Task Force Desperate (8 page)

I heard footsteps pounding on the porch in front as I went around back, gliding along in a slight crouch, my pistol at the low ready. There was the familiar rattle of the gomer’s AK as he tried to blindly return fire, but as I peeked around the corner, he was too far back from the corner to have a hope in hell of hitting my teammates. I leaned out, put the front sight post on his center-mass, and shot him. He crumpled, and everything went quiet.

“Hillbilly, coming out.” I did
not
want to be mistaken for a gomer. Unlikely, given my size and build, but it always pays to be careful. I reloaded with my third and last mag as I came back around to the front.

Imad was already in the truck, and Larry and Jim were on a knee to either side, rifles up. Alek was behind the wheel. “Get in,” he said. “We’ve got to get moving.” I complied quickly enough, grabbing my rifle off the floor in the back. We hadn’t wanted to leave anything in the Defender when we’d left it, so we’d stashed our heavy stuff with the backup vehicle. As soon as I was in, Jim got in the passenger seat, and Larry squeezed into the back.

As Alek threw the Range Rover into reverse, and roared out of the farmyard, Larry started patting me over. “I’m fine,” I told him. He finished his blood sweep anyway, and then leaned across me to Imad. I pushed his arm back. “I’ll check him.” It was standard procedure for us to check each other after a firefight. Sometimes you can get hit, and the adrenaline is just going so strong you don’t even notice. I ran my hands over Imad’s arms, legs, and back, checking for blood. Nothing.

“What the hell happened?” Alek asked, over the noise of the engine and the gravel under the tires.

“It was a simple robbery,” Imad said. “They didn’t have any info; they just knew we had money.” We stopped at the Defender, and, instead of continuing the debrief, Imad and I jumped out and ran to our vehicle. Imad slid behind the wheel, while I got in the passenger side, reloaded my .45, and pulled my rifle up onto my lap. The rest of what had happened could wait until we got back to the compound.

We split off from the Range Rover. We’d take different routes back to the compound, to keep our footprint small. This wasn’t like Afghanistan or Libya, where there had been an established presence, and convoys were common.

As we pulled away, headlights off, we could see people starting to converge on the farm, as well as a couple of HiLuxes, each with several armed men in the back. I took a closer look with the NVGs, and they looked like militia, not official security forces. In fact, I couldn’t hear any sirens, or see any flashing lights. It looked like things had gotten so bad the local authorities really weren’t venturing anywhere outside their strongholds in the city.

This was probably going to create a stir. I doubted that the guys we’d shot were the only ones who knew there were going to be Westerners at that farm tonight, and the shootout was probably going to tip somebody off that there were more than just scared tourists and idealistic humanitarian organizations in town. I cussed under my breath. Between the lack of support from the States, and now this, the job was looking more and more impossible by the hour.

If they thought the US had sent JSOC after them, the bad guys were likely to just kill the rest of the hostages, or, almost as bad, move them. Not that we had any sort of reliable intel on even their general location.

We wound through the streets, taking a complicated and serpentine route back to the compound. There wasn’t a lot of traffic. The streetlights were on, and there were people out walking around, but there was a furtive undertone to their movements. People were scared.

When we got to the compound, we found quite a crowd there. The lights were on, and Billy was walking along a line of locals, most of them showing injuries, directing some to one room or the other. I got out and walked over as Imad parked the truck, careful to leave my rifle in the cab, and my pistol concealed. These people didn’t need to see what we really were.

“What’s going on, Billy?” I asked, as I walked up.

He didn’t look up from the woman he was examining. She was bleeding from a wound on her head. There was quite a bit of blood, but head injuries are like that. I didn’t see any flowing, just a slow ooze. “There was a riot in the southern slums a couple hours ago,” Billy said. “Nobody seems to know what started it, but it turned into Afar versus Issa really quick. Sounds like a few people died, and we’ve gotten a few dozen wounded and injured here. Dave and Colton are inside, treating the worst of them.” He pointed one gloved hand toward the side of the building that Dave had turned into an aid station. “You want to help me triage?”

