I used my sleeve to wipe my face.
“So what are we going to do with them?” He gestured at the corpses.
“You shot ’em, you bury ’em. Better be quick about it. Someone might come along before long, and we gotta be outta here. Keep their weapons.”
“Yeah, Tommy.”
I felt like shit. Yeah, they would have killed me in another few seconds—I know that. But still.
As Clay and E.D. dragged the corpses into the brush, I climbed into the trucks and inspected the machine guns. They were dusty but looked as if they had been cleaned and oiled in this decade. Lots of Russian brass, relatively shiny. Not too green.
OK.
Truck tires had a little tread left, not much, but maybe enough for thin mud.
I got behind the wheel of the first truck and checked out the fuel gauge. It read zero. I got out, unscrewed the cap and ran a stick down the pipe. Last four inches were wet. There were two five-gallon cans of fuel in the bed of the thing. The other one had three cans in its bed. Some blanket rolls that were probably full of lice, a metal pot containing some greasy meat. Probably dead goat. It stunk a little.
Two old milk jugs contained water. It looked kinda brown. Dysentery in jugs. Somali cocktails. I wondered what creek they got it from.
E.D. and Clay came in from the brush.
“So what were they?” I asked. “Holy warriors or pirates?”
“Like I can tell the difference,” Clay said. “What they weren’t was goat herders or farmers.”
“You get them under?” I asked.
“Not very deep. Next good rain…”
“Let’s load up and roll.”
E.D. rode with me while Clay drove the other truck. He lit a cigarette, took a few quick hits off it. After a while he said, “I guess you’re tired of living.”
When I didn’t reply to that, he said, “That guy was about a half second from doing you, Tommy. We fired as soon as we had a good shot, but shit, I was about peeing my pants.”
“I have faith in you.”
“Fuck you do, asshole. I think you’re just tired of living. There were a half-dozen other ways to set this up without you lying down beside the road asking for it, fucking human tiger bait.”
“So, if you lived out here, what would you be? Pirate or goat herder or holy warrior?”
He didn’t say anything to that. We jounced along in silence, the shock absorbers being about as dead as the guys we buried. He glanced at me once or twice, finished his cig, then wadded his sweatshirt up and used it to brace his head. Closed his eyes.
I could still hear the whacks of the bullets hitting them, feel the blood spray, see guts hanging out of horrible wounds, smell the blood.
We had to kill them. Couldn’t steal their rides and leave them to tell everyone they met that someone had ripped them off. I knew how it would be when we discussed this beforehand. I just hadn’t yet seen their faces. And I didn’t want to walk up behind them and shoot them in the head.
At least they didn’t see it coming.
Jesus.
I felt my mouth watering. I slammed on the brakes, stopping the truck, opened the door and vomited in the dirt.
As I waited for my stomach to settle down, I wondered if I would see it coming. Or care.
“Tommy…”
“Just shut the fuck up, man.”
EYL, SOMALIA
Yousef el-Din was a devout fundamentalist Muslim. His god was fierce, strict, ruthless and unforgiving, and He liked the sight and smell of infidel blood. Those qualities also defined Yousef el-Din. He was the senior Shabab leader in the Eyl area. For years the Islamic revolution had been waged full tilt in the southern part of the country and Eyl had been a relative backwater. Recent military and political reverses in the south, which was suffering from a famine caused by the worst drought in centuries, had given new life to the movement in the north.
The north was actually doing worse in the rainfall department, but the people hereabouts didn’t live on agriculture. Also, the north, Puntland, was infested with pirates, which meant money, weapons, imported food. Prosperity. Here were the resources to sustain a revolutionary movement.
The man responsible for most of the prosperity, Ragnar the Pirate, watched from his penthouse balcony as Yousef el-Din got out of his technical. His bodyguard coalesced around him. Yousef’s truck had been the third in a five-truck convoy. Each truck had contained three or four men, all armed. This ragtag band of heroes swarmed like a hive of bees around their queen, Ragnar thought as he watched from his perch high above.
Ragnar saw Yousef look left and right, watched him spend a moment looking over Sultan of the Seas riding at anchor, then walk toward the entrance to Ragnar’s building.
Ragnar toyed with the butt of the pistol sticking out of its holster on his belt. He had an uneasy relationship with Yousef el-Din, as he had with his predecessor, Feiz al-Darraji. Last week Ragnar had al-Darraji killed. Quietly. His corpse and those of his two bodyguards were now fish food, at least two hundred miles out. The three were captured by two of Ragnar’s sons and Mustafa al-Said, his number two, as they left a whorehouse. They were put aboard a boat and given a long ride east. Then they were thrown into the sea. Not being fishermen, they couldn’t swim, so didn’t last long. Since they were devout Muslims, their souls were probably in Paradise now, Ragnar thought. Or maybe not. He had a healthy skepticism about all that holy bullshit.
The women could be relied upon to remain silent, Ragnar believed. They really knew nothing, and they had better remember that if asked. If they didn’t …
His sons Nouri and Muqtada were in the anteroom, waiting at the top of the stairs. Both were armed. Yousef would be alone. His men would have to wait in the lobby downstairs.
He could hear Yousef’s footsteps in the stairwell. The elevator hadn’t worked in years; it was actually stuck between the fourth and fifth floors, its door permanently open.
Ragnar poured himself a cup of tea and sat down in his favorite chair on the balcony, with the harbor at his feet, and waited. He could feel the breeze coming in off the sea, gentle, cool, salty sea air.
Yousef came out onto the balcony, with Nouri and Muqtada behind him. Ragnar gestured toward a chair, and Nouri went to get the guest a cup of tea.
After the social preliminaries, doubly important because Ragnar wanted a hint about Yousef’s state of mind, the men fell silent and sipped their tea.
Yousef el-Din’s face was a mask, Ragnar saw. He had only seen the man on three or four occasions before al-Darraji’s untimely departure, and had paid little attention. Ragnar would not miss al-Darraji, with his love of power, an aggressive personality and the manners of a goat, a man used to pulling the trigger and watching other people die. A man who expected everyone to kneel before him, including Ragnar. No, he would not be missed.
“Feiz al-Darraji has disappeared,” Yousef said sadly, breaking the news. “His friends and soldiers cannot find him.”
Ragnar shook his head sadly. “When was he last seen?”
“A week ago.”
“Ahh, that is a long time. A week…”
“We have been looking, interrogating people who might know something.”
“Of course. I have heard of your inquiries,” Ragnar admitted, “but I hesitated to ask why.”
“Two bodyguards are also missing.”
“We live in dangerous times. Who, I ask you, is truly safe?”
“Since al-Darraji is gone,” Yousef said without inflection, “I have been appointed to take his place.”
Ragnar nodded, as if the appointment were inevitable. “May he rest in peace,” Ragnar answered piously, “but it is the way of the world. We are but flesh and blood, temporary creatures, until we meet the Prophet in Paradise.”