Dalmar fucking Abdi indeed.
The free-flowing spigot in Bettencorp’s bottom line, the cocksucking jackal of the high seas. Nobody even knew who the bastard was. One rumor said Dalmar Abdi was the son of Mohammed Farrah Aidid, Somali warlord and illegitimate self-declared president of the country, a man who picked a brutal close-quarters fight that claimed two American helicopters and eighteen servicemen. Supposedly, Dalmar Abdi, all of six years old, rusting Kalashnikov rifle longer than he was tall, lead a company of ten children against an American rescue convoy.
Another said that he was the son of a Mogadishu soft drink magnate, educated in Rome before returning to his homeland as an aid worker. Once discovering the state of the country and the vicious campaign against it by western powers, he rose up, gathered supporters and became the most feared pirate in the region.
It was probably all bullshit. Dalmar Abdi was just another pirate, albeit an exceptionally gifted one. Bettencourt rankled at the fact that he’d made Dalmar rich, not just Somali rich, but coke-off-a-model’s-tits, soccer-franchise, private-island rich. Four years ago, Dalmar and his crew captured a Ukrainian transport loaded with Sovietera tanks and self-propelled artillery, enough firepower to redraw the entire region. It wouldn’t have mattered except for the fact that the transport was under Bettencorps protection and Bettencourt had personally guaranteed safe passage to some notably humorless Russian plutocrats. It wasn’t just a matter of honor that the weaponry be returned. Bettencourt had little interest in waking up one morning staring at the wrong end of a Makarov pistol.
So he’d dug deep and paid. A lot. Low nine figures, to be precise. He was hoping it was enough for Dalmar to reconsider life in Somalia and go retire to some Swiss chalet like so many of the other political figures of the region. Hopefully a place where he could send a trusted asset to personally extract a refund for the ransom.
But then Dalmar did something completely unexpected. He gave it all away, some to the construction of a local hospital, and the rest to the locals themselves through a network of warlords and tribal leaders. Bettencourt realized he’d inadvertently kick-started the creation of one of the larger private militaries in the region, most of whom were volunteers. Abdi recruited from multiple tribes, continued taking ships under Bettencorps protection, and ransoming, stripping, and sinking them. Despite Bettencourt’s hopes, Abdi stayed out of Somalia’s territorial squabbles, content to simply pay off huge swaths of the country. He became the golden goose, a scrappy pirate with no visible manifestation of his staggering wealth and power. Perhaps Abdi knew that you can’t put a self-guided bomb into a man’s mansion if he didn’t have a mansion.
The tide didn’t turn until Bettencorps purchased a fleet of heavily armed helicopter and jet drones, enough firepower to keep the Somali shark at bay. They’d acquired the wealth of armaments from an American Department of Defense grant after a great deal of arm-twisting by a legion of extraordinarily expensive lobbyists. They’d needed an excuse, which Bettencourt was only too happy to provide — fudged satellite and high-aerial surveillance supposedly linking Abdi’s brigands to Al Qaida of Africa. A little bad press, it seemed, was enough to get the big guns.
Colonel Westmoreland scanned his security badge against a massive hangar door built into one of the four main circular steel pylons holding up the largest platform of Anconia Island. The marine equivalent to an underground vault, the doors opened wide to reveal an immaculately clean, white circular room filled with endless rows of humming black computer servers. The colonel led Bettencourt, the lawyer, and the prisoner into Anconia Island’s command and control system.
“Give me the room,” the mercenary barked to the assorted white-coated network engineers and programmers. It didn’t matter what they were working on, they took one look at the hooded prisoner and filed out wordlessly, heads down. Westmoreland pushed the boy into a chair and told him to stay put. The boy obeyed as Bettencourt and his lawyer found seats.
Colonel Westmoreland dug through the boy’s pockets. Finding a few trinkets, he slammed a pack of gum, a few 7.62mm shell casings, and a plastic card onto the nearest desk.
Bettencourt reached for the laminated card. On one side was the Batman comic book logo, one of the older ones before the latest redesigns. He flipped it over. To his surprise, he found a smiling digital picture of the boy on the other side.
Official Member, Batman Hero’s Club. The boy had scrawled his name on the card, Jaff Suliman. Bettencourt frowned and passed it over his lawyer, who typed the name into his smartphone.
Colonel Westmoreland dug into his vest and produced a small half-terabyte solid-state memory card. He plugged — no, jammed it into the command and control computer. The lights to the server farm dimmed and a video flickered, projected larger-than-life on the nearest wall.
Taken from Westmoreland’s perspective, the video began in the bay of one of the Blackhawks, shot from a camera mounted to the side of the colonel’s helmet. The helicopter swooped low over a Russian transport ship as she tossed in the waves far from the coast.
“It was a fucking ambush,” narrated the colonel. “They love these Russian transports for some reason. I don’t know what the thinking is; we’re never going to put any heavy weaponry within 2,000 miles of these animals.”
“What did this one carry?”
“Grain. Mostly.”
“Anything belonging to the Conglomerate?”
“No. Thank God for that.”
“Are you sure we should be talking in front of the prisoner?” asked the lawyer.
“Fuck him,” Colonel Westmoreland said. “He’s never seeing daylight again.”
“Fuck your mother!” shouted the prisoner from inside his hood. Westmoreland aimed a half-hearted kick at him, still almost managing to knock the boy out of his chair.
“All we knew is that we got a distress signal from one of our client vessels,” said the colonel. “We were showing up to assist, maybe do a little turkey shooting if we found any pirate skiffs nearby.”
Bettencourt smiled at this. He’d had a turn on one of the new miniguns when they’d first arrived at Anconia. Epic. The sheer amount of fire the guns laid down was second to none, long, scorching lines of bullets so hot and thick they glowed like lasers in mid-air, brighter even than the midday African sun.
The video continued, Westmoreland’s chopper leading the other four in a swooping arc around the transport.
Bettencourt felt a little dizzy as he watched Westmoreland’s disembodied hands reach for the rope, then slide down onto the deck of the transport. The camera took a position behind one of the ventilation funnels as men dropped all around him.
“This is about the time things start going wrong,” Westmoreland said.
On the video, a figure moved onto the outside staircase adjacent to the bridge, a towering monolith located on the rear of the transport, rising nearly four stories over the relatively flat deck. Westmoreland aimed his rifle at the figure, then lowered it as the man began to wave both arms. He appeared to be one of the sailors, beckoning the mercenaries towards the bridge.
The colonel took three steps forward when the entire bridge and every portal in the four-story high structure lit up like a Christmas tree with muzzle flashes and incoming bullets. The sound was deafening, even over the PA system of the audio/visual room, so loud that the speakers cracked and went to static, unable to convey the full auditory violence of the gunshots.
Westmoreland’s video flew to one side, finding cover. The man beside him fell, hit, while others returned fire. The helicopters flew in circles, trying to find an appropriate target on the transport superstructure.