“Let me make sure tonight’s trip is put to bed; then I’ll be back out,” I said. I pushed past the line of wounded Djiboutians, and into the main building. The line continued in the hall, leading to the southeast wing of the building, while the door to the northwest wing, our team room, was tightly shut, with a sheet tacked over it. I slipped under the sheet and opened the door.

Alek, Jim, and Larry were coming in from the other side, with Imad. Imad had my rifle in his hand and held it up for me before putting it on my rack. I nodded my thanks, and waited at the map table as the others secured their gear.

“I told Billy I’d go out and help him triage the local wounded after this,” I announced, as the night’s team gathered at the map table. Alek nodded his acknowledgement.

“So,” he began, “How does this affect our situation?”

“We can’t know entirely,” Jim said matter-of-factly. “It’s going to depend on how many people knew about what was going down tonight, and how closely they connected Imad with us here. Worst-case, the bad guys know there are some heavy hitters in town, know it’s us, and act on it.” He rubbed his jaw. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but it sure as hell didn’t help us, any way you look at it.”

There was a moment’s pause, as we all thought over the implications. Then I had an idea. “Wait, we know that Khasam and Farah are in town. We don’t know what Al Masri looks like, but we’ve got photos of those two. Anybody want to bet they’re taking a big part in the demonstrations that keep turning into riots around here?” That got everybody’s attention. “Maybe, if we start watching the demonstrations, we can get eyes on one of these fuckers and tail them. They might lead us to the hostages, or at least to somebody else who can.”

Everybody mulled it over for a moment. “We’d still need to be able to trail him inconspicuously,” Alek pointed out. “As we’ve discovered before, that can be difficult here.”

“Overwatch team,” Imad put in. “I’d be on the ground. Two teams in vehicles on the outskirts, positioned to move in and take up the trail when he leaves the crowd.”

“It could work,” Jim said.

“All right,” Alek said. “We’ve got some planning to do. But first, for the sake of OPSEC, let’s go help get these locals treated, and out of here.”

Leaving our weapons with Rodrigo in the team room, we crossed over to the aid station to lend a hand. There were probably upward of twenty people in the room, men, women, and children. Most of the injuries were blunt trauma, from beatings or thrown rocks, but some sported lacerations, likely from knives or tapangas. Colton was stitching a young woman’s arm, where half her bicep had been cut off, and had been dangling down to her forearm. The kid next to her looked to have been hit with a rock; he was bleeding from a nasty abrasion on his shoulder. I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and squatted down in front of him, to start to clean the wound.

“Fuckin’ nuts, man,” Colton declared as he tied off another suture. “Nobody can tell me why it started. None of these people ever did anything to anybody, and it’s not like it’s their fault their president’s a fucking klepto.”

The dirt and grit out of the gouge in the kid’s shoulder, I reached for gauze and started to gently bandage it. The kid was just watching me, his chin tucked in, not making a sound. “The bad guys are trying to create chaos, so they can take over. Chaos leads to more chaos,” I said. “When you break down a society, everything breaks down, even the decency of a lot of the people, and shit like this is what happens.”

We continued to work well into the night, patching, stitching, and splinting. Fortunately, there weren’t really any critical cases that we had to either keep around or try to take to the hospital, in the north of town. A little after midnight, we were able to send them all home.

It was three in the morning when I woke up. I couldn’t remember the dream, just the sick, disquieted feeling it left me with. For a few minutes I lay there, sweating, staring at the ceiling, trying to will myself back to sleep. I had only managed to drift off an hour before.

It wasn’t working. There was a faint red light splashed on the ceiling, and I looked over to see Larry sitting on his cot, reading by the red glow of his headlamp. Guess he couldn’t sleep, either.

I sat up with a muffled groan. I didn’t want to be awake, but I knew from past experience that I wasn’t going to get to sleep for a while when I felt like this. Larry looked up, putting a finger in his place in the book as I swung my feet to the floor.

“One of those nights, huh?” Larry asked.

“Yeah.” I put my head in my hands and rubbed my eyes. “What’re you doing up?”

“Same reason,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep.” He held up the book, one of the monster hunter books he’d gotten me hooked on. “Thought I’d catch up on a little reading.”

