The Devil's Handshake

37

Borama

Arriving in the early hours of Saturday morning and having gotten only the few hours of sleep that they had all managed to grab on the plane, both Thomas and Mikhail were now sitting in one of the serviced Private Residences within the secure compound of TLH’s new five star hotel on the Airport Road known as ‘The Cismah.’

“Yossi tells me that the Turkmen’s Il-76 arrived from Bangkok via Mumbai last night with a rather interesting cargo from Ukraine and various tractor parts,” Mikhail said rather grimly.

“Not good!” Thomas answered quickly knowing that meant the Viper’s planned coup d’état could literately days away, if not hours.

“I know!” answered Mikhail before advising him that he would brief Igor accordingly.

“There’s something else as well,” offered Mikhail before he went on to explain that he had learned from one of Barak’s sources—that all of Wasir’s transporters had just left Borama for a cargo pick up in Ethiopia.

“I will call the President and ask for a meeting,” replied Thomas quickly, even more fully convinced than he ever was before that Adwalland was a matter of hours away from having a coup-d’etat on its hands.

“I will get going and brief Igor on the transporters,” offered Mikhail somewhat grimly. In every military operation throughout history, despite the best intentions of the strategists, nothing ever runs to plan and depending on what side you are on this will be either fortunate or disastrous.

“What do you mean, Mr. Tony, ‘there is a problem with the helicopter?’” asked Wasir, anger rising as he received his briefing from Tony and Andrew who had been told by their runner in Bissau that their expensive helicopter gunship had been impounded.

Earlier, Andrew had sworn loudly using every swear word in his vocabulary when informed of the news, but now as he briefed the warlord he just sighed and took a sip of his bitter-sweet coffee.

“The authorities have apparently arrested one of our Ukrainian pilots on the back of one of them getting into a bar fight over a whore during which he had killed the whore’s pimp at the small hotel they were staying at,” Andrew explained. “Unfortunately for us they arrested the second pilot when they checked on what they were doing at the hangar at the airport and found the packed-up weapons systems,” he further added.

The rage that followed over the next couple of minutes contained a variety of insults towards both Andrew and Tony, ranging from their lack of professionalism in English to a curse about their parentage, something that neither man understood as he said it in Somali before finally ending with Wasir telling them to get out of office, but not before he had told them at least his men had left this morning and were making their way to Addis to collect the armored personnel carriers from his contacts.

“I thought he took that rather well all things considered!” Tony said as they drove off. Andrew chose to ignore him. He just thought all the dictators-in-waiting were the same the world over. This one was no different.

“Just think of the money!” he told himself with a heavy sigh.