It was 2:00 a.m. when the charter flight touched down on the runway in Tripoli. The pilot had come in slow, giving it just enough speed to keep from being swept sideways by any sudden wind, and then he hit the brakes hard. Tripoli’s runway had been part of a major battlefield at least twice in the past couple of years, and Alan Spencer didn’t blame the pilot for his caution. Mortar and tank rounds had undoubtedly hit the pavement, and there was no way to predict how well the holes had been patched.
Spencer knew that when their plane had taken off from Toronto, this airport had been in the hands of the opposition government army and the Misrata pro-Libya Dawn Militia, but in twenty-four hours anything could have happened. There had been air attacks from the Tobruk-based government in the spring, and the Zintan militia had held the airport for a couple of years before that.
As the plane shuddered and rattled to a halt at the end of the runway and began to taxi, Spencer looked over at the dark silhouette of the main terminal. As they taxied closer, headlights came on and he could see that the building that had once served three million passengers a year was now pockmarked with bullet holes and shrapnel scars. Some of the windows were still broken.
The plane didn’t pull up to the terminal, just stopped a hundred feet or so away, the nose turned toward the end of the runway for the return trip. The male flight attendant opened the hatch and lowered the stairs to the ground. Stepping out of the hatch to the steps was like walking into a furnace. Spencer had judged that it would be too late in the season for the Ghibli, the hot wind from the southern desert that raised the temperature a couple of times a summer. But here it was.
The aid workers had been sitting for so long that they felt desperate to get out the door. Then it seemed to occur to them, one at a time, that it might be a long time before they were in air-conditioning again. Glen McKnight, one of the volunteer doctors, said, “What do you think the temperature is?”
Spencer translated his thought into centigrade. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it were forty,” he said. “It happens here sometimes.” He smiled. “It doesn’t last, usually.”
As they walked away from the plane toward the terminal, several men wearing combinations of military battle dress and civilian clothes loitered nearby. All were carrying AK-47 rifles and a variety of other gear. Most wore the kaffiyeh, but a few were bareheaded and others wore baseball caps or camouflage-print fatigue hats.
Alan was relieved to see that they paid little attention to the passengers, which meant they weren’t hostile, and they were mostly occupied in watching the middle distance around the airport.
The navigator and the flight attendant opened the bay beneath the plane and the aid workers began to unload the cartons of food, medicine, and supplies. There were no airport workers to handle baggage, and the sentries showed no inclination to help, so the Canadians worked at it themselves. They piled their cargo about fifty yards away from the plane near the terminal building. When they had removed all of the small boxes and cartons, they were able to reach the larger heavy wooden crates that had been loaded first.
Many hands lowered each large crate to the ground. Some were heavy, and others were full of medical equipment that was delicate and expensive, donated by companies or bought by contributors. The unloading took about twenty minutes of hard labor, and while that was proceeding, the fuel truck that had been parked in the shelter provided by two large buildings pulled up on the other side of the plane and a man began refueling it.
The men with guns had their eyes turned away until the plane was unloaded, and the fuel truck pulled away and went back to its sheltered space. Then the driver got out and parked a car in front of the fuel truck so the truck would be harder to hit with small arms from a distance.
The plane’s pilot and copilot performed a hasty walk-around inspection of the plane, and then boarded it. The flight attendant raised the steps and closed the hatch, and the pilot started the engine. The control tower had been hit by something big and explosive in one of the battles, and whatever had taken its place was not evident to Alan. The pilot was visible in the cockpit in radio communication with someone, somewhere, and then he moved the plane forward, heading for the end of the runway.
Some of the volunteers watched the plane turn at the end of the runway, and then roar along the tarmac at a slight angle to avoid the worst of the shell craters and burn marks on the pavement, and then rise into the air. Alan listened for sounds of small-arms fire, but heard none, and saw no streaks of light moving toward the plane. In a minute it was high enough so it became just a set of blinking lights fading into the distance.
The air became quiet at that moment. The arrival or takeoff of a plane was a rare occurrence. The militiamen seemed to relax now that the plane was gone, but it didn’t seem to Alan that they were entirely secure or at ease. He noticed that there were also at least a half dozen of them on the roof of the ruined terminal with binoculars and night-vision scopes. He could see they were protected by debris camouflaging a wall of sandbags, and he thought he saw the barrels of heavy machine guns.
