He shook his head. “Africa.” Then closed his eyes and gave a resigned nod. “Africa.”
Van Damm sighed. “Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion of the 7th Infantry, rotated into N’Djamena a month ago to assist Chadian forces in furtherance of the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership.”
“Boko Haram, then,” Ryan said.
The chief of staff rubbed a hand over his bald head. “It looks that way, Jack. Burgess is on his way over right now to give you a more thorough briefing, but for now, it sounds as though Farnsworth was leading one of three fire teams training members of the Chadian Army in reconnaissance and patrol tactics. Thirty Boko Haram attacked an oil-drilling operation outside Koudjiwai, just south of our guys’ position.”
“A Chinese oil platform?” Much of southwestern Chad was designated a Chinese Oil Exploration Zone.
“That’s correct,” van Damm said. “Australian security personnel at the drill site were seriously outgunned and put an emergency call into the Chadian authorities for assistance at the first sign of an attack.” The CoS shrugged. “Men were dying, the government asked for help, and our guys were close. Exigent circumstances.”
Ryan took a deep breath, seething.
Van Damm shook his head. “Damn shame,” he said. “One of ours died protecting Chinese—”
“Stop it!” Ryan pointed a finger at his chief of staff. “It’s a damn shame that Corporal Farnsworth died. Period. I do not give a shit about the ethnicity of the lives he was trying to save.”
“Of course, you’re right, Mr. President,” van Damm said. “I don’t mean to minimize this young man’s death in any way.”
Ryan turned in his chair, looking toward the windows and the Rose Garden. “I know you don’t,” he said, already moving on. “To what end, Arnie? Why does Boko Haram attack an oil platform? Crude oil is worthless as fuel and impossible to transport if you need to move quickly, as they would have to do after something like this. Why not hit a refinery? At least there’s something there they can use. Was it payday or something?”
Van Damm shook his head. “I’m afraid there is an answer to that question, Jack, but you’re not going to like it. The platoon sergeant overseeing the fire teams swears that our soldiers were lured in.”
Ryan turned to face his friend, sitting up straighter.
“Lured in?”
“He says the Boko Haram forces were strong enough to completely overwhelm the much smaller security team at the drill site but only engaged with enough force to make them call for support.”
“Who knew our soldiers were nearby?”
Van Damm let out a deep breath. “OPSEC is fine on our end, but the Chadian Army colonel likes to give interviews about the cooperative efforts.”
“So Boko Haram would know we were going to be there.”
“Virtually everyone with a radio knew the Chadian Army was going to be training in that area. It’s not uncommon to let the tribal chiefs know in advance. We’ve warned them, but it still happens. It doesn’t take much to figure out that if we’re in country, our guys will be with the army when they train.”
“So it was a setup?”
Van Damm nodded. “The platoon sergeant feels sure American personnel were the real target. His CO believes him enough to kick the sentiment up the chain of command.”
China again, Ryan thought, but he didn’t have to say it.
14
Magdalena Rojas pulled her small knees to her bony chest and held her hands over her ears. She clenched her eyes shut, took small breaths, trying to block out the stench of fear and death. There were other girls in the room. Six of them. There had been nine when Magdalena arrived, each chained by the ankle to a metal eyebolt fixed to a five-gallon bucket filled with concrete. The buckets allowed the girls to move around, dragging them from the thin mattresses at one end of the windowless room to the other, where there were more five-gallon buckets to use as toilets. Magdalena’s ankles had been so small, Lupe had been afraid she’d slip out of the regular leg irons. In a fit of red-faced frustration, the cruel woman had smacked her across the buttocks with Ratón, the bull-penis whip, and stormed out. She returned a few moments later with a pair of handcuffs. They were too tight, but Lupe locked them down anyway, hooking the free side to the leg irons and the bucket of concrete. Magdalena’s foot began to turn purple and swell before the woman left the room.
Four of those original girls were gone — dragged through the big red door at the other end of the wide room. Lupe brought in a new girl a short time later — through the normal-sized door. Girls never came in through the red one, they only went out.
The new girl was tall, with broad shoulders, and had many freckles on her nose. Magdalena thought she must have been new because her blond hair was still full and shiny. Apart from hope, healthy hair was always the first thing to go. The other five girls sat in one form of stupor or another, but the new one caught Magdalena’s eye and wanted to talk as soon as Lupe left. She sat with her back to the wall, knees up, wearing the same kind of thin black gown that they all wore — and nothing else.
She tugged at the chain around her ankle, sliding it back and forth over the lip of the plastic bucket as if in dismay at her situation.
“My name… Teodora,” she said in accented English.
“Magdalena.” She attempted a smile, but under the circumstances managed nothing but a passive look.
The blond girl gave a thoughtful nod. “In my country… I know girl with same name.”
Magdalena looked away. She felt sorry for this chatty thing who obviously had not been around enough for her hope to be crushed completely. “Where is your country?”
“Montenegro,” Teodora said, sniffing back a tear. “It is very long from here.” She stared at Magdalena. “Do you know Montenegro?”
Magdalena admitted that she did not.
“I was to have work as nanny.” The girl’s shoulders began to shake. Her breath came in ragged, gasping sobs. “Now… I am… pris… on… er.”
“I know.” Magdalena reached to touch the girl’s arm. Everything had been stripped away from her as well, but she could still offer kindness — if only for a moment. “If we do what they say, they might not hurt us as bad.”
It was a lie but, Magdalena hoped, a comforting one.
The blond girl turned to look at her, still sobbing. “The man who… who… had me before… I come here, he tell me they make us girls to fight sometimes.”
Magdalena shivered. She’d heard no mention of fighting. She’d never been in a fight in her life, not even with her sisters.
Teodora cleared her throat. Her hair hung down over her face like a curtain. “He say we fight to death. For the cameras.”
Magdalena’s words caught hard in her chest.
“I can’t…” She shook her head. “I do not think that is true.”
Teodora coughed, clearing her throat. “The man say it is true.” She sniffed back the tears and sat up straighter as she composed herself. Blue eyes played up and down Magdalena. “If is true, I hope I fight you. You are small. You no problem for me to break.”
Magdalena withdrew her hand and dragged her bucket across the room. She would learn, someday, that letting down her guard brought nothing but pain.
Pain, in one form or another, had been a constant companion since her father had died and her mother had told her to “open her kitchen.” At first the hurt had been in her heart. She’d never been her mother’s favorite. This she knew. But even in a culture where daughters often opened their kitchens to help the family, it should have been her choice. Her father had once beaten a boy who had just looked at her. He would never have suggested she do such things. Her mother, on the other hand, had said she might even learn to enjoy her work. That was a joke. She’d learned to endure the searing pain, the ache of the illnesses that were a foregone conclusion when you slept with upward of twenty different men a week. The act itself was painful enough, but the men were all so much bigger than her that it was nearly always brutal — even when the men pretended they were being nice. Her back and shoulders suffered wrenching injuries she would surely carry for the rest of her life. But even that pain she’d learned to push to the back of her mind.