Task Force Desperate (6 page)

My hand was under my shirt, my fingers touching the butt of my 1911, when there was a torrent of loud Somali from behind us.

The old man was so skinny I half expected him to collapse just from walking. His bones stuck out from his flesh, and his shirt hung off him like a clothes hanger. He was spry enough, though, and had some considerable lung power, as he yelled at the young men confronting us, and waved angrily at them. One of them said something, only to be cut off with another torrent of angry words. Finally, the young men turned away, shooting glares of pure hate at us, and drifted off into the rest of the slums.

“Forgive,” the old man said, in broken English. “Boys. No enough discipline.”

“Thank you, grandfather,” I said. I spoke in English, as I didn’t know any Somali. “God be with you.” Not exactly the local blessing, but I hoped it would suffice. The scrawny old coot with rheumy eyes had probably just saved quite a few lives by intervening. I wondered if he knew it. I suspect he did.

“
A salaam aleikum
,” He replied. “
Nabakey
.”

I put my hand over my heart. That much Somali I had learned. “
Nabakey
.” The old man nodded, waved his skeletal hand at us, and walked back into the maze of alleys.

“Huh,” Larry said. “Good of him.”

“Sure was,” I replied. “Let’s get out of here before we need him to come back.”

Looking up at the sun, I got re-oriented, and this time busted a hard left, moving east to try to get out of the slum, and back over to the Boulevard De General De Gaulle. That would get us close enough to the industrial areas along the shoreline, and hopefully allow us to avoid any more such unpleasant encounters.

Chapter 4

W
e got back to our little urban base camp as the sun was going down over the city. Most of the rest of the team was back, and we gathered in the op-center to go over what we’d found out.

It was mostly atmospherics, and some background info we hadn’t had going in, which was about what we’d expected. We didn’t exactly blend in here, and that was a liability when it came to getting intel. I was pretty sure we’d have to start working sources, something of which I knew next to nothing. Hey, I know my strengths and weaknesses. Shooting and blowing stuff up, I’m good at. Recruiting sources in an entirely foreign culture; not so much.

There was a picture forming, however. Larry and I had gotten a little of it from Arno Kohl, but other pieces were starting to come together.

The President had just changed the rules for the second time, allowing himself to run for a fourth six-year term. There had been plenty of outrage the last time, when he had done the same thing, and been elected by a suspicious 80-something percent. He apparently didn’t even try to mask the election fraud this time, with something closer to one hundred percent. This alone wouldn’t be much of a surprise. Kleptocrats were a dime-a-dozen in this part of the world.

The trouble was, the president was the single richest man in East Africa. Meanwhile, some sixty-percent of the men in Djibouti were unemployed, and living in the crushing poverty we had gotten such a good look at that afternoon. Envy is a powerful tool in the wrong hands.

Much of his wealth came from the port, i.e., from foreigners. The Islamists, from Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, and Somalia, were capitalizing on that, especially in the slums. Anger at the rich, fraudulent president had started to build.

There were demonstrations. They started out peacefully, but the president’s security forces had heard some of the grumbling, and overreacted. Over a hundred people died in the resulting massacre, and the demonstrations turned into riots. The president hadn’t been seen outside the presidential mansion since.

There had been more riots, some aimed at the security forces, but most at the Westerners or even the equally poor Afar. There were militias forming in the slums, and even in some of the more affluent parts of the city. The military was being held close to the presidential palace, and after an entire squad was killed and mutilated in the slums, they didn’t venture too far from the main drags.

Lemonier had been a target because of the growing outrage against Westerners. Nobody seemed to know why they’d gone after a guarded US military base, but were still leaving the European quarter pretty much alone, but that wasn’t really our concern. It was obvious to me, as more of the story came out, that the opposition had been entirely co-opted by Shabaab and Al-Qaeda types, probably with several other random jihadi organizations thrown into the mix. The Muslim Brotherhood wasn’t making any secret of its presence in most of the mosques, either.

