Born of War (15 page)

“D
r. Stewart?”

A man was standing at the door to Paul Stewart's office. He wore a loose blue polo shirt and khakis; clipped to his collar was a CDC temporary pass. His appearance alone was unusual, in that a temporary pass visitor was supposed to have an escort at all times.

“Yes,” Paul Stewart looked up from his computer screen and pushed up his glasses on his nose.

“Enrico Hernandez.” The man stood there with his arms folded. “I understand you were looking for me?”

“Oh, yes.” Stewart had been calling security repeatedly. “Thank you for coming.” It wasn't a thank-you of courtesy. It was a sincere thank-you. “Please come in and close the door.”

The man in front of Stewart was solid, with a bit of a mid-thirties paunch. He wore black, well-shined shoes like a past Marine would and had short black curly hair.

“So, this is about Colonel Parker?”

“Yes, yes it is.”

“What's up?”

“We have an outbreak of a disease in Africa and he can help.”

“Okay
,
so why me?”

“No one knows where he is.”

“I guess not.” The comment was made in a matter-of-fact way.

“We need his help.
I
need his help. His blood might be what is necessary to save lives. How do we get him here?”

“Not easy.” Hernandez hesitated. “Not since his wife died.”

“Oh, I didn't know about that.”

“Sad situation. He lost his parents on the Pan Am flight over Scotland.”

“Lockerbie?”

“Yes, sir.” Hernandez didn't look comfortable talking about William Parker.

“I am not sure I ever knew that.” Stewart rolled his head back. “And his wife?”

Hernandez hesitated again. “I guess it was on the news.”

It wasn't as if the story was a great secret that could not be found out. Still Hernandez hesitated.

“Look, my daughter was kidnapped by the rebels in Somalia. The disease that Parker beat in Afghanistan has popped up in the same area. She is a doctor with a refugee organization and was investigating the outbreak when they captured her. I'm desperate.”

“Oh, I am sorry.” Hernandez had a daughter as well. “Okay
,
it was a real tragedy. We never thought the man would get married but he finally did, to a lady named Clark. They were into the running thing in a big way and did the Hawaiian race together. One of those crazy nuts went off the deep end and drove his car into the crowd. Mowed down several. It just missed him.”

“Oh, God.”

“Yes, sir. The worst of it is that Parker beat the man to a pulp before the cops got there. It took the Gunny a lot of the national security pull to get that all off the record. Cops didn't mind, but it was bad.”

“Gunny?”

“Yes, sir, Gunny Moncrief is the only one who can get to him.”

“I really need Parker's help.” Stewart's voice was broken.

“I got laid off from the security staff here. The cuts in staff got me. I'm just hanging around until I get a new job.” Hernandez started to stand up. “Let me have your number and I will have Gunny get in touch with you.”

“Thank you.”

“You said it was your daughter?”

“Yes. My only daughter.”

“I will get right on this.”

 

 

“This isn't that easy.” Kevin Moncrief was standing outside his truck with Enrico Hernandez at his side. William Parker's farmhouse was as still as water on a pond. There were no sounds and nothing moved other than a breeze out of the west. It was just after high noon. It hadn't taken long for Hernandez to call Gunny and for them to link up.

“He doesn't have a phone.” Moncrief was repeating what he thought Hernandez knew. “No computer, nothing.”

“It's Stewart's daughter.”

“Yeah.”

They met at the Atlanta airport so they could take one truck. It was important that they took Moncrief's truck, just in case on the ride up to the lodge on the property Parker saw something familiar.

“But he isn't expecting me for another two weeks.”

They waited for a while. Moncrief pulled a weed from the overgrown grass and started to chew on its end. It was a change of pace from his cigars.

The cabin looked like it had been closed for the winter months. The shutters were all sealed and a kudzu vine had started to wind itself around one of the posts that was at the entrance.

“Can't stand it,” Moncrief said out loud. He walked over to the post and started to pull the kudzu vine off of it.

“It won't help unless you get it out of the ground,” Hernandez commented while standing at the truck. “It's like the stuff we had at the CDC. It grows in hours, not days.”

Moncrief gave him a look that only a gunnery sergeant could give to a staff sergeant.

“Okay.” Hernandez came over and started to pull the kudzu out of the ground.

“Don't know if he's out there or . . .” Moncrief stopped and pointed to the woods.

