[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (12 page)

While I was waiting, I took a peek out on the street. There were about a dozen people up, businessmen mostly, though I noticed two teenage boys sizing me up. The assault rifles slung over my shoulder convinced them I wasn’t an easy mark, and they quickly found something else to look at.

“Hey, Mr. Dick!”

The shout, in English, came from up the street. It was Rooster.

“Abdi sent me,” he said. “Funeral this morning.”

“You speak English?”

“I have a little.”

“Why didn’t you say anything yesterday?” I asked.

He gave me an African smile. “Taban ali Mohammad tell workers always mind business. Keep mouth shut. Good business in Somalia. Always keep tongue quiet.”

“Good business anywhere.”

“Taban ali Mohammad great man,” declared Rooster. “Funeral? You come?”

“Absolutely.”

Rooster gave me a quizzical look.

“Yes, I come,” I told him, spotting my car. “Here comes our ride.”

(III)

The wake was being held in Taban’s restaurant. All of the tables had been pushed to one side, except for the three placed at the center of the room that held his corpse. Taban’s remains had been wrapped in a white
kafan,
three sheets that together formed a simple shroud.

The sheets made him appear much smaller than he had in life. Unlike in the West, the bodies are rarely if ever displayed at Muslim funerals; given what had happened to the corpse, that was a blessing.

There is a certain democracy in death. Whether we’ve been rich or poor, famous or infamous, achievers or couch potatoes, we all go into the afterlife as naïve souls without a clue of what we’re going to do next.

There were several dozen mourners, all packed into the small front room. Six of Taban’s female relatives sat, bent over, in a row of chairs in front of the body. His wife stood in front of them, facing Taban, her hand on the shrouded leg of the corpse. She stared at his head, silent, looking as if she were communicating with him somehow.

“I didn’t think you would come,” muttered Abdi, coming over through the crowd. He was dressed exactly as he had been when I last saw him: dusty Nikes, stained black pants. The shoes were a size too large; belatedly I realized that they must have been a pair Taban had worn before passing them down.

“I had a lot of respect for your uncle.”

“Hmmmph.”

An imam arrived, and within a few minutes everyone began praying in Arabic. I stood quietly, watching the mourners. Taban had supported most of the people in the room, either directly or indirectly, with jobs, handouts, and houses. Now that he was gone, more than one would find it tough going. Even in the government-controlled zone, there were few real jobs, and none could pay anything near what Taban offered.

I slipped outside as the prayers continued. A large crowd of people had come to pay their respects. They too were praying, eyes fixed in Taban’s direction.

I was surprised to find Abdi on the sidewalk, standing alone, holding a homemade cigarette.

“A friend of Fat Tony’s wants to meet you,” he said. Abdi dropped the cigarette, and shuffled back a few feet to get some distance from the others. His fingers were trembling. He tightened them into a fist.

“You are involved with some very nasty people,” he said. “Fat Tony is not someone to trust.”

“Did he kill your uncle?”

He frowned. I wasn’t sure whether he was having trouble finding the right words in English to use, or having trouble deciding what to say in general.

“They were thieves, trying to rob us and kidnap you,” said Abdi. “You are the reason my uncle died.”

I might have defended myself—Taban certainly knew the risks, and probably had been in such situations before. But I didn’t say anything. Abdi changed the subject.

“My uncle was a very important person here,” he told me. “Many people depended on him.”

I nodded. He raised the cigarette to his lips and took a long pull. Tobacco is one of the things devout Muslims aren’t supposed to indulge in.

“The arrangement you had with him,” he said. “I will continue it.”

“I don’t know that that’s possible.”

His eyes flashed, and I saw some of the anger he’d displayed when we had first met. That was encouraging, actually.

“You don’t trust me?” he said.

“It’s not a matter of trust. You saw what happened to your uncle. I don’t know that we can trust Fat Tony.”

“He didn’t kill my uncle. That I am sure of.”

“Why did you keep driving past when his car was hit?” I asked.

“He always said to do that. He would have known I was coming back. He would have taken cover and waited. I loved my uncle,” Abdi added. “I respected him. He was everything. For me and others. For them inside.”

