[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel

by Richard Marcinko

  The roadblock had been set up by the militia of one of the local warlords. The soft ground on both sides of the road made it impractical to go around, and, besides, the men manning it would undoubtedly have followed. Abdi, probably tired and anxious to get home, decided it was easier to simply deal with it than chance backing up and finding another way.

  I kept my head down but pulled up the rifle as the truck stopped.

  “You’re dead,” hissed Abdi.

  Stage direction? Or a threat?

  I hoped the former. I held my breath—and my rifle beneath me—watching two men come up along the side of the road.

  Abdi yelled something in Somali. The men answered. Abdi yelled back. None of the words sounded like they fit in a love song.

  One of the men came over to the driver’s side and pulled at Taban’s body. Abdi jumped out and began yelling at them.

  The man backed off. Abdi continued to yell, no doubt complimenting them on what excellent taste their wonderful mothers had had in lovers. In the middle of the tirade, he took a few bills from his pocket and threw them on the ground, then stomped back to the Rover and got in.

  That, I thought, was the end of the transaction. But the bills he’d tossed failed to inspire the men back at the gate. The Dushka swiveled in our direction.

  I’m not much on poetry, so I didn’t wait to hear what it had to say. I raised my rifle and fired, dousing the machine gun’s crew. Abdi, meanwhile, hit the gas.

  Our left fender clipped the wagon on the left, spinning it aside. We hit the other full-on. Its wheels collapsed and sparks flew as we pushed it forward, metal screeching against the pavement. One of the guys in the back fired from the driver’s side. I emptied the rest of my magazine, then hung on, not daring to let go of the rope long enough to trade out the box.

  We drove a good three or four hundred feet with the trailer screeching and sparking beneath the front bumper. Abdi tried swerving left then right to get it free, but the damn thing was stubborn. Finally his maneuvers took us off the road. We bounced down a shallow embankment. The wagon broke apart, and pieces of metal flew up into the front of the truck. One shattered the windshield. Another grazed my shoulder, though so lightly I barely felt it.

  Abdi jammed on the brakes. The Rover skidded into loose sand, and quickly wedged itself there as Abdi spun the wheels unsuccessfully, trying to get us out.

  The others piled out of the Rover to investigate. I dropped down. My knees were a little wobbly from all the shakin’ and bakin’ we’d been doing.

  Goat and one of the other bodyguards went to the front and started pushing the SUV. I joined them, but it wasn’t until everyone got out and pushed that we were able to get back on the road. We were lucky the men at the checkpoint didn’t decide to investigate; if they even bothered to fire in our direction, I never heard the bullets.

  “Why did you shoot?” demanded Abdi as I started to climb back on the roof.

  “To save your ass. The machine gunner was about to tattoo it.”

  He scowled at me. “Get inside,” he said. “Having a white man on the roof isn’t a good way to travel through Mogadishu.”

  * * *

  Ordinarily I would have had them drop me off a few blocks from my actual hotel, but given the hour and how tired I was, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it there on foot without becoming someone’s meal ticket. And besides, they wouldn’t have to go to too much trouble to figure out where I was. There weren’t too many Americans in the city, nor were there many places to look.

  I grabbed a second AK and stuffed my pants with mags before hopping out.

  “Thanks,” I told Abdi.

  He didn’t answer. Clearly he blamed me for his uncle’s death, and just as clearly there was nothing I was going to do about it.

  Upstairs, in my room, I checked in with Trace. It doesn’t pay to let her worry too much about my general health—when in doubt, she’s likely to show up at the door with a pot of chicken soup and half an army.

  She picked up on the first ring, and greeted me with warm affection.

  “About time, asshole,” she said. “What sort of trouble are you in now?”

  “I’m not in any trouble, aside from the fact that I’m in Mogadishu and talking to you,” I told her.

  I explained what had happened. With Taban dead, I was unlikely to make any connection with the drug dealers. The only question was when to leave. Though Mogadishu was such a beautiful place, parting would be sweet sorrow.

  “You should get the hell out of Dodge right away,” she told me. “While you can still do it without a medevac.”

  “I’ll decide when I’m leaving in the morning,” I told her. “I have to stay for Taban’s funeral, at the very least. It should be tomorrow.”

  “Make sure it’s not a double ceremony,” snapped Trace before hanging up.

  Both Magoo and Shunt had left several messages asking me to call. Magoo could wait until morning—if then. But there’s nothing like techno-babble to put me to sleep, so I fluffed up the pillows and gave Shunt a call.

  “Would it surprise you to find out that black-market Viagra is being sold through the same network that’s moving heroin into Germany?” Shunt asked when he picked up the phone.

  It did, actually.

  “Explain,” I told him.

  Over the past forty-eight hours, our resident geek had infiltrated half a dozen police forces, banks, and in one case a news organization, pulling together different bits of information to profile the drug dealers connected with Allah’s Rule. Interestingly, he was no longer convinced that the bombing of the bank in Germany was their handiwork; the plastic explosives had come from a European source, different than what the terrorists, and other al Qaeda groups, typically used. But he had a much better picture of what was going on with the drug operation, and believed it included prescription drugs.

