The Night of the Cobra

1 MOGADISHU

“I understand The United States alone cannot right the world’s wrongs.” President George H. W. Bush was addressing the American people on television, and Marine Corps Sergeant Kyle Swanson listened from his perch on a high stool in a bar in Twenty-Nine Palms, California. An unusual moment of quiet settled throughout the popular watering hole as other strong young men stopped playing pool, clinking beer bottles, and hustling girls. They had all seen the ongoing television reports on the horrors in the faraway African country of Somalia, where life was less than cheap and merciless warlords ruled. A United Nations peacekeeping force had failed to halt the spiral of violence, and talk of possible American intervention had been sweeping through the Palms training areas like a hot desert wind. The president looked anguished, and spoke like he meant business. “But we also know that some crises in the world cannot be resolved without American involvement, that American action is often necessary as a catalyst for broader involvement of the community of nations.”

The off-duty marines crowded into the bar cheered. “Damned right!” one called. “Got that straight!” yelled another, and calls of “hoo-ah!” bounced from the walls like excited echoes.

“He’s talking about us, right, Sar’nt Swanson?” asked Corporal David Delshay, a chunky sniper who was finishing off a longneck bottle at the little table. Delshay, a Native American known as the Apache, held a pool cue in his free hand, ready to resume his game against Corporal Mike Mancuso.

“Yep,” said Swanson. Everyone on the big sandy base in the Northern California desert had known this was probably coming. Somalia needed help, and from the TV that was clamped high above the bar the president was saying that the United States was going to be the lead dog in this hasty coalition. That meant that the First Battalion, Seventh Marines, would be the lead dogs for a 28,000-man U.S. ground force, and Kyle Swanson and his Scout/Snipers would be the lead dogs for the marines.

Big Mike Mancuso, another one of Swanson’s sniper team members, looked a little puzzled. “Hey, this dude just lost the election. So how can he send us off to a war?”

“Bill Clinton doesn’t take office for another month, you moron,” piped a brunette in tight jeans who was leaning against Swanson’s side. “George Bush is still president until then. You guys are going on safari.”

Kyle gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze. Chicks loved snipers, and Swanson loved them right back. They came and went like tides, and any relationship could end without so much as a telephone call if Swanson was dispatched on a mission he could not disclose to anyone. Four weekend dates seemed like a lifetime. He was satisfied with that arrangement. Ladies around the bases knew the drill.

“Marines go where they are told, when they are told, and fight who they are told to fight,” he said.

It was that time again. By the time Bush had finished announcing Operation Restore Hope, a computer was sending out auto alerts and the beeper on Swanson’s belt began to vibrate. He turned it off and saw others in the saloon were also touching their own beepers, finishing up, paying their bills, stealing good-bye kisses, and drifting outside, heading back to the base. The parking lot was almost empty within fifteen minutes.

The One-Seven spent the next week packing its gear, then hauled ass out of the States, with stops in Maine and Germany. Sergeant Kyle Swanson was boots-on-ground in the Horn of Africa on Friday, December 11, 1992, just days before Christmas.

He slapped on his floppy boonie hat as he stepped to the tarmac of the small airport of Mogadishu, Somalia, and shaded his eyes with his polarized Oakley sunglasses to look out over the tumbledown, broken metropolis that was still steaming and stinking after a rainy-season squall. In his mind, the place seemed to be singling him out, glaring directly back at him, reaching out to stake a claim. The sniper immediately felt an internal surge of adrenaline that meant this was where he belonged. This was new territory, but not new ground to him. Swanson had seen plenty of combat in other rotten places, so while Mogadishu promised to be mean, he knew it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He was mean, too. In fact, Swanson, all in all, felt pretty good about being out here, back at the sharp point of the spear. Right where he belonged.

Kyle Swanson shouldered his rifle and joined his company as more planes disgorged more marines into the hot sun. Two thousand were coming in as part of the initial contingent of a military buildup that eventually would rise to tens of thousands of troops from the United States and other nations. Swanson was not here to feed people. His unique task was to hide, to observe, and, when necessary, to kill.

Within a few hours of landing, he was about a thousand meters from the airport, concealed in a jumbled pile of rubble that once had been a building with his right cheek resting comfortably against the fiberglass stock of his Remington bolt-action M40A1, which was loaded with 7.62 × 55 mm rounds and rested on a bipod. He used the sharp Unertl 10× fixed-power scope to visually crawl over the landscape while his spotter, Corporal David Delshay, lay alongside him, doing the same with powerful binoculars. They used a laser range finder to paint distances to fixed objects. It was standard sniper fare. Behind them, more planes landed with the steady rhythm of a metronome, and the anchored ships of the Marine Expeditionary Force off-loaded gear and supplies at the obsolete port. Swanson ignored all of that, for his practiced eyes were pointed the other way, toward the city, and he and Delshay sketched a map of what lay before them. They had only just arrived but were already far out front as a dangerous, but expendable, tripwire. Any offensive move against the airport would have to come through them. Both Swanson and the Apache were cool with that.

The sniper team stayed out all day, immobile while in the scorching sun and drenched by an afternoon deluge. Swanson saw plenty of enemy soldiers running around with guns, but the rules of engagement kept him from firing unless they shot at him first. He prayed that they would, but they didn’t. It was hard not to pull the trigger on the thugs that were the reason he was here; they stole everything they wanted, beat people mercilessly, and used starvation and disease as weapons.

When the sun finally went down on that first day, the two weary snipers returned to the air base, where more marines had arrived. The place was filling up fast. Swanson cleaned his weapons, pulled fresh supplies, had something to eat, washed his face and hands, and immediately fell asleep amid the noise. For now, Somalia was home.

By Monday, the secured area was bursting at the seams, and still more soldiers came in by planes every hour: mean-looking Turks and solid Saudis, laid-back Canadians, chatty Pakis, French soldiers, and Kenyans, and ever more marines, until hundreds of troops were penned like cows at the port and airfield. Swanson and his sniper teams extended their overwatch out to two thousand meters and began providing protection for foot patrols that probed into the built-up areas. The newness of being in a foreign land had already worn off, and they settled in for what had all the markings of being a long haul.

By the end of his first week, Mogadishu had him. The place the marines now called “the Mog” hit him in the face the moment he opened his eyes every morning and rode him like a broken-down horse all day. If he got up to pee at night, it was still there. His morale sank almost with every passing hour as his world became all Mog, all day. When he turned on the radio, the Mog topped the BBC World Service. The feeling of despair was fueled by the heart-rending sights of hunger and deprivation all around, and even that grew stale. There was just too much misery out there for any individual to assimilate. It sapped the energy and soul. Staying sharp and keeping his snipers alert was getting harder to do. There was very little fighting beyond the warlords dealing with each other’s forces at night, as if a little secret war was going on right under the nose of a giant.

Political wrangling had staved off open confrontation, and he could see the bad guys; he just couldn’t shoot them until they were dumb enough to shoot first. It was frustrating. The obviously outmatched gunmen of the warlords in Mogadishu avoided confrontation in the city and spread like rats to seek weaker prey elsewhere. In response, the operations people of Task Force Mogadishu at the airport fanned troops into the countryside as fast as they could to counter the moving bands of thugs.

The tedium finally broke on Sunday morning, December 20, when Swanson was called to the battalion headquarters tent and told to draw equipment and pick a half dozen of his snipers. An American army unit in the town of Afgoye, twenty-five miles west in the Shabelle Valley, was receiving intermittent gunfire and wanted help. Kyle turned out his marines, and they sailed off in a pair of Humvees, all of them happy to get away from the Mog for a spell, and maybe even find a fight.

They rolled into an oasis of peace, a lush green belt of mature agriculture that followed a river. The army officer in charge told Kyle that shots had come from a stand of trees that walled the western side of the town, so Swanson and his men spread into the area with their weapons hot. Nothing. People were going about their daily routines, and the crowded refugee feeding station was running like a machine. Army troopers were relaxed in the shade with their equipment scattered on the ground. Nobody was shooting at anybody. Swanson went back to the officer in charge.

When the major insisted that there had been an attack, Kyle went up to a rooftop to get a better angle into the jungle. He discovered a half-dozen American women soldiers sunbathing in bras and panties. They were very unhappy that he had invaded their private space on a Sunday morning, and he was equally unhappy that he and his team had rushed twenty-five miles to answer a false alarm. Seeing the near-naked bodies of the G.I. Janes did not impress him at all. Swanson stalked back downstairs, barked a bit at the officer about lax discipline, and took his snipers home, back to the big city.

Mogadishu had waited patiently while Swanson was gone and was ready for another round when he returned.

Swanson met the enemy face-to-face two days later on a dawn patrol that went into the city. By then, the foreign armed forces had grown to become the biggest gang in town, and more marines and U.N. troops were still arriving. They owned Mogadishu.

The marines followed a familiar street to a private compound, and the sergeant leading the patrol winked at Swanson. “You get to do the honors. I did it yesterday. He’s getting annoyed.” Swanson knocked on a door of hard dark wood. It was exactly seven o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, December 22.

It was opened by a slim man with graying hair and a mustache, sleep still in his eyes. The warlord General Mohammed Farrah Hassan Aidid was consumed with obvious frustration. The marines had come by at this time every single morning for the past week, demonstrating that they could do as they wished in an area that he had supposedly controlled.

“Good morning, General,” said Swanson, removing his sunglasses to give the Somali warlord a good look. He controlled a desire to smirk, and spoke with an even, polite tone. “We are just checking in with you. Is everything okay here today, sir?”

The warlord whined through gritted teeth, “Each morning you people do this to me. Why? Why is it always me and not the others?”

Kyle ignored the comment and touched the brim of his helmet with a mock salute. “You have a good day, sir. Please let us know if we can be of assistance.”

The patrol moved out, leaving the warlord standing alone in the doorway. The sun rose to scald the earth, was followed by the usual afternoon rains, then a night of gunplay downtown.

General Aidid was not helpless, although he was being forced by circumstances to bide his time. The morning call by the marines was bothersome, but it was just another part of the greater game.

Intel sources at the airport had been receiving reports that he had been stockpiling weapons within a walled compound during the ceasefire, in violation of the truce agreement. That the warlord had lied surprised no one; the big question was whether he would fight for the arms stash. The marines decided to seize those guns.

The day after he had knocked on the warlord’s front door, Kyle Swanson and two of his teams went out before first light on Wednesday, December 23, and wiggled into a watch position at the walled enclosure. They were glassing for threats, and after they reported all was still at the site, a full marine platoon came in, shepherded by helicopter gunships and modified Humvees that bristled with firepower and were known as combined anti-armor teams, or CAATs. The big force that appeared as if out of thin air looked unstoppable to Swanson as he watched through his scope from a thousand yards away.

Only it did stop — right in the shadow of the front gate. The buck lieutenant leading the patrol was brought up short by the challenge of a single Somali policeman in a light blue shirt and cap, dark slacks, and desert boots. The cop stood there with his hands on his hips, shouting that the area was private property of General Aidid and was therefore off-limits to the marines and everyone else. Swanson couldn’t believe it. The momentum had been checked and all the implied power was nullified. The gunships above did figure eights and the CAATs idled on the fringes.

The lieutenant had been a stateside substance abuse counselor and was new to the field, but Swanson believed that was no excuse not to have blown right through this single cop. And the veteran platoon sergeant with him had let it happen!

Swanson erupted out the hide and stormed forward, arriving almost out of breath after running the thousand yards. He ignored the reasonable lieutenant and the temporizing sergeant and yelled for the marine squad leaders to get their men going, to get inside of that walled compound with weapons ready and their eyes up. This was no friendly visit.

A pickup truck rushed through the gate, and General Aidid jumped out and began shouting at the lieutenant while Swanson screamed for the platoon to get inside. Only when the marines started moving again did Kyle turn to where Aidid was snapping at the twenty-two-year-old lieutenant. The platoon sergeant was standing back with his thumb up his butt.

There was a flash of recognition when Aidid saw the face of Swanson, who had awakened him only a few days earlier, and then the sniper snatched the general by the shirtfront and threw him to the dirt.

“Down on the ground! Get your ass down there! Now!!” Swanson bellowed.

Omar Jama, who had driven the pickup truck, had stayed with it as he watched his general screech at the lieutenant, but when the other marine came up and abruptly flopped Aidid onto the ground, the Cobra broke into a run. Swanson saw him coming, dodged with a hip fake, and kicked the Cobra behind the knee as he went by, then shoved with a hard shoulder. Knocked off-balance, Omar Jama felt his collar being yanked, and then he also was chewing dirt. “You get down there, too. Both of you stay down!!” Swanson snarled as he pointed his M-16 rifle at their backs.

Other Somalis in and around the compound watched in disbelief as their leaders sprawled ignominiously in the dirt. They were unused to any challenge, and this was unthinkable. But any idea of doing something brave vanished as the marines stormed into the compound and grabbed them, the big CAATs closing in tight and the helicopters hovering with cannons and rockets at the ready.

The argument was over. The Somali militiamen, their toppled warlord, and his fearsome bodyguard, the Cobra, had their wrists lashed with plastic cuffs.

Swanson took a knee beside Aidid and leaned on his rifle. “You listen to me close now, General,” he said. “There is no government in Mogadishu, but there is a new sheriff in town — and it is the United States Marine Corps. Best that you understand that right now.”

Aidid exchanged a sharp look with the Cobra. The two powerful men had been disgraced in public, rendered helpless in mere seconds, and that rough handling might have planted seeds of doubt among some of their fighters, who either had seen or would hear about the episode. Such a disgrace could not be tolerated. This man would have to pay.

They had read the black letters stitched to the name tag sewn on the tunic of the marine — SWANSON — and they silently vowed to remember this particular invader. When the chance came, their lost honor would be redeemed in his blood.

Swanson knew they would hate him. He did not care.

2 THE STADIUM

Remaining apart from the human misery in Somalia grew more difficult with each passing day for Kyle Swanson. Every night, there was gunfire deep in the bowels of the city, and each morning Swanson saw new dead bodies. The Mog was very different from real war, and it chewed at his faith in humanity. At least he and his teams were finally busy instead of just moping around for hours on end with nothing to do. The promise of action buoyed them.

The hope to which Swanson clung like a saving rope was that the longer they were in Mogadishu, the better things seemed to get. Some order was being imposed, more kids were getting food, and more old people were receiving medical care; but the scale of the disaster was still incomprehensible.

Another radio call for assistance came in, this one from a refugee-aid center, and Kyle rolled on it with Dave Delshay, Big Mike Mancuso, and Corporal Terry Smith. They were glad to go, since they were missing out on the action to the south, where a marine amphibious force had just pulled off a hot combat landing at the port city of Kismaayo. This was just another babysitting job, but it was better than nothing.

The griping was normal, for the One-Seven snipers were war fighters, not policemen, and these fruitless and repetitive assignments were sandpapering away their combat readiness. They were totally unafraid of anything that General Aidid or the other warlords might have, so all four of the marines were cocky, filled with a dangerous John Wayne bravado. Two CAATs trailed their Humvees as backups, making it a sizable force for something that was actually just up the street from the airport.

