by Matt Rogers
‘Which is why you should leave.’
‘No, it’s why I should go after him. Because he wasn’t expecting someone like me to show up. I doubt he planned accordingly. I can take advantage of that.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she said.
She was done protesting. King stepped up onto the terrace of the lodge and barged straight through into the communal area, meeting the gazes of eight frightened peacekeepers. The five men and three women had almost certainly become desensitised to violence if they had been operating in Mogadishu for quite some time. Death occurred as frequently as the sun rising each morning.
But when the bodies appeared within their own ranks, within the walls of the compound itself, he imagined it would rattle them for quite some time. They appeared shell-shocked, like their heads would be next on the chopping block.
‘I don’t know how many of you understand me,’ he said to the room. ‘But the threat isn’t around anymore. You don’t have anything to worry about — it won’t be a recurring problem. I’m leaving now to deal with it. You should all stay focused on what you’re here to do.’
He didn’t consider himself adept at public speaking, but he found himself quietly impressed with the spiel. Satisfied, he hurried straight through into the Force Recon Marines’ quarters, allowing Beth to trail in his wake. When he’d found a smaller communal space reserved for the U.S. military and stepped through into a tiny cube of a room with a similar outfit to the main area, Beth followed him through in a hurry.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
‘I need a gun. And your jeep.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘This,’ he said, raising the M45 into view, ‘isn’t going to cut it. I need something else. Something bigger.’
‘There’s a couple of assault rifles,’ she said. ‘They delivered them to us in case shit hits the fan.’
‘Who did?’
‘An identical cargo plane to the one that brought you in. They were originally Delta Force weapons, I think. Last minute change of destination — that sort of thing.’
He crossed to the piece of furniture she had gestured to — an enormous wood-panelled storage container, its contents masked from plain view. He unhinged the latch and lifted the lid clear, revealing a trio of polished Heckler & Koch HK416 rifles. Despite everything, he managed a wry smile. He knew the weapons intimately.
‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘This will do.’
‘What — all of them?’
‘No,’ he said, lifting a single rifle out of the container. ‘I’m not Sylvester Stallone — as much as I’d like to be. I only need one bullet, anyway.’
‘What if he has friends?’
‘Reed?’
Beth nodded.
‘You don’t make friends in Somalia.’
‘Maybe he did. Psychopath like him — there’s plenty of opportunities out there.’
‘That’s business. If he’s somehow infiltrated the smuggling route and managed to conspire with people to scrape profits off the top — that’s not having friends. They won’t care if he lives or dies.’
‘They might. If it means losing money.’
‘You think that’s what this is about?’ King said. ‘Money?’
‘Isn’t it always? What other motivation would he have?’
King instinctively glanced in the direction of the front door, seeing straight through the building, remembering the brutalised corpses of the two Force Recon Marines who dared to get in Reed’s way. ‘Whatever it is, it’s a damn good one.’
He fished through the bottom of the storage container and stuffed a few spare magazines into pockets in his faded cargo pants. ‘This will do.’
‘You’re the least prepared elite operative I’ve ever seen,’ she said.
He looked at her. ‘You’ve seen many?’
She shook her head.
For no other reason than the fact that it felt natural, he leant forward and kissed her hard, taking the chance to experience a brief reprieve from the madness of the past twelve hours. He had barely been in-country for half a day, and already the situation had dive-bombed south.
He started to think he was a bad luck charm.
She didn’t resist. Instead she kissed back, probing ravenously with her tongue. King hesitated as she stepped forward and pressed her chest against his, gyrating, lost in the heat of the moment.
After a few seconds, he pulled away. ‘There’s no time. Sorry. Trust me, I wish there was.’
She stood there awkwardly, biting her lip as her cheeks flushed red. ‘I’m sorry too. That probably wasn’t the right thing to do.’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course it was. I needed it.’
‘You nervous?’
‘Shitting myself.’
‘Then why go? Reed’s long gone. Stay here.’
‘If I stayed, I’d never forgive myself.’
‘Why?’
‘This is what I signed up for,’ he said, lifting the rifle to hammer his point home. ‘Can’t abandon the purpose of my role on my second assignment.’
‘This really is your second task?’
He nodded.
‘I’d rather you didn’t go,’ she said. ‘Personally. Putting all the official shit aside. You’re not a bad guy.’
‘You’re not too bad yourself,’ he said.
For a moment he wavered.
Perhaps Beth was right. There was little chance he could gain ground on Reed, let alone intercept the man’s plans and stop him in his tracks. Even if he never tracked Reed down, he would almost certainly get himself killed setting off on a solo trip across Somalia. The war-torn country didn’t have the best reputation for treating foreigners kindly, let alone their own people. He would run into armed bandits looking for a quick buck over and over again until finally he succumbed to the odds.
On top of that, Beth’s face sported a pining expression, staring hard at him in an effort to convince him to stay. She wanted him, and he wanted her, despite everything that was unfolding around them.
He started to lower the rifle.
