Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 12
The vehicle came to a stop and John got out, walking quickly towards the crumbling building, leaving Patrick and Jackson behind. Normally somewhat talkative and personable, despite his dark humor, both Patrick and Jackson had noticed a change in the man since they had stopped to load the wounded Russian. John walked inside. He didn’t turn around to look at the men; he simply went in and found a chair before motioning to the men to put the Russian in it.
The room was dark, and the floor had long since been reclaimed by nature. A stench hung in the stale, damp air. Animals, probably baboons, had denned here, and without the fresh air to wash out the smell, it was nauseating. Jackson tried to exhale to get the putrid taste out of his mouth, but it was no use.
John pulled a flashlight from his pockets and shined its beam into the corners of the room. Satisfied they were the only living creatures here, the flashlight disappeared, and the room returned to its eerie dampness.
They dropped the moaning Russian in the chair with a thud. The young man screamed in pain and John shook his head.
“Go outside if you need to,” he told the pair without ever looking at them. He was busy pushing the Russian’s drooping eyelids up, making sure the man was still conscious.
Patrick watched as John closed his eyes for a moment, whispered something to himself and then opened his eyes quickly. The blond man’s entire demeanor suddenly changed. If he had been cold and distant the past few miles, he was now a block of pure ice. One glare from him could have stopped a tank in its tracks. His face, like the dying Russian’s, was something otherworldly.
John spoke quietly in a language neither American understood, but the wounded man replied. John spoke quietly, almost comfortingly to the young Russian.
The man nodded ever so slightly, as if trying to save enough energy to stave off the certain death coming for him. John put his hand behind the man’s head, pulling the Russian forward until their foreheads touched. Patrick heard just one word escape the Russian’s lips. “Dmitri.” It must have been his name.
They spoke again for a brief moment, and the wounded Russian blinked once. It was a deliberate blink. The man’s face winced in pain every time he tried to speak, and Patrick realized John was allowing the man to answer his questions in the least painful way possible.
The man slowly, almost painfully, opened his eyes and stared at John. John nodded, and pulled a water bottle out of his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and held it to the man’s lips. The wounded man had drunk nothing in hours, and dying was thirsty work. He cried as the water passed his lips and into him. But it was too much. His body was shutting down. The water forced him to gag, and he spit it up.
They spoke together again. John squatting in front of the dying man. Despite the soothing tone of his voice, Patrick thought John resembled a wild cat, crouching to pounce. And then it came. His tone changed, the question he asked was more direct, more methodical. Patrick couldn’t be sure what exactly was asked, but he thought he heard the word “Zambia.” For the first time the Russian did not answer. John repeated his question, his tone, unwavering and unchanged.
The sun was setting, and the room was dark. John pulled a chem stick out from his pocket and cracked it, holding it between them. His eyes glowed a menacing red from the reflected light. In the red glow the two men both appeared unhuman. Patrick’s blood ran cold as the Russian spoke. His gaunt, sunken cheeks creating their own shadows in the dying natural light. If the Russian was a ghoul, John looked every bit the demon crouched in front of him.
John’s hand moved towards Dmitri and settled on the man’s leg, inches from the large gash the fifty-caliber bullet had made when it grazed him. Whatever the Russian had offered as an answer was clearly not enough. John repeated the question a third time in the same staccato, lifeless voice.
The young man started to speak, offering the same defense as before, but his sentence quickly turned into a scream as John pressed the chem light he had been holding into the man’s wound.
Both Jackson and Patrick jumped, unprepared for the scream. Jackson, who had not been watching as closely as Patrick, grabbed for his rifle.
Patrick’s eyes widened in surprise as John, instead of inflicting more pain on the man, shh’d Dmitri comfortingly and leaned forward, wrapping the young Russian in his bear-like embrace. John rocked the man gently, and continued his soft whispering into his ear. To both Patrick and Jackson’s surprise, the Russian reached up, and put his arms on John’s, as if they were hugging. The short, skinny Russian looked like he could have been a child in the tall American’s embrace.
