She didn’t spend much longer in the water. She pulled on the shirt, turned around and walked towards him. She stopped to pick up the trousers a little unsteadily, pulled them on, rolling down the waist to shorten and tighten them.
‘Sorry, no shoes,’ he said. He looked at the welts on her neck and arms. She had taken a beating. He suddenly felt impressed by her. She had suffered enormously, in a way he could never really understand, but there she was, standing before him, unsteady, yet with a determined look in her eye.
‘How do you feel?’ he asked, grasping for something to say. ‘We need to walk on.’
She looked at the ground, into the distance. Then at him.
‘I can carry you for a bit,’ he said, his guilt not fully receded.
She shook her head. ‘I can walk,’ she said, her voice shaky. She looked around again. ‘Where are we?’
‘East of the town. About six kilometres.’
‘East?’ She looked confused.
‘South a kilometre and then east.’
‘Away from the sea.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Aren’t we going to find a boat?’
‘Not yet.’
She looked at him questioningly.
‘I want you to take me to the Al-Shabaab camp,’ he said.
Her gaze remained firmly on him. She seemed to be thinking, formulating a response.
‘I have to get my friend,’ Stratton said. ‘Don’t you want to help your friend too?’
She looked away again, like the question bothered her. ‘How can we do that?’ she asked. ‘The camp will have many fighters.’
‘I have to at least try,’ he said.
‘They are not like the pirates. They are more vigilant. More dangerous.’
He looked at her, waiting for her to narrow down her options until they equalled his.
She came to a conclusion. ‘Is that why you rescued me?’
He did not need to answer her. It was obvious enough.
‘I am thankful for that,’ she decided.
‘Where is the camp?’
She considered the question for a moment before returning to the water. She crouched to fill her palms and take a drink. Stratton felt his own thirst return and followed her lead.
‘Did you see a road?’ she asked.
‘We followed it. It’s just over there, at the top of the ridge.’
‘It goes south?’
‘Looks like it.’
She looked at the lake and towards the sea, comparing it to a map inside her head. ‘The camp is south from here. Ten kilo metres from the coast.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘No.’
She sat down again. Stratton watched as she tore the bottom of both trouser legs off. But instead of throwing the cloth away, she wrapped the pieces around her feet and tied them off.
She stood up, still a little wobbly. ‘You think you can rescue your friend?’
‘I have to try,’ he said.
‘And if you cannot?’
The answer to that was obvious enough.
‘I think it’s only fair I should know the plan,’ she said.
Stratton felt like he had to accept her as something of a partner. She had earned that much. He also had an urge to trust her. She was an enemy in some ways, but she was also in the same hole he was. They were after the same thing.
‘The same idea you had. The ship we were on is going to be released. My plan is to recce the Al-Shabaab camp. Whatever happens, from there we head back to the ship. We climbed on to it once, we can do it again.’
The girl nodded as she considered the various phases he had proposed. ‘OK.’
Stratton looked to the skies. The eastern horizon was growing lighter. ‘It’ll be dawn soon,’ he said. ‘We should go.’
He headed up the incline and looked back. She was following. He found the road again and they took it south. He set off at an anxious pace but after a short distance realised he was alone and stopped to look back for her.
She was still trudging along. ‘Give me a moment to loosen up,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep up with you.’
Stratton didn’t doubt it and he moved off. Her determination grew and within a short distance she was walking alongside of him. He gave her a look. She looked right back at him.
The road followed the waterline but on higher ground and for the most part about a hundred metres away from the river. As they walked on, he began to see the strangeness of it all, walking through the Somali countryside with a Chinese Secret Service agent, and a woman to boot, kidnapped by pirates, her ordeal. Then he thought of Hopper and his mind came into focus.
‘I’m thirsty,’ she said.
He was too and they left the track and headed down the slope towards a line of thick scrub. They reached a wall of dense bushes and pushed through. On the other side the ground had levelled out and the roots of the plants had no doubt found the water table. After several metres of difficult progress, they came to the water’s edge.
‘You feeling OK?’ he asked her as she took a drink.
‘Yes.’
‘I want to get to the camp before daybreak,’ he said.
‘I understand,’ she said.
They pushed back through the bushes as quietly as they could, on to the road and walked along it at a faster pace. She was as good as her word and kept up with him.
They had been walking for just over an hour when they saw headlights. They were coming on fast behind them.
‘This way,’ he hissed as he ran off the road on to the plain and down into a small hollow.
She lay beside him. Both watched the vehicle come on.
The sound of the engine eventually broke through the quiet. It was an old truck. It jolted and creaked right by them, swerving left and right around the deep potholes. It kept on going, heading up the plateau, then disappearing over a rise. Stratton got to his feet. The girl stood too and they started walking.
It took a little while to get to the rise. He slowed as they approached and then he ducked just before the top, aware that he would be silhouetted against the skyline. She did the same, stopping alongside him. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing yet.’
They could see the truck again a long way off, bouncing along the road, disappearing at times behind the scrub. Finally it drove over a bigger rise and they could only hear it and see glimpses of its reflected light beams.
