Born of War (24 page)

“H
ey ho!” Omar yelled at the top of his lungs. He had seen movement on the other side of the road that he had been following for most of the day. He stooped down behind a large boulder waving his Kalashnikov in the air above the rock. He knew that they were neither Kenyan nor Ethiopian, as he saw one who was in an olive-drab uniform with a black turban. It was the uniform of Al Shabaab.

He waited for a response. There was none.

Omar stayed hunched down with his shoulder against the rock. It had been facing the morning sun and the heat passed through his clothes into his shoulder. He looked around the side of the rock and saw a figure kneeling behind a bush.

“Tarriq, is that you?” Omar yelled out. Tarriq had been with Omar in the training camp. He was the one veteran in the group who had fought in the battle of Raam Caddey several weeks before. A scouting party of Ethiopians had crossed paths with a scouting party of the mujaahidiin. Both parties fired at each other with bursts of ammunition and hand grenades. Several rocket-propelled grenades were fired and, as Tarriq reported, several Ethiopians were slaughtered. A few of the mujaahidiin became martyrs.

“Omar?”

“Tarriq, yes it is Omar.” He stayed below the rock until the identification process was complete. “How do I know that you are Tarriq, my friend?”

“You complained about digging a hole in the sand at the beach.”

“Yes, Tarriq, yes, my friend.” Omar stood up to see his friend just on the other side of the boulder.

“
Al-salamu alaykum
.” Tarriq came up to hug his brother.

“
Wa alaykum s-salam
.” Omar held his hand over his heart. “Do you have something to drink?”

“It is just like Omar to complain!”

Omar thought it a joke.

“I have traveled all day.”

“And why are you alone? Have you lost your mind?” Tarriq was older. He was actually born in Great Britain, somewhere outside London. The two had become friends because of the common link of being jihadists from other lands.

“I had one with me but he deserted.”

“A dog.”

Tarriq was not alone. He had three others with him who were from Baraawe on the coast. They had gotten lost and separated from their unit. Omar explained that he was heading to the northwest to find the two captives.

“Allah is great.” Tarriq was encouraged by the news. “
Amriiki
?”

“Yes.”

“It would be better if they were Europeans.” Tarriq sounded like he had some experience with the prisoner and kidnapping business.

“Why do you say so?” Omar had slung the rifle over his shoulder. They started to head northeast to the village of Tayeeglow. One of the men had fought a battle there several months ago.

“Europeans, especially the French, will pay millions for the hostages. The
Amriiki
will take forever and pay nothing.” Tarriq did have the correct information. “This is the road to Tayeeglow!”

The rutted road forked to the left and right and Tarriq indicated that they should take the right path. Rain clouds were starting to form again in the sky.

Soon they came to a burned-out wreck of a large flatbed truck. The rain started to come down. They all huddled underneath the vehicle and waited. Soon the water started to run through the red dirt in streams.

Nightfall came, and with it, the mosquitoes. Omar pulled out his plastic bag and from it took a net that he wrapped around his head and arms. He laid the plastic bag out in the rain cupped in a way so as to gather water. Soon he was able to stick his face in the plastic-contained puddle and drink.

“We ate roots and drank our own urine when we went into Kenya last year.” Tarriq's friend looked much older. He carried a Dragunov sniper rifle that he had picked up off the battlefield somewhere. Omar studied the weapon and thought of how many Kenyans it must have killed.

Omar listened to the talk of battles as the rain continued to pour down. They often mentioned the helicopter gunships and how they would appear out of nowhere without warning. He tucked his head against the inside of the tire rim with his Kalashnikov across his lap.

Chocolate milkshakes. And ice cream bars.
He could taste the ice cream as it dripped down the sides of his mouth
.

Omar's stomach hurt from hunger but soon his heavy eyes outweighed the growl from his empty stomach. He awoke in the middle of the dark to the loud, vibrating sounds of the four men snoring. Omar stuck his head out in the soft drizzle of rain so as to breathe in air that wasn't saturated with the smell of burned-out diesel and lubricant.

