Joint Task Force #4: Africa (9 page)

Razi stared at the man for moment, his eyes looking at the second-class crow.
How in the hell did he put this together?
Razi slapped the sailor on the shoulder. “Damn, you’re good. I was thinking the same thing.”

Five minutes later, the aircraft was in a turn heading back to where Dragnet had detected the warm bodies. In the front end of the aircraft, the magnetometer operator, a sailor trained as a cryptologic technician in the technical
rating—a former electronic warfare technician—energized the magnetometer database. They hadn’t planned on using this system while flying over the jungles of West Africa. It wasn’t as if they were searching for tanks or submarines.

“Chief, I have another contact!” the NRL sailor shouted.

Razi leaned over his shoulder. Numerous contacts speckled the 360-degree screen, icons popping up all over it, indicating humans. “What the—”

“Look here, Chief,” the sailor said, tapping a readout above the screen. “Over three hundred contacts and growing.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we have a small group—twenty miles away from this group.”

“Or, they could be together,” the other sailor said, color returning to his face.

Lieutenant Reed appeared beside Razi. “What have you got, Chief?”

Razi pointed at the display screen and the readout. “Looks as if this prototype is picking up a large number of people below the jungle canopy.”

“Which way are they heading?” Reed asked.

Razi shrugged.

The lead sailor from NRL replied, “Don’t know, sir. We’re in a turn and this system has problems determining direction and speed of movement unless we stay straight, level, and keep our speed steady.”

“We’re already in a turn, Chief, to go back to where the first contact was made. We’ll get another chance to look at the large contact.” The mission evaluator looked at the two sailors. “You have confidence this system is working— functioning properly.”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison. “We have put this system
through rigorous testing, Lieutenant, and it has been one-hundred-percent accurate.”

Reed pursed his lips. “Then, I’m going to be hard-pressed to trust it, sailors. Haven’t seen anything in the Navy during my short career one-hundred-percent anything that wasn’t as hosed up as Hogan’s goat.” He turned and walked back toward the front, disappearing into the dark shadows of the fuselage, lit by the soft green of the various displays on the consoles.

“Chief, we have two groups of people down there,” the lead sailor protested. “Not one, but two groups and this system—Dragnet is one-hundred-‘by-God’-percent accurate, and I don’t care what that VQ lieutenant says.”

Razi put his hand on his shoulders. “Don’t worry about what he thinks, worry that your data is refined, accurate, and there’re no problems caused by the electronics in this aircraft. Then, we’ll let the system prove itself.”

The EP-3E Aries II aircraft leveled itself. Razi glanced at the digital compass on the main console. It showed two-eight-five. They were heading back toward the first contact. He bent his head, the odor from the vomit along the front of his flight suit wafted through his nostrils, nearly causing him to heave.
Serve the sailor right if I puked on him.

CHAPTER 4

OJO NODDED. “GENERAL EZEJI, THE AMERICANS ARE HERE
again,” he said, nodding upward. “You hear the airplane?”

“They will never leave us alone, General. One month ago, they sent a team to kill you. And, when they failed, they continued the hunt. It is good that we have friends in Monrovia keeping watch so we are aware of their plans.”

Ojo glanced down at the heavyset Nigerian and smiled. “The Americans are never satisfied unless they know everything that is going on around them. They trust no one and verify everything.” He reached out and touched General Ezeji. Ezeji was the only general in the African National Army with military experience, experience much broader than his own. Ezeji said he was a former general in the Nigerian Army, but Ojo had never been able to confirm the information. It would be too much to push an inquiry in Nigeria, for if the man is what he says, then his
value is so great that to endanger him to the Nigerians would be regrettable.

When the rotund man appeared a year ago at their encampment, Ojo believed him to be a member of Nigerian intelligence. The angry Kabaka warned that Ezeji had been sent to spy on the ANA and report everything to Nigeria, the regional West African power. The months had been kind to Ezeji in Ojo’s eyes. Ojo valued the insight and suggestions from the Nigerian, and if Ezeji was a member of Nigerian intelligence, then his worth-for-the-moment outweighed the risk. The sound of the aircraft grew. “Stop the men,” Ojo said, raising his hand.

“But, General, they cannot see us through the canopy nor hear us from their aircraft.”

“I know, but it gives us an opportunity to reconstitute our forces so that when we reach the Arabs we will be ready. It would be incompetent for us to stumble into them and have them kill our soldiers before we were ready.”

