Joint Task Force #1: Liberia Page 7

  Unfortunately, the rainy season had been over for nearly two months. They had the afternoon rains, but that didn’t count on a continent where daily temperatures most times exceeded one hundred degrees. Thomaston knew from experience with the African rains that one moment you were soaked with sweat, then the rain hit, flushing the body salt away, soaking you to the skin. Five minutes after it stopped, you would be as dry as if you had put on fresh clothes. Five minutes later, sweat-soaked again. He picked up the plastic bottle of spring water from the nearby coffee table and took a deep drink. The heat could kill you. Fooled by high humidity, several had died of heat exhaustion in the first two weeks after they arrived to carve this town from the wilderness.

  The main street ended at the southern end of the town. The paved portion ran north, curving around a couple of shallow depressions, cutting through the center of the four-year-old town, turning to dirt and gravel before disappearing over the bush-ridden hills to the north. Thomaston took a deep breath. Was this four-year attempt to build a Liberia-American showpiece in this African country going to fail? Was it going to become another example of African failure? Could be. The Liberians who frequented Kingsville and those who worked for the American expatriates were gone. They had disappeared sometime during the night and failed to return this morning. He took a sip from his second cup of coffee. His one vice to start the mornings.

  This town was a showpiece. A showpiece to entice other African-Americans to purchase vacation homes in the country. Several had. Thomaston looked at the houses bordering the lake near the southern end. Most of those houses were vacant, their owners back in the States, and they would stay vacant until around spring, when their owners would return to spend several weeks in Liberia.

  “Look, General,” Sergeant Major Craig Gentle said, pointing north.

  Thomaston raised his hands to shield his eyes from the bright sunlight of noon. A cloud of red dust rose into the air. Something was coming toward Kingsville. A few seconds later, a large white pickup truck crested the hill.

  “It’s the patrol returning,” he said.

  “Moving kind of fast.”

  “Let’s go see.”

  Retired Sergeant Major Craig Gentle followed the retired lieutenant general down the wood steps toward the main street of their small town. The pickup truck beat them to the front of the general store by a few minutes.

  Wailing and screams of anguish drowned out the noise of the truck engine. A group formed around the pickup. The doors to the cab opened. The engine ground to a stop. Four militiamen poured out, leaving the doors open, and trying to force the people away from the bed of the truck.

  As Thomaston and Gentle approached, one of the militiamen pointed to them. The group pulled back, opening a gap for the two men. Thomaston looked at the partially covered bodies in the back. The entwined legs and arms told him the patrol had fled in haste from whoever had attacked them. He recognized bullet damage when he saw it. The wailing changed into sobs. Behind him, he felt the anxiety of the civilians—he could never feel they were anything else but civilians. Somehow, a career in the military divided humanity into various compartments of good and evil; right or left; and, eventually, civilians and military. Military retirement didn’t bring the title of civilian with it.

  He knew what they wanted. What they wanted was for him to tell them it was going to be all right. These deaths shattered what hope they held that what had happened in Monrovia wouldn’t happen here. He glanced at Gentle, and watched the soldier who had been his right arm for the last ten years of his active duty visibly straighten. Words were unnecessary between them. Going into combat together and working side by side for those years had sealed a bond between the two men that no civilian could ever understand. He reached in and pulled the rest of the canvas cover off the bodies.

  The last word received from the American Embassy in Monrovia was that it was being overrun and they were evacuating. The last radio contact with other American expatriates in Monrovia had been around midnight. President Jefferson had been killed, and rebels—no, terrorists, let’s call them what they are—were killing anyone who was American or had helped the Americans.

  A slight breeze stirred the hot, humid air, bringing a moment of relative coolness to the open area. Electricity from the Liberian Electric Company had ceased earlier in the morning. Thomaston had ordered the generator be run only for the radio shack where Beaucoup Charlie had his ham radio. Beaucoup was trying to reestablish contact with the American Embassy in the Ivory Coast. The rotund former Navy cryptologic technician also had a Bearcat scanner to monitor Liberian military and police communications. The intelligence Beaucoup brought was small, but it was better than nothing.

