Max looked behind them. The Eldorado was following, but its low-slung chassis kept bottoming out on the humps, and sparks flew from the underside of the car. Before they had covered a mile, the Eldorado came to a halt and gave up the chase, but just a few hundred yards behind came the Toyota pickup.
The Toyota slowed just enough to pick up the leader of the gang, Abdulsatter and his sidekick Wasama, who pulled themselves up into the truck bed and loaded their sub machine guns. The men in the Nissan would not be allowed to escape. They would die the death of infidels; slow and painful.
It was pitch black now, and Todd could see the headlights of the Toyota closing on them. It struck him that the Toyota driver had probably travelled this route many times. They needed an advantage of their own. According to the satnav, they were running almost parallel with the main road, which lay about seven hundred yards to their left. As they took the next bend, Todd killed the lights and struck off across the desert as the darkness enveloped them.
“This is madness, Todd! We could hit anything out here!” Max complained, while knowing that it was their only chance. The Nissan bounced over dunes, rocks and fallen trees, but it ploughed on relentlessly. Max took hope from the fact that the Toyota had carried on along the road, chasing a shadow. He hoped that they would be safely back on the main road before the Toyota driver realised his error. His hope was short lived; red brake lights shone in the distance, followed by white reversing lights and then headlights once more heading their way. Todd flicked the Nissan’s headlights back on. The ruse had failed; they might as well see what they were going to hit.
The road was just yards away when Todd saw the ditch ahead, illuminated in the beam of the dipped headlights. There was no way they could cross it, as the ditch was too deep. He braked hard, then reversed back and spun the wheel to run parallel with the ditch, losing a lot of ground to the Toyota in the process. Two hundred yards ahead the ditch levelled out, and there was access to the main road, but the Toyota was heading for the same gap, and it was travelling on firmer ground.
There seemed to be only one course of action open to them, and so Todd aimed the Nissan at the gap and pressed the pedal to the metal. The Nissan responded, arriving at the gap in the ditch at the same time as the Toyota. There was a huge crunching of metal as the vehicles came together in a sickly ballet of carnage. Panels screamed as they tore, and lights and fittings flew through the air. The Nissan hit a hump and took off. The two men held on tight as the vehicle went airborne and then landed on paved road, bouncing them violently in their seats. The Toyota landed just behind them, tearing off the Nissan’s rear bumper as it slid across the road.
They were probably no more than seven miles from the border now, and the Toyota was stuck in the ditch on the other side of the road. The two men in the Nissan were about to start celebrating when acrid smoke and hissing steam began pouring from under the hood.
***
Jamie desperately wanted to call one of her colleagues, but they were now out of signal range and her calls would not connect. She knew that there were some mountains close to the border, albeit they were little more than rocky outcrops, which may have been blocking the signal. There was no way of knowing where the nearest cell tower was.
At her insistence, Dominic had tried to contact his brother on his cell phone, but without success. He then tried calling the French Foreign Legion HQ number and, after speaking to a sergeant in the communications room, he was told that his brother was out of contact because he was ‘operational’.
The French Foreign Legion’s 13th Demi Brigade was the only Demi Brigade in the French Armed Forces. Formed in 1939, it had an impressive history. Then, in June 2011, it was to be demobilised from Djibouti to a new permanent base in Abu Dhabi. The move had been slow and protracted, and whilst most of the mechanised division had relocated, some operational units remained, using the posting to support anti-piracy efforts in the horn of Africa.
It was this diminishing force that Dominic’s brother Nikolas commanded, but only for the next few months. Soon the base would be abandoned, and the 13th Demi Brigade would be back together in the Emirates.
It had been a great honour for Nikolas to be the last post commander, albeit overseeing a small contingent of legionnaires, because when Dominic and Nikolas were young they lived in Djibouti with their mother and father whilst their dad served as Demi Brigadier. It was partly his history in Djibouti, partly his French skills and partly the presence of his brother that had attracted Dominic to this unwanted assignment with the Djibouti government.
