Joint Task Force #1: Liberia (29 page)

“—who seldom listen to their own machines. I know, Leo, I know. Send me that Lieutenant Shoemaker—
I think that’s his name
—from those operators of unmanned flying things.”

“Oh, the pilot?”

“Leo, he’s not inside a cockpit riding a hundred thousand
parts made by the lowest bidder. He’s sitting in the hangar bay, playing warrior like some young kid with a new Sony Playstation. Doesn’t matter. Time we truly test them.”

“I’ll get the pilot,” Upmann said. “If this idea works, Admiral, you may have to change your views on whether you like or dislike this unmanned flight program.”

“That will never happen, Leo. However, disliking unmanned aircraft or not, using them is an entirely different thing. I would prefer heavy fighter aircraft with all their weaponry and pilot capability, but the nearest aircraft carrier is thousands of miles away, and the Air Force doesn’t have landing rights in any of the countries around here. We’ll make do with what we have and see what happens.”

“We going to launch them against the French?”

“Umm. As appealing as it sounds, I don’t think so. What I want is to convince the French that an American aircraft carrier has entered the area.”

“Be hard to do, Admiral. We can change the lighting on the
Boxer,
but only at night. We don’t have the equipment to change our electronic signatures to match a carrier’s surface-search, air-search, and fire-control radars. They’ll figure it out before we’re an hour into it.”

“Leo, is this a surface-warfare thing? Half-empty glass of water instead of half-full?” Holman asked, a slight tinge of humor beneath the words.

“Aye, aye, sir. I am sure we can figure out something. And I do see a half-full glass here, Admiral—just the width of it seems shallow.”

This could be fun, he thought as he turned to go back up the ladder to the bridge. The men and women manning the various combat consoles around the dark space watched as the admiral departed Combat. The EW operator shrugged and pulled the zipper up on her jacket before returning her attention to the polar display in front of her. A few seconds later, the low murmur of operational activity and exchange of information returned to mix with the sounds of fans inside the equipment working continuously to keep the computers and display units from overheating.

CHAPTER 12

THE EXPLOSION BLEW THE TOP OFF THE ARMORY GATEPOST.
Shards of brick and mortar mixed with deadly pieces of whirling barbed wire ripped along the front of the armory building. The noise from the M-50 stopped abruptly. Lethal shrapnel sawed through it and the two militiamen manning the position. Thomaston’s last communication with the Navy had been an hour ago.

The concussion knocked retired Lieutenant General Daniel Thomaston to the ground, saving his life as the shrapnel passed over him.

A moment later he opened his eyes, his vision slightly blurred. Several blinks cleared them. Something pressed across his hips and legs. His initial thought was part of the building had landed on him. He wiggled slightly to see how badly he was trapped. Whatever it was shifted. Thomaston reached back, grabbed a handful of cloth, and pulled the weight off him. He rolled onto his back. A sharp, momentary pain caused his jaws to tighten. The dismembered torso of one of the defenders lay beside him. A dark swathe of blood covered the name tag, but Thomaston knew it was one of the machine-gunners. Both legs were missing from the knees down and
half the head was gone. A single glazed eye stared lifelessly upward.

He turned and pushed himself to his knees, grabbed his M- 16, and stood. His camouflage uniform was splattered with blood. Retired Sergeant Major Gentle, at a crouch, ran toward him, glancing toward the wall with his M-16 pointed in the same direction.

“General,” Craig Gentle shouted above the gunfire, sliding to his knees beside Thomaston. “Are you hurt, sir?” Bits of brick from the building showered the ground as bullets from the attacking rebels peppered it. “Damn! That hurt,” Gentle mumbled, pushing himself off his knees and wiping away brick fragments.

Thomaston shook his head. “I’m fine.” Thomaston looked over his shoulder at the building behind him. Every window was broken. The integrity of the building appeared intact. In the basement, far to the rear, noncombatants had taken refuge. He had to move them. The building was too easy a target. A stitch of bullets from an automatic weapon traced along the bricks near the roof, sending more shards raining down on the grass.

The rebels did not intend to take prisoners, unless it was to videotape killing them to inflame the Western world and gain admiration from followers. They also wanted the vehicles parked in the rear as well as the weapons they had. The last thing he intended to give them were weapons to expand their attack against Americans. He glanced at the sky. He wished he knew if Holman was going to send the Marines early, but the attack an hour ago had cut the radio conversation off prematurely.

