The plans the four had made during their morning meeting were now being enacted. The grey Nissan pulled out behind the taxi and followed it along the dusty road. The taxi weaved its way through the traffic and pedestrians thronging the city centre roads before arriving at a Mosque, impressive by Djibouti standards, where most of the buildings looked to be semi derelict.
Jamil Al Futtaim went inside, and Max and Todd drove back to the villa to collect the others. If Al Futtaim left the compound they would be told by the government watcher assigned to them. Additionally, Al Futtaim’s carry-on bag was now carrying a Vastrick transmitter that Dominic could locate at any time via his iPhone.
***
Thirty minutes later all four investigators were in the Nissan heading down a new dual carriageway called the Doraleh Link Road, which had been built recently to service the new oil terminal and container port. The large oil tanks could be seen on the horizon, which was somewhat coincidental, as the Oil Terminal was called the Horizon Oil terminal. Their destination was a little closer - the container terminal, the destination for Dubai’s stolen cars.
The container terminal was reached by driving along a causeway built on reclaimed land, stretching almost two kilometres into the Red Sea. The familiar container cranes were visible from the shore and the quay was servicing three container ships. Security was tight but, as ‘foreign investors keen to help fund the expansion of the container port’, they were treated well.
They were told about the 18 metre draft, or sea depth, which was two metres deeper than Dubai and the deepest in North Africa. They listened as they were informed that the local sea life was thriving because of their environmental efforts, and then they were shown containers being unloaded.
“Yes, one of our big customers is a Dubai company who bring unwanted cars from Dubai to Africa. They are transported to the Djibouti Free Zone, where the Dubai customer has a compound, and then they are transported to Somalia, Ethiopia and our other neighbouring countries,” Abdhouraman Hassan gushed. “With your investment, we can make this quay three times longer, and we will be able to house cranes that can lift two containers at once. And we will make you much money,” Hassan winked as he concluded his sales pitch.
Al Muran SArl was registered in the Djibouti Free Zone, but was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dubai company which was reclaiming the abandoned cars for the Emirates Government. Its compound in the Free Zone consisted of a concrete post and wire fence around eight feet high, a couple of Portakabin style offices and a flattened area of sand that housed around thirty cars and trucks.
“We need to get in there tonight and look at their records,” Todd announced.
“We cannot do anything illegal. We are working with the government, yes, but their cooperation only goes so far,” Dominic interjected.
“I’ve worked with Vastrick before, with Dee Hammond, and they didn’t seem so concerned about a bit of breaking and entering,” Max offered.
“Perhaps not, but Dee and her team are field operatives. I am a forensic investigator. My tools are my intellect and my laptop. I deal in documents.”
“We will be looking at documents, Dominic,” Jamie said sweetly as she touched his hand.
Chapter 13
Al Muran Offices, Djibouti Free Zone, North Africa:
20th February; 10pm.
Claude liked working the night shift. He volunteered to do it seven nights a week. The offices were air conditioned and the sofa was more comfortable than his bed. Like many families in Djibouti, where the average family lived on around a thousand dollars a year, Claude’s home was a few bare rooms without windows, and running water that worked sometimes. Here in the offices he had a luxurious leather sofa to sleep on, air conditioning, a flat screen TV on the wall and unlimited tea and coffee. Claude sometimes dreamed that one day he would have a Portakabin like this for his family.
Claude was settling down to sleep after watching the latest episode of Arab Idol on TV when there was knock on the door. He fastened his shirt and hooked his baton on his belt, before opening the door to find a man and a woman standing in front of him. The woman looked at his name badge and spoke in English.
“Claude, I would like to make you an offer.” She held up almost half a year’s salary in US dollars. The security guard did not really understand what she was saying, but he knew he was being bribed. The man spoke up in European French.
“We are investigating on behalf of the government, and we need to come in and see some files. We want no-one to know, and to give you five hundred dollars to stay silent.”
