Cloudburst

Fifteen PENANCE

He was not of Berber descent, which meant he had spent most of his early life in or near the city. The vast openness of the desert was alien then. He had come to appreciate it later as commander of the 3rd. Its location, far enough from Benghazi to render the city lights’ glow an afterthought, made it an ideal spot to stargaze. Stars cast a light all their own on moonless nights, of which this night was not one. There was a small sliver of a crescent high in the sky. It would begin to fade soon. Muhadesh looked to the east. No trace of the coming day was yet visible.

It was quiet and cool. The engine of the jeep was off and losing warmth. Muhadesh felt the little remaining on his butt as he leaned against the hood. He wore his blousy dress greens and the beloved mottled-pattern commando parka. At his side was the World War II vintage Makarov from al-Dir.

“My friend, what would you think of me?” He asked the sky. Al-Dir, the warrior patriot, would shoot him, Muhadesh knew. “You have not done what I have. You killed our enemies.” I killed our people, he added silently, afraid that his friend might somehow appear in the darkness.

The Americans had given him a way to relieve his guilt, to exorcise the ghosts that haunted him, or so he thought. He had no particular love for the Americans, but he did love his homeland. Why, then, had he betrayed it? To avenge those I have murdered, he would answer, knowing there was a more correct response. He had to hide his guilt. Masking his own culpability was essential. I am alive. So many had died because he had chosen life for himself. I could have said no. Yes, he had saved lives with his treachery, but he wondered if the number saved was not hopelessly outweighed by those who had perished at his own hands, and those slaughtered by his students. I am alive, while they are damned to eternal sleep.

Muhadesh walked away from the vehicle. He faced north. The ocean was far away, yet he felt himself drowning where he stood. Again the quiet surrounded him, driving away his thoughts, and then he heard it: faint, still, and far away. It was an unmistakable sound. He slid the right side of his parka back.

It was a world of noise in the blackened cabin. Both side doors of the SH-60 Oceanhawk were fully open, with camo-clad Marines dangling their legs out, their M-16s pointing downward into the darkness. The night-vision goggles on their eight faces looked like stubby binoculars pasted on welding goggles. Each of the two pilots wore them also, as did Dick Logan.

“Pickup in two minutes,” the pilot announced, though he didn’t know exactly who he was picking up — a friendly, he had been told. He was flying at fifty feet in his hastily painted helicopter — he liked the “mean” look of its squat, black body — trying to pick out a man-size object, which was supposed to be there, but might not. He had flown special ops in the Gulf War, over similar terrain, and was familiar with the reality that “packages” weren’t always where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there.

“FLIR is showin’ nothin’,” the right-seater said. The Forward Looking Infrared sensor would pick up any ambient heat, such as that generated by a man’s body, on a narrow track out a few hundred meters to the helicopter’s front.

“Right. Mister, is this guy supposed to signal us, or what?”

“That’s not in the plan,” Logan answered honestly. To either side of him the eight jarheads swept their areas of observation.

They were coming. Muhadesh was not certain until that moment. The pickup procedure had been laid out years before with safety and rapidity in mind, but there was no guarantee. He had ensured that they would come, however. The final answers were tucked away securely in his breast pocket with the other note — a request.

The whop whop of the approaching helicopter now assured him. No longer would he fear tomorrow, or the killing. He breathed deeply. The desert air tasted sweet and dry. His soul would be safe. That was his last concern, that his body not be desecrated by his vengeful countrymen.

Muhadesh undid the buckled holster cover and brought the Makarov up close to his ear. The sound was close now, off to his left. He half expected to feel the rotor wash.

“Thank you, al-Dir,” he said aloud, no longer afraid of today, or tomorrow, but still unaware that his last conscious act was motivated by the fear that was, truly, his soul’s undoing.

“There!” a bulky Marine shouted, pointing with his rifle and reaching behind with his free hand to tap Logan.

“Watcha got, Sergeant?” Logan leaned over against his restraints and pulled one earphone free.

“Over there, maybe three hundred yards. Looked like a muzzle flash.”

“Roger.” Logan patted the flak-jacketed soldier. “Major, one of the troops saw what may be a muzzle flash to starboard. Three hundred yards off.”

“Roger.” The Oceanhawk banked severely to the right, making the landlubber CIA officer grab for a handhold. He was jealous of the Recon Marines who swung easily with the roll of the helicopter.

The FLIR picked it up immediately. ‘Two sources, Maj. Come left.” The co-pilot adjusted the sensitivity of the FLIR. “One small, man-sized. The other’s a truck or something, no doubt.”

