[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (11 page)

As in
“Aw shit, we are so going to nail this son of a bitch and cut his skin into little triangles of flesh to serve to our enemies.”

I did the only thing I could do in that situation: I held the gun up as if it were a bayonet and leapt forward, screaming my best rendition of an Apache war cry.

The man at the center of the line threw down his weapon and bolted away. The others raised their weapons to fire.

Just then, something exploded right behind them. Bodies and dirt flew in every direction.

I fell, or was pushed down by the shock wave of the explosion. As heavy machine-gun fire raked the Somali line, I did my best impression of an earthworm.

The gunfire continued for what seemed like another half hour. Each time I thought it was going to let up the gunners seemed to double down. When the roar finally stopped for good, I raised my head and peeked through the still settling dust.

A pair of beat-up Nike sneakers walked toward me. Abdi had returned.

*   *   *

All of the Somalis who’d ambushed us were dead, their bodies close to pulverized. What the grenade hadn’t blown to bits the machine gun bullets had perforated. The scene looked like the floor of Kino Der Toten in
Call of Duty Black Ops
after you’ve sprung a trap on the zombies. Bits and pieces of flesh were littered everywhere. The air smelled of blood, cordite, and burnt metal. Vultures were heading from as far away as Morocco to get in on the feast.

“My uncle,” said Abdi as he helped me to my feet. “Where is he?”

I shook my head. His face clouded.

For a moment I thought he was going to try and shoot me. But he didn’t. He lowered his gaze to the ground slowly, his machine gun drooping with it.

“Take me to him,” he said softly.

We went back to the Rover, leaving two of the men who’d been with him to clean up the bodies as best they could.

Taban’s body had been burnt badly in the fire, but had miraculously stayed intact. It was still belted into the seat. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant sight, but Abdi took it stoically. Goat and Rooster joined us, then helped me fold a sheet around the body.

Tears fell from Abdi’s eyes as we hoisted his dead uncle’s remains to the roof of the other Land Rover. But that was his only expression of emotion.

“I hate this place,” he said, pulling open the driver’s side door. “I’ll drive.”

(II)

Four people in a Land Rover is comfortable. Try and squeeze in three more, though, and you understand why sardines never smile in a can.

Rooster wedged himself into the cargo compartment behind the seat. Goat tried fitting in the front, then gave up and climbed onto the roof, next to the body.

We rode like that for about an hour, until we stopped to put more gas into the truck from our jerry cans. At that point I traded spots with Goat. Riding there was much better than sitting between the two beefy bodyguards, neither of whom seemed at all familiar with the concept of soap.

We stopped again about two hours later. We’d lost most of the food in the other Rover; Abdi parceled out a box of dried fruit, taking none for himself. I didn’t take a share either, but it was more because of what the stuff reminded me of than altruism.

Except for Abdi, none of the others spoke English, but the man who had driven Abdi’s Rover on the way up knew enough Italian to engage in a halting conversation. According to him, the men who had ambushed us were probably just bandits, who saw the vehicles and figured they’d take their chances attacking. The Rovers alone would have been worth losing a few lives over.

“You don’t think it was Fat Tony?” I asked.

The driver had a little trouble understanding. Maybe my Italian was rusty.

“Fat Tony—the man we met in the village?”

“Ah—no, no, no. Fat Tony is our host. He cannot shoot. The Prophet, blessed be his name, would be very unpleased.”

Unpleased
—the Italian word he used was
scontento,
which means “contented” until you throw the “s” in front of it. Unpleasing the Prophet isn’t much of a disincentive in my experience, but then what do I know.

The road got better as we drove southward. Abdi, who hadn’t been going slow to begin with, pressed harder and harder on the gas. Between the wind and jostling from the potholes, I could barely stay on the roof. Finally I lay down next to poor roasted Taban, hooking my arms through the rope we’d used to keep him in place. It wasn’t my worst traveling experience—remember, I’ve been hauled through the air by a C-130—but it was up there.

