Whiplash (9 page)

Approaching base camp Alpha, Sudan

A
FTER THEIR ADVENTURE WITH THE
S
UDANESE ARMY, NEITHER
Danny nor Boston had any trouble staying awake.

Danny stayed in the front seat opposite the driver, scouting forward and brooding on what other difficulties might lie ahead. He also told the Voice to warn him of any vehicles ahead, something he realized he should have done earlier.

The computer dutifully informed him that the coverage here was periodic, provided by an orbiting spy satellite rather than a Global Hawk or a geosynchronous satellite specifically assigned to the area.

“Keep an eye on things anyway,” Danny said.

“Slang recognized,” said the Voice. “Will do.”

“How are we doing?” Danny asked the driver after they’d been back on the road for another hour and a half. They still had another three hours to go.

“Oh, very good, very good,” said Abul. “Very good time.”

“You come from this area?”

“Oh, no. In the north,” said Abul. “I drive here for the money.”

“Is this a rebel area, or an army area?”

Abul shrugged. “More rebel than army,” he said.

The area belonged to whoever happened to be there at the time. It was a mistake to think of the rebels as one united group—there were several, and most didn’t like each other. But it was hard for strangers to understand that.

“The rebels ever bother you?”

“They bother only the army,” said Abul, fudging.

“We shake you up back there?”

Abul didn’t understand, but thought the question required a no, and gave one.

“We heard that it wasn’t safe to go around without weapons,” said Danny. “So we were prepared.”

“I know that you are not scientists,” said Abul abruptly. “I am not a fool.”

“What else do you know?”

“I know to keep my mouth quiet.”

“That’s good,” said Danny. “There’ll be a bonus for the trouble. And the damage to your vehicle.”

The offer to pay for the crumpled fender brightened Abul’s mood considerably. The additional money would make it possible to buy a second vehicle, and maybe even a third. In the Sudan, that would make him a very rich man.

It also meant he could operate the buses in the north, where things were much more stable.

Neither Abul nor the two Americans spoke for more than two and a half hours, until Boston spotted the burned-out armored car that marked the road up to the hills where they’d made camp. It was an old British AEC armored car, manufactured at the very end of World War II. It had passed through a number of owners, including Yugoslavia and Kenya, before finding its place in the Sudanese defense force. A Russian-made RPG—not quite as old, though itself fairly venerable—had ended its career a few months before.

“There’s the turn,” said Boston. “Look at that old soldier, Colonel. Older than our grandfathers.”

Abul slowed down. Boston put his hands against the window of the bus, watching the sweep of the headlights. He’d chosen the site because it would be easy to defend.

“We oughta give Nuri a call,” Boston told Danny. “So he doesn’t blast us on the way up.”

“Go ahead.”

Boston took out his satellite phone to call Nuri. Only Danny and Nuri were hooked into the MY-PID. Danny actually could have made the call himself on the MY-PID channel, but in truth he simply didn’t consider it. He still wasn’t comfortable with the system, still wasn’t thinking about it as
a tool that could help him rather than a computer that could foul him up.

“I ain’t getting an answer,” said Boston.

Now Danny did use the Voice. He went to the back of the bus so Abul couldn’t hear or see him. “Where is Nuri?” he asked.

The Voice gave him a set of GPS coordinates.

“Where is that in relation to me?”

“Fifty-two-point-three miles west. He is moving. Speed indicates a land vehicle.”

“What’s his direction?”

“Due north.”

“Not toward Base Camp Alpha.”

“Negative at the present time.”

Danny stared through the bullet holes. His solution had been the worst of both worlds—he’d pissed off the Sudanese, but hadn’t eliminated them as a threat.

A bad move. He was out of practice. Maybe fatally so.

Abul took the turn and drove up into the small camp, which consisted of three small personal tents—glorified pup tents, big enough for someone to sleep in and little else—arranged around an old stone cottage. The building had been used many years before by a shepherd who’d looked after a herd of goats. It had been empty for nearly fifty years; the roof had been gone for nearly that long.

“You can pull the bus up a little further,” Danny told the driver. “Which tent is yours?”

“I sleep in the bus.”

“Fine. We’ll make something to eat.”

Boston took a quick tour of the perimeter, making sure they were alone. Nuri had posted sensors all around, but Boston didn’t trust them.

