[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (23 page)

Until the bus sped up and veered directly for him.

The man glanced over his shoulder, then started to hurry across, tripping as he did. The bus loomed down. The man cringed. Suddenly, Abdi darted from the side of the street. Running all out, he dove and managed to push the man just out of reach of the bus’s tire as it sped past.

“Ugh,” said the man on the ground. It was Hoshang Zal—the Iranian agent.

“Are you OK?” asked Abdi in Somali.

Two men rushed from the other side before Hoshang could answer. One of them grabbed Abdi and began pulling him across the street.

“No—leave him. He save my life,” said Hoshang in Arabic. “The Prophet, blessed be his name, must have sent him.”

Two blocks away, the bus driver pulled against the curb, tossed open the door, and bounded down the steps, a bag of Twinkies in his hand. His stunned passengers—picked up at random after the bus left early from the garage on the other side of town—sat in shock.

“What took so long?” asked Mongoose, who was waiting with a pair of motorcycles a few yards away.

“Guy couldn’t make up his mind where he was going,” said Shotgun. “I must have circled that damn block a dozen times.”

“Figures.”

“Think we can stop and get some food somewhere? I just ate my last Twinkie.”

A block away, Trace was listening to the eavesdropping device they had planted in Abdi’s clothes. The Qud leader and his companions were talking in Arabic; the conversation was translated in real time by our computer system back in the States. The English was then piped as text to her iPad.

“Please,” said Abdi in Somali. “I do not understand well what you are saying.”

“You are not meant to understand,” answered Hoshang in French.

“Uh?” Abdi shook his head. This time he wasn’t pretending—unlike Arabic, which he could understand reasonably well, he couldn’t speak French at all.

“Can you speak any English?” demanded Hoshang, frustrated.

“A little English, yes. Somali—that is my language.”

“A tongue for dogs. Why do you not know Arabic?”

“I can say my prayers.”

“Get rid of him,” said one of the guards in Arabic. “Pay him. A few cents will change his world.”

“Why are you in Djibouti?” asked Hoshang instead.

“I am for work.”

“And you have it?”

Abdi shook his head. “I can do many things. I have worked in restaurants. I have driven cars. I went school and learned English and—”

Hoshang spit and said a few curse words in Arabic to the effect that schools were only palaces of propaganda where stupid fools were filled with the nonsense of Western lies. Abdi held out his hands, indicating he didn’t understand; Hoshang repeated it, without the curses, in English.

“I had a good teacher,” said Abdi. “Imam Muhammad Shirazi.”

“Ah.” Hoshang’s voice lost its condescending tone. “You are a brother with al-Shirazi?”

“I am only a humble man,” said Abdi.

“He seems more like al-Shabaab,” said the henchman. “A spy against us.”

In Somalia, al-Shabaab is an important Islamic militant group—assuming that’s what we’re calling murderers these days. The group, which probably has more foreigners in its leadership than native Somalis, is funded by al Qaeda. Its radical Sunni members are extremely hostile to Shi’ites, and presumably would be Hoshang’s enemies.

“Are you with al-Shabaab?” said Abdi, pretending to be terror stricken. He stopped on the street, and took a step back. Hoshang grabbed his arm.

“Relax, brother, you are among friends, if Shirazi is your teacher.”

“He is.”

“You will stay with us, and we will reward you with a job,” said Hoshang. “Come along to the harbor. I have to meet with someone.”

Hoshang had recently received a text from his superiors instructing him to meet with a crewman of a ship that had just arrived from Greece. The man had information about a load of guns, which were to be included in a shipment of wheat bound for Ethiopia. We knew about the message because it had actually been sent by Shunt, who is as adept at breaking into texting systems as he is to e-mail.
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Hoshang and his men headed for an SUV Trace had identified earlier as his, thanks to a photo in the dossier. She’d already taken the precaution of putting a GPS transmitter under the chassis to make it easier to track.

But instead of getting into the SUV, they continued walking down the street. Worrying that Hoshang suspected he was being followed, Trace turned her car down another block, circling around.

“They’re still on foot,” she said.

