by Mel Odom
Standing only a couple feet away, Afrah reached into his hip pocket and took out the flask he carried. He took a sip and gazed at the dead men scattered over the ground. The surviving soldier glared at the big man.
“You are not al-Shabaab.” The soldier’s voice cracked and he spoke in Somali.
Daud turned to face the soldier. “No, we are not. We kill al-Shabaab where we find them.”
“We are not al-Shabaab.”
“No, you are not.”
“Then why did you do this thing?”
Daud shook his head.
“We are not enemies. If you fight the al-Shabaab, we should be compatriots.” The soldier relaxed a little, evidently trusting that he would not be killed.
“We are not compatriots. If you do not do as I tell you to, I will kill you. Believe that.”
The man’s mouth tightened and he looked at the ground. Afrah called one of their soldiers over, and together they tied the man up. Then he was led away to a small bit of shade at the side of the road where the other survivors were being kept under guard. The doctor was among them, working on a man who lay prone and bloody.
Daud walked along the uneven line of trucks, stepping up into the rear compartments to survey the cargo. As he’d expected, most of it was food, medicine, and clothing—all things that had been gathered from Mogadishu.
“Doubtless they were taking this to one of the displacement camps.” Afrah walked at Daud’s side.
Daud nodded as he crawled into the third truck. “It would be good to know where these places are. Get me one of the drivers.”
Afrah nodded and walked over to the group of prisoners.
Making his way through the cargo, Daud glimpsed a tire near the front of the space. He shifted boxes and crates to get to the tire and found that there were four in all. He grabbed the top one and hefted it with difficulty, then rolled it toward the rear of the vehicle.
Afrah stood there with a small, older man beside him. Putting out a big hand, Afrah caught the tire and stopped it with ease. He lifted the tire from the truck with one hand and placed it on the ground. Daud returned for another tire and brought it out as well, then jumped down.
“This is Dido. He is the lead caravan driver.”
The old man nodded and looked nervous. He was thin, and his skin had withered from age and from exposure to the elements. He had a mouthful of broken yellow stumps.
Daud looked at the man. “Do you know where these trucks were going?”
“Of course.” Dido reached into the pocket of his shirt. “I have a map.” He took out the map and unfolded it with trembling fingers.
The map was a good one, a printout from a satellite view that had been marked with computer legends rendered in neat white boxes. The destination camps had no names, only coordinates and some kind of key listing.
“Rageh.” Afrah spoke softly.
Daud looked over to his father’s friend.
“We have to get moving. Those jeeps have radios. It is possible that these soldiers were in contact with other military units. There may already be some kind of rescue being mounted.”
Folding the map, Daud put it into his pocket. “You are correct. Find some strong backs to replace the tires on the truck with the flats. Have this man help you.”
Afrah dropped a heavy hand onto the old man’s shoulder, and they walked away.
Daud followed them and watched the doctor as he continued working on the prostrate man. The soldier was already somewhat alert and had an IV drip running into one arm. Bandages covered wounds that tracked along his left side. Daud didn’t know if they were from bullets or shrapnel. The doctor ignored Daud and devoted all of his attention to his patient.
When the doctor leaned back briefly, evidently done for the moment, Daud spoke to him. “What is your name?”
The doctor hesitated. “Sykes. Brandon Sykes.”
“You are very conscientious about what you do.”
Sykes hesitated, obviously uncertain how to take that. “Thanks. I’m just trying to get these people out of here alive. Trying to help as many as I can.”
“That’s why you’re coming with us.”
17
AFTER AWAKENING in the temporary quarters the Marines had arranged in Mogadishu, Bekah Shaw mustered out earlier than the others to get a look at the city. She’d heard a lot in the news about the struggles going on in the nation, and she was aware of the movie Black Hawk Down, though she’d never seen it.
The city was a war zone, more or less, and the Marines were working against the pirates holding ships hostage out in the Gulf of Aden.
That wasn’t what the Charlie Company reinforcements were there to do, though. According to their orders, they were supposed to shore up the peacekeeping efforts established by the United Nations and provide support to the Somali military in holding Mogadishu from the al-Shabaab and other insurgents.
Bekah had read all the handouts that the Marines had given her, in addition to several local English newspapers she’d found lying around in the mess hall. She wore fatigues and carried her helmet by its chinstrap. The M4A1 rifle slung over her shoulder felt comfortable and familiar, as did the Kevlar battle armor.
The temperature along the coastal areas was moderate and even felt cool when the breeze lifted, but she knew that the heat climbed quickly toward the interior. The salt stink of the ocean filled her nostrils, but there was more that she could detect riding the wind. Diesel fuel, charred wood, and cooking meat added their scents.
Standing in front of the warehouse the Marines had been assigned as temporary lodging, Bekah stared out at the city. The buildings and streets bore scars from the decades-long power struggles that had been fought there. The Marines had cleaned most of the street to afford a clear field of fire for the guards stationed in posts atop the warehouse as well as other nearby buildings.
A hundred yards away, a group of scavengers worked the pile of old wrecked cars that had been bulldozed away from the warehouse. Several black and brown men and boys, and even a few white ones, worked the junkers.
