Sand and Fire (9780698137844) Read online

  But now the killing knew no borders. And the killers used new weapons.

  Lambrechts treated other patients with blisters like those of the mother and child. Gold remained by the doctor’s side, translating as best she could. One old man took every breath in agony. He coughed bloody foam, and Lambrechts said he’d inhaled enough chemical to sear the inside of his lungs. Gold tried to speak with him, but he couldn’t talk.

  “He needs oxygen,” Lambrechts said. She gave an order in French, and a nurse wheeled over a green metal bottle. A clear hose led from a valve on the bottle to a plastic mask. The nurse placed the mask over the man’s nose and mouth, and she secured the mask with an elastic band that fit around the patient’s head.

  The old man lay back on his cot, eyes darting from Gold to Lambrechts and the nurse. He kept one hand on the mask as if that could force more oxygen into his lungs. At first the oxygen seemed to give him relief, but as the day wore on he began to wheeze. His face took on a gray pallor, and his eyes squeezed shut when he inhaled, as if respiration itself caused pain. He died in the med tent, each breath a struggle right down to the last one.

  Gold and the medical team worked long into the night, changing dressings, applying ointments, comforting patients. Before going to bed, Gold went to the admin tent to use the satellite phone. She dialed her good friend Michael Parson, an Air Force officer recently promoted to colonel. Parson worked air mobility issues and mission planning for AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, headquartered not in Africa but in Stuttgart, Germany.

  “I’m sorry to call you so late,” Gold said.

  “Sophia,” Parson said, “you can call me anytime you want. It’s good to hear your voice. Is everything all right?”

  Parson sounded like himself, in command and straight to the point. She told him about the chemical attack near Ghat.

  “Oh, shit,” Parson said. “We knew they’d hit that area, but intel said the reports about chem weapons were unconfirmed. Sounds pretty confirmed now.”

  “First Sigonella and now this.”

  “Yeah, that was sarin, but you’re saying you saw blister agents?”

  “Yes.”

  Parson let out a long breath. Over the sat phone, Gold could hear the worry in his voice even as it bounced back down from space. She knew what concerned him. This showed that bad guys had gotten their hands on weapons of mass destruction, in variety and in quantity. The U.S. had once invaded Iraq over a WMD threat. Nobody in the military wanted another war, especially at a time when training and everything else went underfunded. But this time, the chemical threat presented an imminent danger.

  “Where do you think they’re getting this stuff?” Gold asked.

  “I got some ideas, but nothing I can talk about right now. I’ve been trying to get some more eyes in the sky. Maybe a Predator or a Global Hawk. Given what you just told me, I’ll have an easier time with that request now.”

  Gold tried to think of any other help she could offer. “If the area looks safe, I think some of us will fly into the village tomorrow and look around. I’ll let you know if I see anything of interest.”

  “That’s fine,” Parson said, “but for God’s sake, be careful.”

  “We will.”

  Parson paused for a moment. Gold wondered whether she’d lost the connection, and then he said, “This new job of yours sounds too much like the Army. I thought you wanted something different.”

  Gold considered his comment; he seemed to read her mind. With the U.S. withdrawing from Afghanistan, she needed to find other ways to make a contribution. She wanted to keep doing her part to ease suffering in the world. The question was how.

  “Well, it is different,” she said. “But the mission’s not always as clear. Sometimes I wake up with the feeling I’m not where I’m supposed to be.”

  “Where do you think you should be?”

  “Wherever I can do the most good.”

  “Hmm,” Parson said. “That might change with the seasons, but I think you’re in a good place to help some people at the moment.”

  Gold rarely heard Parson talk about finding his own place in the world. He seemed to know his place so well: flying airplanes or leading those who fly. She had a different set of skills to put to use. And, still, the question was how.

