Pirate Alley

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EYL, SOMALIA

The fortified lair of Sheikh Ragnar, the big banana of piracy, Somalia-style, was an old hotel right on the waterfront in Eyl. Six stories high, from the upper story it had a fine view of the harbor created by the two small promontories. Ragnar had knocked down superfluous walls on the top story to create a penthouse. His men were on the floors below, and he had four machine guns mounted on the roof, one on each corner, just in case.

From time to time Ragnar glanced at the captured cruise ship anchored in the river’s channel and permitted himself a smile. Ragnar was not his real name. He wasn’t a sheikh either; he was a vicious, amoral sewer rat who shot first and asked questions later. With his greed, sewer smarts, violent disposition and respect for nothing, Ragnar had what it takes to succeed as a pirate.

So far he had done very well at the trade. The ransoming of Sultan of the Seas and her passengers and crew would be the capstone on his career. He intended to retire and live like a pasha on his ill-gotten millions. He would have all the good food, liquor, women and drugs he could possibly want to eat, drink, screw or snuff up his nose—yet, in truth, Ragnar had that now. Still, like humans everywhere, he wanted more.

More.

He wondered if there were any attractive women in the fortress. Might not a new one be a delicacy in bed tonight? Young, white, with dark hair and shaved legs and big, luscious tits. Ragnar liked big tits and tight, wet pussies with a triangle of curly dark pubic hair. White skin made the dark pubic hair vivid, irresistible. He would ask Mustafa.

FORTY MILES SOUTH OF EYL, SOMALIA

I lay there in the dirt/sand mix of Africa trying to get comfortable. I was on my stomach, with my head resting in the crook of my arm, trying to ignore the hot sun slowly baking me and the itch that had developed on my right ankle. I didn’t think the ants had gotten that far, not yet, anyway, but no doubt if I lay here long enough they would. Ants that would disassemble me piece by tiny piece and carry me away to Ant City to feed the little ones. I was in no mood to be recycled just yet.

It was quiet. Peaceful. Like everyone else on the planet was dead and I was the only one left alive, listening …

As I lay there I thought about many things. How Mrs. Carmellini’s only boy, Tommy, wound up in the African dirt. She wanted me to be a professional something, work in a nice office, marry a nice girl, have 2.5 kids and invite her to visit for the Christmas holidays. I even got a law degree along the way. However, certain character flaws reared their ugly heads and the CIA latched on to me … so there went the nice wife, the kids, and Mom’s Christmas vacation.

An ant crawled up onto my hand. I decided to risk it. I squashed the little bastard with my other hand, moving as little as possible.

I started out in the Company as a burglar and wish I could have stayed at it. Gadgets, bugs and safecracking were my Company specialties, although in the last two years Grafton has sent me to every military and Company school he could think of to teach me tradecraft and unarmed combat. Armed combat, too. I knew how to recruit and run agents, set up drops and lie convincingly. I also knew how to jump out of a plane, kill people with knives, garroting wire and high explosives, could tear down, repair, clean and shoot any weapon in any military arsenal, and could even swim fairly well, although the SEALs refused to certify my swimming skills. Said I wasn’t proficient enough.

I didn’t care: I didn’t want to be a SEAL. What I got out of SEAL training was an abiding loathing of water—I limit myself to showers and an occasional glass of water between meals.

Another school he ran me through that I didn’t do great at was Marine Corps sniping school. Oh, I could shoot fairly well, but I refused to get with the program and commune with blood-sucking insects and lizards, become one with the dirt and sweat, which is what marines are all about. Lying motionless under a bush for days at a time, pissing and shitting in an adult diaper, just to pot someone if he or she happened by was a skill set that I decided I could probably do without. Grafton knew the marines also sent me home without a graduation certificate, although he pretended he didn’t.

The irony of all that training and my current predicament almost brought a smile to my face. Almost.

If worst came to worst, I planned on getting a job at Starbucks and to hell with all of it. At Christmas maybe I’d send Grafton a card, maybe I wouldn’t. I could send Mom a fruitcake.

I was getting really relaxed, itches and all, when I heard the faintest sound of an engine. A gasoline engine. I listened and tried to stay totally relaxed.

After a bit I realized there were two of them, some ways off. I only heard the sounds when the engines revved or topped a little rise.

