Rotten Gods

by Greg Barron

  If possible, they will bring Sufia Haweeya out themselves, utilising a chopper from the heavy cruiser USS Chicago in the Red Sea. Of course, Marika tells herself, the exercise is academic if Sufia has not gone home. It is, after all, mere hearsay — the word of a neighbour. There are a million other places she could be.

  The pilot’s voice crackles over the headphones: ‘Eight minutes to target. Weather conditions clear, but moderate to fresh surface winds and thick airborne dust. Do we abort?’

  ‘Negative. Proceed.’ Marika knows that the wind will make things difficult for them, but it is not enough to delay. They have so little time. They need to bring Sufia out well in advance of the deadline in order to use her as leverage.

  ‘Five minutes to target.’

  Clipping her line to the rail, she watches Madoowbe do the same. She has only his word that he is experienced, but notes that he seems to know what he is doing. Being ex-SAS, she reminds herself, of course he would.

  ‘Is your Sid turned on?’ she shouts.

  ‘Yes.’

  She nods in approval, knowing that the electronic devices might be their sole means of locating each other when they hit the ground.

  ‘Two minutes.’

  The door opens. Fear dries her lips. Her hands shake. Talking becomes impossible in the slipstream. Looking down, she cannot see the ground, only a shroud of brown dust, moving like a living organism.

  ‘Twenty seconds.’

  Just as Marika is about to jump, the giant aircraft hits a pocket of turbulence, throwing her back into the fuselage and onto her side. Her elbow strikes the deck hard at the nerve point. The pain is sharp but fades, and she struggles to her feet.

  The pilot’s accented English comes through the intercom: ‘Very sorry.’

  The plane rocks a few more times, and Marika clenches her teeth and grips her arm. Yeah, I bet you are.

  ‘Are you OK?’ The pilot again.

  ‘Yes. Fine. Proceeding with jump.’

  ‘Do you want us to circle back?’

  ‘No.’ Meeting a surface-to-air missile in Somali airspace is always a chance, and the more circling that goes on, the greater the risk.

  As if the pain of her elbow helps steel her, Marika finds that she is no longer afraid. Moving back to the open doorway, she holds her breath and slides out and away into the silent dawn.

  The queue at the toilets suggests to Isabella that daylight is approaching. She joins the half-dozen women waiting against the wall, too frightened to exchange more than a few monosyllables; drawn, tired and anxious.

  The fat, light-skinned terrorist drifts closer. Isabella has heard the others call him Jafar. As far as she knows he has not slept at all, but once she saw him take a pill from a vial in his pocket and wash it down with bottled water. Is it caffeine, or something stronger; Benzedrine, perhaps? Either way, a man cannot stay functional without sleep indefinitely. Thirty hours? Fifty? A hundred? Some of the mujahedin take turns to sleep in an alcove, yet even so, the tablets must assist them to stay alert.

  Reptilian eyes rove down over her body. She glares back. Jafar drifts away, yet not too far. The line moves on, for it is a large bathroom, with multiple cubicles and a long sink. As Isabella steps inside she sees women washing their faces. She walks into a cubicle and closes the door in defiance of instructions, then takes the phone from her underwear before dropping them to her knees and sitting on the seat.

  The message received flag is up. Understand circumstances. Will pass on any intel. Keep it coming when safe. Tom. PS Will bring as much pressure as possible to bear re your girls.

  Isabella deletes the message, then fires back a quick one mentioning the pills she has seen the mujahedin take. Breathing quickly, she clicks on the second message — from Simon.

  The bathroom door opens. These footfalls sound different on the tiles. Flat-footed. Male. Isabella freezes. Her bladder opens without conscious direction.

  ‘Hurry up. What are you doing in here? Hatching plans? Who has shut the door? It is forbidden to shut the door.’ The voice is not that of Zhyogal, but the fat one, Jafar. The hair on the back of her neck stands erect. Did he follow her in here?

  Isabella slips the phone into her right bra cup. The footsteps echo. Her body tenses, even as her water streams into the bowl. Mouth open, she searches for air. Finally she is able to pull up her underwear, moving the phone back to her knickers and flushing the toilet. Opening the door she steps back out into the bathroom.

