Night of the Cobra

by Jack Coughlin

  “You are right, Hassan. Of course, you are right. I have arrived amongst them suddenly, like a mighty bomb that is ready to explode,” said the Cobra. “They were not expecting me, but now they will know my standing with al Shabaab and my deeds. Our following will increase by the hour. If an enemy tries to touch me, the city will explode in fury, and there will be civil war again. They don’t want that. They have grown soft under this so-called federal government.”

  Hassan stared at his friend for a long few seconds. He did not want the Cobra to get angry, for then he would be uncontrollable. This was more about symbolism, the appearance of control and inevitable power, than it was about actual military strength. Another twenty-four hours, and the Cobra might be sleeping in the presidential palace, but the boss needed to remain in control of his temper. He just had to hold on. “There have been many changes since you were last in our homeland, brother. This is true. The people yearn to overthrow their foreign puppets, and you have given them reason to again be proud of being Somalis. Your attack on the United States has had a profound effect below the surface. You will be the leader.”

  The Cobra felt that the situation was workable. “After I am in power, the Americans will not dare come assassinate me. Tomorrow the troops arrive. It will truly be the start of a new day for Somalia!”

  * * *

  SHORTLY AFTER DARK, ROAD flares and racks of construction lights slowed drivers to a crawl along the broad coastal road from Kismaayo to Mogadishu. Those heading northwest were channeled into a single lane over a space of three miles as road crews in bright reflective vests and hard hats ran loaders and heavy equipment to lay a new stretch of blacktop. Such stoppages were routine during the dry season. Tonight was particularly slow.

  After three miles, more orange cones loomed along the road, and more bright lights edged drivers onto a dirt-road detour. Bulldozers growled up on the highway. Cars and trucks were barely moving over unfamiliar rough ground when they came around a broad curve and saw the roadblocks.

  Five hundred seasoned soldiers of the Burundi National Defense Force were in an ambush configuration at the barrier and out of sight in the darkness all along the detour route. Machine guns and cannon were pointed at the approaching vehicles, which were stopped one by one, the passengers and drivers ordered out and held at gunpoint while searches were made. Men were arrested, and weapons were confiscated.

  Captain Beck White watched from a Humvee, talking by radio with some CIA officer who went only by the code name “Bob.” The tall, dark-haired captain was a Force Recon warfighter with SP-MAG TF-13, a special-purpose marine air-ground task force, and he had been helping train the Burundi contingent of the African Union mission. It was a peacekeeping force that had seen a lot of action. He liked these guys. Poor as mice, they were fine soldiers.

  “We bagged a bunch of al Shabaabs in the first hour and only had to kill six. More than fifty prisoners, and lots of weaponry has been confiscated,” the marine captain reported. “Word is getting back to Kismaayo that the highway is closed, so traffic is getting scarce.”

  “Outstanding, Captain. Any friendly casualties?” Bob made notes on a legal pad aboard the Vagabond.

  “Not among my boys. There’s no love lost between the Burundi military and al Shabaab. The terrorists know we tend to shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “And your roadblock will be up all night?”

  “We ain’t going nowhere until I hear from you. This road is closed.”

  Bob switched off and looked over to Lucky Sharif. “You can let General Hamud know that the al Shabaab reinforcements from Kismaayo have been indefinitely delayed.” They stepped onto the deck, where Kyle Swanson, Ingmar Thompson, and Bruce Brandt were waiting near the fantail, menacing, ghostly figures, all in black overalls.

  34

  THE COBRA

  SWANSON HAD BEEN HERE before, back in the Mog, back on a rooftop, waiting in the dark of the night with a long rifle in his arms. The former Irish clinic was less than two klicks to the south, and memories of Molly chewed at his concentration. The man who had murdered her was asleep in a nice villa two hundred meters straight ahead. Swanson intended to balance the scale, but he swept the uneasy thoughts with iron self-control.

  They had taken the helo in from the yacht to the air base, where a few battered Land Rovers met them, along with some Somali commandos who would be their guides. The CIA station head, Mark Preston, was there for a final radio check so he could stay in touch with all the moving parts, just in case.