“If Nikolas can do anything, he will,” Dominic assured Jamie as he squeezed her hand.
***
Abdulsatter and Wasama berated their men and kicked them as they all pushed together to try to lift the front of the Toyota back onto solid ground. It was hard, backbreaking labour, but the men were too fearful to complain. In the preceding fracas, one of the gunmen had fallen from the truck and broken his arm, but when he cried out in pain his boss pointed a pistol at his head and threated to shoot him. There had been no complaints after that.
Inch by inch the pickup moved back towards the paved road until the front wheels found some grip on rock. The driver quickly spun the wheel and reversed back onto the highway, to the accompaniment of a grating sound. Wasama banged on the hood to get the driver to stop, whilst he examined the car.
“The wheel arch will shred the tyre,” he informed them, pointing to the bent body panel that was torn and which was obstructing the freewheeling of the tyre. Abdulsatter grabbed an old long barrelled repeater rifle from one of his men and, using it as a lever, he placed the stock on the tyre and pulled on the barrel, using the stock as a fulcrum. The torn metal panel pulled away from the tyre, leaving it free to revolve. The rifle was ruined, but its owner said nothing.
The Nissan was almost a mile ahead by now, but Abdulsatter was acting like a man possessed. None of his men wanted to contemplate the consequences of not catching their prey, and so they jumped aboard the Toyota as its wheels spun and it took off in a cloud of dust in pursuit of the Nissan.
Todd was pressing the Nissan hard. He had coaxed it up to almost forty miles per hour, and the steam and smoke had subsided. He knew that they should stop and attend to the engine, but he also knew that if they did so they were dead men. They were on the last portion of straight road on the way to the border. There followed a series of bends and curves that followed the valley between what passes as mountains in the horn of Africa. What he and Max saw behind them was worrying; the Toyota - it had to be the Toyota - was gaining fast, and the Nissan was already moving as fast as it could. Within two miles the Toyota would be upon them and there was little, if anything they could do about it. Todd just drove on relentlessly, and the two men indulged in the dark humour that comes from being in mortal danger.
“If they catch us, you take the five armed men on the left and I’ll take the five on the right,” Max suggested.
“Nah, mate, it would never work. I’ll take on the hardened crims, you take out the sissies,” Todd replied.
“How will I know which ones are the sissies?” Max asked.
“They’ll be the ones in pink,” Todd laughed.
They were around five miles from the border when the Toyota began to loom large in the rear-view mirror.
***
The Nissan was rounding a left hand curve about two hundred yards ahead. The next curve, a right hand curve, took the road behind another tall rock formation, but for a minute or more the Nissan would be in plain view.
“Get your guns ready! I want to take them on the next bend. Don’t spare the ammunition. Once we start firing, don’t stop until their vehicle is destroyed, understand?”
Everyone nodded. Ishmael looked on forlornly, as his rifle was broken, but then he saw Assa lying on the truck bed, cradling his broken arm and moaning, with his unused Kalashnikov beside him. Ishmael leaned over and took the gun; he was back in the fight.
A few secon
ds passed and Abdulsatter gave the order to fire. A barrage of gunfire erupted, many of the shells finding their target. The fusillade of bullets shredded the rear end of the Nissan, and both tyres were shredded. Oil and water laid slick on the road, when it should have been in the Nissan’s radiator and engine. The game was up; the Nissan skidded to a halt, sitting across the road. The Toyota stopped about twenty yards away, and its occupants sprayed the Nissan with killing gunfire.
***
When the rear end of the Nissan exploded in a mess of shrapnel, Todd knew that they had only one chance.
“As soon as I bring this to a stop, we dive out of my side and try to get to cover,” he told Max. “Use the Nissan and the darkness to avoid being seen.” He threw the steering wheel around to the left, whilst pulling on the handbrake. The Nissan ground to a halt, blocking the road. Todd opened the door and dived out. Max did likewise, and almost landed on top of the Australian. They crawled on their stomachs towards a small rocky outcrop and slid in behind it, as the Nissan was pummelled with small arms fire.