Danny took one of the battery lanterns and checked out the building. About a third of the stone partition between its two rooms had tumbled down. Nuri had set up some camp chairs in the front room, along with a small table. A hand of
solitaire was laid out on the table, the deck skewed as if the player had tossed it down in disgust.

Most of their gear was still en route and would be dropped via parachute the following night. They had a camp stove, cooking utensils, extra clothes, a tool kit. A backup radio, two GPS units, a pair of AK-47s and spare ammunition were in a small trunk at the side of the back room. Digging gear—picks and shovels, sticks, strings, the finer trowels and tools of the paleontology trade—sat near the front door. There was a dirt bike; Nuri had taken the other one to scout.

Danny looked at the roof. A tarp could easily cover it. But there wasn’t much chance of rain at this time of year, and with luck they wouldn’t be there long enough for it to matter.

“Nuri made some sort of stew,” said Boston, coming in after checking around. Between his light and Danny’s, the room was fairly bright. “We can just heat it up.”

“Where is it?”

“In that box there.”

“Not in a refrigerator?”

Boston laughed. “Colonel, they don’t have any iceboxes in hell.”

Danny went over to the box. The food was in a covered ceramic pot.

“I think if we eat this, we’ll end up in purgatory,” said Danny, examining it. “Or at least the latrine.”

“I’ve been eating it for two days straight, and I’m not sick.”

“It’s two days old?”

“You get it good and hot, all the germs die.” Boston picked up the pot and put it on the stove. “What do you think of Abul?”

“I guess he’s all right.”

“You trust him?”

“You tell me. You’ve been with him.”

“I don’t know. Nuri thinks he’s okay, but doesn’t really trust him. He doesn’t trust anybody. He’s got that look about him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Remember Stoner? The guy we lost in Romania?”

“Yeah.”

“You think those rumors about him being alive were true?”

“I doubt it.” Danny looked into the pot. It was a bubbling mass of gray, with unidentifiable black chunks floating on top. “I’m not going to eat that crap.”

“Suit yourself, Colonel.”

“You probably shouldn’t call me colonel,” said Danny.

“What should I call you?”

“Danny.”

Boston made a face.

“Then Doc or something like that,” suggested Danny. “Boss. Chief. Anything that’s not military.”

“I keep wanting to call you captain. Kind of think of Colonel Bastian every time I call you colonel.”

“Yeah.”

“Funny guy.”

“Funny?”

“I mean—
remarkable.
”

“Yeah.”

Danny heard a sound in the distance. He didn’t know what it was at first—it sounded like an airplane very far away. Then he realized it was the sound of a truck.

“Kill the lights,” he said. “Let’s see what this is.”

Boston led the way to one of their lookout posts, detouring quickly to grab the night vision goggles, which he’d left in his pack on the bus. Abul, who’d heard the noise but decided to ignore it, joined them. Danny squatted next to the rocks and pointed the night glasses in the direction of the noise. Red Henri’s ragtag armada appeared in the distance, the ambulance leading the way.

“Jesus. It looks like the whole Sudanese army is coming for us,” said Danny.

He handed the glasses to Boston.

“Shit—but they’re coming from the wrong direction,” said
Boston. “This must be another unit—they must have radioed for help.”

“Can I see?” asked Abul.

Boston gave him the glasses.

“This is not the army. This is Red Henri,” said Abul.

“Who’s he?” asked Boston.

“A rebel commander,” said Danny. “He’s the one that’s not attached to any of the religious movements. Right?”

“He is a heathen,” said Abul.

“Whatever his religion is,” said Boston, “he’s coming straight for us.”

Danny took back the glasses. Between the pickup trucks and the troop truck, there could easily be two hundred men there.

“What do you want to do, uh, Doc?” asked Boston. Doc didn’t sound right, he decided.

“We should hide,” said Abul. “Red Henri—very unpredictable. Sometimes nice. Sometimes…”

He put his hand to his throat and made a strangling sound.

Danny turned back and looked at the camp. They’d put out the lights; it looked deserted. But they’d have to leave the bus there.

Two hundred versus two? Even with a Megafortress backing them up, the odds would have been pretty long. As much as he didn’t like the idea of hiding—it smacked of running away—there was no other choice.

“All right—can we get up to that high ground there?” he asked Boston.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

“Grab the rifles and extra ammo and let’s go.”

