The Hunters (18 page)

T
he dry creek bed led to a collection of huts on the outskirts of Ras Kamboni. Parson stooped low, moving ahead of his crew. He listened to the scattered cracks of rifle fire, trying to discern order, finding none. Though the banks of the creek bed had provided good cover for a mile or so, the channel now shallowed to form little more than a slight depression in the ground. Parson needed a new plan because his group could no longer move and remain hidden.

Geedi and Chartier kneeled beside him. Dirt streaked their flight suits, especially along the forearms and at the knees. The Frenchman's face flushed red with exertion. Grit flecked Geedi's close-cropped hair; Parson wondered if the grit came from low-crawling or from dirt kicked up by bullets.

Body armor weighed down on Parson's shoulders and made him sweat all the more. He longed to take off his armor, and he knew everyone else did, too. But he'd heard too many stories about people removing their armor because they were tired—and then getting killed.

During the pause, Carolyn Stewart took out her camera and, again, began recording. She panned from Gold to Parson to Chartier, paused on Chartier's pistol. The actress had tied her tangled red hair in a knot, and though sweat dampened her face, she seemed no more exhausted than anyone else. Probably the result of a high-dollar personal trainer, Parson figured. At least she could keep up.

Stray strands of blond escaped from Gold's ponytail and fell across her eyes and cheeks. She seemed the least tired. That didn't surprise Parson; he knew she kept herself Army fit even out of the Army.

And she was giving him that look—the same one she'd given him while on the run in Afghanistan. Watching with a detached calmness, waiting for his next move.

“Are you thinking about taking shelter in one of those houses?” Gold asked.

“Yeah,” Parson said. “I don't see a lot of options right now.”

“Let me go see if I can talk to somebody,” Geedi said.

Parson considered that for a moment. He hated to put Geedi out ahead of him; he felt protective of the young flight mechanic. However, a good officer deployed his resources as needed—and nobody else spoke Somali.

“Do you think it's safe for you?” Parson asked.

“I only know what I read and heard back in Minneapolis,” Geedi said, “but I don't think these people have fond memories of living under al-Shabaab.”

Parson looked at Gold. She nodded.

“All right, dude,” Parson said. “Be careful.” He decocked his Beretta and offered it to Geedi. The mechanic did not take it.

“Sir,” he said, “I think I'll be better off without it.”

“You sure?”

“If the people in those huts are friendly, I won't need it. If they're al-Shabaab, they'll cut me down before I get to the door.”

And if that happens, Parson thought, I'll put every round I got left into the asshole who did it. The situation reminded him of the times when Gold had contacted locals in Afghanistan. She had an instinct for knowing whom to trust. Parson hoped Geedi's intuition worked as well as hers.

As a military officer, Parson had learned you couldn't become an expert in everything. You had to trust the people under you. A crew's interdependence reminded him of the aspen groves of his beloved West. Each tree shared a common root system, living as a single organism.

“Okay, go ahead,” Parson said. “If anything happens to you, I'll kick your ass.”

Geedi smiled. “I'll be fine,” he said.

“Bon courage,”
Chartier said.

“Thanks,” Geedi said.

Parson thumbed the hammer on his Beretta to cock the weapon.

“I'll cover him toward the houses,” Parson told Chartier. “You watch for anything sneaking down the creek bed.”

“D'accord,”
Chartier said. He pointed his Smith & Wesson back the way they'd come. The bore of the big pistol looked uncommonly large, practically like a scaled-down grenade launcher. But though the weapon boasted plenty of knockdown power, it offered a pathetic rate of fire. And Parson's nine millimeter ranked as a peashooter compared to an AK-47. They were covering Geedi more in principle than in fact.

“Well,” Geedi said, “here goes.”

Without hesitating or looking back, Geedi stood up and started walking toward the wattle-and-daub huts. Their thatch roofs appeared cut from the same kind of grass Parson and his group had crawled through earlier. Around the dwellings, the earth looked almost polished—a sheen left by generations of feet and hooves. The firm soil reminded Parson of packed clay runways at forward bases in Afghanistan.

