“Any idea who was moving the guns?” Jake said.
“No. Cawar is the biggest dealer around, and we’re questioning the drivers, but I don’t expect much to come from it. In this fucking country, it could literally be anyone.”
After Steve had left, the CIA team reconvened in the living room.
“So Yaxaas stole the weapons from the Saviz before he sank it,” said Clap.
“I should have pushed Ted harder to find another way,” Jake said.
“Don’t put this on yourself,” said Clap. “You told him we couldn’t trust Yaxaas.”
“Besides, there’s nothing we can do about it now,” said Pickens.
“Do you think any of your sources might know who bought them?” Jake asked.
“The guns are gone, Jake. Don’t waste time chasing ghosts.”
“It’s not the guns and rockets that I’m worried about,” Jake said. “There was something else on that ship.”
“Something worse than guns and rockets?” asked Clap.
Jake nodded.
“This is like a bad dream,” said Pickens.
“If that ship was carrying what I think it was,” Jake said, “then it’s about to turn into a nightmare.”
FIFTY
ASIDE FROM THE buzz of the insects and songs of the birds, the only sound in the picturesque valley was the hum of a diesel generator. It reverberated softly through the hills, muffled by the grasses and trees of southern Somalia. Down on the valley floor, next to a bend in the Jubba River, clusters of work lights illuminated a fortified camp.
Inside the thick stockade walls were rough-hewn buildings and even rougher men—irregular fighters with rifles slung across their chests and over their shoulders. Several of them were clustered around three off-road trucks that had parked under a canopy of camouflage netting.
Half a dozen men were unloading the trucks, using rope handles to lower heavy wooden crates down from the truck beds and into the waiting hands of their comrades, who then carried them inside the largest of the buildings. Other men opened the crates and unpacked them, stacking the stolen rockets and machine guns against the wall.
But it was in a smaller structure on the other side of camp that Yaxaas and his son sat in hardwood chairs, smoking cigarettes and drinking a blend of cardamom and cinnamon teas. The camp was just a few miles north of the equator and far inland from the coast. The smoke hung in the hot and stuffy air.
“Badeed has stung us hard,” said Nacay.
“A few more defeats and inertia will overtake us,” Yaxaas said. “I’ve wondered more than once if we don’t have a leak inside our organization.”
Nacay nodded. “He has been unusually well informed. I hesitate to say it, but—”
The warlord stared at his son, encouraging him to continue.
“Do you think your old friend Cawar might be playing the Hawiye and the Darood against each other?” Nacay said eventually. “Alternately favoring one side, then the other, to drive his sales?”
Yaxaas laughed.
“He’s been doing it for years. Peace would put him out of business.”
“Then why do you let him manipulate us?”
“Because like every skilled liar, he adds enough truth to the lies to make them believable. Ignoring him completely could put us out of business.”
“But he doesn’t know about the weapons we’ve liberated from the Americans.”
The warlord threw his cigarette on the dirt floor.
“No, but a few rifles and rockets will not change the course of the war.”
The man with the bandoliers entered the room and stood in the doorway.
He did not look pleased.
“You should see this,” he said.
* * *
—
FATHER AND SON followed him outside. The scene in camp had changed dramatically in the twenty minutes they’d been talking. The fearsome Darood militiamen were now huddled in the most distant corner of camp, speaking of black magic and the devil, and fearfully watching the trucks they’d been unloading just minutes earlier.
The man in the bandoliers swore at them as he walked across the camp. Behind the nearest truck was a crate like the others—except for the cloud of dense fog that rose from within it and billowed slowly over the sides before settling to the ground.
The man with bandoliers stopped ten feet away and gestured for Yaxaas to have a look. Bent nails protruded from the lid lying next to it on the ground.
“It was nailed shut?” said the warlord.
The man nodded.
Yaxaas spotted two crowbars under the rolling fog.
They had been dropped in haste.
Nacay joined his father and the two men peered into the wooden crate. Inside, surrounded by blocks of dry ice, was a heavy-duty plastic container with an airtight seal and half a dozen latches securing its lid.
The warlord was not an educated man, much less a scientist, but he had learned much in his fifty years on earth—especially in the field of weaponry.
“Rifles and rockets may not change the course of the war,” he said to Nacay, “but this will.”
FIFTY-ONE
JAKE LAID OUT a photo the pirates had taken aboard the Saviz before they’d scuttled her.
“We’re missing something,” he said. He was in the safe house kitchen with Pickens and Clap.
“Missing something, as in we don’t understand what we’re looking at, or missing something, as in we can’t find it?” Clap asked.
“Both.”
Clap and Pickens studied the photograph. A few of the crates had been opened. Most were still shut. To their untrained eyes, the containers all looked the same, but Jake’s years as a CIA analyst showed him something else.
“What are we looking at?” said Clap.
Jake pointed at the suspect crate.
Pickens squinted. “I got nothing.”
“Same,” said Clap.
“Do you see how the lid on this one is nailed down?”