“Well, Todd, it was all too brief, but it was good knowing you,” Max said, a grim look on his face. He grasped Todd’s hand. They shook hands firmly and grasped one another’s shoulders. Todd set his jaw determinedly.
“I’m not going to be taken prisoner, Max. How about we go out Butch and Sundance style?”
“Yeah. As soon as they realise we aren’t in the car and come looking for us, we’ll rush them.”
Todd nodded. Neither of them admitted what they were thinking; suicide by terrorist.
***
Abdulsatter and Wasama were liberally spraying the Nissan when Wasama heard a noise other than the gunfire. He strained to hear where the noise was coming from. Abdulsatter noticed that Wasama had stopped firing, and looked up into the sky, where his friend had directed his gaze.
In the starlit night sky, just coming into view around the low mountain, was a bright light. It shone directly at the men in the Toyota. A few shielded their eyes and stopped firing. A loud voice hailed them from behind the light, first in French and then in English.
“Put down your weapons! This is a fully armed warship.” The full sound of the rotors was discernible now, and the downdraught churned up dust and flapped at their clothes. Abdulsatter and Wasama were nothing if not pragmatic; the occupants of the Nissan were dead, and the French soldiers had no jurisdiction here. They would have to let his men go.
Abdulsatter nodded to Wasama and they both raised their weapons to show they were setting them down peacefully. Ishmael, still in a bloodthirsty frenzy, mistook the signal and let fly at the helicopter with a hail of bullets from his Kalashnikov.
His leader shouted “No!” but Abdulsatter’s voice was drowned out as his men followed Ishmael’s lead and shot uselessly in the direction of the armoured chopper. An instant later the French Helicopter returned fire, visiting death and mayhem on the screaming terrorists. The helicopter’s twin, American made, M24A1 20mm cannons had been pressed into action, dispensing judgment at over a thousand rounds a minute. In less than a minute, what was left of the Toyota was resting on its axles, and the men on board were shredded to the extent that no-one would ever be quite sure how many gunmen had perished in the hailstorm of gunfire.
***
When the gunfire had ceased and Max and Todd unclamped their hands from their ears, they received an instruction from above.
“Stay where you are. Ground transportation is two minutes away.”
“Well, Todd, you sure know how to show a guy a good time,” Max joked, the relief showing on his dusty face.
“I don’t know whether it’s just me, but a lot of the parties I go to end like this,” Todd replied. Both men laughed out loud.
Chapter 14
Fasil Tower, Media City, Dubai:
21st February; 8pm.
Jamie was massaging Max’s shoulders and neck when Todd came into the apartment that served as their office.
“Me next,” Todd said, claiming his free massage.
The two men had spent an uncomfortable four hours travelling back from Djibouti on Fly Dubai. They were suffering from muscle pain in parts of their bodies they hadn’t realised had muscles. Nonetheless, both men felt lucky to be alive.
Once the ground transportation had arrived, the legionnaires had clinically set about their business of using metal detectors and a high powered electro magnet to sanitise the site. They were keen to recover all of the shell remnants, if they could. Two legionnaires carried the large magnet between them, seemingly unconcerned about the human matter under their boots.
Once the bulk of the shells had been retrieved, the powerful water cannon on the back of the transporter sprayed the area and washed all of the debris into the ditch at the side of the road. When that was done more shells became apparent and they, too, were retrieved.
The transporter hooked up what was left of the Toyota and dragged it off the road and onto a barren stretch of sand. Once the legionnaires were clear, their commander threw a phosphorous grenade into the wreck. Everything flammable ignited with a loud hiss, and the vehicle burned with such intensity that an impossibly bright white halo encompassed the vehicle’s carcass. When the flames died down there wasn’t so much as a scrap of paint left on the unrecognisable mass of bent and torn metal.
“We will leave the Somali investigators to make of this what they will,” the commander of the legionnaires had said, “but they will assume that it was a territorial dispute amongst pirates, if they bother turning up at all.”