  It was almost three o’clock in the morning. Lucky Sharif had gone in earlier and was already embedded with General Hamud. Thompson and Brandt piled into the lead vehicle, and Kyle and Bob boarded the other, with Bob in the backseat so he could stretch out his long legs. Kyle rode shotgun, half expecting to see the landscape as scarred as it had been when he rode through on the back of a tank that took him to the stadium in the final dreary days of December, 1992. Back in the day, there was nothing but chaos and hopelessness. This was different, and the two-SUV convoy sailed along the roads as smoothly as if they were on a Sunday drive.

  “This sure isn’t like the ’Stans and Iraq. Like this war is over, or almost.” Bob had never been to Somalia before.

  The driver was a sergeant named Hussein Kedeyi, and he answered, “Al Shabaab has not been defeated, sir. They remain a huge threat, but we are winning the overall battle and slowly pushing them out. They have been reduced to doing hit-and-run raids because they do not have organization and training. Give us a few more years, and they will not bother us.”

  Swanson saw bright lights throughout the city, even at this early hour, and the people on the street were not armed mobs. Business was being done, and entrepreneurs were making money. No one bothered them. Nobody shot at them. Jobs were replacing poverty. Everything needed for a functioning society seemed to be coming together, including the formal government. At least the opposing sides were not killing each other on the streets. The pleasant smell of the ocean was no longer overwhelmed by rot and decay. He smiled to himself. Molly would have been proud. She sacrificed her life to help turn this place around.

  The sergeant was young but had grown strong and gave off the confident sense that he knew what he was doing. After all, Kyle reflected, he was special ops. The Land Rovers doused their lights as they neared the K-4 in northern Mogadishu and pulled out of sight beside the old spaghetti factory and shut down. The large building had been a landmark battleground for many years and showed its scars. Hundreds of militia bullets pocked the dirty white walls, the windows were empty holes, and the roof had been blown away by bombs. Urban renewal had not yet reached this centrally located pile of rubble, but the sergeant told them that a new pasta manufacturer had opened elsewhere.

  “That’s good news,” said Bob as he climbed from the SUV. “You cannot really have true civilization without spaghetti.” He slapped Sergeant Kedeyi on the shoulder. “Lead the way, son.”

  Swanson followed, only slightly nervous that they were not clearing the old building room by room until he saw two other Somali soldiers were already positioned inside. The place was safe. Kedeyi and the other driver joined them, and suddenly the ground floor was as secure as Kyle could have wanted it; a friendly was at all four corners, weapons up and pointed out.

  Ingmar and Brandt took the stairs and looked around, then called down for Swanson and Bob to come on up. The CIA sniper team would hold the second floor.

  The top floor was a wasteland. Little remained other than a ragged concrete-block surface and piles of junk. Kyle and Bob slid through the litter on the northwest side. They stacked rubble and debris and old concrete to improve the hide, then went in on hands and knees and adjusted the space to fit them both.

  Bob pulled his jacket open, took off the gloves, rolled up the black beanie, and removed the video cam and a still camera that had a snout of a long lens. The M-16 was placed at his right side.

  Swanson peeled Excalibur from its carrying case,
looked it over quickly, and loaded a sleek and heavy .50 caliber bullet in the chamber. The magazine held only three more, which he considered to be more than enough for tonight’s job. He opened the bipod and pointed the rifle just behind the hide opening so it could not be seen. The power source for the scope was activated. His position was the highest spot in the neighborhood and provided a good view across the fences and low walls, all the way to the villa in which the Cobra slept. The scope automatically painted the place with an invisible electronic beam and recorded the ranges, its sensors sniffed the weather, and the computer did the complex math for a solution that would allow the sniper to make a hit.

  “Big place,” said Bob, focusing the viewfinder of his video cam, which also had night vision. “I can see two static guard posts.”

  “Yuh. That’s what I see. No guards are roving around. That’s sloppy. He feels safe.”

  “Not a good idea for him.”

  “No.”

