‘You’re tracking my phone?’
There was a smile in her voice. ‘I am now. Smart, huh? You’re a long way from home. In fact, out in the boonies.’ Her self-control in moments of stress was impeccable, and one of her strengths. It went a long way to helping see through the problems of a situation, and giving guidance to get an operative out of a sticky spot with the minimum of chatter. ‘Are you currently with Mr Masse?’
Tom Vale had been busy. He must have had the report from Angela Pryce and given Callahan and his bosses a full briefing on where I was and what I was doing. I told her yes. ‘I thought this was a non-recognised situation.’ I meant there was no official involvement for the CIA because whatever was happening here was strictly a French affair along with a little-publicised partnership with Colonel Lunnberg and his bunch of DCS pirates.
Turns out I was wrong.
‘I’m authorised to tell you that there has been no sanction by the US government for what is happening right now. Colonel Lunnberg is being recalled to Washington for discussions regarding his activities in the region and the French have been notified that any American involvement is withdrawn with immediate effect.’
That sounded like a painful situation on both counts. Somebody in the administration had to have taken an executive decision to pull out of the deal and sever all ties with the French, risking a government-level row in the process. Otherwise known as a hand-cleansing operation, it would no doubt be touchy for a while on the back-channel diplomatic scene, but that was better than having all the dirty laundry aired in the media. As for Lunnberg himself, he was probably wondering what lay in store for him back in Washington. ‘That’s good to hear. What about his men? They’re on our tail and anxious to do nasty things to us.’
‘Unfortunately, his men are beyond our reach. Lunnberg claims they are out of comms contact and can’t be recalled.’
‘Are they official?’
‘Absolutely not. They’re contractors hired by Lunnberg against official policy. I’m authorised to tell you that at least two of them are currently the subject of investigation for alleged war crimes, and will be arrested the moment they return to a point at which they can be intercepted.’
Great. Official language for saying they would be arrested as long as somebody saw them. The reality was that they would probably vanish like smoke before that could happen. Out of sight, out of the news.
‘Who are they?’ It didn’t really make much difference at this stage, but any information gave me an insight to what we were facing.
‘The group leader is Vincent Ratchman, known as “Ratch” – a former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne. His 2 i/c is Domenic Morales, an ex-marine. They are the two under investigation. The others have no records other than having each done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq both as serving military and as private contractors. They haven’t been judged to have broken any laws as far as we can see.’
‘That reminds me, there’s something you might care to check out for me.’ I explained about the body I’d found in the office block in Mogadishu, and the barcode sewn into the belt. ‘I’ll send you a snapshot and maybe your tech section could decode it.’
‘Of course. You think he was American?’
‘Masse seems to think so. I think it might be McBride.’
‘I see. Anything else I can do?’
‘An armed drone or two would be nice – maybe a fighter plane if you could rustle one up.’ She had once arranged for a Russian fighter to intervene on my behalf on an operation in Ukraine, but I couldn’t see that happening here.
‘Sorry. No fighters. If I had a drone for surveillance, you’d get it. But don’t lose hope; I’m working on sourcing a spare out of Djibouti so we can see what’s happening on the ground down there. What’s your situation right now?’
I gave her a brief run-down of events since leaving Mogadishu, and what we were up against if we didn’t manage to avoid the two SUVs and make our way to the extraction point to meet Marten. For now we were going to have to find a hole and wait out the following day and night before proceeding to the rendezvous. If we got there too early, it would increase the risk of the opposition finding us and making any extraction impossible.
She listened without interrupting, and when I ran dry said, ‘I understand. I hope to have eyes over you at first light. Do you have any materials?’
I smiled. She meant weapons. Whether we were armed or not, there was nothing she could do about it other than keeping her fingers crossed. But she wanted to know for herself and I appreciated it. Like many operatives in the field, I’d worked with some comms people in the past who were strictly business and never asked questions they could not affect in any way. That was fine and a product of sound training. But it sometimes left the person at the sharp end feeling a little vulnerable and uncared-for.
‘We’re good,’ I confirmed.
Just then Masse waved a hand in front of my face and pointed through the windshield. A cluster of small buildings had showed up in the lights, and it looked like we were approaching the outskirts of the village he’d mentioned earlier.
‘Time to go,’ I told Lindsay.
‘Copy that. Be safe. I’ll be in touch.’
As I switched off, Masse looked at me. ‘Who was that?’
‘A friend in high places. Unfortunately, not high enough to help our situation right now, so we’re on our own.’
‘Did you mention drones?’
‘Yes. Wishful thinking on my part. It won’t happen unless we get really lucky. But you should be prepared to hear that there is no further mission to engage with al-Shabaab or anybody else in oil negotiations. That activity is now dead in the water.’
‘Seriously?’ He sounded shocked.
‘Seriously. And to make double sure, the men following us have been disowned and two of them are awaiting arrest on charges of war crimes. Looks like everybody is retrenching fast and covering their asses.’
