by Greg Barron
‘The Sa-baah. That’s her,’ Simon shouts.
‘What if it’s a trap, a lure?’
‘We have to take that chance. How far away is she?’
‘Twenty-five nautical miles, but there is a head sea. One hour’s steaming at fast cruise. These are dangerous waters. I will not risk my boat.’
Simon walks to the chart table, wrenches open the drawer and reaches for the gun he noticed there earlier. His hand grips the butt and drags it out, aiming the muzzle at Lubayd’s head.
‘The gun is not cocked,’ the elder brother says, seemingly unafraid.
One of the many training courses Simon has had to attend over the years involved weapons that might be encountered in a hijack attempt. This particular handgun is familiar to him — the name he does not remember, but he recalls enough to grip the slide between his thumb and the knuckle of his first finger and pull it back, watching a brass cartridge slide into place. ‘Thank you. It is cocked now. I am a desperate man. Change course and radio that you intend to render assistance. Hurry.’
The two brothers look at each other. Lubayd spreads his arms in supplication. ‘This is not the way of a civilised man, Simon. You are making a mistake. Put the gun down.’
Simon glares back, saying nothing, but his forefinger tightens on the trigger.
‘OK, OK, we will do it.’ Lubayd disengages the autopilot and makes exaggerated movements of the wheel. ‘We are changing course. Look at the chartplotter if you don’t believe me.’ He jabs a thumb at the screen.
Simon relaxes but does not lower the gun, merely allowing his elbow to drop down onto his chest to take the weight.
Lubayd goes on, ‘All I was trying to say was that we are not set up to help when we get there. This is a pleasure boat.’ He shrugs. ‘What can we do?’
‘There is no point me going to the main island when the ship I am looking for is foundering out here. Can you go faster?’
‘Not against this sea, I am sorry.’
Simon walks closer to the helm where he has a good view of the plotter, the ship represented by a dark triangle, their course a trailing dotted line. The abrupt change in course shows as a clear dogleg. On the top left-hand corner of the screen is a series of pale circles, the rocky island in question marked in red. At the bottom of the screen the speed readout flickers around twenty-four knots.
Looking down at the gun, Simon feels embarrassed, wanting to explain. Hey, I don’t normally do this kind of thing, very sorry, it’s just that there’s these terrorists and they’re holding my children, and I’m pretty sure they’re on that boat …
Day 4, 11:00
The technicals line up in the yard, machine guns pointed skywards — Russian DShK 12.7mm, Marika decides. Serious firepower. The weapons look well maintained, with oiled rags wrapped around the breechblock and mere traces of rust where the original blue has worn through.
Waiting while the men load the trucks, she adjusts the fatigues that Dalmar Asad ordered to be issued from the stores. Most of the men, however, wear a conglomerate of clothes: part camo, part jeans and T-shirts.
One of Asad’s men gives her a cardboard box that contains her handgun, and the CVCID. The screen is cracked through and nothing happens when she presses the power button. This is a real setback, and she glares up at Dalmar Asad, who shrugs, ‘I am sorry, but my men are like children with electronic gadgets.’
Still scowling, wondering what she is going to do without communications, she unclips the magazine on the Glock, dropping it into her hands and checking that it still contains eight 9mm parabellum cartridges before sliding it back into the butt, surprised but pleased that Dalmar Asad hadn’t ordered the gun to be unloaded before giving it back. Next she straps the holster on over her clothes and delves back into the box, removing a folded square of black cloth.
‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘but what is this?’
‘It is a hijab — head scarf. Some of the villages you will pass through are very traditional. You might cause offence if your head is exposed. Please put it on if my men advise it.’
Marika finds that the cloth fits into one of the cargo pockets of her camouflage trousers. ‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘yet now I have one more favour to ask.’
‘Yes?’
‘I would like to speak to the man called Madoowbe. The one your men beat up and tortured.’ No matter who or what he was, they came in together and she would have to account for him.