I wonder if Wassef got the message?
He had sent the sign from his last video recording to awaken one of the cells. It was difficult to get to a computer on the front. But when they neared a town or a city, he was able to use a cell phone to make a video. He had kept the phone that he borrowed in Jilib to call his wife.

In the pitch-black, cold and wet underbelly of the truck, he opened his plastic corn bag, dug down to a rag, and felt for the phone. Omar pulled it out, turned it on, and saw a voice message. The buzz of the phone didn't bother the sleeping men.

We would all be dead if the Ethiopians showed up right now.
He covered the phone with the rag so that the light was barely visible. And it was there, in the wet mud and dirt, that he learned of the second cell's success.

“
Allahu akbar
!” He hit his head on the undercarriage of the truck. The others started to wake from the noise only to see him in the rain dancing and holding his hands up in the air.

“More Americans have died!” he cried out in joy.

“W
ake up!” Xasan nudged Karen's boot with the butt of his Kalashnikov. It was a nudge and not a kick. He had changed since the near-death of his father. She could smell smoke and hear something crackling. It was a good scent that reminded her of home in Atlanta when her mother cooked a turkey for Christmas lunch. It was the only time during the entire year when her father would turn off his pager and cell phone for a few hours.

I am losing it.
She tried to turn over from the cold side exposed to the damp to the warm side on the ground.

“
Amriiki
,” Xasan whispered.

He had never whispered before. Xasan's use of a reasonable voice woke her up more than his screaming. “
Amriiki
, don't you want to eat?”

Her kidneys had started to hurt during the night. She was now living with constant dull back pain in the flanks of her lower back.

“What?” She turned over again to see a small fire at the edge of the overhang of a tree. It was early morning light and the clouds seemed lower than she had seen them in the past. She focused her eyes and saw something on a spit overhanging the fire. It was a small animal of some sort on a wooden pole above the flames. One end of the pole was stuck in the dirt on one side of the pit while the other was balanced on a large, twenty-liter plastic jug from the truck. Xasan went back to the pole and turned it, waited, and turned it again. With each turn, what little grease there was caused the fire to flame up and crackle.

“What is it?” She pulled herself off the ground and stood next to the fire. The warmth helped dry out her damp and muddy clothes.

“I found my little friend.” Xasan smiled his toothy smile. He pointed to the edge of the darkness where there was a pile of skin and fur. From the shape of the skull she could determine that it was either a small goat or dog. It didn't matter.

Karen went back to the truck to see the old man in the cab asleep but almost sitting straight up. A tarp covered the bed of the truck. She lifted it up to see the shape of Peter in the fetal position. His pants were stained. The smell was overwhelming.

“Peter?” There was no noise. He remained motionless.

“Peter? We have some food.”

She saw a movement.

“Karen?”

“Yes.”

“I am not sure I am going to make it.”

“Peter!” She pulled the tarp off the bed of the truck, revealing his crumpled-up shape. She climbed in and lifted his head, and as she did, she felt his cold and clammy skin and the bristles of his unshaved face.

“Do you have the aspirin?”

“Somewhere.” He had been allowed to keep the bottle. The old man had felt better and therefore it was assumed that no further medication would be needed.

Karen had saved one life and now shifted her priorities towards keeping Peter alive. She felt his pants pockets and found the shape of a bottle in one.

“Here, swallow this. I don't have any water right now but try to swallow it or chew it.” She slipped a pill into the corner of his mouth.

Soon he seemed to feel better.

They ate the rubbery meat, chewing on a piece for what seemed like hours. It didn't matter. This was the first protein they had had for some time. It had no salt or pepper, but the burnt meat certainly had flavor.

“Soon we will see men and get rice,” Xasan said as he gorged himself on the goat. He sucked on the bones while they sat around the fire until they heard a sound in the darkness.

