The Ares Decision

7

Lt. Craig Rivera dropped his empty rifle and yanked a pistol from the holster on his hip, concentrating on not letting his pace slow even a fraction. A jumble of loose rock beneath the carpet of vines nearly tripped him, and he dared a quick glance over his shoulder as he regained his balance. There were still four of them and they were gaining fast. The young girl next to him had been keeping up out of sheer terror but was now starting to fall behind, fatigue finally trumping adrenaline.

He put a round into the chest of a man in a blood-soaked Manchester United shirt and scooped up the exhausted girl, trying to coax a little more speed from his cramping legs.

The incomprehensible truth, though, was that the people chasing him were faster than he was on his best day. And with the added weight of the girl, it was now a matter of seconds before they ran him down. Rivera angled right into a stand of bushes with leaves the size of elephant ears, hoping to confuse his pursuers as they plummeted in after him.

The wet vegetation slapped painfully at his face, obscuring his vision and throwing off his equilibrium as the girl began to squeal and squirm. They were no more than a few paces behind. He wasn’t going to make it.

Rivera felt a hand claw the back of his neck, and then the gloom of the rain forest suddenly gave way to blinding sunlight. The sound of his footfalls and those of the people behind him went silent, and he was tumbling through the air, his mind trying to make sense of a spinning universe — the red and brown of the people falling with him, the green of the jungle, the blue of the sky.

The pain of the impact surprised him. Based on the length of the fall, he’d expected to die instantly. Muddy water swirled around him as he fought to keep hold of the girl and figure out which way was up.

The burning in his lungs started quickly, but he ignored it as long as he dared, waiting until he was in danger of losing consciousness before surfacing. Only one of his pursuers was visible, thrashing wildly, unable to keep his head above the churning river. The others seemed to have already gone down for the last time.

Rivera looked up at the sixty-foot cliff he’d fallen from, focusing on the people standing at its edge. Their eyes were locked on him, but they seemed unsure what to do.

He turned to face the direction the water was taking him, adjusting his grip on the motionless girl to get a more solid hold. When her head hit his chest, though, he saw the unnatural angle of her neck beneath the chain still secured there, and he reluctantly let her body drift away.

Above, the Africans were beginning to track him, following along the top of the cliff, trying to find a way down. He swam for the opposite shore, but the current was too strong, funneling him and all the other debris to the river’s center.

A submerged tree trunk hit him hard from behind, flipping him forward and pulling him under. He tried to kick away from it but found that his right leg was useless. Water filled his mouth and forced itself into his lungs as he struggled to get back to the surface.

He could see the light of the sun, he could imagine its warmth, but the more he fought the more distant it seemed to become. He remembered the lake that he and his family used to go to when he was young, and suddenly he was there swimming with his brothers. He was so tired. Wasn’t it time to rest yet?

Charles Sembutu watched impassively as Admiral Kaye barked orders at the women manning the computer stations. Three of the video feeds had gone black, and another was permanently fixed on the sky. The fifth showed a motionless Caucasian hand holding a knife buried in the throat of a young boy.

“Can we get anything on Rivera?” Kaye said, though the answer was obvious.

“Radio’s dead, sir. Along with the video feed.”

He leaned over one of the women’s chairs. “Replay the last thing we have from his camera. Slow it down this time.”

She brought the monitor assigned to Rivera back to life and they watched leaves colliding with the lens, a flash of the people chasing him, and then the fall.

“Sir, that looks like water at the bottom of the ravine, and our satellite photos confirm that there’s a river cutting east to west close to where the skirmish started. He could still be alive. Can I give the extraction team his last known coordinates?”

Kaye glanced back and Sembutu met his eye, making sure to hide his anger. Normally, when someone failed him, that person’s life became very short and very unpleasant. No such remedies were available when the Americans were involved.

It had been a perfect scenario for him — let the foreigners get rid of a man the world had come to despise and then take credit for it. In one brief moment he would neutralize the growing threat to his own power and make himself a hero to the rural population taking the brunt of Bahame’s attacks.

But the Americans had botched the operation as he had suspected they would. For all their skill, first world soldiers were too mired in tradition and meaningless moral codes to operate effectively in Africa.

He now had no choice but to accept the partnership the Iranians had offered. It was a dangerous gamble, but he was quickly running out of options. Bahame’s army continued to creep south, trying to get into a position that would allow a full-scale assault on Uganda’s capital. Something had to be done.

But it had to be done with the utmost care. If the Americans discovered the Iranians’ plot and his involvement in it, there was little doubt that their retaliation would decimate his country and leave him dead or on the run.

Kaye took a hesitant step back, demonstrating his weakness through his concern for a single, inconsequential soldier.

“No,” the admiral said. “Tell the extraction team to stand by at the rendezvous point.”

“But, sir, the fall. He’s probably—”

“You heard me, Lieutenant. We’ll wait seventy-two hours. After that, we’re pulling the plug.”