Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 28
He lit both pools of fuel, hefted the crates of ammunition, and started towards the ferry. From the corner of his eye, he saw movement behind the nearest fishing hut. It was the boy in the Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl Champions T-shirt who had played soccer with them a few hours before. The boy stared at Frey with wide eyes, stricken with panic. Frey continued to run, reaching out a giant arm and grabbing the boy by the collar, and dragged his tiny frame along with them.
“Go, go!” he screamed, throwing the boy aboard and leaping onto the ferry. It was nearly completely dark now as the ferry pushed off. The flashes and flames from the firefight on the hill had grown in intensity. Frey stood on the back of the boat and watched, staring at the flickering lights of the gunfight. Tracers flew through the night in both directions, and muffled explosions added their bass line to the battle’s noise. They made it halfway across the river, slipping into the darkness, when the cracks reached a crescendo, and then ceased.
A dark and unearthly silence returned to the river valley, interrupted only by the steady droning of the ferry’s diesel motor and the burning of the two Uruguayan vehicles. They cast a ghostly yellow pall on the shore, but the fire soon died away and darkness returned.
Frey dropped the gate of the LMTV, helping Staff Sergeant De Rossi load the giant gun into the bed. He pushed the gun in, and a small stuffed object caught his eye from the truck’s floor. He reached in and pulled out Ella’s stuffed beaver. His heart sank, and a flood of emotion jolted from his gut throughout his entire body.
“Give me a minute, Sergeant.”
“He was one of us sir, a real one,” De Rossi offered what little comfort he could, then walked off towards the cab of the truck.
Frey held the beaver to his chest, exhaled deeply, and rode into the darkness.
Day 7
National Highway N33, Mutanga, Congo
Planned Route: Kiambi to Lulimba, Congo
604 Miles to Rwanda
They departed at sunup. Every engine in the convoy started at the same time as the sun rose over Kiambi. The physical bodies of the last of the rear guard had stumbled into the camp an hour after dark. Their eyes and souls beneath caught up sometime later. None of the three Americans who had made the last crossing, Major Frey, Staff Sergeant De Rossi, or Sergeant Emmet, spoke about what had happened to them on the far side. They couldn’t. It was something for them to share, and no one else.
As the ferry had landed, they’d been greeted silently by Lieutenant Betz and John. Both having defied their orders and waited at the landing. Frey could sense why both men were standing there, and he begrudged neither their disobedience. He had simply climbed into the back of the LMTV and ridden up the far cliff towards the convoy and his family.
The boy Frey had dragged onto the ferry had disappeared as soon as they reached the far bank. His young eyes betrayed a soul that had seen endless defeat. Nodding his thanks, the kid slipped away into the city.
The two Uruguayans who had operated the ferry had driven off sometime in the night. Trying to make it to one of the UN bases somewhere in the country. Two men driving alone through the Congo in the night was neither the smartest nor safest decision ever, but they had done it despite the offer to remain with the convoy.
The remainder of the night had passed slowly, each second spent lying in the dirt, fending off flies and other insects, made to feel like an eternity, knowing a blooded enemy was just across the river. Every eye was glued to the darkness before them, and every ear desperately tried to pick out any man-made sound in an African night filled with noise. The convoy had lit no fires, and was nearly silent the entire night. Everyone lay in a hasty circle, waiting for the inevitable approach of footsteps in the night. No one slept, outside of the children, and Davis Price who, still on painkillers for his collapsed lung which was slow to heal, couldn’t help himself.
But throughout the long night, nothing approached the camp save a troop of yellow baboons who lumbered up to Sergeant Black and tried to steal his MRE. The baboons had broken contact without casualty, and as the sun rose, the tightly circled convoy uncoiled and headed down the road again.
Major Frey had tried to force himself back into normalcy. To shake off the battle and the death, and especially the look on his friend’s face as he had left him on the hill. He had seen war and death before. He had lived it for nearly a decade and a half and it had become as much of a part of his soul as anything possibly could. He had watched friends die before, but this was different. This was not the first time a friend had died for him, but somehow the death of the Uruguayans, men whose country was not even involved in this war, wrenched his heart. For the first time, he felt ashamed. Ashamed he had not stayed behind, and then, ashamed that he felt relieved he had not.
He had held Amanda wordlessly throughout the night, sitting up against the wheel of the LMTV, her head resting on his chest and the aromatic scent of her hair filling his nose. He listened to his children sleeping and watched them dream. He had made life-and-death decisions before, but never with them in the calculus. The metaphorical and physical ocean that had separated his duty from his family had vanished. He knew what the Lieutenant Frey from Iraq, or the Captain Frey from Afghanistan, would have done. This new Major Frey in Africa was a stranger to him.
He had climbed into the truck to depart a shell. His eyes stared off into the distance. The entire crew noticed, and exchanged worried glances. As far as they were concerned, the person most responsible for their continued survival was himself barely surviving. Even in a best-case scenario, they still had three days to travel, and they needed their major back.
“Sir, I have a question,” Private Barsamian asked from the gunner’s turret. He was sitting on the strap hooked across the hole in the vehicle’s ceiling which passed for a seat for the gunner, his hands gripping the top of the turret’s armored walls.
