the human remains, may give us some idea of what we're up against."
McTierney cleared his throat. "Mmm…that could present a slight problem." He managed a sideways glance at Colonel Udinka. "You see, Chief Enkare is dead set against any more desecration of the dead. Restless spirits and all. Seems we may have to do a little cajoling to smooth things over. Chief Enkare won't take kindly to digging up corpses and launching your ANAD bugger inside them."
"Not to worry," Udinka boomed. "I have authority from the Government to assist you in any way."
His voice was drowned out by two black lifters settling onto the ramp a few dozen meters away. Winger hand-signaled for the Detachment to start moving their gear out.
Before the dust had settled, the pallets were pressurized and hustled over on curtains of air, while the lifters squatted down to accommodate the loading process. They looked for all the world like fat mosquitoes, their articulating landing skids retracted to ground level for mission onloading.
Lieutenant Tallant supervised the process. Ten minutes later, she jogged over to Winger. "Another half hour and the pods will be secured. Then it’s just the DPS stuff...charges are being checked now--and we'll be ready to rumble."
"Very well." Winger checked his watch. He wanted to be at the village before sundown. "Muster the detachment for a final briefing. We go airborne at 1400 hours."
Udinka waved his own troops to fall out and board the Quantum Corps lifters. "It's a half hour flight up to the village. Kuluba Hills and some ancient craters straddle the boundary. Banikaiyan's just on this side, right next to an old Berber fort…but then you already know that, don’t you?"
“All too well,” Winger admitted.
"Lieutenant, you figuring Level One…opposed entry?" Corporal An Nguyen asked. Tactical doctrine called for proper protection any time 1st Nano troops went into unfriendly terrain.
Winger had other ideas. "My read of the tactical situation is no…it'll take too long to suit up. But bring the hypersuits anyway. HNRIV or Red Hammer may yet have some unpleasant surprises for us."
Winger and Tallant oversaw the final loadout of the lifters, then gave the CQE's a hand with the hypersuits. Hard-shelled, boosted exoskeletal frames, the tin cans were an infantryman's best friend, short of his assault weapon. It took the Detachment half an hour to suit up and check systems.
By midafternoon, in a stiff northwesterly breeze, the flotilla of lifters set off, bearing north by northeast on a direct vector to the Kuluba Hills district and the village.
The flight went by quickly enough and Johnny Winger watched the burnished red plateau of the western Sahel slide by along the horizon, while he reviewed the tactical plan for Sahara Ghost in his mind, rehearsing scenarios and options over and over again. SOFIE, the tactical AI, was always a comforting voice at times like this. Rather like having your mother go over your homework with you, he thought.
A grassy escarpment rolled by eight thousand meters below them, as the lifter pilots maneuvered toward Kuluba Hills. Patches of baobab and kapok dotted an open desert hardpan with the green shoreline of the Niger River and the craggy faulted walls of Banik crater making an impressive backdrop. As Winger and the rest of the Detachment looked on through scattered clouds, several caravans of camels and herders undulated across the plain, kicking up dust for kilometers around.
"Impressive, isn't it?" Dr. McTierney observed. "I've been coming here with the Epidemic Intelligence Service for the better part of two years and I never tire of the view. Over there'--" he pointed through a porthole at strings of smoke issuing skyward from an encampment on the steeply sloping ramparts of Banik volcano. "Cooking fires from the village. That's our destination…Banikaiyan…and what’s left of La Maghreb. I understand you pretty well demolished the place a few months ago."
“We demolished what was underneath it,” Winger corrected him, referring to the Atom Hammer mission they had conducted while still nogs at Table Top.
Moments later, the lifter pilots had circled the volcano several times to gauge the prevailing winds and set the small force down with a thump onto dark pebbly ground in a clearing southwest of the village. A quick infrared and EM scan of the surrounding rocks and black hills produced no obvious threat signatures.
As soon as the lifters touched down, Winger got on the tactical crewnet and issued dismount orders.
"Step lively, fellows. And keep your eyes and antennas open. HNRIV may yet have something nasty in store for us."
The rest of the Detachment had been unloading gear for a few minutes when a small group of local Tuareg appeared at the edge of the clearing. They were tall, regal people, the men with colorful blue veils called alasho, bearing spears, and the women wearing intricate beaded necklaces and scarves, over black afetek burkas and red sandals. Many of them seemed weak, drawn, haggard, even sad.