He pulled back on the slide of his Kalashnikov, forgetting that he already had one round in the chamber. A flash of brass popped up from his rifle when the prior round was ejected into the air.

At the same time, he kicked dirt over the fire. It smoldered and then smoked. Eventually, with his continuous kicking of the dirt, it went out.

“Who is there?” Xasan had taken a position behind the hood of the small truck. His father stayed in the cab with his rifle raised as well.

Karen had crawled into the bed of the truck huddling next to Peter with the tarp pulled up. She kept her head down, listening for any sound.

“Who is there?” Xasan repeated the question in Swahili.

“Hello, brother!” a reply came back.

“I do not know you!” Xasan was ready to shoot. His reply was frantic as if they were a moment away from the crack of automatic rifle fire.

“It is Tarriq of the mujaahidiin,” the voice came out of the darkness.

“I have heard of a Tarriq. Show yourself!”

After some time, a small man came out of the darkness with his rifle raised over his head.

“Fires can be dangerous. It will pull in a helicopter.”

“Yes, Tarriq.” Xasan paused. He saw the man look at the last of the goat entrails near the bush. “We have bones and you might cook what is left.”

“A fire can be good for some things.” Tarriq pointed to the remaining organs of the goat as two other men came out of the darkness. The fire would soon be rebuilt.

Another man came in from the bush. The strangers all waved to Tarriq as if they knew him well.

Tarriq asked the last man out of the bush something in Swahili. The stranger replied. Karen heard the accent of an American. She pulled the tarp away and looked over the edge of the truck.

“Where are the doctors?” the American voice asked. The commander pointed in Karen's direction.

The man came over to the edge of the truck.

He was white and skinny and had a straggly beard.

“I am Omar.” He spoke the words in unaccented English.

She didn't say anything.

“You are the Americans?”

“I am an American and he is French.” She shook as she spoke.

He gave her a twisted smile as if he were a thief who had opened a woman's purse after stealing it, and then discovered that she had just come from the automatic teller machine. It was an evil smile that she would not forget.

T
he mother tug had left Kismaayo just after midnight. It had three small wooden fishing skiffs strung behind it in one continuous chain. It took a course east-northeast. The men were armed with Kalashnikovs, PKs, F1s, and RPGs. They were heading out to sea for a day or two of fishing. If the radar showed nothing, they would scatter the skiffs and catch what they could and bring it back to the market. If the radar showed a big fish, they would catch a container ship.

The waters were dangerous. Kenya's navy was known to patrol the shoreline, and farther out, the U.S. Navy or United Kingdom were on the prowl.

“It is hard to see.” The tug's master held the metal wheel tightly in his grasp. He watched a small radar screen just above and to the left of the wheel. It was not as old as the tug, which was held together by wire and tape and luck. The diesel engine kept a constant vibration going that passed through the boat.

One rod is not right.
The tug master knew the engine like a mother knows the cry of a baby. It had the slightest click that indicated a piece of metal buried deep inside the old diesel was nearing failure.

One trip, and then....
They were always one trip away from failure. But the capture of a “big fish” would mean a new engine. It would give life to everyone, and his take would be the largest. Or, so to say, his would be the largest after Faud's. The tax collector always came first.

“The rain is setting in.” The ship's master looked out the window. He held the wheel as the old tug continued to roll up and down in the increasingly rough seas.

“It is impossible.” The master was getting frustrated with the situation. The weather seemed to cover most of the gulf. It would take hours of holding on to the wheel and looking at the compass to get anywhere. The seas and the winds were against them. It barely mattered if he looked outside through the film-covered glass, as all he saw were waves. There would be no other ship or object this close to shore, or on his course, other than perhaps another fishing tug from Kismaayo, although they had seen no other boat pull out from the dock that day.

“What are the men doing?”

“They are all sick.”

