Trial By Fire

“One man?” Segawa looked askance at his most mighty of minions. “Truly, brother?”

“We saw nor heard no choppers. He must have jumped from a plane, from high above the clouds.”

Segawa shook his braids and stared up through the rain at the unforgiving, Old Testament God who approved of the old ways. His men waited for Segawa to speak wisdom. “He came from the south.”

Obua smiled. “Yes, brother.”

“From South Africa, only from that benighted land could he have acquired his apparel of war, and a jet to speed him here.”

“It makes perfect sense. He is some kind of mercenary, or commando.”

“Sent by the begetters of these pale children of privilege.”

“Expendable.” Obua grinned. “Deniable.”

“Alone,” Segawa added.

“I have an idea. I think—”

“I know what you think, brother.” Segawa stared unblinkingly up into the rain as if God on high seemed to beam him information. “You think of who would want to shoot down the plane. I ask you who hates the Americans most.”

“The heathens who serve Mohammed.”

“You think they will pay a pretty penny to have the children in their grasp.”

Obua looked into the sky happily. “They would shower pennies upon us like the rain.”

Segawa’s head snapped around. His judging finger stabbed at Obua. “You cannot serve both God and mammon, brother!”

Obua cast his eyes down. “I thought of God’s Army, brother, and our rebuilding.” The fact was that the last open battle God’s Army had fought with the Uganda People’s Defence Force had gone rather badly. It was God’s Army’s intention to overthrow Uganda and establish paradise on Earth. At the moment, though, they found terrorizing pagan villages across the Democratic Republic of the Congo—DRC—border a safer and more profitable activity.

Segawa slowly lowered his finger. “I, too, think of our rebuilding, brother.” He smiled unexpectedly. “I think of eight new recruits.”

Obua straightened at the thought. “Yes, brother…”

“God’s child-soldiers have served us so well.” Segawa gestured at several of the men who had at one time been kidnapped from their villages as children and brutally adopted into God’s Army. “But now they have grown so tall and strong!”

The men shook their weapons and shouted their allegiance.

Segawa turned his gaze heavenward once more. “Eight ghost-faced children of privilege! Striking down God’s enemies! The children of the colonizers! Destroying the heirs of colonialism who spoil our sweet land! What shall our enemies make of it? What shall the world make of it? This is my vision.” Segawa raised his hands and roared into the rain. “So let it be written! So let it be done!”

Obua leaned in while the men cheered wildly. “If what we surmise is true, then he must walk east to cross the Ugandan border.”

“Uganda, our Promised Land,” Segawa intoned. “Zion.”

Religious fervor mixed with the sociopathic need to kill filled and inflamed Obua’s belly. “The White Satan’s servant marches with an army of children. He will be slow, Caesar.”

“Then find him, brother. Find him.”

“HALT!” BOLAN CALLED. The cadets sagged in place. The two cadets carrying the copilot lowered him to the ground. The flight attendant knelt and cradled Pieter’s head in her lap. Bolan glanced at the sun. They had route marched for four hours. The rain had stopped. The sun was sinking and turning orange. “Everybody line up, I want—”

A cadet shook his head and rubbed his wrists. “Man, who are you? Where the hell are the helicopters? Where’re—”

Bolan roared at parade-ground decibels. He would have exactly one opportunity to weld these young men and women into a unit. It was their only chance for survival. “Line up for inspection!”

The eight military cadets snapped into line and to attention as if Bolan had cracked a whip. The Executioner rounded on the questioning cadet. “What is your name, Cadet?” It was embroidered on the front of the young man’s uniform jacket, but Bolan demanded it anyway.

“Jovich, Sir! Martin—”

“Don’t you ‘sir’ me, Jock-itch! I made sergeant back in the day! I worked for a living and I still do!”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

The next cadet in line snickered. “Jock-itch…”

Bolan stepped in front of the sneering youth. He didn’t like what he saw. The tall blond cadet was too handsome for his own good and knew it. He stank just a bit of an excess of privilege and a distinct lack of discipline. Unfortunately, he was priority number one, and Bolan knew there was a very good chance that he was going to die for this egotistical cadet. “You got a name?”

The cadet mockingly looked at the front of his tunic. A vague Southern drawl inflected his insolence. “Yeah, Metard, John.”

Bolan smiled. “Full name?”