“Craig, move three of our fighters from the north wall to the front,” he ordered, pointing at the area where the mortar round had hit. Dust clouded the area, obstructing a clear view.

Gentle grabbed the barrel of the general’s rifle. “Wouldn’t use that, sir,” he said, nodding toward it.

The barrel bent slightly to the right. If Thomaston had fired it, the result would have been an exploding piece wounding or killing him.

“Here, take mine, General. I’ll take that one over there,”
Gentle said, pointing to an M-16 lying unattended on the brown grass of the lawn several yards away.

Thomaston did not have to ask whose it was. He looked along the front wall and, with the exception of the destroyed gatepost, the other militiamen and townsfolk were still fighting. The smell of gunpowder and explosives filled the air, burning his nostrils and causing his eyes to water.

He counted four bodies near the front gate. That left twenty-eight lightly trained militiamen, not counting himself or Craig Gentle. They could not win a war of attrition. The townsfolk with weapons could never withstand a concerted attack by the enemy. He’d even had to show several how to turn the safety on and off. A few figured out on their own how to eject and reload the magazines. Now that they were in combat, he wondered briefly how many remembered how those two simple evolutions worked. Fear was not a great training technique.

Thomaston estimated more than two hundred fanatics facing them. On the plus side, his people were in a strong defensive position if the opposing forces didn’t possess too many mortar rounds. Maybe when he surveyed the battleground, he would find most of the enemy dead or dying in the open field between the road and the armory. He sighed. Wishes and hope never win battles.

The attackers had surprised them. He thought they were farther away. The initial attack of four mortar rounds into the armory sent everyone scurrying to their positions. He glanced at the radio antenna, bent in half where shrapnel had damaged it. Then, just as suddenly, the attack stopped and an African waving a white flag had approached the front gate.

The African demanded they surrender and even promised free passage to Ivory Coast. But everyone in the armory recalled what happened to those Americans trapped in Egypt who were offered the same terms and when they walked out of the hotel, they had been captured and tortured, and had their throats cut, one by one. America had never forgotten the power of those videotapes. He shut his eyes for a moment.

Thomaston’s hands flexed on his M-16. Nothing would make him feel better than to
martyr
this bunch right here, right now, in Kingsville.

An earlier attempt to bluff this homegrown self-made tyrant who called himself a mullah had failed. This
Abu Shit-for-brains
refused to believe the vehicles were disabled, rendering them useless. The man wasn’t after arms and cars. He wanted more videotaped examples to rub in America’s face. More videotapes to go into the September 11th memorial in Washington.

Gunfire, rising in intensity, echoed from the direction of the gate. Gentle reached down and grabbed the M-16 as he zigzagged past. Thomaston jumped over the lower half of a leg still encased in a combat boot, joining Gentle in their dash to safety. The two, back first, slammed against the west wall. Thomaston pointed left. Gentle nodded, turned in that direction, and ran toward the corner of the building, bits of masonry flying over him as enemy snipers fired. The retired sergeant major disappeared around the edge of the armory building.

Thomaston ran along the wall, reaching the side of the damaged gate. The light African wind was clearing the smoke and dust away. The right section was gone, leaving an opening big enough for two at a time to enter. Thomaston turned right and hurried along the wall to where three militiamen stood on top of an SUV, firing over the top of the wall. He didn’t recall directing anyone to move the vehicle here.

“You!” he shouted to the nearest person. The man looked down at the general. “Come with me!”

The man touched his comrade and pointed at the general. The two jumped down. Thomaston had only meant to take one, but considering the opening near the gate as their biggest vulnerability, two were better than one.

Thomaston ran back toward the front of the gate. The two young men followed. All three ran at a crouch, though the top of the brick wall was high enough to protect them from the angry sound of bullets flying overhead. The thick ozone smell of combat dried the general’s nostrils.

When he reached the opening, Thomaston squatted and pointed to the breach. “See that, men?” he said. “If they get through that hole we’re going to have to retreat. Once they’re inside, it’s only a matter of time before they overrun us.”

They nodded.

“You understand what I’m telling you?” he asked, his voice
firm as he stared intently into each of their faces. “You can’t give up this position. They mustn’t get in,” he said softly.

The nearest militiaman licked his lips a couple of times and stared at the hole in the wall. He understood. Thomaston saw realization on both their faces. Both had family in the armory. The first’s jaw dropped for a second, and then visibly the young man straightened and nodded sharply. “We understand, General. No retreat from this position.”

