THIRTY-SEVEN
4°3' S, 39°40' E
Mombasa, Kenya
Like most sea captains, Billy Titus was first and foremost a caretaker, concerned with the well-being of his ship and obsessed with the safety of his passengers and crew. Losing Tarantula to pirates had hit him hard, and the rumors about murdered passengers were gnawing away at the relief he’d felt at the fact that his crew had escaped unscathed. With his ship in pirate hands and his boss captive or dead, he had nowhere to go and no way to help.
Who had been killed? Were any still alive?
No one knew. He kept trolling for the latest news, texting and phoning brother and sister mariners from the empty bar of the Mombasa Yacht Club.
He had just signed for another beer and returned to his table on the patio with a view of Kilindini Harbour when a nice-looking woman with short brown hair walked in and cast intent eyes on him.
Captain Billy had been a babe magnet since he was fourteen, blessed as he was with thick chestnut hair, skin the sun turned to honey, ocean-blue eyes, and an agreeable smile. At thirty-eight it had only gotten better. Now he looked solid, like a guy you could count on to take good care of a half-billion-dollar yacht and treat her crew right. So he was used to being hit on by beautiful women, as, experience told him, he was about to be by this one.
She would ask, buy me a beer? Or, can I buy you a beer? Or, what are you doing for lunch? Whatever it was, his answer was going to be yes. She was lovely to look at, and something about her said she was a nice person. She was also in incredible condition. He’d have pegged her for a blue-water racing sailor, except she didn’t have the sun-blasted skin women got when they raced.
She walked over to his table and asked, “How’d you like to get your boat back?”
“What boat?”
She sat down. “Tarantula.”
“If that’s a joke, it isn’t funny.”
“It’s not a joke. And we’re on an expense account, so name your price and the job is yours.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“We who are rescuing Allegra Helms.”
Titus stared. She was not joking. “Nice lady,” he said. “I liked her.”
“Now you can help her.”
“Are you sure she’s still alive?”
“She was as of two days ago.”
“How can I help?” asked Captain Billy.
“We need your expertise. We need a yacht captain who knows all the protocols. Knows how to talk to the authorities, knows everything that guarantees to anyone listening that he’s a real yacht captain.”
“And I’d drive the boat?”
“Two boats.”
“Two?”
“If you’re in, your salary starts now.”
“I’m in.”
“How much?”
He stated his day rate. She said, “I told you we’re on expense. Don’t you want more than your regular rate?”
“How do you know my regular rate?”
She gave him a look that said, We’re not amateurs, and we would not be talking to you if we didn’t know everything about you.
“OK,” he said. “Tell you what I really want. I want to stop working and go sailing. It won’t cost you a penny. There’s the most beautiful sailboat on the back of Tarantula. Could I have that?”
“It’s yours!” She sprang to her feet. “Let’s go, we’ve got a meeting in three hours.”
“Where?”
“Mogadishu.”
“Mogadishu in three hours? It’s ten at least, if you don’t get held up in Nairobi.”
“I have a plane.”
“You have a plane that can fly to Mogadishu?”
“Provided al-Shabaab isn’t shelling the airport.”
“What if they are?”
For the first time, she smiled—a big, open, country-girl grin. “Come back here and hole up until they stop.”
Titus found himself almost hoping they’d be shelling the hell out of Mogadishu Airport. As she led the way briskly across the parking lot, he noticed she was favoring one leg. “You’re limping.”
“Pulled a muscle.”
“How?”
“No big deal. It just stiffens up when I sit.”
“Do you know there’s blood on your slacks?”
“I’ll change on the plane.”
Billy Titus changed the subject to something that was his business.
“By the way, where am I getting crew?”
“We’ll provide crew.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
2°2' N, 45°21' E
Mogadishu
Paul Janson saw a strong family resemblance between Ahmed and his pirate cousin. Cousin Saakin was twenty years older and had bulked up with age, but they had in common the quick grin that said the secret of the world was a big joke.