Dmitri choked back tears. Whether they were from the pain John had inflicted, the pain of the wounds themselves, or the pain at the sense of impending death he felt, no one, least of all Dmitri, knew.
Dmitri moved his lips, but no sound came out. His head dipped lifelessly forward, and a thin line of drool ran from his lips to the dirt floor below.
Thank God, Patrick thought, assuming the man had died, but whatever comfort Patrick found in the end of Dmitri’s suffering was short lived. John reached a giant paw forward, his long fingers intertwining wickedly though the man’s short hair, and pulled his drooping head upright.
John grabbed the red chem stick and waved it in front of the man’s face, trying to get his attention. The red light flashed like a streak through the dark room, casting eerie shadows across the grim space. Dmitri’s eyes drifted, unfocused, but slowly began to follow the red light as if the glowing stick in his torturer’s hand was the only thing holding him to this life.
The conversation continued. John reverting to the kind and comforting persona he had displayed at the start. Dmitri, however, clung to life by the loosest of threads. Despite not knowing the words the young Russian used, Patrick could sense no more resistance remained in Dmitri’s body. He answered each question quickly, and only moved once—he shook his head “no,” and used what little life remained in him to correct John.
Something had changed. Patrick could sense it. The dynamic between the two had shifted. John was no longer exploring; he was hunting. He sat closer to Dmitri, and once again put his hand on the man’s wounded leg. Dmitri squealed audibly, hyperventilating, and shook his head, protesting his truthfulness. His words came in a muttered blur, but out they came.
The questions from John continued, but his hand never moved from the man’s wound. In the glow of the red light Patrick could see the mangled flesh and meat, the muscle pulsing as fresh blood poured from the deep gash. John asked one final question, quick, flat, directly to the point. Dmitri nodded ever so imperceptibly. His eyelids drooped, closing.
John leaned forward, his ear next to the man’s mouth. Patrick and Jackson both saw Dmitri whisper something, but they were too far to hear what the Russian had said. They could tell John had heard it. He had stiffened for a moment, his eyes wide in the sinister red glow of the chemlight. After a few moments he nodded and whispered something back to the bleeding man, before kissing his forehead.
John stood, unlimbering his long frame, and walked behind the bleeding Russian. He stared into a dark corner of the room, the red chemlight still glowing in Dmitri’s lap casting eerie red-silhouetted shadows on the brick wall. Patrick followed his glance, trying to see what could be interesting the man in the corner. He stared so intently that he missed John pulling the pistol out of his waistband. John raised it to the back of the Russian’s head and pulled the trigger, causing both Americans to jump again.
The bullet passed through the back of the dying man’s brain and exploded through his right eye, embedding itself in the far wall. The young Russian slumped over and slid to the dirt floor in a heap.
The blond American closed his eyes, and whispered something to himself. Opening his eyes again, Patrick saw them focused and friendly, like the man they had spent days riding with had taken a short break from being inside his body and had suddenly returned.
“Let’s go, we need to get to Pweto,” John said and walked without another word towards the waiting gun truck.
Day 3
Local Road D79, Mulundu, Zambia
Planned Route: Chingali, Zambia, to Pweto, Congo
1,125 Miles to Rwanda
The convoy roared west towards the setting sun. Alex was now in the lead, and he had needed to remind himself more than once to say “One” and not “Two” on the radio. The truck and crew that had saved them at the embassy’s back gate was no longer with them. They had driven off towards Kasama and were now on their own somewhere in Africa.
Alex had tried to push the what-ifs out of his mind. He will be fine. That bastard always was fine, even at the expense of everyone else around him.
But the uncertainty weighed on the rest of the group, especially when Major Frey changed the plan. The most direct route, to retrace the route the Russians took north of Lake Mweru, was simply too risky. To get to the national highway, the N5, the one paved and most secure route in all of the Congo, was the goal. Nestled along the shores of the long length of Lake Tanganyika, it was a direct line to Rwanda and temporary safety.