Five miles outside of Mogadishu we came to a checkpoint. The sun had set by then, but fires in a trio of barrels in the road tipped us off as we approached. When we were still a mile away, something was tossed into one of the barrels that made the flames flare, illuminating the area. Sandbags had been piled on both sides of the road, with a pair of two-wheel wagons poised between them as a makeshift gate. The wagons didn’t quite block the entire road, but it would be impossible to get past without ramming at least one of them, and besides the damage that would do, there were men with guns on both sides of the narrow highway. A particularly large gun pointed out from the emplacement on the left side. It was a Russian DShK machine gun. Better known to users and abusers alike as a Dushka—“sweetie” in Russian—it was the sort of weapon that wrote love letters in lead.

The roadblock had been set up by the militia of one of the local warlords. The soft ground on both sides of the road made it impractical to go around, and, besides, the men manning it would undoubtedly have followed. Abdi, probably tired and anxious to get home, decided it was easier to simply deal with it than chance backing up and finding another way.

I kept my head down but pulled up the rifle as the truck stopped.

“You’re dead,” hissed Abdi.

Stage direction? Or a threat?

I hoped the former. I held my breath—and my rifle beneath me—watching two men come up along the side of the road.

Abdi yelled something in Somali. The men answered. Abdi yelled back. None of the words sounded like they fit in a love song.

One of the men came over to the driver’s side and pulled at Taban’s body. Abdi jumped out and began yelling at them.

The man backed off. Abdi continued to yell, no doubt complimenting them on what excellent taste their wonderful mothers had had in lovers. In the middle of the tirade, he took a few bills from his pocket and threw them on the ground, then stomped back to the Rover and got in.

That, I thought, was the end of the transaction. But the bills he’d tossed failed to inspire the men back at the gate. The Dushka swiveled in our direction.

I’m not much on poetry, so I didn’t wait to hear what it had to say. I raised my rifle and fired, dousing the machine gun’s crew. Abdi, meanwhile, hit the gas.

Our left fender clipped the wagon on the left, spinning it aside. We hit the other full-on. Its wheels collapsed and sparks flew as we pushed it forward, metal screeching against the pavement. One of the guys in the back fired from the driver’s side. I emptied the rest of my magazine, then hung on, not daring to let go of the rope long enough to trade out the box.

We drove a good three or four hundred feet with the trailer screeching and sparking beneath the front bumper. Abdi tried swerving left then right to get it free, but the damn thing was stubborn. Finally his maneuvers took us off the road. We bounced down a shallow embankment. The wagon broke apart, and pieces of metal flew up into the front of the truck. One shattered the windshield. Another grazed my shoulder, though so lightly I barely felt it.

Abdi jammed on the brakes. The Rover skidded into loose sand, and quickly wedged itself there as Abdi spun the wheels unsuccessfully, trying to get us out.

The others piled out of the Rover to investigate. I dropped down. My knees were a little wobbly from all the shakin’ and bakin’ we’d been doing.

Goat and one of the other bodyguards went to the front and started pushing the SUV. I joined them, but it wasn’t until everyone got out and pushed that we were able to get back on the road. We were lucky the men at the checkpoint didn’t decide to investigate; if they even bothered to fire in our direction, I never heard the bullets.

“Why did you shoot?” demanded Abdi as I started to climb back on the roof.

“To save your ass. The machine gunner was about to tattoo it.”

He scowled at me. “Get inside,” he said. “Having a white man on the roof isn’t a good way to travel through Mogadishu.”

*   *   *

Ordinarily I would have had them drop me off a few blocks from my actual hotel, but given the hour and how tired I was, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it there on foot without becoming someone’s meal ticket. And besides, they wouldn’t have to go to too much trouble to figure out where I was. There weren’t too many Americans in the city, nor were there many places to look.

I grabbed a second AK and stuffed my pants with mags before hopping out.

“Thanks,” I told Abdi.

He didn’t answer. Clearly he blamed me for his uncle’s death, and just as clearly there was nothing I was going to do about it.

Upstairs, in my room, I checked in with Trace. It doesn’t pay to let her worry too much about my general health—when in doubt, she’s likely to show up at the door with a pot of chicken soup and half an army.

She picked up on the first ring, and greeted me with warm affection.

