Task Force Desperate

by Peter Nealen

  “Won’t happen,” I muttered, bitterly. “They’ll just get away with it again, even if we take all their human shields away. None of the bleeding hearts back home will pay us to go after ‘em, especially if one of them becomes the ‘legitimate leader’ of a ‘sovereign country.’” I took a deep breath, trying to dissipate the poisonous rage. “You’re right, though, damn it. But don’t expect me to thank you for it, not yet.”

  He grinned, and clapped me on the shoulder again. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Now let’s go see how Danny’s doing.”

  Chapter 13

  We met Danny coming out of the shed. He shook his head before we could even ask anything, and pointed toward the main house as he walked past. Alek and I looked at each other. Alek shrugged, and we turned around and followed him inside. The door slammed shut behind me and Danny turned to lean against the wall.

  “He’s cracking,” he said confidently. “Little fucker hasn’t had any real training.” He rubbed a hand over his two-day stubble. “I already have one particularly interesting little bit of information about him.” He grinned tiredly and humorlessly. “That’s Ali Mustapha, the Emir of Dubai’s nephew, in there.”

  That presented a whole new wrinkle to this already nasty little jumblefuck. There was a lot of money in Dubai, and there were a lot of other connections throughout the Arab world. Whatever information we got from junior, he could turn into a serious problem, especially if his uncle got word that he’d been snatched. “Any idea if he’s here on business, or is he just joyriding along for a little jihad over the summer?” Alek asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” Danny admitted. “Could be either, but he sure seems to have expected it to be a walk in the park. Kid’s scared shitless.”

  “Prestigious,” Alek said, contempt dripping from every syllable. “Little punk wanted a taste; well he got it, didn’t he? And now he’s regretting it.”

  I had, if anything, even less sympathy for the kid than Alek did. If he wanted to play at “kill the infidels,” he got to deal with the backlash. It still didn’t take away from a problem that was starting to niggle at the back of my mind, now that I was getting over my initial reaction, and accepting that we’d have to move to hunt down the rest of the hostages. “One problem,” I said. “Assuming that you can wring out everything he knows, Danny, what the fuck are we going to do with him? I’m all for shooting him and leaving him in a ditch, but that could cause even more problems. Can we disappear him to Gitmo or someplace? And if so, how?”

  Danny nodded. “That’s the next thing I have to do, is make a few calls to arrange for processing of this guy once I’m done with him. Right now I’m just concentrating on mission-essential information; how many hostages, where, how long, etc. He’s likely to be plenty valuable on other levels as well, but we’ve got to get him to the people who specialize in these sorts of things. However much he knows, it’s going to take a long time to squeeze him dry.”

  He knuckled his eyes. The guy looked exhausted. Most of us had at least managed to get a couple hours of sleep, but I realized that Danny had gone right to work on Mustapha as soon as we got back, which put him at a minimum of thirty-six hours on his feet. “How are the guys we got back doing?”

  “I haven’t checked on them yet,” Alek admitted. “We’ve been a little preoccupied with the president of this little flyspeck country apparently getting assassinated.”

  “What?” Danny looked up abruptly. “When did this happen?”

  “About an hour ago,” Alek said. “I’m sorry, brother; I didn’t realize you hadn’t heard. Suicide truck bomb to the south side of the palace. The government’s saying he’s still alive, the rebels are saying he’s dead, and the Ethiopians are talking a lot but not moving. Yet.”

  “Fuck,” Danny cursed tiredly. “We already looking at a way out?”

  “Out of the city, at least,” Alek replied. “Depends on how, and how fast, we can get the liberated hostages out of the country and back into US hands.”

  “I might have some help inbound on that,” Danny said. “A bulk carrier just passed through the Suez Canal about two days ago. It has a South African registry, but is owned by a front company; it’s an Agency asset, one that is technically ‘off the books.’” He grinned lopsidedly. “Keeps the budget-cutters from snagging it. It actually does some legitimate business, but is primarily intended to be in the vicinity of littoral operations, so that officers have some sort of seagoing transport to call on.”

