The Somali Doctrine

by James Grenton

  Abdi peered through a hole in the wall. ‘A technical,’ he said, recognising the Jeep with its roof cut off that was rumbling down the street. A grinning youth gripped the two-handled heavy machinegun mounted on the back instead of the rear passenger seat. The youth fired a burst of rounds. Next to him, another youth fired random shots with his AK 47. Machinegun fire responded from further away. The youth with the AK collapsed. The other one looked stunned and began firing wildly. Abdi ducked back into the house.

  ‘Best to get away before it gets worse,’ Samatar said. ‘Come. We know where to hide.’

  Samatar led the way through the ruins of the house, the others trailing behind him. Outside, crowds of people lined the sides of the street, scrambling to safety. More technicals rolled in.

  Bullets flew. People fell. A woman ran towards her son, who was lying in a heap. High velocity bullets ripped her in two. Abdi felt his son’s hand shaking. He pulled him close and followed Samatar, his wife and daughter through the rubble. After a few hundred metres, they stopped and hid in the remains of another house.

  The fighting intensified over the course of the day, but hordes of people still tried to escape. Most were on foot, carrying or dragging their belongings. Some carried their elderly relatives in wheelbarrows. Abdi, his son and their new friends waited, hardly daring to move, for the cool of the evening.

  That night, the screams of women being raped and murdered sliced the air. Abdi clamped his hands over the ears of his son, but to little avail. The screams and gun-shots continued through the night. Memories of his wife’s murder flooded back even stronger than before, like a tidal wave of anguish. Bandits had ambushed and raped her when she was picking firewood to sell to other refugees in exchange for food to supplement the meagre rations distributed by the NGO that ran the camp. She had complained to the police. A huge mistake. The police had told the bandits, who had come back, in the middle of the night, to rape her again and kill her.

  Abdi felt like attacking the first militiaman who went by the house. But he knew it was futile. That would only end with his own death.

  Next day, gangs roamed the streets, killing and pillaging. During a lull in the fighting, Abdi peeked through a hole in the wall. A group of men walked into the street, taking the holy Koran and placing it on their heads.

  ‘We are helpless. God help us,’ they shouted. Abdi knew these were men whose wives and daughters had been raped, bringing dishonour on them and their families. Gunshots were fired and the men scrambled into the ruins of a house across the road. Militiamen fought with knives just metres away. Yet waves of people were still trying to escape the city, many of them mown down by machinegun fire.

  Samatar crept up to Abdi. ‘We need to go.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Brava.’ It was a town 200km south of Mogadishu.

  Khalid was crying. Abdi put his hand over his mouth to muffle the sound.

  ‘Alright,’ Abdi said. ‘Let’s go.’

  They escaped through a doorway in the far wall, joining a line of thousands of refugees. Ahead of them was a roadblock with technicals on either side allowing for a small gap through which the refugees flowed. One of Othman’s militiamen stood on a technical, scrutinising the mass of desperate people.

  ‘Head down,’ Abdi said to Khalid.

  They shuffled forward with the crowd. Behind them, Samatar told his daughter and wife to stay close. The militia picked out men from the line and asked them questions, probably about which clan they belonged to. They led some of them away into the remains of an old building. There were screams and gunfire, and Abdi could feel the people tense around him.

  They came to the roadblock. The crowd slowed to a crawl. They were ushered through the gap between the technicals. They’d nearly made it through when there was a shout.

  ‘You!’

  Abdi kept walking, pulling Khalid behind him.

  ‘I said you!’ A hand grabbed Abdi’s shoulder. The militiaman grinned, his eyes wide with triumph. ‘We’ve been looking for you. Thought you could escape so easily?’

  Abdi shrugged the man’s hand off his shoulder and yanked Khalid along. He pushed through the crowd. Behind him, the militiaman shouted. Gunshots erupted. The crowd lurched to the side. People screamed and trampled each other.