Though small by Western standards, the houses that surrounded them on the block were considered middle class here. Built within the past two or three years, they looked like down-sized duplexes; in fact they were four-family units, with two full apartments back to back as well as side to side. Hoshang had a mistress who lived in a house at the end of the street, which Trace had under surveillance thanks to one of our video bugs.

The residents of this area were relatively prosperous, most with jobs at the port, the larger businesses in town, or the railroad that ran to Ethiopia. They didn’t make much money by Western standards—a few hundred dollars a month at most—but they were far better off than their neighbors who lived in the slum just to the west, on the other side of the main road. While not the worst in the world—we’d seen some of those in India—the place was a collection of shanties, lean-tos, and makeshift tents. It, too, was only a few years old, bacterial mold on the side of a dump.

Shotgun and Mongoose drove their bikes off the main road, closing the gap with Hoshang to two blocks. The narrow streets and alleys were not ideal, even on a motorcycle—there was barely room to turn around, and it was too easy to get ambushed or cut off. But there was no choice; they couldn’t leave Abdi on his own.

Even with Trace giving them directions, they were lost within a few minutes. People, women and children mostly, watched from outside the hovels, a few working very small pots over infinitesimal fires, but most just sitting either inside or out, staring blankly at the two foreigners as they passed. They were wearing helmets and the bikes were battered, but it was clear they were out of place.

The gap between them and Abdi increased. After a few minutes of trying to steer them closer, Trace gave up and had them back out to the wide street where they’d come in.

“Circle around to the north,” she told them. “He must be using the narrow streets to lose any tails. Keep your distance.”

Meanwhile, Hoshang led Abdi and the others to a small shack on the far side of the small slum. He pushed aside the blanket that covered the doorway and ducked his head to get through the low frame. Abdi started to follow, but one of the guards held his arm out to keep him back.

Hoshang and the guard came out a few moments later. The guard held what looked like a coat in his hands. Hoshang walked over to Abdi and smiled at him.

“Today, you are blessed,” he said. He gestured to the other man. “Today you become a martyr. Put on the vest.”

Abdi hesitated.

“Are you a believer or not?” said Hoshang calmly.

Abdi faced a choice: he could either take the suicide vest and hope he could somehow avoid detonating it, or he could prove he was a liar and be killed on the spot.

He took the vest.

“Damn,” said Mongoose when Trace told him and Shotgun what was going on.

“Let’s grab the bastards,” said Shotgun. “The hell with making this look like an accident.”

“How far away are you?” asked Trace.

“Six or seven blocks,” said Mongoose.

“Tighten it up. They’re on the north side of the ghetto—they’re on regular streets now.”

Mongoose and Shotgun got there just in time to see Abdi in the passenger seat of a Nissan pickup, eyes wide and a look of sheer terror on his face as the truck pulled away from the curb.

“Murphy’s kicking our ass,” muttered Mongoose.

“We ain’t doing too bad a job ourselves,” said Shotgun.

“Follow Abdi,” said Trace. “I’ll watch Hoshang.”

“Should have just blown the bastard up,” said Mongoose. “We’d be done by now, and Abdi’d be safe.”

“Blowing shit up doesn’t solve everything,” said Shotgun.

“Just most things.”

*   *   *

The boys followed the truck as it turned onto N2, the main highway that led to the waterfront. As they passed the soccer stadium, they worked out a plan.

“I’m going to ride up next to the driver and shoot him through the head,” Mongoose told Shotgun. “You come around the other side and grab Abdi in case he jumps or whatever.”

“Works for me. Think we should warn him?” Trace had given Abdi a cell phone, and Shotgun wanted to call him.

“Probably won’t answer. But give it a shot.”

“What if the driver has the phone, or Qud-shit
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?”

“Just say ‘duck,’ nothing else.”

“Yeah. Maybe I should quack.”

In the truck, the sheer amount of sweat pouring off Abdi’s body was matched only by the number of prayers that were passing through his lips. He practically bolted through the roof of the truck when his cell phone began to vibrate.

“What?” demanded the driver. He said it in Arabic, but the meaning was obvious.

“Ph-ph-ph—” Abdi reached into his pocket and held out the phone, which was still vibrating.

The driver gestured with his hand that Abdi should throw the phone out the window. Abdi answered it instead, speaking Somali.

