Born of War

by Anderson Harp

  Parker sensed that the man who carried her was the most natural hunter of the group. After he had helped her up and into the truck, he went to the edge of the tree’s cover and stopped. He looked out into the dark directly at Parker. He stood there for a minute or two as if he was staring directly at a threat. Finally, he turned back to the fire and sat down by the body on the ground. He put more wood on the fire, as if to ward off danger.

  “What is it?” Omar sat up from the fire watching the back of Xasan as he stared into the dark. Xasan didn’t move for some time. Omar pulled up his Kalashnikov and felt the cold metal in his hands.

  Xasan finally turned back to the fire.

  “There are lions out there.” Xasan sensed there was death somewhere in the shadows. “I must bury my father soon.”

  He would wake at first light and dig the hole himself. It would be near the grave for the other man. And they would need a third one soon for the other sick one.

  “We will need to cover it well. We will need to stack sticks and mud and then cover it all with piles of thorns.” It was the only way to keep the lions out. The lions were very near.

  Parker waited for the rain to begin again before moving back. As the water came again in waves, he used the cover of sound to pull slowly away from the truck and trees. He felt Tola follow him. They crawled for more than a hundred yards, making sure that they were well out of sight and sound before moving to the cover of several large thorn bushes.

  The bushes were the same ones where they had left some of their gear beneath some savannah grass.

  “I am letting the MarSOC team know where we are and what we saw.” Tola was covering the tablet with his body as he tapped in the words. They would all home in on the grove of trees and the F-35 above would scan the target area.

  “Okay.” Parker kept a lookout towards the grove when he heard something. It was far to the east. The rain had stopped again, briefly, and as it did, sounds started to travel through the air again. “I hear a truck.”

  It was more than a truck. He held his hand up as he strained to listen.

  “It is a truck stuck in the mud and its wheels are spinning.”

  Tola pulled him over to the tablet. He didn’t have to say anything.

  The sensors from the aircraft well above the clouds and the rain showed a line of trucks not far to the west.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  “Sir, we have ground movement.” The officer of the day in the Roosevelt’s SCIF had the report the admiral had been waiting for all night. He had sat in his chair through both the storm and four cups of black Navy coffee.

  “What is the monsoon doing?”

  “It is building. It is coming out of the east with the point of center almost directly over Ferfer. The report is that the river is three times its size. The Shebelle is washing away villages and displacing hundreds of people, if not thousands.” The duty officer showed night sensor video from different camera viewpoints on several different aircraft.

  “And the DF?” There were few things that made a sixty-year-old man worry anymore. His two sons had graduated from the Academy and were on ships in the other ocean. His wife played bridge back in Newport News with her friends, and her daily emails showed the usual worries of a Navy wife. And he wasn’t sure if his career wasn’t one command away from being his last. None of the events of life worried him. But this did. He was not going to be the man who lost the first United States carrier since World War II.

  “There is movement.”

  “We need all aircraft off this ship now,” he said it calmly but in a voice that no one questioned. The fueling and taking off of nearly ninety aircraft took frantic energy.

  “Turn her into the wind.” With its nose heading into the storm, the aircraft would have immediate lift. Every flight would be brutal and if a jet engine faulted, one or two would be lost. A downed aircraft in this weather meant a remote chance that the pilot would be found.

  “Sound general quarters.” The horn blared through the ship. The admiral relayed his command to the group. “Have all of the group disperse except for the Zumwalt .”

  They had intelligence on the Dong Feng but it was only guesswork. No one was sure how effective a weapon it was. The fear was that if it was half as effective as they thought, it was extremely deadly.

  He had a plan.

  “We need a strike by a Tomahawk on that missile’s last-known and suspected location,” he barked the orders.

  “Yes, sir.“

  “We need the Zumwalt to bring her course parallel to the Roosevelt and stay alongside.”

  The one hope was that the missile could see the Roosevelt and not the Zumwalt.

  “She will provide both our protection and our defense.”

  The Zumwalt was armed to the teeth. It had more than eighty cells for a variety of Tomahawks, Sea Sparrows, and anti-submarine rockets, and it had two automatically fed and computer-directed 155-millimeter guns on the deck. More important for this situation, it was equipped with two MK46 30-millimeter GDLS guns. It could lay up protection.

  “As soon as the aircraft are all dispatched, we will head at full speed to the northeast.”

  The Dong Feng’s sensors would see the Roosevelt in front of it but not the shadow nearby.

  The lieutenant carried Godane’s cell phone since Godane never held one on his person at any time. It was a matter of safety. The conversations were all tracked and it made his being a target too simple.

  Godane heard it ring, which was unusual. Virtually all of the cell calls were outbound. It wasn’t meant to be used for an incoming call. If more direction were needed on an issue, he would call back from another number. He heard the lieutenant talking to the person. He immediately knew what the conversation involved. The lieutenant disconnected.

  “It is Sana’a.” The capital of Yemen was the location of all go-betweens.

  “Yes.”

