Countdown_ The Liberators Part 59

The pilot, McCaverty, now that the wounded were stabilized, tapped Stauer on the shoulder and pointed down at a port devoid of floating ships. There were a couple of larger ones-tied up, mind-but those were sunk.

Stauer could not help but laugh with pride at a job well done. Be nice if we could get the f.u.c.king sub back, though, he thought. Hmmm . . . I wonder . . .

"You sure they're willing to parley and not just string us up from the nearest lamppost?" McCaverty asked.

Stauer hesitated a moment before answering, "I'm sure they'd like to string us up from the nearest lampposts. But I'm even more sure that their chief doesn't want his entire family to feed the sharks. We should be safe enough. In any case, once I step off, you maneuver to a position from which you can do a quick take off. If they do grab me, just go. Fast."

That subject, safety, had led to a h.e.l.l of a row with Phillie. Hope we can make up, he thought. She'd be a hard girl to replace. What am I thinking? At my age she'd be an impossible girl to replace. Fortunately, I do have her example, insisting on getting on one of the medevac birds, to argue for me. I think it will work out.

"I sincerely hope you're right," McCaverty said, as he circled the plane down to the now nearly vacant harbor. It touched down lightly, with only a minimal amount of splashing. He steered it for the docks where a small party of unarmed men, and a somewhat larger one of armed men, were waiting under a broad, fringed awning.

"I want to murder the filthy b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Gutaale said, quite despite the smile plastered across his face.

"You'll do no such thing," said Taban, standing beside him. Taban's tone carried the authority that came from speaking for the entire council of elders for the tribe. "I warned you months ago that the precedent you were setting might come back and bite us all in the a.s.s. That has happened and it is your fault. It is going to take years to undo the damage you have caused us, if it can be undone. If you harm this man, his followers will then execute your entire family-which, I remind you, is also closely related to the rest of us-and then proceed to destroy the rest of us. In short, old friend, no."

"But he robbed me," Gutaale pleaded, his smile disappearing in a hate-filled grimace. "Virtually every cent I had to my, to our, name has been taken. All we have left is a couple of tons of melted gold bars under the ruins of the palace outside Nugaal. We are not only under the gun, we are now poor."

"There are other NGOs," Taban said. "Plenty of Europeans and Americans you can pick the pockets of. Plenty of roads to be badly built. Plenty of food aid and free medicine that can be taken and sold. And we can rebuild our fleet of naval mujahadin, in time. But for all that we must be alive. Harm this man and, based on what his group has done so far, we will no longer be alive. So forget it. And get a smile back on your face."

Stauer opened the door and was standing on the float even before McCaverty brought the plane to the edge of the dock. He made a little jump, trying hard not wince at the arthritis pains that shot across his knee, and landed well enough for a man in his fifties.

"I'm Wes Stauer," he introduced himself. "I am given to understand that you speak English. And I believe you have something that doesn't belong to you."

"How do I know," Gutaale asked, "that you will release my family if I give you the boy?"

Stauer shook his head. "You don't know. You can't know. But you can know that I've no personal reason for keeping them. And you can know, because I tell you so, that if you do not release the boy they will be turned over to Khalid. Khalid is much too personally involved in all this for you to expect the same kind of evenhanded, gentle treatment your family has received from me."

"And if I say that I will have the boy put through a wood chipper?"

Stauer sneered, snorted, and then shrugged with practiced indifference. "Then I say, so what? My contract was an either-or proposition. Either I get you to release the boy or I get Khalid the means of vast revenge. I get paid either way and, frankly, don't really care one way or the other."

"Speaking of pay, I want my accountant back and I want my money back," Gutaale said.

"No, and no. The money is now mine," which Stauer considered the truth. He then lied, diplomatically, "And your accountant, sadly, died under interrogation. You would be proud of the way he resisted us. Proud of the way he died with a blessing for your name on his lips and a plea for your forgiveness." The colonel's face grew icy and hard, "But it didn't stop him from s.h.i.tting us everything you own. Several other members of his family, even more sadly, died, too." My obligation to speak truthfully to an enemy is nonexistent until we make peace.

Gutaale shivered. This American b.a.s.t.a.r.d is even more vicious than the Arabs say they all are. Torturing to death a harmless accountant? Innocent family members?

"You killed my people!" Gutaale shouted, mostly to cover his own fear.

Stauer smiled again, saying, "Yes, I did. Lots of them. If you think I regret that, you've been spending too much time surrounded by transnational progressives. What do I care how many I killed, or how, or even why? They stood in my way and they died. In droves."

I have been spending too much time surrounded by progressives, Gutaale silently agreed.

"I told you you've been spending too much time around the NGOs," Taban said in the local language, which he a.s.sumed, correctly, Stauer would not understand. "I mean, steal from them? Sure. That's all they're good for. But eventually you lose sight of the fact that they're freaks, off key notes in Allah's great orchestra, and that the world is absolutely nothing like the fantasy they portray and think they live in."

