Blood Memory (Mongol Moon), page 41
“I never got to host any of those cultural cooking exchanges. That dinner in Mutanga was the closest I got,” Chef said with a shrug. “Maybe if we make it, I can teach the Mai Mai the benefits of beef so they’ll stop eating people.”
“Yeah, why the fuck not? If you can make boiled baboon taste good, you can do anything,” John said, and told the man to grab his rifle and hop in.
That was it. Two more of John’s group from the Agency rounded out the team. He had handed a box to the third, giving him instructions on who to give it to when the convoy reached their destination.
The ambassador’s oldest son Thomas, all of fifteen years, had also volunteered. Frey was glad his mother hadn’t been there to cause a scene. She was off helping bury the dead in a shallow ditch by the tree line. Alex and John both knew what was on the boy’s mind. Vengeance. But a small unit operating alone was no place for the uncontrolled vengeance of a teenager. That is how mistakes got made.
John had told the disappointed boy no, and that the convoy would need fighters too. As the boy walked back towards the LMTVs, Frey put his hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“They took our HMMWV for the mission, so I guess I’ll ride in the LMTV. With my mom,” he said, his voice dripping with sadness and defeat.
Remembering this lone teenager running through machine gun fire to rescue Lieutenant Betz, Major Frey said, “The LMTV is for civilians. You are a soldier, and I’m two gunfighters short in my gun truck. You can ride with me anytime. Go say goodbye to your father, take the time you need, but report to Corporal Harris.” Frey pointed back to the last remaining HMMWV, then added, “I’ll run cover with your mom, Private.”
The boy smiled, hiking the slung rifle higher, and jogged over to the major’s gun truck and a waiting Corporal Harris before the Major could see the tears streaming down his face. Harris had elected to stay with the major too. More precisely he had been shamed into it after Lopez and Barsamian left. Never one to be the last man to leave, he had stayed to drive the major.
Frey walked towards the group of women and others who were saying their final goodbyes to the dead, and preparing what they would need for the last leg of the journey.
Their bodies were lined up along the ground as some of the male embassy staffers dug the large grave with shovels from the LMTV’s repair kits. The bodies had been covered as best as they could be, but Frey recognized most of them underneath the collection of sleeping bags and ponchos that concealed them. He recognized Alyssa, the USAID worker who had snuck off with Lance Corporal Adams. That Adams lay dead in a field only a dozen miles from here and they would be buried apart struck Frey as almost unjust. Next to her lay Meredith Emmons, who had been the sole casualty in Gunnery Sergeant Harmon’s supply truck. Preston Brewster had been with her, and now both he and Doctor Tanaka were going through her pockets, searching for anything they could bring home to her family. Both men had tears in their eyes as they dutifully went about their task.
De Rossi, Franklin, and McCoy were towards the end. Sergeant Major Harmon broke off a single dog tag from each to carry back with him. He unzipped de Rossi’s uniform top to search but came up empty.
“Check his back pocket, Sergeant Major,” Frey quietly told him.
The man’s hands slid behind his dead charge, and came back with one of the metal tags in his hand. “Why would he wear them there? Standard operating procedure is around the neck.”
“If you wore the old body armor long enough, the one with the neck armor, it rubbed a lot. And guys who spent a lot of time in helicopters and under parachutes keep them there.”
Sweeney nodded, taking in this information so foreign to the military he had spent over twenty years in. Frey felt for the man. He had brought seven men to Africa, and now three were being buried here. It was down to him, the wounded Lieutenant Betz, Sergeant Emmet, and Specialist Pass. Frey knew that after Sergeant Major Sweeny stood up, he was going to say goodbye to his old friend Sergeant Patrick, who was leaving with the other group.
“They were good men, Sergeant Major. You did well getting them this far.”
“Do you… ever wish it had…”
“Been me?”
“I… no, I don’t think that exactly, it’s just that…” The man’s voice trailed off. His head shook slowly, and his eyes stared past Frey, as if he would find the words he was looking for written on the tree behind the major.
