Christine shrugged her shoulders. “There aren’t all that many of us that do, sir. Everybody has a first time out.”
“I know. And, blast it, the seafighters are Phil’s baby. Besides, he’s literally the only command-rated officer we have who’s qualified on combat hovercraft. Still…”
Silently Macintyre grimaced and faced forward again, slouched deeper in his seat. Christine found it easy to read his mind. Do you fire a promising young officer from his first command, almost certainly ruining his career without giving him his chance? Or do you risk a crew and a mission with an overconfident greenhorn? Or do you weasel and walk the line by trying to talk a test-bed sailor into a warfighter’s mind-set?
Christine promised herself that she’d get out of the uniform long before she ever reached flag rank. “Life’s a bitch and then you die, sir,” she said sympathetically.
Macintyre glanced up at her and a wry smile touched his face. “Words of wisdom, Commander. Drive on. You mentioned that TACNET was starting to produce some results. Anything indicative yet?”
“Just that it’s real quiet out there for the moment. Union naval operations have dropped right off the scale ever since the interdiction was declared. Hardly any action at all along the Guinea coast.”
“Any chance we might have them a little intimidated?”
Christine Rendino shook her head as she popped the Hummer back into gear. “No way, sir. These guys are just lying low and scoping us out. The West African Union has a good Humint network operating inside Guinea. It’s sure money that they have us under observation. Right now, they’re gauging our force strengths and capacities. When they’re ready, they’ll start moving again.”
“Do you have one of your famous prognostications on what that next move is going to be?”
“That one’s easy,” Christine replied. “Eighty percent probability of a direct attack against the U.N. interdiction forces. Probably right here at Conakry. Also probably very soon, before we’re fully set up and ready for him.”
“You seem sure Belewa is going to take us on directly?”
“Fa’ certain sure, Admiral. Belewa can walk in and take Guinea anytime he wants to. He just has to kick us out of the way first.”
Offshore, the rain had slackened and the mist had started to lift. A Guinean navy patrol launch slid past, its crew sprawled on the deck in various postures of lackadaisical unconcern. In much the same way, the crew of the pinasse lounged atop the cargo that filled its midships section. Only with them, it was a carefully staged pose. Alert eyes narrowed, and as they drew near their objective, each handpicked sea warrior ran his duties over in his mind.
They could see the coast now. And beyond the surf line and the beach, they could also see the approach lights of the air base glowing blue in the growing dusk.
With civil air travel at a standstill because of the unrest in-country, the U.N. military mission had taken over the old passenger terminal at Conakry International as its headquarters. Sandbag revetments and barricades of earth-filled oil drums had gone into place around the building’s exterior, converting the low-set concrete structure into an ad hoc fortress. Communications antennas sprouted from the roof and diesel generators snored, supplementing the uncertain local power grid.
Inside, hastily erected partitions subdivided waiting areas and concourses into office space. The terminal restaurant was now a mess hall, serving up field ration meals around the clock, and weary members of the headquarters cadre caught an occasional fragment of sleep on the cots lining the hallways.
The airport’s lounge had become the headquarters briefing center, the shelves behind the bar having been emptied out and the exterior picture windows closed off with heavy slabs of plywood. Only the frivolous split-bamboo furnishings remained, striking an incongruous note as the UNAFIN commanders gathered to speak about war.
“Gentlemen, forget your nerve gases, your high-energy lasers, and your genetically engineered biotoxins. This is the premier superweapon of the twenty-first century.”
The picture projected onto the wall screen was one of abject deprivation. A cluster of black Africans — men, women, and children — sat hunkered in the dust. Gaunt inside their rags, disease-warped and weary beyond their years, they stared with blank-eyed incomprehension into the camera lens.
Christine Rendino paused for a moment to let the image have its impact, then she continued. “Excess population, gentlemen. There’s plenty of it lying around. It’s self-deploying with the occasional prod of a bayonet, and man, if you happen to be a Third World dictator, it’s efficient. You can get rid of a whole bunch of people you don’t like by burying them alive under a whole bunch of people who don’t like you.”
She had a small audience; only half a dozen other officers sat in the semidarkness. However, even this little group was further divided. Emberly and Stottard sat at one table, while the two British liaisons were at another. Lieutenant Mark Traynor from the Royal Navy’s minehunter group looked cool and very old empire in the white socks and shorts of his tropical uniform. However, Squadron Leader Evan Dane, his counterpart from the Provisional patrol helicopter group, denied the heat in the gray Nomex flight suit of a naval aviator.
Spare and wary, Lieutenant Commander Trochard, from the French navy’s offshore patrol, sat alone at yet a third table. The barriers dividing the representatives of the different military missions were invisible but decidedly present. Admiral Macintyre leaned against the wall at the back of the room. Scowling, he looked on as Christine doggedly continued.
“Using an artificially created flood of refugees to destabilize a neighbor state has been a proven and accepted battle tactic in Africa since before Zaire turned back into the Congo. The Serbs tried it in the Balkans as well. You just have to have a certain… pragmatic attitude to employ the doctrine.”
The voice of Squadron Leader Dane came out of the shadows. “It seems to me that by herding all of your enemies in one place, you’d just be making it easier for them to unite against you, Commander.”
“You’re forgetting the Africa factor, the sheer poverty and lack of available resources. If you’re a subsistence farmer in the Guinea backcountry who’s being deluged by starving Union refugees, the refugees themselves present a far more immediate threat to your survival than the government initiating the problem. Once the food riots begin and the blood feuds get going, you can’t get the factions to work together. How do you organize an army to fight a common enemy when your soldiers are all busy fighting each other for the last handful of rice in the bowl?”
Christine swept her pointer across the screen again. “Multiply this picture fifty thousand times over and you have what the government of Guinea and the U.N. aid agencies are having to deal with right now on a daily basis. Comparatively speaking, our problems are a little simpler, but just comparatively.”
She clicked the projector controller in her left hand and the image on the screen shifted to one of the Premier of the West African Union. Clad in worn bush fatigues and with the cap pulled low and shading his face, he stood in front of a camouflaged armored vehicle.
“This gentleman is General Obe Belewa, career army officer and professional military dictator. Unlike certain other Africans who have aspired to this office, such as the late and unlamented Idi Amin and Muammar Qaddafi, this guy actually knows what he’s doing.”
Christine crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall beside the screen. “If you want an example, consider this. His first major action upon reorganizing his military after the Liberian takeover was to establish a joint army-navy NCO training academy staffed by the best of the old lifer sergeants from his ECOMOG garrison force.”