That was just eighteen hours ago, but it seemed a lifetime away now, as Todd and Max sat in the safety and comfort of their Dubai tower block. Jamie finished Max off with an Indian head massage, which Max obviously enjoyed sufficiently to respond with purring noises.
Todd took his place on the seat Max had reluctantly vacated, and Jamie worked her fingers deep into the tissues around his neck. He relaxed immediately.
“I was just telling Max that after your independent war on terrorism yesterday the Sheikh has been taking a good deal of political flak.”
Todd barely grunted in reply, and so Jamie continued. “The Somalis contacted the Djibouti President to ask if he knew anything about a gunfight near the border. The President said he was aware that there had been some shooting, but as it was not on their side of the border they ignored it.”
“Yeah, that and the fact that neither the Somali nor the Djibouti border control post were manned,” Todd interjected.
“The President said the Somali official suspected foreign intervention, possibly from the international anti-piracy force, but that he had been assured that they had no presence in the area and they were too busy at sea. Luckily, with such a big investment in Djibouti, the Dubai authorities are close to the Djibouti government and so the President was not concerned. Anyway, the authorities in Djibouti and here in Dubai are planning a coordinated raid on the Al Muran business premises at 9am UAE time, and expect to arrest a number of people. They have already intercepted the low loader that you saw in Somalia on its return to Djibouti. It seems that within twelve hours Al Muran will be out of the car smuggling business.”
“That’s going to hurt Mullah Khaweini,” Todd offered.
“And, with any luck, Al Qaeda and their cohorts,” Max added.
***
Max, Jamie and Todd were enjoying a pizza delivered by the Red Tomato Pizza Company when the door to the office opened and Sheikh Mahmoud entered the room, waving for them to remain in their seats.
“Continue eating, please do not mind me. We can work whist you fill your bellies.”
He sat down, and looked at each of them in turn. “Your presence in the UAE is not as much of a secret as it was, after yesterday’s gun battle.”
Todd wanted to say that it hadn’t actually been much of a gun battle, as they had, in fact, been unarmed, but he thought it better to stay silent to hear what the Sheikh had to say.
“Jamil Al Futtaim was apprehend
ed at the airport when he landed at three o’ clock today, on suspicion of carrying drugs into the country, a charge he so rigorously denied that he was released without charge two hours ago. Of course, whilst he was concentrating on helping the customs people by emptying his hand luggage and switching on his laptop to show that it worked, he was filmed typing in his password. Then when his bag was taken away to be X-rayed, we cloned the hard drive. Hopefully he has gone home cursing the authorities without suspecting the real purpose of his delay. From a cursory look into his email account, they have been using the Draft Message system.”
All three operatives understood that he meant a system of sending email that could not be traced by the authorities. Essentially, you type an email and save it as a draft, without sending it. As it is not sent, it cannot be traced or read. Then someone across the globe accesses the same email account with the shared password, and opens the draft copy.
“From now on, we will be monitoring the draft emails in that mailbox. What we did find was a concealed ‘packet of data’ that had been secreted away in the system files, which appears to be typical programming language gibberish, but which is actually encrypted codes, probably numbers, almost certainly bank account numbers.”
“Will the Bank of Burundi freeze the assets, or will they play the Swiss card and plead privacy?” Todd asked reasonably.
“I think I can answer that,” Max cut in. “The CEO of the First National Bank of Burundi is Fergus McLeash, a good Burundian name.” He smiled. “Fergus was headhunted by the Bank when it went international in 2009; not a hard decision for him, because his Icelandic Internet Bank had just gone to the wall, and the Bank’s real corporate HQ is in London. They have a showcase office in Bujumbura, housed in an old French colonial building, but no-one from outside will work there.
I guess that Fergus will freeze whatever he is told to freeze in return for immunity from prosecution for his part in the sub-prime banking collapse of 2008. He still faces charges after four years.”
Shadow of the Burj Page 11
