Born of War (14 page)

O
mar was in a deep sleep in the back of the truck when he first met war. The vehicle slammed to a sudden stop as he looked up to see each of the men scrambling off the truck and into the brush.

“Come on, you fools.”

The driver pointed to the sky.

“A helicopter!”

Omar felt the excitement as he grabbed his rifle and plastic bag. No one let go of anything that they wanted to keep in this army.

He slid off the truck onto a sandy road and then followed another soldier to the bush. The thorns snagged his clothes as he pushed by heading for a tree grove on a rise above the road. He kept following the other fighter as he heard in the background a combination of noises from the smaller Kalashnikov 7.62 rounds, the larger 30-millimeter chain gun, and the thud of an explosion. The man stopped in front of him, turned, kneeled down, and fired his AK towards the sky.

I'm not stupid. It is too open here.
Omar ran past him trying to avoid the swing of the rifle. He reached the tree, got behind the small trunk like a little boy, and aimed his rifle back towards the others. As he did, he saw movement in the sky above and to his right. A camouflaged gunship was puffing out a trail of smoke. It had a circle on its side of red, black, and white. He aimed his weapon at the moving shape and fired.

Shit!
His word of thought went back to Mobile and not the Muslim self of Somalia. He had learned the first lesson of war. Omar had failed to pull the slide back and chamber a round.

It may have been to his good fortune, as the gunship seemed only to have seen his friend in the bush. The whap-whap of 30-millimeter bullets tore up the dirt. Omar saw his friend picked up off the ground and thrown around like a child's doll. He came back to the earth as a limp and loose object.

Omar chambered the round and waited next to the tree. Soon it got deathly quiet. The gunship had moved on.

He stayed motionless for some time but after a short while his knees suddenly felt on fire. He jumped up with his rifle and as he did a round went off. Red ants had covered his legs. He threw the rifle on the ground and jumped around as he slapped his legs to knock the ants off him.

“Allah!” Omar's mind returned to his new life and his new language.

The ants burned. They ruined the high and fear that had accompanied his first brush with both combat and death.

 

 

As he walked up to the limp body, Omar saw how the helicopter's rounds of ammunition had plowed a path through the scrub bushes. There were broken limbs everywhere. He saw the shape of the man in the brush lying in a pool of blood that had puddled in the dirt.

“Hey, man,” Omar said to him, not expecting a reply. A 30-millimeter round had caught him directly in his torso. The man was nearly severed in half. Omar thought he heard a moan but it was only the man's lungs letting out the last bit of air.

The truck had also caught a rocket to the cab. It was burning in a raging torrent. The men all collected together near the side of the road and watched the fire.

“Where is everyone?” The driver was collecting a head count.

“The one with me from Kismaayo is dead. Praise Allah, he is a martyr. He is looking at the face of Allah as we speak.” Omar issued the warrant. No one else was hurt. They all talked in excited voices.

I am so thirsty.
Omar thought of the last of the water jugs that was in the truck. As he started to realize just how close death had come, he went from humble to cocky.

“I shot at the Ethiopian!” he said with glee. They all checked his barrel and confirmed that it smelled of burnt graphite and nitro. The gunpowder was on the slide. “I think I hit him.”

“It will be Allah's will if they crash. We will take a dull knife to his neck,” the driver yelled. “We need to be ready. The front cannot be far now.”

They decided that it was necessary to bury their fellow warrior. The truck was still burning and they determined that the dead one needed to be carried to a distance farther than the two trees.

“Not the tree. Ants!” Omar let out a breath as he spoke. The ant bites still burned. He pulled up his pants and rubbed sand onto his skin. The sandpaper-like rub knocked off all the ants but they still had done a good job biting him.

“Were they red or black?” the Minneapolis friend asked.

“Red.”

“Oh, they are the worst,” the driver spoke up. “We need to bury him in the sun, not under the trees, because the ants will not come out into the sun.”

 

 

They went to a spot that was halfway between the two trees and started to dig. They used their hands and the butts of their rifles to dig into the dirt. When they got down a foot or two, they carefully moved the body into the hole.

“It is important that we do it this way.” The driver had a specific idea of how to bury the body. They laid him in the shallow ditch and said prayers to Allah. Then they carefully collected piles of sticks that they laid over the man. The sticks were covered with what small rocks they could find.

