by Conrad Jones
“Let me see them.” The man in the passenger seat spoke. He was sporting a red beret and was wearing a grimy red vest to match. All the men in the pick-up had mirrored sunglasses on.
“She’s Jamaican, and she’s untouched, very clean,” the guide rambled. He put his hand beneath Grace’s chin and pushed her head upward so that the men in the vehicle could get a proper look at her. “And this one is Swedish. We took them from a boat.” He added, referring to the hundreds of ships that are attacked and held for ransom every year off the Somali coastline. He grabbed a fistful of Tara’s blond hair and twisted her head cruelly sideways. Tara grimaced and thought about putting a bullet through him for a moment, but the mission was an important one and she would have to play along with it for now.
The driver of the pick-up studied Tara and Grace and smiled as he punched a number into a mobile phone. He spoke a few words and then nodded his head as he ended the brief call. The driver grinned and then saluted the guide. The engine roared again and the wheels spun in the sand before finding purchase. The pick-up lurched forward. Grace stepped backward to avoid the avalanche of grit that it had created.
“What’s going on?” She said to her guide. “Which one of them was Said Adid?”
“None of them, he wasn’t there.” The guide looked wide-eyed and confused. He held his hands palm upward and shrugged his skinny shoulders. He was about to speak again when they heard a second engine approaching.
“They were the reconnaissance crew,” Tara said as she looked towards the oncoming vehicle. “If you pull my hair again I’ll cut your balls off, do you understand me?”
The guide was about to reply but the look in her eyes made him think again. He was paid more money than he could earn in ten years for guiding the women to this area of the city. The two women were soldiers, which was a concept that he couldn’t comprehend. Being told what to do by a female was alien to him. These women were very different from his kind and they were very dangerous. Today they were set in a honey trap to lure a Somali warlord out of his lair. Said Adid was the brains behind the recent spate of pirate activity off the coast of Somalia, which had cost Western governments billions of dollars in ransom payments. Despite the deployment of dozens of allied warships to the area, the pirates were still succeeding in capturing ships at will. Governments the world over were being forced to pay huge amounts of money to ensure the safe return of multi-million pound cargos. Despite several coordinated initiatives, the international community had failed to stop the pirates. A joint government committee decided to remove Adid from the equation, thus cutting the head from the serpent. The problem was that Adid was just as unpopular in Mogadishu as he was internationally and there was a huge bounty on his head. He was a ghost-like figure, always in hiding and always moving his hideouts to prevent his rivals assassinating him. Adid was a hunted man and as such, he was forced to be a very cautious man too.
“Shake hands with Adid first, do you understand?” Grace whispered to the guide. A rusty white van appeared from a side street two hundred yards away on the left. The van stopped next to the red pickup truck and words were exchanged between the two drivers. There was a heated discussion going on, and the men who were operating the mounted heavy machinegun on the back of the pickup were gesticulating wildly. Grace thought that their plan might have been scuppered, but suddenly the two sets of men joined in raucous laughter. Whatever the dispute had been about, they seemed to have resolved it.
“I’m not sure about shaking hands with Adid first.” The guide was shaking nervously as he spoke.
“What do you mean?”
“I have never actually met him before,” the guide confessed.
“You have never met him before?” Grace repeated quietly.
“I’ve seen him from a distance and I know what he looks like a little bit.” The guide swallowed hard again, and his Adam’s apple climbed upward towards his chin before bobbing back to its original position. Rivers of sweat were running down his face, a combination of the burning sun and fear.
“What the bloody hell do we do now?” Tara hissed. The white van pulled away from the pick-up and headed towards the strange trio.
“I know that he has a lazy eye, it looks a different way to the other one,” the guide said proudly. The van pulled up adjacent to them and the guide grinned widely at the van driver. The driver didn’t reciprocate his greeting and neither did his colleagues. The driver and the two men in the passenger seat stared expressionless at the two women. They all sported mirrored sunglasses. The atmosphere was electric. This was going to go one way or the other, and Grace knew that it could deteriorate into a melee in a matter of seconds.
