African Adventure Ch. 02

The briefing went on for several hours and then the mission planning began. Robert was tempted, at the end of it, to seek the advice of Colonel Gutierrez, a much more experienced officer, but held off. The rule of operational security was that the fewer people who knew about the details, the less the chance those details would leak to the enemy. It wasn't that he distrusted Colonel Gutierrez, but he certainly didn't trust the people the Colonel worked with.

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"I don't care who they are," the young woman proclaimed, "I just say a little prayer every day and thank God they killed Kibanga and his men."

She was probably, Robert reflected, absolutely serious about that. She was a Junior at some mid-western bible college who had volunteered to spend her summer interviewing refugees. Part of him was amused to hear the very devout woman declaring her support for an assassination while another part of him was intrigued by the amount of cleavage revealed by her tank-top. She wasn't a thin woman, but she wasn't particularly heavy and she carried her weight proportionately which produced some very nice curves. She reminded him, a little bit, of Sonia, particularly with her energy.

Which comparison diverted his mind to other thoughts. And that was another source of amusement for him. Whenever he found himself looking at women he always found something that reminded him of one of his bed partners and that sent his thoughts, and desires, back into familiar channels. He simply didn't have any inclination at all to fool around with other women and he found that he didn't really mind this. Strangely, this seemed to have made him very attractive to women. Right now, for instance, he was surrounded by young female interviewers spending their off-work time in the lounge and, before he had turned the conversation to other channels, flirting with him.

The morale of the interviewers had gone through the roof for a brief while when the news of Joseph Kibanga's death had reached them. They didn't know who had killed the man or even that their interviews had helped to plan the mission that ended his life, but they still took satisfaction in knowing he was no longer hurting people. Some of them had extended their stays, taking time off from their studies to help with the interviewing. Some of them had volunteered to work in other areas. Robert enjoyed sitting with them and soaking in their optimism and energy even as he had to endure the flirting and, he was nearly certain, the silent laughter of Sara, Sonia, and Ilse.

Movement that was out of the ordinary caught his attention near the entrance and he looked in that direction to see Sara running in. She caught his eye and stopped, beckoning for him to follow her. The look on her face spoke of urgency and Robert stood and ran after her without a word. He followed her out into the compound and across to the building they had made their security operations center. When they were inside Sara grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to a map.

"One of our aid teams was ambushed while making the rounds on a new route. They've gone to ground and they're holding their own for the moment, but the ammo expenditure rate is high. They'll be out of ammo in forty minutes or less," she summarized as she pointed to the location on the map.

"Why haven't they broken contact?" Robert demanded. The medical supplies and the equipment were all replaceable and running away was what the aid teams were supposed to do.

"They tried," Diyon responded, "Whoever set the ambush wants everyone dead. We can find out why at a later date. Right now they have wounded and they couldn't get away if they wanted to. I'm bringing in helicopters to pick up the ready platoon, but it will still take two hours to get there and start applying pressure."

"What's the politically sensitive decision you need me to make?" Robert demanded. Diyon had this well in hand and the only possible reason for bringing him here quickly was the existence of another option that required his approval.

Diyon stabbed the map with a finger, indicating a spot perhaps five miles from the ambush. "Vidu has a kill team at this location. They were looking for an intelligence source. They can be on site much faster than the ready platoon."

Consequences and ramifications ran through Robert's mind, but he ignored them. "Get them there," he ordered.

"Jyoti's with that aid team," Sonia remarked quietly.

Robert shrugged helplessly. He hadn't known, and it wouldn't have made a difference in his decision. Right now all he could do was wait.

Vishaal Jyoti was ashamed that she had emptied her bowels in her pants. She was also curious, in a detached way, that this shame was able to penetrate the painful terror that suffused her. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and tightened the tourniquet around the leg of the guard in front of her. He grunted in pain but nodded his head in thanks before something coming over the radio claimed his attention. He smiled grimly and called out something loudly in Sinhalese, repeating the message several times.

"Help is on the way, Doctor," he told Jyoti, "Keep your head down and you'll be fine."

"You're bleeding to death," she told him.

