Ralph Peters Read online

  The South Africans had allowed the laborious shuttling in and out of Kinshasa required to deploy the barely mobile U.S. corps. And the U.S. Army had done its best, scrambling at the last moment to beef up the corps with troops from other units stationed throughout the country, juggling to avoid calling up Reserve units. The defense cuts and troop reductions of the nineties and the starvation budgets of the turn of the century had left even those formations at the highest readiness level short of everything from medics and linguists to ammunition and spare parts. The deployment was chaotic, with Air Force transports unable to fly, while the Air Force nonetheless insisted on deploying B-2 bombers to Kinshasa, even though no one could define a mission for them. The Navy sent two carrier battle groups, but neither jets nor missiles nor guns proved targetable against an enemy who lay dispersed and out of range in the heart of Africa. No one really expected a fight, of course, and everyone wanted to be on the scene. Military Intelligence threw up its hands. The collection systems worked, more or less. But there were no analysts capable of interpreting the data, since the Army had moved to maximum automation—and the automated systems were not programmed for so unexpected a contingency as a deployment to an African backwater. But the shortage of medical personnel trained for catastrophe soon proved the greatest deficiency.

  With each passing day, the decision makers grew more convinced that the South Africans would never fight. It became a joke in Washington, if less so on the ground in Kinshasa, where confusion, shortages, and Murphy's Law kept attention focused on matters closer at hand. Still, even the corps command group reasoned that, had the South Africans wanted to put up a fight, their only chance would have been to strike while the U.S. was establishing its initial airhead—not after the entire corps was on the ground.

  At first the South Africans had remained down in Shaba Province, noncommittal, while the United States threatened to deploy forward into the province itself. For a time the two sides simply postured, armies of observation, since no one on the U.S. side had quite figured out how to attack across half a continent where the road and rail network was either broken-down or nonexistent.

  Slowly the XVIII Airborne Corps began to feel its way forward, attempting to threaten without actually forcing a confrontation at the tactical level. But there was an increasing sense of urgency now. For a new and terrible enemy had appeared.

  By the time of the Zaire intervention, the AIDS epidemic was on the wane. Wide stretches of Africa had virtually been depopulated, since the effective vaccines were far too expensive for use on the indigenous populations. But the Western world felt safe, and even in Africa, the disease appeared to be sputtering out. Only Brazil continued to host an epidemic of crisis proportions, while the rest of South America appeared to have the situation reasonably under control. Few had paid serious attention to the reports of a new epidemic ravaging the surviving populations of backcountry Uganda and Tanzania, and even the World Health Organization at first thought they were simply seeing a virulent cholera outbreak. The difficulties in assessing the extent of the situation were compounded by the reluctance of image-conscious African nations to admit the extent of the problem in their hinterlands. The disease reached Mozambique. International health officials began to tally the losses in health-care workers and found that the rate of fatalities was unprecedented. Soon, much of East Africa seemed to be dying.

  The rest of the world remained unmoved. International quarantines were imposed on the stricken nations. The epidemic remained just one more African problem.

  In Uganda and Kenya the people called the disease Ash-bum fever, because of the burnlike scars it left on the skin of those lucky enough to survive. But it soon acquired a civilized name, when Sir Phillip Runciman isolated the startlingly new vims in a laboratory in Mombasa. Runciman's disease managed to combine viral potency and effects with symptoms normally associated with bacterial infections. Initial signs did resemble cholera, with rapid depletion of bodily fluids through diarrhea and vomiting, but there was an accompanying assault on the nervous system that appeared completely new. The disease quickly passed into a stage where the skin withered and died in discolored patches, while, in the worst cases, the brain began to separate, causing extreme pain, and, in most cases, death. Victims fell into three broad categories— fatalities, which ran as high as eighty-five percent without treatment, survivors with permanent brain damage and various degrees of loss of control over basic bodily functions, and the lucky ones, who were merely disfigured.

  The issue of Runciman's disease had come up during the hasty planning phases of the deployment to Zaire, as one of the many matters of concern to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But there was a sense in the government of no time to lose; there were fears of yet another countercoup in Kinshasa, which might put a legitimate face on the South African occupation of Shaba. And the Department of State assured the President and the National Security Council that the ruling Sublime Democracy Party in Zaire had given guarantees that there was no evidence whatsoever of Runciman's disease along the middle or lower reaches of the Zaire—or Congo—River or in southern Zaire. There was certainly none in Shaba Province.

  The U.S. ambassador to Zaire sent a supporting cable stressing that both the image and national interests of the United States were irrevocably at stake and that, although, frankly, there were some cases of Runciman's disease reported in the backcountry, the disease did not present an immediate threat to U.S. personnel, given sensible precautions.

  The U.S. forces began their deployment.

  The Department of State had worked out a special arrangement with the government of Zaire to "facilitate the efficient and nondestabilizing deployment of U.S. forces." Those U.S. forces were to remain confined to the general vicinity of the Kinshasa airport until they further deployed southeast to Shaba Province. A State Department spokesman told the press that the agreement was designed to prevent the appearance of some sort of American invasion of Zaire, of an unacceptable level of interference in the nation's internal affairs. But it did not take the arriving U.S. troops long to discover the real reason for the restriction.