“Are we finished?” Omar asked.

“No, my friend. We need to gather thorns.”

The helicopter's 30-millimeter rounds had provided several piles of broken branches. They gathered up a pile and stacked it tightly on the grave. It was a natural barbed wire meant to keep out the predators.

“This will keep the lions and baboons away.”

 

 

The men again moved to the west but this time with much more care. The RPG survived, so the one with the weapon was assigned to walk behind the others. If shots were fired at them, they didn't want to waste the round on just one single attacker.

“We will stay in groups of two but fifty meters apart.”

Omar was gaining respect for the driver. He had a good understanding of combat.

Omar thought of how thirsty he was. There were puddles of water in the potholes. A desperate man had difficulty walking through the puddles, feeling the warm water on his sandaled feet, but not stopping to scoop up a handful of liquid to drink.

They walked for several miles keeping off the main road and expecting anything to appear at any time. They cut through the brush, and the thorns tore at Omar's side. He didn't mind, as the thorns were far less of a fear than an ambush or another helicopter.

As it neared sunset, the driver, who was in the lead, stopped the men with a hand signal. They all knelt down with their rifles raised. They waited, and as they did, Omar could hear the sound of a truck nearby. He felt the hot wooden stock of his rifle.

This time I am ready.
He knew that there was a round chambered.

There was movement to the front and then there were voices.

“It is our men!” the driver yelled back. They had caught up to another patrol. The men gathered around a bigger truck that was embedded in mud in the waterlogged road.

“Brothers, we need your help,” the leader of the group welcomed them as they approached. The few in the other patrol had been pushing the truck, trying to rock it out of the ditch.

“Do you have water?” Omar asked.

The other man looked at him like the strange, white ungrateful sight he was to a Somali fighter. Finally, after staring at Omar and the driver and determining that Omar was legitimate, the leader spoke.

“We do.” He pointed to the base of a nearby tree where a tarp covered several boxes. Omar, the driver, and the others pulled back the tarp to see bottled water and cans of food.

“Allah is great!” they all yelled out as they broke open the bottles and began drinking.

“This was left by the retreating Ethiopian cowards,” the leader of the second group bragged. “We shot at them and they ran like the cowards they are.”

They drank from the water but the leader would not let them open up the cans of biscuits and other food items until the truck had been moved.

“Get in here and help.”

“We must do prayers.” Omar looked at the setting sun and each turned to prayer. They took a little water from one shared bottle and symbolically washed before praying.

Once prayers had been completed they returned to the task.

“Come,
Amriiki
. Help!”

Omar looked at the mud-covered men and hesitated. Finally, he stepped into the muck and sank nearly up to his knees. The mud felt good on the ant bites. They pushed until darkness and finally freed the truck.

“Tomorrow we chase down the dogs,” the driver spoke as they all huddled on the bed of the truck tucked together like sardines with their rifles on their sides.

“Tomorrow.” Omar pulled his plastic sack up to the corner of the truck and laid on it. He could hear the sound of helicopters in the distance.

T
he director of the CDC entered his outer office to see Paul Stewart sitting there.

“We need to talk.” Stewart hadn't had any sleep since the telephone call.

“I know.”

They walked into the inner office and Stewart closed the door behind them.

“There are two problems.”

“I learned about your daughter. You know that I will do anything that I can to help.” The report had spread across the CDC as fast as a stream of gas being lit by a match. And it was just as hot. A member of the family was caught in crossfire.

“Yes, thank you. Did you see the WHO report?”

“No.”

“We have a breakout of meningitis near where Karen was. She was actually investigating it when she was captured.” Stewart looked at his hands as he spoke.

“It is the meningitis belt.” It was well known by all the infectious disease experts in the world that meningitis thrived in an area that crossed Africa near the equator. It was famed for devastating Mecca several years ago when thousands had made the journey of the Hajj only to die from a raging infection. “Why is this unusual?” the director asked.

“This is a Neisseria meningitidis. We have the bug in the lab.”