It was the most direct and easiest route if everything in Kasama went perfectly. If the Russians took the bait and headed to the far away eastern border, the Americans might slip past them to the lake before they caught back up on their way home to whatever Congolese mine they came from.
That was before they had spent hours at the makeshift hospital trying to save the two wounded men. They had vented Davis’s lung, and now the young man had to make the journey constantly opening a valve taped to his torso to let out the air filling around and collapsing his lung. Between the vent and the shrapnel still in the man’s midsection, travel on the bumpy African roads was excruciatingly painful, but the young man bore the hurt in silence. The man whose blood stained the bench next to him had been buried behind the tiny hospital.
The delay had eaten into Major Frey’s timeline, leaving too many variables to chance now. So they had headed west towards the Luapula River, and the promise of a bridge across it into the Congo south and west of Lake Mweru. If anything had gone wrong in Kasama, it put a lake between them and the Russians. It was a delay, but not a major one. There had been disagreement, but Major Frey had won.
“One, this if Four, over.” Frey could hear the sergeant major’s voice on the radio. He was the only one still maintaining a by-the-book “over” after every transmission. The rest had followed Frey’s lead and only said it on the first transmission. The major sat in the cramped, stinking HMMWV and wondered when he had ditched the “over.” He had made thousands of radio transmissions in his career, and at some point he had dropped the standard and gone with what worked.
Probably in Iraq, he thought, watching the Zambian marshlands slide by out his window. This part of Zambia south of Lake Mweru was an endless swamp that followed the slowly meandering Luapula River.
“Sir, Four is trying to call you,” Corporal Harris spoke up, looking over at the distracted major.
“Four, One, go ahead,” Frey answered.
“One, this is Four, we are coming up to the bridge. Should we stop and fill up so we have a full tank on the other side? Over.”
“Four, One, yeah, good idea. Let’s pull over up at that high ground ahead of us.” Frey could see the road rise a little towards a small hill. That meant dry ground, and dry ground in Africa meant fewer predators.
“One, this is Four, roger, good copy, out,” came the textbook response. Frey rolled his eyes, but the sergeant major’s idea was a good one. They still had plenty of fuel for a few more hours, but every drop might matter in the Congo.
The convoy rolled to a halt on top of the small rise. Frey pulled his truck to the front, as the rest of the group lined up behind him. He reached over to Corporal Harris, who was already pulling his headset off, and tapped the Marine on the shoulder.
“Leave it running. Get the kids ready for some dismounted stuff,” Major Frey told him, and the corporal frowned, puzzled.
Frey ignored the look. He knew Harris would do what he was asked without needing to know why. The Marine would get his two junior charges ready to move with nothing but Frey’s command.
“And prep a seat for Ambassador Brown.”
Corporal Harris turned towards the major again, his expression progressing from curiosity to confusion, but Harris, like Frey, understood the dynamic. “Aye, sir, we will have his pre-flight drink ready.”
Frey laughed and got out of the vehicle. The sun was setting quickly, as it did this close to the equator. This close to the marshes, the bugs were intense, swirling around anything living that exposed themselves for longer than a millisecond. Frey swatted a Mopane fly away, and walked towards the other vehicles. Off to the right, the roaring of the Mambilima Falls fought with the insects’ constant buzz.
They were parked a mile outside the tiny village of Mulundu, which was connected by a bridge across the Luapula to the Congolese town of Kaluba on the other side. At least it had been. It wasn’t just the will of men that destroyed Africa; Mother Nature played her part, and the rainy seasons here were cruel. Ambassador Brown had assured them that USAID and the State Department sent funds every year for the Zambians to maintain the bridge. But Frey did not share the ambassador’s confidence.
