“Ma’am?”
“Cindy isnotokay. Once you get this ball rolling, go home and relieve her. That’s an order!”
17
The Maghreb
130 Nautical Miles South of Tobruk, Libya
1433 Local Time
The road had last been paved in 1976. Fifty years later, it was in desperate need of repair.
The few drivers who dared to tackle it learned to moderate their speed, which kept chunks of asphalt from kicking up into their undercarriages. Tire-ruining potholes were legion. To the positive, there was virtually no traffic; indeed, barely enough to whisk away the dust from the seasonal haboobs. A rare rain two weeks ago had carved new channels in the tarmac, but none that couldn’t be bypassed on the desert hardpan.
Malenkov stared blankly through the window of his hired car, a riot of thoughts in his head. He didn’t like this place, because it was isolated and bleak. He needed it for those very same reasons. This was his tenth visit to the Maghreb. He’d hired the same driver today he always used, an unsmiling man who was too young to be jaded and too old to be ambitious. As always, he had shown up at the airport in Tobruk on time, and by all accountsthe man had kept his mouth shut since the last visit—the only two metrics Malenkov truly cared about.
If only I could find a hundred like him.
Yet if the driver was reliable, his car was another matter. The Fiat was old, wear and tear from running the decaying roads evident. Its chassis groaned with every bump and the windshield was cracked. Multiple warning lights on the dash glared red and amber—the driver insisted they weren’t an issue, but it hardly instilled confidence. If all went to plan, this would be Malenkov’s last trek here. Indeed, his last time pitching over beaten roads in any of the world’s wastelands.
A particularly vicious bump sent a bolt of pain up his spine. He tried to hold steady. He was getting tired of this shit. Tired of living in the extremes. In little more than a day, he’d journeyed from the subzero misery of Siberia to a high-Saharan furnace. The last official temperature reading, delivered by the pilot prior to landing in Tobruk, had noted the temperature to be thirty-two degrees Celsius. Nearly ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Here, farther inland, it had to be higher.At least it’s not summer, he thought. He wondered idly if Vasin had already learned that he hadn’t flown to Porto as planned. Malenkov decided it didn’t matter.
“We are nearly there,” the driver said.
Malenkov looked up and saw the familiar bullet hole–riddled sign:Al-Jaghbub, 12 Km.
The village of Al-Jaghbub rested enduringly on the eastern edge of the Maghreb. Situated on the roof of the Sahara Desert, the Maghreb had been visited by all the great Mediterranean empires. The Romans, the Vandals, the Byzantines—each had come and gone. A running cast of Islamic caliphs had desperately triedto hold it. That, however, was like trying to hold the sands of the Sahara itself.
The driver turned left onto an unmarked road.
They were not destined for the town, but rather Al-Jaghbub Airfield, which lay ten kilometers north of its namesake village. The airfield had been conceived and built by the Germans in 1941, overrun by the British in ’42, and coopted by the Americans later that same year. After World War II it had served, at various times, as a training center, a military base, and a flight school. With the fall of Gaddhafi, and the outbreak of the Second Libyan Civil War, Al-Jaghbub Airfield had, like so much else in the country, simply gone to rot. Government funding ceased, and the Libyan Air Force faded to a shadow of what it had been. The doors of the airfield’s main hangar stood closed, and its buildings were abandoned. The runway fell covered in sand, the desert inexorably reclaiming its lease.
For five years nothing changed.
Then, eight months ago, the airfield’s renaissance began.
Village elders were approached by a man with a faraway accent. He claimed to represent a corporation none of them had ever heard of. They did their due diligence, as far as five septuagenarian Maghrebi Bedouin could, and announced to the township that they’d discovered nothing alarming about the Agravia Corporation. Indeed, they’d found little at all. Agravia had no website, no listing on any stock exchange, no sign of any products on online marketplaces. What it did have—a circumstance not shared outside the close-knit council of elders—was a representative with a very large suitcase full of American dollars.
As it was known locally, baksheesh.
There was never any written contract, a round of handshakes and the briefcase sufficing. Yet there were terms to the agreement.Agravia’s employees would keep to themselves, Malenkov promised, venturing to the village only for necessities. He gave assurances that their work would not pollute the oasis at the edge of town. The elders, in turn, were to convey two policies to the residents of the village: no jobs could be expected, since the work to be performed in the hangars was highly technical, and the locals were not to approach the facility, which would be strictly guarded.
And with that, the deal was struck.
A bulldozer appeared on a flatbed truck and was soon pushing hills of sand off the runway. Next came a sweeper to keep it clear. As soon as the runway rehabilitation was complete, regular flights began arriving—each week the same aircraft and crew, and always under cover of darkness. They brought in personnel, industrial equipment, food and water, and cots. After two months of preparations, Agravia’s work began in earnest.
The car passed through the main gate, two guards waving the familiar driver and passenger through. Malenkov was dropped in front of the hangar. He settled with the driver, and the weary Fiat rattled away.
He set out toward the hangar entrance. As usual, the big main doors were closed. This could easily be excused as a practical matter. Even in November, the daytime temperatures here reached ninety degrees. Near the side entrance, a big man stood in the shade of the security trailer. Bojan, Malenkov’s head of security, had his own reasons for keeping the main doors shut.
The Serb stepped out to greet him. “Welcome back to Paradise,” he said.
The two didn’t shake hands.
Bojan oversaw the compound’s twenty-six-man security contingent. They had started with twenty-eight men, but two were no longer here. The pair had made a late-night foray into townand been hauled back to the front gate, bruised and drunk, by local militiamen. Bojan had paid off the militiamen to thank them, and the next morning the two malcontents were gone. Malenkov told the others that they had been sent home. Everyone knew it was a lie.
The security team were professional mercenaries. A few were Russian, former Wagner Group, but most were Serbs and Kazaks. All were paid well to work twelve-hour shifts. The majority roamed the perimeter fence, although two men always staffed the command trailer, monitoring video cameras and a network of sensors. Bojan’s contingent easily outnumbered those who worked inside the hangar—six technicians of various specialties.
