Night of the Cobra

by Jack Coughlin

  Swanson realized they had walked through a whole crowd of black Africans at the clinic, and he had not really seen them before she stopped to cover the child. Mogadishu had rendered them almost invisible to his eyes, like background people in a movie, but his focus snapped to total clarity when she led him into a small operating room where a harried medical team was treating a little patient. A low murmur carried through the hallways where other patients awaited their turns and complained that the child was getting preferential treatment because she belonged to another tribe.

  “That’s Dr. Sharif at the table. He trained in Moscow,” Egan said, pointing to the man performing the procedure. “His wife, Deqo, next to him, is our head of nursing, and she also runs our school.” The doctor grunted acknowledgment but did not stop working. Deqo Sharif did not even look up.

  Egan tugged at his sleeve and continued the tour as if escorting a four-star general. Military rank meant nothing to her, and this sergeant had come to help. Just touching his uniform had felt immensely personal. He is more than just another soldier, she thought.

  Swanson forced himself not to openly gawk at the easy sway of her hips and the confident stride of the long legs.

  They really didn’t know where they were going, or what was happening to them, but they both understood that something unexpected, warm, sweet, and long unused was stirring within them like flags catching the first brush of a new breeze.

  The moment collapsed with a burst of gunfire.

  Kyle ran to the door. Mancuso and Smith were pinned up on the water tower as bullets pinged off the metal around them, unable to do anything more than lie flat and pray. They had not taken their weapons, either. More shots were kicking up the dirt around and even within the compound and pecking at the concrete and mud walls. The firing was coming in at a volume that prevented Swanson from running to the Humvee to retrieve his rifles. People at the feeding station milled about like frightened, trapped animals, and the single gate guard was scrunched behind a post.

  Swanson lashed himself with a quick curse as he pulled the 9mm pistol from its hip holster. He had let his professionalism be lulled into carelessness, and while he was being treated like a VIP by a pretty girl, strolling around like he was important, he had lowered his situational awareness. That shit ends right now! He told the Apache to get to the far side of the building and flank the unseen shooters, then leaned out and began popping at the attackers, firing blindly until the pistol was empty. He reloaded and did it again, moving out of the clinic and into the courtyard, where he burned through another magazine. He slammed in another magazine as he advanced into the open space of the gate, yelling as he fired, so pissed with himself for letting this happen. He clicked on empty, out of ammunition, so he wound up like a baseball pitcher and threw the pistol itself toward the hidden gunmen. It exploded in midair.

  Swanson had been so caught up with his internal fury and the noise of the gunfight that he had not heard the CAATs run up and begin pumping a hurricane of bullets and grenades at the target zone. One grenade from the Mark-19 automatic launcher had hit his pistol while it was in flight, and the million-to-one shot blew it up.

  Swanson felt an arm wrap around his waist and pull him hard back behind the cover of the mud wall. It was Molly Egan, and she was giggling loudly as they tumbled to the ground. “Got a little temper problem, have we, Sergeant?” she laughed. “Flinging an exploding pistol at them? Really?”

  Kyle steadied his breathing as a few more rounds pinged into the compound before the gunmen fled. “I’m sorry about all of this,” he said, apologizing for failing at his job. His face was red with the anger he felt with himself. “It never should have happened. I got careless. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” He realized with a start that his team had come to save her, and now things had flipped and she had pulled him to safety.

  “No problem,” she said, getting to her knees. “This is Mogadishu. Were you hit? Standing out there in the open with all that firing?” What kind of man does that? She ran her hands over his scalp, torso, and legs, looking for wounds and blood.

  His anger evaporated beneath her touch. “I’m good. Thank you.” He jumped up and brushed himself off. “And you?”

  “I am fine, Sergeant.” She curled into a sitting position with her back to the wall and smiled up at him while pushing away some loose strands of crimson hair.

  “We have some work to do clearing the area,” he said, forcing his mind back into the game.

