The Watchman

Fifty-Six

The villa looked deserted. But I wasn’t taking any chances. In spite of what we thought, Musa might have left guards in place in case we did the unthinkable and came back.

From a vantage point three hundred metres away, we studied the area carefully until we were certain that nobody was around. The wrecks of the three boats were clearly visible down at the waterline, and the smell of burned wood, fuel and plastic was bitter on the tongue. The two boats on the outside had been stripped of their engines, which meant they had probably escaped the worst of the fire. The one in the centre was little more than a pile of matchwood in the water.

I switched the scope on to the building. The front door was closed. There were no signs of guards anywhere that I could see, no signs of a fire for cooking, and no SUVs loaded with armed men. Maybe Musa and his men had packed up and gone, having decided to cut their losses.

As a final precaution I took out the earpiece and listened. The bug was still active but I got the fuzzy sound of a dying power unit.

To keep Madar’s mind occupied, I handed him the earpiece and told him he was our eyes and ears while we moved closer, impressing on him the responsibility involved.

‘Just listen,’ I told him. ‘You might hear voices instead of the hissing noise. And watch for any men coming from town along the track.’

He nodded seriously and put in the earpiece. ‘What shall I do if someone comes, Mr Marc?’

‘Can you whistle?’ I mimed putting two fingers in my mouth.

He nodded enthusiastically. ‘Of course. Very loud.’ He made a move to demonstrate, but I grabbed his hand to stop him.

‘I believe you. If you see anybody coming, do that — but one time only. We’ll hear you. Then stay right here until we come to get you.’

Tober and I took it in stages, one moving while the other watched. I went first because I knew the lay of the land. I dog-legged down to the garden wall and listened carefully, then on my signal Tober played leap-frog and got to the villa wall. We gave it two minutes, then I took over and covered the door while he ran past to the edge of the garden overlooking the beach to check the dead ground below.

‘That’s some priceless damage you did there,’ he muttered, when he came back and gave the all-clear. He sounded impressed. ‘Blew the beach to shit and back.’

He was right. The smell of explosives and burned wood was much stronger now, catching in the back of the throat. The C-4 had taken a huge bite out of the beach and the ground directly in front of the villa, but the building had been shielded from serious harm by the overhang of impacted sand beneath the garden boundary. Even so, part of the roof shingles had been torn away and some of the upper cinder blocks cracked by the proximity of the blast.

We went inside and did a quick check of the rooms. We were in for a shock. It was clear that Musa and his men were continuing to use the place as a base. The al-Shabaab flag was hanging across the window in the front room, with clothes and other supplies scattered around in boxes. Spare magazines of AK ammunition were stacked against one wall along with two shortwave radios and a case of Russian-made smoke grenades and a crate of rocket launchers. The crate markings had been obliterated but the launchers looked like RPG-7s or a later derivative. I checked through the window and saw boxes of grenades stacked right outside. The thought of all that explosive power so close by made my back itch.

I checked the basement. It was empty and smelled like a cesspit.

‘We can’t stay here,’ I said. ‘There’s nowhere to hide.’ It was also a disaster zone waiting to happen.

Tober nodded and looked longingly at the grenades. ‘We could leave them a little surprise package. One trip wire and all gone.’

‘Nice idea, but it would tell them we were still around. Maybe later.’

I helped myself to a bottle of water and some dried fruit from one of the boxes of supplies, then walked over to the window overlooking the beach and eased aside one corner of the al-Shabaab flag. The glass was cracked and filthy, and by some miracle it had survived intact. I rubbed away some of the dirt, and felt an instant kick in my gut.

Two skiffs with armed men on board were just offshore, coming in fast and leaving curving white furrows of foam behind them.

‘Time to go,’ I said urgently. ‘Keep the house between us.’

We sprinted directly for the slope, running past the hole I’d been hiding in before. Once we reached high ground and could be sure we weren’t being observed, we hunkered down and watched as the two boats slid into the shallows and the men began to offload more supplies. It looked well-rehearsed and it was obvious they were here for a long haul. Each boat carried four men, and while two stood guard with AKs, eyeing the extent of the beach and the terrain inland, the others dragged boxes up the sand to the villa.

When we had seen enough and the men had disappeared inside, we angled round and picked up Madar, then headed further inland until we saw a copse of trees. It wasn’t much, and was uncomfortably close to the coastal track and too far away to keep an eye on the villa, but it would have to do. Perfection doesn’t always come as part of the package.

We sat out the rest of the day, which meant working hard on keeping Madar quiet for the first few hours. I had two energy bars left in my backpack, which helped. Now he was with us he was like a dog with two tails, as if he thought we were bomb-proof and it would give him the same protection. Thankfully, though, he still hadn’t recovered fully from his beating at the hands of Musa’s men, and tiredness eventually took over and he crashed out.

‘What do we do with him?’ Tober asked, when Madar began snoring softly. ‘We can’t take him with us and we can’t leave him here — he’ll get himself killed.’

‘What I said before: we get him somewhere where he can get a boat heading north. Not all the men in Kamboni are Musa’s goons, and one of the fishing boats will be happy to have a free deck-hand.’ It wasn’t the perfect solution, but Madar was bright enough to make his own way. In any case, there was no way we could see him all the way home. He was going to have to do some fast growing up.

Tober and I took turns to watch the track while the other catnapped. The sum total of activity for the day was three vehicles, two heading north, one south, and five small motorbikes loaded with produce, bouncing along through the ruts and potholes. Nobody stopped to investigate the trees, but we both went on high alert each time, ready to take anybody down who came too close.

I debated ringing Vale with an update. But there was nothing to tell him. He knew roughly where we were, and would know by now from Piet that Angela Pryce was on her way. Beyond that he was as powerless as we were. I decided to leave it and conserve battery power.

By nightfall we were edgy, thirsty and eager to be off. Madar was up again, his energy reserves back to normal, and asking endless questions about what we were going to do next and when. I figured the only way to bring him down to a safe level was to move towards Kamboni, and let a touch of natural fear take hold of him. At least then he’d be easier to keep quiet and do exactly what we told him.

It was time to roll.

There was thin cloud cover, which allowed some starlight and a watery moon to show through. That was good and bad; good because it gave us some vision, bad because it made us easier to spot. We set out in file, me on point and Madar between us. I had a slight advantage over Tober, having seen the general layout of the area, which wasn’t a hell of a lot.

The air was still, with just the buzzing of insects to disturb us and clamping down on us in clouds, sticking to our faces and clothes. I got adept at spitting them quietly off my lips every few seconds, and tried hard to ignore the feel of them moving through my hair and tickling my scalp.

The closer we got to the sea, the cooler it became, and the louder the hiss of the waves brushing the beach. It sounded peaceful and serene, a holiday trailer, and it simply couldn’t last.

It didn’t.