When Janson made his offer, Saakin laughed out loud. Then he turned to Ahmed and said, “Your American friend is a funny man.”
Ahmed said, “I’ve been giggling all week.”
Saakin turned back to Janson, still amused, though his eyes had grown as watchful as a croupier counting bets. “Paul. Do you mean what you said?”
A jet on final approach was thundering overhead.
Janson signaled to wait for the noise to pass. He had rented offices in an airport warehouse in the name of a shell company, EastAfricaX. Atop a large, locked safe were banded stacks of US dollars. Next to the safe was a pipe clothes rack on which a dozen white uniforms hung.
Janson wore a pistol on his hip, mostly to discourage Cousin Saakin from getting any ideas about coming back with friends for the dollars on the safe, and had a ballistic vest, bullpup rifle, auto-load shotgun, and a grenade launcher in easy reach in case al-Shabaab made another pass at the airport. A six-man Ghurka squad in constant motion guarded the doors, the halls, and the roof.
The jet, his own Embraer 650, throttled down to near silence, touched wheels firmly, and did not bounce—Sarah at the controls, judging by the urgent but brief thunder of the airbrakes. When they could hear, Janson said, “I’ll say it again. We will pay you and a dozen of your best seamen to crew a megayacht that is waiting for you off Socotra.”
“Yes, yes. I heard that. But then you said you want me to steer the yacht to Eyl.”
“Correct.”
Saakin spoke to Ahmed in rapid Somali. When he was done, Ahmed said to Janson, “He thinks it’s some sort of trap.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Janson.
“How are you going to convince him it isn’t?”
“In about two minutes I’m going to introduce him to the yacht’s new captain.”
* * *
AHMED WAS BACK at the Bakaara Market Internet Café when Isse wandered in looking stoned out of his gourd. “Hey, Isse. What happened to you?”
Isse blinked with a slack-jawed grin twice as wide as any Ahmed had seen on his long face. “God,” he said.
“What? Not again. I thought you were… enjoying yourself.”
“Looks out.”
Ahmed waited. “Looks out?… Looks out for what?”
“Drunks and fools.”
Ahmed took a closer look. The straight-arrow geek was as high as Mars, with eyeballs that went to nowhere. But Isse also looked like he’d been crawling in the mud. He had a bump on his head and a crease on his neck, rust-colored with dried blood, and he was holding his stomach like it hurt. That was strange, because anyone as stoned as he looked couldn’t feel pain. “You OK, man?”
Isse said, “Hey, Ahmed.”
“You OK?”
“Cool. Cool.”
“You maybe want to change your clothes?”
“Why?”
“We’re going to the homecoming… It’s today.”
“At the palace?”
“Aren’t you going?”
“I’m going,” said Isse.
Ahmed exchanged a look with his new friend Banaadir, a slick cat who sold international phone cards at a very deep di
scount. “You look a little messed up, Isse.”
“I’ll be there.”
Ahmed said, “Great. I’ll see you there.”
“Don’t get too close.”
“What?”
For a strange second, Isse looked unstoned. And scared. “Serious, man. Stay away from me.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” Suddenly Isse threw his arms around him and gave him a big hug.
“Thought you said don’t get close.”
“Later.”
“Check out the dervishes,” whispered Banaadir.
“What dervishes? Oh, shit.”
Kaffiyeh-masked fighters shouldered into the Internet Café. They looked around, eyes gleaming through slits in their head garb. The one in the middle beckoned Isse with his finger. To Ahmed’s astonishment, Isse jumped up and followed the guy out the door. The others reached inside their robes, and Ahmed had the horrible realization that they were going to shoot up the place.
There was nowhere to run, just twenty computer booths with guys hunched over the screens, backs to the fighters at the door. We’re all dead, thought Ahmed. Just then armored cars filled with AMISOM troops roared up the street, scattering pedestrians, bicyclists, and donkeys. The dervishes backed out the door and walked quickly away.
“Whoa,” said Banaadir. “That was close.”