  She watched Swanson pick up one of his rifles, get his men together, and sweep the perimeter. The big CAATs rolled in lazy circles. By the time he returned, Swanson had become sullen and quiet.

  Molly studied that with some concern. Some after-action response had taken hold.

  “I’ll get the bosses to put your clinic on the places for regular security patrols,” Kyle said.

  “Thanks again for your help. Come back anytime,” she replied, looking straight into his eyes again with unspoken invitation.

  “I will,” he said, and had never made a more serious promise in his life.

  The return to camp was silent. Every marine in the little firefight had undergone an attitude adjustment. No matter how much the boredom might envelop them, not paying attention to the job could still get them dead. Swanson preached readiness at them all the way back, almost as if talking to himself.

  FRIDAY,

  DECEMBER 25, 1992

  Christmas came the following day, almost as a surprise to Swanson. Some homesick marines had put up and decorated a scraggly tree within the tent, but the other sights and sounds were startlingly absent. To the Muslims of Somalia, it was just another day. To the marines, there was little to celebrate.

  Kyle left Mogadishu at dawn to accompany a French Foreign Legion supply convoy to a refugee camp far north of the city, and they drove all day. The place-names changed, but the situation remained about the same everywhere they went. When evening approached, and the afternoon rain stopped, the legionnaires set up camp for the night. They were not about to let a major holiday pass unnoticed, and with cries of “Joyeux Noël,” the refrigerated trucks in which they were carrying food for the refugees were thrown open. They unloaded turkeys and geese, seafood, potatoes and other vegetables, and cheese, along with other special ingredients, herbs, and spices chosen just for tonight. Whiskey and wine bottles were uncorked while the cooks created a magnificent Christmas feast, and they sang beside the road, in the middle of the civil war.

  Swanson sat cross-legged on a stone and watched them with amusement, with a glass of bourbon in one hand, a half-eaten plate of food beside him, and his M-16 across his knees. Despite the party, the legionnaires had posted tight security. They knew what they were about.

  The image of Molly Egan once again swam into his thoughts, just as it had done throughout the trip. He wanted to get back to the clinic and see her before she could forget him, but here he was, stuck beside a dank road in Somalia, having to spend Christmas with the Foreign Legion. Christmas would be long over by the time he got back to Mogadishu. He missed her.

  * * *

  THE MARINES NEEDED TO break out of the tight confines of the port and airfield, and the next step was the huge soccer field that dominated Mogadishu like a frontier fort. Control of the sports arena had switched between the warlords while the relief-force commanders had stayed busy protecting their arrival points, sorting out the growing forces, and distributing food and medicine.

  No Americans had been in the stadium since they had arrived in country, but every night a patrol of M1A1 heavy Abrams tanks left the established perimeter for a run-up to the stadium, where they would turn around and go home again. After a few weeks, the Somalis grew so familiar with the regular trips that they hardly noticed the mechanized monsters that boomed past in the darkness.

  The operational planners thought it would be easiest to just bull into the stadium when the time was right, with infantry following the tanks. Swanson thought that was dumb and had let the
planners know it before he had headed out with the Legion. Why go blindly into what might easily be a trap? Yes, it might be a walkover, but it might not. Shouldn’t they know if the enemy has built hard defensive positions and infested the place with rockets and machine guns? Send in some scout snipers first.

  As soon as he got back to the stadium late on December 28, Kyle learned that he had won the debate, but it meant he had to do a fast turnaround instead of hitting his cot. After four days on the road with the Legion, he would go in aboard the tanks tonight and take a look, and if things were clear, the armored column would bring the rest of the regiment in at daybreak. There was no time to see Molly.

  There was no moon, and the two tanks went out as usual, but this time with marine sniper-spotter teams clinging to the hulls like leeches, hidden by not only the darkness but also the sheer bulk of the machines and the equipment lashed to them. If anyone looked at the passing sixty-ton tanks, they would see the big cannons and treads, not bumps in the profile.

