Task Force Desperate (39 page)

The whole team kind of sat up and took notice at that. It sounded like a pretty big indicator to me. Maybe that was where they were keeping the rest of the hostages. Or maybe it was a Shabaab/AQ headquarters, where we could at least pin down where the rest of the hostages were. It was more than we’d had, anyway.

“I decided we needed to check it out,” Imad continued. “Spider argued against it, said we needed to stick with the plan, but the plan wasn’t getting us anywhere. It looked like all the honchos were out of town. The man I talked to even said Al Masri had left last week, going back to the Arab states. He didn’t say which one. I asked if he’d heard of Abu Sadiq. He said he hadn’t. We hadn’t heard the name the whole two days we had been there. The man was a ghost; he didn’t seem to exist.

“When we got back to the hostel, I said I was going to go recon the University that night. Spider argued that I shouldn’t, but I pointed out how shitty the security was at night, and promised I’d be careful. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t do much about it without raising a ruckus. So I went.”

He started feeling around his pockets. “I made a sketch. It had all the guards and patrols I could see. I made a thorough recon, then headed back to the hostel at about 0300. But when I got back, Spider was gone.

“I hadn’t gone in the front; that’s probably the only reason I wasn’t taken. There were half a dozen men with AKs out front, waiting for me. I heard them talking. They were laughing about the handful of Americans trying to rescue the hostages, when so many hadn’t been able to stop ‘the brothers’ from taking them in the first place. That was when I ran, but I made some noise getting out, and they came after me. That’s when I got shot. I was able to evade, steal a car, and get out of town. Good thing they didn’t put enough checkpoints in to lock the city down.” He winced and lay back again.

There was a long silence, as we all took it in. We were close; it sounded like the burst of activity at Kismayo University fit with the rough timing of the hostages being moved away from Djibouti. Whether they were all there or not, we couldn’t know unless some other intel surfaced, but it looked to me like we needed to confirm that there were at least some there.

Apparently, my opinion was not shared all the way around. “If they know we’re in the vicinity, and Spider’s been taken, we need to abort,” Baird said. “We’re burned, and they will be ready for us if we attempt to move on them.”

“What do you think, Danny?” Alek asked. “Is this enough to get higher to send in the cavalry, or do they need more? Do we need to go in there and try to confirm?”

Danny sighed, and pulled his sat phone out. “I’ll ask.” He got up and walked away from the trucks, searching for a good satellite signal, while Imad, exhausted and pain-wracked, lapsed back into his morphine-induced torpor.

It was a short conversation. “They won’t risk it,” Danny reported. “They won’t so much as move any assets until we have solid confirmation on all targets.” His shoulders were slumped in defeat. “And yes, that means we have to know exactly where all one hundred fifty remaining hostages are being held before they’ll commit anything.” He ran a hand over his beard. “Damn it to hell. I’m sorry, guys.” He looked at Alek solemnly. “If you make the call to abort, I understand.”

Alek didn’t say anything for a long time. None of us did. Most of us just stared at the imagery of Kismayo and thought. There weren’t many good options. Hell, there weren’t
any
good options. Rock, meet Hard Place.

It was Larry who finally broke the silence. “By all rights, the smart thing to do would be abort,” he said. “But I have one question before we make that decision.” He looked around at the rest of us. “What other option do those hostages have at this point? If the powers-that-be aren’t willing to do anything until they have one hundred percent confirmation, does that mean they get abandoned to be human shields or worse if we call it quits? Are we really the only chance they’ve got?”

Eyes turned to Danny, who held up his hands and shook his head. “I’m not really part of the team on this one, guys. I’ve told you what I’ve gotten from my superiors. I’ll leave the decision to you.”

“I think Larry hit the nail on the head, guys,” Rodrigo said. “Washington has written these men and women off, unless we do something.” He looked down at the dirt for a moment, then looked up at Alek. “I don’t like that. I don’t like that we already lost Colton on this clusterfuck, and the idea that he went down just for us to turn around and abandon the mission turns my fucking stomach.”

“The odds suck,” Tim said.

“The odds always suck,” Hank replied. “Why do you think we used to say, ‘alone and unafraid?’”