A dozen members of the militia on the ground performed a customs check as the volunteers watched. They inspected a few of the cardboard cartons that held bags of rice, beans, and wheat flour, canned vegetables, and halal meat. They moved to the wooden crates of machinery and pried a few open. As he had expected, they paid most attention to the crates that held heavy equipment. Well-drilling rigs, irrigation pumps, water purification machines, and hand tools piqued their interest most because they were made of steel and dismantled for shipment, so the crates looked, felt, and sounded as though they contained weapons.
The medical equipment was light and tended to be electronics sheathed in plastic consoles. There was lab equipment to analyze blood, urine, and dissolved blood gases. There were an X-ray machine, an ultrasound machine, and a PET scanner. There were sterilizers, EKG machines, infusion pumps, anesthetic machines, and monitors to track patients’ vital signs. The militiamen opened a few of the boxes, but shut them almost immediately and moved on to the next ones.
Alan noticed that there seemed to be some kind of commotion beginning near the far side of the main pile of boxes. He recognized Dr. Zidane immediately, and Dr. Leclerc, and they seemed to be unhappy with the man Alan had decided must be the head of the militia contingent. He moved closer and listened.
In a few seconds Dr. Zidane noticed him. She said in English, “He wants to take food and supplies. Can you believe it?”
Alan said, “How much?”
She said, “Who knows? We can’t spare any of it.”
Alan stepped closer and bowed to the leader. “I am Alan Spencer,” he said in Arabic. “Are you the commander of the militia?”
“Abdul Hamid, colonel of the Misrata Militia. I’ve been speaking with this woman, and she doesn’t seem to understand anything she wasn’t taught in an American school.”
Alan said, “American? Dr. Zidane is Canadian, like the rest of us.”
“That difference means nothing here.”
Alan could see that one thing hadn’t changed much in the past thirty years. This was not a part of the world where men—at least men like this militia—were accustomed to arguing with women. Alan said, “Maybe I can help clear up the misunderstanding.”
“You were able to land a plane here because we fought for this airport in two great battles. We’re here to protect you because the plane brought food and other supplies that the people need. We’re not going to sell it or throw it away. The people around here are our relatives. We know how to get it to them.”
Alan smiled, he hoped, convincingly. “Oh,” he said. “Thank you for explaining. Please give me a moment.” He stepped to the two doctors. “I think he feels insulted.”
“He’s insulted because I’m a woman,” said Dr. Zidane. “For that and because I won’t let him steal food and supplies. We didn’t bring this here to support a war.”
Alan said, “He wants to distribute some to the people around here, who are his relatives or members of his faction. How much of the food can we spare?”
“None.”
“Would his tribe and its allies get some of the supplies if he didn’t ask?”
“Of course. We don’t choose sides or tribes. We give aid to whomever we can reach who needs it.”
“Maybe we could trust him to deliver the supplies that are going to his people anyway.”
She scowled. “I don’t trust him. Why do you?”
“Several reasons. He can’t steal the supplies from his men’s relatives, and he knows it. He’s not a king. Nobody who is surrounded by men carrying machine guns is a king. He’ll just be doing some of our work for us.”
Leclerc looked at her. “This sounds logical to me.”
She threw up her hands in a gesture of frustration. “All right. Do it.”
Alan turned to Leclerc and said, “The other reason is that we can’t stop him. If we say no, he can take everything.”
Alan returned to the colonel. “I’m sorry for the delay. If you would be willing to distribute the goods intended for your friends and relatives, it would save us time and effort, and we would be grateful. Take one quarter of the food and supplies, but please leave the medical goods here for the clinic.”
The colonel looked hard at him for a couple of seconds. “That woman. What about her? Does she agree? What if I take it all?”
Alan shrugged. “If you have skilled doctors, you might do some good. But Dr. Zidane is an expert on North African diseases, the only one we have with us. Dr. Leclerc is a famous surgeon. Dr. McKnight is a great anesthesiologist.”
The colonel smiled. “I see why they brought you with them.”
“Thank you. I’ll ask some people to help your men pick out the cartons you need.”
