Born of War (3 page)

“He was born for this shit.” The monitor spat over his shoulder as he mumbled the words.

Neave looked at his watch. A new record had just been set at the farm.
This guy was dangerous.
Neave knew what he was talking about. He was one of the few who could shoot like this. The smell of burnt rounds filled the air.

A
white man walked quickly along the side street of the city of Sana'a. He stopped to inhale his cigarette, at the same time leaning against the wall of the old building as he tried to regain his breath. The old men in the side street stared at the Yankee dressed in his brown laced-up shoes and khaki-colored suit. He wore an open-collared, silk, white shirt. He looked out of place and he didn't care. Everyone in the city knew when he had arrived and why he was there. He was safer in Sana'a than in Detroit.

The capital of Yemen had two unique features. The first was that the nearly two million people who lived in the maze of fortress-like buildings, all connected by an endless run of alleys, tolerated living in a city nearly a mile higher than Denver. And the city was founded before Christ. The old men said that the son of Noah came to this desert spot over twenty-five centuries ago. The men of Sana'a moved like ants on an active anthill stirred by some imaginary stick. Few women were to be seen.

The visitor pushed up his glasses on his nose as he inhaled the cigarette again. He had been smoking since his twelfth birthday and on that particular date finished off a pack of Camels he had stolen from his father. The habit had lasted for three decades. He had a weasel's smile and brown hair that went over his ears, combed to a high part. He spoke his words too fast, in a frantic pace, which caused people to doubt his sincerity even further. The man tilted his head slightly as he spoke, which only caused one to notice how he squinted his eyes.

The eyes were particularly a problem as he wore glasses that had a changing tint from sunlight to dark.

But he had always delivered what he promised.

The café was just inside the gate to the old city. The ancient clay walls of the city gave a brown look to the stacked, tall blocks but the people had whitewashed the frames of the window. All of the buildings were flat topped like some big, brown stack of Legos made out of clay.

He put his hand on the wall of the old Bab al-Yemen gate to steady himself. The altitude had taken its toll. The journey had not helped. He flew into Salalah in nearby Oman, rented a Land Rover, and drove across the desert border to leave a less obvious trail. He pulled his hand away from the wall, looked at the chocolate coating of dust on his palm, and pulled out a white silk cloth to rub the dirt off.

The men who walked by gave him looks and then quickly turned away.

Bertok Genret was there because he loved his Canadian Golden Maple Leafs. The gold coins each contained an ounce of pure gold and he enjoyed just holding one of the coins. His one locked room in his Swiss villa had a false front of a door that led to a vault. He didn't keep everything in this one vault. He knew that it was important to spread the load, but the one room no bigger than a closet held canvas bags of his precious leafs.

“No one reads the words on a leaf,” he often said.

He meant that no one cared how he acquired his gold.

Genret walked to the café and took a seat at a table well to the back. It wasn't just the villagers walking in the tight alleyways that he was concerned about. Sana'a and even its smallest alleyways were under near constant watch from the sky above.

“
Qahwa
.” He had grown fond of the dark coffee served in Sana'a. The old waiter wiped the table with a brown rag that looked like it only added to the dust and grime of the surface.

“One?”

“Yeah.” He spoke the word sarcastically as he sat alone at the table.

The old man understood the sarcasm and walked away. He returned with a chipped cup, making no offer of milk or sugar.

Genret lit up another B & H Gold.

Got to get out of this hellhole.
He looked down at the dwindling pack of Benson & Hedges cigarettes.

“Mr. Genret.”

The man standing in front of him wore robes more in keeping with others in the café.

“
Al-salamu alaykum
.” Genret did not stand. He liked being rude.

“
Wa alaykum s-salam
.” The man stood over the Brit as he continued to smoke his cigarette and put the coffee cup to his lips.

“Sit down, Musa.”

“Someone else wants to talk to you.”

