Sand and Fire (9780698137844) (16 page)

Air Force fliers routinely practiced flying and working in chem gear, and every few years they got tested on those procedures in operational readiness inspections. Many crew members despised ORIs
as having little to do with real-world combat. In recent years, at least, more service members had passed out from heat exhaustion in MOPP suits than had ever been hurt by chemicals.

But now, because of Sadiq Kassam getting his hands on some of Muammar Gadhafi's and Bashar al-Assad's hand-me-downs, ORI scenarios were coming true.

Parson didn't consider himself a brilliant tactician or a masterful leader of men. Instead, he thought of himself as a crew dog who got promoted high enough to get stuck with heavy responsibilities. So he tried simply to make decisions that would keep guys safe while they did their jobs. Take care of the people, he believed, and as long as they're good people, they'll take care of the mission.

The Pave Hawk crews emerged from the showers in clean but ill-fitting flight suits, and Parson finally got to pose the question that nagged at him most.

“Did you get an ID on the bodies you found?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” a pararescueman said. “One was a Legionnaire, and one was a Marine corporal.”

“Thanks for all you did, guys. I know this mission sucked. Get some rest.”

“Yes, sir.”

Parson didn't know how to feel about what he'd just learned. He couldn't let himself take any relief from the news. Two families back home were about to receive that knock on the door they'd always dreaded. But Parson's old friend Blount was still out there. Somewhere.

B
lount had no idea how much time had passed when the truck finally stopped, but the sun had risen. He came to awareness like swimming up from the bottom of a muddy farm pond with weights around his waist. He felt a tugging sensation; because he was so big, his enemies pulled him by his arms and legs. He decided not to sit up and make it easy for them. He lay limp as one terrorist took his wrists. Two others took him by the ankles, and they carried him like men struggling with a huge bundle of cured tobacco sheeted in burlap.

They brought him inside a stucco-walled building, put him down on a concrete floor. The air hung close and hot.

The terrorists brought in two more prisoners. Blount recognized Corporal Fender. The captors dragged Fender by the arms, dropped him on the floor to Blount's right.

Blount raised up, tried to get to Fender.

“Hey, bud,” Blount said. “You all right?”

One of the captors shouted something in Arabic and kicked Blount in the chest. Another lowered the muzzle of an AK-47 toward his head. Yet another clamped shackles around his wrists and locked them with a key.

Each shackle connected to a separate chain. Not a light chain like you'd use to tether a dog, either. More like a logging chain, maybe ten-thousand-pound test. The other end of each chain connected to a metal ring embedded in the wall, just a few inches above the floor.

Blount looked over at Fender. They chained him up the same
way. Fender sat against the wall with his chains coiled around him. He stared up at the ceiling with his mouth open.

Dried vomit stained the front of Fender's MOPP suit. But he seemed to breathe steady, and Blount didn't see any blood.

On Blount's left, the dirtbags chained another man. The man did not wear MOPP gear, just fatigues in an unfamiliar camo pattern. A subdued-color patch on the soldier's sleeve featured vertical bars in three different shades of beige. Above the bars the patch read
FRANCE
. A Legionnaire, then. The Legionnaire was not as big as Blount, but he was almost as stocky and muscled. Shaved head. A white guy, but dark from lots of time in the sun. Tattoos spiraled the length of his arms. Some of the tattoos depicted nude angels, large-breasted and winged. One of them wielded a sword. Other images included a bear, mainly teeth and claws. A rifle cartridge. A flaming skull.

And lots of lettering. Blount couldn't read any of it, but he knew it wasn't French. It wasn't even regular ABCs.

The man had taken a bullet in the thigh. A bloody pressure bandage circled his leg. Didn't seem to be bleeding now, though, so the slug must have missed the femoral artery. At least so far, the Legionnaire acted as tough as he looked. No trembling or crying. He just met Blount's eyes and nodded.

Blount still felt weak. Feeble, even. And his jaw ached from getting slammed with the butt of that rifle. But his mind had cleared enough to try to take stock of his situation. The enemy had carried him to what looked like an abandoned house. A table made of unfinished wood stood in a corner. The rings that anchored his chains had been installed recently; someone had chiseled holes in the walls, spaded in wet cement, and inserted heavy bolts before the cement dried. The rings hung from circular heads on the bolts. The clanking of chains in the next room told him the dirtbags had prisoners in there, too.

