Fog of War

Chapter Ten

Justin and Carrie cleaned the arsenal of M16s and their ammunition, a couple of mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades from the jeep. They retrieved Birgit’s money, removed the militants’ bodies, and scrubbed their blood off the jeep’s seats. They could do nothing about the bullet holes in the windshield, but it was not unusual for Somali cars to have cracked or bullet-shredded windows. If anything, it added a more local feel to Justin’s ride. Along with his blue robe, a jalabiya, he bought in Nairobi, the jeep would allow him to blend in.

Justin eased on the gas pedal as the first mud huts of Barjaare came into view. He was getting closer to the village. He had already seen herdsmen tending goats that looked as scrawny as their owners. They minded their own depressing business, throwing only casual, disinterested glances in his direction. Dead carcasses and piles of garbage became a familiar sight alongside the road.

At the edge of the village, he saw a one-story mud brick building with holes large enough for a small child to run through. Its roof had collapsed and weeds were growing next to the walls. A rusty, broken sign read in large white letters SCHOO, the ‘L’ missing from the word. Justin wondered when and why the village had abandoned it. Perhaps al-Shabaab prohibited the villagers from taking their children to school. Or maybe they were afraid their children would be kidnapped while away from their parents and forced into al-Shabaab’s service. He had read many reports of such occurrences in al-Shabaab-dominated areas.

He left the main road behind and drove to the school. Debris littered the backyard. One of the walls had caved in, creating a large opening. He steered in that direction, negotiating his way through the uneven terrain, and parked his jeep inside the school, away from any curious eyes. He stepped out and took his knapsack from the back of the jeep. Then he slipped his pistol — a newer Russian-made Makarov, retrieved from one of the dead militants in the pickup — and two extra magazines in the right side pocket of his robe and listened.

All he heard was relative silence, pierced by a dog’s yelp, a loud shout in an African dialect he did not understand, and the distant bleating of a goat. Justin glanced at his wristwatch. Still making good time. Yusuf and his guards were expected to arrive at the village before sunset, which was still an hour away. Justin was planning to set up his position at a vantage point across from the doctor’s house and strike as soon as Yusuf got out of his vehicle.

He wore his white and blue headdress and walked toward the village, his knapsack over his left shoulder. He would attract some attention from the locals, and he hoped it would not be the wrong kind of attention.

The first glances came from a group of women in colorful dresses and veils, who were sitting and talking outside a tin-roofed mud house. Their conversation turned hushed as Justin walked on the other side of the road, a few feet away from them. He avoided making direct eye contact, but still glanced in their general direction, paying special attention to the house entrance and a few large rusty barrels stacked along the thatched fence.

A group of children — six in all — ran out from the yard of the next house. They looked malnourished, their bellies swollen, their arms and legs thin as twigs. Justin tried to guess their age, but he found it impossible. They could be five, or seven, or nine. He smiled at them, and greeted them in Arabic. They stared at him, but muttered no words in reply. Justin dipped his left hand in his knapsack and pulled out two granola bars. It was part of his late lunch. He waved them at the boys. One of them — the tallest, who also seemed to be the leader of the gang — reached forward, grabbed the granola bars and broke into a sprint. The others gave chase, their high-pitched shouts filling the village.

Three houses away, Justin spotted two young men preparing firewood out of an acacia tree in their backyard. One of them was swinging a machete; the other was loading the chopped branches into a cart. He passed by without talking to them, and they were too consumed in their work to notice him.

The road curved and became wider, enough for two cars to pass by one another with ease. A bar was straight ahead with a group of men sitting in battered plastic chairs, sipping tea and smoking tobacco on the porch, under the shade of a corrugated tin roof. They laid their gazes upon Justin as soon as he rounded the corner. He smiled, while taking in the entire surroundings. There were eight men, mostly in their late thirties, two or three older, perhaps in their fifties. He could not tell if they were armed, but as he drew nearer he saw an AK lying against the wall by the entrance to the bar. He was sure there had to be more inside the bar and in the nearby houses.

“Salam Alaykum,” Justin greeted them, placing his left hand over his heart.