  “The French are prepared to pay for both hostages but they want proof of life.”

  The MSF had let its corporate donors make the deal for them. They were more suspicious than the charity. The donors had been through this before when MSF executives and even the donors’ own corporate executives had been kidnapped in South America. They had a plan and they hired the best—who required proof that the two captives were still alive.

  “Any word from Tarriq?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What of the American fleet?”

  “We are seeing more and more aircraft.”

  “Even with the monsoon coming?” He had wrapped his head with his turban to protect his face from the gusting wind. Small rocks and stones flew through the air as well as larger chunks of debris from years of destructive warfare. It wasn’t uncommon for a child to be hit by a flying piece of tin roof. There were dangers everywhere as a result of the decade of war.

  “Yes, the weather seems to be no factor in slowing them down. It appears that they are worried about us.”

  Godane considered his options.

  “When we get close to the hostages we will fire the missile.” He wanted some insurance that an air strike wouldn’t hit him or his circle of leaders of Al Shabaab. The two doctors gave him that insurance.

  “Let’s go.”

  The convoy of trucks pulled out of the city heading north and into the wind. They flew across the potholed road splashing through the deep puddles of water that covered the countryside.

  “I need the phone with the number for Al San.”

  The lieutenant in the back handed him the cell with only one number in its directory. The call went to a cell at a house by the beach just south of Baraawe. A Brit who tried to mine uranium when the British Empire ruled the southern half of Somalia had built it well before the years of war. The house was far from his mine, but he built it with cheap labor and made the walls thick to help cool it during the hot months. A large mason-block wall covered with stucco surrounded the house. The first floor had a long porch that faced the ocean and ran the
length of the house. High arches opened the porch to the interior. The main room was a large hallway in the center of the house. It was a large, well-covered house with a thick roof. And just outside the walls that surrounded the old plantation, a vehicle stood with two guards sitting in it. They would not let anyone come close. One was a man named Al San.

  It would be Al San’s finger, under orders from Godane, that would launch the missile.

  Omar held the cell phone tightly during the night. He watched the other men while they stared at him. The rain kept coming and with the rain, he thought it would be better for the army to come to him. His group would not have made it far with the little truck with the bad tire and the four fighters who were left. The truck would go fifty yards or so and then be up to its axle in muck. If they didn’t follow the road, the truck would push the thorn bushes aside for a few feet until they jammed underneath the front end. Some of the thorns were like metal shards that were able, if they caught it just right, to puncture a tire.

  “I am going to make a call,” he lied to the men. He wanted an excuse to climb into the cab of the truck to get out of the rain. He held the phone up to his ear for a minute or two, as if a call was being made, and then laid it down. He had not heard from Faud for some time. Other calls from strange numbers had shown up but he was hesitant to answer.

  The rain fell on the windshield. He looked back on the fire and the two bodies lying near the front of the truck.

  They will attract lions. The lions will not care about the disease or the heart attack. They only smelled flesh, and they would tear the bodies apart with their massive jaws.

  When the sun comes up, we will move. They could not be more than a mile or two away from the other Al Shabaab units. Once with the others, they would have safety in numbers.

  I wonder if he got the message. Omar’s mind shifted to the third cell. His wife was to make the call and get word to the friend in Toronto, the one who ran the milk delivery to the Somali apartment building. He knew what to do. And he knew how to get into the United States without anyone knowing.

  Omar fell asleep.

  He shook himself awake and saw that the weather continued to be bad. It was nearly impossible to see first light as the clouds choked out any rays of sun. But for the first time in days, Omar was dry and out of the rain.

  He realized that he had been asleep for some time as he felt the warm dampness of his turban’s wrap around his neck. He pulled the turban off and shook his greasy, wet hair and ran his fingers through it. He felt the bites from the mosquitoes.

  At least the storm had one good effect.

  There were no mosquitoes.

  He rewrapped the turban and had started to open the door when he saw something move in the dark.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Parker and Tola knew that time was short.

  “I can’t get a signal.” Tola had played with both the tablet and communications gear that he had. The wind created static as the air molecules moved faster and faster. The static electricity caused the signal to crackle.

  “Where is the MarSOC team?” Parker asked. They had heard a truck spinning its wheels to the east, not too far in the distance. “Do we know if they are on the ground?”

  “In this weather, they may have turned around,” Tola speculated. “And if they are down, it was not a fun ride.”

  “We can’t wait.” Parker knew that Stewart was very ill. He had not seen the other doctor but had to assume that they were both under the tarp in the back of the truck.

  The plan was simple. They would move in a two-link chain with Parker in the lead. Any shots to the left would be taken by Tola, and Parker would take the ones to the right. It was important to move into the wind and move quickly. Surprise meant that several well-aimed shots would result in a successful mission.

  “We need to get them and move out of here. We have to head back to the west and hope that the rain continues.” Parker had an idea as to how he could save Stewart’s life. He didn’t know about the Frenchman.

  “Agreed?” he asked Tola.