The bigger picture was, if anything, even more ominous than upwards of two hundred hostages in the hands of psyched-up Islamist terrorists, in the middle of a city that was about to set itself on fire. Djibouti was the only major port on the Horn. That made it very, very important, strategically. If the Islamists were able to install a strict-sharia state here, they could put some serious economic hurt on the West. As if the piracy coming out of Somalia and the worldwide depression weren’t bad enough.

As we were discussing the worsening intel picture, Imad came back. He looked grimmer than usual, as he joined us at the map table.

“Most of the people who might talk are scared shitless,” he explained, as he leaned on the map. “Can’t say I blame them. There are some seriously scary motherfuckers in town.” He started ticking off names. “Mohammed Khasam and Ismail Farah I know for certain are here. Farah made his name with Al-Shabaab a few years ago, for his enthusiasm with a tapanga when dealing with captured AMISOM soldiers. Khasam was almost as bad, although he tended to prefer to drench his victims in gasoline and set them on fire.

“I also heard somebody mention Omar Sadiq Hasan, a particularly nasty Sudanese bad boy, who cut his teeth massacring fellow Muslims in Darfur. He’s got at least five hundred deaths to his name, and he claims as many as seven hundred. I can‘t confirm yet whether he‘s here, has been here, or is on his way.”

He looked around the table. “The Colonel was right, Al Masri is here; at least that’s what I was getting from the whispers. Most of the people here aren’t as afraid of him as they are of the Shabaab types, since he tends to go for bombings and paramilitary attacks more than the kind of up-close tribal violence that the others are known for.”

“Do we have any idea who this ‘Al Masri’ is?” Bob asked. “’The Egyptian’ doesn’t tell us very much.”

Colton, who acted as the team’s intel specialist, shook his head. “Nobody knows his real name, and in all his videos, he’s wearing a shemaugh over his face. There was a theory floating around that he’s actually several people, but somebody did a voice analysis of several of his messages, and it’s definitely all the same man.”

“I don’t suppose anybody you talked to said they knew where these assholes are,” Alek ventured.

Imad snorted. “If I even thought it real loud, they got skittish. Nobody wants to have anything to do with possibly crossing those fuckers.”

Alek wasn’t happy. “What about locating the hostages? Any luck?”

“Well,” Imad said slowly, “maybe.” He obviously wasn’t comfortable with what he had. “There’s someone who offered information. He didn’t say what, but he made it clear that he expects to be well paid for it, and for the risk he’s taking even talking to me.” He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “I’ll be honest; I’m more than half-expecting it to be a setup.”

“More than likely it is,” Jim said. “Is it worth following up on?”

“Right now, it’s the only lead we’ve got, really,” Imad replied.

“Then we’ll take the chance,” Alek said. “Where are you meeting him?”

“Outside the city, at a farm in the south.” Imad pointed out the location on the map. “He gave me a pretty good description. He wants to meet tomorrow, at sundown, and we’d best have a good amount of cash for him, or he won’t talk.”

“Did he specify that you had to be alone?” Nick asked.

“No, but if there are too many of us, he’ll get spooked,” was the answer.

We started studying the farm in question, and pulled up some imagery from Google Earth. It was on the south side of the major canal that ran along the southern edge of the city, and there was a fair amount of vegetation on the imagery. It appeared to be walled, and there was also a large conglomeration of what looked like small shacks less than two hundred meters to either side. I didn’t like it, and I wasn’t the only one. It might be quiet and remote compared to the middle of Ahriba slum, but if there was shooting, there was going to be a lot of attention, real quick.

“I’ll go in with Imad, as backup,” I said. “Probably can’t be packing too much heat--” Imad nodded at my glance, and I turned back to the map “--so pistols only, soft armor, and comms.” I traced the treeline on the imagery. “It looks like two or three guys, with rifles, should be able to get over the wall here, at the northeast corner. Situation’s going to dictate, but it looks like there should be a fair amount of shade and junk to hide in back there.”

“Assuming they don’t have somebody back there already,” Jim pointed out. Jim liked occasionally usurping my place as the team’s resident Voice of Doom.

Larry was looking down at the map and imagery, and stroking his goatee with a frown. “I don’t like it.” He pointed to the only visible entrance to the walled compound. “We can’t see if there are any good alternate approaches, or if this is the only way in or out. You could easily get in there, and have them slam the door shut behind you. And where are we going to stash vehicles if a fast exfil is necessary?”