Base Camp Alpha
Sudan

L
ISTENING TO
R
ED
H
ENRI PONTIFICATE ABOUT HOW HE FINANCED
his campaign in the Hummer, Nuri couldn’t decide whether he was a little crazy or very crazy. He was definitely crazy, and eccentric besides, but his economic arrangements suggested that he had at least an occasional attachment to reality. Such as it was.

Red Henri had built his movement around his control of a copper mine about thirty miles southeast of Eddd. Though ostensibly owned and operated by a Belgium consortium, Red Henri and his troops had more to say about production there than the production manager, let alone the individual stockholders. The company paid him a fee to provide security—basically money so his troops wouldn’t wreck the place, though in theory they were defending against other rebel groups and robbers. The company also paid him personally as a “political consultant”—basically a bribe to keep him from wreaking havoc. But the biggest portion of the mine-related income came from a “transport tax” that Red Henri’s soldiers collected from anyone going into or out of the mining area. Miners and anyone who wanted to do any business with them there had to pay the U.S. equivalent of three dollars going and coming. The fees allowed Red Henri to pay his soldiers about twice what the government paid its forces—when it paid them at all.

The arrangement demonstrated that Red Henri was, if not smart, at least very clever. On the other hand, his belief in the supernatural went far beyond that of most of the Sudanese Nuri had met. Many in the southern portion of the country clung to the ancient animistic religion, believing in spirits that their grandfathers’ fathers would have prayed to. Like many of them, Red Henri believed that spirits walked the
earth as men did. He also believed that he could see them. He carried on regular conversations with them—and for about half the ride from the village, he interspersed his comments to Nuri with an animated discussion with two unseen spirits who were sitting in the back of his Hummer.

When he spoke to them, Red Henri used a tribal language so obscure that even the Voice would have been unable to decipher it, had Nuri dared to show the earphones. But Nuri got the most salient parts—the spirits were divided about whether the scientists should be allowed to stay or not. One of the spirits was very hungry, in fact, and thought that the best use of the scientists would be as food.

Red Henri took a neutral position in the argument.

Nuri wasn’t sure whether Boston and the others would be back yet, and he certainly wasn’t going to call to find out. He assumed they were smart enough to be on the lookout—and to hide if they saw the caravan coming.

The convoy moved with little regard for the highway. The ambulance was accorded the lead, but otherwise each driver vied with the others to move as fast as possible, cutting one or the other off and occasionally coming close to colliding. Some weeks back, Red Henri had decided that the driver and occupants of the last vehicle to arrive at a town he was inspecting would get no supper, and while he had soon relented, none of the drivers wanted to risk their leader’s displeasure. They drove fast, and they drove with their headlights off, hopping across the landscape, bouncing on springs and shocks that had long ago stopped dampening any bumps.

“Up this way, yes?” said Red Henri, pointing in the general direction of the camp.

“That’s it,” said Nuri.

The fact that the rebel leader knew where the camp was surprised Nuri. He hadn’t seen them scouting the area at all.

Red Henri picked up a radio and called to the ambulance, making sure the driver knew to turn up the road into the hills. The driver took the direction as an invitation to blow
his siren. The wail bounced across the hills, echoing through the desert.

D
ANNY CROUCHED IN THE ROCKS ABOUT A HALF MILE ABOVE
the camp, watching with his night glasses as the rebel leader and his entourage pulled into the camp. Their movements were somewhere between that of a highly polished military unit and a troupe of clouds.

“There’s Nuri, getting out of the Hummer,” said Danny. He handed the glasses to Boston.

“Brought a few friends home for dinner,” said Boston. “What should we do?”

“Too late to do anything but watch.”

T
HE BUS WAS THERE, BUT IT WAS OBVIOUS TO
N
URI THAT
the others were hiding. He nonetheless went to each tent and then to the building, calling for his fellow scientists, and hoping he’d come up with an idea on what to do next.

Red Henri got out of the Hummer. His spirits got out with him, still arguing over whether the scientists should be allowed in the area or not. As the men mustered around him in their usual formation, he saw that no one had come out to greet him. This was a severe breach of etiquette, one that spoke very poorly of his hosts. It was also a strong argument on the side of the spirits, who felt the scientists should not be allowed to dig here—and should, in fact, be eaten.

