The Sensory Deception (28 page)

“Those are barrels,” Chopper said. “Can you tune it so we can see if they’re labeled?”

“No, the image is built by reconstructing echoes from the whale’s sonar transmissions. We can only distinguish distance, shape, hardness, and motion. There’s no way to visualize something like a label or photograph.”

Chopper stood. The ball peen hammer pummeled away, but he barely noticed. “Motherfuckers. It’s toxic waste. What else could it be?”

F
arley opened the e-mail from Ringo just before climbing into his hammock. Ringo wrote: “He was sitting on the bluff smoking a barch with his shoulder wrapped in a red bandana.”

Fucking Chopper, badass almighty!

But the message got more interesting. The precise location of toxic waste dumped on the coast? His initial anger converted to intrigue. Video of a toxic waste site could give the documentary the punch it needed. Finally, a reason to believe it could go viral and get him out of there.

This time, after two weeks in Sy’s village, he knew enough to go through the same channels as anyone else who needed Sayyid Hassan’s help. He and Tahir stood in line for fifteen minutes. Ahead of them were two men who claimed the same wife, a boy who had been caught stealing food and the guard accused of beating him, and a farmer who wanted to propose a new crop.

Guards in sunglasses stood on each side of Sy, their AK-47s hanging from shoulder straps. One appeared to be nodding off.

Farley asked, “Did you know that drums of toxic waste have been dumped off your coast?”

Sy said, “It’s common knowledge.”

“I know exactly where it is.”

Sy leaned back in his chair and said, “That is not common knowledge.”

“We can see everything the whale sees, hear everything the whale hears.” Farley rushed his words. “There are barrels off the coast, and if we can raise a few, I can identify the waste and we can trace it back to whoever dumped it.”

“European garbage scows,” Sy said. “Did you notice the boy with whom I just spoke? Did you see the shape of his left arm? Did you notice that he had just one eye? He was born near a creek that…Ah, I understand. This is the story you will tell.”

The afternoon following Farley’s meeting with Sayyid, a dozen men assembled outside Farley’s converted classroom. Most spoke heavily accented English. The water where they would dive was a good thirty meters deep—a real challenge without diving equipment.

They practiced in the water immediately east of camp. Farley started with a course on safe diving practices and followed that with knot-tying drills. Tahir helped get him through the language barrier. He showed them how to dive to the seafloor by hanging on to a rope attached to a two-hundred-pound rock as it fell through the water. This way, they could get to the bottom, work as long as they could hold their breath, and then use their natural buoyancy to surface.

To plan the dive, Farley used a still image that Ringo had sent showing barrels stretching for a hundred meters, piled one upon the other. After ten days of practice, he decided the men were ready. Two of the younger ones turned out to be amazing swimmers who could hold their breath for almost three minutes.

They took a skiff, along with Sy and a few of his sailors, to the dump site, well north of camp and about a quarter mile offshore. Two of the sailors scanned the shoreline.

Tahir helped Farley strap on a video camera. The whole toxic waste recovery would be recorded for the documentary. Farley went in first and pulled a line down to measure the depth of the barrels. The length of the rope attached to the rock used for pulling the divers to the seafloor was adjusted so that it would stop at least a few meters above the barrels.

The divers went down in stages and worked a line around one barrel. Farley emphasized where the rope should be tied to encompass the barrel’s center of mass. Farley explained that if the barrel were to fall and crack, or if the lid were pulled off as the barrel was raised, the toxins could destroy what was left of their ocean-born food source. Farley went down himself to check, and when he was convinced the rope was secure, he had everyone get back in the boat. He stayed in the water to help guide the barrel to the surface as they pulled it up.

To prevent the barrel from colliding with the hull of the skiff, Farley wedged himself in between. With his back against the fiberglass and his hands and feet against the barrel, he examined it for signs of damage and leaks. He rotated it around. It looked solid and well sealed.

There was a label. Most of it had dissolved, but the remaining fragment had a few words written in French,
Terre Mer Gestion SA,
and a symbol. The symbol was a triangle encompassing a circle. The circle was separated into seven pieces: a smaller circle at its center plus six evenly spaced wedges alternating black and white: the international symbol for radioactive hazard.

