by Matt Rogers
He propped the dock worker — already semi-conscious — up against the far wall, and turned his attention to the room itself.
As he’d suspected, it was a security office — hopefully everything King needed rested on the computers scattered across the trestle tables in front of him. He cast his gaze over automatic screen-savers and active screens displaying grainy live CCTV footage of the entire port. Most of the port lay dormant, shrouded in shadow and uninhabited at this time of the night. King imagined the office was occupied twenty-four-seven, a security measure implemented to ensure no-one snuck in unannounced.
Effective system, he thought when he considered how easily he had penetrated the port.
King recalled what Reed had told him hours earlier.
It happened two nights ago. The hired guns came for me the next afternoon.
He yanked the office chair out from underneath the desk and pulled up a seat in front of the only active monitor displaying current CCTV footage. He had little experience with computers, but the port’s security system seemed archaic, a program that a toddler could navigate if they simply applied critical thinking.
He navigated to a menu, and raised an eyebrow in surprise when he noticed the tabs were labelled in English.
He glanced back at the immobilised dock worker in the corner of the room and pondered whether the man spoke the language. He hadn’t considered such a notion, but it opened up a wide range of possibilities — interrogation presenting itself as the most effective option. He wondered just why the hell the man had bothered to learn English — then again, if he was head of security and actively communicating with the dozens of behemoth container ships that trawled into port each day, it made sense that he would need to be able to converse in the most popular language on the planet.
King shrugged it off and turned back to the monitors. A development he hadn’t been anticipating, but would almost certainly make the process smoother.
It didn’t take much effort to pull up the archives. He clicked and scrolled through a dozen separate directories, each labelled meticulously to allow ease of navigation. Briefly, his hands grew cold at the notion that the office was a decoy — everything seemed far too easy.
Then he shrugged it off.
The port had terrible security measures because the workers’ ordinary opposition consisted of junkies and thugs, more than likely. Fools who would slip up when trying to infiltrate the port.
Besides, King imagined the majority of focus rested on the towering skyscrapers of shipping containers piled high along the front of the docks. Those contained the priceless valuables, or — if Reed’s story had any accuracy — the guns and drugs.
He found the archives of all the CCTV footage from two nights previously. A warning as he opened each file informed him that the footage would be overwritten after fourteen days of inactivity, a measure that ensured the archives didn’t pile up terabytes worth of storage with each passing month. It kept the need for storage space at a minimum. Most security systems employed something similar.
King juggled between eight total feeds, covering most of the hotspots within the port, scanning through each grainy archive of footage at a rapid pace. He didn’t need to pay attention to the finer details. If Reed’s shootout with the smuggling ring had indeed taken place, it would flash by on one of the feeds like a detonating bomb, complete with a storm of muzzle flares materialising in the darkness.
It took him four minutes to scan through the entirety of the first feed.
Grimacing at the task that lay before him, fully aware that each passing second risked another chance of getting caught, he twisted in his seat as the dock worker let out a low moan across the room. The man had surfaced from unconsciousness, darting his eyes around the room, groggy and delirious.
King imagined the man didn’t deal with the sudden, violent loss of consciousness very often.
The entire ordeal would seem like a lucid dream, and it would take some time for the guy’s brain to grapple with a return to reality and start firing neurons predictably. King wrenched the M45 pistol out of his waistband and aimed the barrel square between the man’s eyes. With his free hand, he lifted a finger to his lips and stared piercingly across the room, demanding silence.
The man’s eyes widened. He nodded and obliged.
Satisfied that his request would be accepted without a problem, King turned back to the monitor and set to work fast-forwarding through each security feed in turn. He didn’t begin to grow suspicious until the sixth consecutive video log turned up blank. It had taken twenty-four minutes to navigate through the feeds up to this point, and two entire video files remained. The security official had begun to grow restless behind King. As the man’s cohesion returned, piece-by-piece, he started to squirm against his rudimentary restraints. He had obviously sensed the gravity of the situation at hand. A stranger had knocked him out and proceeded to help himself to the security system.
When the man bucked viciously against the vest wrapped around his wrists, King twisted in the chair again and employed the same tactic as he had earlier, raising the M45 level with the man’s forehead.
This time, the guy reacted differently.
He gasped, and the blood drained from his face all at once. His lips were dry and chapped from panic and stress, but he opened them to speak regardless.
‘I’ve seen the footage,’ he said, his accent thick but understandable. ‘You can delete it, if that’s what you’re here for. I don’t want any trouble.’
‘What?’ King said, confused. ‘I don’t want to delete it. I just need to see it. Where is it?’
The man hesitated. He seemed rattled, thoroughly shaken. King wondered what the hell was different from the first time around.
‘Did you leave them alive, at least?’ the man said.
‘What?’ King said again.
‘My men. I saw you on the security footage. Taking them one by one. Please tell me they are alive. They mean a great deal to me.’
One by one.
I’ve seen the footage.