His captors had robbed him of most of his equipment. He still
wore his tactical vest, but the pouches for his radio, GPS receiver, grenades, ammunition, and everything else lay empty and slack. They'd even taken his watch and his grandfather's KA-BAR. They'd piled a bunch of equipment on the table in the corner, far out of reach. Blount recognized two M16s, along with other American gear. He had no idea what had become of his gas mask and his pistol.

One of the dirtbags entered the room with three galvanized pails. He set down a pail beside Blount, and he placed the other two next to Fender and the Legionnaire. Our toilet buckets, Blount realized. So they plan on keeping us here for a while.

And then what? Dear Lord up in heaven, he thought, you know what. A machete and a camera. These things don't ever end well. Not unless a rescue force gets here in time. And for that to happen, they gotta know where we are.

Regret came over Blount like a cloud of nerve gas. What would it do to Bernadette and the girls to know he had come to an end like this? And he could have avoided it so easily. Just a few days ago he'd been sitting on his porch with his family—mission accomplished, home again, done with it all. There had been no rush about finding a job. But he couldn't let go of the action, the camaraderie, the sense of belonging.

Selfish, selfish, selfish, he thought. I brought this on myself. But not just on myself. I brought it on my family. Dear God, forgive me for what I've done to them.

Blount felt his eyes brim. He forced his eyelids to stay open to let the tears dry up rather than fall. These sleazeballs would not see him cry. He would die well, without screaming and carrying on. That was the last thing he could control. These motherfu—these men—would not take away his self-control and dignity.

I'll take at least one with me, Blount resolved. Sooner or later they'll unchain me to take me to my execution. And if this poison don't make me any weaker, if I get better instead of worse, I'm gon' slam somebody's head into this wall. That'll probably make the
others shoot me instead of sawing through my neck. Kill an enemy and die quicker? You gotta put that in the win column.

Fender didn't look so good. He sat on the floor with his chained arms around his knees, rocking back and forth. The chains stretched six or seven feet long. Blount guessed the dirtbags wanted their prisoners to have enough freedom of movement to piss by themselves. That eliminated the need to unlock shackles every time somebody had to go to the bathroom.

“Fender,” Blount whispered. “You all right?”

Now why did I ask that? Blount wondered. Of course he ain't all right.

Fender looked up, pale-faced and drawn, like his mind had seized up and couldn't process things straight.

“We're done, Gunny,” Fender said. Voice not much more than a squeak. Then he began to murmur to himself as he rocked: “We're done, we're done, we're done.”

“You belay that foolishness,” Blount whispered. “We ain't dead yet. Boy, I know you're a good Marine. You keep your game face on.”

Fender quit muttering. Buried his face in his knees.

Blount didn't know why he'd tried to give any kind of pep talk to Fender. Things looked about as hopeless as they could get. But at least Blount and his fellow captives could show these terrorists how strong men died. For all their talk, these filth didn't know from strong. To Blount, they amounted to the very soul of cowardice. For years he'd seen them use civilians as shields, throw acid on women, hang suicide vests on children.

That last part ignited a special fury every time Blount thought of it. And his captors came from the same breed that put bombs on those boys in Afghanistan. Made him pull a trigger on kids.

He felt his pulse rise. He clenched his fists around his chains.

For Blount, fury brought focus. A warrior's mind worked that way; you channeled your anger into your mission. And Blount had a mission: take out one more terrorist.

Now, how to go about that? Well, he could start with a little tactical deception. I ain't feeling any worse, he realized. Might even get better. But the dirtbags don't need to know that.

Blount thought of Samson, way back in the Bible. Praying to God to give him his strength back one more time so he could kill his enemies. Blount didn't know if his strength would come back, but he'd find a way to use it if it did.

He lay flat on his back. He worked his tongue around in his mouth to stimulate his salivary glands. When his mouth filled with spit, he waited for one of the enemy to come back into the room.

Soon enough, one of the dirtbags returned. Happened to be the same guy Blount had nearly choked to death, Rat Face.

Blount rolled onto his side. Retched as loudly as he could. Made a great show of vomiting onto the floor.