  Abdi lunged forward, dragging his son along. Samatar’s voice was in his ear, telling him to keep going. The crowd scattered. Abdi and Khalid ran ahead. Pain shot up Abdi’s bad leg, but he ignored it. They jumped behind a pile of rubble, followed closely by Samatar and his family.

  Abdi could feel his pulse in his head. But there was no time to rest. The sound of the technicals starting their motors rumbled through the air.

  They had to escape.

  Quick.

  Chapter 31

  Nairobi, Kenya

  23 September 2003

  The door to the cell clanged shut. Jim blinked to adjust to the gloom. At least a dozen pairs of eyes stared at him and his blood-stained clothes. Jim slumped in a corner, eyeing the other prisoners, half naked and dripping with sweat, who sat on the concrete floor, desolate expressions on their sunken faces. A few were hunched up on a rotten mattress against the wall. In the corner was a bucket, filled to the brim with urine and excrement.

  Jim put his head in his hands. The police claimed to have found his fingerprints on the knife. He’d tried arguing with them, but to no avail. They’d put on the blank looks he’d seen in so many bureaucracies. He hadn’t been allowed a single phone call. Nobody knew he was here, except possibly Maxine, wherever she was.

  Next to him a scuffle broke out between a thin man with grey hair and a broken nose and a younger-looking man with a goatee and only one arm. They appeared to be fighting over a piece of bread. The tall man had the younger one in a head lock. He was tightening it so much the young man’s eyes looked like they were going to burst out of their sockets. Everyone else was watching with barely any interest.

  Three guards burst in and separated the two men, whacking them both on the head with sticks. They decided to hit everyone else too. Jim protected himself with his arms, but the guards spared him. On the way out, they picked up the bread and threw it into the bucket. The prisoners fell back into a state of stupor. Jim pushed himself further into the corner. The emotional stress was taking its toll and he drifted off to sleep, his head leaning against the wall.

  He woke up with a start. He automatically looked at his wrist before remembering that the guards had taken his watch and his money belt. There were no windows, so he had no way of knowing what time it was. Around him, most of the other inmates appeared to be sleeping, so he guessed it was nighttime. He rubbed his temples. All this effort to make it to Nairobi in time for the secret UA meeting, and instead he was locked up in one of the worst prisons in the developing world.

  There was a movement in the corner. He strained his eyes, then recoiled. Two men were having sex, one of them lying in the dirt while the other one penetrated him from behind. Jim put his head down, closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. For the first time in years, he prayed. He’d heard that some people had strong religious experiences in prison.

  He felt nothing.

  Just emptiness.

  He shrugged.

  Whenever he closed his eyes, Harry’s grinning face appeared: the misshapen teeth, the self-satisfied curl of his mouth, the cold eyes and thin eyebrows. Harry’s eyes were so similar yet his features were so different to the man Jim knew was responsible for his wife Carrie’s death. Were they the same person? Were they brothers? Or was there no link? Nobody seemed to know much about Harry’s past. Was he ex-CIA or ex-mercenary? Or both? Or none at all?

  Jim drifted off to sleep again. He dreamt of his time in Afghanistan: the embeds with the US forces trudging through the barren mountains, the hair-raising skirmishes with the Taliban, the laughter with Carrie back at the hotel when they talked into the night, her lilting Californian accent, the way she would argue about the latest issue clos
e to her heart. Then he saw her up close: her head split in two, the broken arms and twisted legs, her blood-stained shirt ripped to shreds. Her face changed to Maxine’s, and he woke up, shivering despite the oppressive heat.

  Hours later, a guard pushed open the cell door. He grabbed Jim’s shirt and lifted him to his feet. Jim had hardly moved since he’d arrived. His legs buckled underneath him. The guard pulled him up again and nearly carried him through a maze of chain-link fences and barbed wire to a bare room. He dumped Jim onto a metal chair with his back to the entrance and handcuffed his two hands in front of him. Then he left, slamming the heavy door behind him. There were no windows, just grey walls and the same sickening smell of sewage.

