Chapter 16

Mountain water-shed of the Blue Nile, Ethiopia

That the large truck that had been at the neighbor’s farm was not there did not raise much concern; at least until they ‘found’ the aircraft to be missing. Malone and O’Brien came to an abrupt halt a few steps after rounding the road bend, to look down the 1500 meters of straight dirt that formed the ad-hoc airstrip.

“What the fuck?!”

As both Marines moved off the road and into the grasses, Malone brought his rifle to ready, assuming a kneeling position, while O’Brien glassed the farm buildings.

“I don’t see shit. Lets get further off the road. You go north to the creek bed and approach the farm from the northwest. I’m gonna go further south and stay next to the mountain side. I’ll approach the buildings from the south.”

Malone and O’Brien dropped their loads, donned their headsets and ghillies, some extra magazines, and of course, O’Brien put a grenade into his molle. Malone, internally, discounted his sergeant’s ability to function, socially or tactically, when not in possession of a hand grenade.

The two Marines expended over 45 minutes on a stealthy approach. Stopping their advances only to verify the origin of livestock sounds from the west. Both arrived to within 100 meters of the buildings within a few minutes of the other, on opposing sides of the farm buildings.

Malone crawled to the outer dirt berm that formed the farm compound’s fence. Moving further east along the berm, Malone finding a break in the dirt embankment, carefully looked through the notch. Malone was not able to identify any sounds or sights or smells, thus not being certain of any occupancy, when he heard O’Brien in his earpiece.

“In place?”

Malone keyed twice.

“See anything?”

Malone keyed his PTT switch once.

“I’m about 70 meters south of the compound. Don’t see shit. We’ll park our ass and watch for a while.”

Malone acknowledged by keying twice. Backing away from the opening in the embankment and facing back north, Malone tracked two birds, gliding into the damp ground to land to the west of the main farm house. Staring at the birds, he concluded that a mad scientist had crossed a goose with a duck. He thought the birds to be ugly but nicely plump. Malone considered that he would be willing to invite these birds to a private barbecue. These culinary thoughts were interrupted by O’Brien’s transmission.

“Two unknown males exiting the storage building on the south side. Both have AKs. Standby.”

Upon an extended observation, O’Brien noted that the two males had significantly different facial features than that of Diinaol. The obvious conclusion that best fit O’Brien’s paranoia, was that the bad guys had returned and allowed Acorn, or someone, to ex-fil the Cessna. He pondered the chances of recovering Diinaol and his family if he killed these two. But the basis for O’Brien not shooting the two probable interlopers was that it was a more than even probability when considering that Harry Acorn could still be in the area. O’Brien was well aware that all bad guys must be accounted for.

The two unknown men dropped the wood crates less than 5 meters from the main house, stacking them adjacent to other wood containers, then returned to the second out-building.

“Digger! if you are clear, get next to the main house.”

Malone keyed twice as he arose from behind the berm to quietly sprint the 25 meters to beneath the single window in the north wall of the farm house. Listening revealed two male voices, one of which Malone deemed to be of Diinaol’s. They were not speaking English. Not being familiar with the house layout, Malone did not risk looking into the window. Malone continued to eavesdrop until O’Brien transmitted more questions.

“See anyone?”

Two keying clicks followed.

“How many?”

Two slow clicks were keyed in response.

“All bad guys?”

Malone’s response was a quick single key click.

“How many bad guys?”

Malone delayed answering to verify his initial assumption that one of the people was Diinaol. Malone, hearing Diinaol’s distinct sing-song diction, key his microphone once.

“Do you have a shot?”

Malone’s mind raced. His determination was that, having the element of surprise, he could pop up in the window opening and tap the intruders once or twice. If the tangos had no clear shot at him, he could force the issue and jump through the window. Malone keyed his radio twice. He carefully layed down his M40 and pulled the G3 sling to hang the assault rifle to his left side. Removing his .40 caliber pistol, Malone verified the loaded chamber then waited for O’Brien’s signal.

With mirrored motions that would have been a morbidly fascinating scene if observed from above, O’Brien prepared to perform the exact same sequence of events. Centering his vision on the small building’s side exit portal, O’Brien sprinted, with a smooth and noiseless gait, the 40 or 50 meters the dirt berm, paused to listen, then resumed the silent sprint to the corner of the building.

Hearing two quick clicks in his ear piece, Malone rotated and rocketed up into place at the side of the opening. The native farmer, being seated and facing the window, was the first to see Malone, or rather see an extended arm pointing a weapon. Diinaol’s sudden jerk of his head led his standing captor to follow his vision to the window opening. The would-be assailant’s last thought was that the swamps had birthed a supernatural monster.

