Rotten Gods (11 page)

The logistics of this headlong rush through perilous airspace occupies Marika's mind. On her back is a bulky Special Forces-issue parachute. A smaller pack, strapped to her ammo belt, contains clothes and food. Her Glock 9mm automatic is clipped tight into a canvas holster at her side.

In less than thirty minutes they will drop into Somalia, the problem child of Africa — a land torn apart by feuding warlords and their followers. The Transitional Federal Government, backed by the West, and bolstered by troops from the African Union, cannot unite a land where law issues from the barrel of an assault rifle, a place of famine, disarray, and disunity; bleeding and torn.

Even so, Marika is determined, even in that failed state, to find Sufia Haweeya and take her back to Dubai. From the top pocket of her jacket she removes her personal CVCID, nicknamed ‘Sid', the military version of the civilian smartphone that has proved
indispensable in modern intelligence work. She punches in her PIN, then brings up a photograph of the woman on the screen: tall and willowy, high, sloping forehead and defined cheekbones lending her a regal beauty that Marika finds appealing yet intimidating. The sadness of her eyes suggests that life has not always been easy, yet the lips make a half-moon smile, as if she is ready to laugh. There is something familiar about her, also, something troubling that Marika cannot quite place.

Can this woman make a difference? Marika isn't sure, but it is one possibility in a situation devoid of options. It may not be possible to find her, in any case.
I hope you're ready
, she says to the image,
because I'm coming to get you.

Putting the Sid unit back in its place she settles into the seat. She has always found parachuting into strange territory nerve-racking. Low-light drops are an order of magnitude worse. Now, scarcely dawn — ten thousand feet above the Somali desert, with God alone knows what down below — she feels close to terror. Slipping out of her harness, she staggers aft to the head and uses it, determined that it will be a long time before she needs to avail herself again. Back at her seat, she looks at her watch, knowing they must be close, regretting taking the mission on herself. She could have brought in any elite fighting force in the region. It was she, however, who insisted that one or two personnel would be less obvious, able to get in, assess the situation and call for backup if necessary. Madoowbe's language skills and local knowledge will be invaluable.

If possible, they will bring Sufia Haweeya out themselves, utilising a chopper from the heavy cruiser USS
Chicago
in the Red Sea. Of course, Marika tells herself, the exercise is academic if Sufia has
not
gone home. It is, after all, mere hearsay — the word of a neighbour. There are a million other places she could be.

The pilot's voice crackles over the headphones: ‘Eight minutes to target. Weather conditions clear, but moderate to fresh surface winds and thick airborne dust. Do we abort?'

‘Negative. Proceed.' Marika knows that the wind will make things difficult for them, but it is not enough to delay. They have so little time. They need to bring Sufia out well in advance of the deadline in order to use her as leverage.

‘Five minutes to target.'

Clipping her line to the rail, she watches Madoowbe do the same. She has only his word that he is experienced, but notes that he seems to know what he is doing. Being ex-SAS, she reminds herself, of course he would.

‘Is your Sid turned on?' she shouts.

‘Yes.'

She nods in approval, knowing that the electronic devices might be their sole means of locating each other when they hit the ground.

‘Two minutes.'

The door opens. Fear dries her lips. Her hands shake. Talking becomes impossible in the slipstream. Looking down, she cannot see the ground, only a shroud of brown dust, moving like a living organism.

‘Twenty seconds.'

Just as Marika is about to jump, the giant aircraft hits a pocket of turbulence, throwing her back into the fuselage and onto her side. Her elbow strikes the deck hard at the nerve point. The pain is sharp but fades, and she struggles to her feet.

The pilot's accented English comes through the intercom: ‘Very sorry.'

The plane rocks a few more times, and Marika clenches her teeth and grips her arm.
Yeah, I bet you are.

‘Are you OK?' The pilot again.

‘Yes. Fine. Proceeding with jump.'

‘Do you want us to circle back?'

‘No.' Meeting a surface-to-air missile in Somali airspace is always a chance, and the more circling that goes on, the greater the risk.

