Deployed (27 page)

32

DURING THE NIGHT,
the boy got worse. Daud watched over him the whole time and was happy to see that the wounds had stopped seeping blood. However, a fever had set in, plaguing the boy with sweats and then chills, with precious little rest in between.

By morning, Daud felt he had little time to act if he was to save the boy’s life. He called Afrah to him.

“I am going to take him in.”

Afrah looked at Daud for a moment. “Into the medical camp?”

“Yes. There is no choice. His fever climbs steadily. If I don’t do something for him, he will die.”

“You do not know that.”

Calmly, Daud pulled back the bandage from the wound on the boy’s stomach. The flesh was dark and angry with infection, and the swelling strained at the wound enough that he feared it might burst open.

Afrah sighed. “If you go into the medical camp, they will recognize you.” He touched his own face.

Daud shook his head. “I can disguise my face with bandages enough to keep them from recognizing me. With so many people scarred by the struggles that sweep this land, do you truly think I will stick out any more than another man with burns? Especially in a medical facility? No. They will only think that I am another of our country’s walking wounded.” He looked at the boy. “But he needs medical attention, Afrah. He needs more than I can give him.”

“We could all go.”

“No. Only the wounded shall accompany me. That way there will be less attention paid to us.” There were two other men who needed medical attention. One of them had a bullet in his shoulder that Daud hadn’t been able to get to, and the other had a broken thigh that needed a proper setting if he was going to keep the use of the limb. “The boy and our men need help.”

“I know, but I fear for you.” Afrah dropped a heavy hand on Daud’s shoulder. “Should these Americans realize you were the one who killed the UN soldiers, it would go very badly for you.”

Daud looked at the boy. “If this boy dies while he is in my care, things will go even worse. I cannot bear to watch this happen again.”

“I understand. The rest of us, Rageh, will be here should you need us.”

“Thank you.” Without thinking about what he was doing, Daud wrapped his arms around Afrah. For a moment the big man held him, and it was almost like his father was there again. Then he broke the embrace, turned to the boy, and picked him up. “Help the others get to one of the pickups.”

As he approached the camp along the weather-beaten road that led to the collection of military vehicles and
aqals
, Daud’s stomach threatened sickness. He wanted to run, to turn around and go back as quickly as he could. The boy lay beside him in the seat, and he was attuned to the boy’s rapid panting and plaintive groans as he lay trapped in a feverish delirium.

A pair of Marines waved him to a stop between two Humvees.

Heart beating rapidly, Daud glanced in the rearview mirror to make certain the bandaging on the scarred side of his face was in proper position. Satisfied, he applied his foot to the brake and slowed the pickup. He didn’t carry a weapon. Neither did the two men in the back of the vehicle.

A young Marine stepped to the door with one hand on his pistol. Another Marine stood behind his partner with an assault rifle in both hands.

“May I help you, sir?”

Daud pointed to the boy and to the two men in the back of the pickup. “I have wounded. We were attacked by al-Shabaab at a nearby camp.”

The Marine looked at the boy. “What’s wrong with him?”

Daud lifted the bandage from the boy’s side to reveal the ugly wound, knowing that the Marine’s attention would be focused on that. “He was shot and now is fevered.”

The Marine cursed and shook his head. “He’s young.”

“Yes.”

“Give me a sec.” The Marine stepped back and talked quickly on the radio. Then he pointed to a Humvee that pulled up in front of the pickup. “Follow that Marine. He’ll take you to the doc.”

Daud nodded. “Thank you.”

“Good luck with everything. The doc’s good. He’ll get him fixed up.” The Marine waved them forward, and Daud lifted his foot from the brake and applied it to the accelerator. He rolled into the camp without any problems.

Daud followed the Humvee and pulled over when it stopped at the center of the camp. The driver pointed to the large tent nearby. Daud nodded and waved, then switched off the engine and gathered the boy into his arms.

Nurses spotted Daud carrying the boy and came over to him with concerned expressions. One of them reached for the boy. “Let me help you.”

Daud held the boy more tightly to his chest. “I have him. One of the men in the pickup has a broken leg. He will need your help more than I do. Thank you for your offer.”

The nurses went away, one of them to the pickup and the other to get a litter and two men to help her with the wounded man.

