Arisen : Genesis (3 page)

Zack had time to appreciate this, as well as generally to ruminate, as the vehicle stopped bouncing on what passed for roads in Hargeisa, and got out onto one of the World Bank-financed inter-city roads, the ones with pavement. Though this fact also ramped his anxiety back up, as it meant he was more rapidly crossing the distance between the safehouse and the place where he and his head might part ways.

Zack remembered that, despite his earlier bravado, he was still only an analyst – not an operative, never mind a operator (or shooter). And he had certainly never been kidnapped before. So, the longer he had to let his mind run, the more scared he got. On the other hand, he was in some ways prepared for this – he had seen a lot of very sketchy shit go down, much of it ending badly and bloodily.

This was what came from
fourteen
nearly consecutive deployments to the region.

Yes, he’d seen an enormous amount of madness in the Horn, mostly while attached to CJTF-HOA – Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. But it went back further than that. To appreciate Zack’s outlook, and the full horror of his situation, one had to understand how hard he had worked, and for how many years, simply to get the hell out of there. And how desperately he had needed to get away. As well as the kind of man he once was, and had once wanted to be.

But had now become.

Child of the Horn

Zack was a child of colonial Africa – in the most literal sense.

His mother had been an English public-school girl – well-spoken, perfectly turned out, hardy, proud, self-reliant, equally at home on a show horse or a working farm animal. His father had been a Swahili-speaking Kikiyu, a legacy of the Mau Mau Uprising – privileged, self-made, at least as smart and proud as his mother.

And at least as impossible.

His parents were both farmers, in love with the lush central uplands of Kenya – and desperately in love with each other. This love had entailed costs for them both. Zack never met any of his grandparents, for reasons that might be guessed.

His family was isolated when he was a boy – looked down upon by the British and Irish settlers of the “White Highlands,” and distrusted by the Kikuyu, the Masai, and the other black Africans. Zack never spoke English, Kikiyu,
or
Swahili quite right. He also never looked right, and never really felt at home, even when he was at home – in the three-story baronial house that anchored their 2,400 hectares of farmland.

So he withdrew, studied obsessively, and applied only to universities in the U.S. and UK. He was accepted to Princeton (at age 16), packed his bags – and prepared never to look back.

Even introducing himself to his classmates in New Jersey had been perilous. It revealed, in very few syllables, that he was a child of two worlds, and a bastard in both. His last name was “Altringham” – impossible even to pronounce without sounding like an English aristocrat. But his first name was “Zakwani.” Taken together, they pretty much said it all.

He chose to go by Zack, also for reasons easy to imagine.

Having finally escaped Africa, he committed himself to
never
going back. But, then, in his last year at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Twin Towers came down – just 55 miles up the Jersey Turnpike. He could almost hear them hit; and he could definitely feel them. And, with that, everything changed – including his sense of obligation to the country that had offered him escape and a new life.

A few months later, he visited the CIA table at a campus jobs fair. And, giving the matter way less critical thought than it probably deserved, he let himself be recruited. And, to his unfeigned but no-less-ridiculous surprise, it was about five seconds after his Junior Officer Training at the Farm that he was posted straight to Djibouti.

Right back to the Horn of Africa
.

With his language and cultural skills, and with the shadow wars against a-Q and other Islamist militias ramping up in East Africa, there was never any possibility of any other outcome for him. In later years, when he reflected on it, he could only think that on some level he must have wanted this. Nothing that life-altering, not to mention ironic, could happen as the result of a mere oversight.

In eighteen years of service to the United States of America, and to the Agency, Zack had not known two consecutive months of work
anywhere but there
.

Also, as he came slowly to understand, lying face down in the back of that truck, all of that meant that today was probably inevitable.

* * *

Gunfire.

Small arms, faint and windblown at first. Then louder, closing the distance, and heavier, too.

Then firing from inside the truck – 7.62 at full auto, one AK, then two. That dull, throaty, hammering report that Zack knew too well – but which he had never heard from such close quarters, never mind in an enclosed space. It overloaded the air inside, beating him like a wave, even as the heavy shell casings poured down around him, banging on the floor of the truck – or landing on him and burning his flesh. He twisted and writhed, his eyes widening pointlessly in the darkness beneath the hood.