“Hey, Boss. Look at the beautiful women that I have brought for you. This one is Jamaican, very clean, no diseases. This one is French.” The guide grinned nervously as he tried to sell his wares.
“French?” The man repeated.
“Yes, French.” The guide swallowed and his huge Adam’s apple bobbed up and down again.
“You told my friend that she was Swedish,” the man spoke with a deep throaty voice. There was no malice in his tone as he pointed out the guide’s mistake, but there was caution in his eyes as he removed his sunglasses.
“I was mistaken, Boss, she’s French.” The guide grabbed Tara’s hair again and twisted her face upward, as if he could demonstrate her nationality by doing so. “Tell him where you are from bitch.”
“Je suis Française,” Tara lied. The man in the middle nudged the passenger and he opened the door and climbed down to allow him to exit the vehicle. They eyed the women and there was an air of malevolence about them. Every nerve ending in Grace’s body was on high alert, just waiting for the right moment.
“They are good quality, Boss. No one has used them yet.” The guide emphasised the point that neither of his prizes had been raped at any point since their capture. In Somalia that was verging on a miracle and it added to their value because the risk of catching Aids was drastically reduced if another African man hadn’t touched them. “I’ll give you a good deal boss.”
“Shut your mouth,” the man said quietly as he approached the two women. The driver and his mate had also exited the vehicle and they approached the trio menacingly. “She is no more a French woman than I am.”
Grace edged backward an inch or so at a time. She needed to put some distance between herself and their target. If one of the men was Adid, then she had to try to give the snipers a clean shot at him.
“Stay where you are, bitch,” the man growled. Grace froze and looked down at her feet in mock fear. She was studying the man’s face to try to see his eyes behind the glasses. “Have you somewhere to go, bitch?” The approaching men began to laugh but there was no mirth in it, only menace.
“Look here, Boss, I’ll give you the best price I can, because I respect you.” The guide stepped backward away from the approaching man but he didn’t move far enough. The man reached behind his back and pulled a fat silver Bulldog revolver from his belt. As quick as a flash he pressed the thick barrel against the guide’s chest and pulled the trigger. The .44 bullet smashed through his sternum and shredded his heart muscle before punching a huge hole the size of an orange through his back as it exited. The guide was lifted from his feet by the force of the impact and he landed on his back with a thump. A deep red stain began to blossom across his khaki shirt. His eyes were wide open and he stared lifelessly at the blue Somali sky. He was just one of hundreds of young African men who would die that week at the hands of their own kind. The man turned the revolver towards Tara, and he aimed it at her midriff.
“So, bitch, tell me where you are from.” He grinned as he spoke to her. His gravelly voice was full of contempt. Tara glanced at Grace to see if she was going to give the signal for the snipers to open fire but Grace was still looking at the man’s face. He caught the look that had passed between them and turned to Grace. “What?” He snarled. He took his glasses off and put them into his shirt pocket.
Grace immediately saw that his left eye was glass. She was about to signal the snipers by raising her hand when the driver of the van stepped between them. He smiled as he approached her and he pushed his glasses up on top of his head. The driver had a turn in his right eye. The young men of Mogadishu were part of a militia as soon as they were strong enough to carry a gun. Violence was a way of life to them, and making it into your twenties with both eyes intact and keeping all your limbs attached to your body was virtually impossible. There was no way of identifying Adid by the turn in his eye alone.
“I asked you where you are from, bitch,” the man pressed the Bulldog to Tara’s temple. He leaned his face close to hers and licked her cheek with his long pink tongue. Tara recoiled but he pressed the gun harder to her head. “Get on your knees now.”
