Shadow War Read Online Free Page A
Author: Sean McFate
attorneys, think tankers, and advisors, a living army of opinions and analysis.
And yet few of them would understand the Libyan operation. They would insist that we donât seize foreign assets for profit . . . not in the sixty years since the United Fruit Company conquered Central America using the CIA, anyway . . . or since Prescott Bush brokered an oil deal with the Saud family.
But that was merely ignorance. This was the way the world worked. A place like Libyaâor Syria or Afghanistanâwasnât a sovereign country in any modern sense. Even before Gaddafi was overthrown, the desert regions had governed themselves. In the end, the self-proclaimed âking of kings of Africaâ was little more than the mayor of Tripoli. Now Libya was shattered, and everything from oil fields to âtax stationsâ along desert cameltracks were run by whatever local racketeer had the muscle and imagination to control them. The Sahara was the American West of 150 years ago: a lawless land where unemployed soldiers, smugglers, natives, and criminals took what they could, sometimes by cunning, usually by force.
Half the world was like that now. West Africa. Congo. Yemen. In South Sudan, I spent four months helping a local strongman with ties to a U.S. congressman destroy a rebellious rival. The strongmanâs reward was an appointment to the Ministry of Natural Resources. The reward for our client, a large energy firm, was the exclusive right to drill oil in Block 5Aâat a hefty price, of course.
I had believed in that operation. The rebels were butchers. I had seen it myself. Then, three months later, I heard the strongman had slaughtered a thousand âIslamic terrorists,â most of them women and children.
My Libyan operation cut out the local middleman. A middleman who was most likely a murderer, rapist, and thug. In my opinion, Libya was a step toward a more civilized world, not away from one. It was naïve to think otherwise.
So where had it gone wrong?
Somewhere along this damn interstate, I thought, as someone laid on a horn behind me, and somewhere up ahead another car answered. The traffic was completely stopped, and even the Virginians, who lived with this every day, were getting antsy.
Just get me back to Africa, I thought, as I heard the pounding opening to Verdiâs opera The Force of Destiny on the classical station, WETA. It was one of my favorites: two men who fought as mercenary brothers-in-arms, now pitted against each other by fate in a fight to the death. A nice reminder that my occupation was as old as civilization and, like Verdiâs opera, often didnât end well.
It wasnât my job to question Apollo or its clients, I reminded myself, as the traffic started moving. I was a high-end fixer. I was paid to solve problems in war zones, using whatever means I could get away with. And for the creative mind there were so many means.
Whatever happened after . . . well, it was only rumors, anyway.
CHAPTER 2
Thirty-eight minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of a nondescript building in one of the endless office parks near Dulles International Airport. I parked my ancient Mercedes in a long line of similar cars and stared at the man-made pond and the picnic table no one ever used, letting the Verdi wash away my traffic-related stress.
This area was the heart of the mercenary-industrial complex. G4S, a competitor, supplied thousands of security guards to the U.S. military from these buildings, and tens of thousands more to domestic malls. DynCorp pulled down more than three billion a year, although much of that was from military-aircraft maintenance. Blackwater became Xe Services, then Academi, then merged with Triple Canopy, a rival, to beget Constellis Holdings, all in the space of five years. My employer, Apollo Outcomes, had been cleaning latrines on army bases in the 1990s. Now it was a private army with yearly revenues of $3.7 billion, most of it courtesy of
And yet few of them would understand the Libyan operation. They would insist that we donât seize foreign assets for profit . . . not in the sixty years since the United Fruit Company conquered Central America using the CIA, anyway . . . or since Prescott Bush brokered an oil deal with the Saud family.
But that was merely ignorance. This was the way the world worked. A place like Libyaâor Syria or Afghanistanâwasnât a sovereign country in any modern sense. Even before Gaddafi was overthrown, the desert regions had governed themselves. In the end, the self-proclaimed âking of kings of Africaâ was little more than the mayor of Tripoli. Now Libya was shattered, and everything from oil fields to âtax stationsâ along desert cameltracks were run by whatever local racketeer had the muscle and imagination to control them. The Sahara was the American West of 150 years ago: a lawless land where unemployed soldiers, smugglers, natives, and criminals took what they could, sometimes by cunning, usually by force.
Half the world was like that now. West Africa. Congo. Yemen. In South Sudan, I spent four months helping a local strongman with ties to a U.S. congressman destroy a rebellious rival. The strongmanâs reward was an appointment to the Ministry of Natural Resources. The reward for our client, a large energy firm, was the exclusive right to drill oil in Block 5Aâat a hefty price, of course.
I had believed in that operation. The rebels were butchers. I had seen it myself. Then, three months later, I heard the strongman had slaughtered a thousand âIslamic terrorists,â most of them women and children.
My Libyan operation cut out the local middleman. A middleman who was most likely a murderer, rapist, and thug. In my opinion, Libya was a step toward a more civilized world, not away from one. It was naïve to think otherwise.
So where had it gone wrong?
Somewhere along this damn interstate, I thought, as someone laid on a horn behind me, and somewhere up ahead another car answered. The traffic was completely stopped, and even the Virginians, who lived with this every day, were getting antsy.
Just get me back to Africa, I thought, as I heard the pounding opening to Verdiâs opera The Force of Destiny on the classical station, WETA. It was one of my favorites: two men who fought as mercenary brothers-in-arms, now pitted against each other by fate in a fight to the death. A nice reminder that my occupation was as old as civilization and, like Verdiâs opera, often didnât end well.
It wasnât my job to question Apollo or its clients, I reminded myself, as the traffic started moving. I was a high-end fixer. I was paid to solve problems in war zones, using whatever means I could get away with. And for the creative mind there were so many means.
Whatever happened after . . . well, it was only rumors, anyway.
CHAPTER 2
Thirty-eight minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of a nondescript building in one of the endless office parks near Dulles International Airport. I parked my ancient Mercedes in a long line of similar cars and stared at the man-made pond and the picnic table no one ever used, letting the Verdi wash away my traffic-related stress.
This area was the heart of the mercenary-industrial complex. G4S, a competitor, supplied thousands of security guards to the U.S. military from these buildings, and tens of thousands more to domestic malls. DynCorp pulled down more than three billion a year, although much of that was from military-aircraft maintenance. Blackwater became Xe Services, then Academi, then merged with Triple Canopy, a rival, to beget Constellis Holdings, all in the space of five years. My employer, Apollo Outcomes, had been cleaning latrines on army bases in the 1990s. Now it was a private army with yearly revenues of $3.7 billion, most of it courtesy of
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