  The other women have hurried from the room. She is alone with him. This man knows where her girls are. She faces him, shoulders squared, chin high. ‘I have done what you people asked of me,’ she says. ‘I have sold out my country and my honour. I want my daughters returned to my husband. Now.’

  The smile comes slowly to his face. ‘More powerful men than I have decided that it is best for us to keep the little girls until this is over. They will ensure your cooperation. We may need your services again. After that, I know not what my brothers will do with them. Perhaps they will kill them. Perhaps not.’

  Isabella raises one hand to strike him, but he moves out of reach, laughing. ‘When we go back inside, I will tell your colleagues that it is you who betrayed them — that you handed a leather case filled with explosives to the gentle Dr Abukar. Would you like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then shut up about your brats. I do not care if they live or die.’ His eyes move from her face down the curve of her throat to her breasts. Following his gaze she sees that the top two buttons of her blouse are undone. His face reddens, and his breathing quickens.

  Oh God, he’s aroused.

  ‘You disgust me,’ she cries. Before he can react she opens the door and hurries out into the auditorium.

  The rising sun is red, as if hewn from stone, illuminating the air itself and, far below, an unseen landscape cloaked in brown. Marika feels relief as her chute opens, yet calculates that the delay in her jump might have set them off course by up to ten kilometres.

  Looking ahead and above, she sees Madoowbe’s chute, an uncertain distance to the south. She manipulates the steering toggles so as to move closer.

  The rectangular folds hang above her, cells taut with air. This is one of the new ATPS ram-air chutes designed for experts to reach the ground before they attract enemy fire. Marika smells the dust first, then passes into it, the wind tearing at the chute and the air so thick she pushes her collar against her lips with her shoulder and breathes through the heavy cotton.

  The parachute billows and flaps. The light that seemed so benign is blotted out as if shrouded by cloth. The comforting sight of the other chute disappears also, and the wind howls through the strings.

  The dust becomes a gritty mess between her fingers, and each breath a struggle. Worst of all is the feeling of disorientation. Like the time she fell from an old plywood dinghy into a farm dam, where the suspended clay made it impossible to see which way was up. For twenty or thirty frightening seconds she drove herself deeper into the cold depths, until confusion stopped her, and down there the gas in her lungs was more buoyant. Controlling her panic, she began to rise.

  Now, high above the ground, the slipstream tells her which way is down. This is the parachutist’s second-worst nightmare: unable to prepare for impact; or to steer away from obstacles. All she can do is lift her legs and tense, ready for an impact that might be seconds away.

  The whistling of air in her ears and the constant need to depressurise becomes an ache deep into her head. Mucus runs from both nostrils, and just when the stress on her body becomes too much, the earth pounds into her legs, driving her knees into her chest so the air leaves her lungs in a rush.

  Instinct tells her to roll, but rolling can be dangerous in unknown terrain. Instead she folds her upper body and legs, absorbing the impact with the flexibility of muscle and bone, finishing the manoeuvre in a squatting position, weight balanced like that of a cat, pain from the impact already subsiding. Still in that position, she listens
for any sound that might be a threat to her, but hears just the moan of wind and sand.

  Satisfied, Marika begins to gather the parachute, sand filling the folds as fast as she can work. Finished, she takes Sid from her pocket and switches between apps until the GPS chart of the area comes up, her own location a steady green sphere. She increases the view ‘altitude’ with a deft pincer movement of thumb and forefinger, searching for Madoowbe’s signal.

  Sid tracks satellites very fast, but in the sandstorm minutes pass before it acquires enough satellites for a fix. It is comforting to see the village of Bacaadweyn on the screen thirty-five kilometres away — further than they had planned yet still not an insurmountable distance, even on foot. At first she cannot locate Madoowbe’s signal, but by increasing the range control it becomes clear: two thousand three hundred metres on a bearing of seventy degrees. Less than half an hour over good terrain.

