The Devil's Waters (6 page)

The big PJ cranked the engine. He gunned it, spinning the Zodiac around.

For fifteen minutes the PJs coursed back and forth across the waves, collecting their spilled chutes and containers. They hauled them in like fishing nets while Robey clung to the handhold, ignored.

When they’d recovered the chutes, Quincy pointed the Zodiac west to the beach, where the riggers waited with Land Rovers and a trailer for the raft.

The Zodiac couldn’t reach top speed because of Robey’s drag. The PJs all sat in hot wetsuits and itchy sweat. LB saw little sense in making himself, Doc, and Quincy pay any longer for Robey’s mistake.

LB let the kid hang on for two more bouncing, tough minutes, then gave Quincy the kill signal. The Zodiac slowed to a few knots. Robey couldn’t heave himself over the side. Doc reeled him in.

Camp Lemonnier

Djibouti

At the Barn, all
the team’s equipment was cleaned first. Doc, Quincy, LB, and Robey sprayed down the Zodiac, flushed and re-oiled the engine. Robey handled his end of the chores in silence. After the raft and chutes were squared away, they went their separate ways to deal with personal gear, then lunch. LB rinsed his wetsuit and scuba stuff, then hung them to dry in his locker. The team was in a surly mood, anticipating the debriefing set for 2:00 p.m., in ninety minutes, after lunch. Everyone, including the PJs and support crew who weren’t on today’s training mission, was required to attend.

With the great hut emptied, LB climbed the ladder to duck into his tent beside Doc’s. The two preferred the roominess of the Barn, having the Ping-Pong table to themselves, and quiet after hours, so they made their racks in tents on the top of a high, broad shelf below the steel rafters and ductwork. The rest of the team was quartered in CLUs, contained living units, modular trailers stacked on top of each other throughout the camp.

The Barn served as the PJs’ nerve center at Camp Lemonnier. A long, narrow table was the domain of the chute riggers. In the Ready Room, the unit’s comm and intel computers fanned themselves. The briefing room also
showed movies. On the broad concrete floor, rows of hardware and vehicles waited for action, folded and strapped to skids, each able to be dropped onto land or water. The fridge held cases of bottled water to offset the constant African heat.

Doc and LB agreed that Djibouti was a dusty, hot skillet where litter and grit rode on a bug-filled wind and no bush lacked a thorn or poison leaf. The locals were treacherous or high, and when they weren’t, they were pitifully poor and heartbreakingly earnest. The national beer was a weak joke. For the two of them, the Barn was the best place in the whole country.

LB stretched out on his sleeping bag for a quick nap. He grew drowsy fast. Before he could drop off to sleep, boot steps below opened his eyes. A cheery voice called up.

“Hey!”

LB muttered. This was his own fault; he’d left the tent flap open and his bare feet hanging out where Wally could see them.

Wally hadn’t been scheduled on today’s training drop. Too bad. More than once, LB had seen him actually land on the pallet.

LB had known him for fifteen years. Back then, Wally Bloom was a lanky cadet at the Air Force Academy, the best jumper at the school, captain of the competition team. LB had been a young Ranger lieutenant, passing through the academy for a month of high-altitude jump training. Wally was the instructor who gave it. They’d crossed paths that long-ago summer and never got untangled. Now Wally was an even better jumper, the unit’s top CRO, and LB’s captain. PJs weren’t easy men to command, though Wally tried to make it look like they were.

“Hey,” LB answered without sitting up on his sleeping bag.

“You going to lunch?”

“No. Bring me a sandwich.”

“How’d the RAMZ jump go this morning?”

LB folded hands
across his chest. He’d learned to sleep like a soldier, accustomed to the ground.

“Depends on your perspective.”

The unit gathered around the big table and on bar stools. Missing were Wally and Robey.

At 1405, LB stepped outside to look for them. He found both CROs just inside the chain-link gate. Wally leaned on an ATV, listening while Robey spoke animatedly.

LB approached into the sun. “Meeting’s started.”

