The Alarmists (2 page)

With the din of the machine gun filling the air, Petros pulled back from Unit 2, following the line of the SUV in a crouch. He stopped just after the cab, going to a knee below the curve of the windshield glass. After a beat, the sound of an HK erupted from the back of Unit 2, and as Richards poked his head around he saw the weapons fire draw the attention of the machine gunner.

Petros raised up, brought the rifle over the vehicle, set and pulled off a single shot, sending his target toppling back through the sunroof. In the moments that followed, all guns fell silent, leaving Colonel Richards hearing nothing save his own breathing and the groan of the desert wind.

Evidently, their attackers decided they’d had enough. A flurry of movement saw them launching themselves back into the jeeps, and in the brief period before they could send them speeding away from the Americans, Richards thought about having his team open up. Even if they didn’t get them all, it would be enough to prevent an attack later on. What kept him from doing so was that, when it became apparent that their foes had disengaged, not a single member of Richards’s unit fired a shot. And while a person in his position seldom took his cues from his subordinates, Richards had been with these men and women long enough to understand that the uniformity of their actions identified it as the right choice.

The colonel watched as the jeeps disappeared across the flatland, until the visual morphed into the dust clouds that had preceded their coming. As he did so, his team filtered back and Richards could see, without his eyes leaving their retreating assailants, that everyone was intact. Only when the dust clouds had vanished as well did he turn his full attention to those awaiting his orders.

“Injuries?” he asked.

There were none—a fact that freed Richards to pay more attention to the three bodies splayed out on the desert floor. The colonel brought his weapon around and crossed the section of land through which deadly projectiles had flown only minutes ago. When he was close enough to confirm the three kills, he lowered his weapon and glanced at Madigan, who had followed a step behind.

“What do you think, Maddy?”

The captain cast a critical eye over the trio.

“Hard to tell,” she said. “Could be the ONLF, maybe even al-Shabaab. You’ve got some cross-border clothing here. Macawis on these two, pants and shirt on this guy.” She paused and gestured toward the third fallen man. “And this one looks like a local—an Afar.”

Richards nodded. What he saw when he reviewed the deceased was a hodgepodge of, if not ideologies, at least ethnicities. If Maddy was right and this was the work of either the ONLF or al-Shabaab, he found himself leaning toward the latter: a terrorist group with a less stringent membership policy.

“Both of them are known to work in this area,” Madigan added.

“Except that we haven’t heard much from the ONLF since Ogaden in 2007,” said Rawlings, who’d wandered over to poke one of the bodies with his weapon. “For all we know, this is Ginbot 7, or someone else entirely.” He exchanged looks with both Maddy and Richards. “What I do know is that they didn’t know who we are, Colonel. Didn’t know how much firepower we have.”

“Which means,” Richards said, “they weren’t coming after
us
so much as they were coming after any good-sized research team that might have a decent amount of valuable equipment.”

Rawlings shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, boss.”

Richards had to agree with him—it was only a guess. Adding to his irritation was the fact that the attack, while sparing his team any casualties, would serve to keep him from completing his project. They wouldn’t continue on to the rift now, not with blood spilled at their hands. And the odd satellite readings—the ones that hinted at something man-made happening within the natural forces fronted by the rift—would go unexplained. For now.

December 3, 2012, 2:33 P.M.

One of the benefits of holding a tenured university professorship was that by juggling classes and effectively using teaching assistants, the professor could free up enough time for some much needed weekday angling. Brenton Michaels hardly moved as he worked a brush pile, slow-rolling spinnerbait in search of one of the lake’s larger fish—hopefully a bass, either the black or the white variety, which were occupied with chasing the shad through the shallows around boat docks and riprap, suspended in the medium depth water along the deeper drop-offs. He’d caught a nine-pound black bass in the same spot the year before: nowhere close to a record but large enough that he’d bragged about it. And the passing months had only allowed the fish in this reservoir to add weight and length. But that wasn’t really the point. If at the end of the day he came off the lake without a nibble, it would still be worth it.