  The slums of Kinshasa were haunted with plague. The situation was so bad that, when ordered to dispose of the bodies of the victims of Runciman's disease, the Zairean military had mutinied. The back streets of the capital recalled the depths of the Middle Ages.

  The U.S. Army command group on the ground immediately reported the situation. But the fundamental sense of mission, of commitment, did not waver. With a "can-do" attitude the XVIII Airborne Corps and the Air Force's Forward Command, Africa, instituted rigid quarantine procedures. Yet, exceptions had to be made. U.S. commanders and planners had to meet with their Zairean counterparts, U.S. and local air controllers had to work side by side, waste had to be disposed of beyond the confines of the airport, and senior officers had social responsibilities that could not be ignored without deeply offending local sensibilities.

  By the time the U.S. Army began its wheezing deployment to the disputed area downcountry, it had become apparent that Runciman's disease—or RD, as the soldiers had quickly renamed it—was not strictly a disease of the African poor.

  Still, operations seemed to go well enough. The Second Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division conducted a flawless combat jump into the grasslands near Kolwezi, the heart of Shaba Province. They found the South Africans had abandoned the town, after setting it ablaze. Quickly, the paratroopers secured a sizable airhead. And the next wave of transports began to land. The South Africans made no move to interfere. They could not even be located. It appeared that they had backed down, evacuating the province.

  The forward deployment of U.S. forces continued, having become little more than a strenuous logistics exercise. On the scene in Shaba, at corps headquarters in Kinshasa, and in Washington there was jubilation. It was decided that U.S. forces would remain on the scene just long enough to tidy things up and to make our unequivocable support of the present Zairean government clear to all interested pa
rties.

  Taylor cried out in pain as he regained consciousness. There was a hammering at the back of his skull that made it painful to breathe, painful to move, painful to keep still. His eyes felt as though he had been punched with pepper-coated fists, and his head felt too large for the flight helmet clamped around it. Then he realized that his back ached deeply, as well, commanding him not to move.

  But he did move. Jumping madly at the thought that the aircraft must be on fire. He tore at the safety harness, screaming, hurling himself out of the cockpit in a panic, a frightened child. His pant leg caught on the frame, and he fell facedown, the force of his weight sending a shudder through the remnants of the airframe. He tore wildly at his leg, struggling to free himself, almost dragging the wreck behind him until the fabric of his flight suit gave way, freeing his calf to cut itself against the sharp metal. The world seemed to have no end of pain in store for him, and he curled into himself, whimpering, imagining that he was screaming, still waiting to die.

  There was no fire. The tattered aircraft frame sat erectly in the churned grassland, its Gatling gun loose as a hangnail and its snout nuzzled against a leathery dwarf of a tree. The tail section was missing, and the rotors looked like broken fingers. The multipurpose missiles were gone, perhaps fired off in the last moment, or stripped away as the machine skidded through the undergrowth. Taylor was so amazed that he was alive, unburned, and that his bird, at least, had held together the way it was supposed to, that it took him a long moment to remember the weapons officer.

  None of it had been the way it was supposed to be. You were supposed to outfly and outfight the enemy. You were supposed to fly home in triumph. And if your heroics and sacrifice caused you to crash, the first thing you were to do was to think of your comrade. But Taylor had only been able to think of his own pain, his own fear, overwhelmed by a terror of burning alive.

  The weapons officer sat slumped in his subcompartment. Not moving. As still as the inert fuselage.

  A young warrant officer, hardly out of flight school. When asked why he had taken the most inexperienced man in the troop to be his gunner, Taylor always replied that it was his responsibility to train the man properly. But he also wanted someone who was malleable, who would do as he was told. Not some cranky old bastard who had seen a dozen troop commanders come and go.

  Taylor hardly knew the man. As the troop commander, he always kept a bit of distance from the others, and the leadership technique was compounded by Taylor's essentially private nature. Now, dizzy and sick, with his eyes tricking out of focus, he looked up from the ground at the slumped figure in the aircraft, shocked at the summary of his failures.

  This was not the way it was supposed to be. He had done nothing correctly, failing in everything. His troop lay squandered across the wastes, and the man for whom Taylor bore the most immediate responsibility had lain dead or unconscious or unable to move while his superior, the swaggering cavalry captain, had rescued himself without a thought for any other living thing. It was not the way it was supposed to be.

  At the same time, Taylor could not suppress a physical joy, inexplicably akin to sex, at the knowledge that he was really alive, that he had survived.

  He lifted himself up, half cripple, half crab, and began tugging and slapping the cockpit. The frame was bent, locking itself shut. Finally, Taylor had to smash it with a rock. All the while, his gunner's only movement was a slight shudder of the helmet and torso in response to the waves of energy Taylor's clumsiness sent through the machine.

  "Ben?"