“If we’re burned, we can’t take our time,” I pointed out. “If we’re going to go ahead and push, we need to do it soon, or those poor bastards are going to go the same way the ones in Qardho did.”

“I’m not going to make this call by myself,” Alek said. “We’re all here by our own choice. I personally don’t think we should turn tail and leave those guys to rot, not while we still have ammo and freedom of movement. But I’ll leave it up to the team. All in favor of continuing on mission?”

All but Tim raised our hands. He looked around, then said, “Aw, fuck. Fine. I think it’s suicide, but I suppose there are worse ways to go.” He raised his hand too.

“That makes it unanimous.” We turned to Baird. “We’ve got another team inbound,” Alek said. “I’ll leave it up to you if you and your boys continue on. I know this seems a little psycho.”

Baird said nothing for a while, then chuckled. “We’ve been hanging out here, hoping for something that might stand a chance of doing this much damage to the jihadis for over a year, Alek,” he said. “Forget what I said before. We’re in. Every man I have working with me knows what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

Alek nodded, and held out his hand. “Welcome to the psych ward.”

“I’ve been here longer than you have, my friend,” Baird replied as he shook Alek’s meaty paw with a grin that seemed to glow in the darkness.

The Bell 407 swooped in to land in a swirl of dust, and we hurried to get Imad loaded up. As we passed him to Caleb’s and Dave’s willing hands, Caleb leaned out and yelled, “Mike’s team left early, about eight hours ago. They should be in position to link up with you guys in about another five or six hours.”

“Good news,” Alek shouted back. “Saves us some time.” He pointed to Imad. “Get him to a hospital as fast as you can. He’s your priority now.”

Caleb threw a mock salute, and waved to Sam. We jogged away as the rotors bit and flung sand and gravel at us hard enough to hurt, and the helo pulled for the sky.

We had less than a day to plan, link up with Mike’s team, finish the plan, and get into position to infiltrate Kismayo with a reinforced platoon. Sleep and chow were going to be secondary considerations for a while.

Time to get to work.

Chapter 27

I
t was just about midnight as we crept into the outskirts of Kismayo.

The idea was to probe the outskirts for a dead zone, and start slipping through. We had to signal carefully, since, as Baird had pointed out, the bad guys weren’t anything like as unsophisticated as we had come into the country expecting. Any transmissions had to be short and clipped, or we ran the risk of alerting them we were coming.

Of course, with total radio silence, we had another problem; namely, keeping the teams coordinated and getting everybody through the gap in a timely manner. This was why Jim, Bob, Tim, and I were creeping ahead, while the rest of our guys stayed hunkered down in the bush about seven hundred meters north. It meant that it would take longer to infiltrate, but staying clandestine was our only hope at the moment, so we did what we had to do. It had meant stepping off a little early, too, to make sure we had as much darkness as possible to work with.

The goal for tonight was to get eyes on any hostages that the bad guys were keeping in Kismayo, and, if we couldn’t account for all of them, snatch somebody who knew where the rest were. Easy day.

Right.

Jim went to one knee at the corner of the first big compound we’d come to. In the dark, Kismayo looked like just about every other desert city we’d been in, whether in the Middle East, South Asia, North Africa, or East Africa. Mud or cinder block walls surrounded courtyards and squat, mud or cinder block houses. Dusty, deciduous trees and bushes grew where there was water to support them. Here the houses seemed to mostly have metal roofs, but other than that, most of these places weren’t all that different.

The lights were on, but only in certain places. The neighborhood we were poking around the edges of was dark, which was a large part of the reason we were there. Whether they didn’t have electricity because they were too poor, had pissed off the local ruling council, or just due to the overall incompetence of the Islamist-run power plant, we had no way of knowing. Frankly, my money was on option three. Just as long as the power stayed off, we’d be in business.

Tim moved from cover to join Jim at the base of the wall, facing off to the east, while Jim peered around the corner to the south. Apparently satisfied that the way forward to the next compound was clear, he turned and signaled to Bob and me to move up.

I came to my feet while squeezing Bob’s shoulder. He reached up and returned the silent signal with his off hand, and rose smoothly to follow.

