Genocide of One: A Thriller (44 page)

When Rubens came out onto the entranceway, a piercingly cold wind struck his cheeks.
The CIA limousine was already waiting, but Holland didn’t get in the car. Instead
he motioned Rubens aside, away from the Secret Service agents.

“Listen, Arthur,” the director said in a low voice. “What I’m about to say is not
an order. I don’t have the right to interfere in an operation spearheaded by the Defense
Department.”

“All right.”

Holland looked around him, and when he was satisfied it was safe, he spoke. “Save
Nous.”

Rubens stared at the top intelligence official.

“This operation is too much for Eldridge. He’ll eventually have to rely on you. When
that happens, do what you can.”

“Yes, sir,” Rubens replied, straightening himself as he spoke.

Holland turned and walked back to the limousine.

Rubens looked at his watch. It was 6:00 a.m. in the Congo. On the other side of the
world Nous was facing a terrible crisis, and there was nothing Rubens could do about
it. All he could do was hope that Jonathan Yeager and his party could rout the largest
armed group in the Congo.

The battle about to begin, Rubens thought, though small in scale, might well decide
the fate of the world.

And Nous would be witness to the worst side of these animals called humans.

His digital watch showed 6:00 a.m., the PKO unit’s zero hour.

From his perch in the tree Yeager checked the situation, but there was no sign of
an attack. On the ground, Mick remained motionless as he observed the battle line
of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

“Nothing yet?”
Garrett’s voice asked over the radio.

Yeager pushed the send button twice, the signal to wait. Just then there was an explosion
in the direction of the main road. Yeager trained his binoculars there and saw black
smoke pluming up from a wrecked tank. LRA soldiers nearby were shouting and pointing
to the south. Hostilities had finally started. Yeager looked back at the side road
twenty meters ahead. The unit blocking the road ran back to the personnel carrier
and grabbed their weapons.

There was sporadic gunfire, punctuated by a series of explosions on the main road.
Missiles from far away were destroying one armored vehicle after another on the main
road. Blood sprayed up, and body parts—arms, legs, torsos—flew into the air. With
a piercing shriek countless mortar shells rained down on the soldiers.

Mick looked up at Yeager above him, waiting for the signal to proceed. The unit in
front of him was still maintaining battle formation, and he shook his head. The enemy
was surprisingly disciplined. If Yeager and his team weren’t careful, they’d have
the tables turned on them.

About three minutes after the attack began, the force on the main road started to
scatter. Above them a black Cobra AH-1 attack helicopter rushed by like the wind,
spraying the ground with its Gatling gun. Tracer bullets precisely followed the enemy
ranks, ripping apart the bodies of the soldiers and sending them flying. The attack
by the Pakistanis totally deviated from the rules of engagement for PKOs. Yeager spotted
another Cobra. As the AH-1 hovered, it aimed for the branch road intersecting the
main road.

In a low but piercing voice Yeager spoke into the mike.
“Go!”

“Roger that,”
Garrett’s voice said from two hundred meters back.

A barrage of TOW antitank missiles blasted out from under the wings of the attack
helicopter and devastated the line of troops. One missile landed nearby, and Yeager
was almost thrown out of the tree. On the road in front of him the LRA troops were
firing back, but their rifles were no match for the weapons of the PKO. The attack
helicopter rained machine-gun bullets as it drew closer, and the enemy unit in front
scattered wildly into the jungle, seeking to escape.

Yeager signaled Mick. At the same moment, the four booby traps they’d set exploded,
and the enemy that had been pressing down on them was driven back. Yeager and Mick
used their silenced pistols to, one by one, shoot the soldiers who remained alive,
wiping out the enemy twenty meters to the left and right. An escape route had finally
opened.

Yeager clambered down from the tree just as Garrett and the others caught up with
them. Pierce was carrying Akili in his arms, his mouth wide open, panting for breath.
Akili appeared to be awake, but his kittenlike eyes were shut tight.

The attack helicopter swept low over the side road, accompanied by explosions, reddish
earth swirling into the air as it roared away. They couldn’t see well for all the
dust, but Yeager recognized the opportunity. “Let’s go!” he yelled.

