Jeremy yelled out a startled, wordless cry of warning as he struggled to unsling his old bolt-action Enfield. Sleep-dazed Corporal Rupert sprang to his feet, his weapon lying forgotten on the pier decking. An instant later twin daggers of flame lanced out from the bow of the launch, the converging tracer streams shredding the noncom and flinging him aside.
Exposed for the first time to the realities of war, Jeremy Makeni froze. He was never given the instant he needed to recover. The dual-mount machine guns raked the length of the pier and something smashed into the young soldier’s chest.
He fell beside Corporal Rupert, a lingering fragment of warrior’s pride keeping his hand closed on the stock of his rifle. Jeremy’s eyes no longer responded to the growing glow of the sun, but faintly, he heard a man speaking. For a last moment, he thought it was his father’s voice.
Yelling their deep-toned battle cries, the Liberian soldiers streamed up from the pier float, ignoring the two bloodstained bodies sprawled on the upper deck. Forming into assault teams, they stormed the streets of the city, en route to their assigned objectives. It was a scene being repeated a dozen times over along the waterfront as the seizure of Sierra Leone’s capital gained momentum. Over all, recorded words thundered repetitively from a bank of loudspeakers aboard the invasion transport.
“PEOPLE OF FREETOWN! STAY IN YOUR HOMES! STAY OUT OF THE STREETS! LIBERATION HAS COME! SOLDIERS OF SIERRA LEONE! LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS! YOU ARE OUR BROTHERS! WE WISH YOU NO HARM!”
The indirect lighting in the White House briefing room dimmed. The two-meter-wide flatscreen set into the cherry paneling of the wall flicked on, displaying a computer graphics map of the African continent for the three people seated at the central conference table.
Secretary of State Harrison Van Lynden turned in his chair to face the man at the head of the table. “To begin, sir,” the graying New Englander said, “I believe that a brief review of the situation in the crisis zone would help to put today’s developments in perspective. With your permission, Mr. Dubois, our Undersecretary for African Affairs, will walk us through the recent events in the region.”
Benton Childress, the forty-fourth President of the United States, nodded. “Very well, Harry. Carry on, Mr. Dubois. Whatever you think we need to know.”
“Thank you, sir.” A fit-looking black man in his late thirties, Richard Dubois scowled a scholar’s thoughtful scowl as he keyed a command into the wall screen control pad. The north-west quadrant of the map windowed up, filling with a view of the great West African peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic.
“West Africa, gentlemen,” he began. “To say that this is an unstable and troubled region would be a cataclysmic under statement. Although potentially rich in natural resources, eight out of the world’s ten most impoverished nations are located here. Although hundreds of millions of foreign-aid dollars have been expended in the region, it still contains eight out of the world’s ten national populations with the shortest average life expectancy. Massive governmental corruption is rife. The military coup is the accepted method of changing administrations, and for the past two decades total anarchy has been commonplace.”
Childress nodded thoughtfully. “According to my family’s genealogy, some of my people may have come from over there. Only from a little farther north, near Mali.”
“Many of our ancestors did, sir,” Dubois agreed. “Mine came from farther east, we think from around Ghana. This region was the focus of the western Atlantic slave trade. The coastal chiefs grew rich raiding other tribes hundreds of miles inland, keeping the barracoons full for the European traders.”
Van Lynden gave a brief snort of grim laughter. “If you want a touch of irony here, one of my ancestors has a connection with the area as well. He was a rather notorious Dutch sea captain who built himself something of a reputation as a blackbirder. A few centuries ago, our families might all have met under somewhat different circumstances.”
Dubois touched the display control again, and once more the screen image zoomed in on the western underbelly of the peninsula. “Here is the heart of the current crisis, the neighboring coastal states of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Both nations share a unique heritage. Both were founded in the early nineteenth century by freed black African slaves from North America. Sierra Leone as a British Crown colony in the year 1808. Liberia in 1822 as an independent nation with support from abolitionist factions within the United States.
“As a result, both use English as their official language and both have a distinctive Anglo-American flavoring to their national cultures. The governments of both nations were also established around the basic principles of Western-style democracy. That, however, didn’t take quite so well.”
Van Lynden crossed his arms and sank deeper into the leather of his conference chair, a frown coming across his angular “down north” features. “At one time I recall that both countries were considered model states among the emerging Third World nations.”
“Very true, Mr. Secretary,” Dubois agreed. “Sierra Leone gained full independence from Great Britain in 1961. Both it and Liberia had stable governments, growing economies, and reasonably good civil rights records for the region. Unfortunately, things began to go wrong. Large-scale pocket-lining on the part of governmental officials and a catastrophic brush with socialism bled the life out of the regional economy. This, combined with conflicts and favoritism among the tribal factions within both nations, soon led to large-scale unrest and disaffection.
“Both countries fell into a descending spiral of coup and civil war, each new regime coming into power proving to be worse than the one it had replaced. The government of Sierra Leone managed to maintain some semblance of national order, mostly thanks to the South African mercenaries hired to put down their last wave of revolts. Liberia, however, sank into total chaos.”
“That I remember,” President Childress commented. “Wasn’t the death of one of the Liberian presidents, Samuel Doe, I believe, videotaped and distributed by his executioners?”
“Yes, sir, in September of 1990 by the forces of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, the Charles Taylor faction. Only, it wasn’t an execution, Mr. President. President Doe was tortured to death. Mr. Taylor himself personally officiated.”
“Lord, that was a bad one,” Van Lynden murmured. “I remember the U.S. took some flak for not intervening at the time. Frankly, though, we couldn’t find a single faction in the whole damn place that we felt we could support. In the end, we used the Marines to evacuate our embassy staff and the other foreign nationals who were in-country and then just let the chips fall where they may.”
Dubois nodded. “The organization that eventually did intervene was ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States. In response to the crisis, ECOMOG, the ECOWAS Military Observation Group, was established. This was a body of peacekeeping troops deployed into Liberia by the ECOWAS membership with the intent of stabilizing the area and allowing the formation of a new Liberian government.
“While involving contingents from the various ECOWAS states, ECOMOG was primarily made up of Nigerian forces. Putting it bluntly, its performance was lackluster. Or at least it was until Brigadier Belewa assumed command.”
Dubois called up the next preprogrammed image in the briefing system, that of a tall, powerfully built black man in camouflage fatigues and field cap. Photographed against the backdrop of a shattered building, he stood with hands on hips, stern features set as if in thought.