The young man standing behind the first wiped his hands one at a time on his trousers. His eyes glistened with moisture. Thomaston knew the fear they were experiencing, for the most these two could do was buy time, and they knew it too.

“I’ll be watching and if it looks as if they are going to breach, I’ll try to send reinforcements. You understand?”

They nodded.

“You can’t leave this breach undefended. No one, and I mean no one, must get through.”

Around the corner of the building, Craig Gentle appeared with four townsmen. About one hundred yards separated the east wall from the lake. Running behind the lake, rain forest stretched down from the hills to join the thick jungle and rain forest to their south.

“Good luck,” he said to the two militiamen. He touched each of them on the shoulders as he left, never looking back. Thomaston picked up the pace and sprinted to where Gentle and the others squatted under the protection of the south wall.

Before Thomaston arrived, one of the men jumped at something Gentle said and ran toward the SUV to join the lone gunman there.

Was it his imagination or was gunfire tapering off?

“General, where do you want these three?” Gentle asked.

He looked swiftly around the area where the attack seemed concentrated. “Send them to the other side of the front gate as reserve to the two guarding the breach in the wall. You three, listen to me.” He saw the patina on the sleeve of the older man where at one time the black chevrons of a sergeant had been sewn. Fremont Sealey was the man’s name. The two bottom buttons of the shirt were open to allow the ample paunch to protrude. He was one of the automobile mechanics of the town. Thomaston never knew he had been Army. “
Sergeant Sealey, you keep these two with you. Your job is to reinforce any area of the wall where it looks as if the enemy is trying to penetrate. Watch the front gate. If they get inside the compound, we retreat to the vehicles parked around back.”

Sealey saluted. “Will do, sir.”

Thomaston detected a slight trace of moisture in the sergeant’s eyes. He glanced at the front of the old Army shirt looking for some sign of Sealy’s specialty, but saw none. Made a snap decision he was a Desert Storm veteran from his age and gray hair. Been a while since Sealey had seen combat, he thought. “Fremont, the troops are looking to you, Sergeant Major Gentle, and me for leadership. You can do it, soldier. Your job is to make sure no one overruns the breach created by the explosion. I am giving you command of the south and west walls. No one gets inside the compound.”

Thomaston saw the man’s back visibly straighten. He understood what was happening—the moment in combat when a soldier fully realizes his only chance to live was to fight fiercely and win.

“Yes, sir. We can do it.”

“Fremont.” Thomaston leaned against the hefty veteran and whispered softly into his ear. “No retreat. There can be no retreat.”

“I know, sir. Johnson, Wood,” the resurrected sergeant said to the two townsmen behind him. “Let’s go.” He motioned forward. “Stay with me, and I’ll kick yore butts if you try to leave until I tell you to.”

“Sergeant Sealey,” Gentle said, “be careful.”

The old man’s face tightened, his jowls and double chin rising, as he replied with confidence, “Sergeant Major; Jason, Andy, and I will be all right. No one is getting inside without coming through us.”

Combat was more than a battle of weapons and explosives; it was the measure by which an individual’s fortitude was weighed; an individual’s ability to fight and win against an overwhelming urge to run. During battle, Thomaston had seen adversity forged in moments from the least likely character, and he had been surprised to discover it lacking in those he’d most expected to rise to the moment when courage was needed. It little surprised him to see it in the sergeant. It
mattered little what age you were when it was time to rise to the call of combat.

Soldiers seldom realized the exact moment when they become seasoned combat veterans. One moment they’re scared new meat, and the next they’re scared combat veterans. There was no universal moment to identify when that transition occurred. One moment they doubted their own capability, and the next they doubted the enemy’s. It was also a dangerous moment, when suppressed fear sometimes cost lives.

The whistle of a mortar rode over the noise of small arms. Thomaston glanced upward, tracking the shell by sound as it passed overhead. “Incoming!” he shouted, shoving Gentle. Across the front lawn of the armory, Sergeant Sealey and his two townsmen followed suit, diving to the ground at the same time as Thomaston.

The mortar round passed over the building, exploding near the vehicle park. Across from Thomaston, Sergeant Sealey pushed himself off the ground, slapped the two with him, and the three continued their slow run toward the front wall.

If they started taking mortar fire, the armory building would be fair game to the attacking force. The noncombatants—
the image of the civilians crouching scared in the dark basement broke into his thoughts, and just as quickly he shoved it aside
—must be moved ASAP out of the building.

“Craig, get them the hell out of the building!”

“General, they’re safe there,” Gentle said, raising to a crouch.