Grace had no way of knowing who the primary target was, but the situation was now beyond redemption. There was no way of taking out Adid alone. She reached for her combat spike, which resembled a sharp screwdriver and with expert timing she drove it upwards under the driver’s chin. The spike sliced up through the driver’s flesh, pierced his tongue and the roof of his mouth before entering his brain. His eyes widened in shock as the metal penetrated him. He dropped like a stone onto the sandy road. Four sniper rifles, which were well concealed around the area, spat death and in the space of ten seconds the men from the van and their affiliates in the technical pickup truck were lying dead or dying in the Somali dust.
CHAPTER THREE
The child taker stayed hidden in the trees for hours. The smell of peat and foliage permeated the woods, along with the fresh scent of spruce when the breeze changed. Fluffy white clouds sprinted across a clear blue sky chased by the occasional grey ones, which sprinkled showers in their wake. He watched the twins and their parents playing and eating their dinner. The sound of their laughter drifted to him and echoed inside his tormented mind. He was filled with both a sense of excitement and a tinge of jealousy. His first memories of family life were not happy ones. He recalled the days when his parents called him Ian. Ian was the first child of a young couple who lived in a small town on the outskirts of Manchester called Irlam. The couple had married in their teens. It was a shotgun wedding and his mother was nearly six months pregnant when she walked into the registry office. There were no cheering guests or comedy speeches from the best man, just two sets of scowling parents disgusted that their youngsters had been so irresponsible. All the aspirations they had held for their offspring had been shattered by premarital unprotected sex. The hopes and dreams of college and university educations followed by great careers were dashed, and disappointment and shame replaced them.
By the time Ian was born, his young father had followed his own father and grandfather into employment at the local steel mill. The work was incredibly hazardous but well-paid for that day and age. His father adored Ian. He was the apple of his eye and even the grandparents eventually relented and doted on the newborn baby. His mother, however, was a different kettle of fish. She struggled to bond with her son at all. She felt trapped in the two-up-two-down terraced house that they lived in. Her husband grafted twelve hours a day to earn a living and the long hours of enforced solitude made her resent the child. The grandparents became concerned as she left Ian in soiled nappies for long periods and he was always crying. Ian’s father desperately tried to help his young wife to cope with the burden of motherhood but his shifts were long and the work was physically exhausting. When he came home from work he needed to eat and then sleep. Life for Ian’s mother was lonely and relentless, and she took her frustrations out on the child. Bruises began to appear on the baby and he looked underfed. The family were convinced that she was mistreating him. There were arguments and the threat of bringing in social services was made several times, although it never came to fruition.
Just when it seemed that the situation couldn’t get any worse, Ian’s father went to work one day and never came home. He was crushed to death between two huge ingots of white-hot steel. The ingots were lowered onto a flatbed trailer that travelled on railway lines through the mill to a cooling area. There hosepipes sprayed them with water that was pumped from the nearby canal. That particular day Ian’s father was in charge of one of the hoses. He was spraying the white-hot steel when a second trailer broke free and crashed into the one that he was working on. The impact tipped the flatbed over and the ingots, which weighed tons, fell on top of the young father. By the time the metal had been cooled down enough for his rescuers to move the massive ingots, Ian’s father was welded to the steel. His body had to be peeled from the metal like a burnt sausage from a griddle. When his charred body crumbled, even his intestines were cooked. For baby Ian, things could only get worse.
The grandparents tried to step in and help the young distraught mother but she shunned their efforts and her behaviour spiralled out of control. The death of her husband had brought her a small amount of compensation from the steel mill, and the local community always had a whip-round when a mill employee died. She began to use her newfound wealth to buy the only thing that made her happy: vodka. Every time the grandparents turned up at the house, she was drunk and abusive. The house became steadily more and more filthy and disorganised. Soiled nappies were left discarded around the house, and a mountain of dirty dishes threatened to engulf every flat surface in the kitchen. Eventually Ian’s grandparents stopped visiting altogether, especially when a string of men began to frequent the tiny house. She sought company from any man that would stretch to the price of a half bottle of vodka; she repaid them by giving them her body and it wasn’t long before she fell pregnant again. She didn’t have a clue who the father was and she didn’t care. All she did know was that the thought of giving birth to another child would only add to her woes. She sought out a private clinic and had the baby aborted, which brought more shame on her family. She never heard from her father again. She was left all alone in the world apart from her baby Ian, who she hated.