  “Yes. I am ready.”

  They began to crawl forward until they got to within fifty meters. The closer they were able to get to the camp, the better the probability of successful shots. The Kalashnikovs had suppressors on them so the silence might buy another half second, but one round from a fighter would give the other army a location and a range.

  They paused while Parker scanned the campsite again. The friendly one who had helped Karen was asleep against the trunk of the tree next to another body. The other two were huddled up with each other and their rifles. Omar was missing.

  Shit. Parker thought to himself.

  There was no time to wait.

  He felt the bolt of the Kalashnikov to make sure that it was both forward and tight. He pulled the stock up into his shoulder, put the first head in his sight, and felt the trigger on his bare finger. He stopped for one second to look behind and check that Tola was at the ready. And then he squeezed.

  A thump caused the first man’s head to slap back.

  The man asleep against the trunk of the tree looked up in surprise.

  Parker squeezed off the second round and the other man’s head popped back just as the one at the base of the tree started to reach for his rifle.

  Parker and Tola stood up in a low crouch and moved forward at a quick pace through the savannah grass. They never looked down.

  Seeing the two strangers come out of the darkness, the remaining fighter at the base of the tree made the decision of his life. He dropped the rifle and held his hands up high.

  Parker scurried into the campsite looking in a circle for the man he most wanted. He went to the bed of the truck and slowly nosed his weapon under the tarp not knowing what to expect.

  Two frightened people with large hollow eyes looked back at him.

  “I am an American,” William Parker said to the two. He repeated it again.

  “I am an American here to help.”

  “Where is he?” Parker hadn’t made this journey for just the two hostages. And they were not safe until he found Omar and got them away from the approaching army.

  “I don’t know.” Tola swung around with his back to Parker, keeping his rifle trained on the one who surrendered. “I will check the cab.” He turned towards the cab while still keeping an eye on the one with his hands raised.

  “We need to get the hostages out of here. We need to get them into the dark.”

  Parker went to the back of the truck and slowly dropped down the bent tailgate.

  “We will get them out of here and then I will come back for Omar.”

  Tola shook his head in agreement but never fully turned his back to Xasan. He started to turn towards the cab trying to cover two points at the same time. Parker had the job of getting the hostages out of the fire zone and into the safety of the dark.

  “Come with me.” Parker helped the two captives slide out of the truck bed. As he did, he could feel their bones through their clothing. They were wet and both were shaking like leaves in a windstorm.

  “You will be all right. We just need to get you out of here.”

  He pulled Karen up like a toddler and he grabbed the Frenchman by the back of his belt. The man weighed little at this point.

  They started to move towards the darkness. The truck was to their rear and Tola was to Parker’s back left.

  A window cranked down. It was a sound that caused Abo Tola to turn his weapon around towards the truck cab.

  In that instant something fell out through the window.

  “Grenade!”

  Tola didn’t think. The grenade was to the side of the truck but well within range of both Parker and the hostages. Abo Tola jumped on the grenade and, as he did, he pushed it as deep as he could into the mud. The fuse was smoking. Instantly, there was a horrible “thump” sound.

  Tola stayed limp.

  Somehow, in the randomness of combat, the man with his hands held high fell
to his knees and then collapsed. A fragment of the grenade had struck him in the head. Xasan was dead.

  “Shit!” Parker screamed. He dropped the two hostages to the ground and ran towards Abo Tola.

  At that moment, the door to the truck opened and he saw in the corner of his eye a figure run into the darkness.

  Parker kept his rifle in one hand and felt Tola for a pulse with the other hand. His friend was badly wounded.

  “Hold on!” he yelled.

  Just as he started to clear Abo Tola’s face of the mud to see if he was breathing, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “I will take over from here, sir.”

  Parker pulled his rifle to his rear, ready to shoot, when he realized that several shapes had come out of the darkness. One was the MarSOC medic. The others surrounded the campsite. They disappeared into the black, taking up positions that would stop anyone else from coming in.

  “Will, are you okay?” Gunnery Sergeant Kevin Moncrief was checking on his friend.

  “I need your .45.”

  Parker took the MEUSOC semiautomatic and quickly moved into the darkness.

  He followed the road, knowing that the target was scared and only willing to take the easiest route.

  He won’t go into the thorn, Parker guessed. He would go where he thought his comrades might be. He would follow the road.

  The grenade had sent a signal that everyone heard. It would not be long now before the shit hit the fan.

  Parker had only one goal right now. The hostages were being taken to a flat field some several hundred yards away where two MV-22 Ospreys were sitting in the dark. Once they got word of the rescue one bird would start to spin up its turbines. But Parker wasn’t here for the flight.

  Parker stopped as the wind died down for a moment. He bent down to listen. He heard a man’s heavy breathing ahead. He pulled back on the pistol’s slide, quietly, making sure that a .45 ACP cartridge was seated in the chamber. The barrel was extended with a suppressor. But it was pitch black and he was blind. He was going on instinct.