Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 4
Why did that idiot stop? the major wondered, his brain spinning. They had rehearsed their exit two dozen times, but not this precise scenario. They had assumed they would either make contact as they rolled out, or from behind, never in the middle.
The noises of the battle at the front gate still thundered, but Frey knew that to stop here meant death. He needed to get the unarmored LMTVs with their cargo beds filled with people as far away from the danger as possible. The answer hit Frey in a second. As long as Lieutenant Betz’s truck was there, the Iranians had cover, but they couldn’t move, and every second the convoy got further away. The young lieutenant was, perhaps unintentionally, giving them a chance to escape.
“Punch it,” he said to a stunned Harris who, despite his instinct, obeyed the order and pressed his booted foot onto the pedal. Mashing it into the floor as the first tracer rounds started to fly by from the rear. The green strobes flew down the length of the convoy like beams piercing the night.
Frey saw the color, and knew this was Russian or Chinese ammunition. The barium salts in their powder produced this green light. The fire was wild and ineffective. Bright tracers sprayed throughout the night randomly, like children aiming hoses. It was the telltale sign of a man using the rifle under pressure for the first time who hadn’t quite mastered the art. The thirty rounds flew wildly by the convoy and down the street. Whether they landed harmlessly in a wall, or went through a window into some sleeping Zambians, Frey couldn’t tell. Nor did he care.
He knew back there someone was trying to get an RPG into action. The two figures at the rear of the truck stepped together for a moment, and a bright flash from the back of the tube sparked through the dark. Frey had seen this before. More times than he could count.
“Barsamian, get down—RPG,” Frey managed to get off before the rocket took flight.
The deadly shape flew painfully slow, every second an eternity. If that rocket hit one of the LMTVs, it was all over. They would have to fight their way back into the embassy and try something else.
If it hits my family’s LMTV…
Frey never got to finish the thought. The rocket cleared the tube, and curved wildly, corkscrewing down the street. It ricocheted off the pavement and then skipped past the rearmost LMTV before flying up into a parked delivery motorcycle. The warhead exploded, setting the motorcycle’s cargo ablaze and lighting up the night.
“Those fucking idiots didn’t take the wire off the stabilizer fins,” Barsamian yelled, and Frey breathed a sigh of relief.
The Iranians considered their offending weapon, then started to reload. They had enough time to get one more shot off at the convoy before they dealt with this last American vehicle. The assistant, who had never bothered to reload his rifle, was reaching into the bag to grab another rocket when a machine gun tore through them, cutting both men down. They collapsed in a ball on the street, one on top of the other.
In their haste, the Iranians had not seen the first American vehicle exit, and it had sat there, without lights, down the dark street, lurking like a golem. The two Iranians did not live long enough to even realize their mistake. Both were dead before they hit the ground. The last Iranian saw his two comrades die just feet away in the street, and knew his only chance of survival was to get the heavy metal door that separated him and the Americans inside the stopped vehicle open.
The radio clicked twice, and John’s voice broke through Betz’s hot mic. “Adams, get down,” he said, his stoic voice calm amidst the chaos.
Frey looked in his mirror. They were only a few hundred feet from the pair of American HMMWVs, but he could see the turret of the lead vehicle facing its stopped wingman. Time stood still. It may have been a heartbeat, maybe two, before the machine gun sitting on top of John’s truck tore a burst of flame through the night. Tracers ricocheted off Betz’s armor, and the last attacker fell.
It was a risky move, one that wouldn’t have been possible if John’s truck had a fifty caliber, which would have cut through the other HMMWV like it was paper. The entire incident had taken seconds, but now three Iranians were dead, and their cover blown. They needed to hurry. A running chase through the streets of Lusaka was not a desirable outcome.
“Two, this is One,” John’s voice came on the radio as flatly as it was when they had started moving less than a minute before. “Threat’s eliminated, we’re right behind you.”
His cell phone’s ring jolted the colonel from his sleep. The incessant banging and noises from the mine had become white noise to him and no longer troubled his sleep. Vodka helped as well, but that was more a cure for boredom than sleep. But his phone rarely rang, and when it did, it rang with a furiously annoying tone that drilled into his brain like his skull was the mine outside his door.
Brushing off the fatigue and rubbing the hangover from his tired eyes, he reached for the offending device and for a moment considered not answering it.
The colonel stared at the screen, knowing he could never place the number, but he knew the country code. +260. Zambia. Scratching his long dark beard, he pushed the button and answered the phone.
“Yes?” He spoke in heavily accented English. It hurt him that he was forced to speak in English, but he had learned over the past decade and a half to accept this as a fact of African life. “TIA,” he had heard said: This is Africa.
Luckily for the colonel the reply came in Russian. Listening to the report of the man he had sent to watch the American embassy in Zambia, the signs of fatigue drained from his face, replaced by equal parts focus and anger. He had hoped this call would be good news, that the American embassy had fallen and his prize was captured and waiting for him, but the voice on the other end of the phone had nothing but bad news.
“How long ago did they leave?” the colonel asked. “What direction?”
Looking at his watch, he tried to do some math. He stood, still only half dressed, and yelled down the hallway to his second-in-command: “Get the mobile company ready! Tell the Chinese they will have to secure their own damned mine.”
