by Jason Kasper
When Jais rounded the corner of a building and stopped in his tracks before kneeling and peering around to the right, I knew he’d found what we were looking for .
I approached and kneeled beside him, peeking at an old Hilux pickup parked beside a long, single-story structure .
He whispered, “Cover me while I boost it .”
I crossed to the opposite side of the intersection and set down my parachute kit bag, then knelt at the corner of the building to look down the street beyond the vehicle. Jais was now placing his kit bag and combat pack into the bed of the truck .
Then he smashed his rifle’s buttstock into the driver’s side window, and I heard the faint crunch of glass before he opened the door and disappeared inside. As I scanned the streets to provide cover for Jais while he hotwired the vehicle, my thoughts turned to my interview for the job that we were now trying to salvage from the ashes of a chance weather event .
I had unquestionably heard the words of my former teammates in the interview room, near-verbatim quotes from a single meeting the day after I killed Saamir. Those words were spoken by a synthesized voice that I couldn’t conclusively identify, and while Jais had been the one to appear from behind the mirror, he hadn’t used that same language since then .
I felt confident he hadn’t been the one to interview me, lending further credence to my belief that either Boss, Matz, or Ophie had survived and was watching unseen yet allowing me to live. Only the team would have known what was said that day—no one else was present. Yet I began to feel an inexplicable, nagging suspicion that there was someone else I wasn’t considering .
As my thoughts marched toward the next corner of rumination, I heard the truck engine fire to life .
The pickup drove forward and stopped beside me. I grabbed the handles of my parachute kit bag in one hand, rose, and tossed it into the bed before trotting to the passenger side .
Opening the door, I unslung my combat pack and set it between my legs as I slid onto the cloth seat. I rested my rifle next to the pack and eased the door shut as Jais pulled forward, accelerating down the muddy street without headlights .
Erasing the interview from my mind, I said, “Well, this is off to a promising start .”
Jais drove from an awkward position, working a stick shift while holding his head high. His mouth was partly open as he tried to angle his night vision binoculars toward the windshield at the best angle. “Buttery smooth all around,” he said. “Basically, everything to our south and east is ocean, and we couldn’t be farther from safe territory, which is either the government-controlled region near Mogadishu or across the Kenyan border in the opposite direction. And this truck only has a quarter tank of gas .”
“We’ve got the satellite phone. You could call in the helicopter .”
He shook his head. “I’ll use the phone to send a report, but that’s it. If I call to request a bailout before we get the case, the Outfit won’t forgive us .”
“We landed a hundred miles off target due to factors completely outside our control,” I insisted. “Most would consider this an emergency, if not an outright goddamn catastrophe. I think requesting a little assistance is understandable .”
“You’re wrong. They’d send shooters on the bird to make sure we paid for quitting on them and then leave our bodies for the enemy or the hyenas, whichever came first .”
“Lovely. So what do you want to do ?”
“You’ve got a map, David. You tell me .”
“This isn’t the time for the Socratic method, Jais .”
“I disagree completely. Let’s see how you handle pressure.” Jais turned left onto the first road heading north out of Kismayo .
I pulled the waterproof map case from my cargo pocket and unfolded it in my lap as I flipped my night vision device upward on its mount. I turned on a red light, holding the lens just over the map’s surface .
I checked my GPS and began examining the map. “The road we’re on heads northeast along the coast for about ten miles until it hits the village of Goobweyn at the outlet of the Jubba. Then the road turns north along the river—we’re on the wrong side of that, by the way—and we’ve got another sixty miles to the first bridge at Jilib before we can cross to the east side of the Jubba and keep moving toward the landing zone .”
“That bridge is going to be under the control of one militia or another, guaranteed. And we’re not making it across with your milky complexion .”
“A little racist, but I’ll concede that profiling is more widely accepted here than it is back home. Perhaps you’d prefer to play swim roulette through the hippos and crocs living in the Jubba ?”
“It’s your plan now, David. Is that what you want us to do ?”
“I’d prefer to trade this car for a boat in Goobweyn .”
“What makes you think we can find a boat there ?”
“If the town’s at the outlet of the Jubba, its economy will rely at least partially on open water fishing. No one’s going to interfere with that as long as al-Shabaab or whatever militia is in charge gets their cut .”
“Good, David. What next ?”
I slid my red light across the map. “So we’ll ride the river and stop short of Jilib, drag our boat into the jungle and wait until nightfall, and then continue under night vision under the bridge and all the way up to Dujuma. We can find a car there before daybreak tomorrow and drive twenty miles east across the desert to our landing zone .”
Looking over, I saw him nodding in approval. “That’s the ticket. Traveling by river will be a lot faster than driving along these shit roads, and once we hit contested territory we’d be running into militia checkpoints anyway .”
“Will the reception party still be at the landing zone by the time we make it there ?”
“The Outfit will be able to relay our updates, but we’re well outside the terms of the agreement. Whether the reception party chooses to come find us or not doesn’t really matter—we’ve got no other options .”
I rotated my night vision back down as Jais piloted the vehicle forward into the night. The muddy road extended endlessly to our front, appearing now in muddled hues of green, and neither of us spoke again for a long time after that .
