Sheep Dog and the Wolf

by Douglass, Carl;

  Sheep Dog gave the two men a small salute and hopped out of the jeep. The sergeant handed him his bags, then the jeep worked its way to face the opposite direction with some difficulty. By the time the two men could look back to see where their passenger had gone, he was out of sight.

  He walked through the arid landscape lugging his bags during the remainder of the day, enduring the heat and annoying insects. He felt safer well away from the road, such as it was. It was approaching dusk when he came into the village. He took note of the center of activity in the town and made his way in that direction.

  From early afternoon, Abdel Said Badr assisted in an eye clinic in the tiny African village, so small that neither the village nor the surrounding area warranted names on the map. Abdel participated in the treatment of patients with old, stone hard cataracts. Only the area witch doctor had any medical knowledge, and he had long experience and was much sought after. While Abdel pinioned the arms of the patient, the witch doctor gave a well practiced one knuckle punch on the blind eyes. Frequently, the calcified lens of the eye would be dislodged, and the patient returned to possession of a distorted and shrunken vision of the world, but it was better than blindness with milky lenses. The witch doctor’s terse rationale was that “one is better than zero”. Of course there were many failures, masha’allah. There was no time to treat women.

  Sheep Dog hovered in the background of the clinic tent unnoticed and watched Badr at his work with the last few patients. When Badr left the clinic and walked wearily to the mosque, Sheep Dog and his bags followed. Two frightening, very black, and very heavily armed Tanzanian men walked immediately behind Badr, and another two cleared the way in front of him. The obvious guards sat in the back row of the mosque, and Sheep Dog found a place on a prayer mat between two men who did not look appreciably better than him while Badr gave a stirring, but non-inflammatory lesson on Islamic cleanliness. The young man passionately described how The Prophet, May God shine his mercy upon his Messenger, plucked his armpit and pubic hair and bathed twice a day.

  The four guards kept themselves in the shadows as much as possible. When Maghrib—the sunset prayer—was done, the guards—and behind them deep in the developing gloaming, Sheep Dog—followed Badr as he made his way in the dark to his rendezvous with prospective recruits in the secluded jungle. He observed the skillful way the young missionary cajoled and motivated the boys to join in the struggle. When the last of the young men who were being recruited had faded back into the tangled thicket, two strangers were brought to Badr by the guards. They greeted them as a brother.

  “Masaa el-kheir, akh, Salam alekum.”

  Badr replied in kind, “Wa alekum es salam.”

  “We come from the Leader of the Council and would have words with you.”

  “I am honored. Speak.”

  “We are the new couriers.”

  He handed Badr a sealed envelope.

  “We come directly from the wali.”

  “I see that. I will have the money for you tomorrow. Bring a sturdy truck and meet me at the Christian church at the stroke of noon. Be prepared to do real work.”

  “That kind of work for Allah and the jihad, we will willingly do.”

  In fact, they were positively excited at the prospect of lugging crates of currency onto the wali’s truck. Anything would be better than the boredom of guard duty or the terror of partisan combat in the desert or the jungle—their usual lot.

  Sheep Dog made a decision. He silently followed the two strangers to their truck which was parked a mile away from the village. When they started up the engine, he hitched a ride in the back, hiding himself and his two bags among the truck’s boxes and covered himself and them with a tarp. After Isha’a—the night prayer—he was hungry enough and felt safe enough to venture out to find some food and water. He was parched and achingly tired. It was a starless dark night, and he had to feel and smell his way to the mess tent. All around him he could hear men snoring, the sounds of men playing cards, and the murmurs of the devout as they read the Qur’an aloud. Each man was absorbed in his own pursuits, and no one paid the least attention to Sheep Dog as he padded softly into the mess tent. He swiped a hind quarter of a lamb, a round loaf of coarse Bedouin bread, and four plastic gallon containers of water and took them back to his hiding place in the truck. The food and water were restorative, and he was better able to tolerate the oppressive desert heat. He even fell asleep.

