The Tracker had been dozing at his desk in front of the screen in the London embassy that showed him what the drone over Marka could see. The voice was from the speakerphone linked to the control bunker outside Tampa. The voice belonged to M.Sgt. Orde, back on shift.
He jerked awake and checked his watch. Three a.m. London time, six in Marka, the darkness before dawn.
The Global Hawk had been replaced by one with full tanks and hours of loiter time before it, too, would run dry. On the Somali coast, there was the tiniest pink blush across the eastern horizon. The Indian Ocean was still black, as was the end of the night over the alleys of Marka.
But lights had come on in the Preacher’s compound, and small red blobs were moving about—the heat sources caught by the drone’s body sensors. Its cameras were still on infrared mode, enabling it to see in the dark what was going on ten miles beneath it.
As the Tracker watched, the level of daylight rose with the sun; the red blobs became dark shapes moving across the courtyard far below. Thirty minutes later, a garage door was opened and a vehicle rolled out.
It was not a dusty, dented pickup truck, the all-purpose personnel-and-load carrier of Somalia. This was a smart Toyota Land Cruiser with black windows, the vehicle of choice of al-Qaeda right back to bin Laden’s first appearance in Afghanistan. The Tracker knew it could hold ten people.
The watchers, four thousand miles apart in London and Florida, watched just eight dark shapes board the SUV. They were not close enough to see that in the front were two of the Pakistani bodyguards, one to drive, the other heavily armed in the passenger seat.
Behind them sat the Preacher, shapeless in Somali robes with head covered, and Jamma, his Somali secretary. The third seat went to Opal and the other two Pakistani guards, making up the only four the Preacher could really trust. He had brought them all from his days in the Khorosan killer group.
The last was squatting in the baggage area behind the rows of seats. He was the Sacad Duale.
At seven Marka time, other servants hauled the gate open and the Land Cruiser rolled. The Tracker faced a quandary: Was this a red herring? Was the target still in the house, preparing to slip away, while the drone he must now know was above him went elsewhere?
“Sir?”
The man with the control column in the Tampa bunker needed to know.
“Follow the truck,” said the Tracker.
It led through the labyrinth of streets and alleys to the outskirts of town, then turned off and drove under the cover of a large, asbestos-roofed warehouse. Once in there, it was out of sight.
Fighting to control the panic, the Tracker ordered the drone to return to the residence, but the compound and its yard were wreathed in shadows and quiet. Nothing moved. The drone returned to the warehouse. Twenty minutes later, the large black SUV emerged. It drove slowly back to the compound.
Somewhere down there, it must have sounded its horn, for a single servant emerged from the house and opened the gate. The Toyota rolled inside and stopped. No one got out. Why? wondered the Tracker. Then he caught it. No one got out because no one was in it except the driver.
“Get back to the warehouse fast,” he ordered M.Sgt. Orde. In reply, the controller in Florida simply widened the camera lens from close-up to wide-angle, capturing the whole town but in lesser detail. They were just in time.
From the warehouse, not one but four half-body pickups, the so-called technicals, were rolling out one after the other. The Tracker had almost fallen for the basic switch.
“Follow the convoy,” he told Tampa. “Wherever it goes. I may have to leave, but I’ll stay on my cell.”
• • •
In Garacad, Mr. Ali Abdi was woken by the growling of engines below his window. He checked his watch. Seven a.m. Four hours until his regular morning conference with London. He peered through the shutters and watched two technicals leave the courtyard of the fort.
It was of no matter. He was a very contented man. The previous evening, he had secured the final concurrence of al-Afrit to his mediations. The pirate would settle with Chauncey Reynolds and the insurers for a ransom of five million U.S. dollars for the Malmö, including cargo and crew.
Despite the one minor fly in the ointment, Abdi was sure Mr. Gareth would also be happy when he learned that two hours after the pirate’s Dubai bank confirmed lodging of the dollars the Malmö would be allowed to sail. By then, a Western destroyer would surely be offshore to escort her to safety. Several rival clans had already sent skiffs to prowl around the Swedish merchantman in case she was ill guarded and could be snatched again.