There were a dozen faint pinpricks in the photograph, ringing the top of the lid.
“Vaguely,” said Clap.
“Well, it is,” said Jake, “to prevent it from being opened out of curiosity. You’d need to pry it open.”
“And?” said Clap.
“And it’s the only one that was nailed shut—plus you’ve got condensation all over the exterior.”
Pickens and Clap looked at each other.
“It’s in the bottom of a ship,” said Pickens.
“But it’s the only one,” Jake said.
“If the condensation is such a dead giveaway,” said Clap, “why didn’t whoever packed it do something to prevent it?”
“Because these crates were packed in Iran, probably somewhere in the desert, where the humidity is next to zero. No one anticipated the condensation that would occur once the ship reached the open ocean.”
“But why just the one crate?” said Pickens. “They all came from Iran.”
“Because that one is being cooled from the inside.”
Clap looked up. “Do you know what’s in there?”
“I know what isn’t,” Jake said. “Chemical weapons don’t need to be refrigerated, high explosives won’t ignite until around four hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and nuclear weapons can survive the heat of re-entry through the atmosphere.”
The three CIA officers stood silently for a moment.
“The only thing that makes sense,” Jake said, “is a biological weapon.”
* * *
—
JAKE VIDEOCONFERENCED TED Graves. He was in his office, wearing a suit and tie. Though he’d been a member of the senior intelligence service for years, he still looked uncomfortable in the traditional uniform of an executive. His sleeves were rolled up and the to
p button of his shirt was open to accommodate the poorly knotted tie around his neck.
“This is your third call in as many days,” said Graves. “You’re supposed to be a fire-and-forget weapon.”
Jake explained his conclusion about the biological agent.
“So let me get this straight,” said Graves. “You think the Iranians were shipping a weapon of mass destruction to Sudan because you saw a photo of a wooden crate, with water on it, on a ship? There’s a lot of water on ships, Jake.”
“The water is on the outside, Ted. That’s how ships work. And this was condensation on a single crate, not a splash of seawater across the hold.”
“What do your teammates think?”
“My teammates don’t know what to look for.”
Graves was one of a handful of people at CIA who knew Jake from his prior life. He’d been a strategic weapons analyst before moving into the field and, while Graves was smart, he knew he didn’t have Jake’s technical skills.
“We were expecting small arms and rockets,” said Graves.
“And we found them, but we also have this. You mentioned paying our source a bonus, so I assume it was HUMINT?”
Human intelligence. A living person.
“It was,” said Graves.
“Did we get a manifest?”
Graves shook his head. “Just a heads-up about the transfer.”
“We’ve got a problem, Ted.”
“I think you need to take a deep breath, Jake. Even the IRGC wouldn’t give Sudan a biological weapon.”
“This isn’t about arming Sudan. Iran is hiding evidence. U.S. sanctions have bitten to the point that Iran has been forced to let UN weapons inspectors back into the country to keep their economy from imploding. The inspectors started making site visits a few months ago and snap inspections a few weeks ago. I’m guessing the Saviz shoved off from Bandar Abbas just as the inspectors arrived.”
“What kind of biological agent?”
“There’s no way to tell without testing it.”
Graves sat back in his chair.
“Well, it may be a sanctions violation, but it’s a moot point. It’s at the bottom of the ocean now.”
“I don’t think it is.”
Graves leaned forward again and braced his thick forearms on his desk. His face filled the screen of Jake’s laptop.
“You told me you saw the photos of the ship sinking. You told me it’s at the bottom of the ocean.”
“The ship is at the bottom of the ocean, but Yaxaas stole the cargo before he sank it.”
“Is this another one of your hunches?”
“SOCOM intercepted a convoy leaving Kismaayo yesterday. It was carrying weapons from the Saviz.”
“Fucking warlords,” said Graves. “I’m not surprised. Let me make a phone call and figure out the best way to get that crate transported and tested.”
“The crate wasn’t in the trucks, Ted. A few trucks made it out of the port before U.S. forces arrived.”
Graves stared at the screen.
“Yaxaas has the bioweapon, Ted.”
“We don’t know that it’s a bioweapon, Jake. It could be nothing.”
“It’s a bioweapon.”
“You’re going to have to ignore it for now,” said Graves. “We still need Yaxaas.”
Jake shook his head.
“Jake, for your own sake, forget about it. All you have is a picture of a wet crate and a razor-thin theory. I can’t go to the Seventh Floor with this and say we’ve got a loose Iranian weapon of mass destruction. It’d be Iraq Two all over again.”
“Ted, Iran has had a biowarfare program for forty years. It’s a biotechnology leader in the developing world. Ten years ago they were sanctioned for buying pathological instruments, spray driers, and other now dual-use technologies from the Chinese, and Somalia is in the middle of its third famine in twenty years. A biological epidemic here would send the country back to the Stone Age.”