By the time they curved out of the roundabout, none of them were thinking about shooting anybody, and it had all the signs of another dry run in which the stooges would run as soon as the marines showed up. As usual, this place was also quiet, with no enemy firing anywhere. Swanson and his men stepped from their Humvee, and he waved for the CAATs to snoop about on their own until it was time to leave. It was so still that Big Mike and Terry Smith scampered up a water tower, and Swanson didn’t stop their climb, although it was a dumb war-movie kind of thing to do that would put them in an exposed position. But things were so calm that he judged they were in no real danger, and, besides, it looked sort of cool. They all would be gone in a few minutes anyway. Corporal Delshay had his weapon, so Kyle left his own long sniper rifle and personal M-16 in the seat as he went to the main building with Delshay to check in with whoever was in charge.

The facility was one of the overwhelmed clinics, makeshift hospitals, feeding stations, and refugee camps that dotted the safer areas of Mogadishu. The front wall was pretty chewed up, but the compound seemed safe enough.

He stopped abruptly when a woman stepped into the courtyard to meet them. She was as tall as his 5 foot 9, with high cheekbones and thick, startlingly red hair and a mouth that seemed to want to laugh. He guessed that she was about twenty-five, twenty-six. Beautiful!

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” she said, her mind still back in the hospital, and she was also caught momentarily off guard when her sea-green eyes caught the visitor’s intense gray-greens. She had seen hundreds of military men in uniforms from all over the world, but this man surprised her with his open, confident look. It was as if the rest of Mogadishu evaporated for a micro instant and just the two of them were standing face-to-face in a bright tunnel, and slow smiles creased their tired faces. She extended her hand. “My name is Molly Egan. I’m the administrator here for the Irish Aid Society.”

“Hi.” He took the soft hand in his own. “Sergeant Kyle Swanson, Marines. Glad to meet you” Glad? Not the word. Not even close. He didn’t want to let go. “Are you having some trouble?”

Molly pulled her hand away first, and busily wiped it on a towel. “Sorry. I’m all messy from working in there.” The red hair bobbed toward the hospital. “Yes. There was some shooting a little while ago.” How can I prolong this? “Would you like a soda?”

“Sure.” He didn’t know what else to say. He felt like he was back in high school, afraid to speak to the prettiest girl in the lunchroom. Swanson followed her inside. Her torn jeans and blue cotton smock were speckled with tiny droplets of old blood. “Ah. Then. You guys are okay?”

Egan handed Swanson a Fanta orange drink, tapped out a cigarette for herself, lit it, and blew a line of smoke at the ceiling. “For now,” she said. “Those people can be a nuisance. We appreciate your chasing them away for a while.”

The soda was warm, but her smile was magic, and he could almost feel little darts of electricity between them. “You have guards here, don’t you?” Damn. What a stupid question. Swanson studied her eyes. They reflected a vast weariness, but she wasn’t mad at his comment, which might have been taken as an insult. That was good.

She nodded. “Yes, of course we do. Bandits show up now and then to try and steal our supplies and drugs, but our guards, local boys we hire, usually are enough to make the gangsters go away just by returning fire. We don’t always call for help.”

Swanson thought briefly about that. This woman wasn’t afraid. Freckles. “How are things going here otherwise?”

“Same as always, Sergeant. Any day that we feed more people than we bury is a good one. We’ve had a lot more of the good days since you guys arrived. Would you like the ten-penny tour?”

He took a final look around. All remained quiet outside. “Sure. So does the ‘Irish Aid Society’ mean that you’re Irish?”

“Indeed I am,” she replied. “My people are in County Cork, close to the sea.”

Swanson smiled. “I’m Irish, too. Well, American-Irish at least.” He blurted it out for no reason other than trying to continue the conversation. He had long ago outgrown any problems of talking with women. Until now. “My mother’s family came from Shannon. I’m from just north of Boston.” He sipped the orange drink to stop himself from babbling.

“Swanson is an English name,” Egan said lightly, with a tilt of her head. “Although you do look Irish.”

“How long have you been here, Doctor Egan?” he asked.

“Only about two months now,” Molly said. Her voice had only a mild accent. “And I’m not a doctor, just a coordinator for Irish Aid. Before coming here, I was over in Uganda and, earlier, in the Balkans. There are refugees everywhere, Sergeant.” That explained the strain evident in her entire body. Kyle had seen marines get a blank thousand-yard stare after too much combat, and this girl seemed headed that way as she hopped from disaster to disaster. Humanitarian workers got the look after the hopelessness of dealing with too much tragedy. She stopped to tug a ragged red blanket over a child who was sleeping on a piece of cardboard. Her movement was soft, gentle.

Swanson realized they had walked through a whole crowd of black Africans at the clinic, and he had not really seen them before she stopped to cover the child. Mogadishu had rendered them almost invisible to his eyes, like background people in a movie, but his focus snapped to total clarity when she led him into a small operating room where a harried medical team was treating a little patient. A low murmur carried through the hallways where other patients awaited their turns and complained that the child was getting preferential treatment because she belonged to another tribe.

“That’s Dr. Sharif at the table. He trained in Moscow,” Egan said, pointing to the man performing the procedure. “His wife, Deqo, next to him, is our head of nursing, and she also runs our school.” The doctor grunted acknowledgment but did not stop working. Deqo Sharif did not even look up.

Egan tugged at his sleeve and continued the tour as if escorting a four-star general. Military rank meant nothing to her, and this sergeant had come to help. Just touching his uniform had felt immensely personal. He is more than just another soldier, she thought.

Swanson forced himself not to openly gawk at the easy sway of her hips and the confident stride of the long legs.

They really didn’t know where they were going, or what was happening to them, but they both understood that something unexpected, warm, sweet, and long unused was stirring within them like flags catching the first brush of a new breeze.

The moment collapsed with a burst of gunfire.

Kyle ran to the door. Mancuso and Smith were pinned up on the water tower as bullets pinged off the metal around them, unable to do anything more than lie flat and pray. They had not taken their weapons, either. More shots were kicking up the dirt around and even within the compound and pecking at the concrete and mud walls. The firing was coming in at a volume that prevented Swanson from running to the Humvee to retrieve his rifles. People at the feeding station milled about like frightened, trapped animals, and the single gate guard was scrunched behind a post.

Swanson lashed himself with a quick curse as he pulled the 9mm pistol from its hip holster. He had let his professionalism be lulled into carelessness, and while he was being treated like a VIP by a pretty girl, strolling around like he was important, he had lowered his situational awareness. That shit ends right now! He told the Apache to get to the far side of the building and flank the unseen shooters, then leaned out and began popping at the attackers, firing blindly until the pistol was empty. He reloaded and did it again, moving out of the clinic and into the courtyard, where he burned through another magazine. He slammed in another magazine as he advanced into the open space of the gate, yelling as he fired, so pissed with himself for letting this happen. He clicked on empty, out of ammunition, so he wound up like a baseball pitcher and threw the pistol itself toward the hidden gunmen. It exploded in midair.

Swanson had been so caught up with his internal fury and the noise of the gunfight that he had not heard the CAATs run up and begin pumping a hurricane of bullets and grenades at the target zone. One grenade from the Mark-19 automatic launcher had hit his pistol while it was in flight, and the million-to-one shot blew it up.

Swanson felt an arm wrap around his waist and pull him hard back behind the cover of the mud wall. It was Molly Egan, and she was giggling loudly as they tumbled to the ground. “Got a little temper problem, have we, Sergeant?” she laughed. “Flinging an exploding pistol at them? Really?”

Kyle steadied his breathing as a few more rounds pinged into the compound before the gunmen fled. “I’m sorry about all of this,” he said, apologizing for failing at his job. His face was red with the anger he felt with himself. “It never should have happened. I got careless. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” He realized with a start that his team had come to save her, and now things had flipped and she had pulled him to safety.

“No problem,” she said, getting to her knees. “This is Mogadishu. Were you hit? Standing out there in the open with all that firing?” What kind of man does that? She ran her hands over his scalp, torso, and legs, looking for wounds and blood.

His anger evaporated beneath her touch. “I’m good. Thank you.” He jumped up and brushed himself off. “And you?”

“I am fine, Sergeant.” She curled into a sitting position with her back to the wall and smiled up at him while pushing away some loose strands of crimson hair.

“We have some work to do clearing the area,” he said, forcing his mind back into the game.

She watched Swanson pick up one of his rifles, get his men together, and sweep the perimeter. The big CAATs rolled in lazy circles. By the time he returned, Swanson had become sullen and quiet.

Molly studied that with some concern. Some after-action response had taken hold.

“I’ll get the bosses to put your clinic on the places for regular security patrols,” Kyle said.

“Thanks again for your help. Come back anytime,” she replied, looking straight into his eyes again with unspoken invitation.

“I will,” he said, and had never made a more serious promise in his life.

The return to camp was silent. Every marine in the little firefight had undergone an attitude adjustment. No matter how much the boredom might envelop them, not paying attention to the job could still get them dead. Swanson preached readiness at them all the way back, almost as if talking to himself.

Christmas came the following day, almost as a surprise to Swanson. Some homesick marines had put up and decorated a scraggly tree within the tent, but the other sights and sounds were startlingly absent. To the Muslims of Somalia, it was just another day. To the marines, there was little to celebrate.

Kyle left Mogadishu at dawn to accompany a French Foreign Legion supply convoy to a refugee camp far north of the city, and they drove all day. The place-names changed, but the situation remained about the same everywhere they went. When evening approached, and the afternoon rain stopped, the legionnaires set up camp for the night. They were not about to let a major holiday pass unnoticed, and with cries of “Joyeux Noël,” the refrigerated trucks in which they were carrying food for the refugees were thrown open. They unloaded turkeys and geese, seafood, potatoes and other vegetables, and cheese, along with other special ingredients, herbs, and spices chosen just for tonight. Whiskey and wine bottles were uncorked while the cooks created a magnificent Christmas feast, and they sang beside the road, in the middle of the civil war.

Swanson sat cross-legged on a stone and watched them with amusement, with a glass of bourbon in one hand, a half-eaten plate of food beside him, and his M-16 across his knees. Despite the party, the legionnaires had posted tight security. They knew what they were about.

The image of Molly Egan once again swam into his thoughts, just as it had done throughout the trip. He wanted to get back to the clinic and see her before she could forget him, but here he was, stuck beside a dank road in Somalia, having to spend Christmas with the Foreign Legion. Christmas would be long over by the time he got back to Mogadishu. He missed her.

The marines needed to break out of the tight confines of the port and airfield, and the next step was the huge soccer field that dominated Mogadishu like a frontier fort. Control of the sports arena had switched between the warlords while the relief-force commanders had stayed busy protecting their arrival points, sorting out the growing forces, and distributing food and medicine.

No Americans had been in the stadium since they had arrived in country, but every night a patrol of M1A1 heavy Abrams tanks left the established perimeter for a run-up to the stadium, where they would turn around and go home again. After a few weeks, the Somalis grew so familiar with the regular trips that they hardly noticed the mechanized monsters that boomed past in the darkness.

The operational planners thought it would be easiest to just bull into the stadium when the time was right, with infantry following the tanks. Swanson thought that was dumb and had let the planners know it before he had headed out with the Legion. Why go blindly into what might easily be a trap? Yes, it might be a walkover, but it might not. Shouldn’t they know if the enemy has built hard defensive positions and infested the place with rockets and machine guns? Send in some scout snipers first.

As soon as he got back to the stadium late on December 28, Kyle learned that he had won the debate, but it meant he had to do a fast turnaround instead of hitting his cot. After four days on the road with the Legion, he would go in aboard the tanks tonight and take a look, and if things were clear, the armored column would bring the rest of the regiment in at daybreak. There was no time to see Molly.

There was no moon, and the two tanks went out as usual, but this time with marine sniper-spotter teams clinging to the hulls like leeches, hidden by not only the darkness but also the sheer bulk of the machines and the equipment lashed to them. If anyone looked at the passing sixty-ton tanks, they would see the big cannons and treads, not bumps in the profile.

Swanson breathed slowly through a bandanna wrapped around his face in a futile effort to filter out diesel fumes and the stinking miasma of the Mog. The gagging smell of human waste, decomposing corpses, scorched streets, and uncollected garbage was the city’s true signature. He heard the usual chitter of automatic gunfire and the boom of rocket-propelled grenades as rival gangs battled in the tangled streets on the far side of town. The tanks clanked unmolested through the darkness.

He let his fingers roam over his gear to make final checks. His heartbeat ticked like a steady metronome. This was what he had been bred to do, and fear never entered his mind. If anything, he had to fight down any sense of excitement that might start the adrenaline pumping. Swanson wanted to be steady. Usually, the whole time continuum would change for him, and the world would play in slow motion; slow was smooth, and smooth was fast. The tanks crunched along a broad paved street, maneuvering around heaps of trash; old cannon barrels bent at odd angles; and the useless, burned-out carcasses of personnel carriers and other vehicles.

Somewhere back in the warrens of the city, a mortar coughed and the shell climbed high, tilted nose-down, and whistled back to earth to explode inside the bowl of the stadium. No return fire. Another mortar shell hit the concrete building.

Then they were there. The tanks slowed at the front gate of the outer wall, a ten-foot-high barrier darker than the surrounding night. Swanson sucked in a final breath, loosened his grip, and kicked free, hitting the ground with a roll. The tanks heaved away on the familiar pattern that had been established during the previous nights. As their safety line rolled away, the sniper muttered the warrior’s affirmation: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley.

He gathered his three guys — once again, the team of Corporals Smith, Mancuso, and Delshay — and checked for broken arms, busted knees, or other damage. They were fine, as were their pair of M-40 sniper rifles and four M-16s, the nine-mil pistols, a bunch of hand grenades, and encrypted radios that could summon a Quick Reaction Force for help in a hurry.

The four men flattened against the rough wall and examined the area through their night-vision goggles. A few souls were moving about on the distant city outskirts, but no one was reacting to their presence. Swanson did a quick radio check to alert headquarters that they were at the broad gate. He stepped into the large entryway, and his team formed around him in a diamond pattern, one of them facing in each direction, including the rear.

In more pleasant times, crowds had thronged through this portal to enter the stadium, which could hold more than thirty thousand sports fans. Now the big structure was more like an abandoned sewer, as if everyone who entered left some waste behind. A concrete apron stretched between the gate and the stadium’s inner wall, fifty yards of open space in which the marines would be vulnerable. They hustled across and onto the ramp, then paused again.

They were breathing harder but saw nothing, although there was some scrambling and movement straight ahead. Sticking to the darkest areas, the marines slid forward to where the ramp opened into the seating areas, inclined slopes of concrete benches for spectators. The strange noises were closer and louder, coming from down on the field.