  The four militiamen stared. Thomaston took a deep breath and consciously stood straighter. He had to give these people hope, of which he had little, and confidence, of which he had plenty. The fear of what happened in Monrovia and the knowledge that the rebels were moving toward Kingsville brought back memories of the days immediately after September 11, 2001. Memories of the feeling of being unsafe. Where knives and guns were placed near the bed to fight an enemy whose sole purpose was to kill Americans.

  The security of a Liberia built on democratic ideals and a growing economy had died in less than twenty-four hours.

  Thomaston shifted the Navy Colt .45 on his hip slightly to take it off his hipbone so it wouldn’t rub. Exposed sores became infected quickly in the moist African environment.

  The fact that they had brought their fellow townsmen back gave him satisfaction about their ability to overcome fear and do what they had to do. In the days to come, these young men and women would discover something he had known his entire life. He truly believed that deep within every American was a heroic spirit that, when faced with adversity, rose to the occasion.

  “What happened?” he asked the young man standing in front of the other three. He hadn’t been the one in charge. Thomaston glanced at the bodies. His eyes roved over the four dead faces. The last face was that of the man he had put in charge of the patrol, Dan Arts.

  He had forty trained militiamen—well, thirty-six now. Members of the Kingsville vigilantes, as the Liberians referred to militia. These young men and women—most in their twenties—working only with the training he and Gentle had provided, now found themselves fighting for survival against a fanatical enemy—a deviate, evil Islamic cult. This ten-year War on Terrorism was more than a war on Islamic extremism. It was a clash of cultures that one day would force the Western world to crush the ancient, tyrannical beliefs of millions of Muslims. He was the only one who believed this, and he recalled the chewing-out he got from the Army Chief of Staff when he voiced it to a journalist.

  “They killed them,” a female voice cried, her voice muffled by the chest of her husband. He glanced. John and Mary Johnson from Ogden, Utah. Another African-American family who’d wanted to return to their roots and seen Africa as their Israel. Two weeks ago, they had decided to return to Utah, taking their teenage son with them. He looked at the bodies in the bed of the truck. Now, it was too late. There he was: John, Junior. Eighteen, good-looking, and Thomaston recalled an incident a month ago when two young American girls had to be pulled apart because of him. There would be no more fights over this young man.

  Behind the crying Mary, another woman had collapsed, and other ladies of the church, with the help of the nearby men, lifted her, carrying her toward the community center. Near the front of the truck stood Harold Pearson, his broad shoulders shaking, tears streaming down an expressionless face. Pearson was a huge man who towered several inches above Thomaston’s six feet two. Thomaston had seen Mahmoud Pearson in the back of the pickup. Harold would recover. He and Harold had joked about being two of the more eligible widowers in the town. Now, Harold was more like him. Thomaston had no children, and Harold had just lost the only child he had. The man would bear watching in the days to come. When the reason for leaving died, either men killed themselves physically or mentall
y, or they became avenging angels of death, destroying everything and anyone who’d brought them to that point. In the days to come, avenging angels would be what Thomaston needed.

  Retired Lieutenant General Daniel Thomaston pulled the tarp back over the faces of the dead men. He stared a few seconds at the bumps under the waterproofed green tarp.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said, lifting his beret and using the back of his arm to wipe the sweat from his broad forehead.

  “We left Dan and them about twenty kilometers up the road, General. He told us to take our truck, drive back toward Kingsville, and patrol the roads for any more refugees or rebels sneaking along the sides of it. When we turned around and headed back, about ten kilometers later we saw smoke. When we got closer, we heard gunfire. I hit the gas and we drove like mad to get there. The gunfire stopped before we reached them. When we turned the corner, they saw us. There were a bunch of Africans running from the bush toward Dan and them. Bill and Jesse turned their M-16’s on them from the top of our cab, and the Africans took off into the bush. Dan’s truck was on fire. We found the bodies near it.”