“I’m not disputing any of that, Jake, but what are you going to do about it? Ask Yaxaas if he has it and to kindly return it? Then he’ll know there’s a loose weapon of mass destruction out there, or at least that we think there is. At that point, even if he doesn’t have it he can claim that he does, then blackmail us.”
“Sometimes you have to poke the bear.”
“Move on, Keller.”
“I’m trying to save a country, Ted.”
“So am I,” Graves snapped. “The United States of America. Stay away from Yaxaas.”
FIFTY-TWO
THE NURSE’S BLUE hijab and brilliant smile were like beacons of hope to those inside the clinic.
She was on her knees, showing a weary mother how to feed her malnourished child with a peanut-based paste that would give him desperately needed calories. Without access to clean drinking water, and already weakened by hunger, the boy had succumbed to a parasitic infection. His bulging eyes blinked slowly and he was close to death, but he still had a fighting chance, thanks to the clinic.
It had been founded two years earlier, after the nurse had approached her clan elders and demanded that something be done to save the tens of thousands of Hawiye who died in Mogadishu each year from the effects of war and famine.
She was summarily dismissed. Unmarried women did not demand things of any man in Somalia, much less the rulers of the clan.
But Farida was undeterred.
She’d pulled a laptop from her shoulder bag and laid out a spreadsheet showing how much the clinic would cost to build, staff, and operate. She identified an abandoned building in the Wardhiigley district that had been damaged in a mortar attack but could easily be repaired, then proceeded to explain how even the most rudimentary care could save thousands of lives, and finished by telling the elders that their inaction would be inexcusable in the eyes of God.
She’d nearly been thrown from the room and beaten.
But the young woman’s preparation and tenacity had impressed the most powerful of the Hawiye clan elders, and Badeed agreed to personally fund the clinic on one condition—that she would join as its director.
* * *
—
THE CLINIC WAS technically a stabilization center—meant to prevent at-risk patients from deteriorating past the point of no return—and in a country where 15 percent of the children did not live to celebrate their fifth birthday, the director’s time was in high demand. Farida passed the peanut paste to the boy’s mother and moved to the next area.
The building was long and narrow, like a railroad car, and she entered a room where several adults stricken with tuberculosis were lying prostrate on mats on the floor and wearing surgical masks to protect those around them. One of the men had also lost a foot in an IED attack, and gangrene had infected the stump. The risk of potentially fatal sepsis was high because of his weakened condition and old age.
An old man in Somalia was in his fifties, maybe sixty if Allah was really punishing him.
The director looked at the old man. Sitting on the floor next to him was Badeed. The warlord saw the director approach but continued massaging the old man’s bony foot until he drifted off to sleep.
“Miss Hassan,” Badeed said as he raised himself up with his cane.
“We need more medicines,” she said as they walked to another room. “Our shipment from the Red Crescent was stolen outside the city. The workers were killed and the medicines stolen.”
“I heard,” said the warlord. “It was Masaska.”
The nickname meant “snake” and the man had gotten it after being bitten by a highly venomous puff-adder. Subsequent necrosis of the face had left him with a ragged hole where his right cheek had been. He was one of Yaxaas’s men, angry at the world, and notoriously violent.
“Please.” Farida put her hand on the warlord’s arm. “Just help us get more medic
ine.”
“But he will do this again . . . and he is Darood.”
“Please,” she implored.
Badeed nodded.
Though the warlord was eager to avenge the killings and the theft, he had chosen the administrator of his clinic well.
FIFTY-THREE
THE MAN WITH the bandoliers was a descendant of the Masai warriors of Kenya. Intense and driven, he’d needed only two days to acquire all of the items on Yaxaas’s list—a remarkable feat given that most of them, including the doctor, had to be brought down from Mogadishu.
Only the test subjects had been sourced locally.
Everything was ready by sunrise on the third day. Yaxaas and Nacay were in camp, the equipment had been unpacked and tested, and all non-essential personnel had been dismissed. Three holding pens had been constructed fifty meters outside the western fence line. With corrugated metal roofs and chain-link walls, they resembled primitive jail cells, which would have been accurate—had they not been something infinitely worse.
The twelve test subjects were moved at gunpoint under blue skies and scattered clouds until each pen was filled with a juvenile and an adult of each gender. Obtaining a perfect distribution of age and sex had been easy—Yaxaas’s men had simply kidnapped who they’d needed off the streets of a neighboring town.
The warlord had recognized the biohazard symbol—three sets of pincers arrayed around a circle—when he’d first seen the plastic container packed in dry ice, but neither he nor anyone else in camp, including the doctor, knew precisely what they were dealing with. Everyone assumed it was a weapon because it had been found among weapons, but they had assembled today to test whatever it was inside the thirty-six sealed glass vials.
The doctor had come to Dujuma more or less willingly—one did not say no to an invitation from Yaxaas—but he did not know why he’d been summoned until he’d arrived in camp. Upon learning that his duties would likely result in the deaths of many, he hid his displeasure in order to minimize further loss of life.
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