  The next morning, word came down that the insurgents had melted away from areas around Ghat. Gold put on a tan field jacket and gathered some tools: her digital camera, pens and notepad, and a canteen filled with water. Ballistic sunglasses and Nomex gloves, too. Army habits were hard to break, and in fact she remained an inactive reservist. She and Lambrechts boarded an old Soviet-built Mi-8 helicopter. The chopper—painted white to distinguish it from military aircraft—bore lettering along the tail boom that read UNITED NATIONS.

  Wind rocked the Mi-8 at liftoff. Sand as fine and light-colored as ground mustard enveloped the helicopter as soon as its blades changed pitch. The brownout blocked Gold’s view of the horizon, and she began to feel a little airsick from the jolts and bumps of turbulence. Lambrechts suffered even more from the rough air; she put her hand to her mouth as if about to throw up. But the ride grew smoother after the aircraft climbed a few hundred feet. Above the worst of the dust, the horizon became visible through the windows.

  With the helicopter on course for the village, the desert flowed underneath like a brown ocean. Breezes kept enough sand in the air to blur the edges of hills and dunes, giving the terrain the appearance of a landscape painted in watercolors. After twenty minutes of flying, paths appeared on the desert floor. Gold saw that the paths converged at a village. Just outside the cluster of dwellings, a grove of palm trees stood in a gulley; Gold presumed the ditch carried water at least part of the year. Over the village, the pilots descended for a closer look before landing.

  Gold craned her neck to see better from her side window. Troops patrolled narrow alleys. They wore gas masks and bulky clothing. Under all the equipment, they plodded along like hard-hat divers walking the ocean floor. Their gear reminded Gold of the MOPP suits she had used in Army training for chemical environments. The troops, Gold knew, were African Union CBRN specialists, trained for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear hazards. The soldiers carried what looked like test equipment for measuring contamination.

  The helicopter landed and shut down several hundred yards upwind of the town. Two African Union helicopters were parked nearby. A man in MOPP gear strode toward the makeshift flight line. As he came closer, he removed his gas mask, and sweat streamed from his face and hair. Gold and Lambrechts stepped down from the helicopter. The man greeted them.

  “I am Major Ongondo,” he said. “Kenya Defence Forces.”

  He removed two pairs of gloves—heavy rubber gloves worn over a set of white cloth gloves. Wiped his face with a handkerchief. Gold shook his hand, clammy with perspiration.

  “Sophia Gold,” she said. “I work with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. This is Dr. Danielle Lambrechts.”

  “You may inspect the community,” Ongondo said. “We detect only trace levels of blister agents. I suggest that you not touch anything.”

  Gold felt almost foolish showing up without any CBRN gear, but her current employer didn’t equip people for chemical warfare. She wondered whether she should lead Lambrechts into the town, but it looked safe enough now. Ongondo’s men had removed their gas masks and walked about with the fronts of their MOPP suits unzipped. Weaponized chemicals often dissipated quickly, especially with any wind. Sometimes weather conditions pushed the toxic cloud into places not targeted by the shooters. Shells filled with poison made for a sloppy weapon, in Gold’s view. Indiscriminate by definition.

  The horrors of chemical weapons used in World War I had led to a number of treaties banning them. As far back as 1925, the Geneva Protocol had outlawed first use of chemical or biological weapons. The current treaty, known as the Chemical
Weapons Convention, had remained in force since 1997. But with some groups and some governments, chemicals still held a lot of appeal. The weapons could be devastating over a short duration, and they were cheap.

  From the pocket of her field jacket, Gold pulled out her camera. She turned it on and took a distance shot of the village. The medina—the old residential section—looked as uniformly beige as the desert that surrounded it. Palm trees appeared as feathers of green, providing the only variation in color. From this perspective, Gold saw few signs of the horrors that had taken place just hours before. She and Lambrechts walked toward the village with Ongondo.

  “More than a dozen people came to our refugee camp on foot,” Gold said. Lambrechts told the Kenyan officer about the burns on the women and children, and the old man who’d died.

  “We found eighteen dead,” Ongondo said. “Some survivors suffer from burns, and others show no symptoms.”

