Born of War (22 page)

He looked back at the closed front door as he pulled out of the driveway.

The blue sheet covered the weapon, which was just behind his driver's seat. Wassef tried to move slowly, not speeding, leaving the quiet neighborhood behind.

He was on the interstate in just a few minutes. There were no sirens. They would come later.

“W
here did they come from?” A new face assigned by Doctors Without Borders stepped out of his tent in the MSF compound. He had been pulled in from Paris as soon as the word had gotten out that they had lost two of their own. MSF—like the World Health Organization, the CDC, and the Ethiopian Minister of Health—had to constantly work hard to fight the disease at its front line.

“You wouldn't think there are that many who live here.” A nurse from the south of France was smoking a cigarette as she stood outside their tent.

A line of tired and thin people stood at the entrance point. Helpers moved around in white suits, with blue gloves and boots. Each helper and nurse wore a face mask. It was an odd sight: people in Bedouin wraps, black turbans, and sandals on their feet; or children in bare feet—all standing there. They did not all look sick, but they all looked frightened. Word of the village of death had started to cross the borders.

“What's the count?” the doctor asked in French.

“We lost well over a hundred in the last two days. We have a problem with the bodies.” The logistics of death were mounting up.

“Is anything helping?”

“It seems that those who have been inoculated with the general meningitis vaccine are holding their own. Some get sick, but when we can keep their fluids up they seem to be making it.” She took a pull from her cigarette. It had the bitter smell that only French tobacco has.

“You know that those things will kill you.” He was a young thoracic surgeon who was regarded as a pain in the ass as much as a good surgeon. Chest surgery wasn't needed here; however, his dedication was.

“We are surrounded by stacks of bodies that are dead from this deadly disease. I will enjoy my cigarette.”

“And now this report that we have to worry about being attacked.” The doctor turned back into his tent before changing into the infectious-disease suit. “The military has brought the war to our front door while we are trying to save these lives.”

He looked out to the rise of land on the other side of the valley and several helicopters circling the armed camps beyond Ferfer. And then he looked back at the line of the sick, wondering which ones were here for a shot. And which ones simply went back over the hill to pick up their AK-47 again.

“The world is mad.”

The noise of a vehicle caused him to turn back towards Ferfer. It was climbing the road up to their compound. The doctor could see a young Ethiopian solider behind the steering wheel and another one beside him. The passenger had gold-rank insignia on his shoulder boards that flickered in the bright light of the rising sun.

“Now what?” A young German surgeon had, by seniority, become the director of the MSF encampment and, as a result, had the job of speaking with the visitor.

The nurse watched as she continued to smoke, her arms folded.

“Hey, you.” The Ethiopian officer walked up to the edge of the tents. The medical staff had strung white-and-red tape around the line of tents and posted signs yards apart. The top sign had the large red letters MSF and the words M
ÉDECINS
S
ANS
F
RONTIÈRES
below. The other sign was more significant. It had an AK-47 in a red circle with a line across it. The camp was meant to be unarmed.

The officer stopped short of the tape.

“Here goes.” The doctor went to the line and stopped. He knew that the people beyond were watching. He would not cross the line, and he would not allow the Ethiopian colonel to cross it either.

“Doctor, thank you for helping my people.”

“We are here to help.” He was right. They provided medical care to the poor in over seventy countries. But only once in MSF's history had it asked for military help. Its neutrality had come at a great price. In the south, Sudan raiders struck an MSF clinic, killing hundreds. The lack of medical care there, as a result, caused thousands to die. Because of incidents like this, MSF continued its attempts to maintain neutrality.

“You need protection. We detect movement.” The colonel pointed to the line of the sick. “You know that some of the people who want to kill you are standing in that line right now and looking at us.” He never took his hand off his pistol in the holster on his belt.

“We are unarmed and remain so.”

“You think this piece of tape and these plastic signs will stop a bullet?”

