by Dick Couch
Now they sat on the tarmac of Yemen’s Aden, International Airport, the searing heat draining what little energy they had left. There was no auxiliary power unit here to push in air-conditioning, nor was the old amphibian equipped for that anyway. They had spent the night there, and Shabal had ordered them to be in their aircraft first thing in the morning, ready to take off.
“Yes, yes, we have been told to just wait a few more minutes,” the first pilot said into his satellite phone. “The vans with our passengers are coming from the port. And, yes, we will call when they are aboard, and we are on the final leg of our journey.” After a further exchange, he ended the call.
“I’m glad you were talking to him,” the second pilot said, scowling. “If you let me talk to him, I’d just tell him to leave us the hell alone and let us do our fucking jobs.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t let you talk to him,” replied Vitaly, the first Russian. Both of them had been mercenary pilots for years, and both had earned more money in their current job than they had ever earned flying bombers for the Soviet Union. Back then, they were young men flying new airplanes. Now they were older men flying museum pieces, but it paid well. Usually they were employed by the Russian mafia to smuggle all manner of contraband around Russia, the former Soviet Republics, and Central Asia. When Shabal approached them and offered them twice what the Russian mafia was paying, they had been more than willing. It had intrigued them that somehow this rough-looking Chechen knew exactly what they were earning from their former employers.
“Yeah, I know I’d probably piss the guy off, and sure, the money’s good, but this guy scares me. I heard he’s some kind of fanatical Muslim, and who knows who’s on his tail. We don’t want to get caught in the crossfire if he decides it’s time for paradise or some other goddamned thing. I don’t like it. I like the money, but I don’t like him. I don’t like any of them.”
“You’re right. These Chechens are all the same, whining about how we raped their country and all that bullshit. And when they get the chance to get it over on us, they take every advantage. But it’s a payday and a good one.”
The second pilot didn’t reply, just shook his head. Even more than two decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ethnic Russians still had a condescending attitude toward anyone from any of their former Republics.
They continued to sit and wait, mopping sweat from their brows and bodies with ragged towels, hoping their passengers arrived before the sat phone jangled again and Shabal continued to micro-manage them.
“Look, Vitaly, here come the two vans,” said the second pilot. “Now maybe we can get going and get out of this fucking heat. I wonder how many of these guys we’re going to have to haul.”
“I dunno, Sergei. Shabal said it was high priority. Maybe three or four; maybe a half dozen.” The Russians watched as the two vans drove right up to the Albatross. There was no airport or tarmac security, or if there was, it had been bought off. A tall, stocky Yemeni alighted from the first van.
“You stay here and get all our takeoff checks done, Sergei. I’ll go meet them and get them aboard.”
“Better you than me,” Sergei replied, as he began to run his hands over the Grumman’s switches, a well-rehearsed routine he’d done hundreds of times since they’d bought this Korean-War-vintage relic on the black market a decade ago.
Sergei allowed his hands to brush across the switches; he no longer needed to look at them. As he did so, he watched Vitaly and the Yemeni engage in an animated conversation. The conversation got more and more animated until he saw Vitaly throw up his hands in a gesture of resignation. What now?
He soon found out. The Yemini opened the cargo door of each van, and eight dark-skinned Asians alighted from each one. Half were women, and all of them carried something rolled up under their arm—nothing else. The Albatross barely had seats for half that many.
Vitaly and the Yemini quickly crowded them into the Albatross’s cargo door. The Yemini got back into the first van, and as quickly as the vans had appeared, they headed back the way they had come.
Sergei twisted around and saw Vitaly getting the sixteen Asians situated in the back of the aircraft. Shabal! He knew damn well the Albatross usually carried a max of ten passengers in back. Now he was really taking advantage of them.
When Vitaly finally climbed back into his seat beside his copilot, Sergei exploded.
“Are you kidding me? Sixteen of these assholes? What the hell is Shabal thinking?”
“Yeah, but they’re all skinny fuckers. We’re still only slightly over our takeoff weight. We’ll have no problem hauling them all to our final stop in Somalia.”