The cadet bristled. He looked Bolan in the eye and what he saw there snapped his eyes front once more. “Metard…Jean-Marie.”

“Thank you, Meatwad.”

Metard clenched his jaw but kept his retort behind his teeth. Mirth was visibly suppressed up and down the line. Bolan wasn’t surprised to find that Metard wasn’t well-liked by his fellow cadets. The soldier moved down the line and looked at another blond cadet. He was shorter than Metard, but even at fifteen years of age he had the shoulders of an Olympic swimmer. The cadet grinned and stood at perfect attention. “Eischen, Alexander Charles, Sergeant!”

Bolan raised one eyebrow slightly. “Felt the need to sneak that Charles in on me, did you?”

Eischen slid a hostile eye towards Metard. “It’s no Jean-Marie, Sergeant, but we do our best.”

Bolan liked Eischen’s attitude. “Alexander Charles Eischen, fine. Ace it is.”

The female cadet standing next to Eischen gave him an approving look. Bolan stepped up to the lone female in the group. She had dark hair, dark eyes and an olive complexion. She squared her shoulders as she fell under Bolan’s scrutiny. “Shelby, Sergeant! Maria Dirazar!”

Bolan’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Shelby…”

“Most people just call me Shel–”

Bolan lunged in eyeball to eyeball. “Do I look like most people to you, Cadet?”

“No, Sergeant!” Shelby went to ramrod attention. “You are like no man I have ever met!”

“Good answer, Snake.”

Shelby blinked. “Snake, Sergeant?”

“Shelby. Carroll Shelby. Greatest American car designer of the twentieth century. You’ve heard of the Cobra? Super Cobra? Super Snake?” Bolan shook his head with weariness. “You’re Snake, Cadet.”

Shelby’s whisper followed Bolan as he walked down the line. “Sweet…”

Bolan found himself in front of a fifteen-year-old youth who could look him in the eye. The young, lantern-jawed mesomorph in the making stared straight ahead with a grim look on his face. Bolan looked long and hard at the name embroidered on the front of the young man’s uniform.

Hudjak.

“Cadet?”

“Yes, Sergeant.” The tall young man was a tower of stoicism.

“I think we’ll just call you Huge.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Until you screw up, Huge.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Next cadet in line was the only black cadet. Except for Huge, he was the biggest in the group. Bolan read his tag. “Johnson.”

“Yes, Sergeant. John Henry.”

“You know the legend of the man you were named after, Cadet?”

“Heard it every day growing up, Sergeant. Told every day it was something I’d better live up to.”

Bolan smelled leadership potential. “Good to know, Hammer.”

Hudjak elbowed Johnson in congratulations as Bolan moved on.

A young Chinese man stood at attention. “King, Donald, Sergeant!” The cadet’s voice dropped low. “Sergeant?”

Bolan dropped his voice in return. “Cadet?”

“Sergeant, please don’t call me Donkey Kong. It takes a fistfight every year at the start of school to scrape that one off.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Cadet. We’ll keep it Don King.”

The cadet looked confusedly for the rub. “But, Sergeant, that’s my name.”

“Don King,” Bolan prompted. “The Rumble in the Jungle? The Thrilla in Manila?”

Cadet King stared at Bolan vacantly.

“The Sign from God hairstyle?” Bolan tried. He was becoming painfully aware of the fact that it had been some time since he had spent any quality time with the latest generation of America. “Fine, what’s your real name?”

“Sergeant?”

“You’re second-generation Chinese.”

“Yes, Sergeant. My parents came from Taiwan.”

“So ‘Donald’ is the American name they picked for you. Chinese put the family name first and the given second. That makes your family name King. What’s your real name, Cadet?”

The cadet sighed painfully. “Dong, Sergeant.”

“Donger, I tried to be merciful.”

Cadet King rolled his eyes. “I knew it.”

Bolan lunged. “I will roll your eyes right out of your head, Donger!”

Cadet King snapped to attention. “Cadet Donger! Ready for duty, Sergeant!”

Bolan came to the last cadet in line. If he hadn’t looked down, he might have missed him. The cadet was clearly Indian or Pakistani. The young man just cracked five foot two, and if he was more than ninety-eight pounds dripping wet Bolan would be surprised. He read the young man’s moniker.

The cadet just barely kept his shoulders from sagging.

