Countdown: The Liberators-ARC (12 page)

development. So you can get the emergency money

with hardly any trouble. Development funds are much

more difficult to get. So, the temptation is to keep

everyone in a perpetual emergency situation rather

than to work towards their integration.

-Dr. Barbara Harrell-Bond, OBE

D-147, Abéché, Chad

Abéché wasn't the middle of nowhere, but you could see the middle of nowhere from there. That is, you could if the dust had settled enough to see much of anything. That only happened, though, in July and August when the town got most of its annual nineteen inches of rain. The rest of the time? Forget it.

It was the kind of place that in a travel guide discussing nightlife, things to do, places to see, places to stay, etc., there would be zero entries. Even the airport only operated in the day.

For all that, to Labaan the most disappointing part of the town was that somehow-inexplicably, impossibly-Lance was waiting for the party near the airport parking area when they arrived. They found him by the plane they'd last seen in N'Djamena, reclining on a folding lawn chair, with a reflector held under his chin to help get that perfect tan.

"Dude," Lance said, "the day after I saw you I tried to crank it and it just started to work. Maybe a vapor lock in the engine. Dunno. But good to see ya, dude. You ready to head on out?"

Labaan resisted the urge to shoot the idiot American. But only because we need him for now.

"Vapor lock? In a turboprop?"

"Dude, I dunno; I just fly 'em. You want me to take you to Kosti or not?"

With all the humanitarian aid and human rights workers flooding eastern Chad, nobody much cared about a single Pilatus PC-12 leaving with a human cargo. Lance told the control tower he was leaving. Nobody answered. With a shrug, he gave a little power to the plane's sole, nose-mounted, engine and taxied to the runway. There he turned left, heading west. At the western end he did a one eighty, waiting for a flight from Care to clear off.

"Dude," he called to Labaan, "open the hatch and look behind us to see if anyone's trying to land." When Labaan didn't move, Lance added, "Dude, I'm serious."

Sighing wearily, Labaan did just that. Having looked from directly behind to directly overhead, he closed and dogged the hatch and shouted over the engine's roar, "You're cl-"

He couldn't finish before Lance had given the engine full throttle and was racing down the runway, shouting, "Kawabungaaaa!" The plane's deck moved out from under Labaan's feet, tossing him off the bulkhead rearward of the hatch and then to the floor.

I will kill this man, Labaan thought to himself, as he crawled along the deck to his seat. Not all the lives saved by America around the world are enough to justify his continued existence.

"Hey, dudes," Lance called out over his shoulder, "Look down below. Refugee camp." He twisted the control yoke and tilted the Pilatus over on its port side to give his passengers a view.

"There are twelve of these," Labaan told Adam, "all spread more or less in an arc east of Abéché. At least, there were twelve. There may be more now. And they keep growing. Someday, I suspect, the entire population of Africa will be in refugee camps where well-meaning Europeans and Americans can feel good about themselves for all the wonderful things they do on our behalf."

"You don't much like the whites, do you?" Adam said.

Labaan shrugged. "Whites in themselves? I've no strong feelings one way or the other. But the ones who come to help us? The twenty-year old diletantes who come to teach our people how to farm land they've been farming for five thousand years? The ones who then give out so much food that it doesn't pay to farm anymore? The ones who ensure that both sides to our innumerable and interminable civil wars are fed, thus ensuring that the wars will go on forever? I despise those whites.

"Worse, though, are the ones who brought us Marxism, or brought some of our people to their lands to teach them Marxism. Imperialism never did us the harm that that one miserable European pseudo-philosophy has.

"Worst of all, though, are the ones who bring money, lots and lots of money, that feed our kleptocrats and give them both the means and the motivation to retain power. Always for good purposes does that money come," finished Labaan. "Always for evil purposes is it used."

"Imperialism did us plenty of harm," Adam objected, heatedly.

"Did it?" asked Labaan. "Ask anyone in a position to know, anyone old enough, if they'd rather things stay as they are or if they would, if they could, go back to the old days. Not one in a hundred wouldn't rather have the Euros back in charge. Unless we could talk the Americans into taking the job."