Assault rifles in hand, the mercenaries leaped out onto the side road. They broke
into two groups, covering both sides. Pierce, carrying Akili, raced across the road
in the gap between them. In the space of five seconds Garrett and Meyers shot down
four enemy soldiers who spotted them, and Mick jumped up on a personnel carrier, grabbed
an RPG, a sniper rifle, and other weapons, and stuffed them in his backpack. The four
mercenaries crossed the road and ran into the jungle after Pierce.

Routed enemy soldiers appeared between the trees, and each time the mercenaries exchanged
fire with them, killing them with rifles and grenade launchers. As they exchanged
fire a bullet from behind them sliced off a piece of Yeager’s shoulder, but for a
battlefield wound it wasn’t serious. Yeager shot back, not even feeling the pain,
gunning down the soldier who shot him with three bullets.

The mercenaries formed a tight protective circle around Pierce and Akili, so they
were unharmed. They all ran like mad toward the south, and the gunfire faded into
the distance. It appeared that the threat from the LRA was now behind them. As he
ran for all he was worth, Pierce gasped, “We had a satellite image from ten minutes
ago. It showed a separate group of about two hundred straight ahead.”

“LRA?” Yeager yelled back.

“Yes.”

The Pakistani army had overlooked this force at the front lines. “How far?”

“Five hundred meters.”

As if to back up Pierce’s words, they heard Kalashnikovs firing ahead of them. Yeager
grimaced. At this rate they would run right into them. “Where’s the supply vehicle?”

“It’s heading down the main road toward us, but with the PKO troops there it can only
get about two kilometers from here.”

Should they forge ahead or detour around? Either way a force larger than a company
was waiting for them. If two hundred enemy troops were deployed into the jungle it
was inevitable they’d get caught in their net. Maybe the best plan was to gather in
one place and try to fight it out.

As Yeager pondered this, they came out onto a village carved out of the jungle. There
was a circular common area and a row of simple mud-wall dwellings. And standing out
among them was a large redbrick building.

“What’s that?”

“A Catholic mission church.”

The church looked like it could be a bulwark against the enemy. Yeager swept the village
with his eyes. Maybe all the villagers had become refugees, since the place was deserted.

“Okay. We’ll wait for the enemy inside that church.”

“What?” Garrett shot back. “If they find us, we’ll have no place to run.”

“No—we won’t hide. We’ll attack them and lure them out of the jungle. When the Pakistanis
see them, they’ll take care of them for us.”

Garrett, convinced, glanced at his watch. “The PKO attack will be over in seven minutes.
We have to hurry.”

Yeager and Mick went first and raced to the church. The church was a large, blocklike
building, and though flat, its roof was high, so overall it was as tall as a two-story
building. Yeager plastered himself against the wall and tried peering into the church
through the window, but the glass was sooty and he couldn’t see a thing. He and Mick
edged along the wall to the wooden front door. A hubcap was hanging from the door,
perhaps a charm of some kind.

The two men exchanged glances and together kicked down the door and rushed into the
church. They swung their rifles in all directions in case enemy troops were inside,
and as they did Yeager involuntarily backed away. There were a huge number of people
inside, but all of them were dead and decomposing. Bodies of all ages—from babies
to the elderly—littered the floor, and a black cloud of flies hung over the chapel.
The stink of death pressed back terribly on Yeager and Mick, driving them out of the
church.

“Man, that’s sick,” Mick said, grimacing.

Yeager caught his breath and then flew into a rage. “The Pakistani army is too soft
on them. Those LRA assholes should be slaughtered. Every single one of them.”

“With that smell we can’t go inside,” Mick said. Like a skin diver, he took a huge
gulp of air, went back inside the church, grabbed a ladder that was leaning against
a wall, and quickly dragged it outside. “Let’s climb up to the roof,” he said.

