, drinking tea from a white porcelain cup. He watched the road which was only fifty or so feet from him. The road led north, away from the city and into the hinterlands of Zambia. It wasn’t the road they would take back to the convoy, but it was a convenient place to hide out. No one came this way anyway.
Sergeant Patrick watched as John checked his phone, trying to ignore Lance Corporal Jackson’s suggestions on how to reattach the turret’s motor. The man was sitting alone, like he often was, waiting for something to happen. Patrick had no idea what that could be. John wasn’t exactly the transparent type, but he was sure when the time was right, the CIA agent would tell him. In truth, he only assumed John worked for the CIA. He had never been introduced as anything other than “John,” but the deference the known Agency staff, as well as the ambassador, paid him was enough to solidify his position above that of a lowly, middle-aged National Guard sergeant.
“Look, Sergeant, if we just wire it through these zip ties, it won’t get snagged again.” Jackson’s voice was optimistic, like a man who had spent his short career being told what to do finally being set free to use his creativity.
Patrick was at the end of his patience with the task. It was Jackson’s turret anyway. “Just do it however you want.”
He tossed the joystick that rotated the powered turret to Jackson and climbed down from the vehicle’s roof. He had other things to look after. Like the long wooden crates that the Zambians had loaded into the rear of his truck in Kasama. With the wooden crates was a solitary large, hardened green plastic box. On top was stenciled,
COMMAND LAUNCH UNIT (JAVELIN)
NIIN
01-433-8025
NSN 1430-01-433-8025
AAWS-M (ADVANCED ANTITANK WEAPON SURF-TO-SURF MISSILE)
It was a Javelin. Patrick glanced over at the sitting John who appeared no different than he would if he was in a Parisian café, waiting for a woman to show up. The tall blond man had changed out of his suit and back into a T-shirt. This one had the words “Dixieland Delight” across the chest. The dude must have packed nothing but ammunition and T-shirts. And whatever was in those folders that had made the Zambians so attentive.
The folders had also bought these javelins—or, bought back, as they had “Property of US Army” stenciled on the side—as well. How the man knew the Zambian civilians had them was anyone’s guess.
In the building, John leaned back in the chair, taking another drink of his tea as his phone lit up. The bright glow from the screen visible as he held it up. He answered it quickly, saying no more than a handful of words as he stood, leaving the folder on the chair, and walked towards Patrick and the waiting truck. Patrick hadn’t been able to hear the words, and even if he could, he was sure they were in one of the languages John spoke that he didn’t.
“If you girls are done bickering, we’ve got some driving to do,” he told the pair as he climbed in the vehicle. “Let’s go, waiting on you.”
Patrick packed the containers back into the vehicle as Jackson plugged in the turret. He didn’t want to have to hand-crank it. They were all alone now in the middle of Africa. Every second might matter.
The HMMWV pulled out from behind the buildings and onto the road, starting the long trek west towards their friends. In the opposite direction of the Russians. Patrick drove as John reached behind him and picked up the phone from the seat Enoch had been riding in. The phone was an older, pre-Bluetooth model, with the old plug-in headphone port. The headphones were taped around the microphone of an extra headset that sat in the back, and let them listen to the phone’s music. John scrolled through until he found one of his favorites. As the three men drove down the road, a female’s voice started to sing.
Patrick recognized it instantly, one of those mid-2000s love songs that had gotten turned into a Euro-rave track. This particular one featured a woman telling her lover how every time they touched it was magic. Patrick had sung it to his wife at a bar after their first child was born, and she had rightfully laughed at him.
“Hey, sir, don’t we have any, like, good music?” Jackson inquired.
“Every time you call me sir, I’m adding another EDM song to the playlist,” John replied.
“Jackson, how old are you?” Patrick asked, shooting John a look.
“I’m nineteen, Sergeant,” the young Marine replied.
“You were a baby when this song came out, show some respect,” John told him, smirking.
“At least Enoch played the occasional rock song,” Jackson said, defending his position.
“Yeah. And look where that got him.”
It only took a quarter of an hour before they approached the intersection where they had run into the Russians a few hours before. Patrick knew what they would find on the road. These Russians didn’t seem like the “bury your dead” types, so the road would be littered with their corpses, and whatever leftover horrors a fresh battlefield offered. He had seen scenes like this before, and braced himself for another.
“This right turn here, you are clear right,” John told Patrick. They didn’t see any spent brass on the road, and Patrick, who had done a tour in Iraq, knew the locals had long since scooped up the valuable metal. But the bodies, and the body parts, were still there, strewn about the road, darkening and bloating in the heat. Patrick could smell them even as they drove past.
“Jackson, navigate me around this,” Patrick said, slowing his speed to a crawl.
“Just run them over,” came the answer from the turret.
“Do what I fucking tell you,” the sergeant replied. He wasn’t sure he could stomach running over one of the bloated corpses and having it pop under the tires. John was silent, seemingly not caring one way or the other, and stared out the window as they slalomed through the remnants of the carnage the American machine gun had made. But John’s head was bobbing up and down, peering closer to the glass occasionally. He was looking for something. Patrick could not begin to imagine what the man could possibly want here, but he would be no help navigating the vehicle around the human landmines.
Suddenly, John spoke again. “There. Yes. Stop the truck,” he ordered. Patrick obeyed despite his confusion, and watched the big man in the seat next to him unfold his long limbs out of the vehicle and walk up to one of the Russian bodies. Squatting over him, John rolled the man on his back, looking for a weapon or a hidden grenade. Only then did he start to check his wounds. Patrick and Jackson could see him say something to the man, and to their surprise the wounded man appeared to respond. John stood and turned back towards the truck. “Both of you come here and load this dude in, he’s coming with us.”
Jackson and Patrick traded confused glances. Certainly John didn’t mean…
“Let’s go, hurry up before he dies. Throw him in the back.”
There was the John they knew.
The soldier and Marine obeyed, dragging the wounded man up to and then into the truck. He was small and light so carrying him wasn’t difficult, but he was bleeding profusely from wounds in his stomach and leg. His face was that of a young man, maybe early 20s, but in a ghostly shade of white. Jackson buckled the limp man into the seat behind John, where Enoch had once sat.
“You sit down in here with us,” John told Jackson. “We won’t need a gunner for a bit.”
Patrick drove, glancing at John every so often, wondering what the man was doing bringing this dying Russian whom he clearly had no intention of treating. John stared out the window as the wounded man moaned in the back, trying to put pressure on his own wounds.
The music continued to play through the headphones, the three Americans remained silent and the Russian moaned.
The upbeat lyrics and rhythm unsettled Patrick, and were occasionally interrupted by soft moans, but never wails, from the wounded ghoul in the back seat. Ten minutes, and a pair of cheery electronic songs later, they approached a group of abandoned buildings along the road. They looked like they had once been a repair shop for cars, but now merely served as a place for African wildlife to get out of the elements. The sun was starting to set, sending golden rays across and through the building’s broken windows.
“Here,” John told them. “Pull over behind this building and bring him inside.”
