The Kill List (22 page)

But he was not sure how long conditions would last. The Somalis often did not even bother to hoist their rears over the taffrail when they needed to defecate. The Filipinos, glaring with anger, had to broom it all through the scuppers in the pounding, enervating heat.

Captain Eklund could not even talk to Stockholm anymore. His satellite telephone had been disconnected on the orders of the one he called the little bastard in the suit. Ali Abdi did not want any interferences by amateurs in his delicate negotiations with the office of Chauncey Reynolds.

The Swedish skipper was thinking such thoughts when his Ukrainian deputy called out that a launch was coming. With binoculars, Capt. Eklund could make out the dhow and the neat little figure in the stern in a safari suit. He welcomed the visit. He would be able to ask yet again how fared the merchant marine cadet called Carlsson. In all that landscape, he was the only one who knew who the lad really was.

What he did not know was that the teenager had been beaten. Abdi would only tell him Ove Carlsson was well and detained within the fortress only as an earnest of the good behavior of the crew still onboard. Capt. Eklund had pleaded in vain for his return.

• • •

W
hile Mr. Abdi was on the
Malmö
, a dusty pickup drove into the courtyard of the fortress behind the village. It contained one large and hulking Pakistani, who spoke neither English nor Somali, and one other.

The Pakistani stayed with the truck. The other was shown into the presence of al-Afrit, who recognized the man as from the Harti Darod clan, meaning “Kismayo.” The Sacad warlord did not like the Harti, or indeed anyone from the south.

Though technically a Muslim, al-Afrit virtually never went to the mosque and rarely said any prayers. In his mind, the southerners were all al-Shabaab and insane. They tortured for Allah, he for pleasure.

The visitor introduced himself as Jamma and made the obeisances appropriate for a sheikh. He said he came as a personal emissary of a sheikh of Marka, with a proposal for the ears of the warlord of Garacad only.

Al-Afrit had never heard of any Jihadist preacher called Abu Azzam. He had a computer, which only the younger among his people really understood, but even if he had been thoroughly literate in its function, he would never have dreamed of watching the Jihadist website. But he listened with rising interest.

Jamma stood in front of him and recited the message he had memorized. It began with the usual lavish salutations and then moved to the burden of the message. When he lapsed into silence, the old Sacad stared at him for several minutes.

“He wants to kill him? Cut his throat? On camera? And then show the world?”

“Yes, Sheikh.”

“And pay me a million dollars? Cash?”

“Yes, Sheikh.”

Al-Afrit thought it over. Killing the white infidel, this he understood. But to show the Western world what he had done, this was madness. They, the infidel, the
kuffar
, would come take revenge, and they had many guns. He, al-Afrit, took their ships and their money, but he was not mad enough to trigger a blood feud between himself and the whole
kuffar
world.

Finally, he made his decision—which was to delay a decision. He instructed that his guests be taken to rooms, where they could rest, and be offered food and water. When Jamma was gone, he ordered that neither man retain the ignition key to his vehicle, nor any weapon he might have on him nor any kind of phone. He personally wore a curved
jambiya
dagger in a sash at his waist, but he did not like any other weapon to be near him.

Ali Abdi returned from the
Malmö
an hour later, but because he had been away, he did not see the truck arrive from the south, or the two visitors, one the bearer of a bizarre proposition.

He knew the times of his preagreed telephone talks with Gareth Evans, but because London was three time zones west of the Horn of Africa, they took place in midmorning in Garacad. So the next day he had no reason to leave his room early.

He was not present when al-Afrit lengthily briefed one of his most trusted clansmen, a one-eyed savage called Duale, just after dawn, nor did he see the pickup truck with the black roof drive out of the courtyard gate one hour later.

He had vaguely heard of a Jihadist fanatic who preached messages of death and hate over the worldwide web, but he had not heard of the man’s utter discrediting, or his online protestations, that he had been foully defamed in a
kuffar
plot. But like al-Afrit, albeit for different reasons, he despised Salafists and Jihadists, and all other extremist maniacs, and observed Islam as little as he could get away with.

He was surprised and pleased to find his principal in a reasonably agreeable mood when he appeared for their morning conference. So much so that he suggested they could lower their demand from seven million to six million dollars and probably secure closure. And the clan chief agreed.

When he spoke to Gareth Evans, he exuded self-satisfaction. He was so tempted to say, “We are almost there,” but realized that phrase could only mean that the pair of them were colluding on an agreed price. Privately, he thought: One more week, perhaps only five days, and the monster will let the
Malmö
sail.