Bekah knew what they were looking for: parts that could be harvested to keep other vehicles running, tires, and—when all else failed—copper wiring and other metals that could be salvaged for scrap prices. In places like Mogadishu, recycling was part of the lifeblood that kept the city working.
People back home in Callum’s Creek operated by the same principles. They kept their old refrigerators and stoves so they could part them out too, either using the pieces themselves or trading them to other people.
Reaching into her BDU pocket, Bekah took out the small digital camera Granny had given her a couple Christmases ago. The gift was an extravagance by Bekah’s standards, something she definitely didn’t need, but Granny had insisted. Until then, Bekah had made do with an old 35mm Rebel camera she’d saved up for and gotten secondhand before Travis was born.
She snapped off a few shots of the men working the cars. Travis might enjoy the pictures when she got back to Callum’s Creek.
“Shutterbug?”
Startled, surprised to find herself suddenly not alone, Bekah turned and found Gunnery Sergeant Francis Towers behind her. The man stood six feet six inches tall and was broad and thick. She didn’t know how he could move so silently, but he did. His skin was black as coal, and he was ill-defined in the morning shadows that still draped the front of the warehouse. He smelled like Doublemint gum and Old Spice, but he’d leave those things behind in the field the same way Bekah would forgo deodorant and scented soap, which could give away her position to the enemy.
Towers was in his early forties and had been a Marine since age nineteen, when he’d discovered he wasn’t going to cut it as a forward in the NBA. Bekah had already tapped into the scuttlebutt about the man. Activated reserves got dropped into new situations nearly each tour and had to learn the ropes and the pecking order quickly. Or get squashed.
Despite the fact that they were reinforcements and there to help the
entrenched full-time Marines, those full-time Marines didn’t always appreciate the activated units. There was usually a discrepancy in age, for one thing—a lot of the reserves tended to be older than the younger enlisted troops. And for another, reserves often wanted to know why orders were given and didn’t obey them as blindly as the younger Marines. Those attitudes created friction.
“Good morning, Gunney.”
Towers nodded. “Good morning, Marine. Lance Corporal Shaw, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, are you?”
“Am I what, Gunney?”
“A shutterbug.” Towers nodded toward the camera in her hand.
Bekah smiled a little and shook her head. “Not even close. Just got a hobby of taking pictures.”
“Brass give you the lowdown on hanging pictures on Facebook and sending them off to friends back home? No bodies, that kind of thing?”
“Yeah.” Bekah shivered. Since the world had entered the digital age, the hard face of war and death could show up on every computer in every home. “It’s not my first time at the rodeo, Gunney.”
“I knew it wasn’t. I’ve seen your field service report. You’re an outstanding Marine.”
“Thank you, but it takes all of us to look good.”
Towers smiled at that. “It does. It takes all of us. So I wanted you to know that I’ve noticed you doing your part.”
Bekah put her camera back in her pocket and closed the tab. “I know there’s a reason the brass doesn’t want photos on the Internet, but I sometimes wonder if maybe having everyone back home see everything we see would make a difference.”
“What? Seeing bodies? Seeing folks blown all to bits and lying in the street days later? That what you mean?”
The coarseness surprised Bekah, but she nodded.
“You forget that there’s always been pictures.” Towers took a deep breath and let it out. “Ain’t like a camera’s anything new in the field. Soldiers have had them a good long time. The Internet makes it easier to show everybody, but magazines and newspapers done all right showing folks all them things before computers and smartphones come along. My father caught a couple tours in Vietnam. He had him some pictures too. Shot them on an old Instamatic. He never showed them pictures to my momma, but he showed them to me.”
Vietnam was history to Bekah, fodder for films and conversation among some of the old-timers who swapped stories in Hollister’s Fine Dining. She respected the men who had served, but she didn’t have a true touchstone for that war.
“The problem with pictures is that there’ll always be pictures.” Towers nodded out toward the sprawl of the city, toward the broken buildings and cratered streets. “It was pictures that brought us out to this country back in the 1990s. Pictures of kids—starving, wounded, diseased. Kids nobody wanted. Somebody started showing those pictures around and telling the United States they could make a difference.”
“Don’t you think we do?”
Towers grinned, his teeth white and the gleam in his dark eyes showing the effort was genuine. “We do make a difference. Marines always do. Don’t forget that.” He shrugged his shoulders and rolled his neck. “The big drawback is when we gotta pull out of an area and people ain’t ready to stand on their own two feet. They can’t help but go back to what they were.” He paused. “That’s what happened to this place. It’s even true of them pirates out in the Puntland. They just gone back to being what they’ve been before.”
As she listened to the gunney’s words, Bekah couldn’t help but think about Billy Roy and how he’d been in high school. She’d thought marriage would grow him up, or at the very least being a daddy would. Instead, Billy Roy had gone back to being what he’d always been too. She thought about Travis, how she wanted more for her son’s life than what Billy Roy and she had had.
“Lance Corporal.”
Jerked back to the present, Bekah focused on Towers.
