The American Mission (8 page)

“Even better to be here,” Alex replied. “I'm looking forward to getting to work.”

“That may be sooner than you had planned. Ordinarily I'd show you around and let you get settled, but I'm afraid we have something of a situation. The Ambassador wants you to come upstairs first thing.”

Mark handed Alex a laminated Embassy ID on a cheap metal lanyard. His picture and name were framed by a gold border, indicating that he was cleared for classified information and had unrestricted access to all parts of the mission. His ID badge in Conakry had had a blue border. He slipped the lanyard around his neck.

Now just don't blow it
, he thought.

The Ambassador's office was on the fourth floor, behind layers of security that included a Marine Security Guard who controlled a heavy mag-lock door from behind a screen of bulletproof glass, a badge reader in the elevator that activated the button for the fourth floor, and a cipher lock on the door to the executive suite.

The Front Office was spacious and plush, with thick carpets and leather armchairs. Two secretaries sat at desks positioned just in front of the private offices for the Ambassador and Deputy Chief of Mission. The secretaries, both overweight middle-aged women with short gray hair and glasses, looked as if they could have been sisters.

“Hello, Peggy,” Alex said to the Ambassador's secretary. She looked up from the spreadsheet on her computer screen and smiled when she saw who it was.

“Well, look who we have here. Come give your Aunt Peggy a kiss.” With a visible effort she got up from the overmatched Aeron chair and hugged Alex. Peggy Walker had been Spence's assistant for the better part of twenty years. She went everywhere with him and did just about everything for him. Alex had known her since his first week in the Service and had tremendous respect for both her sheer competence and her obvious devotion to Spence.

“It's good to have you back, Alex,” Peggy said when she finally let go. Her eyes were shiny with tears. “I'm glad that you're getting another chance.”

“Thanks, Peggy. It's good to see you too.” Alex was not surprised that Peggy knew about his troubles with DS. Ambassadors had few secrets from their secretaries.

Peggy sat down heavily in the Aeron chair, which let out a thin squeak of protest. Back in command of her desk, she was all business. “The Ambassador is expecting you, Mr. Baines,” she said. “Please go in.”

Spence was sitting at a long oak conference table deep in conversation with a group of half a dozen people when Alex entered. On the center of the table, he could see a detailed map of what looked like a stretch of the Congo River. Most of the group at the table wore conventional business attire, but the one woman in the room was wearing an army uniform and the man next to her was dressed in what looked like a white linen suit with a red silk tie emblazoned with some sort of crest. This was definitely not standard State Department issue. The body language of the group was tense. Only the slight man in the tropical suit looked unruffled.

Even so, Spence smiled broadly when he saw Alex enter the room. He stood up and gave Alex a firm handshake, clasping Alex's shoulder with his left hand. At just about an inch over six feet tall, Alex was not a small man, but Spence was at least two inches taller and built like a bear. It had been more than a year since they had seen each other and Alex was struck by how much Spence had aged. His hair was now more gray than black and there were deep creases around his eyes.

“Spence, you look like hell.”

“You don't know the half of it, Alex,” he laughed, shedding at least five years in doing so. “Let me introduce you to the team.”

Turning to the group at the table, Spence announced in his deep ambassadorial baritone: “Colleagues, allow me to present Alex Baines, the new head of the political section and a dear friend. Alex, I think you know Bob Jeffries, my DCM.” Alex and Jeffries had worked together on a crisis action team in Washington following a failed coup attempt in Uganda.
Alex remembered Jeffries as a technically competent but cautious officer, more inclined to focus on potential danger than opportunity.

Alex nodded at Jeffries. “It's good to see you again, Bob,” he said.

“You too.”

“Next to him,” Spence continued, “is Deborah Fessler, our Defense Attaché.” The Attaché was a brassy blonde with the broad shoulders and compact build of a power lifter. The eagles on her shoulders marked her as a full colonel.

“On the other side of the table, we have our Station Chief, Jonah Keeler; our Regional Security Officer, Rick Viggiano; and Henri Saillard from Consolidated Mining.”

Keeler was a slim black man who looked to be in his mid-forties. He wore stylish tortoiseshell glasses that gave him a vaguely professorial air. In contrast, Viggiano looked like an enforcer for the mob, with thickly muscled arms, slicked-back hair, and a bushy mustache that was vintage seventies. His hands were the size of dinner plates. Saillard was the dandy in the white suit. He sported a carefully trimmed goatee, and his dark hair contrasted sharply with his Nordic blue eyes. His presence in the conversation was something of a surprise. Not only was he an outsider, he was clearly a foreigner, French or Belgian Alex guessed by his name. His presence would necessarily restrict what it was that the group could discuss.