I didn’t doubt that was true. What I wondered was whether Abdi was a coward.

But even granting the best possible interpretation of his actions—that he had driven on by design, then come back fully expecting to save his uncle—I doubted he would do the same for me.

“Your uncle was a great man,” I told him. Then I turned toward the street, looking for my car and driver.

“Where are you going?” asked Abdi.

“Kenya, probably.”

“You aren’t going to meet with Fat Tony’s man?”

“I don’t trust him,” I said. “And I’m not so sure about you, either.”

He looked like I had slapped him. “You should come with us to the graveyard,” he muttered.

“I really have to get going.”

He grabbed my arm as I turned away. I tensed, swung around, and barely stopped myself from clocking him.

“I want to help you the way my uncle would have,” he told me. “I need the money.”

“I don’t think you can help me.”

“Try me. What do you lose?”

My life, for one.

*   *   *

I told my driver to meet me at the cemetery, then joined the procession to the grave. The cemetery was several blocks away on a hillside overlooking the ocean. Squat hovels flanked it north and south. The gravestones were simple but lined up meticulously; if they had been more uniform in size and shape the effect would have rivaled the fields for fallen Allied soldiers in northern Europe. I found it difficult to look at them, not just because of Taban, but because of all the comrades I’ve had to bury over the years. Death is a constant companion in my business, and while I have been far, far luckier than most, still I’ve seen a legion of friends lowered into the ground. The fragility of life humbles you, lingering long after the adrenaline of battle dissipates. Each time I consider the fact that I may be next, I promise myself I’ll live to at least one hundred, just so I can piss off many more no-load people.
11
Everyone needs to focus on a meaningful goal in life.

After some prayers, Abdi stepped over to the grave to speak. Rooster and Goat had come over to stand next to me, heads bowed. I didn’t understand a word Abdi was saying—it was all in Somali—but it sounded appropriately somber.

Then the words changed suddenly to English.

“Mr. Dick knew our uncle well,” said Abdi, looking in my direction. “He is a great man who will pay tribute to our uncle.”

Everyone stared at me. Apparently Abdi had already said this in Somali and was now translating into English so I would understand.

Put on the spot, I cleared my throat and took a half step forward.

“Taban ali Mohammad was a great man,” I said.

Abdi translated, which gave me a moment to think of what to say next. I didn’t think it was appropriate to mention that he did business with pirates and kidnappers, though very possibly the people here would have viewed that a lot differently than most of us would.

“He provided for his very large family,” I said, “and was a friend to many people.”

There were a few murmurs from the crowd as Abdi translated.

“Taban had many ambitions, but what he loved most was his restaurant,” I continued. “He had a very generous spirit. I think his restaurant was the best in Mogadishu.”

One of the women started to wail. Within seconds, three-quarters of the crowd were crying aloud as well.
12

Talk about having an effect on your audience.

I said something about him having gone to a better place, then stepped back. Abdi’s voice cracked as he repeated it.

“Good speech, Mr. Dick,” said Rooster. “Very good. Taban ali Mohammad was a great man.”

Abdi picked up a fistful of dirt and dropped it over the body after it was lowered. He did this three times, then everyone else followed. I joined the procession, sandwiched between Rooster and Goat.

When everyone had dropped in their fistfuls of dirt, some of the family took up shovels and finished covering the grave. They stomped down the mound, then had one last prayer before the funeral was over.

Walking past the thin iron gates that marked the boundary of the cemetery, I realized my driver and his car were nowhere to be found. Rooster, trailing behind me, came up and asked where I was going.

“Back to the hotel,” I told him. “If I can find my car.”

“We can ride you,” said Rooster. “To hotel, yes?”

“Yeah.”

Rooster led the way to a small Toyota parked down the hill, two blocks away. The car looked about twenty years old. Once white, the paint had faded to a dusty gray, pockmarked with reddish brown splotches of rust. The quarter panels were fringed gray with epoxy filler, apparently in a forlorn effort to keep the corrosion from creeping completely up the sides.

