Terminal Justice (28 page)

The two men did not speak until they were out of earshot of the rest of the group. “You look positively grim, Roger. I take it that the news is not good.”

“Mahli is still out of reach,” Roger started slowly. “Their security isn’t sophisticated, but the sheer number of guards makes it impossible to get close enough to do anything.” A.J. reached out and touched Roger on the shoulder, communicating his support and understanding. Roger inhaled deeply. “That man has to die, A.J. He positively, absolutely has to die the most painful death possible and his carcass left for the hyenas.”

“He will, Roger,” A.J. said quietly. “He most certainly will.” Turning back to the group, A.J. shouted for Sheila to join them. “I want Sheila to go with you, Leonard, and Gerald. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense forever.”

“Won’t you need her?”

“I’ll be fine,” A.J. said tersely. “It’s more important that she go with you. You’re going to need another pair of eyes and hands. Mahli’s too slimy to catch single-handedly.”

“I’m sorry, A.J.” Roger was downcast. “Mahli returns to the compound periodically, but it’s hard to know when. I’ve followed him back and forth several times, but there’s never an opportunity. Wu and Raines have been a big help with the surveillance. They have also been able to verify that it was Mahli at the Judith Rhodes camp. The satellite photos place his car there, but …”

“No need to apologize,” A.J. replied. “Patience is what’s required here. There’s no sense in getting yourself killed. How’s Aden holding up?”

“I sent him home when Raines and Wu showed up. He was never comfortable with all this. He’s not cut out for this kind of work.”

“I’m not surprised. Still, he has been helpful to us.” When Sheila joined them, A.J. said, “I’ll be taking the crew back to Addis Ababa tomorrow. We start back home in the morning, Sheila. I want you to go with Roger—”

“But—” she began to protest.

“No buts,” A.J. said firmly. “I’ll be fine. I need you to put an end to Mahli. Now here’s what I want you to do …”

“I, FOR ONE, AM LOOKING FORWARD TO A REAL BED,” Kristen said as she slumped in her chair. “My back wasn’t made for canvas cots.”

“It doesn’t take long to appreciate the small things in life, does it?” David took a sip of dark bitter coffee and glanced around the hotel’s café. “This place looks far more lavish now than when we left.”

The two sat in a silence shrouded with weariness. Despite the fatigue brought on by their arduously slow journey back to Addis Ababa, both were too wired to sleep.

“You look positively contemplative,” Kristen said as she looked at the changed man in front of her. He had, like her, only been in Africa a short time, yet he looked stronger, his skin was darkened by the sun, and he carried himself with more confidence. “What’s floating around in that mind of yours?”

David chuckled and rubbed a freshly shaven chin, a chin that had until that day sported a thick covering of black stubble. “Fog mostly. I was just thinking about that Roger fellow; he sure came and went quickly.”

“Sometimes things happen fast.”

“But he left right after his meeting with A.J. I would think he would have spent the night and rested up some. He sure seemed in a hurry.”

“And …,” Kristen prompted.

“I don’t know,” David rubbed his eyes. “He definitely had something on his mind. Something was bothering him.”

“You could tell all that in the few short minutes you were with him?”

“That and his body language when he and A.J. walked away.”

“You can tell that much about a person by their body language?”

“Sometimes,” David replied. “It’s more of an art than a science. The anthropologist Desmond Morris once said that body language is more truthful than words. Our physical actions constantly give clues about our thoughts and emotions. You can’t read someone’s mind, but you can learn a few things about that person.”

“Such as?”

“Okay. Do you see that couple over there eating lunch?” David nodded to a middle-aged couple sitting about thirty feet away. Kristen nodded. “Where do you think they’re from? I mean, which part of the world?”

Kristen looked at them for a short time and then said, “I have no idea. They’re white, so they could be from the United States, Europe, South Africa, Russia, just about anywhere. There’s really no way to tell.”

“You’re right, there’s no way to tell
exactly
, but I can tell that he is from Europe and that she is from America, probably the Midwest.”

“I don’t buy this for a moment,” Kristen said skeptically. “You haven’t heard them speak, so you can’t tell by their accent. I don’t see how you can be so sure—unless you peeked at their passports.”