Stratton stood upright and looked beyond the point where the truck had disappeared. The wind blew gently into their faces. They could hear the branches of a rugged, stumpy shrub scraping together.
‘It’s stopped,’ he said.
‘I can still hear it.’
‘Yes. But it’s stopped.’ He stepped over the crumbling rocks of the plateau and down the other side of the rise.
The girl followed but more cautiously, watching where she placed her cloth-covered feet. The horizon grew brighter by the minute. The breeze had been fairly cool throughout the night but they knew it would get hotter as the sun came up.
They reached the bottom of the slope and began up the crest of another. It was hard to tell the distance to the top in the near darkness.
When he reached it he lay on his belly to look down the other side.
She did the same.
They were looking into a large depression between the ridge they were on and another far beyond. As the ground descended into the basin he could see the way the dark, stunted trees huddled together. An encampment sat in the middle of the wood. He saw several fires and a sprinkling of oil and electric-powered lamps. Men’s voices drifted up to them on the breeze. They could hear a generator, or perhaps more than one.
It didn’t look like a village. It could have been nomads. They tended to use trucks as much as animals to carry their possessions. But it was too close to where the girl described the Al-Shabaab camp as being. ‘What do you think?’ he said.
‘Do you think we’re ten kilometres from the beach?’ she
said.
He looked back at the ocean to be sure. ‘I’d say so.’
‘Then this must be the right place.’
‘They might have sentries on the high ground,’ he said, looking along the ridge and beyond. But he would be surprised if there were any. In fact he would have been impressed.
‘What now?’ she asked.
He could tell she was uncomfortable being there and wanted to get it over with. ‘I need to get a closer look. We should move in now before it gets any lighter, see if we can find somewhere to observe from. If we can’t find anywhere, we’ll have time to get back.’
They heard a cry of some sort from the camp. It had a rhythm to it, like a chant. He recognised it. The Muslim call to prayer just before dawn.
‘Do everything I say. If I go to ground, if I stop, you do the same and without a noise or a word,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I will.’
He gripped the rifle and, keeping as low to the ground as he could, stepped over the crest and down the other side. The girl moved as he moved, her eyes either on him or the camp.
Stratton stepped slowly and quietly towards a jumble of rocks halfway down the incline and a stone’s throw from the first line of trees that formed the outer perimeter of the camp.
They crouched against the rocks and waited, listening. The voices became louder but he could not understand a word.
‘I don’t like this position,’ he said quietly, looking around them. ‘It will be exposed when the sun comes up.’ He spotted a rocky outcrop further along the plateau with more of an overlook to the camp.
He set off, keeping low, careful not to disturb the loose ground. If he could hear them, they would be able to hear him. The girl followed a short distance behind.
A loud voice suddenly cut through the encampment and Stratton and the girl dropped to the ground. Stratton’s first thought was that they had been seen. They waited but they heard only the distant voice rising and falling. He guessed it was the cleric exhorting his congregation. They crept to the rock formation using their hands to climb. Once there, Stratton felt satisfied with the cover. The boulders pretty much provided all-round protection from view if they kept well down. They waited again, on edge. If anyone had seen them, the action would soon follow. The minutes creaked by. Stratton felt happy enough that they hadn’t been seen.
As the wind shifted a strange whirring sound became apparent. It was faint but constant. After checking around, he decided it was coming from a dip further along the slope. As he looked he thought he could just about see a rhythmic movement beyond the ridge-line, like something spinning. To get a proper look at it, he’d have to expose himself in the open so he decided not to, focusing instead on the camp.
He could see several long, low wooden huts, a single mud one with a sloping roof and dozens of makeshift shelters scattered through the trees, the ground littered with trash. Further inside he saw half a dozen Toyota pick-ups and a couple of large flatbed trucks.
As the first rays of sunlight broke over the horizon the insistent beats of the spinning, whirring object seemed to get louder. He still couldn’t make it out and he decided to risk stretching his head a little above the rocks. As soon as he did so he knew what it was and ducked back down. The camp had a portable radar system, dispelling any possibility of it being inhabited by a bunch of nomads.
These people were not small players to be operating that kind of hardware. And they obviously had reason to fear an air attack. And if they were prepared to be alerted to an air attack, there was every chance that they had some level of air defence system beyond rifles and pistols.
As he examined the camp, several men carrying rifles and supplies of some kind emerged from the wood and began to walk up the incline towards the radar installation. Stratton studied them as they came on. By the time they were halfway to the radar, he had identified that two of them were carrying rocket launchers across their backs.
Stratton looked to the girl to see if she had recognised the hardware.
She was watching them intently. ‘Those could be ours,’ she said.
Stratton followed the men up the slope to a high point among the rocks.
As the sun fully exposed itself, he checked their position once again, in particular the route out. They had two broad escape options: uphill or downhill. If they headed up the plateau into the parched, treeless hills, they had little chance of finding cover. The ideal route out was back the way they had come and down to the river. The thick scrub along the bank would provide cover. At least the Toyotas wouldn’t be able to navigate the riverbank.