“Still . . .” Sergei countered, but he didn’t want to unload on his pilot. Yet he didn’t like surprises, either.
“I know, I know,” Vitaly replied. “It seems this Yemini guy works directly for Shabal, or that’s what he said. He says this bunch started out in Indonesia and that he was contracted to bring them here. They’re all Filipinos, and he says Shabal’s been training them for almost a year.”
“But how the hell did they get here?” Sergei interrupted.
“I was getting to that. He says they crossed the Indian Ocean on a tramp steamer, and they’ve been cooped up in that hulk for weeks. The steamer just docked in the port a few hours ago. Now they’re ours or at least ours for a while.”
“Yeah, but sixteen of them!”
“Be patient my friend. Shabal himself will be at our destination. We’ll trade this lot for our usual load and be out of there before nightfall.”
Sergei didn’t respond but started flicking switches with a purpose. He then moved to the engine levers, then more switches. Within seconds the first of the two Wright R-1820-76 Cyclone nine-cylinder, air-cooled radial engines coughed to life, spewing white smoke as it did. Then the second Wright coughed to life in a similar fashion. While Sergei monitored the cockpit gauges, Vitaly keyed the radio.
“Aden tower, this is Albatross Two Seven ready to taxi for takeoff.”
“Roger, Two Seven. You’re cleared to taxi and takeoff. Stay with me on this frequency until five miles clear.”
“Roger, Aden. Thank you and good day.”
“I cannot wait to unload these cattle,” his copilot groused.
“Remember, Sergei, patience. Patience and a payday,” the other Russian replied as the Albatross lumbered down the active runway, climbed into the morning sky, and turned south.
* * *
Eight hundred miles away, as he sat in the back of the Tupolev Tu-134 parked at Nairobi’s International Airport in south-central Kenya, Shabal was anything but patient.
“So you’ve finally taken off with my cargo. Good. Are you sure you know the exact coordinates of where we will meet in the desert?” Shabal all but shouted into his satellite phone.
“Yes,” he continued, after hearing Vitaly’s reply. “But this is too important to leave anything to chance. Read the coordinates back to me.”
Shabal nodded as he absorbed the Russian’s transmission.
“Good. Be sure you are on the ground as planned. I want you there before I arrive. We’ll make the transfer then.”
With that, Shabal ended the call, and walked up the aisle and into the cockpit of the Tupolev—the Russian version of the venerable DC-9—and barked his orders to yet another two Russian pilots.
“Call for takeoff. We begin the final leg of this part of our journey now.”
The Tupolev pilot glanced at his copilot, trying to mask his annoyance, and began his pre-engine-start checklist.
* * *
A.J. and Ray had watched the sun continue to rise in the desert sky, boredom setting in. That all changed at about 1000. A.J. had the 0800–1200 shift and picked up a faint rooster-tail of dust in the distance. He watched it for close to fifteen minutes before rousing Ray.
“Yo, sleeping beauty, wake up. Looks like we might have some company.”
Ray was soon by his side with a small pair of Leica
Silverline 10x42s and began to track the running line of dust. Soon they were able to discern a file of four vehicles. The two in the front were pickup trucks, followed by a panel truck and a tank truck. As they got closer, the pickups became Toyotas with mounted automatic weapons in their beds and each with a half dozen armed men. They were technicals and the face of insurgent Africa—teens with headbands, designer sunglasses, blue jeans, and AK-47s in armed Toyotas. Young black men with no prospects and nothing to lose. The panel truck seemed to be in better shape than the battered Toyotas and the tank truck and, by African standards, quite modern. It had just been stolen from the airstrip at Botiala. The four vehicles came to a stop just below and to the southeast of their position. It seemed that they, too, had GPS receivers. After a few moments, the armed men in the back of the pickups dismounted. Some looked to seek the limited shade afforded by the vehicles. A few of them crawled under the tank truck. The others stood about talking, posturing, and smoking cigarettes. These were wild young men, equally immune to the sun and to matters of conscience. They, too, were waiting.