  “Great,” I responded. “And we’ve got two Zodiacs and an old transport plane. Not going to help us much getting twenty-odd bodies out to a ship.”

  Danny chuckled. “Which is why it always has an AP.1-88 hovercraft in its hold.”

  I stared at him blankly. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “It’s a cargo/passenger air cushion vehicle,” he explained. “Can carry up to 80 passengers. They should be offshore by tonight or early tomorrow. Under cover of darkness, the hovercraft will come in, pick up the hostages, and get them out to the ship, where they’ll be cared for until they can be returned to the States.”

  “That is of course assuming that the hovercraft doesn’t get shot to shit coming in,” Alek pointed out. “How long is the ship going to loiter?”

  “Not long,” was the frustrated reply. “Langley has determined that it needs to mimic the movements of a genuine freighter as closely as possible. It can be in the area, but it can’t stay, like Bryan Van Husten is doing with the Lynch. Speaking of which, how much longer is he going to be able to stay put?”

  Alek grimaced. “Not long. His partners are already making unhappy noises about the risk he’s running, not to mention the fees that he’s incurring, not getting his cargo to its destination in time.”

  I hadn’t heard that part yet. It was sounding like what little support we had was starting to evaporate, and we were still stuck out here in the cold, figuratively speaking, with a mission that nobody else was willing to stick their necks out for.

  Danny gusted a sigh. “Let’s go check in with my ship, make sure they’re on schedule.”

  I jerked a thumb at the shed. “What about Junior?”

  “Heh. Let him stew for a bit.”

  The ship, the MV Baxley, was on schedule, and in fact the ACV would be making landfall that night. We set to getting the hostages ready to move. Danny disappeared back into the shed, to work on his “guest” a little bit more, hoping to wring the information we needed out before we had to turn him over to handlers on the Baxley.

  I was prepping to go out with Nick, scouting for another hidey-hole. Frankly, this one was starting to put my teeth on edge; we’d been in one place too long. I wasn’t the only one, either; with the common Recon/SOF background most of us shared, staying in a hide for very long got uncomfortable. Where else we were going to set up was looking a little problematic, but we were primarily looking at setting up in what was left of Lemonier. There were a few squatters who had settled in there, but for the most part, it was abandoned. We’d be leaving at nightfall.

  We never got out. I had just finished double-checking my kit and weapons, and lay down on my cot, sweat-soaked as it was, when something stopped me. At first I couldn’t place it; it was faint, far-off. But after a moment I nailed it, and my blood ran cold.

  It was a distant rumble, made up of the roar of engines, the squeal of treads, the tramp of feet, and the thump of rotor blades. The Ethiopians were moving, coming up the main roads, aiming to secure the city. And we were still in it.

  I swung my legs back off the cot and thumped my feet to the floor, accompanied by another five pairs as everybody else who was trying--generally without success--to sleep in the stifling heat got up, grabbing for weapons and gear. Bob and Rodrigo made a beeline for Dave’s clinic, to get the hostages ready to move.

  “Get the fuck up!” Alek boomed unnecessarily as he came in the door. “We’ve got company; we’ve got to be ready to move, now.”

  Tim was already starting to br
eak down the bare-bones comm suite he’d left up, and Hank, Larry, and I ran outside to get the vehicles prepped, dragging our kit with us. Fortunately, old habits die hard, especially in what was, for all intents and purposes, enemy territory. We’d been packed for a breakout the entire time we’d been in place. Nick and Jim were tearing maps and photos off the walls as the rest of us pounded out into the courtyard.

  We were too late. As I came out into the courtyard, two BTR-60s and a Humvee, all flying Ethiopian colors from their antennas, rolled up to the compound and stopped, troops pouring out of the backs of the BTRs and deploying on the street. It was a good perimeter, but it should be, considering how much training the Ethiopians had gotten from the United States in the last ten years.