Bolan heard Metard snicker back in line and made a note of it.

For the moment the soldier looked at the cadet before him with a modicum of sympathy. “Son of the Indian subcontinent?”

“Technically I was born in California, Sergeant, but we went back to West Bengal right after for five years for my father’s job. Then we came back again.”

“Lovely country,” Bolan opined. “Been there several times.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. My family goes back to visit every year.”

“Well,” Bolan mused. “Might as well get this over with.”

The young man nodded bravely. “Yes, Sergeant.”

Bolan read the embroidery again—Rudipu.

“Hell of a handle,” Bolan admitted.

“Yes, Sergeant. Thank you.”

“You got a first name, Cadet?”

“Gupti, Sergeant.”

Metard snickered again. The young man was digging a deeper hole for himself. Bolan stayed with the business at hand. “Gupti Rudipu.” Bolan nodded. “Hell of a handle.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“You know the possibilities are mind-boggling.”

“Yes, Sergeant. I know.”

“I bet you do. Any mitigating factors before I pass judgment, Cadet?”

The teenaged cadet considered his résumé. “Well, I am captain of the rifle team at the academy.”

Bolan perked an eyebrow. “NRA Whistler Boy High-Power Junior Team Match?”

The sack of chicken bones Cadet Rudipu called a chest swelled with pride. “This will be my second year, Sergeant.”

Bolan nodded. “Never met a rifleman I didn’t like, Rude.”

Rudipu beamed. “Yes, Sergeant! Thank you, Sergeant! I’ll make you proud of me, Sergeant! I promise I will!”

“No one likes the squad cocksucker, Rude.”

Rudipu snapped back to attention. “No, Sergeant!”

Bolan turned back to face the line. “All right, I want—”

“Hey!” Metard’s outrage boiled over. “How come everyone else gets cool names and me and Jovich’s suck?”

King held his peace on that one. Jovich stepped away from Metard like he was radioactive.

Bolan rounded on Metard. “Because they know when to have themselves a tall frosty STFU when certain others I can name ran their mouths.”

Metard’s face flushed scarlet.

Bolan regarded the cadet like something he had just scraped off his shoe. “You want another nickname, Meatwad? You earn it. You read me?”

Metard shook with impotent rage.

“I asked you a question!” Bolan bellowed.

“Yes, Sergeant!”

“Yes, what?”

“I read you, Sergeant!”

Bolan took a few steps back and eyed his squad. “You have questions. Let me answer ninety percent of them right now. I am the angry god of your universe. You will do what I say when I say it. You are cadets, in training to become officers in the United States Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. I expect you to act like it. Do those two things, and you might just live through this. I hope that clears things up.”

The eight cadets stared at Bolan in a mixture of shock and awe.

Bolan glanced up at the sinking sun. “We need to do distance, but given the nature of the situation, I am going to allow each of you to ask me one question, once. After that, every last question had better be pertinent and about survival. Now. Go.”

The cadets glanced around at one another. Johnson raised his hand.

“This isn’t the classroom, Hammer. We’re in the jungle. We don’t raise our hands. We don’t have the time.”

Johnson nodded. “Sorry, Sarge, I just—” Johnson suddenly balked at his own temerity. “I mean, may I call you Sarge, Sergeant?”

“If it’ll speed things up.”

Johnson gazed on Metard with cold pleasure. “Well, I don’t want a new nickname or anything, Sarge, but I’m with Meatwad. I mean, what’s going on? Don’t get me wrong, you are super-bad, but, like, where are the choppers and Navy SEALs and shit?”

“There are no choppers. There are no Navy SEALs and shit. There are no carriers or special operations teams currently in range. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them. All you have is each other and me.”

Jovich eyed Bolan warily.

“You got something to say Jock-itch?” Bolan asked.

“We’re American citizens. Our plane got shot down. I mean, why isn’t anyone coming?”

Bolan looked around the squad. “Anyone know why not?”

It was Johnson who spoke. “Because all modern U.S. administrations have had a reluctance to have American soldiers shooting black Africans.”

Bolan nodded. “And?”

“And neither the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Sudan or anyone else has authorized the United States to send military flights over their airspace, much less Egypt, Libya or any other North African countries, and the DRC sure as hell hasn’t given Uncle Sam permission to mount a military rescue mission within its borders.”

“You just made squad leader, Hammer.”

