“That boy doesn’t need rescuing, Visser. He’s carrying water jugs, not a rifle.”
The hand released the shirt and clamped Abdi’s jaw. The Dutchman leaned closer, breathing in his face. “But you have carried a rifle, haven’t you, child? I see death in your eyes.”
“That’s your reflection,” the Spaniard yelled. “Now get out of here before Chutani’s men show up and haul you and your boys off for having weapons in the camp.”
Visser released Abdi and turned around slowly, one hand raised. “Suffer the little children, Mr. Garcia. Isn’t that what the Lord said?”
“‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ is in there too, Visser.”
“Ahh, but ‘there is no peace for the wicked, saith God,’ and wickedness is consuming this land. The war proves it.” The hand landed on Abdi’s shoulder again. “Innocents like this one are caught in the crossfire. Deceived, exploited, into a short, brutal life of rape and murder. Steeped in such sin, how shall he escape judgment? I have answered the Lord’s call to be a watchman on the wall. I shepherd the lost, guide the straying. What about you? Will you give account for his eternal soul, Señor Garcia?”
The Spanish doctor didn’t reply right away but walked slowly past the huddle of cowering Somalis, between the two gun boys, onto the concrete slab. He stopped inches away from the Dutchman.
Abdi took a step back. A peculiar ferocity was coming off the little man in waves. It wasn’t like a doctor at all, but it was reined in tightly.
“I’m not going to give account for any soul except my own. I’m ready. Whenever that time comes, Visser. But right now, I’m not going to fence Scriptures with you.” His voice was low, rumbling.
“This boy isn’t some brainwashed, beaten child soldier from Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. He’s inside a U.N. refugee camp fetching water for his family. From where I stand, you’re the only armed lunatics who look like they’re about to kidnap someone.” The short man glanced scornfully down at the Dutchman’s rifle. “Now, in Jesus’ Name, either bet… or fold.”
Visser held the shorter man’s gaze for several moments. For a split second, Abdi thought he was going to yank that old Type 86 around and gun the doctor down, but instead he blinked and stepped back with a mocking bow.
“His blood be on your head, señor.”
He whistled, and the two skinny boys put up their AKs. A minute later the three of them had been swallowed up by the gathering night.
Abdi remained by the spigots with the Spanish doctor. The anger was gone. Turned off or submerged, Abdi wasn’t quite sure which.
Mr. Garcia put his hand out and smoothed Abdi’s wrinkled shirt. “You must be careful from now on. Watch out for him,” he said softly.
He looked down into Abdi’s face. “And I’d stay away from Biye K’obe, if I were you.”
CHAPTER TEN – Gross and Improbable Mischief
Gulf of Aden, ten kilometers off the coast of Djibouti
An M-106 Stiletto boat is a forty-five-foot, M-keel spearhead of carbon composites and smoked armorglass. Open up the two, three-hundred-horsepower engines, and twelve thousand pounds skips across the water like grease on a hot plate. Tam and I had added a stealth package and lost a few knots with the extra weight, but the photo-mimetic cells mirrored the ocean around us so perfectly it looked like the boat’s surface was heaving with moon-silvered slate and shadow waves. Stare at it long enough and you’d swear dream winds were bearing you naked over open seas. It was mesmerizing and eerie as hell.
The seven of us were crouched below the gunwales as the boat sliced through the night. Poet9, the Triplets and I were up front. Tam and Curro were double-checking our gear in the stern. Above us, the sky was alive with stars, diamond chips scattered in ink. Ahead, the charcoal smudge of the Djibouti coast was fast approaching.
Mission up: Somaliland. Another episode of gross and improbable mischief.
Poet9 was tapping something on a keypad, green-screen glow on his face. “So far so good. No coastal surveillance grid. Worst case is a boat patrol, but even then, with a war on, everybody’s got their hands full. So probably not. We’ll be on the beach, duty-free, in twelve minutes.”
“Not to mention most sane people are trying to get out of East Africa right now,” I said. “You validate those IFF tags Hester gave us? Things’ll be sketchy enough without D-H bots shooting at us.”
“He says they work. I ran ’em through diagnostics. But the only way to know for sure is when we’re staring down the barrel of one.”