Robey stilled his gestures. At LB’s arrival, his face bore the same simmering mix of anger and restraint he’d had in the water.

Wally answered. “Robey tells me you lit him up pretty good this morning.”

“Did he? If the lieutenant will come inside, I’ll gladly give him an afternoon session. He can tell me which one he liked better.”

Wally shook his head. LB didn’t like dealing with Wally’s disapproval through sunglasses. He preferred to see a man’s eyes, the giveaway. Underwater, calm or panic showed there before it did in the body. Same thing in combat or a storm, or poker. The dying always died first in the eyes.

“Wasn’t his fault,” Wally said. “The right-side toggle tore when his canopy opened. He only had half control of the chute. Sounds like he did a helluva job landing anywhere near the RAMZ.”

“That so, LT?”

Robey nodded, holding something in.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The rear door of the Barn opened. Doc shouted for them to come on, then retreated into the cool.

LB turned to Robey. “Sir?”

The young CRO licked
his lips. “Look. This is my first deployment. That makes me the new guy. I figured it was best to keep my mouth shut.”

“You had no problem talking to the captain here.”

Wally raised a hand. “I ran into Quincy at lunch. He told me what happened. I approached Robey.”

LB asked again, “So why’d you stay quiet and take it? I was wrong.”

“Didn’t see the need.”

“For what?”

“To show you up.”

“Really? You’re worried about making me look bad?”

“Yeah. You’re LB. You’re the man. It’s called respect.”

LB set a hand on Robey’s shoulder. The kid was almost as tall as Wally.

“LT, I was an officer in the Rangers for eight years. I served in South America and the Middle East. I’ve done two PJ tours in Iraq, three in Afghanistan, all of them with the captain here. This is my third time in Djibouti. I’m not worried about looking bad, or being shown up. At this point, I care about one thing, and that’s the mission. If I’m wrong and you don’t tell me, if you let me make a mistake, that’s what makes me look bad.”

Robey hesitated before nodding. This clearly wasn’t the direction he had figured LB would take.

“Now, let me be real clear about this, so we don’t run into it again. You’re an officer. I’m not. You chose to be an officer. You’ve got to show the same commitment to leading men as me and the other guys show at being PJs. Your job is to lead. Period. You never sacrifice that responsibility for your own comfort or need to avoid conflict. Never. You’re in the fucking military. Conflict is what you do. What if I’m wrong on a real mission? You gonna worry about my feelings then?”

Robey opened his mouth to speak. LB cut him off.

“Sir, please don’t answer me. You haven’t thought this through enough to
answer.”

Wally said, “They’re waiting on us.”

LB nodded. “One last thing. See this?”

He tapped the patch on Robey’s sleeve, the same one they all wore.

“That others may live, Robey. That might be the toughest motto in the military. The PJs you lead from this point on are going to trust you with their lives. They need to know you’ll lay it all down for them. They’ve got to count on you being right and saying so. You lead, Robey. Whatever shape that takes. However bad it hurts.”

LB rammed a thumb at Wally.

“I’ve known this one since he was twenty. I trained him. I argue with him as often as not. He’s too good-natured by half, but I’ll say this. I have never seen him refuse to step out in front. You stop worrying about me and start watching him.”

Before Wally could say anything about the compliment, or Robey could mutter a young officer’s thanks for the tough lesson, LB took a step backward.

He put his hands on his hips, a teakettle of a man when he stood like this, short and stout. “One last thing.”

Robey said, “Okay.”

“The men and women who turn to you will be in bad trouble. They will be in the shit. You’ll be their lifeline. They may be frightened, even panicked. They may be bigger and stronger than you. Under no circumstances can you lose your composure or your control of the situation. A PJ is trained to do his job past the breaking point of any other soldier. More than anything else, that’s what makes you a PJ. You got that? Sir?”

Robey squared his jaw before he answered. “Got it.”

Wally signaled LB that the tongue-lashing was done for now. Robey slipped on his sunglasses, too.