The master smiled at the young pups that always wanted to go. He knew that they dreamed of riches if a big one were caught, and some fish to sell if not. He thought of them under a tarp, in the back, behind the protection of the wheelhouse and huddled together like sardines. They would be grouped together as close as fish in a can.

“Should I wake the men up?”

“No, they are probably sick and not asleep.”

A beep from the radar pulled the master's eyes down from the gray and black that surrounded the boat. A running light on top of the steering house flickered and reflected back from the wall of fog that they were driving into.

“Another fisherman?” the master asked out loud as he saw the smallest of blips on the screen. It had been acting up lately. He hit the side of it with the palm of his hand, as if that would shake the tubes inside and restore their connection. Sometimes it worked.

“It must be.”

“It doesn't look bigger than our boat.”

The blip was small and close.

And then it disappeared.

“Allah protects us,” he mumbled under his breath. He pulled back on the throttle and, with it, the engine's rumble came down a notch.

And then the blip appeared again, this time as only a flicker. If the object was any real distance away, the radar would not have registered anything.

“Another tug would be nice.” He always liked running into a brother on the sea. They would pull alongside and exchange word of where the dangers were.

And again it disappeared.

He pulled back on the throttle again, and as he did the rumble reduced further. The master could hear the men stirring in the back as if the engine's reduction in revolutions was a wake-up call for them to prepare for their skiffs.

“Hold the wheel,” the master told his son. “I will be back. Keep its heading, but stay slow.” He didn't want to run over a brother's tugboat because his defective radar hadn't given him a good signal. He pulled apart some of his turban and wrapped it around his face so that only his eyes would feel the rain and salt water. As he opened the door and walked towards the bow, the yellow light flickered on the wheelhouse above.

The engine of his boat could barely be heard.

He stopped at the edge of the steering house, turned around, and spoke through the open door.

“Stop the engine.”

His son obeyed the order and there was silence.

“Anything on the radar?”

“A flicker. It is there and then it is gone.”

The master turned to the bow.

Suddenly a wall of gray appeared out of the rain with its bow slicing through the water at just ten degrees off the tug's bow. It displaced the water with its tonnage and the wake lifted the tug up off the water's surface.

“Allaaah!” the master screamed as the odd-shaped object passed by on their port side. The man grabbed on to the door of the wheelhouse to hold on tight as the tug came to a nearly forty-five-degree list. He saw, in the corner of his eye, several of the men on the tail of the boat fly off into the water. In that second, he knew that each would die.

He continued to hold on. The gray ship had no windows nor any light. It was shaped like a manmade sea monster with no sharp edges, or form, or glass.

And then the tail of the ship passed by the tug. The engines were churning up the water with the force of ten or twenty knots. The wake threw the tug up and over to a list on the opposite side. With the sudden change in displacement of tons of water, the tug swung over hard, and with the swing he heard the screams of several more men as they flew off the tug from the other side.

And as suddenly as it appeared, the gray ship disappeared into the rain.

“We have the man you wanted to see.” The guard was standing at the door to the room where Faud was sitting on a carpet with his legs folded underneath him.

“He is here?” Faud looked up from his portable computer. It was one of many that he had, and used. He would switch them on hourly and would often keep them in a truck over a hundred meters from wherever he was staying. It was a precaution he had learned to live with, and one that had kept him alive. Cell phones and computers were switched out. Web addresses were changed daily, if not more often.

“Yes, we brought him directly from the dock.”

Faud was still in the house on the far northwestern side of Kissmaayo. They were preparing to move again as soon as the Kenyans began pressing an attack to the west and neared the city.

“Bring him in.”

The man was an African whose people were from the south of Somalia. His dark skin was the result of Mother Nature after centuries of evolution for the people who lived near the equator. The skin reacted to the harshness of the blinding sun, making his people much darker than most. His years at sea only made the skin dryer and more wrinkled.

“
Al-salamu alaykum
.” Faud stood up to hug his brother.