Up in the rocks, the two SEALs moved without speaking. Ray came up on the PSC-5 to report the activity while A.J. began to assemble the camera—a Nikon D3X SLR body mated with a custom lens that amounted to a variable-power spotting scope. While Ray was the IT SEAL and a genius with radios and comm gear, A.J. was the team cameraman, and he knew his cameras. When he had assembled his gear, he began to photograph each of the new arrivals on the desert floor. It took a while, but soon each was recorded with a high-resolution, full-on head shot, one perfectly compatible with face-recognition software—something else no drone could do. Ray quickly took the digital images and sent them over the PSC-5 data link to the task unit and the SEALs on the Bonnie Dick. If any of these guys were on someone’s terrorist watch list, they would soon know it. As they watched the small assembly of vehicles on the desert floor below them, they heard the faint drone of an aircraft engine, a sound that momentarily puzzled them both. It was the sound of radial piston engines, gasoline powered, and it was growing louder.
“Over there,” said A.J. as they scanned the horizon, “coming from the east.”
“Got him,” Ray replied as he caged the aircraft with his binoculars.
They both watched as the dot sprouted a high wing, engine nacelles, and finally a tail section. The aircraft lowered its landing gear and made a straight-in approach, raising its own rooster tail of dust as it touched down. It was an old Albatross. Neither of the SEALs had seen one before, except possibly in an old movie, nor was there any reason they should have. It was made in the USA but had left active Navy and Coast Guard service before either of the SEALs was born. And yet here it was in a remote piece of desert in Somalia. Both knew it was an old amphibian, but that was all.
Once on the ground, the Albatross taxied to a stop and shut down. One of the pickup trucks drove over to the aircraft, close but not too close. After several moments, the rear door opened, and a white man in shorts and a dirty, open-collar short-sleeved shirt stepped out. He had dark hair and several days’ growth of facial hair. He ignored the technicals in the pickup and went about placing a small metal step under the door of the aircraft. He then helped a woman in peasant’s clothes to deplane from the flying boat. Then another, and another. The two SEALS watched in silence as a total of sixteen passengers disembarked—eight women and eight men. They were not large people, nor were they imposing like the Somalis who looked on. They carried no baggage, save for a roll of cloth each carried under one arm. Once clear of the aircraft, they began to unroll their cloths, kneel on them, and lower their foreheads to the desert floor. The cloths were prayer rugs. Within minutes, the amphibian’s passengers were lined up in neat rows, facing east, and chanting prayers. All the while, Ray scanned the new arrivals with his binoculars while A.J. captured high-resolution images. It was hard to catalog their faces, as they prayed to the east and the two recon SEALs were north of them.
“Whadda you make of all that?” Ray finally asked.
A.J. did not immediately respond. Finally he took his eye away from his camera. “I haven’t a clue, but they’re not Skinnies.”
“Not Somalis—you’re kidding me.”
“Nope. I think they’re Filipino. Maybe Indonesian, but probably Filipino.”
Ray did not question him. A.J.’s background in Thai boxing made him something of an expert on subtle Asian differences—variations that would escape most Western eyes. And though he himself could not put his finger on it, they seemed to move and act like those he had known from the Philippines. And that was how they would report it; they appeared to be Filipinos—Filipino Muslims praying in the desert in Somalia not far from the Horn of Africa.
“Y’know, A.J., this whole business is starting to get weird.”
“Weird is the new normal,” A.J. replied. “We just need to separate the weirdness from the violence if we can. Or the boss and the chief need to.”