Johnson seemed to have mixed emotions about the promotion. “Thanks, Sarge.”

Eischen gave Bolan an appraising look. “So, who are you?”

“I don’t know, Ace, you tell me.”

Cadet Eischen continued to maintain his positive attitude. “Expendable, deniable and…super-bad?”

“Something like that.”

The truth was dawning on Metard. “So who sent you?”

“You tell me.”

Cadet Shelby addressed the five-hundred-pound gorilla in the camp. “He’s here because you’re the son of a United States senator, Meatwad.”

Metard reappraised Bolan. “My father sent you?”

Bolan locked eyes with the prize. “I wasn’t sent. I was begged.”

Metard flinched.

“Your father is a senior United States senator and a war hero. When you went missing, he called in every marker he had. Then he begged the President of the United States—your soon-to-be commander in chief, assuming you live that long—for his son’s life. The powers that be begged me. I said yes.”

Metard cast his eyes down.

Hudjak frowned. “So if there are no carriers in range, where did you come from?”

“Where do you think?”

“You parachuted in.”

“You think?”

“From where?”

Bolan gave the hulking cadet a pointed look.

“South Africa?”

Bolan nodded.

“Why were you in South Africa?”

“That’s three questions, Huge.”

Cadet Hudjak smiled. “Sorry, Sarge. I beg forgiveness and ask that my multiple questions not impose on Snake’s rights of inquiry.”

Shelby gave the guy a winning smile.

“Forgiven. You got a question, Snake?”

“So we’re walking out of here, Sarge?”

“That is the long and short of it.”

Visible alarm spread down the line. King almost raised his hand and stopped himself. “Sarge?”

“Donger?”

“What happened?”

“You tell me.”

King did some math. “Terrorists figured out that the son of a U.S. senator was on a private flight to an international military leadership seminar in South Africa. They decided to shoot us down.”

“Look at him go,” Bolan said.

“And those…guys—” King shuddered “—who found us are not them. Who were they?”

Shelby spoke quietly. “I did a paper on the Congo Wars last quarter. Those guys were tribal militia, rebels…or worse.”

“Last call.” Bolan looked up and down the group. “Anyone else?”

Rudipu perked up. “Sarge?”

“Rude?”

“Do you always answer a question with a question?”

The ghost of a smile passed across Bolan’s face. “No.”

A few nervous laughs broke out. “Cold camp tonight. I don’t want any fires giving us away. Divvy up the food from the plane. Sandwiches, power bars, whatever snacks you brought with you. Eat half now, save the rest for breakfast. Long day tomorrow, and we’re going to have to start catching whatever we eat real soon.”

Bolan turned before a new round of questions started and went over to the crew. The copilot was in bad shape. His broken legs were swollen and smelled. There was nothing to be done about the bullets in his guts. “How’s he doing?”

The flight attendant just managed to choke back a sob.

The copilot opened red-rimmed eyes. They were lucid as he surveyed Bolan. He spoke in about the thickest Australian drawl Bolan had ever heard. “Heard your palaver with the kids, then. Reckon you got a nickname for me, too?”

Bolan gave the dying man a grin. “You prefer Bullet-stop or Brittle-bones?”

The copilot grimaced good-naturedly as a rale passed through his lungs, “You know it hurts when I laugh, then.”

The flight attendant mopped the bloody spittle from the copilot’s mouth. “And me? Do I get a name, too?”

“What is your name?”

The woman looked steadily into Bolan’s eyes. “Roos von Kwakkenbos.”

“The Rudester has nothing on you, and you and Hudjak may be related.”

Von Kwakkenbos laughed. “And?”

“We’re just going to stick with Blondie.” Bolan turned his attention back to the copilot. “How you doing?”

The copilot turned to Von Kwakkenbos. “Reckon you should take a look at the kids, get some tucker while the getting is good.”

The woman gave the copilot a long look and went to join the cadets.

Copilot Pieter Llewellyn sighed, and there was a bad gurgle at the end of it. “Reckon I’m done, then. It’s at least 150 klicks to the border.”

“The cadets are willing to carry you. So am I.”

“Fine bunch of lads. ’Preciate it. But those dipsticks following us? You’re not going to beat them in a footrace, specially toting my carcass about. ’Sides, we both know I’m gonna cark it long before we ever reach Uganda. Guess there’s nothing to be done.”