With his second million dollars, added to his life savings, he felt a comfortable retirement in a civilized environment beckoning.

• • •

T
he Tracker was beginning to worry. In angling terms, he had dropped a heavily baited hook into the water and he was waiting for a monster to bite. But the floater was immobile on the surface. It did not even bob.

From his office in the embassy, he had a second-by-second patch through to the bunker outside Tampa, where a senior NCO from the Air Force sat silently, control column in hand, flying a Global Hawk high over a compound in Marka. He could see what the master sergeant could see—a silent collection of three houses inside a wall on a narrow cluttered street with a fruit market at one end of it.

But the compound showed no signs of life. No one came, no one left. The Hawk could not only watch, it could listen. It would hear the tiniest electronic whisper out of that compound; it would pluck a few syllables out of cyberspace, whether they were uttered, on computer or cell phone. The National Security Agency at Fort Meade, with its satellites in space, would do the same.

But all that technology was being defeated. He had not seen the pickup truck driven by Jamma change its configuration with a black cab roof, then double back and head north instead of south. He did not know it was on its way back. He could not know that his bait had been taken and a deal struck between a sadistic Sacad in Garacad and a desperate Pakistani in Marka. In Donald Rumsfeld’s unusual terminology, he was facing “an unknown unknown.”

He could only suspect, and he suspected he was losing, outwitted by barbarians cleverer than he. The secure phone rang.

It was Master Sergeant Orde from Tampa. “Colonel, sir, there’s a technical approaching the target.” Tracker resumed his study of the screen. The compound occupied the center of it, about a quarter of the space. There was a pickup at the gate. The cab had a black roof. He did not recognize it.

A figure in a white dishdash came out of the house at the side of the square, crossed the sandy space and opened the gate. The pickup drove in. The gate closed. Three tiny figures emerged from the truck and entered the main house. The Preacher had visitors.

• • •

T
he Preacher received the trio in his office. The bodyguard was dismissed. Opal introduced the emissary from the north. The Sacad Duale glared with his one good eye. He, too, had memorized his brief. With a gesture, the Preacher indicated that he could begin. The terms of al-Afrit were terse and clear.

He was prepared to trade his Swedish captive for one million dollars cash. His servant Duale should see and count the money and alert his master that he had actually seen it.

For the rest, al-Afrit would not enter al-Shabaab land. There would be an exchange at the border. Duale knew the place of the exchange and would guide the vehicles bearing the money and guards to it. The delegation from the north would make the rendezvous and bring the prisoner.

“And where is this meeting place?” asked the Preacher. Duale simply stared and shook his head.

The Preacher had seen tribesmen like this in the Pakistani border territories, among the Pathan. He could pull out all the man’s nails, both fingers and toes, but he would die before he spoke. He nodded and smiled.

He knew there was no real border between north and south on any map. But maps were for the
kuffar
s. The tribesmen had their maps in their heads. They knew exactly where, a generation earlier, clan had fought clan for the ownership of a camel and men had died. The spot marked the place where the vendetta had begun. They knew if a man from the wrong clan crossed the line, he would die. They needed no white man’s map.

He also knew he could be ambushed for the money. But to what end? The clan chief from Garacad would get his money anyway, and what use to him was the Swedish boy? Only he, the Preacher, knew the true, staggering value of the merchant marine cadet from Stockholm, because his good friend in London had told him. And that immense sum would restore all his fortunes, even among the supposedly pious al-Shabaad. North or south, money not only talked, it shouted.

There was a tap on the door.

• • •

T
here was a new vehicle at the compound site, a small sedan this time. At 50,000 feet, the Hawk wheeled and turned, watching and listening. The same white-clad figure crossed the sand and conferred with the car’s driver. In Tampa and London, Americans watched.

The car did not enter the yard. A large attaché case was handed over and signed for. The figure in white headed for the main building.

“Follow the car,” said the Tracker. The outlines of the compound slid out of screen as the camera suite high in the stratosphere followed the car. It did not go far; under a mile. Then it stopped outside a small office block.

“Close up. Let me have a look at that building.”

The office block came closer and closer. The sun in Marka was overhead, so there were no shadows. These would come, long and black, as the sun set over the western desert. Pale green and dark green; a logo, and a word beginning with
D
in roman script: “Dahabshiil.” The money had arrived and been delivered. The overhead scrutiny returned to the Preacher’s compound.

• • •

B
lock after block of hundred-dollar bills were removed from the case and placed on the long polished table. The Preacher might be many miles from his origins in Rawalpindi, but he liked his furnishings traditional.