“Can’t find the words?”
“No, sir. I…”
“Take some time, they’ll come to you. One thing you’ll realize as a combat veteran is that the brain and the mouth don’t always synch up.”
He patted the man’s back, and he could see the realization on the old NCO’s face that he was indeed finally a combat veteran. Major Frey peeled a patch off his right shoulder, his patch from a unit he went to war with, and handed it to Sweeney.
“Here, I know we aren’t technically in the 1st Infantry Division now, but you can take mine.”
Tears came again to Sweeney’s bright eyes, along with an intolerable sadness mixed with a shameful sense of relief. Frey knew the tempest of emotions the man was feeling, as keenly as he knew he was of no more use to the man. He nodded in understanding, and left the man to his duty.
Frey walked down the line and saw Nala over the ambassador’s body, but before he got there, he saw Ms. Jones laid next to him, the poncho which covered her slightly pulled back, revealing her face. Whether the woman wanted to spend eternity next to her boss was a question beyond Frey. He squatted down to pull the cover back into place, and saw that whoever had laid her here had also left her sketch pad with her. Frey slid the book from the woman’s hands and held it in his. There was blood on the cover, and some of the pages, but if her son somewhere in Bagram survived, Frey wanted him to have it. Somehow.
He paused next to the ambassador’s wife. Widow now. He thanked God he had never had Casualty Notification Duty. What to say to a grieving widow and child somehow seemed perpetually beyond his grasp.
“Ma’am,” he said quietly.
The widow turned around. “Please… Nala,” she said quietly. Frey could see the tears in her eyes, but he noticed something else. Something darker, harder, that he couldn’t quite place.
“We have to get going. I want Thomas to ride with me. It’s armored, and… it’s better to spread out,” he said, knowing she hadn’t seen how reckless her son had been back at the bridge.
“Whatever you say, Major,” she whispered.
Frey studied the woman’s face for a moment. Her eyes dropped, unable to meet his, and her shoulders slouched. Tears ran unchecked down her face, and her hands hung limp.
“Nala,” he said gently. “Do you know why your husband is dead?”
She gave him a fierce look, but pain shone in her brown eyes. “Because I made us stop. I delayed us all those days, I—”
“No.” Frey interrupted. “He’s dead because he came to Africa to help people. He’s dead because the Russians killed him. He’s dead because we are at war and sometimes that is how war goes.” Frey stepped closer, nearly touching the woman now. “You had nothing to do with it,” he firmly said.
Tears sprang to her eyes, a dam threatening to break. “If I hadn’t—” she tried to get out.
“If you hadn’t nothing. Those people were waiting for us. It didn’t matter. Us stopping got us the fuel we needed, and it got us Denis,” Frey told her, realizing she might not know the role Denis had played during the escape from the Russians. It probably was untrue; had they not taken the detour, they probably would have beaten the Russians to the highway, but they would never know. Time to move on.
“It was Denis who knew the creek was shallow in that spot. Without him, we are all dead in that field back there.”
Nala looked up, uncertain what to say. This wasn’t her world; it wasn’t the world she expected, either. Frey was the type of man she had spent her entire adult life chastising, and now, when she was at her weakest, he wasn’t attacking her, he was holding out his hand to help.
“Your husband gave you two sons, and our America is going to need all of her sons. You got this. You are a strong woman. Let’s go,” Frey said with a tone of finality, looking her in the eyes and making sure he saw the fire return before he turned back towards the rest of the group.
Everyone was preparing and saying their goodbyes. The plan didn’t just break the group in two, but it also separated people who had spent more than a week together fighting for their lives.
Major Frey walked up to where his kids were sitting against the wheel of their damaged LMTV. There hadn’t been time to clean all of the blood off of them, but Ainsley from the USAID staff had tried. He put his hands on both of their shoulders, kneeling in front of them. James’s lip trembled, despite him trying to keep a straight face. Ella, still with blood in her hair, had wrapped her arm around her big brother’s shoulder and was drawing as much comfort from him as she could.