“Who were those guys?”
“You know the Italian?”
“I know who you mean.”
“The dervishes are the Italian’s fighters.”
“They are?” Ahmed felt his jaw drop like the cartoon genie in Aladdin.
“Everybody knows that. Where you been, Ahmed?”
“Minneapolis,” Ahmed answered slowly, even as his brain kicked up to warp speed: How in heck had Islam-crazy Isse fallen into the Italian’s clutches? And what did he mean by don’t get close? And why did he hug me? He doesn’t even like me.
THIRTY-NINE
There is one rule,” said Paul Janson. “It will be obeyed.”
Cousin Saakin, the dozen turbaned fishermen the former pirate had recruited—former pirates themselves, Janson did not doubt—and a worried-looking Captain Billy Titus were packed into the Embraer’s three small cabins. Kincaid stood directly behind Janson, silent. In the cockpit behind her, Lynn and Sarah were working through their checklist. It was 802 nautical miles to the airport on Socotra Island, which lay between the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, 150 miles northeast of the Puntland coast. Two hours’ flying time from Mogadishu.
“The rule is, no one dies.”
Billy Titus looked relieved.
Cousin Saakin said, “There are accidents sometimes. What if they accidentally die?”
“You cannot accidentally kill.”
“But if I happen to, by accident…” The pirate shrugged. “Accidents happen.”
“If it happens, I will kill you,” said Janson. “No accidents. No mistakes. No wild shooting.”
Saakin grinned. “First you’d have to find me.”
“I’m good at finding.”
Saakin’s grin took on a knife’s edge. “Then you have to try to kill me.”
“I’m better at killing.” One of Janson’s phones vibrated. He passed it back to Kincaid. “Believe me, Saakin, this is the way it will be. If anyone dies, you will die. Do you still want the job?”
Kincaid said, quietly, so only Janson could hear, “Ahmed’s here.”
“We’re not taking the kid with us.”
“He says he’s got to talk to you. He won’t tell me why.”
Janson ducked to look out the window. The tall, skinny Somali-American was standing in the door of the private aviation shack, bent over his phone like a question mark. “Tell him to wait there.”
He turned back to the faces scowling at him—the simple fisherman-pirates and the not-at-all-simple Cousin Saakin, who was looking for angles to increase profit out of the operation.
“The plane will take off in a couple of minutes. Grab what seats you can find and buckle in. I apologize that we don’t have seat belts for everyone, but the pilots are the best. Hang on to the guy next to you if we hit rough air.”
Kincaid opened the door they had just closed and lowered the steps, and they walked briskly across the tarmac toward Ahmed. “‘I’m better at killing’?” Kincaid echoed. “Why’d you start a pissing contest with Saakin?”
“Saakin strikes me as a natural-born killer.”
Kincaid nodded. “Could be.”
“Best to squelch his instincts—What’s up, Ahmed?”
“You know how you thought Isse was jerking you around on the phone?”
“I knew he was. I didn’t know why.”
“Guess who he hooked up with.”
“No time for guessing. What’s going on?”
“The Italian.”
Janson looked at Kincaid. Rumors were flying around Mog that AMISOM had raided a villa on the Lido looking for the Italian. No one knew if AMISOM had caught him. But General Ddembe’s refusal to take Janson’s calls since Janson had tipped him off suggested strongly that the general was embarrassed or pissed off that the raid had gone badly.
Janson took Ahmed’s arm. “How do you know?”
“I don’t know know. But I’m pretty sure.”
They listened closely as Ahmed described Isse stumbling glassy-eyed into the Internet Café, their odd conversation, and the sudden appearance of the fighters who supposedly belonged to the Italian. “I go in my head, Isse doesn’t like me, thinks I’m a godless criminal, why would he hug me? And why’d he tell me to stay away from him?”
“Stay away from him at the homecoming?”
“I guess. I mean, he looked like hell, but he said he’s going. I said, ‘Hey, you just said stay away and now you’re hugging me?’ Then Isse said, ‘Later.”’