T
o get the footage necessary for a good documentary, Farley knew he had to record all aspects of Sy’s camp: panoramic geographic scenes, wide-angle views of activity in the village, and intimate portrayals of daily life. Getting the right footage required perseverance. He and Tahir spent hours every day walking around the village with video and audio sensors attached to themselves. Once they became a common sight, the villagers ignored them and they started acquiring genuine, spontaneous scenes.

They started each day by documenting the milieu, touring from inside the village out to its periphery. The village centered on the primary well. Vegetable gardens, bisected by paths, surrounded the well and extended to the old school building. The well water ran clear year-round and was sufficient to provide for the population as well as maintain the crops. The scenes of gardens, ramshackle huts, and the old school building, if well edited, could lend an effect of lush poverty.

On the coast, Sy’s dozen-boat latter-day pirate fleet was pulled up on the beach. The plains to the west consisted of dry grass and low shrubs. A fifty-meter clear zone was maintained beyond the chain-link fence that enclosed the central living area. The clear zone continued around the south edge of camp and to the coast.

To the north, a low mountain ridge formed a natural barrier and a place for guards to patrol with the other boundaries in sight. Several creeks converged below the ridge, funneling toward the ocean in a tiny delta. Covering just ten acres, this was the most fertile land for miles. Except for the few months of monsoon season, the creeks trickled just enough water to grow crops on one side and feed livestock on the other.

Sayyid Hassan was proud of his kingdom. But there was an underside to the culture Sy maintained. The fifty-meter clear zones were there for a reason. The caves in the northern ridge were off-limits to everyone but those who guarded them, also for a reason.

Tahir pointed toward the area with a quick jab of his elbow. “That is a prison.”

Farley shielded the sun with a hand, trying to make out its features.

Tahir said, “The guards would be more comfortable if you were more subtle.”

Farley lowered his hand. “You suppose they have prisoners?”

“Where there is a prison and guards, there are prisoners,” Tahir said. “But it wasn’t guarded yesterday.” Tahir maneuvered toward the ridge, never actually facing it but getting closer. Finally their path intersected that of a guard.

Sy’s guards or warriors or police force—Farley didn’t know what to call them; Sy referred to them as his “men”—wore tan canvas shorts and tunics that looked as though they’d been dyed by the dirt that composed the plains. Each carried a knife in his belt; some had machetes. Most of them bore AK-47 automatic rifles with their signature long, curved magazines.

In the month Farley and Tahir had been there, Sy’s men had carried their rifles slung over a shoulder by the strap that ran from barrel to stock. The guard who now approached held his rifle in its business position.

Tahir spoke to the guard in a few languages to find one he understood. The man did not respond and his gun didn’t waver. Farley and Tahir headed back to the lab.

Tahir said, “Something has changed.”

Farley loaded the video they’d just recorded onto the computer.

One of Sy’s men, complete with AK-47 hanging from his shoulder, leaned into the room and said something in Arabic. Tahir followed him out.

Farley organized the new video recordings in a database he’d configured for the project. They’d recorded hundreds of hours. He checked the log and reviewed all of his subcategories: boring video of Somalis working in fields, tending livestock, eating, praying, and sitting around fires laughing and talking. He put a fresh memory stick in the camera and started to make his way to a classroom.

As Farley stepped out the door, Tahir appeared and said, “Attach your equipment to me the way you did to the whale.”

Farley asked, “What’s going on?”

“There’s trouble. All the men have been called to the central guard station, and weapons are being distributed.”

Farley equipped the old soldier with Ringo’s custom high-resolution, high-sensitivity, broadband video cameras.

“Farley, they are preparing to defend this camp.”

Tahir hadn’t felt this much adrenaline since the last time he crossed the Iraq-Iran border, in 1991. He jogged to the guard station where weapons were being distributed; some men were assigned AK-47s and others machetes. He stood in the line. When it was his turn, the guard handing out weapons asked a
higher-ranking guard for instructions. Tahir was given a machete and assigned to one of eight groups of men.

The smell of fear and sweat on the guard next to him, the look of control in the eyes of Sayyid Hassan as he indicated how he wanted his men distributed—it all came back to Tahir. Finally, here was something he could do well.

The camp’s obvious weakness was its low-ground location. An offensive could be directed from the ridge to the north. The north was also suspect because it was the direction of the nearest Al-Shabaab compound. Sy had assembled two hundred men, far more than served as guards in the daily life of the camp. About half of them carried AK-47s. As it had been since the dawn of culture, every man capable of running, shooting, and executing orders was on hand to defend his home.