Swanson slithered forward to get a clear view while the others provided a base for protective fire. He raised his head slowly until his eyes came above the concrete rim. A pack of wild dogs, having picked up the scent of the approaching men, stared back from the field, their eyes glowing in the light of his goggles. The pack leader gave a menacing growl, and his fur was standing straight up. The noise had been the grisly sound of the pack devouring the body of a dead man. Kyle eased back down and scooted away.

“Wild dogs,” he said. “About thirty of them. They’re busy with a meal, so we’ll let them have the field for now. That will give us some good rear security.” He led his team deeper into the warren of offices and compartments beneath the stands, and they went room by room, any of which might contain a possible threat.

The stadium was a monument to war. Artillery and fire had scourged the seating area, and ragged craters made every step a risk. Down on the field, the dogs snapped and barked around the corpse, and the echo of their primal anger echoed around the emptiness. They suddenly stopped fighting, and Swanson looked back in time to see the animals scatter, fleeing for shelter. Then he hear a mortar round shrieking in.

The other three team members were safe, clearing the interior rooms, but Swanson was standing in the bleachers. He collapsed into a ball, tight against a concrete riser, and instinctively covered his genitals with his hands. It was going to be close. The shell detonated only several layers of seats above him with an explosion that rattled the concrete circle, bounced him hard, and showered him with debris. The major concussion wave had gone up, not down toward him.

“Well, that sucked,” he said, rolling over and wiping away the debris.

“What are you doing, just lying there?” Delshay had run back out to help.

“Screw you,” said Swanson. He motioned for the patrol to get back to work. The dogs crept back to finish their dinner.

The four marines found nothing of interest on their first circuit of the wide field and spiraled up to the next level and did another 360 tour. Many rocket-propelled grenades had been fired at the stadium, but they had only bounced off of the hundreds of tons of poured concrete. Mortar rounds splattered with little effectiveness. The place was solid. The marines made their way inexorably toward the highest point in the arena, a section that must have been a press box or a space reserved for VIP spectators. That small rectangular structure was scarred by bullets and scrapes of artillery, but it was also empty. Kyle looked over the edge of a big window and saw the sprawl of downtown Mogadishu not far away. From this vantage point, the snipers would have eyes-on to cover the arriving vehicles when the sun came up.

Swanson radioed the brass back at the airport. Recon mission complete: on site, unseen, not a shot fired. The stadium that dominated the heart of enemy territory was now the property of the U.S. Marine Corps and a pack of wild mutts.

3 THE WARLORD

The parade began at daybreak. A mass of marines left the seaside airport perimeter, curved around the K-4 traffic circle, and headed north on Via Lenin to the 21 October Road, then east to the stadium. The column was led by mighty amphibious assault vehicles, heavy M1A1 tanks, other sorts of armor, boxy Humvees, and both five-ton and seven-ton trucks — all sandwiched by marines marching on foot in full combat gear. The entire regiment was on the move, and the ground shook beneath their tracks, wheels, and boots. A haze of dust rose to match the early yellow sky.

The warlord General Mohammed Farrah Hassan Aidid watched with interest, slouched against a dented Toyota Land Cruiser. In loose khaki slacks and a faded brown shirt, he blended in with the curious crowd that lined the 21 October Road. The marines looked singularly tough, extremely fit and determined, and carried a fantastic array of weaponry. Their unspoken macho professionalism reminded him of how he had been awed by regular Soviet soldiers when he was sent to Moscow as a young cadet to study at the Frunze Academy. He had felt very small and out of place among those men at that time, but that was years ago. He was no longer the one out of place; he was equal to any man on the field, and the game was just getting started.

“Is my Cobra scared of these Americans?” the general enjoyed teasing the bodyguard standing with him. The presence of the Cobra made him feel safer, even in the face of this invading army, for Omar Jama was much more than just a gunman. He had been carefully groomed for this job. His Somali merchant father had taught him English and Italian and the mathematics of business before he was even ten years old. That had drawn the attention of Aidid when the senior Somali army officer decided to recruit a special cadre of boys from his Habar Gidir clan. Omar had proved to be a particularly intelligent student, abnormally strong, and a vicious, natural predator. As he matured and the civil war began, he had proved both loyal and valuable, time and again. Aidid had bestowed the name of “Cobra” on his prized killer.

“What? No, I am not. Of course not!” Omar Jama was sucking on a wad of khat to get a morning buzz after a long night of fighting near the Green Line. His muscled shoulders and arms bulged from a long blue shirt that hid the pistol in the waistband of his jeans. The comment took him by surprise.

The Cobra took a slight step forward and waved at an American as large as himself, who was lugging a big M-249 squad automatic weapon. “Hello, marine! Welcome to Mogadishu!” he called out in good English. The marine did not smile in return, just kept marching along in route step, his eyes on the crowd and his finger near the trigger housing. The machine gun was loaded.

“I am going to get me a SAW like that, General. More than one hundred rounds a minute and up to eight hundred on sustained fire. I can kill a lot of Americans with that.” The Cobra stepped back to his boss.

“Good,” Aidid said. “Kill a lot of them. Just make certain that one of them is the Swanson marine. He’s in that crowd somewhere.”

“We will find him, sir. He cannot continue hiding from us for long, not in our own city.”

The four snipers watched the incoming column from the press box atop the stadium, ready to give covering fire, but none was needed. Their position was within an almost solid concrete box with three windows, a large one in the middle and two on each side. All of the glass had been blown out long ago. There was only one door. It was not until daylight arrived that they saw the potential.

“This is a pretty sweet place,” said Corporal Smith. “It’s ours, right? I mean, we got here first.”

“Home is where my helmet is,” agreed Corporal Delshay.

They all knew an intramural skirmish was in store once the regiment’s rear echelon interlopers started nosing around for the best spaces. Sergeant Kyle Swanson planned to secure ownership immediately. “Let me think about that,” he said.

Smitty and Delshay were left in the overlook while Swanson and Mike Mancuso jogged down the bleachers to mingle with the new arrivals. The interior of the stadium was a maze of sunless tunnels, and the two snipers took some time to explore areas they had not had a chance to look over in detail when they had come sneaking in the night before. The wide, flat apron out front was already turning into a parking lot for marine vehicles.

Boom! The bark of a shotgun broke the quiet. Boom! A yelp. Swanson and Mancuso walked back toward the soccer field. Boom again, followed by the clacks of a shotgun racking in a new round. A reedy staff sergeant wearing glasses was killing the dogs with a Remington 870P. Kyle knew the type: a desk jockey who had volunteered for the dirty little mission and was walking around like king of the jungle, slaughtering animals that had nowhere to run. Just opening a door and chasing them out would have been a lot easier, but less satisfying for this guy.

“Fuckin’ pogue,” Mancuso sneered. Swanson agreed. They moved on.

The personal gear that the team had left behind was aboard one of the incoming trucks, and it took some hunting to find it. Fellow snipers had made sure that the gear had not been touched, although it was worth its weight in gold: personal cots and cases of ready-to-eat meals (MREs) and crates of bottled water. Those cases would become building blocks for little walls to partition the press box and create the luxury of individual personal spaces. Also buried among the standard supplies was Swanson’s personal kit: boxes of Canadian Army rations that were better than the dreaded MREs. It was no contest between the Canadians’ chicken carbonara with tortillas and hot sauce versus MRE menu no. 8: ham slice with accessory packet A. Even better was the stash of Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey and a special bottle of Rémy Martin cognac that Kyle had liberated from the Foreign Legion during the long road trip.

Hauling it all up the stadium stairs was going to be a job, which was why he had chosen Mancuso for the first trip. Big Mike would stand guard at the truck with that dark scowl on his hard face to deter any scavenging jarhead from robbing it, while the other three snipers would work in relays to move into their hideaway.

Within a few hours, it was squared away. They had been awake yesterday, throughout the night, and now well into this new day and were about ready to keel over. Smitty scrounged some paint and posted a SNIPERS IN ACTION sign on the closed door of their private condo. A rotation was set so that two would rest while the other two stayed on watch. Swanson fell asleep as the sun rose in the empty sky, and the sweltering heat beat down.

“We should go back now, General. It is too dangerous for you to remain out here in the open.” The Cobra had brought along only three fighters, not enough to repel a determined attack. “Ali Mahdi probably knows by now that you are out here and vulnerable.”

Omar was right. Ali Mahdi, the warlord north of the Green Line, was always looking to assassinate him, just as Aidid would someday like to bury his rival in a red-dirt desert grave. The general clapped a hand on his bodyguard’s hefty shoulder. The stadium was in the grasp of the marines now, so that show was over. It was time to do some serious thinking about what would happen next. “Let’s go,” he agreed, and they climbed into the Toyota.

“Did you happen to see him, the Swanson marine, among all of those others?” Aidid looked back at the vanishing stadium as the Cobra drove into the city. The warlord had made a point of having his spies identify the insulting marine as being one Sergeant Kyle Swanson, a veteran sniper with a reputation for toughness.

“No, General. But he’s there. I know that. I know it!” Omar Jama drove through a crowd without slowing down, and people jumped out of the way.

“I can feel it, too.” The general had determined that Swanson must never leave Somalia alive.

There were thousands of marines in his country now, and they had spread like a camouflage cancer. The airport and the port were working, and now they had taken over the stadium. Aidid had decided it would be a losing battle to fight for any of those places, which was why the walled soccer pitch had remained empty. As a result of their presence, the feeding stations, clinics, and refugee camps had gained security, and even the open-air Bakara Market was doing a better business. But the general was a patient man, and he knew all those gains by the crusaders were temporary.

In his opinion, the marines could stay at the stadium as long as they wanted, for entrenched troops hunkered down with machine guns behind sandbags and walls crowned with razor-sharp concertina wire were going to be useless for anything other than protecting a logistics point. The time was near when the Americans would find themselves entangled in the close streets of Mogadishu and their firepower and mobility would be limited. They would not be able to tell friend from foe among tens of thousands of people.

Aidid had studied tactics and strategy in his rise to becoming a major general in the Somali army before war, drought, and famine collapsed the nation. He had come out this morning to personally take the measure of his enemy. Sufficient foreign muscle could reopen and protect the humanitarian missions, but, even numbering in the thousands, the Americans could not stop this war, much less win it. He felt the time was right to move the crisis into a new stage.

Tuesday afternoon, Swanson awoke, rested after a few hours of sleep. The stadium had turned into a marine anthill. Hundreds of sandbags were being filled and stacked, big metal Conex containers were parked to be part of the barrier, wire was strung atop the walls, and men had sighted their weapons. Helicopters whacked through the sky. Throughout the cavernous structure, sergeants barked commands. Setting up a fort in one day was a noisy business. He looked around. Delshay was still asleep, a paperback mystery open across his chest. Smitty and Mancuso were watching the outskirts of Mogadishu through their scopes.

“By God, there are a lot of people downtown today,” Smitty declared.

Kyle looked over the parapet. In the daylight, Mogadishu appeared almost alive, squirming with so much life all jammed into one place.

Smith said, “Since I did my bit last night capturing this place, can I go home now, Sar’nt Swanson?”

Swanson stripped and used bottled water for a quick, improvised shower, then put on a clean uniform. He picked up his M-16 and a small box, then clapped the shapeless boonie on his head. “I’m going to take a walk. I’ll pass along your request to leave to the commandant. I’m sure he will authorize it.”

“Where you going?” Smitty had not removed his eye from the scope while they bantered.

Swanson pointed. “Out there. I’ll be back soon. Big Mike is in charge while I’m gone.”

4 THE PATROLS

By noon, Swanson was once again at the Irish Aid Society clinic, rested, clean, and as nervous as a boy on a date. He arrived in a CAAT with a .50 caliber machine gun on top and four marines and found Molly Egan in the hospital, carrying a kid under each arm.

She put the children down as soon as she saw him and came closer. Their eyes met, and they politely shook hands again. “Hello, Sergeant Swanson. Welcome back. Did you bring another exploding pistol?” Her clothes were rumpled, but the deep red hair flashed in the sunlight coming through the window, and her smile made his day.

“Even better. I come bearing gifts. Step outside.” He laughed. God, she is something else.

The marines were unloading four fifty-pound burlap sacks from the CAAT. “Two hundred pounds of rice for you guys, and something special that no Irish Aid Society center should be without.” He reached into the cab and brought out a bottle containing a liquid that had the look of burnished copper. “Rémy Martin cognac, six years old. Consider it a belated Christmas present.”

Molly put her fist to her mouth in surprise, and patted Kyle on the arm with her other hand. “Oh, you are a good man, Sergeant Swanson. Where did you get all of this?”

“The French can be a generous people, particularly when they don’t know they are being generous. It’s for you, Dr. Sharif, and the staff.”

“They are Muslim and don’t drink alcohol,” she said.

“Are you Muslim?”

“No, I am not. I can use this. You, too. Come on inside.” She walked in, and Swanson followed, after telling his marines to stay sharp. No climbing-the-water-tower bullshit this time.

There was a distinct change of atmosphere in the building, a lessening of the fear and hopelessness that Swanson had seen on the earlier visit. A middle-aged man sat at a small, square table, talking to a woman in a colorful wraparound, and Egan made the introductions. “Do you remember Dr. Lon Sharif, Sergeant Swanson? And his wife, Deqo. This little guy over here is their grandson, Cawelle.”

Swanson smiled at the little boy, who stared back with big eyes. He looked to be about eight and was as skinny as a railroad track. Kyle squatted down to be more on the kid’s level and extended his hand. “Hello, Cawelle.” The kid shied away, then changed his mind and shook.

Molly explained. “His name is the Somali word for ‘lucky,’ although he hasn’t had much of that. His parents died in the fighting about five months ago, so he lives here with his grandparents.”

Kyle had a yellow package of chewing gum in his tunic pocket and gave it to the boy. “Can I call you Lucky? It’s easier for me to say.”

The boy understood English, and nodded his permission as he stripped a stick of gum and put it in his mouth. He chewed a few times and, without warning, jumped into Swanson’s arms. The marine stood, holding him easily, and turned to the grandparents. “How did the operation on that girl turn out, Doctor?”

“Which one?” The surgeon had a blank look and a furrowed brow, puzzled by the question. “There have been so many.”

“From the last time I was here. She had a terrible stomach wound, and I was told that she had been raped and beaten.”

“That one died,” Deqo Sharif remembered with her confident, but soft, voice. “We save those we can, Sergeant, but we fail too often. Please, sit and join us.”

Molly said, “He brought rice for you, and whiskey for me.”

“Christmas presents, just a little late. I’ve been out of town. Next time, I will load up on soft drinks and some other supplies.” He accepted the two fingers of cognac that Egan poured into a glass and held it up. “A salute to all of you, for being here and making such a difference.”

The Sharifs had just finished their rounds in the hospital and, for a change, had no emergencies demanding their attention. They had cups of tea, but Molly knocked back her own cognac with a practiced ease. Kyle noticed flecks of amber in her eyes.

Kyle gathered his words carefully. “I really came by today to apologize for the last time. I was careless and allowed a bad thing to happen right under my nose. For that, I’m sorry. That’s not the way marines do things.”