A couple of the younger men replied with the customary “Alaykum Salam.” The others offered reluctant nods, their cautious eyes measuring up his face, his clothes, his moves.

“My name is Fadil Naeim. I’m a journalist with CairoTV in Egypt,” Justin spoke slowly and softly in Arabic, with a warm, friendly tone in his voice. He smiled as he talked and kept the AK and the bar entrance in his peripheral vision.

His words stirred some emotion among the men. A few shifted in their seats, motioning to the rest and whispering among themselves.

One of the older men, who sported a salt-and-pepper beard, peered at him for a few moments, then asked, “A journalist? You’re lost? Where’s your guide?”

Justin had already thought about various replies to those questions. “Our four-car convoy fell into an ambush. I think… I think in the aftermath I got lost.” He tried to make his words and the tone of his voice come across as unthreatening, yet not make him sound too weak. He did not know if the allegiance of these men lay with al-Shabaab or the Somali government.

The word “ambush” rattled the crowd. Two of the younger men stood up and asked, “What ambush? Where? Who was it?”

The old man kept his piercing eyes on Justin, as if determining if he was telling the truth.

“I don’t know who they were. Masked men in camouflage clothes, with large guns. They probably wanted to kidnap us and hold us for ransom. Our security guards returned fire. It was about an hour south. Who controls that area?”

His question brought about an uneasy silence. The old man took a deep breath. “Some troubled and foolish young men have turned to guns to escape poverty,” he said in a gloomy voice. “They are very dangerous and brutal, and you’re lucky to have made it out alive.”

“Where’s the rest of your convoy?” asked one of the younger men.

Justin had a ready answer. “They drove in the other direction. The gunmen gave chase.”

He paused for a second, scanning their faces. They seemed to have bought his story.

“How safe is the village?” he asked. Birgit had said there were no al-Shabaab fighters, but Justin wanted to double-check her information.

“They don’t control our homes or our lives,” the old man answered, his head gesturing toward the AK. “They tried once or twice, but we held them back. The government is strong. We are strong.”

Justin nodded. The old man was not exactly lying, but still not telling the whole truth. The Somali’s government authority was very weak, with stories of soldiers defecting to al-Shabaab's forces reported almost on a daily basis. Tribes and clans ruled the villages as they had done for centuries, surviving by siding with the stronger warriors at any given time.

“Sit down and enjoy a cup of tea,” the other old man said, motioning toward an empty seat to his right. “It will help you.”

“Thank you.”

His seat faced the bar’s entrance and the direction of the road from where Justin had arrived. His back was exposed, but he accepted the offer, not wanting to refuse the old men in front of everyone. He also accepted a mug of shah, the sweet tea, one of the younger men brought to his table. He took a few sips, enjoying the taste and the silence. A soft breeze flapped his headdress. It was a few degrees cooler in the shade.

“Is there a doctor here?” Justin asked in a casual tone. The satellite photos of the village and of the doctor’s house were in his knapsack by his feet. He had studied them and knew how to get there, but he was looking for a polite way out of this tea break.

“Why, you’re wounded?” asked the old man who had invited him for tea.

“No, but something I ate is turning my stomach upside down.”

“We have no doctors here,” said the old man who had done most of the talking. “The closest one is about an hour north.”

Are you sure? Justin wanted to ask, but held his tongue. “No doctors?” he asked, scratching his chin. “I was told by our guides you had a good doctor.”

“We did once. But he died five years ago,” replied the old man.

A couple of the younger men nodded.

Justin frowned. They had no reason to lie to him about a doctor, so it had to be that he was given bad intelligence. He hated bad intelligence. Did they send me to the wrong village? Where is Yusuf? What else is wrong with this intel?

“Thanks for the tea and the hospitality,” he said, standing and picking up his knapsack. “I have to head back. How do I get to El Wak?”

Before anyone could give him directions, the roar of a loud car engine echoed from the road behind him. Justin turned to see a gray pickup truck drawing near. The silhouettes of four men were visible, standing behind two heavy machine guns, one mounted next to the cab, the other to the back. Another vehicle resembling a jeep was visible through the thinning cloud of red dust.

