The Hunters (13 page)

B
efore takeoff, Parson tried to think of anything he could do to improve the odds of success. Ideally, an op like this would involve hours of mission planning. With people bleeding in the field, however, he didn't have the luxury of time. He leaned out the cockpit window and called to Chartier and Geedi.

“Hey, guys,” Parson said. “Can you see if you can scrounge some body armor for us? Maybe there's some lying around these military hangars.”

“You got it, sir,” Geedi said.

“If you can't find any in about fifteen minutes, don't worry about it.”

“Okay,” Chartier said.

Gold took back her phone and called her contacts with the Somali government. When she told them the mission was a go, a flatbed truck rolled out to the DC-3. The truck carried Igloo coolers containing blood and blood plasma. Cardboard boxes and wooden cartons of bandages and dressings. QuikClot and morphine. Cases of bottled water. None of the cargo had been palletized or packaged for air shipment. Parson, Gold, and Stewart—along with the Somali truck driver—began loading the boxes directly onto the floor of the aircraft. For once, Stewart wasn't taking photos; there was too much else to do.

“Let's put the heavier stuff toward the front of the cargo compartment,” Parson said. “Geedi will check the weight and balance when he gets back.”

“What does that mean?” Stewart asked.

Parson explained to the actress that you couldn't put cargo just anywhere in an airplane. The load had to balance. He knew she wouldn't understand tech talk like “leading edge of mean aerodynamic chord,” so he kept his explanation simple.

“Imagine if you tape a lead weight to the tail of a toy glider,” Parson said. “If you throw that glider, it won't go anywhere but down. But if you tape the weight to the right spot in the middle of the glider, it'll fly just fine.”

“I had no idea,” Stewart said as she put down a cooler of blood plasma. She took her smartphone from her pocket. “Hey, can you take a picture of me helping?” Passed the phone to him.

Parson had to check himself to keep from rolling his eyes. Loading boxes hadn't kept her busy for long, after all. He aimed the phone, eager to get the silly task out of the way. Without worrying about framing the shot, he tapped with his finger to snap the photo. Caught an image of Carolyn Stewart standing amid the medical supplies, untied red hair spilling over the shoulders of her safari jacket. A little blurry. Stewart stood motionless, apparently expecting Parson to take more pictures, but he ignored her. Passed the camera back to her. Stewart helped load a few more boxes, then took video of Parson and Gold at work.

On Parson's last trip down the steps to load cargo, he saw Chartier and Geedi return with body armor. Geedi carried two sets, and Chartier had three. Not the newer lightweight flak jackets the Air Force issued, but the Ranger Body Armor vests from the 1990s. With the ceramic plates installed, those things weighed about twenty-five pounds. Not very comfortable, especially in this climate, but a hell of a lot better than nothing.

“Excellent,” Parson said. “Who gave you those?”

“Uh, we found them at the back of a hangar,” Geedi said. “We couldn't find anybody to ask, so we just sort of liberated them.”

Parson chuckled. Too bad to borrow without permission, but he'd bring back the vests in a matter of hours. “That'll work,” he said. “Hey, we just put all the cargo on board. We tried not to dork up your weight and balance too bad.”

“I'll check it and strap everything down, sir.”

“Good man.”

Chartier filed a new flight plan, and twenty minutes later Parson eased back on the yoke to lift the DC-3 into a bright East African sky. Below, combers rolled in from the ocean and sprayed white spume across rocks and coral. Parson intended to follow the coastline down to Ras Kamboni on a VFR flight plan. No established IFR airway could take him to his destination; airways went to real airports. Gold sat in the cargo compartment. Stewart stood behind Geedi's jump seat, wearing a headset and peering outside through her Dior sunglasses.

“A little more than you bargained for?” Parson asked her on interphone.

“Oh, this is terrific,” the actress said.

Brave or stupid, one or the other, Parson thought. Or both. At least she didn't mind a little manual labor when the airplane needed loading.