“Do you think he would mind if we tried the door?” Hernandez asked after putting a handful of kudzu into the truck. “I got the impression that the doc wanted to talk to him soon.”

“You think another hour or two makes the difference?”

Hernandez didn't say anything.

“Okay
,
let's try the door, but it may be booby-trapped.” Moncrief smiled. “You first.”

The door swung open without a problem. They walked into the lodge. There were no lights on and it was still . . . Moncrief walked into the kitchen and felt the stove.

“Nothing in the fridge.” Hernandez was looking inside. “It's cold but no light.”

“Yeah, he's good.”

“What?”

“He knows what is in the refrigerator, but if he opened it at night, the light would spotlight anything in the room.”

“Oh.”

They walked around the large open room with the stone fireplace at the end. It was surrounded by glass doors that looked out on a stone porch and a grassy, flat piece of land cleared of all trees, and beyond, to a slope down to the river. In the distance Moncrief could see the stacks of a paper mill and the streak of white smoke that twisted into the air with the air current.

“Leave him a note?” Hernandez looked for something to write with.

“Well, we . . .” Moncrief's cell rang, interrupting him mid-sentence.

“Hell, Gunny, should we answer it?'

Moncrief's cell phone continued to ring. It showed the caller.

“Fulton County Library.”

“Hey,” said Moncrief into the phone.

“What do you need, Gunny?” The voice was Parker's.

Moncrief looked around the room. He had stopped wondering how to outguess William Parker before this.

“We need to see you.”

“Good, I have something to show you.”

“He said what?” Hernandez asked as they drove back north.

“Said he had something to show us.”

“Did he say what it was about?”

“Something to do with Mobile.”

F
erfer changed overnight.

The report of the disease to the World Health Organization caused a call to go out as it had when Ebola struck West Africa the year before. In a matter of hours, helicopters started arriving and landing on a small open piece of ground behind the Ethiopian military outpost on the other side of the valley from where the Doctors Without Borders refugee encampment stood.

Two MV-22s came in low over the valley, banked hard over in a turn, and then started to transition one by one for a landing. The aircraft had MARINE marked in a darker gray on the rear of its fuselage. Two similarly marked Cobra gunships stayed on top, circling like wasps waiting to sting.

The MV-22 Ospreys were marked with the squadron numbers of VMM-166. They were followed by the Super-Cobra attack helicopters from HMLA-269. The Super-Cobra was a two-man gunrunner that protected its bigger brother with both a 20-millimeter belly-mounted Gatling cannon and several missiles. It didn't have the speed of the Osprey but when they met up and got into the action it provided extra protection.

The open landing zone already had more than a dozen Russian-built transport helicopters parked in a line on the east side of the landing zone. A red smoke grenade on the far end of the open patch showed the drift of the wind, and the Ospreys turned into it. The first aircraft started to transition from forward flight to its helicopter mode. As the blades spun, a cloud of dust started to churn up. Small rocks and the red sand circled in what looked like two rising tornados for each engine on the aircraft.

The Osprey kept its engines running as teams of brown-camouflaged men fully decked out with special-fitted helmets, ear sets, goggles, vests, and HK rifles jumped out of the aircraft following a straight line past the propeller wash and then ran in different directions. The instant the last boot hit the ground, the Osprey's engines increased in volume and it slowly lifted off the ground. A moment later the second Osprey followed suit, moving into the landing zone, dropping off its cargo, and then pulling up into the sky. A team of fourteen operators spread out in a circle.

“Captain?”

Marine Captain Abo Tola looked up to see an Ethiopian soldier with the markings of a major standing there with his hand out.

“Yes, sir,” said Tola.

“Welcome.”

“Yes, sir. We are here to save some space for our logistics team.”

Tola knew the uniform of the Ethiopian officer. This major served with NDF, or National Defense Force. His unit was a secret unit of fighters considered to be one of the toughest in the world. They were notorious for brutal hundred-mile hikes across the desert, surviving on only that which they could carry or find from the land. They wore berets. They fought and trained with the neighboring Kenyan Special Forces who were considered just as fierce and just as secret a unit. And they shared a hatred for Al Shabaab.

“I have heard of your unit.” Tola tried to pay him a compliment. “Linda Nchi?”

“Those crazies from Al Shabaab have been a pain for some time.”

