by Peter Nealen
The bigger picture was, if anything, even more ominous than upwards of two hundred hostages in the hands of psyched-up Islamist terrorists, in the middle of a city that was about to set itself on fire. Djibouti was the only major port on the Horn. That made it very, very important, strategically. If the Islamists were able to install a strict-sharia state here, they could put some serious economic hurt on the West. As if the piracy coming out of Somalia and the worldwide depression weren’t bad enough.
As we were discussing the worsening intel picture, Imad came back. He looked grimmer than usual, as he joined us at the map table.
“Most of the people who might talk are scared shitless,” he explained, as he leaned on the map. “Can’t say I blame them. There are some seriously scary motherfuckers in town.” He started ticking off names. “Mohammed Khasam and Ismail Farah I know for certain are here. Farah made his name with Al-Shabaab a few years ago, for his enthusiasm with a tapanga when dealing with captured AMISOM soldiers. Khasam was almost as bad, although he tended to prefer to drench his victims in gasoline and set them on fire.
“I also heard somebody mention Omar Sadiq Hasan, a particularly nasty Sudanese bad boy, who cut his teeth massacring fellow Muslims in Darfur. He’s got at least five hundred deaths to his name, and he claims as many as seven hundred. I can‘t confirm yet whether he‘s here, has been here, or is on his way.”
He looked around the table. “The Colonel was right, Al Masri is here; at least that’s what I was getting from the whispers. Most of the people here aren’t as afraid of him as they are of the Shabaab types, since he tends to go for bombings and paramilitary attacks more than the kind of up-close tribal violence that the others are known for.”
“Do we have any idea who this ‘Al Masri’ is?” Bob asked. “’The Egyptian’ doesn’t tell us very much.”
Colton, who acted as the team’s intel specialist, shook his head. “Nobody knows his real name, and in all his videos, he’s wearing a shemaugh over his face. There was a theory floating around that he’s actually several people, but somebody did a voice analysis of several of his messages, and it’s definitely all the same man.”
“I don’t suppose anybody you talked to said they knew where these assholes are,” Alek ventured.
Imad snorted. “If I even thought it real loud, they got skittish. Nobody wants to have anything to do with possibly crossing those fuckers.”
Alek wasn’t happy. “What about locating the hostages? Any luck?”
“Well,” Imad said slowly, “maybe.” He obviously wasn’t comfortable with what he had. “There’s someone who offered information. He didn’t say what, but he made it clear that he expects to be well paid for it, and for the risk he’s taking even talking to me.” He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “I’ll be honest; I’m more than half-expecting it to be a setup.”
“More than likely it is,” Jim said. “Is it worth following up on?”
“Right now, it’s the only lead we’ve got, really,” Imad replied.
“Then we’ll take the chance,” Alek said. “Where are you meeting him?”
“Outside the city, at a farm in the south.” Imad pointed out the location on the map. “He gave me a pretty good description. He wants to meet tomorrow, at sundown, and we’d best have a good amount of cash for him, or he won’t talk.”
“Did he specify that you had to be alone?” Nick asked.
“No, but if there are too many of us, he’ll get spooked,” was the answer.
We started studying the farm in question, and pulled up some imagery from Google Earth. It was on the south side of the major canal that ran along the southern edge of the city, and there was a fair amount of vegetation on the imagery. It appeared to be walled, and there was also a large conglomeration of what looked like small shacks less than two hundred meters to either side. I didn’t like it, and I wasn’t the only one. It might be quiet and remote compared to the middle of Ahriba slum, but if there was shooting, there was going to be a lot of attention, real quick.
“I’ll go in with Imad, as backup,” I said. “Probably can’t be packing too much heat--” Imad nodded at my glance, and I turned back to the map “--so pistols only, soft armor, and comms.” I traced the treeline on the imagery. “It looks like two or three guys, with rifles, should be able to get over the wall here, at the northeast corner. Situation’s going to dictate, but it looks like there should be a fair amount of shade and junk to hide in back there.”
“Assuming they don’t have somebody back there already,” Jim pointed out. Jim liked occasionally usurping my place as the team’s resident Voice of Doom.
Larry was looking down at the map and imagery, and stroking his goatee with a frown. “I don’t like it.” He pointed to the only visible entrance to the walled compound. “We can’t see if there are any good alternate approaches, or if this is the only way in or out. You could easily get in there, and have them slam the door shut behind you. And where are we going to stash vehicles if a fast exfil is necessary?”
“Here.” Jim was pointing to the open ground by the canal. It was less than two hundred yards from the farm. “If everything goes to hell, go over the back wall, and sprint for the trucks. It’s a short distance, and we can even support from the trucks.”
We studied the problem for a while longer, then I finally straightened up. “You know what? I think we need to do a drive by in the morning. Get a look at the ground beforehand. One more truck roving around isn’t going to attract too much attention, as long as we don’t loiter too long. Imagery’s great, but there’s a lot we can’t see. Not to mention--” I checked the time stamp “--this is five years old. Things well could have changed.”
