“Thank you, Private. You did your duty well. You will get a special commendation and a promotion. You’re now a corporal and you are dismissed.”
The man turned, and a wave of relief washed over his face as he hurried out of the tent.
“What does it say?” Adams asked.
“Message to you from Ambassador Oberholtzer.” He handed the message to the Vice President. He read it.
“Mr. Vice President. I hope this message gets to you. First, we must communicate. You have a SATCOM. So do I. It would be most helpful, sir, if you could turn your set on every day at twelve noon and again at six for any messages we have for you or that you might have for us. Leave it on the same frequency you used to talk to the President.
“We are aware of your solid support for the Bijimi Loyalist Party and Mojombo Washington. We are desperate to know more about him and his plans, and what you want to do in the next few days. The President is still concerned about your safety.
“Please let us know what we can do to help you. Two Navy SEALs have delivered this message. They have been instructed not to harm in any way any of the Mojombo forces. I trust they achieved this today and delivered the message.
“If you could confirm your receipt of this message at six o’clock this evening, we can talk.
“May you stay safe and in good health and spirits. I am respectfully your servant: Ambassador Nance Oberholtzer.”
“What time is it?” The Vice President looked at his watch, a solar-tech one powered by the sun or any other light, which charged the batteries. “Good, only three-thirty. We’ll talk with the ambassador tonight. Maybe we can get those SEALs to help us launch some attacks. They are good, fantastic. The best trained and most effective sea, land, or air combat forces ever assembled.”
“How many of them?” Mojombo asked.
“That’s the beauty of them. They work in platoons of sixteen men. Only two officers, but in the field every man is of equal rank. It’s amazing what they can do. We send them all over the world on a covert basis to get our chestnuts out of the fire.”
“Who sent them here?” Mojombo asked.
“That’s one question we’ll have for the ambassador. Let’s write down any more questions you have and we’ll both talk to him.”
The leader of the rebels stood up from the chair and paced around the tent. He sat down, got up again, and walked outside. Vice President Adams waited for him. When he came back he sat down and frowned, then gave a long sigh.
“Is this a good thing? This talking to the center of our enemy?”
“The ambassador is not your enemy. He’s probably the best friend you have in Sierra City. This can only lead to help for you, benefits for you.”
“I have no doubt that these SEALs are terrific. However, they are only sixteen. What can sixteen do against four thousand armed troops shooting at them?”
“Like you, Mojombo, they don’t engage in pitched battles except when they can assure surprise or a crushing blow with something other than manpower. Let’s wait and see what the ambassador has to say.”
“We will wait. In the meantime, we were working on some ideas for attacks on the corrupt politicians. We already hit the main police station and the Army base. Should we burn down the Hall of Democracy, where the legislature meets?”
“Doesn’t seem like a good idea. Maybe we should concentrate on the military. Snipers could infiltrate far enough so you could shoot up the two small helicopters that the Army has. That would put their entire air force out of commission.”
“Yes, good idea. We’ll send a four-man team in tonight to do that. Let me get the men started downstream on our smaller boat. The choppers are kept in the open at the Army camp just north of the capital. It will be a two-day mission. Now what else?”
“Electrical power. Where do you get it from?”
“Most of it comes across the border with Bijimi. We used to be part of that country. The British built the hydroelectric plant twenty years ago. Now it serves four different nations.”
“So we leave the generators alone, and take down the lines that bring the power across the border. That would black out most of the nation and would cause an immediate uproar and problems for the Kolda government.”
“I wonder about that. It would cause government turmoil, but the main losers would be the people, who would suffer the most. Let’s get some better ideas.”
“My Navy days didn’t include a lot of G-2,” Adams said. “The fact is I was a lowly lieutenant in the black-water boats that got shot up six different times in Vietnam.”
“The police, the Army,” Mojombo said. “Those have to be our targets. I hesitate to do anything that will kill civilians or make their lives any harder than they are right now.”
“Yes, I get the picture. My next suggestion is that you’re too far from the center of the action. You need to move closer to Sierra City.”
“But wouldn’t that put us in more danger from a raid by the Army? They could being in two thousand men with weapons and rout us in five minutes.”
“Not if you move into an area and get the civilian population entirely on your side. Then if the Army tries to come in, your soldiers can fight or fade into the jungle and the civilians will come out in the street and totally swamp the soldiers. Civilians always inhibit a fighting force. You told me that the Army units won’t chase you into the jungle. They proved that before.”
“This idea of starting to enlist all the people in a town is good. I’ve thought of it, but haven’t tried it. Say we moved down to the village called Tinglat. We would still be twenty miles from the city. There are over a thousand people in that village who raise some crops, cut wood, and harvest certain trees from the forest. I have friends there. Yes, I think they will support me. I’ll go down there tomorrow with twenty of my men and we’ll talk to them.
“They will be my people. I can protect them from the cheating tax collectors who routinely rob the workers in the villages. We’ll strip the tax men and tar them and cover them with chicken feathers before we float them down the river on a small raft. Yes, I think we can do it. We’ll start to claim territory and the population. When we get one area well protected, we’ll get volunteers to swell our fighting ranks and then move to the next village as we make another jump closer to the city.”
“Now, what about new targets for your night raiders? The government forces will soon be patrolling the river, so you might have to come in by land the last ten miles or so. Any more small Army units you could hit, or government warehouses stacked with foreign-aid food, say?”
“Oh, yes. At least one that I know about. It’s in the north end of the city and is the President’s personal cache of hard-to-get goods. I’d bet there is food enough there to feed my men for a year, if we just had some way to get it up here.”
“You have a market day in town?”
“Yes. With our poor farmers, every day is market day, so they can scratch out a living from their small farms.”
“Most of those wagons and trucks and carts go back up the trail empty, don’t they?”
Mojombo jumped up and laughed. “Oh, you are so right. We can make a raid on the warehouse at night. Transport everything we want into another warehouse farther north in the city. Then the next day…” He laughed again. “Mr. Vice President, I’m tremendously glad that you are on my side.”
Mojombo stood and nodded to himself. “Yes, I have much work to do and people to talk to before tomorrow morning. I will lead the raiders myself. We will need to steal trucks to move the matériel. Such a strike as this will not be extremely harmful to the President and his band of thieves, but it will put them on notice that we know more about him and his piracy than he thinks.”
“I want to go along. I had four years in the Navy.”
“No. It is too risky. You are still my key to the whole idea of a national revolution. I am working on the demands that I will make to the world. But first the talk with your ambassador at six, then the raid tonight and the exodus of the goods tomorrow.” Mojombo paused. “Do I have your word as a gentleman that you will not try to join our force that marches out to the river shortly after dark?”