Larry and I went back a ways. We’d been on the same team in the Philippines, just before we’d gotten out and hooked up with Alek and Jim to start Praetorian Security. We’d been in half a dozen hellholes together since.

“You never made it to Libya, did you?” I asked.

“Nah, just the PI,” he said, setting the book down on the rack next to him. “Twice before our team, then the deployment we did.”

Suddenly struck by a memory, I grinned. “You remember that one night on Mindanao, something like a week before everything went to shit? We were about two miles outside of that tiny-ass village that nobody knew the name of.”

Larry chuckled. “When Lucky woke up with a banana spider two inches above his face?”

“And sat up right into it.” I shook my head. “I’m still amazed he didn’t start shooting. He sure freaked out far enough.”

“Lucky was always a little high-strung,” Larry said. “What happened to him, anyway?”

“Don’t know,” I admitted. “He got out right after we got back from that deployment, and I kind of lost track of him.” Larry just nodded. That happened in this business. A guy you had spent every waking moment with for a year or more got out, went home, and just kind of dropped off the map.

After a long pause, Larry asked quietly, “Why’d you ask about Libya?”

“Ah,” I searched for an answer that would make sense. I wasn’t entirely sure, myself. “This just kind of reminds me of the situation over there. What with the complete chaos, what starved, beaten version of a civil society they had there breaking down. It wasn’t pretty. It ain’t going to be here, either.”

Larry murmured thoughtfully. “Can’t save every situation, brother.”

I snorted. “Can’t save any of ‘em, is how it’s starting to look.”

Larry leaned back and swung his feet back up on his cot. It creaked dangerously under his weight. “You know, I remember you saying once, ‘The world is fucked. Any student of history should be able to see that clearly enough. The only thing any of us should worry about is doing the right thing. Probably won’t change anything, but that doesn’t stop it being the right thing.’ Sound familiar?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, sounds like something I’d say.”

“It’s a sage bit of wisdom,” he said, putting his hands behind his head. “You should probably think about it.”

I flipped him the bird and lay back down on my cot. Morning would come soon enough.

Chapter 6

D
amn, but I was getting tired of the Djibouti heat.

Larry and I were in the Defender, slowly cruising in random circles in the back streets, about a half mile from where there was another demonstration going on. We could actually hear the rising and falling roar, even over the sound of the engine. Whatever was being said, it was getting them good and riled up.

“I’ve got eyes on Khasam,” Bob whispered over the radio from the overwatch position, which was actually the other Range Rover, where he was crouched over a laptop, controlling the tiny Aeroseeker UAV that was hovering over the crowd. “He’s standing on top of a Nissan van, with a bullhorn. Can’t make out what he’s saying, but it’s loud, it’s angry, and it’s aimed to the north.”

“Who else is around him?” I asked.

“Looks like a bunch of his goons,” was the reply after a moment. “Nobody who wants to look important.”

“Probably too much to hope for that we might be able to bag more than one of the assholes,” Larry said. He was lounging in the passenger seat, one massive arm resting on the open window. His other hand was down on the butt of his STI, which was holstered on the side of the seat.

I took another turn, this one leading away from the traffic circle where the day’s crowd was gathered. The flaw in our roving tracker plan was becoming obvious now that we were on the ground. The fact was not all that many people in Djibouti City drove that much, and only a few of the streets were fit for cars. Our orbits were severely limited, and we were running the risk of being too far out of position to pick Khasam up when he decided to leave.

I was looking for a place to park, within a distance where we could close fast on foot, when I got a call from Imad.

“Hillbilly, Spearchucker.” He sounded worried.

I tapped the push-to-talk. “Send it, Spearchucker.”

“Just a heads-up. This guy is pushing. It’s the same bullshit as always, but he’s trying to get the crowd really riled up, and I think he’s succeeding.” There was a lot of background noise; Imad was sub-vocalizing into his bone mic. “A lot of the usual crap about Western exploitation, the president is a thief and a puppet, blah, blah, blah. But he’s calling for a lot of blood and violence.” Another roar of sound drowned him out. “He just called for the president’s severed head to be paraded through the streets.” It was getting really hard to hear him through the crowd’s yelling. “This is going to turn into a riot any minute now,” Imad said.