There were noises of general agreement. We figured out a scheme of maneuver for the leader’s recon, and then retired for a few hours shut-eye, while we could.
Imad and I pulled the Range Rover back into our compound a little after noon. The recon had gone as smoothly as could have been expected; we got a good look at the farm and the surrounding ground, and didn’t think we’d been noticed, at least not insofar as we were casing the place.
The fact was, we had to be very careful as to our movements. The exodus of Westerners from the city, with the majority of those who stayed staying holed up in the European quarter, was severely limiting our camouflage. It’s hard to blend in in an African country when you’re one of the few Caucasians walking around.
Imad parked the truck next to the warehouse, and we got out, grabbing our rifles off the floor. We were harmless tourists as far as anyone looking in the windows could see, but we were still loaded for bear out of sight.
It was hot as hell. Even with the Range Rover’s still-functioning air conditioning on, it had been sweltering. When I got out and stepped into the direct sun, I wanted to wilt. I hadn’t been this hot since Libya. My shirt was sopping with sweat.
There were three reciprocating industrial fans going in the op-center, but they didn’t seem to do much besides circulate the hot air. At least none of Rodrigo’s electronics were overheating yet. I pulled out the camera that we’d been “sightseeing” with and started downloading the pictures onto one of the laptops.
We had already discovered one hitch in the plan that we couldn’t see from the imagery. What looked like a wall around the farmhouse was in fact a fence, made of corrugated sheet metal. That presented a problem--while it was possible to quietly scale a mud or concrete wall, a man in load bearing gear with a rifle wasn’t going to get over a sheet-metal fence without making a hell of a racket. The more I thought about it, the worse our options were getting. Somebody was going to have to walk into that fence, and there weren’t a lot of vantage points to cover the inside, if any. On top of that, getting overwatch into position before dark was going to be a bitch. There wasn’t a lot of cover or concealment between the road and the house.
While I was pondering this, and cleaning up the photos, Hank turned away from the comm laptop he was covering, and called out, �
��Hey, get everybody up. The Colonel’s on the line. Says it’s important.”
There was a fair amount of rustling and grumbling from the far end of the room, as Imad started rousting the rest of the team out. Most had racked out, or tried to. It could turn out to be a long night, so Alek had invoked the oldest bylaw of soldiering: get what sleep you can, when you can. It was too hot to get much, but any rest is useful.
The team shuffled over to the bank of comm equipment, most wearing little more than shorts, but with weapons still close at hand, along with at least a couple of spare mags. Nobody was under any illusions about our security situation. Mike’s team was handling most of it, to their chagrin, but none of us could afford to let down our guard too far, even if we were technically in a secured location.
Hank swiveled the laptop so that everybody could see it, and touched the key to activate the speaker/mic combination. “Everybody’s here, Colonel.”
Heinrich’s pixelated portrait came on the screen. Even as blurry as he was, he looked haggard. I knew he was doing everything he could back in the States to get us as much intel as possible. The fact that there wasn’t much available that we couldn’t find on the ground here wasn’t going to stop him from trying, and staying up nights to do so. One of the reasons we liked the guy.
“Gents, I got Rodrigo’s rundown of what you’ve got so far. I know it sucks trying to get an in with these people on such a short timeframe. But I’m afraid that we’ve got even less time that we might think.” He reached to the keyboard beneath the screen. “This got posted on YouTube about four hours ago.”
The video program beeped, and a link came up under the picture. Hank reached in and clicked on it, then maximized the video that came up.
The picture was of a shemaugh-swathed man in a green fatigue jacket, sitting in front of a black flag with Arabic lettering on it. It looked like every other jihadi propaganda video that had been floating around for the last thirty years.
The man started to speak in Arabic, followed a second later by an accented English voice-over. “Praise be to Allah, the most merciful, the most compassionate. Muslim brothers everywhere, as-salaamu aleikum, wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatu, wa bad:
“’Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of truth, even if they are of the people of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.’
“I address our Muslim brothers, subject to the oppression of the infidel West, who yet rise in the name of Allah to strike with us at the depraved Crusaders.
“All over the Ummah, they set their bases on Muslim ground. They kill our children, and rape our women. They defile our soil with their presence, and oppress the Ummah with their depravity. Their arrogance tells them that they are untouchable, that they rule land, air, and sea.
“But, my brothers in Islam, they are not invincible, they are not unconquerable. Allah has delivered them into our hands, as He once delivered them into the hands of abu Bakr, Salah ad-Din, and our dear brother, Osama, murdered in his home by the cowardly killers of the Crusader Americans. Just as Osama once struck at the Crusaders in Islamic East Africa, to show their weakness, so have we now struck at their necks, and destroyed their largest base in this ancient Muslim land.
“Yes, my brothers, the infidel base from which they sent their cowardly drones to murder our faithful brothers in Yemen, Somalia, and Oman has fallen, and we have taken many captives. We hold these hostages as a warning to the West; that if they act against the Ummah anywhere, these will feel the wrath of Allah, at our hands!” He shook his fist at the camera, and from behind him came cries of “Takbir!” and “Allahu akhbar!”