Daud strode into the tent and looked around. “I need a doctor. Quickly. This boy has been shot.”

One of the men in scrubs came over and lifted the bandage that covered the boy’s wound. “I’m Dr. Cline. Is this your son?”

Daud answered without hesitation. “Yes.”

“When was he shot?” Gently, the doctor took the boy from Daud’s arms.

Daud felt empty and more frantic as he followed the doctor to a nearby operating table. “Yesterday.”

“Who stitched the wounds?”

“I did. To stop the bleeding.”

“You did a good job, but I’m going to have to open him up and clean those wounds out. I’ll also need to take a look around and make sure everything’s intact.”

“Of course.” Daud stood by helplessly as the doctor placed the boy on the table.

Working quickly, talking to two nurses who came over to assist him, the doctor cut the boy’s shirt from his body, then removed the bandages, applied yellow-orange-tinted antibacterial, and used a scalpel to cut the stitches. Freed of the stitches, the wound opened on its own and wept infection.

“Will he be all right?” Daud kept remembering how he’d been forced to put Ibrahim in the grave with his mother. He could hear the whistle of the night air as he’d accomplished that, and he could taste the salt of his tears on his tongue.

“We’re going to do our best, and our best is very good.” The doctor smiled at Daud and kept working, calling out instructions, which the nurses carried out professionally and with speed.

Daud began to feel a little better.

“How badly are you injured?”

The doctor’s question caught Daud off guard, but then he realized the man was referring to the bandages he wore. “I am fine. Please attend to the boy.”

“If you’re in pain—”

“Please, this is nothing. The bandages are there to keep the flies from the wound. Take care of the boy. I will be fine.”

The doctor nodded and continued working. Within minutes he had cleaned out the boy’s wounds, inspected the damage, and pronounced the boy to be luckily free of life-threatening or debilitating damage.

Some of the tension that had filled Daud vanished in that moment, and he took his first relaxed breath. His next feat was to get back out of the camp without alerting suspicion.

Then a nearby explosion blew out the side of the tent and killed a nurse and the man Daud had brought in with the broken leg. The concussive wave blew people and supplies in all directions.

Daud threw himself across the boy in an effort to protect him, but when the second and third explosions arrived, he didn’t think any of them had long to live.

33

“INDIGO LEADER!”

Hearing the note of panic in the Marine’s voice, Heath answered immediately. “This is Leader.” He halted near the center of camp and looked around, not seeing anything that would warrant the tone.

“This is Indigo Two! Bogeys are coming in from the north! They’re rolling fast!”

“Affirmative, Two.” Indigo Two was one of the scout teams presently watching the camp’s security perimeter.

Heath looked to the north and thought he detected a smudge of dust against the early-morning sky. Before he could be sure, however, mortar explosions went off inside the camp and he knew their security had already been compromised. The ground quivered under his feet.

Two of the
aqals
took direct hits and went up in gouts of flame. Bodies hit the ground several yards from the impact area.

Heath lifted a woman to her feet, picked up the small child beside her, and hustled both of them toward one of the cargo trucks. There wasn’t going to be enough time to evacuate the camp in the trucks, but Heath was hoping that whoever was attacking them was after the cargo and wouldn’t want to risk damaging it.

Many of the people were already heading out of the camp. They knew from a long association with violence that staying in one spot didn’t bode well in an attack.

More mortars fell into the camp, bringing mass destruction all around. Heath worked as swiftly as he was able, grabbing more people who were nearby and directing them to the truck. Then, realizing that there were too many, and that he was having to fight against those fleeing, he headed for a Humvee and spotted Gunney Towers legging it in that direction as well.

They reached the vehicle at the same time. Towers clambered into the rear deck and manned the .50-caliber machine gun. Heath slid behind the steering wheel and pressed the starter button. The engine blasted to vibrant life, and he released the clutch as he floored the accelerator.

“Two, do you have eyes on the mortar teams?” Heath headed north, toward the incoming vehicles. If he’d set up a vehicle attack on the camp, he would have set up a defensive line the vehicles could fall back to. Gunney Towers seemed to be willing to go along for the ride.

“Affirmative, Leader. North. Same as the bogeys.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Heath saw that three other Humvees were now in pursuit. “What kind of vehicles are the bogeys?”