Rat Face laughed. Walked over and kicked Blount in the back.

That's right, chump, Blount thought. See how messed up I am. Sick as a dog. Just threw up all over your floor. It's only clear spit, but you done got so overconfident you didn't notice that.

G
old sat down to breakfast in the refugee camp's mess tent with a troubled mind. She still struggled with her choice of a role in a world changing quickly around her, and an interrogation ending in a prisoner's suicide didn't help. She'd always hoped that as a linguist and interpreter, she could make it easier for people to communicate, to examine ideas. Exchange thoughts over tea instead of bullets over barricades. But this morning she'd awakened again with that feeling she wasn't where she was supposed to be.

The powdered eggs on her cardboard tray didn't look very appetizing. Gold tore open a packet of pepper and sprinkled it over the eggs, and she chided herself for complaining, even if only to herself. A lot of people displaced from North African villages would have loved to get this meal. She took a sip of the coffee in her Styrofoam cup, found it weak and bitter at the same time. Gold ripped open more packets—this time of sugar and creamer—and they made the coffee even less drinkable.

This chow hall reminded her of mess tents in some of the more remote forward bases in Afghanistan. Cooks toiled over stainless steel vats heated by propane. Greasy nylon passed for tablecloths. One table offered a mound of assorted snacks that wouldn't spoil: packaged granola bars, bags of chips, crackers wrapped in cellophane. Someone had placed a shortwave radio on the snack table and left it tuned to the BBC. Gold half listened while she ate; the segment about international stock indexes did not interest her. Hard to believe
that comfortable life went on with so much suffering happening in places like this. She thought of a line from the Russian writer Anton Chekhov: Behind the door of every contented man, someone should stand with a hammer and remind him with a tap that there are unhappy people.

Lambrechts entered the mess tent and looked over the offerings. The Belgian doctor wore a
MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES
T-shirt. She came to Gold's table carrying a bagel and a plastic knife, and from somewhere she'd scrounged a single minitray of cream cheese.

“Bonjour,”
Gold said.

“Bonjour,”
Lambrechts replied, smiling at Gold's use of what little French she knew. “You look pensive,” Lambrechts added as she sat down.

“Maybe so,” Gold said. “I want to try to do some good here, but I feel like I'm always O-B-E.”

“You're what?”

“Sorry, Army talk. Overtaken by events.”

With her plastic knife, Lambrechts spread cheese across the bagel. She appeared to ponder Gold's dilemma for a moment.

“Anyone would be upset after seeing someone take his own life,” Lambrechts said, “You can't hold yourself responsible.”

“It's not that. It's—”

Before Gold could elaborate, something on the radio caught her ear. The program broke away from business news for a special broadcast:

“The Reuters and Associated Press news services both report a disastrous military raid in North Africa last evening. The news agencies' sources say a joint U.S. and French operation involved an assault on a suspected hideout of terrorist leader Sadiq Kassam. The attacking forces encountered unexpectedly fierce opposition, which may have included use of chemical weapons.

“Information remains sketchy, but sources say one Marine helicopter crashed. Officials confirm at least two dead, several wounded, and as many as six missing. The names of the dead and missing have not been released, pending notification of relatives.”

“Oh, my God,” Lambrechts said. “That's awful.”

Parson might have had something to do with that mission, Gold knew. She needed to find out more. Now.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I'm sorry to rush off, but I have to check my messages.”

“Of course,” Lambrechts said. “Tell me if I can do anything.”

“Pray.”

Gold stood up, gathered her tray, cup, and plastic fork. She dumped her half-eaten meal into the trash and ran to the admin tent. When she logged in to her e-mail account, she saw a message from Parson. To her great relief, it was only a few hours old. So Parson had not found an excuse to fly out with the Marines and get himself killed. But when she opened the e-mail, it brought no good news.

Our big friend is missing? No, Gold thought. Please no.

That could only mean A. E. Blount. Gold remembered a night when she, Parson, and Blount's Marines entered a village terrorized by a Taliban splinter group. They found a little orphaned girl, already traumatized, who looked up at Blount with wild-eyed fear. The girl had almost certainly never seen a black man, and had probably never seen any man even close to Blount's size. No wonder she was afraid of him.