His eyes became laser focused; his hand trembled as he rubbed it through his long, dark beard again. He had just one more question. Holding the phone to his ear again, he asked, “Was he with them?”
“Da,” came the reply.
Day 1
National Highway T2, Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia
Planned Route: Lusaka to Mpika, Zambia
1,242 Miles to Rwanda
They had floored it through the streets of Lusaka, turning through the city’s narrow streets like race car drivers in their lumbering vehicles, but no one had chased them. They were too busy fighting over the empty embassy the Americans had left behind. Even if the Iranians had wanted to avenge their three dead comrades and scorched homeland, the thought of chasing down a heavily armed American unit cooled their bloodlust long enough for the distance to be insurmountable.
They reached the city’s outskirts just as the sun began to rise, and now, a few hours before it reached its zenith, were well into the quiet ruralness of the Zambian countryside. The main highway was paved, but was still in rough shape. Zambia’s roads had once been the envy of all southern Africa, but that was in the decade after the British had left northern Rhodesia and the locals had named their new country Zambia in the 1960s. Since then the roads, and much of Zambia itself, had deteriorated.
The convoy cruised over the rolling hills and through the sleepy villages that dotted the T2’s path. Trees and bush grass filled the spaces between the tiny towns and villages, and traffic heading away from the capital was light. Even more importantly, the rain, so constant for the last weeks, had stopped.
Frey pulled up his map and saw their destination: Rwanda. The once war-torn country had become a refuge for the collection of Americans and Europeans from all over Africa. If they could get there. The road to temporary safety was just over 1,300 long miles from Lusaka, and should take them just over four days to travel it. If all went well.
Closing his eyes and thinking back into the dark recesses of his memory, Frey remembered the message the motorcycle courier had carried.
State of War exists between United States/NATO and Russia, China, DPRK, Iran.
Current Friendly/Enemy Situations Unknown.
No Contact with CONUS/EUCOM/AFRICOM Command Possible.
Hold in place if possible.
If you cannot, assemble at Kigali, Rwanda.
If impossible, attempt to find ship at Dar es Salaam.
If all options impossible, make best decision.
God Bless America.
Signed: CDRUSAFRICOM
The letter was typed, printed, signed, and delivered via a motorcycle courier who had ridden clandestinely through Africa to deliver it. He had assumed the US Africa Command Commander had been in Germany for the holidays. Who in their right mind would spend it here? Yet, here he was, still giving orders via courier, just as messages had traveled in Africa for hundreds of years.
A separate letter had come to the tall blond man in the lead vehicle, but Frey had let the Marines give it to him without question. In the back of his mind, he knew that would need to be watched. Any objective for the convoy other than reaching safety put his family in danger, which was why Frey had put the intelligence agency officer’s gun truck ahead of his in the column. Right out front where he could be watched.
Thus eight American vehicles drove down the T2 highway away from Lusaka. The noise in the old, barely insulated gun trucks was deafening, but was occasionally interrupted by Marine Corps Private First Class Barsamian’s singing in the turret.
“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee…!” the private from Missoula droned on. “We don’t take no trips on LSD—”
“What was rule number three, Private Barsamian?” Frey said into his headset, looking up from the files he was reading to scan the side of the road, a habit that had never left him since his first deployment to Iraq. It was also where he had also developed the six rules that those who rode with him had to obey, and rule number three was the firmest of them all.
“No country music, sir?” the young private answered nervously.
“And what kind of bullshit are you singing, Private?”
“Country music, sir.”
“We have our own problems, Private. We don’t need to hear about theirs.”
“Roger, sir,” the private answered, adjusting the microphone of his headset so the major couldn’t hear him sing. Each HMMWV had a driver, a truck commander, and a gunner, all wearing a headset hooked up to a central radio. Some, like Frey’s, also had a fourth man sitting in the rear in case more men were needed quickly. The HMMWV was loud, and to hear one another across the roaring diesel engine was a test of vocal and auditory endurance without a radio. The microphone was hot, meaning they could talk to one another inside the vehicle without pressing the switch that dangled from the headset. That was to talk to the other trucks.
Frey looked back down to finish the report he had been reading. The day he had been assigned to this position he had begun reading everything he could about Zambia. Every news article, every AFRICOM white paper, every classified CIA assessment. He had even subscribed to two Zambian online newspapers and a third Substack from some hiker who was traveling Africa. In Frey’s experience, the more you knew, the more prepared you were. He had spent years working in Eastern Europe. He had learned their customs and habits, but this assignment had come as a surprise, and he hated surprises nearly as much as he hated being back in Africa.
Before they had destroyed the embassy’s classified computers and files, he had printed out anything he felt might be of value. At the moment he was reading a report on the rainy season and how it correlated with increased political unrest. It may or may not have been helpful, but he wanted to have it either way.
As the convoy took a left turn, Barsamian moved his turret from right to left, covering the inside of the corner like the gunners had rehearsed dozens of times.