“Pickups and light jeeps. Armed with machine guns and shooters.”

The dust cloud to the north was definite now, a solid line that revealed the vehicles racing toward the camp.

“How many bogeys?”

“Six. No . . . eight. I see
eight
.”

Heath steered straight at the enemy vehicles. The Humvees were more heavily armored, practically tanks compared to the al-Shabaab’s civilian vehicles, which had few upgrades beyond the machine guns. The Humvees had reinforced bumpers capable of dealing damage in a collision.

A moment later, Heath spotted the first of the vehicles. Gunney Towers did too, and the big fifty-cal spoke in a voice of thunder. Rounds chewed up the ground in front of the approaching pickup, then smashed through the radiator and the engine. Flames burst out from under the hood.

Out of control, the stricken vehicle veered to the side and slowed down, becoming a roadblock for the jeep behind it. Gunney Towers tracked to the new target and lit it up as well. The driver must have tried to take evasive action, but the effort ended in disaster when the jeep turned turtle on the rough ground and ended up rolling over and over while slinging passengers from it like rag dolls.

Looking back at the camp, Heath watched as a new salvo of mortars slammed into the tents.

Gunney Towers reached down and slapped Heath on the helmet. “Nine o’clock. Now.”

Responding immediately, Heath pulled on the steering wheel and felt the vehicle buck and rear as the tires fought the uneven terrain. It looked like they’d caught a massive dust cloud and were dragging it after them.

“Mortar team.”

Heath spotted them then. A three-man team hunkered down under a low ridge that hid them from the camp. He steered for them as Gunney Towers opened up with the machine gun. Fifty-cal bullets tore one man to pieces and took the legs out from under another. The third escaped, but only because Heath bore down on him so quickly that he was out of range of the machine gun’s field of fire. Heath adjusted the steering wheel and chased the man down, thinking of the women and children he’d seen lying dead on the ground. There was no mercy in his heart, only the desire to subdue the enemy.

The al-Shabaab man was there one instant, then he was under the wheels. As Heath made another tight turn, he looked back the way he’d come and saw the corpse the Humvee had left behind. Then he was looking for new targets, knowing they could save lives if they acted quickly enough.

Dazed, Daud peered up from where he lay on his back on the ground. His first thought was of the boy, and he couldn’t remember how they had gotten separated. He believed one of the last explosions must have knocked him away.

Frantic about the boy’s safety, Daud forced himself to stand and peered at the operating table where the boy had lain. He breathed a sigh of relief to see the boy still there.

Several dead men and women lay in the tent. Both of the men he had brought there were now corpses that joined some of the medical staff and other patients.

Before Daud could cross to the boy, four men dressed in tattered clothing entered the tent through the large hole in the back. They carried machine pistols that they brought out of their loose clothing. One of them was a hawk-faced man with a fierce beard whom Daud immediately recognized as Qaim, one of Haroun’s lieutenants.

Reluctantly, wishing he had a weapon, Daud gave ground before the men.

“You are certain you saw him come in here?” Qaim gazed around the wreckage belligerently.

“I am certain.” The speaker suddenly pointed at Daud. “There. With his head bandaged.”

Qaim lifted his machine pistol.

Hurling himself forward, Daud dodged through the front entrance of the tent as bullets ripped through the air where he’d been. He immediately went low once outside the tent, scrabbling at the earth with his hands like an animal.

A Marine wheeled and looked back at him, pulling his weapon to his shoulder. Daud didn’t know if the man would have shot him or not, because in the next instant bullets from inside the tent struck the American in the face.

Even as the corpse fell, Daud reached out for the fallen Marine’s rifle and pulled it to him. Still bent low, Daud ran and dove behind the pickup he had driven into the camp. On the other side of the vehicle, breathing raggedly, he yanked the captured weapon to his shoulder and peered at the tent.

One of the al-Shabaab men appeared in the tent’s doorway. Daud centered the rifle’s sights over the man’s chest and opened fire, squeezing off two three-round bursts that drove the corpse back into the tent. Then he waited, hoping another man got brave enough to do the same thing.

Only no one did.