Realisation hit King like a bolt of lightning. He nearly recoiled in his chair, the grip on his sidearm wavering as he finally understood what was happening.
This man had seen security footage of someone abducting his dock workers, something that had evidently occurred in separate incidents. He feared King suddenly, for no apparent reason.
Now, King knew what it meant.
The security official had recognised him. He had identified King as the man from the footage, returning to eliminate all trace of his deeds.
King recalled his first thought upon meeting Bryson Reed.
His identical twin.
The gravity of the situation struck him at the same time as the office’s front door thundered inwards, slammed open by a heavy boot.
19
In a cramped, claustrophobic industrial unit wedged up the back of the peacekeepers’ compound, Bryson Reed had a military-issue satellite phone pressed to his ear. He listened intently, understanding the narrow window of time he had to make his move. He nodded as each sentence was transmitted across the line.
El Hur.
Twenty-four hours.
‘On it,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem.’
He ended the call without bidding the man on the other end of the line farewell, electing to only keep the conversation to the bare necessities. They had all the time in the world to converse during the trip across the Indian Ocean.
He took a deep breath and stared out the grimy window at the rest of the compound, noting the tranquility that had settled over his surroundings. Nevertheless, it was time to go. It couldn’t wait any longer. He’d humoured the new arrival for as long as he could, and he hadn’t seen the man leave the complex, but he had to assume Jason King was knee-deep in his investigation of the port.
He didn’t know what King might find. Reed had covered his tracks well, but there was always the chance that a clue might slip through the cracks.
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Then everything would fall into place, and King would come hunting for his head.
Best to err on the side of caution, and get the hell out of Mogadishu before the fool realised what was really going on.
It hadn’t been difficult to deceive the bastard. The idiot opened his mouth too much, and Reed had deduced that King was looking to recruit him within thirty seconds of the conversation originating. He’d fed the man just enough bullshit to pique his interest, inventing fictional situations that would portray him as a one-man-army.
Exactly what King had been looking for.
Reed had seen the man’s eyes light up, despite his best efforts to hide it. He thought he had another prodigy on his hands, a star recruit to whatever organisation King worked for.
Reed shrugged in the darkness. Maybe he did.
But the ambush at the docks hadn’t happened, and the encounter with the three al-Shabaab militants certainly hadn’t unfolded the way everyone thought it did. It had taken Reed far too long to realise that in the bloody aftermath of a shootout, it was near-impossible to decipher who had fired the first shot.
It hadn’t taken much effort to instigate the carnage.
The ramifications of the shootout had escalated faster than he thought possible, but he’d successfully diverted attention off the real purpose for his visits to the port. Disguise something under the veil of a more serious incident, and all the attention melts away, redirected to the catastrophe Reed had caused by aggravating al-Shabaab thugs.
Can’t believe it worked, he thought.
He shook himself back to the present. It was time to go, whether he wanted to or not. He crossed to the tiny wardrobe next to his dirty mattress and slipped on a pair of tactical combat gloves.
All his belongings — of which there were few — had already been stuffed into a standard military duffel bag. The straps had been fastened to meet the dimensions of his shoulders. Everything was prepared.
He looped the duffel bag onto his back and secured it tight, ensuring it wouldn’t budge in the forthcoming confrontation. He checked the M45 pistol on the kitchen table had a full magazine chambered within, and he flicked the safety off in preparation for the short trip out of the compound.
Johnson would be manning the gate, as usual.
They didn’t exactly get along swimmingly.
He couldn’t see a scenario where Johnson would willingly gift him passage through to the outside world. It had been the man’s idea to exile him to the portable unit in the first place, mentioned in a passing comment that Reed knew would continue to crop up if he let it be. He’d latched onto the suggestion and twisted it into his own thought, thinking it might show him in a favourable light to his superiors.
He’d only needed a few days of stalling for his acquaintances out at sea to complete their journey.
The ploy had paid off.
Now he snatched the M45 off the table and held it at the ready. He stepped out into the night, the air hot and suffocating even at such a late hour. The compound was dead quiet — the peacekeepers had long since hit the sack and activity had deadened. Reed set off across the rear yard, slicing through waist-high grass and stepping over twisted roots. The ground underneath the overgrown vegetation was covered in a fine dusting of sand, blown across from the surrounding plains.
Reed hunched low as he strode along the side of the main lodge, making sure to keep his sizeable bulk below eye-level on the off chance a peacekeeper felt the urge to stare out their window on a sleepless night.
He made it to the front of the compound, passing the convoy of jeeps that were used to funnel the AMISOM recruits to all manner of colourful locations.
Briefly, he wondered where Beth and Victor were.
Both were unreliable, Victor especially.
Reed had hardly seen the man since he’d stepped foot in Somalia, even though they’d been assigned to the same detail. Beth was polite, but he could tell she had been avoiding him ever since his ill-timed advances.
Fuck them both, he thought.
Johnson had the personality of a cardboard box, but at least the man could be trusted to stick to the assigned schedule. Reed had no doubt he would find Johnson manning the security booth at the compound’s perimeter, which was why he kept the M45 clutched tight between his fingers. He was ready, should the opportunity present itself.