Ian had no good memories of his childhood. His mother was a violent drunk and he could only remember hoping that she would be so drunk when he got home from school that she would be asleep. She couldn’t hit him when she was asleep. He also remembered being scared and hungry most of the time.
School was a blessed relief at first but it soon became an extension of his living nightmare. The other kids soon spotted that he was always unwashed and that his clothes were ill fitting and dirty. His school blazer was three inches too short on the arms and there were snail-trails of snot on his sleeves formed by his constant runny nose. He was a skinny kid with sticky-out ears and holes in his shoes and kids are incredibly cruel to other kids. Soon school became so bad that he didn’t go any more. He spent his days wandering around the back streets, or stealing sweets and food from the local shops, until it was time to go home.
Ian, the child taker, was eight years old, when after a long list of casual affairs his mother finally met another man. There was a short spell when life became almost normal for the young child. His mother stopped drinking as much, although it was always prevalent in his memory. There was a brief period when he enjoyed hot porridge every morning and he was given dinner money to take to school. Tea was cooked and served for six o’clock in the evening, in time for his stepfather to come home from work. Ian had never been happier at home and there was a routine for a while, although his memories were tainted by the fear of receiving a beating if he stepped out of line.
The problems with the new set-up began when the school truant officer knocked on the door. Ian hadn’t been into school for nearly nine months. His mother was furious when he got home that day but her wrath paled into insignificance when compared to the reaction of his stepfather. Ian had taken many a good hiding from his mother in the past and a couple in the schoolyard from older bullies, but nothing came close to the pain he felt that night. His stepfather dragged him by the hair into his bedroom and beat him to within an inch of his miserable life. Ian couldn’t understand why he
was so angry. His stepfather told him that he was thief and a liar because he had continued to take his school dinner money for all those months without actually going into school. Ian had begged and pleaded with him to stop the assault but the beating was relentless. Even when he’d tried to explain through his swollen bleeding lips that he had bought his dinner every day with the money, the beating continued until he had lost consciousness.
Ian’s memories of the next few weeks were hazy and blurred. His injuries were so severe that his mother reluctantly took him to hospital the next morning. The doctors didn’t believe that he had fallen down the stairs and social services were alerted to the fact that he was an abused child whose safety was in jeopardy. A gaggle of disapproving social workers decided that he was to be taken into care when he was well enough to be discharged. His mother and stepfather never visited him once in hospital. At the grand old age of eight and a half Ian was taken to a care home for prepubescent boys, which was run by a Catholic priest. It was then that the real abuse began.
Chapter Four
Mogadishu
An unmanned MQ-1 Predator drone patrolled the airspace over the ruined city of Mogadishu. It was tasked with monitoring the operation that was taking place on the ground and its information was being sent back to the task force command centre, situated on board an American aircraft carrier twenty miles off the Somali coastline. The Predator was equipped with synthetic aperture radar, which was capable of relaying detailed digital video via K-band satellite links, even if the ground was obscured by cloud of smoke. In non-technical language, it could see everything. The plan to draw the Somali warlord Said Adid from his hideaway by using the promise of foreign, disease-free women as bait had been compromised. The honey trap had worked to a degree, but the unit was now uncertain of the outcome. Whether it had been successful or not, was still in question. All the active members of the unit were unharmed. However, they could not confirm that they had eliminated their target. There were several confirmed kills but Adid had been so elusive in the past that there were no up to date photographs of him. They had bodies but there was no way of knowing if he was amongst the fatalities.