Rotten Gods (45 page)

 

The shifta no longer move predictably, but have scattered, searching. Someone kicks a pebble out to the rear, yet when she turns she sees nothing. Still she scans, using the night-vision enhancing method of moving her head from side to side, looking out from the corner of her eyes as she does so.

‘Three men, coming this way,' Sufia says, ‘dead ahead. Can you see them?'

The hammer of the machine gun adds to the ringing blankness of Marika's hearing, and despite the flash suppressor, a tongue of flame two or three metres long sears out from the muzzle, lighting the area as if with floodlights.

Marika sees men drop to the ground. She lifts her assault rifle to her shoulder, trying to pick them up in the sights but mainly firing by feel at the area, squeezing the trigger several times in succession. She turns to Sufia. ‘Can you keep an eye on our rear? Call out if you see anything.'

Silence follows, broken by the pop-like discharge of Sufia's rifle. ‘There was just one,' she says, ‘and I think I hit him — he's down anyway.'

‘Good work.'

The machine gun fires again, but this time there is nothing visible in the lit area. ‘Sorry,' Madoowbe says, ‘I'm getting jittery.'

‘Where are they? Do you think they might have run?'

‘I doubt it. These men live on their reputations for bravery and savagery. They know there are just three of us, and won't stop until they have us.' He pauses. ‘I don't need to tell you that we must resist being taken alive. It would be bad for me, but worse … for women. If it comes to that, please let us make sure …'

‘I understand,' Marika says.

‘Have you still got that pistol?'

‘Nah,' she murmurs, ‘no ammo. I left it in the vehicle.'

Time stretches on, silent but for muffled voices out across the desert.

‘What are they doing?'

‘Having a conference, deciding how to take us — puffing up their courage, accusing each other of cowardice, discussing what
they're going to do to us when it is over. Some of these men have just lost a brother or a friend, and will be pleading to be allowed to lead the attack.'

Marika again looks up at the sky, seeing a light moving low down near the northern horizon. ‘Look — what's that?'

‘Probably a commercial airliner,' Madoowbe says.

‘Do they fly across Somali airspace?'

‘They would not be silly enough to do so at low altitudes, but at forty thousand feet, yes. There is not a plane or missile in the country capable of flying to those heights.'

Still watching the light, Marika prays for it to come closer and morph into something that will take them away. Instead it recedes into nothing.

‘The shifta are attacking again,' Madoowbe hisses. ‘Get ready. They will be more determined now.'

This time the shifta creep from mound to stone with such stealth that when Marika closes her eyes she feels as if she can will them away. Then comes the roar of the machine gun, and in the muzzle flash a number of the enemy are revealed as closer than she believed possible. Panicking, jamming her forefinger back on the trigger, she watches one man drop, then another. Return fire comes in, from two or more men using a boulder for shelter. The heavy machine gun seeks them out, stone chips flying and the air filling with the metallic smell of shattered stone.

A cry fills the night, and the machine-gun fire illuminates a single shifta, firing a carbine as he runs, screaming indecipherable words of rage. The single-minded charge must have unnerved Madoowbe; his first burst flies wide. Marika also misses, the pin clicking down on an empty chamber as she exhausts the magazine. She has no more spares and has to unclip it and press
in loose cartridges from her pocket. She looks up in time to watch the machine-gun bullets chew the suicide charger to pieces.

‘That was a distraction,' Sufia cries. ‘They've come up on all sides. They are going to overwhelm us.'

Again the machine gun fills the night with a long shuddering roar, then falls silent.

Marika fires again, twice. ‘What's wrong?' she calls.

‘The gun has jammed.'

‘Leave it. Run.'

Bullets fly as they take to their heels, away past the vehicle and the smouldering, stinking pyre of burning rubber. Running, knowing how close behind death pursues them. On impulse Marika reaches out, taking Madoowbe's hand, feeling him return the pressure.

As they reach the lower slopes of a sand dune, a sound drifts across the desert that can only be the heavy beat of a chopper. ‘Do you hear it?' she cries. ‘It's them. They're coming for us.' Her feet struggle through the soft sand to the summit. ‘Stop running. They'll be able to see us here.' She has them visually now, three choppers: all Sikorsky Blackhawks, the UH-60M variant with the glass cockpit and wide chord rotor blades, distinctive to a trained ear.