Stauer understood Taban's tone well enough, even if he didn't know the words. He consulted his watch, neither subtly nor ostentatiously. "Look," he said. "I really don't have a lot of time for this. You've got forty-eight hours to have the boy here, ready for pick up. At that time I'll have our captives in boats standing offsh.o.r.e. A single plane will come for the boy. If he's here, and gets on the plane safely, then the boats holding your people will drop them off somewhere within five miles of here, unharmed. If the boy is not here, however . . . but why go into detail? The boy will be here, won't he?"

"He will be here," Gutaale conceded, without a trace of good grace. "Unharmed."

D+1, Suakin, Sudan

Labaan found Makeda before he found Adam. The girl was washing clothing by hand in a tub. Bent over and concentrating, she didn't see him or hear him until he announced himself. "Woman, have you seen your man this morning?"

"He went for a walk," she replied, without bothering to look over her shoulder. "He does that a lot since he agreed to your 'parole.'" There was something in the keeper's voice that seemed to her to indicate a terrible upset. That, once she realized what it was, caused her to leave off her washing and turn around.

Yes, Labaan, for all his dark features, had gone pale.

"What is wrong?" she asked, immediately worried for both Adam and herself.

Labaan shook his head. "Nothing that need concern you." He shook it again, amending to, "Nothing that will cause either of you any harm. But finish up your ch.o.r.es as quickly as possible-no, just forget them and go pack. You and he are . . . moving. Today. As soon as possible."

"Moving?" she asked. "To where?"

"Bandar Qa.s.sim," he answered. "From there . . . well . . . to Adam's home, I suppose."

Since being captured, the only thing Makeda had ever been able to a.s.sociate with automobiles was being carted off to market, or transferred from one owner to another. As such, she found the whole idea of riding in one most distressing. Indeed, it was distressing enough that she shook while standing next to the vehicle that had come for them, Adam's near presence notwithstanding.

"What's wrong, love?" he asked. When she told him, he said, "I could tell you that I understand. Perhaps in some way I even do. But the deeper part of the thing? No, that I would have to experience myself to tell you I honestly understood it. A captive I have been. A slave, never."

He grew quiet for a moment, before continuing, "And neither shall you be, from the moment we leave this place. I don't know how to free you legally, since the whole thing is extralegal everywhere I know of. I can tell you that you are free. You can come with me. You can stay here-"

"Not on your life," she said.

"I didn't think that was an option. Or you can come with me to my home and then go wherever you wish."

"What do you want?" she asked.

He sighed. "Me? I want you to stay with me."

Labaan, at the wheel of the car, overheard. He is a good boy, he thought. And always was. If I had had a son . . .

"Come," the old former captor insisted, pushing the thought away. "We must hurry or terrible things will happen. Come."

D+3, Bandar Qa.s.sim, Ophir

"I've never been in an airplane before, Adam," Makeda said. If the auto sojourn had visibly upset her, the prospect of actually leaving the Earth's surface looked to have her ready to vomit.

"It's fun," Adam a.s.sured her. "Really, I've done it many times."

"How many?" she asked.

"Ummm . . . twice," he admitted. "Not counting changing planes and brief stopovers. On my way to America to go to school and . . . ummm . . . on my way back to Africa. Ot maybe it was three times. But it will be fun."

"I would never personally describe flying as 'fun,'" Labaan said. "Though I know people who enjoy it. Some of them"-he immediately thought of Lance- "are idiots in my opinion. But it will not be so bad, girl. You'll be safe."

Makeda chewed her lower lip for a moment, then lifted her chin proudly and said, "If I knew for a fact that the thing was more than likely going to crash, and that chance was my only chance to be my own property again, I would still get on it."

Labaan and Adam exchanged glances. Labaan's glance translated as, "keeper." Adam's was more accurately described as accusatory: "And you knew I would find myself tied to this girl when you gave her to me. b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Labaan laughed and took Adam's hand. "You are a good boy," he said, "and have every prospect of growing into a good man. Try to be a better one than my chief or yours."

"I will," the boy answered. "I promise." Taking the girl's hand, he led her to the airplane that floated to meet them at the dock.

The small floatplane came to the dock and twisted a bit. The engine's roar dropped off to a mild hum. Then the door popped open and a kindly faced man introduced himself. "I'm McCaverty," he said, "and I believe you people ordered a taxi."

"What if they take the boy, and that skinny slave he's acquired, and then don't release our people?" Gutaale fretted.

Taban shook his head. "You've not only been spending too much time with the bleeding hearts, chief, you've been listening too much to your own conniving heart. There is no reason, none, for the American not to give you back your people once he has what he came for. Besides," he pointed to sea, "there are the boats bringing them."

