The Hunters

by Tom Young

  Chartier looked over at Parson, and Parson gave a thumbs-up.

  “Ah, that sounds good, Spear Alpha,” Chartier transmitted. “We’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “Cool,” Parson said to Chartier on interphone. “You ever do a random steep in a transport plane?”

  “Non,” Chartier said. “But I have seen the C-130s do it in Afghanistan.”

  “All right, then you got the concept. Just call my altitudes off the radar altimeter and watch my descent rate. Don’t let me drop faster than about two thousand feet per minute.”

  “D’accord.”

  “Sounds scary,” Stewart said.

  “You’ll think you’re on a roller-coaster,” Geedi said.

  “Just make sure you guys are buckled in tight,” Parson said.

  “We are,” Gold answered.

  Minutes later, Parson flew over the LZ at eighty-five hundred feet. The AMISOM troops on the ground looked like ants. The LZ appeared as an open patch of dirt, surrounded by scattered patches of trees. A much larger field stretched to the north, but Parson could see why Ongondo had not chosen that one for an LZ: Thick grass covered the bigger field. Hard to tell from this altitude, but the grass and weeds looked to be waist high or better.

  Green smoke began flowing across the LZ; that meant good conditions for landing. Parson noted that the wind blew from a direction of about zero-seven-zero. With just an open patch of dirt for a runway, he could land in any direction he wanted. He wanted to land directly into the wind.

  “You ready?” Parson asked.

  “Toujours,” Chartier said.

  “Huh?”

  “Always.”

  Parson throttled back to get below flap limit speed. When the airspeed needle dropped below 110 miles per hour, he said, “Gear down, and gimme full flaps.”

  Chartier moved the gear lever, pointed to the green light on the panel, looked outside. “Gear down,” he said. “Good visual check right.”

  Parson looked to see the gear strut extended on his side and said, “Good check left.”

  Chartier lowered full flaps, and Parson pressed forward on the yoke to fight the resulting burble of lift. When the airplane settled down, Parson said, “Okay, folks, this elevator’s going to the first floor.”

  He rolled into a sixty-degree bank. The horizon tilted in the windscreen. The DC-3’s nose dropped below the line where Africa met the sky.

  “Woo-hoo,” Stewart cried from the back, off interphone.

  The airplane began spiraling. Parson held just enough back pressure on the yoke to control the rate of descent. Unlike his hard level turn to avoid the missile the other day, this maneuver actually put little stress on the airplane.

  “Eight thousand,” Chartier said. “Coming down two thousand feet a minute.”

  Parson looked down to see the streamer of green smoke getting larger. The DC-3 seemed to orbit around the point marked by the smoke. Parson held the bank angle steady and let the plane spiral around twice more.

  “Six thousand,” Chartier said. “Bringing back memories?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Parson said. “She’s handling pretty good, too. Who says you can’t teach an old bird new tricks?”

  Parson kept his scan going: airspeed 110, descent rate good, bank angle sixty degrees. He felt like a young lieutenant, confident in his new flying skills. The ground rotated closer; the ants looked like people now. Parson smiled as he listened to the conversation in the back.

  “Wow,” Stewart said. “He acts like this is nothing.”

  “He can do this in his sleep,” Gold said.

  “Four thousand,” Chartier said. “Down two thousand feet a minute.”

  Parson let the airplane continue spiraling. He heard a click in his headset, as if someone on the radio frequency keyed a mike but said nothing. What was up?

  Parson didn’t worry about it; radios could do weird things. He rolled out of the bank a few hundred feet off the ground, nose pointed into the wind. Pulled back on the yoke to arrest the descent rate.

  “Welcome to Ras Kamboni, folks,” he said.

  The green smoke flare guttered out. The DC-3 settled toward the LZ.

  An AMISOM soldier ran toward the middle of the landing zone.

  “What’s that fool doing?” Parson said. The airplane was now floating just feet above the LZ.

  The soldier yanked the pull tab on a flare. Threw the flare hard. The thing tumbled end over end, bounced onto the ground.

  The flare spewed red smoke: closed LZ. But it was too late.

  15.