The shifta, too, have seen the aircraft come, but rather than melting back into the desert, they continue to come, the fusillade of bullets intensifying now.

‘They know they'll be safest right on top of us,' Marika says, ‘and that the choppers won't pick us up under heavy fire.'

‘I'll stay here and hold them off,' Madoowbe hisses, ‘you keep going with Sufia. Get to a safe distance so they can pick you up.'

‘No! I won't leave you.'

His hand grips hers. ‘Listen. This is not a matter of your preferences. You have a job to do — now do it. Go!' He takes his
hand away, lifts his weapon to his shoulder and fires twice. ‘Do it. Hurry. Make it worthwhile.'

‘Hell,' Marika sobs out, ‘don't do this to me, Madoowbe.'

‘Don't say anything,' he shouts back, ‘just go.'

Marika feels her heart breaking as she bends and kisses him on the cheek. ‘You are the bravest of men,' she says, ‘and I will carry you always in my heart.'

The two women, so different, from such disparate backgrounds, run down the soft slope of the dune, no words necessary. The ground is firmer in the valley between two dunes as they run headlong between patches of thorn bush scarcely discernible in the darkness.

‘The next dune,' Marika says between deep breaths, ‘they can pick us up from there.' Turning back she sees the lights brighten as the choppers continue to move closer. Tracer rounds arc up to meet them, and the chain guns hammer back in response, shooting flame ten or more metres towards the ground.

Sufia does not reply, but Marika hears her footfalls behind her. The dune is close now, the first slopes made up of dry sand that clings to feet and ankles, doubling the effort. It all seems too much, but still there is the sound of fighting and yelling behind. Gunshots that make her wince each time they come.

The words
this heroism must not be in vain
becomes a mantra in her head. Over and over to the rhythm of their flight and the gunshots behind.

The sound of following footfalls stops and Marika turns to encourage Sufia along, eyes falling on the shadow that has appeared from nowhere; the glint of a knife and skin in the lights that pour from the choppers. The knife moves to Sufia's throat, behind it teeth bared in a savage and triumphant grin.

At first Marika thinks this must be one of the shifta who has somehow edged his way around the firefight on the dune. Then, however, she sees the desert fatigues and the thin moustache. She sees also fresh burns covering one side of his face and the glint of an earring.

Somehow, despite what appear to be terrible injuries, Captain Wanami has followed them across the desert, and now he holds the power of death over the one woman in the world who might help prevent disaster at Rabi al-Salah. From his lips comes a stream of Somali, which Marika has no hope of translating, yet the venom and hatred is unmistakeable.

Holding the assault rifle by the barrel, she swings it like a baseball bat, the stroke growing in power as she brings her shoulders to bear, until the heavy wood stock strikes Wanami in the side of the head with a sickening thud. He goes down, dropping the knife, and Sufia is free.

Marika reaches for the other woman's hand, hearing her frightened sobs. ‘Run,' she screams. They take flight together, but when Marika turns she sees that Wanami is back on his feet, dazed, taking first one step and then another after them. Still holding Sufia's left hand in her right, she doubles her speed, half pulling the dazed Somali woman after her.

The soft sand is impossibly unstable. Their feet slide back one pace for every two forward, and the ascent becomes a real physical ordeal, even for Marika who once thought herself as fit as — fitter than — any young woman of her age.

‘Not far now,' she grunts, ‘hurry.'

Finally, the sand shelves into the flattish peak of the dune, and Marika glances back. Wanami is no longer in sight, and her eyes move to the firefight just a few hundred metres away, the choppers hovering overhead, out of range.

‘Shit,' Marika cries. ‘If we don't do something they won't even know we're here — they'll fly out again.'

Unbuttoning her shirt, and slipping it from her shoulders she lights a match from the box in her pocket and holds it out while the shirt catches fire, the flames flaring high. She waves the burning garment backwards and forwards, keeping on until her hands scorch from the heat.