“‘Later,’ like ‘Good-bye, see you later’?” asked Kincaid.
“I don’t think so. It was like stay away from me later. But the main thing was the dervishes. They were definitely terrorists. They walk in and say ‘Come on, Isse,’ and off he goes.”
“What do you mean he looked like hell?”
“Like he’d been crawling in the mud. He had dried blood on his neck. And bumps on his head.”
“As if he were in a fight?”
Ahmed shrugged.
“Or ran away?” said Kincaid.
“That’s what I was thinking, like he was with the Italian for some reason and tried to get away and they caught up with him.”
“But he went willingly, you said.”
“Yeah, but he was stoned.”
“Did you ever see Isse do drugs?”
“No way. Drugs are haram to the Islam freaks.”
“So why is he suddenly doing drugs?”
“I don’t know.”
Janson asked, “What was he on, khat?”
“No, not khat. Khat, you get all wired. Heroin, I guess. Or opium. Or oxy. Something that makes your pupils disappear.”
“Opiates?” Paul Janson’s normally bland features grew sharp. “Ahmed! Describe precisely what Isse looked like. Aside from being dirty and banged up and pupils contracted. What else?”
“I don’t know, I mean…”
“Was he still sick? You remember he said he didn’t feel well.”
“Yeah, he said it was something he ate. He was holding his stomach like it hurt.”
“When’s the homecoming?”
Ahmed checked the time on his phone. “Gates open in an hour.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Kincaid said, “Paul?”
“Ahmed, grab us a taxi.” To Kincaid he said, “I’ve got to get some stuff from the plane.”
“We’re saddled up to get Allegra.”
“You go ahead. You’re in command. Get on the yacht and head for Eyl. I’ll catch up.”
“I can do that. But what are you doing?”
“Isse is our guy. We brought him
here. We can’t let him kill a bunch of innocents.”
“How’s he going to do that?”
“What if AMISOM didn’t nail the Italian and the Italian got ahold of Isse and turned him into a suicide bomber?”
“I’m listening.”
“We know Isse was enamored of fanatics like Abdullah al-Amriki. Going with the dervishes suggests he caught up with some kind of fanatic. We know he was having fun screwing around with me on the phone. ‘You’ll hear from me loud and clear.’ And we know he’s going to the homecoming.”
Kincaid said, “High-profile target with world media covering it.”
“If he slaughters a bunch of government officials on camera, he’ll knock the government straight back into failed-state chaos. Which the Italian’s been working at all along.”
“It’s a bunch of ifs,” said Kincaid. “Problem is, if you’re right, then right now the dervishes are wrapping him in a suicide vest.”
“Not a vest.”
Kincaid’s eyes widened. “Jesus. When he was jerking you around on the phone, he said, ‘Something I ate.’ And Ahmed said Isse was holding his belly.”
“What do suppose is in his stomach?”
“PETN—OK, I do Allegra.”
“No civilians in the cross fire.”
“But don’t you wish they’d learn to duck?”
“Get me the burqa.”
They bounded up the steps. Kincaid hurried to a clothes locker in the back of the plane. Janson beckoned Saakin and Titus to join him in front.
“When you get aboard Irina, Captain Titus, you’re the captain of the ship. Saakin, you’re captain of the pirates. But my partner is the boss. You do exactly what she orders, instantly. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” said Titus.
“Where will you be?” asked Saakin.
“I’ll catch up in Socotra or join you at Eyl. Until I get there, Jess is boss. Got it?”
Saakin shrugged, with a dubious “If you say…”
“Saakin, if she says jump, you ask only, ‘How high?’ I’ll see you guys soon. Good luck.”
Kincaid handed him a canvas bag into which she had stuffed his kaffiyeh and the burqa. “I slipped a couple of extra mags in for you.”
“See you soon.” He gave Lynn and Sarah a quick nod. “Come straight back from Socotra. With any luck, I’ll see you in a few hours.”
The Janson Option Page 26
