Mission Liberty (18 page)

“I’m sorry,” DeLuca said in the car, a beat-up Toyota Cressida they’d rented at the hotel. “America should have done something.”

“That is the popular conception in Africa, you know,” Asabo said. “That during the civil war in Rwanda, the Americans were
watching the whole thing on television from their satellites. And knew what the
interahamwe
was doing, from the beginning. I’ve heard some say it was shown every night on popular American television. I have told people
that was not true, that only the government had access to the pictures. It was an intelligence failure.”

“I think ‘intelligence failure’ is my favorite new euphemism,” DeLuca said. “Half the things that go wrong aren’t ‘intelligence
failures’—they’re stupidity successes. Often spectacular stupidity successes, like Rwanda.”

“How would you explain it?” Asabo said.

“I’m not sure I can,” DeLuca said. “I was a Boston police officer in 1994. But I will tell you one thing. The military has
always placed too much value on satellite intelligence and not enough on human intel. Look at Gulf One, goddamn Norman Schwarzkopf
with his goddamn slide shows every night, showing nose-cone footage from smart bomb cameras of cars scurrying across a bridge
and laughing and saying, ‘There goes the luckiest man in Iraq.’ He was so proud of the technology that he made the war look
like a big video game. Anyone with any brains knew the footage of bombs dropping on actual people got left on the editing
room floor. The people without any brains, who number more than a few, unfortunately, got the idea that we’re omnipotent and
we can see where we want to see and go where we want to go, any time we want, without consequences. I swear to God, 9/11 wouldn’t
have happened if Al Qaeda didn’t think we were taunting them, saying, ‘We can hit you but you can’t hit us.’ As you may have
noticed from Iraqi Freedom, we don’t do that anymore. We don’t run our intel in PowerPoint shows on national television.”

“Did you have pictures?” Asabo said. “Of Rwanda?”

“I’m not sure,” DeLuca said. “Some, I think. I don’t know. I wouldn’t say we were blind. Just confused. And maybe numb. I
met Iraqis who thought America watches the whole world, 24/7. And that we know what’s going on.”

Hoolie laughed at the thought.

“Half of North Korea’s military establishment works deep underground,” DeLuca continued, “because they think we’re watching
them. After Gulf One, if you lived near Canaveral or Vandenberg or Greely, you would have seen launch platform after launch
platform throwing up milsats. You wouldn’t have known what it was, but you would have seen a lot of rocket plumes. Before
Gulf Two, I think it was four or five launches a month, just getting ready to invade Iraq with all our birds up and running.
We still couldn’t find anybody. That’s why I was there. And for that matter, that’s why I’m here—that’s what you’re part of.
Team Red was formed to put a new emphasis on gathering human intelligence.”

“The whole WMD thing in Iraq was an intelligence failure,” Hoolie said. “Maybe I should say a stupidity success. We didn’t
have enough human intelligence. We were too reliant on satellite imagery.”

“Satellites are fine,” DeLuca said, “if you know where to point them, and when, and what to look for, and how to follow up.
If you don’t, all they do is make you overconfident.”

As he spoke, he downloaded and examined the falcon view of the Park Motel, which was now three kilometers ahead of them. He
saw a large pond and a set of buildings, but zooming in and out, he saw no sign of military vehicles or unusual activities.
He looked at his watch. They weren’t early. Was the letter he’d received a hoax? Or was he driving into a trap? If so, where
was the trap?

A large sign marked the entrance, reading,
WELCOME TO THE PARK MOTEL, LIGER’S FINEST RESORT SPA. EASY ACCESS TO TSOTHO NATIONAL PARK. AIR-CONDITIONING. IN ROOM TELEVISION.
HBO.

“Good thing the TVs are in the rooms,” Hoolie said. “I hate it when you have to look out the window to watch TV.”

The proprietor greeted their arrival personally. The only other car in the circular drive beneath the palm trees was a blue
Honda Civic with the motel’s name painted on the door. His name, he said, was Mohammed Ali, and he was smiling from ear to
ear, shaking hands, searching with his eyes to see if there was any luggage to carry.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” he said, “do come inside. I’m afraid I’m a bit short-staffed today because business has been
slow, so I’ve sent some people home, but I can show you to your rooms myself…”

“Thank you,” DeLuca said, “but we don’t need rooms— we’re just here for a meeting. Is there somewhere we could wait?”

“Yes yes yes,” Mohammed said, “please follow me, you can wait in the bar.”