  The al-Shabaab ambush team melted away from the bend in the road. Abdullahi ordered Hussein and the other soldiers of God to move inland, where they would join the main assault force attacking the infidel stooges. Hussein used cover as best he could. He crouched below a thornbush here, ran forward to an acacia tree there, slipping ever closer to the sound of gunfire.

  Although hiding and moving across the ground concerned him most, Hussein did notice two odd things in the sky. One was a silver airplane, not like the big machines he’d seen flying into Mogadishu, but something a bit smaller. In the distance, the thing turned round and round as it fell from the sky. Maybe someone skilled with big weapons had shot down the flying machine. Praise be to Allah if that turned out true. Yet the silver airplane trailed no fire or smoke. A very strange sight for Hussein’s young eyes.

  The other thing he understood better. A huur, a marabou stork, flapped across the battle zone with a calmness Hussein envied. What glory to glide across the land so free and untroubled. To float on the wind, to find food whenever needed. But perhaps the stork flew so tranquilly because of all the bleeding and fighting below it, and not in spite of the violence.

  For the stork was a messenger of death. The old women used to tell how the stork could see the angel of death come to take souls away. Abdullahi would say the stork flew for the infidels. Hussein wondered if the stork flew for him—or for Ibn.

  Maybe the stork flies for all of us, Hussein thought.

  He turned his eyes from the bird, looked back down to the ground and to the situation around him. Unlike Ibn, Hussein was not yet a martyr; he still had things he must do. And though he did not like Abdullahi, Abdullahi’s instructions had made clear the task before the soldiers of God. The orders had come straight from the Sheikh.

  A large group of infidel stooges, slaves to the Crusaders, had moved into territory only recently retaken by al-Shabaab. They had come in greater numbers and had set up lines around the town of Ras Kamboni. This would not stand. To beat back these stooges, the soldiers of God would not take them on all at once. Instead, the soldiers would concentrate their attack on one point in the stooge line. Some of the boys did not grasp all of Abdullahi’s words, but Hussein understood: Shoot again and again at the same spot. Just the way he had opened a hole in that armored vehicle in Djibouti. Once the hole opened, rush into the opening and press the attack. Fire on the flanks of an enemy thrown into panic. Even one without learning could see how this worked. One needed only to think. Hussein did not know why, for some, these things required so much explaining.

  Ahead, Hussein saw the staging point for the attack, a collection of four wattle-and-daub houses on the outskirts of Ras Kamboni. One thatch roof had caught fire. Maybe a tracer round or sparks from a rocket-propelled grenade had ignited the dry thatch. Wind whipped the flames into a crackling fury, and gray smoke billowed into the air. The burning thatch smelled like the dry kindling a woman might use to start a cooking fire.

  One of the older men lay on the ground to the left of the burning home. In a prone position, he aimed his AK-47 toward trees behind the little village. A slight rise in the terrain in front of him offered some protection from infidel bullets. The man looked behind him. He motioned for fellow fighters to join him.

  Hussein broke from behind an acacia
and ran, hunched low, toward the swale where the man lay. Hussein’s sheathed machete bounced on his hip, and the grenade in his vest pocket dug at his side. Gunfire barked from everywhere—one or two shots at a time, then a sizzle of automatic fire. To Hussein’s right, another boy ran forward as well. Something hit the boy, and he tumbled to the ground. The boy came to rest sprawled on his back with his rifle sling tangled around his arm. He did not move. Hussein reached the swale and dived into it. Struck the dirt in a way that jammed his extra magazines against his breastbone. That hurt, but he said nothing.

  “What happened on the road?” the man asked. The man wore a black shemagh and a green tunic, with a vest laden with pouches for magazines, grenades, and a radio. Hussein had seen him before but did not know his name. One of the Sheikh’s lieutenants, probably equal in rank to Abdullahi.

  “We killed a truck full of stooges,” Hussein said. “Another truck came along and it got away, but I shot a man on that truck, too.”

  “Very good,” the man said. He raised his arm and pointed. “There are stooges in the woods there behind the village.”

