Black Flag

by David Ricciardi

  Or so Jake thought.

  He’d been given a second chance to get his partner back alive.

  Whatever it took, Jake was going to make it right.

  A one-man hostage rescue was just about the most difficult thing Jake could imagine. Surveillance, intelligence gathering, and operational planning were usually handled by teams of men with deep experience, extensive training, and nearly unlimited resources. The actual raid was usually carried out by a nation’s top special operations force—groups such as America’s Delta Force or SEAL Team Six, Israel’s Sayeret Matkal, or the pioneering British SAS.

  And Jake was on his own.

  As usual.

  But it was pressure that had forged him into the weapon he’d become. He just needed a way into camp. The lightning had stopped, but so had the clouds and the heavy rains that had provided him with cover. Now with patrols scouring the hills and the machine gun nest covering the valley, crossing the clear-cut area around camp would be nearly impossible.

  He needed a way in that no one would expect.

  Something impossible.

  Maybe something crazy.

  He lay motionless, scanning the banks of the Jubba. The thirsty animals once again started to appear at dusk. At first there was only a small serval cat and a few dik-dik, cautiously approaching to take a drink, but more animals arrived as night fell, including a lesser kudu that appeared from the plains and bounded into the river.

  The current was flowing swiftly from all of the runoff, and the antelope made slow progress as it tried to cross to the near side.

  Jake peered through the night vision scope atop his rifle.

  Unlike the greater kudu he’d seen before, the lesser species was maybe 150 pounds and three feet tall at the shoulder, with stripes on its hide and patches on its neck to camouflage it from predators.

  It was perfect.

  Jake snugged the rifle stock into his shoulder as the antelope approached the near bank. The shot would be heard by everyone in the area as the bullet broke the sound barrier, but Jake had learned many years earlier that pinpointing the source of a single gunshot was exceedingly difficult—especially with a suppressor—but a follow-up shot would give his position away.

  Success would depend on a single cold-bore shot, from a rifle he’d never fired, that had been sitting in the rain for days.

  Jake pressed his cheek against the stock, exhaled, and disengaged the safety.

  The kudu shifted its weight to its rear legs as it prepared to leap out of the water.

  Jake fired.

  The round caught the antelope just behind the ear. It fell back into the water and disappeared below the riverbank.

  The nearest patrol stirred briefly but soon returned to their routine in the absence of any further noise or commotion.

  Jake lifted himself onto his elbows, moved forward a few inches, and remained motionless for several seconds. There was no sign that he’d been seen by Yaxaas’s men, and he crawled a few more inches toward his objective. Even in the darkness, it took nearly an hour to cover the one hundred yards to the banks of the Jubba, where a wide bend in the river protected the camp’s western edge like a moat.

  The dead kudu was fifty yards downstream, caught in the riverbend.

  Jake hauled the downed animal onshore and into a stand of reeds. He pulled the karambit from his vest and skinned the antelope from stern to stem, removing its legs and dumping the innards into the fast-moving water. After rinsing the head and hide, he lashed it to his back and wore it like a helmet and a cape.

  Then, with the machine gun nest above him, the camp’s guards in front of him, and the patrols in the hills all around him, Jake started crawling on his hands and knees.

  A sharp-eyed lookout with a night scope would have spotted the ruse in a second, but Jake had seen dozens of antelope since arriving in Dujuma and Yaxaas’s men had undoubtedly seen thousands. He was counting on the guards seeing the kudu’s distinctive spiral horns and dismissing it out of habit.

  Otherwise, he’d be dead.

  Jake moved across the clear-cut zone, briefly lowering his head to mimic nibbling on some grass, and stopped behind the stockade fence, where he was shielded from view.

  With the karambit on his vest and a suppressed .45-caliber H&K pistol in a drop-leg holster, he ditched the kudu hide and scaled the fence using the same knotted line he’d used before. From atop the fence he could see that most of Yaxaas’s men were working under the lights in the center of camp, rinsing the warlord’s SUV and the delivery van with buckets of water. The building holding Pickens was twenty yards away, so close that Jake could almost touch it.

  He dropped into camp, drew the pistol, and heard a strange noise behind him.

  At first he thought it was thunder, once again echoing through the hills, but the skies were clear and the sound was too steady and too rhythmic to be thunder. An uneasy feeling overtook him as it grew louder and louder until it was deafening. Jake pressed himself to the ground and looked up, just in time to see a helicopter roar by a hundred feet overhead.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  JAKE SWITCHED ON his night vision goggles as the helicopter skimmed the nearby hilltops. It was the MD-520 he’d seen at Mogadishu airport, but with benches mounted to its sides. Strapped onto the benches were men with helmets, goggles, and sniper rifles.

  The helo flew a wide orbit around the valley while the snipers scanned the ground below. Jake realized that it was the same helicopter Yaxaas used to seize the tankers, and the men on the benches were the highly trained ex-military marksmen that he’d heard about.

  Jake crawled back to the wall as more of the warlord’s men poured into the courtyard.

  A gunshot echoed through the hills as the helicopter flew another loop around the valley. One of the snipers had fired his weapon. Out of the corner of his eye, Jake noticed one of the goats tumble through the air and land on its side, dead.