  Picking herself up, Marika moves towards the signal. At first she is cautious, but relaxes when she comes across nothing but sand interspersed with flat-topped acacias and the occasional baobab tree. This is wilderness — Somali style. With visibility restricted to just a few metres, she does not hurry.

  At one stage the ground becomes rocky, and as she navigates this more difficult terrain, she finds herself at the lip of a precipice so deep that the bottom is hidden in swirls of shifting sand and dust. Recovering her balance with difficulty, she moves back, turning northwards until she is able to resume her heading.

  Marika is as fit as an athlete, yet the constant soft sand makes her calves ache, and the dust storm forces her to wear goggles. Even so, the distance between her and Madoowbe shortens rapidly. His blip is almost superimposed on hers when she stops and calls.

  There is no answer but the wind and the sigh of shifting sand.

  Again she calls and nothing happens.

  Shaking her head in frustration she removes her goggles. He must be close, surely?

  Marika feels her legs collapse. Something grips her arms. Even as she falls, her training takes over, and she pulls away, using gravity to multiply her own strength. Her attacker responds, anticipating her, until, still standing, he takes her neck in the crook of his arm. Twisting sideways, from a distance of just a few centimetres, she looks into Madoowbe’s eyes. In his hand he holds a Browning Hi-Power pistol. The muzzle moves to the side of her head, and she sees his teeth as he smiles.

  At first the sense of betrayal is so great that her limbs freeze, but then anger takes over, and her reaction is physical, bringing her arm back ready to strike, slamming the heel of her hand against the gun, pushing it away from her. The move unbalances the Somali, who is slow on the counterattack. She punches him hard on the centre of his broad nose. Anyone, struck in such a manner, cannot help raising one hand to soothe the injured extremity, and Madoowbe is no exception.

  Using this momentary advantage, she turns to run, aiming to disappear into the shroud of windblown sand, when the toe of his boot smashes into her shin, and she hurtles face-first towards the ground, tripped with the skill of a top-level football player, forced to use both arms to cushion her fall.

  Madoowbe is on her in a moment, giving her no time to roll. Sitting on her back, the muzzle of his handgun boring into the back of her head. ‘Do not move, or your unborn children will perish here on the sand with you.’

  Marika has seen footage of Islamist executions. A line of men on their knees, mujahedin with handguns shooting each in the back of the head, bodies tumbling, dying while the killers shout Allahu akbar — God is great. Ronald Schultz, the American security consultant, hands tied, shot with twenty or more 7.62mm rounds from a Kalashnikov, the death so violent that his kneeling body performed a near cartwheel before coming to rest on his side. The beheadings were perhaps the worst: Eugene Armstrong; Jack Hensley; Durmus Kumdereli, the Turkish driver. Marika wonders if her own face has the same numbed fear.

  ‘I trusted you,’ she spits, trying to turn her head. Worse. Fuck it. I liked you.

  Engine noise cuts through the shrieking wind. Into the clearing roars two of the vehicles referred to in this part of the world as ‘technicals’ — four-wheel-drive utilities with a machine gun mounted on the tray, belts of shiny brass cartridges drooping from the chambers. Three men, shemagh head cloths about the neck and head, armed with assault rifles, jump down from the tray even before the vehicles stop, covering her with their weapons.

  A fourth man, bandolier of ammunition across his chest, steps from the passenger seat of the second vehicle. He is lighter-skinned than many of the others, wearing just a keffiiyeh cap on his head. He is very lean, with a pencil-thin moustache that emphasises that fact. His more military dress and bearing, along with an obvious swagger, mark him as a leader. A ring in his left earlobe is startlingly bright — real gold.

  ‘Sheel qasnaan,’ he shouts at Madoowbe, and they carry on a brief conversation. Marika’s Arabic is good, and many words cross over into the Somali language, yet still she understands almost nothing of what they are saying.

  Two men drag her to her feet, and the leader pats along her sides and legs, grinning as he removes her sidearm, and a knife in a holster. Sid catches his eye. He takes the unit and passes it to a comrade, who fools with it for a moment before shoving it into a pocket.

  Marika watches the man’s eyes rest on the chain that hangs around her neck, with the tiny silver scapular — a confirmation present from her parents. She raises a hand to protect it but the man restrains her while another lifts it over her head, then holds it up like a trophy.