"Can't be helped," he replied, "But thank you for trying. My family is safe, and that's the important thing. God bless Mr. Thompson. Besides," he added, "my son-in-law is on the rescue team and he won't want to explain to his wife how her father died, so perhaps there is still hope." The man rolled over onto his stomach and pulled himself towards a firing position.

Jyoti shook her head and crawled over to where they had assembled the wounded. One of the interviewers, a young man from Italy, was holding an improvised dressing over a sucking chest-wound another interviewer had suffered. The coagulating agent that impregnated the standard field dressing created dangerous levels of heat and his hands were slowly being burned, but he kept the pressure on and kept up a series of rapid fire questions designed to keep the wounded woman from losing consciousness. His tear streaked face simply nodded towards the other wounded when Jyoti put her hand on his arm.

The other two wounded, both guards being worked on by nurses, were unconscious and Jyoti thought it unlikely that either one would ever awake. As she examined them she heard a cry of pain from one of the guards and started to crawl over to him. He was clutching at his face with both hands and it took her several shouted commands to get him to pull the hands away. His face had been lacerated by something, wood fragments of some sort she thought, and his right eye was a ruin.

"Don't touch it!" she shouted at him, "You'll just make it worse. Hold on and I'll give you some painkiller."

"Use my gun!" he yelled.

"No!" she shouted back.

"Yes!" he insisted, "We need to keep them back. If they get close enough to start throwing grenades we're done for."

Jyoti fumbled with the rifle for a moment. She'd seen them in use, but she'd never fired one herself.

"How do I aim it?"

"Don't! Just keep it pointed in the right direction and squeeze the trigger every once in a while," the man responded.

Jyoti tried that, squeezing the trigger. The recoil came as a shock and she dropped the rifle. A hail of gunfire answered her single shot and she ducked until it stopped. When she dared to she glanced over at the man for guidance. His lifeless body stared back at her, savaged by several of the bullets that had missed her. Her body convulsed, stomach emptying helplessly onto his corpse. After a minute her body calmed and she thought she heard a shout from where the bandits were. She looked and saw someone dart forward from a tree. Grabbing the rifle she pointed it in his general direction and squeezed the trigger.

The man dropped behind a tree and Jyoti thought she'd killed him. Gunfire from his position put paid to that idea and she didn't know if she was relieved or sorry. She crawled back a little to put a fold of earth between her and them and then crawled over to another tree. Carefully she edged the rifle around the tree and fired again. An explosion in front of her, and a stinging impact to her face, caused her to drop flat again. She lifted the rifle a moment later and squeezed the trigger several times, terrified that she had let them get close enough to throw grenades and they were all going to die.

A symphony of explosions seemed to confirm this and Jyoti forced herself upwards, less concerned with dying than she was with letting down the people depending on her, and fired the rifle until it wouldn't fire any more. She looked at the rifle in abject horror, knowing that she was supposed to replace the magazine, but without any idea of how to do it. Desperately pulling at it didn't produce any results and she looked around for someone who could tell her what to do. Only then did she realize the firing had stopped.

"Amikoj! Amikoj!" someone called out. "Ne pafos ni!"

"Kiu vi estas?" one of the guards called back.

"Vidu!" the voice shouted.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!" the corporal in charge of the guard detail yelled, "Our rescue is here."

Jyoti looked cautiously out and saw a man slowly approaching. He was completely covered in camouflage equipment, even his face was obscured by netting wrapped around it. But his voice was familiar as he gently took the rifle out of her hands.

"Well done, Doctor," Vidu said.

"It's empty," Jyoti responded dully.

"There are wounded," she said, trying to find the energy to rise to her feet.

"Including you, Doctor. That's a nasty cut on your cheek. Just you sit still for a while and let us get things organized. We'll call you over if we need you."

"If you're sure," she said.

He patted her shoulder gently as the rest of his men moved past them. "I'm sure. Just wait here."

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur for her. Vidu and his men never called for her so she sat until she heard the sound of helicopters and then wandered over to where three large helicopters were landing. More guards poured out of them and bustled around securing the area and hustling the wounded into the helicopters. Over to one side Jyoti saw a pile of bodies and two men kneeling with bags over their heads, but she didn't see Vidu and his men.