  As first light began to be noticeable, there was a sound of padding feet. The freedom fighters were heading to their prayer rugs for the Fair. Again, Sheep Dog could hear the murmuring of prayer. To maintain security, these devout bandits could not afford the luxury of a muezzin or of a strong-voiced preacher. They made do with ritual and a few quotes from the Qur’an. Sheep Dog remained in his supine position in the truck bed until he heard the men marching off to breakfast. He slipped out of the truck and hid behind a clump of scrub bush, planning to join the men as they loaded up for the day’s planned work.

  There were over two hundred jihadists milling about taking down the camp and loading trucks. Sheep Dog counted on the anonymity of similar dress, similar clothing, similar weaponry, hoods, and hats. Sheep Dog found a stockpile of bullet belts and crossed two over his chest. He wore his large K-bar knife in a leather scabbard on his belt and melded into the Brownian movement of the crowd. He attached himself to a line of men passing boxes of food and ammunition from one man to the next to load them onto trucks. He feigned deafness and mutism, and since he was a good worker and did not bring attention to himself, soon no one attempted conversation.

  The troops mounted the backs of troop carriers, pick-ups, and three decrepit rusting school buses. There was a train of thick dust as the convoy moved out. All of the men wrapped cloths around their faces, and then Sheep Dog did not look at all out of place. All of them became beige sand men together. He sat in the back of a pick-up on his bags with nine other men, and no one evinced any more interest in his belongings than they did in him. They left their camp at 0900 and arrived in the nameless village with the incongruously immaculate white church facing the town square at 1115.

  The jihadist soldiers clambored out their vehicles and sought out shady spots to rest and to stretch their cramped limbs. A few of them were sent to sentry duty. Sheep Dog unloaded his own bags and carried them to the shady side of a building that was once a store but was now empty and derelict. He made several other trips, collecting crates of ammunition for a submachine gun he dug out of a crate of them, still encased in creosote. He worked himself further and further away from the crowd as noon approached.

  As promised, Abdel Said Badr was driven into the middle of the square bringing three other pick-ups along side his as he stopped. Badr was dressed in a bright blue flowing Bedu cloak which made him stand out from the olive drab and beige of the other men. Sheep Dog chalked it up to a small display of vanity—perhaps a fatal one. The leader of the bandit militia and Badr exchanged perfunctory greetings, hugs, and cheek kisses, then they separated and sent out two men from each camp to transfer the many boxes of money Badr had brought. The four pick-up loads fit comfortably into one of the militia’s large trucks, and the work was efficient.

  Sheep Dog stayed on the periphery and worked equally efficiently. He set his personal bags on a sand berm, then opened a crate marked Grenades and with a devil’s head MS-13 mark that could have adorned an adobe wall in Tijuana. He pulled out handfuls of Stingball grenades and set them in small piles in strategic locations around the periphery of the square. When the transfer of the money boxes was complete, most of the soldiers and officers found cooler places inside the buildings emptied by the terrified citizens of the town and settled in for a siesta. Sheep Dog picked up two three gallon cans of gasoline and walked to the trucks pretending to top-off their tanks. He worked his way to the large truck holding the money and made a theatrical effort to look legitimately busy. He poured the gasoline on the tops of the cardboard boxes and ditched the cans. Any
one walking near the trucks would have noticed the smell of gasoline; but, fortunately for Sheep Dog, no one passed by.

  He leaned a piece of corrugated metal siding against a dried up tree stump and climbed under it with his gear. It was like being in a reflector oven, and the sweat poured off him soaking his shirt and crotch. He bore it without movement or sound.

  It was almost 1500 hours when the yawning, stretching, grumbling men reappeared in the center of the plaza. The trucks were all parked very close to one another, and a large crowd of something like 250 men and a third that many women gathered to mount up and get on to their next project of plunder, murder, and rape all in the name of Allah and for the cause of jihad.