Abdi thought of the future. The second of his million-dollar bribes would be assured. Gareth Evans would not cheat him lest they ever had to deal again. But only he, Abdi, could know that he was retiring and emigrating to a lovely villa in Tunisia, where he could live in peace and safety miles from the chaos and killing of his native land. He checked his watch again and rolled over for an extended snooze.
• • •
The Tracker was still in his office, considering a limited range of options. He knew a lot, but he could not know everything.
He had an agent inside the enemy camp, probably riding a few feet away from the Preacher in one of the four technicals rolling through the desert six miles below the Global Hawk. But he could not communicate with his man nor the reverse. Opal’s transceiver was still buried beneath a shack on the beach outside Kismayo. It would have been suicidal for him to have attempted to bring anything with him to Marka save the harmless-looking item he had been given by the casuarina trees.
The Tracker presumed there would be a meeting somewhere and a handover of money for the Swedish prisoner. He had no qualms about what he had done, reasoning that the cadet from Stockholm was in greater danger with the man even his own clansmen nicknamed Devil than with the Preacher, who would keep him alive and well for the money.
After the swap, the Preacher would presumably return to Marka, where he was untouchable. The only chance of destroying him had been to lure him out into the Somali desert, to those wide-open spaces where there were no civilians to hurt.
But missiles were forbidden anyway. Gray Fox had made that plain yet again the previous evening. As the sun that now blazed down on Somalia brought the first light to London, he considered his options. Despite all his pleadings, they were not generous.
The SEALs’ Team 6 was on base at Dam Neck, Virginia, and there was no time to bring them across half the world. The Night Stalkers, with their long-range helicopters, were at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. That apart, he suspected choppers would be too noisy. He had been in jungle and desert. He knew that at night the jungle is an infernal din of frogs and insects while the desert is eerily silent, the creatures who live in it have the hearing of the bat-eared foxes that share the sand with them. The thump of helicopter rotors, carried on the night breeze, can be heard for miles.
There was one unit he had heard of but never seen in action or even met. But he knew their reputation and specialty. They were not even American. There were two American units that, by repute, could match them; but the SEALs and the Delta boys were across the Atlantic.
He was roused from his thoughts by M.Sgt. Orde.
“Colonel, they seem to be separating.”
He went back to the screen, and again incipient panic was like a punch in the gut. Down on the desert floor, the four technicals were in column but widely spaced. They had four hundred yards between each of them.
This was the Preacher’s precaution to ensure the Americans would not dare use a missile for fear it would miss the truck he was traveling in. He was not to know he was safe because of the young Ethiopian behind him. But now they were not just separated in a line, they were all diverging.
The convoy was north of the soldier-guarded enclave of Mogadishu, heading northwest into the valley of the Shebelle. To cross the river, there were half a dozen usable bridges between Ethiopia and the sea. Now the four technicals were parting company as if h
eading for different bridges. His one drone could not follow them all.
Even at full maximum screen width, it could only observe two. But, by then, each truck would have become too tiny to see. From Tampa, the controller’s voice was urgent.
“Which one, sir?”
• • •
Gareth Evans came into the office just after eight. Lawyers are rarely early risers, and he was always the first to appear in the office. The night watchman was by now accustomed to emerging from his box behind the reception desk to unlock the plate-glass doors and admit the negotiator—and that was when he was not spending the night on his cot in the office upstairs.
He had brought his vacuum flask of coffee from the nearby hotel where Chauncey Reynolds had billeted him for the duration. Later, dear Mrs. Bulstrode would appear, then go to the deli to secure him a real breakfast and be back before it went cold. He had no idea that every stage of his negotiations was faithfully reported to the Secret Intelligence Service.