“Duck!” said Shotgun.
“Duck!”

Abdi turned to his left—just in time to see Mongoose pull parallel to the truck and raise his pistol.

Abdi pushed his head down. Mongoose fired point-blank into the driver’s turned head.

The truck veered to the left, crossing into the oncoming lane. Clipped by a passing Nissan, it veered back, plowing across a narrow divider and into a traffic circle that formed one of the hubs of the downtown area. The front wheels struck the rounded curb marking off the circle, sending the truck headlong into the monument at the center—a bizarre, life-size sculpture of dancing dolphins.
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“Kick ass,” yelled Shotgun approvingly.

The truck barreled over one of the metal mammals and continued across the traffic, hitting a large truck ferrying stone from a quarry before rebounding into the lot of a commercial building. Shotgun skidded around the dump truck and pulled next to the pickup as its radiator gave way with a huge burst of steam.

Abdi, in a state of shock, fumbled for the handle of the door. Shotgun, straddling his bike, yanked it open, then reached in and lifted the light-boned Somali out.

Mongoose had sped ahead and had to backtrack to the lot. When he got there, he put another round in the driver’s head, just to be sure he was dead.

“We need to go,” yelled Mongoose. Onlookers were gathering.

“Hold on to my back!” Shotgun barked to Abdi, plopping him onto the seat behind him.

“Go east,” said Mongoose. “We’ll circle back to the docks later.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” said Shotgun, jerking the bike around and setting off.

*   *   *

While the boys were playing motocross, Trace followed Hoshang and his remaining minion to the dock area. She drove to the Avenue General Galileni,
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taking a left to scoot around yet another traffic circle. She drove past a row of warehouse buildings, most large and gleaming, before spotting Hoshang getting out of his vehicle behind the last ship docked along the pier.

Though tempted to try and run him down, Trace decided he could easily escape by jumping into the water, and instead drove past, parking behind one of the large cargo holding facilities and getting out.

That took no more than thirty seconds, but in that time, Hoshang disappeared.

Three dozen or so men were working along the pier area, mostly coming and going from the ships. There were the usual assortment of crates, miscellaneous stacks of materials, and a pair of forklifts.

Actually, there were
four
forklifts, two more than she expected. Which greatly complicated matters.

Trace walked quickly to the nearest forklift. She reached under the dash, groping for the radio control she’d left earlier in the day.

It wasn’t there. She had the wrong forklift.

Hiking the long skirt she’d worn to fit in with the locals, Trace trotted to the next one. A nearby worker shouted something to her. Trace ignored him, sliding into the seat and once more trying to locate the large boxy controller she’d taped under the dash.

No joy. Somewhere, Murphy giggled. How he had managed to slip two more forklifts onto the dock in the barely two hours since Trace and the boys had set things up is a mystery. But then again, so is everything about Murphy.

The man who’d yelled at her had gone to another forklift, started it, and was driving away. Trace realized
that
inevitably would be the one she wanted. But as she started to pursue him, she saw Hoshang walking down the gangplank of the ship on her right. She veered left, heading for a pile of crates as she formulated a new, simpler plan. She hooked the vehicle’s front teeth into the bottom skid, backed up, then leaned to her right to see where her target had gone.

Behind another row of boxes. Still walking slowly, and alone.

Trace veered a little too sharply, and the forklift started to lean on two wheels. She quickly leaned back, but the disruption was enough to cause the crates she’d grabbed to slide off the forks. The top box slid from the stack, and the second followed. They exploded against the wharf’s macadam, splattering their contents: several million marbles shot across the pier.

Trace put the little vehicle into reverse, then spun around. Hoshang was behind her by now, almost to his truck. Trace stepped on the gas, and the forklift jerked forward—then began skidding uncontrollably on the flood of marbles she had unleashed.

The scene was worthy of Buster Keaton, if not the Three Stooges, but Trace was not a film buff. The unstable forklift skidded sideways and then went over, forcing her to abandon ship. She landed on both feet, retrieved her pistol from beneath her skirt, and found herself facing the car. There was a moment, a very brief one, when Trace and the two occupants of the vehicle saw each other and stared.