  Swanson breathed slowly through a bandanna wrapped around his face in a futile effort to filter out diesel fumes and the stinking miasma of the Mog. The gagging smell of human waste, decomposing corpses, scorched streets, and uncollected garbage was the city’s true signature. He heard the usual chitter of automatic gunfire and the boom of rocket-propelled grenades as rival gangs battled in the tangled streets on the far side of town. The tanks clanked unmolested through the darkness.

  He let his fingers roam over his gear to make final checks. His heartbeat ticked like a steady metronome. This was what he had been bred to do, and fear never entered his mind. If anything, he had to fight down any sense of excitement that might start the adrenaline pumping. Swanson wanted to be steady. Usually, the whole time continuum would change for him, and the world would play in slow motion; slow was smooth, and smooth was fast. The tanks crunched along a broad paved street, maneuvering around heaps of trash; old cannon barrels bent at odd angles; and the useless, burned-out carcasses of personnel carriers and other vehicles.

  Somewhere back in the warrens of the city, a mortar coughed and the shell climbed high, tilted nose-down, and whistled back to earth to explode inside the bowl of the stadium. No return fire. Another mortar shell hit the concrete building.

  Then they were there. The tanks slowed at the front gate of the outer wall, a ten-foot-high barrier darker than the surrounding night. Swanson sucked in a final breath, loosened his grip, and kicked free, hitting the ground with a roll. The tanks heaved away on the familiar pattern that had been established during the previous nights. As their safety line rolled away, the sniper muttered the warrior’s affirmation: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley.

  He gathered his three guys—once again, the team of Corporals Smith, Mancuso, and Delshay—and checked for broken arms, busted knees, or other damage. They were fine, as were their pair of M-40 sniper rifles and four M-16s, the nine-mil pistols, a bunch of hand grenades, and encrypted radios that could summon a Quick Reaction Force for help in a hurry.

  The four men flattened against the rough wall and examined the area through their night-vision goggles. A few souls were moving about on the distant city outskirts, but no one was reacting to their presence. Swanson did a quick radio check to alert headquarters that they were at the broad gate. He stepped into the large entryway, and his team formed around him in a diamond pattern, one of them facing in each direction, including the rear.

  In more pleasant times, crowds had thronged through this portal to enter the stadium, which could hold more than thirty thousand sports fans. Now the big structure was more like an abandoned sewer, as if everyone who entered left some waste behind. A concrete apron stretched between the gate and the stadium’s inner wall, fifty yards of open space in which the marines would be vulnerable. They hustled across and onto the ramp, then paused again.

  They were breathing harder but saw nothing, although there was some scrambling and movement straight ahead. Sticking to the darkest areas, the marines slid forward to where the ramp opened into the seating areas, inclined slopes of concrete benches for spectators. The strange noises were closer and louder, coming from down on the field.

  Swanson slithered forward to get a clear view while the others provided a base for protective fire. He raised his head slowly until his eyes came above the concrete rim. A pack of wild dogs, having picked up the scent of the approaching men, stared back from the field, their eyes glowing in the light of his goggles. The pack leader gave a menacing growl, and his fur was standing straight up. The noise had been the grisly sound of the pack devouring the body of a dead man. Kyle eased back down and scooted away.

  “Wild dogs,” he said. “About thirty of them. They’re busy with a meal, so we’ll let them have the field for now. That will give us some good rear security.” He led his team deeper into the warren of offices and compartments beneath the stands, and they went room by room, any of which might contain a possible threat.

  The stadium was a monument to war. Artillery and fire had scourged the seating area, and ragged craters made every step a risk. Down on the field, the dogs snapped and barked around the corpse, and the echo of their primal anger echoed around the emptiness. They suddenly stopped fighting, and Swanson looked back in time to see the animals scatter, fleeing for shelter. Then he hear a mortar round shrieking in.

