Battleground sts-6 Page 4

  "How long will this coup last?" the shorter one asked.

  "Who knows. We be careful until then. Maybe the United States will come in to rescue their ship. Who knows?" The two policemen stood there a moment, then turned, and walked back the way they had come.

  "We searched it. We tell them we searched the whole building and didn't find a thing except rat droppings."

  "Yeah, that's good. Rat droppings." The smaller man shook his head. "Only, you can tell them, not me."

  The sailors breathed easier as the two policemen went out the way they had come in.

  Silently Tretter motioned for the other two sailors to follow him. They went to the near end of the building and Tretter looked out. It was daylight. Tretter rummaged around near a broken door until he found what he had left there. Straw hats, large and floppy.

  "Put these on to cover those American heads. Keep your hands in your pockets and maybe we can fake it up two blocks. Hope not a lot of folks are awake yet."

  They put on the hats and Tretter nodded. "For God's sake don't rush. We're almost on the equator here and it's gonna be hot as hell in an hour or two. Just mosey along. I've got the peashooter in my pocket if we need it."

  They ambled across the dusty street to the alley and moved up it. A door banged somewhere ahead, but no one was there by the time they reached the spot. They saw no one along a second garbage-filled dirt alley that showed the backs of a few old buildings on both sides. They went across a wider dirt street to an alley, and paused inside in some shadows.

  "Halfway up the alley," Tretter said. He scowled at them. "Don't gawk at this lady. She's half Arab and half Kenyan. She talks in English and sometimes Arabic, and some Swahili thrown in. Just take it easy."

  "Hey, she can speak Hindustani for all I care," Vuylsteke said. "Can she save our swabby asses from that wigged-out crazy colonel?"

  "Yeah, I think she can. The Army killed her brother. A lot of the Kenyan people look down on the Arabs and the Arab mixtures. She's not a happy camper."

  "She got a big place?" Perez asked.

  Tretter gave him a snort for an answer, and they meandered on up the alley. Then in a blink they were gone. All three had stepped into a dark doorway that opened to a knock. They went up wooden stairs to the third floor, and then down a hallway. The person who led them was a small woman, no more than five feet tall, with long straight black hair and dark clothes.

  She opened the door at the end of the hallway and slipped inside. Tretter waved the other sailors in. The woman closed the door and faced them. She was tiny and slender and had a creamy brown complexion. She wore no makeup, but her eyes glowed a deep brown. She wore a long black skirt and black blouse. Her face was grim.

  "So, United States Navy sailors. I help you, you help me, no?"

  They nodded.

  "The Army kill my brother. I want you kill three Kenyan Army soldiers for me. Three for one, my family tradition."

  "I don't know, lady," Vuylsteke said. "We do that, and the whole fuc — the whole damn Kenyan Army gonna be down here looking for us." He was the senior man. It was his call.

  She shrugged. "You think about. I live alone. Have two rooms. No close friends. Work at place across town. You stay here. Be quiet. Tonight I show you how to kill Army soldiers and not get caught."

  "Oh, guys, this lady's name is Pita," Tretter said. "It means the fourth-born, but she says she was only the second-born. Pita, this is Vuylsteke and Perez."

  "Am pleased to meeting you. Now must go see my mother."

  "Pita, is there anything to drink?" Tretter asked. "Water, coffee. We're all dry as hell."

  Pita frowned for a moment, then brightened. "Yes, I have Coca-Cola. You like?"

  5

  Sunday, July 18

  1315 hours

  U.S. Embassy, 2249 R Street

  NW Nairobi, Kenya

  Ambassador Harrington G. Jerome watched out his second-story window as the gunfire continued to rake the U.S. Embassy. This was totally outrageous. The embassy was United States soil. How dare this renegade colonel fire upon them.

  His First Secretary, Frank Underhill, rushed in, blood dripping from his right arm, which hung useless at his side.

  "Sir, we have only our twelve Marines. I'm afraid most of the rest of us don't even know how to fire a weapon. The gate is holding for now. The Marines drove our big truck against the steel gate, but they say they can't be sure how long it will last."

