Task Force Desperate

by Peter Nealen

  There was already one pirate on the ladder, starting to climb up. Alek and I shot him simultaneously, and he folded in on himself and dropped back into the skiff, landing on one of his compatriots. The aggressive jackass with the AK was yelling incoherent hate up the ladder, when I shot him in the throat. I had been aiming high chest, but high angle shooting can get interesting. He dropped to the bottom of the skiff, clutching his spurting neck, his gurgles lost in the cacophony of our fire. Alek shot the coxswain and two more pirates at the stern with a series of hammer pairs, so fast it all blended together into a roar of sound. I finished off the pirate who was lying under the fallen climber, as he tried to crawl out.

  The roar of the Bell 407 was joined by the stutter of automatic weapons fire, and I looked to the stern to see Sam bring the helo in a long, slow turn over the second skiff, while one of our guys leaned out the door with an M60E4, and raked the boat. There was some sporadic return fire for a second or two, but it didn’t last long. Fragments of wood and fiberglass flew up as the stream of 7.62 rounds hammered the boat. The gunner ceased fire, and I could see, even from this distance, that the skiff was lying a bit lower in the water, and starting to list to one side.

  The helo made one more slow turn around the skiff, then pitched forward and went for the dhow.

  There was some more serious opposition coming from the pirate mothership, as they had gotten a gunner back on the KPV. Fortunately, they weren’t very good shots, especially as Sam was keeping the helo weaving through the air, until he suddenly came nearly to a halt, flaring up and presenting the gunner’s side to the ship. The KPV tracked away from the helo, and the M60 opened up, hammering the KPV gunner to the deck.

  Sam made three passes, each time low and slow, letting the gunner work the ship over from bow to stern. When he pulled pitch for the Lynch, the dhow was sitting dead in the water, with some smoke starting to rise from its stern. As we stood and watched, the smoke thickened, getting black, and flames started to lick up from the cabin in the back. I don’t know what he’d hit, but there wasn’t going to be much left of the dhow in an hour or so.

  Alek took hold of the boarding ladder and heaved it off the gunwale, where it clattered against the skiff before flipping into the ocean. Then, as the skiff started to drift away, he shouldered his rifle, and put a mag into the hull, keeping his group as tight as he could. Water started to pour into the skiff, stained red as it lapped around the bodies.

  For a moment, he and I just stood there, watching the skiff sink. The bloodletting hadn’t changed the ultimate suckiness of our situation. Nor had it really assuaged the anger at the hard place we found ourselves in. I just stared at the bloodied bodies as they were taken by the ocean, and felt nothing.

  Alek clapped me on the shoulder as the helo flared overhead, coming in to land on the helipad, and I followed him back into the superstructure.

  Behind us, the sharks gathered for their feast.

  Chapter 10

  Danny had set up next to the comm station, at the far end of the team room. He was poring over imagery while keeping a pair of earbuds in, plugged into the SIGINT scanner he’d brought along.

  I came in from another fruitless night reconnaissance. We didn’t dare go out in the daytime anymore. While Alek, Danny, and I had been out on the Lynch, an Issa militia had attacked a group from Medicins Sans Frontieres, and killed two of them with tapangas, while screaming about foreign infidels. The third, a French national, had been rescued by a squad from the Legion, which had been dispatched only because the team had been from France. Overall, the Legion was still holding to a strict “hands-off” policy as far as the civil unrest went.

  Danny looked up as I dropped my gear on my cot. “You guys are back early.”

  I slumped onto the cot, my rifle across my knees. “It was come back early, or get in a firefight,” I replied. “Too many militia out there tonight. We don’t want to draw any more attention to ourselves, at least not until we’ve got a target site for the hostages.” I grabbed a water bottle and pounded about half of it in one pull. “You getting anywhere?”

  Danny sat back in his chair and rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m starting to think that they’re not here.”

  “What?” That got my attention.