He stepped onto the long, winding trail running through the empty space in front of the main lodge. There was at least a hundred feet of open ground between the front gate and the complex itself, riddled with tall weeds and complete with miniature valleys carved out of the uneven ground by the elements. Reed slunk off the trail, keeping low, large enough to be visible to a trained flashlight. The moon had dipped behind a cloud, and the resulting blanket of pitch darkness hung thick over everything. No-one would spot him unless they swung a torch in his direction.
He made for the front gate.
A low muttering floated up the trail, emanating from a source just a dozen feet from Reed’s position. He froze. He recognised the incoherent rambling, and what it signified.
Victor was back.
The Hispanic alcoholic had barely been in-country two days when he’d set off in search of cheap moonshine, acquiring a stash of the eye-watering liquid somewhere in Mogadishu’s slums early into their station. From there, it had been a downward spiral.
The man had no self-discipline whatsoever, and didn’t deserve the position of a Force Recon Marine.
Then again, neither did Reed — for entirely different reasons.
Victor came careening into sight, barely able to keep himself upright. The scent of intoxication emanated off him — Reed smelt the sharp, acrid tang of distilled spirits. The man could function respectably during the day, but something about the night-time encouraged his darkest vices. He routinely slunk off to drown his emotions in the moonshine. Johnson must have allowed him to do it, for the man let Victor through the gates each night unobstructed.
Reed shrugged noncommittally. He couldn’t blame Victor. They were all wrestling with demons. Each of them elected to deal with their issues in different ways.
He heard Victor slurring incoherently. The man drew directly alongside him, hesitating in the middle of the track, barely able to keep his feet underneath him as he swayed on the spot.
All of a sudden, Reed sensed an opportunity.
He didn’t hesitate. King had nailed his analysis in one crucial aspect — when Reed sensed an opportunity, he committed in a single instant and didn’t look back. It probably made him perfect for the organisation that King belonged to.
In another life, maybe, Reed thought.
In this life, he materialised out of the weeds on one side of the trail, moving cautiously enough to avoid detection. Victor had no idea there was anyone nearby, so when Reed lifted the M45 in a gloved hand and fired a deafening round through the corner of the man’s temple, he died instantaneously without any knowledge that his life had reached its end. The pistol’s muzzle flashed in the darkness, bright as a beacon.
Reed moved like lightning, darting over to the corpse as it slumped to the dirt trail in grisly fashion. He placed the M45 in Victor’s right hand and wrapped the guy’s limp fingers tight around the sidearm’s grip, slotting one finger inside the trigger guard. Then he reached down to the man’s waist and yanked Victor’s own service pistol out of its holster, swapping weapons with the body in the blink of an eye.
Force Recon Marines all carried identical M45 MEUSOCs, so no-one would immediately notice the difference.
His work complete, Reed disappeared back into the field with his ears ringing and his pulse racing.
It didn’t take long to muster a response. The gunshot had torn through the silence of the compound, stirring everyone from sleep. The peacekeepers would be slow — even if they realised the discharge had come from within the complex, they would hesitate to investigate. That was the Marines’ responsibility, after all.
Sure enough, Johns
on came sprinting down the trail a few seconds later, his own M45 sweeping the dirt track from left to right. Reed watched him approach, buried in the darkness, his own ears still adjusting to the returning silence.
Johnson spotted Victor’s body and approached cautiously, spotting the dark pool of blood and brains around the man’s head.
‘Oh, fuck!’ Johnson said, grinding to a halt as he spotted the M45 in Victor’s palm. ‘No fucking way… oh my God.’
Johnson lost his temper in drastic fashion, pacing back and forth across the trail, pressing a pair of fingers deep into his own eyelids to combat the stress. He dropped his guard entirely, encapsulated by the apparent suicide, clearly wondering just how the hell he was supposed to react to the situation.
Reed could imagine what would be running through the man’s mind.
You let him out. You let him drink. You let him die. It’s on you.
Johnson squatted on his haunches in the centre of the trail, frozen in shock, staring at Victor’s corpse in sheer disbelief.
Behind him, Reed rose out of the weeds and descended on the man silently, like a ghostly apparition in the night.
It was rather simple. Johnson expected nothing, which made the first blow the most important, and Reed had the physical capabilities to end a fight with a single strike. He snatched a handful of Johnson’s thick curly hair to stabilise the man’s head for the half-second it took to swing through with his power arm, bending at the joint and sending the point of his elbow like a jackhammer into the side of Johnson’s throat.
The man went down in a crippled heap.
From there, it didn’t take much. Reed preferred not to fire another shot and attract more attention than absolutely necessary, so he followed Johnson down into the dirt and hammered three strikes with the same elbow into the same exact point, using gravity and momentum and the raw power of adrenalin to maximum effect. He heard bones crunch and felt muscles tear under the force of his overwhelming assault.