Cutting Edge pp-6 Page 23

  * * *

  The UpLink convoy made good time for the first twenty miles of its trip out of Port-Gentil. But it was barely past noon when the populous townships beyond the city thinned out across the low, barren countryside and the string of vehicles left the paved coastal road to drudge over rutted sand and laterite.

  At the head of the column, a group of local guides drove one of the unmodified Rovers. Rumbling along after it was a big, squarish 6×6 cargo truck with a loaded-down flatbed trailer. Pete Nimec occupied the front passenger seat of the tricked-out Land Rover in the third slot, DeMarco behind the right-hand steering wheel, a group of four engineers and company officers in back. Then came another armored Rover for the company honchos driven by Wade and Ackerman, followed by a plain vanilla filled with Sword ops and local hired hands. Next were two more 6×6 haulers. Hollinger, Conners, and an assortment of bigwigs and technicians rode seventh and last in the only remaining armored vehicle.

  Soon they were rolling between the southern shore of N’dogo Lagoon and a belt of intermittent jungle and scrubland along the Atlantic Ocean. Sunlight poured down on the trail to throw a blinding white glare off the grainy material spread in uneven heaps beneath their wheels. Nimec could see heat-shimmers over his Rover’s wide steel hood as the feeble output from its air-conditioner vents blew lukewarm on his neck and face. Outside his window, slender smooth-barked cypresses rose straight as lamp poles from small island mounds in the lagoon. Storks and egrets stood in the straw-colored reeds at its fringes, some with their long necks bowed to drink. There was no hint of a breeze. Everything seemed still and torpid in the settled dry-season heat. The only motion Nimec observed was from animals along the lagoon bank darting off at the sound of the diesel engines, but it was always out of the corner of his eye, and always too late to catch more than a blurry glimpse of some startled creature — a sleek body, a whip of a tail — as it splashed beneath the surface.

  Then lagoon and forest receded behind the convoy, and for a time there was just flat drab savanna spreading out and away from the margins of the narrow vehicle trail.

  Sette Cama had been an active British camp in the middle of the nineteenth century. What remained of it now was a loose scattering of wooden huts and bungalows that rose from the sedge on either side of the road, and an overgrown graveyard with the names of long-dead colonists etched into its crumbling headstones. Beyond there would be nothing but more deserted stretches of jungle and savanna for dozens of miles.

  In his Rover up front, the guide radioed back to call a rest stop before continuing on toward the headquarters site. Then he led the vehicles off the trail over a patch of clumped, flattened grass and treaded dirt toward a large A-framed structure Nimec instantly figured to be the village trading post. There was an old pickup parked in front, a stand with some fruits and vegetables under the roofed porch, and a galvanized water bucket and metal dipper next to a slatted bench by the entrance. Out back was a row of three crude outhouses. Except for a Coca-Cola poster whose red background had faded to a pale pink, the signs taped against the dusty windows were handwritten in French. They seemed to have been put up more in defiance of the tyrannical sunlight than for any other reason. A few well-established palms around the building offered it some weak, spotty shade.

  The vehicles stopped, and the locals went to stretch their legs and make small talk with a group of men who came out of the place to meet them, looking glad for a break in their monotony. While they stood and chatted, the members of the UpLink party started to dribble from their vehicles in ones, twos, and threes, a few of them wandering off to investigate the trading post, others just to stand around and smoke, a small number heading with reluctant necessity toward the shabby outhouses. Wearing bush shirts with Sword patches on the shoulders, and baby VVRS guns in sling harnesses against their bodies, some of Nimec’s men got out of their vehicles in a loose deployment around the post. They did their best to stay low profile and at the same time ensure they had control of the area, keeping watch over the execs without getting in anybody’s way. A single Sword op remained in the cab of each of the three cargo haulers.

  Nimec sat beside DeMarco for a minute or two after their backseat companions had wandered off toward the post.

  “I’d better work out some kinks of my own,” DeMarco said, digging his knuckles into his lower back. “Feel like taking a walk?”