  Thomaston nodded. He licked his lips. What would be the rebels’ next move? They had been broadcasting incessantly all morning from a captured radio station in Monrovia about their victory—urging loyal Liberian citizens and Moslems to rise up and slay the infidel Americans violating their land. He had little hope it was rhetoric. Since September 11, 2001, no one doubted the violent desire of Islamic fanatics to kill Americans. Threats were no longer taken as rhetoric, even when an inclination to accept it as such was strong.

  He would have enjoyed having Beaucoup turn off the radio. He wanted so much to turn around and tell everyone to forget the bodies in the pickup truck. Bandits did it. Go back to what you were doing and forget it. He wanted to return to the small genealogy-DNA business he ran for African-Americans searching for their roots.

  But he couldn’t. The circle of frightened faces surrounding him was waiting for him to say something. He sighed quietly, then hoped no one noticed. He knew the look. The scared faces of people who had followed him two years ago when he raised funds to set up this small bit of America in the African countryside in the center of Liberia. He glanced over the heads of the growing crowd for a moment.

  Then, his eyes traveled the crowd, pausing infrequently on faces of men and women whom he recognized as former U.S. military—there was retired Master Chief David Seams, one of the few whites in the town. What Thomaston wouldn’t give to be able to sit around this evening at the community center swapping stories with other veterans. But that was gone. He had learned on September 11th that you can never go back to what was normal after such an event. Normality itself is always changing, and while Americans unconsciously experience the small changes of normality, something like what happened in Monrovia and the approach of the rebels means never being able to go back. He bit lightly on his lower lip. All those thoughts passed through his mind in seconds.

  “General?” the young man in front said, his eyes raising in a question mark.

  “Yes,” Thomaston replied, then realized the young militiaman had asked him what they were to do. “First, let’s bury our comrades.”

  He turned to the older man—retired Sergeant Major Craig Gentle, a thin reed of a man with long arms out of proportion with his body. The craggy face had been a near-permanent fixture with Thomaston through much of his Army career. He had been happy when his Command Sergeant Major from the 82nd Airborne had elected to follow him to Liberia. Gentle was just another military careerist who finished his thirty years with no wife and no family. Gentle had two kids from his short marriage, but they had been raised half a continent away and he was just a stranger they called Dad.

  Sergeant Major Craig Gentle saluted. Like General Thomaston, Gentle had dragged out jungle fatigues from the storage trunk when the news from Monrovia had reached the town. Others had followed suit, and speckled throughout the anxious crowd like a patchwork quilt, former members of the Army and Marines wore their old battle fatigues.

  Thomaston wondered briefly what the average age was for these veterans. He was fifty-eight. Gentle had to be about the same age. These militiamen standing in front of him were in their early twenties. It had been a smart thing after arriving here with those ninety-six families to organize a militia to function as both a police and security force.

  “General,” Gentle interjected. “With your permission, I will muster the militia.”

  “Good idea, Sergeant Major, plus put out two more forward posts on the road at ten kilometers, with backup force at six kilometers—out of sight. In the event of contact, I want those forward posts to fall back to the six-kilometer mark. When you finish the quick muster, I want a ready-response unit in the armory ready to respond to wherever they may be needed.” Thomaston paused. He lifted his Army beret, ran the back of his right arm across his forehead and up over the high brow created by a receding hairline. Gray hair accented the small gray mustache Thomaston had allowed himself since retiring from Army Special Forces. Not many three-star Rangers were on active duty, and after he retired there were no African-American three- or four-star Rangers in the Army. Only two two-stars that he recalled, and he regretted failing to keep up with their success.