  More al-Shabaab men gathered nearby. Three took cover behind an overturned drinking trough near the houses. Two others found concealment in a dry gully. All five started firing toward trees beyond the village. Hussein could not see their targets.

  A voice came from the radio, and the man next to Hussein rolled onto his side. “Qibla, Qibla, Qibla,” the voice called. A code name for this man, Hussein supposed. When praying, Qibla was the direction one faced toward Mecca.

  The man pulled out the radio and spoke into it. “Qibla here,” he said.

  “Sheikh here,” the man on the other end said. Hussein recognized the voice. “Did you see the airplane circle down?” the Sheikh asked.

  “I did,” Qibla said. “What of it?”

  “Make sure it does not leave. Destroy it. Shoot the pilot. Do whatever you must.”

  “Understood,” Qibla said.

  “The famous American has been flying around Somalia. This may be the plane. I want these people captured or dead.”

  “Praise be to Allah.”

  “Sheikh out.”

  Hussein looked toward the wooded area that concealed the infidel troops. He saw a man with a rifle get up, run a few yards, and take cover again. These stooges from Kenya or Ethiopia or wherever should have stayed home, Hussein thought. The Sheikh and the other men said the stooges had no right to oppose the will of God.

  The enemy soldier began firing. Smoke from his rifle gave away his position. Hussein took careful aim. Squeezed off two shots. The stooge dropped and fired no more.

  “Did you hear the Sheikh’s orders?” Qibla asked.

  “About the airplane?” Hussein said.

  “Yes.”

  “I do not see it now,” Hussein said. “Where did it land?”

  “Beyond those trees,” Qibla answered.

  “Is there an airport here?”

  “No. It just landed in a field.”

  Very strange. Hussein did not know airplanes could do that. No matter. He just needed to get within firing range of it. Or better yet, get close enough to use his grenade.

  “What is the best way to cripple an airplane?” Hussein asked.

  “If you see the pilots sitting in the front, shoot through the glass. If you do not see the pilots, shoot at the engines.”

  “I can do that.”

  More and more al-Shabaab fighters converged on the village. Three men with belts of ammunition draped around their shoulders came from the direction of the road. One carried a large machine gun; Hussein did not know the exact type. They took up a position beside one of the burning wattle-and-daub homes and low-crawled into some weeds. The man with the machine gun extended metal legs from the barrel and rested the weapon on the ground. The other two men took off their belts of bullets and fed one of the belts into the machine gun. The gunner began to fire, and the weapon spewed ammunition at such a rate that the noise sounded like the long roar of a lion. Yes, Hussein thought, we are lions of jihad.

  The stooges fired back. Frustration burned in Hussein’s chest; he could not see where the enemy hid.

  But he could see where their bullets struck. Dirt flew into the air all around him. Rounds slammed so close that grit stung his eyes. No bullets hit him, though. At least not yet. Lucky—or perhaps a blessing from Allah—that he had joined Qibla at this low place in the ground. Hussein wondered if he could count on any sort of luck or protection. Nothing had protected that poor, simple Ibn, despite the faith he had placed in those cowrie shells. A soldier must have faith, to be sure. But he must also think.

  More soldiers of God made it to the rally point. A squad of five men and boys ran into the village. Two of them carried grenade launchers.

  The plan was working. In his excitement, Hussein forgot his bitterness about Ibn’s wasteful death. He forgot his resentment that Abdullahi gave out so much punishment and so little food. He forgot everything but the urge to bring battle to the enemy.

  He rose to charge forward. Qibla grabbed his arm.

  “Wait,” Qibla ordered. “Let them put down more suppressing fire first.”

  Very well. Hussein could wait. No sense wasting whatever short life he had left. And if important Americans lurked nearby, he wanted to live long enough to see them. And take them prisoner. And kill them.

  The fighters with launcher tubes readied their weapons. Two of them fired, and their rocket-propelled grenades whooshed toward the infidels. Explosions rocked the enemy lines. The noise of battle rose all around Hussein. He had never seen such fierce combat; al-Shabaab usually set up ambushes or surprise attacks on unarmed gaalos or kafirs. Hussein had seen army battles like this only in old movies projected onto bedsheets in the alleyways of Mogadishu.