I looked over at him and raised an eyebrow.
“No worries,” he winked. “I scripted a nuke code, call it ‘Snowcrash’. Little bastard will crisp any network it touches.”
“We start glassing tac-nets, we’ll attract all kinds of unwanted attention.”
He shook his head. “It’s a one-time use, so we need to be in full panic mode before I push that button.”
“Sure as hell better not come to that.”
The little Mexican threw me a grin. “Relax… this job’s a walk in the park. Or, in this case, a stroll through the lion preserve.”
“Barrel of laughs, you are. Hester ever say how many other outfits have been contracted?”
“His guesstimate was a couple dozen. Hefty chunk of that military dropouts from the ’Stans. They work cheap. Some of them might have a few notches on the handle from pacification duty in Krasnodar or Tbilisi, but my guess is they’re coming to be vodka-soaked meat shields for the veteran crews.”
“And that would be us.”
“Bet your culo, it is,” he agreed.
“Well… everybody’s gotta start somewhere,” I said. “Earn as you learn.”
“Hell of a lot better than pay as you go,” Poet9 answered.
I kept eyes on the horizon, chewing on my next question. “Speaking of veteran crews,” I finally asked. “Any word on Oryol or Alpha Group?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny. That’s another ‘wait and see’. I sure as hell hope not.”
I had nothing to say after that. Only a bad feeling. Poet9 went back to his screen.
I was scanning the horizon for the twentieth time when Curro’s voice came over com-link. “Seven minutes to landfall.”
“You sure of that, Gunga Din?” I asked back.
“Sure I’m sure. I’m watching the 3D mapper. And don’t call me ‘Gunga Din’. Do I get a rifle now?”
“No,” Tam cut in. “Jace, you ready up front?”
“Yes, Mom. We’re smart and strapped.” I thumbed over to a private channel. “Curro going to be all right? This is quite the field trip,” I whispered.
“Couldn’t talk him out of it,” Tam said. “Poet9 will stick to him like underwear. You, me and the Triplets will be doing the shooting. We’re at the sharp end. They’re strictly tech-support.”
“You going to tell Alejo and Carmen?”
“Was gonna pass on that. They’re off somewhere playing Mother Theresa. I don’t want to spoil their mood,” he answered.
Seemed like a reasonable answer as far as our line of work went, so I let that sit. “He getting a rifle?” I asked.
“Nice little Kriss Super V. Sexy optics. He’ll love it.”
“Good. Full-auto forty-five leaves a mark. Devante will watch him.”
“I know,” he said again.
Curro called over the throb of the motors. “You guys are talking about me. I can tell. Five minutes.”
Tam, Poet and I chuckled. The Triplets burst out laughing.
Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail sat in the bow, their broad, pale faces covered in camo-grease and Oakley Elite Quad Eight visors.
Billed as ‘Variable Condition Optical Systems,’ Quad Eights are capable of four-by magnification, night vision and thermal enhancement with digital micro-displays for the built-in laser range finder and windage meter. Oakley V-COS are the ultimate in tactical ninja-vision.
Our Killer Bunnies were running final weapon checks. They had their regular G-46s slung
across their backs. The German assault rifles were almost like teddy bears, the Triplets practically fell asleep snuggling the damn things, but the chunky Pelican crates at their feet meant they’d brought some big toys along for this trip.
Flopsy and Mopsy were both unpacking General Electric XM214 miniguns. Capable of 4,000 rounds per minute, you could cut down small forests with them. The slogan, “G.E.—we bring good things to life,” took on a whole new meaning. I watched Cottontail secure a rack of HEDP rounds for an M2GC 84mm recoilless rifle. Big lads with big guns.
I leaned over. “You guys expecting trouble?”
“Victory loves preparation,” Cottontail quoted quite seriously.
“OK, but you preparing to arm your own militia?”
The three of them looked at their crates. I could see the wheels turning as they considered the question. “We could supply four—” Cottontail began.
“I’m kidding,” I interjected. “I’m wondering about the firepower. The SPLM isn’t the Sofex Arms Fair, but I’m sure they have plenty of gear kicking about. Why come so heavy?”