Malone fired twice, both rounds hitting between the small area bounded by the man’s rifle and the base of his neck and his shoulders. Malone’s ghillie-covered body disappeared from the window as he dashed to the front of the house to support his sergeant upon hearing the report of a pistol.

Rounding the corner at ready, Malone found O’Brien standing over two prone bodies. One body with a bullet hole in its head and the other body convulsing with a ka-bar deeply embedded in its torso. Also catching Malone’s interest were the wood crates next to the bodies.

O’Brien signaled ‘eyes’. Malone could only shrug, not knowing the status of the main farmhouse. Holstering their pistols, the two Marines brought their G3 rifles to bear, with O’Brien leading the house-clearing drill. It was only a drill because Diinaol and his family were the only living occupants.

The Marines left Diinaol to untie and de-gag his family members, that had been sequestered in the back room, while they humped back down the road to retrieve their gear. Returning after 10 minutes, O’Brien begin a gentle interrogation of Diinaol.

“How many were there and where are they now?”

“There were at least seven, perhaps more. Most of them went in the trucks. The CIA man and another went in the airplane. The airplane went east, up the valley. I do not know which direction the truck went.”

“Did you hear their plans?”

“Only that they were going to get others and that the CIA man must wait for instructions.”

“Is anyone injured?”

“No, just bruises and small cuts. We are well.”

“Did they say when they would return?”

“No. But it would appear that it takes a day’s travel to reach their destination.”

O’Brien looked away, concerned over unintended possibilities, exited the farm house, and stood in the would-be court yard of the compound, now serving as a minor munitions depot. Looking over several stacks of wood crates, Malone and O’Brien briefly surveyed the stacked materials of combat.

“Why the fuck would the CIA be starting a tribal war in Ethiopia? This country has a large, professional army to mitigate this shit. What am I missing, boss?”

“I’m fuckin clueless, dude. I’m gonna give up on trying to make sense of this shit. I’m guessin that things have become a major cluster-fuck in Washington. And am willing to bet a paycheck that POTUS doesn’t know shit about this and is trusting all of those intel fuckwits. Those stupid fuckers on the POTUS staff probably believe everything the spooks and generals say.”

“If that’s true, we’re in a huge pile of dog shit. You think Pistol’s team is doing okay?”

“Yep, its a fuckin mess. Don’t worry about Pistol. He’ll take care of any shit that comes his way. We need to get our lame ass outa this shit sandwich. We got 55 to 65 hours before our ride gets here. I’m gonna guess, given a day’s round-trip travel time, that the spook and his people will probably return in 48 hours. But with that airplane, that fuckin spook could return any time”

“What a fucking mess, boss.”

“Yep, they serve us only the finest shit sandwiches.” O’Brien motioned to the array of stacked wood crates, “Let’s see what toys those assholes brought us...”

Diinaol’s family, being literate and relatively educated, did not regard the talents and skills of the two Marines as supernatural. The exception was the brother-in-law, whom regarded the Marines as ghost-like spirits that disappeared and re-appeared without notice. Diinaol’s wife was careful to admonish her brother about not discussing his beliefs with her children. The early morning re-appearance of Malone and O’Brien, seemingly and inexplicably out of nowhere, reinforced the opinion in the uneducated mind of Diinaol’s brother-in-law. Diinaol’s brother-in-law reminded him to never say his name in front of these embodied ‘spirits’.

After punching-in on the time-clock for the day’s toils, Malone went to work inserting detonators and setting up fuzes, for later insertion, into two small crates of Chinese mines. The Mandarin characters were opaque to Malone, but the devices were obviously copies of Russian TM-62 land mines. After un-lashing an e-tool from his pack, Malone hefted a crate of the deadly devices that he had prepared and headed to the road northwest of the farm compound.

Diinaol translated for his teenage son and his brother-in-law while O’Brien explained the operational details of an AK-47, along with its ‘practical applications’. Diinaol’s wife looked askance at the training; she was disappointed by the eagerness of her brother and eldest child to learn the ways of war. She was a practical woman that did not want to see tribal conflict come to her valley. She abhorred what war did to men and had not found an explanation for the male fascination with the subject. When the live-fire training started, Diinaol’s wife ushered her other three children back into their house.

Before O’Brien started his tutelage on basic tactics, he re-emphasized the principal of minimizing risk by instructing Malone to hide his family in the mountains to shield her from the coming violence, to which she staunchly opposed. Diinaol chose a principled approach. The land had been under the care of his family for generations, long before the government of modern-day Ethiopia had formed and surveyed the land, and he intended to pass the land to his children. Diinaol believed it was his fight, earning O’Brien’s respect.

O’Brien focused on, and purposely limited, his tutorials to fields of fire and the bounding over-watch during a retreat and the basics of an ambush and the possible resultant counter-attacks. O’Brien was uncertain if he was expecting too much or too little from his three recruits. He figured that the remainder of the day and, perhaps, most of tomorrow would be available to set up a defensible position and to drill the troops.

