Sand and Fire (9780698137844) Read online

  “Yes, sir,” Gold said. She looked down at the woman, who called out in Arabic and pointed to the boy with the mangled hand. Her son, perhaps? “What happened to these people?” Gold asked.

  “The bandits attacked a village on the Algerian side of the border,” Ongondo said. Keeping both hands on the stretcher, he blew a droplet of sweat from the end of his nose. “Here is the result,” he continued. “One of my patrols was wiped out before the bandits withdrew. Your camp was the nearest hospital.”

  “I’m so sorry about your men,” Gold said.

  Though the Kenyan officer spoke with command presence, his eyes glistened.

  “I am, too,” Ongondo said. “And it pains me just as much to see more civilians hurt. What wrong have they done?”

  “Nothing,” Gold said, “except live in territory the terrorists want.”

  “My people have a saying,” Ongondo said. “‘When elephants fight, the grass suffers.’”

  An important moral in a very few words, Gold noted. Ongondo seemed to fall back on his learning whenever he struggled with emotion—just the way Gold did.

  Lambrechts met Gold and Ongondo when they entered the med tent. The doctor wore light blue scrubs, and a stethoscope hung from around her neck. The woman on the stretcher did not speak, but after looking around, she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Relieved, apparently, to find herself at a hospital, however primitive.

  “This woman has suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder,” Ongondo said. “Most of these people have been shot. Some have stab wounds. There are eight of my own men. And one prisoner.”

  “Prisoner?” Lambrechts asked. She kneeled to examine her new patient.

  “Yes. We wounded and captured one of the bandits.”

  “Is this the same group that attacked the village outside Ghat?” Gold asked.

  “We believe so,” Ongondo said. “Sadiq Kassam’s terrorists.”

  Lambrechts looked up from the wounded woman. “Are there injuries from chemical weapons?”

  “None that we have seen.”

  Gold looked out through the tent flap and saw medics and soldiers bringing more patients. Some of the wounded cried out in pain; others stared with dull eyes at things far beyond the horizon. Gold had seen all this before, too many times. But she never got used to it.

  On the makeshift flight line, soldiers who’d flown in on the helicopters gathered around one of the aircraft. They formed a knot at the back of the chopper and began escorting a walking patient. Gold could tell from the way the men handled him that they felt little sympathy about his wounds. Two soldiers pulled him by the front of his shirt, and the man stumbled to keep up. He wore green cargo pants that looked vaguely military, along with a checkered scarf around his neck. The man’s hands were tied behind him. Blood soaked one sleeve.

  “Our prisoner,” Ongondo said.

  “What will you do with him?” Gold asked.

  Ongondo placed his hands on his hips, regarded the captive, bit his lower lip. “Not kill him, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “As much as he deserves it.”

  “We will treat him here,” Lambrechts said. “You must promise you will not abuse him in any way.”

  “You have my word, ma’am. Technically, the Geneva Convention does not apply to terrorists. But my orders are to treat him as a legitimate prisoner of war.”

  “Please do.”

  Gold understood Lambrechts’s concern. A UNHCR camp must remain a place of refuge and relief. Ongondo had just lost men under his command; such a situation would test anyone’s judgment and professionalism. But perhaps an officer who quoted proverbs about the ravages of fighting would think before pulling a trigger or swinging a fist.

  The medical staff triaged the patients. The prisoner, suffering from an arm wound, had to wait because his injury wasn’t life-threatening. Lambrechts asked Gold to keep an eye on the AU soldiers and their captive.

  “Make sure no one does something I’ll regret,” Lambrechts said. “We can’t let a war crime happen under our noses.”

  “I’ll stay with them,” Gold said.

  Lambrechts turned her attention to the wounded soldiers and civilians. The most seriously injured troop had taken a round at the bottom edge of his body armor, and the bullet had ripped through his lower abdomen. Others suffered from embedded shrapnel, and one had lost an eye.