“See the loathsome infidel soldiers, humbled and broken at our hands,” he said, gesturing to his right. The camera panned to show about a half-dozen young men, dressed in tattered remains of uniforms or PT gear, kneeling on a concrete floor. Their hands appeared to be tied behind their backs, and their feet were tied or taped together. The back three had sacks over their heads, but the front three were uncovered. All of them showed signs of severe beatings, and one was hardly able to stay upright. His face was crusted with dried blood from one or several cuts on his head.
As the video continued, two more masked men, dressed in shabby fatigues and with some AK variants slung on their backs, stepped to the bloody-faced man and grabbed his arms. He didn’t resist as they roughly dragged him over to the black flag and forced him to his knees.
My fists were clenched, and my jaw was working with rage. I knew what was coming.
“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Apostle, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides,” the shemaugh-swathed terrorist intoned, as he lifted a tapanga from the table in front of him, and stepped over to stand over the kneeling American. To cries of “Allahu akhbar!” he put the edge to the young man’s neck, and began to saw.
Blood sprayed, and the young man screamed, a horrible gurgling that died in a few seconds as his trachea was cut through. His murderer kept at it, sawing away at flesh, bone and gristle as blood drenched the remains of the man’s Air Force utilities, and the hands of the butcher that was killing him. With a few hacks and a couple of jerks, the severed head came free, and the terrorist held it up, to the now near-hysterical shouts of “Allahu akhbar! Allahu akhbar!”
“This will be the fate of all infidels!” he shouted. “Let the faithful take heart, and let the Crusader West tremble in fear! Allahu akhbar!” The video ended.
For a long minute, there was only silence. Deadly silence. Heinrich didn’t interrupt it right away.
“That poor bastard,” he finally said, “was Senior Airman Kyle Phillips. He was a data technician at Lemonier. Near as we can tell, the motherfucker who sawed his head off is Al Masri.
“Unfortunately, we can’t gather much from the video. Concrete floor, white walls; could be anywhere over there. One thing we can get is that they may not be keeping all the hostages in one place. We only saw six, and from what we’ve been able to ascertain, including the statements on several jihadi websites, they have a lot more than that.”
He sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little. “Look, I’m sorry I had to show that to you guys. But we’re trying to get you any information that we can, and if the CIA has anything, they aren’t telling us.” He shook his head angrily. “We’re getting precisely dick in the way of support.”
“Do they want the hostages back or not?” Nick demanded. “They had a fucking JSOC compound in that base; they’ve got to have some information to help us out.”
“They don’t want any governmental fingerprints on it,” the Colonel replied. “At least not until they have a slam-dunk. If this goes south, the only involvement that they have is thirty deniable contractors.”
“They’re going to have a lot worse than that!” Alek exploded. “That poor kid is just the first. If they don’t get their shit together, they’re going to have a lot of dead hostages on their hands, not just thirty dead contractors they’d rather didn’t exist.”
“It‘s the Iran hostage situation all over again. They‘re dithering, and the administration doesn‘t want to risk an op going bad. Like I said, you guys are deniable. Hell, you’re more than deniable, you’re potential scapegoats. The mainstream media still hasn’t let go of the Blackwater meme.” The Colonel didn’t bother to hide his disgust.
“So what the fuck are we still doing here?” Bob snarled. “Let’s pull chocks and get the fuck out.”
“We’re still here because we’re getting paid to be here,” Alek said, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Not only that, but those poor bastards might have a fighting chance because of us.” He looked around. “Nothing changes. We find the hostages, and we call in the cavalry.”
“And if there’s no cavalry?”
Jim asked quietly. “If they decide it’s too dangerous?”
“Then we kill, steal, and hijack our way to where they can’t say it’s too dangerous, and call them to pick the lot of us up.” There was a set to Alek’s jaw. I knew the feeling. None of us was comfortable with the situation, but we were even less comfortable with the suits back in the States playing politics with American lives. Just like Captain Van Husten had said, we had all taken the oath, and nobody ever released us from it. “Believe me, I’m not letting those fuckers off the hook.”
There was a moment of silence, as everyone absorbed the new reality. As bad as it sucked, there was no whining, no, “We’re screwed, man!” Just quiet, angry acceptance that the job was going to be harder, and likely, not all of us would be going home after it.
“If we’re going to go ahead and push on,” Larry said, “we’d probably better finish getting ready for this meet tonight.”
And with that, we got back to work.
Chapter 5
Imad and I were sitting in the Defender, which we had idling on the dirt track about a hundred fifty yards from the entrance of the fence, watching the meeting place as the sun crept toward the hills to the west. Our loose shirts hid soft armor vests, pistols, and multiple spare mags. Tiny Bluetooth headsets were hidden in our ears.
“Not a lot of activity,” I observed. I’d expected more overt guards.
“He’s being cautious,” Imad said. “He seemed like the cagey type when I talked to him.” He stopped suddenly. “There. Just inside the fence.” I saw what he was talking about. There was a man standing there, in the increasing shade of the fence and a wide-topped acacia.
“Can you tell if it’s our boy, or one of his pals?” I asked.