He shook his head but didn’t say anything. I figured he was thinking about what would happen to him now the deal looked sunk. With nothing more to work on, he was more or less out of an assignment.
‘So Lunnberg might call them off?’
This time it was wishful thinking on his part. ‘Not a chance. I think they’ve been given orders to finish it and eliminate any loose talk. By that I mean us.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
We entered the village through a section of closely-packed, single-storey houses – a sort of outer ring of dwellings. Some were of rough sandstone bricks, many were made up of sheet metal and other fabrics. There were no signs of the inhabitants, only clusters of goats, a few donkeys and emaciated cows and even a camel or two. If anybody was in, they had heard us coming some way off and were keeping their heads down.
When we hit the village proper, which was dense, untidy and spread across a couple of low-lying slopes like a rash, Masse slowed down, looking for something off to his left. We passed a couple of more substantial buildings, which I guessed were – or had been – local administration offices of some kind, then a compound with a high wall and double gates.
‘Police barracks,’ he said briefly. ‘But nobody is there now. They kept being attacked so they gave up and moved into a military camp thirty kilometres to the west.’
I considered it briefly as we drove by. In most circumstances it would have been a useful place to hide; high walls and plenty of cover. But it would be way too obvious for Ratchman and his men to pass up without taking a closer look. Once they got inside they would be on a man hunt and we’d be trapped behind the same high walls that were supposed to be our protection.
‘Ah, I remember,’ Masse breathed, and turned down a zigzag street closely bordered by houses, the engine noise pounding off the walls. If we’d hoped to enter the village unnoticed, forget that; everybody and his uncle must have been listening to us go by.
More twists and turns and the road began to rise, then dipped again down a slope to emerge in an open expanse of
broken ground littered with refuse. The light seemed better here and signalled that dawn was coming up fast. We hadn’t got long to find some cover and disappear.
I caught a glimpse of a junkyard full of wrecked vehicles, some of them in camouflage green with the remnants of regimental colours on the sides. They looked as if they had been in a war and I figured they’d been abandoned by whoever had once owned them.
Masse read my mind. ‘Somali and African Union army vehicles,’ he said. ‘They get attacked and damaged and the army leaves them behind. It’s cheaper and easier to get foreign aid to supply new ones than to retrieve and repair these. The locals sell what they can and cannibalise the rest. It’s part of the circular economy.’
He swung the wheel and took us behind a row of wrecked trucks and stopped the pickup between a broken low-loader and a large tractor unit without wheels or an engine.
‘We must hide the vehicle,’ he said, and jumped out and scouted around until he found two old tarpaulins stretched over an engine block perched on a stand to offer protection against the sun. He pulled out a knife and slashed through the ropes holding them, and slung one of the tarps across the cab of the pickup weighed down by a couple of truck wheels. Then he grabbed a cloth bag from the back and beckoned me to follow him.
I picked up my stuff and trekked after him. He’d done well and done it quick; looking back, the pickup now looked like any old wreck, with the truck wheels on top of the tarp adding to the picture of a vehicle at the end of its life. Masse led the way through another gap in the fence to the side of the compound, and across an open space to the warehouse I’d spotted earlier.
‘This is deserted,’ Masse said. ‘Nobody uses it. We’ll be safe here.’ Up close it was less impressive than it had first appeared, and looked as if it had been thrown together using spare materials, although I was guessing it had been originally government built. It had no windows but two large double doors, and looked like a grain or foodstuff storage area, maybe erected many years ago at a time of drought. Either way, it looked like being our refuge until it was safe to move on.
As Masse went to step through a gap in the doors, I heard a faint hum coming across the rooftops.
‘Wait,’ I said. This had the same makings of a trap as the abandoned police barracks. From what little I’d seen, this village had only two large buildings, and we were now standing outside one of them. Ratchman would take one look at them and send in his men like rat catchers. He might miss the pickup hidden among the wrecked trucks, but he’d scour this place from top to bottom to find us.
‘Why? It’s perfect.’
‘No. It’s not. Hang on – I have a better idea.’ I ran back to the junkyard and pulled the second tarp down from over the engine block, then hunted around until I found a piece of a truck fender. I hurried to the back of the yard where it merged into scrappy bushes and rocks leading to another section of scattered housing. I selected a patch of ground close behind a dhirindhir bush and scooped out a shallow depression from the sandy soil. I threw the tarp down over the top and weighed it in place with dirt and a few rocks, then for good measure tossed a handful of twigs on top. As foxholes go it wasn’t great but it would have to do.
Next I checked the ground as far back as the first houses huddled together behind a line of stick fencing. I could smell animals on the far side and heard them shifting about nervously as I approached. Cows or goats, I figured, but I didn’t want to get too close and spook them. What I needed to do was check out the area to see if there was an exit point in case we had to bust out and run.
I followed the fence until I found a section where the sticks had been pulled away. Beyond it lay a narrow alley between two houses. There was already a faint glow in the sky to the east, and although I couldn’t see what lay beyond the alley, it was something we would have to take as we found it, good or bad.