  It was a spectacular shot—from a moving aircraft, against a small target, at night, and at least fifty of Yaxaas’s militiamen surrounded the helicopter as it landed in the center of camp. A few of the men fired their rifles into the air once the helo was on the ground.

  Jake wouldn’t be rescuing Pickens tonight.

  He’d be lucky to make it out alive.

  He looked around carefully, making a detailed mental map of the camp, and climbed over the wall before dropping down outside. Jake tied the kudu hide on his back and crawled back across the kill zone toward the hills. He moved slowly—painfully so for a man on whom so much depended—until he was back at his original observation post.

  Jake put the rifle to his shoulder and scanned the camp. Dozens of armed men were circulating inside the walls. The helicopter crew was folding its rotors while another group of men finished rinsing the warlord’s car and the delivery van.

  The delivery van . . .

  Emblazoned on its side was the name and logo of the popular Caafi brand of bottled water. It was one of the largest suppliers in Mogadishu—and it was owned by a Hawiye businessman. Even a few cases tainted with a weaponized virus had the potential to spread it throughout the entire country.

  Strapped to Jake’s pack was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and two warheads. He’d originally set up one hundred yards from camp, but the patrols and the terrain had forced him back another three hundred yards. It was technically within range for the RPG-7, but Jake had never fired one, and anything less than a direct hit on the bioagent would simply disperse it into the atmosphere, leaving the men in camp, including Pickens, to become the first victims in a cycle of infection that would spread throughout the country once they’d returned to the capital city of Mogadishu.

  Using the RPG from four hundred yards was off the table. He needed to be closer.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS NEARLY three a.m. by the
time he reached the dirt bike.

  The motorcycle started after a few kicks. Jake rode under night vision goggles, with the rifle strapped to the bike, his pack on his back, and the pistol strapped to his thigh. High grasses brushed against his legs and rodents scurried from his path as he navigated a series of game trails to the paved road on the outskirts of Dujuma.

  Jake stopped to check his map and cross-check his wrist-mounted GPS. The dirt road to Yaxaas’s compound was a mile north of his position. He sat for a moment, caught a whiff of the motorcycle’s two-stroke engine idling beneath him, and visualized the plan he’d devised. It was a plan born of increasing desperation, one that would depend on skill, determination, and a tremendous amount of luck.

  He set off, riding no faster than fifteen miles per hour to minimize the noise. While the grassy hills would absorb much of the sound, Jake was going on the offensive, and that necessitated complete tactical surprise. He needed to hit his enemy when they felt safest, when their guard would be lowest, and to have any chance of success, he would have to achieve his objective before Yaxaas’s superior forces could organize and react.

  Jake stopped at the entrance to the camp’s access road. The main gate was a mile in, at the end of a twisting single-lane road that had been cut through the valley. The road was a death trap, with steep sides and the machine gun nest covering the final approach to camp.

  Jake turned off the road, dropped a satchel in the tall grass, and headed into the hills, riding up increasingly steep slopes. Several times he threaded his way through narrow ravines or cut switchbacks across the hills until he’d reached his destination. He shut down the bike and hiked the last hundred yards to a location he’d noted on the map.

  He crawled up the side of the hill with his rifle laid across his forearms. The land smelled of dirt and grass and wildflowers that were already blooming from the rains.

  Still prone at the summit, Jake raised the rifle, switched on the night scope, and scanned the area. Off to the left, hidden behind a hill, lay the machine gun nest and the camp. To his right, obstructed by other hills, lay Dujuma.

  But Jake hadn’t come for the view.

  What he wanted was right in front of him.

  He took his pack and climbed down the hillside. Dawn was two hours away—and he had work to do.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  THE SUN HAD just risen above the horizon when Jake climbed back to the hilltop. His work in the valley had been productive but taken longer than expected. He applied fresh camo to his face, tucked fresh grass into his hat, and settled in behind the gun. The road was sixty feet beneath him and shaped like a giant letter V. To his left was a straightaway, directly under him was a sharp corner, and to his right was another straightaway.

  There wasn’t much left for him to do, but wait.

  With the rainstorm gone and the skies clear, the temperature soared quickly into the high nineties, along with the humidity. Jake lay prone in the grass under a majestic old leadwood tree, whose barren branches would break up his form on the ground. Aside from the buzzing of insects and the occasional screech of a distant monkey, the scene was quiet.

  Nearly twenty-four hours later, it was just as quiet.

  It was just before daybreak when a familiar sound woke him from a catnap. It was the helicopter’s turbine engine spooling up.

  A shot of adrenaline coursed through Jake’s veins and he was instantly hyper-alert. As before, the success of the mission would hinge on the events of the next few minutes—it was the nature of being a solo operator. There was no second line of defense if Jake were to die. The helicopter was the single greatest threat he faced and he had no control over it.

  Not directly, anyway.

  He switched on his NVGs and watched the helo lift into the air above camp. It flew slowly, making no more than five or ten knots. It meant that Yaxaas wasn’t moving the biowarfare agent by air—otherwise the helicopter would have flown directly to Mogadishu—which was good news.