Amidst the firing, there came a wet meaty sound, like a watermelon hitting the pavement, and then a shout, and the truck veered to the left, leaving the road – and then rotated around on its long axis, the pull of gravity pivoting ninety degrees as Zack’s body slammed against the unyielding body panel beside him, a hundred pieces of crap coming loose and taking flight. The truck skidded on its side for another few seconds, the scraping and whooshing sounds filling the cabin and Zack’s sensory-deprived world.

And then silence, for exactly two beats.

Then more shouting, then screaming, then more gunfire, 5.56 this time, from very close, point-blank range. Then a last couple of empty brass casings tinkled dully on the ground. And a single word, crisp, relaxed, and perfectly in control.

“Clear.”

Something blotted out the sunlight in front of him, then dexterous hands pulled his hood off. It was Dugan, his chiseled, stubbled jaw stuck right in Zack’s face. He rotated Zack by the ears, checking his pupils. “You okay, man?”

Zack blinked heavily. “Yeah, not bad. What’s up with you guys?”

At this, Dugan cracked a smile. “Didn’t much feel like waiting for the QRF.” Drawing his MPK Titanium knife from its boot holster, he unbound Zack with two quick slices, then hauled him out of the truck and to his feet. Upright now, and outside, Zack could see that the jihadi truck was over on its side in a shallow culvert. Bright red blood covered much of its interior, in particular the windscreen.

Parked up a few feet away was the team’s armored, tricked-out, souped-up Chevy Tahoe, the engine running smoothly. Maximum Bob stood behind the engine block, his assault rifle pointed across the hood. Zack worked out from all this that these two had simply hopped in it and hauled ass up the road after him – the minute they worked out what had happened. He choked up slightly to think that these two felt so protective over him.

I guess I must be doing something right around here…

“Thanks, guys,” he said.

“No problem, Zack. Let’s roll.”

Everyone on that roadside knew that al-Shabaab, like most Islamist fighters, always came back to gather their dead, in order to perform the proper burial rites. Somewhere, probably not very far away, there were three more truckloads of these guys.

And they would soon be here.

Dugan started to shove Zack into the Tahoe, but there was a lot of blood on him, from the dead guys in the truck, and Zack decided that, given current events, he didn’t want it there. He decided to risk the thirty seconds he needed to strip down to his skivvies and toss the clothes. He then climbed in the back of the Tahoe and started rummaging through the supplies in back for new fatigues. And a new weapon.

And hand sanitizer.

By the time he was dressed and buckled in, they were most of the way back to the safehouse, Bob driving 110mph as a standard defensive maneuver. Zack never understood that one – even in a war zone, even in IED Alley, you were more likely to die in a car crash than an ambush. He checked his watch. It was exactly 19 minutes since he had leapt down those back stairs.

You can keep your CAG and DEVGRU
, he though to himself, sinking back into the soft leather of the truck seat. If you asked Zack, the Agency had the best shooters and tactical guys
anywhere
. Half of the guys in their Special Activities Division (the Agency’s paramilitaries) came from JSOC, most of the rest from vanilla SEAL teams and Army Special Forces. And by the time they got to the Company, they generally had an entire career’s worth of operational experience, not to mention several million dollars worth of training. Plus they’d survived it all. And on top of that, they were volunteering to go again!

Zack paused to wonder where these two hard men had been when he was in grad school at Princeton. Probably not New Jersey.

Finally, the Tahoe slipped into the narrow streets of north Hargeisa, then peeled around the side of the safehouse, dust billowing. They drove under the covered awning, all piled out, and closed and locked the goddamned gate. Some part of Zack was disappointed, or at least surprised, not to have been a human target marker for smart bombs in that al-Shabaab stronghold.

Get ’em tomorrow
, he thought.

For today, he would live on.

Back from the Dead

It was only after they got back that Zack remembered his tablet, the one the a-S guys had taken off him.
Oh, well, fuck it
, he thought. It was probably shattered from the crash, or covered in blood, or both. And he had more where that came from. Later, when he had time, he could get on the net and see if it was still running; and, if so, remotely wipe it.

