Mission Liberty (6 page)

“Pepperoni or sausage?” he replied, surprised to have been called upon. In fact, a great many questions were forming in his
head, but this was not the place to speak before they were fully formed.

“What we want you to do,” Kissick said, “is find Dari. We’ve had a task force on Adu for a while now, but Dari is going to
require your more specialized skill sets and core competencies, vis-à-vis leveraging linguistics, undercover work, and that
sort of thing. Plus we don’t know where he is. I’m told this is the sort of thing you were doing in Iraq, and that you were
better at it than anybody. I understand you like to prep your missions yourself, but with this following so close on the job
you did today extracting Ambassador Ellis, we couldn’t overtask you by asking you to plan two missions at once, so we’ve done
as much of the groundwork for you as we could to get you started. That said, on such short notice, it’s quite likely that
you’re going to have to do a certain amount of ad-libbing, but again, General LeDoux has assured me that one of your finer
qualities is going off script. CIA intel on Dari is in your report. Mr. Chandler, is there anything you have to update it?”

“I have a man in Baku Da’al who’ll be able to give you more than what I’ve put in the report, but we don’t have a com link
with him at this time,” Chandler said. “My own data stream stopped when I left the embassy three days ago.”

“Did you leave anything behind that could find its way into rebel hands?” DeLuca asked. “I understand that the embassy fell
rather suddenly.”

“Just my Callaways,” Chandler said. “But I promised them I’d come back for them.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Hans Berger, the oil consortium representative, said. “I don’t think they’ll be able to hit them
any better than you could.”

Again, the men gathered round the table laughed. DeLuca smiled, though his instinct told him the best thing he could do, at
this point, would be to pick up Hans Berger and Wes Chandler and throw them over the side of the ship. The waters were shark
infested, he’d been warned, but the sharks could take care of themselves.

“General LeDoux will brief you further after we’re done here,” Kissick said. “Does anybody have any questions or comments?
Now’s the time to brain-dump.”

“General Denby will be CCed as to all of this?” Lionel Ayles-Kensey asked. Kissick nodded.

“What is the situation on the ground, as we speak?” Hanson Sedu-Sashah asked.

“Better than it was six hours ago,” Kissick said. “General Emil-Ngwema’s forces re-entered the city shortly after today’s
raid by Agent DeLuca and his team. As I understand it, the rebel forces have pulled back, with heavy fighting still at the
soccer stadium and at the airport. I gather the Ligerian air force finally figured out where they’d hidden their airplanes
and managed to get a few of them in the air. President Bo has already gone on national television to declare victory and urge
everyone to stay calm, so one may surmise from that that the Presidential Guard managed to hold the palace.”

“Slippery fellow,” Ayles-Kensey said. “Like father like son.”

“Anything else?”

“Just one,” DeLuca said. “What do you want me to do, once I find Dari?” He was tempted to say
if
I find Dari, but he didn’t dare express a lack of confidence, not when everything was going so swimmingly well.

“Report in,” Kissick said. “The course of action will be determined at that time.”

At that time, DeLuca had no doubt, there would be, at the very least, a UAV armed with a Hellfire missile already overhead
or a pair of Super Hornets scrambling into the air from the deck of the
Lyndon Johnson
to take Dari out.

“If there are no further questions, then I’ll leave you to your individual preparations. CENTCOM will be here, with myself
and Admiral Webster, until such time as we can establish something on the ground. We’re calling this Operation Liberty, by
the way. Please refer to it as that, should any of you become authorized to speak to the press. Seven days, gentlemen. My
aides will be happy to help you with any questions you might have once you’ve read the briefing report.”

“Wanna take a walk?” LeDoux asked DeLuca.

“Yeah,” DeLuca said. “Cocktails on the poop deck.”

“Not here,” LeDoux whispered. “Let’s take it offline, as General Kissick might say.”

DELUCA FOLLOWED LEDOUX OUT ONTO THE flight deck, where they found a seat on a blast deflector. LeDoux handed DeLuca a cigar.

“We’re not allowed to smoke,” he said, “but I thought you might want something to chew on, other than my ass.”

It was a moonless night, but there were so many stars in the African sky that it felt almost bright enough to read by. DeLuca
gazed toward shore, watching a faint orange glow on the horizon, where an unknown number of buildings burned in the city of
Port Ivory.

