The deserted road snaked along a wooded park as he took the turn for Vouliagmeni. He came around a sharp corner and nearly slammed into a gray Volkswagen that was parked halfway across his lane. Two men stepped out. One had a shaved head and was easily two hundred fifty pounds. The other was almost as big and was wearing a leather jacket. Jake hadn’t seen them before, but he recognized the type: thick necks, barrel chests—hard men.
They motioned for Jake to keep driving, but he spotted skid marks on the pavement and pulled to the side of the road.
Caught in the glare of his headlights, nose-down in a ditch, with its hood crumpled and windshield shattered, was Athena’s car.
The men walked menacingly toward Jake as he stepped out of the car. They were thick all around—street brawlers with the scars to prove it. The one with the shaved head shouted something in Greek and motioned for Jake to drive away.
Jake took a step back.
Shaved Head walked up to him and pushed him in the shoulder.
Jake staggered backward a few steps, and Leather Jacket once again motioned for him to leave.
“That person needs help,” Jake said in English.
The two goons exchanged a look.
“You go. We help,” said Shaved Head in thickly accented English. It wasn’t a Greek accent, though, something Eastern European.
The goon reached for Jake’s arm, and he flinched and took another step back.
The man sensed weakness and came at Jake again.
But instead of retreating, Jake stepped forward and quickly closed the distance.
It was during his first field mission for the Agency that he developed the core principle that would allow him to survive in some of the most dangerous places on earth: It was better to be the aggressor, to set the circumstances of a confrontation, than be forced to react to someone else’s plan.
Shaved Head was barely an arm’s length away when Jake pushed off his back foot and attacked the other man—unexpectedly launching a palm strike that shattered his nose.
It caught both of the ruffians by surprise.
The thug staggered backward and Jake attacked again, chopping the side of the goon’s thick neck—but it had no discernible effect. The man regained his balance and came at Jake with his hands up, trying to grapple with him.
It was a situation Jake wanted no part of. The thickset man looked as if he wrestled grizzly bears for fun. If he got Jake on the ground, it would be the end—for Jake and for Athena.
Jake kept moving sideways, keeping the thugs one behind the other to prevent them from attacking him simultaneously. He kept buying time until the one in the leather jacket pivoted toward Jake with most of his weight on his right leg.
It was an opportunity Jake couldn’t pass up.
He rotated his hips and kicked the man in the kneecap, driving his heel through the joint until the knee shattered and the goon went down, screaming in pain.
Leather Jacket was out of the fight, but the cat was out of the bag too. Jake wasn’t the easy target he’d pretended to be. Shaved Head looked at his friend lying on the ground in agony and decided that it was a condition he’d prefer to avoid, so he reached under his untucked shirt, came up with a snub nose revolver, put his finger on the trigger, and pointed it at Jake.
THIRTY-FOUR
JAKE HAD BEEN on the wrong side of guns before, and he knew there was a short window to act before the other side used the weapon to take control of the situation. He leapt forward, grabbed the man’s gun hand, and pushed it to the side.
But the thug was a thick block of muscle, with at least fifty pounds on Jake, and the snub nose revolver felt like it was clamped in a vise. The goon pulled the trigger, but the shot went into the woods. Jake used his other arm to launch three elbow strikes to the man’s temple.
The gunman staggered but held on to the weapon. He pulled the trigger a second time and the bullet ricocheted off the pavement.
The goon clamped his other hand over Jake’s and began to pry it away. There was no way Jake could hold on. The man was simply too strong.
Jake delivered a throat strike to the man’s Adam’s apple. It wasn’t a killing blow—but it was close. The man’s eyes went wide as he lurched forward, but the oxygen he needed to function wouldn’t come. Jake drove his knee up into the man’s groin several times until he dropped the weapon. A second later he collapsed on the ground, wheezing for air and writhing in pain.
Jake picked up the pistol and turned toward the ditch, looking for Athena.
But she was already out of the car and staring at the scene in the headlights of Jake’s car: him, the gun, and the two large men he’d so violently dispatched.
Her knees went weak and she collapsed.
Tires squealed as the two goons fled the scene.
Jake ran to her and gently lifted her head from the ground. A trickle of blood ran down her face.
“We need to leave now,” Jake said.
They drove to Athena’s home in his rental car. Again seizing the offensive, Jake persuaded her to call the police before the wreck was discovered. He was waiting out of sight on the terrace when two officers arrived twenty minutes later. Athena explained how she’d swerved to avoid a dog in the road and crashed the Jaguar. She didn’t have her phone, felt dizzy, and a passing motorist had offered her a ride, so she’d left the scene. She apologized and volunteered to take a sobriety test, but it was clear that she hadn’t been drinking, so the officers left without issuing a citation.