  Only then did Sheep Dog stir. He wriggled into his ghillie suit and slowly crawled on his abdomen into the position he had selected to be able to have a downhill field of fire. He had the AK-47 which he stole earlier along side him, and he brought his AA-12 Combat shot gun into position in front of him. A smoker carelessly tossed a glowing cigarette butt on the ground where Sheep Dog had spilled some of the gas he used to saturate the boxes of money, and a quick burst of fire erupted and spread up the truck’s rear tire and closed in side. Men began shouting, and several ran for water. A large crowd of combatants gathered around to watch the fire, pushing and shoving until almost every person in the village packed together. There was little else in the way of entertainment in that part of Tanzania, it appeared.

  Sheep Dog fired a series of bursts of three grenades, the first of which impacted the money boxes causing a tremendous explosion which filled the plaza with a deafening boom and a blanket of thick, black, choking smoke. Debris flew in all directions—body parts, truck parts, shreds of clothing, burning tires, and money. Lots and lots of burning money. Sheep Dog guessed that he had just blown up $10 million, maybe more. He kept his cool and waited until survivors or lucky ones began to appear. They walked around in a collective daze, all stunned by the blast and unable to launch a counterattack. Sheep Dog logged fifteen grenades into the closely packed groups of soldiers, and the effect was devastating. To the chaos of the scene came the addition of screams, shrieks of pain, and curses.

  Finally, several shooters traced his shots back to him, and Sheep Dog scrambled away. He ran to his several caches of Stingball grenades and began throwing them. His enemies became fewer and more cautious. Sheep Dog kept on the move running from grenade pile to grenade pile producing ever more confusion, explosion, death, and mutilation. Several men ran screaming with their BDUs aflame. Wounded men limped or dragged themselves or companions away from the furnace blast in the center of the square. Sheep Dog picked of nearly 15 of them with his AK-47.

  He was living on luck, and his luck ran out. Abdel Said Badr, conspicuous in blue, emerged from the carnage apparently unhurt and began rallying his troops. His men were battle hardened and undeterred by heavy incoming ordinance or casualties. They began a steady beat of machine gun fire at Sheep Dog keeping him on the move enough to prevent him from being able to bring the destruction of the AA-12 to bear to protect himself. He ran out of ammunition for his AK-47 and had to abandon it. He zigzagged around behind several buildings on the dead run until he came to an alleyway. He spotted a stairway leading to the flat roof, and he took the stairs three at a time. He fell over the top and onto the scorching silvery surface of the flat roof, burning the palms of his hands. He sprang to a crouch quickly enough to avoid serious burns and duck walked to the building’s front edge and peered down onto the heads and backs of Badr and a dozen of his best men two stories below.

  He inserted his second and last magazine of explosive and flammable loaded grenades into the AA-12 and opened a withering fire down on his tormentors. They disappeared in a blood mist and smoke screen. He could smell the cordite and the copper/iron smell of blood. When the air pollution cleared he could make out legs protruding from under a blue cloak. The Sheep Dog knew that he had been successful because the legs and cloak were headless.

  His mission accomplished, Sheep Dog now had to escape. Ordinarily, he planned his route well in advance, but this had been a seat-of-the-pants thing from the start. He could see three intact trucks on the rise where he had been standing and firing at the congregation in the center of the plaza twenty minutes previously. He had not noticed them before, but they looked like at least temporary salvation. Hopefully, one of the trucks would be in good enough condition to get him to Dar-es-Salaam. There was one little problem, however. He had no good idea where the capital city was from his location. He did a little reckoning by the post-noon day position of the sun and decided that he was still north of the city, and he was pretty sure that he could tell which way was south. Not that he expected to see a road, but at least he had a plan and a direction.

  He sucked in a deep breath and ran full out for the stairs and descended them as fast as he dared and out into the alleyway. No bullets. So far, so good. He turned and ran at full gallop down the alley and around the back of the building and did not stop until he reached the corner where he could see the trucks. He saw no one alive. There were half a dozen scorched corpses in his view, but no threats. And no bullets. So far, so good.

  He moved slowly keeping close to the building now. He was fifty yards from the first truck. He was tired from carrying his bags for the better part of the last twenty-four hours, and he was breathing hard. And, as he paused, he was aware of his mouth being as dry as if he had been lying face up with his tongue lolling out in the middle of the Ar-Rub’-al-Khali. Worse, he was getting dizzy; and his thoughts were coming more slowly and with more difficulty.