  We stopped and waited, fanned out across the courtyard, facing the gate, as a Humvee rolled up to it. It was an older job, without the up-armor kit or the protected turret. Thin sheet-steel sides, and an open turret with a DShK heavy machine gun mounted on it. The gunner was turned to face us, though he kept the muzzle of the gun pointed at the sky. Four more Ethiopian soldiers came in on the flanks of the vehicle, covering the gate, though their AKM and G3 rifles remained pointed at the dirt.

  The three of us faced them quietly, letting our own weapons hang from their slings, or, in Hank’s case, carefully placing them on the ground. I kept my hands out to my sides. Damned if I was going to reach for the sky like a hostage.

  The passenger door of the Humvee opened, and a man with a thin mustache and the shoulder boards of a senior lieutenant stepped out. A moment later the back door opened, and our bearded visitor from the clinic, who had tipped us off about Balbala, got out. He was now in uniform, his shoulder boards bearing the four stars of a captain. Together, the two men walked toward us, unarmed. That was a good sign, or at least I hoped it was.

  The captain strolled up to us as though it was just another day, we weren’t armed to the teeth, and there weren’t soldiers with enough firepower to go through our vehicles long-ways behind him. “Good afternoon, my friends,” he said, and reached his hand out to me. Slightly nonplused, I shook it. His grip was firm and strong. “How is the woman we helped your friend to heal?” he asked me. “Is she recovering well?”

  “Last I heard, yes,” I replied carefully. “The people we help don’t always come back to tell us how they’re doing after we send them home.”

  “That is good to hear,” he said, doubtless referring to my assessment of the woman’s health. “And your countrymen in Balbala? Were you able to contact them?”

  “As a matter of fact we were,” I replied. I was tempted to relax, if ever so slightly. The man seemed to genuinely be on our side, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time overseas, is that one is only ever on his own side. If the interests of his country matched ours at the moment, so be it. If not, then he would turn on us. He might do it regretfully, and I liked to think that this man would regret such an action, but he’d do it anyway, and in a heartbeat.

  “And are they well?” he asked. His tone never changed, it remained polite and conciliatory. Yet I sensed there was an unyielding hardness in the man if crossed. I wasn’t sure why he was playing this polite double-talk game, but as long as his men weren’t leveling weapons, I was willing to play along. Through the corner of my eye, I could see Alek and Jim watching from the doorway. No weapons were in sight, but I knew they were there, ready to go into action in a heartbeat.

  “The few that we found are, generally speaking, yes,” I answered. “Some are better than others, but they will be going elsewhere soon.” I could feel Hank’s eyes on the back of my neck, and I could almost hear Larry thinking about how he might be able to get around on the flank before this went pear-shaped. I started praying that nobody did anything stupid. I didn’t want to get gunned down in a courtyard by Ethiopians.

  “I am glad to hear that,” he replied, stepping closer. I resisted the urge to back up. He lowered his voice. “I am sorry, my friend, but we are here to make sure that you leave. My superiors know of your presence, thanks to me, but cannot allow you to continue your operations in the city once we have secured it.”

  I grunted. “You sound pretty optimistic about ‘securing’ the city,” I said. “The locals haven’t had a lot of luck in that department.”

  He smiled coldly. “The Djiboutian National Army is not the Ethiopian Defense Force, my friend. We will secure the city, and end the violence that is threatening the stability of all of East Africa. But you will not be here.” He gestured to the BTRs outside. “These will stay here to make sure you do not get into trouble. As soon as you are ready to leave, they will escort you to your point of departure.”

  “And what if there are more Americans in the city?” I asked.

  “Then we will find them, and make sure they are safely returned to your country,” he answered. Then he stepped back, and looked around at us. “You have twenty-four hours to prepare to leave. Good day, my friends.” He turned on his heel and walked back to the Humvee, the senior lieutenant following at his heels. The Humvee roared off, but the soldiers remained at the gate. Two now watched the outside, but two were still faced in, toward us.

  I jerked my head at Larry and Hank, and led the way back inside. This called for some renewed planning.

  It was not a happy conversation.

  We were stuck, truth be told. None of us wanted to fight the Ethiopians, even if we could. It was a losing proposition from the get-go, and it wasn’t our mission here. We were in Djibouti to find American hostages, and if we killed a few terrorists in the process, so much the better. That was it.