Adam went silent, turning his head and eyes to the front of the plane.

Labaan wasn't letting go, though. "Of course there are some people who like things as they are, especially the kleptocrats like your father who could never steal as much while the imperialists were in charge. Like my own chief, for that matter. And the people in the former French Empire couldn't go back, since there's nothing to go back to; the French kept their empire in everything but appearances."

***

The sun was well behind the Pilatus now, shining in thin streaks through the port side windows and painting those in bright lines on the seats and walls. Adam asked, "So what is our problem, then?"

Labaan shook his head. "Countries. Countries that mix tribes and clans."

"How so?"

"Because when you're a minority-or even something less than an absolute majority-in countries such as we have, and you're in a position to steal, then you're only stealing from other tribes on behalf of your own. Why, it's immoral not to steal then, before someone else beats you to it and disadvantages your own tribe."

"Well, yes, of course countries are wrong," Adam said. "Someday, when all of Africa, and all of mankind, live under a single roof . . . "

Labaan started to laugh. The laughter grew and grew, filling the plane with sound even over the sound of the motor. "Is that the nonsense you learned in school, boy? I suppose it must be; since they tried to teach me the same things when I was there. Family of Man, is that it?" Again, Labaan broke down in howling laughter. "Join in the Family of Man, boy? Those people running those refugee camps back there? They joined the Family of Man, and they're doing very well by doing little good, too. And the people that supervise them from plush offices in New York, and Paris, and London? They're in the Family of Man, which only means they've no moral connection to anyone but their own blood.

"Family of Man, my ass! You create a Family of Man, and one government, and the whole world will become Rwanda or the Congo writ large. And you know what, boy? There'll be no escape from it, either."

"Kosti, Sudan coming up," announced Lance, from his pilot's seat.

Labaan gave one last look, a look half full of regret, at Lance as he stepped off the plane. Yes, perhaps for the betterment of mankind I should have shot him. But he did, at least, refrain from shouting "Kawabunga!" when he dove for the strip. And the landing was, for a dirt field, acceptable. Even so, I predict that Allah shall punish me in the hereafter for my failure to better the lot of mankind in this one case.

Looking around, Labaan saw exactly what he expected to see, a dusty van with a couple of men in it, waiting for him and his party. The driver's seat was empty.

"Warya, Labaan," the driver called out as he stepped around the van, buttoning his fly.

"Warya, Bahdoon," Labaan called back, walking forward to shake hands with his brother and slap him on the back. He did those things, then took Bahdoon's shoulder in his hand, gripped it, and shook it. "You, Brother, are the first thing that's gone right since leaving Nigeria."

"You must tell me about it on the way."

"I will, I promise. And Suakin, it is ready?"

"Haa. Very ready. We have the archeologist uncle is supporting, the permits from the government here, the arms, the video equipment, beds, food, cooking implements . . . everything you called for in your list."

"And all the men have been strip-searched for private means of communication?"

"That, and their money has been taken away. I purchased thirty women, right here, for cooking, cleaning, and sex. I promised them, as you insisted, that they would be given their freedom in three years."

"It is well, brother. And now, if you will take us to Suakin . . . "

Bahdoon nodded and said, "Surely." Then, spying Adam, he said, "The captive doesn't look like much does he?"

"I think he has a good heart," Labaan said. "But his brain is contaminated with silly European and American notions."

D-146, Suakin, Sudan

The cut and dressed coral walls were covered by a sheet. This was necessary as, so far as Labaan knew, Suakin, the ancient port on the nearly circular island in the middle of a bay, was the only town in the world, or in the history of the world, to have been made of coral building blocks. If seen, those blocks were a dead giveaway.

In front of the sheet, on a cushion with his arms bound behind him, Adam sat facing a video camera. There were guards beside him, but they were standing with only their legs and the bayoneted, downturned muzzles of their Kalashnikovs showing. Labaan, the interviewer, was off screen entirely. Adam's chin was sunk onto his chest, resting on the one size fits all robe they'd given him to replace the filthy clothes-mere rags now-in which he'd been taken.