‘I’m afraid that is not possible.’
Marika feels a chill. ‘Why not?’
‘Because he escaped from his cell during the night. The man must be as strong as a bull and a contortionist — he managed to bend a bar and squeeze through a space that I doubt you would get through. He will not get away so easily if we meet again. Come, the patrol is ready to leave. Please do not be afraid of my men — they will treat you well in every way. Under threat of death.’
Marika opens one of the rear doors, sliding across the ripped and worn upholstery of the bench seat. The remainder of the men clamber aboard. The air explodes with sound as the man on the heavy machine gun not two metres away fires a burst into the air. Brass cartridges clatter down into the vehicle tray and the earth below. The act is a mere punctuation yet, to Marika, it smacks of ill-discipline and waste. She turns to Dalmar Asad, who stands beside the vehicle, unperturbed. ‘I’m surprised you let them waste ammunition like that.’
‘Not at all. I provide meals, accommodation and qat. They, however, pay for their own cartridges. It is my way of preventing them from shooting things all day. My boys love to shoot their guns.’
A man walks from the office building towards the vehicles, carrying a Nam-style green pack in one hand and an assault rifle in the other. Marika recognises the fine moustache and lean frame, the memory of pain and fear raising the gooseflesh on her arms.
Dalmar Asad sees the direction of her eyes. ‘Yes, Wanami will command the patrol. I am sure you will put your previous differences aside. He is a good man. I trust him more than most of the others.’
Marika takes a deep breath. Good man? Previous differences? The bastard beat the shit out of me; connected a truck battery to my nose.
Captain Wanami, at a soft order from Dalmar Asad, pauses beside them, listening while the warlord issues a stern-sounding stream of Somali.
‘I just warned him that you are important to me,’ Asad says, ‘that he will answer for your life, with his own.’
Wanami answers with a nod, but his eyes never leave Marika’s. The moment is soon over, and she watches him move to the lead technical, open the door and slide into the passenger seat. Wheels spin, gravel flies and her head snaps back against the seat as they accelerate out the driveway.
Simon rues that wasted hour, staring out through the armoured glass screen at the bows, shining stainless steel windlass and a hank of chain draped across it, the swells marching across in soldierly lines. Now and then another desperate plea from the stricken ship crackles out from the VHF. Twice they steam past tiny islands — lonely fragmented sentinels with white smudges of spray at the base.
The old woman appears from below, moving to the galley where she prepares a half-slice of flat bread smeared with cream-coloured yoghurt from a plastic tub. If she notices the gun in Simon’s hand she gives no sign, moving to her usual place at the dinette table.
‘How far now?’ Simon asks.
Lubayd fiddles with the set before announcing, ‘Four nautical miles — ten minutes at this speed.’ His eyes drop to the gun. ‘Put it away, please. You have my word that I will continue on this course.’
Simon lowers the barrel but makes no attempt to part with the weapon. ‘Sorry, but I think I’ll just hang onto it. Makes me feel better.’
Lubayd shrugs, as if he does not care, and turns back to the helm.
Across the world, regardless of time zone, latitude, longitude, and electoral fortitude, governments meet and deliberate, discussing the terrorists’ demands. Many of the necessary actions hav
e been on the drawing board for some time, lacking only determination and electoral consensus. Some politicians privately see the Rabi al-Salah ultimatums as an opportunity to fast track legislation that might have taken years.
The debilitating effects of climate change have coincided with a critical point in the downward spiral of the major Western economies. Every responsible leader knows that the borrowing can’t continue. That expenses must be reined in. Yet austerity budgets lead to public outrage, rioting, and electoral oblivion. Greece, a country technically in default of its repayment obligations as early as 2011, suffers general strikes, and violent confrontations on a scale not seen there for more than half a century.
Finance Minister Evangelos Venizolos attempts to salvage some national pride by accusing the EU of making his country a scapegoat for the crisis, when other states like Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal are also spiralling towards bankruptcy. Despite a last-ditch referendum, the country cannot fight what Albert Einstein once described as the most powerful force in the universe — compound interest.