The villagers moved into the clearing and surrounded the Detachment, not threateningly, but with purpose.
Colonel Udinka and the Territorial troops moved out and secured a perimeter to block any further approach. Udinka shouted out a few words in the local dialect.
"Kombasa ulithi lugguru mahenge!"
One man, weighted with ornate headbands and an especially large spear, came forward.
"Mahenge maua. Njombe!" He swept his arms around, palms out, circling the clearing with his gestures. "Mortangi…mortangi…" his head and voice dropped to a whisper. "--mortangi…."
McTierney muttered to Winger. "That's Enkare, the chief. He's rather distressed this afternoon."
Udinka said a few more words, then brusquely ordered his troops to fan out toward the village. The Colonel came over.
"The chief says there is still great death here…he does not like us to come anymore…he says we bring more death."
Winger had seen the plaintive looks of the villagers. There was a grim determination to them. "Tell them we've come to help out. We're here to find what causes the Great Death and get rid of it."
Udinka translated and added a few more orders for his troops. Presently, Enkare came directly up to Johnny Winger. He reached out with the tip of his spear and touched Winger on the top of his forehead.
"Uleezi komangi…" several more gentle taps and a circle of the spear tip around the top of the Lieutenant's head. "Ne…mortangi…chaki mabati."
Udinka smiled, translating. "Chief Enkare makes you a spirit warrior…komangi for the village."
Winger met the Chief's grief-stricken eyes with a level gaze of his own. "I'm honored. My Detachment is here to fight the Great Death. We want to study what he has done."
While Udinka interpreted, McTierney nudged the Lieutenant in the ribs. "Not bad for a Yank, eh? You'll get the hang of this in no time." The Scottish virologist recognized several friendly faces among the villagers and dived into an outpouring of hugs and handshakes.
Winger explained, through Udinka, what he wanted to do.
"We've got to take a look at the index case."
Udinka exchanged words with Enkare, gesturing first at his own troops, then the Detachment. "His name was Soweto. Terrible, terrible mortangi, much suffering. The Chief doesn't want to disturb the gravesite again. It angers Kalbamba, the giant who lives in the volcano."
Winger and McTierney and Udinka pleaded with Enkare for understanding but the
Chief was adamant. Finally, exasperated, McTierney summoned his friends from the crowd of villagers. Around the rotted stump of a kapok tree, arguments and tempers flared. Winger knew they had the force to complete the mission even against the Chief's wishes. He didn't want it to come to that.
At last, Enkare relented, persuaded by pleading sobs from several women. McTierney identified the older woman as Soweto's widow.
"Her name's Nalinka. She's been through a lot. Got the bug herself but somehow, with help the doctors and some good fortune, she threw it off. Can't explain that at all."
Winger was sympathetic. ANAD needs to lo
ok at her too, he told himself. After all she had been through…but it couldn't be helped.
Enkare formed up a procession of the villagers and led them deeper into a tangle of kapok trees and scrubland to the village outskirts. The gathering of huts formed a tight circle, no more than a hundred meters across, nestled in the brow of a ridge from the nearby crater. Each hut was a crude twig and branch skeleton, draped with straw and cowhide. Antennas and cables snaked across the clearing, powering Uliba's telecom systems, the only concession to the 21st Century.
What was left of Banikaiyan Mountain lay to their east, its top slumped and leveled off after the implosion of the Red Hammer lab a few months before.
Throughout the village, listless addicts lay strewn about the dirt paths, entangled in the brush, propped up against trees, their eyes glassy from HNRIV overdose. Several twitched and convulsed, trembling every few seconds, hard in the grip of the malfunctioning mech storm. Legs and arms were half hidden in dense tufts of vine, still with rigor mortis, swollen bodies hosting angry hordes of flies and mosquitoes. The lucky ones had already died.
Johnny Winger swallowed hard as they filed into the main clearing.
"Nalinka's the only survivor from Soweto's family," McTierney explained. "He had two other wives plus a menagerie of sons and daughters, probably thirty in all."
"All died…from HNRIV?"
"And attempts at treatment." McTierney nodded somberly as they reached