The Somali Deception Episode II (A Cameron Kincaid Serial) (11 page)

Abbo’s bright white eyes beamed
wild, lunging out of his skull toward the three invaders.
 
Mounted on Abbo’s groin, her back to the
three was a woman, naked and beading in sweat.
 
His large hands firmly clutched the thin
waist of the woman, almost encircling her, a
caucasian
woman with long flowing chestnut hair.

* * *
* *

Abbo’s Suite, Burj Khalifa Level
105, Dubai

Cameron, Alastair, and Pepe were
members of an elite fraternity.
 
The
Corsican Second Foreign Parachute Regiment, the Special Forces spearhead of the
French rapid reaction force.
 
These
three men were plucked as the elite of the elite, to go first and laser dot the
targets for the Special Forces spearhead.
 
They were once super soldiers, trained to execute missions that would
otherwise be suicide.
 
The training
these men received, matched only by very few elite services, set them as
masters of compartmentalizing.
 
In
their peak, they were mentally above their operations, beyond reproach in their
tasks.
 
Compartmentalization is the
perfect unconscious psychological defense mechanism used to avoid cognitive
dissonance, or the mental discomfort and anxiety caused by having conflicting
values, cognitions, emotions, or beliefs.
 
Perhaps that is why, when still physically and mentally acute, their
time came to muster out.
 
Part of
what made these men super soldiers is that they were not machines.
 
To scan a room out of the corner of ones
eye and then, in less than a second, calculate the next action may appear an
inhuman mechanistic ability, yet the judgment to make the instantaneous call,
stems from the soldiers humanity.

Humanity was the reason soldiers
were not sent on missions that involved them personally.

Soldiers could not be expected
to compartmentalize a hostage situation involving their sister, at any point in
the operation the risk was too high that soldier could compromise himself,
could compromise the mission.

Yet, there was no one else for
this mission.

Perhaps Pepe had lost his edge.

Perhaps Pepe was merely a super
soldier.

Pepe did not utilize his attuned
peripheral vision entering Abbo’s bedroom.
 
He focused on those two bright white beaming eyes and, from the instant
the door burst wide, was directly over Abbo, the muzzle of his MP-5 thrust into
Abbo’s forehead.

The window of Pepe’s mask
revealing his upper face and eyes blazed varying shades of red.
 
On no other mission had his blood
burned.
 
The rapidly forming beads
of sweat appeared pink across his brow.

The muscles through Pepe’s chest
and upper body clenched and flexed tight as his arm extended forward, sinking
Abbo’s skull deep into the pillow.
 
A vein shot up on Pepe’s forehead and neck and, though anatomically incorrect,
appeared to pierce right down into his hand, into the submachine gun, into
Abbo.

“
Aargh
,”
said Abbo, a blood ring saturated where muzzle cut into flesh.

“Pepe,” said Cameron.

Pepe did not respond.
 
He leered at Abbo, into Abbo, he owned
Abbo Mohammed.

“Pepe,” said Cameron again.
 
“It’s not her.
 
She’s not Christine.”

Pepe blinked heavy, his stare
still given to Abbo, first one blink and then another, a wince, and then
another.

“This isn’t Christine,” said
Cameron, his voice somber.

Pepe’s eyelids blinked heavy
again, then again, meaty steaks slapping his eyes to attention, and then
slowly, he shifted his gaze up across the bed to Cameron and Alastair.

“Quoi?” asked Pepe.

“This is not Christine,” said
Alastair.

For the first time since
entering the room, Pepe, the once super soldier trained to be mindful, to see
all at once, looked into the face of the woman mounted naked on Abbo.

The woman was hyperventilating,
crying, her cheeks streaming with tears.
 
From far inside her throat barely audible sighs and squeaks escaped in
rapid burst.
 
Her entire body
quivered and she was barely able to hold herself up on the man she was
entertaining seconds ago.

 
“This is Antoinette,” said Cameron.

* * *
* *

Abbo’s Suite, Burj Khalifa Level
105, Dubai

Alastair removed the crumpled
linen from the foot of the bed to drape the trembling woman’s nude body.
 
In a tender manner, he placed his hands
on her now covered shoulders and gently removed her from the groin of the
titanic warlord.
 
She let Alastair
ease her to the floor.
 
Her
breathing, already elevated, increased and her lower lip began to rapidly
quiver.
 
The subtle sighs and
squeaks that had fought to escape
her an
instant
before became squawks and caws as the woman, really not more than a girl,
slipped into hysterics.

“Shhh,” said Alastair.
 
He held the girl’s shoulders firm and
gentle in his hands.
 
“We’re not
going to hurt you.
 
You’re okay.”
 
He squatted to her height then matched
his calm blue eyes to hers, “Breathe.
 
You’re okay.
 
Breathe in
through your nose like this.”

As Cameron watched Alastair calm
the woman, he thought how different she was now from earlier in the evening,
from the playful young woman at the table in the At.mosphere restaurant.

“Out through your mouth,” said
Alastair, “there.”

Her name was Antoinette.

“Again, breathe in through your
nose, that’s right.”

Antoinette and the other girl
that had been with Abbo, Mary, each had green eyes and wore their chestnut hair
in the same fashion as Christine.
 