“If you’re standing on the beach,” LeDoux said, “the surf here glows a bright blue from microbial aquatic organisms that turn
phosphorescent when they come in contact with the air. Bright blue. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

“On a positive note,” DeLuca said.

“On a positive note,” LeDoux agreed.

“Permission to speak freely?” DeLuca asked.

“You need permission?” LeDoux replied.

DeLuca unwrapped his cigar and bit down on it, breathing through his nose for a moment before looking his friend in the eye.

“I know you’re coming up with the best possible response,” DeLuca said, “and I suppose I should feel honored. But this is
one solid hundred-ton brick of horseshit. And you know it is, so I know you wouldn’t be part of it unless there was no alternative.”

“Fuck it,” LeDoux said, glancing around to make sure there were no munitions or spilled pools of jet fuel nearby before pulling
out his lighter and lighting his cigar. LeDoux clicked the lighter shut. “I’m a general. I can smoke where I want to.”

“Damn straight,” DeLuca agreed, lighting his from LeDoux’s lighter.

“I figure we have about three minutes until some irate ensign comes out to tell us to extinguish, and then another five until
he goes away and gets someone of a high enough rank to come back with the same request.”

“About that,” DeLuca said.

“It’ll have to do,” the general said. “Remember those old
Mission: Impossible
shows, at the beginning, where the voice on the tape recording always said, ‘Your mission, Mr. Phelps, should you choose
to accept it… ’? Just once, I wanted to see him throw his envelope full of photographs in the fireplace and say, ‘The
hell with it—I’m going fishing.’ Too bad it doesn’t work that way.”

“Too bad.”

“If it makes it any better, I only found out myself this afternoon while I was watching the Dave DeLuca show on satellite
television.”

“But they knew before they brought us here,” DeLuca said.

“They probably did.”

“Probably?” DeLuca said.

“Tell me what you think,” LeDoux said.

“Here’s what I think,” DeLuca said. “I think the White House is trying to cover its ass after the whole WMD intelligence fiasco
in Iraq. I think they want to say they had boots on the ground in Liger, so with a week to go, they send in the boots and
they don’t really care who’s wearing them or what happens to the people who lace ’em up. They just want to say they tried.
Why else would they give me my assignment in front of a goddamn congressional delegation? What kind of bullshit little performance
was that?”

“You kids these days,” LeDoux said. “You’re so cynical.”

“They don’t really give a shit about the mission—they just want to say they sent the most elite team they had,” DeLuca said.
“Am I wrong?”

LeDoux didn’t correct him.

“This is horseshit. You and I both know how much can go wrong, even with months of planning. We were lucky today. Everything
went to shit in no time, and the next thing we know, we’re careening down the alley on two wheels with people firing rockets
at us. I don’t think it’s possible to be so lucky, twice in a row.”

“It probably isn’t,” LeDoux said.

“Here’s what else I think. I think Kissick is angling to be the first Marine to chair the JCS, and this is his ticket, so
he’s covering his ass. He sounds like a fucking CEO, not a Marine. No wonder he’s the Sec-Def’s favorite little leg-humper.
The mission is lame. We’d need at least three days to work up our covers, for chrissakes,” DeLuca said.

“They’re actually not half bad,” LeDoux said. “I had a chance to look at ’em. DIA is doing much better work in that department
since we increased their budget. The bottom line is, this came from the White House. End of the day, we have to send someone.
CI’s always been who they send when they don’t have a plan yet. You know that. I’m sure we can both see the dangers that present
themselves. It’s ad-lib as hell. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.”

“Ad-lib is another word for half-assed,” DeLuca said. “I signed on for added risk. What I mind is chaos and stupidity. I’ll
take my people into harm’s way in a heartbeat, you know that, but I also consider part of my job is to keep them from the
kind of harm perpetrated every day by goddamn Pentagon planners and PlayStation generals and standard Army-issue Remfro rear-echelon
motherfuckers and shit-for-brain congressional armed forces committee pissants and all the other flaming dickwad assholes
who don’t have the slightest idea what it means to walk across a road while somebody is aiming his rifle at you.”

DeLuca drew on his cigar until the ember glowed, holding the smoke in before letting it out slowly.