As if the pain of her elbow helps steel her, Marika finds that she is no longer afraid. Moving back to the open doorway, she holds her breath and slides out and away into the silent dawn.

 

The queue at the toilets suggests to Isabella that daylight is approaching. She joins the half-dozen women waiting against the wall, too frightened to exchange more than a few monosyllables; drawn, tired and anxious.

The fat, light-skinned terrorist drifts closer. Isabella has heard the others call him Jafar. As far as she knows he has not slept at all, but once she saw him take a pill from a vial in his pocket and wash it down with bottled water. Is it caffeine, or something stronger; Benzedrine, perhaps? Either way, a man cannot stay functional without sleep indefinitely. Thirty hours? Fifty? A hundred? Some of the mujahedin take turns to sleep in an alcove, yet even so, the tablets must assist them to stay alert.

Reptilian eyes rove down over her body. She glares back. Jafar drifts away, yet not too far. The line moves on, for it is a large bathroom, with multiple cubicles and a long sink. As Isabella steps inside she sees women washing their faces. She walks into a cubicle and closes the door in defiance of instructions, then takes the phone from her underwear before dropping them to her knees and sitting on the seat.

The message received flag is up.
Understand circumstances. Will pass on any intel. Keep it coming when safe. Tom. PS Will bring as much pressure as possible to bear re your girls.

Isabella deletes the message, then fires back a quick one mentioning the pills she has seen the mujahedin take. Breathing quickly, she clicks on the second message — from Simon.

The bathroom door opens. These footfalls sound different on the tiles. Flat-footed. Male. Isabella freezes. Her bladder opens without conscious direction.

‘Hurry up. What are you doing in here? Hatching plans? Who has shut the door? It is forbidden to shut the door.' The voice is not that of Zhyogal, but the fat one, Jafar. The hair on the back of her neck stands erect.
Did he follow her in here?

Isabella slips the phone into her right bra cup. The footsteps echo. Her body tenses, even as her water streams into the bowl. Mouth open, she searches for air. Finally she is able to pull up her underwear, moving the phone back to her knickers and flushing the toilet. Opening the door she steps back out into the bathroom.

The other women have hurried from the room. She is alone with him. This man knows where her girls are. She faces him, shoulders squared, chin high. ‘I have done what you people asked of me,' she says. ‘I have sold out my country and my honour. I want my daughters returned to my husband. Now.'

The smile comes slowly to his face. ‘More powerful men than I have decided that it is best for us to keep the little girls until this is over. They will ensure your cooperation. We may need your services again. After that, I know not what my brothers will do with them. Perhaps they will kill them. Perhaps not.'

Isabella raises one hand to strike him, but he moves out of reach, laughing. ‘When we go back inside, I will tell your colleagues that it is you who betrayed them — that you handed a
leather case filled with explosives to the gentle Dr Abukar. Would you like that?'

‘No.'

‘Then shut up about your brats. I do not care if they live or die.' His eyes move from her face down the curve of her throat to her breasts. Following his gaze she sees that the top two buttons of her blouse are undone. His face reddens, and his breathing quickens.

Oh God, he's aroused.

‘You disgust me,' she cries. Before he can react she opens the door and hurries out into the auditorium.

 

The rising sun is red, as if hewn from stone, illuminating the air itself and, far below, an unseen landscape cloaked in brown. Marika feels relief as her chute opens, yet calculates that the delay in her jump might have set them off course by up to ten kilometres.

Looking ahead and above, she sees Madoowbe's chute, an uncertain distance to the south. She manipulates the steering toggles so as to move closer.

The rectangular folds hang above her, cells taut with air. This is one of the new ATPS ram-air chutes designed for experts to reach the ground before they attract enemy fire. Marika smells the dust first, then passes into it, the wind tearing at the chute and the air so thick she pushes her collar against her lips with her shoulder and breathes through the heavy cotton.

The parachute billows and flaps. The light that seemed so benign is blotted out as if shrouded by cloth. The comforting sight of the other chute disappears also, and the wind howls through the strings.