Athena washed the blood from her face and went to find Giánnis. He was watching television in the living room and she kissed him on the forehead. She smiled sadly, mourning the men who’d died aboard their ships and longing for the seemingly unlimited source of strength her father had once been. She sat next to him on the sofa and they held hands while they spoke.
She joined Jake on the terrace twenty minutes later.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“Not here. There’s too much sadness here already,” she said. “Can you get the Land Rover? I’m sorry. I’m wearing these stupid heels again.”
The gravel driveway crunched underfoot as Jake walked to the truck and brought it around. They drove in silence to the beach and Jake again parked facing the water. Athena pulled a wool blanket from the back seat and snugged it up to her neck as if to shield herself from further harm.
“You’re not with the State Department, are you?” she said quietly.
Jake stared out to sea.
“I saw what you did to those men.”
“I don’t think that was an accident,” Jake said.
“It wasn’t,” she said. An edge crept into her voice. “They were Albanian mafia—the same hoodlums who’ve been threatening my family for years. I’ve never seen those two before, but I know the type. They obviously haven’t given up.”
“You should hire professional security. Those men were dangerous.”
“My fiancé used to say that I always attracted the worst kind of men.”
“Does that include him?”
“Especially him,” she said with a smile, but it faded quickly, “but he died in a car racing accident two months before the wedding—the same week my brother disappeared. Four weeks later my mother’s cancer relapsed, and three months after that, my father had his stroke. In six months, I went from being on top of the world to being crushed under its weight.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And now all those families from the Symi,” she said. “Shattered.”
Athena left her shoes in the truck and rolled her pants up to her calves. She waded ankle deep into the surf with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Jake followed. The water was warmer than the air, and it felt good as it swirled over their feet. Neither made eye contact, choosing instead to watch the stars flicker between the clouds blowing overhead.
She walked back to the truck and sat in the passenger seat with her feet on the dashboard and her legs clutched to her chest.
Jake sat in the driver’s seat but didn’t start the motor.
They sat in silence, staring out over the Gulf. It was twenty minutes before she spoke again, barely above a whisper.
“All day, I had our operations team radio the ship about the most trivial things—minor weather updates, service issues—anything I could think of.”
She sighed.
“I deluded myself when they stopped answering,” she continued. “I kept saying that they were only having communication problems, but in my heart I knew.”
She sighed again.
“I must be cursed,” she said. “So much death.”
They sat listening to the gentle surf. A warm breeze blew in from the sea.
“Sometimes I think I know more about death than I do about life,” Jake said.
She started to say something, but stopped.
“I watched my best friend die last year,” Jake said. “He was ten feet in front of me and there was nothing I could do.”
She shook her head. “How do you deal with it?”
“I try not to think about it, but sometimes it’s all I can think about . . . I don’t know if anyone ever gets over that kind of loss, but I try to focus on the positives—what my parents meant to me, what my friend and I accomplished.”
She looked back out to sea. “Life is hard.”
“It isn’t all bad. Humans are just wired to focus on the negative. It’s our survival instinct.”
The two of them stared into the night sky, looking for light among all the blackness.
“I feel as if I’m in some nightmarish fairy tale,” she said, “living this life of ridiculous luxury while I send honorable men to their deaths.”
“It’s not your fault,” Jake said. “I pushed.”
Athena looked at him.
“That’s kind of you to say, but I have a mind of my own.”
“The choices in front of you were terrible.”
“‘The greater good’ is wonderful in theory, but not when you’re the wives and children of men who will never come home.”
“It’s an imperfect world, and we’re often forced to use violence to stop violence, but I sleep well at night knowing that I’m fighting for people who can’t help themselves. It’s what we live for that defines us.”
Athena tucked her arm inside his.
“Can you do me a favor?”
Jake nodded.
“You know who’s responsible for my brother’s death, don’t you?”
He nodded again.
“Good.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “Kill him for me.”
THIRTY-FIVE
JAKE FLEW THROUGH the night and touched down in Mogadishu at daybreak. The Ground Branch team arrived a few hours later in three vehicles. The six men, all combat veterans, were independent contractors who’d been working in a CIA Counterterrorism Center team, planning and executing operations with U.S. and African military forces. They’d been in the field for several weeks and looked it, sporting shaggy hair, scruffy beards, and heavy loadout bags filled with survival gear, surveillance equipment, clothing, and weapons.
Lots of weapons.
Though Jake was also part of the Special Activities Center, he didn’t know any of the men in the CTC pursuit team or follow normal reporting channels. More accurately, Graves didn’t follow normal reporting channels. He routinely circumvented the branch chiefs underneath him and used Jake as a singleton, out on his own, working covert missions where the risk was enormous and no trace could be left behind.
Pickens set the team up in the safe house’s family room, with sleeping bags on the floor, and Jake briefed everyone on what the Agency had learned about Yaxaas’s background, his piracy business, and his other operations in Somalia.