We didn’t run, and we didn’t move in an exaggerated “stealthy” crouch. For one thing, that just wears you down physically. Don’t believe me? Try moving a hundred meters with gear and a rifle, in a half-crouch. You’ll be smoked and in pain by fifty. Running makes noise, plus the human eye is drawn to movement. Walking slowly presents a lot less eye-catching movement than dashing from cover to cover.

This is not to say we strolled. It was a controlled, quiet glide to the next compound to the south, across the bare dirt track that passed for a street from Jim and Tim. Keeping to the shadows, out of the line of faint light coming from the lit portions of the city, I came to a stop, and after making sure there wasn’t a can or bottle there, lowered myself to a knee. Once Bob had settled, watching our six-to-three o’clock, I stayed there motionless for a handful of heartbeats, watching and listening.

There was no movement. No sound, aside from the whisper of the wind, the buzz of insects, and some movement inside the compound we were huddled up against, that I identified as a donkey when it brayed loudly. Another moment of waiting to see if the owner was going to come out to investigate why his jackass was making noise in the middle of the night, and I relaxed fractionally, and signaled Jim and Tim forward.

We moved like that for another fifteen minutes or so, using a combination of the shadows of compound walls and bushes in between to mask our movement. The entire time, we were cataloguing what we saw, trying to imagine how the rest of the teams would have to move through. It was going to be dicey, and most likely, they would have to choose multiple infiltration routes through the neighborhood, to reduce their footprint. I hadn’t seen any room for more than two or three shooters to hide at any one time.

The structures started getting closer and closer together, and our maneuvering room started getting cramped. We still hadn’t seen a soul, which was good, but I didn’t think it could last. Urban infiltration is not my favorite sport, but it certainly was a challenge.

Jim and Tim had just slipped across the northeast-to-southwest dirt road that was the major thoroughfare through the neighborhood. I was about to follow, when I got a sudden clenched fist signal from Tim. Freeze. I stayed on a knee, motionless.

It took only seconds to see what Tim had seen. A faint glow on the side of the wall that Jim and Tim were hiding beside began to intensify, until it was the unmistakable white glare of headlights. I shrank back from my corner, trying to stay in the shadows as much as possible, and brought my suppressed rifle into a half-ready position, just in case.

I didn’t want to have to use it. Contrary to a lot of movies and video games, when you kill somebody on an infiltration, you can’t just drag the body into the shadows and go on your merry way. A killing on an infiltration means the infiltration is over, and you just fucking failed. Sooner or later, somebody is going to wonder where that poor bastard you just slotted went. If he’s a sentry, somebody is likely to wonder that sooner rather than later. Then they come looking for him, likely with the suspicion that he met with foul play. Whether you get spotted immediately or not, you just got compromised, and, as it says on the door of Scout/Sniper School, “Compromise is Failure.” Out here, failure meant we’d be dead.

And that is leaving aside the noise of the shot, which would give us away in the first place.

The vehicle turned out to be an open-topped jeep knockoff, with four skinnies in it, all armed. The two in the back were standing up and looking around. Fortunately, they didn’t seem to have NVGs, or we’d have been screwed, sitting not ten feet from the road. They did have a radio, and I was close enough I could hear chatter in Somali crackling on it even over the noise of the engine and creak of the suspension. They cruised on past, not slowing down or showing any sign they’d spotted us.

Well, shit. They were patrolling, and by the sound of that radio, they were patrolling aggressively. That was going to put a serious crimp in the night’s activities. I waited until the taillights disappeared around the bend, then made another careful scan, focusing as hard as I could on the thermal outlines, making sure that there wasn’t anybody else hanging out, or that the jeep hadn’t dropped somebody off to watch their rear.

Nothing showed up. The thermal showed nothing aside from a couple of chickens pecking in the dust outside another wall, and a mangy dog rooting through the heaps of trash on the side of the road a few hundred yards away. It was ignoring us for the moment. I willed it to keep its attention on the garbage, and got up to cross the road.

We moved deeper in, until we found ourselves in a little, brush-choked, dusty cul-de-sac. It was sheltered by another compound from the road, and there was plenty of concealment in the brush and the shadows. It wasn’t safe, by any means, but nothing in this city could be considered safe. It would do for a team minus to stage. I got on the radio, and sent Alek the description and directions before advising to send no more than six shooters, and keep them in pairs until they got in position.