“Nonsense,” replied Lon Sharif, brushing aside the apology. “All of those warlord gunmen are unpredictable. You drove them away, Sergeant, and they have not been back since then. That’s the point to remember. Without your presence, it might have gotten bad.”

Kyle put his empty glass aside. “Nevertheless, it gave me a needed dose of reality. This isn’t the Africa of elephants and lions.”

The doctor smiled. “It’s good that you realize that.” His voice was gentle. He smiled at his wife, who nodded approval.

Molly laughed. “I’ll always remember you charging out toward them, shooting your big pistol, fighting the war on your own, standing out in the open and then flinging it at them when you ran out of bullets. You were so mad! Want another drink?”

Swanson declined. “And I remember you tackling me. I’ll pass on another drink right now because I have to go on a patrol in a few hours. I just wanted to come by and check on you all.”

The doctor spoke, almost as if on the edge of sleep. “We are better today than yesterday, which was better than the day before. The supply lines have opened up, and the violence is way down because security has improved. It shows what we might be able to do in this country if we can just have peace. I understand you marines now occupy the stadium?”

“Yes, sir. It gives us a better forward base. And you’re right, Doctor Sharif. The logistics are really flowing. I would like for you to make a list of whatever you need here at the clinic — medicine or food or whatever. I can make sure that it finds you.”

“That is very kind, Sergeant Swanson. But we get by.”

“Sir, mountains of supplies are being off-loaded, and the docks and airports are stacked with crates. The world is pouring in contributions at every port in Somalia. Don’t wait for the bureaucrats to assign you a share or for thieves to steal it, Doctor Sharif. Just tell me, and I’ll get it.”

“Why?” asked Deqo. Her eyes were on him, always wary of any offer that sounded too good to be true.

“I am a sniper, ma’am. I kill our enemies, and I am very good at it. But after seeing what you’re doing to keep innocent people alive and feed them, I would like to be a little part of that, too. The only way I can think of, without jeopardizing my mission, is to bring you some of the good stuff, which is already being stolen and sold on the black market. Penicillin? Bandages? Coca-Cola? A portable generator? I can find it all.”

Molly pulled out a cigarette, lit, and leaned back. A little trail of smoke weaved toward the door. She studied him. “You’re serious.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“Very well. Dr. Lon and Deqo may be hesitant, but I will have a list ready for you by tomorrow, if you can get by to see us again.” She looked directly at him. It was an invitation.

“Good. I’ll see you then,” he said, putting Lucky back on his feet. “And please, all of you, call me Kyle.”

“Then I am Molly.”

Swanson ducked into the new command post of C Company, where the commander was using an old door as a desk. “Request permission to enter, sir.”

Captain Harmon Flint said, “Come in, Sar’nt Swanson.”

“Your messenger says that you would like for me to join your foot patrol this afternoon, sir.”

“Only if you think you’re good enough to run with Suicide Charlie.” Flint had known Kyle long enough to give him a sharp jab.

“I’ll try to keep up, sir.” The sniper looked at a flag tacked to the wall, the unique black-and-white skull-and-crossbones emblem that traced its lineage back to a night in 1942 when the company blunted a murderous Japanese attack on Guadalcanal. The survivors painted the image on a white parachute and lifted it high at dawn.

It had bred generations of tough war fighters who took shit from no one. Got a serious mission? Dial up Suicide Charlie. They would take on anything. Flint rubbed his palm across his stubble of hair. In the late afternoon, his shirt was soaked in sweat. “Good. But take a seat first. You want some coffee?”

Swanson shook his head but picked up a bottle of water.

“That was a good job you guys did with the stadium last night, Kyle.” He pushed a cross-hatched paper over the desk. “Look at this. We have to make our own maps because an accurate layout of the Mog doesn’t exist. A couple of main roads and thousands of little ones.” Flint settled back in his chair.

“Sar’nt, I have the statistics from higher up, and my G-2 is on top of things in our area, but I want your opinion, too. You’ve had your nose in the dirt more than almost anyone. How do you read it?”

Kyle sucked on the water. “Operation Restore Hope has been a walkover so far.”

“Yep. Now we hold this stadium on the city’s northern flank, we have the airport in the southeast, got the port, and are patrolling deeper into Mogadishu every day. I can’t believe this General Aidid character is just giving up.”

“That’s exactly my estimate, sir. He’s not going to quit. I think that’s about to change really soon.”

Flint squinted. “Why?”

“The warlords decided to avoid any major confrontation when we first came in because they knew we had the firepower to crush them.” Then Kyle told the captain about how the situations at both the arms cache and later at the Irish clinic had flopped from nothing happening to deep trouble in a flash. “The Skinnies are losing their fear of us, Captain. Our rules of engagement are pretty benign.”

“I read this about the same. Bad news is that battalion got word today that a couple of thousand new troops are not going to be coming to Somalia after all. Also, some are saying we may start to withdraw by the end of January.”

“Ouch. That’s only a month from now.” The sniper finished the water and set it aside. “I don’t see the logic in declaring victory when we only really just got here. Probably because I’m just a sergeant.”

The commander of Suicide Charlie laughed. “Somalia is a feel-good sideshow, a nice humanitarian gesture, Kyle. The political timing is terrible, with the president being a lame duck until the new administration can take over. Throw in that ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and that bastard Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and a lot of people back in Washington are feeling that we’ve done our part here. They want to turn this business over to a coalition and get out.”

Swanson stood and gathered his gear. “That’s too bad. I can feel trouble coming, Skipper, just as sure as one of these afternoon showers, but this one is going to become a typhoon. When this word gets around, General Aidid will want to have control of Mogadishu by the time we withdraw.”

“Yeah. Well, go out with the patrol and see what you can see. Come across anything I might need to know on background, just come see me. Anything else?”

“How about a hundred pounds of rice, sir?”

“That’s a lot of rice. Can’t you just liberate it from the French?”

“Already done that.”

Like every other building in Mogadishu, the spaghetti factory in the northern Yaqshid District had seen better days. The Italian colonizers had stamped their influence on the African city and built a thriving manufacturing plant to turn wheat flour into pasta that blended nicely with the rich tomatoes from the Shabelle Valley. It was now just a ruin, and urban warfare thrived in its rubble. Kyle and his team created a hide from which they could provide support for a recon team picking through the tangled mess.

A light rain had passed through, but the temperature remained warm enough for steam to rise from the rubble. Swanson was seeing things he had not noticed before as they trekked downtown. Every wall was bullet-pocked, and stinking trash and war debris lay around like a lumpy, filthy carpet. Patrols were out probing other sectors, helicopter gunships were overhead, and CAATs scooted around like killer dune buggies. The gangs stayed curled out of sight or hid their weapons and appeared as part of the general population. An old man with a wrinkled face stared impassively at Swanson from a doorway. Children did not play, but begged the Americans for food.

The snipers watched the marine patrol move slowly, exactly nine hundred yards away. Swanson had his big rifle tuned so fine that he would be able to deliver a bullet on target nine football fields away. He concentrated on his breathing, eye to the scope and finger on the trigger. Corporal Delshay was his spotter and glassed the area with a bigger scope.

“Lookathere,” the Apache whispered. “Coming in on the flank.”

Swanson saw the figure. No more than late teens, skinny, in sandals, shorts, and a T-shirt, with the usual AK-47 in his hands. When the thug spotted the American patrol, he raised his weapon, and Swanson made a snap shot that skipped in front of the gunman and drilled up into his thigh. The target jerked, dropped his weapon, and plopped into a sitting position. With plenty of time to spare now, Swanson made a slight adjustment and brought the crosshairs onto the forehead without ever bothering to look at the face, fired, and flipped him.

“He’s done,” Apache said. Kyle made a note in his logbook. It was exactly 10:37 P.M., just another night in the Mog.

Having to kill a bad guy wasn’t going to ruin his day.

The marines went back to the stadium several hours later, having found nothing but a few targets, misery, and a total lack of hope among the people. As they approached the gate, Swanson saw that some of the inhabitants of Mogadishu were changing addresses and moving closer to the stadium walls, like settlers in the Old West seeking the sanctuary of a military installation. A shantytown was being born under the marine guns.

He slept well, exhausted and dreamless, until the middle of the morning. It was Wednesday, December 30. One more day for the year 1992. Showers had been made operational in the stadium, and he stood beneath the chill water in the canvas tent, working hard with the shampoo and soap to try and scrub away the city’s stink. He had a tight window of time before having to attend a mandatory noon briefing, so he rounded up Delshay and a Humvee to rush over to the clinic and get the list from Molly Egan. He didn’t care what was on the list. He just wanted to see her again, if only for a minute. He left Delshay at the wheel and jogged into the dark, muggy anteroom of the hospital.

Molly was alone when he came in. She rushed to him without a word, and Swanson wrapped his arms around her tightly and felt her squeezing him just as hard. His fingers traced her spine and burrowed into her hair as her forearms locked behind his neck.

Their kisses were hungry, and he finally, reluctantly, had to separate. “I gotta go, Molly,” he said, then stopped for another long kiss before pushing away. “I wanted to tell you my idea. Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and there is going to be a party on the rooftop at the press hotel. Meet me there, and we can celebrate in style. There will be a lot of people around. You’ll be safe.”

“I can be there at ten,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, a light flutter of her lips. She shoved the list in his jacket pocket. She could feel the tense strain in his muscles, although his face remained locked in hard planes that revealed nothing. “You can go for now, but I warn you that you may not be safe from me tomorrow night.”

“Ten o’clock it is, then, Molly Egan.” He gave her hand a final squeeze, then ran back out to the CAAT, and the big machine thundered away. He made the briefing with three minutes to spare.

5 THE BOATMAN

Kyle Swanson was as tight as a spring by the time he got back to the sniper’s roost in the stadium press box. He knew what was happening to him, and would not let anyone see that Molly had almost shattered his barriers against getting personally involved while on a mission. He shucked the gear, grabbed a bottle of bourbon, and went to the lower level, then out around the edge of the field, where construction units with blades and hoes were tearing out all the overgrowth and garbage and rubble to make the grounds usable.

He discovered a sanctuary on the far side, where a hill of wooden cases surrounded a large shipping container that had been left open and stood yawningly empty and inviting. Swanson made sure no one was near, then dodged inside and pulled the door almost closed behind him, jamming a two-by-four into the opening so it could not lock by accident. The sliver of light did not extend to the back.

His boots walked him to the rear almost automatically, where he tore off his shirt and used it as a towel to mop his face and chest, then threw it aside and sat with his back wedged in the corner. Safe enough. He took a pull of whiskey and welcomed the bite of the liquid, and let the tension go. A tremor ran through his legs, the muscles flashing in spasms, and within a minute, he was curled into a fetal position, shaking hard and gritting his teeth to stop any sound. Swanson sucked fetid air into his lungs and set his mind free to roam and deal with the recurring, hallucinatory dream that haunted him, a subconscious creature that he knew as the Boatman.

“You are doing well here in Somalia.” The deep, disembodied voice was familiar to Kyle, and the taste of dust in his mouth was replaced by salty brine and ash. He had been expecting it since he arrived in Somalia. All light in the box had disappeared, and in the blackness he made out the shape of a tall, lean figure approaching from the other side of the container, paddling a long boat. The phantom and the sergeant were not friends.

“Leave me alone,” Swanson said in a subconscious voice. “Get the fuck away from me, you maniac!”

The shadow assumed a more solid shape. It was a ghostly presence wrapped in a black cloak that billowed in a wind that could not be felt. A fleshless skull with empty eyes studied the marine, and there was a teasing giggle. “Heh. I was wondering when you would come. Look in my boat.”

Kyle kept his eyes clenched tight, not wanting to look, but he saw them anyway. Twelve bodies were aligned in obedient sitting positions, six on each side of the rocking skiff. “I have more waiting to make the trip, but the boat can only hold a dozen at a time. As I said, you have done well.”

Swanson had been in country for less than a month, and already his total of confirmed kills had reached double digits when he included the kid at the spaghetti factory. He had killed them all, and now his mind was wrestling with the carnage that his sniper rifle had dealt. The hallucinated figure was only something his brain had concocted by pulling from the morbid writings about hell by Dante, and it was Kyle’s subconscious interpretation of the boatman, Charon, who ferried lost souls over the River Styx. Charon appeared only when Kyle had reached a point of mental overload, and served the purpose of scooping out the bad memories and hauling them away to a far, unseen shore where tall flames danced. Dumped over there forever, the souls were unable to haunt him.

The Boatman leaned lazily upon his oar, as if ready for a long conversation. “You seem sad. End your misery now, sniper. Join us in the boat. It would be crowded, but I always have room for you.”

“Never.”

“Someday you will. Someday soon, perhaps. You will want to kill yourself to atone for all of your murders.”

“None of them was murder, you asshole.”

“Tell them that.” The Boatman waved his skeletal arm over Kyle’s victims, and the wind blew the rag of a sleeve. “Sanctioned murder, perhaps, but murder nonetheless.”

“Leave me, and never come back.”

“I will not promise that, Sniper Swanson. I must go for now, but I will return. I am part of you. And I will keep spaces for you and your friend.” Streaks of lightning bolts sizzled on the far horizon, and the Boatman spun his loaded craft around and slid away, back to the other side of the shipping container. He disappeared as Kyle yelled, “What friend? Who? What are you talking about?” There was no response.

Swanson slept for thirty minutes in the hot box, pondering the last words of the dream demon, before he slowly broke from the nightmare. The stripe of brightness coming through the door reappeared like a searchlight beam, and he uncoiled and remained still to get his bearings. He felt better and took another shot of whiskey.

Nobody had discovered him. Almost exactly two years earlier, he had endured his first visit from the Boatman after a hard fight in the Saudi border village of Khafji against an invading Iraqi armored troop. However, in Khafji, a spit-shined major named Bradley Middleton had found Kyle in the throes of the nightmare, and mistook the quaking for cowardice. Middleton had tried to throw Swanson out of the Marine Corps as being mentally unfit, but failed.

Swanson felt there was no shame in this habit. Mental decompression in some form or another was not unusual for combat soldiers, all of whom experienced it sooner or later. He could just as easily have taken a snort of cocaine, beaten his wife if he was married, or tied on an all-night drunk that would have him crawling among the dust bunnies, followed by a healthy puke and a two-day hangover. The few minutes he spent with the Boatman cleansed him and banished the men he killed from his thoughts. It was just his way.

Kyle twitched, stretched, took a final drink, then capped the bottle and put on his shirt again. He felt great. The marine sergeant was back. He plucked away the chunk of wood and kicked the damned door open wide. Time to go back to work.

In this better frame of mind, he would spend New Year’s Eve with Molly, and he remembered her hug and kisses, as if her fingerprints were embedded on his skin.

“Hey! Anybody in there?” Swanson turned in his overwatch position when someone pounded on the door of the press box. At least the SNIPER sign had stopped them from barging in unannounced. He found a helmeted captain standing outside.

