Mission Liberty (23 page)

“Oh, well put,” Evelyn said. “Don’t worry, darling—Hugh was just leaving. Weren’t you, Hugh? Remember how you said you were
leaving? He’s got to get back to his people at El Amin.”

Lloyd stood up, looked at Warner, and sighed heavily.

“Forgive me, Mr. Brown,” Lloyd said, “but if I could, I’m afraid I’d like to take your friend away from you. Evelyn, I can
really only say this one more time. If you come with me now, you’ll be safe. My car is waiting, but I really can’t stand here
all day and argue with you. If you don’t come with me, God only knows what’s going to happen. If you must make a foolish choice,
so be it, but I think for once in your life you could be sensible and go along with someone else’s idea for a change. I may
not have many areas in life where I know more than you, but I’d think you’d have to agree that Liger is one of them.”

“Oh, Hugh, please, you can go now—go with a clear conscience. You did your best, didn’t you? You tried. That’s all you can
do,” Warner said. “Besides, I’ve just met up with my old friend. We haven’t had a moment to catch up, so why don’t you just
leave us? We’ll be fine, won’t we, Mr. Brown?”

“Perhaps Mr. Lloyd has a point,” DeLuca said. “We could always meet another time.”

“Nonsense,” Warner said. “No time like the present. Good-bye, Hugh. See you at the Henley. Hugh’s quite a rower. Always pulling
his little oar.”

“Evelyn,” he said, then gave up. He turned on his heel and left, shaking his head as he went.

Evelyn gave DeLuca a terse smile.

“You’re the intelligence expert,” she said. “Tell me, David—what did I ever see in that man? Where was my intelligence when
I needed it?”

“Intelligence and love have nothing to do with each other,” DeLuca said. “If they did, nobody would fall in love more than
once. I suppose he’s good-looking, if you like that British square-jawed rakish devil-may-care sort of thing.”

“Oh, he’s quite good-looking,” she said. “Just ask him, if you don’t believe me. How are you?”

“I spent the night in a tree,” he said. “Other than that… What are you doing here? You really shouldn’t be here.”

“Don’t you start,” she said. “Ms. MacKenzie said I could find you here. I was worried when they said you were supposed to
return last night.”

“Have you heard from Mack?” he asked.

“Not since she went to Kumari to talk to Imam Dadullahjid,” Warner said. “Stephen and Claude are with her. Let me get right
to the point, David, because Hugh is right—there isn’t much time. I have eight hundred women and children living under plastic
sheets and one or more armies about to land on us. I have twenty-five African Union troops with virtually no bullets in their
guns to protect us and they’re scared out of their wits. I have ten United Nations troops and we suspect two of them have
been trading food for sexual favors with some of the girls. I also have four French doctors and six nurses, all of whom are
white, and at least twenty or thirty people who are too sick to walk. I need your help. I need whatever help you can give
me.”

DeLuca looked at her.

“I don’t know how much I have to offer,” he said. “Right now, there’s only three of us. Myself, Hoolie Vasquez, and Paul Asabo.”

“Paul Mufesi Asabo?” she asked. “The king’s son?”

DeLuca nodded.

“Is there anyone you won’t use?” she asked him.

“It’s my understanding that he volunteered,” DeLuca said. “He wanted to help.”

“Did he?” she said. “Well, you may have a greater asset there than you realize. You know, there’s a persistent rumor that
his father is still alive. One of those things people believe because they want it to be true.”

She startled as an explosion sounded, closer than any they’d heard before.

“David, I’m afraid,” she said. He was surprised to hear that word, coming from her. “Something terrible is going to happen.
You’re really the last hope I have to stop it. Is there anybody you can call? I’m not asking for a full division—a hundred
men…”

“That’s just not how we do it anymore,” he said. “If we go, we go in force, with air support and the whole nine yards. They
told me two days ago that I was on my own until Saturday. I’m sorry.”

“You sent people to rescue your idiot ambassador,” she said. “Are you saying you’d risk your lives for one white man, but
not for eight hundred black women and children?”

