[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (10 page)

“The ship will have a Russian flag and will sail past in about two weeks,” I told him. “Payment will be made when it reaches its destination. In a foreign currency, and we will arrange for a delivery.”

Foreign currency meant not in American dollars or euros, something that was a deal breaker in Puntland. Fat Tony insisted on American dollars, and a bank transfer. I hemmed a bit for show, then finally told him I would have to speak to my employers to see what I could do.

“I believe that it can be arranged,” I conceded. We shook hands. This time I looked to make sure I had them all when he released my grip.

Fat Tony called over one of the skinny young men, and whispered something to him. The young man disappeared into the kitchen, reemerging in a few moments with a dusty bottle of Dewar’s Scotch to cement the deal. The bottle had apparently come from a previous business arrangement.

I’m not a Scotch man, but having a toast was necessary to seal the deal. And so I dutifully accepted a glass.

“As a Muslim, I cannot share your drink,” Fat Tony said with some sadness—right before the young man poured two fingers’ worth of Scotch into his glass. He finished his before I even tasted mine.

We engaged in some light conversation. I noted that my clients had interests in many parts of the world, and were especially enthusiastic about shipping items from places like Afghanistan and Iran and Pakistan to places in Europe.

“What sort of shipments?” asked Taban. Beads of sweat began to sprout on his forehead; he obviously knew me well enough to realize the arrangement had just been an excuse to meet Fat Tony.

“Any sort of shipments,” I said, looking at Fat Tony. “Anything that might be sold for a profit elsewhere.”

Fat Tony smiled. Maybe the Scotch agreed with him.

“Sometimes there are the sort of shipments that you are speaking about,” he said. “They are not easy to arrange.”

“No,” I agreed. “But that only adds to their value.”

The rest of the conversation was pleasantly disjointed, with Fat Tony discoursing on local politics and the trials and tribulations of a businessman trying to make an honestly dishonest living. The international community had recently begun yet another initiative to bring legitimate government to Somalia, something that of course he opposed, though taken at face value his words gave every indication of the opposite. The Western media, he claimed, slandered many legitimate tribal leaders and businessmen by calling them warlords.

“Slander, slander, slander,” he said, banging the table with his glass for more emphasis—and not so subtly indicating that the young waiter should refill his glass. “Nothing but slander.”

“Join the club,” I told him.

Having accomplished my mission, I wanted to get the hell out of Eyl as quickly as possible. So did Taban. But I couldn’t afford to be impolite, which could jeopardize both my ultimate mission and my life, so I remained at the table, nodding and studying the Scotch, until finally Fat Tony’s one-sided conversation ebbed.

“Thank you very much for your hospitality,” I told him, rising. “Taban will be authorized to make the final arrangements. He can contact me, if there is a need.”

“A very pleasure to do with you,” said Fat Tony.

“I do not like your new employers,” Taban told me when we were on the road. “Russians and mobsters. You must consider who you associate with.”

It was interesting to hear a lecture on morality and ethics from a man who made his living by dealing with pirates and other criminals, but I let that pass. Taban was so sincere I could almost hear an angel whispering over his shoulder.

Actually, it was the whip of the wind as rifle shot blew through the windshield.

“We’re under fire!” I yelled to Taban.

He didn’t answer. He did have an excuse: it’s hard to talk with a bullet hole where your mouth was. So much for the old adage, bite the bullet.

(V)

Taban’s foot had been pressed firmly against the accelerator when he was shot. It remained there as his head flew back against the seat, propelling us at an increasing speed. I lurched over to the wheel, trying to keep us straight, but it was too late; we veered off the road, careening through the shallow ditch flanking it.

I yanked us back onto the road, only to have Newton’s Third Law of Motion—
For every action there is an opposite but equal reaction
—meet Murphy’s—
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, at the worst possible moment.
The Land Rover careened across the pavement, swung over the apron and then back into the center of the road, only to hit a pothole that pitched it onto its side. We tumbled sideways and then skidded across the macadam on the driver’s side of the Rover, flying off the shoulder and onto the flat desert. Sparks, bullets, and dirt flew everywhere.