  Nothing.

  "Ben? Are you all right?"

  The gunner did not respond. But Taylor's eyes had acquired enough focus to see that the man was still breathing, however faintly.

  A few dark stains decorated the chest of the gunner's flight suit, and, as Taylor watched, a large fly settled near the gunner's name tag.

  "Ben?" Taylor unfastened the man's oversize helmet, lifting it off, trying not to hurt him.

  As the clam-shaped sides of the helmet cleared the gunner's temples, the man's head fell awkwardly to the side.

  His neck was broken. So badly that he should have been dead. Yet, now, at last, he moaned.

  "Oh, God," Taylor told him, unsure what to do or say. "Oh, God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. Oh, God."

  The man's eyes didn't open. But he moaned again, and Taylor could not tell whether it was from sheer pain or in response to his voice.

  "Ben? Can you hear me? Can you understand?" Taylor was weeping in shame, failure, frustration. "I can't get you out of there. Do you understand me? You've got to stay strapped in. I can't move you. Do you . . ."

  Another fly settled on the gunner's face, strolling down a cheek to the dried blood painted under the man's nose. Taylor flicked at it, careful not to touch the head, not to do any more damage than he had already done. Looking at the caked blood, Taylor realized that they must have been sitting there for hours before he himself had come to.

  Where were the rescue aircraft? The world was utterly silent.

  The gunner made a sound that was more like that of a badly wounded animal than of a human being. Then without warning, he spoke one distinct word:

  "Water."

  The hopelessness of it all made Taylor begin to cry again. He could find no trace in himself now of the superpilot, the fearless cavalryman.

  "Ben ... for God's sake . . . you can't drink. I can't give you anything. You mustn't move your head."

  The gunner moaned. There was still no evidence of genuine consciousness in the sound. The single word might have been an eruption out of a coma's dream.

  "Please . . . water."

  Periodically, throughout the afternoon and evening, the gunner would call for water, or mumble the word "drink." His eyes never opened. Taylor rigged a bit of shade for the man out of scraps, but there was no practical way to reduce the heat in the narrow cockpit. Taylor tried to fan his broken companion, but the effort was so obviously ineffectual it became ridiculous. Soon, he settled himself into the meager shade on the side of the wreck away from the sun, flare pistol ready to signal at the first sound of search helicopters. He tried to be stingy with the emergency water supply, but it was hard. He grew thirstier. Yet, invariably, after he allowed himself a taste of the sour wetness, the gunner would begin calling for water, as though he were watching as Taylor drank, accusing him of drinking his share too. Occasionally, Taylor would get up and chase the flies away from the injured man's face and hands. But they soon returned. The gunner's lips were already swollen and oozing.

  In the night, the younger man's voice woke Taylor. The sound was a horrible rasp. But the man did not beg for a drink now. He spoke to a third person:

  "Can't make me go off there. I won't do it. No. I'm not . . . going off of there ..." Then he moaned back into his dream.

  Taylor made one of his periodic attempts to bully the radio to life. But there was nothing. And the emergency transponder had gone astray somewhere in the course of the crash landing. He was afraid to light a fire, afraid that the wrong party might see it, afraid that it would attract animals rather than keep them at bay. He found it impossible to go back to sleep after the gunner's ravings had awakened him. All of his body seemed to hurt. But, far worse, he seemed to be thinking very clearly now. He realized that, although he wanted the gunner to survive, wanted it badly, he would unhesitatingly choose his own survival over that of the other man, if a choice had to be made. He had always imagined himself to be selfless, ready for sacrifice. But now it was very clear to him that he wanted, above all, to live, and that his own life was more important to him than was the life of any other man. His year of service in Colombia, during the drug-war deployment, had not truly tested him. Beyond occasional small-arms fire from the jungle or a hilltop, the greatest enemy had been boredom, and he had imagined himself to be fearless, a real stud. But the captain's bars on his shoulders, all of the words he had spoken in dozens of ceremonies, his cherished vision of himself ... it wa
s all a joke. In his moment of responsibility, he had failed, and there was no rationalizing it away. Even now, if he could have chosen to be in the warm, safe bed of any of a dozen girlfriends instead of here pretending to nurse the injured weapons officer, he would have made his decision unhesitatingly. Sitting afraid in the African night, under a painfully clear sky, he found that he had never known himself at all in his twenty-nine years. The man in the mirror had been a dressed-up doll.

  A sharp new pain woke him from his doze, and, in the morning light, he could just make out the ants scouting over his body, feeding on his tom calf. He jumped up, slapping at himself in fresh terror. He danced wildly, smashing at the tiny creatures with his fists, scraping at his ankles and boots, tearing at the zipper lines of his flight suit as he felt the bites moving along his legs.

  After stripping himself half-naked, he won his battle. Gasping and shaking, he went to check on the weapons officer.

  The man's face was covered with ants. The eyes were open, their blinking the only sign of resistance against the swarm. The pupils never moved, staring straight ahead at the wrecked console. But they were unmistakably alive. Sentient.