Born of War (30 page)

I
t was near midnight when several men and women gathered in the conference room at the headquarters of Médecins Sans Frontières. They represented both the leadership of the organization and doctors who practiced medicine from around the world. It looked like a meeting of the United Nations.

“We have two doctors in their hands. The report is that he has malaria that is progressing, and she may have the beginnings of kidney failure.” The international president was chairing the meeting. She had served time in the field, as they all had. And they all knew the risks involved. Nevertheless, despite their effort to remain neutral, terrorists did not hesitate to pull them into the storm.

There was one way out.

“Our donors have agreed to fund the release of the doctors. They are offering two million dollars for each of them.” She passed around a list of donors with their contributions. Both Ebola and the meningitis had strained their budget and the sources of help.

“It makes it difficult that she is an American,” one of the doctors spoke up from the back of the room.

“She is the daughter of Paul Stewart. He has worked to stop disease around the world. In fact, he has been instrumental in helping us with Ebola,” the president replied.

“We have over four thousand field staff fighting Ebola. And now we have another thousand fighting the Neisseria meningitidis, with clinics on the Ethiopian and Kenyan borders,” the same voice called from the back. “What do we do about the clinic at Ferfer?”

“Good question,” the president responded. “Right now, we have our representative in Said trying to get word to Godane that we're willing to negotiate for a release of the doctors. His reputation is that he will deal; however, the hostages are very sick and time is running out. We can't lose more doctors. We need to move the clinic in Ferfer back farther into the interior of Ethiopia.”

It wasn't clear whether Godane would learn of the offer before one or both of the kidnapped doctors became too ill for it to matter.

 

 

The circle of trusted followers that surrounded Godane was getting smaller.

“So what is the status of the
Amriiki
?” Godane asked his new head of security and intelligence. He had replaced Abo Musa Mombasa, who had become a martyr in Yemen while making a deal for more arms. Godane was referring to the approaching American fleet.

“Our fishing fleet reports aircraft flying low only fifty miles from the coast.”

“And the
Amriiki
? What of him and the doctors?”

“We have sent reinforcements to find them. The rains have slowed their passage but they should reach them by tonight.”

“Good.”

“We think the Americans know where the DF is located.”

“Can it be moved?”

“Only with the risk that its location can be confirmed.”

Godane considered his options.

“We will move to the hostages. And when we have them in hand, they will serve both as a source of money and as a source of security. Then we will see if the missile serves us well.” Godane would personally take charge of both Omar and the hostages.

Godane knew that ISIS had been drawing away both support and money from their cause. Omar had helped bring attention back to this war, but he had too much of an ego to be tolerated much longer.

The sinking of an American aircraft carrier would be such a shift of power that Godane's name would be burned forever in the minds of the true believers.

“Before the missile is put at greater risk, we must use it.” He gave his order. It would be a matter of timing. Without the protection of holding the hostages as shields, he knew that the risk was incurring an all-out retaliation by the Americans on him and his army. He needed to reach the hostages and ready the weapon for its use.

“May Allah be praised!”

“W
e must bury Tarriq now.” It was one of his fighters who spoke the words to Omar.

“Do it.” Omar didn't seem to want to be bothered. “Let the doctors dig the hole.”

The fighter had known Tarriq all his life. They were of the same clan. It bothered him that Omar didn't seem to care.

“We will help.” Xasan and his father both started towards the edge of an acacia tree where the grass was not too high and there were no thorn bushes. Another of Tarriq's fighters had become sick as well. It seemed that one minute he was healthy and joking and the next minute he was curled up on the ground in the mud clutching his head. The progression of the disease caused fear in them all.

Karen watched as they started to dig. She had no energy left and a pounding headache made her feel both nauseous and dizzy.

They started to dig as the rain subsided. One of the men had built a fire underneath the tree and it smoldered more than burned. The wood was wet even when they pulled off the bark of the branches to what was once the dry core.

The old man stopped, stood up, looked up into the sky as if he had seen something, and then collapsed like a sack of potatoes being dropped to the ground.

“Ah-yaa!” Xasan yelled. He ran to the bed of the truck and pulled on Karen to come help.

She tried to get up and started to fall as her head pounded inside her skull.

“I need a fire to see,” she mumbled the words. “Bring him to the fire.”