The main problem with the location was its exposure to the sun. He didn’t want to spend all day there, especially without water. So once he had formulated a plan, he decided to risk the move back to the first ridge and then down to the river.
The scope of the task to rescue Hopper looked daunting. The camp was large and probably held anywhere between a hundred and three hundred men. Which made any attempt to get closer during the day out of the question. To get inside at night would require a diversion of some kind. Ideally, something that forced the jihadists to evacuate the camp. Like a fire. The fuel storage. A serious explosion such as the weapons arsenal going up would be better. The rockets would make a big enough bang and solve a large part of the problem at the same time. But just how he was going to achieve any of that he did not know.
Stratton glanced at the girl to see how she was doing. She was holding her head in her hands and looking exhausted. He decided to wait a couple more hours and gain more information if possible before making an attempt to get to the river. When darkness fell he would return alone and do what he could to get Hopper.
As he sat thinking about the problem, it occurred to him once again he shouldn’t even be attempting it. The operations room back in Poole would be dead against it. He would be laughed at for even considering it. And if he died trying, he would be labelled a fool. His final epitaph. Someone back home would find out one day. The truth always surfaced eventually. The pair of them should get out of there right there and then, head for the coast and concentrate on getting themselves on to that cargo ship. It was the smart option to be sure.
Stratton reached out and touched the girl’s shoulder. She snapped out of her daze and looked at him. He could see her better in the new light. Her face was bruised, her eyes and lips swollen. Scabs had formed at the sides of her mouth. Welts striped her neck and shoulders. He could only imagine the wounds on the rest of her body.
‘Let’s head to the river,’ he said. ‘Get some rest.’
Her relief at the news was evident. She nodded.
As they began to move a cry went up from within the wooded encampment. A roar of men’s voices answered it.
The cleric shouted again. The faithful responded as one.
The shouting became unstructured, punctuated by angry voices raised as if in demonstration. It sounded like the congregation was moving through the camp. Stratton could make out figures among the parched, stunted bushes and tall spindly pine trees. He saw a large gathering of men, pressed together and moving as a single mass right towards them. The mob emerged from the wood into a level area at the foot of the hillside directly below Stratton and the girl.
There must have been a couple of hundred of them, all bearded, many with headdresses, most with AK-47 assault rifles slung over their shoulders.
Stratton and the girl instinctively pressed themselves further into the ground while watching the gathering through the gaps in the rocks around them.
The mob was close, little more than fifty metres from them. Stratton gripped his rifle in readiness. The girl tensed, her breathing short as fear enveloped her. The edge of the mob mounted the slope but stopped not far up it. The men’s attention wasn’t focused on the plateau, it was focused on the clearing. They kept shouting and formed a broad circle around the space.
Some men came striding through the wood hauling two figures between them and the mob parted to let them
into the clearing. They threw the figures on the ground.
It was Hopper and the Chinese girl’s partner.
They had their hands tied behind their backs and rag blindfolds over their eyes. They stayed where they landed in the dirt.
A warrior, wearing a black turban, pushed his way through the jeering crowd into the clearing and harshly pulled Hopper up on to his knees.
Stratton recognised the fighter. It was the Saudi.
Sabarak shouted something at the crowd, almost taunting them. He released Hopper who remained on his knees, although he appeared unsteady. Like a man who had taken a severe beating. Sabarak grabbed the Chinese man by the hair and brutally yanked him up on to his knees. Another taunt to the crowd, which responded with a roar.
‘Allahu Akbar!’ Sabarak called to the skies, his arms outstretched.
‘Allahu Akbar!’ the crowd replied.
Stratton felt utterly helpless as he watched his partner, grimy and filthy, on his knees. Hopper’s face was bloody and swollen yet he remained upright and proud.
The Saudi addressed the crowd, who hushed enough to hear his ranting. They cheered each time he paused. Stratton felt surprised at how the man had achieved such an influential position so quickly. After a thunderous and climactic ovation, the mass of men went almost silent. The far side of the crowd from Stratton, nearest the trees, began to shuffle and part as a single voice cried out beyond them. A man, carrying a long, ornately ceremonial sword extended above his head, pushed through those not quick enough to move out of his way.
He entered the clearing and marched around the inner perimeter formed by the wall of men, angrily and enthusiastically brandishing the long thin blade.
The two prisoners remained where they were a few metres apart, oblivious to the swordsman parading around them.
Stratton glanced at the girl who was watching in cold horror. She looked at him for a second then back to the crowd.
If Hopper was about to be executed, Stratton could see no way out for him, not without including himself in the day’s list of attendees. The man with the sword walked the circle a couple of times, stirring up the mob. Fighters stepped forward to spit on the two prisoners, men they didn’t know and knew nothing about. Any one of the mob would have happily taken on the responsibility of killing the two foreigners. They didn’t care that the two had families, friends, people who loved them. All the mob possessed was pure hate. They borrowed it, taught it or imbibed it from their own friends and families.
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