  As we were discussing the matter, Danny came in. “Somebody mind explaining to me why there are Ethiopian troops at our gate?” he demanded.

  “Sorry, Danny,” Alek apologized. “We didn’t want to interrupt you, and figured you’d find out soon enough, anyway.” He filled Danny in on the situation and the Ethiopian captain’s ultimatum. Danny frowned, and rubbed his stubble.

  “I suppose it’s just as well,” he said, jerking a thumb in the general direction of the shed. “Our boy cracked.” He sat down heavily. The lines were getting deeper on his face, and there were dark circles under his eyes. As tired as we all were, Danny had been working at least as hard as we had been, if not more so. He took a deep breath. “They were smart. The hostages aren’t in one place, or even two. They’re scattered all over in groups of twenty or so. I’ve got the locations of two more of these groups. He also let slip the name and general location of a guy who will know where the rest are. Some gomer called Abu Sadiq.”

  “Who the fuck is Abu Sadiq?” Bob asked.

  Danny shrugged. “No idea. Never heard of him. Could be he’s a new player, could be one of the same old bad guys with a new alias. Don’t know.”

  Jim had a thoughtful frown on his face, as he leaned on the table. “So where are the next two groups?”

  Danny smiled, thinly and humorlessly. “Not here. One is in Berbera, across the border in Somaliland. The other is in Qardho, which, if you‘ve never heard of it,” he said in response to the blank looks from all of us, “is a small town in the middle of Puntland.” He scratched his beard. “Abu Sadiq is a little farther away; his main bolt-hole is apparently in Kismayo.” There was a chorus of curses at that. Kismayo was eight hundred miles away, as the crow flies, on the southern tip of the Islamic Emirate of Somalia. As the crow walked, it was more like fifteen hundred miles, through pirates, terrorists, and at least two shooting wars; the continuing civil war between al-Shabaab and the New Federal Parliament of Somalia, backed up by the African Union, and the continuing Kenyan occupation of western Somalia, against the al-Shabaab/Hizb-ut-Islam insurgency.

  And that was assuming we were able to get out of Djibouti without the Ethiopians escorting us the wrong direction. I wouldn’t put it past them to do their damnedest to keep us “out of trouble.”

  “Do we dare go after the hostages first, or Abu Sadiq?” Larry asked. “I’d think it woul
d be better to get the intel first.”

  Alek grimaced and looked at the table. “I wish I knew the answer.” He looked around at all of us. “Opinions, gentlemen? I’m not sure there’s a right way to jump, here. The bad guys probably already know we busted out the first twenty. There’s bound to be a backlash, and soon. Trouble is, if we go after these two groups, we could be condemning the rest to death, while we try to find Abu Sadiq. So here’s the dilemma: do we take what we can now, or try to map out the whole package, and see if we can’t get some SOF support to grab as many of them at once as we can?”

  One by one, each weighed in, and it was pretty unanimous. While we hated to leave those guys in enemy hands longer than absolutely necessary, it just made more sense to try to put the hits as close together as possible.

  Of course, the enemy always gets a vote, too.

  Chapter 14

  True to his word, the captain showed up again the next morning, after a night of sporadic gunfire and explosions. From where we were, it didn’t sound like the Ethiopians were steamrolling the city the way he’d assured us they would, but when I pointed this out, he shook his head emphatically, and insisted that it was just “mopping up.” I wondered where he’d heard that particular euphemism, and if he understood what it usually turned out to mean.

  The Ethiopian soldiers didn’t interfere with us, but made their presence felt anyway. They had been kind enough to supply an ancient Ural 375 truck to help transport the hostages to the shore, where Danny had told them the hovercraft was landing. We had been informed that we would be getting on it, as well, so he had called ahead to have it configured to take our vehicles.

  There was something close to a squad of well-armed troops lining the courtyard as we climbed onto our trucks. Two more Humvees flanked the gate, with DShKs pointed at the sky. The captain smiled and waved as we started out the gate. He had helped us with the Balbala raid, but was more than happy to see us gone.