“Al-Shabaab, that’s al-Shabaab!” shouted one of the younger men.

Everyone scattered toward the bar and the house next to it, jumping over the chairs and tossing the tea mugs in the rush.

So much for being strong and holding them back, Justin thought. He marched toward the next house. Its thatched fence had an open gate.

The pickup came to an abrupt stop. The vehicle jerked forward, its breaks squealing in protest. Two gunmen jumped off the back, swinging AKs and forming a security perimeter.

Justin slipped inside the gate and observed them through the fence. The gunmen’s arrival and their moves had caught him by surprise. He thought al-Shabaab was a ragtag group of fighters, but these men acted like well-trained soldiers. Perhaps they’re government’s forces? The jeep’s features were now clear. It was a military jeep, like the ones used by the Somali army and the African Union Mission in Somalia, the UN-backed peacekeeping force in the country. What’s AMISOM doing here?

The driver’s door and the back door of the jeep opened at the same time. Justin fixed his eyes on the passenger, a man wearing a beige jalabiya and a white prayer cap. The man’s face was imprinted on his memory. He recognized him as Hassan Khalif Yusuf. The man who was in possession of the leaked information. The man who wanted him dead.

It was payback time.

Justin pulled out his pistol, cocked it, and stepped out onto the dirt road. He took fast, long steps along the fence, keeping the pistol close to his side, his eyes on his target. Yusuf was walking in front of his jeep, heading toward the house to his right, followed by his driver. One of the gunmen noticed Justin and made a stop gesture with his hand. Justin ignored him. Before the gunman could lift his assault rifle, Justin aimed his pistol and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the gunman on his neck and he fell, hitting the side of the pickup.

The other gunman opened fire. Justin dove, rolling on the ground. Bullets hit far and wide, and he was able to squeeze off another shot. It did not find its target, but it was enough to send the gunman ducking for cover behind the pickup. Justin ran bent at the waist and slid behind the wall of the nearest house just as the heavy machine gun mounted on the truck’s cab began its deafening drum. Justin slithered toward the back of the house, dragging his knapsack behind him. The machine gun bullets blew holes the size of basketballs around him. Sprays of dried mud covered his neck. Wood splinters stung the sides of his face. A couple of bullets ricocheted off the walls, striking close to his feet. The back door of the house was four feet away. Three seconds later, he crawled inside it.

The house was small, dim, and empty. Justin stayed away from the front and side walls still receiving the fierce pounding of the machine gun and climbed a staircase at the back of the house. He pushed open the small wooden door and crouched on the roof. He could not see the road below, so he moved closer to the crumbled wall surrounding the roof. Now he had a great vantage point. Justin peered through one of the bullet holes in the pockmarked wall and confirmed the position of his targets. He dropped to one knee, raised his head over the wall, and picked off the gunman behind the thundering machine gun with two clean shots. He planted two bullets in the head and the body of the other gunman, who was just swinging his weapon in Justin’s direction.

A bullet grazed his left forearm. Justin cursed and fell back on the roof. He looked at his bleeding arm as other bullets slammed against the wall. One of the gunmen was returning fire with his AK, judging by the sound of the gun. Justin retreated to the other side of the roof, toward the back of the house, away from incoming bullets and waited for a break in the volley. His chance came a few moments later, when the gunman stopped shooting. Justin stole a quick peek, less than half a second long, but enough to spot the gunman lying on the ground by the pickup’s hood. He popped up and fired the last three rounds in his pistol in a quick burst. The first one missed, but the second and the third pierced two holes in the gunman’s back.

Everything went quiet for a moment. Justin’s eyes followed a stream of dust along the road going toward the south. Yusuf’s jeep was no longer in front of the house. Justin rushed down the staircase, replacing the empty magazine in his pistol with a fresh one.

As he stepped out back onto the road, he heard loud shouts coming from one of the houses across from the bar. He swung his gun toward the noise. Heavy footsteps followed, and three young men hurried outside. The same ones who were having tea and smoking at the bar a few minutes ago. Two were carrying AKs. The third held a rocket-propelled grenade launcher over his shoulder.