The lake remained placid as he floated the bait, and for the first time in two hours he glanced at the sonar. He’d angled every fishable section of these waters and could recite depths and brush pile and buoy locations by rote. He hadn’t used instruments in years, at least not on this lake. But today he had a feeling that the fish weren’t in their usual spots—that they’d gotten as used to his tricks as he had to theirs. The possibility tested his belief that the act of fishing was its own reward, and that made him consider firing up all his expensive gear for the first time in a long while. But the purist in him won out and he released a deep sigh and started to pull back on the line.

A moment later the muffled ring of his phone interrupted the silence. In a brief flirtation with spite he considered not answering it. But there were few who knew the number, and of those, none that he wanted to tick off. He rummaged around in a canvas bag that, in addition to the phone, held sun block, his shoes, and the largest Snickers bar money could buy.

After looking at the phone’s display, he groaned before answering the call. “You do realize that interruptions like these can lead to the misshaping of malleable minds, don’t you?” he asked.

The question resulted in the briefest of pauses on the other end before Abby, with her customary aplomb, said, “Your sophomore sociology class is up one flight of stairs and thirty-two steps down the hall. At the end of that minor odyssey is a midsized lecture hall, where at the moment Maureen Kellogg is lecturing a group of students who look a lot more interested than they usually do when you’re actually up there doing your job. So I think it’s safe to say that if you’re involved with school in any way right now, it’s a school of fish.”

Brent smiled into the phone. Then he took in a deep draught of moist air, suspecting that his next question would pull him away from the pristine water.

“What’s the emergency, Abby?”

“Emergency?” his admin asked. He could hear the sound of her rapid-fire typing in the background.

“If it keeps me from pulling in a ten-pounder, then it better be,” he said.

Abby didn’t answer right away, but when she did so it was with a brevity Brent had come to expect.

“Okay then,” she said.

The next sound to hit Brent’s ear was silence again, for she’d ended the call. When fifteen seconds later she answered his call back, he could imagine the smug smile on her face.

“Department of the Humanities. How may I direct your call?”

“Okay, what is it?” he asked.

“But it doesn’t qualify as an emergency,” she said. “Not enough to let the big one get away.”

“Abby . . .”

“You got a call from the Pentagon. They want you for a consult.”

The boat sat motionless on the calm water as he digested that. He’d rested the fishing rod across his knees, with the line following the curve of the boat beneath the surface where the neglected bait seemed content to do what it had done all afternoon, which was nothing.

“Oh,” he said.

Calls to consult for one government agency or another, while not frequent, happened with enough regularity to render them unsurprising, and didn’t even get him too excited. A request from the Pentagon, however, was a different matter. In the past fifteen years—after he’d achieved sufficient accolades to be recognized as one of the top experts in his field—he’d received two job offers from someone associated with the Pentagon. A shiver of excitement always accompanied signing his name to a nondisclosure agreement labeled
Top Secret
. He also knew that was why Abby had called, even knowing the message could have waited until he was off the lake.

When after several seconds it became apparent that his admin was content to allow the silence to continue as long as it would, the professor said, “Can you give me the broad strokes?”

He could imagine the look on Abby’s face, pleased that she’d vexed him. She waited a little while longer before giving him the information.

“Colonel Jameson Richards,” he repeated. “I don’t think I’ve worked with him before.”

“I got that impression too,” Abby said. “He wants you in Washington tomorrow.”

“Did he give you any idea what the project is?”

Abby chuckled. “Yeah, the Pentagon’s all warm and fuzzy now. They
like
to talk about super secret stuff over the phone.”

Brent smirked. “You know what this means?” he asked.

“You mean besides the fact that I’m going to have to scramble to find people to cover your classes again?”

“I love you, Abby.”

“I love you too, doll.”

Three hours later, Brent had his bag packed and was on his way to the airport.

December 4, 2012, 6:32 A.M.