  “Who did this?” Gold asked. “And where did they get these weapons?”

  “I have no idea who and where,” Ongondo said, “and I cannot imagine why.” The officer’s voice cracked. Until that moment, Gold hadn’t realized he was struggling with his emotions.

  “These things can be hard to comprehend,” Gold said.

  Ongondo wiped sweat from his face with his sleeve, stood with his gloves wadded up in his fists. Shook his head.

  “The Baila tribe in Central Africa has a folktale to explain the inexplicable,” Ongondo said. “In the time before history, a woman went to work and put down her baby by the side of the field. When the child cried, a great eagle landed and spread its wings. The woman feared the eagle would kill her child, but the bird only stopped the child’s crying. The next day, the same thing happened; the eagle landed just to soothe the child. The woman told her husband, who did not believe. She took him to the field the next day. When he saw the eagle land beside the baby, he drew his bow and shot an arrow at the eagle. The eagle flapped away, and the arrow hit the child. The eagle had wanted only to soothe the child, and he placed a curse. Kindness went away from mankind, and people kill one another to this day.”

  “That is a very sad tale,” Lambrechts said.

  Gold considered the wisdom packed into such a short story: senseless violence that kills the innocent. Telling the story seemed Ongondo’s way of getting his feelings under control. She wished she could talk further with the Kenyan officer. But he, Gold, and Lambrechts pressed on to matters at hand.

  Inside the village, the first sign of trouble Gold noted came in the form of a dead goat. The animal lay sprawled as if struck by a car, except the goat had died in a courtyard far from any curb. Gold aimed her camera, pressed the autofocus button. The goat’s black fur came into sharp clarity, and Gold took the photo.

  Down the next alleyway, two AU men rolled a corpse into a black body bag. The dead person’s left arm, stiff from rigor mortis, reached up from the bag as if the deceased wanted to climb out and live again. The men forced the arm down and zipped the bag closed. Gold waited before snapping another picture, to spare this unknown Libyan the indignity of being photographed in such a condition. She could not see if the person was a man or a woman.

  “What an awful way to leave this world,” Lambrechts said.

  A dog had died nearby, a dun-colored animal of indeterminate breed. Its lips curled upward, revealing fangs shown in a final growl. Gold imagined the dog could not have comprehended this vaporous enemy that inflicted such pain. The AU troops hefted the body bag, left the dog where it was.

  The sight reminded Gold of photos she’d seen of Halabja, Iraq, where Saddam Hussein’s regime killed thousands of Kurdish civilians with a gas attack in 1988. The death toll hadn’t climbed nearly that high here. But the randomness of this attack and the mystery of the attackers gave plenty of reason to worry about what might come next.

  The AU troops carried the body bag to a square by a mosque, set it down in a row beside eight others. Gold raised her camera again and photographed the row of bags. If not for the scirocco blowing the chemicals away quickly, how many more bags would there have been?

  “This could have been much worse,” Ongondo said.

  “I was just thinking that,” Gold said.

  “My medics have set up a casualty collection point. Would you like to go there?”

  “Yes,” Lambrechts said. “Right away.”

  At the three CCP tents, a Libyan doctor and two nurses worked with three military medics. In the stifling heat, Gold removed her sunglasses and wiped her sleeve across her brow. Lambrechts waded into the throng of patients; scores of people filled the tents. The coughing adults and crying children made conversation nearly impossible. Lambrechts raised her voice to communicate with one of the medics.

  “I am a physician,” she said. “Do you speak English?”

  “No English. No English.”

  “Parlez-vous français?”

  The medic shook his head.

  “Parli italiano?”

  “Sì.”

  While Lambrechts examined patients, Gold took photos that would emphasize the first point she’d make when she e-mailed New York—Send more doctors and medical supplies.

  The victims here appeared even worse off than those who’d reached the refugee camp yesterday. Many of their blisters had broken open to reveal red, oozing flesh underneath the ravaged skin. The sight brought bile to Gold’s throat, but she forced her gut to calm and her mind to focus.

