Task Force Desperate

by Peter Nealen

  “We need to go now, while they are disorganized,” Baird said. “They might not follow.”

  Alek didn’t look at him, but kept watching the activity around the old deuce-and-a-half trucks. “They will. Their commander has a vested interest in killing us now. We’ve made him look bad.”

  Baird frowned. “That is not how they usually work. We have hurt them badly, twice. They will not want to press further.”

  “Their commander isn’t a skinny,” Alek said, finally turning to face him. “Can’t see much detail, but he’s not black, and he’s not acting like a warlord. He’s acting like a trained infantry commander with a concrete mission.” He locked eyes with Baird. “And I’m pretty sure that mission is to take down anyone trying to get out of Baardheere. That means us. And if he’s not a skinny, that means he probably doesn’t have a lot of concern for using up a few more of them to accomplish his mission.”

  “Particularly if he’s an Arab,” I pointed out. A lot of Arabs, especially in Africa, held black Africans in contempt at best. Sudan was the prime example of this attitude, as the predominantly Arab government slaughtered black Muslims in Darfur and black Christians in South Sudan.

  Baird was nodding thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes sense, given what’s been going on. The Kalifah advisors want strategic control of the Horn of Africa. They don’t really give a damn about the people here. Of course they’d see Somali fighters as expendable.”

  Danny looked at me. “You think you can nail him from the roof of one of the trucks?”

  Alek and Baird turned to look at me. I squinted to the east, trying to gauge the wind. “If he stays put for a couple more minutes, easy day,” I replied. I turned and hollered down the line, “Hank, you want to spot for me?”

  Hank nodded silently, and heaved himself to his feet. I went to the HiLux, where we had the long guns stashed, and drew out my Sako.

  It took some doing to get both of us up on top of the UAZ. I‘m kind of long and lanky, but Hank is short, built like a fireplug, and for some reason objects to using his three-inch long goatee as a handle to haul him up. Fortunately, since the Bukankha was kind of a van, there was enough space for the two of us and the rifle. The TRG is a long weapon, and takes up a bit of room. I unzipped its drag bag, and laid it out as a shooter mat, both for the padding to give the steel bipods something to grip, and to keep from burning myself on the steel roof of the vehicle.

  Hank was prone beside me, almost on top of my left side, with a spotting scope laid over the top of an assault pack he’d grabbed at random out of one of the vehicles. He settled in as I popped the lens caps and settled in behind the rifle, getting my body lined up to absorb as much of the recoil as possible without throwing the muzzle off on the first shot. I was already concentrating on controlling my breathing, slow and shallow.

  “Eleven fifty,” Hank murmured. “Wind…five right.”

  I picked out the commander. Alek was right; the guy was unmistakably an advisor. He was dark, but not black. I couldn’t make out a lot of facial features at eleven hundred fifty meters, but he appeared to be an Arab; either Egyptian or Sudanese. While most of his troops were dressed in various civilian clothes, equipped with bandoliers at most, and older Soviet or Chinese weapons, he was in desert camouflage, with a soft cap, chest rig, and a Beretta AR70 or similar knockoff.

  “Shoulda blended in with your troops a little more, Achmed,” I whispered. “Shooter ready.”

  “On you,” Hank said.

  I let out my breath, relaxed, and squeezed the trigger. It broke like glass, and the rifle slammed back into my shoulder with a thunderous boom. I worked the bolt before even getting back on glass to see the aftermath.

  “Hit,” Hank reported. “Upper left chest. He ain’t getting up from that.”

  In spite of Hank’s optimism, I stayed on glass. I wanted to make sure, for one thing, that old boy hadn’t been wearing body armor, in which case he might be able to get up. I’d had a buddy get hit with a 7.62 NATO AP round in the plate, and just feel a shove.

  I also wanted to see if dropping the commander had the desired effect, or if I needed to start spending ammo on more of them.