“We are going to be okay. Remember… we are together.”
Both kids nodded. There was nothing he could do for them now except get them out of here. Amanda was busy loading some of the more seriously wounded into one of the three LMTVs that would make the trip. The fourth was already burning. No sense leaving it to the Russians.
“They are getting ready to go,” Alex told his wife as she helped the last of the wounded into the truck. He watched as she walked over to the departing group. First handing Trevor some things, one of which he recognized as one of her books on tropical diseases, and talking to him for a moment before walking up to John. Frey knelt down beside his kids again, making sure he was on their level so they could see directly into his eyes.
“Hey,” he said, trying to be cheerful, “we are going to drive a little bit more, then that is it, okay?”
“Like, one or two episodes of He-Man?” James asked hopefully.
Alex smiled. “Maybe a little bit longer than that. But by tomorrow,” he told him, ruffling the boy’s hair, feeling a few spots still matted with blood.
“And you,” he said, looking over at Ella, raising his eyebrows a little in false accusation. “Are you annoying your brother?”
“No, Daddy,” Ella whispered, looking down at the ground.
Alex pulled her in closely. “It’s going to be okay… I know, this… this has been bad. But we are still together. We are going to make it.”
“It was so loud, Daddy,” Ella softly said. “I was scared.”
Alex smiled and kissed her forehead. “Me too, but how could you be scared? Your brother was right there.”
Ella turned her head towards her big brother and forced a smile.
“Remember, as long as you are together…”
“We are going to win, Daddy.” She smiled at him with tear-streaked cheeks.
“Sir, we are REDCON One,” Harris told him, walking up. “Ready to roll when you say.”
Alex lifted his kids into the rear of the LMTV, and hugged his wife, who had just returned.
“You got this?” he asked, looking into his wife’s tired eyes. Amanda smiled back, but Alex noticed a tear slipping down her cheek.
Not caring how dirty his fingers were, or how much she’d criticize him for not washing them first, he cupped her face and brushed the tear away. She nodded, and raised her eyes to meet her husband’s. “You will break before I do, Major Frey.” She smiled, wiping another tear away, and helped her children into the vehicle’s rear.
Major Frey walked back to his gun truck. The last one the convoy had. Plugging his radio in, he started by checking to make sure Corporal Harris had told the new men the ground rules.
“Roger, sir, but, uh, can we negotiate on this ‘no country music’ rule?” Lance Corporal Binkley, the truck’s new gunner, asked from the turret with his Tennessee drawl.
“No, Lance Corporal, we may not.”
Outside, John’s group climbed into their vehicles and got ready to roll. The tall blond man stood by his gun truck. He was wearing a Metallica T-shirt and had his headset on, but was looking Alex’s way. Alex nodded ever so slightly as John extended his pinky and thumb like a surfer. There were things he wanted to say, things he had kept inside for years, things he knew he should tell the man. This was the time and the place, but the words didn’t come. Even if they had, they were pointless. His brother would know them without him even saying anything. He shifted in his seat and felt the necklace with its attached medal secured in his pocket. He reached in, its smooth metal comforting to the touch.
Tear it up, big brother, he thought as the man climbed into his vehicle and rolled away.
***
Private Barsamian sat behind John as they started to roll out. The big blond man turned around in his seat and handed Barsamian an old iPod which was connected to one of the vehicle’s headsets.
“You have the aux cord, Barsamian,” John told him, knowing the young Marine was too young to know what an aux cord was.
“Holy shit… this ride is gonna be amazing!” The private from Missoula’s eyes went wide seeing the iPod had nothing but EDM and country music on it. Old country, like his dad listened to. Not the new nonsense.
“Hell, yeah, sir! You two may look alike, but you and Major Frey are two totally different dudes,” Barsamian told him as the vehicle started to roll forward into the unknown.