Then Lars’ voice came roaring back, ringing in his ears as it replayed on a constant loop in his mind.
Don’t get any ideas.
The man had explicitly told him not to get involved with Beth, warning him of the consequences in the fuselage of the cargo plane. His words hammered home. If King stayed, Lars would know why. He would understand that King had folded in the face of adversity.
And, on top of everything, King had his own personal motivations. He was willing to capitalise on any chance he could get to make Reed pay for his actions — no matter how slim the odds.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘This is my job.’
He brushed straight past Bethany Morris and strode for the front door, not daring to look back unless he changed his mind.
Now that he had committed to the journey, he hardened his demeanour, removing emotions from the equation entirely.
There would be hell to pay for what Reed had done.
With echoes of Tijuana ringing in his thoughts, he tightened his grip on the HK416 and made straight for Beth’s open-topped jeep.
25
He left the compound behind in a trail of dust, not daring to look in either of the side mirrors in case he caught a glimpse of Beth on the terrace. He’d been secretly hoping she shared his urges ever since he’d spotted her approaching in the jeep earlier that day. He liked the way she carried herself, and he liked the way they meshed, and he liked almost everything about her down to the way the right side of her mouth twisted up when she smiled, but all of that melted away as the reality of the situation dawned on him.
He would never see again.
And — on top of that — he had almost no chance of success with what lay ahead.
But he’d faced the same adversity in Tijuana and Guatemala, and he’d come out on top.
The thought of Reed disappearing into the complicated web of the extra-legal world and living out the
rest of his days in unanswered luxury sent fury through his chest. King wouldn’t let the man get away, even if it meant he himself died in the process.
The burden on his shoulders weighed him down as he mounted the path Reed had spoken of the previous afternoon, a one-way dirt track that ran along one side of the compound’s perimeter and twisted into a disintegrating neighbourhood nearby. He plunged into a scene similar to a big-budget Hollywood disaster movie, complete with demolished buildings resting in pitiful piles of rubble and the burnt-out shells of old vehicles that had been torched long ago.
Everything about this land was steeped in misery and suffering.
Much like King himself.
He hardened his resolve, forcing all unpleasant thoughts out of his mind and practicing a measured process of meditation, breathing in deep for seven seconds, holding the breath in for seven seconds, then exhaling for seven seconds.
Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t shake the invading thought that his superiors would likely chew him out even if he achieved the best-case scenario in the coming days. He could stop Reed in his tracks and deliver justice to the man, but the responsibility for the two dead Force Recon Marines rested squarely on his shoulders. It had been his role to step in and clean things up — instead, he had aggravated the situation.
For all he knew, Reed had been biding his time to escape the compound unseen, and had been forced into action when King showed up. Maybe if he’d stayed out of the equation entirely, Reed would have escaped without incident.
That would have been preferable to the way the situation had graphically unfolded.
He settled in for the drive. A brief look at a satellite interface in the passenger’s footwell of the jeep had revealed that Afgooye lay seventeen miles outside of Mogadishu’s city limits, buried in the hostile Somali countryside. He had no idea what he might encounter that far off the beaten track, but the isolation would work in his favour. It wouldn’t be hard to spot a fellow six-foot-three American in a remote village.
That was, if Reed was still there.
Something told him he would be.
Whatever was set to occur in Afgooye, King imagined it would involve a process. There had to be an endgame to his mad plan, something that sent him riding off into the sunset to live out a carefree existence.
He settled into a steady rhythm, tuning out the section of his brain working overdrive to ponder the worst-case scenarios that lay ahead. There was no use considering what might be on the horizon. Whatever it was, it would involve a gun and his reflexes. He didn’t operate in a complicated field.
Half an hour out of Mogadishu, as the surrounding rubble and buildings packed with dust-coated civilians melted away, King determined he was halfway to Afgooye. The air blasting over the windshield and bombarding the open-topped cabin was hot and heavy. He wiped a palm across his forehead, already slick with sweat, and returned it to the battered wheel a moment later. All natural light had faded into the distance as he drove further and further from civilisation.
He spotted the convoy a hundred feet in the distance, cresting a rise in the trail and soaking in the sight of a cluster of headlight beams all at once. He gripped the wheel with white knuckles, inwardly panicking, confused by the darkness and the hostile terrain. A quick glance at either side of the trail revealed impenetrable fields of weeds and potholes. Any attempt to steer around the group of vehicles would result in disaster. The inhospitable terrain would snag his wheels, grind the jeep to a halt, and then he would be left to the mercy of whoever lay ahead.
He couldn’t stop and reverse, either.
It was the only remaining option — the trail had narrowed considerably, preventing any kind of turn that didn’t involve at least five or six points — but it would prove disastrous. No matter how fast he backtracked, the convoy would sense something awry and give pursuit.
They would travel faster forward than he could backward.
As he got closer, he realised they’d arranged their vehicles in a rudimentary barricade across the trail, taking advantage of a short expansion in the width of the route. They had all the odds on their side.