  Nimec pulled his head off his back rest, glanced at his watch, and thought about how much he missed Annie. He didn’t feel much like doing anything besides getting his job done.

  “No thanks,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  Nimec gave him a nod.

  “Yeah, Steve, go on,” he said. “Think I’d rather wait in here.”

  * * *

  The convoy was under way again within half an hour, and soon swung heavily inland through the thickening wilds.

  DeMarco glanced over at Nimec as they crawled ahead in their Rover.

  “Okay if I ask you something?” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Could be it’s none of my business.”

  Nimec shrugged.

  “Go ahead, shoot,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”

  DeMarco nodded.

  “I noticed you’ve been checking your watch a lot,” he said, keeping his voice quiet so it couldn’t be heard by the passengers in back. “And I was sort of wondering about it.”

  Nimec sat looking straight out the windshield.

  “Maybe I’m compulsive about the time,” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Or maybe I just want to keep track of our progress. This WristLink contraption has a global positioning system readout.”

  “Maybe.” DeMarco hesitated, then pointed toward the dash console with his chin. “Except we’ve got a big, clear, easy-to-see GPS display right in front of us.”

  Nimec raised his eyebrows but remained quiet a moment.

  “ ‘My Girl,’ ” he said finally.

  “Huh?”

  “That old Temptations song,” Nimec said. “Remember it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I’ve got the watch set to play it on the day I’m supposed to get back to the States.”

  “And see your girl again?”

  “Right.”

  DeMarco smiled a little.

  “Nice,” he said. “That’s nice.”

  Nimec kept looking straight out the windshield.

  “Think so?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nimec cleared his throat.

  “Actually it was her son who programmed it,” he said. “Annie’s got a boy and girl. Chris and Linda.”

  DeMarco nodded. He briefly took his left hand off the steering wheel and wriggled its third finger. He was wearing a simple gold wedding band.

  “I miss my sweetie, too,” he said. “Been married going on twelve years, and it’s tough when the job keeps us apart. Separations are especially hard for the kids. We have three in our own brood… Jake, Alicia, and Kim.”

  Nimec grunted. “Your wife’s with UpLink too, right?”

  “A database administrator,” DeMarco said. “Her name’s Becky. Née Rebecca Lowenstein. My mother was hoping I’d wind up with a nice Italian Catholic girl, keep with the family tradition.” A grin filled his face. “Meanwhile, she’ll be attending my older daughter’s bat mitzvah come next July. Cosí é la vita… that’s life.”

  Nimec chuckled, and leaned back against the seat. The vehicle rumbled slowly along behind the 6×6’s tailgate, forging through clumps of broad-leafed manioc plants that swarmed up on the trail and threatened to close it in.

  “You and Annie have solid plans?” DeMarco said after a while.

  “For right when I get back to the States, you mean…?”

  DeMarco shook his head.

  “I mean, are you two serious?”

  Nimec looked puzzled a moment.

  “We’re not engaged or anything,” he said. “Seems a little too early. But
we’ve been steady for about a year, year and a half.”

  DeMarco shrugged, holding the wheel.

  “How long people have been seeing each other has nothing to do with serious,” he said.

  Nimec raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m not following you.”

  DeMarco shrugged a second time. “I once dated a woman, exclusive, for almost three years,” he said. “Thought she was a great person, got on fine with her, but never considered making things permanent. Just seemed like something was missing between us. Then, bang, Becky comes along, and I know we’re a perfect match. Except I’m still involved with that other gal.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Broke up with her. It’s one of those things that’s never easy, but had to be done. Then I asked Becky out, popped the question a few weeks later. Cut ahead three months, we’re walking down the aisle at that interdenominational UN chapel in New York City, beautiful place. A priest and rabbi co-officiating.”

  “Never had any doubts you might’ve been rushing things?”

  DeMarco gave Nimec a short glance.