  The commander lay in the dust, his tan cammies quite visible against the red dirt. He wasn’t moving, and no one was rushing to aid him, either. In fact, a few were staring in shock at the corpse of their erstwhile leader, while the rest were either running for cover or piling into the trucks.

  “I think that did it, buddy,” Hank said, still peering through the spotting scope.

  I came off the scope, and started unloading the rifle to slip it back in the drag bag. “I think you may be right. Sure looks like that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

  Hank chuckled as he stowed the spotting scope and went to drop off the side of the van. “Or the camel jockey’s.”

  I just shook my head. “Even for you, that was bad. I mean, it was just sloppy.”

  He dropped to the ground, grinned, and shrugged. “It’s been a long week. I’m a little off.”

  I handed down the drag bag, then followed it. Alek nodded to us once, and then headed for his truck. I took the drag bag back from Hank, carried it over to the HiLux, stowed it, and then headed for the Land Cruiser.

  The LaB cordon wasn’t going to give us any more trouble. We’d definitely do some antitracking on the way out, but they’d have to find another leader who could beat and cajole them back together and back after us, and that would take some time. We could make the best of that time, and hopefully be at the helos and moving before they could get anywhere near us.

  We just had to move fast.

  I can’t say that moving fast across the Somali desert is that much fun.

  If you were into Baja racing, it might be fun for about the first hour. After that, it just gets punishing. No matter how padded the seat, and these seats weren’t all that well padded anymore, the bouncing starts to hammer your tailbone and send shocks up your spine that you’re sure will cause some lasting pain later in life, should there be a later in life. Add in even our lightweight body armor, ammo, and weapons knocking around, and it gets worse.

  It took five hours to cover the red, rocky badlands between Baardheere and Garbahaarrey. Nobody talked much, just keeping an eye out for further pursuit. The last we saw of the LaB force that had come after us, they were scrambling back south toward Baardheere in a cloud of red dust. But, while we were technically within the Ethiopian sphere of control, the truth was that anywhere outside of the little enclaves around the Ethiopian garrisons, Somalia proper was still as lawless and wild as ever. Bandits and militias were an ever-present threat.

  As we moved away from the Juba, the main source of water, the country got increasingly barren. Though it had been carved by streams and flash floods in the past, for the most part it was now a wasteland of dry, dust-choked washes and eroded rock outcroppings. The tenacious green scrub remained, drawing what little water it could out of the ground. The terrain slowed us down; we had to stop twice to get the Bukankhas unstuck.

  Finally, as the sun started to dip toward the horizon, Garbahaarrey started to come into view.

  It wasn’t much--just a group of brown stucco houses and a white mosque surrounded by the same scrubby trees and bushes. Our little convoy angled to the west of the town, where a long dirt airstrip had been carved out of the bush.

  There wasn’t any sort of airport facility; the strip was just there. There were a few prefabs at one end that looked out of place; I suspected they were where Baird’s people kept the helos. An old twin-engine Antonov sat at the northeast end of the strip. It was dusty, but all the windows were intact, and it looked like it still had the engines and props in one piece. It would probably still fly.

  We were alert, in spite of the spine-pounding trip and the heat. There had been raids in Garbahaarrey barely a month ago. Being in the passenger seat of the Land Cruiser, I had a good view of the town as we got closer. I was watching for anything--vehicles, pat
rols, sniper positions.

  I didn’t see a damned thing. The town was quiet, and movement was minimal. A couple donkeys cropped what little greenery they could find outside a house on the outskirts. A woman watched us from the window. A couple of kids squatting in the dust outside another house stopped playing to watch us, but otherwise showed no reaction.

  As I had expected, the lead UAZ took us right to the prefab hangars on the west side of the strip. As it slowed and stopped, and the rest of our vehicles spread out into a loose perimeter around it, a short, skinny man burned so dark by the sun I might have thought him to be an Arab if not for the fact that his eyes were so light blue they were striking even from inside the vehicle, and his hair was a blond so bleached by the sun it was almost white, came out to meet us.