“Is there anything else, Colonel?”

“No.”

“I have to go on shift.” The doctor turned back to the nurse. “Give me one of those cigarettes.”

“I thought you didn't smoke.”

 

 

“Boss, something's up.” Moncrief looked like the cat with the mouse's tail sticking out of his mouth. With Gunny, however, the tail was a chewed-up stump of cigar.

“You know if you go out of the wire you will have to ditch the cigar.” Parker gave it back to the Gunny in spades. “They will smell your Cuban coming from a click away.”

“How did you know that it was Cuban?”

“I know you.” Parker's guess was close to the point.

“I talked to the Ethiopian colonel. He wants to meet you.”

“Let's go.” Parker followed Moncrief past the sandbagged bunkers that had been thrown up at the entrance to the Marine compound. The road led down the hill to a similarly bunkered entrance at the Ethiopian base. Moncrief waved his hand and a guard stood up and motioned for them to come forward.

The Ethiopian camp was just as organized as the Marine camp. Tents that looked more like ones used by the Bedouin were lined up with their sides rolled up during the heat of the day. As Parker passed the tents, he noticed that they were all empty. He walked up to a tall, thin man with dark black skin who was wearing a beret and a camouflage uniform with gold-rank insignia on the shoulders.

“Colonel, this is Marine Colonel William Parker.” Moncrief never used such a formal statement except when there was a purpose for doing so. The two shook hands.

“I know why you are here.” The colonel squatted down.

“Oh, really?” Parker and Moncrief squatted down as well. It seemed the accepted way to talk to each other in a country that had few chairs in the desert.

“You have survived this disease.”

“Yes.”

“You are blessed.”

“Yes.”

“But will you survive the attack?”

Parker hesitated.

“What can we do to help?”

“Would you like to go on one of our patrols tonight?” The colonel wanted Parker and Moncrief to see how they fought their battles.

 

 

“We are not armed.” Moncrief was speaking to one of the Ethiopians. It was nearing midnight. Parker was looking on. He was armed with his Heckler & Koch automatic pistol in his shoulder holster but it would only help in a close-quarters situation. The Ethiopian was the senior enlisted and spoke perfect English. He had a sister who lived in Denver.

“No problem.” He turned to another of lesser rank and gave an order. In a short moment, two young soldiers came out of a tent. Again an order was issued; the two soldiers turned and shortly came back with what looked like two brand-new Kalashnikovs.

“Are they new?” Parker asked.

The senior enlisted officer took one, turned it over, and looked at the serial number.

“Six years old.” The weapons were in immaculate condition. “When a recruit is accepted and is allowed to join our battalion, he is given his beret and his weapon. Both are for life. He must sleep with his rifle, clean it, and care for it.” He handed the automatic to Parker. “Take care of it.”

There was little known of the Ethiopian Battalion 50th. They were feared and were fearless. It was the secret battalion that even the CIA knew little about. One was in training for years to be admitted, and it was a grueling, relentless physical and mental challenge.

“What about
them
?” Parker was talking about the two who volunteered to give up their rifles to the Marines.

“They get to stay at home tonight. For them, it will be a bad night. We don't like missing the action.”

“I understand.” Parker pulled the rifle to his shoulder. He looked through the sight to a light on the far end of the camp. He felt the wood stock in his left hand.

“What is it sighted to?”

“A hundred meters center of aim. If you shoot farther, you must raise the aim point a notch for every fifty meters.”

“Ammunition?”

“It has a fully loaded magazine. That should be enough.”

The patrol gathered together at the Ethiopian front gate. They all bounced up and down several times in what looked like some kind of dance but it served a practical purpose.

“No noise?” Moncrief asked Parker. He wanted to know if Parker heard anything jingling as he hopped up and down. If so, he had a roll of black electrical tape to keep it still. They and the patrol were totally silent.