  “I’m only human,” he said. “You hear these stats about how over fifty percent of marriages hit the mat. And then there are all the timetables society lays on you. You’re supposed to date for this long, get engaged for that long, wait so many years to have a baby… sure, I had doubts. You don’t, it’s not normal. But worrying about them seemed like a waste. I knew what I knew. And figured it was enough for me to commit.”

  Nimec became quiet in his seat as they rocked along over the deeply rutted trail. He turned his eyes to the display console’s GPS screen.

  “Looks like we’re pretty near base,” he said, motioning at the readout graphics. “All we have to do now is get there without breaking an axle.”

  DeMarco nosed their Rover forward, took a hard, jarring bump.

  “Or our asses,” he said, his hand tight around the wheel.

  * * *

  The sound of engines was close.

  They raised their eyes, their heads covered with the heat and flash retardant hoods now. Although the brush around them trembled slightly, it did not part.

  Saddled high in the bubinga tree, the man with the Sig SG550 sniper rifle was motionless, camouflage netting wrapped around his face, his cheek against the weapon’s nonreflective black stock.

  The sound was growing louder, yes. Closer. But its source had not yet entered their fire zone.

  The ambushers remained hidden, ready for the moment.

  * * *

  “What the hell,” DeMarco said. His foot had slammed down hard on the brake pedal. “You ever ask yourself if the boss finds these green splats on the map just to test us? See what it’ll take to drive us crazy?”

  Nimec produced a thin smile.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I could almost wonder.”

  DeMarco shifted the tranny into PARK. He had a feeling they might be going nowhere for a while.

  They sat looking out their windshield at the cargo hauler’s tailgate, their passengers muttering unhappily in the rear. A moment earlier the convoy’s lead Rover had come to a sudden halt, setting off a chain reaction down the line. This after their trail had taken them through a thicket of snarled, spiny-limbed euphorbia toward a jungle corridor that had promised some blessed shade from the relentless sun.

  The forward driver had exited his vehicle, gone around to the truck behind him, and then paused to talk with some other locals who’d hopped from its cab — the entire team scanning the trail up ahead, shielding their eyes from the midday brightness with their hands. Now he separated from them, approached the Rover, and made a quick winding gesture with his finger.

  DeMarco lowered the automatic window, catching a blast of hot air in his face.

  “C’est un arbre qui tombe,” the driver said to him, looking dismayed. A man named Loren with angular features and a deep umber complexion, he was an excellent local guide who had already made the trek out to UpLink’s Sette Cama base a bunch of times.

  “Ce mal?” DeMarco asked.

  One of the execs riding in back leaned forward in his seat, trying to make out the guide’s response, unable to understand his French.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “We’ve got some downed trees across the trail,” DeMarco replied. “Our guide says these things happen sometimes. A tree rots, goes over, hits another, and that one crashes into another.”

  The exec frowned, but sat back to relay the news to his companions.

  “How big a holdup can we expect?” Nimec said to DeMarco.

  DeMarco held up a finger, had another brief exchange with the guide in French, then shrugged.

  “Depends,” he replied after a moment. “There can be two, three, or a dozen trees that need clearing. Loren, a couple guys from his Rover, and the truckers are going have a closer look at the fall, and he wants us to check it out with them so we know the score. He says it doesn’t seem too bad from here. If a few of us pitch in to help, we should be able to move soon.”

  Nimec gazed out in front of him but was unable to see past the 6×6’s broad rear end. After a second he turned back to DeMarco.

  “Tell Loren I’ll be right with him,” he said.

  DeMarco nodded. “Guess I’d may as well tag along.”

  “No,” Nimec said. “You sit tight.”

  DeMarco looked at him.

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Like I told you before, nobody ever gets hurt by being careful.” Nimec pushed his molded radio earplug into place and adjusted the lavalier mike on his collar. He thought a moment and then resumed in a hushed tone, “Call back for some of our boys to get out of their Rovers and keep their eyes open to what’s around us. But I want them sticking close… nobody off the trail. At least one man should stay in every vehicle with the execs.”