“Not at all,” David said beaming. “What is the man eating?”

Kristen looked backed over at the couple. “Pie. Probably apple pie. Why?”

“Which way is the pie pointed?”

“Pointed? You mean the front of the pie? The part away from the crust?” David nodded. “To the side, I guess. He’s eating the pie from the side.”

“When you eat pie, what direction does it point?”

“I’ve never thought about it. It points at me.”

“There you go. Americans point their piece of pie at them and begin eating from the front of the triangle to the crust. Europeans turn their pie so that it points to the side and begin eating the pie at its side. Now notice the woman. She’s not done with her main course. Watch how she cuts her food.” Kristen did her best to study the woman without appearing to stare. “What do you see?”

“She holds the fork in her left hand and her knife in the right. She cuts the food, sets the knife down, and transfers the fork to her right hand to eat.”

“That means that she is most likely from America, or at least her parents were. Transferring the fork from hand to hand is typically American.”

“How do I know you’re right?” Kristen grinned mischievously. “You could be making all this up.”

“Simple,” David replied. “Ask them.”

“You don’t think I will, do you?” Kristen slid from her place in the booth and approached the couple. David watched as the couple eyed her suspiciously at first, then smiled. A moment later she was back in her seat with a slight pouting expression on her face. At first she said nothing.

“Well?”

“All right,
Doctor
O’Neal,” she said, playfully emphasizing his title. “He’s from Manchester, England, and she grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas. Next you’re going to be telling me that you can discern their driver’s license numbers.”

“No, and that’s the whole point. All a student of body language can do is make broad generalities about the person being observed. In court situations, attorneys are trained to watch for a change in a witness’s blinking pattern. A person who blinks normally and then changes to a rapid pattern is very likely lying, as is someone who keeps touching his or her nose or mouth. The sharp-eyed attorney sees this and presses the point all the harder.
He can’t prove the witness is lying, but he can make adjustments in his questioning.

“That’s my whole point with Roger and, I might add, Gerald and Leonard. I can’t tell you what they’re thinking, but I can tell you that they were agitated, maybe even frustrated. About what, I couldn’t hazard a guess.”

“Got your curiosity stirred up, David?”

“Something is definitely up. Shortly after his meeting with Roger, Sheila, and the two from Child Touch Ministries, A.J. announced that Sheila would be returning to Somalia with Roger. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“No, not really. Sheila has been with A.J. a long time. She’s a capable person.”

“I’m sure she is, but the suddenness of it all, makes me wonder.”

“Maybe it’s Somalia. It’s not a nice place right now, and A.J. said that things were unsettled. Maybe there’s some trouble at one of the camps.”

David was somber. “It seems that every corner of the world has some problem, some tremendous need.”

Kristen nodded. “That’s why A.J. takes some of his key executives on these trips. Outside the comfortable offices of Barringston Tower it doesn’t take long to see how difficult the work is and who the real heroes are.”

“They are indeed heroes. The people I’ve met working in these camps have changed my life and my world-view. I know that I’m going home in a matter of days and will be sleeping on my bed, but they will still be out here doing the hard work.”

“And the noble work.”

“And the noble work,” David agreed. “I wish everyone could see what we’ve seen. Maybe things would be different. Maybe more people would become involved.”

“That’s our job, isn’t it? Making sure the word gets out. You do it through the speeches you write, and I through public relations.
It’s important for you to know that you are doing hero’s work as well. True, you and I are not out here every day, but what we do helps make it possible for others to be here day in and day out.”

David wearily nodded his assent. “You’re probably right, and I’m too tired to go on,” he said in exhaustion. “All of this is catching up to me. If I don’t get a nap soon, I’ll end up sleeping under the table.”

“We can’t have that, now can we?” Kristen rose from her seat. “Take me home, James, and don’t spare the elevator.”

David laughed, rose from his seat, and escorted Kristen from the café.