Even as she drops the last of the burning fabric she watches the gunships loom closer, like giant predatory insects. Standing in the floodlights, clad in camo trousers and white bra, Marika is conscious of the tears flooding down her face. Watching, relieved, as the nearest craft stops, hovers, and begins to descend. An arm extends from the open side door, helping Sufia inside, with Marika pushing her up. Glancing back she sees Wanami running over the edge of the dune, hunched over like an animal. A killing madness is evident in those glaring, rounded eyes.

Marika places both hands on the door sill of the chopper and tries to boost herself up, but Wanami reaches out one arm and grips at her ankle with a strength no living man should possess.

Marika shrieks, kicking at him with her free foot, feeling it strike something but there is no lessening of the grip. Her eyes plead with the men inside the machine. ‘Help me, for God's sake,' she implores, and someone leans down beside her with an automatic pistol in his hand. A blast of sound as it fires once, twice.

Still the hand holds on, and the chopper starts to rise. Again she tries to kick Wanami away, looking down and seeing that bullets have pulped half the dome of his head, but the hand still grips her, dragging her down. Now she screams, unable to escape the foul thing that defies logic and the natural order.

Someone fixes a bayonet to a carbine and leans down beside her, slashing at the tendons in the dead man's wrist until, finally,
the hand opens and the corpse falls back to the desert sand. The chopper crew pull her inwards, safe inside the machine.

Someone passes her a blanket but she ignores it, holding a grab rail against the motion of the rocking, rising craft. ‘There's one more,' she cries, resisting the crew's efforts to make her sit. ‘He's holding them off on that dune there. We have to help him.'

As she watches, however, the shifta in the floodlights continue to shoot back up at the choppers. A burst of fire from the chain guns does not put them to flight, but sees them loom closer to the top of the hill.

One the men shouts, ‘We can't risk it. Sorry.'

Madoowbe's tall figure is visible in the floodlights. She sees him stand, throwing the empty assault rifle away and beginning to run. Despite a fusillade from the chopper's armaments the shifta are on him in seconds. Marika watches him fall and men swarm over him.

‘Jesus. No,' she screams. Hands grip her shoulders.

Before she gives herself to grief she turns to Sufia and understanding passes between them. Madoowbe has laid down his life for them, just as they were coming to know him.

Day 6, 21:00

Durham
's infirmary is the size of a household living room decked out with double bunks and a screened operating theatre at one end. There is scarcely enough floor space to stand. Pipes and conduit run in bunches along the ceiling so low that Simon has to constantly duck.

Frances is asleep in a lower bunk, her face white, one side of her neck covered with a pink dressing, and her shoulder
bandaged. Simon kisses her on the forehead and rests one hand on the soft blonde hair of her head, before walking across to where Kelly is sitting up in bed, tapping away on a borrowed tablet, catching up on all the electronic smokescreens and mirrors people use to feel that they are still part of a community in this modern world.

‘Good night,' Simon says, placing one hand on her shoulder.

Kelly stops typing and looks at him, trying to smile, but he can see the pain inside. The pain they all feel. There is a fragility to her face now, her hair in a pony-tail like a little girl, yet her eyes are much older. ‘I can't help thinking that this is all my fault. If I had shouted at the airport — attracted attention — they wouldn't have …'

‘They would have killed you, and taken the girls regardless. There was nothing you could do. Trust me. OK?'

Kelly nods. ‘Yeah, sure. I'll try.'

Returning to Frances's bed to pull up the blankets he sees that she is almost asleep. With a final kiss on the forehead he leaves the cabin, to find Captain Marshall walking down to meet him. Simon shakes the older man's hand, and the gesture becomes more than that, a lingering attempt to communicate something for which words will always fail.

Marshall drops his eyes. ‘Are you OK?'

‘Not really.'

‘You have no idea how bad I feel — giving the order to open fire on that launch.'

‘Why? It was rigged to explode anyway, and we don't even know if she was aboard.'

‘I know, but …'

Simon shakes his head. ‘No guilt, please. None of this is your fault. Put that out of your mind, for God's sake.'