“Afternoon, sir,” Swanson said, stepping out. He did not salute because his hand was full of rifle. Night was almost on them.

“Evening, Sergeant.” The captain was a serious and smart guy who had been a combat platoon leader before being plucked out for staff things. “We are going to need this place for the combat operations center.”

Ah, our ownership is being challenged, Swanson thought. It was best if the officer did not see the improvements they had made, with walls of water bottles, and whiskey and good food, or all of the good shade from the hot sun that punished the Horn of Africa. Kyle called over his shoulder. “Apache. You get on the window. Watch that rooftop where we saw that guy. If he comes back with a gun, kill him.” He walked out, forcing the captain to follow. The door closed.

Corporal Dave Delshay was startled. They hadn’t seen any suspicious figures. Then he realized what was happening and dropped his latest book. “Got it covered,” he said. Look busy!

“I don’t think this is a good location for the COC, Captain,” Swanson said, intentionally moving toward a jagged crater that had been gouged by a mortar blast sometime back. Chunks of rock and debris stuck out like ruined teeth. “We’ve been catching sporadic fire from downtown. This is a regular RPG Alley.”

“That right?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Swanson. “You don’t want this. Look at all the damage. It’s too exposed for a command center. We’ve got some sandbags stacked inside, but one RPG through the window and your whole staff would be gone.”

“It is kind of beat up and exposed, isn’t it?” The officer was nodding agreement.

“Yes, sir. We’re only in there to deliver long-distance counterfire.”

“An RPG would take your team out just as easily.”

“That’s why we’re paid the big bucks, sir. Did you see that big hole on the front of the place?”

“Yeah. Good. I’ll take the word back. Where’s your helmet, Sergeant?”

“Snipers aren’t required to wear helmets, Captain. They get in our way with our scopes. We wear boonies.”

“Well, then, put that on. Stay sharp. Remember Beirut.” The officer needed to exert a little authority before closing the conversation and retreating downstairs.

Swanson saluted and ducked back inside. “Close call, boys. Enjoy this place while you can.”

6 NEW YEAR: 1993

The Sahafi hotel on Maka Al Mukarama Road at the K-4 traffic circle was about as safe as anywhere in Mogadishu. Every side in the complicated and growing civil war needed it, as did the foreign governments who were fighting both Aidid and Ali Mahdi. An entrepreneur had seen a niche market in the war and opened the place to serve the press. It was neither subtle nor exotic: “Sahafi” meant “press” in Arabic, so it was, literally, the “press hotel.” Journalists could plunk down eighty-five bucks cash and get three meals, a bed for the night in an air-conditioned room, and the comfortable comradeship of others of their ilk.

It had five floors, several hundred rooms, and was enclosed within chalky white walls. The rooftop provided an open view of downtown Mogadishu, and the lobby was a handy place for anyone wanting to make a news announcement. The press was propping up the economy of Mogadishu by hiring cars and drivers and interpreters and guards. Every day, the courtyard was the best place in the city for a local to find employment.

Swanson exited the Humvee in the courtyard entry, where the party was already under way in a dozen languages. The guards placidly chewed cuds of khat and impassively watched the foreigners celebrate the end of their year 1992. As Muslims, they observed the Hijri calendar, so to them it was really 1413. They were being paid, so they didn’t care.

Kyle found the halls jammed with civilians and men wearing the uniforms of many countries. Beer and booze had been flowing for some time, and nobody paid any attention to the newest marine in their midst. Many doors were open, and people were sprawled in the rooms, drinking and smoking and arguing. There was a hot new rumor of a bloodbath fight somewhere, but that story could wait until tomorrow. Two weird Japanese photographers had gone over to check it out but were not back yet, and who cared; they were crazy anyway.

He spotted her quickly, for Molly had transformed from the blood-dappled aid worker into a beacon who stood out in the crowd atop the hotel. She was not being sensitive to Muslim culture tonight and wore a loose dress of white Egyptian cotton that came just to her knees, with her small waist cinched in a wide green belt that matched her bracelet and her eyes. The red hair was uncovered and shone in lights that were strung on long poles about the parapet. Swanson thought that radiant hair should never, ever be covered. She spied him and gave an impish grin. A German photographer who had been trying to chat her up was summarily dismissed, and she gave Kyle a kiss and a beer from an iced cooler that was kept full by an American contractor.

He popped the tab. “You are beautiful, Ms. Egan.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Swanson. You got all dressed up for the occasion, too,” she said, tugging the collar of his clean cammies. His .45 was holstered, snug on the web belt. Her skin was soft, and she had light perfume.

“How come you look like you just got out of the shower?”

“Because I have. See that dark-haired Brit girl over there? Her name is Maisie Turner, and she is a reporter with the Guardian newspaper, which keeps a room here. We met when she was doing a story on relief work, and she volunteered her facilities tonight.”

Turner must have felt the look because she glanced over and gave a little wave. She was petite, had her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, and wore a loose top with tight jeans. Another woman not playing by local rules tonight, Maisie was happily scrunched between a tanned U.N. worker from Norway and an intense Australian freelancer.

“I don’t understand these press people,” Swanson said, catching the drifting aroma of marijuana. The rooftop was a placid oasis. “Don’t they know there is a war going on?”

“War is what they do, Kyle,” Molly said. “They move from one hotspot to another and keep bumping into each other in different hotels and clubs. One told me they follow the ‘boom-boom,’ just like we aid workers follow tragedy and you follow an enemy. They don’t want to be anywhere else, at least not this week. Next week, a better story may pop up elsewhere, and they will go chase that one. Now, dance with me, my pretty marine.”

Swanson finished his beer and tossed the empty can into a barrel. When he took her hand, the rest of the crowd seemed to disappear. They came together and rocked in place.

Molly whispered, “Maisie gave me her room key.” She leaned on his shoulder. “It has air-conditioning, clean sheets, and there’s more beer in the refrigerator.”

“Then why the hell are we still up here?” He stepped back and gave her a twirl, and her skirt fanned out to show her legs as she spun. She came back to him, even closer now.

“I thought you’d never ask. We can be back up here in time for midnight.”

“Why would we want to do that?” Swanson looked at her, and the smile became a serious look. He was realizing the water was deep, and he was ready to drown happily. “I don’t want to waste a minute with you, girl.”

“I know. I feel the same way, Kyle, and it scares me a little. It is best not to have real feelings in these battered places. But tonight I want you to take me, love me, and tell me everything is going to be all right. I want to still be in bed, naked and next to you, when the sun comes up tomorrow.”

The U.S. Secret Service provided a needed break to the daily schedule, which was becoming dangerously routine. President George H. W. Bush, who had ordered the intervention in the Somalian emergency, was in country for a firsthand look at the mission, and Swanson was providing countersniper protection at the airport. While Kyle and Molly had partied at the Sahafi yesterday, Bush had been aboard the USS Tripoli after digesting MRE field rations from a lunch with the troops at an airfield sixty miles north of the Mog.

The Secret Service had the job of protecting the president, even in a war zone, and buttoned things up tight for the two-day visit. They automatically turned to Swanson for assistance because he was a known quantity and was already on site — their own snipers trained at the marine scout-sniper school in which Kyle had served as an instructor. However, they didn’t totally trust him.

Troops secured the roads into the areas Bush visited, with more marines standing guard on the surrounding rooftops. The president, in a desert camouflage jacket, spent a half hour at a feeding station and an orphanage in Mogadishu. Seven hundred children clapped and welcomed him while the Secret Service sweated it out.

Swanson stood with Corporal Smith in the main guard tower at the front gate of the airport, while other snipers manned other points and glassed the areas both inside and outside the facility at which the big blue and white Air Force One waited. With them in the tower was Secret Service agent Mark Deber, a lanky, square-shouldered man wilting in the heat. He had removed his suit coat, but sweat saddlebags puddled his white shirt. Deber knew Swanson from the Quantico training but was in the tower to keep an eye on both of the marines: a guard to guard the guards. Nothing was left to chance where presidential protection was concerned. It was the kind of challenge that Swanson enjoyed.

“Deber, you ought to stick around here in the Mog for a while. You missed a big party last night, and we can take you to the hot joints downtown along the Green Line, catch some jazz.” Swanson swept his scope over the open ground beyond the fence, looking for telltale signs of a hide.

“Fuck that. I’m outta here on the next plane after Big Bird. I don’t want nothing you got here, like maybe dysentery,” Deber said. “How’s the duty been?”

“Pretty quiet. The Skinnies don’t want to mess with us.”

“They just shoot each other,” added Smitty, who was examining the edge of the city.

“Sounds like a deal to me,” said Deber. “Long as they don’t shoot at us.”

“Got that right.”

The president’s armored convoy arrived, and Bush spent some time saying hellos and thanking the people at the airport. Swanson smoothly scanned the exterior of the gate, then the interior area around Bush, tense and watching for potential threats. For the briefest of moments, the Unertl scope on his sniper rifle swept over the president’s face, and the twenty-four-inch barrel with its one-in-twelve-inch twist was pointed directly at his ear. It would have been an easy shot. Swanson kept the rifle moving.

“That ain’t funny, Swanson. You were somebody else, I’d have taken you down,” Deber hissed behind him. The agent wondered if he had screwed up; had he really given the best sniper in the Marine Corps a free shot at the president? Swanson kept a grin buried deep. No harm, no foul.

Then Bush was safely aboard the plane, and it was gone, heading for Moscow, where he was to sign a nuclear-arms-reduction treaty.

The two snipers and the Secret Service agent all relaxed and took deep breaths. The president, the most important man in the world, was somebody else’s responsibility now.

“Hey, Deber. Since you were ready to shoot me down like a dog a minute ago, how about giving me a present?”

“What? You want a reward for being your usual asshole self?”

Swanson slid the big rifle into its custom-made bag. “Not for me. I want a souvenir for a kid at a relief clinic. You got something that says WHITE HOUSE on it?”

Deber patted his pockets. “Yeah. Here. They give these things out like candy.” It was a white cardboard square with a lapel pin that bore the presidential symbol, an eagle with flared wings and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA printed in tiny gold letters around the blue edge.

“He doesn’t have lapels,” Swanson complained.

“Not my problem,” Deber said. “I’m gone. You guys watch your asses.”

On the way back to the stadium, Swanson considered the presidential trip. The Man had left Somalia, but Swanson and thousands of marines and the troops of other nations were still here, and it seemed that the president had begun to waffle on the planned exit. Originally, the plan was to have it all done before January 20, when Bill Clinton would be sworn in. On this personal trip, President Bush had given it more of an open ending. His spokesman was ambiguous, promising the Somalis would not be abandoned but conceding that some American troops might start handing their duties over to U.N. forces and withdrawing by the end of January. Bottom line was that Swanson knew his days left in Somalia were numbered … he just didn’t know the number.

Deqo Sharif gave an “I know what you did last night” grin when Kyle Swanson came to the Irish Aid Society relief center. She had been helping Lon with a delicate birth, and her face showed the fatigue. They worked when they needed to work, not according to clock hours, but somehow managed to keep their humanity intact. Sleep was not high on their priority list.

“Molly is not here, Kyle. The agencies are having a conference about how to get more food out into the countryside.”

Swanson said, “That’s okay, Deqo. Did you get to see President Bush today?”

“No. We were busy here, as always, but it was good that he came to Somalia at all.” Her dark face frowned. “Did you marines hear about a big attack on one of the compounds of Ali Mahdi last night?”

“Yeah. The local cops think it was planned by General Aidid, and was led by the general’s pet thug, the Cobra. They are bad news.” Swanson was always ready for a tidbit of intelligence to pass along. “What do you think it means?”

“People say that it was an assassination attempt, but Mahdi wasn’t there, and he will demand revenge.” She adjusted her robe and looked at him with steady dark eyes. “It was also a sign, Kyle, to show everyone in Mogadishu that you marines don’t really control the city. You did not know about it in advance and could not stop it.” She sighed with frustration. “I think things are going to get bad again.”

“You may be right, Deqo. You may be right. I will make sure the patrols continue to come by here.” Swanson took out the lapel pin. “Look, the real reason I came by today was to bring this little badge for Lucky.”

“He’s in class right now. I will give it to him later.”

He handed it over and watched her study the shining enameled seal of the president. “Tell him it’s a gift from President Bush and will help keep him safe.”

“Can it stop a bullet?” Deqo tucked it into the folds of her conservative purple guntiino, a long cloth that draped over her shoulder and around the waist. A matching cloth called a shash crossed her head.

Kyle rapped lightly on the table and said, “I’ve got to get back. Please tell Molly I came by, would you?”

“Of course. Thank you. Be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me, Deqo. I carry the biggest gun out there.”

7 THE FIGHT

The Tenth Mountain called for help. Swanson thought they might be running low on suntan lotion, but grudgingly acknowledged the unit was spread thin, with soldiers posted all over Somalia, occupying other cities and keeping roads open. The fact that the Tenth headquarters had been set up in no man’s land within Mogadishu seemed to have escaped the attention of the planners.

At the stadium, General Jack Klimp, the marine commander, received intel that the troublemaking warlord General Aidid was up to something, and marine assets were preparing to meet the challenge. The hard-eyed general found Swanson and told him, “Take some snipers over there and scout out what’s going on. This might be the fight we have been expecting. Maybe they are going to come out at last. Then get back here with a SITREP.”

Kyle and ten of his men piled into Humvees and tore out of the stadium down the 21 October, and were inside the gates of the Tenth HQ compound within minutes. Once again, he found no outward signs of any real gunfight, but the army guys said the usual harassing fire being spat at them had increased.

“Come up here and take a look,” said a colonel, who led the sniper up to the flat rooftop of the three-story building, which had been baking in the sun all afternoon. The officer pointed to another compound about six hundred meters away, where a crowd of Skinnies milled about three long warehouses. “That’s where Aidid is now storing some of his heavy stuff. We have never seen that many people around those buildings at one time.”

As if to emphasize the point, a rifle popped and a bullet ricocheted off of the three-foot-high parapet surrounding the Tenth headquarters’ roof. Swanson raised his and played over the area. There was no court-of-law proof of any recent big firefight, but the colonel was right: those warehouses and the large crowd were a real threat, and it was growing. The rules of engagement still mandated that as long as the Somalis did not brandish their weapons, the marines would not open fire. Swanson believed that was about to change in a hurry. With its combat power dispersed elsewhere, the available cooks and clerks of the Tenth Mountain HQ were putting aside their paperwork and suiting up with load-bearing gear and rifles.

“I’ll be right back,” Kyle said. He left most of his snipers with the army dudes and hauled ass back to the stadium.

Klimp’s staff had spread out the biggest map they had, and Kyle pointed out the warehouses and reported the crowd of Somalis there was whipping up its courage. Aidid apparently was ready to do some damage, and although the effort probably was to be directed at his rival warlords, the U.S. troops were in the way.