Mopsy was gently folding belts of 5.56 ammo into a rigid-frame backpack. “This is the first time we’ve been back to Africa since Mr. Alejo and Mrs. Carmen rescued us in their boat. We thought we should be prepared.”
I suddenly felt like shit. These three were the last of their kind: illegal combat clones known as “Series Sevens.”
Developed a decade earlier as shock troops for then-president of Zimbabwe and megalomaniac sociopath N’Kosa Mambi, his army of Sevens blew through the plankton-standard grunts of the Zambian and Mozambique military like linebackers at kindergarten recess. U.N. Rapid Response troops fared little better.
Mambi’s delusions of empire were finally quenched ten months later by a massive overkill of U.N. and Corporate forces in a pitched, six-day battle with the Series Seven main contingent at Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River.
By then, humiliated field commanders had convinced their bosses the clones were so lethal and unpredictable that their existence was prohibited by a unanimous United Nations mandate. The in-vitro labs were razed, the surviving science team divvied up among the Corporates, and the gene-template destroyed. Extermination orders were issued. Harboring a Seven became an international felony.
Back when Tam and I had just founded Eshu International, one of our first contracts was as a protection detail for a small mom and pop maritime transport firm out of Barcelona.
The four of us—me, Tam, Alejo and Carmen—had found the Triplets starving, shocked, and near-death in Eritrea. After a couple of hair-trigger moments, we snubbed the bounty and smuggled them to safety in the hold of Al’s boat, the Balius.
The Triplets weren’t pets. Or property. They were friends, and they’ve been half of Eshu International Private Security for eight years now.
This, however, was a major screw-up on my part. Tam and I were so used to our Killer Bunnies being silent, loyal, and deferential that we never asked them, let alone thought, about what it would be like for them to go back to where they’d been bred, fed into a meat-grinder of a war, then hunted like animals. A real brain-dead move.
The three of them were looking at me with a simple confidence. I crumpled a little bit, then mustered a little false cheer.
I mumbled a congratulations for their forward thinking. “No worries. A little rumble in the jungle, and we’ll be back home in no time.”
“We’re not worried,” Cottontail said. “Where you go, we go. Where you die, we die.”
I clapped him on his bowling-ball shoulder and felt even more shitty.
I was about to radio Tam again when the Triplets looked up and snapped their weapons to their shoulders. Their heads swiveled like targeting-lasers to port.
“Contact left. A thousand meters,” Poet9 murmured half a second later. “Surface vessel on parallel course.” He looked up at me. “Coming early to the party. Looks like someone had the same idea as us.”
Tam’s voice. “They being loud and rude?”
“If they’re stupid,” Curro interrupted. “How come you’re not giving me a weapon?”
“Gimme, gimme never gets…” Poet sang. “They’re running sneaky-devious like us, but I’ve got one of our Falcos keeping an eye on them. We’ll know if they wander into our yard.”
The Falco Evo UAV was an old Italian-made aerial drone we’d bought from a Pakistani connection. Kashmiri separatists and Indian military incursions had made the Pakistani military wild for robots a few years back. Guess they’d gotten tired of foot patrols in the Himalayas. At the time, Finmeccanica robotics were all the rage, and Rome had flooded the international arms market with thousands of military drones.
Now the Pakistani armed forces were addicted to robo-tech, dumping old gear at bargain prices every eighteen months, fending for the latest, the shiniest. We had a dozen of the things in storage back in Belfast. Poet9 called it ‘Mafia-surplus’. No matter, that kind of gear was perfect for this mission—old, rugged, nothing fancy enough to arouse suspicion.
Poet9 tapped his screen. “They’re avoiding us, staying on course. They can stay on station another twelve hours before they have to land at Ji Jiga for refueling and maintenance.”
“Turn-around time?” Tam asked.
“Twenty-four hours.”
“A full day?” I exclaimed. “A day without God-view is like a day without sunshine. What the hell? Ji Jiga is just over the Ethiopian border.”
Poet9 put up his hands, exasperated. “Be happy we got them down to twenty-four hours. That was another ten grand.”
“Snake charmers and cattle thieves,” I muttered.