“Yeah?” John asked, studying the satellite imagery of the mines.
“Yeah, I mean, he is a good officer and all. Best I’ve ever seen, at least,” the young man confessed.
“He’s the best there is,” John said as their gun truck crossed the main road and bounced onto the side road that would lead them to the target. As the rest of the convoy disappeared from view for the last time, he added, “And a hell of a brother.”
The phone had been ringing incessantly for the past half hour. The colonel knew who it was, and he knew what the giant plume of black smoke off to the west meant. The Americans had attacked the lithium mine at Lubungo. The pillar of smoke from the open air pit mine could be seen rising over the horizon, a harbinger of doom for the greater war effort.
He had seen the two American vehicles pull away from the others. He had watched them bury their dead through the grainy drone camera and then break the group into two. It was a diversion, of course, one the colonel did not intend to fall for, no matter how many times the Chinese mine manager called him. He would catch his prize and then circle back and deal with the rogue Americans. What could they do, alone in the wild, away from their precious technology and supplies that they relied on so desperately? They were nothing without them. At best they could kill some of the workers, which wasn’t really that much of a loss. It was a mine; they could always find more Congolese to feed into it.
They had already wasted enough precious time waiting for the armored group to catch up to them, but now the colonel needed them. The Americans were only a few hours ahead, and he was closing in on them. It would only be three hours until they reached the pass in the mountains at Lulimba. He knew the Americans would likely try and slow him down in the narrow mountains, and there the colonel would need his armor.
He rejected the call from the Chinese manager and stared at the road ahead of him. He was close. The colonel could feel it in his bones. The phone stopped ringing. The colonel smiled. Maybe the Americans had killed the man.
“Sir, they are stopping!” his driver yelled across the vehicle, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the engine. Their intercom had long since failed and the one mechanic they had who could repair it was lying dead back at the border crossing between Zambia and Tanzania.
“What?” the colonel screamed back.
“The column. It is halting,” the driver said, pointing back at the long line of vehicles behind him.
Now is not the time for another maintenance problem, the colonel thought, as he ordered the driver to circle back to see what the problem was. They had already lost almost a third of the vehicles they had started with, including another armored vehicle. It had sunk in the mud when the idiots tried to use the cannon while crossing a creek. They were down to three of the precious armored vehicles. He needed them. They were all that equalized his numbers in Africa. He still had more than enough vehicles and men to do the job; what he was running short of was time.
Captain Pulleraski stood next to his vehicle, a group of his men around him. The colonel could see he was on the phone.
Impossible, he thought. He had been very strict and forbidden his men from giving their numbers to the Chinese manager. All communication needed to run through him, and him alone.
“Yes. Yes, I understand,” the captain said as the colonel walked up. “We are on the way.”
The man hung up, and turned squarely to face the bearded colonel. “We are leaving. We are going back now.”
“No, you are not. How did he contact you?” the colonel demanded, incredulous.
“That does not matter. The Americans have hit the lithium mine and are now heading towards the gold mine at Kampulu,” Captain Pulleraski growled. “They freed all the workers and got them to help kill the men we left behind and all of the Chinese managers. All dead. If we don’t get to Kampulu ahead of them, we will lose that too.”
The colonel fumed. “They are prepared, they know it is coming, tell the Chinese to kill the workers, and then the Americans—there are only ten of them, damn it. They don’t need us to protect them from ten fat Americans.”
The captain just shook his head and turned to walk back to his vehicle.
“Do not turn your back on me!” the colonel screamed, stepping closer to his insubordinate captain. He hoped his size and beard would intimidate the smaller man into obedience.
“You are no longer in command here,” Pulleraski told him, turning to face his now former superior. “I am taking over, and we are going to do the job we are paid to do. If there is still time.”
The colonel had had enough, and pulled his pistol out, pointing it directly at Captain Pulleraski, who glared back at him down the pistol’s short barrel.