  Bob radioed the SITREP in to the CIA station at the airport and received confirmation; then they settled down to wait. There was no live feed relayed to Washington. Kyle had not wanted anyone getting cold feet at the last minute.

  For almost an hour, they didn’t exchange a word, and the silence lay heavy between them. One would watch while the other rested. Kyle was almost in an easy trance, breathing smoothly, keeping the blood pressure and heartbeat in low gear, thinking of nothing in particular. The big gun seemed a comfortable extension of his body. This would be an easy shot, if and when it came.

  The plan was for the Somali special ops people to encircle the house and hit it hard from the rear just before dawn, driving anyone inside out the front door. If the Cobra lived through that initial attack, Kyle would take him down when he appeared.

  Swanson exhaled a long breath but never wavered from his sight line. The weight of the big rifle was evenly distributed. Almost time. It felt good.

  His mind was steeled with professional detachment now, and nothing would break his concentration. No memories could intrude to rattle him. Still, time passed slowly. “You watch for a while,” he told Bob.

  Kyle rolled onto his back, squinting his eyes closed, and a drop of water came down his cheek. He had been staring through the scope for too long; just normal eye strain. He knew better. Thirty minutes was max, and he had stretched it. He doused a cloth and wiped his eyes and there was clarity.

  Bob rolled into position and let the lens of his camera magnify the scene. “I got it,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  * * *

  LUCKY SHARIF HAD NOTHING to do but stand quietly beside the Humvee with a radio in his hand. He could connect to Bob and Kyle with a single click, but he had nothing to report. General Hamud was studying an area map. An entire company of his men had stolen out of the city during the darkest hours and had thrown a net around the villa.

  “My grandfather was an educated man,” the general said, breaking the quiet. His eyes were focused in the middle distance, which was only a deep emptiness. “His name was Abdiwel Godah Hamud, and he became a spokesman for our clan during the years of horror. Do you remember his name?”

  Lucky didn’t. “No, sir. I was just a kid.”

  The general resumed. “Well, he helped negotiate a treaty to stop the fighting. Then he made a terrible mistake by thinking that General Aidid, the worst of the warlords, would honor the peace agreement that he had just signed. So my grandfather went to the home of a family member to celebrate. A few hours later, the Cobra broke in and killed them all.”

  The soldier put his attention back on the map and was satisfied that everyone was in place. “He broke a couple of my ribs, shot me, and left me for dead. I learned only later that the Cobra murdered my grandfather, with a machete, just as he did yours. I think this man has lived long enough, don’t you?”

  “Yes, General. I do.” A recollection swam to his mind. “By any chance did they take you to the Irish clinic for treatment?”

  “I don’t remember anything after being shot.”

  “I was raised at the clinic. I saw a lot of kids go through there. You may have been one of them.”

  Hamud and Lucky exchanged knowing looks. Then the general read the glowing hands on the face of a clock in the Humvee’s front panel. “It is six o’clock. The sun rises in ten minutes.” He motioned to a nearby colonel and said, “Go.”

  Lucky passed the word to the sniper and climbed aboard the Humvee.

  * * *

  A STORM OF GUNFIRE at the villa shattered the early-morning stillness of Mogadishu—an old, familiar, dreaded song for Somali citizens. General Hamud’s commando unit took down the pair of guard posts with a combination of machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, then closed the net, firing disciplined bursts and aiming before pulling triggers. Smoke grenades boiled up in a covering screen, pushed by the morning breeze.

  The Cobra had been in bed, relying on his fearsome al Shabaab bodyguards to protect him overnight and hold the place safe until the reinforcements arrived from Kismaayo in a few hours. The gunshots alerted him that it wasn’t happening that way at all. By the time he was dressed, his defenders were crumbling in the path of a trained force. He screamed with fury and grabbed a pistol, stalking through the building and yelling at the men to fight to the death. “The entire city will rise up and protect us,” he screamed. “Hold tight! Do not abandon your positions! God is great!”