“Here.” Jim was pointing to the open ground by the canal. It was less than two hundred yards from the farm. “If everything goes to hell, go over the back wall, and sprint for the trucks. It’s a short distance, and we can even support from the trucks.”

We studied the problem for a while longer, then I finally straightened up. “You know what? I think we need to do a drive by in the morning. Get a look at the ground beforehand. One more truck roving around isn’t going to attract too much attention, as long as we don’t loiter too long. Imagery’s great, but there’s a lot we can’t see. Not to mention--” I checked the time stamp “--this is five years old. Things well could have changed.”

There were noises of general agreement. We figured out a scheme of maneuver for the leader’s recon, and then retired for a few hours shut-eye, while we could.

Imad and I pulled the Range Rover back into our compound a little after noon. The recon had gone as smoothly as could have been expected; we got a good look at the farm and the surrounding ground, and didn’t think we’d been noticed, at least not insofar as we were casing the place.

The fact was, we had to be very careful as to our movements. The exodus of Westerners from the city, with the majority of those who stayed staying holed up in the European quarter, was severely limiting our camouflage. It’s hard to blend in in an African country when you’re one of the few Caucasians walking around.

Imad parked the truck next to the warehouse, and we got out, grabbing our rifles off the floor. We were harmless tourists as far as anyone looking in the windows could see, but we were still loaded for bear out of sight.

It was hot as hell. Even with the Range Rover’s still-functioning air conditioning on, it had been sweltering. When I got out and stepped into the direct sun, I wanted to wilt. I hadn’t been this hot since Libya. My shirt was sopping with sweat.

There were three reciprocating industrial fans going in the op-center, but they didn’t seem to do much besides circulate the hot air. At least none of Rodrigo’s electronics were overheating yet. I pulled out the camera that we’d been “sightseeing” with and started downloading the pictures onto one of the laptops.

We had already discovered one hitch in the plan that we couldn’t see from the imagery. What looked like a wall around the farmhouse was in fact a fence, made of corrugated sheet metal. That presented a problem--while it was possible to quietly scale a mud or concrete wall, a man in load bearing gear with a rifle wasn’t going to get over a sheet-metal fence without making a hell of a racket. The more I thought about it, the worse our options were getting. Somebody was going to have to walk into that fence, and there weren’t a lot of vantage points to cover the inside, if any. On top of that, getting overwatch into position before dark was going to be a bitch. There wasn’t a lot of cover or concealment between the road and the house.

While I was pondering this, and cleaning up the photos, Hank turned away from the comm laptop he was covering, and called out, “Hey, get everybody up. The Colonel’s on the line. Says it’s important.”

There was a fair amount of rustling and grumbling from the far end of the room, as Imad started rousting the rest of the team out. Most had racked out, or tried to. It could turn out to be a long night, so Alek had invoked the oldest bylaw of soldiering: get what sleep you can, when you can. It was too hot to get much, but any rest is useful.

The team shuffled over to the bank of comm equipment, most wearing little more than shorts, but with weapons still close at hand, along with at least a couple of spare mags. Nobody was under any illusions about our security situation. Mike’s team was handling most of it, to their chagrin, but none of us could afford to let down our guard too far, even if we were technically in a secured location.

Hank swiveled the laptop so that everybody could see it, and touched the key to activate the speaker/mic combination. “Everybody’s here, Colonel.”

Heinrich’s pixelated portrait came on the screen. Even as blurry as he was, he looked haggard. I knew he was doing everything he could back in the States to get us as much intel as possible. The fact that there wasn’t much available that we couldn’t find on the ground here wasn’t going to stop him from trying, and staying up nights to do so. One of the reasons we liked the guy.

“Gents, I got Rodrigo’s rundown of what you’ve got so far. I know it sucks trying to get an in with these people on such a short timeframe. But I’m afraid that we’ve got even less time that we might think.” He reached to the keyboard beneath the screen. “This got posted on YouTube about four hours ago.”