It wasn't until they had gone more than a mile and crossed the valley that they got the news. Parker was in the center of the patrol. Moncrief was near the front. One, then another, stopped to raise a hand. It was barely visible in the low light. Parker knelt down with one knee on the rocky ground. He heard the slight sound of movement and then saw Moncrief approach.

“What's up?” Parker whispered.

“They didn't just come out here tonight to do a random patrol.”

“What?”

“They saw some movement last night. And they suspect that a splinter group is going to attack MSF tonight.”

“What is their plan?”

“They are going to set up an ‘L' and catch the Al Shabaab fighters on their way back. Lock and load.”

Damn,
Parker thought. Tola and the others would not be happy that he was out on a patrol, getting ready to enter into a firefight.

“Don't worry. They want you to just stay back and see how we fight.”

As if one can stay back in a combat patrol. It is the “stay back” part that usually gets you in trouble.

Parker slowly, quietly, pulled back on the bolt and chambered a round. He felt for the safety and put his thumb on it. He could feel the grooved safety flip switch and thought of which way it needed to be turned if he wanted to fire.

The patrol continued in the dark, following the wall of the valley on the other side of Ferfer. The medical clinics and stations were on the far side of the valley and were lit up like circus shows. He watched the people, particularly in the MSF encampment, moving around as if there was nothing to fear from the darkness. He could see the line of people still in the dark, waiting to be treated. It seemed that the line had only gotten longer as the day progressed. The people were squatting or lying down on blankets, waiting their turn.

They cut through the bush for most of another hour until they came to a high spot that paralleled a ravine. The line of soldiers stopped and the senior man slowly came back, pointing out a spot for each man to take. Parker could see through the low light that five of the men had been turned on the far end so as to face up the ravine. If the enemy pulled back into the ravine after the attack they would be walking into a plowed field.

And then they waited.

Eventually he heard well into the distance the sound of a gunship. It seemed very far away, as if it were on another mission.

They waited in the dark and silence for what seemed to be hours. Suddenly, the moon broke out between the clouds and, when it did, for only a short moment, Parker thought he saw movement.

Bullets started to fly across from where they were and he saw people scrambling at the MSF station. Some were ducking behind rocks. Some looked like rag dolls that were picked up and thrown about in a lifeless flop. Still, the patrol held its fire. They were too far away. Another round of shots was fired and then Parker saw movement in front of him, as if the Al Shabaab patrol was going in for the kill.

At that same moment, the helicopter noise suddenly got louder. It appeared without notice, breaking through the cloud cover. The yellow flashes of the Ethiopians' helicopter's guns streaked down to earth like a Roman candle spurting out flame.

The helicopter's fire was between the MSF camp and their patrol.

They are knocking them back,
Parker thought. The attackers will retreat and their retreat will take them to a place of supposed safety. Their meeting point would be in the ravine. They were running directly into a trap.

The bush suddenly got quiet. The helicopter pulled off. Moans and screams could be heard across the valley from the encampment, but in front of Parker it was silent. He waited. He looked to his side to see another soldier, tense, with his weapon on his shoulder.

Then Parker thought he saw movement again.

Again, the moon broke through the cloud cover for a moment. It was the worst possible thing that could happen to the attackers. With a glance, Parker looked from left to right and counted five men going down into the ravine. For an eternity, the Ethiopians held their fire.

And then the rounds went off.

A red flare was popped somewhere to his left. In the red light, Parker could see the fighters below firing blindly into the dark, while the Ethiopians struck their targets. He saw an object fly up into the air to his left and then heard the rumble of a hand grenade. Shots continued to be fired.

Suddenly, out of the darkness, a figure ran straight at the Ethiopian soldier to Parker's left. The Ethiopian soldier fired one shot, but it missed, flying just above the attacker as he raced toward them, up the side of the ravine. And then the Ethiopian's gun misfired. He frantically pulled the slide back but in that nanosecond the jihadist would be on top of him.