According to the report he’d read on his backup CIM, the political fallout from the rescue mission was still shaking out,
people, including members of the House and Senate, charging the president with acting unilaterally and going to war without
the permission of Congress and even launching a crusade according to his own personal religious agenda—he’d used the word
crusade three times in a speech defending the mission. He knew why Warner had said what she’d said, but he knew she understood
his position, too.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was unfair. Particularly given that you’re here risking your life even as we speak— very bad
form on my part. I apologize.”

“What about your ex?” DeLuca asked. “I was told Ngwema released the mercs. Can’t he send someone? He is with them, isn’t he?”

“They only fight for what they’re paid to fight for,” Warner said. “You know that. They’re called mercenaries. Not missionaries.”

The UN buses were gone from the courtyard, as were the United Nations troops that were protecting them.

“I’ll do what I can,” he told her. “I can give you information. And we have UAVs in the air that are armed, but they’re really
not what you need. Right now my team is scattered all across the country, and I need to pull them in.” He saw Vasquez and
Asabo crossing the lobby toward him. When they arrived, he made the introductions.

“Evelyn Warner, BBC foreign service,” she said, shaking Asabo’s hand. She took out her business cards and handed one to DeLuca
and another to Asabo. The card had her SATphone number. “Now you must grant me an interview when you have a moment. I knew
your father, I have to tell you, met him when I was a young girl and not much of a reporter, through my husband’s family,
actually, but I liked him very much. Can we make a date?”

Asabo looked at DeLuca for guidance.

“It’s all right,” DeLuca said. “Nobody can keep a secret from Evelyn for very long.”

“I’ve ordered a martini, but I don’t know where the barman went,” Warner said. “Can you stay a moment? I was hoping somebody
could make me laugh today. That’s another thing there’s a shortage of in Liger.”

Then a shell rocked the hotel, striking one of the upper floors, and immediately, a second explosion shook the building, hitting
the roof somewhere near the banquet facilities. A third explosion followed, a mortar round sending up a spray of dirt and
debris as it struck the center of the courtyard, where moments before, people had huddled.

Vasquez ran to the door. DeLuca could have kicked himself—the barman disappearing should have been a sign. How did he miss
it?

“Incoming—convoy at the gates,” Hoolie reported. “Six… eight trucks, maybe 150 troops.”

DeLuca saw trucks in the driveway, rebel soldiers in the familiar red berets of the Ligerian People’s Liberation Front, pumping
their fists in the air and shouting, their eyes lit by the wild light of combat.

“Let’s go,” DeLuca said, taking Evelyn Warner by the hand and pulling her to her feet.

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, he was running. They ran through the lobby toward the rear of the building,
the kitchen in disarray, the doors swinging open. There was a service court at the rear of the building, a white wall with
a wide gate in it to allow the passage of delivery trucks, a laundry building, a garbage facility, a storage building. DeLuca,
Warner, Vasquez, and Asabo ran, following a crowd of people fleeing the troops assailing the front of the building. He heard
a roar of gunfire behind him.

Behind the hotel, a cobblestone street ran uphill, with shops lining either side. He heard more mortar rounds landing behind
them. Screams. People running everywhere.

At the top of the hill, the road came to a T. Across the street, he saw a church, St. Michael’s Cathedral, according to the
sign, a gold cross shining from the top of the cathedral dome. Terrified people crammed to squeeze through the wrought-iron
gates that spanned a gap in the cement wall surrounding the edifice. He heard small-arms fire. Shouting.

“In there,” DeLuca said, pointing to the church. “Quickly!”

Inside the gates, he saw perhaps five or six hundred people, filling every square inch of the churchyard, frightened children,
mothers trying to quiet them, rocking them, hushing them, kissing their foreheads, and scared boys holding sticks, as if they
could defend their families with sticks.

Someone was screaming above the din. DeLuca saw a priest running toward them, a short man in a clerical collar and black cassock,
a large cross hanging around his neck on a gold chain, and he was shouting at them, pointing and gesturing.

“What’s he saying?” DeLuca asked Asabo.

“He wants you to leave,” Asabo said. “He says he wants no white people here. That if you stay, they will kill everyone.”

DeLuca watched as a second priest, wearing a red surplice and white tippet, joined the first, handing him a machete. The two
priests approached the gate, the short one holding the machete high above his head in a menacing way, shouting in English,
“Get out, you go now, get out!”