“Oh?” Genret had dealt exclusively with Musa now for nearly a decade. He noticed movement in the entranceway to the café. A small man with a round bearded face dressed in white robes and an odd-looking leather jacket walked in. Only the top of his beard just below the nose was visible. His face was mostly covered by a red-and-white checkered keffiyeh. The silk headdress was often worn in Sana'a but rarely was it wrapped so tightly across the face. It was as if the winds of a storm had kicked up the dust and the man was using it for what it had been intended. It was, however, so tightly wrapped that it looked odd. He stood out among the hundreds of others with the same keffiyeh. He had two large bodyguards, AK-47s held tightly at their sides, trailing behind.

The jacket was unusual, in contrast to the white robes common to the city, but not overly exceptional. Even though a desert town, it was at nearly eight thousand feet, keeping the temperature constant. Often, Sana'a would be cool. And at night it could be bitterly cold.

“So, you are our famous Mr. Genret.” The man pulled the wrapping from his face as he spoke to reveal the angle where his beard followed the outline of his jaw. His combed-over hair, along with the beard, gave the impression of a large brown ball with hair glued to both the bottom and the top. Unlike Genret, he had a muscular frame. It was not clear to Genret whether the man spent his life in tents or on the top floor of the Ritz. Although in Sana'a he was certainly not staying at the Ritz.

“And you are?” Genret leaned back in his chair with his arm to his side, flicking the cigarette ash on the floor.

“Sheikh Muhammad Al Faud.”

Genret dropped the cigarette to the floor and sat up in the chair.

“Faud Mohammed Khalaf?” Genret used his other name. His body tightened up like a rattler. He looked around, keeping an eye on the café's arched opening. This man was known to be very dangerous. He could kill and, more important for Genret, Faud was a target to be killed. A Predator would not hesitate to drop one on the café, even in the center of the capital of Yemen, for this target. Genret would be a casual side player in a CNN news story the next day. It would take a week or more for his fate to make it back to his wife in Switzerland. The story would simply read that the financial mind of Al Shabaab had been killed by a Predator strike in Yemen.

“Don't worry, Mr. Genret.” The man sat down opposite Genret and waved his hand at the waiter. “
Qahwa!
” he yelled over the high-pitched music that played from a box behind the bar.

The waiter brought another cup of coffee; however, this time he acted carefully, cautiously, wiping the table with a bright white cloth. It was clear to Genret that the waiter also knew who his customer was. Again, Genret was scared.

The answer was that the meeting needed to be short. The only safety for both was to remain constantly moving.

“So you know me.”

“Head of finance for Al Shabaab.” Genret knew of Faud. He was an Arab with a price tag on his head that might have exceeded the Leafs in Genret's secret room.

“Yes.” The man smiled as if he had been introduced as the founder of Facebook.

Genret offered the pack of cigarettes to his seatmate at the table.

“The habit is deplorable,” said Faud. “It is a Yankee addiction that is far more harmful to you than the bullets of those AKs.” Faud pointed to one of his guards sitting at the table behind and looking out, constantly, towards the alleyway. “If America wants to kill, they have done it best by tobacco.”

“You want arms?” Genret asked the obvious; however, Faud didn't need to leave Somalia to place an order for several crates of AK-47s. “I assume that is why you have come?” Genret had never dealt with anyone from Al Shabaab at this level. He was somewhat stymied by his visitor.

“We want something very special.” Faud paused.

He drew with his finger a shape on the table. There were no markings. Only the movement of his hand. Genret noted that his hand was brown and tough like a piece of leather exposed constantly to the sun. The fingers were short and stubby and fat. He was a Saudi by birth.

More difficulty, more profit.
Genret pondered the idea. A truckload of Russian rocket-propelled grenades was less profitable but just as marketable. The penalty for something more deadly was rarely worth much more than what Interpol would have given him just for the RPGs. Ten years in prison was ten years whether it be for cases of RPGs or a missile. And that required his staying in the same jurisdiction long enough for Interpol to catch up to him. And then there were always the jailers. Money, especially gold ounces, helped many cross through borders.