  The young bullies specialized in random raids on easy targets and were not used to the fierce attack of the commandos. The boys usually melted away when the army brought its strength to bear, but this time there was nowhere to run. They heard the Cobra’s words, but those empty promises and exhortations floated away like balloons. One by one, the al Shabaab boys went down beneath the unrelenting, ferocious assault.

  The main attacking force was pushing from the back of the villa, and the rooms were being cleared one by one. The only route out was in the front, where machine guns were raking the open ground. After only five intense minutes, General Hamud ordered his troops to stop shooting. A tense silence gripped the villa. He clicked the loudspeaker mounted on his vehicle.

  “You boys of al Shabaab! This is Brigadier General Hamud of the Somali National Security Forces. You know who I am. There is no escape route open, and the column of reinforcements that you were expecting has been obliterated. In one minute, I will resume killing you all. Your only hope for survival is to give me the coward named Omar Jama, who calls himself Cobra. Turn him out, and we will take you prisoner. One minute!”

  Inside the villa, Hassan Abdi was crouched beside a wall, bleeding from a shoulder wound. He looked up when he saw his hero and friend approach, noting that the scarred face was twisted in hatred and anger. For the first time, Hassan recognized the true madness that possessed the man. He had spent twenty years chasing a dream that did not exist. The Cobra was no great warrior who would lead Somalia and Islam to a new day. The only people who followed him did so because he had money to pay them. Hassan finally understood that he had made a terrible mistake by attaching himself to such a false and wicked man.

  “You failed me,” the Cobra shouted. He spat on his old friend, then shot him twice in the head. The remaining al Shabaab gunmen scuttled into other rooms to hide from both the soldiers outside and the crazed man inside. The Cobra knew it would be only a few seconds before they turned their weapons on him and tossed him out. With a final defiant yell, he burst into a run and crashed through the destroyed front door and into the hazy dawn, intent on killing anyone he could. Whoever it was did not matter. He just had to kill somebody. He ran toward a parked Humvee, firing his pistol as fast as he could.

  Kyle Swanson took the shot. The .50 caliber thundered, and the mammoth bullet caught the Cobra on the right knee, tearing the leg away in a gout of blood, flesh, stringy muscle, and bone.

  The Cobra spun and fell with a yowl of hatred, still gripping the pistol and finding the strength to fire it again. Swanson adjusted, then to
ok away the gun hand. The sniper watched the Cobra writhe on the ground, wreathed in gore. One more shot, and this would be done. He jacked in another round to put one in the head.

  “Cease fire, Kyle! Don’t shoot!” The voice of Lucky Sharif was shouting in his ear. “We’ve got him.”

  Swanson had a history of disobeying orders, but Lucky sounded like he meant it. His trigger finger froze halfway through the pull. “Roger that.”

  “Bob, turn off the cameras.” Sharif was insistent, urgent.

  “Done,” he replied, then turned to Kyle and asked, “WTF?”

  Swanson kept his eye glued to the scope. Bob went back to the big camera and pushed the magnification to its max to get the closest image on the 3 × 5 screen. The body of Omar Jama bled and shook, the face twisted and the body in spasms. A ring of soldiers had closed around the villa and were herding out the remaining al Shabaab fighters, their weapons thrown into a pile.

  General Hamud stepped from his Humvee, and Lucky Sharif came from the other side. Both were carrying machetes with long, sharp edges that glinted in the morning sun. Lucky kicked the Cobra over onto his back so he could watch.

  “For our families,” the general said.

  “For everyone from Mogadishu to Minnesota,” added Lucky.

  The Cobra saw the big knives rise and then come slashing down, and he cried out as waves of agonizing pain ripped his body with each new cut. There was no mercy.

  Bob pushed the cameras away. Swanson watched until the very end.

  EPILOGUE

  THE WALLS OF THE new Washington office of Excalibur Enterprises were painted a muted basic white, with plenty of hardwood and glass throughout the suite. Kyle Swanson had a corner office the size of a small bungalow. An adjacent conference room of equal proportion shared a connecting door. The rest of the space was given over to a receptionist and three staff cubicles for sales and office management. Such a layout was common in the building, where lobbyists and corporations nested in the nation’s capital.