“You done, or do you need more time?” LeDoux said.

“I’m just getting started,” DeLuca said. “But go on. I guess I needed to vent.”

“I know,” LeDoux said. “Why do you think I asked them to leave the blast deflectors up?”

“Just tell me why I’m really going back in,” DeLuca said. “I don’t want to hear about the president’s guru or whites or Christians
or for that matter oil. Been there, done that. I don’t want to hear about terrorists or making the African continent safe
for democracy because I’ve been there and done that, too. Why am I going?”

“You’re going,” LeDoux said, “on the very real chance that you can make a difference. The fact of the matter is, we don’t
have any good intelligence on John Dari. CIA makes him a warlord. I think that’s too easy a label, and I think this administration
prefers labels to complexities, so that’s what the CIA gives them. You, on the other hand, don’t. This guy could well be the
African Osama bin Laden. If he is, then it’s best we’re rid of him. And if he isn’t, we need to know that, too. It could mean
millions of lives, and I’m not talking about suitcase nukes or dirty bombs or nerve agents. I’m talking about good old-fashioned
hunger. This country is a fucking mess, and it’s going to stay that way until somebody straightens things out. In the meantime,
the food can’t reach the camps, and every day, thousands of people die. Saddam put people in mass graves and tortured them
once in a while for kicks, so we stepped in. Here, they just walk off into the sand and fall down, or go to bed and don’t
wake up. We’ve got more food and medicine waiting to ship from our bases in Cape Verde and Diego Garcia than this country
could use in a year, tons and tons, and we can’t get it on the ground or in the hands of the people who need it. Everybody
says we didn’t plan on how to win the peace once we occupied Iraq. That’s the mistake they’re trying to correct this time.
It’s going to be like the Oprah Winfrey show—we’re going to give everybody a new car and groceries for a year.”

“Well
that
ought to make ’em happy,” DeLuca said. “I have a good idea—why don’t we just skip the war and go straight to the peace?”

“Gee,” LeDoux said. “Why didn’t
we
think of that?”

“I just hope nobody makes soup out of my head,” DeLuca said.

“It would be so bitter I don’t think anybody could swallow it,” LeDoux said. “Come on. I have somebody I want you to meet.
Plus I think the hall monitor finally caught us.”

“Stand to!” a young member of the Shore Patrol said, approaching at a brisk pace. “No smoking on the flight deck, goddamn
you…” He stopped in his tracks when he saw who he was talking to. “Oh. Excuse me, General. I didn’t… I mean . .
.”

“At ease, sailor,” LeDoux said, handing him his cigar as DeLuca did the same. “Just testing your battle-readiness. Did you
see me or did the bridge send you?”

“I saw you, sir,” the young sailor said.

“Excellent. I was afraid they might be sleeping up there,” LeDoux said. “What’s your name, sailor?”

“Ortega, Luis, sir,” he said. “Seaman first class.”

“Good work, Ortega,” LeDoux said. “I’ll put a commendation for you in my report. Please toss these overboard, if you will.”

LeDoux led DeLuca to the guest officers’ quarters and knocked on one of the doors. A soft voice said, “Come in.” DeLuca saw
a black man lying on the bed, reading a book, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose. He was dressed in a white
shirt and black pants, barefoot. He got to his feet and offered his hand when Phillip LeDoux introduced him. DeLuca put him
at six foot two and two hundred pounds and handsome, a bit like a young Muhammad Ali, back when he was known as Cassius Clay,
but without the brashness.

“Paul Asabo,” LeDoux said, “this is Agent DeLuca, U.S. Army counterintelligence.”

“Call me David,” DeLuca said.

“Please, sit down,” Asabo said. There was, however, only a single chair in the room, which was ample for naval quarters but
less than half the size of a small motel room. LeDoux gestured for DeLuca to take the chair. Asabo sat on the edge of the
bed. LeDoux closed the door behind him, then leaned against it.

“Paul is going to be going with you,” LeDoux said. “He was helping us today with our translations. Last I checked, David,
none of your people speak Fasori, right?”

“You’re a translator, then?” DeLuca said.

Asabo looked up at LeDoux.

“Paul is the son of Kwame Mufesi Asabo.”