Trial By Fire

Bolan looked at several abandoned dress uniforms. “Uncle Sam still makes his full dress uniforms out of wool, Niners. You’re going to want those jackets and slacks when it gets cold.”

King glanced about as the morning mist turned to rainbowing steam in the morning sun. “Sarge?”

“Donger.”

“Where does it get cold around here?”

Bolan pointed directly west at the mist-shrouded peaks that lay between the Niner squad and the Ugandan border. “There.”

4

“What have you got for me, Bear?” Bolan asked. Kurtzman looked at his bank of monitors. One screen was devoted to the weather over Equatorial Africa. Three more coordinated satellite feeds as high-resolution imagery intelligence birds became available. Another screen was coordinated with signals intelligence satellites that were eavesdropping on the region. The largest screen, the one directly in front of Kurtzman, was dedicated to what he considered the “footwork” of the Computer Room—his own research and information processing.

“I have Julius Caesar Segawa.”

“Cute,” Bolan replied.

“Nothing cute about him.” Kurtzman looked at the only known photograph of the madman. With his knit cap, dreads and beard, Segawa could have passed for a reggae singer, except that reggae singers didn’t pose for portraits holding an automatic weapon while sitting on a pile of human heads. “We have very little confirmed on this guy, Striker, but what we do know is bad, and I mean bad.”

“This Caesar, he’s Lord’s Resistance Army?”

“Worse.”

“What does that mean?”

Kurtzman looked Segawa’s picture again. The Lord’s Resistance Army had been engaged in armed rebellion against the Ugandan government more or less since 1987. They believed in a heady blend of traditional African religion, spirit-medium mysticism and Apocalyptic Christianity. Kurtzman knew that the group certainly was not the first to use murder, abduction, rape, mutilation and sexual enslavement against civilian populations, but they had gone at it with an enthusiasm unseen in the twentieth century, and it is thought they had pioneered the use of child-soldiers in African conflicts.

“It seems Segawa got kicked out for going too far in his atrocities.”

“Isn’t that kind of like getting thrown out of a rock band for doing too many drugs, Bear?”

“Yeah, well, imagine if the lead singer started eating people.” Kurtzman smiled in spite of himself. “You yourself told me you have firsthand evidence of the cannibalism thing here on the ground.”

“I’ve seen firsthand that they eat hands. What else do we know?”

“Not much. Segawa split off and formed his own group called God’s Army. They haven’t had much success taking over the Lord’s Resistance Army, much less overthrowing the Ugandan government. They pulled a big fade into Congo a few years back and have been under the radar ever since. All I can find are second-and thirdhand horror stories about them that missionaries and aid workers have heard from refugees.”

“Anything pertinent?”

“He’s supposed to have some woman with him. A witch doctor. Rumor is people in the region are even more scared of her than him.” Kurtzman stared at the image of Segawa sitting on heads. “To be honest? I’m worried. I don’t think he’ll stop at just holding those kids for ransom. God only knows what he’ll do.”

“Any idea of their troop strength?”

“Depending who you listen to the Lord’s Resistance Army has an estimated strength of fifteen hundred to three thousand men at any given time. Caesar and his God’s Army are a splinter group and have been in the bush for several years. They’re strong enough to raid villages with impunity, but in recent years they’ve been strictly avoiding the militaries on both sides of the border as well as their former brethren. I’d say Caesar’s got to have at least one platoon. Possibly two.”

The math was ugly. Bolan and his little troop were outnumbered by at least five if not possibly ten to one. Bolan changed the subject. “Any clue on our shooters?”

“That is something of a poser. All we have to go on are the photos of the plane you sent and the location of the crash site itself. Walking it backward from the crash site, the air defense guys I spoke with figure Flight 499 was probably at cruising altitude. For a Challenger 604 max is about forty-one thousand feet. Flight 499 would have been well below that, and given the prevailing weather maybe half that or less, but certainly well out of range of anything shoulder-launched. Going by the pictures, put together the damage to the plane and the pilots’ ability to land it, our best guess is that 499 took a near miss by something using a proximity fuse. I’m thinking something vehicle-launched.”

“More likely towed,” Bolan surmised. “You got any probable launch sites?”

“Hard to imagine it was actually fired from the DRC. There just isn’t anything in your neck of the woods with that kind of range. Best bet would be a launch from the northeastern extreme of Uganda or the southern tip of Sudan, but they would have had to have been very close to 499’s flight path. We’re talking right under it. The other two things of interest are that the only air defense weapons the Ugandans have are obsolete Russian antiaircraft guns. But the Sudanese do have a few Russian SA-2 Guideline missile batteries. Those could have reached out and touched Flight 499.”

“But the few they have are all tasked with defending the capital and their air bases, they’re all out of range of Flight 499’s flight path, and even the yahoos in Khartoum aren’t dumb enough to start firing at commercial flights, particularly ones with a U.S. senator’s son aboard.”

“That’s how I see it, too, which leaves us with players we don’t know about misbehaving in the tri-border region. Though it’s hard to imagine any bad guys I can think of planning this operation. The logistics are too extreme to match the target.”

“It wasn’t planned. Our players were misbehaving as you said, but Flight 499 came up as a target of opportunity.” Bolan’s voice went cold. “And since we have unknown enemies playing with surface-to-air missiles in the area, I’m not going to get my resupply flight, am I?”

“Resupply is currently considered too dangerous. If the bad guys have access to medium range surface-to-air missiles, we must assume they have shoulder-launched weapons as well and may be moving into your area. How are your supplies?”

“On average everyone has four loaded magazines. We’ve got three pints of rice and some sandwich spread. After that we go directly to eating endangered animals.”

Kurtzman scrolled the files on the cadets and the flight attendant. “How are your people holding up?”

Bolan’s voice brightened. “Good, better than I’d expected. Pieter was right, they’re a good bunch of lads and sheilas.”

“So what is your current plan?”

“We keep heading west.”

“I don’t know if you can out march these guys, Striker.”

“I know.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to reach out and show Caesar the Ides of March are upon him. Striker out.”

BOLAN SCANNED THE SKIES as he clicked off. The daily downpour was just about due. “Rude! Hammer!” he called. “On me.”

Cadets Johnson and Rudipu ran up and snapped to attention front and center. “Sarge?” Johnson asked.

“Squad leader, rumor is you intend to be a Marine.”

“Yes, Sergeant. I hope to be Force Recon, like my father.”

Bolan held out his compass and his spare map. “You know how to use these?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“You’re going to take Niner Squad straight up that mountain. If you push hard, you should be able to summit before dark.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“You’re keeping a cold camp. I’ve had one of the bags of rice soaking in water since this morning in a plastic bag. Ace is carrying it, but he doesn’t know it yet. It should be edible by the time you hit the top. Don’t tell anybody, but Blondie has peanut butter and jelly. Tonight everyone in the squad gets a cup of rice and three tablespoons of the PB and J. Blondie will provision it out. Meat is carrying the second rice bag. You will put it in the plastic bag Ace is carrying and soak it overnight. If Rude and I are not back by morning, that and the other half of the peanut butter are breakfast and dinner. If we’re still not back, you soak bag number three and continue to head due west.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”