  "Yes, Frank, thank you. Keep all of the civilians out of the line of fire. Thank God for the wall around the compound. Otherwise we would have been overrun the first hour. Have that arm tended to at once. We can't afford to lose you."

  "Yes, sir. I'll do it. We've held out four hours already. Maybe we can keep them away until night. They won't continue to come at us in the dark, will they?"

  Ambassador Jerome remembered his days in the infantry. Night attacks were always the best for those attacking.

  "Don't worry about it, Frank. Just keep things together. Remember, if they do break in, your first act is to burn all papers and destroy the encrypto machine. Be sure of that."

  "Yes, sir. I understand."

  Below on the ground floor, three U.S. Marines stood beside a broken-out window. They had set up a light machine gun there and had a dozen belts of ammunition ready. From time to time the gunner sent five-round bursts over the top of the wall.

  "There's one," Sergeant Wilson snapped.

  An M-16 on single-shot barked once, and the figure trying to flip over the top of the concrete block wall jolted as the bullet hit him and he spun off the top of the wall and fell outside.

  "Keep it up here," Wilson said. "I'm checking the north wall. That's their best attack point."

  Sergeant Wilson ran through the embassy with his M-16. He had fatigue pockets stuffed with six spare magazines for the rifle. A window on the second floor on the north-facing side of the embassy had been opened before it could be shot out. A Marine stationed there raised up and looked out at irregular intervals, then quickly dropped out of sight. Twice rifle rounds had slashed through the window a fraction of a second after he'd ducked.

  "Still there, Sarge," Private Marshall said. "Must be fifteen or twenty of them. Don't know why they don't come on across."

  "They aren't sure how many guns we have in here," Sergeant Wilson said. "They think they know, but nobody is willing to be the first one to bet his life on it."

  "So, is it a stalemate?"

  "Only as long as they want it to be, Marshall. They have at least two armored personnel carriers out there and maybe five hundred men. One of those personnel carriers could probably punch a hole in our concrete-block wall. Not even sure if it has rebar in it."

  A grinding and clanking brought both Marines up to the window for a quick look.

  "Now we've got real trouble," Sergeant Wilson said. "We have any of those RPGs left, or did we burn them up in practice?"

  "Should be four of them in the basement," Private Marshall said.

  "Go down and get them and bring them all up here. I'll man your post. Run, damnit. That's a tank out there grinding along toward us. It could smash its way through that wall like it was flypaper, rebar or no rebar. Move it."

  The Marine took off on a run. Sergeant Wilson lifted up and fired a burst of five rounds out the window at the wall. All of the rounds hit the inside of the blocks, but the Kenyan soldiers on the other side would get the message. He had to buy a few more minutes. He jolted up, looked out, and came down in one move.

  A rifle round slapped into the outside of the wall near the window. The tank was halfway across the open field north of the embassy wall. This time, when Sergeant Wilson fired, he lifted his sights to aim at the tank. Then he paused just a fraction of a second to see if any of the six rounds hit the tank. He couldn't tell. He jerked his head down, and two chunks of hot lead blasted through the open window a microsecond later.

  Where the hell was Marshall? The fucking tank would be on them any minute.
>
  Marshall panted up to the window with four Rocket Propelled Grenades. They were self-propelled and had little back-blast. Quickly Sergeant Wilson put one of the devices on his right shoulder, checked the sight, then pulled the tab to arm the grenade. He moved up to the window, aimed the grenade out it and in line with the tank, and fired.

  The rocket whooshed away, leaving a burning cloud of smoke behind it. Half-a-dozen rifle rounds hit the window and came through it, but Wilson had dropped down just in time. Long before the smoke cleared away they could hear the tank. The round hadn't stopped it. Wilson wasn't even sure if it had made a hit. He sent Marshall to a window down the hall with two grenades and told him to fire at the tank if it smashed through the wall.

  "Aim for the fucking tread. That's about the only way we can stop it."

  As he spoke, a blast shook the north wing of the embassy. It must have hit just below them. Sergeant Wilson lifted up and looked out the window. The tank's gun, maybe a.75-caliber, still smoked. They had fired a round at the embassy.

