Joint Task Force #4: Africa (27 page)

Other times, he believed the Navy was shielding a great leader from greatness. Crazy Harry was a phenomenal mix of great leadership and dangerous ideas. The key was to respect him from afar, but that was hard to do when you were crammed with twenty-two other aircrew on the same aircraft with a genius for a madman. Luckily, Crazy Harry didn’t try to do a victory roll in the EP-3E, and he hadn’t voiced the idea since.

“Well, Senior Chief, looks as if we’re earning our flight pay today,” Lieutenant Commander Peeters said, stepping up beside Pits.

“Yes, sir. We hear anything yet, Commander?” Pits tossed the plastic spoon into the trash and took a sip.

“Not yet, but if they keep to their SEER training, they’ll be transmitting every fifteen minutes.”

Pits nodded. “Yes, sir, but yesterday when we left them, we told them to expect rescue either late yesterday or early this morning. I don’t think they’ll be transmitting—”

“Chief Razi is with them. If anyone is sharp enough to know what to do, it’s him. By now, he’s got those three junior sailors standing watch, policing the area, and going over the details for a helo rescue.”

I’m going to be sick,
Pits thought.
The man is unbelievable! It’s one BS after another and every one of these officers believe him.
“Yes, sir,” he replied. “No doubt in my mind that if anyone can turn this into a good-news story,
it’ll be Chief Razi.” Pits edged by Lieutenant Commander Peeters and walked back toward the cockpit, unaware of Peeters staring after him. Nor did he see Peeters eventually scratch his head with a questioning look on his face as Pits passed from view into the shadows of the aisle.

CHAPTER 11

RAZI SHINED THE RED LIGHT ON THE GROUND AHEAD OF
him, waving the flashlight back and forth, raking the huge tangle of bushes blocking his way. He ran his free hand over his face, feeling the tattered cloth of his glove move through the mud and dirt caking his features. Razi reached out and pushed the leaves of the nearest bush, watching them move easily aside. Just one more obstacle to overcome, but—he took a deep breath and raised his head— none of the others stopped him, and neither would this one. He dropped his hand. The leaves sprung back to their original position. Razi straightened. He was a goddamn chief petty officer, and chief petty officers never let obstacles stop them—and they always fell so that their rank insignia was hidden.

He tucked the flashlight under his arm, the light pointing down, and pulled the compass from his survival vest. The survival vest hung loosely from Razi’s shoulders.
Sometime during the night, he didn’t recall when, he must have unzipped it down the center to allow the night air to dry the dampness from the sweat-soaked trunk of the flight suit. He touched the zipper halves with both hands for a moment as if to zip the survival vest back together, but a rustle to his right drew his attention, and he dropped his hands away.

After several seconds, Razi freed his compass, lifted the flashlight, and illuminated it. Squinting, he assured himself he was on the right course before jamming it back into the vest. Razi fought an urge to howl at the barrier in front of him. He’d done that a couple of times at earlier barriers only to discover the barriers fought harder. He knew his fellow chiefs would laugh at the idea of plants fighting you, but he had learned a lot in the jungle. Things no one else knew. Things he would never tell anyone. He touched the leaves for a moment. He snickered at the idea of him knowing these secrets and keeping them to himself.

It was better to go ahead without the fanfare of his howl. He nodded and grinned. His war cry, as he thought of it, was getting better. Razi reached forward, shoved the limbs aside, and stepped into the edge of the thicket. The red light barely showed a foot away in this mess, but he was on the right course toward his sailors, and nothing was going to stop him.

Razi had long quit wondering if the noise he made alerted those ahead. He wanted them to know he was coming. In his misguided reasoning, Razi had convinced himself that if those boy soldiers heard him coming, they would give up their pursuit and run in fear. He smiled at the thought of their wide-eyed fear as they scattered pell-mell into the surrounding jungle, running to momma. It never dawned on Razi, as it wouldn’t on most Americans, that the children soldiers of Africa had long since seen and
heard worse things in the night than an unarmed, dirty chief petty officer lost in the turbid jungles of their land. Most of Africa’s children soldiers had no parents, and those few who did had little idea where their parents were, much less where they themselves were.