Duale had already announced he had to count the ransom. Jamma continued to interpret from Arabic to Swahili, Duale’s only language. Opal, who had brought the attaché case, stayed in case he was needed, the junior of two private secretaries. Seeing Duale fumbling with the bundles, Opal asked him in Somali: “Can I help you?”

“Ethiopian dog,” snarled the Sacad, “I will finish the task.”

It took him two hours. Then he grunted.

“I have to make a call,” he said. Jamma translated. The Preacher nodded. Duale produced a cell phone from his robes and tried to make a call. Inside the thick-walled building, he could get no tone. He was escorted outside to the open yard.

“There’s a guy in the yard on a cell phone,” said M.Sgt. Orde in Tampa.

“Grab it, I need to know,” snapped the Tracker.

The call trilled in a mud-brick fort in Garacad and was answered. The conversation was extremely brief. Four words from Marka and a reply of two. Then the connection was severed.

“Well?” asked the Tracker.

“It was in Somali.”

“Ask NSA.”

Nearly a thousand miles north in Maryland, an American Somali lifted the headphones off his ears.

“One man said, ‘The dollars have arrived.’ The other replied, ‘Tomorrow night,’” he said.

Tampa called the Tracker in London.

“We got the two messages, all right,” the communications intercept people told him. “But they were using a local cell phone network called Hormud. We know where the first speaker was—in Marka. We don’t know who replied or from where.”

Don’t worry, thought the Tracker. I do.

C
olonel, sir, they’re moving.”

The Tracker had been dozing at his desk in front of the screen in the London embassy that showed him what the drone over Marka could see. The voice was from the speakerphone linked to the control bunker outside Tampa. The voice belonged to M.Sgt. Orde, back on shift.

He jerked awake and checked his watch. Three a.m. London time, six in Marka, the darkness before dawn.

The Global Hawk had been replaced by one with full tanks and hours of loiter time before it, too, would run dry. On the Somali coast, there was the tiniest pink blush across the eastern horizon. The Indian Ocean was still black, as was the end of the night over the alleys of Marka.

But lights had come on in the Preacher’s compound, and small red blobs were moving about—the heat sources caught by the drone’s body sensors. Its cameras were still on infrared mode, enabling it to see in the dark what was going on ten miles beneath it.

As the Tracker watched, the level of daylight rose with the sun; the red blobs became dark shapes moving across the courtyard far below. Thirty minutes later, a garage door was opened and a vehicle rolled out.

It was not a dusty, dented pickup truck, the all-purpose personnel-and-load carrier of Somalia. This was a smart Toyota Land Cruiser with black windows, the vehicle of choice of al-Qaeda right back to bin Laden’s first appearance in Afghanistan. The Tracker knew it could hold ten people.

The watchers, four thousand miles apart in London and Florida, watched just eight dark shapes board the SUV. They were not close enough to see that in the front were two of the Pakistani bodyguards, one to drive, the other heavily armed in the passenger seat.

Behind them sat the Preacher, shapeless in Somali robes with head covered, and Jamma, his Somali secretary. The third seat went to Opal and the other two Pakistani guards, making up the only four the Preacher could really trust. He had brought them all from his days in the Khorosan killer group.

The last was squatting in the baggage area behind the rows of seats. He was the Sacad Duale.

At seven Marka time, other servants hauled the gate open and the Land Cruiser rolled. The Tracker faced a quandary: Was this a red herring? Was the target still in the house, preparing to slip away, while the drone he must now know was above him went elsewhere?

“Sir?”

The man with the control column in the Tampa bunker needed to know.

“Follow the truck,” said the Tracker.

It led through the labyrinth of streets and alleys to the outskirts of town, then turned off and drove under the cover of a large, asbestos-roofed warehouse. Once in there, it was out of sight.

Fighting to control the panic, the Tracker ordered the drone to return to the residence, but the compound and its yard were wreathed in shadows and quiet. Nothing moved. The drone returned to the warehouse. Twenty minutes later, the large black SUV emerged. It drove slowly back to the compound.

Somewhere down there, it must have sounded its horn, for a single servant emerged from the house and opened the gate. The Toyota rolled inside and stopped. No one got out. Why? wondered the Tracker. Then he caught it. No one got out because no one was in it except the driver.

“Get back to the warehouse fast,” he ordered M.Sgt. Orde. In reply, the controller in Florida simply widened the camera lens from close-up to wide-angle, capturing the whole town but in lesser detail. They were just in time.

From the warehouse, not one but four half-body pickups, the so-called technicals, were rolling out one after the other. The Tracker had almost fallen for the basic switch.