  The next time he looked out, Sergeant Wilson saw that the tank was too close to the wall to fire over it. That wouldn't last long. He looked out the window now every three or four seconds. He took no incoming fire. The snipers must be off the wall.

  A moment later he saw the ten-foot concrete block barricade bulging. Then cracks showed, and a second later one large section of blocks crashed down inside the compound. The tank's gun swiveled around to point to the front again as the tank clanked and rattled as it crawled over the broken and bashed-in blocks, then stopped just inside the compound.

  The tank's machine gun chattered, and the window frame above Wilson shattered as half-a-dozen rounds hit it and rained glass down on him.

  The last grenade. Wilson armed it, checked the sight, lifted up, and in another quick move aimed, fired, and ducked. This time he wasn't quite fast enough, or the marksman outside had been firing already before Wilson had launched the small missile.

  The AK47 round glanced off the rocket launcher, tumbled as it smashed forward, and dug into the right side of Sergeant Wilson's mouth, then slanted to the left and slashed through the top of his mouth into his brain. He slammed backwards, and died before he knew if his round had hit the tank.

  One window down, Private Marshall saw the sergeant's round explode on the left tank tread and blow it off the rollers. The tank was dead in the water. Then the big gun swung around, and Marshall got off his round aimed at the small driver's window slots in the front. He saw the round hit and explode, but he wasn't sure of the damage.

  He fired his last RPG round as a dozen Kenyan troops ran through the hole in the wall. The grenade splattered four of the soldiers into spare body parts, and put down three more. Then Marshall picked up his M-16 and fired out the window. He couldn't understand why Sergeant Wilson wasn't firing.

  Downstairs at the front window, the Marines kept the machine gun chattering aimed just over the wall. The men there heard the tank and the RPG rounds, but they didn't know the tank had crashed through the wall.

  Two green-shirted Kenyan soldiers worked along the front of the embassy building, tucked in close so no one inside could see them. One crawled the last twenty feet, lay on his back, and pulled the pin on a hand grenade. He tossed it into the window where the machine gun chattered, then ran back the way he had come.

  Private Anderson saw the grenade come in. Four-second fuse, he thought. No time to run. The small hand bomb bounced once on the wooden floor; then Anderson dove on it, shielding it with his body as it exploded with a mind-numbing rumble.

  The machine gunner's eyes went wide as he stared at the man on the floor who had just saved his life. Then he bellowed in fury and angled his weapon to the north, where he saw the movement of green uniforms. He fired until his last belt ran out, then grabbed an M-1 and kept blasting away at the oncoming Kenyan soldiers.

  Ten minutes later, it was all over. Ten of the twelve Marines were dead. The other two had been knocked unconscious by the concussion of the.75-caliber rounds and captured. Four of the civilian employees of the embassy had been killed by gunfire. The Kenyan troops backed the truck away from the main entrance and opened the gates.

  A weapons carrier drove in, and Colonel Maleceia stepped out. Two of his officers had found the ambassador, and brought him to the front of the building.

  "Mr. Ambassador. This embassy is closed and all your rights are nullified. This is no longer United States soil. You all are prisoners of war, and will be treated as such. Any resistance by you, or any of your people, will bring immediate execution. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

  Ambassador Jerome nodded. Tears ran down his cheeks. "I understand, Colonel. None of my people will resist in any way. Already four of the staff have been killed along with ten of the Marines. You have no right-"

  The ambassador stopped as Colonel Maleceia snapped up his head. "Careful, Mr. Ambassador. What room is large enough to hold all of your people?"

  "The formal dining room."

  "Not good. We'll put everyone in that large room in the basement. I don't want you to be too comfortable. We'll see what your government will do to ransom you. How many people do you have left alive, Mr. Ambassador?"

  "Forty-two alive and fourteen dead. Fourteen that your men killed when it wasn't necessary."

  "Don't criticize me, Jerome."

  "Do you know what you've done? The whole weight and power of the United States will bear down on you. You can't possibly live for more than a week. You are a monster and a dead man. You have violated every diplomatic code of conduct of behavior ever invented."