That was Abbo’s thing, his fetish.
 
All of the women in the warlord’s harem could pass for Christine, or
sisters she never had.

“Okay, now can you take a walk
with me?” asked Alastair.

The woman in the restaurant
floors above was flirtatious and seductive.
 
That was before three armed commandos
stormed the master bedroom and mentally overwhelmed her.
 
She was now in shock and as a broken
child.
 
Alastair calmed Antoinette
and was escorting out of the master bedroom.

Cameron had seen girls like
Antoinette on countless missions.
 
Things were going to get worse in her world before they got better.
 
For the
moment
she would be okay.

The ability to maintain the calm
of oneself and surroundings during a mission is a key factor, a matter of
training.
 
Alastair Main, the devil,
was a natural, smooth and sedating, a real snake charmer.
 
Alastair had once told Cameron that he
had learned to control himself and his environment as a child in the bush, from
his father the big game hunter, and from the true masters, the bush warriors of
the Laikipia plateau.

Cameron and Pepe were trained in
tactical breathing and other techniques of calm by the Legion.
 
Alastair had been raised a
predator.
 
Alastair had taught their
team a thing or two about hunting, about mimicking the other predators of the
wild.

The basic law of biology is that
most body functions are on autopilot so the brain does not consciously have to
think about making them happen.
 
The
autonomic nervous system manages heart rate, body temperature, breathing,
blinking, and digesting.
 
All of
those functions operate in an involuntary reflexive manner.
 
In stressful situations however, all of
those systems can go out of whack.
 
Add the adrenalin and real time danger of combat stress and loss of calm
can mean life or death.
 
Elite
training in the Second Foreign Parachute Regiment had taught them how to be
attuned to their bodies and override the autopilot where they could.
 
They could not tell their kidneys how to
function, or mentally force their body temperatures up or down, yet through
practice they learned to use tactical breathing and blinking, as a bridge back
to a calm optimal condition to fight.

Cameron rolled his eyes back
over to Pepe.

Pepe was calm now.
 
The window in his mask was no longer the
index shades of Dante’s inferno.
 
There had been a time when the stress of the moment would not have edged
Pepe.
 
Fortunately, his tactical
training kicked in with a slight push from Cameron.
 
Cameron had said his name a number of
times before the outside world registered and then Pepe literally blinked
himself back to the moment.

The muzzle of Pepe’s MP-5 still
pressed against the warlords head.
 
Not with the same skull crushing force he applied during what Cameron
could only define as a rage, yet with still enough pressure to ensure Abbo was
not going to flinch.

Yes, that was pure rage.

Cameron recognized the fervor in
Pepe’s eyes.
 
He had seen the
madness many times before on the faces of enemy combatants that fought with a
cultish intensity beyond reason.
 
He
thought himself, his team above and immune to such irrational emotive
drive.
 
Yet
this warlord, Abbo Mohammed, had hijacked a yacht with Pepe’s sister
onboard.
 
To liberate Christine they
had stormed the warlords Somali compound to discover Abbo had separated her
from the other hostages.
 
Christine
was to have a role in his Dubai harem.

That was the
intel
they had.

Christine was their motivation
and each hour she was held hostage would push them closer to the edge.
 
Cameron was not surprised by Pepe’s
reflex, entering the room to find Christine serving as a concubine to a
warlord, witness to her act of forced fornication.

The woman in the master room was
not Christine, or in the act of forced fornication.

Christine was not in the suite
and she had not been with the harem.

Their self made mission had a
primary objective of infiltration and exfiltration of one primary target,
Christine Laroque.
 
Now the mission
had taken a turn.

* * *
* *

Abbo’s Suite, Burj Khalifa Level
105, Dubai

Abbo Mohammed sat propped
against his headboard.
 
A crimson
stream trickled from the center of his forehead where the muzzle of Pepe’s MP-5
had broken the skin.

“What do you think you are
doing,” said Abbo, the baritone of his voice resonating with contempt.

Cameron lifted a pillow from the
side of the massive bed, “Here, you can cover yourself up.”

“Does my manhood make you feel
inferior?”
 
Abbo shot Cameron a
judging leer.
 
“Good.
 
I feel no shame.
 
You should have shame.
 
Thieves in the night, and you, Cameron
Kincaid, I see you beneath your mask.
 
You think you can steal from
me?
”

“We aren’t here to steal,” said
Cameron.
 
He dropped the pillow.

“No matter,” said Abbo, his
voice confident and deep.
 
“You will
not leave alive.
 
My men will never
let you leave.”

Pepe had composed himself.
 
“They are all dead.”

“You think the men in other room
and the hall are the only soldiers that protect me.
 
You are foolish.
 
I have men downstairs that will be
arriving any moment to take your heads.”

“Also dead,” said Pepe.

Abbo furled his brow.
 
“You play.
 
You will see.”

“The tall one, the two skinny
men
,
the one with the scar?
 
Dead, dead, dead, and dead, and your
driver too, oui, he is also dead.”

“That is impossible,” said Abbo.

“No,” said Pepe.
 
“Far from impossible.”
 
He produced a knife from the inside of
his jumpsuit.
 
“I cut their throats
one by one.”