“They don’t care where the stones come from. Conflict diamonds? Don’t make me laugh. Call them what they are. Blood diamonds. I couldn’t give a fuck less.” Her language was in character with her attitude. Everyone knew she had more balls than a juggler.
As she stepped out over the threshold onto the porch in front of Faisal’s shop on Avenue Equateur, she snapped her Bluetooth headset over one ear, turned on her HTC Incredible, multi-app smartphone, took off the straw fedora, unwrapped the camo-patterned bandana from her head, wiped her sweaty brow, rewrapped the bandana, and replaced the fedora. A second later, she was tuned into a pirated copy of Leki’s Congolese-Belgian hip hop sensation, “Warrior Girl.” She noted how the city looked.
It’s looked like this for as long as I can remember.
The streets outside were lined with fruit and diamond stores and shopping vendor cars hawking everything from dirty bars of homemade soap to rubber tire sandals.
What a shithole to be thrown into.
The din of the street’s hustle and bustle suddenly broke. Gunshots exploded, blasting the monotonous cacophony of the street. Shouts. Screams. Revving engines. More automatic rifle reports. Flashes of gunfire. Amber turned. The security guard dropped his rifle. He ran into the diamond exchange. Soldiers poured in behind him.
No, not soldiers. What?
Chapter 7
Seven
U.S. European Command Headquarters Hospital
S till on his back in the hospital bed, Maran squirmed, trying to move his torso, but the sedatives were too strong. If he could just roll over a little bit. The restraints gripping his wrists, his legs, only amplified his angst. A sense of doom settled in like sulfur fumes, so heavy it even dulled the knife-like pain in his leg. His mind kept drifting back to the arch moment of his life, back and forth from the past to the present to the pain.
His head reeled, torn by flashes of horror.
Creatures crawled from other, still darker worlds, dragging him through fearsome, impossibly narrow tunnels that stank like dead fish, back and forth, across, and up and down. Black as a coal mine. If one route gave brief respite, the next found him thrown into a bottomless pit where he saw his son, Dennis, screaming for help, out of his reach, beyond his protection. Delirium. Sweat poured out of every pore. It trickled down his face. It dripped down the hair at the nape of his neck into the wet pillow. Three-dimensional nightmares piled on top of nightmares, rolled like a tsunami, filled him with fears of hopelessness. Visions of his slaughtered team mingled with memories of childhood failures: grief and guilt and regret, exaggerated by the intense rage that burned in his stomach like a corrosive.
The scene shifted to his last fishing trip with his son. It brought mist to his bloodshot eyes.
On leave from Fort Bragg two years before his Cabinda assignment, Maran had driven with Dennis to the Old Ferry Landing fishing piers at Coronado Beach outside San Diego. The world was bathed in sunlight. The wind wafted through the open car windows like a softly cleansing wash. Years earlier, Maran and his Army unit had trained there with the CIA’s Joint Special Operations Group in an amphibious exercise with a Navy SEAL Team on the sands at the U.S. Naval Amphibious Base. The base didn’t look much different now. But there had been no festive family atmosphere when he raced up and down the wet sand carrying a 500-pound pine log with his Army pals and the Navy’s BUD/S recruits, BUD/S for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. The joint training was the Pentagon’s response to a number of earlier U.S. military failures.
He rented a 21-foot motorboat at Fisherman’s Pier to take ten-year-old Dennis Maran fishing for Bonita and yellowtail amberjack off the cliffs at Point Loma. A fishing line, taut with a fighting fish, took his mind away from his fears. Maran watched his son’s face beam. He thought the boy looked a lot like
As she stepped out over the threshold onto the porch in front of Faisal’s shop on Avenue Equateur, she snapped her Bluetooth headset over one ear, turned on her HTC Incredible, multi-app smartphone, took off the straw fedora, unwrapped the camo-patterned bandana from her head, wiped her sweaty brow, rewrapped the bandana, and replaced the fedora. A second later, she was tuned into a pirated copy of Leki’s Congolese-Belgian hip hop sensation, “Warrior Girl.” She noted how the city looked.
It’s looked like this for as long as I can remember.
The streets outside were lined with fruit and diamond stores and shopping vendor cars hawking everything from dirty bars of homemade soap to rubber tire sandals.
What a shithole to be thrown into.
The din of the street’s hustle and bustle suddenly broke. Gunshots exploded, blasting the monotonous cacophony of the street. Shouts. Screams. Revving engines. More automatic rifle reports. Flashes of gunfire. Amber turned. The security guard dropped his rifle. He ran into the diamond exchange. Soldiers poured in behind him.
No, not soldiers. What?
Chapter 7
Seven
U.S. European Command Headquarters Hospital
S till on his back in the hospital bed, Maran squirmed, trying to move his torso, but the sedatives were too strong. If he could just roll over a little bit. The restraints gripping his wrists, his legs, only amplified his angst. A sense of doom settled in like sulfur fumes, so heavy it even dulled the knife-like pain in his leg. His mind kept drifting back to the arch moment of his life, back and forth from the past to the present to the pain.
His head reeled, torn by flashes of horror.
Creatures crawled from other, still darker worlds, dragging him through fearsome, impossibly narrow tunnels that stank like dead fish, back and forth, across, and up and down. Black as a coal mine. If one route gave brief respite, the next found him thrown into a bottomless pit where he saw his son, Dennis, screaming for help, out of his reach, beyond his protection. Delirium. Sweat poured out of every pore. It trickled down his face. It dripped down the hair at the nape of his neck into the wet pillow. Three-dimensional nightmares piled on top of nightmares, rolled like a tsunami, filled him with fears of hopelessness. Visions of his slaughtered team mingled with memories of childhood failures: grief and guilt and regret, exaggerated by the intense rage that burned in his stomach like a corrosive.
The scene shifted to his last fishing trip with his son. It brought mist to his bloodshot eyes.
On leave from Fort Bragg two years before his Cabinda assignment, Maran had driven with Dennis to the Old Ferry Landing fishing piers at Coronado Beach outside San Diego. The world was bathed in sunlight. The wind wafted through the open car windows like a softly cleansing wash. Years earlier, Maran and his Army unit had trained there with the CIA’s Joint Special Operations Group in an amphibious exercise with a Navy SEAL Team on the sands at the U.S. Naval Amphibious Base. The base didn’t look much different now. But there had been no festive family atmosphere when he raced up and down the wet sand carrying a 500-pound pine log with his Army pals and the Navy’s BUD/S recruits, BUD/S for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. The joint training was the Pentagon’s response to a number of earlier U.S. military failures.
He rented a 21-foot motorboat at Fisherman’s Pier to take ten-year-old Dennis Maran fishing for Bonita and yellowtail amberjack off the cliffs at Point Loma. A fishing line, taut with a fighting fish, took his mind away from his fears. Maran watched his son’s face beam. He thought the boy looked a lot like
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