Then we slipped down into the ditch at the right side, which happened to be deeper and sharper-angled here than anywhere else along the way. The SUV flipped over. Not once, not twice, but three times, coming to rest on the side where I’d been sitting.

Bullets began popping against the chassis. By the time I managed to break out the window with the butt-end of my gun, the two bodyguards, Rooster and Goat, had jumped out. They were hunched at the side of the SUV, firing at a row of bushes about two hundred yards away.

Whoever was in the bushes had a machine gun, a few assault rifles, and at least one high-powered rifle.

Our second vehicle was nowhere to be seen.

“Hold your fire,” I told Rooster and Goat, motioning with my hands. “Conserve ammo. We’re going to be here awhile.”

My warning came too late—both guns clicked empty, loud and clear.

The ground directly behind us was flat; there was no cover for at least a hundred yards, so retreating that way was not going to work. More promising was a rock outcropping about thirty yards to our left. If we could get there we might be able to sweep around and flank our enemy from the rear.

Getting to the rocks without getting killed wasn’t going to be easy. They were thirty yards away: a good seven or eight seconds for the swiftest of us, and that wasn’t me. If the guy with the sniper rifle was even halfway decent, he’d have at least five shots. The machine gun would have plenty more.

Run, dive, tumble—maybe it would work. After all, Somalis were notorious for being bad shots. Maybe they’d already spent all their luck killing Taban.

Staying here was out of the question. The Rover was taking a pounding. Sooner or later something inside was going to blow up.

But if that was the case, why not make it sooner?

“We need some more ammo,” I yelled, more or less talking to myself, since neither Rooster nor Goat spoke English. I waited until the gunfire from the bushes died down, then dropped my gun, grabbed the edge of the roof, and did a pull-up onto the side. I fell face-first through the window as a fresh wave of bullets flew into the bottom of the truck. I smacked my neck on the console as I fell, but it was a small price to pay in exchange for not having the rest of my body perforated.

I grabbed for just about anything I could—ammo boxes, magazines, grenade launcher, guns—and began tossing them out the window. I may not have been particularly accurate, but I was certainly fast, and if there was an Olympic event for weapons tossing I would have taken the gold. I hunted around for one of the boxes with the hand grenades, but could only find three loose ones. I shoved them in my pockets. With the truck now rocking to the beat of gunfire, I decided I’d pressed my luck as far as I could and did my best snake dive from the Land Rover onto the ground.
10

Rooster and Goat had grabbed more mags for their AKs, but the rest of the gear lay on the ground. I picked up the rocket grenade launcher and got it ready to fire. Then I took out one of the hand grenades and held it up, a bit like a priest displaying the chalice at Midnight Mass.

“We’ll run as soon as I yell ‘go,’” I told the others, pantomiming what we would do. I threw in a few generic curses; obscenity is universal.

Goat nodded. Rooster looked perplexed.

“I’ll count three,” I added, gesturing with my fingers. “I’m going to drop it into the gas tank—”

Before I could get any farther, two of the men firing at us dashed out from behind the bushes and darted toward the road, trying to flank us from the side. Goat saw them, and immediately emptied his AK in their direction without hitting either. He threw the rifle down, grabbed another from nearby, and once again fired until he ran out of bullets—maybe a third of a minute or less on full auto.

Every one of his bullets missed, but the men scurried back for cover.

I grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and leaned up to drop it into the gas tank of the Land Rover.

Or would have, had Murphy not flipped the SUV onto the side where the gas cap was.

Shit.

I spun around, not quite sure what I was going to do instead. As I turned, Rooster tried getting behind me to the other side of the truck and a better firing position. He hit my hand as he passed.

The grenade flew upward. Then down to the ground.

The pin was in my hand, the grenade was at my feet, and I was about as far up the proverbial creek without a paddle as you could go, ready to kiss my ass good-bye.