It took Razi two hours to penetrate the thick maze of jungle growth before he suddenly emerged into a semblance of a clearing that stretched off in the direction he needed to go. Razi didn’t stop to congratulate himself on working through the jungle bramble. He stepped off, hurrying forward. Not sure why he was hurrying, but knowing he had to find his sailors before sunlight. Tomorrow the— What would come tomorrow? He checked his watch and his compass. Fifteen minutes before four. He bit his lower lip and shook his head in disbelief. Rescue! That’s what would come. A helicopter swooping down, snatching them from the jungle, and by this time tomorrow, he’d be on his second case of beer.

If his watch was right, he’d been on the ground for over seventeen hours. He hadn’t been that far from his sailors. Maybe he had walked past them? What if he had missed them, and when morning came he discovered he was miles away on the other side of them. Razi kept walking. He couldn’t have made that much trail in that time. The fall off the cliff added a couple or three hours to his trek. It wasn’t as if the jungle let you walk straight and didn’t fight you all the way.
Oh, yes, he knew. Chief Petty Officer Razi was smarter than my other chiefs.
He patted himself on the chest. “I know things you’ll never know.”

Rockdale, MacGammon, and Carson were ahead. He shook his head.
Focus
. He had to be alert because the three sailors were near. He giggled. They had to be near, he’d walked too long for them not to be near. A wave of ecstatic relief washed over him as he envisioned their gratitude
when he walked out of the jungle to join them. Rockdale, MacGammon, and Carson were probably curled up in fetal positions, holding on to each other against the jungle night. They’d be safe soon. He’d be there. No sailor was safe without a chief petty officer nearby.

He stopped and squatted in the middle of the faint trail, taking another swig of water. Razi shut his eyes. His legs ached. He rotated his right shoulder and wondered why it hurt. He thought maybe a few minutes nap while resting on his haunches would help. He shut his eyes.

Minutes later he opened his eyes, unable to sleep. He was too pumped up on reaching Rockdale, MacGammon, and Carson, hearing their accolades and feeling the slaps on his back when they see him. Somewhere ahead—and it couldn’t be too far—his sailors waited. For Razi, the mere act of him walking into the middle of the three other aircrew was sufficient to mark it as a rescue. After all, he was a designated NATOPS instructor. What more could a bunch of young sailors lost in the woods want? The children soldiers could have their mothers, but sailors needed their chiefs, and he was these sailors’ chief petty officer.

He squatted patiently, telling himself he should be up and moving, but the sense of urgency he felt earlier seemed to have evaporated because he had convinced himself his goal was only minutes away. He started to stand; rising halfway, before something—he didn’t know quite what— caused him to sink back down onto his haunches.

He lifted his head, drawing air through his nose, smelling the jungle night. There was a new odor riding the humid breeze. He had waited patiently when hunting in the hills of North Carolina. A good hunter waited. This wasn’t exactly a blind, but—He switched off the flashlight. The dark of the jungle immediately enveloped him. A sharp smell passed through his nostrils—a foul odor, almost like
urine. It took a few minutes for Razi to recognize the ammonia-sharp odor for what it was—human sweat. He lifted his arm, the soaked fabric pulling away, and took a whiff. His nose wrinkled. It wasn’t him, though his was sharp. He raised his head and took several more whiffs. He smiled, associating the odor with the children soldiers who had earlier frightened him. His smile disappeared. Well, he wasn’t frightened now. He stood. The sooner he found them, the sooner they could flee back to momma’s arms.

The odor rode the wind. He turned his head until the slight night wind hit him squarely in the face. It was at that moment when Razi realized that the jungle sounds were silenced. Everything had gone to ground. He had become so accustomed to the night sounds that they had faded into the background, but with the light gone, the odor assailed his nostrils, making the disappearance of the sounds prominent.

Razi took several quiet steps forward, following the direction of the wind, hoping he recalled accurately his surroundings in the event he had to backtrack. He wanted a little distance between him and where he squatted. Maybe those boys with their pissant guns had decided to investigate. Something caught his attention slightly to his right. He stopped, leaning against a nearby tree, blending into the grays and blacks of the jungle night as they taught in survival school. He squinted in that direction, concentrating, smelling the air. After several seconds, a flicker caught his eye, and he smiled. It was a campfire. Not a large one, but one nearly blocked by vegetation between him and it. Maybe, just maybe, he’d stumbled onto the armed boys before they found him. He touched his flashlight, nearly turning it on before thinking better of it. He forced down a giggle, thinking of the expression on those boy-soldiers’ faces when he dashed into the center of the campsite,
howling his war cry at the top of his lungs before beating the living shit out of them.