“In our lab?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, shit.” The bug being kept in the lab meant that an aggressive reporter could connect the dots whether they should or not. After the scandal of the loose smallpox vials, this would be a body blow. A leak from the CDC would show that the Neisseria meningitidis bacteria was of a new serogroup C meningococcal disease. It was the same hypervirulent strain that appeared in the mountains of Pakistan and that was frozen in the lab on the top floor of the CDC. The problem was that the frozen sample in the CDC predated the outbreak in Pakistan.

“WHO is activating an FMT.” Stewart had followed the traffic all night. The World Health Organization was forming a team.

“Like the Ebola outbreak?”

Ebola had struck West Africa as quickly as a mamba snake struck its target. The disease multiplied exponentially by the hour when it broke out.

“Where is this again?”

“Next to the border of Ethiopia and Somalia.”

“An exploding pandemic in the middle of a war zone?”

“Yes. Fortunately, it is in a low-population area. But a man reported that Karen and a French doctor with the MSF camp were seized after they had visited a village where an outbreak occurred.”

“How many sick were there?”

“None. They were all dead.”

“Oh, God.” The director sat back in his chair. Stewart could see that he was trying to use his scientific mind to analyze the options. “What of your daughter and the Neisseria?”

“She got all of the shots, but I don't know her odds. It's a lottery ticket.” Stewart took his glasses off and rubbed his face with his hand. “With this beast, you could contract it in an emergency room at Emory and be deathly sick in a matter of minutes.”

“And the Ethiopians?”

“The minister of health is starting to get things rolling. They are mobilizing their medical teams and the FMS is turning into a major encampment at a place called Ferfer.”

“And the military?”

“The Ethiopians are moving their troops into the area.”

“What are your thoughts about Karen?”

“I don't know. I really don't know.” Stewart sat slumped into the chair. He did have one thought but he wasn't ready to play all of his cards.

“How bad is this bug?”

“There was a breakout in Afghanistan some time ago.”

“And?”

“There was one survivor.”

“Really?” The director leaned forward in his chair. He was thinking of the antiserum.

Stewart was thinking of something else.

“I may need the help of DOD and the CIA.”

“For this, we can do that. For this, we can do just about anything.”

“Thank you.” Paul Stewart didn't care about being the director of scientific security anymore. He didn't care about his chance of being the director of the CDC. His résumé was finished. All he wanted to do was find Enrico Hernandez of the security section.

D
uring the night Karen was woken up by a grunting sound that came from deep in the dark. She started to fall asleep when she heard the same grunting sound from the other side of the truck. It was as if the grunts were surrounding their little camp.

Xasan and the other guards stirred when they heard the noise. She could tell that they were on edge. Their voices went from whispers to loud babbling.

The captors pulled down broken branches from the tree they were under and some dried brush and gathered them in a pile between the tree trunk and the truck.

Xasan had a lighter. They poured some gas from a can kept in the truck bed and started a fire. The wood crackled as it began to burn. The smoke rose up to the first limbs of the tree and then was pushed back into them.

Karen pulled her legs up as she looked through the net over her face. Peter did not stir. She watched as the driver came out of the cab and helped. Xasan took a stick from the fire and walked around the circumference of the tree at the edge of the darkness.

“Hey, you!” The guard kicked Peter in his boot.

“Oui?” Peter mumbled as he started to wake up from his sleep.

“Where is your other one?”

Peter and Karen looked to the other side of the tree trunk. Mataa was missing. Peter smiled for a moment.

“I don't know,” Peter said in a reassured voice.

“Don't be so cocky,
Amriiki
.” Xasan pointed the burning stick at Peter's face.

It didn't matter that Peter was not an American. The comment was a rub in other ways. Doctors Without Borders considered their neutrality very important. Karen knew that the survival of several refugee camps depended upon neutrality.

“What do you mean?” Karen asked.

“Look at the ground.” Xasan waved the torch at the spot where the third prisoner had been lying. The ground was dark with a circle that looked black against the sandy dirt. The blood followed a path into the darkness.

“Oh, shit!” Peter gasped.

“What is it?” Karen didn't understand.

“A pride of lions. Did you hear grunting?”

“I'm not sure what I heard. I thought I heard lions roaring but that seemed impossible.”

“A lion dragged Mataa away.”

 

 

Daylight came as a relief to both the captors and the captives.

Karen could feel Peter's body shiver as they fell back asleep under the tree. His body heat passed out through his clothing. He started to mumble in French. She squeezed his arm.