The dust becomes a gritty mess between her fingers, and each breath a struggle. Worst of all is the feeling of disorientation. Like the time she fell from an old plywood dinghy into a farm dam, where the suspended clay made it impossible to see which way was up. For twenty or thirty frightening seconds she drove herself deeper into the cold depths, until confusion stopped her, and down there the gas in her lungs was more buoyant. Controlling her panic, she began to rise.

Now, high above the ground, the slipstream tells her which way is down. This is the parachutist's second-worst nightmare: unable to prepare for impact; or to steer away from obstacles. All she can do is lift her legs and tense, ready for an impact that might be seconds away.

The whistling of air in her ears and the constant need to depressurise becomes an ache deep into her head. Mucus runs from both nostrils, and just when the stress on her body becomes too much, the earth pounds into her legs, driving her knees into her chest so the air leaves her lungs in a rush.

Instinct tells her to roll, but rolling can be dangerous in unknown terrain. Instead she folds her upper body and legs, absorbing the impact with the flexibility of muscle and bone, finishing the manoeuvre in a squatting position, weight balanced like that of a cat, pain from the impact already subsiding. Still in that position, she listens for any sound that might be a threat to her, but hears just the moan of wind and sand.

Satisfied, Marika begins to gather the parachute, sand filling the folds as fast as she can work. Finished, she takes Sid from her pocket and switches between apps until the GPS chart of the area comes up, her own location a steady green sphere. She increases the view ‘altitude' with a deft pincer movement of thumb and forefinger, searching for Madoowbe's signal.

Sid tracks satellites very fast, but in the sandstorm minutes pass before it acquires enough satellites for a fix. It is comforting to see the village of Bacaadweyn on the screen thirty-five kilometres away — further than they had planned yet still not an insurmountable distance, even on foot. At first she cannot locate Madoowbe's signal, but by increasing the range control it becomes clear: two thousand three hundred metres on a bearing of seventy degrees. Less than half an hour over good terrain.

Picking herself up, Marika moves towards the signal. At first she is cautious, but relaxes when she comes across nothing but sand interspersed with flat-topped acacias and the occasional baobab tree. This is wilderness — Somali style. With visibility restricted to just a few metres, she does not hurry.

At one stage the ground becomes rocky, and as she navigates this more difficult terrain, she finds herself at the lip of a precipice so deep that the bottom is hidden in swirls of shifting sand and dust. Recovering her balance with difficulty, she moves back, turning northwards until she is able to resume her heading.

Marika is as fit as an athlete, yet the constant soft sand makes her calves ache, and the dust storm forces her to wear goggles. Even so, the distance between her and Madoowbe shortens rapidly. His blip is almost superimposed on hers when she stops and calls.

There is no answer but the wind and the sigh of shifting sand.

Again she calls and nothing happens.

Shaking her head in frustration she removes her goggles. He must be close, surely?

Marika feels her legs collapse. Something grips her arms. Even as she falls, her training takes over, and she pulls away, using gravity to multiply her own strength. Her attacker responds, anticipating her, until, still standing, he takes her neck in the
crook of his arm. Twisting sideways, from a distance of just a few centimetres, she looks into Madoowbe's eyes. In his hand he holds a Browning Hi-Power pistol. The muzzle moves to the side of her head, and she sees his teeth as he smiles.

At first the sense of betrayal is so great that her limbs freeze, but then anger takes over, and her reaction is physical, bringing her arm back ready to strike, slamming the heel of her hand against the gun, pushing it away from her. The move unbalances the Somali, who is slow on the counterattack. She punches him hard on the centre of his broad nose. Anyone, struck in such a manner, cannot help raising one hand to soothe the injured extremity, and Madoowbe is no exception.

Using this momentary advantage, she turns to run, aiming to disappear into the shroud of windblown sand, when the toe of his boot smashes into her shin, and she hurtles face-first towards the ground, tripped with the skill of a top-level football player, forced to use both arms to cushion her fall.

Madoowbe is on her in a moment, giving her no time to roll. Sitting on her back, the muzzle of his handgun boring into the back of her head. ‘Do not move, or your unborn children will perish here on the sand with you.'