  He shook his head in frustration and gestured to the imagery on his laptop. “There should be some sign. Logistical movements, extra guards, something.” He glanced over at me. “How much of the initial images did you guys see?”

  I shrugged. “Just the video of the initial assault, and a couple of gomers dragging mutilated bodies through the streets. That’s it. I didn’t know there was any more.”

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “I told those assholes to give you guys everything.” He sat up and searched on his laptop, before another photo came up, then leaned back and said, “Take a look.”

  I got up and walked over, leaning over his shoulder to look at the screen. It showed the main gate at Lemonier, from an angle that suggested it had been taken from just over the horizon. There were triumphant gomers standing on the walls and on top of the mangled gate, waving rifles and RPGs in the air. And below was a line of people, unarmed, their hands on their heads. Most of them looked to be wearing uniforms. It was a long line, too.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked. It looked like the fucking Bataan Death March.

  “If you think it’s our people getting herded out of Lemonier after the attack, then yeah, it is.” He switched back to the images he’d been looking at. “The satellite that took that picture went below the horizon and lost contact only a moment after that. The one that was supposed to take its place got shot down by a Chinese A-sat last year, and hasn’t been replaced.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “From that image right there, we know that there were at least two hundred in enemy hands after the assault. That should leave a pretty big footprint, wherever they are; they might not feed them much, but starving hostages to death is counter-productive, and even at minimal rations, enough to keep two hundred people fed is going to be noticed. But I haven’t seen dick that points to that kind of logistical effort anywhere around here.”

  “You think they’ve killed them all already?” I asked, a sudden icy ball settling in my gut. Maybe we were here for nothing…

  “No, a mass grave would show signs, too,” he said. “I’ve seen them before, and I know what to look for. They’re either not here at all, or they’re being kept in multiple different places.”

  “That way nobody can really mount a successful rescue op,” I said, realization dawning. “If we find one group, they might execute the rest when we go after them.” These fuckers were getting clever. This spoke of a level of sophistication that I hadn’t heard of Islamists using before.

  “They’ve got some damned good COMSEC too,” Danny said. “Not encryption, these assclowns wouldn’t even know what it means. But if there are hostages here, nobody’s talking about it.

  “It’s this Al Masri dogfucker,” he said after a moment, staring at the screen. “We knew he was smart, but usually even the smart ones have let their ideology get in the way of strategy. For some reason he hasn’t. He’s not trusting Allah to fill in the blanks.”

  “Has he done something like this before?” I asked. I didn’t actually know a lot about Al Masri. I knew he was reportedly connected to several Salafist terrorist organizations, and was considered a member in good standing of the Muslim Brotherhood. But specifics were hard to come by in open-source materials.

  “Not at this level,” was the reply. “He was the power behind the attacks in Bahrain a couple years ago, that ended with the Emir dead, parliament suspended, and the island in Iranian hands. We don’t know if that was his desired endstate, but he showed some real strategic brilliance there. Then, once the Iranians moved in, he dropped off the map, only to show up in Somalia last year, where he orchestrated the retaking of Mogadishu from AMISOM, mainly by assassinating leaders and l
uring platoons of AMISOM troops into fire sacks where they couldn’t fight back without killing a lot of civilians. A lot of civilians did wind up getting slaughtered, and the population turned against the AMISOM mission. Once they had Mogadishu back, they started hitting the Kenyans, even managed to drive them out of Kismayo, and back into the hinterlands. In a matter of months, Al-Shabaab owned southern Somalia again.”

  “And we still have no idea who this asshole is?” I asked. Maybe the CIA had information that we didn’t.

  Danny just shook his head. “Nope. His nickname suggests he’s from Egypt, but that could just be a ploy to throw his enemies off the scent. For all we know, he could be a fucking German who speaks Arabic really well. Adam Gadahn was a fat-assed American with a high-pitched voice, and he was on the ‘most wanted’ list of Al-Qaeda maggots for a long time.”

