Gideon's War / Hard Target

The tip of the spear hit him just above the collarbone, passing through his right shoulder and out his back, clean as a knife through butter. He grimaced slightly, then turned a quarter turn, fell on his side and began, improbably, to snore.

Eighteen inches of bloody, sharpened wood stuck out of his back.

According to the doctor, a half inch lower and it would have hit the subclavian artery, killing him in under five minutes.

It was the only time Gideon’s father ever laid a hand on him. He doled out his son’s punishment as methodically as a te

The image of his snoring brother and the searing pain of his father’s hand on his backside came back to Gideon now, as he stood looking at the ring of spears pointing at him. They were tipped with sharpened scraps of iron that looked as if they might have been ripped from car hoods or forged from cook pots. Crude as they were, Gideon knew how easily they could slice through muscle and bone.

The men were still bombarding him with angry questions and accusations in a language he couldn’t understand, so he just kept talking in as soothing a tone as he could muster. “I’m just here to find my brother.” Gideon hoped that even if they couldn’t understand his words, they would understand his intent, but he might as well have been reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “His name is Tillman. Tillman Davis.”

More shouting and spear waving, so he decided to try another tack. “Abu Nasir.” he said. “He calls himself Abu Nasir.”

The commotion suddenly stopped. “Abu Nasir?” one of them said softly.

“Yes. Abu Nasir.”

Two of the older men exchanged glances, their hostile suspicion giving way to curiosity.

Suddenly remembering that Uncle Earl had given him a recent photo of his bearded brother, Gideon reached slowly into his p. &ñ€ocket and pulled it out.

The oldest man snatched it from him, studying the photo, then looked up at Gideon. The others crowded around, setting off a raucous debate. Several of the men pantomimed stabbing Gideon with their spears. Did these men work for Abu Nasir, or were they rivals? Did they love him, hate him, what? He wasn’t sure.

Abruptly, they came to a decision and settled down.

The old man pointed his spear at Gideon’s chest and then nodded once, as if bestowing some seal of approval on him. “You. Abu Nasir. Come.”

“Okay.” Gideon smiled and nodded vigorously. Keep smiling, he thought. Keep smiling.

The men—there were seven of them—turned and began to walk silently back into the jungle. Gideon followed. They walked for several hours, stopping several times to listen carefully before moving on. Although their faces betrayed no emotion, it was clear that they were nervous. Gideon got the impression they were worried about being ambushed.

They followed a hardpacked trail, which was only sporadically overgrown. Several of the men carried machetes, but they used them only once to clear the trail.

Late in the afternoon they came to a ruined patch of land where a village had stood until recently. Black soot and cinders were all that remained of its grass-and-bamboo huts. The air smelled of rotting meat. The carcasses of a sow with her litter of piglets lay in a heap, thick with buzzing flies. Since pork had to be a prized food here in the jungle, Gideon couldn’t imagine several hundred pounds of meat being left to rot by local tribesmen.

Then he saw a body, a woman, lying tangled in the underbrush. And then it was as though some key had turned in his vision. Suddenly he could see more dead people—women, old men, children—lying around the periphery of the clearing.

The highlanders kept their eyes straight ahead of them, not remarking or even looking at the evidence of tragedy around them. Who did this? Gideon thought. But no one was there to answer him.

Soon they were back in the jungle, the light waning. Gideon realized that other than the tin of peaches, he hadn’t eaten all day. With all the physical activity he’d been engaged in, he was starving. As the light began to die, the highlanders finally stopped. They sat in a circle, silently eating dried meat and some kind of smelly goo wrapped in broad leaves. The men never offered him anything, and he didn’t ask.

As night fell the sounds of the jungle filled the darkness. Hoots and howls, growls and buzzing noises. Except Gideon saw no animals, no monkeys or snakes, nothing but mosquitoes and moths nearly as big as his hand, which thudded around in the trees above him. The highlanders never spoke. One of them moved away from the group—presumably to serve as sentry. The others simply lay down on the cold, hard dirt and fell asleep.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

The night brought on a damp cold. Gideon’s stomach knotted...

The ground was hard, and every part of his body was sore. Insects skittered around in the leaves. Gideon felt as alone as he’d ever felt in his life. Even on the nigh siñ€t when his father and mother had died, he had not felt quite so alone. At least he’d had Tillman.

Tillman. He was here because of Tillman. The thought of seeing his brother again comforted him.

And then he slept.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

PRESIDENT DIGGS ENTERED THE secure Situation Room deep beneath the White House, trailed by Elliot Hammershaw. Everyone stood, all nine members of the ad hoc working group that the president and Earl Parker had assembled only a few days earlier to plan and support their covert operation to retrieve Tillman Davis. The group included Admiral Dirkson Reed, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a compact man with silvered hair and piercing forest green eyes, who had earned his reputation for courage under fire as commander of the nuclear sub the USS Reagan—a reputation he had burnished many times over in combat and in the halls of power. In the nearly twenty years that Diggs had known the admiral, he’d never seen the man as rattled as he looked right now. Diggs had come here to discuss the implications of Gideon Davis’s ambush, fully expecting that it would mean the end of their covert attempt to shore up the sultan in his escalating civil war. But seeing Admiral Reed’s eyes, he braced himself for even worse news. Which is exactly what he got.

“Admiral, give me the sitrep on Gideon Davis.”

“His status is unchanged, Mr. President.”

“Then you still haven’t heard from Tillman Davis.”

“Actually, sir, we have.” The admiral’s jaw clenched, trying to curtail his rising anger. “He’s apparently seized the Obelisk.”

Diggs blinked, trying to get his head around the words. “Earl Parker is on that rig. I just talked to him an hour ago.”

“We only learned about this ourselves a few minutes ago.”

“From what source?”

“YouTube, sir.”

“YouTube?”

Admiral Reed nodded at the air force sergeant who ran the communications equipment in the Situation Room.

The president watched as the oversize LED screen at the front of the room lit up, revealing a grainy video framed by the ubiquitous YouTube player. An attractive woman in her early thirties, wearing a neon yellow jumpsuit, was on her knees, addressing the camera. She appeared calm, but her eyes betrayed her terror. Behind her were several masked men holding AK-47s.

“Turn up the volume,” Diggs said.

The terrified woman’s voice sounded strangely quiet, even as it boomed out over the speakers: “My name is Kate Murphy,” she read. “I am the executive in charge of the Obelisk, which is now under the control of Abu Nasir. Because of U.S. support for the corrupt CIA puppet, the so-called Sultan of Mohan, Abu Nasir’s men have seized the rig and are holding hostage the surviving members of my crew along with Ambassador Randall Stearns and Deputy National Security Advisor Earl Parker.” She paused, letting out the tight bggs t‡reath she’d been holding, then resumed. “A bomb of sufficient power to destroy both the rig and all its occupants has been planted on the Obelisk. Our demand is simple: in exchange for the lives of the hostages, the president of the United States must recall all U.S. military forces from Mohan, including all CIA operatives, all contractors, and all so-called military advisors. If this demand is not met by eight o’clock a.m. tomorrow, Abu Nasir will kill the hostages and destroy the Obelisk. There will be no negotiation and no further contact.”