“Drop the guns,” Justin shouted at them. “Drop them.”

The young men froze as they found themselves staring at Justin’s gun.

“We want to help,” said the one with the RPG. “To fight al-Shabaab.”

Kind of late for that, Justin thought, but realized he needed a driver if he was to give chase. “Can you drive?” he asked the young man with the RPG.

“Of course I can.” He sounded slightly offended by the question.

“Good. You’ll drive the ‘technical.’ And you,” Justin said to one of the men with an AK, “You’re in charge of the gun in the back. I got the one in the front. Let’s go.”

The two young men nodded and hurried toward the pickup.

“What about me?” asked the third young man.

Justin looked at him. He was barely a teen, but his eyes sparkled with the joy of revenge. And he was holding his AK with both hands, ready to let out a volley of bullets. “Get in the passenger’s seat. When we get closer, you’ll shoot.”

“I can do that,” the young man replied, then ran to the pickup.

Justin scanned the area around him, full of newly-arrived villagers. He saw the two old men and nodded at them. They were standing next to the closest house to the bar. One of them — the one who had offered him tea — called out to him, “You said you were a journalist.”

And you said you were strong and held back al-Shabaab. It was the first reply that came to Justin’s mind. Instead, he said, “I am a journalist. This is my hobby, my pastime.”

The old man grinned. “You’re very good at it. Alhumdulilah.”

I don’t know if I’ll praise God for this bloodbath, Justin thought, as the young men threw the bodies of the two gunmen off the truck. But I’ll thank Him for keeping me alive through the shootout.

Justin nodded his goodbye, tossed his knapsack in the back of the pickup, and climbed in the truck. He stepped around boxes of ammunition and a few RPGs. The young man had already positioned himself behind the PKM heavy machine gun, two gun belts wrapped around his neck. Justin rapped at the top of the cab and shouted at the driver, “We’re good to go.”

The driver floored the gas. Justin hung on to the wooden handle of the PKM mounted on a makeshift tripod. The pickup turned sharply, then gained speed. He looked at the machine gun. Its barrel had some rust spots and the grip was well-worn. It was likely still in good working condition, but there was a big difference between his definition of “good” and “working” and that of local Somalis. Justin checked the gun belt feeding into the machine gun to make sure it was loaded properly. Once satisfied all was in order, he closed the feed tray cover and engaged its latch.

The driver kept the pickup mainly on the road, and a dust cloud soon engulfed them. Justin brought his headdress down to his eyebrows and wrapped its ends around his mouth. Still, the grains of dirt pricked his eyes, making it difficult to see, let alone aim his gun. The driver flipped on his headlights, which did not help much. Justin’s vision was still reduced to a dozen or so feet in front of the pickup.

The young man in the front passenger’s seat popped his head and his AK out of the window. Before he could pull the trigger, Justin stepped closer to him and shouted, “No shooting until we get closer and until I give the order.”

The young man grunted and scowled, but retreated inside the cab.

Justin peered straight ahead and thought he saw the blurry boxed silhouette of the jeep. As he returned behind his PKM, he saw bullets kicking up dirt on the left side of the road.

“They’re shooting at us,” the front passenger shouted.

“I can see that,” Justin replied, “do not fire back. We need them alive.”

The front passenger let out a torrent of curses. He was interrupted by a couple of lucky bullets that struck the side of the pickup as they went around a curve.

“Man, they’re going to kill us,” shouted the gunman at the back.

Justin thought about his options. They had to return fire, but he could not afford to kill Yusuf and his fighters. Not before they had given up their secrets.

“Drive to the left,” he ordered the driver. “Get us out of the road. I need a clear line of sight.”

The pickup veered in that direction. It lost some speed, since the driver was swerving to avoid the dips and rises of the terrain. They moved out of the dust swirling on the road and were now driving parallel to the jeep.

“Faster, faster,” Justin shouted, readying his machine gun.