O’Brien’s determination of the odds, which he did not share with Diinaol, was about a 50/50 chance that they all would survive an attack. And those odds were stacked in their favor by the element of surprise and because they would have the high ground. He knew that they would be royally fucked if Acorn’s arrival in the Cessna was coincident with the main body of bad guys and if Acorn was able to direct the attackers from the air.

Malone spirited away Diinaol’s family to the southwest where they would be hidden in the dense brush at the west end of the valley. After less than two kilometers, O’Brien picked up the two youngest children and carried them a few more clicks to a small clearing that was not easily observed from the air or from the farm. After setting up the small tent, Malone pulled the two plastic water jugs from his pack and handed a Chinese pistol to the mother of Diinaol’s children. The woman took the handgun and clasped his hand with her other hand as a tacit gesture of appreciation. As she closely followed the young Marine back down the mountain slope, she wondered if the Americans were also at war with each other. Noting the speed and smooth motion as he navigated the brush going downhill, Diinaol’s wife, cleared her mind of worries and focused on the care of her children.

“Where ya put them?”

“About three to four clicks up the valley, just to the inboard of that first ridge.”

“Ya got the other shit set up?”

“Yeah, except the two mines in the road berm, no fuzes until we figure which we want go first. But the cover plate is on them.”

“Outfuckinstanding, my corporal.”

“So how big of a boom does this shit make?”

“I dunno. They set off something similar to a rusky TM at that imp-demo school. It flipped a dumpster filled half-way with sand. I was ‘bout 100 meters from it and could feel the blast. I’m guessin if we get one to go within a meter or two of a vehicle it should be enough to force them into our firing lanes.”

“It should work, boss. I think we got the odds going for us.”

When O’Brien did not bite, Malone continued.

“The two biggies are, number one, that idiot underestimated us; I mean, the fucker left a handful of people thinking that we wouldn’t notice anything and that they could take us down. Which leads to advantage number two, surprise.”

“Agree, unless the fucker flies in while their vehicles approach and he has comm with them.”

“What if we just blow him out of the sky.”

“If we try to shoot the asshole down, it will expose our position. And we can’t do shit until our three soldiers start in with their suppressive fire.”

“Nah, its cool, boss. We got this either way. We’re going to fuck them up. We’ll stop this tribal war before it can start.”

O’Brien was hoping to get lucky just once more, but he was well aware that there was no such animal as ‘luck’. A destiny that would be defined by competence and performance made its appearance only when all of the gods were disinterested and left the humans to settle differences through their backwards and barbaric ways.

With an abundance of nervous energy and the exuberance of youth, Diinaol’s eldest sprinted to ambush site, and was the first to assume his position.

Diinaol and his brother-in-law, knew that it would require at least 15 minutes for the vehicles to traverse the worn and rutted road leading into the valley. O’Brien seeing the last truck descend down the pass called Malone.

“We have two Chinese six-bys. The first had two in the cab and four in back. The second has five or six. I only saw AKs. Guessing speed 20 to 25.”

Malone keyed twice, did the arithmetic for 25 km/hour rate, and estimated that the first truck will turn south, towards the farm, in less than ten minutes. With nothing better to do, Malone re-arranged and re-stacked his M40 and G3 magazines, verified the Velcro straps that held three grenades in place on his molle, then looked down the line of ambushers.

Malone’s position, while offering little in the way of cover, did provide excellent concealment. Malone was less than 200 meters to the west, near the bottom of the short mountain pass, where the road turned to the south towards the farm buildings. He was surrounded by, and embedded within, a cluster of short bushes and 50 cm tall grass. The front end of his M40 suppressor was well within a bush to his front.

O’Brien was to the south/southeast, about 300 meters slant distance, and 30 meters up the mountain slope. He had the best over-all view of the ambush site, but did not have a good line of fire to three of the four principle land mine emplacements. The doppler-shifted whine of a turbine engine jerked O’Brien’s attention away from tactical considerations of ambush timing.

“People, we have an airplane approaching through the pass. Digger, don’t change shit. Keep the plan goin. I’ll deal with it.”

O’Brien’s reasons for selection of his site included this particular scenario. He was close enough to the airstrip and to the east a third of the way down its length to enable a firing lane that was severely oblique to the aircraft’s landing direction. The Cessna turned southwest as it descended through the pass. O’Brien guessed that Acorn was setting up to drag the field before landing. If Acorn noted that his people were not present at the farm house or saw the ambush setup, things would go south very quickly. While he had established three possible ex-fil paths if things went awry, O’Brien was not certain that any retreat method could not be seen by an airplane.