Born of War (32 page)

The SEAL team took out each guard with careful, deliberate head shots.

Several charges of plastic explosives were placed on the rocket, but before it was blown apart, a team member took out its guidance computer. The treasure would be well used.

The Blackhawks flew back to the group with no injuries and no losses.

 

 

Paul Stewart held his daughter's hand as they placed her on a gurney and took her into the isolation clinic. They pulled the needle out of Parker's arm as they finished the transfer.

“Thank you.” Paul Stewart pulled Parker into his embrace. The grime, the soaking wet, and the smell of days in combat didn't matter. He had his daughter back.

“I have to check on my man.” Parker didn't like thank-yous. He went straight to the other clinic to see a man fully bandaged with an I. V. running to his arm. The medics had surrounded the other gurney.

“What's his status?”

The Marine major was standing by as they started to carry Tola back to the landing zone.

“He is alive and stable.”

“Good.” Parker reached over and squeezed his friend's arm. Abo Tola had received no wounds to his face or his head. The mud had absorbed much of the energy like the other grenade that Omar had thrown. The rains had helped in one unexpected way. They made the grenades less deadly.

“It was an old Russian F1,” Parker mumbled to both Tola and himself.

“They stopped making them years ago.” Some arms merchant had sold the World War II grenade to Al Shabaab. The man made money but the goods were not the best. It was fortunate for both Parker and Tola that this was the case.

“They have a C-17 standing by at Djibouti,” the major said as they carried Tola to the Osprey. “The bird is equipped with a complete emergency room and he will be in Bethesda before noon tomorrow.”

“Good.” Parker didn't smile but he did feel relieved. “You will have some paperwork to do on him when he gets better.”

Abo Tola would become one of the very few that would wear a ribbon blue with stars.

A
second Osprey left the makeshift camp near Ferfer later that same day. The monsoon had been followed by a day of crystal clear weather, as if nature wanted the monsoon to scour away the stains from the battlefield.

“We have a C-17 waiting on us in Djibouti.” Moncrief looked like he had a renewal on life.

After food, a hot shower, and warm clothes, Parker only wanted to sleep. The MV-22 didn't take as much time as he remembered. It picked up the trailing Cobra gunships soon after the engines started to spin up.

“Were they out there as well?” Parker pointed to the gunships.

“Yes, they were on the last leg, but we held them back to keep sound to the minimum.”

“It must have been a hell of a ride.” Parker remembered his rough landings in bad weather and figured this storm was even worse.

“Well, I thought we were going to flip over at one point.” Moncrief didn't smile.

They both looked back at the small man chained in the back. He wore an olive-colored flight suit that would soon be exchanged for an orange one. Warren was sitting in the back talking to him but getting no response.

“What's the story on our buddy?” Parker asked, pointing to Warren.

“He had a very bad headache. He tried to hit the medic up for some high-powered stuff. He got two aspirin instead.”

Parker laughed. “How's the French doctor?”

“He's got malaria but he is going to be all right. The MSF has sent a confidential letter of appreciation to the president. They weren't crazy about the military intervention, but knew that Karen Stewart was an American citizen, and that it was our call. Plus, they saved about four million dollars that they are now able to put toward both Ebola and the meningitis strain.”

“Where are we going now?”

“The C-17 is going to take us directly to Andrews. We will get some catch-up time.”

“Actually, we are going somewhere else.” Parker unbuckled his seat belt and stood up in the small cargo bay of the MV-22. He went up to the crew chief and spoke into the chief's ear. The chief shook his head and gave him another helmet. Parker put the helmet on and started talking to the pilots. It wasn't that the Osprey was going to change course. It was that the C-17 was going to change destinations.

 

 

Just like its arrival, the Osprey came across the heading of the runway at Camp Lemonnier like a typical aircraft flying the strip. It ran the length of the runway and then stopped near the numbers on the far end. The tilt-rotors cycled through a transition and the aircraft slowly put its feet down on the ground. The wheels were muddied, as was the Osprey.

The aircraft taxied to the end of the runway and then to an open spot of tarmac where a much larger aircraft—the C-17—was waiting. The Osprey looked like a child when it pulled up next to the Globemaster. The C-17's engines were running and the deck of the runway was awash with warm air that smelled of kerosene.

The MV-22 spun its engines down and finally came to a stop.

Parker picked up his backpack and followed the prisoner from the airplane, accompanied by Moncrief. A slew of men carrying M4s and wearing bulletproof vests that bore Velcro patches reading FBI surrounded the aircraft. MarSOC Marines accompanied them in full combat gear. As Parker passed the prisoner, he saw one agent putting a bulletproof vest on him while another read out his Miranda rights.

A man with gray hair was standing on the side. He walked up to Parker and Moncrief.

“Sir, I am the chief agent. I understand that you have requested that your prisoner be taken to another destination?”

“Yes, that is right.” Parker nodded his head as he pulled the backpack over his shoulder.

“I wanted to tell you that the director thanks you.” The agent held out his hand. “And he agrees.”

 

 

The C-17 climbed out from Djibouti and headed well out over the Gulf of Aden before it started to turn again to the west. Parker noticed that two F-35 Lightnings were on the wings as the big ship crossed over the water and then well above Egypt. The airplane leveled off high above any danger from the ground below.