Claude thought about his job, his family, his nice sleeping arrangements, but mostly of becoming rich with five hundred dollars.
“No one must know you were here?” he replied in French.
“Naturellement,” Dominic replied as Claude stood aside and allowed the couple in.
***
Todd and Max were deep into Somalia, following a low loader stacked with stolen cars. The roads were largely unpaved but busy. European cars from the 1980s, filled with people, trundled along the rough roads, often with luggage stacked precariously on roof racks. The two investigators felt exposed, albeit the windows of the Nissan were blacked out and no one could see in.
Eventually the low loader pulled into a long-abandoned petrol station that appeared to have some kind of café behind it. There was a selection of cars old and new parked outside. Todd parked the Nissan off the road, about a hundred yards past the old service station.
Todd and Max watched in amazement as a roadside party swung into action. An immaculate 1960s Cadillac Eldorado Brougham Convertible, in bright red with lots of chrome and rear wings, provided the loud funk music, and food and drink came from car trunks across the lot. African women in scant clothing poured out of the shack and mingled with the whooping men.
One by one the cars were unloaded, admired, caressed and bought. Wads of cash, probably dollars, exchanged hands and the new owners took to their cars and spun the wheels to impress the women.
To a man, the buyers were African, French speaking and dangerous looking. Not one had hair more than an inch long. All were armed and bare chested, with more than a few bearing visible scars that looked as though they had been inflicted by a machete. These men were either pirates or, more likely, they were the men who profited from piracy.
Max clicked away, and Todd turned the car around so that it was facing the impromptu party before setting away the dashboard mounted video camera.
***
Jamie expected Claude, the guard, to hover over them nervously as they searched. She was dead wrong. Once they were in and they had assured him that his Government would be grateful for his cooperation, he simply sat on the sofa and watched an episode of The Simpsons on the Fox satellite channel, apparently unconcerned about the activities of his visitors.
Their search was fruitful and simple. No drawers were locked and documents were filed on open shelves. Dominic clipped his laptop into the main server and relayed the contents of the server to the Vastrick hub back in the UK. The transfer would take some hours to complete, and when it was finished it would shut down after executing a self-erasing procedure; clever devils, these French investigators.
Armed with photocopies of incriminating documents, and a photographic record of their visit, Jamie and Dominic left Claude to the TV and an episode of King of the Hill. The relatively small amount of money they had given him would probably feed his family for months, whereas it would barely cover the cost of two nights in the Kempinski.
Having loaned his Nissan to Max and Todd, Dominic had to take Jamie out in his landlord’s old Honda saloon of unknown vintage. They drove back with the windows down, air conditioning not being a standard feature when this car was made. Jamie half expected to see an 8 Track tape deck in the car, but all it had was a radio, on which every channel broadcast Turkish or Asian dance music.
“From the ledgers I was able to determine that the money from the illegitimate car sales is
channelled into a separate account at the First National Bank of Burundi,” Dominic told her, “whereas the legitimate imports appear in the formal accounts with the monies going to the company bank account back in Dubai. Even on the legitimate sales they are a profitable outfit.”
“So the chances are, the money from the stolen cars is being channelled into the same bank account as the property scam funds,” Jamie guessed.
“That is a presumption, but probably a correct one. I will be able to tell when I see the electronic bank transfers from the server.” Dominic paused, and then smiled. “But the night is still young. How about a bite of dinner? We can eat at the fish restaurant on the beach.”
“My mom told me that Frenchmen only ever think about women and food. It seems she was right,” Jamie teased.
“Is there anything else?” Dominic asked in all seriousness.
***
All of the cars had been unloaded and the party was in full swing when a man in a pristine white singlet broke from the pack and started to walk towards the parked Nissan. What his intentions were neither of the investigators knew, but they realised that there would be no happy outcome if he saw white faces in the 4x4.