  I sat there and looked at the imagery on Danny’s laptop for a moment, while Danny squinted at the ceiling, his hands behind his head. How the fuck were we supposed to find a ghost? Or, for that matter, find where the ghost kept hostages?

  “So what are we looking at?” I asked, finally, an unpleasant sensation gnawing at my guts. “How the fuck are we going to find the hostages and get them out?”

  “We keep going up the chain,” Alek said from the doorway, his rifle tucked under his arm and his vest in his hand. “Like we did with Khasam. We’re going to have to be careful, and try to make it look random, so we don’t tip them off that that’s what’s happening. They’ll definitely kill the hostages then.”

  “And what if they’re not even in the country anymore?” Danny asked. “We can’t take on the entire revolution here in Djibouti, even if the hostages’ lives weren’t hanging in the balance. For one thing, while we’re doing that, the trail’s going to get colder.”

  “Do we have a trail right now?” Alek asked bluntly.

  Danny frowned. “Not really.”

  “Then we keep going as we are until we pick one up,” Alek said, walking over and depositing his gear on his rack. “No other course of action that I can see, unless we suddenly get an intel windfall tomorrow.” Danny said nothing. There wasn’t much to say.

  “Is anybody still coming to Dave’s clinic?” he asked suddenly, a thoughtful look on his face.

  “Yes, and no, we’re not going to start grilling the locals as to whether or not they’ve seen any hostages,” Alek said flatly. “If we’re not compromised now, we sure will be as soon as that happens. For all these people know, we’re just a meaner-looking version of Doctors Without Borders, and I’d like to keep it that way.” All the same, I had found myself wondering how long that was going to last. After the French docs had gotten hit, how long before some angry gomers got it in their heads to hit the other clinic full of Westerners, conveniently too close to the Afar part of town?

  “I’m not talking about openly asking pointed questions, Alek,” Danny said, annoyance creeping into his voice. “I’m not stupid, and I’ll remind you that I’ve been at this particular game longer than you have. There are ways to get information without the source even knowing they’ve given it to you. I’m just thinking that we do need to start engaging the locals who come to the clinic more. Something useful might come up in conversation.”

  Alek nodded thoughtfully. He had a point. “Unfortunately, none of us speak Somali very well, aside from Imad.”

  “I do,” Danny said. “And although I’m a little rusty, my field med skills haven’t completely atrophied.”

  “And if you’re in the clinic, who’s going to keep looking over all the rest of this stuff?” Alek asked, motioning to the laptop and the imagery pinned to the wall.

  “This crap isn’t getting us anywhere,” Danny admitted. “I think it’s time to rely on some good, old-fashioned HUMINT.” He stood up and stretched. “And, coincidentally, I happen to have the training for that, too.”

  As he stepped to the door, heading for the clinic on the far side of the building, he turned back for a moment, a serious expression on his face. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. We might have a bit more of a time limit on this op than we thought. With the threat of the rebels taking over, the Ethiopians are starting to mobilize. No word on actual movements yet, just the initial mobilization orders, and an increase of radio chatter on the border.”

  That feeling of being between a rock and a hard place just wasn’t going to go away. “Only a matter of time, I suppose,” I said heavily. “They can’t afford to let the only port they have access to taken over by Islamist hardliners. They’d be strangled.”

  “That’s not all,” Danny said. “I’m starting to get mutterings that the Eritreans have noticed the mobilization, as well.”

  Alek sighed. “Which means they’ll be coming, if for no other reason than to fight the Ethiopians. Great.” His shoulders slumped. “We’ve got to find what we’re looking for. Fast.”

  For three more days, we waited and listened, playing aid worker, and keeping our weapons close at hand, albeit out of sight of the people we helped. The entire time, we waited for the gunfire or explosion that would announce that we were the next target.

  While the city seemed locked in a never-ending riot, somebody was putting some backbone in the government troops, who were holding the port and the presidential palace. The latter wasn’t actually that hard, as it was situated on a man-made peninsula, and really only had two points of access. Still, they hadn’t yielded any ground in several days. I suspected the Legion had something to do with it, until a tall, fit man walked into our clinic, looking around with a hawkish stare that missed nothing.