Asabo stepped in front of the charging priest, holding his hand in the air to show the palm of his right hand.

“I am Paul Mufesi Asabo!” he called out. The priests stopped in their tracks. DeLuca watched as the crowd fell silent. A look
of wonder spread across the faces of the refugees taking shelter, the news spreading by word of mouth, “Mufesi Asabo is here,
it’s him, the son of the king, he’s here…” Asabo spoke briefly with the priests, and although DeLuca couldn’t identify
the language, he recognized the tone of chastisement and reproach, Asabo shaming the priests as they lowered their weapons.
The priests were frightened, too. They spoke softly now. DeLuca heard a chant rising among the throng,
“Da-hene, Fasori-hene, Mufesi Asabo,”
which Evelyn Warner translated as “king of the Da, king of the Fasori.”

“He says you can stay,” Asabo said, turning to DeLuca. “I’ve told him his behavior is shameful.”

“I gathered,” DeLuca said, “but I also think he might be right. We may want to find other accommodations.”

“I’ll stay,” Asabo said. “These people are frightened.”

“If the rebels find you…” DeLuca began.

“No one will betray me,” Asabo said. He turned to the crowd and put his finger to his lips to shush them. DeLuca was astonished
to see that even in the chaos and confusion of war, the crowd turned silent at Asabo’s command. “I’ll be okay.”

“We’ll be back,” DeLuca said.

They turned right out the gate and ran, trying every door they could to look for a place to take refuge, but all the doors
and gates on the street were locked. DeLuca turned. He saw men standing on the roof of the hotel, observing the city below
with binoculars. They came to another T. To the right he saw people fleeing, several blocks away now. To the left, the street
the hotel was on—they ducked quickly behind a wall as a truck carrying troops sped across the intersection. Had it turned,
they’d have had nowhere to hide, and perhaps the next truck would turn.

DeLuca saw a mosque across the street, a stone wall, a door, and then the door opened a crack. He saw a bearded man, dressed
in clerical robes, his head wrapped in a white turban. The man glanced down the street in both directions, then gestured for
them to cross. DeLuca, Warner, and Vasquez ran, slipping through the door just as a troop transport turned up the street.
The imam put his finger to his lips to indicate the need for silence, his back to the door as he waited. Once the transport
had rumbled past, he opened the door again to check.

“You are safe here,” he said in English, closing the door and locking it. He identified himself as Imam Ahmed Al-Shahab. DeLuca
spoke to him in Arabic. The imam told them they could stay as long as they wished.

“We thank you for your assistance,”
DeLuca said in Arabic.
“We have Allah to thank that you were here to open the door.”

“The Koran requires that I help,”
the man said in reply.
“If you give me your weapons, I will give them back to you when you are ready to leave.”

Again, DeLuca trusted his gut, even though his instincts, as a cop and as a soldier, told him never to give up his weapons
to anyone. Evelyn Warner was unarmed. He gave his MAC-10 to the holy man and instructed Vasquez to do the same.

They waited, listening to the sounds of artillery and gunfire, waxing and waning. After an hour, the tide of battle appeared
to have turned. DeLuca followed the fight in real time on his CIM, alternating between satellite imagery and an iconographic
display provided by IMINT using arrows and markers. IPAB/LPLF forces had not been defeated, so much as they’d passed through
without leaving a rear guard. Ligerian regular army troops were currently making a stand south of town. A dozen villages north
of Baku Da’al had been burned to the ground.

When Scott said it looked like it was safe to return to the hotel, DeLuca thanked Imam Al-Shahab, who gave them their weapons
back and bade them, without a trace of irony in his voice, to go in peace. Paul Asabo had managed to turn aside an assault
in the church when he was able to reassure the troops that the priests had given shelter only to women and children, after
secreting the men and boys inside the chapel.

The hotel was riddled with bullet holes. DeLuca found the Toyota Cressida he’d rented tipped over on its side. He and Vasquez
righted it, the car bouncing on its shock absorbers, but when he turned the key, again it started.

“Sweet,” Vasquez said.

DeLuca searched the hotel and found Robert Mohl seated at the bar, drinking the last remaining beer on the premises, the rest
of the booze supply having been looted by the rebels. He’d passed the attack hiding in the basement, he said.