A pulsing red light at half past eight told him Mr. Abdi was on the line. Gareth Evans never liked to permit himself a rush of optimism; he had been disappointed before. But he thought he and the Somali go-between were close to the agreed-upon ransom of five million dollars, for which he had full clearance. The money transfer was not his problem; others would handle that. And he knew there was a British frigate not far offshore to escort the Malmö to safety when the moment came.
“Yes, Mr. Abdi, Gareth Evans here. You have news for me? You are earlier than usual.”
“Indeed news, Mr. Gareth. And very good news. The best. My principal has agreed to settle on five million dollars only.”
“That’s excellent, my friend.” He tried to keep the exultation out of his voice. This is the fastest release he had ever secured. “I think I can get the transfer made this day. Are all the crew well?”
“Yes, very well. There is . . . how do you English say . . . a wasp in the ointment, but not important.”
“I think it’s a fly. A problem. But, never mind, a wasp will do. How big a wasp, Mr. Abdi?”
“The Swedish boy, the cadet . . .”
Evans froze. He held up a hand to stop Mrs. Bulstrode in her tracks, breakfast in hand.
“You mean Ove Carlsson. What problem, Mr. Abdi?”
“He cannot be coming, Mr. Gareth. My principal, I’m afraid . . . It was nothing to do with me . . . He received an offer . . .”
“What has happened to Mr. Carlsson?” Evans’s voice had lost all its good humor.
“I’m afraid he has been sold to the al-Shabaab in the south. But do not worry, Mr. Gareth. He was only the cadet.”
Gareth Evans replaced the receiver, leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. Mrs. Bulstrode put down his breakfast and left.
• • •
Agent Opal sat between Jamma and the door. The Preacher was on the far side. The technical, which did not have the suspension of the Land Cruiser, bucked, rocked and shuddered with every stone and pothole. They had been motoring for five hours; it was nearly midday, and the heat was stifling. Any air-conditioning the vehicle had once had was long for the archives.
The Preacher and Jamma were both dozing. Had it not been for the jolting, Opal might have fallen into a fitful sleep and missed it.
The Preacher awoke, leaned forward, tapped the driver on the shoulder and said something. It was in Urdu, but the meaning became clear only moments later. They had been driving in line since leaving Marka, and their vehicle was the second of four. Just after the tap on the shoulder, the driver turned off the track of the one in front and took another.
He glanced out and back. Trucks three and four were doing the same. The seating arrangements were different from the Land Cruiser. There was just the driver up front, with the Preacher, Jamma and himself along the seat behind. The three bodyguards were out in the open behind the cab with Duale the Sacad.
From above, all four technicals would look the same, and like eighty percent of other pickup trucks in Somalia. Three of the technicals were local hirelings from Marka. Opal knew about drones; they had featured large in his training at the Mossad agent school. He began to retch.
Jamma looked at him in alarm.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s the jolting,” he said. The Preacher looked across.
“If you are going to be ill, go ride outside,” he said.
Opal opened the door next to him and hauled his torso outside. The desert wind blew his hair about his face. He reached a hand toward the open bed of the truck, and a hefty Pakistani grabbed it. After a wild second dangling over the rear wheel, he was pulled into the rear. Jamma leaned across and slammed the door from the inside.
Opal smiled wanly at the three Pakistani bodyguards and the one-eyed Duale. They all ignored him. From inside his dishdash, he took out what he had been given under the casuarinas and had already used once. He pulled it on.
• • •
Which one do we follow, sir?” The question was becoming very urgent. As the Global Hawk widened its aperture, the desert moved farther away, with all four trucks at the periphery of the picture. The Tracker noticed a disturbance in one of the technicals.
“What’s that guy doing?” he asked. “Truck number two.”
“He seems to have climbed out for air,” said M.Sgt. Orde. “He’s pulling something on. A baseball cap, sir. Bright red.”
“Close in on truck two,” snapped the Tracker, “ignore the others. They are decoys. Follow truck two.”