Spence no doubt had his reasons for wanting him in on the conversation. It was his mission and therefore his call. Alex moved to stand behind the one empty seat at the table. “Looks like I've arrived at something of an interesting time.”

“That's for damn sure,” Deborah Fessler said without irony.

“Alex, I'm glad you're here,” Spence said, as he sat back in his seat at the head of the table. “We've got a problem that we need your help with. Seems a survey team working with Consolidated Mining got jumped out in the bush by the Hammer of God. They're holding hostages, including as many as six Americans.”

“Hammer of God? Pretty theatrical name,” Alex commented. He had never heard of the group. The international press rarely covered developments in the Congo, and the Hammer of God had yet to make the
New York Times
. Alex had his clearances back, but it would still take time to get up to speed. There were new players on the scene since the last time he had been in the country.

“Maybe a bit self-aggrandizing,” the colonel replied, “but not entirely undeserved. The Hammer is the private army of Joseph Manamakimba, who is a no-fooling sociopath with a history of murdering hostages. His soldiers don't just follow him, they worship Manamakimba as a living god. They are supposed to have some kind of magical protection in combat, and they win most of the time so who's to say it isn't true? In all seriousness, Manamakimba has some skill. The Hammer is still a paramilitary and its organization is somewhat ad hoc, but the officers seem to know what they're doing. We think Manamakimba has had some professional training, maybe from the Cubans in Angola.”

Spence motioned for Alex to sit. “Colonel Fessler and Jonah can bring you up to speed on the situation.”

The colonel pointed to a spot on the map near a bend in the Congo River. This is the last known position of the Consolidated team. Intelligence from intercepts of Hammer of God communications indicates that the hostages are being held in the same area.

“We can't get any pictures through the jungle canopy, but the level of chatter is consistent with a force of approximately thirty fighters. If Manamakimba himself is there, and we've listened in on a couple of conversations that lead us to believe he is, this is likely a group of some of his toughest, most experienced jungle fighters.”

“What do we know about Manamakimba? What kind of man are we dealing with here?” It was essential, Alex believed, never to forget that you were negotiating with a person, not an organization or a country. Understanding that individual, what he valued, how he viewed the
world, and what kind of personal stake he had in the discussions was often the difference between success and failure. Spence had taught him that.

It was the CIA Station Chief who responded. “In truth, Manamakimba is something of a cipher. He's been one of our top targets for intelligence gathering over the last couple of years, but we haven't been able to get close to anyone close to him. The intelligence is almost all second- or thirdhand. We don't know where he's from, what his goals are, or even what he was doing before the Congo went to hell. We do know that he's smart, ballsy, and successful. This war was made for a guy like him.”

Keeler was refreshingly matter-of-fact about what he did not know. This was not a common attribute among station chiefs.

“We don't even have a particularly good picture of him,” Keeler continued, handing Alex a red folder with a
SECRET
cover sheet. Inside was the standard Agency bio on Manamakimba with a slightly blurry head shot that looked like it might have been a passport or visa photo. Even in the fuzzy photo, however, Alex could see that Joseph Manamakimba was strikingly handsome. He did not look like a mass murderer, but the scant text of the biography painted a different picture.

“The guy hardly looks like Genghis Khan,” Alex observed.

“No contest,” Keeler replied. “Manamakimba would make the khan look like the social secretary at a church picnic.”

“Has he made any demands at this point?”

“Yes, he's asked for thirty-five million dollars and the complete withdrawal of UN forces and all Western oil and mining companies from eastern Congo.”

“That's interesting.”

“Ain't it?”

“Is it possible that Manamakimba was deliberately targeting this group? That he didn't just stumble across them in the jungle by chance?”

“What are you getting at, Alex?” Spence asked.

“What he's asking for is impossible . . . and all out of proportion to the leverage he has,” Alex explained. “According to our Agency friends, Manamakimba is smart and effective, so it seems unlikely that he doesn't understand that.”

“So?'

“So, it means that this is a political act and not opportunistic blackmail. It sounds to me like he's trying to draw attention to a cause rather than effecting a particular outcome.”

Alex looked across the table at Henri Saillard. “Have you had other run-ins with the Hammer of God recently? Consolidated Mining is the largest operator in eastern Congo. It's logical that you would be a magnet for Manamakimba if he's targeting the extractive industry.”

“No,” Saillard replied dismissively. “This is an isolated incident perpetrated by a greedy thug. This is a criminal not a political act.”