* * *
We neared Goobweyn shortly after six in the morning, the sky finally brightening above us. While we’d taken advantage of the drive to eat and restore our strength as much as possible, after a long, sleepless night there was a certain rejuvenation that could only be achieved upon seeing the sunrise .
Unfortunately, the daylight forced me to take the demeaning measure of donning my shemagh .
Jais said nothing as I fished out the balled mass of black and white patterned cloth from my pack, but I knew a droll comment was coming as I struggled to arrange the cotton material into the folds I’d practiced back at the Complex. He waited until I had covered the top of my head and was wrapping the excess fabric sideways across the lower half of my face before speaking .
“Yeah,” his deep, melodic voice sang from behind the wheel, “put on that rag of obedience .”
With my voice muffled by cloth, I said, “Jais, you’re built like a fucking linebacker. Don’t act like you’re going to blend in any better .”
“I’ll blend in better than you, cracker .”
I finished tying the corners together behind my head. “Whatever. How do I look ?”
He glanced at me and then turned his eyes back to the dirt road, shaking his head. “I don’t know what the fuck you look like, David. Some kind of suburban terrorist wannabe, I guess .”
He was dressed as I was, in lightweight civilian clothes offset by an olive green canvas chest rig holding three AK magazines with grenade pouches to spare. We had chosen Israeli Galil assault rifles for their ability to reliably fire under the filthiest of conditions and, more importantly, to accept standard AK-47 magazines and 7.62 x 39mm ammunition. One could find these in abundance anywhere in the Third World .
I looked out the p
assenger window at the occasionally visible sliver of ocean along the horizon and saw it had disappeared altogether amid a broad, rolling expanse of hard-packed red dirt and scrub brush. Jais steered our truck through a bumpy right turn off the main road and onto a trail marked by little more than a set of tire tracks. Thatch and sheet metal roofs were visible through the trees to our left .
Jais said, “I’ll park by the water and walk along the river until I find the closest thing they’ve got to a speedboat. Stay with the truck, and don’t come after me unless you hear gunshots .”
“You’ve got to be kidding. It’s suicide to walk in there alone .”
“A bit farther north and I’d agree with you. But we’re ten miles outside Kismayo—this isn’t contested territory, the locals have survived this long, and I’ve got a two-inch stack of Somali shillings in my pocket that speaks louder than another guy with a rifle will .”
“All the more reason I should be there to back you up .”
“If you get close and they see you’re white, what are they going to think? They’ve had US fighters and drones flying overhead for years now. I can keep my mouth shut and give them some cash without issue, but if they see a white guy they’re going to assume we’re spies or special forces. That burns our mission, and I can’t have that. Besides, do you know how to drive a boat ?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
“Don’t blame me for that, Jais. You’re the one who picked me over the other guys that tried out .”
“I told you not to bring that up .”
“You just…you said some weird shit to me during our interview .”
“That’s enough, David.” His face turned to granite .
Unwilling to raise his suspicion any further, I fell silent .
Jais continued driving, and as the trees cleared the Jubba River appeared before us, its rippling waters extending five hundred feet to a far bank dotted with palm trees. Jais followed the trail as it turned left and paralleled the river, and then stopped the pickup as soon as the primitive village buildings were visible through the windshield. He put the transmission in neutral and cranked the parking brake, leaving the hotwired engine running as we exited the Hilux to warm air thick with the smell of seawater .
Jais reached into his combat pack in the bed to retrieve the boxy Iridium satellite phone and powered it on. He extended the antenna and dialed a programmed number, holding the phone to his ear. Adjusting my grip on the rifle, I turned my gaze east toward the ocean .
While Kismayo may have been reminiscent of a hundred other desert shitholes I had seen, Goobweyn was staggeringly beautiful .
The rising sun cast waves of shimmering sparkles across the river’s graceful curves, culminating in a golden haze where it met the Indian Ocean. Clusters of palm trees leaned perilously over the water’s edge, their fronds drifting with a warm morning breeze. The sky after the storm was a crystal, cloudless eternity rising over the earth and water, endlessly clear without a trace of precipitation .
Jais began speaking into the phone. “This is Bobcat Actual. Be advised, aircraft detour due to storm necessitated emergency bailout. Current location: vicinity of Goobweyn. Transitioning to boat for movement north on Jubba River, will establish hold-up site south of Jilib and report location prior to nightfall. Request reception party pick us up there — ”
There was a long pause before he spoke again .
“Copy all. Continuing mission, will update when able. Out .”
Collapsing the antenna, he turned off the phone and replaced it in his pack .
I said, “I didn’t like that long pause in the middle of your conversation .”
“The reception party is honoring the terms of the original agreement: pick up at the landing zone, not fifty miles away. They said the enemy presence is too strong along the river for them to come near it .”
“Maybe our bosses need to be more persuasive .”
“Don’t I know it. Get used to this, David. The Outfit is at the bottom of a very long and mysterious food chain. Now wait here and try not to look so white .”
Without another word he began walking along the shore into the village, carrying his rifle pointed barrel-down at his side .