  Vigilante—there was a word that conjured up all kinds of ghosts among his fellow African-Americans who made up this community. In Africa, however, a vigilante was a government-approved law enforcer authorized to use deadly force to protect properties and lives. Even he carried a Liberian vigilante card in his wallet. A few had had problems with becoming vigilantes, but eventually he’d overcome their objections, and had personally helped each militiaman fill out the one-page paper required to register as a state-sanctioned vigilante.

  A young woman ran toward the group of men. The M-16, strapped across her back, bounced as she moved. The slight cotton dress normally on the attractive twenty-year-old Tawela Johnson had been replaced by blue jeans and a long-sleeve blue cotton shirt that clung suggestively to small, firm breasts. It would be better for all concerned if the young lady would wear a bra.

  “General!” she shouted as she approached, drawing the attention of the crowd.

  Cries from behind startled him. A couple of women stood beside the pickup truck. It was Dan Arts’s wife and mother. Must have came from the other side. Others helped them away, hushing their pleas to take Dan’s body. In this equatorial heat, the bodies had to be buried quickly. Reverend Hew could do it.

  Tawela stopped in front of Thomaston and Gentle, her breathing deep. “Just a moment,” she gasped. “Let me get my breath.”

  Thomaston turned to the men. “Go ahead and take care of burying them.”

  “General, Mr. Beaucoup has gotten some news from Monrovia,” Tawela said quickly, still breathing heavy. “Sorry, General. I ran all the way over here from the radio shack. I was as surprised as—”

  “What did you hear, Tawela?” Thomaston interrupted.

  “Yes, sir. Nathan Hammonds is on the road headed this way with five vehicles full of Americans. He is taking the back roads, he said, and expects to be here late tomorrow if everything goes well and they avoid the rebels.”

  “How did he get through to us?” Thomaston asked. “We haven’t been able to establish contact with anyone since last night. Beaucoup said those sunspots are playing havoc with communications.” Nathan Hammonds was a friend. The man was a retired Army infantry officer, though for the moment, Thomaston couldn’t recall which unit. His thick eyebrows bunched as he bit his lower lip in thought.

  “Hammonds has a radio in his car, General. It wasn’t loud and it was hard to hear, but Mr. Beaucoup Charlie talked with him for a few minutes before he faded away. Yes, sir, he sure did.”

  Thomaston nodded. “Okay, Tawela, you run back up there to Radio and you tell Mr. Beaucoup Charlie that I said to keep in contact with Hammonds. If you get Hammonds on the radio again, get a location so we can keep track of him.”

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nbsp; She threw up her hand in an awkward salute, nearly sticking her thumb in her eye. Thomaston caught the raised eyebrows of retired Sergeant Major Gentle. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, he would have laughed. Instead, he winked at Gentle as they watched the athletically challenged Tawela run off.

  Though Gentle had been retired for five years, Thomaston knew he still found civilians exasperating. “How in the hell do they manage to live to ripe old ages and still be so disorganized and dysfunctional?” Gentle always said. “How can anything survive with everyone trying to be in charge?”

  He and Thomaston spent a lot of time over beer and pretzels discussing the genetic makeup of civilians and pondering the great mysteries of their survival. Conversations that became more jovial as they sat on the veranda of the community center, watching the sunset while opening their third—or maybe fourth—cold beer. He had to admit beer tastes better after a day in the steaming-hot humidity of the African countryside. Almost as good as those first beers after a ten-mile summer run around Fort Bragg.

  “Command Sergeant Major,” Thomaston said firmly. “I thought you were going to muster the troops?”

  “Yes, sir. Should . . .”

  Everyone looked to the sky. The faint sound of an aircraft broke through the noise of the crowd. “Jet,” Thomaston said softly.

  Heads turned right and left as people moved apart, searching for the source of the approaching aircraft.

  Then, suddenly, there it was. The aircraft popped up over the top of the community center. In that split second, Thomaston recognized it as one of the four Liberian Air Force Cessna A-37 Dragonfly attack aircraft.