Mike Maden - River of Gods

Maersk Oil Pumping Station

Tamanghasset Province, Southern Algeria

11 May

Lieutenant Beaujolais kneeled down to get a better photo on his cell phone. The Danish woman was beautiful. Such a waste. He pressed the button. The cell phone camera flashed. The woman’s face appeared on the small screen. Blond hair, brown eyes, a mouth twisted in a rictus of terror.

He pressed SEND. The message was addressed to the French Foreign Legion command. He stood. The rubber soles of his boots made a crackling sound as he moved. The floor was sticky with blood. He took a photo of the Danish woman’s twisted body, three feet away from her head.

“Lieutenant!” The shout came from outside.

The lieutenant pulled his pistol and dashed outside. The corporal’s voice came from around back.

“Lieutenant! Here!”

Beaujolais ran to the far side of the building. The corporal, a wiry Haitian, pointed in the distance. A man stumbled around in the distance on a low dune, like a drunk.

“You! Stop!” the lieutenant called. But the man stumbled on.

Beaujolais fired his pistol in the air. “STOP!” But the drunk plodded on.

The lieutenant and the corporal ran the distance, their boots marching a straight line through his wobbly footprints. They were both in fantastic shape, but sprinting uphill a hundred meters in the hot sand left them both exhausted, thighs and calves throbbing.

The lieutenant’s eyes stung with sweat. He wiped it away with his free hand, afraid he was seeing things.

Mon Dieu.

The wide-eyed Haitian corporal saw the same thing.

The two soldiers raced the last few meters, shouting for the man to stop in French, English, and Arabic. He didn’t.

The Haitian dropped his rifle and tackled the man from behind. He didn’t resist. They rolled him over. The drunken man held up his two arms, raising blackened stumps to heaven, crying out, I am no thief! in Arabic, blood and tears streaming down his lidless eyes. He wasn’t drunk.

He was out of his mind.

No question. This was the man on the AQS video beheading the Danish woman in the pump house posted just hours before.

The Haitian opened his canteen and tried to give the man water, but he spit it out. The corporal dumped it on his face to cool him and relieve his sun-scorched eyes.

The lieutenant shot a cell phone picture of the man’s blistered face for confirmation from HQ, but he was certain it was him, the killer in the video. But this wretch wasn’t AQ Sahara. They wouldn’t do this to their own kind. Besides, he had no beard, no weapon, and they left him behind—unlike the other two masked butchers in the video holding the girl. Maybe they forced this man to behead her?

“Who did this to you?” the lieutenant asked in Arabic.

The man wept and burbled.

“I can’t understand you.”

“Al Rus,” the man finally muttered.

The lieutenant cursed. They had just missed him. But at least they knew he was in the area. Maybe headquarters could do something with that.

The Oval Office, the White House

Washington, D.C.

Diele poured himself another scotch. Without asking.

Again.

President Greyhill was coming to regret his arranged marriage with the esteemed former senator from Nevada. Diele had helped broker the deal that got Myers to resign her office in exchange for blanket pardons for Pearce and his friends. The broker’s fee Diele charged was the vice presidency. The exchange gave Greyhill the big desk in the Oval Office, but he could never shake the feeling that Diele had one hand on the doorknob, ready to shove him back out.

But Diele had his uses. He was a formidable ally to have in his corner—the kind of bare-knuckled street fighter who would gleefully kick an unsuspecting opponent in the balls before the fight even began. The kind of fighter that would rather kick an opponent in the head when he was down on the ground clutching his scrotum than actually get in a ring and prance around for ten rounds. That made Diele extremely valuable to Greyhill.

But the vice president was a pain in the ass, too. Didn’t know his place. Stomped around the Oval Office like he owned it. Drank up Greyhill’s best liquor. Didn’t even have the courtesy to ask Greyhill if he wanted one of his own, which he did.

“Quit pissing your pantaloons. It’s a nonstarter,” Diele said over the top of his glass. “Fiero can’t touch us.”

Greyhill shifted in his chair behind the famous desk. The pronoun “us” grated on him. “You’ve seen the headlines today, haven’t you? Seems Fiero is awfully prescient.”

Today’s below-the-fold front-page article in the New York Times featured a map of Africa and the spreading influence of the Chinese. A Washington Post op-ed had picked up on the Fiero Sunday-morning interview, too, and echoed her concerns.

“Slow news day at the fish wrapper, that’s all. And who watches those tired old news shows anyway?” Diele fell onto the couch, put his feet up on the heirloom coffee table. Greyhill clenched his jaw. Diele was a primitive.

“But what about her point? China and REEs and all of that? And, of course, the terrorist connection.”

“What terrorist connection? She didn’t offer any proof. Just some damn hearsay speculation. Don’t you see? She’s throwing everything out on the stoop, see what the dog’ll lick up. Or in this case, the reporters. You can smell her desperation. Don’t you think if any of this was legit, it would’ve popped up on the PDB?” Diele was referring to the Presidential Daily Brief, a document provided each morning by the director of national intelligence. Greyhill preferred an oral presentation by someone from the DNI’s office with just bullet points. He seldom read the actual documents. Diele pored over them.

“Our national intelligence community hasn’t always batted a thousand. Remember Benghazi? A dead ambassador and three brave Americans murdered by our ‘allies.’ Just because something isn’t in the PDB doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.”

Diele drained the last of his drink. The ice rattled in the glass. “Worst-case scenario? The terror threat turns out to be real. Then we send in the drones. But don’t even think about getting sucked up in that quicksand over there. It’s all a damn mess. The first Marine boot you put on the ground over there will be marching on your political grave.”

Greyhill frowned. Diele might be right. His instincts usually were. But Greyhill had taken note of the vice president’s grammatical shift. Suddenly, it was “your” political grave. Another irritating pronoun. He took the change as both a warning and a threat.

Karem Air Force Base

Niamey, Niger

11 May

The raccoon rings beneath Captain Sotero’s eyes spoke volumes to Judy. Clearly, the woman hadn’t slept in days. No doubt because of her and Pearce’s arrival four nights before.

The captain sat at the small table in Judy’s dining/living room in the spartan visiting BOQ trailer where she’d been largely confined by AF Security Forces guards since her return from Mali.

“You have everything you need here, Ms. Hopper? Any personal items you need sent over?”

“No, everything’s fine. Just a little cramped, that’s all. But I’m used to that.” Judy had grown up in even more austere environments as a missionary kid in Africa. “Wouldn’t mind being able to stretch my legs every now and then.”