But without speaking her language, and aided only by a chocolate bar, Blount put the child at ease. In the days that followed, the girl became drawn to him as a protector.

God didn't make enough people like Gunny Blount, Gold thought. We can't lose the one we have. Suddenly Gold knew where she needed to be, at least for today: Mitiga.

She picked up the sat phone, thinking to call Parson and then her
bosses in New York. But before punching in a number, she put the phone back down. No phone calls, she decided. She'd just go. As Parson would say, sometimes it's easier to ask forgiveness than get permission.

She left the admin tent and walked out to the refugee camp's helipad. The UN's Mi-8 helicopter had seen better days. Its crew chief, a mechanic retired from the Royal Canadian Air Force, busied himself wiping grease smears from the chopper's white paint. Oil cans lay on the ground beside the aircraft. The whole machine smelled like the engine of an old used car.

“Good morning,” Gold said. “Are you guys flying today?”

“Yes, ma'am. We're heading up to Tripoli.”

“You don't have to call me ma'am. I was enlisted, too.”

The crew chief rubbed his fingers with the oily rag, smiled at Gold. “I knew there was a reason I liked you,” he said.

“Thanks, Chief. Are you landing at Mitiga International?”

“Nope. Going to a helipad near the docks to pick up a load of food.”

“Do you think the pilots would drop me off at Mitiga?”

Gold explained the situation. She gave no names, but she told him about the shoot-down and the missing personnel. The crew chief's expression changed as soon as he heard the word
missing
.

“We'll take you anywhere you want to go,” he said. “We all did tours in Afghanistan.”

“Thank you for your service, Chief.”

“And for yours.”

While she waited for takeoff, Gold dropped by the medical tent to tell Lambrechts she was heading to Mitiga. She did not give the doctor a chance to object or ask questions.

Unsure when she'd return, Gold packed for several days. Her gear included a GPS receiver, desert boots, a Surefire flashlight that ran on lithium batteries, and a green-and-black shemagh, or Afghan scarf, that she'd worn on her last military deployment. Good
sandstorm protection in any desert. When she wrapped the shemagh around her neck and pulled on her boots, she felt almost like a soldier again. Nothing missing but the M4.

At departure time, Gold inserted a set of foam earplugs, donned her ballistic sunglasses, and hoisted a dusty duffel bag long faded from deep olive to light green. Gold boarded the helicopter, buckled into a troop seat, put on a headset, and the helo lifted off.

The refugee camp dropped away beneath her, blue United Nations flag fluttering from a makeshift pole. The Sahara unfurled below the Mi-8 as an endless expanse of dunes and plains. As the aircraft rattled toward Tripoli, Gold could not help but wonder if Blount was lying dead somewhere—or if he'd become a prisoner. Terrorists would probably consider it a badge of honor to behead such a big and powerful Marine, to wield the knife at his execution. Would some gruesome video show up online at any moment?

The answers to her questions lay down there somewhere. Perhaps Blount was in that tiny village at the two o'clock position. Or perhaps at the end of that sand-covered hint of a road off the eleven o'clock. No way to know now.

After a while, the horizon to the north changed texture. The pencil line where the earth met the sky turned darker. The pencil line gave way to a blue incandescence as the helicopter made progress, and eventually the Mediterranean revealed itself. The desert stopped abruptly at the shoreline, and the cluster of shapes on the shoreline came into focus as Tripoli.

“We'll land in about ten minutes,” the crew chief said on interphone.

“Roger that,” Gold said. “Thanks.”

A few minutes later, as the helicopter flew over Mitiga International, Gold saw that Parson had been busy setting up his forward air base. A row of fighter jets perched on hardstands along a taxiway. Prefab clamshell hangars dotted the tarmac. A pair of HH-60 rescue helicopters sat on the parking ramp in front of what looked like an
air ops center. A few other assorted aircraft rounded out the collection: a C-130 transport, a KC-135 tanker jet, and an AWACS plane with a rotodome mounted on top of the fuselage.

The pilots began talking with Mitiga's control tower. Gold couldn't follow all the flyboy lingo, but she gathered that the UN helicopter was number two for landing behind another chopper. She looked forward through the windscreen and saw a tremendous helo painted in the slate gray of the U.S. Navy and Marines. The military chopper trailed dark gray exhaust as it flew.