Geedi knocked on a wooden door that hung on a single broken hinge. The door did not open at first; cautious words came from behind it. Parson, of course, understood none of the conversation. The tone sounded matter-of-fact—no one inside seemed to panic or to threaten Geedi. Gold listened closely, too. She spoke no Somali that Parson knew of, but he supposed she judged the tone just as he did. Except, with her experience as an interpreter, she could make a more expert evaluation. She looked interested but not worried.

As Geedi negotiated, begged, or whatever he was doing, Parson recognized a classic blood chit moment. Blood chits were squares of cloth carried by military aviators. The chits bore the image of a U.S. flag, and they carried a message in local languages:
I am an American aviator. Misfortune forces me to seek your assistance. I will not harm you, and in return for your aid, my government may try to repay you.
During World War II, some fliers sewed silk blood chits into the linings of their flight jackets. You couldn't do that anymore; nowadays blood chits were made of Tyvek and treated as a controlled item—issued before each military mission and collected upon return. And on this civilian mission, a blood chit was just one more damned thing Parson didn't have.

Turned out he didn't need one. The door swung open to reveal a thin old man.

“As-salaamu alaikum,”
Geedi said.

“Wa alaikum as-salaam,”
the man replied.

With a sweeping gesture, Geedi motioned for Parson and the rest to come to the hut. Parson looked around for signs of the enemy, then stood up and trotted. He kept his Beretta angled toward the ground, finger across the trigger guard. Gold and Stewart followed, with Chartier bringing up the rear, medical ruck still over his shoulder. The old man hastened everyone inside, and Geedi closed the door.

For a few seconds, the hut seemed dark except for slivers of sunlight cutting through cracks in the daubing. When Parson's eyes adjusted, he found himself in a one-room dwelling. The hut looked much like those he'd seen all over the Third World, whether made of tin, cinder blocks, or mud. Blankets covered a thin mattress on a warped timber floor. The floor creaked whenever anyone took a step, but Parson supposed a floor of anything other than dirt qualified as a luxury. The furniture consisted of two mismatched chairs: a wooden chair with broken slats and a folding camp chair with rusty metal framing. Parson saw no means for cooking, but the place smelled of bread; maybe the residents cooked on a hearth outside.

The old man wore canvas trousers frayed at the cuffs. His purple shirt was untucked but buttoned all the way to his neck. His short, thick hair had turned white, and his arms looked thin enough to break at a touch. An elderly woman, presumably his wife, stood in a corner. She wore a loose-fitting garment, like a sarong. Her multicolored wrap and her limbs—as thin as her husband's—put Parson in mind of a frightened tropical bird.

Stewart reached into her pack for her video camera. Gold shook her head. The actress nodded and left the camera alone.

Geedi spoke with the old couple in hushed tones. The language had a pleasant patter to it; Parson's years of working with Gold had helped him notice such things. As the old man talked, he seemed not to emphasize particular syllables like an English speaker. The words flowed in a more even pace, with a pause every now and then as the man assembled his thoughts. Geedi folded his arms, nodded, uttered short comments and questions. Finally, Geedi said something Parson understood.

“He says the fighting has gone on here for two days,” Geedi said, “and he has no idea who is winning.”

“I couldn't raise Ongondo on the radio,” Parson said, “so that sure as hell ain't a good sign for our side.”

“Is it safe for him to take us in?” Gold asked.

Parson liked the way she posed the question. Typical Sophia Gold, more concerned with the old couple's safety than with her own.

“I'll ask,” Geedi said.

While the conversation continued in Somali, Chartier holstered his pistol in his survival vest and put down the medical bag. Parson decocked his Beretta and holstered it as well. Took out his GPS receiver and pressed
MARK
to store the location of the hut as Waypoint Two. He noted that Waypoint Two was more than two miles from Waypoint One, near the airplane. A damned long way to low-crawl through grass and evade down a creek bed. With his position stored, Parson powered down the GPS to save the batteries.

“He says he doesn't care if it's safe,” Geedi said. “If al-Shabaab takes over again, he doesn't want to live. He says he will help us or die trying.”