“
Wa alaykum s-salam
,” the tugboat owner replied as they greeted each other with a pat on their chests and then a hug.

“You brought in the Danish ship several years ago.”

The tugboat captain smiled.

“And you were the one who got the yacht.”

Several foolish Americans had tried to cross near the Horn of Africa in a private yacht. The tug had pulled it into port but it was a disaster, as the Americans had resisted. The young and foolish gunmen with the captain sprayed the cabin with automatic machine-gun fire. The teak wood was shredded and pools of blood were everywhere. The bodies were thrown over the side for the sharks. But there was no bounty. Later, an insurance company from the Virgin Islands negotiated a deal to buy the yacht back for pennies on the dollar. The tug captain was embarrassed by the circumstance when he was told how much the living brought, versus the dead.

“Yes, brother.” The tug owner let his eyes fall to the ground.

Faud realized he had said something that he hadn't intended to.

“Have tea with me.” He pointed to a place on the rug and the two sat down. “I have asked some brothers to join us.”

Several other soldiers dressed in the olive drab of their uniforms joined them but sat back from the two.

“So, what did you see?” Faud asked.

“It appeared out of the rain.”

“Did you have radar?”

“Yes, but it is old, and only a blip showed up for a second. Several of our men were martyred when the wake almost flipped us over.”

“Blessed are our brothers who are seeing the face of Allah. Allah be praised.”

Faud held out both hands palms up as if making a blessing on their souls.

“How did it look?”

“Unlike anything I have ever seen before.”

Faud turned to the portable computer, struck some buttons, and did a Google search, while a woman dressed in a burqa brought in several cups of tea. Her hands were covered in black gloves and no skin was shown whatsoever. It was only her eyes looking through the slit above the niqab that showed any sign of a human being. All of the men looked past her, as it was a sin to look at her. It was the law.

“Is this what you saw?” Faud pointed to an image on the screen.

“Yes, that is it.”

“And sound?”

“Nothing, until it was just upon us.”

“Yes, I have heard of this.”

Faud looked at the picture of the
Zumwalt
. The DDG-1000 was the stealth ship that they feared. It made no port calls and stayed at sea. His intelligence reported seeing the ship as far away as the Pascagoula shipyard in Mississippi.

“I remember who first told me about this.” He spoke to his lieutenants. “He lived less than fifty miles from the American shipyards and sent us photographs some time ago.”

The ship was built just outside the city of Mobile.

“We need to move it again.” Faud didn't say what. The tug master had no idea what he was talking about. The others in the room did. The DF-21 had to be moved again.

“Where is Tarriq? Have we heard from him?”

“Yes. He found our lost brother and they are with the captives near Tayeeglow.”

“And they are an
Amriiki
and a French one?”

The one lieutenant nodded his head in the affirmative.

“One is a doctor from Paris with the MSF. The other is also with the MSF. She has complained of back pain and he has malaria,” the junior officer reported.

Faud held up his hand. They stopped talking.

“Is the chai good?” he asked the tug master.

“Yes. I have not had sugar in so long.”

Faud smiled as he sipped the tea. He waited till the man finished his tea and left. And then Faud called the rest of his men back into the room.

“The MSF and the French will pay well for the one from Paris. The
Amriiki
, I don't know. But they must both be alive.” Faud hesitated as he looked out from the arch and towards the sea.

“And Omar.” He considered his options. “He does not know that Tarriq was ordered to find him?'

“No.”

“If he has more cells, as he says he does, there may be value there as well. The money has poured in after the Reagan attack.”

Faud paused again.

“If only more had died.” Only the few in the very back of the aircraft were killed as they were flung onto the runway by the force of the blast. The pilots were being praised as heroes for dropping the airplane down so quickly on the runway. The attack had triggered a well-trained Reagan fire crew to be on the runway before the aircraft had even come to a complete stop. As a result, a fire had been avoided.

“We need more missiles and more money. Keep Omar alive.”