The longer he stared, the clearer the campfire became. After a while, Razi didn’t know how long, he straightened. Then, he started toward the fire, stumbling over unseen vines as he moved, and several times grabbing trunks of young trees that made up this small grove through which he noisily approached the campsite. He heard voices talking and stopped, listening intently for a few seconds, until he realized it was his own voice.

Razi giggled again.
How stupid,
he told himself. “At least I’m not answering myself,” Razi said aloud.

Razi took several deep breaths, one step forward, and squatted again, his head turning slowly from side to side. Bushes in front of him hid the campfire. Those boy soldiers waited ahead. He leaned forward on both hands and eased himself to the ground, sharp sticks poking him the length of his body. “They won’t see me now,” he mumbled quietly. Mustn’t talk to myself. Must keep quiet until I wring their scrawny necks. Theirs were thin reeds of a neck, he recalled. He raised his right hand and made a fist, looking at the silhouette against the night foliage, and shook it several times. Just like that, wring their necks, and watch their puny heads flop forty-five degrees to the side. He twisted his fist back and forth, visualizing their heads flopping from side to side, bouncing off their thin shoulders. Razi giggled.
This is going to be fun,
he thought.

Razi dropped his fist and started crawling forward. He couldn’t see the fire now, but he didn’t need to see it. As long as he was crawling forward, they couldn’t see him. Farther into the bushes, his survival vest, no longer strapped firmly to his body, caught on something, slowing his forward movement for a second. Razi wriggled out of it, continuing forward, his mind so focused on the boy soldiers
ahead of him. Behind him, the limbs sprung back to their natural position, lifting the vest off the jungle floor into the lower reaches of the main bushes. The pouch flap holding the PRC-90 radio came open.

His mind was only slightly aware of the loss of the survival vest. He heard the muffled crackle of the radio behind him and a voice calling from it. A low voice called his name along with the other three, but it was behind him and his mind told him they weren’t real, just another obstacle trying to stop him. His forward motion never stopped, Razi kept crawling forward, and in a few feet the voices from the radio could no longer be heard.

A half-hour later, Razi rolled onto his back, and raised his arms above his chest, stretching out the cramps racing through each arm. Dehydration caused camps, he recalled from SEER training. He patted his chest, searching for the water bottle. Both hands patted his chest. His survival vest was gone and with it the radio, the compass, the water, and what little food he had. For some reason, it didn’t bother him. He raised his arms, twisting his hands back and forth, amazed that he could see them. Moisture dripped off his hands onto his chest. Dawn was coming. He giggled again.
I walked all night, killed some terrorists, and even crawled to rescue my sailors.
That story line should be worth a few free beers and maybe even a groping session with that new flight engineer.
What was her name?
He stopped for a moment, trying to recall the flight engineer’s name who had swiped her finger through the peanut butter on his flight boot. “Damn, it’ll come later,” he said after a couple of minutes.

He sat up and brought his hands close to his face. Strands of torn cloth rippled the fire-retardant cloth of the gloves, leaving strips hanging by threads to the wrist portion. His hands picked at the tattered gloves, ripping apart
the few remaining strands that held the fingers of the gloves together. His knuckles were red. Razi blew on them, watching blood pool where cuts and deep abrasions had torn the skin. He curled his fingers into his palms.
How did I do this?
he wondered.

Suddenly, shouts drew his attention. He quickly rolled over onto his stomach and raised his head. Gunfire ripped through the jungle, causing Razi to rise to his knees. The next moment he was standing up, tearing through the bushes. He could see the campfire to his right. He turned slightly and ran directly toward the campfire, ignoring the thrashing noises he was making as he tore through the jungle growth. The smell of gunpowder surrounded him. Someone in the back of his mind was screaming for him to stop.
“What are you doing, you stupid shit?”
the voice shouted. For a second, he was aware of the stupidity of running toward gunfire. He didn’t even have a knife. Marines did this type of stuff. Not sailors. And definitely not Razi. This wasn’t something he’d do, he told himself, but he kept charging. The fleeting moment of rational thought was lost in a primal urge to kill. He pushed the last bushes apart and stumbled into the circle of the campfire, his motion carrying him forward as he regained his balance.

A few feet from where he emerged stood Rockdale and MacGammon, their arms raised above their heads. To the right, lay a third body, wearing a flight suit, the head hidden by a flight helmet. That would be Carson. Standing over Carson was the malnourished African Razi had first seen in the downpour. The boy had the barrel of his gun pressed against the flight helmet. Two other boy soldiers stood between Razi and Rockdale.