Yeager nodded and motioned Garrett and the others to join them. Intermittent gunfire
sounded from the jungle where the enemy was hidden. When they reached the roof they
had a 360-degree panorama. The jungle spread out as far as they could see, covering
the earth like the surface of the ocean. Off to the east rose the glacier-capped peaks
of the Rwenzori Mountains. To the north the Pakistani army’s helicopters continued
their attack, mopping up before returning to base.

Yeager saw the rest of them up to the roof, pulled up the ladder so the enemy couldn’t
follow, and assigned them positions. He had Pierce watch the north, while he and the
others took up a position so they could concentrate their fire on the enemy to the
south. Garrett and Meyers, deployed to the left and right of the roof, were also to
keep an eye out on the east and west. Assuming they might not be able to hear orders
when the firing started, they put on their wireless headsets.

From the jungle across the hundred-meter square they saw numerous muzzle flashes and
heard many women screaming. This separate LRA company wasn’t fighting the Pakistani
ground forces but were apparently continuing to massacre villagers they’d taken captive,
eliminating any witnesses to their massacres before the Pakistanis found them.

Yeager’s hatred for the enemy was growing by the minute. He swore he’d make them pay
for their atrocities. The four mercenaries rested their rifles on the edge of the
roof and began firing simultaneously at the jungle, where the enemy was hidden. They
aimed at the edge of the jungle, since some of the villagers might still be alive.
After they’d emptied their thirty-round clips, they saw figures among the dark trees.
The enemy had taken notice.

“Save your ammo,”
Yeager shouted into his headset, his final order before the battle.
“Let’s hold out until the PKO gets here.”

They reloaded and again took aim. In the dark jungle a group of enemy soldiers dimly
appeared, looking like stalks of wheat waving in the wind, and suddenly spilled out.

Yeager drew a bead on the foremost group and was about to squeeze the trigger when
all hell erupted. The group charging toward them, wildly firing their AK-47 assault
rifles, were children. Little boys, around ten years old, shrilly yelling, plowed
forward to kill him.

Half a year ago, on a sunny day, Oneka’s life changed forever.

Until then he was a normal child. Born and raised in a small village along the road,
he had a lazy father, a hardworking mother, and an older brother and younger sister
near his own age. In the morning the children would go to draw water, then skip off
to elementary school, help their mother in the fields, and play with friends from
the village. Their only real pleasures were going to market once every two weeks and
occasionally having chicken for dinner. When a feast like this was laid before them
on the dirt floor of their one-room dwelling, his brother, Obuya, and sister, Atieno,
smiled from ear to ear, and the three of them would happily share their food with
each other.

On the day when the devil came to their village, Oneka was playing outside the house.
He and Obuya were kicking a ball back and forth. Atieno was sitting in front of the
house, singing a song and watching her brothers, when her tiny voice was drowned out
by screaming. At the edge of the village a woman was shrieking. This wasn’t the kind
of shouting heard when couples were fighting but a fearful scream that froze anyone
who heard it.

Oneka and his brother went out to the road to see what was happening. A speeding truck
roared by, quickly stopping as it let out three soldiers in front of each house. It
was advancing toward them.

“Dad! Mom!” Obuya yelled for his parents.

His mother, working in the fields behind the house, and his father, taking a nap,
ran up to them, their faces strained. At that very moment the vehicle stopped in front
of Oneka, and three men with guns leaped out from the bed of the truck.

“Run!” his father yelled as he grabbed up Atieno, who was right next to him. One of
the soldiers charged at him and stuck the bayonet clear through Atieno in her father’s
arms.

Oneka felt he was in a nightmare. Atieno was just singing. She wasn’t doing anything
wrong. So why would they…

His little sister collapsed. His father had no time to mourn his daughter’s death.
The knife that had pierced Atieno had stabbed through his chest, too. His father moaned
in pain, clutched at his wound, and fell writhing to the ground.

The tallest soldier walked over to Oneka’s mother, crouched on the ground in shock,
and said, “I’m taking your sons.” His mother didn’t respond. She was shaking, and
she couldn’t speak. Another soldier came up to his older brother and held out a knife.
“Rape your mother and then slash her throat,” he commanded. Obuya, his eyes wide,
shook his head. As if waiting for this, the three soldiers fell on him with hatchets.