Ezeji passed the word to the runners who fanned out in all directions to stop the movement of the army. Cellular telephones were useless in the absence of towers and the fledging army could ill afford satellite telephones, so the poverty of their fighting force hid them from their adversaries who would remotely exploit their activities. Their own human intelligence networks had reported newspaper articles telling of how Western governments had reached the conclusion months ago that only humans interjected into the ANA could provide any real information on this growing, mysterious African army. Intelligence abhors military and political mysteries. The lower the technology capability of an adversary, the more important human intelligence gathering becomes.

Ojo lifted his khaki hat and ran the back of his hand across his forehead. It was a Western misconception that
Africans were unaffected by the high humidity and heat of the jungle—that dark skin and generations of living here protected them.
What a lie!
Heat was heat, and it could kill an African as quickly as it could kill a white man. The interlocking leaves of the jungle canopy hiding them from the reconnaissance aircraft trapped heat, turning the shaded jungle into a sweaty cauldron of fatigue and dehydration. Every night, his generals brought new stories of missing and dead soldiers. The missing, most tired of constant marching and fighting the deadly heat, had simply slipped into the bush to return to dust-ridden patches they called farms. Dead did not necessarily mean
dead.
For the army to keep moving, it was sufficient for a soldier to lie down and refuse to go on or become unresponsive. Ojo had little doubt that many of them waited until the army had moved on before they miraculously recovered and disappeared into the jungles to join the more adventurous “missing” ones.

Ojo overheard Ezeji direct a runner to locate Kabaka and to return with the news. Ezeji’s actions had either proved Ojo’s surmise that the man was loyal to him, or that the Nigerians wanted the ANA to succeed. Someday, he would figure out why the Nigerians would allow the ANA free reign in West Africa. Even America checked with the Nigerians before they did anything in this part of the world. Could the Americans be afraid of the Nigerians? No, Ojo thought, shaking his head. The Americans needed the Nigerians. Needed them to patrol and pacify this volatile area of Africa. It was an American strategy to use regional powers to promote stability for failed states, and areas of instability provided sanctuary for terrorists such as Abu Alhaul.

“It is hot,” Ezeji said, his voice soft.

Ojo acknowledged the comment, slid his hat back on his head, straightening it so the brim rode above the eyebrows.
Ezeji seemed as dedicated to the cause as he did. Maybe he was too paranoid. Then again, sometimes a cause and a person are one in the same. Early causes must be explicitly linked to a personality. He was the personality. Only when the turmoil of birth was over could a cause stand alone. Sometimes he wondered what causes ANA fought, other than to rid Africa of foreign intervention. He must not fall for the trappings of power, but it was a grand feeling to raise one’s hand and watch others wait for his words. Ojo had a far-off goal he wanted to achieve. Someday, when he handed over power, a power he hoped would be far-reaching over an independent Africa, he would be allowed to gracefully rock away his older years watching his child grow. Most African futures seemed filled with violence and death.

“General Ojo, we are stopped,” Ezeji said. “I have talked with General Darin, and he is aligning his soldiers along our left flank. They will move parallel with us. The scout who returned an hour ago reported finding a fresh trail of our quarry, turning north.”

“How old?”

Ezeji shrugged. “One day, possibly two. It is hard to say without stumbling onto a campsite, and it looks as if the Arabs are fleeing. It is easy to say they know we are pursuing them. Our village visits have told us that. What I don’t believe they know is how far back we are. As long as they think we are close, they will continue to hurry away, sapping their strength, until we finally catch up.”

“They’re smaller, they can move faster.”

Ezeji nodded. “Yes, but we have groups already surging forward to block the path they may have taken. When the Arabs run into this block, they won’t know how many and they will stop to fight. When that happens, then we can surge forward and finish this quest quickly.”

Ojo nodded and glanced around him. The constant
noise of hundreds of feet tramping through the virgin jungles had ceased. Everyone stopped moving. Many would be throwing their packs to the side to grab rest, and some even a short sleep.

Ojo nodded to the stake-bearer, Niewu, who had joined them during Ojo’s reverie.

Ojo, Ezeji, and Niewu stood together listening to the noise of the aircraft grow, then for an unknown reason the aircraft noise steadied. Ezeji believed the aircraft had found them, and for a short time, Ojo agreed. Then, as slow as it approached, the sound of the aircraft engines began to decrease.

“It is turning around,” Ojo offered.

“Why would it turn around, if not to fly over us again?”

“I don’t know, General Ezeji. It is hard to say what is happening above the forest without being able to see, and without being inside the minds of the Americans on board. I believe they fly looking for signs of us and signs for the Arabs we chase. All we know is what we hear, and what we hear is that it has turned around. It is leaving our area, and since it is American we are going to take no action against it, right?” Ojo asked.
Where is my comrade Kabaka who marches very much to his own brand of chaos? We don’t need him firing at the Americans—

“Of course. I agree completely. We finish one step at a time—”

“Not engage the world all at once. For the Americans, as well as the French in the Ivory Coast, we will wage our battles with them in the court of world opinion, and to do that we must avoid anything that gives them reason to take action against us.”