Backpedaling, LB watched the
pair of CROs follow. In the meeting, he’d rip LT again in front of the team. Let the kid have some practice getting on his feet as an officer, defend himself. Give him a free shot, even things up.

Qandala

Puntland

Somalia

Yusuf waited until
all the children were seated before he would come down.

In the courtyard below, women arranged the children so the littlest ones had seats in the front. Next came the girls, and behind them, the boys were made to kneel. They, being boys, wanted to stand.

On his adobe parapet, a sundown breeze furled his robe. Yusuf turned away from the bustling below to gaze east at the blue water beyond two miles of meager land. Tonight’s sky would stay starry; the monsoons were over. One great ship rode at harbor, a Saudi vessel. The freighter was not his, but had been taken two weeks ago by another crew. Yusuf did not know how the negotiations were proceeding. From his catwalk along his walls he’d watched the supply skiffs parade back and forth. Yusuf had not ventured onto
bad-weyn
in seven months.

For a lark that he’d planned, he reached for a bag of coins. He tossed them in the air, scattering them over the courtyard at the feet of the children. This ruined the women’s careful seating and made them glower at Yusuf. Suleiman’s sister, Aziza, for whom the wedding celebration was being held—Suleiman had found her a
Darood, though she’d had to settle for being third wife—was not amused. One long-faced woman, Hoodo, smiled up at Yusuf out of her
hijab
scarf. He had no wife, and lived only with servants in his compound. His position in the clan, his militia and wealth, would let him have any woman he fancied; he could even pay a husband and take the man’s wife for his own. Since his return to Somalia, Yusuf had satisfied himself with prostitutes in Mogadishu and Bosaso. He told himself he lacked both the need and the time. This argument no longer held, because he had already begun to make the time, and the need nudged him, looking at Hoodo. She was known as an excellent cook and dutiful. At gatherings Hoodo always teased him, then asked for Yusuf’s stories. She looked beautiful tonight, draped in an indigo
coantino
, almond eyes surrounded by henna dots, diagrams on her slender feet and hands. He’d long considered buying her. He might speak to her grandfather before the year was out.

While the women rearranged the children, Yusuf gazed over his compound. Chinese candle lanterns hung on lines above smoking pits where camel and goat meat fried. A diesel generator powered his machine to make ice; tubs of it cooled Western colas and beers. Small bundles of
qaat
were available inside the house for those who preferred the leaf to drink. Two Japanese SUVs, black and white, had been polished by his servants to be admired.
Odayal
, pirate captains, a hundred crew and clansmen, and a dozen of Yusuf’s private gunmen had come for the party. An emissary from the jihadists had arrived as well, without invitation but graciously requesting at Yusuf’s door an audience at a convenient moment. Yusuf welcomed the al-Shabaab sheikh. The man wore an old revolver in a holster across his chest. This was no cause for concern; every man at a Somali wedding wore a dagger, sidearm, or rifle. After the vows were taken, before the feast, they would fire in the air in salute, to spur the groom for his wedding night, even if it was to the number-three wife.

Yusuf descended the wooden
stairs. They creaked under his bare feet. He was the biggest man at the party and in the village. He lacked the thinness of Suleiman, the narrow head and yellowness of eye. His cousin had returned home to Somalia from London first, after fifteen years. Yusuf had stayed in England’s plenty five years longer, enough to let his face grow round and well fed, his hands and feet great.

The children sat like a garden of stones when he stood before them, the pirate king and warlord of Qandala. He raised a wide palm for silence from the women and children and attention from the men of the gathering.

“Nin aan dhul marin dhaayo maleh.”
A man who has not traveled does not have eyes.

This was the way a story began.

For the children, Yusuf pointed beyond the walls of his compound, to a land far away where tales were lived. To the Darood, the captains, elders, and the sheikh, he spoke of a closer nature.

“A lion walked the land that was his home. He walked far, across plains and rivers. His domain was as broad as his legs could carry, for nowhere the lion stood was he not king.