  He was dressed in a white t-shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals. He also had a leather pistol belt slung around his hips, and an FN HiPower in his hand. Baird got out of the UAZ and walked toward him. The blond man, on seeing Baird, grinned widely and embraced the former CIA man, slapping him heartily on the back.

  I got out, with a needless admonishment to Rodrigo to keep the engine running. Alek was already out of the HiLux, and Danny was coming over from his truck. We converged on Baird and the blond man, who was talking rapidly to Baird in slightly Afrikaans-accented English.

  “…all ready to go,” he was saying. “They’re gassed up, and I went over them just this morning. As soon as you are ready to launch, we can lift.”

  Baird turned to us as we came up. “What do you think?” he asked. “Do we need to spare a few hours to rest, or do you want to launch now?”

  “We’d best take a few hours,” Danny said. “I know we’re on the clock here, but fatigue is going to be our worst enemy the longer this goes on. Tired shooters make mistakes, and we can’t afford mistakes at this point.”

  Alek was nodding, and looked at me. I had to agree. “I don’t want to push this too far to the right, but we need to get some shut-eye. We’re not going to do those guys any good if we miss something because we’re ready to drop.”

  It was agreed. First we set security, with about a quarter of our guys and Baird’s watching the perimeter, while the rest loaded our gear on the birds. While that was going on, I checked with Baird that we had confirmation from his contacts down south. He assured me he did, that they’d meet us with vehicles, a place to go firm, and a meeting set up for Imad and Spider. “I’m on top of it,” he said.

  “Not trying to question you too much,” I said, “just haven’t had a lot of good luck with other people’s arrangements so far this trip.” He nodded knowingly; we’d told him about the clusterfuck at Socotra and Hobyo.

  “We’ll be fine, at least up until we get into Kismayo,” he said. “After that, of course, all bets are off.”

  I nodded, and went back to making sure my ruck was secured properly in the Alouette. I’d be one of the guns covering Imad and Spider on their insert.

  After that, we found what space we could to stretch out in the shade of the prefab, and tried to get some sleep. For most of us, myself included, it wasn’t that hard. We’d been in either condition orange or red for the better part of three weeks. That alone, never mind the mileage we’d covered, the heat, and the limited food and water, was exhausting.

  It seemed like I’d barely closed my eyes when somebody was kicking my boot. I opened my eyes with a grunt, and sat up, rubbing the grit out of them. My tormenter had by this time moved on to somebody who wasn’t moving.

  It took a few minutes to get my head together, a sure sign that, in spite of the circumstances, I was getting tired enough that my edge was starting to slip. It bothered me, and I smacked myself in the back of the head a couple times to make sure I was awake and ready to work. After that, it was short work to throw on my vest and grab my rifle, then start helping to push the birds out onto the strip.

  It was dark, in a way that you only see out in the wilderness or the Third World. I hadn’t seen any power lines going into Garbahaarrey, and there weren’t any lights showing in the town now that the sun was down. The air had cooled, and a light breeze was blowing in from the east.

  We got the helos out of the prefabs and on to the strip, spaced far enough apart to lift without interfering with each other. Then, with a last huddle to make sure everybody, including the pilots, was on the same page, we loaded up and got ready to lift.

  The Alouette started up smoothly, the engine rapidly climbing in pitch to a howling whine, and the rotors started to turn, biting the air with a staccato roar. After a moment, the bird started to rock as it lifted clear of the ground, the terrain around us momentarily obscured by a massive cloud of dust. In a few more minutes we were high enough to clear the brownout, and turned south.

  There was no moon. We roared over the barren East African desert in near total darkness, broken only by the stars overhead, which, given the lack of light pollution, were brighter and more numerous than I’d seen them in a long time. The pilot, whose name I hadn’t caught, was flying dark and low, without running lights. Looking back, I could just barely see the Cougar hulking behind us, also blacked out. After about an hour, we turned east, while the Cougar rumbled past us, heading south to the lay-up point.