Responsible world leaders understand that carbon emissions must be stopped, and fast, if only to prevent the most expensive natural disaster in history. Plant nurseries gear up to output fifty billion new trees, a production run to rival any wartime munitions program. The late Professor Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt movement mobilises a generation of Kenyan women into tree planters. The Great Green Wall project on the same continent works towards a fifteen-kilometre wide corridor of trees, eight thousand kilometres long, across the southern Sahara from Senegal to Djibouti.
Alternative methods of reducing carbon, including blasting sulphates into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, stashing concentrated C02 underground and pumping it into outer space all have their advocates and adversaries. None offer hope of more than token reductions.
Responding to the Rabi al-Salah crisis, the United States Congress meets in an all-night, record session that sees tempers flare and insults thrown. A dawn statement from the Vice President goes live to air.
‘I have been instructed by Congress to inform the people of America that, while condemning the methods of the terrorists at Rabi al-Salah, we will begin an assessment of the logistics and ramifications of withdrawing all US troops from the locations named in the militants’ demands. As a sign of good faith we will evacuate four major bases in the region …’
In Australia, the Government threatens a double-dissolution election when the Opposition at first refuse to support a full withdrawal of troops. In the end, however, three key independent MPs and the Greens side with the Government, giving them the numbers.
Pakistan, fighting to control an internal conflict that borders on civil war, issues a statement that all demands will be complied with.
The Israeli Knesset sees some of its most emotional and passionate speeches in living memory. The Yesha Council and Almagor threaten to take matters into their own hands. The ruling Kadima party attempts to broker a compromise position between these parties and the political left — the People’s Voice and the Peace Camp. The result? Stand off.
The most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, offers tentative support to the Rabi al-Salah terrorists, daring to issue a statement along these lines, surmising that the United States and her allies are too preoccupied to cause a diplomatic fuss. This lead is followed by Bangladesh, Northern Sudan, Algeria, Malaysia, Niger, Senegal, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. The Sunni majority Maldives, a country that will soon lose half its land area to a rising Indian Ocean, offers the ‘freedom fighters of Rabi al-Salah’ sanctuary should it become necessary.
The left-wing magazine New Day, a journal that has seen a phenomenal growth in circulation over its three years of existence, makes the case that the terrorist attack on Rabi al-Salah was made inevitable by the policies of the self-centred democracies of the West. That America and Europe have proved themselves to be the fat sows of humanity, lying in a bog-hole of their own filth, polluting the world until it is too late; responsible for bringing the terror of rising sea levels and unprecedented storms to the Third World. China’s role in this disaster rates no mention.
The article argues that when a handful of men from the affected countries fight back in the only way they can, they should not be labelled terrorists: Western civilisation is putrescent. There must be something new, something better. A way to embrace the natural world. Something that will let us exist on this planet for millions of years, not just a few centuries as technological beings. The long-term survival of our species is at risk and no price can be too great to ensure the common good. Only a plague species does not have the intelligence to know that its very fecundity threatens its survival. Our never-ceasing hunger — for food, for possessions, for money, for luxury — has brought us to the brink.
The so-called developed nations have not brought peace, but war and weapons on a scale never imagined. They have armed the majority world, in particular the bottom billion — the most disadvantaged people on earth. They have bombed and maimed civilians as they jostle for influence. They have forced the dispossessed to use distasteful methods of war, for they are powerless without them. They have driven the world to a physical crisis from which it may never recover. Let them learn, let them accept that there must be change; dramatic social and economic change. Let them act, at last. Now that it is all but too late.
The article, attributed to a freelance journalist attached to The Guardian, Yanis Moussa, runs for an unprecedented fifteen pages, and ends with a cartoon of Uncle Sam kneeling down for beheading by a stylised Islamic warrior and his scimitar.