The jeep came into his view as Justin aligned the sight of the PKM with the target. It was well within the maximum effective range of the gun of over 1500 yards. Justin pulled the charging handle back, sliding the first round of ammunition from the belt and feeding it onto the bolt face. He returned the handle to its previous position and took a deep breath. A second later, he pulled the trigger, firing a six-round burst, followed by a nine-round burst. He sent the bullets in front of the jeep, mainly as a show of strength and to force the jeep to perhaps slow down. He had no illusions Yusuf was going to stop and surrender without a fight.

Incoming bullets stitched a strange pattern around the pickup. One or two whizzed very close to his head. Justin blasted another barrage, aiming closer to the jeep, then let the machine gun barrel cool for a few seconds.

The AK of the front passenger came out of the window

Justin shouted, “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot!”

The young man was already squeezing out round after round. His weapon was bouncing wildly, the powerful recoil almost throwing the gun out of his small, untrained hands.

“Cease fire, cease fire! Stop shooting!” Justin shouted again, his voice lost amidst the gun reports.

The AK clicked empty and disappeared inside the cab.

“Don’t shoot any more, got it?”

“Fine, got it,” came the reply. The young man sounded very much annoyed.

Another stream of incoming bullets hit the pickup. Justin ducked, but there was not much cover on the truck bed. The insurgents had reinforced the sides of the truck with steel plates crudely soldered together. They had provided some level of extra protection at some point, but now they were full of bullet holes. Justin doubted they were going to survive another onslaught.

The truck sank as the bullets blew one of the tires, then stopped. The windows glass shattered. More bullets hammered the doors. Screams of pain came from the cab. Justin looked at the RPG launcher by his feet. The gunman was lying flat next to the box full of machine gun ammunition belts. “The RPG. Give me the RPG,” Justin said.

It took him a few moments to focus and make sense of Justin’s words.

“The launcher. Now,” Justin said.

The man reached for the weapon and handed it to Justin, who gave it a quick look to make sure it was all in one piece. He rolled on his stomach and picked up the launcher. The barrage of bullets had slowed down, but they were still peppering the truck. This rust bucket isn’t going to be my coffin, Justin thought, tightening his grip around the launcher.

The shooting stopped. Justin seized the moment. He glanced over the side of the truck. The jeep had stopped. Justin climbed to one knee and leveled the RPG launcher. He aimed it at the jeep — about one hundred yards away — and pulled the trigger.

The grenade whooshed toward the target. The gray smoke coming out of the launcher’s breach swallowed up the truck. A second later, a powerful explosion roared through the area. Justin grabbed one of the AKs by the ammunition box and jumped out of the truck, hitting the ground running. He was now out of the smoke cloud. The RPG had knocked the jeep to its driver’s side. Small flames chewed at the tires. Justin advanced slowly, his assault rifle at the ready in case he saw survivors.

He reached the mangled wreck. The driver was dead, his head snapped backwards. A sharp metal piece from the door had pierced the chest of the front passenger. He was dead too, blood still trickling out of his mouth. A low sigh came from the back seat. Justin peered through the sight of his AK and found Yusuf’s face covered in blood and bruises. A pool of blood was forming on his chest. His eyes still had the dim light of life in them, but it was quickly burning out.

“Who’s your source?” Justin asked in Arabic.

Yusuf tried to speak, but a soft wheeze came out of his mouth. He coughed, bloody spittle dripping down the side of his face. “My son… hhhh… save my son.” His eyes moved toward the man lying next to him.

Justin saw the resemblance between the two men and realized the bitter fact: the son Yusuf was trying to save was already gone. “Your son for your source. Who gave you the intel?”

Yusuf drew in a shallow breath. He said in a weak voice, “The Yemeni… Hussein Ahmed Al-Khaiwani. He… he has it.”

Justin did not recognize the name. “Don’t lie, Yusuf.”

Yusuf tried to shake his head. It proved to be a daunting task. “It’s the truth. Al-Houthi… he gave us your position.”

Footsteps raced behind him. One of the gunmen, the one in the back, stood a few steps away from the hood of the jeep.

Justin asked, “How are the others?”