Once Parson leveled the plane at altitude and put it on autopilot, he considered how he could graft his old combat procedures onto this weird, half-civilian, half-military mission. As he neared Ras Kamboni, he'd have everybody put on body armor, just as if he were running a combat entry checklist. He'd stay high until he flew over the landing zone, and then he'd do a random steep approach: put down the gear and flaps, chop the power, and spiral down over the LZ. That would keep the airplane over a supposedly secure area during descent.

Just like dropping a C-130 into Baghdad or Kandahar. Except a C-130 would have armor, a missile warning system, and defensive countermeasures. Parson had none of that now. Just a defenseless piston-driven airplane full of highly explosive aviation gasoline, avgas, instead of relatively stable jet fuel.

The terrain scrolling beneath the aircraft gave little indication of renewed combat. Parson knew that could be deceptive. Sometimes battles on the ground made themselves obvious: smoke rising, fires raging, tracers flashing. At other times, battles hid themselves—at least from aviators. You could glide down final approach thinking everybody on the ground was singing “Kumbaya,” then get out of the airplane and find bullet holes in the tail.

Sparse traffic moved along a coastal highway. The few cars and trucks looked fairly normal. In addition, two military personnel carriers, probably belonging to AMISOM, sped south. But that could happen on any day in Somalia.

About a hundred miles from Ras Kamboni, Parson decided to run his makeshift combat entry checks, such as they were. He asked Chartier to switch the fuel selectors from the aux tank to the mains. That meant fuel flowing through shorter plumbing, with less chance of gasoline meeting a high-velocity round. He also switched off the external lights, mainly out of habit from flying night missions in war zones. He knew bad guys couldn't miss a shiny DC-3 flying overhead in daytime, lights on or off. Finally, he told everyone to put on their body armor.

Parson unbuckled his harness, unzipped his flight suit, and removed the Beretta and its bellyband holster. He zipped the suit up again, hoisted his body armor, and donned it. Closed the fasteners on the front of the armor and put on his survival vest over it. Removed the Beretta from the bellyband and secured it in the holster sewn into the survival vest. Now anyone could see he was armed, but he didn't care.

From the corner of his eye, Parson saw Gold in the cargo compartment, helping Stewart don her vest. Gold glanced toward the cockpit, frowned, and said on interphone, “Michael, we're not supposed to be armed.”

“We're not supposed to be doing tactical approaches into hostile fire zones, either,” Parson said. He smiled at Gold and raised his eyebrows, just to take the edge off his retort.

Parson figured she couldn't really be surprised to see him with a gun. If he bent the rules under military authority, he sure wouldn't hesitate to break them as a civilian. What would World Relief Airlift do about it? Fire him from a job that paid nothing? Send him to Somalia?

After twenty more minutes of flying, Parson began to make out the anvil-shaped peninsula of Ras Kamboni. From the airplane's GPS moving map display, he could see that Ongondo had given him coordinates not for the peninsula itself but for a landing zone a mile or two inland. That suited Parson. The LZ lay well outside the town, in open country.

“Hey, Frenchie,” Parson said. “Let's give 'em a call and see if their invitation still stands. You got the comm info I gave you?”

Chartier nodded and dialed in 121.5, the emergency frequency, on the VHF radio. Pressed his transmit switch and said, “Spear Alpha, World Relief Eight-Niner inbound your position.” He checked the GPS screen. “We're about fifteen minutes out.”

Ongondo answered immediately. “World Relief, Spear Alpha,” he said. “Have you five by five. The LZ is cold. We will pop smoke when we have you in sight.”

Chartier looked over at Parson, and Parson gave a thumbs-up.

“Ah, that sounds good, Spear Alpha,” Chartier transmitted. “We'll see you in a few minutes.”

“Cool,” Parson said to Chartier on interphone. “You ever do a random steep in a transport plane?”

“Non,”
Chartier said. “But I have seen the C-130s do it in Afghanistan.”

“All right, then you got the concept. Just call my altitudes off the radar altimeter and watch my descent rate. Don't let me drop faster than about two thousand feet per minute.”