Klimp wasn’t going to give an inch. His plan was to wrap a bubble around and over the suspicious compound and bring out his own heavy infantry, armor, and air power. If Aidid so much as wiggled, he would be crushed. Kyle dashed back to the Tenth HQ, this time carrying his huge M82A1A special-application scoped rifle with its 10× Unertl scope. On the roof, psyops people with portable loudspeakers were warning the militiamen to surrender by dawn.

When night fell, the darkness came with a rainstorm that slashed in from the Indian Ocean, and heavy winds spun across the ragged city with a discordant, threatening hum. The cold and merciless rain soaked the sniper teams on the rooftop. Visibility fell to zero, blinding Swanson’s night-vision goggles. He took them off. The wind was blowing the sheets of rain almost horizontally, right at them, and wiping a hand over his face did not help. No one could see anything in the dirty night, but beneath the storm’s roar, he heard the growlings of large engines and a lot of shouting over in the Aidid camp.

Kyle repositioned the M-60 machine guns on the roof and brought up a forward air controller to coordinate the helicopter gunships that might be needed. Newer deep growls of other machines joined the noise as marine armor took stations. The loudspeakers never shut up: “Surrender at dawn!”

The night and the river of rain stretched into an eternity of anxious misery, and Swanson could only wonder what was going on down below where the Skinnies were gathered. He and his spotter, Corporal David Delshay, the Apache, built a ragtag shelter and occasionally took breaks to go inside to dry out and have something hot to drink. His boots were full of water, his clothing was soaked, and he shook like a puppy as the chill seeped into his bones. Sleep was impossible, and battle was certain to come with the daylight.

The African storm tapered away just as the sun began to light the sky, and when the veil of mist lifted, Kyle got his first good look at what had been happening. Tanks and other heavy weapons had been driven out of the Somali buildings and were revving up in the courtyard, and the militiamen were all carrying weapons. Kyle squared into a sitting position between the parapet and a rooftop air-conditioning unit and dialed the scene close with his powerful Unertl scope. The loudspeakers squawked last-chance demands to the Somali warriors to surrender. That wasn’t going to happen. The warlord’s men, idle for weeks, were spoiling for a fight.

General Klimp watched the brewing situation with real-time imagery back at the stadium. His marines were also weary of the boredom. Klimp got Swanson, his best sniper in the best position, on the circuit.

Kyle had been listening to the increasing radio traffic through an earbud. He had an armor-piercing round in the chamber of his SASR, and five more ready in the clip below. The other snipers and machine gunners along the wall were sighting in on potential targets when the distinctive whopping sound of approaching helicopter gunships joined the morning din.

Beside Kyle, the forward air controller saw something new roll out of the warehouse: a four-cannon ZSU-23/4 called the Zeus, a powerful weapon that could erase the incoming attack birds from the sky as soon as they appeared. “Oh my God,” the FAC yelled into his radio. “Abort! Abort! Abort!” The choppers immediately stopped on a dime, just out of range, and hovered behind the headquarters building.

The situation was at the point of no return. None of the Skinnies had yet fired, but neither had they surrendered, and they now were showing off anti-aircraft field guns and tanks. Swanson heard a familiar voice in his earbud; Klimp was asking if the sniper could disable the Zeus without hurting any of the Somali fighters. The big gun was a game changer that could not be allowed to join a fight.

Swanson adjusted his scope to center the evil-looking multiple cannon. The best way to ruin it would be to slam an armor-piercing round through the ammunition canister that fed belts of ammo to the weapon. It was located in the middle of the cannon. Corporal Delshay lasered the range, and Kyle dialed it in while he told the general what he had, adding that there was no guarantee.

“Take the shot,” Klimp ordered, and Kyle fired. The powerful .50 caliber bullet punched straight through the metal ammo canister as if it were thin cardboard. Then the round punched straight through the gunner who was seated behind it. The man went over backward, dead, and hell erupted. The battle was on.

Another Zeus answered Swanson’s opening shot with thundering blasts from its quadruple guns directly at the sniper’s position. Chunks of the rooftop parapet were pulverized with impacting explosions, and Swanson pushed away onto his back as green tracer rounds flew overhead and ate at the protective barrier. The other marines and soldiers opened up in response. The Apache grabbed Swanson’s jacket and rolled him back into position. “Get up!” Delshay yelled. “Take that son of a bitch!”

Kyle repositioned and started firing, no longer having to worry about not hitting anyone. His armor-piercing rounds quickly shredded the second Zeus as the world roared in his ears and the militiamen got their first taste of the Marine Corps in full battle cry.

With the anti-aircraft guns dead, the FAC called in the hovering gunships, and the lurking choppers pounced over the rooftop like predatory panthers, their miniguns slashing deadly paths through the Aidid compound. Swanson and Delshay were showered with the falling hot brass of the spent cartridges. It was open season.

Kyle reloaded and began pumping armor-piercing rounds into the gunner and driver positions of the Russian-made tanks while other marines raked the enemy foot soldiers. Firing erupted all around the perimeter, and the big marine tanks crashed forward to add their machine guns and cannons to the scrap. All three warehouses caught fire. Satisfied that the major enemy machinery was dead, Swanson looked to individual fighters who were hiding in buildings that overlooked the battle zone so they could shoot back at the Americans. They died as soon as they appeared. The compound that only minutes before had been the militia’s striking power was littered with junk and bodies.

The firing stopped, and Kyle lowered his rifle to reload. As he put in a new clip, a neatly dressed man walked onto a balcony, and the sniper instantly recognized General Aidid. The leader was greeted by cheers from the Somali militiamen, who had just taken a thorough beating. Aidid examined the ruins of the ludicrously one-sided battle, then looked with disdain toward the American positions a few hundred yards away.

A bare-headed marine who was reloading a large rifle was looking back at him. It was the same one who had manhandled him in their earlier confrontation. The Swanson Marine! Again! Damn him!

Kyle steadied the mighty SASR so that it pointed directly at the warlord, who realized that his fate rested on the trigger finger of the man he had grown to personally hate.

“I’m locked onto Aidid,” Swanson spoke easily into his radio. An easy three-pound twitch on the trigger would end the warlord’s life. A second man who had come onto the balcony also recognized what was about to happen and stepped in front of Aidid. It was the bodyguard, the Cobra, and that didn’t matter at all to Kyle, who did not adjust his aim. A big SASR round would just burrow through both bodies as easily as it had torn through the armor of the Zeus quad-fifty.

“Cease fire. Stand down,” came the voice of General Klimp. The battle was over.

The warlord turned away slowly from the sniper, intentionally ignoring him now, and gingerly left the balcony. The Cobra also backed away, but never took his eyes off Swanson. He raised his empty right hand and pointed an accusing finger at the marine in silent threat. Swanson did not put aside the rifle until the balcony was clear.

“Were you at the Aidid compound yesterday? I hear it was a real battle.” They were walking on the beach, holding hands and barefoot in the silver sand. Molly’s baggy khaki pants were rolled up to her knees. Swanson wore old cargo shorts and a T-shirt, with his .45 ACP on his hip. Almost every man on the beach carried a weapon.

“Yep. Along with about five hundred other marines. It wasn’t much. The whole thing didn’t take more than five minutes.”

Lucky Sharif was with them, out deeper, but not too deep, for sharks might be about, drawn by the blood of slaughtered camels rendered at a nearby plant that dumped the waste directly in the Indian Ocean. Kyle spun an old football that he had bartered from a corporal, and he tossed it to Lucky. The boy knew soccer, and trying to handle a ball that had points on both ends was unnatural to him, and it knocked him down with a big splash. He came up laughing. “That boy is going to be a fine wide-out for the Pats someday.”

“A what for the what? You are sooooo American, Kyle. The rest of the world doesn’t follow your sports teams, you know.”

He pulled her close and they bumped shoulders. “Maybe the world would be a better place if they would, and the sports of other countries are even more weird. I’ll bet that even you can’t understand cricket.”

“You changed the subject. What about that fight?”

“Deqo says you’re going down to Kismaayo to do some work. When were you going to tell me that?”

“You’re changing the subject again. Some of the other marines told me you were right in the middle of it.”

“Nature of the job, Molly. Really, it was not a big thing. We had them from the start. In fact, we picked the fight to teach General Aidid still another lesson. That jerk needs a lot of lessons.”

Lucky dashed from the surf and threw the football back to Kyle, using both hands. The boy was having a good time. He had survived dangers bigger than any shark.

“Go long!” Kyle called, pointing, and the boy took off down the beach, his long legs churning. Kyle lofted a tight spiral that fell into Lucky’s outstretched arms. The boy juggled it and almost hauled it in, but it bounced away. “He needs some work. What about Kismaayo?”

“It will only be two days to help out with a new U.N. food-distribution point. There is so much matériel pushing into the pipeline these days that the NGOs are having a hard time on the other end.” Marine trucks, choppers, and ships could haul the supplies only so far. Then the NGOs took over because there was no Somali government to handle the distribution.

“Two days and two nights,” Kyle said with a glum tone. “That might as well be forever.”

“This is nice,” she said, and kicked at a small incoming wave. They walked past some bare-chested marines playing beach volleyball over a sagging net, their rifles on nearby towels. Some women in little swimsuits baked in the sun.

Kyle had often scolded young privates who swooned over girls they had just met and wanted to marry as quickly as possible, no matter the situation. Now he had fallen for this Irish girl, and having to swallow his own medicine did not make it taste any better. Stolen hours were all they had, and both were determined to enjoy their remaining time, as long as they had. Kyle had already convinced himself that Somalia, or even forever, would not be long enough. He did not want their love to become a casualty of war. Somalia had brought them together, but it was very weak glue. Either of them could be transferred at a moment’s notice.

“Well, I guess that Lucky and I can work on his pass routes while you’re gone.”

“You realize that he is placing you and me in parental roles, at an age between himself and his grandparents, Lon and Deqo.”

“Umm. What are we going to do about that? We’re not his parents.” Kyle looked at her serious face. “We never will be.”

They moved on in silence for a little while, then slowly turned and started walking the other way, back toward the airport.

“I have been thinking about something, Kyle. It’s only an idea right now, but maybe we can get all three of them out of this place. I can check out the procedures for Ireland, and you can look into the qualifications for America. Maybe we can pull Lucky, Deqo, and Lon out and safe — all of them.”

Swanson felt a wind, and Lucky raced by, football beneath his arm, being chased by another boy. “Doctor Sharif probably won’t leave, and Deqo won’t leave without him. You know that. Lucky can’t go alone.”

“It’s just something to think about,” she said. “Here’s something else to think about: suppose we take him back to the clinic and retire up to Maisie’s room at the hotel. She flew over to Uganda on a story.”

“Things happen when I get you there, Irish. Things of which your mother probably would not approve.” He grabbed her by the waist. “Consider yourself warned.”

“Words, words, words.” She mocked him, then quoted Eliza Doolittle again. “Show me.”

She’s the one, he decided.

8 KIA

General Aidid tumbled into a great and furious sulk following the embarrassing defeat of his forces. Ali Mahdi crowed that the Americans had finally taken sides, and everyone in the city was gossiping about how easily the marines had taken down Aidid’s forces. The substantial losses in manpower and matériel paled next to the image of being so easily whipped. Weakness was propaganda poison, and Ali Mahdi would use it to the fullest.

Aidid had planned to trap the marines in the urban canyons of Mogadishu and force them into wicked door-to-door battles. His warriors had gotten their guns from the warehouses under the cover of the storm but didn’t even get out of the gate to use them. Instead, the marines struck first by leapfrogging out of the stadium and raiding his most important storage site. Seventeen fighters had been killed and twenty-five wounded. Then the marines confiscated hundreds of his rifles and machine guns — sixteen truckloads of valuable weaponry. That was the big picture.

A smaller picture was also seared in his memory: that of the Marine Swanson positioned on a rooftop and deliberately aiming a huge rifle at the general, grinning while he did so. It was salt that rubbed hot and hard into Aidid’s wounded pride.

The general was relaxing on a floor mat in his home, wearing a loose sarong and sandals in the heat as he thought things over, trying to calm himself. He spooned up a ball of spicy rice, vegetables, and camel meat; chewed; swallowed; and made a decision.

“Omar!” the general called, and the Cobra strolled easily into the room, holding a book that he had been reading. “I have a special assignment for you,” Aidid said.

“Anything.” The face remained expressionless, the eyes unseen behind wraparound sunglasses of the type favored by the Americans. Beads of sweat laced his forehead.

“Thousands of American marines have invaded our country, and thousands of other foreign troops, too.” He did not have to finish the thought.

“The Swanson Marine.” The Cobra’s dour face regained a bit of spark.

“Yes. His time has come. We have spies and a lot of money. Use it. Find him for me.”

“And kill him?”

“A simple death would be too easy. I want this sniper to die in spectacular fashion. I want to make an example of him.”

“I will have this death, General.” Omar also seethed with a desire for revenge.

“Of course. First, we pay him back for being a sniper.”

Aidid sprawled back on the mat and covered his tired eyes with folded hands. “You are going back into the Green Line tonight, I hope.”

“Yes, sir. I plan to drive out with ten men to raid an Ali Mahdi storehouse. We need to restock our own armory.”

“Be savage tonight, Cobra, and instill fear. I want you to try a new tactic. Take two trusted men who are good with guns and are disciplined. Leave them behind to be a sniper team of our own. They will remain in place until a marine patrol comes near and then shoot one of the Americans. When this killing happens in Ali Mahdi territory, any alliance he is building with the Americans will collapse. They will send more troops in there.”

“Ah. And that will help draw the marines into the street fighting we have wanted.” The Cobra logged away the information; always learning.

A patrol stepped off into the darkness and was soon beyond the airport checkpoints and into the city itself. An easy rain pelted their faces, much gentler than the recent storm, almost refreshing after the scalding afternoon. The eleven-man column was a coiling snake that would prowl through abandoned buildings, down tight alleys, around blind corners, and into gutted neighborhoods. Out front, on point, was Corporal Jerry Evans, who had been a wrestler in his Iowa high school days and carried his heavy gear with ease. Evans looked up at a tall building and felt a hundred unseen eyes looking back. His night-vision goggles painted things green, and he saw no threats, so he leaned forward into his work, keeping his finger near the trigger.

Evans was not scared. He had lost his combat cherry two years ago in the Desert Shield war that kicked Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Mogadishu was just another stop on the marine train. He loved this shit and was going to be a lifer. At the moment, his entire being was concentrated on what he was doing step by step, moving into the heart of the Mog.

It was a repeat of what they had done last night, and by coming back to the same place, they hoped to catch some gunmen who would mistakenly gamble that the marines would not show up twice on the same streets. An hour into the patrol, he had found nothing of interest. The deep cigarette-gritty voice of Sergeant Marty Reyes came through his earpiece and ordered him to change direction and head down an alley to the northeast. Evans stepped out, and the ten other marines followed.

He was on cruise control. Mogadishu was like New York, a city that never slept. There was always something or someone stirring. The big corporal had never been to New York, but he had seen it a lot on television. Lots of clubs and girls. But the Big Apple didn’t have the danger factor of the Mog, and that was the rush over here. He stepped around a stack of rocks, paused, listened, and moved again.