Gathering himself, getting a bad feeling about the lack of response from the al-Shabaab men, Daud slid away from the pickup and returned to the tent. Instead of going through the entrance, he made his way around to the section blown out at the side. He remained low and duckwalked into the tent.

One of the al-Shabaab men remained inside. The man watched the tent’s front entrance nervously, but he split his attention between the other open sections of the tent as well. He noticed Daud coming through the opening too late, but he tried to bring his weapon up anyway.

Wanting to take the man alive, Daud shot him in the right elbow as he turned. The bullet’s impact knocked the machine pistol from the man’s grip. He screamed in pain and stared in shock at the crimson threading down his numb arm.

Approaching him, Daud covered the room. The other two men had gone.

The boy was gone as well, as was the doctor who had been attending him.

Turning, the wounded al-Shabaab man tried to escape, but he was in shock and not moving very well. Daud grabbed the man by his shirt collar and bent him backward over the nearest operating table with the heated rifle muzzle under the man’s chin.

“Where is the boy?”

The man didn’t speak.

“Talk.” Daud’s tone was cold and dispassionate. “If you do not, I will kill you right here.”

“They took him. They took the boy.”

“Why?”

“Qaim knew they could not stay here. When they saw the boy, Qaim said that since we had not killed you, Haroun would be happy with the boy as a compromise. They left to take the boy and the two doctors to Haroun.”

“Why would they do this?”

“As hostages. To keep the Americans at bay, and to draw you to Haroun.” The man grimaced in pain. “Haroun has promised to kill you.”

Daud thought only of the boy and how yanking Kufow around as Qaim and his compatriot were doing couldn’t be good for his injuries. The boy needed medical treatment and a chance to rest.

“Where did they go?”

The man nodded toward the back of the tent. “There. They went that way.”

Yanking the man forward, Daud hauled him from the table. “If you make one wrong move, it will be your last.”

Holding his injured arm, the man stumbled forward. Daud followed him to the hole in the rear of the tent and stepped out into the open. He gazed in all directions, but all he saw was madness, people fleeing, a mixture of vehicles among them. There was no sign of the boy.

“Lower the weapon.” The voice sounded behind Daud and held grim intensity and lethal conviction. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

Recognizing the accent as American, Daud gingerly placed the M4A1 on the ground and held up his hands. “This man is one of those who attacked this place. He is al-Shabaab.”

“We’ll get all that figured out soon enough. You just take three steps away from that weapon and drop to your knees. Do it now.”

Angry and frustrated that he had lost the boy, Daud complied with the order, then locked his hands behind his head as he was also told to do. He stared at the crowd of people running from the camp and tried not to feel helpless. Afrah was still out there. Something could yet be done.

“I want to speak to your commanding officer.”

The Marine stepped forward and grabbed Daud’s left wrist. “We’ll have to see about that.”

Moving quickly, knowing that if he wasn’t in a position to force a negotiation, he would have nothing, Daud captured the Marine’s wrist and jerked him forward, headbutting the man in the face. Spinning on the ground, he swept the Marine’s feet from beneath him as the assault rifle cracked rounds into the ground. He grabbed the Marine’s MARPAT uniform and pulled him forward again, keeping him off balance, then slammed his head into the man’s face again. Cartilage snapped and blood spurted from the Marine’s broken nose. His legs went boneless and he dropped.

Daud captured the falling rifle and pointed it at the al-Shabaab man as the terrorist tried to get to his feet. “No.”

The man froze.

“Sit.”

Reluctantly, the man did as he was told. “I am bleeding. I need medical attention.”

“You should have thought of that before you blew up the medical facilities. Be thankful you yet live.” Daud remained seated and waited, raking the bandages from his head. If the Marines knew of him, now it was time for them to know he was here. He knew he did not have enough people to attempt to rescue the boy. He did not even know where Haroun was.

But he felt certain the Marines would know more. He would get their information, and then he would decide what to do.

The attackers turned tail without warning.

Heath almost pursued, buzzing with adrenaline, but he knew that would be a mistake. They could be leading him and his team into a second ambush.

“Hold your positions, Indigo. Let’s get a new perimeter established and see if we can take care of our people.” Heath turned the Humvee around and headed back to the camp. Smoke crawled into the sky from the burning
aqals
.