  One teenage boy sat on the ground. Flaps of skin dangled from his face. He stared at the tent wall and took quick breaths. Pain, Gold imagined, had forced his mind in on itself until he could think of nothing else. She had known that kind of agony herself. Gold kneeled, opened her canteen, held it in front of the boy.

  “Drink this,” she said in Arabic.

  The boy grasped the canteen with fingers that looked like half-cooked meat. He lifted the canteen to his mouth, drank for several seconds, passed the canteen back to Gold.

  “I am sorry to do this,” Gold said, “but I need to take your photograph to show what they have done to you.” Governments and aid agencies needed to see this.

  The boy did not answer or even make eye contact. Gold snapped a picture of his hands and one of his face. A medic came over, helped the boy to his feet, and led him to an examination table. Gold hoped the medics could give him some kind of relief.

  In the crowded tent, Gold felt she was only getting in the way. She rose to her feet, put her sunglasses back on, and went outside.

  The quiet of the paths and alleys contrasted with the noise inside the hospital tents. Gold checked her watch; it was just after noon. Yet the village showed no normal bustle of life. No traffic, no vegetable merchants, not even the call to prayer from the muezzin. An entire community poisoned and sick.

  A calico cat stalked across the sidewalk and disappeared down an alley. Gold decided to look around some more, so she followed the animal. The cat simply vanished, as strays could do, but something else caught Gold’s eye. The far end of the alley opened onto a wider street. Along the concrete wall of a home there, someone had spray-painted graffiti. The red paint looked fresh.

  Gold squinted, read the Arabic. TO THE INFIDELS, TO THE SUFI APOSTATES, TAKE THIS WARNING. A NEW PASHA WILL RULE TRIPOLITANIA WITH ALLAH’S FIERCE JUSTICE.

  Pasha? Tripolitania? Those words evoked the days of the Barbary pirates. Maybe some terrorist chieftain sought to cast himself in their image.

  Wait a minute, Gold thought. Why would you come this far into a village you’d just hit with chemical weapons, only to spray-paint a threat?

  Well, you could do it if you wore a gas mask.

  That implied preparation. A dangerous enemy with a plan. Gold took a shot of the graffiti. This photo, she’d send to Parson.

  CHAPTER 4

  Home.

  Blount sat in a high-back rocker
on the front porch of his house, eight-year-old Ruthie in his lap. Priscilla, the older one, stretched out on the swing, which hung from the porch ceiling by a pair of chains. She kept the swing swaying with occasional nudges of her sandal against the hardwood floor while she read a book on an electronic tablet. The weather remained warm for October; through the screens of the open windows Blount smelled supper cooking. Bernadette, the woman who kept him sane and strong, was fixing Chicken Bog. The aromas of onion, sausage, chicken, and rice would have told even a blind man he was in the low country of South Carolina.

  A violent and unpredictable world lay beyond the horizon, Blount knew all too well. But what he could see from his house looked like paradise. The front yard bordered a marsh lagoon. A pair of mergansers cut ripples across the estuary, the surface turned golden by the setting sun. Cordgrass bent with the tide. Palmettos with leaflets shaped like green bayonets stood sentry where the water met dry land. A fitting place for a Marine to make his home. The universe could have ended right then and there, and Blount would have gone out happy.

  Behind him, he heard the sound of his wife’s footsteps. Bernadette appeared at the screen door, a kitchen towel in her hands. Still fit after two children, partly because she ran with Blount every morning—when he was home. Skin the color of walnuts, long fingers that could stroke his back and make everything that hurt go away, she was the most beautiful thing on God’s green earth.

  “Y’all come on in,” Bernadette said. “We’re ready to eat.”

  “Yay,” Ruthie said. Blount’s youngest wriggled out of his grasp. She was getting near about too big to sit on his lap. Enjoy every minute, Blount’s grandfather had told him. They’ll get grown in no time.