In Cold Blood (12 page)

“No, I have not.”

“I think that you have. We know that this company has provided security for other ships operating in the Arabian Sea. Your employer has used them many times before, for example. I know them too. I will tell you about an incident, one in particular that I remember very well. I was aboard a boat with my brothers. We were seeking to take a ship, much like yours. We attached our ladders, but then as we tried to climb aboard, soldiers appeared and shot my brothers in cold blood. I was at the bottom of the ladder. I dived into the water as my brothers fell from the ladder. The soldiers fired at the bodies for a minute. They all died, captain. I pretended to be dead, floating with the bodies, in their blood, until the ship was on the horizon and I could be collected. The sharks had the others.”

“I’m sorry, Farax, but you can’t expect me to be sympathetic.”

His jaw clenched and there was a momentary flash in his eye that reminded Joe of his oratory. “No, captain, I do not expect your sympathy. But when it is being reported on western television that the ship included operatives from Manage Risk, perhaps now you will understand why it is a gift from Allah that your crew should contain men from this company.” He stood and pointed to where Joyce and the three men under his command sat. “It is easy to tell a soldier from a sailor, captain. I know these are the men. I wish to make an example of the one who fired the long gun. You will tell me who it was or we will take one member of your crew until you do. I leave it to you. A matter for your conscience.”

Joe tried to stand, but one of the guards swung his rifle around, shaking his head. “You want me to give a man up to die?”

“It is justice. Who was it, captain? This is your last chance today. Someone must die. Who is it to be?”

Joe felt hot vomit rising in his gorge. “I… I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

“Very well.” Farax rose quickly. “Him,” he said, pointing roughly at Ryan Nelson.

The two men with pistols hurried forwards, taking Nelson by the elbows and dragging him away from the wall. He struggled and screamed, his sneakers scrabbling against the rough basement floor, but they were too strong for him. They looped their arms beneath his shoulders and heaved him to the door and then away up the stairs.

“No,” Joe yelled out, lunging towards the door.

“No, captain,” Farax said. The men with the AKs aimed them at him. He stopped. He had no doubt that they would shoot.

“Don’t do this, Farax.”

“What choice have you given me? I will see you later, captain. I will pray that Allah gives you the gift of wisdom.”

Farax left the room. The door closed behind him.

THEY MADE excellent progress. It was early and the roads were empty, the sixty kilometres to the border gradually disappearing beneath the wheels of the truck.

They approached a small settlement and Bashir took his foot off the gas and glided in to the side of the road.

“What are we doing?”

“We will stop here. This is a Boni village. My tribe. You will have a cup of tea and some breakfast?”

Beatrix followed Bashir along a narrow path between coconut trees. The soft sand gave under the soles of her boots, pitching her about. The village was tiny. The Boni encampment comprised a few wattle huts and other shelters made of branches and plastic. It was pathetic, even compared to the squalor of the camp. Bashir explained, superfluously, that life was difficult for them here. The brackish well was far away, decent firewood was scarce, and the children often went hungry.

One of the tents seemed to offer food and drink and Bashir collected two cups of scalding hot masala tea. Beatrix’s feet were aching and the morphine wasn’t helping. She took off her boots and massaged the soles. When she rested them, the sand burned her skin. It was only early, but the sun was already as hot as a poker, advancing upwards with relentless purpose. A woman came out of the hut with two slices of white bread and Beatrix ate hers as a male colobus monkey with bright blue balls watched, the monkey making a grab for the crumbs that scattered at her feet.

THEY SET OFF AGAIN. Beatrix recognised the road from before but, a couple of kilometres from the checkpoint, Bashir swung the wheel and turned off the road. He followed a narrow track, just wide enough for the truck to pass, and skirted to the east and then back to the north.

“What is this?” Beatrix asked.

“It is a
panya
. A smuggler’s run.”