Xasan pled with the others to stop while he pulled his father by the shoulders closer to the fire pit. He placed his father up near the trunk of the tree with his head supported by the base. The man's eyes had rolled to the back of his head.

The fire started to crackle as Karen pulled herself over to his body. She felt for a pulse but the body was still. It had already begun to cool.

She laid him flat and put both of her hands on his chest and pushed with what little strength she could muster. She pushed again and again. Her ears were ringing.

“Xasan, come here.” She pulled his hands together and placed them over the old man's chest. And then she put her hands on top of his.

“Push, like this.”

He didn't understand the words she was saying, but he did understand what she was doing. He pushed, first lightly, and then as she pushed down on his hands harder, he began to push harder.

Karen collapsed back onto her side.

“Keep pushing,” she told Xasan.

He needs to keep pushing until he is convinced his father is gone.
She knew the man was dead but Xasan didn't.

“Ah-yaa,” he cried out with tears streaming down his face.

She felt the cold mud on the side of her face and it felt good.

This is a good place to die,
Karen thought as she lay there next to the fire. The heat was warming her face while she barely noticed her back, which was wet and cold.

Omar stood in the shadows.

Xasan kept pushing with his hands until both became numb. He thought he heard a breath and started to yell with joy but then the body remained still and cold.

He finally collapsed next to his father.

“We need to get to the others,” Omar finally said. They were down to Xasan and two other fighters who had come with Tarriq and Omar. The third fighter lay in the mud and the rain without moving. He too would be dead by dawn. “They cannot be more than a mile or two away.” He looked out into the dark and the road that was now filling up with water.

The smoke of the fire rose up to the branches of the tree and then the wind carried it to the southeast, in the same direction as the road, and directly into the faces of the two hiding in the dark.

E
very movement by the fire was being watched.

Parker and Tola slowly crawled up to another acacia tree within distance of an easy pistol shot. They watched the fight for the old man's life and then saw Karen Stewart collapse to the ground.

She is hurting.
He could see that she barely had the energy to move.

Her weight is down.
Parker knew she was ill and that meant she would not be able to get herself out on her own two feet. And the French physician was nowhere to be seen.

Is he already gone?
Parker stayed there in the damp grass, looking for the French doctor, as another torrent of rain fell down. The mujaahidiin's olive cloth stuck to his skin. There were two holes in the center where bullets had struck the prior owner.

Parker continued to watch for movement near the fire.

There is Omar.
That was the one thought that Parker had as the rain came down and he lay in the wet grass. Omar could not run from him fast enough.

Parker thought back to his trip to Mobile and the yellow evidence tape that surrounded the school. He thought of the kindergarten schoolteacher who lost her life protecting her children. And he thought of the children.

Omar moved back and forth in front of the fire with his Kalashnikov over his shoulder. Parker watched his mannerisms and how he moved his hands.

Right-handed.
He made a mental note.

And then Parker scanned the others sitting close to the fire. One was trying to save a man on the ground. The others were looking on as if it didn't matter. One of them looked at Omar once. Parker knew that look. Years ago he saw another man stare at him in the same way. It was in the mountains of Pakistan and it was the look of hate. Omar was alone whether he knew it or not.

He and Tola waited, motionless, in the grass. The skill of staying perfectly still was a basic requirement of being a recon Marine. It took a willingness to be comfortable in the environment. He was soaking wet, yet concentrated not on his discomfort but on the target. He controlled his breathing with slow, easy breaths. The rain was a friend just like the dark. If it made Omar uncomfortable to leave the cover of the acacia tree, then it was to Parker's advantage.

Parker felt the presence of Abo Tola near him but did not hear the slightest sound from his right. Tola had been trained well. He was a natural hunter. As Parker learned to hunt in the South, Tola learned on the plains of Africa. It was in the DNA of both of them.

After some time, the camp became still. They all cowered by the fire. Then Parker saw something interesting.

A thin man, slightly taller than the rest, who had been trying to help the other, older man by the tree, came over to Karen Stewart. He bent down, said something, and then helped her up. He walked her over to the back of the small vehicle and then lifted her up as she crawled inside the bed of the truck.