“You men have been in-country longer than I have,” Jake said, “so you know that most of these warlords travel with militiamen who are untrained, undisciplined, and quick on the trigger. Yaxaas isn’t going to like what we’re telling him, so don’t be surprised if it goes kinetic.”
The team leader was a five-foot, seven-inch coiled spring who went by the nickname “Clap.” Jake was skilled in the martial arts, having studied jiujitsu in college and Krav Maga while at the Agency, and he immediately recognized Clap as someone who knew how to handle himself. Every step, every movement he made, was designed for maximum tactical advantage. He was leaning against a wall, with his arms folded across his chest and a baseball cap pulled down over his tight Afro.
“Frankly,” Jake said, “the warlord’s death would not be an adverse outcome.”
“Ted said you might feel that way,” Clap said as he pushed off the wall and took a step forward, “but we’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The two men stared at each other for a few seconds until Jake laid a marked-up map of the city on the kitchen table.
“Yaxaas’s compound is heavily guarded. We’ll need to begin pattern-of-life surveillance to locate a spot outside the area where we can make contact, but—”
“He eats lunch a couple of times a week at the Liido Seafood restaurant,” Clap said. He tapped a spot on the map. “We’ll set up there in the morning.”
* * *
—
THE FIRST TWO Ground Branch men left just before sunrise, when most of Mogadishu was still asleep, and they made it to Liido Beach in under twenty minutes.
The restaurant was directly on the beach, open on three sides with only a thatched roof overhead and a kitchen in the rear. The beautiful white sand beach would have been filled with families before war and famine had devastated the country.
Today it was empty.
The Ground Branch men parked their unfortunately named Toyota Isis minivan on a side street and headed out on foot in opposite directions. Both were African American and trained to remain inconspicuous. They checked in over their communication sets from discreet observation posts flanking the restaurant, casually conducting countersurveillance sweeps on each other every half hour or so. There was little activity on the waterfront aside from the ever-present fishermen who were dragging their nets ashore and the feral cats that were scavenging through them.
The team had no idea if Yaxaas would visit the restaurant today, but at the very minimum it would be an opportunity to set up surveillance, assess security, determine ingress and egress routes, and note any CCTV cameras, private security, or government forces that could potentially interfere with their mission.
An hour later, two different Ground Branch officers rolled up in a tiny Toyota Starlet to a curbside fruit and vegetable stand. They purchased a pineapple and a few bananas while the original two rotated back to the safe house. And so it went for the next five hours, with the men constantly changing vehicles, disguises, clothing, and locations so that no one in the area would realize the intense surveillance that was being conducted.
It was nearly two p.m. when Jake got the call. Yaxaas’s armored Range Rover had just arrived, along with two pickup trucks filled with gunmen. Jake, Pickens, and the rest of the Ground Branch team loaded into the remaining vehicles and executed a plan they’d devised based on the lax posture of Yaxaas’s security, who seemed to be relying on their sheer presence to deter any threat as opposed to any tactical deployment. Most were hanging around their pickups with their weapons slung, with only two guards inside the restaurant with the principal.
The Ground Branch men converged on the location from three directions and, in a matter of seconds, had surrounded the restaurant—unnoticed by Yaxaas’s goons.
But that was about to change.
/> THIRTY-SIX
ONE OF THE Ground Branch men jammed all of the wireless communications in the area as Pickens’s SUV screeched to a halt in front of the restaurant. The team entered in full tactical gear with weapons in hand. By the time the warlord’s bodyguards even noticed, the Agency team had him surrounded and the restaurant sealed.
Yaxaas had survived as long as he had not only because he was ruthless but because he was able to make expeditious and judicious assessments of his opposition. He noted the position, posture, and equipment of the Americans—and they were unmistakably American; with their sleeves rolled up and wearing baseball caps, they could be nothing else—and decided that a firefight was not in his best interests.
He told his men to lower their weapons.
Jake stepped out of the SUV and entered the restaurant.
The pirate leader was sitting across from a younger man, slightly taller and more muscular than the warlord, and Clap identified him over the tactical radio net as the warlord’s son, Nacay. While Jake appreciated the intel, he wondered how the Ground Branch team already knew so much about the objective—and what else they might be keeping to themselves, but that conversation would have to wait, because there was a large semiautomatic pistol printing through Nacay’s untucked shirt.
“Lose the gun,” Jake said. He barely trusted the Ground Branch team; he certainly wasn’t going to let Yaxaas’s son keep a weapon.
But Nacay had not inherited his father’s calm demeanor. He leapt from his seat, but Jake was too fast for him. He caught the back of Nacay’s head, kicked his legs out from under him, and slammed his head into the table and held it there. With his other hand, Jake lifted the pistol from Nacay’s holster and pressed it against his neck.
All the guns came up again.
The warlord’s guards were shouting and swinging their weapons wildly across the restaurant as they tried to cover the better-placed Americans.
Black Flag Page 13