They had found the National Road again, meaning that at least part of it occasionally was paved. They were on a paved part now. Not only did the tactical vehicles run smoothly over potholes, but they ran faster. And speed meant safety. They had been traveling just over an hour, every mile putting the horrors, and the threat, of the Kiambi crossing behind them.
“You said the Rwandans and the Congo are fighting, but we are driving through the Congo towards Rwanda. Doesn’t that mean we will drive through some of the fighting?” Barsamian asked, doing his best to sound like he had paid attention and understood the major’s briefing on what they might find in the Congo from days before when they had first crossed the border.
Frey didn’t answer. His brain was somewhere else. Refighting last night’s battle in his head, thinking of any possible way everyone could have made it off the hill. Cursing himself that he wasn’t smart enough to think of one.
Despite the silence, the young private from Montana, perhaps sensing what was needed to get their major back, pressed on. “I mean, organized fighting, like army on army. Obviously there won’t be any Marines or the war would be over. But, are they still, like, having their own war despite us fighting World War Three?”
Frey inhaled slowly and then responded. “Most of the fighting is… was… north of where we will be going, but there is going to be spillover. It is the Congo.”
“Yeah, tracking, sir, but does that mean we might have to fight these M23 rebels, the Congo Army, the Russians, the Chinese, those assholes behind us, and the Kai Kai you mentioned that eat people?”
“Mai Mai,” Frey corrected him. “I don’t know. What are your rules of engagement?” he asked, wanting to make sure the young private behind the machine gun really understood them. He knew what the young man was doing, and as much as he detested its necessity, he understood. A leader dwelling on the past was no help to anyone. He needed to snap out of it.
“Russians or Chinese, shoot. Africans, fire if engaged,” the young private said into the headset.
“Red and yellow, we green to engage; black, hold back!” PFC Lopez sang from the vehicle’s back seat.
“Private…” Corporal Harris said from the driver’s seat of the HMMWV. Like Barsamian, Corporal Harris understood what the major needed. He needed that normalcy. The banter and rhythm that had defined their days together. He needed them to do their roles. He needed Barsamian and Lopez to be idiots, and Harris to be the older brother.
Frey looked over across the vehicle’s interior at him, wondering how this young non-commissioned officer would choose to handle the privates in his charge. He did not register it, but it was the first time his mind had left the ridge above the Luvua River since the day before.
“Yes, Corporal?” Lopez and Barsamian both answered in unison.
“If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m going to kill you both and feed you to the fucking Lai Lai.”
Frey stared out the window so Lopez couldn’t see his smile. He wasn’t going to correct the corporal’s pronunciation. But already a living soul was filling the void inside.
“Aye, Corporal, just… I’m going to get to kill someone eventually, right?” Barsamian asked. “We’ve been in, like, I dunno, a half dozen gunfights, and nothing for ‘ol Private Barsamian. Even Lopez has gotten some. But that makes sense. Probably wasn’t the first time our resident Mexican shot a black dude in the street? Right, ese?? The biggest bullshit is if I’d never enlisted and just stayed in Missoula, I probably would’ve Red Dawned at least one commie by now.”
No one responded.
Just then, as if on cue, the radio came to life.
“Two, this is One,” John’s voice pumped into their headsets. It has been a while since they had communicated with the other vehicles. Who knew who was out there and listening? The American radios were still encrypted and hopping frequencies thousands of times a minute, but the enemy couldn’t hear what wasn’t said.
“One, Two, send it,” Frey responded. They were approaching a fork in the road, but the route had been clear. They were going north, then east back to the N5 and the shores of the great Lake Tanganyika. Frey wanted them north of the lake port city of Kalemi and closer to the mountains by sundown. They had ten hours of daylight left. They could do it.
“Two, One, we have some sort of situation up the road about a mile out. Looks like some sort of bus accident, I can’t make it out.”
“We can’t go around. Can we push through?” Frey asked. He had no intention of stopping for whatever was going on ahead of them.
“Yeah, we can try. Might be a bit bumpy.”
Whatever the lead vehicle had seen on the drone, they were going to be on top of it in about a minute.
Corporal Harris gave Frey a look. By “bumpy,” John meant there were bodies in the road.
“We’ll figure it out when we get up there,” Frey told his driver. “Don’t stop unless I tell you, roger?”
“Aye, sir,” the Marine responded, taking a deep breath and tightening his grip on the wheel, happy he had his leader back.
In the rearview mirror, the gaps between vehicles were large, good for traveling on the rough and unpredictable roads, but bad for clearing this obstacle together. The longer it took for the convoy to clear the wreckage, the higher the chance for something to go wrong, giving whoever was up there opportunity to interfere.
“Tell them to close the gaps.”
Standing in the turret, Private Barsamian faced the other vehicles. He brought his fists together in front of his face, and the gaps between the vehicles began to tighten.
A thick column of black smoke had already started to rise in front of them. A white bus that looked like it came straight out of some 1970s church camp was on its side on the road’s shoulder, and it was on fire.
“Barsamian, get high in the turret, guide Harris through this mess.”
