Mike Maden - River of Gods

“What happened to this place?” Mann asked.

Mossa pointed to the crumbling pump house. “The French dug a well there, but it was shallow and dried up after the first summer, so they had to leave this place. My father saw his first airplane here, when he was a boy. But that was a long time ago.”

“Mossa gave you an airport, as promised. Where is your plane?” Cella asked.

Pearce checked his watch. “Still another hour. Judy will be here, guaranteed.”

Mann raised a pair of binoculars to his face. “Not a bad location, if you wanted to open up postal routes into central Africa.”

“Drug smugglers fly their planes into here sometimes,” Mossa said.

He ordered Balla and Moctar to scout ahead. They nudged their camels forward down the slope toward the airport, guns up, while the others waited and sweated in the late-morning heat.

The tower and the hangar were empty of drug runners, but decades of human detritus—crushed food tins, cigarette butts, empty paper oil cans—littered the hangar. The well in the pump room was dry as dust and the pump was long since removed from its bolted perch, as was the generator and any piece of valuable metal that might have been attached to it.

The tower building was no better. The first floor had served as some sort of lobby and office complex. The porcelain and plumbing in the two restrooms had been ripped out, save for the pan in the Turkish toilet, stained and vile.

The second story served as the observation tower. Whatever electronic equipment had been there had long been removed, and anything of value spirited away. The tower windows offered a 360-degree view, but they were wide open to the sky. Small shards of yellowed glass crunched beneath their boots, and the back wall was pocked with bullet holes.

“How’s the arm?” Pearce asked.

Early shrugged. “Never better.”

“Then you’re here on overwatch.” Pearce knew Early was lying, of course. If they were attacked, his friend would be in the safest position.

“You got it, chief.”

“You want one of the RPGs?”

“Nah, I’m fine with this.” Early charged his SCAR-H and flipped the firing-mode switch to automatic. The rifle had no burst mode.

“Stay frosty up here.”

Pearce and Mossa worked their way back down the crumbling cement stairs to the skid-marked tarmac. They made their way over to the hangar where the rest had gathered. The rolling hangar doors had long since disappeared, burned for firewood, Pearce guessed. Even the metal tracks to guide the wheels had been ripped out of the floor for scrap. At least the corrugated steel roof panels were still in place, though sunlight leaked through the scattered gunshot holes, shot from inside judging by the shape of them.

The camels and the others were all inside the cavernous building, hiding from the sun. The cracked floor was strewn with dried chestnuts of camel dung of indeterminable age. Clearly, they weren’t the first visitors to park their animals in here.

Mossa approached his men, sitting cross-legged in front of their kneeling camels. Pearce found Cella near the hangar entrance, smoking a cigarette, staring at the sand.

“We never finished that conversation we had the other day,” Pearce said. “Borrow one of those?” He pointed at her cigarette.

“I thought you quit.” She held out a pack. He pulled one out.

“I quit a lot of things.”

She flicked her lighter. He lit up. They smoked in silence for a while. Pearce thought she would take the bait, talk about her daughter. Something was wrong about that situation. But it really wasn’t any of his business.

“What’s next for you?” Cella finally asked.

“Work.”

“Where?”

“Wherever.”

“Must be lonely for you.”

“I was never much of a people person.” Pearce saw movement in the sand. “What’s that?”

Cella shielded her eyes. “Looks like a snake.” The long, thin shape S ’d down the dune toward them. She called over her shoulder to Mossa in Tamasheq.

Mossa came over to them. She pointed at the snake, now stopped on the dune. “What kind of snake is that?”

“I have never seen such a snake.”

Pearce threw down his cigarette and bolted for the dune.

The snake suddenly reversed direction, S- ing backward up the dune, tail first.

Pearce was faster. He snatched up the snake around its neck. The snake flopped and twisted in his fist. He felt the tiny servos grinding in his grip as the rubbery snake body flailed. Pearce wrapped his other fist around the snake’s neck and tried to twist off the head, as he’d done to a hundred other snakes in his life. But the metal spine wouldn’t give way that easily. When he reached the tarmac, he put the flailing snake under his boot and cut the head off with his combat knife. He picked up the severed head. He lifted his boot and the body flopped around on the tarmac. He examined the head more closely as he marched back to the hangar. Video and audio sensors inside the unit. No question.

“What is it?” Cella asked.

“Surveillance drone.” He tossed the head to Mann, now standing at the door along with Balla and Moctar.

“Excellent craftsmanship,” Mann said. “Israeli or Chinese.”

“I’m betting Chinese.” Pearce turned to Mossa. “Get your men ready. We’re going to have company.”

Pearce tapped his ear mic. “You see anything up there, Mikey?”

“A plane. Two, maybe three klicks away. Due west.”

Pearce pulled his sat phone out of his pocket, speed-dialed Ian. “How soon?”

“ETA ten minutes.” It was four in the morning where Ian was, and he hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours. Pearce heard the fatigue in his voice.

“From what direction?”

“East.”

Pearce cursed again. “I need eyes on the ground, and backup, if you can swing it. We’ve got company on the way, maybe already here.”

“How many?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Troy?” Early said.

“Yeah?”

“Chutes.”

“How many?”

“Looks like… oh, shit. Six, seven, eight, nine—”

Ian interrupted. “I only have the one option if you want assistance.”

“Do it. Now.”

“Will do, but it will take longer than ten minutes to reach you. And there’s been a slight change in plan.”

“What change?”

Karem Air Force Base

Niamey, Niger

15 May

Same trailer, same ground control station, different crew.

There were only two Reapers on the base and two GCS trailers. The original DoD plan was to deploy four five-person crews, each working twelve-hour shifts in the two trailers, keeping both Reapers in the air twenty-four hours per day. But budget cuts and crew shortages meant they could only field two full crews at any given time, and that meant keeping only one Reaper aloft for twenty-four hours at a time. Until they were fully staffed and funded, the second GCS trailer would remain shut down in reserve.

This morning’s crew, known as Blue One, was flying a fully armed Reaper on a surveillance mission along the Algeria–Niger border. Technically, the computer was flying the machine on a preprogrammed flight pattern. Intelligence sources on the ground reported possible AQS traffic in the region. The Reaper mission was tasked with monitoring the border traffic and recording any suspicious movement.

Red One team had launched the aircraft sixteen hours earlier. Blue One had just relieved them four hours ago. The pilot, sensor operator, and GCS controller were bored out of their minds. The pilot wasn’t even in her seat. She was doing yoga stretches, trying to work out a knot in her lower back. The mission monitor was in the clinic on IVs, fighting a bout of dysentery, so the flight engineer, Captain Pringle, was doing double duty. His feet were up on the desk and his eyes were shut, because he was pulling a double shift as a favor to the Red One flight engineer, who’d just taken a three-day emergency pass to be with his pregnant wife in Landstuhl, Germany, giving birth to their third son.