“I wouldn't be so certain of that,” Jonah Keeler chimed in. “What Alex is saying makes a lot of sense to me. There have been a spate of attacks on mining operations in the same area where the Consolidated team was hit. Nothing definitive links the other attacks to the Hammer of God, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if they were responsible. I suppose we'll find out soon enough what Manamakimba's after.”

“How so?” Alex asked.

“They've asked for a parley,” Fessler explained. “Based on the demands on the table, we don't think that there's a deal to be had, but there may be a chance to buy some time. There's a group of Pakistani UN peacekeepers moving into position to execute a raid to secure the release of the hostages. They need at least twenty-four hours to deploy, however, and Manamakimba is threatening to shoot one hostage every hour beginning at dawn if we don't meet his terms. We're hoping negotiations can go on long enough for us to get the Pakistanis in position. It's a gamble, but it's likely the only chance this group has.”

Alex could envision the risks, not only for the hostages but for the negotiating team as well. A hostage rescue operation was complex and
difficult under the best of circumstances. Factor in the lack of operational intelligence and the peacekeepers' lack of experience and appropriate training, and the most likely outcome of this exercise would be massive loss of life on all sides. It could work, though, with the right negotiator. The negotiator would need to string Manamakimba along, selling him on the idea that there was a deal on offer if he kept talking a little longer. It was a difficult and dangerous task that fell somewhere between the role of bait and sacrificial lamb. Alex did not envy whoever drew the short straw for that assignment.

“Who's doing the actual negotiations?” Alex asked Spence. “The mining company or the UN?”

“I thought that was clear,” the Ambassador replied. “You are.”

J
UNE
20, 2009

B
UMBA

T
he first obstacle was the helicopter. The Congo was vast, about the size of Western Europe, and there were few paved roads. Air transport was the only practicable means of traveling the long distances. In central and eastern Congo, most of the air links were controlled by UNSAF, the unfortunate acronym for the UN Security Assistance Force that was inevitably mispronounced “unsafe.” An UNSAF charter plane flew Alex, Jonah Keeler, Rick Viggiano, and a few of the RSO's local security people to Bumba in north central Congo. From there, they would have to take a Russian Mi-8 helicopter to the UN resupply base near the confluence of the Congo and Aruwimi Rivers. The tough and reliable Mi-8 was the workhorse of African air transport.

For Alex, the challenge was not a fear of flying, or even a fear of crashing. It was a fear of ghosts. Since Darfur, the sight and sound of helicopters had been enough to trigger panic attacks and flashbacks to the butchery in Camp Riad. Dr. Branch had helped him understand these episodes as symptoms of an underlying condition rather than as a
sign of weakness or moral failure. PTSD was a subtle disease that responded to changes in the environment. It was possible to identify the triggers, however, and develop effective coping strategies. Yoga was part of Alex's regimen. So was avoidance. The Sea Knight flight out of Western Sudan was the last time he had been on a helicopter.

Deplaning, he could see three Mi-8s clustered on the runway. In repose, the massive rotor blades drooped precariously close to the tarmac. It was only when they were spinning that the blades would straighten out and stabilize into a flat disk. As the team walked across the tarmac toward the helicopters, the rotors of the lead Mi-8 began to turn, cutting through the humid air with a characteristic rhythmic thrum.

Alex's heart rate soared and a trickle of sweat ran down the back of his neck. He could hear his breathing grow heavier and faster, and he made a conscious effort to control it. The yoga was supposed to help with this. He tried
ujjayi pranayama
, a technique that integrated breath control with low-frequency vocalizations. It was almost a humming sound, and Alex hoped that the rotor noise would mask it from his colleagues. The breathing exercises helped. His pulse rate dropped slightly, and the surging sense of panic began to recede somewhat. Just in case, he patted his pocket to make sure that the plastic bottle of Zoloft was still there. That was his insurance policy.

As Alex climbed through the narrow hatch into the Mi-8, his chest tightened and it became harder to concentrate on the
pranayama
. It felt as though there was not enough oxygen in the aircraft's cramped interior.

The Mi-8 was primarily a cargo carrier, and seating was limited to a bench made of canvas-strapped aluminum tubing welded to the hull. Alex took a seat and buckled up the restraints. He concentrated on his breathing and struggled to maintain an outward appearance of equanimity. Jonah Keeler leaned over in his direction and said something that Alex did not catch. He nodded in agreement, hoping that the Station
Chief would leave it at that. It was evidently an adequate response, as Jonah turned to his other side to talk to one of the UNSAF officers traveling with them.