The camera moved to truck two at the center of the frame, then closed in. The five men in the back became bigger and bigger. One had a red cap. Very faintly, the watchers could make out the insignia “New York.”
“God bless you, Opal,” breathed the Tracker.
• • •
The Tracker caught his colleague, the defense attaché, as the man came back from his morning five-mile run through the country lanes around Ickenham, where he lived. It was eight a.m. The attaché was a full colonel, drawn from the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. The Tracker’s question was brief and simple.
“Sure, I know him. He’s a good guy.”
“Do you have his private line?”
The attaché scrolled through his BlackBerry and dictated the number. Seconds later, the Tracker had the man he sought, a British major general, and asked for the meeting.
“My office. Nine o’clock.”
“I’ll be there,” said the Tracker.
The office of the director of Special Forces of the British army is in Albany Barracks, Albany Street, in the elegant residential district of Regent’s Park. A ten-foot-high wall shields the cluster of buildings from the road, and the double gates are sentry guarded and seldom opened to strangers.
The Tracker was in civilian clothes and arrived by cab, which he dismissed. The sentry studied his embassy pass, which gave his army rank, made a phone call and then ushered him through. Another soldier led him into the main building, up two floors and to the office of the DSF at the back.
The two men were around the same age and there were other similarities. Both looked hard and fit. The Britisher was two ranks higher than a lieutenant colonel, and though he was in shirtsleeves, a jacket on a peg in the corner bore the red lapel tabs of the General Staff. Both men had the indefinable air of those who had seen hard combat and rather a lot of it.
Will Chamney had started in the Guards then transferred to the Special Air Service Regiment. He had survived the grueling selection course and spent three years as a troop commander with D Squadron, 16 Troop—the free fallers.
In the regiment, as it is simply called, an officer, or “Rupert,” cannot opt to come back for a second tour; he has to be invited. Chamney went back as a squadron commander just in time to take part in the liberation of Kosovo, and then the Sierra Leone affair.
He was with the SAS team that, with the paras, rescued a group of Irish soldiers captured alive by a mob of limb-chopping rebels at their base
deep in the jungle. The West Side Boyz, as the drug-fueled insurgents called themselves, took over a hundred casualties in under an hour before fading into the bush. On his third tour at SAS base, Hereford, he had commanded the regiment with the rank of colonel.
At the time of the meeting, he controlled the four declared units of Special Forces: the SAS, the Special Boat Service, the Special Forces Support Group and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment.
Due to the extreme flexibility of officer deployments in the Special Forces, he had, between three assignments at Hereford, commanded Air Assault (paratrooper) units in the UK and in Helmand, Afghanistan.
He had heard of the Tracker, knew that he was in town and knew why. Though TOSA was in the lead, destroying the Preacher had long been a joint op. The man had provoked at least four murders on British soil.
“What can I do for you?” he asked after handshakes and the usual greetings.
The Tracker explained at some length. He wanted a favor, and security clearance was not an issue. The DSF listened in silence. When he spoke, he went straight to the core.
“How long have you got?”
“I suspect until dawn tomorrow, and there are three time zones between here and Somalia. It is just past midday there. We take him out tonight or we miss him again, and probably forever.”
“You’re tracking him by drone?”
“As we speak. A Global Hawk is right over him. When he stops, I believe he will overnight. They have twelve hours of darkness down there. Six to six.”
“And a missile is out?”
“Absolutely. Riding with him in his entourage is an Israeli agent. He has to be extracted alive. If he is wasted, the Mossad are going to be displeased. Putting it mildly.”
“Not surprised. And you don’t want to upset that lot. So what do you want from us?”
“Pathfinders.”
General Chamney slowly raised an eyebrow.
“HALO?”
“I figure it’s the only thing that might work. Do you have any Pathfinders presently within that theater?”
Probably the least known or heard-of unit in the British armed forces, the Pathfinders are, with just thirty-six badged operatives, also the smallest. They are drawn mainly from the Parachute Regiment, already rigorously trained, then retrained almost to destruction.