The hotel was one large central building and a line of smaller cottages following the shoreline of a five-acre pond, DeLuca
estimated, the buildings all painted a bright pink with blue trim. The shore was lined with trees festooned with the nests
of bowerbirds, woven grass globes about the size of small cantaloupes, dangling from the trees like Christmas ornaments. Bright
yellow and orange birds flitted about, as did blue kingfishers and green hummingbirds, darting amidst the flowering bushes
that Ali had used to landscape the property. The bar was a large open-air thatch-roofed structure built on pylons about thirty
yards from shore, connected to land by a wooden bridge that reached out and then ran parallel to the shore before connecting
to the bar. There was a large monkey cage in one corner of the bar, where four colobus monkeys cavorted, chattering loudly
and grimacing and reaching through the bars for handouts.

“Don’t get too close,” Ali said. “They will settle down in a minute. My sons named them John, Paul, George, and Ringo. I will
go start the generator. If you would like tea or limone or whatever you will have, please help yourself. There is beer, too,
and I would bring it to you myself but as a Muslim, I do not touch alcohol, and my barman is not here, so help yourself and
you will pay me later. Please.”

He crossed the bridge and disappeared into the main building. The late afternoon sun moved westward across an azure sky. DeLuca
heard birds chirping and warbling, insects buzzing, the wind activating a set of gentle chimes that hung beside the monkeys’
cage, and from the kitchen, the faint pulse of a radio playing reggae music. With a little imagination, it was almost possible
to pretend they weren’t in the middle of a civil war.

Hoolie read the note printed on the back of the menu.

“It says here this place started as a fish farm. The pond is stocked with tilapia. When the birds came and made nests, the
guy figured it would make a nice place for a motel. The bread on the table is for us to feed the fish. Toss a piece in and
see what happens.”

DeLuca picked up a dried roll that was probably a few days old and cast it onto the water. Within seconds, the roll was being
pecked apart by a swarming school of small reddish gray fish, roiling the water and churning the surface white.

“Well that’s pretty cool,” he said. “Jesus Christ!”

He nearly jumped from his chair as a pair of massive jaws emerged from the water and snapped loudly down with a splash into
the middle of the school of swarming fish. Hoolie laughed as the first crocodile was joined by a second, then a third, all
feeding on the tilapia. DeLuca counted four more pairs of eyes gliding silently across the surface of the water toward the
commotion. He’d drawn his weapon without thinking, alert to the possibility of an ambush.

DeLuca put his Beretta back in his concealed nylon holster and sat down.

“Excuse me while I go change my underwear,” he said.

Hoolie continued to read from the back of the menu.

“‘Why did I decide to stock the pond with crocodiles also?’ it says. ‘This is a question that is asked frequently. I tell
those who ask, I did not decide to stock the pond—this is Africa. The crocodiles just come. You are advised to avoid swimming
in the pond, but be certain otherwise that they will not hurt you. Remember, hate attracts hate. Love attracts love.’”

There were no fences or barriers of any kind at the edge of the pond.

“I wonder what keeps them from walking into the rooms?” DeLuca wondered.

“Fear of spiders,” Asabo said.

They waited for nearly three hours before DeLuca suggested perhaps they should head back to Baku Da’al. Asabo said Liger was
a place where if you showed up on the same day as your appointment, you were considered punctual. DeLuca kept checking the
falcon view on his CIM, but even at maximum zoom, they appeared to be alone. He’d asked for a Predator to be posted overhead,
armed with a Hellfire missile, but he was beyond the reach of rescue teams and past bingo-fuel for Blackhawks—the Hellfire
offered a one-shot option, and after that, they were down to the sidearms they had on them.

Then a figure appeared in the twilight between two of the guest cottages. The man stood, quite still, and DeLuca watched him.
A second figure appeared, a third, and then he saw perhaps a hundred soldiers, armed mainly with Kalashnikovs, but here and
there, men carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers. More soldiers appeared by the kitchen, the motel office, and on the
road. DeLuca realized they were effectively surrounded, but then it didn’t matter, because they hadn’t come to put up a fight.
The Sons of John Dari appeared to be disciplined and well-equipped, DeLuca noted, without the ragtag aspects of Africa’s other
boy armies and militias.

“Everybody stay cool,” DeLuca said softly. “We knew we couldn’t beat the numbers anyway, so let’s all take it easy.”

