Chapter 13
Al Muran Offices, Djibouti Free Zone, North Africa:
20th February; 10pm.
Claude liked working the night shift. He volunteered to do it seven nights a week. The offices were air conditioned and the sofa was more comfortable than his bed. Like many families in Djibouti, where the average family lived on around a thousand dollars a year, Claude’s home was a few bare rooms without windows, and running water that worked sometimes. Here in the offices he had a luxurious leather sofa to sleep on, air conditioning, a flat screen TV on the wall and unlimited tea and coffee. Claude sometimes dreamed that one day he would have a Portakabin like this for his family.
Claude was settling down to sleep after watching the latest episode of Arab Idol on TV when there was knock on the door. He fastened his shirt and hooked his baton on his belt, before opening the door to find a man and a woman standing in front of him. The woman looked at his name badge and spoke in English.
“Claude, I would like to make you an offer.” She held up almost half a year’s salary in US dollars. The security guard did not really understand what she was saying, but he knew he was being bribed. The man spoke up in European French.
“We are investigating on behalf of the government, and we need to come in and see some files. We want no-one to know, and to give you five hundred dollars to stay silent.”
Claude thought about his job, his family, his nice sleeping arrangements, but mostly of becoming rich with five hundred dollars.
“No one must know you were here?” he replied in French.
“Naturellement,” Dominic replied as Claude stood aside and allowed the couple in.
***
Todd and Max were deep into Somalia, following a low loader stacked with stolen cars. The roads were largely unpaved but busy. European cars from the 1980s, filled with people, trundled along the rough roads, often with luggage stacked precariously on roof racks. The two investigators felt exposed, albeit the windows of the Nissan were blacked out and no one could see in.
Eventually the low loader pulled into a long-abandoned petrol station that appeared to have some kind of café behind it. There was a selection of cars old and new parked outside. Todd parked the Nissan off the road, about a hundred yards past the old service station.
Todd and Max watched in amazement as a roadside party swung into action. An immaculate 1960s Cadillac Eldorado Brougham Convertible, in bright red with lots of chrome and rear wings, provided the loud funk music, and food and drink came from car trunks across the lot. African women in scant clothing poured out of the shack and mingled with the whooping men.
One by one the cars were unloaded, admired, caressed and bought. Wads of cash, probably dollars, exchanged hands and the new owners took to their cars and spun the wheels to impress the women.
To a man, the buyers were African, French speaking and dangerous looking. Not one had hair more than an inch long. All were armed and bare chested, with more than a few bearing visible scars that looked as though they had been inflicted by a machete. These men were either pirates or, more likely, they were the men who profited from piracy.
Max clicked away, and Todd turned the car around so that it was facing the impromptu party before setting away the dashboard mounted video camera.
***
Jamie expected Claude, the guard, to hover over them nervously as they searched. She was dead wrong. Once they were in and they had assured him that his Government would be grateful for his cooperation, he simply sat on the sofa and watched an episode of The Simpsons on the Fox satellite channel, apparently unconcerned about the activities of his visitors.
Their search was fruitful and simple. No drawers were locked and documents were filed on open shelves. Dominic clipped his laptop into the main server and relayed the contents of the server to the Vastrick hub back in the UK. The transfer would take some hours to complete, and when it was finished it would shut down after executing a self-erasing procedure; clever devils, these French investigators.
Armed with photocopies of incriminating documents, and a photographic record of their visit, Jamie and Dominic left Claude to the TV and an episode of King of the Hill. The relatively small amount of money they had given him would probably feed his family for months, whereas it would barely cover the cost of two nights in the Kempinski.
Having loaned his Nissan to Max and Todd, Dominic had to take Jamie out in his landlord’s old Honda saloon of unknown vintage. They drove back with the windows down, air conditioning not being a standard feature when this car was made. Jamie half expected to see an 8 Track tape deck in the car, but all it had was a radio, on which every channel broadcast Turkish or Asian dance music.
“From the ledgers I was able to determine that the money from the illegitimate car sales is channelled into a separate account at the First National Bank of Burundi,” Dominic told her, “whereas the legitimate imports appear in the formal accounts with the monies going to the company bank account back in Dubai. Even on the legitimate sales they are a profitable outfit.”
“So the chances are, the money from the stolen cars is being channelled into the same bank account as the property scam funds,” Jamie guessed.
“That is a presumption, but probably a correct one. I will be able to tell when I see the electronic bank transfers from the server.” Dominic paused, and then smiled. “But the night is still young. How about a bite of dinner? We can eat at the fish restaurant on the beach.”
“My mom told me that Frenchmen only ever think about women and food. It seems she was right,” Jamie teased.
“Is there anything else?” Dominic asked in all seriousness.
***
All of the cars had been unloaded and the party was in full swing when a man in a pristine white singlet broke from the pack and started to walk towards the parked Nissan. What his intentions were neither of the investigators knew, but they realised that there would be no happy outcome if he saw white faces in the 4x4.
“Time to go, Max!” Todd said as he slipped the car into gear and pulled away slowly, trying not to arouse suspicion. As they pulled back onto what passed as the paved road, the man walked into the middle of the highway to block their path. He waved for them to stop, and when they showed no signs of doing so he raised his hand and pointed a handgun at them.