King couldn’t make out much more due to the headlights shining directly into his eyes, but he reached down and nonchalantly thumbed the safety off the M45 in the holster on his waistband. He slid the gun free and tucked it under his leg, keeping one hand wedged between his thigh and the tattered seat in case he needed to react all at once.
Then he let fate determine what happened next, and continued crawling toward the convoy.
If they were affiliated with Reed, King knew he would be dead in seconds. He would only be able to squeeze off a few shots before he was outnumbered, given the number of vehicles waiting for him. They had effectively bottlenecked him into a trap.
He slowed to a halt a few feet from the meeting point and waited for two silhouetted Somali men to stride over to his side of the jeep. He rested an elbow on the door and huffed for dramatic effect, acting as if the stoppage were simply an inconvenience.
Like he drove this route all the time.
If they didn’t know Reed, it might save him.
Then he caught a glimpse of the uniforms, and changed his approach.
‘Evening, officers,’ he said.
26
King recognised the insignia on the plain olive button-up shirts — these were officers of the Somali Police Force. What they were doing all the way out here was another matter. If Reed had been correct in his assessment, and this road paved the way for a direct smuggling route to Afgoye, then these men had to be accepting of the practice if they stationed themselves along the trail.
King thought hard as he waited for a response. Perhaps he needed to pay a tariff to be granted safe passage through to Afgoye. He cursed inwardly. He hadn’t left the compound in Mogadishu with a single dollar to his name.
The foolishness of his decisions came racing into the forefront of his mind as the two Somali officers exchanged a befuddled look and motioned for one of their comrades to step forward.
The officer on the left motioned to King, and simply grunted.
‘English?’ the man who had stepped out of the shadows said, surprise in his tone. ‘You speak English too?’
Too.
Reed had been here.
‘Yeah,’ King said, maintaining the disgruntled demeanour. ‘You’re the translator?’
‘Yes.’
‘You usually here?’
‘Only when I need to be,’ the man said.
So they knew Reed was coming. He let someone know in advance.
They’d prepared accordingly, bringing along someone to translate.
King rolled with it.
He analysed the trio, all of them crowding around his side of the vehicle, unsure of how to proceed. They had clearly seen the HK416 assault rifle lying in full view across the passenger seat, but none of them bothered to draw their own weapons.
Either they felt entirely in control, or they thought King had something to do with all of this.
Reed must not have been clear with the specifics.
King rolled with it once more. He narrowed his gaze in mock suspicion and pointed an arm lazily ahead. ‘I’m his brother.’
None of them spoke a word.
‘You going to let me through?’
‘He said nothing about a brother,’ the translator said.
Bingo.
The first hurdle had been traversed. The mere vocalisation of a denial proved that they were unclear about the details. If Reed had implicitly instructed them that he was acting alone and that anyone attempting to pass themselves off as his allies were to be gunned down, then King wouldn’t stand a chance. But the man must have been ambiguous, for the trio of SPF officers merely loitered around in apparent confusion.
But it also meant that Reed had managed to get himself in bed with the Somali Police Force.
How?
Why?
For now, he played ball. The last thing he w
anted was for the trio to suspect his intentions, see through his charade, and begin to grill him on the exact details of his involvement. King spotted two or three more silhouettes milling around the vehicles behind them. Six-on-one didn’t favour him, and he had no intention of starting a bloodbath amongst these men. He doubted they deserved it. More than likely, Reed had bent them to his will, just as he’d done to King.
So he switched up his composure, growing visibly frustrated, taking the offensive.
‘Who cares what he said? He told me to follow this piece-of-shit trail until I met up with him in a dozen or so miles. What’s the issue?’
‘We did not know you were coming.’
‘Too bad. And I need a cut of the payment.’
It was a calculated risk — if it proved incorrect, he would brush it off as a breakdown of communication between the involved parties.
It didn’t.
‘Why?’ the translator said, following the question up with a muttered explanation to his two colleagues in Somali. Then he switched back to English. ‘That money was for us.’
‘I need some of it. I don’t need to tell you why. He told me you wouldn’t protest.’
They exchanged a series of glances, each sporting expressions somewhere between annoyance and apprehension. King imagined they didn’t want to upset Reed. He wondered how handsomely he had paid them…
Where’d he get the money from? King thought.
Finally, the translator relented after an awkward silence. ‘How much did he say?’
‘Half.’
The man raised both eyebrows. ‘No.’
‘There’s no negotiation.’
‘You are right. We will not accept that. No negotiation needed. You can tell your brother to come back and talk to us about it if he needs. He should have told us he was dropping off half of it for a follow-up tail.’
‘He’s in a hurry,’ King said. Then he threw both hands in the air, exaggerating the gesture. ‘Okay, fine. A fifth.’
‘A fifth?’
‘Yes. If you can’t do that, my brother will be back. And he will be angry.’
The translator muttered again to his comrades, and they exchanged words. There was hesitancy in their voices, but also a thin undertone of acceptance. They must have expected some kind of catch to Reed’s offering — which made King wonder about the size of the payoff.