“Time to go, Max!” Todd said as he slipped the car into gear and pulled away slowly, trying not to arouse suspicion. As they pulled back onto what passed as the paved road, the man walked into the middle of the highway to block their path. He waved for them to stop, and when they showed no signs of doing so he raised his hand and pointed a handgun at them.
Todd issued an expletive, and told Max to belt up before slowing the Nissan down to walking pace. The man smiled and started to walk to the driver’s side door. As he drew level with the front wing, Todd floored the accelerator and the Nissan pulled away as fast as a Nissan Patrol is capable of, but nowhere near fast enough for Todd’s liking.
The man was taken aback, and instinctively stepped away from the accelerating vehicle before calmly levelling his gun and firing at the quickly departing car. His three shots all missed the car, which was a large enough target, but Todd was weaving and the man had probably had a few drinks. The two men in the car held their breaths, hoping that the party goers would laugh the incident off and get on with their celebrations. Those hopes were quickly dashed.
In the rear view mirror Todd watched as the shooter ran to an old Toyota pickup truck and jumped into the truck bed, banging on the roof of the cab until the wheels spun, sending sand and grit everywhere, and reversing the old pickup onto the highway. No sooner had the Toyota taken off after them than a small army of ragged and beaten up cars also joined the pursuit, with the Cadillac Eldorado following in the rear.
Todd would not have been worried if they had been travelling in their Range Rover, or if they had been able to take a gun or two along for the ride, but neither of these were possible and they were in a sluggish Nissan Patrol almost forty miles from the border.
Much to his surprise, the Nissan, once it reached top speed, stayed there quite readily and was relatively untroubled by the poor road surface. Some of the cars following were not as fortunate; two or three bounced into ruts and the hoods sprung up, blinding the drivers, who careered into each other and a following car. Max relayed what was happening behind them to Todd, who was concentrating on missing the worst of the potholes in the road.
With three cars out of the chase there were two saloon cars, an old Mercedes and a Mazda still in pursuit, with the Toyota pickup struggling to keep up and the Eldorado not far behind it.
The Nissan had just rounded a bend, slowing as it went, when the two saloons made their move. A shaven-headed man leaned out of the Mazda passenger window and began shooting at the Nissan with a machine pistol, possibly an Uzi or a cheap knock-off version of an Uzi. One round took out the wing mirror, and another punched a hole in the rear windscreen, which remarkably crazed but did not fall to pieces as they did in the movies.
The Mercedes was coming up alongside the Nissan, and the passenger was levelling an old Browning Hi Power pistol in Todd’s direction as the Mercedes tried to side swipe the Nissan.
“Hold on!” Todd yelled as he jumped on the brakes. The Nissan fishtailed wildly but kept to the road. The Mercedes had been swinging in to side swipe the Nissan when Todd braked, and it swung into the lane ahead of the Nissan in an uncontrolled spin.
The Mazda behind them was just feet behind the Nissan Patrol and could not stop in time. It hit the Nissan with a shuddering crunch, causing the crazed rear windscreen to fall out, and careered off the road and into a ditch, where it rolled over onto its side before sliding along on the desert floor, cutting the gunman in two as he hung out of the window and the car roof sliced through his torso as it grounded. Bodies rolled around inside the Mazda, and Max figured that if there were any survivors they would not be chasing anyone again any time soon, if ever. Max felt the deceleration reverse as Todd floored the accelerator again.
The Mercedes had come almost to a standstill, facing the Nissan head on, when Todd accelerated towards them. Max and Todd could see the terrified faces as the occupants raised their hands from the car controls to uselessly shield their faces. Todd swung the Nissan to his left to avoid a head on collision that would have disabled their car as well, but he still hit the Mercedes with a bone-jarring thud.
The Nissan fared better, losing some plastic fairings and suffering a bent wing, but the Mercedes toppled backwards into a ditch and rolled over onto its roof. There were flames coming from the underside of the chassis as Todd tried to put distance between them and the scene of carnage they had left behind them.