  DeMarco regarded him. The four company honchos aboard their Rovers were talking among themselves in back.

  “You sure you don’t smell trouble?” he said, his voice also too low for them to overhear now.

  Nimec shrugged.

  “Not so far,” he said.

  Then he shouldered open the door to exit the vehicle.

  * * *

  Weapons of war are by obvious definition intended to have ugly effects.

  Thermobarics — a military nomenclature for devices producing intense heat-pressure bursts — are uglier than most.

  Whether dropped by an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet or fired from a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, a thermobaric warhead will cause vastly more sustained and extensive destruction to its target than a conventional explosive munition. There are numerous designs floating about the open and black international markets, many battle tested, some under development, their payload formulas and delivery systems guarded with varying degrees of secrecy. In its basic configuration a fuel-air warhead has three separate compartments, two with high explosive charges, a third containing an incendiary fluid, gaseous, or particulate mixture. Though Russian arms builders will not confirm it, the RPO-Bumblebee warhead’s flammable mix is a volatile combination of petroleum-derived fuels such as ethylene or propylene oxide, and tetranitromethane-a liquid relative of PETN, the combustible ingredient used in many plastic explosives.

  As the primary HE charge is air detonated, the incendiary compartment bursts open like a metal eggshell to scatter its contents over a wide area. A second explosive charge then ignites the dispersed aerosol cloud to produce a tremendous churning fireball that can reach a temperature of between forty-five and fifty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit, burning away the oxygen at its center, a vacuum filled in a fraction of a second by a rush of pressurized air approaching 430 pounds per square inch — almost thirty times that which is normally exerted on an object or human body at sea level. Anyone exposed to its full force will be at once crushed to something less than a pulp, if not entirely vaporized. As the blast wave races outward, many at the nearest periphery of the detonati
on will die of suffocation, the breath sucked from their collapsing lungs. The casualties may also suffer extensive internal injuries such as venous and arterial embolisms, organ hemorrhages, and actual severing of bodily organs from the flesh and muscle tissues that hold them in place, including having their eyes torn from their sockets.

  Pete Nimec had gotten only one leg out of the Rover when the RPO-A warhead erupted at the head of the convoy, and along with his fast reflexes, that was probably what saved his life.

  There was a loud eruption from the mass of trees up ahead of him, then a roaring, rushing chute of heat and flame. The concussion struck the Rover’s partially open door, slamming it up against him and throwing him back into his seat with his fingers still clutching its handle. He had a chance to glimpse the vehicle Loren had exited just moments before bounce several feet off the ground, then drop back down on its left flank, crumpled and blazing, its windows blown out, completely disintegrated by the blast.

  Nimec had seen enough action in his day to realize the six men still inside it would have been killed instantly. Almost without conscious thought about how to save himself, without time to think, he dove behind the Land Rover’s open passenger door, knelt behind its level VI armor as the blast wave swept over the 6×6, jolting it backward into the Rover’s ram bumpers. Debris flew in every direction. Some of it rained down heavily on Nimec. Some drifted in the air around him, burning around him. There were scraps of clothing, foliage, seat covers, lord knew what else. Nimec heard screams in the sucking, broiling wind — from the truckers who’d gotten out of the hauler’s cab, from the panicked executives inside the Rover, all their terrible cries intermingled. And DeMarco, shouting at him across the front seat, “Chief, chief, can you hear me, chief are you okay…?”

  Breathless, dazed, Nimec couldn’t answer at first. His left eye stung, something dripping into it, blurring it. The warm wetness streamed down his face. He wiped the back of his hand across his brow and it came away slick and red.

  Nimec blinked twice to clear his vision, then found himself almost wishing he could have remained blind to the scene before him. The truckers had been immolated. One of them lay still on the ground, his clothes burned away, his charred body consumed with fire. Near him the scattered remains of another man, or perhaps more than a single man, were also ablaze.