Not a single marine had been killed by enemy gunfire since the original unload back on December 6. One civilian contractor died when he ran over a land mine, but that was it. With all the sporadic gunfire that could be heard at almost any hour, it seemed to Corporal Evans that the bad guys should have been able to have hit something by now. He heard the rumble of a vehicle engine and brought the patrol up short, hugged back against a wall as a dirty technical turned the corner, motoring around like it was all king of the night. The marines had the truck surrounded before it could come to a complete halt, and the four gentlemen in it were so surprised that they bailed out, broke, and ran. Their machine gun hung useless on its mount. Sergeant Reyes taped on a block of C-4 explosive to the automatic weapon, and the whole technical went up with a crash.

That would probably do it for the night, Evans thought. Every goon in town would now know where the marine patrol was. A minute later, headquarters gave the order to come back, and the patrol turned around, being just as careful going back to the airport as they had been on the way out.

A single gunshot cracked from a dark rooftop, and the bullet took Evans in the neck and drilled into his chest, dropping him hard on the stones. The other marines engaged the sniper with a hail of fire as they dove for cover. Sergeant Reyes did a quick head count. Someone was missing.

“Evans?” he called. “Where are you? Anybody got eyes on Evans?”

The marines looked at each other. No Evans. “Let’s go find him,” said Reyes. He set up a base of covering fire that smothered the building from which the shot had come and then led several of his men back to where Evans had last been seen. He lay facedown on the filthy street, bleeding hard, his head twisted at an awkward angle. They grabbed his web gear and dragged him to cover.

“We have a friendly WIA,” Reyes reported over the radio, forcing his voice to remain steady and understandable while a corpsman worked on Evans. “We need an evacuation.” He gave the grid coordinates. New rips of AK-47 spattered out of the night, forcing the marines into a tighter defensive perimeter.

Within minutes, three armored vehicles from the Quick Reaction Force trundled into the wasteland. All of the militias were wide awake by now, bringing new guns to the fight. Bullets pinged off hulls, and the armored tracks opened up with their heavier weapons to cover the patrol members, who stuffed Evans into one of the bays, climbed in, and slammed the hatches shut.

A doctor met the little convoy back at the base. He pronounced Corporal Jerry Evans dead on arrival.

Kyle turned to the Central Intelligence Agency for help. They occasionally borrowed him for temporary assignments, and that had built some relationships with their hardened operators. They kept trying to get him to join their secret pack of field spooks, but Swanson was a marine, and would stay one. In marine speak, the CIA acronym stood for “Christians in Action.”

One of the rough men was Nicholas Hamilton, a former West Pointer, currently stationed in Somalia. The CIA had a bad habit of making their workplace so secret that it became strikingly obvious. In Mogadishu, the Christians worked in a heavily guarded and separate compound deep within the airport grounds. The place wore a crown of communication antennae and was surrounded by repetitive rows of high fences and coils of spiky concertina wire and bore a wooden placard at the gate that read STAY THE HELL AWAY. Swanson told the sentry to send word into the tent that he wanted to see Hamilton.

In a few minutes, the CIA agent appeared and barked, “Can’t you read signs, you fuckin’ jarhead?” Hamilton walked to the fence, opened the gate.

Swanson entered. “We lost a guy last night up near the Green Line,” he said when they ducked inside and into the cool blast of air-conditioning. Several people gave him a glance but then went back to whatever they were doing.

“Not one of yours, was it? I haven’t read the after-action report.”

“No. It was a corporal out of the three-eleven. What disturbs me is that it was a clean sniper hit, Ham, not just the usual wild shot in the night. If the Skinnies start good sniper work in that urban terrain, we will have a whole new set of problems.”

“A lot of rooftops and rubble,” the CIA man agreed. “We have some people out and about, spreading money and asking questions. Who the hell knows? They were bound to nail somebody sooner or later.”

“I don’t like losing any marine,” Swanson responded. A full mug of coffee was put on the table in front of him. “Even if it is just bad luck.”

“Neither do I, but the famous Kyle Swanson didn’t trot down here because of that incident. What brings you to the land of the supersecret decoder ring? Did somebody call for you? Maybe you want to tell me about your redheaded girlfriend?”

“You know about us?”

“You two are the talk of the town.”

Kyle put his face to an air conditioner and let the cool wind blow directly on him. “Passports, Ham. I need three genuine U.S. passports for a Somali family we, meaning the US of A, may want to evacuate in a hurry.”

Nick Hamilton laughed. “Every Somali in Somalia wants an American passport, including the warlords. What makes these three so special, out of a couple of million people who would love to leave this godforsaken country?”

“Proper egress papers, too. Visas to pass through Kenya, a smooth entry to the U.S., and some restart cash.”

“Why, shit, Kyle! Sure as hell! Anything else? You want me to charter a private jet, too?”

“Not a bad idea, but no.” Swanson unfolded a metal chair and sat down, leaning forward, elbows on knees. Drank some coffee. “Ham, these people are nobody, and that makes them special. Just a doctor who will never desert his patients; his wife, who will never leave without him; and their only living relative, an eight-year-old grandson. They live and work at the Irish agency — never stop working, from what I have seen. All three of them speak English. I can get some reference letters from NGO and relief types, but these are not really important people in the grand scheme of things. They are just rocks of resistance who have dedicated their lives to helping other Somalis, which is why we are all here in the first place.”

Hamilton leaned back and hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts. “So, there is no real reason other than Kyle Swanson likes them.”

“No! Godammit all, Ham. We should do this because we can! Because we should! Do you want to go back to the real world and have accomplished nothing at all over here? I don’t. Someday when we are old, you and I can rock on the porch of your home in New Hampshire and remember back to when we did something more than hand over bricks of cash to warlords.”

“We can’t save everybody in Somalia, buddy. That’s cold, hard fact.”

“We can save these. Trust me. They are worth it. They made a difference.” Swanson emptied a little envelope from his shirt pocket, and out slid a sheet containing all of the data needed for a passport and regulation-sized photographs.

Nick Hamilton was stunned. He had never seen this Kyle Swanson before, so different from the nerveless shooter who sometimes did black jobs for the CIA. “Idealism doesn’t suit you, Kyle,” he said.

“You Christians owe me big, Ham. I always come running whenever you crook your finger to tell me to go somewhere and kill somebody. I want a little payback: three passports for a family that would never ask for themselves and probably will refuse to make the jump anyway.”

And in the back of his mind: Out of Somalia, hang up the rifle, quit the Corps, marry Molly, settle down, and help raise Lucky. The family he had never had was within his reach.

9 THE SPY

The Cobra felt pride about the shot that he had made, which killed the marine. It was another milestone for him in the University of War. He had passed through the cannon-fodder stage of his development long ago, when he had been trained by Aidid’s foreign mercenaries to be more than just another black African child with a Kalashnikov. They had schooled him every day in how to kill with a knife and other weapons, and also with his hands and feet. Failure meant a quick shot to the back of the head and eternity in a shallow grave. The Cobra had survived.

So why was the general furious? Omar Jama thought it would be just the opposite, but the man he had sworn to protect was storming around and shouting. “I did not order you to personally make the sniper attack! I told you to pick other men to do it. This was an experiment, nothing more.”

“I killed the marine, sir. That was the objective.” The Cobra was confused. “It was easier to just do it myself.”

“But it was not my objective!” The general was in his face, nose to nose. “I never doubt your bravery, Omar, but your eagerness to fight clouds your judgment. You are too valuable for me to lose in a minor skirmish. Do you not understand that?”

“I don’t understand, General. I thought I was doing what you wanted.” He fondly remembered hiding far back in a darkened room on an upper floor, seeing the marines slowly edge forward, the pleasant stark smell of gun oil and ammunition rising to his nostrils, the care with which he had sighted on the target, and the sensuous, slow squeeze of the trigger. The aim was above the neck to avoid the protective vest, and the single bullet struck perfectly. Omar had repressed the urge to empty the entire clip, but discipline took over, and he withdrew and fled into the neighborhood.

The general calmed. “You are one of my most able officers, Omar, as well as my personal protector. You have a nimble brain, and the strength of a horse, and that elevates you above the others.”

The Cobra nodded. While Aidid had arranged for youngsters to learn among the mercenaries out in the bush, he also had furnished the brightest of them, future leaders of elite killing squads, with schoolteachers. Aidid had been educated in Moscow and Rome, and he needed lieutenants who could think. The foreign instructors opened the whole big world before their incredulous students, and religious instruction was provided by imams.

“You are the last of your group, Omar. The others have died fighting our enemies. You must assume more of a leadership role. Long after I am dead, you will still be around to carry our movement’s legacy forward — my hand beyond the grave. I confide secrets with you, and you perform duties that I would not dare to give anyone else. But you must follow my orders to the letter.”

“Yes, General Aidid. Whatever you wish.”

The general backed away. His prize student was almost a finished product. “Excellent, my boy. Excellent. Once we are victorious and I become the president of Somalia, I intend to appoint you as an ambassador; you will go to foreign countries and travel widely. We shall practice terrorism without borders, as preached by al Qaeda, and you will carry it worldwide.” The older man smiled, remembering his own youthful days wandering the streets of Italy.

“May I make one request, General? Before you make me wear a western suit and tie and polish the asses of diplomats? I still want to kill the Swanson Marine?”

Aidid had been mulling over that very thing and had almost changed his mind. The visceral hatred of a single man was getting in the way of more important tasks. The marines eventually would leave and take Swanson with them, and it would be as if he had never been here at all. But if that particular bit of blood would pacify the Cobra, it was a small price to pay. “Certainly,” the general agreed.

Deqo Sharif handed instruments to her husband as Lon calmly operated on another patient, this one a young man with a mangled foot. The patient was stoic, thankful that the physician had magically numbed the limb before starting with his sharp probes. Only a few weeks ago, no such medicine was available. The unfortunate victim would have been lashed to the table to restrain him.

Everybody was starting to believe there was a chance that the tide might be turning. The changes at the Irish Aid Society medical clinic had outpaced many of the others because Kyle Swanson and his sniper teams had unofficially adopted the place. Big Mike Mancuso, Terry Smith, and David Delshay then brought in even more friends to help, for there was precious little else to do in the Mog. The bare-walled compound was cleaned and scrubbed, guys from a construction battalion of Seabees framed new interior walls of plywood, and the exterior was sandbagged. It was painted a gleaming white, inside and out. Visiting navy corpsmen showed up with better medical equipment and hung around to help Dr. Sharif with the patient workload. The battalion surgeon suggested a few more improvements, and better lighting and more potent medicines arrived. Cabinets were refinished to hold clamps, trays, scalpels, and other implements. The Irish place near the K-4 roundabout had been transformed into something resembling an antiseptic infirmary, with Molly Egan running the entire show like a circus ringmaster. Patients who would have died three weeks earlier were being saved. Children were eating.

Sharif determined that the foot was not all that bad, just a series of deep cuts caused by a bad fall onto the rubble, so no broken bones had to be set. He picked out debris, swabbed the wounds liberally with antibacterial lotion — another blessing — and reached for the sharp needle and a length of synthetic polymer fiber, which Deqo had ready. They had done this together so many times that words were unnecessary. The stitches would eventually be absorbed by the body. The doctor wrapped the foot in fresh gauze while she shook a few penicillin pills into a little envelope to fight infection. When the injured man limped away, supported by a friend, Lon pulled his cloth mask beneath his chin, tossed away his rubber gloves, and actually smiled.

Deqo was so proud of him. He had almost worked himself to death to help so many people during the worst of times, back in the famine days when the war raged at its worst and three hundred thousand Somali people were dying. Deqo had not yet mentioned the possibility of leaving Somalia to him. She and Molly and Kyle would make the pitch tonight after a special dinner in their single-room living quarters adjacent to the infirmary.

Hadn’t he done enough? Imagine what he could accomplish in a real hospital. This might be the only chance for their grandson, Cawelle, to grow up in peace instead of poverty, someplace where he might have more opportunity. Molly was arranging letters of recommendation from the Irish and United Nations authorities, and Kyle was working on the travel arrangements and U.S. passports. They would gang up on the doctor tonight and try to save Lon from himself. No matter how much her husband might wish to believe differently, Deqo knew that Somalia eventually would kill him, too.

Maryam Ismail was a middle-aged woman whose body was already bent with age, and her dark face was framed with frizzy gray hair. She had lost her husband long ago in the war against Ethiopia in the Ogaden, and, never having been blessed with children, she was on her own. She depended on her Habar Gidir clan for survival, although in Somalia no one received something for nothing.

Omar Jama had discovered the woman had value because foreigners trusted her as a harmless housecleaner. She never stole so much as a cheap ring while dusting and polishing for the infidels, but Maryam listened to gather pieces of information that might be of interest to her clan leaders. At present, she had a job inside the Irish Aid Society. She also was a spy for General Aidid.

“I have something about this man you seek, sir, this United States marine named Kyle Swanson.” She spoke softly and with great respect and gave a shy and almost toothless smile when she found Omar Jama at a table in the shade of a sheltered wall in Bakara Market.

“Sit, mother,” the Cobra replied politely, pointing her to a mat at his feet. He snapped his fingers, and a stall owner gave her a bowl of warm soup. “Tell me.”

“The American is in love with the red-haired whore at the Irish agency, sir. They are together almost every day, and she speaks about him with her coworkers, even in my presence. They never notice me, of course. She is very much in love with him.” She had always disapproved of the foreign woman who flaunted herself in front of any man.

Omar straightened his back and bit his lip with anticipation. Finally, an opportunity. He nodded for Maryam to continue, weighing a reward that would keep her happy. “Are they always just at that clinic?”

“No, master. They spend many nights at the press hotel.”

The Cobra was thinking faster. The Irishwoman with the hair like flame was the key to the Swanson.

Maryam had fallen silent, so Omar handed her some coins and a wrapper filled with khat twigs and leaves. Her face brightened. “They stay in the safe zones, but sometimes wander away from the other marines. He does not want to share this white prostitute with his friends. Will you want me to continue to watch them close, sir?”

“Yes. What else do you know of them?”

Maryam shook her head. Yes. She knew something else that would show her worth. “Perhaps this will be of interest to you, master. They are getting together at the clinic tonight for a private meal with Doctor Sharif and his family. This I know to be true because my cousin, who also works there, was sent to shop in the Bakara for fresh food to cook. We came together.”

Had this old woman actually found the answer? He knew of the Sharifs, and hated them for their work, which interfered with his own goals. “Is the clinic heavily guarded?”

“No. They believe things are much safer now, and marines walk by sometimes at night, but no longer stay in shifts at the front gate. There is only one local guard. The Marine Swanson always carries a gun, sir.”

The Cobra felt a warm glow in his belly. Here was a chance to catch the Swanson Marine away from the protective security cordons at the airport. As he counted out some more money and more khat, he watched greed grow in the woman’s watery eyes. “Mother, a final question. Can you help me enter the clinic tonight during their gathering?”