Masse was following and giving me his hard-time stare. ‘Portman, what are you doing?’ he hissed, and looked around nervously.
‘Looking for an escape route in case we’re blown. This is it.’ I indicated the alley. ‘Remember this spot. If we have to, we go down the alley and hide out as best we can. The first chance we get, we make for the front of the junkyard and the pickup and get out of here.’
I turned and started walking back to the foxhole. Time was getting tight and we had maybe five minutes left. Masse followed close behind, tripping over the occasional rock or clump of coarse grass and muttering to himself. He may have lived out here for years, but I got the feeling he hadn’t been much of an explorer in all that time and preferred the city life.
‘I understand what you are saying,’ he continued, ‘but the … the hole you dug; it’s out in the open. They will see us immediately! We need to be inside four walls where we can protect ourselves and form a – what is it – a defensive position.’
‘Have you never heard of hiding in plain sight?’ I said, and held the tarp up so he could slide underneath without disturbing too much of the dirt and stones. Then I slid in alongside him and made sure the AK was ready to hand in case I needed it. ‘This is the best position, I promise. The first place Ratchman and his buddies will look is inside the building. They might take a quick look out here but they will see what they want to – what they expect to see.’
He grunted but said nothing, and checked his pistol. Maybe he was finally getting the message.
I lifted the edge of the tarp by my side and checked the light outside. Daylight wasn’t far off and would come up quickly, flooding the area and pushing back the shadows. By the time the men in the SUVs got here and looked our way, they would have the sun in their eyes and we wouldn’t even be a shadow on the ground.
I heard the sound of an engine. It was growing, the hum drifting over the buildings and across the open space in front of the junkyard. They were taking it steady, probably nervous about finding themselves in the tight network of back alleys and twisting streets, with the real risk of facing an ambush at any moment.
‘This is crazy,’ Masse said, and spat on the ground.
‘Better this than dead,’ I said, and placed a stick under the front edge of the tarp, giving me just enough of a view beneath the bush to spot anybody approaching … and a field of fire if I needed it.
Waiting for action you know is likely to take place is probably the hardest thing to do. You can follow the old saying of preparing for the worst while hoping for the best, but nothing is more stressful than waiting for that first moment of a contact, trying to ignore the what-ifs and the maybes. For one, you probably have only a vague idea of what the opposition forces consist of or what weapons they can bring to bear on you. All you can do is make sure you’re in the best position you can find and are ready to respond to whatever gets thrown your way.
We had each brought bottles of water, and sipped economically as we waited. Dehydration can be an additional problem in tight spots, leading to dulled senses and slow reactions, and we were going to have to be fully alert in case our position got blown. In between, I kept my eye on the front of the building and the village beyond.
The first thing I saw was the spread of headlights. They were faint against the coming dawn, flickering over the store and touching the area to the front and sides of the junkyard, but focussed enough to show that they were heading this way. I could hear only one engine, and I figured the other vehicle was tackling the police barracks to cut down the amount of time they had to spend in the village. Ratchman and his crew were pretty much in the same situation as Masse and me, unless you discounted them being better armed and equipped and able to call up a Chinook to pull them out of the country if things got a little hot. But they were still in hostile territory and getting a Chinook here would take a while; it didn’t mean they could be leisurely about finding us.
The engine died abruptly, and I waited for the sound of voices or footsteps. They would make their approach spread out to minimise risk, and moving fast to reduce being targeted. I figured they would check the
outside yard first, but since a bunch of wrecked trucks wouldn’t provide much of a hiding place, they’d quickly move on towards the building.
I heard a whistle. It was short and sharp, an attention-grabber. The lead man directing his men. Then came an exchange of voices and a clatter as somebody kicked aside a section of thin metal. They wouldn’t be taking chances, covering each other in turn and moving forward in a leap-frog manoeuvre. It’s a particularly stressful kind of work, expecting at any moment to find somebody popping up out of hiding with a gun in their hand. I could almost taste the sense of nervousness they would be feeling, the adrenaline running high as they tried to anticipate whatever might happen next.
Masse moved his free hand towards the edge of the tarp for a better view and I motioned at him to stop. I’d just spotted movement at the front corner of the building. It wasn’t much but there was now enough light for me to see the figure of a man standing there. He was holding an assault rifle to his shoulder and staring along the barrel, and looked primed and ready to open fire.
‘Don’t move,’ I said softly. ‘We have one armed man on foot close to the store and he’s looking edgy.’ I moved the AK a fraction and centred on the man’s chest. If he gave even a hint that he’d seen us, I was going to have to put him down.
‘What’s he doing?’ Masse whispered. He was breathing in short bursts and I could feel a tremor going through him as he tried to control his fears. He sounded as if he was on the point of breaking, so I increased the pressure on his arm until he began to calm down.
‘Nothing. He’s just standing there. He can’t see us but he doesn’t want to come down here because it’s open ground and instinct tells him he’ll be vulnerable if he does.’
Masse hissed and checked his pistol again. ‘How can you know that? He might be about to open fire.’
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