Dog looked at the phone, waiting for the punch line.
“You still there, Bastian?”
“Yes, sir,” said the colonel.
“Good. We’re going to take a hell of a lot of shit on this, I guarantee. But I’m behind you. You bet your ass. I read the whole damn report. Ms O’Day made sure I got a copy. And a friend of hers. Brad Elliott. I didn’t think you and Brad were pals.”
“We’re not.”
“Oh? He talks about you like you’re his son. Says you’re right on the mark.”
“Well, uh, I’m flattered. To be candid, General, I thought you were a supporter of the JSF.”
“What? Did you read that in the Washington Post?”
“No, sir.”
“I expect you’re taking a lot of shit,” said Magnus.
“That’s an understatement,” said Dog, not entirely convinced that Magnus was on the level.
“Well, hold tight. And keep your nose clean. Some of these pricks will use anything they can against you. The Congressmen are the worst.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dog. “Thank you, sir.” But his line had already gone dead.
Somalia
23 October, 0100 local
Mack woke to find the Imam staring at him. Sergeant Melfi and Jackson were gone; perhaps he’d only dreamed they were here with him alive.
“Major, very good,” said the Iranian. “Come now. We must meet our fate.”
The Imam straightened, then gestured at him to rise. Though still groggy, Smith felt almost powerless to resist.
“What’s going on?” Mack asked.
“You are going to stand trial,” said the Imam. “Justice will be swift.”
He turned and walked back to the steps. Someone behind Mack pushed him; he stumbled over his chains, but managed to keep his balance.
Goddamn. Mack Smith. The hottest stick on the patch. Damn Iranians were going to make him the star of ‘don’t let this happen to you’ lectures for the next hundred years.
The man behind him pushed again. Knife’s anger leaped inside him; he spun and grabbed the startled soldier by the throat, pushing him to the floor with surprising ease. He smashed the bastard’s head against the concrete. The chain of his handcuff’s clanked against the man’s chest as he grabbed the guard’s ears, pulling them upward to smash him again, then again, feeling the thud of the floor reverberating across the Somalian’s skull.
He knew he was being foolish. The best thing to do was go along, resist, yes, but not so overtly, not so crazily. Doing this was like committing suicide, or worse.
And yet he couldn’t stop himself. Blood spread out behind the man’s face as Mack pounded again and again, screaming, shrieking his anger.
Then a sharp light erupted from behind his ears. Then his head seemed to collapse. He blanked out.
“You screwed up their plans, Major,” Gunny was saying. “You really threw them for a loop. I don’t know what you did, but it messed they up. Kept us here for hours. And they didn’t want that, I can tell you.”
Mack waited for the hunched shadow to come into focus. They were moving, in a train – no, a bus, an old school bus with half of its seats removed. Gunny, the Marine Corps sergeant, was kneeling next to him in the back aisle. There were scratches on the wall of the bus next to him, empty.
“What do you think, Sarge?” said another Marine.
Jackson. He was leaning over a seat a few feet away.
“I don’t know, I’d say he took a slam to the noggin. You with us, Major?”
“Yeah,” groaned Knife.
“You have blood on your flight suit,” said Gunny. “Don’t look like yours.”
“No?”
Mack struggled to sit up. He was still chained at the hands and feet. “I hit somebody,” he told them.
“No shit?” said Gunny. “Way to go, Major. Dumb, but way to go.”
“Yeah, it was dumb,” agreed Mack.
“You messed them up,” added the sergeant. “Put them on notice that we’re no pushovers.”
The bus lurched off the side of the road, coming to a stop.
“City,” said Jackson, looking gout the window. “By their standards anyway.”
“Where are we?” Mack asked.
“Damned if I know,” said Gunny. He went to the window and looked outside. “Pretty damn dark.”
“Think it’s Mogadishu, Sarge?” asked Jackson. A few years before, several U.S. soldiers had died there in an ill-fated relief operation.
“Nah. Wrong direction. We’re still way north. We’ve been heading west.” Gunny returned, hovering over Mack. “Damned if I know where the hell we’re going. Can you get up, Major?”
“Maybe,” he said. he let Melfi pull him up; he sat on the floor, waiting for the blood to stop rushing to his head.
“Did he die?” Mack asked.
“Did who die?” Gunny asked.
“The guy I hit.”
“Don’t know,” said the sergeant. “The raghead guy’s still alive, if that’s who you’re talking about.”
“I didn’t hit him,” said Mack. “I hit one of the guards. A Somalian.”
The door to the bus opened up front. Two Somalian soldiers came up the stairs, followed by an American in a flight suit – Captain Stephen Howland, one of the F-117 pilots. The Imam was behind him. The soldiers stepped aside and let the pilot pass. He walked toward them slowly, eyes fixed on the floor. He didn’t seem to be injured, beyond some bruises to his eyes.
“I see Major Smith has recovered,” said the Imam mildly. “There will be no more episodes, Major. They make our task that much more difficult. Our hosts get bothered.”
“You could just let us go,” said Gunny. “Then we’ll go easy on you.”
The Iranian had already started off the bus. The others followed, leaving them to the two Somalian guards and driver at the front.
“Libya?” asked Johnson.
“Yeah. The Iranians have declared a Muslim coalition against the West,” said Howland. “Libya, Sudan, Iran, now Somalia. Iraq is cheering them on.”
“The usual shitheads,” said Gunny. “They won’t get anywhere.”
“I don’t know,” said Howland. He sat in the seat opposite Johnson. “They’re gloating about Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They think they’re coming in with them. Something about air bases. Probably they didn’t give our planes permission to land.” The pilot shook his head. “There’s a whole lot of shit going down and we’re right in the middle of it.”
“Aw, come on,” said Gunny, trying to cheer him up. “If you’re standing in shit, at least it can’t rain on your head.”
“Unless you slip and fall in it,” said Howland.
“Jeez, Gunny, look at that.” Jackson pointed out the back window. A flatbed truck had pulled up behind them. A huge scrap of black metal was lashed to the rear; Somalians clustered all over the wreckage as well as the roof of the vehicle’s cab.