“Would not you say this aircraft is an action against us, General Ojo?” Niewu asked, his voice betraying the fatigue of old age.

Ojo shook his head. “No, the aircraft is an unarmed reconnaissance aircraft filled with American military men twirling their cameras, staring at their radars, and searching the jungles beneath them with binoculars. What can they see through the jungle blanket that barely lets the sun hit our faces? As long as we stay away from anything electronic, not light campfires, and avoid open areas, we are safe.”

“What do you think they will do if they do find us?”

Ojo shrugged. “I think they will just fly more and stay overhead more, orbiting and orbiting, trying to discover who and what we are. I think we are an enigma, and America, like France, and even your home country of Nigeria, dislikes enigmas near their centers of influence and power.”

“That would be dangerous,” Ezeji said.

“What would be dangerous?” Niewu asked, coming closer.

“Dangerous to have them orbiting overhead all the time. Then, no matter where we moved, we would be tracked and the American presence would tell everyone where we are, like a float above a fishing line.

Ojo nodded and pointed up. “The airplane is leaving. Once the troops are realigned, General Ezeji, we will continue. We will pursue in the three lines of advance, with you in the center and Darin on our left and Kabaka to our right. Somewhere ahead awaits our quarry, and once we are done with Abu Alhaul and have rid Africa of his Jihadist schools and teachings of death, we will move to the next step for an independent and poverty-free Africa. The Americans will be happy when they learn of what we have done. It is the Americans who make me more nervous than the French or the British, so if we convince them we are no threat to their homeland, they will leave us alone.”

“They will never leave us alone. They will view what
we have done in the villages as war crimes. They will continue to look for you.”

“How can they say it is a war crime to disarm a terrorist? Those boys we killed were already dedicated to dying in a suicide explosion to take themselves and as many innocents as they could with them. I would say we have disarmed the terrorists by killing them.”

“They won’t see it that way. They will see us killing children and say we are war criminals. They may back away from trying to engage us militarily or through their CIA, but they will forever watch us.”

“I prefer them watching to acting.”

“If we convince them we are a positive factor in their war against terrorism, they may even provide dollars to help us in our attempt to raise our people out of poverty.”

Ezeji exhaled loudly. “Africa will always have its poverty.”

“You may be right,” Ojo sighed. “But we would be wrong not to try.”
Poverty is a great cause for rallying a people,
he thought.

“We can try—”

The cry of a point sentry interrupted Ezeji, drawing both their attention. The noise of weapons being unlimbered and the clicks of safeties switching off reminded Ojo of childhood and witnessing swarms of locusts rolling across the countryside like great waves washing away everything beneath them. The fading sound of the American aircraft was lost in the noise of soldiers preparing for the unexpected, and when the rising noise of the army achieving readiness settled, the sound of the American aircraft had vanished completely. Ojo glanced up at the jungle canopy, wondering where the aircraft had gone. For whatever reason, the aircraft had been overhead and now had left the area. Would it return?

A soldier rushed up to General Ezeji, whispered something, and quickly departed.

“Seems one of our patrols has returned.”

A few minutes later, two of Ojo’s enforcers—soldiers chosen personally by him with the belief that their loyalty was to him and to him alone—led several young boys through the brush to where Ojo and the other two stood. He guessed the oldest boy to be twelve, but individual age was, at best, a guess in the growing African epoch of orphans. Four, he counted, each carrying an AK-47, the weapon of choice for terrorists and freedom fighters alike. The smallest, and most likely the youngest, had his weapon slung over his shoulder with the barrel pointing down. With each step the AK-47 bounced off the boy’s lower leg only a couple of inches above the ankle. AK-47—the weapon of choice for an impoverished army. Ojo nodded in admiration of the boys. All four marched, heads high, lips pursed together. He could see their pride in being soldiers in the African National Army. He doubted that they realized how expendable they were as a fighting element. It was the young ones that were sent forward to reconnoiter the terrain and to be the trailblazers for the main body. The loss of a child warrior was preferred over an adult. Africa was the continent of child warriors. Child warriors so numerous that they were an expendable item for the army, like a basket of corn leaking kernels, many at a time. For a brief moment, Ojo wondered how many had died in his battles. His head dipped for a moment. They never buried their dead, leaving them to the jungle to return to mother earth.

“General Ojo,” the enforcer leading the boys said, his hand raised in a British-style salute. “This group has been sent back. They have found our target.”

Ojo nodded at the young leader of the four. “You have found the Arabs?”