“D'accord.”

“Sounds scary,” Stewart said.

“You'll think you're on a roller-coaster,” Geedi said.

“Just make sure you guys are buckled in tight,” Parson said.

“We are,” Gold answered.

Minutes later, Parson flew over the LZ at eighty-five hundred feet. The AMISOM troops on the ground looked like ants. The LZ appeared as an open patch of dirt, surrounded by scattered patches of trees. A much larger field stretched to the north, but Parson could see why Ongondo had not chosen that one for an LZ: Thick grass covered the bigger field. Hard to tell from this altitude, but the grass and weeds looked to be waist high or better.

Green smoke began flowing across the LZ; that meant good conditions for landing. Parson noted that the wind blew from a direction of about zero-seven-zero. With just an open patch of dirt for a runway, he could land in any direction he wanted. He wanted to land directly into the wind.

“You ready?” Parson asked.

“Toujours,”
Chartier said.

“Huh?”

“Always.”

Parson throttled back to get below flap limit speed. When the airspeed needle dropped below 110 miles per hour, he said, “Gear down, and gimme full flaps.”

Chartier moved the gear lever, pointed to the green light on the panel, looked outside. “Gear down,” he said. “Good visual check right.”

Parson looked to see the gear strut extended on his side and said, “Good check left.”

Chartier lowered full flaps, and Parson pressed forward on the yoke to fight the resulting burble of lift. When the airplane settled down, Parson said, “Okay, folks, this elevator's going to the first floor.”

He rolled into a sixty-degree bank. The horizon tilted in the windscreen. The DC-3's nose dropped below the line where Africa met the sky.

“Woo-hoo,” Stewart cried from the back, off interphone.

The airplane began spiraling. Parson held just enough back pressure on the yoke to control the rate of descent. Unlike his hard level turn to avoid the missile the other day, this maneuver actually put little stress on the airplane.

“Eight thousand,” Chartier said. “Coming down two thousand feet a minute.”

Parson looked down to see the streamer of green smoke getting larger. The DC-3 seemed to orbit around the point marked by the smoke. Parson held the bank angle steady and let the plane spiral around twice more.

“Six thousand,” Chartier said. “Bringing back memories?”

“Oh, yeah,” Parson said. “She's handling pretty good, too. Who says you can't teach an old bird new tricks?”

Parson kept his scan going: airspeed 110, descent rate good, bank angle sixty degrees. He felt like a young lieutenant, confident in his new flying skills. The ground rotated closer; the ants looked like people now. Parson smiled as he listened to the conversation in the back.

“Wow,” Stewart said. “He acts like this is nothing.”

“He can do this in his sleep,” Gold said.

“Four thousand,” Chartier said. “Down two thousand feet a minute.”

Parson let the airplane continue spiraling. He heard a click in his headset, as if someone on the radio frequency keyed a mike but said nothing. What was up?

Parson didn't worry about it; radios could do weird things. He rolled out of the bank a few hundred feet off the ground, nose pointed into the wind. Pulled back on the yoke to arrest the descent rate.

“Welcome to Ras Kamboni, folks,” he said.

The green smoke flare guttered out. The DC-3 settled toward the LZ.

An AMISOM soldier ran toward the middle of the landing zone.

“What's that fool doing?” Parson said. The airplane was now floating just feet above the LZ.

The soldier yanked the pull tab on a flare. Threw the flare hard. The thing tumbled end over end, bounced onto the ground.

The flare spewed red smoke:
closed LZ.
But it was too late.

T
he al-Shabaab ambush team melted away from the bend in the road. Abdullahi ordered Hussein and the other soldiers of God to move inland, where they would join the main assault force attacking the infidel stooges. Hussein used cover as best he could. He crouched below a thornbush here, ran forward to an acacia tree there, slipping ever closer to the sound of gunfire.