  “It makes a lot of sense,” said Shunt. “It’s a growth industry—not only in Europe but here in the States.”

  He talked about it the way a stockbroker talked about the offering of a new stock. The drugs were originating somewhere in Asia—he hadn’t tracked that down yet, though I’m sure Pakistan was on his suspect list. Fake Viagra, hydrocodone, a few other painkillers—potentially, the pharmaceuticals could bring more money than heroin and hashish. Even better from an Islamic nut job’s point of view; because they were intended as medicine, there was no Koranic proscription on moving them.

  “Connection to the bank?” I asked.

  “Haven’t found it yet.”

  “You get into the network?”

  “Working on it.”

  “What about Veep?”

  “Nothing. I’m going to have to come up with a way to track what he does online without him knowing he’s being tracked. He’s too sophisticated to be nailed with a simple keylogger.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Well, he is the head of security.”

  In my experience, among the people most vulnerable to the simplest attacks are the so-called experts. They’re so busy telling others what to do that they forget to do it themselves. Or maybe they just think that they’re above it all because of their position.

  At this point, of course, there was a definite possibility that Veep was entirely innocent. Maybe even a probability. But I didn’t want to admit it, not yet anyway.

  Shunt rattled on about his various plans, which had the desired effect: my eyes were soon gluing themselves shut.

  “Update me tomorrow,” I told him. “Right now I’m hitting the hay.”

  I drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  My sat phone was ringing when I woke a few hours later. I groped for it groggily.

  “What the F do you want?” I growled after punching the talk button. It doesn’t pay to be too friendly when you’re answering the phone—it only encourages people to bother you.

  “Dick, this is Danny. Where are you?”

  “In bed. Alone,” I added.
r />   “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I just thought you’d want to know—French police and Interpol just made a big drug bust.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They raided a ship that had just come into Marseilles. Looks like it might have been the guys who were getting goods from Allah’s Rule. I just got off the phone with Shunt—he’s checking it out.”

  On the one hand, the bust would help—Allah’s Rule would need new buyers, and I’d already made a connection. But if Fat Tony had set up the ambush the night before, the only thing I’d be in line to buy was a whole lot of lead.

  I called Magoo. The call was routed to one of his underlings, who was about as helpful as the people on a computer help desk. I told him to have Magoo call me, then took a shower.

  By then it was light. I went down to the desk and asked the man there to get me a ride, thinking I would go over and see Abdi and find out about the funeral. I’d retained a car and driver who’d worked for us before; he had no phone, and the only way to get him was to have the hotel clerk send a boy to fetch him.

  While I was waiting, I took a peek out on the street. There were about a dozen people up, businessmen mostly, though I noticed two teenage boys sizing me up. The assault rifles slung over my shoulder convinced them I wasn’t an easy mark, and they quickly found something else to look at.

  “Hey, Mr. Dick!”

  The shout, in English, came from up the street. It was Rooster.

  “Abdi sent me,” he said. “Funeral this morning.”

  “You speak English?”

  “I have a little.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything yesterday?” I asked.

  He gave me an African smile. “Taban ali Mohammad tell workers always mind business. Keep mouth shut. Good business in Somalia. Always keep tongue quiet.”

  “Good business anywhere.”

  “Taban ali Mohammad great man,” declared Rooster. “Funeral? You come?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Rooster gave me a quizzical look.

  “Yes, I come,” I told him, spotting my car. “Here comes our ride.”

  (III)

  The wake was being held in Taban’s restaurant. All of the tables had been pushed to one side, except for the three placed at the center of the room that held his corpse. Taban’s remains had been wrapped in a white kafan, three sheets that together formed a simple shroud.

  The sheets made him appear much smaller than he had in life. Unlike in the West, the bodies are rarely if ever displayed at Muslim funerals; given what had happened to the corpse, that was a blessing.

  There is a certain democracy in death. Whether we’ve been rich or poor, famous or infamous, achievers or couch potatoes, we all go into the afterlife as naïve souls without a clue of what we’re going to do next.

  There were several dozen mourners, all packed into the small front room. Six of Taban’s female relatives sat, bent over, in a row of chairs in front of the body. His wife stood in front of them, facing Taban, her hand on the shrouded leg of the corpse. She stared at his head, silent, looking as if she were communicating with him somehow.

  “I didn’t think you would come,” muttered Abdi, coming over through the crowd. He was dressed exactly as he had been when I last saw him: dusty Nikes, stained black pants. The shoes were a size too large; belatedly I realized that they must have been a pair Taban had worn before passing them down.

  “I had a lot of respect for your uncle.”

  “Hmmmph.”

  An imam arrived, and within a few minutes everyone began praying in Arabic. I stood quietly, watching the mourners. Taban had supported most of the people in the room, either directly or indirectly, with jobs, handouts, and houses. Now that he was gone, more than one would find it tough going. Even in the government-controlled zone, there were few real jobs, and none could pay anything near what Taban offered.

  I slipped outside as the prayers continued. A large crowd of people had come to pay their respects. They too were praying, eyes fixed in Taban’s direction.