When he stuck his head back in the TOC, Baxter looked at him like he was back from the dead. Baxter’s cropped, sandy, curly hair, his square head, oval-framed glasses, and absurdly youthful features all made Zack feel like he’d just warped back in to the freshman dorm. Baxter was also effortlessly lean and lanky in that annoying twenty-three-year-old way.

Give it time…
Zack thought.

“JSOC team extract?” he asked

“Yes,” Baxter said, looking up at him. “Back to CLUVille.” That was the nickname for the residential area of Camp Lemonnier in nearby Djibouti – endless rows of Containerized Living Units. Lemonnier was the headquarters of CJTF-HOA, as well as of the entire U.S. Africa Command. In addition to hosting humanitarian and demining efforts, Lemonnier served as the home planet for virtually all CT, drone, and shadow-war activities for the entire region.

“JSOC want a formal debrief on the busted op?”

“Not at this time. I gave them the high-level. They said they’ll let us know, when and as.”

Zack laughed once, not even sure whether he was amused by this. It was like that more often than anyone would guess.

“What else?”

“Nothing. The a-S Victors are being tracked, persistent eye-in-the-sky. I went ahead and briefed the desks at Langley, plus Foggy Bottom. They’re considering just doing a drone strike, while we’ve got eyes on. Lock in the gains, instead of going for live captures.”

Zack nodded. “Makes sense. I’m going to shower.” He mustered up a weary smile, then started to withdraw.

“I saw it,” Baxter said, drawing him up short.

“…It?”

“I didn’t see you get taken. Though we do have that on one of the feeds. But I saw Dugan and Bob take down the truck you were in. I saw them get you back.” He was still looking at Zack at a slight angle, like he was trying to work out if he was really alive.

Or if I’m maybe just the zombie version of me
, Zack thought. He also remembered that Baxter had been a Georgetown man. Zack found that Baxter could be, alternately, and seemingly contradictorily, a bit of a policy geek – and a bit of a frat boy. Zack considered him young and nearly totally clueless… but also a really good sort. That breed of young person attracted to a career in the intelligence services, or military or law enforcement. Lives of service.

Professional good guys.

Zack smiled again, more genuinely now. “All’s well that doesn’t end with a video of my ass on a jihadi web forum.”

The two exchanged solemn nods.

It’s all good.

* * *

In the hallway, Zack ran into the SEALs, who were just back from checking the perimeter, and now heading to their team room to kit down.

“You should let me look you over,” Maximum Bob said. Like most experienced spec-ops guys, he was trained up the paramedic level.

“I’m totally fine.”

“I’ve heard guys with six bullet holes in them say exactly that.”

Zack laughed. “Okay. But let me get myself squared away and caught up first.” He considered thanking the two men again. But he knew they didn’t need it. Instead, he just nodded and carried on to the bathroom, got a whole bunch of hot water flowing, and luxuriated in the delicious feeling of being out of danger.

Like air and sex, safety was one of those things you only really appreciated after it was taken away for a while. Zack believed that was why a lot of guys did this job, or why they did it for so long. The rush, then the release. It wasn’t great for one’s long-term survival prospects. Then again, we don’t want what’s good for us.

We want what we want.

Dugan and Maximum Bob were cases in point – extremely smart guys who nonetheless took absurd risks for decades on end. As Zack lathered up, he thought about the two men who had raced out into danger, to literally pull his ass out of the fire today.

Maximum Bob was maximal in both body and brain. He went six-five, with hands like catcher’s mitts, arms like legs, and short, spiky blond hair – too short for his huge head. He’d originally spent two years in the fleet, swabbing decks and brawling, before going out to BUD/S, the notoriously brutal 28-week selection course for SEALs. It turned out his keen mind had been an underutilized resource, due probably to him looking like a professional wrestler, and he quickly became a go-to guy, and soon platoon chief, in SEAL Team Ten. He completed a half-dozen tours of Afghanistan and HOA before getting the nod to try out for Team Six (aka DEVGRU). Smart, aggressive, and fast for a man of any size, he sailed in and never looked back.