“Where are your scientists?” Red Henri demanded when he saw Nuri come out of the building. “Why are they not greeting me?”

“I thought they were sleeping, but I guess I was wrong. They may have gone to work in the field.”

“Which field?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Maybe you didn’t have scientists here,” said Red Henri. “No friends.”

“No, there are two here already, and more on their way. See, they have to dig at night because the spirits—”

More scientists? How many?

Even one would be too many
.

Red Henri suddenly understood the spirits’ point. These men had not asked permission to be here. Their digging was a severe imposition, not just to the spirits, but to him.

Of course they’re not here. It’s as I said—they’re nothing. They’ve already run off. My brother came this way this afternoon and chased them down.

Rubbish. Your brother couldn’t chase a flea
.

“I don’t believe there were any scientists,” Red Henri told Nuri. “There were no scientists here.”

Nuri wasn’t sure whether he should agree or not.

“Were there scientists?” demanded Red Henri.

“Of course.”

Red Henri unsnapped his holster. Nuri cursed himself for not shooting the bastard when he had the chance. Two of Red Henri’s bodyguards were directly behind him; he had no chance of getting his pistol.

“What happened to my scientists?” said Red Henri, pulling out his gun.

“They dig at night, so as not to offend certain of the spirits that watch over the bones.”

Red Henri began to laugh. Finally, he saw the truth. The men were simply cowards.

“Your scientists ran away, didn’t they?” he said to Nuri. “They saw Qwandi’s brother and they ran. And Qwandi’s brother is the mildest spirit here. So you won’t be getting any work done. That’s too bad.”

Red Henri rocked the pistol back and forth in his hand. He made up his mind that he would kill Nuri. But as he raised his pistol, the first spirit spoke.

You can’t eat him if he’s a coward. You’ll become a coward yourself
.

“He’s not the coward,” said Red Henri.

Of course he is. What man has cowards for friends but is not one himself? It is impossible
.

Red Henri nodded at the wisdom of this. “I’ll just shoot him and leave him, then.”

If he is bringing other friends, you should wait to shoot him
, said the other spirit.
They may have money and other things. He had the nice motorcycle.

Nuri tensed. He didn’t have a plan to escape. The only plan he had was to drop down, grab the pistol from his leg, and try and shoot Red Henri. It would be preemptive revenge only, so he could tell himself that he died doing something.

Red Henri pointed the gun at Nuri’s forehead. Nuri leaned to his left, ready to dive to the ground. But Red Henri raised the gun and fired, the shot sailing harmlessly into the sky.

“I do not think you are a coward,” he said.

“Well, uh, thanks.”

“You should not be friends with cowards. When a man is a friend with a coward, he becomes a coward. It is the same as eating his heart—you become a coward. Do you want that?”

“No,” said Nuri.

“When your scientists come back, you will come see me. We will have much to discuss. The spirits wish to be asked permission. Some are against you. One suggested you be eaten.”

“I’m probably not that tasty.”

Nuri started to laugh. But Red Henri didn’t even smile as he turned away.

D
ANNY,
B
OSTON, AND
A
BUL CAME DOWN FROM THEIR HIDING
place about a half hour later, after the rebel troop had cleared out. They found Nuri sitting in front of one of the campfire stoves, sipping from a small bottle of scotch.

He hated the stuff generally, but it had a certain medicinal quality and was the only alcohol he’d been able to find during his brief stop in Ethiopia before coming to Sudan.

“There you are,” said Nuri. “You missed the party.”

“We weren’t sure what was going on,” said Danny. “We
saw all the trucks and everything. We figured it would be better if we just disappeared for a while.”

“Probably. The spirits might have thought you were brave, and eaten you.”

Danny gave him a puzzled look. Nuri didn’t explain.

“Jasmine hasn’t been around for a while,” said Nuri. “Henri didn’t know Luo was killed. They’re starting to run low on ammo.”

“Is that good or bad?” asked Danny.

“Good. It means he’ll show up eventually.”

“So why did you bring Red Henri here?”

Nuri looked up from the stove. This was the problem when you worked with someone, he thought—they were always second-guessing you.

“He wanted to see the place,” Nuri said. “And he had two hundred reasons why I figured it was a good idea to let him.”

“What did he want?”

“Dinner.”

Danny didn’t realize Nuri meant that literally, and Nuri didn’t say. He just went back to sipping his scotch.