by By Jon Land
Danielle Barnea eyed the huge stacks of flour, foodstuffs, and seed.
“You wish to inspect? Please, please . . .”
Danielle moved closer to the sacks, each of them clearly stamped with the United Nations insignia. Outside, the last of the Somali day was fading fast, leaving behind steam-baked air that smelled to Danielle like burning rubber. In these same Mogadishu streets, eighteen American Special Operations troops had lost their lives more than a decade before. That reminded Danielle of some of the ill-fated missions she had been lucky to survive during her days with Israel’s Sayaret Matkal, the elite Special Ops force responsible for actions undertaken outside the country. That seemed like a lifetime ago now. So much had come and gone that had led to this operation, brought her here not on behalf of Israel, but the United Nations. Ten months and at least that many assignments for the U.N.’s Safety and Security Service, and it still felt odd.
“You like?” Sahib asked, startling her. He had drawn up close while her mind had been wandering and the smell rising off him was a combination of onions and cheap tobacco. His face was thin, depressions worn into the center of both cheeks that deepened each time he flashed a smile.
She stepped lithely to one side and he tapped one of the sacks, as Danielle watched. He had what looked like a .45 caliber pistol shoved down his baggy pants that billowed over his gaunt frame.
“Is perfect arrangement, yes? United Nations sends for people. We steal before it gets to people. Sell low to brokers who sell high. Everybody win. Makes me feel like capitalist.”
Sahib smiled again, his teeth blindingly white.
Danielle ran her eyes about the warehouse, cataloging everything for her report. She counted four armed guards in addition to Sahib, none of them paying much attention, their assault rifles shouldered. The missing shipments had been plaguing the United Nations for years, boatloads of goods that never reached the poor and needy they were supposed to aid. It was estimated by some that fifty percent of all U.N. shipments to Third World countries like Somalia ended up in the hands of black marketeers, corrupt government officials, or a combination thereof.
”I have medicines too, antibiotics. Good ones. You like?”
Danielle turned back to Sahib. “Not this trip.”
”We ship anywhere, by boat or plane. Just like FedEx. Plane costs more.”
Danielle kept scanning the room, counting the sacks in her mind for her report. Her job here was done. Her cover had held and she had made contact with Sahib, something no other United Nations operative had managed to do. Now she would give Sahib a deposit and provide him with shipping instructions. The balance, of course, would never be paid. The shipping instructions were a sham. U.N. peacekeeping troops stationed twenty miles to the north would seize the stolen goods as soon as she provided the location of the warehouse and security posted in the area.
A high-pitched horn honked behind her and Danielle turned to see an ancient, weathered cargo truck waiting outside the warehouse.
”You will excuse me, yes?”
With that, Sahib trotted away from her and reverently greeted a stout man who had emerged from the passenger side of the truck, preceded by a figure who was clearly his bodyguard as well as driver. The stout man embraced Sahib lightly and then stepped back into Danielle’s line of vision.
She felt something shift in her stomach. The stout man was Sharif ali-Aziz Moussan, an Iraqi terrorist with strong links to al-Qaeda. Rumors that he had been killed during the American invasion had been unfounded, leaving him as one of Iraq’s most sought-after fugitives still at large.
Moussan spoke softly to Sahib. The Somali smiled tensely, his gaze drifting briefly back to Danielle as he explained her presence here. Moussan nodded, apparently satisfied, while Danielle bemoaned the fact she had come here unarmed in the guise of a conduit and broker. After all, this was purely an intelligence-gathering mission; her job was to turn over whatever she learned for further action and no more.
But Sharif ali-Aziz Moussan would be long gone by the time that further action transpired. She watched Sahib lead Moussan toward another section of the warehouse. The bodyguard who had emerged from the truck ahead of Moussan stepped out of the shadows and fell into step behind them.
Danielle’s heart fluttered. She recognized him as well. The man’s name was Hassan Tariq, a colonel in Iraq’s Special Republican Guard, a man who had personally supervised the guerrilla war waged against American and British troops that had been raging since Baghdad fell.
Across the warehouse, Danielle watched Sahib yank back a thick canvas divider to reveal stacks and stacks of weapons ordnance. Too far away to discern anything more specific than that, she drifted closer, keeping behind some semblance of cover as best she could. The language denoting the contents of the crates was French, not a total surprise considering France’s propensity for selling to anyone who could pay. So far as she knew, though, the French arms traders had never done business in this part of the world, meaning this particular shipment must have come from somewhere else or been stolen in transit. Then again, it was also possible the shipment had been smuggled out of Iraq in the early days of the war and brought here for safekeeping until such time as the weapons were needed.
Danielle could read French well enough to recognize the markings on the various crates and boxes: ammunition, assault rifles, grenades, antitank weapons—the crates contained everything a small army needed to wage war, she realized, as Moussan swung suddenly and thrust a finger in her direction.
