She stopped in the hallway, her back to him. Just as quickly, she returned and shut the door. She stood in front of him as tears coursed down her cheeks. “Five years ago, I was recruited by the Boys in the Basement as a special agent.” Allston had heard of the Boys and suspected they had a connection to Special Operations and Intelligence. “Part of my training,” she continued, “involved extensive weapons training. I was recruited primarily based on my language skills… and for other reasons…” She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “African men find my type of figure appealing.” She was brutally honest. “Sexually.” She paused, her face now hard as stone. “For two years, I was on special assignment in Nairobi.”
An inner voice warned Allston to drop the subject, which, like a fool, he disregarded. “You were engaged in humint?” Humint is human intelligence or old-fashioned spying. A little nod answered him. “A Kenyan?” Her eyes said yes. Then he knew. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because, I…” her voice trailed off. Then, very firmly, “Because I’m ashamed of what I did. I seduced a nice man with a lovely family. Like an idiot, he talked too much, trying to impress me. He was taking kickbacks from OPEC and Iran, supposedly for his tribe. But instead of funneling the money to his tribe, he used most of it to buy off rival tribes so they would cooperate with him in the national government. It was a very dangerous game if his tribe discovered what he was doing. I reported everything he told me. The CIA picked it up… I was sent home.”
“And the prime minister ended up dead,” Allston said. The Kenyan press had reported it as a suicide but there were many rumors to the contrary.
“Then his clan butchered his family.” Her voice was shaking. “Because of the money.”
Allston didn’t know what to say. He managed a lame, “It wasn’t your fault.”
Jill stood there, now dry-eyed and composed. “Yes, it was. Will there be anything else, sir?”
For the first time, he saw her for what she was, a very attractive, intelligent, and competent woman who got caught up in a situation beyond her control, and was now paying the price for it. For her, responsibility came with the job. “Thank you for your candor, Major Sharp. I hope we can still work together.” She spun around and walked out, leaving him alone. “Damn,” he muttered. Why did she tell me all that? he thought.
Vermullen led the tour around the refugee compound with Allston and Malone as he pointed out the defenses the legionnaires had built with overlapping fields of fire. “Great work,” Allston said. “Can you work up a plan for us?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Vermullen replied. “How many men can you commit?”
“Right at a hundred men and women,” Allston said. Vermullen didn’t reply at first. He had never used women in a combat role and didn’t want to start now. Allston decided the timing was right and ventured, “I was hoping we could integrate our forces into a defensive plan. Again, Vermullen was silent. Allston plunged ahead. “I know the emphasis you put on training, but perhaps now is the time to…” He deliberately left the proposal open. Did the Frenchman understand that the time for training was at an end?
“It is not what you think,” Vermullen said. “We have been training the South Sudanese.”
Allston was shocked. Training the southerners was a direct violation of the UN peacekeeping mandate. “Does the UN know?”
“Of course not,” Vermullen replied. “Let me work on a plan. Can I use your Major Sharp and Sergeant Malone?”
“You’ve got ’em.”
Allston sat in the corner of his makeshift operations center at a small table that served as his office. While he didn’t have the privacy he often needed, he was at the heart of all activity and wired in with operations and maintenance. The downside was that he was too available for anyone who came in, and he had to tune out distractions so he could focus on whatever task demanded his immediate attention. “Colonel Allston,” Jill said, breaking his concentration. He looked up. She was standing a respectful distance away with a beaming Loni Williams.
“Whatcha got?” he asked in a friendly tone, trying to close the gap that was looming between them.
“The kid you shot is talking,” Williams said. “You wouldn’t believe what this Jahel guy is like.”
“Yeah, I would,” Allston replied. “He’s a first-class bastard.” He kicked back in his chair and interlaced his fingers, tapping his thumbs together. “I hope you’re following the Army Field Manual on interrogation.”
Jill answered. “Yes, sir, we are. Sergeant Williams is much more fluent in Nuer than me but I monitor the interrogation. His name is BermaNur, and he’s seventeen years old. The raid was more than a hit and run. You were the target. That’s why they hit the guesthouse.”
Allston’s stomach disappeared, and, for a moment, he was speechless. “Well, that certainly made my day. Anything else?”
“The SA,” Jill continued, “is going to cross the White Nile and reinforce Waleed. Probably in the next week or so.”
“How would a seventeen-year-old kid know that?” Allston asked.
“He doesn’t,” Jill replied. “But he said the SA promised Jahel he could sack Malakal as soon as they found a ford for the SA to cross the White Nile. That fits with what we’re hearing on the jungle telegraph. Also, the townspeople are leaving Malakal in droves, and that Waleed’s men are deserting in mass. He’s down to less than two hundred men.” She let him digest the news. “I’m just connecting the dots, sir.” She checked her watch. “Colonel Vermullen will be here in a few minutes. He’s got a defensive plan worked out, and he asked for the Reverend Person to be here.”
“Please call the good parson and the key players,” Allston said. More and more, he was relying on her as his second in command.
“Will do, sir.”
Major Mercier tacked a large-scale chart of the mission and the surrounding area on the wall of the big room in Mission House. Vermullen stood beside the chart. “I have walked every meter of the terrain,” he began, “and the two most likely axes of attack are from Malakal or from across the White Nile at the ford the Janjaweed used when they attacked the mission. I believe we can successfully defend against one, if we have early warning to position our forces. The plan you see here is based on concentric rings surrounding the mission, but not the refugee camp or airfield. The outer ring is approximately three kilometers out.” He touched the small circles that formed the outer ring and extended to the southern bank of the Nile. “I call this Delta Ring. It is made up of manned listening posts, or LPs. The LPs have only one purpose, to warn of any attack. Once we know the axis of the attack, we concentrate our forces accordingly on the next ring, which I call Charlie Ring. It is made up of many defensive firing positions and is our first true line of defense. It is far enough back from the river that we can dig in, at least until the river floods. Then it will turn into a bog. But until then, we must dig as many DFPs as we can. The more we have, the more flexible we can be in reacting to an attack.”
Allston got it immediately. “So the listening posts on Delta Ring, where there is no activity, fall back to help reinforce the part of Charlie Ring where the action is. What happens to the LPs that detect an attack?”
Malone answered. “They’re on their own.” In the hard calculus of combat, the forward LPs were expendable.
Again, Vermullen tapped the chart. “This shaded area between Charlie Ring and the mission compound is a minefield. I call it Bravo Ring.” He waited for their reaction.
“I thought land mines were used at the forward edge of the battlefield,” Allston said, “and not so close in.”