The scene before them was about to become strange as well as weird. While the contingent on the prayer rugs continued their devotions, the two SEALs heard the sound of another aircraft approaching. They heard it, but they could not yet see it; it was coming from the north, behind them. The whine of the jet engines was nearly overpowering when it flashed overhead about four hundred feet. It was a twin-engine, commercial-looking passenger jet, with two tail-mounted rear engines. This one looked familiar. The aircraft banked to the east, executed a 270-degree turn, and lined up for an east-to-west approach. Only after it had neatly set down and taxied up close to the Albatross was A.J. able to confirm what he suspected when the aircraft had turned on final. It was a Soviet-era Tupolev Tu-134—almost like a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, but not quite. This pilot did not shut down nor did he leave the aircraft. The Tupolev sat parked on the desert floor, engines at idle. When the rear door opened and an internal ladder dropped into place, a single individual stepped to the door and gazed out. He had an automatic pistol in his hand and a hard look on his face. The recon SEALs were in luck in that the Tupolev presented its starboard side with a clear view of the passenger door. A.J. was able to get a high-res close-up of the man. Seemingly satisfied with what he saw, the man cached the pistol in the waistband at the small of his back and climbed down the ladder. The man was tall with a rakish look and a scar down the side of his face. He was clearly a figure of authority and clearly the man in charge. He was Shabal.
A particularly large, brutish-looking Somali approached Shabal, and they spoke quietly for a few moments. Then under the big man’s direction, the Somalis formed a human chain and began to move bags of cargo from the Tupolev to the Albatross. After a dozen or more bags were put aboard the aircraft, the men shifted to the panel truck and loaded the remaining bags into the back—close to two dozen of them. The bags seemed to weigh on the order of fifty pounds each, and the young men had no difficulty with them, laughing as they tossed them from one man to the next. The big man admonished them and they began to handle the bags with more care. While the cargo was being shifted, the tank truck backed up to the jet, and fuel hoses were passed up to the pilot, who now stood atop the wing to supervise the refueling. Those on the prayer rugs continued to pray, as if the activity taking place around them was none of their concern. When the handling of cargo was complete, a man stepped tentatively from the cab of the panel truck. He wore a broad-brimmed sun hat and dark sunglasses. When he removed his hat and glasses to mop his brow, A.J. quickly captured his image with his Nikon and entered him into the system. He was definitely Slavic, and a big man with coarse, rough features, but one who moved with a bit of grace.
From his dress and mannerisms he appeared to be Western, or at least eastern European, and he and Shabal immediately fell into conversation. Shabal remained stoic, but the other man began to grow animated. He seemed to be shouting as he spoke with his hands. Even at this distance, and not being able to hear a word of the conversation, A.J. and Ray could tell who the alpha dog was—it was the man who h
ad arrived in the Tupolev. The other man seemed to be bargaining or pleading. He was clearly unhappy with what was taking place.
Only when Shabal pulled the automatic from his waistband did the other man settle down. He never threatened him with the pistol, but their conversation seemed to become less spirited while Shabal held the weapon at his side. Finally, the man shrugged and turned to the large Somali now standing off to one side. The big man then turned to give a few short commands, and the Skinnies took what appeared to be two large steamer trunks from the panel truck and passed them up and through the door of the Tupolev. Shabal, the man from the panel truck, and the big Somali huddled for a short while, and then broke away. Shabal and the sixteen Filipinos boarded the Tupolev. The big Somali returned to the cab of one of his pickups and the little European climbed into the Albatross.
It was the flying boat that was the first to leave. The pilot cranked one of the old radials for what seemed to be a long while before it exploded with a burst of smoke and noise, followed by the second. The little amphibian then pirouetted to an easterly heading and began to crawl across the desert. It slowly gathered speed and finally clawed its way into the air, turning north for the Gulf of Aden. The Tupolev was next. This pilot brought the jet engines up to takeoff power and then released the brakes. The long fuselage darted across the desert floor and pulled up steeply, then quickly leveled off. The SEALs watched as it banked to the south and banked again to a westerly heading.
The driver of the tank truck jumped onto one of the pickup trucks, and with the other pickup and the panel truck, they headed back the way they had come. The two SEALs watched them go, noting that there was a carefully hidden bag of product in the back of each truck. The Skinnies were all smiles as they each in turn took a peak at their generous payment for service.