  Jim dozed off despite the knot in his stomach. The door banged open behind him. He jolted upright and twisted round. Harry strode into the room, dragging a chair with him. He plonked the chair in front of Jim.

  ‘You don’t look well, dear boy,’ Harry said, sitting down. ‘They not looking after you here?’

  Jim didn’t reply. Everything was turning into a living nightmare. Maybe the lack of food and sleep was playing tricks on his mind.

  ‘Come on then,’ Harry continued. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve already cut your tongue out. Are you enjoying it here?’

  Jim ignored the jibe.

  Harry edged the chair closer, until his face was nearly touching Jim’s.

  ‘Look here, Jimmy boy, you’re in serious trouble, don’t you know? Double murder. A lifetime in this shit-hole. Sound like fun to you?’

  Jim shuddered. Harry smiled, satisfied.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Jim said at last.

  ‘Ah!’ Harry’s face brightened up. ‘That’s more like it. I’d like you to help me with Interpol.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Let me explain.’ Harry walked up and down the width of the room, as though giving a lecture. ‘We at Universal Action have a mission to feed the poor. Interpol, however, is standing in the way of this. They may have dropped you, but they’re still not our friends. Help us stop their annoying investigations into our work, so that we can continue to ensure peace and distribute aid.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m going to believe that, do you?’

  ‘Believe what?’

  ‘That you want peace.’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  Harry sat down again. There was a sudden look of sincerity in his eyes that was disarming.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Jim said.

  ‘Get back into Interpol. Convince them to drop their case against us.’

  ‘Why would they listen to me?’

  ‘Because you’re the one they sent in to investigate us.’

  ‘You just said they’d dropped me.’

  ‘We’ll help you make a convincing escape from jail. Then we’ll feed you new intel they’ll find credible.’

  ‘What about this double murder?’ Jim said.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. I’ll sort it out.’

  Jim looked around the room at the bare walls and the cobwebs in the corners. The handcuffs dug into his wrists. Any opportunity to get out of here was better than rotting away for years in this hell-hole. He’d decide later how to deal with Harry.

  ‘You trust me?’ Jim said.

  ‘I’ve got Maxine.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll do it,’ Jim said.

  ‘Listen carefully.’ Harry leaned so close Jim could feel his hot breath against his face. ‘Don’t even start to think you can double cross me. If you go against my orders, even just once, you’ll be back here before you know what’s hit you. As for Maxine…’

  Harry’s eyes gleamed.

  Carrie’s face flashed in Jim’s mind. He lunged at Harry before he even realised what he was doing.

  ‘You killed her,’ he screamed.

  His hands grabbed Harry’s throat and pushed him over in his chair, which toppled backwards. They both landed on the floor with a thud. Jim pummelled Harry’s face with both fists. Harry tried pushing Jim off him. Jim whacked him in the face with his elbow. Harry’s head lolled to the side. His body went limp. Jim kept on beating him, unable to stop.

  A door banged open. Jim felt a sharp blow on his skull. He crumpled to the floor, clutching his head. A prison guard rolled him onto his back with his foot. Another one bent over Harry, who was struggling into a leaning position. One of Harry’s eyes was so bruised it was all closed up. His nose bled profusely.

  Harry turned his good eye to Jim and spat out through damaged teeth. He staggered to his feet. He kicked Jim in the ribs, making him groan.

  ‘You son of a bitch,’ Harry said, wiping his bloodied face with his sleeve. ‘You’ll rot here for the rest of your miserable life.’

  Chapter 32

  Nairobi, Kenya

  23 September 2003

  Jim woke up back in the prison cell. He had a splitting headache, his ribs ached, and his clothes had fresh blood all over them. He put his head in his hands and covered his ears. The cell was even more crowded, with a group of 15 men standing in the middle, shouting and arguing. A young man was lying on his back on the mattress, racked with coughs and covered in scabs.

  Then Jim remembered the fight with Harry, and tears of rage flooded back. He drifted back into sleep, semi delirious. In one dream, Harry was five metres tall. His eyes gleamed with a supernatural glow as he throttled a woman whose face switched from Carrie’s to Maxine’s over and over. In another, Harry’s face was a grinning skull, flesh dripping off bone, like something out of a horror film.