A cackle erupted from Maryam Ismail as her new treasure mounted. “Oh, yes, sir. I will tell my cousin to expect your visit and to leave a door unlocked.”

“She is to tell no one, and you are to tell no one else.”

Maryam’s shoulders tightened, and she felt a chill. The big man stared down like a snake examining a mouse. She whimpered. “No, sir, of course not.”

The Cobra dismissed her and rushed away to report the spy’s incredible information. The path to murdering the hated marine was open!

General Aidid listened intently while watching the gleam in the eyes of Omar Jama. A promise was a promise, and it would make Omar content. “Make him suffer,” the general said, then flipped away his cigarette and turned to other matters.

10 THE ATTACK

Doctor Lon Sharif called it a day. It had been a long but a good one. A friend had asked him to assist in a late surgery at the Banadir Hospital downtown, and, when that was done, Lon was surprised to find no waiting line of patients when he arrived back at the clinic. The aroma of spicy food welcomed him home, for the women had spent the afternoon preparing an exotic stew. Deqo told him that he even had time for a nap and a bath before evening prayers. The doctor welcomed the respite. There was no doubt that conditions were improving in favor of sanity. It was dark when he awoke, bathed, and wrapped a clean macawis sarong in a black and brown pattern around his waist.

Tonight was an occasion that Deqo had planned in mysterious secrecy in some conspiracy with Molly Egan. The only outside guest would be Kyle Swanson. The war would remain far outside for a few hours, and Lon would find the reason.

Kyle was already there, in civilian clothes with a long shirt that concealed the pistol in his rear waistband. He was playing with Lucky, who wore clean blue jeans and a T-shirt with a rock-band emblem. Deqo grunted with effort as she hoisted the heavy cast-iron stewpot onto the table amid the bowls and spoons and cups.

Outside, rain was falling as Omar Jama finished the trek from his downtown lair, immersed in shadows and keeping a keen watch for military patrols. A loaded Glock pistol was in his belt and the razor-edged machete was strapped diagonally across his back.

The mass of the stadium loomed off to the right, bathed in bright lights so that it shined like a wet diamond. It was the safe place in which the boys from America lived. Far to his left was the airport, where more Americans and foreigners were billeted. He padded through the familiar streets to the roundabout without hurry. The city seemed to undulate and breathe around him in the African night. Mud tried to hold his feet. He looked to the left, then the right, and crossed the final road to the Irish clinic.

The compound’s stucco walls had been reinforced with stacks of sandbags and tangles of barbed wire, but it was not a military outpost. He slowed, placing each step to avoid ground clutter, and eased up along the outside wall to the wide gap that was a crude gateway through the barricade. The lone guard had taken shelter from the rain and was nowhere to be seen.

He again paused to take his bearings, then crossed into the small courtyard and flattened against an outside wall. There were several doors, and he did not know which led to the living quarters or the clinic’s rooms. The western side of the compound contained the medical facilities and the feeding station, which were closed for the night. The quietness disturbed him. Fear was absent here, replaced by the seductive hope of better lives. A thin dog with pale eyes trotted past, gave a sniff, and went along its scavenging way. Then Omar heard a burst of laughter and smelled the scent of food.

A whispered tssshh and the cluck of a tongue brought his attention to a woman standing in the darkness. She pointed to a door and then disappeared. From inside that door flowed sounds of happiness.

“Now you all listen to me,” the doctor said, looking at them when the meal was done. Swanson had brought along boxes of delicious cream cookies that he swore had fallen from a truck. Sharif nibbled one and relaxed at the low table. “I am an old man, but I am not yet blind. You all have been as thick as conspirators for the last few days, and you set up this feast tonight. I want to know the reason.”

Molly looked over at Deqo, who looked at Kyle. His face serious, Kyle reached into a deep pocket of his shirt and pulled out three blue booklets. He placed them side by side like playing cards on the flat surface. The marine felt as if his life was on that table.

“These are legitimate United States passports in the names of Lon, Deqo, and Cawelle Sharif,” he said quietly, looking directly at the surgeon. “We want you to take your family to America. The paperwork is all arranged. All that is needed is your permission.”

Doctor Sharif was speechless, but Kyle held up a palm. He didn’t want Lon to say anything yet. He turned his eyes to Molly. “You are not the only one with a big decision to make tonight, Lon.”

He reached into his other pocket and withdrew a small box, changed position, and rose on one knee before Molly. Swanson opened the little box, and a diamond ring glittered in a nest of white silk. “Will you marry me, Irish?”

Molly remained still, and her eyes locked onto him. “Are you serious?”

“Yes, Molly. I am asking you to be my wife. Please?” The warrior had lowered his façade of steel. At that moment, he was just a man who knew he had somehow, against all odds, found the woman of his dreams waiting for him in this hellish country.

Molly had her palms on her cheeks in astonishment, her mouth was in an O, and tears began to leak from her green eyes. Kyle removed the ring from the box and held it out. She had dreamed about such a moment since she was a little girl in Ireland, but had chosen instead to help people in some of the most dangerous places on earth. And it was in just such a place, here in Somalia, that she had found love.

“Yes!” She squealed. “Oh, yesyesyesyes!”

The Sharifs clapped and cheered as Kyle slid the ring onto Molly’s finger, and she grabbed him in a big kiss.

Lon was transfixed by the three passports on the table, the unexpected tickets to new lives, and simultaneously was taken aback by the marriage proposal between his friends.

The Cobra wiped his face once he was inside and slid the big knife from its sheath. The heavy handle filled his hand, and he felt the familiar prefight tingle that came when everything was going right. He walked down the narrow passage that remained in a hallway stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of supplies and found the inner doorway to the living spaces, which had been left ajar for him.

He did a quick peek and saw a group sitting around a table. The old man lay on a padded mat about eight feet away. His wife was clapping her hands in delight about something. A little boy bounced like a happy ball. The white woman was seated cross-legged on the far side, and the Swanson Marine was on one knee, facing her, with his back exposed to attack.

Omar hefted the machete handle up until it was just behind his right ear and the blade pointed back over his shoulder. He screamed a fanfare of triumph for the bloody victory that would be his in only a few moments and rushed inside.

Deqo Sharif screeched in utter horror as the huge intruder swung the long knife down in an overhand cut that razored deeply into the neck of her husband. The blade hit with such force that it almost decapitated him, and a spray of dark arterial blood fountained out wildly. The doctor collapsed full length.

Omar let the swinging blade finish the deadly arc, and his entire arm kept moving until his right bicep pushed against his chin. He ignored the women and the child and stepped past the spewing corpse toward Kyle Swanson, who had only then started his turn around to face the threat.

Lucky had seen the chop come down. Somali children had learned to fight for their lives, even when a loved one lay dying. Doing nothing would be fatal, for the big man would show no mercy. The ninety-pound boy launched himself at the attacker, his arms stretched out as if making an American-style football tackle. He collided hard with the Cobra’s left shin and scrabbled for a hold around the ankle. The giant wobbled with the sudden weight that clamped his foot, and then Lucky sank his teeth into the man’s meaty calf, trying to bite all the way through, gnawing like a mad dog.

The Cobra snapped the thick wooden handle of the machete down on the boy’s head, and clubbed him a second time before the teeth released. Lucky fell off and rolled away from a kick aimed at his ribs. The diversion had cost the Cobra only a few seconds, but he knew those were vital. His forward momentum had been stopped, and he was forced to skip backward to regain his balance.

The Somali woman was still clutching her dying husband. She was not in the fight, and Omar Jama would deal with her, the other woman, and the troublesome little boy later. Swanson was the target, and the American was reaching beneath his shirt, obviously going for a pistol. The Cobra’s veins pulsed with blind lust, and he brought the machete back under control, and lunged.

The first indication that Kyle Swanson had that something was terribly wrong was through the reactions of those around him who actually saw Omar Jama burst in. He was still grabbing for the Colt in the holster at the base of his spine when he reached the angle in his turn to see what was happening behind him. He shoved down on his right foot to lever himself into a standing position.

Molly Egan jumped straight through him and knocked him down. She exploded into the danger zone with a terrible primal scream that reached back over the ages to her Gaelic warrior ancestors. She attacked the Cobra with everything she had, her fingers curled like claws and slashing for his eyes.

For the second time, Omar Jama was caught by surprise. The chance to hit the marine was gone, because the berserk Irishwoman had inserted herself between them. The long knife was by his right side, but she had closed too fast for him to bring it up in a full swing. Instead, he thrust the blade straight out and drove the point solidly into Molly Egan’s chest, spearing her as she ran into it. Her bright eyes opened wide with pain and shock, but she still pummeled at his nose and scratched at his eyes even as he tried to pull the machete free. The long, wide blade had penetrated vertically into her horizontal rib cage, and its sharpness cut into the bones, which trapped it.

Unable to jerk the blade free, he dropped the girl with the machete still protruding from the chest, and she fell atop the table, mortally wounded. He frantically dug for his pistol to shift back to Swanson.

Kyle came up on all fours, but had lost the grip on the Colt, which skittered away as if trying to hide. For the briefest moment, he wanted to grab the blade and pull it out and make Molly still be alive, but his mind had automatically jerked him into the unseen planes where the pure warrior existed. All he could do right now was to stay alive himself. His emotions froze, the storm went away, and the world slowed down as instinct and training took over.

Once on his feet, he recognized the attacker who was trying to get a pistol up. That gun would make all the difference since Kyle held no weapon of his own, so Swanson smiled and spat at his foe and took a defensive step closer, motioning Omar Jama to come to him. The guy had muscles, but Kyle’s body was honed like a precision machine.

“You’re the Cobra, right? So come on, you fucking snake. You killed an old man and a helpless girl. Big deal. Time to deal with me now. I’m going to rip your head off.” Could he taunt this guy into forgetting about the gun and going hand to hand? Swanson gave a little head feint, and the Cobra twitched, following it.

Despite the setbacks, every advantage was in Omar Jama’s favor. Swanson’s pistol had disappeared, but why shoot him? He would enjoy beating the marine to a bloody pulp, and it shouldn’t take too long. That moment of contemplation slowed his gun hand, and in that instant the little boy was on him again, windmilling with scrawny arms, kicking feet. The teeth now clamped painfully onto an ear.

Swanson kicked the Cobra beneath the exposed right knee on which the big man was resting all of his weight, and the bone broke with a satisfying snap. The Somali fighter tottered and threw a wild punch, which Kyle ducked and countered with a hard pop in the mouth. Teeth splintered, but the pistol was suddenly in the attacker’s hand.

Then Swanson moved in close to negate the height and reach disadvantage. He got a hand on the gun and twisted the barrel backward over the trigger finger, as if opening a jar. The pistol slipped free and bounced on the floor.

An ordinary man would have been curled up helpless, but the Cobra’s enormous strength kept him going, and he came erect, even on the bad leg. A fist connected on Swanson’s forehead and made Kyle see stars. Then the Cobra picked the marine up beneath the arms and flung him against a wall cabinet, which splintered, and the marine fell to the floor amid the debris.

All the Cobra needed to do was keep pushing forward and get the marine’s throat in his big hands. Omar Jama knew he was going to win this fight, as surely as the tides rose and fell and night followed day, and he reached out again. First he yanked the boy off his back and threw him cruelly across the room.

Swanson grasped a fallen picture frame and sailed it flat at Omar’s face. When the Cobra dodged, Kyle slammed him in the stomach and crunched a knee to the groin, but only managed to hit the inner thigh. It was like fighting a concrete slab. Swanson could not let that monster get on top, so he rolled out of reach and got to his feet. Don’t let him remember the gun.

Swanson laughed at him, taunted him again. “Are you crying, you tall tub of fat? Get over here and fight me. I am going to kick your ass into next week and nail your balls to General Aidid’s door.”

Omar Jama scowled and shook his head, trying to clear it. He was having an unusual feeling that he had not experienced since he was a child. Swanson should be dead by now, but was instead dancing just out of reach, crowing and demeaning and dishonoring him once again, still grinning.

“I will kill you!” Omar shouted. One final rush would pin the marine, and Omar would then choke him and break his neck.

Deqo had watched it all unfold like a dreadful stage show. Lon was dead. Molly was badly wounded, and Lucky was sprawled senseless in a corner. Kyle was fighting the madman that was trying to kill them all. Without another thought, she jumped up, grabbed the heavy pot with both hands, and smashed it into the back of the Cobra’s skull. The giant wobbled, and Deqo drew back and delivered another strike on the base of the neck, aiming for the spine.

The Cobra was stunned by the first blow and went down with the second. Her third thundered down on the crown of his head and knocked him unconscious. Omar Jama slumped to the floor, redolent with the liquid leftovers of the African crabmeat stew.

Swanson retrieved both pistols, and had one in each hand when he rolled the Cobra onto his back. The man was starting to awaken, despite his beating. Kyle would not let that happen. He began to hit him in the face with the guns—right, left, right, left—and each blow ripped a bloody gout in the man’s skin. He beat him until he was certain there was nothing left within the Cobra but maybe a tiny spark of life in the back of his bug brain.

Kyle rolled away and crawled over to Molly Egan and brought her up to a sitting position, leaning against him. She was dead, and the machete stuck out like an obscene memorial. Blood had congealed around the blade and soaked her shirt, and more blood smeared her mouth and her nose. He burrowed his face into her hair. He knew that he could never turn this clock back, and tenderly slid his hand down her slender face and closed her eyes. The emotions that he had suppressed before the fight were returning, but he refused to cry and would not pray. If any god allowed a place like Somalia to exist and let Molly be murdered so coldly by a fiend, then what good was he? Swanson softly hummed as he ate his pain. The ring was still on her finger.

Deqo was in the corner, awakening Lucky and checking him for any serious damage. Kyle and Deqo exchanged looks but did not speak. Nothing they could say would change anything.

Other people, drawn by the noise, were rushing in — clinic workers who had been around misery every day — and they immediately set to work, and one covered Lon’s body with a sheet. Another ran to get marines from the stadium, and still another bound the hands and feet of the Cobra with lengths of rope. Two women gently peeled Swanson’s arms from the body of Molly Egan and removed her to a bed in the surgery, where they would withdraw the machete in private.

Two marines in full battle gear thundered into the room, and others came running to search the area.

“Goddam, Sar’nt Swanson. You okay?” A rough hand shook his shoulder. It was a guy from Suicide Charlie.

Kyle pointed to the Cobra. “Yuh. Call this in, would you? It’s going to a political problem. That’s the Cobra, General Aidid’s personal attack dog.”

The marine examined the Somali. “He don’t look too good. Did you kill him?”

“I don’t know. But you need to get that piece of meat to a secure area right away, before Aidid finds out what happened. He might send more of his goons out.”

“Got it.” The marine looked around. The room was wrecked, but something was missing. “Hey. Where’s Molly?”

“She’s dead,” Swanson responded in an agonized monotone. He would not crack. From now on, he would be steel. “Molly’s dead.”