Goat and one of the other men had followed us. I got in the front seat on the passenger side, tucking the rifle muzzle down between my legs. The seat was close to the dash; I tried adjusting it, but the rails were either rusted or jammed and it wouldn’t budge.

A large wedge of wire had been stuffed into the ignition; this served as the key.

“Tricky,” said Rooster. He pumped the gas, then played with the wire. It took him four or five tries before the engine turned over, then several more before it coughed to life.

“Coughed” being the technical term for stuttering and backfiring. Mourners had flooded the street, and Rooster made his way gingerly around them, riding the brakes. The street had once been paved with bricks, but there was only scattered evidence; mostly it was a collection of ruts and potholes. At the intersection we turned right, driving into a district of tightly but irregularly placed houses, none larger than a good-sized garden shed back home. The road was dirt, and an orangish haze rose from the wheels and crept in through the windows as we picked up speed. Rooster drove through a maze of shanties, heading us southward and down the hill until we came to a road flanked by high walls. This was a high-rent district, or what passed for it here, a kind of suburbia on the south end of the city.

I knew the hotel was to our right somewhere, but with the crazy patch roads I had no idea how to get there. Finally we came to an intersection. I saw a highway in the distance. Rooster turned toward it.

“I want my hotel, not the airport,” I told him.

“I make the wrong turn, Mr. Dick,” confessed Rooster.

“Just get us there,” I growled.

“We are not going to hotel,” said Goat behind me. He shoved a pistol into the side of my neck.

Rooster said something in Somali to Goat. I don’t think it was “be gentle with Dick”—he jammed the snub-nose barrel forward and hard into my chin.

“Keep your hand away from rifle,” said Rooster. “Better not to make a mess in the car.”

(IV)

There is something about the feel of a snub-nosed revolver against your anatomy that gets your pulse racing. And when that happens, there’s no sense lollygagging around.

“I think we’re going a little slow for the highway,” I said in a calm voice, extending my left foot under the dash to mash Rooster’s on the gas pedal. The Toyota lurched, hesitated, bucked, then burst forward. Goat flew backward—but not before I managed to slap the gun out of his hand.

Unfortunately, the snub nose of the gun and bucking of the car threw my aim off, and I couldn’t grab the pistol as it bounced into the back, beyond my reach.

Rooster had taken his left hand off the wheel to try and punch me. Rather than hitting back, I opted to help him steer—I jerked the wheel to the right, then hard to the left. He flew back against the seat, flailing at me. Unable to get his right foot off the accelerator, he tried stabbing the brake with his left. An elbow to his throat took his hands off the wheel. Before I could grab it, the car twisted around in a 360. Rooster’s foot flew off the brake. The Toyota engine had finally found its sweet spot, revving steadily now as we spun. I grabbed the wheel and managed to get us moving straight—straight at a stone wall.

We rammed into the wall at about forty miles an hour. The airbags exploded, burning my face and pushing Rooster back in his seat.

Goat jackknifed over the back into the window, sliding between and over the two airbags. They may have slowed his momentum, since he didn’t hit quite hard enough to do more than spiderweb the glass.

I grabbed at the door, got it open, then realized I still had my seat belt on. I unbuckled it and tumbled out of the car, pulling my AK with me.

Rooster looked at me over the prone body of his comrade. He had a dazed look on his face.

“Always wear your seat belt, Rooster,” I told him.

Then I shot the son of a bitch through the head, and put a few holes into Goat’s ribs. I’ve always admired a car with a bright red interior.

I fished the revolver from the back. It was a Colt, worn from decades of hard living but still serviceable. I was just pushing the cylinder back in place when a horn sounded. I looked up and saw a Land Rover rushing toward me.

I tucked the revolver in my pocket and lifted the AK. The Rover stopped and Abdi jumped from the passenger side, waving his arms. He was unarmed.

“Come! Come!” he yelled. “We must get away from here.”

“Your two henchmen just tried to kidnap me.”

“They don’t work for me. They—” He looked at the Toyota. “You killed them? You have to get away from here quickly.”

“They were working for you yesterday.”