* * * *
Chapter 4
B
en wheeled the cart loaded with sandwiches and drinks across a gravel playground toward the school. He passed a set of swings which swayed in the light wind and a seesaw flopping slowly up and down. One of the cart’s wheels kept sticking against the gravel and the extra weight of the bucket of ice on the lower shelf made the effort more cumbersome than he had expected. Still, the fact that the school’s electricity, and with it the air conditioning, had been turned off hours before would make the ice very welcome indeed.
A door was thrust open when Ben drew within ten feet of the building. He veered the cart slightly, having aimed it toward a larger set of double doors closer to the classroom where the hostages had been gathered. There was a slight incline the last stretch of the way, and a few of the sandwich trays shifted, nearly sliding over the cart’s small raised lip. Ben held them in place with one hand as he drew near the door, then had to shimmy the cart carefully over the doorjamb to get it into the building.
Ice cubes rattled, jangling against each other. The door slammed closed. Ben felt a pistol barrel smack against his temple. He was torn from the cart and pressed up against the wall.
“Who are you?”
“I don’t speak Spanish.”
”What then?”
”English.”
A powerful hand spun him around. “Who are you?” a dark face set against the even darker hallway demanded in English.
“United Nations! I’m from the U.N. An observer.”
The man looked him over and snickered. “Too late to make peace.”
“It’s never too late,” Ben said, as the gunman riffled through the sandwiches stacked atop the trays.
Ben held his breath and started to slide back toward the door. Almost instantly, the gunman’s hand lashed out and pinned him against the wall again.
“Where you going, Mr. U.N.?”
“I got you the food you requested. My job is done.”
“Not anymore, Mr. Observer,” the gunman said, his mind working. “You come with me and we find a new job for you.”
He smiled, clearly pleased with himself, and prodded Ben back to the cart, pushing him forward when Ben began to wheel it down the white concrete floor.
The classroom was five doors down, darkened save for a few candles and stray flashlight beams, the windows covered by a combination of blinds and black construction paper. The gunman shoved Ben into the room and the cart nearly s
pilled over.
“¿José, quién es este gringo?”
José offered his explanation to a tall, thin man dressed in army fatigues. The tall man nodded at the mention of the United Nations, seemed to approve. Then he reached down and grabbed a sandwich in a filthy hand.
“You eat,” he ordered Ben, thrusting it in his face.
Ben took a bite. The luncheon meat, whatever it was, tasted awful, but it wasn’t poisoned. Ben chewed slowly, scrutinizing the scene around him. The other two terrorists were positioned in opposite corners of the darkened room. The children, terrified and sobbing but hopeful at the sight of the food, sat at their desks, which had been clustered into a circle in the center. The room stank of sweat and fear. Ben noticed a few pools of urine on the floor.
He swallowed, took another bite.
“Enough,” the tall man said, snatching up a few sandwiches for himself. “Children come up and you give them.”
“I brought drinks too. Soda,” Ben said, and watched the tall man’s eyes move to the cart’s lower shelf too. “It’s warm.”
“No shit.”
“But I have ice.”
The tall man gave the cart’s lower shelf a closer look before diving his hand down into the bucket of already melting cubes. Ben sucked in his breath, fearing the tall man would find the pistol concealed in a plastic bag amidst the ice. But he came away only with a handful of cubes and swabbed them along his face, leaving streaks of dirt behind as he moved away and left Ben alone near the cart.
José, meanwhile, herded the kids from their chairs into a stiff, single line. Ben searched the young faces for Salgado’s son, couldn’t decide which one he was.
Just a little closer, he willed. A few more seconds . . .
Ben reached down and dug some ice out into the first plastic cup. Handed it to the first boy in line, along with a soda can and a sandwich. The two terrorists in either far corner were both eating now, the tall man halfway back to the cart when Ben finished serving the second boy and reached down to get the third a cup of ice along with a drink.
Now! It has to be now!
Ben thrust his hand into the ice, deep to the bottom of the bucket, and closed it around the plastic bag containing the nine-millimeter pistol Colonel Riaz had reluctantly provided. His fingers sloshed through more water than he had expected, making him fear the possibility that the gun would jam once he tore it free of the plastic. In the shadow of an instant, he hesitated, then focused again on the two guards in the room’s rear corners busy with their sandwiches. Ben’s eyes had adjusted well enough to the murky light now, the positions of his targets etched onto his mind.
Ben peeled the plastic bag open and slipped the nine-millimeter free. Then he drew the gun from the bucket, squeezing hard to keep the frigid water from turning his fingers slow and stiff. He brought it up ready to fire, turning it on the tall man first since he appeared to be the leader.
The roar was deafening and the gun’s kick was greater than he had expected. The tall man’s eyes bulged in shock as he was pushed backward into the wall, hands clutching for the jagged hole that had appeared in his shirt.
Ears still ringing, Ben twisted and shot José in the face. He could hear the children screaming now, even while he opened fire on the terrorist in the nearer corner, catching him between mouthfuls and before he could trade his sandwich for the assault rifle slung behind him.