  Ongondo and his men stayed in the rec tent, waiting for word on their wounded comrades. They glared at their prisoner, seated on the floor. Three soldiers kept rifle barrels trained on the man, and Gold could see how this could go very bad very quickly. Just one undisciplined troop with an itchy trigger finger could murder the prisoner and claim the man tried to escape.

  Gold tried to think of what she could do to ease the tension. Food and drink, perhaps? At least that would give the men something to focus on other than vengeance. She went to the mess tent, which offered little between meals. But she found cans of Pepsi and Sprite labeled in English and Arabic, along with apples and oranges. She took the soft drinks and fruit from the refrigerator case and brought them to the soldiers. The soldiers cracked open the cans, which dripped with condensation. They ate and drank, and they glared but offered no protest when Gold held a can of cola to the prisoner’s lips. He drank in deep gulps, foaming liquid running from his mouth.

  The scirocco subsided, and scattered puffy clouds scudded over the desert. Late in the day, as sunset reddened the clouds, a medic called for the wounded prisoner. Gold and Ongondo helped the man to his feet and escorted him to what passed for the camp’s operating room—just a smaller tent off the main medical tent, staffed by Lambrechts and an anesthesiologist.

  The Swiss anesthesiologist, a female physician in scrubs identical to Lambrechts’s, clipped away the flex-cuffs that bound the prisoner’s hands. Then she helped him remove his shirt and lie down on the table. Blood soaked the pressure bandage around his arm. But the bullet had not struck bone, and Gold supposed the man would keep the limb. Still, the wound looked ugly enough when the bandage came off. The round had left a ragged tear in the muscle tissue; a gobbet of flesh hung down from the bicep like a misplaced tongue.

  With a small hypodermic, the anesthesiologist injected something just under the skin of the prisoner’s good arm. After a few minutes, she inserted a large-gauge needle at the injection site and connected an IV drip. Ongondo watched with little apparent emotion.

  “He does not warrant such care,” the Kenyan officer said.

  “Our oath requires us to help anyone in need,” Lambrechts said. Blood had spattered her scrubs. A smeared red handprint marked her sleeve. Gold wondered whether the print came from Lambrechts herself or from the flailing hand of a patient.

  “I understand. And I thank you for treating my men.”

  “All of the wounded you brought here will survive, if luck is with us.”

  The prisoner began to mumble. Gold leaned in close to listen.

  “Ash-hadu anla ilaha, Muhammadan abduhu wa rasuluhu.”

  “You can understand him?” Ongondo asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Gold said. “I speak Arabic, though not as well as Pashto.”

  “What does he say?”

  “The Muslim profession of faith.”

  “In case he does not wake from surgery, I suppose,” Ongondo said.

  “Perhaps.”

  Ongondo thought for a moment. “If you speak his language,” he said, “then perhaps you can help us. We will need someone to interpret when we question him.”

  Gold hesitated before answering. She did not relish the idea of taking part in another interrogation; she’d done more than her share of that in the Army. As Gold considered how to respond, the anesthesiologist opened a valve on the IV drip. The prisoner’s eyelids fluttered, and he went unconscious.

  “Let’s talk outside, sir,” Gold said.


  Gold and Ongondo left the operating tent, stepped out under a dusky Saharan sky. The sun had slipped below the horizon.

  “I gather that you are reluctant to take part in the questioning,” Ongondo said.

  “I am,” Gold said. “I’m not sure it’s appropriate for me to do that.”

  “I will respect whatever you decide. But we may have to wait a while for another interpreter. And the prisoner could have time-sensitive information.”

  A good point, Gold had to admit. After all, if this guy was involved with Kassam, maybe he’d have information about the chemical attacks.

  “All right, sir,” Gold said, “I’ll help. But please promise me you won’t put the prisoner under any duress. I’ll have to walk away—and report it—if you do that.”

  “I gave my word before,” Ongondo said, “and it still stands now.”

  When the prisoner came out of surgery, Lambrechts insisted that they let him sleep through the night. That suited Gold. It gave her a little more time to prepare herself mentally.