I knew what they were. Technicals, which were Jap pickups with a machine gun mounted on a swivel in the bed. They were the tanks, jeeps, supply vehicles, scout cars, VIP transport and mobile antiaircraft units of both the pirates and the Islamic fundamentalist rebels hereabouts, the Shabab, the holy warriors who had been trying to take over the country for the last seventeen years. The Shabab wasn’t doing so hot right now, what with the famine in the southern half of the country and the universal opprobrium in which they were held, here and everywhere else. Three million people were in the various stages of starvation and the Shabab refused to allow international aid. Anything delivered anyway they stole.

The drivers of these two technicals were certainly taking their time. We spotted them with binoculars about twenty-five minutes ago and I had been lying here for fifteen, contemplating my itches and misspent life.

A voice in the earpiece. “About a quarter mile away now, Tommy. Act dead.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Tried to relax every muscle, become one with the earth.

“Two guys in each truck.”

I could hear the engines clearly now. One had the remnants of a muffler; the other was reduced to a straight exhaust pipe, which blatted fiercely.

The two trucks were coming along this dirt road from the south, headed, presumably, toward Eyl or one of the villages farther up the coast. We were inland a few miles from the coast road, which was fairly well traveled. This rutted track through the desert was much less so. There hadn’t been any other vehicles in over an hour.

Not that many people in Somalia were out on the roads. Without a government, with a civil war raging, with pirates along the coast, the country was swarming with armed, hungry men willing to rob, loot, pillage and rape about anybody. Anywhere you went, you needed to be in an armed group that the locals didn’t want to mess with. Sorta like Europe in the Dark Ages, I imagine, or perhaps Wall Street today.

As the trucks approached I practiced being dead.

They were loud and right there when they stopped and the engines dropped to idle RPM. I tried to breathe ever so shallow.

Heard a door slam. Then another. Still, the kick in the ribs a few seconds later was kinda unexpected. I grunted.

A foot in my ribs rolled me over like so much dead meat. I blinked at the light, looked up. Saw a head wearing a rag blotting out the sun. The rays of the sun behind him left his face in shadow.

I realized he had a pistol in his hand.

The guy beside him said something. This guy was maybe twenty, wearing a rag and filthy trousers and shirt. There were two more of them, off to my right.

They jabbered.

The guy who had kicked me before kicked me again, and I curled up into a fetal position.

More jabbering. Laughter. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the closest man. He raised his pistol, cocked it with the thumb of his left hand and drew a careful bead on my little cranium.

I scrunched my eyes shut. Wondered if this was gonna be the big It. All my life, just to get to this.

Then I heard the thunks, the sickening impact sounds of big bullets striking living tissue. I felt a fine spray of liquid. I felt rather than saw two bodies falling.

About two seconds later I heard the shots, just one booming sound, rolling through the low hills and acacia bushes.

Two more heavy smacks, one potato, two … and, again, the report, just one bang.

“Tommy?”

I moved my hands and keyed my mike. “Yeah.”

“They’re down. All four.”

“Yeah.”

I pushed myself to my knees, then stood. All four of them were dead. Ratty clothes, sandals, Russian weapons, scraggly beards and head rags. One guy had guts hanging out. Blood sprayed everywhere. I felt the puke coming up my throat and managed to shut my eyes and keep it down.

The trucks were still idling.

My part in this little murder scene was designed to get them out of the trucks. We didn’t want the hardware damaged.

I was checking out our new rides when the guys came down from the hills carrying the Sakos, E.D. and Travis Clay. They paused to inspect the corpses.

E.D. looked me over. “You got sprayed with blood,” he said.

I used my sleeve to wipe my face.

“So what are we going to do with them?” He gestured at the corpses.

“You shot ’em, you bury ’em. Better be quick about it. Someone might come along before long, and we gotta be outta here. Keep their weapons.”

“Yeah, Tommy.”

I felt like shit. Yeah, they would have killed me in another few seconds—I know that. But still.

As Clay and E.D. dragged the corpses into the brush, I climbed into the trucks and inspected the machine guns. They were dusty but looked as if they had been cleaned and oiled in this decade. Lots of Russian brass, relatively shiny. Not too green.

OK.

Truck tires had a little tread left, not much, but maybe enough for thin mud.