The rotor volume increased, and the aircraft shuddered slightly as it lost contact with the ground. As they rose up, Alex looked out of one of the small portholes at the ground below. Rather than verdant jungle, his mind's eye saw a blood red desert and Janjaweed
horsemen riding with leveled lances. He knew it wasn't real, but the image below him was so powerful and haunting that he pulled up hard against the restraints. The webbing dug into his shoulders.

He looked away from the window and bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. The pain helped to beat back the vision of the past. Without conscious thought, he reached for the bottle of Xanax in his pocket, grasping the top lightly with two fingers. The flight would be so much easier if he was mildly sedated. The side effects of the drug included irritability, memory problems, and drowsiness. None of these were particularly attractive attributes to acquire in advance of negotiations with a homicidal sociopath. Instead, he took a picture of Anah out of his shirt pocket. It was her most recent school picture, and she was sitting in front of a plain blue background smiling at the camera.

Alex held his daughter's picture in the palm of his hand, stealing occasional glances at it throughout the eighty-minute flight. But it was not until he was back on solid ground at the UN peacekeepers' advance base on the shores of the Aruwimi River that he felt fully in control.

•   •   •

T
he normally sleepy outpost was bustling. The UN soldiers had already exchanged their sky blue berets for jungle-pattern Kevlar helmets. The young Pakistani conscripts who had arrived in the Congo as peacekeepers had been told to prepare for war.

This was as close to the rendezvous point as they could get by air. Manamakimba had been clear that he would shoot at any helicopters
approaching his camp. According to the CIA assessment, the guerillas had collected just enough shoulder-fired missiles to make the threat credible.

There was only one road upriver, and it was about an eight-hour drive from the UN camp to the bend that Manamakimba had identified as the meeting place. The peacekeepers-turned-warriors would give the negotiators a two-hour head start and a total of six hours from first contact in which to make a deal. At zero hour, and assuming as nearly everyone did that the negotiations would fail, the Pakistanis would assault the camp in strength and, at least according to the plan, secure the freedom of both the hostages and the negotiators.

The negotiating team traveled in a convoy of five lightly armored Toyota Land Cruisers. The UN's fully armored Humvees were significantly heavier and tended to sink up to their axles in river mud.

Alex rode shotgun in the lead vehicle. The driver, Nduku, was a shift supervisor on the Embassy's local guard force and a former paramilitary from an outfit that had battled frequently with the Hammer of God. Viggiano liked to have at least a few people on his payroll who knew something about killing. Two armed Pakistani soldiers sat in the back, Sergeant Irfan Chaudry and Private Ali Sharif. To Alex's chagrin, the head of the UN operation had assigned them to Alex as his personal bodyguards. Neither looked old enough to shave, and their oversize helmets merely exaggerated their youthful appearance. The Pakistanis were armed with wicked-looking Heckler & Koch G3 assault rifles. On the seat next to him, Nduku had an auto-racing magazine and a chocolate bar. In a fight with the weapons at their disposal, Alex would have put his money on Nduku.

Chaudry and Sharif took their responsibilities seriously, however, and Alex was glad of the company. It kept him from brooding too much about either the upcoming encounter with Manamakimba or the unsettling vision of Sudan he had seen through the helicopter window.

Alex popped Miriam Makeba's jazzy
Pata Pata
into the Land
Cruiser's CD player. Pretty soon, Chaudry and Sharif were bobbing their heads in time to the rhythms sung in the soft but powerful voice of South Africa's folk legend.

For the next few hours, the conversation wandered widely over the usual topics of general interest to young men: family, sports, food, and girls. Even as he was chatting idly with Nduku and the UN soldiers, however, a good part of Alex's mental energy was occupied with the task in front of him. He sifted through the variables, looking for an angle or an edge, anything that might improve the prospects for success. Risk could not be avoided, but it could be managed. Having a daughter, he discovered, had changed the way he thought about risk. The risks he took for himself he was now taking for Anah as well. If the worst came to it, his brother had agreed to be Anah's guardian, and Alex's will was up-to-date and on file with the State Department's central personnel office. It would be better for all concerned, he reasoned, if that option remained theoretical.

The road they were traveling followed a rambling route through mostly dense jungle. When the road intersected a river, there was often a small village, usually nothing more than a scattering of huts. Twice they drove through villages that had been pillaged by one or more of eastern Congo's multitude of armed groups. One village looked as though it had been abandoned for months. The jungle was already moving in to reclaim the land that had been cleared for crops. In the next village, however, thin wisps of smoke wafted into the air from huts that had only recently been burned to the ground. There was a lull in the conversation as Alex and his companions considered the significance of this particular portent.