(VI)

I’m not exactly sure what I did, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t praying. Either I scooped, kicked, or levitated the grenade away, because the next thing I knew it was exploding some seventy or eighty yards from us.

The explosion threw dirt and dust everywhere. It wasn’t exactly a shield, but it was better than nothing.

“Run!” I yelled to the others, taking a second grenade and lobbing it just over the truck, in the area of the gas tank. “Run!”

I scooped up the grenade launcher and an AK and took off, not bothering to see if they were following. I took three, maybe four steps, when something pushed me down hard.

The explosion had lit the gas tank, which responded with a very strong secondary
ka-boom.
Laden with ammo, the Land Rover caught fire spectacularly, shooting a cascade of flames skyward in a pyro display that would rival any you’ve seen at WrestleMania. Thick, pungent black smoke curled across the landscape, a veritable band of airy ink that blocked out the sun and hid everything behind it from view.

I struggled to my knees, coughing from the smoke. I felt myself lifted upward: Rooster and Goat were dragging me away.

We collapsed behind the rocks, exhausted. I could have slept for a good week straight, but there was no chance to rest.

The ground behind us dipped down gently, which would make it possible for one of us to crawl from behind the rocks to a point where he couldn’t be seen. From there, he could move around the flank to the rear of the bushes, and make an attack.

I decided I’d do the flanking because it was the hardest part to explain. I mapped out the operation for them, trying to show that they had to provide cover fire and then be patient. When Goat gave a halfhearted nod, I decided that was as good as I was likely to get.

“Do it!” I shouted, pantomiming their firing. I grabbed the AK and grenade launcher, then dove on my belly. As soon as they started firing, I began crawling away from the rocks. Within seconds I realized it would take too long. I pushed up and sprinted like a track star coming out of the blocks.

Too bad I couldn’t run like a track star. Bullets whizzed around me; after maybe a half-dozen strides I threw myself back to the ground.

Fortunately, I was now far enough down the gentle slope that I was no longer a target. I went a little farther, then made a sharp right and began inching toward their position.

I guessed that whoever had ambushed us would have a guard posted, and that I would see him first. What I didn’t expect to see, though, were camels—a baker’s dozen were milling placidly, chewing their cuds as I approached from the north.

At first, I ass-u-me-d that they were a wild herd; I was too far from the bad guys to connect the camels with them. But then a flash of light just beyond caught the corner of my eye.

I was a lot closer to our antagonists than I’d thought. Fourteen males of various ages from twelve to twenty-five were crouched in a ditch no more than five yards beyond the camels. I froze dead in my tracks—metaphorically speaking, though I realized I was damn close to making that figure of speech a reality.

All but one of the men turned and saw me near the herd as I took a step back. They may have been as surprised as I was, but there were a lot more of them than there were of me.

Instinctively, I pulled up the grenade launcher and fired. The RPG sailed right at the clump of men—and kept going, its rocket motor not even igniting until it was beyond them.

By that point, I’d dropped the launcher and raised my AK, sweeping right and spraying the ditch with 7.62 mm rounds. I swung left, dropped the mag, and threw in the next.

Two rounds spit out as my finger pressed on the trigger. Then the AK47, the remarkably simple, dope-proof gun that never ever jams, jammed.

Murphy is a son of a bitch, and forever at my side.

PART TWO

SIX, DRUGS & ROCK ’N’ ROLL

In any problem where an opposing force exists, and cannot be regulated, one must foresee and provide for alternative courses. Adaptability is the law which governs survival in war as in life—war being but a concentrate form of the human struggle against environment.

—
C
APTAIN
S
IR
B
ASIL
L
IDDELL
H
ART,
S
TRATEGY
, 1954

1

(I)

I kept pressing my finger against the trigger, not quite believing the gun wouldn’t fire. My brain screamed a succession of curses, but the rest of my body was incredibly calm. My central nervous system hadn’t yet communicated just how completely screwed I was.

There were a half-dozen Somalis left alive in the ditch about twenty yards from me. They looked at me with something approaching awe.