“On one day, he moved in the shadows of a forest. He followed a sound and a scent. He was hunting.”

Yusuf bent low for the children. He worked his hands like the paws of a stalking beast. He cocked an ear and sniffed the wind.

“The lion found his prey sitting against a tree. He crept closer, silently. Before he could leap and strike, the prey jumped to his feet. The lion halted, amazed. What stood before him was a tall and beautiful
jinn
.”

Yusuf rose erect, playing the genie. He spread his arms in greeting.

“‘Welcome, lion. I have expected you.’”

Yusuf crouched again, the wary lion.

“‘How could that be, spirit? You were asleep. And I was silent.’

“‘I am greater than you. That is how.’

“‘I am king. This is my
land. You are not greater than I.’

“At this, the lion roared his mightiest. Leaves shook off the trees, the ground broke beneath the lion’s feet.”

Yusuf raised both arms high to depict the size of the lion’s roar. The children dropped their own jaws.

“The
jinn
wiped a fallen leaf from his shoulder. He opened his mouth and bellowed with the sound of thunder. No! Of a mountain rising out of the earth. The lion was staggered by the genie’s voice.”

Yusuf played the lion, puffing his chest, defiant.

“‘I am king of this land. You are not greater.’

“The lion swiped a powerful paw against a tree, slicing out a chunk that made the tree crack and topple. The
jinn
stepped away from the tumbling tree. With one finger, he pushed over another, bigger tree. The lion bared his long teeth so the
jinn
could see.

“‘I see. I grant that you are more powerful.’”

Yusuf stepped one leg back to bow deeply, as the lion accepting the truth of the genie.

“Then the lion clapped one paw against the earth, making a deep rumble in the forest floor. He did this again and again. Each time he struck the ground, an animal appeared in the clearing around him. First another lion, almost as big as him. Then a camel, then two. Then cheetahs and more lions, apes and elephants, crocodiles, rose out of the river. Hawks, seagulls, and buzzards lighted on the branches. All creatures of the forest, plains, rivers, and skies came to stand with the lion.”

Yusuf turned in a circle to invoke all the growling, flapping, crouching animals.

“And the lion said to the
jinn
, ‘But as you see, spirit, I am king of this land.’

“The
jinn
nodded to the lion, and all the animals of the kingdom who were joined against him.”

Slowly Yusuf rotated once more, fingers under his chin to play the spirit considering all the beasts at the lion’s command.

Yusuf gathered
the hem of his robe. He sped the genie’s spinning, faster on his toes for the children and adults, until the genie leaped, clicked his heels, and ran away.

The children laughed and hooted after the defeated
jinn
. The boys in the back threw their coins, then scrambled to reclaim them. Hoodo came forward clapping loudest, then joined the women taking the children off to bed. Men lingered in the courtyard, pleased with Yusuf’s storytelling, before filtering away to resume smoking, talking, and grooming their hungers for the coming feast. Yusuf watched from behind a corner. The sheikh stayed alone and quiet, the way the
jinn
had waited for the lion.

Yusuf came out of hiding to approach the sheikh. The Islamist inclined his covered head.

“That was a wonderful story.”

Yusuf returned the small bow, his head not covered. “It was one of my mother’s. She was a great storyteller. A poet also.”

The sheikh flattened a palm across the chest strap of his holster. A pious gesture.

“Allah has given you the same gift, Yusuf Raage. I am Sheikh Birhan Idi Robow.”

Yusuf smiled. “I did not know. I apologize. But I see I chose my story better than I knew.”

“Perhaps. May we leave your elegant party for a few minutes? So we may talk in private.”

Yusuf raised a hand to catch Suleiman’s attention. He told his cousin he would be back quickly. His intent, which Suleiman caught, was to have Suleiman climb the parapet and keep watch over this conversation.

Yusuf led the sheikh out a back door, through the adobe compound walls. His home lay on the eastern outskirts of Qandala, surrounded by open ground and sparse scrub. Sheikh Robow plucked a brittle stick from a bush.