Parker sensed that the man who carried her was the most natural hunter of the group. After he had helped her up and into the truck, he went to the edge of the tree's cover and stopped. He looked out into the dark directly at Parker. He stood there for a minute or two as if he was staring directly at a threat. Finally, he turned back to the fire and sat down by the body on the ground. He put more wood on the fire, as if to ward off danger.

 

 

“What is it?” Omar sat up from the fire watching the back of Xasan as he stared into the dark. Xasan didn't move for some time. Omar pulled up his Kalashnikov and felt the cold metal in his hands.

Xasan finally turned back to the fire.

“There are lions out there.” Xasan sensed there was death somewhere in the shadows. “I must bury my father soon.”

He would wake at first light and dig the hole himself. It would be near the grave for the other man. And they would need a third one soon for the other sick one.

“We will need to cover it well. We will need to stack sticks and mud and then cover it all with piles of thorns.” It was the only way to keep the lions out. The lions were very near.

 

 

Parker waited for the rain to begin again before moving back. As the water came again in waves, he used the cover of sound to pull slowly away from the truck and trees. He felt Tola follow him. They crawled for more than a hundred yards, making sure that they were well out of sight and sound before moving to the cover of several large thorn bushes.

The bushes were the same ones where they had left some of their gear beneath some savannah grass.

“I am letting the MarSOC team know where we are and what we saw.” Tola was covering the tablet with his body as he tapped in the words. They would all home in on the grove of trees and the F-35 above would scan the target area.

“Okay.” Parker kept a lookout towards the grove when he heard something. It was far to the east. The rain had stopped again, briefly, and as it did, sounds started to travel through the air again. “I hear a truck.”

It was more than a truck. He held his hand up as he strained to listen.

“It is a truck stuck in the mud and its wheels are spinning.”

Tola pulled him over to the tablet. He didn't have to say anything.

The sensors from the aircraft well above the clouds and the rain showed a line of trucks not far to the west.

“S
ir, we have ground movement.” The officer of the day in the
Roosevelt
's SCIF had the report the admiral had been waiting for all night. He had sat in his chair through both the storm and four cups of black Navy coffee.

“What is the monsoon doing?”

“It is building. It is coming out of the east with the point of center almost directly over Ferfer. The report is that the river is three times its size. The Shebelle is washing away villages and displacing hundreds of people, if not thousands.” The duty officer showed night sensor video from different camera viewpoints on several different aircraft.

“And the DF?” There were few things that made a sixty-year-old man worry anymore. His two sons had graduated from the Academy and were on ships in the other ocean. His wife played bridge back in Newport News with her friends, and her daily emails showed the usual worries of a Navy wife. And he wasn't sure if his career wasn't one command away from being his last. None of the events of life worried him. But this did. He was not going to be the man who lost the first United States carrier since World War II.

“There is movement.”

“We need all aircraft off this ship now,” he said it calmly but in a voice that no one questioned. The fueling and taking off of nearly ninety aircraft took frantic energy.

“Turn her into the wind.” With its nose heading into the storm, the aircraft would have immediate lift. Every flight would be brutal and if a jet engine faulted, one or two would be lost. A downed aircraft in this weather meant a remote chance that the pilot would be found.

“Sound general quarters.” The horn blared through the ship. The admiral relayed his command to the group. “Have all of the group disperse except for the
Zumwalt
.”

 

 

They had intelligence on the Dong Feng but it was only guesswork. No one was sure how effective a weapon it was. The fear was that if it was half as effective as they thought, it was extremely deadly.

He had a plan.

“We need a strike by a Tomahawk on that missile's last-known and suspected location,” he barked the orders.

“Yes, sir.“

“We need the
Zumwalt
to bring her course parallel to the
Roosevelt
and stay alongside.”

The one hope was that the missile could see the
Roosevelt
and not the
Zumwalt
.

“She will provide both our protection and our defense.”

The
Zumwalt
was armed to the teeth. It had more than eighty cells for a variety of Tomahawks, Sea Sparrows, and anti-submarine rockets, and it had two automatically fed and computer-directed 155-millimeter guns on the deck. More important for this situation, it was equipped with two MK46 30-millimeter GDLS guns. It could lay up protection.

“As soon as the aircraft are all dispatched, we will head at full speed to the northeast.”

The Dong Feng's sensors would see the
Roosevelt
in front of it but not the shadow nearby.