•   •   •

A
bout a kilometer from the rendezvous point, an armed soldier stepped into the middle of the road and waved for the convoy to stop. Alex had to look closely to see the other paramilitaries waiting
expectantly in the jungle on either side of the road. This was the first potential tipping point. If Manamakimba was intent on provoking a major confrontation with the UN, wiping out the convoy would be a good place to begin. The soldier standing in the road with his arm outstretched like some kind of traffic cop had his rifle slung across his back. He was wearing a black tank top and jungle camouflage pants tucked into heavy combat boots. The handle of an impressively large knife protruded from one of the boots. Sweat glistened on his shaved head.

Most striking, however, was what seemed to be a kitchen faucet dangling around the guerilla's neck from a piece of manila rope.

“Nduku, what's with the plumbing supplies?” Alex asked the driver. Having fought for years in the jungles of eastern Congo before deciding to peddle his trade to the other side of the security equation, the former irregular was a wealth of information on the Congo's myriad paramilitary outfits.

“Magic,” Nduku answered. “All the Hammer of God fighters wear them. Manamakimba himself has blessed each totem. It makes the wearer immune from bullets. This is true. I swear it is. I have seen it myself. The bullets go right through them and leave no mark.”

Nduku crossed himself reflexively as he spoke.

Alex had experience in Sudan negotiating with warlords and their subchiefs. It was always tricky and the consequences for getting it wrong could be severe. When the guerilla approached the jeep, Alex had to open the door to speak. The windows in even semi-armored cars do not roll down. After the air-conditioned comfort of the Land Cruiser, the jungle air was fetid and humid with a pervasive odor of rot and decay.

“You are the Americans?” The soldier spoke in Lingala rather than French.

“Yes, we are,” Alex replied in the same language. In his Peace Corps days, Lingala had been the language of choice for communicating
across tribal lines. Like most trade languages, it was relatively simple and easy to pick up. Alex's Lingala was nearly as good as his French.

“We walk from here. You come alone. No others. No guns.”

Without looking away from the guerilla, Alex spoke in English to his Pakistani bodyguards. “Boys, I'm going to get out of the car. I want you behind me and to one side. Keep your rifles in your hands but don't point them at anyone. Keep some distance between yourselves so he can't target you both.”

The Hammer of God fighter stepped back when Alex and the UN soldiers got out of the car. The guerilla was built like a wrestler, but he was shorter than Alex. Instead of looking down at the American seated in the Land Cruiser, he now had to look up. It was a subtle shift, but the dynamic was clearly different. Similarly, the Pakistani soldiers visibly under his command meant that, at least as far as the guerilla was concerned, Alex was now armed. Alex leaned forward slightly to underscore the man's failure to intimidate him with a show of force. “
Te,
” he said, using the Lingala word for “no.”

“Let me explain to you how this is going to work. We are here to secure the release of our people from your custody. These are the cars in which we will transport them to safety. Refusing to allow them through indicates to me that Mr. Manamakimba is not serious about reaching an agreement. If that is the case, we should turn around and leave now. If that's not true, then the cars are coming with us. These men,” he said, inclining his head in the direction of Chaudry and Sharif, “are my personal bodyguards. They will not leave my side. Mr. Manamakimba is expecting us and I believe he would strongly prefer us to be alive.”

There was a look of uncertainty in the guerilla's eyes as he wavered between two very different decisions. Grudgingly, he stepped aside and gestured to Alex to follow him. The tightness in Alex's chest eased as he took a deep, controlled breath. The approach he had chosen had been a calculated risk, but a real one nevertheless.

The soldier who had only moments ago been threatening Alex stepped into the jungle and emerged riding a Kawasaki dirt bike with a noisy two-stroke engine. Without a word, the guerilla gunned the engine and took off down the riverside road. Nduku followed.

They bounced down the rutted road for slightly more than a kilometer. Suddenly the jungle opened up on both sides into a wide, flat clearing. Large, dun-colored canvas tents stood in a neat row on the far side of the clearing. The small convoy of white Land Cruisers parked alongside the road. The Americans and their UNSAF minders got out of the cars and stretched surreptitiously to work out the kinks from the long and uncomfortable trip. Nduku stayed behind the wheel. Alex took the opportunity to survey the camp.

Guerilla fighters were engaged in a variety of tasks. Some were standing guard on the camp perimeter. Some were cleaning their weapons. A few were sleeping in hammocks strung between trees. Many had a faucet, a piece of copper pipe, or some other mundane tool of the plumbing trade hanging around their necks. Most of those carrying guns looked to be adults, but Alex saw a number of children working in the camp. One group, in which the oldest could have been no more than twelve, was cooking a one-pot meal over a sizable fire. Another group was kicking around a soccer ball.