  The next morning, Ongondo and three of his men woke the prisoner. Gold watched them emerge from the sleeping tent and march him to a storage shelter. In the shelter, surrounded by crates of canned food, Ongondo made the man sit on a folding chair. The soldiers pointed their weapons at him. No one moved to strike him, but Gold wondered what would have happened if Ongondo hadn’t been there. One soldier took out a set of flex-cuffs.

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Gold said. “May we leave him untied?”

  Ongondo waved his hand, and the soldier put the cuffs away. Gold hoped the small kindness might make the prisoner more likely to talk. The man wore the same bloody shirt and cargo pants he’d had on yesterday, except a sleeve had been cut away from the shirt before surgery. The blood had dried and darkened on the wrinkled clothing. Gold found a bottle of water, twisted off the cap, handed the bottle to the prisoner.

  A breeze carried the coolness of dawn and flapped the blue polyethylene of the shelter walls. Still, sweat trickled down the man’s brow. He fingered his pockets and sipped from the bottle. From time to time he squeezed his eyes shut as if he were concentrating on some mystery, working out some puzzle in his head.

  “Are you in pain?” Gold asked in Arabic.

  “A bit,” the man said.

  “Should I call the doctor?”

  “No. I can bear it.”

  That surprised her. Most people facing interrogation, even without the threat of torture, would take any opportunity for delay. But Gold had long since given up trying to fathom the terrorist mind. At best, she could recognize certain patterns, anticipate typical attitudes.

  “What is your name?”

  “Ahmed.”

  “And family name?”

  “Bedoor.”

  “Ahmed Bedoor,” Gold said. “Where are you from?”

  “Egypt.”

  Hmm. Gold pondered the answers, given promptly, conversationally. Ahmed Bedoor, if that was really his name, veered from the typical in more ways than one. She had seen men in his place spit and curse, call her an infidel harlot. Vow retribution and hellfire. Or refuse to speak at all.

  “And you are one of Sadiq Kassam’s men?” she asked.

  “I serve the pasha of Tripolitania.”

  The title Kassam claimed, the one Gold had seen in graffiti in the village hit with the chem attack. Gold translated the statements for Ongondo, then regarded her strange charge and considered how to proceed.

  “In what capacity do you serve him?” she asked.

  “I am a mere foot soldier.”

  Bedoor’s bearing puzzled Gold. He seemed almost . . . professional. He had to know, or at least suspect, that he faced long imprisonment or execution. Perhaps this was a kind of resignation; Gold had seen unexpected attitudes displayed by prisoners on a few occasions, sometimes when they were under the influence of narcotics. Insurgents often went into battle stoned out of their minds to bolster courage or dampen pain. Some American soldiers told stories of putting five, six, eight rounds into a jihadist to take him down, and they attributed such superhuman resilience to PCP or LSD. But if Bedoor had taken anything, it had probably worn off by now.

  “What does your group hope to accomplish?”

  The prisoner drew in a long breath, studied Gold as if she had asked a foolish question.

  “The pasha has made that clear in his recent statements. We will return this region to sharia law, to true Islamic rule, as in the days of old.”

  Gold paused to fill in Ongondo on the questions and answers thus far. Bedoor spoke fairly standard modern Arabic, so she had an easier time understanding him than some of the refugees from the Ghat region.

  “Ask him how many men Kassam has,” Ongondo said.

  Gold put the question to the prisoner. At this point in interrogations, some low-level jihadists professed innocence and claimed they’d been forced to fight against their will. She wondered why he didn’t try that.

  “I do not know how many men there are,” Bedoor said.

  Gold repeated Bedoor’s statement in English. Ongondo sat on a box of canned pears, placed his elbows on his knees, steepled his fingers.

  “Ask him what weapons they possess.”

  Gold repeated the question in Arabic.

  “I do not know. I had a rifle.”

  Ongondo rolled his eyes, stood up, motioned for Gold to come with him. They stepped outside the shelter tent.

  “Do you believe anything he’s saying?” Ongondo asked, arms folded.

  “I can’t get a feel for this guy,” Gold said. “I don’t necessarily think he’s lying, because he could just deny everything. But he’s pretty well spoken for a terrorist foot soldier.”