  More talk with Madoowbe. This lasts for perhaps a minute before the gunmen again take her arms and lead her towards the nearest vehicle, ushering her into a back seat. The sweat smell of them is intense, and they make no effort to keep their distance, sandwiching her between them. Craning her neck, she sees Madoowbe step up into the back seat of the other vehicle.

  Treacherous bastard, she thinks. Yet she is more hurt than angry; hurt that he made a fool of her. Her anger she reserves for herself, for the ease with which he overpowered her. Tripped, for God’s sake. Her face burns. If ever there’s a round two, you won’t be so lucky.

  The engine roars into life and the vehicle lurches forwards, tyres spinning in the sand before finding purchase. The other technical takes the lead. The wheels kick up a fountain of sand as the driver accelerates down the track. Marika finds herself swaying, her knees touching the rifles that lie across the men’s laps.

  With a professional eye, she appraises the weapons — Czech-made Samopal VZ58 assault rifles, not in generic use in this part of the world. This suggests that money is behind them. One man holds a stubby grenade launcher of Chinese manufacture.

  In addition to the guns, each man carries a curved dagger in a leather scabbard, the bone handle carved with intricate images and wound with copper wire.

  The dark-faced men chew qat, or miraa, constantly, the leaf imported from Kenya and distributed by Somali warlords as a means of both making money and ensuring the loyalty of their troops. Nothing good, Marika knows, can come of being captured by this lot.

  ‘I am an Australian citizen,’ she declares. ‘You have detained me without permission and are therefore in breach of international law. I will see that you are caught and punished.’

  If anyone understands her speech they say nothing coherent in reply, but her threat sparks a round of rich, deep-voiced laughter. Marika ignores it, instead staring out the window, the landscape revealed and snatched away as the dust thins and thickens in waves. Once or twice they pass through settlements. The smell of camel and goat wafts inside, overpowering the livestock stench of the armed men.

  They turn onto a main road, where, on the verge, men and women, bone thin and obviously starving, pass by. Many walk in pathetic family groups, carrying firewood, filthy plastic water cans or bundled possessions on their heads. None look at the armed vehicles, as if frightened to present any challenge, imagined or real, to the armed men. Many carry infants. Mos
t have a defeated, haunted look. These are the dispossessed. The phenomenon that is inadequately summed up by such a simple word as refugee. Marika remains silent, watching the passing parade, her heart and belly aching with helplessness.

  As the journey progresses, Marika finds a hand on her upper arm, fingers curling over her bicep. The sensation is no less alarming than a spider crawling over her bare flesh. Fingertips brush the side of her breast. Her reaction is instinctive, and she spits, ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t you bloody dare!’

  The man withdraws his hand as the moustached leader in the front turns and barks an order. Marika senses that he is telling the man not to touch her but cannot be sure. Either way, nothing happens for some time, until the convoy slows to a stop, engines running. A man from the lead technical opens a chain mesh gate.

  With the vehicles now motionless, visibility deepens to a couple of hundred metres. The wire-protected compound looks to be at least two hectares, with dishevelled white-painted buildings standing in clusters. Men with firearms who have been lounging against a wall walk out to meet the vehicles as they skid to a halt.

  Dark faces peer inside, teeth exposed, laughing when they see her. One of her captors winds down the window and chats with his comrade outside. Another photographs her on his cell phone from the window, then stands back, fiddling with the device, probably, she decides, sending the image to his friends.

  The doors open, and a man on the outside seizes her arm, dragging her off the seat and onto the ground. Coughing, choking, sprawled in the dust, trying to crawl. Others lift her to her feet — too many to resist — leading her, half dazed, into the nearest building.

  Passing through the door and into the darkness inside, the smell strikes her: unwashed bodies, curry, and rotten food scraps. A series of openings loom ahead, and Marika is propelled through the nearest one. A heavy iron door slams behind her, and she shrinks back against the far wall, sucking air like a turbine, staring back at the faces that peer through the barred cell door, laughing and making comments she imagines are crude.