“You doing okay?”
“I am.” Bekah nodded. “Just thinking about what you said.”
“Well, let’s go get chow. You and I have a debrief with the lieutenant at oh eight hundred.”
Glancing at her watch, Bekah logged the time. She had fifty minutes for breakfast. “Sounds good, Gunney.”
“Found a local place that I thought I could treat you to.”
Bekah knew then that the meeting this morning hadn’t been by chance, and her curiosity flared. “I can treat myself.”
Towers cocked a skeptical eyebrow at her. “You really gonna turn down a free meal and a chance to pump the sergeant about the new lieutenant?”
Bekah grinned and relaxed, knowing that Towers had sought her out to bring her up to speed away from the rest of the unit. There weren’t as many on the team who had served together as there had been in the past. Learning a new command infrastructure—and about the officers—was important. “When you put it that way, a free breakfast sounds great.”
“I thought it might.” Towers led the way across the street. “Get your pot on.”
Bekah strapped on her helmet and followed. As soon as she left the warehouse she changed her mind-set, telling herself she was now in enemy territory.
Towers took his helmet off as he entered the small restaurant. The place was a small affair in the corner of a warehouse, what would be a mom-and-pop business back home. The resulting space seated maybe forty people.
Burning frankincense thickened the air. The décor was a loose collection of photographs that spanned dozens of years. In several of them, the harbor area looked industrious and relaxed, but that time was long past, as marked by the faded condition of the photographs and the cars and trucks visible in the images. Other photographs were of American soldiers seated at the small tables and mugging for the camera. The eatery wanted to establish a connection with the American soldiers; that was evident. But Bekah knew it was because American soldiers tended to have more money than other servicemen.
“I know,” Towers said. “You didn’t expect there to be a restaurant anywhere near the city, what with all the food shortages, but people gotta work and people gotta eat. You’ll find little out-of-the-way places around the harbor area, but always under the loose protection of the military. The military pulls out, these places close up shop and disappear.”
“Food is tight in this city.” Bekah took her helmet off as well. “Where do they get the supplies?”
“From the ships passing in and out of the port. They make deals with captains and ships’ crews. You find markets everywhere like this. People want things, a way is made to provide them. Basic economics.” Towers looked around the room, and his hand didn’t stray far from the sidearm at his hip. “I been in a lot of places. Always try to find someplace where I can clear my head, away from the rest of the team.”
Bekah understood that. Sergeants got squeezed between enlisted and officers.
“Keep in mind, just because I bring you here today don’t mean this place is safe.” Towers looked at her.
“I get that.”
“Bad people gotta eat too, and you’re a woman. You walking around in that uniform, no hijab, and carrying that rifle—that marks you as a target in the eyes of some men.”
“I know.” Part of the briefing had included warnings about the strict Muslim code and the resistance to women military personnel. But the Marine Corps believed in its female Marines and knew they made a difference with the local women. “Not much different than it was in Afghanistan.”
“There’s a difference. In Afghanistan, you generally knew who was trying to kill you.” Towers guided her to a small table near a wall. “Here, the scorecard seems to change every day. Make no mistake: we’ve got a dirty job to do. I’ll go get us something to eat.”
Gunney Towers went to the counter and placed their order, not bothering to ask Bekah what she wanted. She assumed that was because the menu was limited, or because Towers had learned what was more palatable to American taste buds.
Bekah sat in the uneven cha
ir, placed her helmet on the table, and kept her rifle close to hand. Some of the men in the little shop eyed her, but they looked away when she glanced in their direction.
These customers were all old men already at their tea and coffee. The young men were laboring at whatever jobs they could find. Or they were sleeping in, hungover from a long night of chewing khat or drinking to excess. The diners spoke in their native languages or a mixture of Somali and Arabic.
Somali was totally unknown to Bekah, but she had picked up some Arabic in Iraq during her first tour. She eavesdropped casually. Most of the talk she could understand was about the sudden departure of the al-Shabaab and what it meant. The concern seemed to be whether the Muslim insurgents would stay gone and how long the Western military would remain this time. One of the men lamented that he was too old to become a pirate.
Turning her attention to the wall beside her, Bekah studied the young American faces she found there. They sat at tables with British and Nigerian military as well as Somali soldiers. All of them looked like they were having a good time.
Bekah couldn’t help wondering how many of those men and women had actually made it back home alive.
After a few minutes, Towers returned to the table carrying two small trays containing unfamiliar food and two cups of hot liquid that looked like tea. But the scents made Bekah’s mouth water and her stomach growl.
Towers placed one of the trays in front of her and sat on the opposite side of the table. He pointed at the food with his fork. “Over here they call breakfast quraac. That pancake-looking thing is canjeero. Break it up and drop it into that bowl.”
Bekah started doing that and discovered the bread was more grainy and tough than she’d expected.
Towers passed her a small porcelain container. “This is ghee. Cow’s butter, but it’s different than anything you ever had back home.”
“I’ve made butter before.”
Towers looked surprised. “Grew up in the country?”
“Little town in Oklahoma.”