“Follow the convoy,” he told Tampa. “Wherever it goes. I may have to leave, but I’ll stay on my cell.”

• • •

I
n Garacad, Mr. Ali Abdi was woken by the growling of engines below his window. He checked his watch. Seven a.m. Four hours until his regular morning conference with London. He peered through the shutters and watched two technicals leave the courtyard of the fort.

It was of no matter. He was a very contented man. The previous evening, he had secured the final concurrence of al-Afrit to his mediations. The pirate would settle with Chauncey Reynolds and the insurers for a ransom of five million U.S. dollars for the
Malmö
, including cargo and crew.

Despite the one minor fly in the ointment, Abdi was sure Mr. Gareth would also be happy when he learned that two hours after the pirate’s Dubai bank confirmed lodging of the dollars the
Malmö
would be allowed to sail. By then, a Western destroyer would surely be offshore to escort her to safety. Several rival clans had already sent skiffs to prowl around the Swedish merchantman in case she was ill guarded and could be snatched again.

Abdi thought of the future. The second of his million-dollar bribes would be assured. Gareth Evans would not cheat him lest they ever had to deal again. But only he, Abdi, could know that he was retiring and emigrating to a lovely villa in Tunisia, where he could live in peace and safety miles from the chaos and killing of his native land. He checked his watch again and rolled over for an extended snooze.

• • •

T
he Tracker was still in his office, considering a limited range of options. He knew a lot, but he could not know everything.

He had an agent inside the enemy camp, probably riding a few feet away from the Preacher in one of the four technicals rolling through the desert six miles below the Global Hawk. But he could not communicate with his man nor the reverse. Opal’s transceiver was still buried beneath a shack on the beach outside Kismayo. It would have been suicidal for him to have attempted to bring anything with him to Marka save the harmless-looking item he had been given by the casuarina trees.

The Tracker presumed there would be a meeting somewhere and a handover of money for the Swedish prisoner. He had no qualms about what he had done, reasoning that the cadet from Stockholm was in greater danger with the man even his own clansmen nicknamed Devil than with the Preacher, who would keep him alive and well for the money.

After the swap, the Preacher would presumably return to Marka, where he was untouchable. The only chance of destroying him had been to lure him out into the Somali desert, to those wide-open spaces where there were no civilians to hurt.

But missiles were forbidden anyway. Gray Fox had made that plain yet again the previous evening. As the sun that now blazed down on Somalia brought the first light to London, he considered his options. Despite all his pleadings, they were not generous.

The SEALs’ Team 6 was on base at Dam Neck, Virginia, and there was no time to bring them across half the world. The Night Stalkers, with their long-range helicopters, were at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. That apart, he suspected choppers would be too noisy. He had been in jungle and desert. He knew that at night the jungle is an infernal din of frogs and insects while the desert is eerily silent, the creatures who live in it have the hearing of the bat-eared foxes that share the sand with them. The thump of helicopter rotors, carried on the night breeze, can be heard for miles.

There was one unit he had heard of but never seen in action or even met. But he knew their reputation and specialty. They were not even American. There were two American units that, by repute, could match them; but the SEALs and the Delta boys were across the Atlantic.

He was roused from his thoughts by M.Sgt. Orde.

“Colonel, they seem to be separating.”

He went back to the screen, and again incipient panic was like a punch in the gut. Down on the desert floor, the four technicals were in column but widely spaced. They had four hundred yards between each of them.

This was the Preacher’s precaution to ensure the Americans would not dare use a missile for fear it would miss the truck he was traveling in. He was not to know he was safe because of the young Ethiopian behind him. But now they were not just separated in a line, they were all diverging.

The convoy was north of the soldier-guarded enclave of Mogadishu, heading northwest into the valley of the Shebelle. To cross the river, there were half a dozen usable bridges between Ethiopia and the sea. Now the four technicals were parting company as if heading for different bridges. His one drone could not follow them all.

Even at full maximum screen width, it could only observe two. But, by then, each truck would have become too tiny to see. From Tampa, the controller’s voice was urgent.

“Which one, sir?”

• • •

G
areth Evans came into the office just after eight. Lawyers are rarely early risers, and he was always the first to appear in the office. The night watchman was by now accustomed to emerging from his box behind the reception desk to unlock the plate-glass doors and admit the negotiator—and that was when he was not spending the night on his cot in the office upstairs.

He had brought his vacuum flask of coffee from the nearby hotel where Chauncey Reynolds had billeted him for the duration. Later, dear Mrs. Bulstrode would appear, then go to the deli to secure him a real breakfast and be back before it went cold. He had no idea that every stage of his negotiations was faithfully reported to the Secret Intelligence Service.