There would be no mistakes here. “Let’s sweep the area.” The pilot pulled back on the collective and brought the nose down, giving the SH-60 altitude and speed. He wanted to circle the area of the heat sources to make certain there were no surprises awaiting them. After two full sweeps the pilot brought the nose back around toward the sources.

“Dead ahead.” The co-pilot now had a better vantage point with the FLIR. Altitude gave a higher aspect to the scene, making the picture more obvious, and more ominous. “Just the two sources, but I don’t like it. See that one.” His finger pointed to a ghostly green spot of light on the screen.

The pilot didn’t like it either. “Lieutenant?”

In the cabin the Marine commander leaned farther in to escape the noise of the downwash. He pushed the boom mike almost into his mouth. “Go ahead!”

“We’re showing two sources: one man, looks prone, and a vehicle about ten yards beyond him. The area looks clean. I’m gonna set you down fifty yards this side of the guy. Roger?”

“Roger.” The lieutenant tapped the man to his left on the helmet, the sequence continuing around the cabin until all the Marines were alerted.

Logan felt hopelessly under armed with his seven-shot .45, but it would have to do. Really, he hoped it wouldn’t need to.

Suddenly everything slowed. The helicopter pitched backward and the main wheels touched the desert floor. A second later the cabin was empty, except for Logan, who felt very exposed to the night streaming in through both doors. He pulled the slide back on his Colt. At least it made him feel safer.

The thud scared the shit out of him. Everything looked surreal through the goggles. The Marines were back, six of them still around the edge, their legs hanging out as before, and two, including the lieutenant, were in the center over…a body? The helicopter threw everyone back as it rose and moved forward, banking hard to the right until it was heading due north.

“Seal it up,” the lieutenant ordered. His men followed it smartly, bringing their bodies fully into the helo and closing the windowless doors on each side. One slid a heavy fabric curtain closed between the cabin and the cockpit. “Glasses off. Lights.”

Where before there had been a world of dancing green specters, there was now the harshly lit tomb of the Oceanhawk’s interior. The floor jumped with the turbulence of the low-altitude flight, bouncing the Marines against the walls. Some still wore their Kevlar helmets, and all looked quite emotionless in their painted faces. Young white eyes stared at the form in the center of the cabin.

Logan safed his weapon. One of the arms had fallen to the floor from where it lay against the chest, and came to rest on Logan’s boot. There was blood on the arm, caked with sand, and there was blood all over the floor beneath the right side of the head. The face — the eyes were lifeless — stared toward him, and the left side of the head seemed caved in. He knelt next to the man, straddling one arm. Logan had never seen a dead person so close.

“Looks like he popped himself, mister,” the lieutenant commented. “In the right, out the left.” He noticed the civilian’s discomfort. “Your guy made an exit, that’s for sure.”

Why? Logan thought silently. DONNER had made such a damn fuss about ensuring the pickup. Didn’t he want to get out? Logan shook his head as he checked the man for the last message. We pushed him. His pockets were empty, as was the holster at his side, except for one. He pulled the three pieces of paper out, unfolding the wrong one first. It didn’t speak to the questions his superiors wanted answered, but it did, at least partly, answer Logan’s.

“Well,” Logan said aloud, though it was drowned out by the turbine noise, “you win, DONNER.”

He opened the other papers. Their messages, to his mind, were secondary to what he had just read, but still important. The single-spaced typewritten pages were in Italian, both DONNER’s and Logan’s second language. Translating took a moment. Logan had a sense of what the whole picture was from the discussions with his bosses back at Langley; these messages completed the picture and scared him. The little he knew about nuclear physics was enough. A goddamn butcher would shit his pants.

“Major?”

“Go ahead, Mr. Logan.”

“How long to the Vinson?” This had to get to Langley fast.

After a pause: “Thirty minutes. Tops.”

Logan put the papers in his leg pocket. He could wait half an hour, but could the world? It was an overly grandiose question, he decided, one that DONNER had obviously reasoned and answered for himself. Had the man figured it all out? Probably not; the note pointed in that direction.

There could have been a great conversation when DONNER came out. Logan had looked forward to that. Case officers didn’t usually get that luxury. Of course he might have been allowed to spend some time with him at a later date. That wouldn’t have been good enough, though, and now it mattered not at all.

No one would ever know what Muhadesh Algar had made himself live through, least of all himself. Logan only knew that one life was over for the man known as DONNER. Such a benign code name for the man. He had lived to the extreme while trying to absolve his guilt, though no one would know that either. In the end only one person would feel some sense of relief from a life destined to end in futility, and that relief itself would somehow seem less than absolute considering the sacrifice.