Although hiding and moving across the ground concerned him most, Hussein did notice two odd things in the sky. One was a silver airplane, not like the big machines he'd seen flying into Mogadishu, but something a bit smaller. In the distance, the thing turned round and round as it fell from the sky. Maybe someone skilled with big weapons had shot down the flying machine. Praise be to Allah if that turned out true. Yet the silver airplane trailed no fire or smoke. A very strange sight for Hussein's young eyes.

The other thing he understood better. A
huur
, a marabou stork, flapped across the battle zone with a calmness Hussein envied. What glory to glide across the land so free and untroubled. To float on the wind, to find food whenever needed. But perhaps the stork flew so tranquilly
because
of all the bleeding and fighting below it, and not in spite of the violence.

For the stork was a messenger of death. The old women used to tell how the stork could see the angel of death come to take souls away. Abdullahi would say the stork flew for the infidels. Hussein wondered if the stork flew for him—or for Ibn.

Maybe the stork flies for all of us, Hussein thought.

He turned his eyes from the bird, looked back down to the ground and to the situation around him. Unlike Ibn, Hussein was not yet a martyr; he still had things he must do. And though he did not like Abdullahi, Abdullahi's instructions had made clear the task before the soldiers of God. The orders had come straight from the Sheikh.

A large group of infidel stooges, slaves to the Crusaders, had moved into territory only recently retaken by al-Shabaab. They had come in greater numbers and had set up lines around the town of Ras Kamboni. This would not stand. To beat back these stooges, the soldiers of God would not take them on all at once. Instead, the soldiers would concentrate their attack on one point in the stooge line. Some of the boys did not grasp all of Abdullahi's words, but Hussein understood: Shoot again and again at the same spot. Just the way he had opened a hole in that armored vehicle in Djibouti. Once the hole opened, rush into the opening and press the attack. Fire on the flanks of an enemy thrown into panic. Even one without learning could see how this worked. One needed only to think. Hussein did not know why, for some, these things required so much explaining.

Ahead, Hussein saw the staging point for the attack, a collection of four wattle-and-daub houses on the outskirts of Ras Kamboni. One thatch roof had caught fire. Maybe a tracer round or sparks from a rocket-propelled grenade had ignited the dry thatch. Wind whipped the flames into a crackling fury, and gray smoke billowed into the air. The burning thatch smelled like the dry kindling a woman might use to start a cooking fire.

One of the older men lay on the ground to the left of the burning home. In a prone position, he aimed his AK-47 toward trees behind the little village. A slight rise in the terrain in front of him offered some protection from infidel bullets. The man looked behind him. He motioned for fellow fighters to join him.

Hussein broke from behind an acacia and ran, hunched low, toward the swale where the man lay. Hussein's sheathed machete bounced on his hip, and the grenade in his vest pocket dug at his side. Gunfire barked from everywhere—one or two shots at a time, then a sizzle of automatic fire. To Hussein's right, another boy ran forward as well. Something hit the boy, and he tumbled to the ground. The boy came to rest sprawled on his back with his rifle sling tangled around his arm. He did not move. Hussein reached the swale and dived into it. Struck the dirt in a way that jammed his extra magazines against his breastbone. That hurt, but he said nothing.

“What happened on the road?” the man asked. The man wore a black shemagh and a green tunic, with a vest laden with pouches for magazines, grenades, and a radio. Hussein had seen him before but did not know his name. One of the Sheikh's lieutenants, probably equal in rank to Abdullahi.

“We killed a truck full of stooges,” Hussein said. “Another truck came along and it got away, but I shot a man on that truck, too.”

“Very good,” the man said. He raised his arm and pointed. “There are stooges in the woods there behind the village.”

More al-Shabaab men gathered nearby. Three took cover behind an overturned drinking trough near the houses. Two others found concealment in a dry gully. All five started firing toward trees beyond the village. Hussein could not see their targets.

A voice came from the radio, and the man next to Hussein rolled onto his side. “Qibla, Qibla, Qibla,” the voice called. A code name for this man, Hussein supposed. When praying, Qibla was the direction one faced toward Mecca.

The man pulled out the radio and spoke into it. “Qibla here,” he said.