The big helicopter descended through the haze, and the UN aircraft followed it. When a turn pointed the Mi-8 toward the Med, the water shone so brightly Gold had to shield her eyes, even though she wore sunglasses. Freighters dotted the surface, presumably awaiting anchorage at Tripoli. Another turn placed both helicopters on final approach.

“What's that other helicopter?” Gold asked.

“That's your Marine Corps,” one of the Canadian pilots said. “It's a CH-53.”

Gold tried to picture the Navy ship from which the CH-53 would have launched. She'd seen no carrier or any other kind of military vessel among the freighters, and she found it vaguely reassuring that something as fearsome as that Marine helo, bristling with guns and flare magazines, could swoop in from a steel deck somewhere in the ocean beyond the horizon.

The 53 settled to the tarmac near the rescue helicopters, and the UN chopper landed behind it. As the Mi-8 shut down, Gold pressed her talk button to thank the crew.

“I owe you one, guys,” she said.

“No, you don't,” the crew chief said. “Least we can do.”

Gold removed her headset, released the clasp of her seat belt, and lifted her duffel bag by one of its shoulder straps. She hopped down from the helicopter without waiting for the crew chief to put the boarding steps into place. All the sensations of a middle-latitudes air
base hit her at once: heat, dust, exhaust fumes, and the never-ending whine of engines.

The structure with the most antennas and satellite dishes must be the operations center, Gold assumed. She made her way past the first line of sand-filled HESCO barriers, showed her United Nations ID to an Air Force security policeman, walked around another line of HESCO barriers, and pulled open a plywood door.

The scent of dusty sandbags, the beige glow of fluorescent light reflecting off clamshell walls, the stacks of bottled water transported her. This scene could have passed for Kandahar airport in 2002. But the world had changed since then, and not always for the better.

However, her lasting friendship with Parson counted as one good change. She heard his voice before she saw him. His back to the door, he was talking about fuel with someone on his cell phone. Ops center staff, some in flight suits and some in fatigues, worked at desks around him.

“That Marine Corps helo just landed,” Parson said. “They're gonna want to fill up with JP-8.” He turned, phone still to his ear, and saw Gold. His eyes widened with surprise. “Yeah, thanks,” he said, still maintaining eye contact with Gold. “Don't worry about the billing.” He terminated the call with a press of his thumb. “Sophia,” he said. “Great to see you, but how did you get here?”

Parson wore his usual desert flight suit with a name tag that displayed his rank and his pilot's wings. Beside the wings Gold noticed something new: a round badge that consisted of a star adorned with wings and a wreath—the Air Force commander's insignia.

“I caught a ride on a UN helicopter. Got here as soon as I could. I want to do whatever I can to help you find Gunny Blount.”

Gold put down her bag and embraced him. The brief display of affection in front of other military personnel felt strange, but it violated no regs. She worked in a civilian status now.

After the hug, with her hands still on his arms, she leaned back and regarded him. He looked like he'd worked through the night.
Skin sagged under his eyes, and he needed a shave. He still appeared reasonably fit, though. If anything, he'd lost some weight. Maybe subsisting on the food of a deployed chow hall for several days had done that to him.

Before Gold could say more, four Marines came into the ops center. Gold recognized two of them as pilots from the CH-53; they wore flight equipment that included horse-collar-style flotation gear in case they ditched at sea. The other two looked like ground officers and wore digital camo: a captain and a lieutenant colonel. The golden wings of the Navy and Marine Corps Parachutist Insignia gleamed on their uniforms. The lieutenant colonel made introductions.

“I'm Bill Loudon and this is Captain Adam Privett,” he said. “Twenty-second MEU off the USS
Tarawa
.”

“Yes, I talked to Captain Privett on the phone,” Parson said. “I'm Michael Parson and this is Sophia Gold. She's with the UN, but she was a sergeant major in the Army, and she's still in the Reserve.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sergeant Major,” Loudon said.

“You, too, sirs.”

“Guys, we'll help do anything possible to get your men back,” Parson said. “Sophia and I know one of them, so we have a personal stake in this, too.”