“How are you doing?” She was taking on the role of being the strong one.

“Okay.” He looked pale. Peter kept rubbing his leg just above his boot. Finally, he pulled his pants leg up.

“Oh.”

His leg was white with red splotches dotting the skin from where the mosquitoes had got him.

“I must have rolled over in the night.” His pants had pulled up in his sleep and exposed the skin. The leg had been below the net.

“Come on,
Amriiki
s!” Xasan seemed ready to leave the river. It carried with it certain dangers. “We must cross.”

The strength of the river's flow had not lessened during the night. Its edge ran into the weeds, making it far more frightening. The water would be near the floor of the cab and they all kept looking for the slightest unusual movement. A mamba still roamed the area.

Xasan pointed and yelled like a foreman on the docks. No one was to be spared. He pointed to Karen and Peter to help push on one side while the other guard would push on the driver's side. The old man would stay behind the wheel. Xasan rode in the bed, just behind the cab with his AK rifle held up. His job was to scan for the mamba.

Karen felt every movement of the water as the truck plunged into the river. The vehicle moved quickly, making it seem that the crossing would be swift and safe. And then she heard the wheel spin out.

“Push! Push!” Xasan yelled as he jumped up and down in the bed trying to help dislodge the truck from the riverbed. It didn't budge and then a log came towards them with the current. Karen and Peter were on the down side; she looked up, yelled, and braced herself over the edge of the bed. She felt Peter do the same.

The log swung into the truck with a loud thud while the driver continued to hit the gas. The engine stuttered, and then roared, and as it did, the truck suddenly pulled forward out of the riverbed and on to the rutted road.

“Oh, my God,” she gasped. The hunger, the lack of sleep, and the exhaustion caused her to simply hang there on the side of the truck bed.

“Allah! Praise be.” Xasan waved his rifle in the air.

“Where is the other one?” Peter asked. The man with the broken leg was missing. “Did he go under?”

“He was where the log hit.”

The guards looked up and down the riverbank for a short while, seeing nothing but the torrent of water passing by. For one short moment they yelled out when they saw a movement in the water. It was the same place where the night before they had seen the mamba.

“He is seeing the face of Allah, praise be,” Xasan finally declared.

 

 

The truck continued to move to the south and east following the rutted road that ran parallel with the riverbank. The noon sun broke through the clouds and when it did, the temperature rose rapidly. Karen could feel her skin being fried by being so close to the equator. She used her scarf to cover up as much as possible. The men made both her and Peter walk behind the truck. Ropes were not necessary anymore.

Peter started to wobble when he walked. Despite the blazing sun, he looked like he was cold.

“How are you doing?” she whispered. Xasan didn't like their talking.

“Just got this headache. I will kill them both for an aspirin.”

“They know we are missing. I left the gum wrapper at the riverbank on top of a rock. I put another, smaller rock on top of it. They should see it.” Karen was offering him hope.

By midafternoon, they could hear voices and the sound of cattle. They all got excited, even Xasan.

The village was no more than a half dozen huts but more important for Xasan, two Toyota trucks were parked below the protection of the trees. They both had antiaircraft machine guns mounted in their beds. The barrels of the guns extended almost beyond the front windshield.

“Brothers!”

They were fellow Al Shabaab fighters and all from the same clan.

“Xasan!” The leader hugged his cousin. “You look thirsty and hungry.”

“We could eat!”

“We have food and water. And cans of tuna!”

“I am famished!” Xasan grabbed the plastic liter jug and started to drink.

“Who are these?” The other man was unusually tall for a Somali and not as dark-skinned as his cousin. He had jet black short curly hair with black bushy eyebrows that extended to the point where the two almost touched each other.

“We have captured some
Amriiki
! They will be worth much in ransom.”

“We must get the news to others. There is word that there is an
Amriiki
who is a fellow warrior just south of here. He will be able to tell us more about our prisoners. We need to feed them and keep them in good health like the goatherd takes care of his flock before going to the market!” The tall one had a better sense of the need to ensure that his prisoners survived.

“They should eat.” Xasan had not considered the thought until now. He told the driver to get a can of tuna for each of them, and a jug of water to share.

The prisoners had value. How much was the question.