The flight was heading into the sun as it traveled west. Parker had no idea of the time, and sleep finally overtook him. His body repaired itself by a deep sleep, although it didn't last long. When Parker awoke, he thought of Abo Tola. He was aware that Tola was on an airplane like this one, heading on nearly the same course as it crossed over the Atlantic. But he knew that the captain would be in the care of the surgeons at Walter Reed soon and, with their attention, would soon run again.

“I need to bring Abo some doro wot,” Parker said mostly to himself.

It occurred to Parker that his friend would be with his family soon.

“He will be okay,” Moncrief said.

“Yeah, I think he will.”

“Look at our boy.” Moncrief pointed to Omar, who was surrounded by agents all wearing vests and dressed in dark Navy tactical uniforms.

“Yes.”

The older agent came up to where Parker and Moncrief had set up camp. The benefit of the C-17 and its cargo-loaded seats was that they both had a bench of seats to themselves.

“Sir, our prisoner doesn't know yet where we are going. Would you like to tell him? By the way, his buddy was caught at the Canadian border. They had another cell planned to hit a railroad car of chlorine gas as it passed through Denver. We had stopped the delivery of every large-quantity load of chlorine gas in the United States, which is how we learned of the impending attack.”

Parker was pleased to hear the news.

“I'd be happy to tell him what to expect.”

Parker walked up to the handcuffed man sitting coupled to the seat. He didn't make the conversation long. He bent over and whispered into Omar's ear. He could hear Omar breathe in quickly.

 

 

The C-17 was on final descent when the crew chief came over to Parker and Moncrief.

As the wheels touched down, Parker noticed all of the agents stand up, with one holding his hand on Omar's shoulder.

“Sir, you might want to see this,” the chief said to Parker, gesturing towards the window.

Parker stood up and crossed over to one of the windows in the rear of the aircraft. He looked out to see a line of black Yukons with their blue lights flashing. It wasn't the Yukons themselves that were unexpected; it was the crowd of people on the other side of the fence.

The members of the bombed church were all standing outside the fence to see Omar return to Mobile. The jet came to a stop and the engines spun down. The crowd stood there in complete silence.

“We will use the cargo door.” Parker and Moncrief slipped down the steps on the far end of the aircraft. They waited until the prisoner was put in the second Yukon and taken away.

A lone police car was sitting at the end of the tarmac as the others left.

A police officer was standing in front of his unit with his arms crossed.

“Oh, jeez,” Parker said to Moncrief. It was the officer who had arrested him at the scene of the bombing.

“Sir, do you two need a ride?” the officer asked.

“To Georgia?” Moncrief said.

“Anywhere.” The officer opened his front door. “I have something for you.”

“Yeah?” Parker asked.

“This cell phone you asked to borrow that night. This one with the cross. It was my wife's. It doesn't work. Someone found it on the grass a day after the bombing and remembered it was hers. I would appreciate it if you would take it.”

“I shouldn't.” Parker didn't really know what to say.

“Hey, she called me from this asking for help. And you are the one who answered the call.”

The cell phone was the one she'd used to make her last call.

 

“O
mar, you made the news again.” The guard on death row at the United States Penitentiary liked to poke fun at prisoner number fifty-nine. He and the other fifty-eight prisoners were locked in single cells as members of the Special Confinement Unit. They shared the honor with a prior resident named Timothy McVeigh.

“What?”

“The Marine captain.”

Omar barely remembered that night. He only recalled the man who threw him into the ground and pushed his face down into the mud. It wasn't the Marine captain.

“Yeah.”

The guard stood at the steel door that separated the two.

“He's at the White House today getting the Medal of Honor.”

Omar didn't sleep much anymore. It wasn't the sentence of death that kept him awake. The federal charge of use of a weapon of mass destruction allowed the U.S. to move for death. A sealed federal indictment awaited him in Mobile. Alabama had its charges of murder as well. There was no doubt he was going to die. What bothered him were the sounds of the prison. They were endless. The metal clanking continued day and night. Sleep came like in combat, with a few minutes here and there.

Omar had been told the execution would be by lethal injection. It was scheduled for seven days from now.

“What do you want for the fly out?” The guard had made it clear that the death of the children and a pregnant police officer's wife made him a special prisoner. If Omar had been released to the general population neither the federal government nor the state of Alabama would have had their chance for the final word. Children-killers had a special place in the prison system and it was usually a blade just below the rib cage.

“Your buddy McVeigh had two pints of ice cream. Same cell. We call it the bad-luck cell, as the appeals just don't seem to slow things down for this one.”

“Any word of my child?”

“No.” The guard folded up the newspaper and walked away. “There's still no one on the visitation list.”

 

 

The monsoon season ended early in Somalia that following year. The death toll from the meningitis had climbed, like that from Ebola, into the thousands. But slowly, as the rains stopped and the vaccinations from the new drug that Karen Stewart helped develop took effect, the tide turned. Now the medical camps were closing down.

However, Al Shabaab had a new leader and despite all that had happened, death would continue to follow the people of Somalia.

William Parker stood at the grave on his farm the day of Omar's execution. The stone was marked with his father's name. He put the burned shell of a cell phone on the marker.

“This blood will wash off.”