The track cut deeper and deeper into the brush. The surface was much worse than the Garissa Road, just a rough track that swung left and right between the low bushes. Sometimes the rocks would change into a smoother, sandier surface and Bashir could accelerate a little. That was unusual and progress was generally slow. The stony outcrops demanded care and attention, and the occasional diversion, following paths that were barely even tracks until the obstacles were cleared. The branches scraped against the side of the truck and the windows and the suspension clanked and groaned as they bumped into and out of ditches and depressions. Bashir was cheerful throughout it all, singing along to Somali music on the radio.

After thirty minutes they heard another engine and Beatrix caught her breath until she saw it was another truck. This one was designed for cattle, but it was carrying people in the back. Bashir pulled into a passing point and let the truck go by. Beatrix saw a dozen pairs of eyes staring at them as the truck bounced along the road, and pairs of hands gripping the wooden slats.

“They go to Dabaab,” Bashir said. “One thousand a day arrive in the camp. Al Shabaab are emptying the country.”

Bashir fetched them both bottles of water from the back of the truck and they drank until the noise of the engine had receded and the birdsong had started up again.

They climbed more sharply, the truck’s engine wheezing from the effort, eventually turning into a dried out wadi and following its route up to a ridge. The sides of the wadi were taller than the truck and, for a moment, it felt as if they were inside a tunnel. Then, after a short ascent, the wadi disappeared and a plateau levelled out around them.

Bashir stopped the truck.

Beatrix looked out from their elevated position. She could see wide stretches of sand, areas of low scrub and denser vegetation that must have been nearer to an oasis. She saw a big drilling rig, most likely boring test wells and, beyond that, extensive salt pans. The ridge descended sharply to join the main road again. It pointed straight across the level landscape, heading to the northeast and the coast beyond.

Heading to Barawe.

Heading to Joyce.

“Welcome to Somalia.”

POPE WAITED for Lieutenant Commander McMahon outside the ship’s mess. The SEALs were inside, running through their final briefing, and it was not lost on Pope that he hadn’t been invited to participate. Fair enough, he thought. He wouldn’t have invited outsiders into one of his briefings, either. You never really knew who you were dealing with. Better not to take chances.

They finished and the men filed out. They all looked like typical, average SEALs: around six foot tall, lean physiques, buzzcut hair.

McMahon was the last outside. “Captain Pope,” he said. “Will you walk with me?”

They went out onto the flight deck. The Knighthawk that Pope had arrived in had been lashed to its bindings and, as they watched, an Osprey was coming in to land.

“When are your men going out?”

“Twenty four hundred hours,” he said. “Figure it’s going to be an hour to get there, so we’ll be looking at assaulting at zero one hundred hours.”

“Any new intel?”

“No, captain. Nothing I haven’t told you about.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Look, let’s put out cards on the table, alright? I’m getting the feeling that we’re not sharing all the information that we have here.”

“Go ahead.”

“All I know is that four of the hostages over there,” he gestured out towards the horizon, “have British passports. And that’s why you’re here. We’re working together, right? Cooperating. That sound about right to you?”

“It does.”

“And we also know that you’re saying you’ve got an asset in the town. Right?”

“Possibly.”

He raised an eyebrow at the equivocation. “
Possibly?
”

Pope knew he should follow the script, but he also knew that if he didn’t give the lieutenant commander a little additional information then it would make things much more dangerous for Beatrix once things started to heat up.

“Between us, we may have an ex-operative there. I left her in Kenya, before the chopper came to bring me out here. She had transport and she was heading east. I don’t know if she was able to get across the border or not.”

“Hold on. She?”

“Yes. And she’s on her own. No support from us. And so far beyond deniable that it isn’t true. As far as we’re concerned, she doesn’t exist.”

“Okay.” The lieutenant commander looked perplexed. “So you haven’t been in touch with her since?”

“Why would I? Technically, she doesn’t work for us any more.”

“She’s a free agent?”

“Precisely.”

“And you can’t tell me anything else?”

He shook his head. “There’s nothing else to tell.”

“Not where she might be? What she might do?”