The young man shook his head. “Both dead.”

“Bring the truck here, if it still works. We’ll take their guns.”

Justin could care less about the weapons, but it would give him an excuse to get rid of the young man and finish his conversation with Yusuf.

“And their bodies,” the young man said.

“What?”

“We’ll take their bodies.”

Justin furrowed his brow. “Why?”

The young man blinked as if Justin’s question made no sense. “So the village can see we killed them. If they see the bodies, they will have no fear.”

Justin hated the idea of corpses being paraded around as trophies, but decided it was not his call. Even if he stopped it, he was not going to stand guard by the jeep. Sooner or later, the villagers were going to take the bodies. That is, if hyenas and other desert vultures had not already gotten to them.

“Fine. Now get the truck.”

The young man cast a glance at the jeep, scowled at the dead bodies, then began to walk back. Justin returned to Yusuf, but was met by the man’s empty gaze. “At least I got a name. That’s a start,” Justin said. “Yemen. Another hellhole.” He spat on the ground.

He thought about Yusuf’s last words. The man had said “al-Houthi.” The same terrorist group that’s close to getting their hands on Romanov’s missiles. Romanov. That man is everywhere.

And Justin did not believe in coincidences.

Did Romanov know about the leak? Did he know Houthis had this intelligence? Is this what he meant when he said he could “sweeten the deal?” He would give us this name?

Justin looked around the jeep. A satellite phone lay next to Yusuf’s right hand, along with a thin briefcase. He took both and walked over to the other side to search the glove compartment. The pickup truck growled in the distance but did not move. Justin hoped it would take a while before the young man got it working, so he could finish his search. He found another satellite phone and a large envelope and put them together with the other items. He moved on to the trunk. It had tools, rags, a couple of empty buckets, a spare tire, and other spare parts for the jeep. Nothing of interest to him.

He quenched the tire fires, which had begun to eat through one of the doors. Then he began to pull out the bodies and go through their pockets as he laid them on the sand. He found cash, Somali and Kenyan IDs — which he was not sure whether they were genuine or very good counterfeits — keys and a digital camera. One of the gunmen had a couple of gold rings that looked too small for his stubby fingers. Spoils of war? Justin snapped a photo of each dead man’s face with the digital camera, so the Service could run the images through their databases and confirm their identities.

The truck pulled up next to the jeep before Justin had a chance to look inside the briefcase and the envelope.

“The engine took a couple of rounds, but it will hold until we get back to the village,” the young man said, eyeing the corpses. “The stupid cowards,” he added as he got out of the truck. He noticed the briefcase in Justin’s hand. His face glowed with excitement. “Booty. For both of us?”

“Yes.”

The young man hurried to pillage the corpses, removing jewelry, pistols, and boots. Justin stepped aside, scrolling through the phone numbers of the satellite phones. Most names were Arabic, a few Somali or Kenyan. He did not know any, but the Service could find out as they searched through their files.

“We’ve got to go,” Justin said.

The young man frowned. He looked at the bodies. “I’m not finished. Do you want to—”

“No. We’re not loading them now. We have to go back to the village.”

The young man collected his plunder, dropping a boot here and a pistol there. Justin gave a hand to the young man. They loaded everything in the back of the truck, next to the bodies of the two young men.

“You’ll drive,” Justin said. “I’ll stay in the back.”

The young man had proven an asset on the ground, but it was going to take much more to gain Justin’s trust.

They rode in silence, Justin standing behind the machine gun, keeping a constant eye on the driver. When they drew near to the school, Justin asked him to stop. His jeep was still where he had left it less than an hour ago.

“Where are you going?” asked the young man.

“Our roads part here.”

He put his share of the booty in his knapsack and slung it onto his back. He took one of the AKs and a few extra magazines from the ammunition box, then reached out to shake the young man’s hand. “You did well in the fight.”

The man smiled, nodded.

“Ma'a as-salaama,” Justin said. Goodbye.

“Ila-liqaa.” Until we meet again.

Justin smiled. No offense to you or this country, but I hope I’ll never have to set foot again on this land.