A few years before, the local chief of Mulundu had murdered one of his subjects, setting off a year’s worth of rioting and low-scale civil war in the district. Few Americans had ventured out here since, but the land bore the scars of battle. All along the road, they had passed the black shells of burned cars and roofless husks that had once been homes. Neither had ever been cleared nor had new human life ever returned.
Behind him the driver of the first LMTV, a short and skinny man named Franklin Jones, climbed down from the truck, having to jump from the last step to the ground. Using a member of the embassy staff to drive had never sat well with Major Frey, but at least the man had never rear-ended them.
Frey motioned him over, and the middle-aged embassy staffer quickly recovered from his confusion and ran over to the major. “Would you please run back and tell Ambassador Brown and Lieutenant Betz I want to see them?” Frey had phrased it as a polite question, but really it was a command.
“You mean, me?” Jones asked, somewhat bewildered.
Frey sighed, and turned to face the civilian. “There is no one else here. Yes, you please.”
Jones beamed just as brightly as when he had been told he would be driving the LMTV, which as far as Frey knew, was the second time in the man’s life he had ever been tasked with anything important. He scurried off, before returning with both men.
“Is everything okay, Major?” The ambassador spoke first, his long gait hitched and stiff from the hours crammed inside the back of the LMTV.
Lieutenant Betz did not speak. He waited, knowing his major would give him the information he needed.
“We are going into the village to find the exact route to the bridge. I don’t want to be ‘Jessica Lynching’ it though some border town with only one real exit.” Frey was sure his reference to the ill-fated convoy that gave the Global War on Terror its first fake hero was lost on both men.
“Mike, you will be in charge while I’m gone. It shouldn’t be more than a half an hour, down and back. If I make contact with anything dangerous, I will fight my way back to you. Do not come to us, do you understand, Lieutenant?” Frey added extra emphasis on this last part. If anything happened to them, the convoy would be down to two gun trucks. It did not need to be one. “If you make contact, make your best call. Either fight it here if it is small, or pull out and we will be on the radio.”
The lieutenant nodded, trying to process the information, trying to grapple with the burden that he was now in charge of everyone’s life.
“What if you don’t come back, sir?” Betz asked, reminding the major of the last outcome he had missed mentioning.
“I’ll either be back, or you’ll hear why not,” Frey replied without smiling. “Ambassador Brown, hop in.”
Brown climbed in without a word of protest, folding his long legs into the tiny back seat of the HMMWV. His head hit the soft, padded ceiling, and he turned nervously towards Private Lopez across the vehicle’s rear, surprised that anything could be less comfortable than the LMTV.
Lopez smiled at the ambassador. “Hey, sir,” the young man greeted his former boss. “Sorry we didn’t have time to warm any towels or fluff your pillow.”
“Thank you for thinking of me anyway,” the ambassador replied, trying to be a good sport. This type of interaction was outside of his forte, as Frey well knew. The ambassador had gone from boarding school to Harvard, and from there to law school and an environmental justice firm. Interacting with privates from Boyle Heights was not in his wheelhouse.
They pulled away, passing Lieutenant Betz talking to Gunnery Sergeant Harmon, whose stare did nothing to hide his distaste at the alterations being made to the chain of command. Taking orders from a veteran like Frey was one thing. Taking them from a novice like Betz was another.
The village of Mulundu was the same as the other dozen villages they had passed on their drive. It was small, poorly organized, and the bright paint of the walls tried in vain to cover the underlying poverty. The village was large enough to be on the map, and had what passed in this part of the world for a high school and a church.
“Follow this road until it makes a big left, and then there should be a side road that goes to the river,” Frey told Harris. Neither wore their headsets, so Frey simply yelled above the roar of the diesel motor. In the turret, Barsamian drummed on the armor, humming himself a song. Frey recognized the rhythm before the words came from Barsamian’s lips, but he was too slow to stop them.
“I bless the rains down in Affffffrica….”
“Barsamian,” Frey said sternly over the radio.
“Roger, sir. Shutting up, sir.” The young Marine knew the order, and Major Frey’s hatred of the legendary song.