Alan joined the nurses and volunteers waiting nearby. “Give them a quarter of the food. Nothing else. Keep all the medical supplies and the agricultural machinery and so on.”
The work went quickly because the militiamen wanted to travel while it was still dark and their convoy wouldn’t attract attention, so they did much of the lifting and loading. Meanwhile, Alan began an informal inventory of the items that the soldiers were not supposed to take.
He was careful to locate a crate he had packed personally in Toronto. It held the diagnostic X-ray machine and some stands and associated equipment. Inside he had placed a Czech-made .45 caliber pistol with the barrel threaded for its silencer, and four spare loaded magazines. He had taken the pistol off the body of one of Faris Hamzah’s assassins who had come for him in Chicago. He had chosen this pistol as the one to retain, because it was high quality and had no purchasing history that could possibly lead to him.
He had hidden the pistol and the rest wrapped in two of the lead-lined aprons that went with the X-ray machine, and then restored the original packaging so that even if the machine were subjected to a physical search, his additions wouldn’t be noticed. He slipped the pistol and magazines into his travel jacket. When he found his duffel bag he took off the jacket and hid it inside the duffel.
Alan worked with a few other volunteers to place the pile of supplies and equipment inside the terminal’s damaged waiting area and then set up enough folding cots so they could all sleep as a group and watch each other, their bags, and boxes. When Alan got the chance to pick a cot, he chose one on the perimeter. He reached into his duffel bag, took out a towel, rolled it to use as a pillow, and then reached back into the bag and felt for the weapon he had hidden there. He screwed the silencer on the barrel, engaged the safety, and buried the gun among the clothes.
He studied his own reaction to the long flight, the layover, and the physical labor in the heat. He wasn’t twenty-five years old anymore, but he seemed to be all right—aware of no signs of dehydration or muscle aches.
He lay there thinking about Marie. She would have found the laptop and the videodisc a few hours ago, so she knew what he had done. He felt a painful mixture of affection and regret grip his stomach, and then waited for it to pass. When it didn’t, he spent a few minutes reviewing the provisions he had made for her. They should be sufficient to keep her safe and comfortable for the rest of her life. He reviewed everything again, and soon he dozed off.
Around 5:00 a.m. growling engines signaled the arrival of the three trucks that were to take the aid workers to their first clinic. The volunteers stowed their cots and their belongings, and then began loading the trucks. The wind had shifted while they were sleeping and the temperature had dropped about ten degrees.
The Canadians relaxed and regained their optimism. These were men and women in their twenties through forties—a generation or two younger than Alan—and they had recovered from the long flight overnight. They set up a line like a bucket brigade to pass the cardboard cartons of supplies from the terminal to the trucks. Alan took a place in the line and began to pass boxes.
After a few minutes he sensed someone behind him and turned. It was Dr. Zidane, and she pulled him out of the line and led him a few yards away.
“Alan, I want to express my thanks for the way you handled things last night. I guess what I mean is, how you handled me. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“I wasn’t handling anybody,” he said. “I was just trying to bow to the inevitable, and people let me do it. I find the gray hairs help.”
“I made a foolish mistake,” she said. “I was tired and irritated, and I think I’ve gotten too used to living in places where people wouldn’t think of breaking the rules. Here you have to be flexible and patient. My parents moved to Canada in the seventies, so I never lived here as an adult.”
“Well, I was glad to help. And thanks. It’s nice to get a pat on the back from the boss.”
“Well, I’d better get over to the trucks before somebody puts a generator on top of an ultrasound machine.” She hurried off, and he returned to work on the loading line.
As he worked, he thought. He had made himself visible, and that was a risk, especially being visible to men like the colonel. He might suspect him of being a plant from a Canadian intelligence agency. Alan was fairly confident that the Libya Dawn fighters wouldn’t care if he were. They were allied with the remainder of the old Parliament, and they were opposed to the extreme Islamists to the east, and to the internationally recognized government beyond them in Tobruk. Canada wasn’t much of a threat. But in civil wars it was difficult to know who all the players really were, and which side they might be on tomorrow.