“Tell him we're grateful,” Parson said. “And we're sorry to drop in on him like this. What's his name?”

“I did. And his name is Nadif.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Nadif?” Parson asked.

“No, sir. It doesn't work like that. For a Somali's full name, you use a given name, his father's name, and his grandfather's name. You don't have a surname that the wife takes.”

Nadif began speaking again, in long sentences and grave tones. Geedi nodded, spoke short replies, listened with his index finger over his lips. When the man finished talking, Geedi translated a tale that explained why the old couple so quickly offered refuge to foreigners on the run from al-Shabaab.

Sometime before the terrorist group first took control of the region around Ras Kamboni, a relief organization dug a well in the village. The well house hummed with electrical power. Villagers did not need to pump water by hand; they had only to flip a switch to activate an electric pump. The motor pushed the water through a cleansing filter; Nadif said he'd never seen or tasted water so pure. Deaths from cholera—especially deaths of children—plummeted.

“Life here was still hard,” Geedi translated, “but at least people weren't dying that awful vomiting and shitting death.”

Sometime in 2010, when al-Shabaab controlled most of southern Somalia, the group declared the well unclean. Because infidels had built it, the terrorists declared, Muslims could not use it.

At the time, Nadif's son and daughter-in-law had just had a baby. The grandchild—a boy—was the light of Nadif's life. The family hoped to send the boy to school when he grew old enough; maybe he'd become something other than a trash collector like his father and grandfather.

When the villagers abandoned the new well and began using water that was truly unclean, cholera came roaring back to Ras Kamboni. Infants and children began to die. Nadif's son determined he would not let that happen to his child. So he began sneaking to the well at night to collect drinking water in a pail.

The noise of the electric pump gave him away. Naturally, al-Shabaab had posted guards in the trees nearby, and the terrorists grabbed him and held him for a show trial.

According to Nadif, the “judge” had no more training in Islamic studies than in brain surgery; he presided over a sharia court nonetheless. To show the mercy of sharia law and the leniency of al-Shabaab, the judge decreed Nadif's son would not face the death penalty.

He would only lose his right hand.

The judge ordered dozens of villagers to watch as three thugs held Nadif's son to the ground. They pressed his arm over a board the way one might place a fish on a piece of wood before cleaning it. A fourth terrorist wielded a hacksaw. With nothing to kill the pain, they sawed off the arm below the elbow.

“He says they took their time about it, too,” Geedi said. Nadif said he could hear the echoes of screams even now. He could still see the arm lying on the ground, the blood gushing from the stump.

Al-Shabaab allowed no doctor to examine Nadif's son. They only covered the stump with a bandage and tied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. The son's wound became infected. And without clean water, the little grandson became sick.

“His son died of tetanus,” Geedi said, “and his grandson died of cholera. His daughter-in-law took her own life. He did not say how.”

“No wonder he hates al-Shabaab,” Stewart said.

“Nothing more dangerous than a man who has nothing to lose,” Chartier said.

“Please give him our condolences,” Gold said, “for what little that's worth.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Geedi said. He spoke again in Somali, and Nadif replied with quick words and waves of his hands.

“What is he saying?” Chartier asked.

“He says he will give us food, shelter, anything we want,” Geedi said.

“Very generous,” Gold said, “but I hate to put this household in danger.” For the first time today, she looked anxious.

Parson knew why. Years ago in Afghanistan a family had sheltered him and Gold, and the family paid for it with their lives. He sure as hell didn't want more deaths like that on his conscience. At the same time, he had a crew and a passenger to protect. He hooked his thumbs into pouches of his survival vest and looked over the old couple.

“They might be all right if nobody saw us come in this direction,” Parson said, “and I doubt anyone did. I hope we hit that little bastard who was shooting at us. Even if we didn't, I don't think he followed us.”

The bad guys, Parson figured, would probably assume he and his crew had left with the AMISOM troops. In fact, that's exactly what Parson would have done if he'd had the chance. As it was, he had no idea where the AMISOM troops were. Things must have gotten pretty hot for Lieutenant Colonel Ongondo not even to answer the radio.