"Where's Vidu?" she asked one of the guards helping her into the helicopter.

"He's not here, Doctor," the man replied, "The lieutenant is in Kinshasa right now. I think you're confused. Might be a concussion. Just sit tight and we'll have you back at the hospital in no time at all."

The ride did seem very short and the staff at the hospital went to work on them with horrified enthusiasm. Jyoti was walked over to an examination room where one of the staff physicians carefully examined her for a concussion before allowing a nurse to clean up her facial injury and stitch it closed. She was sitting on the examining table, unable to feel half of her face when Sonia walked in.

"I hear you did well," Sonia commented, "The doctor says that physically you're fine, although that slice on your face is probably going to scar. How do you feel?"

Jyoti tried to answer but she honestly didn't know and talking was an intolerable effort made worse by the numbness of her facial muscles. She settled on a shrug.

Sonia saw the vacant look in Jyoti's eyes and made up her mind. "Come with me, Doctor. There's one last thing to do. A patient who needs help."

Jyoti stirred at that, like an old warhorse hearing the trumpets, and with Sonia's help walked unsteadily out of the hospital. Driven by sheer determination, Jyoti managed to keep walking, but she had no idea where they were going. It was a surprise to find herself in her room and sitting on her bed. She accepted a glass that Sonia pressed into her hand and took a drink, almost choking on the first sip of the scotch. The remainder went down very nicely and the warmth spread through her body.

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Jyoti awoke in the morning to find herself tangled up in Sonia. She took several moments to simply breathe and try to piece together her fragmented memories before she sat up. Sonia, she saw, was wearing underwear while she was wearing nothing at all.

"Feeling a little more human?" Sonia asked.

Jyoti gingerly probed the ache on her face. "I hurt," she replied.

"That sounds human to me," Sonia replied.

Jyoti grinned, and regretted it. "Ow."

"No smiling in the war zone," Sonia quipped, "You need a shower and a meal and a follow up exam. Sooner started, soonest done."

"Why are you in my bed?" Jyoti mumbled.

"You don't remember last night? You woke up screaming. I just held you. It helps. Worst thing in the world after a trauma like that is to be alone," Sonia replied.

Jyoti stared at Sonia, her mind racing with thoughts.

"You've been through this?"

Sonia nodded. "Something like it. The first person I saw die was my brother. After that, the violence kind of melts into a collage of memories. The first person I killed was what really got to me."

"Didn't kill anyone," Jyoti tried to snap out.

Sonia nodded again. "Nope. But you sure saved several lives. That corporal was singing your praises to anyone who would listen. Vidu said the same thing, but much more quietly."

"He was there!" Jyoti exclaimed.

"He was," Sonia said, "But don't tell anyone. Officially you didn't see Vidu or any of his men. The story for public dissemination is that the bandits ran away before the response platoon arrived."

"That's not what happened," Jyoti protested.

"No, it's not. But telling the truth would endanger lives and put a stop to our work here. So that's what you're going to say. Anyway you slice the story, though, you come out a hero. Vidu said the bad guys were getting ready to run in on you when you emptied the clip and held them in place long enough for Vidu and his killers to get into them. That saved you all. And the medical attention you and the nurses gave the wounded saved a lot of them."

"Who died?"

Sonia hesitated, weighing Jyoti's condition before replying. "We lost three. Two guards and the interviewer with the chest wound. Rosita. From Belize. She was only supposed to be here a month, but she kept staying. I wish she had known the good she was doing."

"What good?" Jyoti demanded, "We provide medical care and save lives. Then some barbarian with a gun comes in and puts the whole mess to the torch."

"That's why you can't talk about Vidu. We use the information the interviewers gather to identify the worst offenders and kill them."

"Ke estas pli informajxo ol sxi bezonas," Robert commented from the doorway.

"Sxi bezonas scio cxi, sinjoro. Sxi vidis tro. Se mi estas malkorekto do batas mi," Sonia replied.

Robert considered this for a moment. "Nu! Sxi estas via respondeco."

"Jes, sinjoro," Sonia replied and bowed her head.

Robert left and Jyoti suddenly realized she had been naked throughout that exchange. "What the hell was that?" she demanded.