Driving a HMMWV, especially an armored one, was a group effort. The driver could see what was farther out in front of him, but the long hood and flat ballistic glass prevented him from seeing things closer in. To his right, the radio mounts blocked his view entirely. It required the vehicle commander in Frey’s seat to be the driver’s eyes for everything coming from that direction.
The gunner, exposed in the turret, had the best view. As Barsamian stood on the turret’s strap, he had a 360-degree view of the vehicle.
“Go slow, but don’t stop, let him guide you,” Frey told the corporal. These Marines were too young to have driven HMMWVs during the early days in Iraq and Afghanistan. Frey had, and the intricacies of it would stay with him until his dying day. Whenever that came.
“Aye, sir,” Harris responded. “Speak up, Marine,” he told Barsamian in the turret.
“There’s debris and stuff, but you can clear it,” Barsamian said, as the convoy snaked through pieces of bus and, as they got closer, pieces of people.
“We’ve got dismounts walking up on the right. Keep going,” Frey told him.
Frey watched the vehicle in front of him lurch up, then settle back down.
“Vic One just ran over a body,” Barsamian said from the turret. “Savage.”
Shaking his head, Frey watched as the stream of Africans approached the convoy. “Gunner, rotate your turret to the three o’clock.”
Barsamian hesitated, and then the powered turret whirred…
“Do… I engage?” Barsamian asked.
“Holy fuck,” Lopez said nervously from the back.
“No, but keep them back,” Frey told his gunner.
Frey could see the crowd as they got closer. Some were bleeding, some were holding babies or children, and as they inched closer to the bus, Frey saw what had happened. The front of the bus had been torn apart and was still on fire. The windows were shattered, the roof blown off. Twisted shards of aluminum reached up towards the heavens like ghastly arms beckoning for relief. On one smaller piece, a man’s shirt was wrapped, waving like a flag where it had been snagged from his body on the sharp metal.
They had hit a mine.
Frey pressed his microphone switch. “Everyone, stay on the road—repeat, do not leave the road. Mines. Out.”
His brain spun. There were probably no mines in the road itself, even in the potholes, but after decades of on and off fighting in this area, random mines or unexploded ordinance were all over.
They snaked through the debris and the bodies slowly, trying not to hit anything that might puncture a tire. Frey’s vehicle had just about cleared the wreckage when the radio came alive.
“One, this is Four, halt the convoy, halt the convoy, we have boots on the ground!” Gunny Harmon’s voice, normally so calm and in control, if a bit aggressive, betrayed the disbelief that also shot through Frey.
“What the fuck?” Frey said aloud. Boots on the ground meant one of their group had gotten out of their vehicle. Looking back in the mirror to see what on earth the Gunny could have seen, it only took him a second to spot it.
From his turret, Barsamian saw it too. ”Holy fuck, what is that crazy bitch doing?”
Frey stared wide-eyed, seeing that the ambassador’s wife and one of the USAID girls had jumped out of their LMTV and were hurrying towards the injured group. Ansley, he thought her name was, but that didn’t matter now. She could stay here for all Major Frey cared, but the ambassador’s wife was an entirely different story.
”Lopez, dismount and get back there—move, Marine,” Frey yelled.
Lopez ripped his headset off, grabbed his rifle, and was a blur of camouflage as he climbed out, and sprinted to the defense of the ambassador’s wife. The young Marine had come to Africa all the way from one of the roughest neighborhoods Los Angeles had to offer to guard the ambassador and his family, and now one of them was walking into danger.
“All Vix, negative—push through, push through,” Frey called out over the radio. Having forgotten the need to limit radio transmissions amidst this crisis. Whoever was listening now was listening. “One, pull through fifty meters and stop. Set up a defensive perimeter there. Stay on the fucking road.” With the ambassador’s wife on the ground, they had problems, but there was no need to compound those problems by letting the Africans near the vehicles.
“Eight, Two,” Frey continued, calling Lieutenant Betz in the convoy’s last truck, “I want you and your dismount on the ground.” Scrolling through the contingencies in his head, there was none for this. He was making it up on the fly.
“Five, get them formed up there, keep everyone in the vehicles, you are in charge, I’m getting out,” Frey told Sergeant Major Sweeney, and climbed out of his vehicle into the middle of the African morning.
With the sudden burst of heat came the smell.
Burnt rubber, metal, and flesh all swirled together. Frey had smelled it before, but no matter how many times he did, he had never grown used to it. He spotted Nala, the ambassador’s wife, holding a baby and trying to communicate with one of the locals, and started to jog towards her. He ran with his rifle at the low ready, diagonally across his body, pointed at the ground, but his right index finger straight forward across the side of the trigger and his thumb felt for the safety.
Yeah, right, lady, Frey thought as he got closer. Private Lopez was already there, pushing back a short Congolese man getting a little too close to the ambassador’s wife, and Lieutenant Betz and his dismount Corpsman Bagley were approaching from the other direction.
He slowed as he approached and took in the scene around him. There appeared to be about twenty locals in various states of injury, with another ten dead in the road that he could see. They didn’t have time for this… whatever this was.