When Max looked back over his shoulder he saw that the Mercedes was well ablaze, but neither the Toyota nor the Eldorado had stopped to help the trapped passengers. Todd pressed on. They were still over twenty five miles from the border on a deserted road, and the undamaged cars behind them were slowly closing the gap as the road surface improved.
“Call Jamie, and tell her where we are. See if she can get the US Naval base in Djibouti to scramble a chopper. Tell them that pirates are trying to kidnap us.”
***
Jamie had enjoyed a dinner of freshly caught hammour, and was sampling the tiramisu when her phone rang. Immediately alert, she could hear the tension in Max’s voice as he briefly outlined their situation.
“I’ll see what I can do, but it’s likely to take more than thirty minutes to get any action, and by then you’ll be back in Djibouti.”
Dominic overheard Jamie’s half of the conversation, and asked her what was going on. Before she had finished explaining, he had his phone to his ear. He babbled away in French, but Jamie was able to get the gist of what he was saying.
“Nikolas, it is Dominic. Two good friends of mine are being pursued on the wrong side of the Somali border, heading back to Djibouti. It looks like a kidnap attempt. You are close to the border. Can you help?”
Nikolas replied in quickly spoken French. “Dominic, you are in Djibouti and yet you do not call your brother until you need help? I will see what I can do, but we are not allowed to cross the border, as you know.”
“If you don’t they may die, Nik.”
“I’ll see what I can do. It is dark and the border is poorly marked; anyone could make a mistake, eh?” They hung up the phone and Dominic turned to Jamie.
“That was my older brother, Nikolas; he is in the French Foreign Legion. They are well known for carrying out exercises in Somalia, where they are not supposed to go. I think we have more chance with him than with the Americans. Their main communications centre for the region is in Cyprus.”
“That’s hundreds of miles away,” Jamie said, pointing out the obvious.
“This is the military, Jamie. You cannot dial 911 and ask your local helicopter flight leader for help. It will take two hours for your request to get through the chain of command.”
Jamie looked out to sea and chewed on her knuckles, trying to hide the fact that her eyes were brimming with unshed tears.
&nb
sp; ***
“Todd, we have to do something pretty quickly. The chances of the cavalry arriving to save the day are remote, in the extreme.”
“There’s not a lot we can do without weapons, mate,” the Aussie replied.
The Nissan was performing as well as could be expected on the uncertain road surface, and with a new, less than aerodynamic front end, but the road ahead was level and straight, which would favour the Eldorado.
With a good fifteen miles still to go to the border, the Eldorado started to draw level with the Nissan. Todd laughed out loud, relieving the tension in the car.
“What the hell is there to laugh at?” Max demanded.
“Sorry, Max, it’s just that here we are in the middle of the bloody desert in Somalia, and we’re about to enter a drag race with a 1960s Cadillac Eldorado. It’s just surreal.” Max had to agree, but reality kicked in as shots riddled the Nissan’s saloon.
“Ram them, Todd!” Max yelled.
“You’re joking, right? There’s about three tons of steel under that Eldorado in the form of welded I-beams. This fella,” he patted the steering wheel, “is designed to crumple to protect the passengers. In any collision they’ll disable this car and we’ll be sitting ducks.”
Nonetheless, he swung the wheel and the Eldorado dropped back, taking avoiding action.
“Well, look at that! He doesn’t want to get his paint job ruined!” Todd continued to weave across the carriageway to stop the Eldorado encroaching. Shots were still puncturing the Patrol’s body work. It was only a matter of time before the gunmen aimed at the tyres, and then the game would be up.
“Up ahead!” Max pointed to the road ahead. Todd saw it, too - a rough sandy road that headed in the direction of the border, with more humps than an Egyptian camel farm. Todd pulled off the main road and took the old smuggling track. After five hundred yards he had to slow down and shift into low ratio gear and full four-wheel drive, but they were moving.
Shadow of the Burj Page 10