“I could give you some more morphine,” Bolan countered.

The copilot perked up. “Aw, that’d be bonzer, mate!”

Bolan readied an injector from the plane’s kit. “You know, you’re the only Australian I know who actually uses that word.”

“Well, then, you’ve never been to Maralinga, then, have you? There’s an—” Pieter’s eyes just about rolled back in his head as the morphine flooded his veins. “Aww, beauty…”

“Would you believe me if I said I had?” Bolan asked.

“Believe almost anything you tell me at the moment.”

“You saw what they did to the pilot.”

Pieter’s eyes hardened through the morphine haze. “Bill was always a bit of an asshole, but he didn’t deserve that.”

“Listen, if we bury you, they’re most likely going to dig you up.”

“Well, that’ll waste a little of their time, then, won’t it?” Pieter asked.

“Yeah, but then they’ll probably eat you.”

“Hope they choke.” Pieter grinned past his bloody teeth. “Or at least get indigestion.”

Bolan smiled. The copilot was a brave man.

“Well, your choice, then, mate. Burn me, bury me, leave me for the dipsticks. Reckon I’m fine with any of it.”

“Mighty reasonable of you, Pieter.” Bolan nodded. “How would you feel about all three?”

3

Arua, Uganda

Alireza Rhage looked out of his office window across the sea of lights just outside Arua proper. The constellations of campfires were a cosmos of misery. The twinkling lights were the result of thousands of refugees burning whatever flammable garbage they could find. Arua was swollen with those who had fled the internecine fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan. The refugee camps were swiftly becoming suburban shantytowns rife with violence and despair.

They were fertile recruiting grounds.

Ostensibly Rhage was a businessman investing in Uganda’s northern tea cultivation. Years of corruption and warfare had turned that industry into a shadow of what it once was. In his year and a half as a tea exporter, agricultural attaché Rhage had never turned a dime of profit. That was of no consequence. In reality, Captain Rhage was an exporter, and what he exported had reaped untold dividends in blood and human misery.

Rhage turned to his personal secretary. “You say there has been no report of a crash, and Flight 499 never arrived at Wonderboom Airport in Pretoria?”

Sergeant Major Pakzad shook his head. “No, Captain.”

“Have there been any reported emergency landings?”

“There have been seven emergency landings by private planes reported in sub-Saharan Africa within Flight 499’s flight window, Captain, but none was reported by Flight 499.”

“Given the nature of the emergency, could they have landed under false identification?”

“That is possible, of course, but none of the emergency landings recorded in the last forty-eight hours were made within reasonable distance of Flight 499’s flight path.”

“Does it strike you as odd, Sergeant Major, that a private flight full of American military cadets, one of them the son of a United States senator, appears to have disappeared without a trace?”

Pakzad smiled with pride. “Well, Captain. We did shoot it down.”

Rhage smiled in return. It had been Sergeant Major Pakzad’s plan. He was a brilliant intelligence officer. He and his staff constantly processed information and devised scenarios. In the sergeant major’s fertile mind, Flight 499 and its passengers had gone from a nonactionable item of mild interest to an opportunity. “Yet, no international outcry. No rescue or salvage mission mounted that we know of. What does that tell you?”

“It says that perhaps the crash occurred in a place the United States cannot easily reach. A bad place, where they have no assets. So they are keeping the situation quiet.”

“Which implies that the cadets may be alive.”

“It is possible, given the nature of the emergency, the pilots did not get out a distress call. By the same token, it is possible that the United States has the power to suppress the situation. My best guess is that the plane crash-landed. If there are survivors they most likely used their cell phones to call for help, which we could not monitor or intercept. The United States has no realistic way to project force into the Congo, much less do so without creating an international incident. The northeastern corner of the DRC is one of the most violent, lawless places on Earth. The United States would not want to advertise they are missing people in the region. Any number of groups hostile to them could retrieve the survivors. A hostage situation involving U.S. military school cadets in Equatorial Africa would be a worst-case scenario for them.”

Rhage glanced at the tri-corner border region of Sudan, Uganda and the DRC. “The best they could immediately manage would be to drop in Special Forces operators.”

“Yes, but from where?” Pakzad pondered. “The United States? Divert them from operations in Afghanistan?”

“Nevertheless, I am taking this continuing silence to mean the Americans are up to something.”