“Sheikh here,” the man on the other end said. Hussein recognized the voice. “Did you see the airplane circle down?” the Sheikh asked.

“I did,” Qibla said. “What of it?”

“Make sure it does not leave. Destroy it. Shoot the pilot. Do whatever you must.”

“Understood,” Qibla said.

“The famous American has been flying around Somalia. This may be the plane. I want these people captured or dead.”

“Praise be to Allah.”

“Sheikh out.”

Hussein looked toward the wooded area that concealed the infidel troops. He saw a man with a rifle get up, run a few yards, and take cover again. These stooges from Kenya or Ethiopia or wherever should have stayed home, Hussein thought. The Sheikh and the other men said the stooges had no right to oppose the will of God.

The enemy soldier began firing. Smoke from his rifle gave away his position. Hussein took careful aim. Squeezed off two shots. The stooge dropped and fired no more.

“Did you hear the Sheikh's orders?” Qibla asked.

“About the airplane?” Hussein said.

“Yes.”

“I do not see it now,” Hussein said. “Where did it land?”

“Beyond those trees,” Qibla answered.

“Is there an airport here?”

“No. It just landed in a field.”

Very strange. Hussein did not know airplanes could do that. No matter. He just needed to get within firing range of it. Or better yet, get close enough to use his grenade.

“What is the best way to cripple an airplane?” Hussein asked.

“If you see the pilots sitting in the front, shoot through the glass. If you do not see the pilots, shoot at the engines.”

“I can do that.”

More and more al-Shabaab fighters converged on the village. Three men with belts of ammunition draped around their shoulders came from the direction of the road. One carried a large machine gun; Hussein did not know the exact type. They took up a position beside one of the burning wattle-and-daub homes and low-crawled into some weeds. The man with the machine gun extended metal legs from the barrel and rested the weapon on the ground. The other two men took off their belts of bullets and fed one of the belts into the machine gun. The gunner began to fire, and the weapon spewed ammunition at such a rate that the noise sounded like the long roar of a lion. Yes, Hussein thought, we are lions of jihad.

The stooges fired back. Frustration burned in Hussein's chest; he could not see where the enemy hid.

But he could see where their bullets struck. Dirt flew into the air all around him. Rounds slammed so close that grit stung his eyes. No bullets hit him, though. At least not yet. Lucky—or perhaps a blessing from Allah—that he had joined Qibla at this low place in the ground. Hussein wondered if he could count on any sort of luck or protection. Nothing had protected that poor, simple Ibn, despite the faith he had placed in those cowrie shells. A soldier must have faith, to be sure. But he must also think.

More soldiers of God made it to the rally point. A squad of five men and boys ran into the village. Two of them carried grenade launchers.

The plan was working. In his excitement, Hussein forgot his bitterness about Ibn's wasteful death. He forgot his resentment that Abdullahi gave out so much punishment and so little food. He forgot everything but the urge to bring battle to the enemy.

He rose to charge forward. Qibla grabbed his arm.

“Wait,” Qibla ordered. “Let them put down more suppressing fire first.”

Very well. Hussein could wait. No sense wasting whatever short life he had left. And if important Americans lurked nearby, he wanted to live long enough to see them. And take them prisoner. And kill them.

The fighters with launcher tubes readied their weapons. Two of them fired, and their rocket-propelled grenades whooshed toward the infidels. Explosions rocked the enemy lines. The noise of battle rose all around Hussein. He had never seen such fierce combat; al-Shabaab usually set up ambushes or surprise attacks on unarmed
gaalos
or
kafirs
. Hussein had seen army battles like this only in old movies projected onto bedsheets in the alleyways of Mogadishu.

He felt no great fear. He remained calm enough to think, to know Qibla gave good advice to wait. If Abdullahi would beat him for merely losing a magazine full of bullets or misplacing a machete, then surely Allah would punish Hussein for losing his life before the proper time.