Three men separated themselves from the others and approached the bridge to the bar. Asabo recognized John Dari at the center.
He looked, of course, older than his high school photograph, but he retained a basic youthfulness, the main difference being
the crescent-shaped scars carved into each cheek, bisected by a line extending down half an inch. The two men with him were
enormous, each approaching six foot six and three hundred pounds by DeLuca’s estimation, presenting the image of a quarterback
with a pair of NFL linemen forming a pocket on either side of him, though unlike NFL linemen, Dari’s protectors also carried
M-10 machine pistols.

Dari and Asabo’s eyes met, though neither man said anything. Then Dari spoke softly to his guards, in a language DeLuca couldn’t
identify, and the two men withdrew to the bridge.

“Hello, John,” Asabo said at last.

“Hello, Paul,” Dari said softly, looking at DeLuca and Vasquez. “Why don’t you introduce me to your friends?”

“This is Don Brown, from the World Bank,” Asabo began.

“That’s all right, Paul,” DeLuca interrupted. He extended his hand to Dari. “Special Agent David DeLuca, United States Army
counterintelligence. This is Agent Vasquez.” He held his hand out a moment longer, and when Dari didn’t take it, he pulled
it back.

“Delta Force?” Dari asked. DeLuca shook his head.

“Different group,” he said.

Dari turned his attention to Asabo.

“Why have you come?” he asked.

“I’ve come with these men,” Asabo said. “To talk to you.”

“To talk to me,” Dari said. “And what will we talk about? I read that the Red Sox won the World Series. Shall we talk about
that?”

“I think Paul and Hoolie and I have come to listen,” DeLuca said. “The people who sent me wanted me to learn everything I
could about you.”

“You want to learn about me?” Dari said. “Why don’t you just go to my Web site?”

“We didn’t know you had one,” DeLuca said.

“I don’t,” Dari said. “I’m joking. Why would you want to know about me?”

“Because we feel like we have a responsibility to Liger,” DeLuca said. “We know that you’ve become an important person in
Liger. But we don’t know what that means.”

“What were you told?” Dari said. “Just because I’m curious.”

“We were told you’re leading a rebel militia,” DeLuca said. “That you’re linked to Arab terrorists, and possibly supported
by them or aligned with them. We don’t know what your allegiances are exactly, or your goals. To be honest, we’re afraid of
you.”

“So you don’t know if you should kill me or buy me, is that it?” Dari said, smiling. “Shoot first and ask questions later,
isn’t that the American way? I saw those John Wayne movies, you know. I grew up in America, like Paul here. I know America.
The only difference is that he said he would come back, but didn’t. I said I wouldn’t, but I did. The prince and the pauper.”

“We’re here to open a channel of communication,” DeLuca said. “With the idea that we could both benefit from it. If you really
knew America as well as you think you do, you’d know that we don’t send people to kill anybody anymore. We send bombs and
missiles first, and then we send people. I didn’t come here to harm you.”

“Oh, yes,” Dari said. “I forgot—you have a responsibility to Liger. It’s not that you want all of our oil and you want it
for free, if you can get it. You have sixty thousand men waiting on ships because you want to come ashore, out of the goodness
of your hearts, because you saw pictures on television of doe-eyed African children with big bellies and now you want to help
us. You give President Do $30 million in military aid and now you want to get rid of him for us. You have a born-again fundamentalist
president who has talked about the new crusade and how God has told him he cannot stand by and watch the slaughter of innocent
Christians in Liger, while his armies and his bombs kill one hundred thousand innocent Muslims in Iraq. Or can only a Christian
be innocent?”

“We could talk politics, or we could talk religion,” DeLuca said. “I was hoping we could talk about things that are more practical.
We can talk about oil. I’m not going to bullshit you and say we’re not concerned about the world oil supply, because I have
a Ford Expedition sitting at home in my driveway, and I’d just as soon not pay forty dollars to fill my tank when I get home,
just like everybody else. We also have over a thousand aid workers in this country and hundreds of thousands of American aid
workers around the world, vaccinating kids and driving trucks full of food and rebuilding towns where a tsunami killed a quarter
of a million nonwhite non-Christian non-American people. When the earthquake hit San Francisco in 1989, I don’t remember seeing
a whole lot of Ligerian aid workers flooding into California to hand out blankets in the shelters. Maybe we should talk about
Mbusi, or Angasa, or Bok, or Dasai, or Pomogoso. I mean, gosh, things are going so well in Liger—maybe we should just step
aside and let it all play out. You think?”