  Soon enough we could see the coastline ahead, and the Juba River as a dark ribbon passing through the desert, meandering toward the sea. Our designated insert point for Imad and Spider was at an intersection a few kilometers outside a nameless village near the mouth of the Juba. The pilot took us on a long, circular turn around the LZ, and from the open door next to Jim, who was manning one of the Pecheneg door guns, I scanned the LZ. There was nothing on the road but the single van that we’d been warned to look for, and as we passed overhead, a red light blinked twice. That was the signal. I let the pilot know we were clear and we started coming in to land.

  The Alouette flared in another billowing cloud of dust, then Imad and Spider were on the ground and running toward the van, with little besides the small satchels they carried with them. They didn’t have any kit but a pair of battered AKMs and a 9mm Makarov, a little bit of water, their bona-fides, and that was about it. I didn’t envy them.

  The pilot had feathered the rotors when he landed, so the dust was settling, and we were able to see our two guys meet up with their driver. Apparently everything was kosher, because I got the “all clear” signal from Imad, so I turned to the pilot, and gave him a thumbs-up. He returned it, and the dust and sand started to get kicked up again, as he gave us lift and started us back into the sky.

  We turned northwest to swing wide around Kismayo, and headed for our lay-up point, where we would wait for word from Imad and Spider. Behind us, the van’s headlights came on, and it started trundling down the dirt road, heading for one of Shabaab’s largest strongholds in the country.

  Chapter 26

  There was no word for three days.

  Our lay-up site was in the middle of nowhere, sixty-two kilometers from Kismayo. There was nothing but dust and low, dark green scrub as far as the eye could see. Baird’s contacts had three HiLuxes and two Unimogs for us, with the requisite armament--two Pechenegs, a PKM, a DShK, and an HK21. We had fuel for the trucks and the helos, water, and chow, even if it was mostly rice and goat. We even had some extra ammo and explosives. I had no idea where they’d scrounged NATO ammo out here, but Baird said that anything was possible if you knew the right people and had money.

  Baird’s contacts were a pair of Darod Somalis who had been part of the Jubaland Initiative before they gave up in disgust as the independent Jubaland failed to materialize. Both were also American expats, one of whom had served in the Army for four years before getting out and immigrating to Kenya to be part of the Initiative. They generally kept to themselves, but I had talked to Aden, the former soldier, enough to know he had lived in Seattle for ten years, and had been stationed at Ft. Lewis. He liked America well enough, but still considered Somalia to be home.

  Both of them had a taste for
rap music that most of us did not share. They stayed under their cammie net, and we stayed under ours, while I tried to keep Disturbed, Metallica, and Lamb of God songs going through my head to counteract the hip-hop from their side.

  It was getting on toward dark on the third day when the sat phone rang.

  Alek grabbed it and answered. It was quiet enough I could hear the single word that was spoken before the connection was severed.

  “Wildfire.”

  That was bad news. It meant Imad and Spider had been compromised, and whoever had made the call was heading for our preplanned emergency RV site, hopefully with both of them. Either way, it meant one thing for us. We immediately started grabbing our gear and getting ready to move. Bob ran off to warn the pilots to start getting the Alouette ready to lift.

  I grabbed Alek. “I’ll take Jim and Hank,” I said. “We’ll pick ‘em up, hose down whoever might be after ‘em, and get back here.”

  He nodded. “Go.” I already had my kit on and my rifle in hand. I barked for Jim and Hank, and sprinted toward the helo.

  Hans, the blond-haired South African, was already in the pilot’s seat, and had the rotors turning. We scrambled aboard, Jim and Hank taking the door guns, and no sooner were we on than we were rocking into the darkening sky.

  I don’t think we were more than a hundred fifty feet up before Hans pitched the nose down and sent us racing over the desert. He’d made it clear that he wasn’t all that invested in the overall mission, but he was invested in his part of it, namely, getting us where we needed to go quickly, and getting us out again. The guy was a daredevil who didn’t give a shit about the danger. He just liked to fly.