Hussein saw movement behind the trees. More stooges in their camouflage-patterned uniforms. He raised his weapon and fired. One of the stooges fell. Hussein continued firing one shot at a time until the rifle emptied. He could not tell if he hit anyone else. He pulled a fresh magazine from his vest and slapped it against the release lever to knock away the empty. Clicked in the new mag. Cycled the bolt. Scanned for more targets. Qibla raised himself for a better view as well.

There. A stooge aimed over a pile of sandbags.

Hussein lined up the notch and post of his sights. Just before he pressed the trigger, flames spat from the stooge's muzzle.

Despite gunfire cackling all around him, Hussein heard the bullets strike Qibla. The impacts sounded like a halal butcher whacking a blade into the ribs of a goat. Something warm spattered Hussein's cheek. He ducked, turned to see Qibla collapsed, facedown and bleeding. Exit wounds between his shoulder blades and the back of his neck.

Nothing in Hussein's sparse training told him how to help someone badly hurt. Whether the wounded lived or died depended on the will of Allah. And when Hussein turned Qibla over, he could see his lack of knowledge did not matter. Though Hussein knew nothing of medicine, he knew dead, extinguished eyes when he saw them. He also knew that sound of a final breath, a rattling sigh.

Hussein looked away from the body and crouched low in the swale. In his mind, the situation around him began to form itself the way one begins to see the landscape as the sun comes up. Hussein could not set a word to this concept; he knew only that if he observed and thought, he could grasp things more clearly. A soldier of God must trust the mind that God gave him.

What he saw was this: At the point where al-Shabaab meant to pierce the enemy's line, the enemy was weakening. Hussein had killed at least one of the stooges himself. The enemy's fire came in short spasms now. In a few minutes, the al-Shabaab fighters could probably move forward and then attack to either side. He could not see where the infidel airplane had landed, but the thing had to be beyond the trees somewhere.

Hussein drew in a deep breath, readied himself to move forward. Breeze lifted dust into the air. Clouds scudded fast overhead, as if they wanted to withhold rain and fly out of Somalia as quickly as possible. Judging from the dust and dry vegetation, the clouds must have withheld for many days.

One of the al-Shabaab men fired another rocket grenade. The projectile seared into the stooges' line. Exploded in a tangle of thorn scrub and sandbags. A storm of smoke, sparks, grit, splinters, and metal shards boiled from the point of impact. The concussion stunned Hussein for a moment. A ringing sounded in his ears, and little points of silver swam in his eyes. His mind went all muddy, but he blinked and shook his head, and his thoughts came together again.

Gunfire no longer pocked the ground around him. The firefight continued to swirl to either side, but in front of Hussein, the line had opened. From somewhere along the battle line to the left, Abdullahi reappeared with two other fighters. They ran bent over with their heads ducked low like men caught in a monsoon downpour.

“Go!” Abdullahi shouted. “Move up!”

Hussein sprang from the swale. He did not look back at Qibla, or whatever the man's real name was. Hussein ran forward with his AK pointed in front of him, legs pumping, lungs burning. The weapon's sling dug into his shoulder. Sweat ran into his eyes. Smoke salted the air he inhaled. He sprinted past the burning house and up to what remained of the stooges' sandbagged position.

One of the enemy soldiers lay dead from a bullet wound to the chest. Probably the man Hussein had shot. Another body—or maybe two others—spilled across the ground. The explosion from the rocket grenade had torn them up so badly Hussein could not tell which parts belonged where. He wondered if the hand grenade in his pocket could do equal damage.

A bullet sang past Hussein's head. He dived behind the sandbags. Checked his magazine and fire selector: still plenty of rounds, still set for single shots. A bead of his sweat splashed onto the AK's receiver. Hussein wiped his brow with his torn sleeve.

He came up firing at enemy troops running from the breach in their line. No time to align his front and rear sights; Hussein simply brought the weapon to his shoulder and fired instinctively. The recoil felt good as it jolted his cheek. Two of the stooges fell to his rounds. Hussein bobbed beneath the sandbags again. Good of the dead infidels to leave him such fine cover.