  I was surprised to find Abdi on the sidewalk, standing alone, holding a homemade cigarette.

  “A friend of Fat Tony’s wants to meet you,” he said. Abdi dropped the cigarette, and shuffled back a few feet to get some distance from the others. His fingers were trembling. He tightened them into a fist.

  “You are involved with some very nasty people,” he said. “Fat Tony is not someone to trust.”

  “Did he kill your uncle?”

  He frowned. I wasn’t sure whether he was having trouble finding the right words in English to use, or having trouble deciding what to say in general.

  “They were thieves, trying to rob us and kidnap you,” said Abdi. “You are the reason my uncle died.”

  I might have defended myself—Taban certainly knew the risks, and probably had been in such situations before. But I didn’t say anything. Abdi changed the subject.

  “My uncle was a very important person here,” he told me. “Many people depended on him.”

  I nodded. He raised the cigarette to his lips and took a long pull. Tobacco is one of the things devout Muslims aren’t supposed to indulge in.

  “The arrangement you had with him,” he said. “I will continue it.”

  “I don’t know that that’s possible.”

  His eyes flashed, and I saw some of the anger he’d displayed when we had first met. That was encouraging, actually.

  “You don’t trust me?” he said.

  “It’s not a matter of trust. You saw what happened to your uncle. I don’t know that we can trust Fat Tony.”

  “He didn’t kill my uncle. That I am sure of.”

  “Why did you keep driving past when his car was hit?” I asked.

  “He always said to do that. He would have known I was coming back. He would have taken cover and waited. I loved my uncle,” Abdi added. “I respected him. He was everything. For me and others. For them inside.”

  I didn’t doubt that was true. What I wondered was whether Abdi was a coward.

  But even granting the best possible interpretation of his actions—that he had driven on by design, then come back fully expecting to save his uncle—I doubted he would do the same for me.

  “Your uncle was a great man,” I told him. Then I turned toward the street, looking for my car and driver.

  “Where are you going?” asked Abdi.

  “Kenya, probably.”

  “You aren’t going to meet with Fat Tony’s man?”

  “I don’t trust him,” I said. “And I’m not so sure about you, either.”

  He looked like I had slapped him. “You should come with us to the graveyard,” he muttered.

  “I really have to get going.”

  He grabbed my arm as I turned away. I tensed, swung around, and barely stopped myself from clocking him.

  “I want to help you the way my uncle would have,” he told me. “I need the money.”

  “I don’t think you can help me.”

  “Try me. What do you lose?”

  My life, for one.

  * * *

  I told my driver to meet me at the cemetery, then joined the procession to the grave. The cemetery was several blocks away on a hillside overlooking the ocean. Squat hovels flanked it north and south. The gravestones were simple but lined up meticulously; if they had been more uniform in size and shape the effect would have rivaled the fields for fallen Allied soldiers in northern Europe. I found it difficult to look at them, not just because of Taban, but because of all the comrades I’ve had to bury over the years. Death is a constant companion in my business, and while I have been far, far luckier than most, still I’ve seen a legion of friends lowered into the ground. The fragility of life humbles you, lingering long after the adrenaline of battle dissipates. Each time I consider the fact that I may be next, I promise myself I’ll live to at least one hundred, just so I can piss off many more no-load people.11 Everyone needs to focus on a
meaningful goal in life.

  After some prayers, Abdi stepped over to the grave to speak. Rooster and Goat had come over to stand next to me, heads bowed. I didn’t understand a word Abdi was saying—it was all in Somali—but it sounded appropriately somber.

  Then the words changed suddenly to English.

  “Mr. Dick knew our uncle well,” said Abdi, looking in my direction. “He is a great man who will pay tribute to our uncle.”

  Everyone stared at me. Apparently Abdi had already said this in Somali and was now translating into English so I would understand.

  Put on the spot, I cleared my throat and took a half step forward.

  “Taban ali Mohammad was a great man,” I said.

  Abdi translated, which gave me a moment to think of what to say next. I didn’t think it was appropriate to mention that he did business with pirates and kidnappers, though very possibly the people here would have viewed that a lot differently than most of us would.

  “He provided for his very large family,” I said, “and was a friend to many people.”

  There were a few murmurs from the crowd as Abdi translated.

  “Taban had many ambitions, but what he loved most was his restaurant,” I continued. “He had a very generous spirit. I think his restaurant was the best in Mogadishu.”

  One of the women started to wail. Within seconds, three-quarters of the crowd were crying aloud as well.12

  Talk about having an effect on your audience.

  I said something about him having gone to a better place, then stepped back. Abdi’s voice cracked as he repeated it.

  “Good speech, Mr. Dick,” said Rooster. “Very good. Taban ali Mohammad was a great man.”

  Abdi picked up a fistful of dirt and dropped it over the body after it was lowered. He did this three times, then everyone else followed. I joined the procession, sandwiched between Rooster and Goat.

  When everyone had dropped in their fistfuls of dirt, some of the family took up shovels and finished covering the grave. They stomped down the mound, then had one last prayer before the funeral was over.