Mike Maden - River of Gods

One last shot.

The Aviocar was a flying truck, nothing more. No weapons, and slow as molasses. Electronic countermeasures and chaff would be a waste. Any jet jock worth his salt would get a look at the old girl, flip on his gun switch, and have some target practice. A flying fish in a barrel. But Ian had devised a trick. He removed the active homing radar unit from a decommissioned AIM-54 Phoenix antiaircraft missile and installed it in the Aviocar. Maybe the old transport plane couldn’t carry a long-range antiaircraft missile like the Phoenix, but it had the wherewithal to carry a small, secondary radar, didn’t it?

Here goes nothing, Lord, was the best Judy could pray under the circumstances. She punched a button on her console, painting the jet behind her with her own air-to-air missile radar signal, just like the one she was experiencing. Now, as far as the pilot behind her was concerned, a U.S. Navy Hornet just locked on him with a Phoenix missile. There was only one thing he could do if he wanted to survive the engagement.

Run.

And that’s just what he did. The radar blip on Judy’s scope angled hard off her tail and reversed course, dropping altitude and picking up speed, racing away like a scalded cat, silencing the shrieking missile alarm in her cockpit ten seconds later.

Thanks, Ian, I owe you one, she thought. It had been a long time since she’d last seen him. Time to fix that. Maybe she’d even buy him a beer.

The village of Anou

Kidal Region, Northwest Mali

Pearce, Early, Mossa, and his fighters gathered up several cans of ammo and five machine guns from the dead Malian troops and loaded them into the Toyotas. But there were too many AK-47s to haul, so they spiked the barrels by bending them into right angles. Any pistols they didn’t take they disassembled, ruining the firing springs and tossing the rest of the gun parts in all directions. Anything else lethal or of use to the Mali army was loaded into the trucks and the trucks set on fire. The BTR was left intact, but Moctar rigged a booby-trap grenade beneath the driver’s seat. The first man who sat in it would trigger the spring-loaded mechanism.

Mossa dismissed Early and Pearce for the last bit of business. As non-Muslims, they were forbidden to touch Muslim corpses, and Mossa assumed that most or all of the dead Red Berets were Muslim. Besides, Westerners already had a grim view of his people, perhaps especially of Tuaregs, so he didn’t want the two Americans around to watch. Mossa and his men gathered up each of the Red Berets and sat them up against the wall, facing away from the city. Then they placed the spiked AK-47s in each of their laps. Now the Red Berets formed a gruesome palace guard for the massacred village. If nothing else, Mossa hoped the image would strike dread into the next column of Mali soldiers who dared approach.

Pearce and Early found Cella in one of the houses tending to one of the raped girls lying on a bed. Cella rung out a wet cloth and set it on the girl’s forehead, then motioned for the two men to follow her.

“How is she doing?” Early asked.

“Not well. She lost a lot of blood.” Cella pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered them. Early took one, and Pearce passed. Cella flicked a Zippo and lit Early’s, then hers.

“Judy called in. They landed fine, no problems. Holliday will be picking up your daughter soon.”

“Who is Holliday?”

“A friend. The chargé d’affaires at the American embassy in Niamey. He’s making all of the legal arrangements, and he’s already contacted your father.”

“Please thank him for me.” Cella took another drag.

“Why don’t you thank him yourself? Let’s get out of here.”

Cella shook her head. Her thick honey brown hair was shiny with oil. Pearce could only imagine the last time she’d bathed. “I’m needed here. These are my people now.”

Pearce glanced at Early. Help me out here.

“Don’t look at me. I came here to bring her home. That was three months ago.”

“You’re running around in the middle of a civil war. You’ve got no business being here, especially now that your daughter is gone.”

“My husband is dead, but Mossa remains my father-in-law. He is good to me and good to his people. But they have no access to medical care, and that is what I can give them. You of all people should know this.”

“And your daughter? Doesn’t she deserve a mother?”

Cella’s blue eyes flared. “She deserves a father, too.” She took a last drag, dropped the cigarette, and crushed it under her boot. “Look what happened to him.”

Thirty minutes later, Mossa, Cella, Early, and Pearce gathered at Ibrahim’s store. The boy was carefully folding his grandfather’s map into a square for safekeeping.

“We’ll leave very soon. It will be crowded in the jeeps with you two new men, and the five women—”

“Four. We just lost one,” Cella said. She turned to Pearce. “The one you asked about.”

“Daughter, you decide where the women ride. It will be a long journey and with few stops.”

“What about me?” the boy asked. He kept folding the yellowed paper.

“You will ride with Humaydi. He has two sons your age.”

The boy shook his head. “I will ride with you.” His fingertips carefully pressed the ancient map creases.

Mossa stared at the boy, unused to such defiance. He gave orders in battle, men obeyed, men died. But this child?

The boy looked up at him, his eyes wounds.

Mossa nodded. “You will ride with me.”

The boy made the last fold, forming a neat square, not saying a word. It was settled, then.

Pearce’s phone rang. It was Judy. They chatted briefly, but his phone died. No charge.

“My daughter?” Cella asked.

“She’s fine. With the ambassador now, heading back to the American embassy.”

“Thank God,” Mossa said, shutting his eyes briefly.

“Your father is scheduled to arrive late tonight on a chartered flight. If everything goes well, he’ll depart again with her back to Italy in the morning. Judy will only call back if there’s a problem. That is, if I can get this charged up.”

“They’ve got universals in the trucks. You can charge it up on the way out,” Early said.

Mossa turned to Pearce. “Thank you, Mr. Pearce. For everything.” He extended his hand.

“Glad it all worked out.” They shook. “Now we need to get you to your mountain.”

Tamanghasset Province

Southern Algeria

7 May

The French Foreign Legion patrolled the barren stretch of desert with the permission of a reluctant Algerian national government. Cocaine shipments from Bolivia had been making their way into Europe through the porous sands of the Algerian Sahara, an ironic twist to the Americans’ War on Drugs. The Algerians appeared helpless to stop it, though the French government suspected that certain corrupt officials in Algiers profited by the venture. The French decided to take matters into their own hands.

The French government generally, and the French army in particular, had been stretched beyond the breaking point since the Great Recession began in 2008. But the French Foreign Legion had a long history in this desert and, despite their limited resources, volunteered a section of their best. Working from incomplete Interpol reports and questionable intelligence from Algeria’s security service, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité, today’s patrol was heading for a stretch of remote highway that was reportedly used as a temporary airfield for drug shipments.