Along a narrow alley that bisected a portion of the merkato, wooden stalls, wagons, and overflowing baskets of every size lined both walls, two deep in some places. In fact, so closely were these mobile retail outlets placed that the vendors who operated them were often forced to walk over, around, or under the goods of others in order to corral buyers for their own wares. The sense of industry in this stretch of real estate—an ebb and flow of entrepreneurial energy that spread out from the alley to consume an untold number of square blocks—was a free-form thing constrained by rules sufficient to keep it from giving way to chaos. And yet chaos was what it most closely resembled.

Set apart by a matter of feet from this flow of bodies and goods, two men sat at a small round table, customers of a tiny café that looked to have been dug out from a thick stone wall rather than built into the larger structure by conventional means.

Dabir had positioned himself at the table so he could look out on the alley, and the other man had pulled his chair around so he could do the same. It left them as something of a study in contrast, with Dabir’s dark skin and regional clothing playing against the westerner’s lighter skin and American dress. As the Eritrean sipped his drink he sent his eyes over the alley, looking for anyone who seemed more interested than should be the case. However, that was the beauty of a place like the merkato, he thought. They could have been discussing grain prices or arranging a transfer of nuclear material and not one of the thousands of people within the surrounding area would have known or cared. It was an anonymity granted by virtue of there being far too many people there to keep track of any two of them.

“We lost four men,” the Eritrean said. He sipped at the tej again, his eyes on the people passing in front of the café.

“I’d heard three,” the westerner said in perfect Amharic. He too nursed a glass of the honey wine.

At this, the Eritrean shifted his eyes from the alley to his table companion. “Three in the desert,” he said. “Another died in the jeep as we drove.” He studied the westerner closely, but could not see the man’s eyes for the sunglasses. “I am curious, Mr. Standish. How do you have information about our losses?”

Standish’s first response was a smile and a sip of the tej. Then he said, “You’ve worked for me for how many years, Dabir? And you’re surprised I know something I’m not supposed to know?”

After a moment, Dabir answered with a slight nod. But when he spoke, his words held a hint of the defiance that made him such a good soldier.

“And yet your information has proved inaccurate,” he said. “It is four—not three.”

Dabir was gratified to see a hint of annoyance on the American’s features, obvious despite the sunglasses he kept on even in the café’s dim interior.

“You can be sure the widow fund will reflect that adjustment,” Standish said.

“You are most generous, hälafi,” Dabir said.

He returned his gaze to the alley, his field of vision occupied by a man selling fruit from several baskets and an Arab with head scarves that Dabir suspected would not move in this location.

“You did not tell us there would be American military in the area,” he said after a while.

Again, Standish did not answer right away. Dabir saw his attention on the activity taking place beyond their table, following a man with a dozen or so plastic bins stacked on his head walk past the café—watching until the man disappeared from view. Only then did he speak.

“Your job is pretty simple, Dabir. Stick close to the border and harass anyone you can.” He fixed his business partner with a look. “That requires a certain level of common sense on your part. If you see a group of people with better weapons than you have, leave them alone.”

Despite the minor insult, Dabir would not be baited.

“They were dressed as researchers,” he said. “We did not see weapons.”

Standish finished his tej before responding. When Dabir moved to pour him more from the pitcher, the American waved him off.

“We both know this business isn’t without its risks,” he said.

“True. And yet the CIA cannot warn us when Americans will present themselves as targets?” Dabir asked. He was gambling. Standish had never made his affiliation clear. To Dabir, who had studied in Europe and whose understanding of global dynamics was more extensive than that of most of his countrymen, the probability that Mr. Standish was a CIA operative made sense. His money was certainly regular enough to be backed by the U.S. government.

The sunglasses served their purpose, though, as the Eritrean was unable to read anything in Standish’s eyes.

“You’ll need to recruit more men to replace the ones you’ve lost,” Standish said, as if Dabir had simply misplaced the dead men. “You’ll find enough in the account to facilitate that.”

“Of that I have no doubt,” Dabir replied. Whatever organization Mr. Standish was with—and Dabir had expended what resources he had available to try and answer that question, to no avail—they were always forthcoming with the money. As long as that held true, the mercenary would do as he was asked. “Again, you are most generous.”

He stayed for several minutes after Standish had left, but he did not touch the tej again.