I got behind the wheel of the first truck and checked out the fuel gauge. It read zero. I got out, unscrewed the cap and ran a stick down the pipe. Last four inches were wet. There were two five-gallon cans of fuel in the bed of the thing. The other one had three cans in its bed. Some blanket rolls that were probably full of lice, a metal pot containing some greasy meat. Probably dead goat. It stunk a little.

Two old milk jugs contained water. It looked kinda brown. Dysentery in jugs. Somali cocktails. I wondered what creek they got it from.

E.D. and Clay came in from the brush.

“So what were they?” I asked. “Holy warriors or pirates?”

“Like I can tell the difference,” Clay said. “What they weren’t was goat herders or farmers.”

“You get them under?” I asked.

“Not very deep. Next good rain…”

“Let’s load up and roll.”

E.D. rode with me while Clay drove the other truck. He lit a cigarette, took a few quick hits off it. After a while he said, “I guess you’re tired of living.”

When I didn’t reply to that, he said, “That guy was about a half second from doing you, Tommy. We fired as soon as we had a good shot, but shit, I was about peeing my pants.”

“I have faith in you.”

“Fuck you do, asshole. I think you’re just tired of living. There were a half-dozen other ways to set this up without you lying down beside the road asking for it, fucking human tiger bait.”

“So, if you lived out here, what would you be? Pirate or goat herder or holy warrior?”

He didn’t say anything to that. We jounced along in silence, the shock absorbers being about as dead as the guys we buried. He glanced at me once or twice, finished his cig, then wadded his sweatshirt up and used it to brace his head. Closed his eyes.

I could still hear the whacks of the bullets hitting them, feel the blood spray, see guts hanging out of horrible wounds, smell the blood.

We had to kill them. Couldn’t steal their rides and leave them to tell everyone they met that someone had ripped them off. I knew how it would be when we discussed this beforehand. I just hadn’t yet seen their faces. And I didn’t want to walk up behind them and shoot them in the head.

At least they didn’t see it coming.

Jesus.

I felt my mouth watering. I slammed on the brakes, stopping the truck, opened the door and vomited in the dirt.

As I waited for my stomach to settle down, I wondered if I would see it coming. Or care.

“Tommy…”

“Just shut the fuck up, man.”

EYL, SOMALIA

Yousef el-Din was a devout fundamentalist Muslim. His god was fierce, strict, ruthless and unforgiving, and He liked the sight and smell of infidel blood. Those qualities also defined Yousef el-Din. He was the senior Shabab leader in the Eyl area. For years the Islamic revolution had been waged full tilt in the southern part of the country and Eyl had been a relative backwater. Recent military and political reverses in the south, which was suffering from a famine caused by the worst drought in centuries, had given new life to the movement in the north.

The north was actually doing worse in the rainfall department, but the people hereabouts didn’t live on agriculture. Also, the north, Puntland, was infested with pirates, which meant money, weapons, imported food. Prosperity. Here were the resources to sustain a revolutionary movement.

The man responsible for most of the prosperity, Ragnar the Pirate, watched from his penthouse balcony as Yousef el-Din got out of his technical. His bodyguard coalesced around him. Yousef’s truck had been the third in a five-truck convoy. Each truck had contained three or four men, all armed. This ragtag band of heroes swarmed like a hive of bees around their queen, Ragnar thought as he watched from his perch high above.

Ragnar saw Yousef look left and right, watched him spend a moment looking over Sultan of the Seas riding at anchor, then walk toward the entrance to Ragnar’s building.

Ragnar toyed with the butt of the pistol sticking out of its holster on his belt. He had an uneasy relationship with Yousef el-Din, as he had with his predecessor, Feiz al-Darraji. Last week Ragnar had al-Darraji killed. Quietly. His corpse and those of his two bodyguards were now fish food, at least two hundred miles out. The three were captured by two of Ragnar’s sons and Mustafa al-Said, his number two, as they left a whorehouse. They were put aboard a boat and given a long ride east. Then they were thrown into the sea. Not being fishermen, they couldn’t swim, so didn’t last long. Since they were devout Muslims, their souls were probably in Paradise now, Ragnar thought. Or maybe not. He had a healthy skepticism about all that holy bullshit.