  The other three team members were safe, clearing the interior rooms, but Swanson was standing in the bleachers. He collapsed into a ball, tight against a concrete riser, and instinctively covered his genitals with his hands. It was going to be close. The shell detonated only several layers of seats above him with an explosion that rattled the concrete circle, bounced him hard, and showered him with debris. The major concussion wave had gone up, not down toward him.

  “Well, that sucked,” he said, rolling over and wiping away the debris.

  “What are you doing, just lying there?” Delshay had run back out to help.

  “Screw you,” said Swanson. He motioned for the patrol to get back to work. The dogs crept back to finish their dinner.

  The four marines found nothing of interest on their first circuit of the wide field and spiraled up to the next level and did another 360 tour. Many rocket-propelled grenades had been fired at the stadium, but they had only bounced off of the hundreds of tons of poured concrete. Mortar rounds splattered with little effectiveness. The place was solid. The marines made their way inexorably toward the highest point in the arena, a section that must have been a press box or a space reserved for VIP spectators. That small rectangular structure was scarred by bullets and scrapes of artillery, but it was also empty. Kyle looked over the edge of a big window and saw the sprawl of downtown Mogadishu not far away. From this vantage point, the snipers would have eyes-on to cover the arriving vehicles when the sun came up.

  Swanson radioed the brass back at the airport. Recon mission complete: on site, unseen, not a shot fired. The stadium that dominated the heart of enemy territory was now the property of the U.S. Marine Corps and a pack of wild mutts.

  3

  THE WARLORD

  DECEMBER 29, 1992

  MOGADISHU, SOMALIA

  THE PARADE BEGAN AT daybreak. A mass of marines left the seaside airport perimeter, curved around the K-4 traffic circle, and headed north on Via Lenin to the 21 October Road, then east to the stadium. The column was led by mighty amphibious assault vehicles, heavy M1A1 tanks, other sorts of armor, boxy Humvees, and both five-ton and seven-ton trucks—all sandwiched by marines marching on foot in full combat gear. The entire regiment was on the move, and the ground shook beneath their tracks, wheels, and boots. A haze of dust rose to match the early yellow sky.

  The warlord General Mohammed Farrah Hassan Aidid watched with interest, slouched against a dented Toyota Land Cruiser. In loose khaki slacks and a faded brown shirt, he blended in with the curious crowd that lined the 21 October Road. The marines lo
oked singularly tough, extremely fit and determined, and carried a fantastic array of weaponry. Their unspoken macho professionalism reminded him of how he had been awed by regular Soviet soldiers when he was sent to Moscow as a young cadet to study at the Frunze Academy. He had felt very small and out of place among those men at that time, but that was years ago. He was no longer the one out of place; he was equal to any man on the field, and the game was just getting started.

  “Is my Cobra scared of these Americans?” the general enjoyed teasing the bodyguard standing with him. The presence of the Cobra made him feel safer, even in the face of this invading army, for Omar Jama was much more than just a gunman. He had been carefully groomed for this job. His Somali merchant father had taught him English and Italian and the mathematics of business before he was even ten years old. That had drawn the attention of Aidid when the senior Somali army officer decided to recruit a special cadre of boys from his Habar Gidir clan. Omar had proved to be a particularly intelligent student, abnormally strong, and a vicious, natural predator. As he matured and the civil war began, he had proved both loyal and valuable, time and again. Aidid had bestowed the name of “Cobra” on his prized killer.

  “What? No, I am not. Of course not!” Omar Jama was sucking on a wad of khat to get a morning buzz after a long night of fighting near the Green Line. His muscled shoulders and arms bulged from a long blue shirt that hid the pistol in the waistband of his jeans. The comment took him by surprise.

  The Cobra took a slight step forward and waved at an American as large as himself, who was lugging a big M-249 squad automatic weapon. “Hello, marine! Welcome to Mogadishu!” he called out in good English. The marine did not smile in return, just kept marching along in route step, his eyes on the crowd and his finger near the trigger housing. The machine gun was loaded.