“About time, asshole,” she said. “What sort of trouble are you in now?”

“I’m not in any trouble, aside from the fact that I’m in Mogadishu and talking to you,” I told her.

I explained what had happened. With Taban dead, I was unlikely to make any connection with the drug dealers. The only question was when to leave. Though Mogadishu was such a beautiful place, parting would be sweet sorrow.

“You should get the hell out of Dodge right away,” she told me. “While you can still do it without a medevac.”

“I’ll decide when I’m leaving in the morning,” I told her. “I have to stay for Taban’s funeral, at the very least. It should be tomorrow.”

“Make sure it’s not a double ceremony,” snapped Trace before hanging up.

Both Magoo and Shunt had left several messages asking me to call. Magoo could wait until morning—if then. But there’s nothing like techno-babble to put me to sleep, so I fluffed up the pillows and gave Shunt a call.

“Would it surprise you to find out that black-market Viagra is being sold through the same network that’s moving heroin into Germany?” Shunt asked when he picked up the phone.

It did, actually.

“Explain,” I told him.

Over the past forty-eight hours, our resident geek had infiltrated half a dozen police forces, banks, and in one case a news organization, pulling together different bits of information to profile the drug dealers connected with Allah’s Rule. Interestingly, he was no longer convinced that the bombing of the bank in Germany was their handiwork; the plastic explosives had come from a European source, different than what the terrorists, and other al Qaeda groups, typically used. But he had a much better picture of what was going on with the drug operation, and believed it included prescription drugs.

“It makes a lot of sense,” said Shunt. “It’s a growth industry—not only in Europe but here in the States.”

He talked about it the way a stockbroker talked about the offering of a new stock. The drugs were originating somewhere in Asia—he hadn’t tracked that down yet, though I’m sure Pakistan was on his suspect list. Fake Viagra, hydrocodone, a few other painkillers—potentially, the pharmaceuticals could bring more money than heroin and hashish. Even better from an Islamic nut job’s point of view; because they were intended as medicine, there was no Koranic proscription on moving them.

“Connection to the bank?” I asked.

“Haven’t found it yet.”

“You get into the network?”

“Working on it.”

“What about Veep?”

“Nothing. I’m going to have to come up with a way to track what he does online without him knowing he’s being tracked. He’s too sophisticated to be nailed with a simple keylogger.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, he
is
the head of security.”

In my experience, among the people most vulnerable to the simplest attacks are the so-called experts. They’re so busy telling others what to do that they forget to do it themselves. Or maybe they just think that they’re above it all because of their position.

At this point, of course, there was a definite possibility that Veep was entirely innocent. Maybe even a probability. But I didn’t want to admit it, not yet anyway.

Shunt rattled on about his various plans, which had the desired effect: my eyes were soon gluing themselves shut.

“Update me tomorrow,” I told him. “Right now I’m hitting the hay.”

I drifted off to sleep.

*   *   *

My sat phone was ringing when I woke a few hours later. I groped for it groggily.

“What the F do you want?” I growled after punching the talk button. It doesn’t pay to be too friendly when you’re answering the phone—it only encourages people to bother you.

“Dick, this is Danny. Where are you?”

“In bed. Alone,” I added.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Me, too.”

“I just thought you’d want to know—French police and Interpol just made a big drug bust.”

“Uh-huh.”

“They raided a ship that had just come into Marseilles. Looks like it might have been the guys who were getting goods from Allah’s Rule. I just got off the phone with Shunt—he’s checking it out.”

On the one hand, the bust would help—Allah’s Rule would need new buyers, and I’d already made a connection. But if Fat Tony had set up the ambush the night before, the only thing I’d be in line to buy was a whole lot of lead.

I called Magoo. The call was routed to one of his underlings, who was about as helpful as the people on a computer help desk. I told him to have Magoo call me, then took a shower.

By then it was light. I went down to the desk and asked the man there to get me a ride, thinking I would go over and see Abdi and find out about the funeral. I’d retained a car and driver who’d worked for us before; he had no phone, and the only way to get him was to have the hotel clerk send a boy to fetch him.