Our big motors cut to trolling speed about two hundred meters from the beach, and I could hear waves now. We fell silent, flipped on our Oakleys and crouched even lower. Tam and I scrutinized landward, paying special attention to the scrub line that ran along the stretch of dunes above the beach. Curro and Poet9 scanned for sensors, robots, mines, and good old-fashioned human beings. The Triplets had weapons up and ready for the slightest twitch of hostility from the other boat.
We waited the obligatory five minutes, then brought the Stiletto forward in little squirts, waiting and watching every few meters to see if we’d stirred anything up. Another twenty minutes of that, then the hull rasped on gravel.
Tam and I waded ashore. Poet9, Curro and the Triplets started off-loading our gear.
Forty minutes later, five little Polaris all-terrain vehicles were lined up on the shingle, chunky with gear and weapons. We were ready. I signaled to the Stiletto to autopilot to a new position fifty kilometers out from Berbera. It would power-down and ride a sea anchor waiting for a call. Its solar arrays would keep its systems charged, and if our little misadventure went south, it was our taxi out of a bad neighborhood.
Curro sat on the back seat of one of the ATVs fondling the submachine gun Tam had finally given him. I spied Poet9 slipping his Walther 10mm into a shoulder holster. Gold winked at me. I did a double take. “What did you do to Grace?”
“Ooooh. I thought you’d never ask. Feast your eyes on her now.”
He handed me the big black gun. Only it wasn’t all black anymore. The flat metal of the pistol’s slide was now covered with a delicate tracery of computer circuitry inlaid with gold. If that wasn’t bad enough, the bright, razor-thin lines twisted into two tiny angels whose robotic wings enfolded the muzzle.
“Jealous, huh?” he grinned.
“I’m speechless.”
“Esse, Life’s too short to shoot an ugly gun.”
He took it back and wiped it gently with his sleeve before tucking it in under his arm.
“We’re good to go,” Tam called out. “Let’s get to the rendezvous before the other boat offloads and this clam bake gets too crowded.”
Motors purred, and the seven of us climbed the dunes southeast toward the Somaliland border.
CHAPTER ELEVEN – Two out of Three
Djibouti, southeast border
The seven of us were cruising through the hill country about ten kilometers from the triple point; the junction of Somaliland, Djibouti, and Ethiopia. The black, broken teeth of the Guban Mountains sawed clouds in front of us, and I caught the molten-wink of a distant river threading the savanna below.
Tam and I rode abreast, the ATV motors purring loudly. Poet9 and Curro lagged a few meters back, riding double on a six-wheeler that was loaded with most of our gear. The Triplets had spread out in a wedge formation fifty meters ahead of us, watching for patrols or recon drones. So far, the meanest thing we’d stirred up was a pair of bony zebras.
Tam radioed the Triplets to hold, and the seven of us stopped for water in the shade of some umbrella-shaped damal trees.
Curro slid off his Polaris and started stretching his legs. “How much farther?”
“Rumor is the big SPLM camp is just inside Ethiopia, south of Biye K’obe,” Tam answered. “We’re to follow the border southwest another hundred klicks to a set of GPS coordinates near a river—the togga Silil. Guides will bring us the rest of the way.”
“You trust a gaggle of kalashes to lead us to a secret rebel base deep in the jungle? Where am I, in a comic book?” Poet9 demanded.
Tam shrugged. “Like it’s going to show up on Google Earth. You got another idea?”
“No. But what’s to keep the little punks from pawning us off to their cousins in the Somaliland National Army for a little baksheesh?”
“Well… we do have guns,” Curro noted. “And the Triplets.”
The three clones were next to me, straddling their four-wheelers as if they were kid’s toys. In the heat and humidity, they’d stripped down to camo fatigues and combat vests, having muted their pale skin with liberal applications of grease paint and sun block. They looked fresh and perfectly content in the heat and humidity. After all, they’d been made for places like this. I counted half a dozen weapons hanging from each of their vests—knives, pistols, grenades… Cottontail had a machete long enough to qualify as a sword strapped across his back. I smiled—our Killer Bunnies. They saw me and grinned back.
Shift Tense: Eshu International Book 2 Page 8