That aide stood there, awaiting his leader's orders, when another one came up to the roof.
"Sir," said the second aide, "your brother has called. His village, Bandar Cisman, is under attack."
With a curse, Gutaale gave his orders. "Launch the entire fleet of naval mujahadin. Get my personal guard company in trucks and have them assemble here. And tell the armored force near Rako to mount up and go to my brother's aid.
"And I want a status report on everything, everywhere!"
D-Day, Suakin, Sudan
There was a guard not far away, standing in the light reflected off the waters from the prison on the mainland. The guard was pretty sure the boy wouldn't try to escape and, even if he did, that the blame would lie upon Labaan's head. For his part, the captive sat on the edge of the island, looking at the mainland wistfully, but also reminded by the prison's lights that things could have been much, much worse.
So many miles to the north, Adam had no idea that this day, rather this night, had any particular significance. All he knew was that it was somewhere around the fifth or sixth month of his captivity, and that that captivity had become, in many ways, altogether too comfortable. That, and that Makeda didn't approve of "parole."
On the other hand, the girl was realistic. Life had slapped her around far too much for her to be anything else. "Since you can't escape unless you're outside and you can't escape from outside if we're manacled together and since you had better not try to escape without me, since you gave me your word, too, I suppose we'll have to live with it. And, if your word to Labaan wasn't good, I suppose it wouldn't be any good to me, either."
He found himself, from time to time, comparing her with his old girlfriend, back in Boston, Maryam the Ethiopian. Those comparisons did not generally favor the latter.
What was Maryam, after all? Adam wondered. Her father worked for the UN. She grew up among the people Labaan sometimes calls "tranzis." She was going to school on the UN ticket. She lived a sheltered life, an artificial life, with almost no idea of Africa as it was.
Compare that with Makeda, who not only knows Africa as it is, but has experienced the very worst of it, first hand.
Maryam was dark and moody, despite her ignorance and sheltered life. Makeda is bright as the sun, despite her utterly shitty one. I would prefer day over night . . . and . . .
I wonder if, perhaps, Labaan didn't do me the biggest favor of all in taking me.
D-Day, Rako, Punt
"Speak up, dammit!" Major Muktar Maalin shouted into his cell phone. Between the shouting, the massed shuffling of feet, the ascending roar of tank engines, and the cursing as some of those engines failed to roar, it was something besides easy to make out the frantic words of one of his uncle's, Gutaale's, minions.
Whoever was on the other end of the connection forced himself to calm down and enunciate. "Your uncle . . . the chief . . . wants . . . you to . . . take your . . . battalion . . . and go . . . to the aid . . . of your uncle . . . his brother . . . in Bandar Cisman. He is . . . under . . . attack."
Since the minion seemed to be having no trouble understanding Maalin's words, the major said, quickly, "Tell the chief I put my soldiers on alert when his brother called. We will be ready to roll within the hour."
"Hurry! Our chief's brother . . . urges all haste."
D-Day, Bandar Cisman
Instead of a flight helmet, he wore a padded wire set with headphones on each side and an adjustable boom mike. Air through the open window rushed through Luis' hair. The pilot wore the same. Both sets of headphones were connected by wire to a central box.
His gun was a fine weapon, Luis thought. His instructors had called it a PKB. It had spade grips he clutched to his chest, and fired, so they'd said, about eight hundred rounds a minute. Who could count so fast, Luis wondered. No matter, it fires fast enough.
The pilot, Harley, had lined up on his first target and begun firing rockets mounted on the wings. Harley had experience with these, apparently, because it took him only four shots before one struck the boat, blasting off one corner and setting the rest alight.
"I used to be better than this," the pilot cursed. "Curse of old age. Try your luck, Luis."
No, Luis found, firing from a plane is different from firing from the ship. He missed with his first several bursts completely. He was getting the range right, but the lead required was throwing him off. Way off.
"Next pass," Harley called, "start shooting before you think you're lined up on the target and let the plane walk it in for you." Harvey made a sweeping gesture taking in the stacks and stacks of ammunition crates. "It's not like we've got any shortage of machine gun ammo, amigo."
Luis nodded, "Si, señor."
Hovering two miles west of Bandar Cisman, Cruz watched the rockets go in, even as the CH-801's side-fired tracers drew bright lines in his NVGs, lines that faded only slowly. He glanced left and right. At the limits of vision, about a mile for objects of that size, he saw the other two Hips hovering as well.
"That works," he said. Passing the message on to the other two helicopters, he lifted his Hip's tail, applied power to the engines, and closed on the town.
"Move, Marines. MOVE!"
Cazz stood behind the clamshells, physically prodding the disembarking men into a semblance of order. Feet churning the gravel and sand, they snaked forward, in a reformed double line, around the sides of the helicopter. Automatically, they stooped forward as they moved. Sure, the chopper's blades were high, butcha nevah know.
Ahead, five or six meters in front of the blades' reach, the platoon leader of Second Platoon, a ‘youngster' of forty who'd retired from the Corps as a major, stood directing his squads into a platoon line. North and south, the other two platoons did the same. The only difference was that First Platoon, to the north, oriented to the southeast while Second, to the south, oriented northeast. The town was now boxed.
Cazz's RTO, another youngster of thirty-seven, tapped his shoulder with the handset of a radio. "Sir, I've got the mortars."
Taking the handset, Cazz said, "Slow fire, and I mean slow. Center of mass of the town. I want their attention and I want them scared . . . but not dead."
"Shot, over," came the reply, in mere seconds. In another forty or so, the Marines heard the freight train sound of a falling one-twenty, followed by a bright flash that silhouetted the one-story buildings of the place.
"That's the ticket," Cazz said. "Give 'em one every five minutes, no more, until further notice.
Ahead, at a range of three hundred to three hundred and fifty meters from the town, the Marine skirmish line went prone and began a slow, rattling fire on the buildings. "Scared," the man had said.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The dove, descending, breaks the air
With wings of incandescent terror.
-T.S. Eliot
D-Day, MV Merciful, northeast of Bandar Cisman
The occasional fall of mortar shells, to the southwest, was at best dimly perceptible, and then only if one was looking and knew what one was looking for. Nobody on the ship really was. They were much more concerned with reconfiguring, refueling, and arming the three Hips that bounced now on the flight deck.