Past the landing craft and their escorting patrol boat that Taban had pointed to, the big boat, the one that had launched the others, had its crane over the side. A slack line ran into the water. n.o.body on sh.o.r.e had the faintest idea why.

"Now show some manners and wave your former guest goodbye."

EPILOGUE.

D+5, MV Merciful Merciful, South Indian Ocean

Kosciusko had left the bridge under his XO's command. Now he, like all the other company commanders, the staff, the sergeant major, and pretty much everyone else who could be fitted into the chapel c.u.m recreation c.u.m planning area, sat or, in many cases, stood, to hear what Stauer had to say. Only a few key players, notably the mess sergeant, were not in attendance. Neither was Wahab, as he had to go drop off Adam and Makeda and then retrieve his wife and family before Khalid discovered some things were not quite what he thought they were. The Chaplain, Wilson, had just finished the memorial service for the slain, every one of whom was laying in a refrigerated container somewhere forward. They'd be buried later, somewhere to be determined.

Payments, rather large payments, were already en route to the next of kin of the dead the force had suffered, carried by the two retired general officers who had had a place in planning the operation, back in San Antonio, but were too old, and knew it, for taking a more active role. In Galkin's case, for his next of kin-his mother, living in Saint Petersburg-the money had been sent through Father Pavel, in Paldiski, along with a small contribution to his church. Sure, Galkin hadn't really been part of the force, had never signed an enlistment contract, but, Stauer thought, Let's be big about this. What's a little piece of paper with a signature, anyway?

"Gentlemen, ladies, couple of things," Stauer began. "First off, to announce a wedding: Chaplain Wilson will be officiating over a marriage between Miss Potter and myself in three days. You're all invited-Lana Mendes and the Romanian nurses' aides are required-to attend. Ladies, I am informed that the bride will be perfectly happy to have you serve as her bridesmaids in the same attire she'll be wearing, battle dress.

"Gordo, you have the logistics down on that?"

Harry Gordon looked up from a clipboard. "Yes, sir. There's still half a container of booze we stashed away for the victory celebration. Even these reprobates couldn't kill it all off. And, while Sergeant Island says that the 1910 Manual for Army Cooks doesn't have anything specifically about weddings, he can improvise. He also says that, since the manual does not cover the subject matter, perhaps it's a bad idea. However, you being the boss and the manual giving great deference to command, he says he'll play along."

The sergeant major harrumphed. "Sergeant Island is a wise man, sir, and I think you should give his counsel serious weight."

That earned him a dirty look from Phillie until she realized he was smiling-What? Joshua never smiles! Though, of course, he sometimes did-and wasn't remotely serious.

"And," Gordo continued, "Phillie doesn't have to wear battle dress. It seems that Doctor Lin not only sews guts, she sews as a hobby. Or maybe it was a necessity in China. Dunno. Anyway, there is enough white material in sick bay that she is sure she and her own people can come up with a proper dress. Silk, no. White, yes.

Reilly cast a sidewise glance at Lana. Should I ask about a second dress? Nah, I haven't even asked her. And besides, she'll want her poor nose fixed before she consents to having her picture taken. And she'll want pictures. If she agrees. Which, of course, she might not.

"It'll still be battle dress for the bridesmaids, though." Gordo looked personally affronted that he didn't have a solution to that minor problem.

"Fair enough," Stauer agreed. "That work for you, Phillie?"

She nodded, speechless. The whole idea that Wes was actually going to follow through, especially after the fight they'd had . . . Thank you, G.o.d. Will You forgive me if I don't have any more s.e.xual sins to confess, since none of the deliciously wet and sloppy stuff I intend to indulge in to excess will be a sin anymore?

"Speaking more generally, and toward the future," Stauer added, "We really need to do some thinking, some planning, and some talking.

"How many of you guys have any idea of how much money we have?" Stauer looked around. No, from the faces only a few do.

"All right." He pointed at a thin middle aged Ophiri, standing against the rear bulkhead, and said, "Courtesy of the 'late' Mr. Dayid, also late of Gutaale's accounting service, we have . . . billions. A couple, anyway. Not counting the a.s.sets we got from this job. If you check your enlistment contracts, you'll note that I I get to control and dispose of any property seized. Sorry, Reilly, that means I own those tanks you filched. get to control and dispose of any property seized. Sorry, Reilly, that means I own those tanks you filched.

"What that means, though, is that we can afford to stay together, doing what we do best, until we're finally just too old to walk anymore." Stauer looked around at the small sea of mostly gray-headed, men, with weather- and care-worn faces, and added, "In other words, until sometime next year, anyway."

That drew a hearty and good-natured laugh from the company.

"Or, we can split up the money and each of you will be a millionaire. For about ten minutes until the tax bite hits. And good luck explaining to the IRS where the money came from.