The heat was going to be a beast to contend with, I thought as he walked away. While we weren’t standing precisely on the equator, our mission had taken us just three degrees of latitude south of it. The sun’s first rays beamed through me as if it were already midday, its stifling heat aided by the rag encompassing my head .
Looking back to the north, I saw Jais’s hand raise in a friendly greeting as distant villagers clustered on the bank to receive him. I turned in a slow circle, my thoughts now shifting to more strategic matters .
Even in our present situation, stranded a prodigious distance from our intended destination, I was haunted by the chain of thought that had begun back in Kismayo, which now seemed a world away amid the sunrise. As had so often happened since Ian recovered me from the Dominican, I began considering the identity of a possible traitor. I had weighed the likelihood of Boss, Matz, and Ophie ad nauseam—but was now plagued by the notion that someone else had been lurking in the shadows, unnoticed .
Who could I have been missing? Who else could have known what was said during a meeting that had occurred months earlier with only my teammates in attendance ?
The only answer, I realized with a gnawing sense of discomfort, was Ian .
He wasn’t present that morning, but he was the only other person with access to the house and the ability to come and go freely. In that moment, it dawned on me that the Indian wasn’t my sole source of intelligence .
Ian was .
He had provided all the information we had about the Handler and the organizations at war. After the team was killed, Ian had controlled everything I knew of the universe outside my compound in the Dominican, had supplied the notion of the survivor, and, for all I knew, had told the Indian exactly what information to feed me .
Could Ian work for the Handler ?
My mind lurched through a stomach-churning sequence of events. Boss had told me that Ian led a team of guys who worked around the clock to obtain intelligence for us, and yet we never saw any of them. The only direct contact with the Handler I’d ever witnessed was Boss answering his phone to receive the final assignment to kill the Five Heads. When Boss had ended that call, he’d said, And that was the Handler himself, not his assistant . Ian was the only one not present for that conversation, and yet he had conveniently appeared the next day with all the information we needed to march to our deaths .
The buzz-saw rhythm of a boat motor approaching from the north cut through the sound of the idling truck engine, and I looked to its source .
The craft slicing through the water toward me was a small, white and blue boat perhaps twenty feet in length. Jais stood alone at the helm, rotating the steering wheel with one hand and pulling back on the throttle with the other .
I slung my rifle and carried both combat packs down to the bank, then set them on the sand and returned to the Hilux to remove the kit bags filled with our parachute equipment and cold weather gear. After performing a final check of the cab and bed to ensure we hadn’t left anything behind, I hoisted the kit bags and shuffled toward the combat packs. By then, Jais had slowed the boat and was turning sharply toward me as the hull slid to a stop against the sand at the water’s edge .
I saw six molded plastic seats and two yellow fuel cans on the floor of the boat .
“Nice score,” I said, loading our combat packs and kit bags .
“Yeah,” Jais said. “They can buy three more of these fine vessels for what I paid for this one, so everyone came away happy .”
Pushing the hull with both arms, I took three wet steps through tepid water before leaping onto the bow and settling into a seat in front of the helm as the boat rocked. As we drifted backward, Jais increased the throttle and then turned a wide arc back the way he had come, hugging the ea
st bank as we soared northward .
To our left, slim women in burkas carried yellow jugs toward the water’s edge and a cluster of children waved to us with unintelligible shrieks. As we cruised past them, I saw a herd of a dozen or so lanky camels being driven to the water by boys with sticks and a pair of mules wandering along the bank, unsupervised. All of this whipped by in a blur before sandy shores and palm trees stretched ahead of us as the ground on either side of the river extended flat in both directions .
I pulled the shemagh down from my mouth, still considering whether Ian was under the Handler’s employ. Above the metallic whine of the motor and the wind in our faces, I called, “My first African wildlife. Not exactly a safari .”
Managing the wheel from his standing vantage point, Jais replied, “When your ass is running from a lion, you’ll miss the camels. You okay? You look like you’re getting seasick already .”
I brushed the thought of Ian from my mind. “I’m fine. Mind if I lighten the load ?”
“Go ahead .”
Grabbing one of the kit bags, I heaved it over the side of the boat. The second followed suit, splashing into the surface of the Jubba and quickly sinking out of sight. I watched the trail of our wake curving with the shape of the river, my final glimpse of ocean replaced by an arid, desolate landscape that was soon devoid of any signs of life .
7
“Put your shemagh on !”
Jais’s voice was sharp but as quiet as he could manage over the low, grumbling sound of the boat engine .
Wondering what he had spotted, I ducked my head, pulled the cloth over my face, and quickly tied it in place against the wind. Whatever havoc the tumultuous political situation had wrought in Somalia, the river remained tranquil—so far, the only signs of human life were a few decrepit fishing vessels .
In fact, the three hours we’d spent on the open water had almost been relaxing. Trees and foliage along the water provided shade from the sun’s wrath, and the speed of the boat created a warm wind that cooled our sweaty faces. We had just one hour to go before we would pull our vessel into the forest and wait for nightfall. Then, we would proceed under the first bridge at Jilib, fully expecting to reach Dujuma and steal another vehicle by daybreak before continuing toward the landing zone .