  He was actually lighter-skinned than Imad, and had a thin beard and mustache. He was in mufti, but carried himself with the unmistakable bearing of a career soldier, and not one from around here. I’d seen enough of the Djiboutian National Army to peg this guy as an outsider. If I had to guess, I would have said Ethiopian. Which opened up a whole other can of worms.

  I caught Dave’s eye, as I continued bandaging the shrapnel wounds on the little boy in front of me. He’d been too close when some jackass launched an RPG at random, and had caught about three dozen splinters of metal and pulverized concrete. Fortunately, none had hit his eyes; he’d heal fine. If he lived so long.

  Dave jerked his head at me, then at the tall man standing in the door. I saw he had his hands full, up to his elbows in an unconscious woman’s blood as he tried to save her. I washed my hands in the corner and met the newcomer’s eyes. “What do you want?” I asked. Maybe not the usual question one was supposed to get from an aid worker, but I wasn’t really an aid worker, so what the hell.

  “I have heard that there are Americans here,” he said, in accented, but flawless, English. “I was understandably curious; most Westerners have fled or are staying locked down in the European quarter. I wished to see these extraordinary Americans.”

  “Well, you’ve seen us,” I said brusquely. This guy was fishing, and I more and more suspected he was Ethiopian, probably an advisor to the National Army. The Ethiopians had been pretty close to the US for a while, getting a fair amount of support from Task Force Horn of Africa, the survivors of which we were now searching for. But in the last few years, rumor had it that they were turning more and more to the Chinese. In other words, I had no idea what this guy might be planning if he suspected we might be here for some other reason than aid work.

  “I am surprised,” he admitted, as he walked further into the clinic. “I would not expect aid workers to be so doggedly staying on, especially not after a major American military base was recently overrun. Or hadn’t you heard about that?”

  “Oh, we’ve heard about it,” Dave replied without looking up. “Jeff, can you give me a hand? I need a clamp.” I hurried over to where he was kneeling over the woman. Her upper leg had been severely wounded, but someone had had the presence of mind to throw a tourniquet on. Dave was now trying to find the artery. I grabbed a clamp off the table next to him and reached in.

  The tall man steppe
d over to loom over us as we worked. “Can I be of assistance?” he asked.

  Dave actually looked up, nonplused. “Sure, I guess.” He pointed with an elbow at the table. “Put on some gloves, first.” As dirty as the place had been when we’d found it, Dave had personally scrubbed and sterilized it, and he’d be damned if somebody put their dirty hands on one of his patients without precautions. Dave had been an 18D, Special Forces Medic, and had collected very nearly enough medical knowledge to become an MD. He just would rather work this way. He said it paid more these days, and he was probably right. He also just didn’t want to work in an office, for some stuck-up hospital administrator.

  The tall man dutifully pulled on a pair of sterile rubber gloves, and leaned in. Dave pointed to a Surefire next to the table. “Hold that so I can see.” The man picked it up without a word, and shined the light into the wound.

  The wound was a ragged one, and had slashed across the thigh. As near as I could tell, it had only nicked the artery, but that was enough. Dave had his suture kit nearby, but he was trying to find the artery first, which was difficult. Pinched off by the tourniquet, it had shrunk. Fortunately, it hadn’t been severed, so it couldn’t retract into the leg.

  I used the clamp to pull open the wound, allowing Dave to get better access to the artery. I heard him grunt as he got enough room to work, and he reached for the sutures, which the tall man quickly handed to him. I glanced at the woman, noticing her features for the first time. She was really quite attractive, if a little on the scrawny side. Good thing she was out, too. This would hurt like hell if she was awake.

  Dave worked as deftly as he could in the small space of the wound, while the tall man moved carefully to keep the light on his hands. I still didn’t know who the guy was, and I was still gun-shy about his being here, but he’d had some training, and appeared to know his way around some trauma medicine.