“We were keeping the peace, ha-ha. You know all that. It says here you speak this African Kissy-willy, that right?” He rattled a piece of paper.
“Kiswahili? A little—”
“Good. And Italian, it says. Good, just the guy I want. We got a problem up there, I don’t follow it, but there’s a Kenyan medical unit making a hell of a noise, and I haven’t got time to deal with it. You’ve been asked for. Dick Murch—know him?”
His mind was slow because of no sleep, and it was all coming too fast—Yugoslavia, winter, snow, then all of a sudden Kenyans and Swahili. Murch. “Murch. Yeah—Canadian Army intel—”
“He asked for you by name.” The major rattled the paper again. “Your boss messaged us you’re just the man for the job.” The major, a man with decent feelings, glanced a little unbelievingly at Alan. It would be, after all, a shitty job, whatever it was—cold, uncomfortable, fruitless. Alan saw the major understand that Alan’s boss hated his guts. The major’s voice was almost apologetic: “Well—won’t last long. And it’s just being a good listener, eh? And you can take those photos you brought in right up to Murch and save us a step.”
Well, Alan thought, at least there would be wine with lunch before he left.
“There’s a plane going up in—well, it was supposed to leave a half-hour ago, but they never get out on time. One of yours.” He meant that the US had re-opened the airport at Tuzla and was moving there in a big way. Alan doubted the jab about being late; the Air Force, like the Navy, ran a tight operation. The major was just pissed because he was still here. “Dalembert’ll show you which one.” There went wine with lunch. And lunch, probably. A voice in his head said, This is another fine mess you’ve got us into! The voice would have been Harry O’Neill’s, doing one of his imitations. God, he wished O’Neill was with him! The bond of friendship would have got him through this crap. He and O’Neill had been two first-tour IOs together five years ago, winning the Gulf War on brilliance and brashness (with a little help from some pilots). O’Neill would have known how to deal with Suter. O’Neill would have known how to deal with Alan, for that matter. You’re good, Shweetheart—you’re really good—
“Got a weapon?” the major said.
Weapon. Weapon? Alan had to concentrate. “Got an armpit gun in my pack.”
“Wear it. They’re shooting at us up there. I mean, at us. Take off your rank, anything shiny.” He held up a finger. “Lesson: If you try to help some poor sonofabitch who’s being killed by his brother, they’ll both kill you, instead.” He made a gun with his hands and pretended to squint into a sight.
Alan gave another long, fatigued sigh. He unstrapped the pack and began to feel for the Browning nine-millimeter. This was a fine mess.
Fort MacArthur, North Carolina.
The Georgian brick buildings, the green lawns and the old trees looked like a university campus. The classroom looked like a university classroom. The students, in their thirties and forties, might have been university graduate students. But they weren’t. This was the toughest school in America, with the highest rate of flunkout, dropout, and just plain exhaustion. This was what people inside the intelligence community called the Ranch.
Harry O’Neill sat relaxed at one of the student desks. Unlike the rest, he was attentive to the briefing on Africa. The rest were in body positions that suggested that Africa didn’t exist for them. The teacher, himself a case officer no longer active, was pointing a laser pointer at a map with the outlines of countries but no names and asking questions with the resigned tone of a man who knew that he wouldn’t get answers.
“What’s this?” he snapped. When there was no answer, he said, “O’Neill?”
“Rwanda,” O’Neill murmured.
“This?” Silence. He nodded at Harry. O’Neill said, “Burundi.”
The bright dot moved. The teacher waited, flicked an eye at O’Neill. “Zaire.” Then, “Central African Republic. Chad—”
The teacher snapped the pointer off and leaned his butt back against a table, arms crossed, and said, “Okay, okay. You know what’s going on there? Want to do a little central African brief off the cuff, Mister O’Neill?”
Harry smiled. “Off the cuff, sir, let’s see—two years ago, there was a crash—some folks say a shootdown—of an aircraft with the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi aboard. All hell broke loose, with the two major ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis, massacring each other. Tutsis came out on top, drove the Hutus into eastern Zaire, where they’re now living in big refugee camps that are being run by their own militias, who got out with their weapons and a big blood lust. When the other shoe drops, there’ll be hell all over again.”
“How come you know all this and the rest of these guys don’t, O’Neill?”
Before Harry could reply, a voice behind him said, low and with a snicker, “Cause dat’s his home, man!”
O’Neill was the only black man in the class.
The teacher snapped erect, face flushed. “All right—who said that—?”
But Harry O’Neill hadn’t stirred. He only smiled and said softly, “Oh, that’s okay, sir. I know who said it.”
When the class ended, most of them stirred and stretched, but a man named Richmond hurried out the door and started down the corridor. Harry O’Neill was just as fast, however; within a few strides, he had caught up and fallen in with the man, draping one arm around the other’s shoulders with what seemed perfect friendliness.
“Richmond, Richmond!” he said. He smiled. He squeezed Richmond’s shoulder. O’Neill had been both a Phi Beta Kappa and a starting defensive end at Harvard; the squeeze had authority. “Richmond, next week we have Close Combat Drill three times, did you know that? And, because I’m near the top of the class, I get to pick my partner, did you know that?” He gave another squeeze. “And Richmond—” His voice took on the same thick, fake-black tone that had been heard in the classroom. “Ah picks yew—man!”
Tuzla.
Alan tried to sleep on the short hop to Tuzla, but it was no good. They’d put him in a “crash-resistant” seat with enough straps to hold back Hulk Hogan, but they hadn’t given any thought to comfort. Most of the huge aircraft was loaded with cargo. The French coffee had lifted him for a little, but that was gone now. He had already had the second surge that comes with real fatigue, the time of being wired, with crash to follow. Except he hadn’t been able to crash. At Tuzla, they made one big turn and went in, with another aircraft on the runway ahead of them and another right behind. Like cyclic ops. Alan tried to find an office for UNPROFOR and finally learned that what was left of it wasn’t at the airfield; it was beyond the city, and he’d need transport. It was like a demonstration of Murphy’s Law. Somebody found him a truck.
The driver was Italian, one of those people who dedicate their lives to not being impressed, so he was not impressed that Alan spoke Italian with a Neapolitan accent. Still, he was willing to talk, so long as it was clear to Alan that he was not impressed by officer rank, either. When they had gone a few kilometers, he stopped.
“Good place to piss,” he said in Italian. “No snipers.” Alan didn’t recognize the Italian