  After what felt like weeks, but may just have been a day or so, a guard marched into the cell and hauled Jim to his feet. Jim protested feebly. The guard dragged him to the same bare room where he’d attacked Harry.

  Jim gritted his teeth, preparing himself for more punishment.

  But there were no handcuffs and it wasn’t Harry waiting. It was Sarah, looking as striking as ever with her jet black shoulder-length hair and slim figure in a navy blue suit. Jim’s heart lifted, until he noticed her gloomy look.

  ‘Have a seat.’ She pointed at the empty metal chair in front of her.

  Jim slumped into it. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t dreaming again. She studied him for a while with her dark, round eyes, her pretty face scrunched into a frown.

  ‘We’re in serious trouble,’ she said, eventually.

  ‘I don’t need reminding.’

  ‘How have they treated you?’

  ‘What do you think?’ He decided to cut to the point. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘We were on Harry’s trail in Paris when everything went pear-shaped.’

  ‘What about this Mohammad guy?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Head of Bureau in Addis,’ Jim said. ‘The guys at HQ said you wanted me to contact him.’

  ‘Bunch of liars. I never said anything of the sort.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘A body was found in a ditch outside Nairobi yesterday. It was the front story in the papers this morning when I landed. Some high up cop. Called Mohammad. Could be him.’

  Mohammad had been desperate in the car. He’d paid with his life.

  ‘Does Harry have connections in Interpol?’ Jim said.

  ‘Not Harry. Edward.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I was called in by one of the senior managers,’ Sarah said. ‘He told me about Edward’s complaint against you.’

  ‘What did Edward say?’

  ‘He wanted the investigation closed.’

  ‘It was unofficial anyway.’

  ‘This part was. But we’ve been investigating them for some time. That’s why Edward and Harry hate us so much.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? To turn me in?’

  Sarah smiled warmly. ‘I said yes to closing it down, so they stupidly allowed me to return to my desk. I picked up everything I could and legged it to the airport.’

  ‘They didn’t stop you?’

  ‘They pretended to try. I guess they’d be qu
ite happy if I succeeded in stopping Harry and Edward.’

  ‘Why did you come all the way here?’

  ‘What do you think?’ She touched his fingers. ‘I don’t let my team mates rot in jail.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  She showed him her Interpol ID card. ‘This always works.’ She pulled his hand. ‘Come on. Let’s go before someone finds out why I’m really here.’

  ‘Wait,’ Jim said. He was in a hurry to escape, but he had one question he wanted an answer to. ‘Who’s Harry?’

  ‘He’s head of security for UA.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Sarah. Is he who I think he is?’

  She stood up. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘This is important. I need to know.’

  She hesitated, opened her mouth to speak several times, then said: ‘Now isn’t the time.’

  She knocked purposefully on the door. A guard opened, the same one who had hauled Jim out of his cell earlier. Jim limped after Sarah down damp corridors, past guard towers and through locked grills. She flashed her credentials. Bored guards let them through. Ten minutes later, they were near the entrance.

  The guard at the gate put out his hand.

  ‘ID,’ he barked.

  Sarah held out her Interpol card. The guard snatched it. He looked at Sarah, who was staring at him with cool, authoritative eyes. He looked down at the card, scratching it as though trying to check its authenticity. Jim’s heart was pounding. They were so close to the exit. His tired muscles tensed. First, he’d go for the man’s throat. Then, he’d grab the man’s gun from its holster and take him hostage. If the guard didn’t have the keys, he’d force another one to open the gate.

  He was in the middle of preparing his game plan, wondering if he’d have the strength to carry it through, when the guard handed the ID card back. Sarah put it in her pocket and walked past. Jim followed, his legs shaking.

  The gate opened.

  They stepped through.

  To freedom.

  Chapter 33

  Mogadishu, Somalia

  25 September 2003