  “These bandits come from all walks of life. Try asking him where Kassam has based himself.”

  Back inside, Gold formed the question into Arabic. Bedoor looked out the tent’s opening into the desert. He’d made little eye contact with Gold during the questioning. His distracted manner almost made her feel she was communicating with a ghost, one made to appear against its will through a forceful séance.

  “I cannot tell you that,” he said.

  The answer rendered into English did not please Ongondo.

  “Tell him he will answer that question, or he will have a very unpleasant day.”

  This sounded a little too familiar, a little too much like interrogations Gold had interpreted in the past.

  “You promised no mistreatment.”

  “I will keep that promise. But we need that information if we can get it.”

  Gold considered how to pose the question without threatening. She never shied from using her own judgment when it came to choice of words.

  “These men want very much to know where Sadiq Kassam is now,” Gold said in Arabic. A true statement, certainly, without any venom.

  “I am sure they do,” Bedoor said.

  Now what to do? Gold did not need to maintain neutrality; the United Nations did not pretend terrorists had equal standing with the new governments of North Africa. Once again, time for a judgment call.

  “If you answer their questions here, with me, you will fare better than if they take you elsewhere.” Another true statement.

  Bedoor looked out into the desert again. He stared at the horizon, which brightened as the sun rose higher. He put Gold in mind of a specter again, waiting for the séance’s spell to break and let him cross back over to the spirit world.

  “Very well. The pasha’s headquarters is an abandoned village near the town of Ubari.”

  “Ubari, Libya?”

  “Yes, it is on the Libyan side of the border.”

  Gold updated Ongondo in English.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Excellent work, Ms. Gold.” He gave a command to one of his troops: “Get me a map.”
r />   A soldier hurried from the tent and came back a few minutes later with a chart marked in military grid zones. Numbers and letters marked the zones, with numerical designations for point coordinates.

  “Can you read a land navigation chart?” Gold asked in Arabic.

  “Some,” Bedoor said.

  She spread the chart before him. Bedoor hesitated, looked up at the soldiers glaring at him. He pointed to a spot.

  “Here,” he said. “Your map does not depict the village because it is so small. But it is here.”

  Gold peered at the place Bedoor had indicated. As he said, the chart did not show a village. Was he lying? Not necessarily. Nomads moved around; villages grew and crumbled. He’d pointed to one of the strangest environments on earth, at the edge of the Ubari Sand Sea. The chart’s contour lines appeared as irregular circles. A rolling expanse of dunes, interrupted only by a few saline lakes. Ongondo noted the grid zone, wrote down the coordinates.

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Ongondo asked.

  “Impossible to say,” Gold said.

  Ongondo folded the chart and glanced at one of his soldiers.

  “Take him back to the medical tent,” he said. “Let him rest.”

  At that moment, Bedoor placed his hand into the waistband of his cargo trousers. He fished around for a moment, took out his hand, and placed something in his mouth. Bit down, chewed, swallowed.

  “What did he just do?” Ongondo asked.

  “He took a pill,” a soldier said.

  Already suspecting the worst, Gold kneeled beside Bedoor’s chair. She put her hand on his good arm and asked in Arabic, “What did you put in your mouth?”

  Bedoor shuddered, gathered himself as if it took great effort to speak.

  “There is no God but God,” he said, “and Mohammed is his prophet.”

  Bedoor began to take rapid, shallow breaths. He slumped in the chair. His lower lip took on a blue cast.

  Gold ran to find Lambrechts. When they returned, Bedoor was lying on the storage shelter’s floor. Lambrechts and two medics helped carry him into the med tent. They laid him on an examination table, and Lambrechts pulled open one of his eyes and shone a penlight into it. She ripped open his shirt. Put the eartips of her stethoscope into her ears, listened to his chest. Immediately she tore away the stethoscope by its tube, placed the heel of her right hand on his breastbone and the heel of her left hand over her right. As Lambrechts started chest compressions, one of the medics drew a curtain around the table. Gold and Ongondo waited outside the med tent.