Media organisations continue their blanket coverage of the situation, with endless opinions from experts in any field related to the drama. Few outlets find time to report a significant weather event in the Indian Ocean, forming south of the Bay of Bengal and threatening the Andaman Islands. India’s meteorological department tags the developing storm as Tropical Cyclone Zahir, yet it remains of local interest only.
Day 4, 13:00
Ali Khalid Abukar holds his hand to his eyes, staggering with vertigo. Fatigue is a black wall that looms from all sides. In the last seventy hours he has slept for just an instant at a time, leaning or sitting, allowing the blackness to settle into his psyche before he fights it away.
The headaches began a day earlier, an internal hammer that throbs with each heartbeat — one of the side effects of the drug Modafinil. Ali, like the others, carries a package of capsules, printed in Indian script with the trade name Modalert.
Unlike more archaic stimulants — amphetamines such as Benzedrine — Modafinil, apparently, has few side effects with normal use. The user, however, requires increasing doses to stay alert, and now headaches have come, along with an anxiousness that lurks under the surface, never quite morphing into real panic. He descends into a kind of half sleep. A trance. Dreaming of the Islamic State that he has created in his mind, the salafist society like that of Mohammed’s Medina, and of the twelfth century al-Muwahhidun.
There is food for all; just laws; work for every adult man. For women too there is a fulfilling society behind the closed doors of the home. When he pictures the woman of that home it is Sufia. The pain of their separation is a deep thrust, yet he allows her image to distract his thoughts for just a moment.
Twelve months earlier he travelled into the Shabeellaha Hoose region of southern Somalia, occupied by the Islamist group Shabaab al-Mujahedin, now infiltrated and strengthened by al-Muwahhidun and Hizb al-Islam. Despite their constant attacks on what they call ‘apostate’ forces in Mogadishu and beyond, there is a side to their struggle that demonstrates to Ali just what is possible under the Sharia.
At dusk one day beside a field near the coastal village of Baraawe, an imam explained to him the simplicity and beauty of the new order he had helped bring to the region. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is the political system God ordained for His people. All men know the law, for it is explained in the Qur’an. Each knows his place. The chil
dren are respectful. The elderly have dignity.’
Yes, the women were hidden, seen in public swathed in niqab and abaya, but the imam explained that even these wraiths had a rich and interesting life behind closed doors, with visitors of their own sex and a sense of joy that they lived their lives in the way described by the Prophet, may peace be upon Him.
Ali closes his eyes and prays with all his heart.
The convoy follows a dusty track, vehicles skidding and sliding around corners, as if the act of driving fast relieves boredom for the drivers. The technical’s roof provides welcome shade from the sun, but there is no air-conditioning, just the stifling desert air rushing in through open windows. Marika stares out at occasional small villages as the patrol stabs through, scattering people and livestock without regard for their safety. Now and then her eyes settle on the erect figure of Captain Wanami in the lead jeep, and she is glad she wasn’t forced to travel in the same vehicle as him.
Listening to the conversation around her, Marika learns a few basic words of Somali by studying the gestures attached to a word. Ha means yes, often emphasised with a double: ha, ha. Mia, similarly used, means no. Ghaba means something along the lines of bitch, and whas appears to translate to ‘fucking’. The latter is their favourite word, used often and with emphasis. Since the start of the journey they have called her the whas ghaba. The fucking bitch. The nickname gives her the first and only belly laugh of the trip.
On the outside, however, there is little to laugh about. Here Marika sees poverty more dire than any in her experience — men, women, and children with desperate, hungry eyes. Most live in dome shaped tukul huts made of acacia branches and thatch, or cast off iron sheets. Poor crops, drooping corn and wilted root vegetables stand in fields fenced with thorn to keep out goats that have long ago been eaten. There are cattle, but few in number, as skeletal as the villagers who protect them with guns. The starving beasts stand with mournful eyes, an oxpecker bird on a flank or bony shoulder.