 

 

The lieutenant carried Godane's cell phone since Godane never held one on his person at any time. It was a matter of safety. The conversations were all tracked and it made his being a target too simple.

Godane heard it ring, which was unusual. Virtually all of the cell calls were outbound. It wasn't meant to be used for an incoming call. If more direction were needed on an issue, he would call back from another number. He heard the lieutenant talking to the person. He immediately knew what the conversation involved. The lieutenant disconnected.

“It is Sana'a.” The capital of Yemen was the location of all go-betweens.

“Yes.”

“The French are prepared to pay for both hostages but they want proof of life.”

The MSF had let its corporate donors make the deal for them. They were more suspicious than the charity. The donors had been through this before when MSF executives and even the donors' own corporate executives had been kidnapped in South America. They had a plan and they hired the best—who required proof that the two captives were still alive.

“Any word from Tarriq?”

“No, sir.”

“What of the American fleet?”

“We are seeing more and more aircraft.”

“Even with the monsoon coming?” He had wrapped his head with his turban to protect his face from the gusting wind. Small rocks and stones flew through the air as well as larger chunks of debris from years of destructive warfare. It wasn't uncommon for a child to be hit by a flying piece of tin roof. There were dangers everywhere as a result of the decade of war.

“Yes, the weather seems to be no factor in slowing them down. It appears that they are worried about us.”

Godane considered his options.

“When we get close to the hostages we will fire the missile.” He wanted some insurance that an air strike wouldn't hit him or his circle of leaders of Al Shabaab. The two doctors gave him that insurance.

“Let's go.”

The convoy of trucks pulled out of the city heading north and into the wind. They flew across the potholed road splashing through the deep puddles of water that covered the countryside.

“I need the phone with the number for Al San.”

The lieutenant in the back handed him the cell with only one number in its directory. The call went to a cell at a house by the beach just south of Baraawe. A Brit who tried to mine uranium when the British Empire ruled the southern half of Somalia had built it well before the years of war. The house was far from his mine, but he built it with cheap labor and made the walls thick to help cool it during the hot months. A large mason-block wall covered with stucco surrounded the house. The first floor had a long porch that faced the ocean and ran the length of the house. High arches opened the porch to the interior. The main room was a large hallway in the center of the house. It was a large, well-covered house with a thick roof. And just outside the walls that surrounded the old plantation, a vehicle stood with two guards sitting in it. They would not let anyone come close. One was a man named Al San.

It would be Al San's finger, under orders from Godane, that would launch the missile.

 

 

Omar held the cell phone tightly during the night. He watched the other men while they stared at him. The rain kept coming and with the rain, he thought it would be better for the army to come to him. His group would not have made it far with the little truck with the bad tire and the four fighters who were left. The truck would go fifty yards or so and then be up to its axle in muck. If they didn't follow the road, the truck would push the thorn bushes aside for a few feet until they jammed underneath the front end. Some of the thorns were like metal shards that were able, if they caught it just right, to puncture a tire.

“I am going to make a call,” he lied to the men. He wanted an excuse to climb into the cab of the truck to get out of the rain. He held the phone up to his ear for a minute or two, as if a call was being made, and then laid it down. He had not heard from Faud for some time. Other calls from strange numbers had shown up but he was hesitant to answer.

The rain fell on the windshield. He looked back on the fire and the two bodies lying near the front of the truck.

They will attract lions.
The lions will not care about the disease or the heart attack. They only smelled flesh, and they would tear the bodies apart with their massive jaws.

When the sun comes up, we will move.
They could not be more than a mile or two away from the other Al Shabaab units. Once with the others, they would have safety in numbers.

I wonder if he got the message.
Omar's mind shifted to the third cell. His wife was to make the call and get word to the friend in Toronto, the one who ran the milk delivery to the Somali apartment building. He knew what to do. And he knew how to get into the United States without anyone knowing.

Omar fell asleep.

He shook himself awake and saw that the weather continued to be bad. It was nearly impossible to see first light as the clouds choked out any rays of sun. But for the first time in days, Omar was dry and out of the rain.

He realized that he had been asleep for some time as he felt the warm dampness of his turban's wrap around his neck. He pulled the turban off and shook his greasy, wet hair and ran his fingers through it. He felt the bites from the mosquitoes.

There were no mosquitoes.

He rewrapped the turban and had started to open the door when he saw something move in the dark.