“Make sure they aren’t slinkying,” Frey said to his driver, Marine Corporal Harris. Frey had picked Harris for a reason. He was a few years older than the standard Marine, which was either a very good or a very bad sign. In his experience, men joined late in life either with nowhere else to turn or because they felt a calling they could not quiet. Harris’s maturity and quiet, confident demeanor told Frey it was the latter.
“Five is bunching up, sir,” Harris reported.
“Come on, Sergeant Major,” Private Barsamian said into the headset, his crooning complete. “It isn’t that fucking hard, National Guard.”
“Enough, Marine,” Harris interjected. “Keep your eyes on your sector.”
“Yes, Corporal, at least he is on the correct side of the road,” the young Marine answered. If he felt any sort of sting from the rebuke, it was absent in his voice.
He’s right, Frey thought to himself. It isn’t that fucking hard.
A convoy of vehicles on the move had to constantly pay attention to the distance between vehicles. Turns or stops could create a slinky effect in the convoy, which bunched the vehicles up. It was a mortal sin in the wartime army Frey had been raised in. Bunching meant turning a small target into a fat one—and a few casualties into a disaster.
He reached down and pushed the little switch that was attached to his chest. “Five, this is Two, watch your slinky.”
“Two, Five,” came the response. “Uh, roger.”
Silence returned to the vehicle. As silent as possible behind the roar of a six-and-a-half-liter General Motors Detroit Diesel engine.
“Is… there a rule against Taylor Swift?” the private asked, breaking the silence.
“No, Private, there is not, as long as it isn’t her country stuff,” Frey told him.
“Man, I don’t want to hear any oldies. My mom listens to Taylor Swift,” Private Lopez in the back chimed in, shaking his head. “Fucking white people, man.”
Frey looked back in the mirror as they rounded the curve, trying to catch a glimpse of the truck his wife and children were in. Seeing it round the corner, Frey went back to his map.
“Thank you, sir,” Private Barsamian said, defending himself. “Disregard Private Lopez’s ignorance, sir, that is just how he was born. I just… I’m trying to process that we are a month into World War Three, and this Marine hasn’t had a single enemy kill, while Lance Corporal Jackson, the guy who needed an ASVAB waiver for not being able to read and write, has fucking three.”
“Patience, Marine, it’ll be a long war,” Corporal Harris said.
Frey quirked a smile. Here was another reason why he had picked Harris to drive. The dynamics between officers and enlisted working in close quarters for long hours was complicated. It was always better to have an experienced non-commissioned officer to run the vehicle and the men who crewed her. Which allowed Frey the space to worry about the overall convoy.
They had been driving hours without issue. Outside his window, a row of tiny stores and homes slipped by. They were the same cement construction one saw throughout Africa. A gift of a former colonial power, and a reminder of a time when Zambia was rising. The paint was spotty now, and a mismatched and faded cloth hung in the window openings instead of the glass that once did. He saw a delivery truck pull up and offload a pallet filled with bottles of Coke. Fresh from the plant west of Lusaka. Even if America no longer existed, at least something would be left of her, Frey thought to himself.
He marveled at how life here at the end of the world just kept on going. Like the great powers were still out there somewhere as they had always been. But would it last? Africa had always been trapped between two worlds. Despite its efforts, it had never quite been able to fully transition to a modern society. The greed, hatreds, and jealousies of the old Africa had always held it back. So now it straddled old and new, and did neither particularly well. The land might be beautiful, but to Frey, the people who inhabited that land so often were the worst versions of humanity. They murdered and robbed and raped for no reason than their own petty fiefdoms and vanities.
“Two, this is Eight, over,” the headset on his ears came to life and interrupted his thoughts as Lieutenant Betz, in command of the rear vehicle, called for him.
Frey was the second vehicle, so his call sign was “Two.” Usually, as the commander, he would have been referred to as “Six” on the radio, but with the combination of Marines, National Guard, and civilians all using the radio, they had decided to just keep it simple and call everyone by their order in the convoy.
“Eight, Two, go ahead,” Frey answered.
“Two, Eight, my Golf element says there has been someone following us for the past hour, over.”
Major Frey’s eyes narrowed at the news. Right. That had been too easy. Neither the Iranians, Chinese, nor the Russians back at Lusaka would let their enemy slip away like that.
“Eight, Two, roger. If they get closer than a hundred feet or you see them take some aggressive action, then weapons free, over.”
“Two, Eight… Ugh, roger… out,” Betz said, the pitch of his voice betraying the young lieutenant’s fragile nerves.
Standing behind and above Lieutenant Betz was his “Golf,” code for gunner. A young Marine lance corporal manning a fifty-caliber machine gun. A gun which had been in service since the dawn of the 20th century. Its 12.7-millimeter bullets killed mercilessly, and a quick burst from the monster would have no problem turning anyone back.
Frey had left the decision of whether everyone in the vehicle trailing them lived or died to the young lieutenant, and the convoy was relying on him to make the correct call.
“Two, this is One,” John’s voice came across the radio. “We shouldn’t take any chances.”
Frey’s anger bubbled up in his chest, but he knew he had to stuff it down. At least for now. He composed himself for another heartbeat and pushed the switch on his chest that hung from the headset’s cable to speak. “Eight makes the call, out.”