  Colonel Maleceia growled, and drew his weapon from the holster on his right side. He lifted the automatic, stepped forward, and shot the ambassador in his right eye. Ambassador Harrington G. Jerome jolted backward and died in a sprawl on the front steps of the embassy.

  "Clean up this mess," Colonel Maleceia barked. "The rest of you round up everyone inside and take them to the big room in the basement, the one with the steel doors and no windows. We don't want anyone to escape."

  Ten minutes later in the locked basement room, one of the Marines still alive used strips of cloth to wrap up Frank Underhill's shot-up arm. He had lost a lot of blood, but he knew that he would live. There was so much to do. He was in charge now. He shivered when he remembered how matter-of-factly that madman had executed Ambassador Jerome. Terrible.

  He made sure the six others who had been wounded were tended. All were non-life-threatening but one. Madelyn, a secretary and code clerk, had taken a ricocheted bullet in her chest. Evidently it had missed the vital organs. But she was pale and lying down.

  The basement room was smaller than Frank remembered. With forty-two people in it — no, only forty-one alive now — there would barely be room for everyone to lie down on the floor. He had no hope for food, water or toilet facilities. There simply were none.

  An hour later, Colonel Maleceia had figured out the radio in the communications room. He didn't bother with the codebooks that he found partially destroyed. He would broadcast in the clear. It would bounce off the satellite overhead and be picked up in Washington, D.C., as clearly as if he'd phoned from down the block. He hadn't spent all of his time at the U.S. military training center working on tactics. His radio and electronics capability was considerable.

  First, he broadcast a warning that an important message would be coming. He gave his name and new position as ruler of Kenya.

  A frantic message came through in the clear to the embassy asking if all was well. They knew it was not. Maleceia ignored it.

  His message was brief.

  "To the United States of America. This is a notification and a warning to the people of America. First, I now hold one hundred and sixty of your sailors from the Roy Turner and forty-one members of your diplomatic staff at the former U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. These hostages will be humanely treated pending your acceptance of my conditions.

  "The United States of America will pay to
the nation of Kenya the sum of one hundred billion dollars in gold, food, merchandise, jet fighter aircraft, naval ships, and in credits around the world that Kenya can draw upon, for the release of these two hundred and one individuals.

  "There will be no attack or threat of attack on Kenya soil by U.S. forces. Any such attack will result in the execution of one hostage for every hour of any such attack.

  "The United States has forty-eight hours to start delivering the gold, the merchandise, the ships, and planes as demanded. If this schedule is not met, one hostage will be executed and the video beamed to the world on television every hour until delivery starts.

  "There is no alternative. I know of the wealth and squandered goods and riches in the United States. The people of Kenya are starving for such goods and food. It will be delivered on schedule or the dire measures will be carried out.

  "This is General Umar Maleceia, Premier, President, and Commanding General of the great nation of Kenya, ending his proclamation."

  General Umar Maleceia toured the ambassador's private quarters and bounced on the bed. He chuckled.

  "I will sleep here tonight," he told his aide, a major who had taken advanced lessons in kowtowing.

  "Yes, General," the major said, recognizing the new rank the colonel had granted himself.

  Maleceia smiled at the man. "You'll go far, Major. What was your name again?"

  "Ralston, General. An English name my parents liked when I was born."

  "Too bad. Yes. Now, the kitchen. Send for the chef. Bring him from the basement. Tonight I will feast on roast duck or maybe a roast turkey dinner with all the trimmings like we had twice a year in Texas. Yes, a roast turkey dinner."

  Five minutes later, the cook, a smiling little Italian man from the Bronx, explained the problem. "General, sir. We have no turkey, no duck. I can prepare a feast for you from some chicken breasts, stuffing, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, cranberries, peas and carrots, with fluffy dinner rolls and strawberry jam."

  General Maleceia frowned. "I can't make a turkey appear. All right, the chicken dinner. You have an hour. Now get to it." Back in the ambassador's suite, he broke open the locked liquor cabinet, selected a fine scotch, and poured himself a shot. That was so good he had two more. He didn't offer any to the major.