  He felt no great fear. He remained calm enough to think, to know Qibla gave good advice to wait. If Abdullahi would beat him for merely losing a magazine full of bullets or misplacing a machete, then surely Allah would punish Hussein for losing his life before the proper time.

  Hussein saw movement behind the trees. More stooges in their camouflage-patterned uniforms. He raised his weapon and fired. One of the stooges fell. Hussein continued firing one shot at a time until the rifle emptied. He could not tell if he hit anyone else. He pulled a fresh magazine from his vest and slapped it against the release lever to knock away the empty. Clicked in the new mag. Cycled the bolt. Scanned for more targets. Qibla raised himself for a better view as well.

  There. A stooge aimed over a pile of sandbags.

  Hussein lined up the notch and post of his sights. Just before he pressed the trigger, flames spat from the stooge’s muzzle.

  Despite gunfire cackling all around him, Hussein heard the bullets strike Qibla. The impacts sounded like a halal butcher whacking a blade into the ribs of a goat. Something warm spattered Hussein’s cheek. He ducked, turned to see Qibla collapsed, facedown and bleeding. Exit wounds between his shoulder blades and the back of his neck.

  Nothing in Hussein’s sparse training told him how to help someone badly hurt. Whether the wounded lived or died depended on the will of Allah. And when Hussein turned Qibla over, he could see his lack of knowledge did not matter. Though Hussein knew nothing of medicine, he knew dead, extinguished eyes when he saw them. He also knew that sound of a final breath, a rattling sigh.

  Hussein looked away from the body and crouched low in the swale. In his mind, the situation around him began to form itself the way one begins to see the landscape as the sun comes up. Hussein could not set a word to this concept; he knew only that if he observed and thought, he could grasp things more clearly. A soldier of God must trust the mind that God gave him.

  What he saw was this: At the point where al-Shabaab meant to pierce the enemy’s line, the enemy was weakening. Hussein had killed at least one of the stooges himse
lf. The enemy’s fire came in short spasms now. In a few minutes, the al-Shabaab fighters could probably move forward and then attack to either side. He could not see where the infidel airplane had landed, but the thing had to be beyond the trees somewhere.

  Hussein drew in a deep breath, readied himself to move forward. Breeze lifted dust into the air. Clouds scudded fast overhead, as if they wanted to withhold rain and fly out of Somalia as quickly as possible. Judging from the dust and dry vegetation, the clouds must have withheld for many days.

  One of the al-Shabaab men fired another rocket grenade. The projectile seared into the stooges’ line. Exploded in a tangle of thorn scrub and sandbags. A storm of smoke, sparks, grit, splinters, and metal shards boiled from the point of impact. The concussion stunned Hussein for a moment. A ringing sounded in his ears, and little points of silver swam in his eyes. His mind went all muddy, but he blinked and shook his head, and his thoughts came together again.

  Gunfire no longer pocked the ground around him. The firefight continued to swirl to either side, but in front of Hussein, the line had opened. From somewhere along the battle line to the left, Abdullahi reappeared with two other fighters. They ran bent over with their heads ducked low like men caught in a monsoon downpour.

  “Go!” Abdullahi shouted. “Move up!”

  Hussein sprang from the swale. He did not look back at Qibla, or whatever the man’s real name was. Hussein ran forward with his AK pointed in front of him, legs pumping, lungs burning. The weapon’s sling dug into his shoulder. Sweat ran into his eyes. Smoke salted the air he inhaled. He sprinted past the burning house and up to what remained of the stooges’ sandbagged position.

  One of the enemy soldiers lay dead from a bullet wound to the chest. Probably the man Hussein had shot. Another body—or maybe two others—spilled across the ground. The explosion from the rocket grenade had torn them up so badly Hussein could not tell which parts belonged where. He wondered if the hand grenade in his pocket could do equal damage.

  A bullet sang past Hussein’s head. He dived behind the sandbags. Checked his magazine and fire selector: still plenty of rounds, still set for single shots. A bead of his sweat splashed onto the AK’s receiver. Hussein wiped his brow with his torn sleeve.