Operation Linda Nchi was the code name in Swahili for the joint mission of Kenya, the Somali military, and Ethiopia against Al Shabaab in 2011. It was all started by Al Shabaab's kidnapping of two health workers from the Doctors Without Borders refugee camp in Dadaab. Ethiopia officially made no comment to the world as to its involvement with the operation; however, Al Shabaab was on everyone's list.

“I am afraid they aren't going away as we had hoped.” Tola had seen intelligence reports that Al Shabaab was tattered and filled with infighting; however, there was another intelligence rumor out there as well: the group was in the market for a “carrier killer” missile. “What are your thoughts on our encampment?”

Tola knew that the major would let the Marine have the call, within limits. No field commander was going to sacrifice the decisions he had to make to protect his men no matter what protocol might ask of him.

“Your call.”

“The bluff about half a click to the east there would fit our follow-along.”

“Yes, that would be good.”

Tola's staff sergeant was standing just behind the two and within hearing distance. He, like Tola, was ready for battle. He carried a Heckler & Koch M-416 rifle fitted with a suppressor. In his shoulder holster he had a special operator's 1911 .45 caliber automatic. He was fully armed for combat. Like Tola, he had pulled off his goggles and replaced them with his wraparound eyewear. The glasses were ESS CDI eye pros that could take a blow to the face. His eyes would be far more protected than the rest of his body. He looked like the Terminator. And he was as close a product to the Terminator as America could train and produce.

“Staff, on that bluff, as we talked.”

“Yes, sir.” Tola saw him go to his radio and direct the others towards the bluff.

“Come in to my tent and I can give you a lay down.” The major pointed to a desert drab tent with two guards standing out front.

Inside, a satellite photograph of the area had been blown up and laminated.

“The MSF refugee encampment is here.” It had already grown from what Tola had seen in the last satellite update. “The World Health Organization has brought in its on-site team and our health workers have set up an encampment here.” He pointed to the health workers as all being to the other side of Ferfer.

“Should there be some protection on that side?”

If the border was truly followed, the military forward operating base was between Somalia and Ferfer as well as the health camps. But Tola knew that the border mattered little to a terrorist force.

“We have rapid reaction teams but the MSF is not happy about us even being here.”

Tola shook his head. Doctors Without Borders was notorious for risking lives to keep its declared neutrality. They would watch the sick be chased away from camps in other African countries so that they would not be accused of taking sides. However, there were two trump cards here. First, like Ebola, the Neisseria meningitidis was able to spread quickly. And second, two of their staff had been kidnapped. It called for a bending of rules.

“The WHO wants protection. They have seen about a dozen deaths already. They are trying to do inoculations to as many as they can reach.”

The two were interrupted by the sounds of heavy helicopters passing overhead.

“It is our SOCSS coming in.”

“What?”

“Our logistics coming in to set up our base of operations.”

The aircraft flew past the Ethiopian post and Tola knew they were heading to the bluff.

“Good.”
He glanced at his watch. SPMAGTF Crisis Response–Africa would be on the ground, self-protected and fully up for operations well by nightfall. This special-purpose Marine air-ground task force was unique and tailored specifically for this mission.

“We would like to start doing some patrolling just to know what's on the deck.”

“Of course.”

Tola wanted a sense of the battlefield. He didn't care about the border.

“We have a unit from the CDC joining us on our FOB.”

“Yes, I have heard such.”

The Ethiopian major didn't say what Tola guessed he would have said if given the chance. Ethiopia flew Russian helicopters for a reason. They wanted to maintain their independence even if it meant varying from the West on some equipment. The Russian financing didn't hurt either. But the Marines were here as guests. They had a reason to be in play with the American doctor being one of the kidnap victims, but still they remained guests. Tola anticipated this.

“We will keep you informed on all we do as much as we possibly can.”

Again, Tola would let the major know all that could be safely shared. If there was some piece of intelligence that needed to remain with the Marine force so as to ensure it was protected, Tola would make certain that such was the case. Otherwise, he would keep the Ethiopian major informed.

“And you are Ethiopian, my American brother?”

“Yes, my mother was from the village of Labuka. We are Kara.”

“I am Kara!”

The two smiled and shook hands again, this time grasping each other's arms up to the elbows.

“We are in a common fight,” Tola said as he squeezed the major's arm.

“Al Shabaab must be stopped. This American terrorist that they have is a disease no different than the meningitidis.” The major raised the subject of the man from Mobile.

“Yes. But first we need to recover Dr. Stewart.”