“Do you recall how many trees Somalia once had? When I was a boy, I played under acacia, mahogany, yagar. We had
forests like the one in your story. I pretended to be just such a lion. Now, look at this.” Robow dropped the stick on the pebbles. “We are so poor from civil war that we sell each other charcoal. And we have no trees left.”

Yusuf, still barefoot, aimed a hand east to the ocean.

“We had fish. Tuna, mackerel, swordfish, shark, shrimp, and lobster. We fed ourselves and made a living. The fish are gone now. Poachers from a dozen countries took them with gillnets, and no one to stop them. They paid no taxes, nothing. They respected no limits and swept away everything.”

Robow touched Yusuf’s arm. “My losses made me a warrior. Yours made you a pirate. We are not so different.”

Yusuf stopped their walk. He glanced back at the roof of his compound, where Suleiman kept watch. This Islamist did not come to Qandala alone. He certainly had men in the alleyways, perhaps in pickup trucks with mounted machine guns. Yusuf did not want to stroll too far from his own gate and clan.

“How may I help you, Sheikh Robow?”

“The opposite. I have come to help you.”

“With respect, because you are my guest, that would be a first.”

The Islamist laughed, a barking trill that made Yusuf suspect he was unaccustomed to laughter.

“I was told you are a blunt man, Yusuf Raage. I am no diplomat myself. So, with respect as your guest, I will be plain.”

“
Cad iyo caanaa lagu noolyahay
.” We live on meat and milk. The plain things.

Robow held his hands apart, to show they were empty and the offerings of a friend.

“The town of Harardhere has fallen.”

“I know.”

“We did not take it. We visited the elders and pirate chiefs and asked, frankly, for a share of the pirate income. And for them to stop interfering with our shipments from Yemen. Harardhere was quite the pirate stronghold.”

Yusuf licked
his lips, to speak carefully. “But you’ve declared piracy anti-Islamic.”

“Yes, we have. You are lawless. We are Allah’s law. But Allah’s battles may not always be fought by the righteous. Pirates can have a purpose.”

“I assume this includes me.”

“Of course. But I will come to you in a moment. We were turned down by the pirates of Harardhere.”

“It cannot be easy turning down al-Shabaab.”

The sheikh stayed sanguine. “The ways of man are many. This is why the fewer ways of Allah are preferable. In any case, the militants of Hizb al-Islam took advantage and came in with guns. To be honest, this was done before we could do the same. They are now in control of Harardhere and impose the law. Many of the pirates fled north. Some have already relocated here. I saw the ship at anchor offshore. I know it is not yours.”

“No.”

“But in the end, even for Allah’s warriors, pirate money was too much of a lure. Hizb al-Islam has made a deal with the pirates of Harardhere to split their ransoms in return for not driving them out completely.”

Yusuf knit fingers in front of his robe to keep from balling his fists.

“You are coming to Qandala?”

The sheikh grinned, hiding his hands in his dangling white sleeves. “This is not in our plans. But I ask you to understand. Al-Shabaab and Hizb al-Islam are rivals. We are fairly similar in our beliefs. This is more of a sibling squabble than over Wahabbist doctrine. We have taken the ports of Barawe and Kismayo. Hizb al-Islam has set their sights on the pirate den of Eyl next, so we will make a move there first. Both of us need access to shipping. We require supplies, not unlike your own operation.”

Yusuf and
the sheikh walked in the waning sun. Robow smiled at the pebbles underfoot; Yusuf strode, impatient for the dangling threat to fall.

“What are you offering me?”

“A bargain.”

“I’m listening.”

“How large is your militia?”

“I pay fifty men. I can get a thousand of my clan in two days.”

“Even if you can’t, your point is taken. You pirates are getting more difficult to uproot.”

“We didn’t become pirates to share. We all know about Harardhere.”

“Good. Then I bring you an offer the pirates of Harardhere were denied. We will not come to your town. And we will protect you from Hizb al-Islam should their interests turn to Qandala. You may continue to stay pirates in your little
rer manjo
village.”