He had also felt a chill from talking to Dr. Zidane. She and Dr. Leclerc were in charge of this mission to Libya, and she was the one who had most of the knowledge of the place—the language, religion, and customs. She should have been able to deal with the commander. But something had gone wrong last night, and he thought he knew what it might be.
Dr. Zidane was clearly a member of a rich, high-status family, the sort who might have once expected to order an army officer around. But things had changed. The country was divided into five or six major factions, and people of every shade of opinion were walking around with military weapons. She might have been right that the colonel was simply unable to tolerate a structure that put a woman in charge. But there might be more to his animosity too. The fighters had no reason to love the aristocracy.
What Alan was most afraid of was that he might have sparked resentment in her. He had unexpectedly come between her and the nearest Libyan authority, and maybe even between her and Dr. Leclerc. He resolved to fade into an unnoticeable blur in the mission as soon as possible.
At nine the trucks reached their first stop and the Canadians set up the first clinic in a village fifty miles from the outskirts of Tripoli. The lines of patients formed while the volunteers were still hauling boxes around and setting up tents and canopies. The registered nurses and trained technicians supervised and set up the diagnostic equipment and prepared the supplies for vaccinations, pap smears, deworming, and other routine procedures. At least half of the relief workers had been deployed in remote countries before, so there were plenty of people who were capable of deciding what went where.
The clinic was in operation within an hour, and patients were being seen in an orderly, timely way. Alan was one of the four Arabic speakers who wrote down the names of the patients and their complaints, took their blood pressure and temperature, and then directed them to the triage nurses.
The clinic hours started at first light each day and went on until the four doctors had worn themselves out around dusk. For the nurses and volunteers, the work continued until late evening. They cleaned and bandaged minor injuries, gave shots, and handed out food and clean water.
There were several volunteers who were engineers and specialized in electricity, hydraulics, or sanitation, and they ranged away from the clinic, invited into the villages by local people to solve problems or repair old systems. Alan Spencer quickly learned who they were and what each did, in case the information should become useful.
The clinic remained in its first location for three days, and then the trucks, which had been hidden in two garages and a warehouse, arrived again and they loaded up and left. They drove eastward, but immediately had to swing south into rough country controlled by the Tuareg, because the strip of land along the Mediterranean in the north-central part was controlled by ISIS, and they would have been eager to behead a couple of dozen Canadian humanitarians in front of a web camera to help their recruiting efforts. The Canadians made five six-day stays among the Tuareg at known oases.
As they moved eastward again they entered the area controlled by the national government. The regime was based in Tobruk, and consisted of the country’s Council of Deputies, combined for the moment with the remnants of the former national army. The government army was carrying on a campaign called Operation Dignity. Its primary opponents were the other national government in Tripoli and Islamic militias of the Libya Dawn faction. At that moment both sides were fighting over Benghazi, but a cease-fire was holding south of there, where the Canadian relief mission was headed.
They had avoided the area to the north and west where ISIS was holding out against air strikes from Egyptian fighter planes. The Canadians had also avoided the Tunisian border, where a group of Al Qaeda fighters were operating a base that they used as a training camp and a stronghold for staging raids.
Every region had its own militias, each with its own weapons, its own tribal hatreds, and regional rivalries. Spencer knew that Libya had about 140 tribes. The national army still seemed to be in charge in the east, but they could not pacify it, so lines shifted. Some of the eastern Libyan Islamist militias—Ansar al-Sharia, Libya Shield 1, February 17th Martyrs Brigade, Rafallah al-Sahati Brigade—had banded together into the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries to oppose the Tobruk forces.
Changes came abruptly in a modern civil war, and the chance of heading for a safe destination and arriving to find it taken or retaken by a hostile force was high. But the relief mission’s leaders kept themselves and the staff informed about what was ahead as well as possible by satellite phone and radio. They stayed out of the large cities, where bad things were most likely to happen. Cities were the big prizes for attackers and the lifelines of the defenders.
As the mission headed eastward, Alan Spencer began to carry on quiet conversations with his Arabic-speaking patients. He would ask about their tribes, how their relatives and friends were surviving, the state of their businesses and home villages. He noted the names he heard, their factions and groups. And sometimes, he would work his way around to asking: “Have you ever heard of a man named Faris Hamzah?”