"He's mad that I told you that. I told him you needed to know and if I was wrong he could beat me. So you're my responsibility now. If you tell anyone what I've told you, I'll suffer for it."

"Beat you?" Jyoti echoed, "He's abusive?"

Sonia laughed until Jyoti's expression turned from puzzlement to anger. "Oh, I'm sorry Jyoti. It's just ... When you asked me that question the answer that ran through my head was 'Only when I'm lucky.' It's going to take a while to explain why I find that funny. Why don't you go take that shower and then we'll take care of getting you fed and checked out and then I can tell you a lot of secrets."

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Jyoti tried to understand everything she had been told in the past hour and she looked away from Sonia and Ilse to the room around her. It didn't help. Now that she had more information the room took on a different appearance, her mind casting each object in a new, more sinister light. What, for instance, was in the wardrobe? Clothing? Whips?

"What would possess you to choose to be a slave?" she asked.

"I enjoy it," Ilse responded.

"But you have to do anything he tells you to do?" Jyoti pursued.

"No. We choose to do anything he tells us to do," Sonia replied, "There's a big difference. Slave is really the wrong word. We use it mostly out of habit. Ask Sara how all this got started and you'll understand why we use it. Besides, it sounds more exciting than 'submissive'."

The painkillers from the follow-up examination of earlier didn't help Jyoti in the least with puzzling out this new information. "But why?" she pursued.

"The short answer is that it's just the way we are, Jyoti," Sonia replied.

Even through the fog of drugs Jyoti could see that Sonia wanted her to understand, wanted her to not judge them harshly. "You're not kept against your will?"

Ilse laughed. Surprisingly, the very delicate appearing young woman had an annoying laugh, almost braying to Jyoti's ears. "I pestered him for months and then he made me take all sorts of classes. And I'm the lucky one; there must be six or seven women from the village who want to join the household. No, Doctor, he doesn't keep us against our will."

"Then I'm not going to pass judgment on the way you live your lives," Jyoti declared.

She could see some tension bleeding from Sonia's body and was glad she had said that. Sonia was fast becoming the best friend Jyoti had ever had and she had no desire to hurt her.

"To change the subject, why are you here? What does Mister Thompson get out of this?" she asked.

Ilse glanced over at Sonia. "It's okay," Sonia reassured her, "I'm doing the talking and it's my responsibility if Mastro Robert becomes angry. You just sit there and witness what is said so he can have an unbiased report."

"Jes, sklavinego," Ilse replied.

"I won't tell you everything, Jyoti. There's too much at stake. And the more you know, the harder it will be for you to interact with the other staff. Are you sure you want to know what I will tell you?"

Doctor Vishaal gingerly nodded her head.

"The information the aid agency, particularly the interviewers, gathers is collected and condensed. In addition to being a record of what is happening here, the intelligence information it contains is extracted and sold to various agencies around the world. We also use the information to select people to kill. Like Joseph Kibanga. That was done by Vidu and his men. The government can't touch a lot of these people without starting another civil war. But we can. And we do.

"As for what Mister Thompson gets out of this ... Mostly he's protecting Sara and me from threats that were made. But he's also trying to do some good. He feels he's done a lot of bad and has to make amends. In many ways he's more damaged than any of us."

"How do I keep from talking about this?" Jyoti mused aloud.

Ilse grimaced and Sonia looked a little chagrined.

"It's going to be hard. I suspect you'll need to spend more time with people who are in on the secrets," Sonia replied.

Ilse nudged Sonia. "Tell her the rest," she prompted.

"The rest of what?" Sonia demanded.

"You brought her into the household, Sonia. You didn't ask her if she wanted to be part of it, you just made it impossible for her to not be part of it. So tell her the rest."

"'Into the household?'" Jyoti quoted, "A slave like you?"

Sonia quickly shook her head.

"No, not everyone is a slave. Luke is a member of the household, I think Diyon and Vidu have fallen into that category. It's just ... a position of trust. And the rest of it is ... I'm attracted to you. So maybe I told you more than I should have so that you'd be drawn into the household. Oh fek! Sara is going to have unpleasant words for me," she finished miserably as she realized the truth of what she'd just said.