  But it also meant that the helicopter was flying convoy protection for whatever ground vehicle was moving the virus, which meant the snipers would be scanning every inch of the area looking for someone like Jake, which was not so good news.

  He watched the aircraft come closer until he could clearly make out the snipers with their legs dangling over the skids and their rifles slung over their shoulders. Three sets of headlights came around the corner to his left, bouncing slowly over the rutted dirt road. In front was Yaxaas’s Range Rover, followed by the delivery truck and a pickup filled with gunmen.

  The helo had closed to within a hundred yards. In another fifty yards, the helicopter’s rotor wash would flatten the tall grass and the snipers would spot him.

  The fate of the goat in camp left little doubt as to what would happen next.

  Jake flexed his hand as the helicopter loomed closer—forcing himself to be patient. He could clearly see the snipers with their weapons up, sweeping the ground, searching for targets.

  It was nearly overhead when he squeezed the remote firing device. Half a mile away, where the camp road met the paved road, the coded radio signal was received and an electrical impulse triggered a pair of blasting caps—each about the size of a cigarette—which in turn detonated the four blocks of British PE8 plastic explosives that Jake had left in the satchel. The explosion sent a tower of flames and a column of smoke rising into the air.

  The helicopter roared past to investigate.

  But the sound of the departing helo was quickly replaced by the throaty growl of the Range Rover’s supercharged V8 engine.

  Jake grabbed a second actuator and paced the SUV’s approach.

  Three, two, one . . .

  He pulled the trigger.

  A fraction of a second later, another ten blocks of PE8 exploded in a brilliant flash, a violent pressure wave, and a deafening blast.

  A cloud of dust rose into the air where the Range Rover had been.

  The SUV was literally blown off the road at thirty miles per hour. It fishtailed wildly and nearly slammed into the hillside, but the warlord’s wheelman knew his trade. He let off the gas, turned into the slide, and got his vehicle back under control. The supercharged V8 snarled once again, the run-flat tires bit into the ground, and the big SUV launched itself back onto the dirt road. Jake looked into the distance, watched the taillights disappear around the corner, and muttered to himself.

  Motherfucker.

  EIGHTY

  BUT THERE WAS no time for mourning.

  The delivery van had been right behind the SUV. It was inching through the shallow crater made by the IED and was already halfway up the opposite side. The pickup truck filled with gunmen was right on its bumper, laying on the horn and practically pushing it down the road.

  Jake got to his feet, lifted the RPG out of the grass, and fired.

  The pickup disappeared. Dead men flew through the night like chunks of lava from an erupting volcano.

  Jake reloaded the RPG.

  He was thirty yards from the delivery truck—a can’t-miss shot, even for a novice—but he didn’t know for sure if the warhead would burn hot enough to destroy the weaponized bioagent or if the explosion would simply disperse the virus into the air, infecting him and anyone else who visited the site.

  There was only one way to destroy it for sure.

  He shifted his aim to a spot ten feet in front of the delivery truck and fired again.

  A crater exploded in the dirt. The front of the truck was shredded, its windshield shattered and blown in. Smoke rose from the engine compartment.

  Jake ran to the dirt bike. He had a minute, maybe two, to finish the job before the helicopter returned—call it a hundred seconds. He kicked the bike to life and sped down to the road at top speed, skidding to a halt in front of the delivery van. There were two men in the front seat wearing the sky blue uniforms of the bottled wa
ter company. They were dazed, and their faces were peppered with fragments of glass, but they were conscious. Jake recognized them as one of the patrols he’d seen guarding the hills around camp.

  Jake drew the pistol from his leg holster and punched two pairs of .45-caliber holes through the windshield to ensure the men would never make their intended delivery.

  He leaned the bike against the van. For all the violence that had occurred, the scene was strangely quiet. The smoldering pickup truck and the dead gunmen were silent. Only the soft idle of the dirt bike and the distant thrum of the helicopter penetrated the dawn air.

  The van’s rear doors hung at odd angles, partially blown from their hinges by the force of the RPG. Jake pried them open and hauled himself inside. Easily five hundred cases of bottled water were stacked in front of him, shredded by shrapnel. Water was everywhere—in the air, on his hands, running across the floor, and dripping from the ceiling.

  Jake had been inoculated against anthrax and everything else the U.S. government had vaccines for, but a weaponized virus was a different animal altogether. His chances of survival would be next to zero if it had already been mixed into the bottles.

  But Jake didn’t have time to ponder his own fate. He heard the pitch of the helicopter’s rotor change as it turned around. At most he had sixty seconds before it was on him.

  He knocked over several cases of water and found what he was looking for tied down in the center of the refrigerated van.

  It was a large black case with heavy-duty latches, airtight seals, and a biohazard logo.

  Jake had known that the black market for arms in Africa was robust ever since he’d joined the Agency, but still he’d been stunned when Pickens had shown him the weapons he’d accumulated in the safe house basement. Jake was on board with the mission—supporting CIA’s African partners and getting dangerous arms out of the hands of terrorists and warlords—but it was still disturbing to know that anyone with the means to pay for it could acquire such a wide range of destructive devices . . . until Jake had learned of the bioweapon.