He wanted to be honest and tell him that Beatrix was going to mount her own attack under the cover of the SEALs’ assault, but that was a step too far. He dared not. Stone was right about that. There was a good chance that a wild card like that would mean the SEALs aborted the mission. And he doubted whether that would stop Beatrix from going in. She would do it solo and that would be as good as a suicide mission, no matter how good she was or might once have been. He balanced up the merits of speaking and staying silent and decided, however perverse, that she stood a better chance of survival if he remained vague.

“You don’t need to worry,” he said. “She won’t get in your way. I doubt you’ll even know she’s there.”

“I got to be honest with you, Pope, that’s not going to do her much good once the bullets start to fly. If she’s there and she does get involved, we won’t be able to discriminate. She’ll probably get shot. If she doesn’t, and she gets compromised, we won’t be able to stop and get her out. This is all focussed on the hostages.”

Pope nodded. “I understand. And you’re being very reasonable. If I could tell you more, I would.”

BASHIR DROVE ON. He followed the
panya
until it fed, quite brazenly, onto a road that led east to Jilib and then Barawe. The landscape was flat and arid and the midday heat was punishing. The road eventually turned due east and they followed it as it then bent to the north. They continued through a belt of junipers towards Jilib.

“Third largest city in Somalia,” Bashir said. “Mogadishu is largest, then Hargesia, in the north.”

They crested a shallow rise before the gradual depression into where the city was set. It spread out all the way to the hazy horizon. It had been levelled during the civil war and the buildings that had replaced it tended to be lower-slung, with a handful of high rises starting to appear in the centre of town.

“We’re going through it?”

“I deliver the water here. You should stay in the truck.”

“Pull over.”

He did as she asked. She reached into her bag for the niqāb and jilbāb that she had bought at the airport before they left Morocco. She went around the truck so that Bashir could not see her, pulled the cloak over her head and then pulled and tugged it until it fell naturally around her. The veil was next and she arranged it around her face until it fell comfortably. She looked into the wing mirror: only her eyes were visible. She strapped on her shoulder holster. The garments served an even more useful purpose than obscuring her identity. It would be more difficult to identify her as a westerner now and she would be able to wear her semi-automatic with no fear of it being discovered.

It took a moment to adjust to having the surprisingly thick material over her mouth and her field of vision restricted. Finally satisfied, she turned to Bashir.

“Very good,” he said.

“Can you see who I am?”

“Impossible to say.”

“Good.”

“What is this? Journalist’s trick?”

“Something like that.”

She indicated that Bashir should proceed and he drove into the city, merging with the steady stream of traffic that had started to accumulate on the approach. They passed into the city limits, passing half a dozen mosques and a hospital. The town was a surprise. It was big and blowsy, a metropolis that would not have looked out of place in some of Somalia’s more affluent neighbours. It had recovered miraculously well from the war, the only obvious relic of which was the Soviet-era MiG in Somali air force colours that had been shot down in the act of strafing the city, now restored and mounted on a plinth in the middle of a roundabout.

The man who was buying Bashir’s water was waiting for them in a truck near the entrance to a large covered market, the East African equivalent of a Moroccan souk. She saw a shoe stall, the teetering stacks smelling of plastic and fresh leather; there was a sari shop, the bolts of colour like garish lures to tempt customers inside; stalls piled high with oranges and lemons, both of which were prolific nearer to the coast.

Bashir reversed the truck so that the crates of water could be thrown from one into the other and clambered up into the back.

“You want some food?” Beatrix asked him.

“Sure.”

There was a refreshments stall at the entrance to the market. She approached the stall, pointed to a stack of triangular
sabmuusas
, and then held up five fingers. They could have two now and the others would serve as rations for later.

“Four shillings,” the man replied in guttural Arabic and Beatrix handed him the money.

He put the food into a bag and handed it to her. She dipped her head, feeling the weight of the Glock 17 underneath her arm.

She strolled into the market and soaked in the sights and sounds. There were children, practically feral, scurrying between the stalls. Goats wandered wherever they wanted. The buildings were ramshackle, tarpaulins replacing shattered roofs in many places. Traders sold wicker baskets, fruit, vegetables. She turned a corner into a narrow passageway where it was only possible to walk in single file. Dust was everywhere, heavy and cloying, and the heat from the sun was dizzying.