Blue Warrior

Early and Pearce exchanged a glance. That missile launcher was a Soviet weapon, nicknamed Grinch in military circles. It was the functional equivalent of the American Stinger missile.

The Hind banked hard left to chase one of the trucks on the far end. The gimbaled machine gun roared again. Sand sprayed around the truck. The other Toyotas turned, chasing the Hind, firing their machine guns. Bullets sparked on the helicopter’s heavy armor. No effect.

“Now,” Mossa said.

The Grinch puffed, blowing the missile out of the tube, then the missile engine kicked in with a roar. It raced toward the turning Hind, a trail of crooked white smoke marking its path.

The Hind knew a missile had locked on it. The pilot juked hard just as the Grinch missile launched, and dropped antimissile flares.

Too late.

The Hind erupted in a fireball as the finger of smoke slammed into the hull. The top rotor separated from the chopper, pinwheeling away as the rest of the wreckage rained toward the sand.

The Tuaregs cheered and clapped Balla on the back.

“Built in Russia, killed by Russians,” Early joked.

“Serves them right,” Pearce said.

Mossa turned to Pearce. “That should buy us some time.”

36

Adrar des Ifoghas

Kidal Region, Northeastern Mali

7 May

Mossa lead the way.

The boy hovered close to the Tuareg chief. Cella was next, shepherding the four women. Pearce and Early were behind them. Moctar, Balla, and the rest of the fighters took up positions among the rocks, hidden from view. Pearce assumed they were left behind to watch for signs of Mali troops.

Mossa wended his way between two tall pillars of granite split like a V, opening a dark chasm in the mountain. He stepped over the inverted apex of the V and disappeared. The others followed suit. Pearce found himself in a broad, low-ceilinged passageway. He had to duck several inches in order to avoid hitting his head, but the dark air felt like a cool water bath compared to the heat outside. Mossa’s LED flashlight washed on the path in front of him. Enough light bounced off the ground that Pearce could make out dim scratchings on the rock walls. An alphabet he didn’t recognize. Pearce couldn’t tell if they were a hundred years old or a hundred thousand. Didn’t care. His pulse was quickening and his legs ached. He was grateful that Moctar and Balla had volunteered to carry his cases.

Pearce wasn’t part of the 2001 assault on Tora Bora or Operation Anaconda in 2002, but he’d seen some of the classified after-action photos when he was at The Farm. Al-Qaeda made great use of natural caves like this one in Afghanistan. The Russians had bombed the hell out of the underground sanctuaries but never did the damage that American B-52s were able to inflict. The idea of being buried under tons of rock had never appealed to him, especially after the stories his dad told him about the North Vietnamese and their tunnel complexes. His dad had volunteered a few times to crawl down those holes with nothing but a Smith & Wesson revolver and a flashlight. And those tunnels were made only of dirt. His dad was a helluva storyteller, even when he was drunk, which was most of the time. But the way he’d describe slithering on his belly through the dark underground, twisting around ninety-degree bends, waiting for bayonets or grenades or poisonous snakes to strike out at him from the dark, had made him cry as a child. As a small boy, they sounded like monster stories, but they were true — and they had happened to his father. Crying, of course, meant an ugly sneer from his old man and the back of his thick, gnarly hand, but young Troy was as scared for his father inside of those tunnels as if he had been there himself.

And now he was. Or so it seemed. His heart raced.

No, he reminded himself, you’re not under the dirt and on your belly and there aren’t any Charlies just around the corner waiting to shoot you in the pitch-black.

A few steps later he emerged out of the short passageway into a tall, spacious cave big enough to fit a house in, and light poured in from a kind of natural chimney that led up to the surface. The light would be dimming any minute when the sun finally set, but for now it was a relief, like when the movie projector finally kicked on inside of a dark theater. Beneath the open chimney hole was a fire pit, smoldering with coals that filled the room with a smoky haze.

Circling the fire pit were several small woven rugs. In a far corner, another collection of rugs. But what really caught Pearce’s attention was the collection of ammo boxes, stenciled crates, and stacks of bottled water. Moctar and Balla set Pearce’s cases next to them.

Mossa gestured for Pearce to take the rug next to him on his right. The boy immediately plopped down on the rug to Mossa’s left. Moctar and Balla headed for the supplies while Cella took the women to the far corner.