A pulsing red light at half past eight told him Mr. Abdi was on the line. Gareth Evans never liked to permit himself a rush of optimism; he had been disappointed before. But he thought he and the Somali go-between were close to the agreed-upon ransom of five million dollars, for which he had full clearance. The money transfer was not his problem; others would handle that. And he knew there was a British frigate not far offshore to escort the
Malmö
to safety when the moment came.

“Yes, Mr. Abdi, Gareth Evans here. You have news for me? You are earlier than usual.”

“Indeed news, Mr. Gareth. And very good news. The best. My principal has agreed to settle on five million dollars only.”

“That’s excellent, my friend.” He tried to keep the exultation out of his voice. This is the fastest release he had ever secured. “I think I can get the transfer made this day. Are all the crew well?”

“Yes, very well. There is . . . how do you English say . . . a wasp in the ointment, but not important.”

“I think it’s a fly. A problem. But, never mind, a wasp will do. How big a wasp, Mr. Abdi?”

“The Swedish boy, the cadet . . .”

Evans froze. He held up a hand to stop Mrs. Bulstrode in her tracks, breakfast in hand.

“You mean Ove Carlsson. What problem, Mr. Abdi?”

“He cannot be coming, Mr. Gareth. My principal, I’m afraid . . . It was nothing to do with me . . . He received an offer . . .”

“What has happened to Mr. Carlsson?” Evans’s voice had lost all its good humor.

“I’m afraid he has been sold to the al-Shabaab in the south. But do not worry, Mr. Gareth. He was only the cadet.”

Gareth Evans replaced the receiver, leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. Mrs. Bulstrode put down his breakfast and left.

• • •

A
gent Opal sat between Jamma and the door. The Preacher was on the far side. The technical, which did not have the suspension of the Land Cruiser, bucked, rocked and shuddered with every stone and pothole. They had been motoring for five hours; it was nearly midday, and the heat was stifling. Any air-conditioning the vehicle had once had was long for the archives.

The Preacher and Jamma were both dozing. Had it not been for the jolting, Opal might have fallen into a fitful sleep and missed it.

The Preacher awoke, leaned forward, tapped the driver on the shoulder and said something. It was in Urdu, but the meaning became clear only moments later. They had been driving in line since leaving Marka, and their vehicle was the second of four. Just after the tap on the shoulder, the driver turned off the track of the one in front and took another.

He glanced out and back. Trucks three and four were doing the same. The seating arrangements were different from the Land Cruiser. There was just the driver up front, with the Preacher, Jamma and himself along the seat behind. The three bodyguards were out in the open behind the cab with Duale the Sacad.

From above, all four technicals would look the same, and like eighty percent of other pickup trucks in Somalia. Three of the technicals were local hirelings from Marka. Opal knew about drones; they had featured large in his training at the Mossad agent school. He began to retch.

Jamma looked at him in alarm.

“Are you all right?”

“It’s the jolting,” he said. The Preacher looked across.

“If you are going to be ill, go ride outside,” he said.

Opal opened the door next to him and hauled his torso outside. The desert wind blew his hair about his face. He reached a hand toward the open bed of the truck, and a hefty Pakistani grabbed it. After a wild second dangling over the rear wheel, he was pulled into the rear. Jamma leaned across and slammed the door from the inside.

Opal smiled wanly at the three Pakistani bodyguards and the one-eyed Duale. They all ignored him. From inside his dishdash, he took out what he had been given under the casuarinas and had already used once. He pulled it on.

• • •

W
hich one do we follow, sir?” The question was becoming very urgent. As the Global Hawk widened its aperture, the desert moved farther away, with all four trucks at the periphery of the picture. The Tracker noticed a disturbance in one of the technicals.

“What’s that guy doing?” he asked. “Truck number two.”

“He seems to have climbed out for air,” said M.Sgt. Orde. “He’s pulling something on. A baseball cap, sir. Bright red.”

“Close in on truck two,” snapped the Tracker, “ignore the others. They are decoys. Follow truck two.”

The camera moved to truck two at the center of the frame, then closed in. The five men in the back became bigger and bigger. One had a red cap. Very faintly, the watchers could make out the insignia “New York.”

“God bless you, Opal,” breathed the Tracker.

• • •

T
he Tracker caught his colleague, the defense attaché, as the man came back from his morning five-mile run through the country lanes around Ickenham, where he lived. It was eight a.m. The attaché was a full colonel, drawn from the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. The Tracker’s question was brief and simple.