The women could be relied upon to remain silent, Ragnar believed. They really knew nothing, and they had better remember that if asked. If they didn’t …

His sons Nouri and Muqtada were in the anteroom, waiting at the top of the stairs. Both were armed. Yousef would be alone. His men would have to wait in the lobby downstairs.

He could hear Yousef’s footsteps in the stairwell. The elevator hadn’t worked in years; it was actually stuck between the fourth and fifth floors, its door permanently open.

Ragnar poured himself a cup of tea and sat down in his favorite chair on the balcony, with the harbor at his feet, and waited. He could feel the breeze coming in off the sea, gentle, cool, salty sea air.

Yousef came out onto the balcony, with Nouri and Muqtada behind him. Ragnar gestured toward a chair, and Nouri went to get the guest a cup of tea.

After the social preliminaries, doubly important because Ragnar wanted a hint about Yousef’s state of mind, the men fell silent and sipped their tea.

Yousef el-Din’s face was a mask, Ragnar saw. He had only seen the man on three or four occasions before al-Darraji’s untimely departure, and had paid little attention. Ragnar would not miss al-Darraji, with his love of power, an aggressive personality and the manners of a goat, a man used to pulling the trigger and watching other people die. A man who expected everyone to kneel before him, including Ragnar. No, he would not be missed.

“Feiz al-Darraji has disappeared,” Yousef said sadly, breaking the news. “His friends and soldiers cannot find him.”

Ragnar shook his head sadly. “When was he last seen?”

“A week ago.”

“Ahh, that is a long time. A week…”

“We have been looking, interrogating people who might know something.”

“Of course. I have heard of your inquiries,” Ragnar admitted, “but I hesitated to ask why.”

“Two bodyguards are also missing.”

“We live in dangerous times. Who, I ask you, is truly safe?”

“Since al-Darraji is gone,” Yousef said without inflection, “I have been appointed to take his place.”

Ragnar nodded, as if the appointment were inevitable. “May he rest in peace,” Ragnar answered piously, “but it is the way of the world. We are but flesh and blood, temporary creatures, until we meet the Prophet in Paradise.”

A trace of amusement crossed Yousef’s face. He sipped tea. Glanced at the Sultan lying in the harbor.

“The news of your success has gone to the ends of the earth,” Yousef el-Din remarked, a rather abrupt change of subject.

“We have made a start,” Ragnar replied. “We will not succeed until the ransom is paid.”

“They will pay. And you will pay us.” The “us” he was referring to was the Shabab, as Ragnar well knew.

“Let us stop circling the fire,” Ragnar said, his eyes pinning Yousef el-Din. “Al-Darraji intended to kill all the prisoners after the ransom was paid. He had his reasons, and no doubt you know them. Now I will tell you the reality of our situation. We can capture ships and demand ransom only because when it is paid we turn over the ships and crews. If we do not, they will never pay again. The money will stop coming. Without money, we will starve. That is, we will starve if the military forces of the West do not invade and kill us first.”

Yousef said nothing.

Ragnar continued, “Feiz al-Darraji did not care about us. He only wished to lead a glorious jihad against the unbelievers. He cared not for us, whether we eat or starve, whether we live or die. As long as he and his men could march into Paradise with the blood of infidels on their hands he would sacrifice us all.”

“So you killed him.”

Ragnar rose from his seat and drew his pistol. He checked to see that it was loaded. He pointed it at Yousef. Walked toward him until the muzzle of the weapon was only a few inches from Yousef’s head.

“As long as the Shabab stays out of my business we will get along. For only that long.”

He holstered the weapon and made a dismissive gesture with his left hand.

“Go,” he said. “This time, you live. The next time, you will not.”

Yousef stood. “I am but one man. The Shabab is thousands. They will destroy you if you stand in their way.”

“Perhaps,” Ragnar said, “but you will not live to see it. And the mullahs will not see any money. Believe that. Al-Darraji did not care whether he was in this world or the next. He did not care about money. So he said. He is now in the next world, and he went penniless. Your revolution progressed not a millimeter. I doubt if Allah gives a damn.”

Yousef shook with fury. “Do not blaspheme,” he roared. “Our jihad is holy. On the Prophet’s beard, do you understand holy?”

Ragnar turned his back. He heard steps, then silence.

When he turned around Yousef was gone. Down the stairs. Nouri nodded at him.