“Semtex-H? Is that what you want? I can get a shipload on sale.” Genret felt slightly repelled. The plastic explosive would take down the roofs of malls in Ethiopia and Nigeria, crushing the children underneath.

“You have children?” Faud asked the question.

“Yes, I have two.”

“In your Geneva?”

“Yes.”

Genret knew that Faud and the world kept track of where the arms dealer's ties were. But it didn't sound like a threat. It would have been a loss to Al Shabaab for Genret to leave his trade.

“I have two wives. One in Somalia and one here in Yemen.” Faud looked away for a moment. “One wife is from Saudi Arabia, like me, but we can never go home.”

“Yes.”

“No, you don't understand. You never will.” The Saudi turned deadly serious.

Faud leaned over the table and looked directly into Genret's eyes. Genret felt the stare through his tinted lenses.

“It is Allah's will. Those words mean little to you nonbelievers. You see no more than your present world. You never will.”

There was silence.

It was true. Genret made money as a necessity. His children would fly with their mother to New York at Christmas, but he never considered that the same flight might be carrying a laptop loaded with Semtex. The sin was that his wife and children knew him as an exporter. The wife never asked for the truth and he never provided it.

“Mr. Genret, we want a Dong Feng 21.”

Genret rolled back in his chair, catching the news like a baseball bat to his chest.

“I am not sure.” He hesitated with his choice of words. He wasn't trying to be dramatic. He had nothing else to say. A nuclear core was probably easier to obtain. The Dong Feng 21 was the only weapon in the world that would have caused Genret to roll back as he did.

“We have a weapon identified.”

Genret thought that every intelligence agency in the free world would pay, dearly, to hear what was said next.

“You know what they call it?”

“Yes.” Faud paused. “And it is well suited to our little land with such a long coastline. Don't you think? We have too many American ships off our coast.”

A mobile, well hidden, protected DF-21D would tip the balance of the scales in the Gulf of Aden. Shipping had to use the tight waterway as they exited the Suez Canal, but it also meant that military ships were likewise squeezed into the same narrow corridor.

“Is it China?” Genret had had little dealings with the sale of weapons from China. It was known, however, as the creator of this new weapon, or at least what was considered to be the newest and most capable variance. The DF-21D's software was known to be able to track and kill the fastest of America's military ships. It was a “carrier killer.” The rocket would climb and then sink to surface level as it tracked its target. A ship of nearly five thousand men and a deck of aircraft could be at risk.

“China is not the only one. Although they have been most generous in offering our brothers the skills needed.” Faud had said much in one statement.

Iran has created a knockoff!
Genret pondered the thought as he nervously lit another cigarette.
God, MI-6 would drop me in the Gulf Stream with my brains like mashed potatoes.
He would be drugged and gagged until they could get him to some stone shack in the highlands. He wanted to shut his ears. The knowledge burned through his chest. A leak would cause the free world's intelligence networks to grab him for any chance of this information. Israel would pay a bounty for even a hint of this information.

And if he told anyone, Al Shabaab would follow him to the driveway that led up to his Swiss hideaway and kill him. With one sentence, Genret had been pulled in whether he liked it or not.

“We need your skill in transportation. What price to get this across the Gulfs of both Oman and Aden? What price to get it to Somalia without being detected?”

“Will the Iranian Navy help cross one?” Genret asked.

“Yes.”

“And what will Oman do if a truck passes across its lands?”

“They will look away.”

“Do I have to pay for that?” The cost of bribes carried an extra expense that had to be planned for.

“No.”

Genret didn't believe what he was hearing but took another sip of the coffee.

“10,000 Leafs at one ounce per,” said Genret.

The job had the makings of being that final push that he and his competitors always were looking for. Genret knew that if he passed on the job he would never leave Sana'a. But the thought of death didn't enter his mind as much as the fact that the other arms dealers would be sick to know that he was the chosen one.