The terrorist in the opposite corner, though, had time to bring his rifle around and start shooting before Ben could resteady his pistol. The staccato burst of automatic fire burned through his already clouded hearing and Ben hit the floor in time to hear the chalkboard at his rear explode under the fusillade. He rolled once and came to a halt firing.
Click.
The trigger felt like a lead weight. The pistol had jammed and Ben discarded it. Over his head another spray of fire dug chasms from the wall. He heard the familiar rattle of a spent clip ejecting, followed by the clack of a fresh one being snapped home, and rolled toward the tall man he had shot in the chest.
The tall man still had his submachine gun shouldered and Ben went for it, realizing too late it was pinned under his body. No way he could wrench the barrel anyway but straight up. He pulled the trigger instantly, doing his best to hit the overhead lights.
The sound of glass breaking joined the childrens’ screams and the din of the gunshots reverberating through the room. The glass rained down on the final gunman, distracting him long enough for Ben to tear the submachine gun from the leader’s shoulder. He hit the trigger again and watched the bullets spin the final gunman around in his tracks, resembling a twisted marionette as he smacked into a desk and toppled over on the floor. At that very instant, the door to the room burst open and Colombian soldiers flooded in, led by Colonel Riaz who quickly assessed the situation and ordered his men to stand down.
“I see you did exactly as I instructed, Inspector Kamal,” Riaz said, reaching a hand down to help Ben up from the floor. “Very good work.”
* * * *
Chapter 5
W
hat is she doing here?” Moussan demanded, fixing his piercing eyes on Danielle.
“I’ll take the whole shipment,” she said to Sahib, ignoring Moussan, Tariq, and the weapons supply they had come to procure. “How fast can we arrange for—”
“This will have to wait,” Sahib interrupted. “Something else has ... I am sorry. You understand, yes?”
He grabbed her arm and began to usher her from the warehouse, toward Sharif ali-Aziz Moussan’s truck that would soon be packed with enough weapons to destabilize Baghdad anew. Hassan Tariq watched her the whole way, suspicion dawning in his eyes.
“I will have you taken to a local hotel to wait,” Sahib continued. “I will come for you once this business is complete.”
Sahib whistled for one of his guards. The man hurried over, shifting his rifle from his right shoulder to his left. Sahib jabbered some terse instructions and the man nodded his understanding. Then Sahib forced a smile and jogged back toward Moussan, leaving Danielle alone with the guard.
She followed him out of the warehouse toward a dust-covered sedan parked down the street. The man moved to the driver’s door, paying her no heed, and started to ease himself inside.
Danielle pounced, the moves unfolding before she had a chance to contemplate them, instinct taking over. She saw herself slamming the door when he was halfway in the car, catching the man partly on the hip and partly on the gun he had forgotten to strip from his shoulder.
He grunted, more in surprise than pain, and twisted toward Danielle. She cracked him in the face with an elbow, slammed his face down on the steering wheel, then yanked his limp frame backward and let it slump toward the console.
Next Danielle pried his assault rifle free. She felt the surge of adrenaline slow, leaving cold reason in its place. Sahib still had three guards in the warehouse, not to mention Moussan himself and the deadly Tariq. Danielle didn’t like the odds of a shoot-out, considered the more explosive option of setting the warehouse ablaze. Burn the weapons and think of all the lives that would now be spared as a result. She could live with that.
But in that case Moussan and Tariq would both likely escape, and that she could not live with.
Danielle reached back into the car and swept her palm across the guard’s bloodied face. Her fingers came away wet and warm, and she splattered the blood across her own face. Its acrid stench turned her stomach as she felt along his belt for the pistol she remembered seeing there.
Nothing. And nothing on the seats or floor either. It must have been a different guard she was thinking of, and now a key element of her plan was forfeit. Danielle refocused her thinking and circled round to the passenger side of the car. She stuck a hand through the window and popped open the glove compartment.
A semiautomatic pistol lay there, rusty black and dull from poor upkeep. Danielle took the pistol in her hand, checked its heft. She had never heard of the maker before and didn’
t like the feel. But the clip was full and she jerked the slide backward to chamber the first round before jamming the pistol low on her hip, easily hidden by her sweat-soaked shirt.
Danielle started back toward the warehouse, staggering, bloodied, and seemingly in a panic.
“Help me,” she gasped to the first pair of Sahib’s guards to emerge from inside, collapsing to her knees. A third emerged and began scanning the street.
All three skirted past her, not stopping, and darted into the street. Sahib emerged next, followed closely by Moussan and Tariq, who had drawn and steadied his own weapon.
“My God,” Sahib said, crouching when he saw her bloodied shape on the ground.
As he leaned toward her, Danielle reached up and grabbed him round the throat, spinning him before her as she lurched to her feet. Danielle shot Sahib’s three guards in rapid succession first, then swung toward Tariq. Tariq opened fire just as Sahib attempted to flee, his route taking him right into the path of the bullets, the force of which threw him into Danielle.