"Lift his head," Labaan ordered. "Let his father, Khalid, see who he is."

A Kalashnikov muzzle moved slightly as the guard holding it shifted to put his fingers through Adam's hair. The boy winced as his head was pulled back, showing his face to the camera.

"Tell your father, boy, are you being, and have you been, treated well?" Labaan asked.

Despite the pain it cost him, Adam twisted his head to free it of the grasping fingers. Even so, he had taken the hint and kept his eyes on the camera lens as he answered, "I have been kidnapped, drugged, endangered, chained like an animal, and threatened with torture, mutilation and death. But I am fed and watered, and reasonably healthy, Father."

Later, after the filming was over and the disc on its way, Labaan had taken a much ashamed Adam to the guards' quarters, a rather large coral-walled barrackslike room. Unveiled women, some older, some younger, were scrubbing floors on hands and knees. They got to their feet when they saw Labaan enter.

"You're going to be with us a long time, Adam," Labaan said. "I see no reason to make your captivity any worse than it must be." His arm swept around the room, taking in the women and girls. "Pick one," he said. "Pick one for yourself to care for you and to ease the burden of your sorrows."

"I can't," the boy said. "It's wrong to enslave people, even women . . . even Christian women, as I suspect these are."

"They are," Labaan confirmed. He mused for a minute, then said, "If you can't pick one for yourself, I'll pick one for you." His eyes roamed over the women until they came to rest upon one of the younger ones, an Ethiopian, tall and slender like most of her people. She was quite pretty, Labaan thought, pretty enough to keep the boy's mind occupied. "You, girl, what's your name?"

The girl lowered her eyes and answered, "Makeda, if it pleases you."

"Don't worry about pleasing me," Labaan said. He pointed at Adam and continued, "Please him. He's your new master."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ship me somewheres east of Suez,

where the best is like the worst,

Where there aren't no Ten Commandments

an' a man can raise a thirst;

-Kipling, "Mandalay"

D-116, Yangon International Airport

The last place Terry Welch and his team wanted to be at the airport was the Theravada Buddhist Temple lookalike VIP lounge.

"I thought Burma was socialist, Terry," Rob "Rattus" Hampson said, looking out the bluish windows at the gold trim visible outside. A college boy, one who'd enlisted into special forces straight out of school under the old "X-Ray" program, Rattus made a considerable effort to keep abreast of things in the world. He could have made, indeed, had been making, quite a fine living as a physician's assistant on the outside. But when Terry had called, saying, "Free beer," the old code for "Alert," he'd looked inside himself, discovered that, deep down, he loathed civilian life, and come a runnin'.

"The original socialist dictator here," Terry answered, "was clever in many ways. One way was that instead of suppressing religion he enslaved it to the cause. Mind you, since he made any number of key decisions based on numerology, I'd suggest he was probably sincere about Buddhism, too. Hell, for that matter, adherence to Marxism requires a faith that's almost religious."

Little Joe Venegas looked around, trying very hard to keep from his face the disdain he felt. "Place gives me the creeps, and it seems so fucking obvious."

Venegas, like Hampson, had found gainful employment in the civilian world, after retiring, following the dust up in Afghanistan. In his case, though, it was in IT, since before striking for warrant he'd been a communications sergeant. Like Hampson, he hadn't really cared for civilian life. Perhaps the thing he'd loathed most was the big, blustering bastard who ran his shop. So when Buckwheat Fulton had called, passing on Terry's message, Little Joe had walked into his boss's office and said simply, "I quit." He'd then made reservations for a flight at night, a couple of nights hence, terminated his lease, and ordered his furniture picked up and stored. Then he'd waited for his former boss to leave work, beaten the living bejesus out of him, never saying a word as he did so, and left.

"Never heard of "The Purloined Letter," Little Joe?" asked Rattus.

Joe didn't answer immediately but instead looked around at the various businessmen, jet setters, and do-gooders flying to or from the latest conference at some luxury resort. "Well, we're mostly the right age to fit in, and the suits help, but old as we are, Rattus, not a one of us has a gut to match most of these fuckers. And most of them have cell phones glued to their ears."