THE IRONY OF THE MOMENT FORCED A SMILE TO Roger’s lips. He gazed down at the sprawling, walled compound and watched as Mahli’s guards scampered into the courtyard raising their AK-47s, AK-80s, and RPGs at the helicopter that hovered eight hundred feet overhead. Roger felt no concern, no apprehension that a score of deadly weapons were pointed at him. He knew they wouldn’t fire, he had seen to that. The men in the courtyard would take a steady bead on the helicopter, but they wouldn’t dare squeeze a trigger—not as long as the man, a man they all recognized, hung precariously out the open door of the craft, his mouth taped shut, his hands tied with nylon cord behind his back, and a rope around his waist tethering him to a metal brace under one of the helicopter’s seats.

Roger diverted his gaze from the ground with its animated host pointing up to the terrified passenger. How different he was now. When they first met he was pugnacious, crude, and aggressive, baring his teeth like a mongrel dog and spitting his words out with bile-laced hatred. Now Roger imagined that he could hear the man whimper in terror, attempting to plead for mercy through the wide duct tape that held his lips immobile. He felt no pity for the man, for he knew that he was responsible for the death of many people. Roger had no pity, no remorse. Instead, he felt alive, really alive. He could feel his blood course through his veins and sense the pounding of his heart even over the thudding of the rotors above him.

It had been far easier to capture Mukatu than he would have
thought possible, a task for which he would like to have taken full credit, but the basic idea had come from A.J.

Frustrated at the conditions that had held success just out of reach, he had decided to strike back at the man who had cruelly and senselessly killed Dr. Judith Rhodes. Analysis of the satellite photographs pirated from the CIA’s computers had been useful. They had hoped to be able to trace Mahli’s activities from the camp to his hiding place.

The photos also proved helpful in an unexpected way. Each file had contained at least a dozen digitally enhanced photos of Somalia, especially Mogadishu and the surrounding regions. Reading the photos, which had been delivered to Roger by Wu and Raines, proved difficult. He had seen such photos many times during his stint in the army, but he had never been called upon to interpret the data. That had always been done by experts who pored over the photos with a fine-tooth comb. Roger could make out certain landmarks, but little more.

The combined expertise of Raines and Wu proved beneficial. Like Roger, they had been career military men who had become disillusioned with the American military structure. Also like Roger, they chose to work for those who could pay well, and A.J. paid them very well. Raines and Wu, both highly trained intelligence experts, had spent hours sitting in their hotel rooms analyzing the satellite images. The images were exceptionally clear with high resolution, having been taken on several of Somalia’s many unclouded summer days. In the pictures individual vehicles could easily be made out. The space-borne cameras could have provided even greater detail, even to the point of reading license plates, had they been set to do so. But since no U.S. troops were active in the area, the cameras had been set to take images of larger areas.

Painstakingly comparing a sequence of photos taken over a period of weeks, Wu and Raines discovered a commonality. One photo showed the Barringston Camp on the Webi Shabelle at Giamama where Dr. Rhodes had been murdered. The image had
been taken shortly after the attack and plunder. The men could see the still image of smoke rising from the burning structures and tents. They could even see the tiny black dots that were the camp’s inhabitants standing in various open areas. Another photo taken at the same time, but with a wider angle, revealed a line of trucks leaving the camp. At the rear of the convoy was a dark blue four-wheel-drive car that Wu recognized as a late model Jeep Cherokee, ironically, the same kind of vehicle he himself drove back in the States.

“It makes sense,” he said. “The cars are durable, able to travel rough roads, but still fairly luxurious inside. That’s the kind of car I would expect these guys to drive. While their men get their kidneys shaken in the trucks, these guys enjoy a tape deck and leather seats.”

The discovery of the vehicle would have been little more than an interesting insight if it had not appeared in other photos: once in front of the warehouse that Roger had staked out a few weeks before, and twice in photos of Mahli’s compound.

“So we have more evidence that Mahli was involved in the murder of Dr. Rhodes,” Roger said matter-of-factly. He remembered that he and Aden had followed Mukatu in a similar car, most likely the same car. “We were sure of that from the beginning. How does all this help us?”

Sheila answered the question. “We look for his car. I doubt anyone but Mahli and Mukatu drive that thing. We can better track them now. We continue the surveillance of the compound. When that car leaves we activate our plan.”