  He poked his head out around the corner of the building. No bullets. So far, so good. He took a few good breaths, tensed himself and raced out into the open. The high-pitched twang of an AK-47 on full automatic came from his right from behind a scrap pile that had been a truck in the forenoon. He bent low, zigzagged, dropped and rolled, and several of the Klimovsk 7.62 x .39 rounds kicked up dust pockets within a foot or two of him; but he was not hit. He had twenty yards to go to make cover. On impulse, he made a sudden hard right turn and headed obliquely in the direction of the shooter. He paused behind a smallish oil barrel which was rapidly turned into a sieve. It was most disconcerting to have bullets hitting his meager two-foot wide shield.

  There was a pause in the staccato firing. Sheep Dog hoped the guy was reloading. He took a chance and ran as fast as he could move in the same direction he had been going. Ten yards from another burned out hulk, he made a front somersault followed by a side role, and he was three feet from safety. A bullet trail skipped along side him spraying dirt and rocks. The bullets passed so close to him that he could have reached a hand out and gotten it shot off. No bullets in him. So far, so good.

  He threw himself the last three feet and was out of the line of sight of his tormentor and behind a bullet proof barrier. He worked to calm down and to think. Where was the guy? Had he stayed in the same place? Sheep Dog took a quick peek. He saw no one, and since no bullets came his way, he decided, optimistically, that no one had seen him. He readied his 9 mm and crawled along hugging the bare ruined metal of the one-time truck. He had to be within a few yards of where the shooter had been. Maybe the guy would be stupid enough to stay in place—thinking himself safe—or maybe he was even more optimistic than himself and presumed that he had killed his quarry.

  He crawled silently and slowly over the rough and uncomfortable desert floor. To his total consternation, his last forward movement brought him face-to-face with a terrified boy. The child could not have been more than thirteen. The child was so stunned to see his enemy almost within kissing distance that he froze. Sheep Dog pointed his 9 mm at the boy’s face. The boy threw down his rifle and put up his hands. Sheep Dog shot him between his eyes. Without a sound, the child slumped forward dead. Sheep Dog saw one notable thing about his victim other than his tender age. He was missing half of his left hand. The portion of the hand remaining had a crisp edge which was well healed. The little boy h
ad been punished for some infraction by having the outer part of his hand chopped off with an axe or a machete. Sheep Dog had one more thing to hate about Islamic terrorists, and he no longer made a distinction in his mind between what the Muslims called their “extremists” and the rest of the “peace-loving” and friendly majority. He had mentally adopted the old Wild West idea that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. He just substituted the word ‘Muslim’ for ‘Indian’.

  He was still not at the truck and had about thirty-five yards of no-man’s land to cross before he could get to transportation. How many unfriendlies were waiting unseen for him to venture out? He would just have to find out. He crawled over to the boy’s body and expropriated his canteen and drank it down in a single long swallow. Thus fortified, he leaped up and ran helter-skelter across the open space.

  No bullets. So far, so good. He was able to run up to the passenger door of the truck and was startled to hear its engine running. He took a quick look into the cab and saw a distinguished beturbaned older Arab man struggling with the pesky gears. He pointed his hand gun through the open window directly at the man’s face and waited. The manobviously a person of some importance by his wearing a clean dark thobe and Western eyeglassesfinally turned and looked in Sheep Dog’s direction. He clasped his chest and let out a kind of squeak. Sheep Dog shouted for him to keep his hands in plain sight, and the man complied immediately.

  The man’s eyes riveted on Sheep Dog’s finger as it began to squeeze the trigger.

  “Don’t shoot,” the man shouted. “I am worth far more to you alive than dead.”

  “Convince me.”

  “First, I know how to get back to Dar es Salaam.”

  “Maybe the man reads minds,” Sheep Dog thought. “I guess I just look like I’m lost.”

  “And…” he said.

  “I am Musab Sarayrah Abdulmutallab.”