Todd issued an expletive, and told Max to belt up before slowing the Nissan down to walking pace. The man smiled and started to walk to the driver’s side door. As he drew level with the front wing, Todd floored the accelerator and the Nissan pulled away as fast as a Nissan Patrol is capable of, but nowhere near fast enough for Todd’s liking.
The man was taken aback, and instinctively stepped away from the accelerating vehicle before calmly levelling his gun and firing at the quickly departing car. His three shots all missed the car, which was a large enough target, but Todd was weaving and the man had probably had a few drinks. The two men in the car held their breaths, hoping that the party goers would laugh the incident off and get on with their celebrations. Those hopes were quickly dashed.
In the rear view mirror Todd watched as the shooter ran to an old Toyota pickup truck and jumped into the truck bed, banging on the roof of the cab until the wheels spun, sending sand and grit everywhere, and reversing the old pickup onto the highway. No sooner had the Toyota taken off after them than a small army of ragged and beaten up cars also joined the pursuit, with the Cadillac Eldorado following in the rear.
Todd would not have been worried if they had been travelling in their Range Rover, or if they had been able to take a gun or two along for the ride, but neither of these were possible and they were in a sluggish Nissan Patrol almost forty miles from the border.
Much to his surprise, the Nissan, once it reached top speed, stayed there quite readily and was relatively untroubled by the poor road surface. Some of the cars following were not as fortunate; two or three bounced into ruts and the hoods sprung up, blinding the drivers, who careered into each other and a following car. Max relayed what was happening behind them to Todd, who was concentrating on missing the worst of the potholes in the road.
With three cars out of the chase there were two saloon cars, an old Mercedes and a Mazda still in pursuit, with the Toyota pickup struggling to keep up and the Eldorado not far behind it.
The Nissan had just rounded a bend, slowing as it went, when the two saloons made their move. A shaven-headed man leaned out of the Mazda passenger window and began shooting at the Nissan with a machine pistol, possibly an Uzi or a cheap knock-off version of an Uzi. One round took out the wing mirror, and another punched a hole in the rear windscreen, which remarkably crazed but did not fall to pieces as they did in the movies.
The Mercedes was coming up alongside the Nissan, and the passenger was levelling an old Browning Hi Power pistol in Todd’s direction as the Mercedes tried to side swipe the Nissan.
“Hold on!” Todd yelled as he jumped on the brakes. The Nissan fishtailed wildly but kept to the road. The Mercedes had been swinging in to side swipe the Nissan when Todd braked, and it swung into the lane ahead of the Nissan in an uncontrolled spin.
The Mazda behind them was just feet behind the Nissan Patrol and could not stop in time. It hit the Nissan with a shuddering crunch, causing the crazed rear windscreen to fall out, and careered off the road and into a ditch, where it rolled over onto its side before sliding along on the desert floor, cutting the gunman in two as he hung out of the window and the car roof sliced through his torso as it grounded. Bodies rolled around inside the Mazda, and Max figured that if there were any survivors they would not be chasing anyone again any time soon, if ever. Max felt the deceleration reverse as Todd floored the accelerator again.
The Mercedes had come almost to a standstill, facing the Nissan head on, when Todd accelerated towards them. Max and Todd could see the terrified faces as the occupants raised their hands from the car controls to uselessly shield their faces. Todd swung the Nissan to his left to avoid a head on collision that would have disabled their car as well, but he still hit the Mercedes with a bone-jarring thud.
The Nissan fared better, losing some plastic fairings and suffering a bent wing, but the Mercedes toppled backwards into a ditch and rolled over onto its roof. There were flames coming from the underside of the chassis as Todd tried to put distance between them and the scene of carnage they had left behind them.
When Max looked back over his shoulder he saw that the Mercedes was well ablaze, but neither the Toyota nor the Eldorado had stopped to help the trapped passengers. Todd pressed on. They were still over twenty five miles from the border on a deserted road, and the undamaged cars behind them were slowly closing the gap as the road surface improved.
“Call Jamie, and tell her where we are. See if she can get the US Naval base in Djibouti to scramble a chopper. Tell them that pirates are trying to kidnap us.”
***
Jamie had enjoyed a dinner of freshly caught hammour, and was sampling the tiramisu when her phone rang. Immediately alert, she could hear the tension in Max’s voice as he briefly outlined their situation.
“I’ll see what I can do, but it’s likely to take more than thirty minutes to get any action, and by then you’ll be back in Djibouti.”
Dominic overheard Jamie’s half of the conversation, and asked her what was going on. Before she had finished explaining, he had his phone to his ear. He babbled away in French, but Jamie was able to get the gist of what he was saying.
“Nikolas, it is Dominic. Two good friends of mine are being pursued on the wrong side of the Somali border, heading back to Djibouti. It looks like a kidnap attempt. You are close to the border. Can you help?”
Nikolas replied in quickly spoken French. “Dominic, you are in Djibouti and yet you do not call your brother until you need help? I will see what I can do, but we are not allowed to cross the border, as you know.”
“If you don’t they may die, Nik.”
“I’ll see what I can do. It is dark and the border is poorly marked; anyone could make a mistake, eh?” They hung up the phone and Dominic turned to Jamie.
“That was my older brother, Nikolas; he is in the French Foreign Legion. They are well known for carrying out exercises in Somalia, where they are not supposed to go. I think we have more chance with him than with the Americans. Their main communications centre for the region is in Cyprus.”
“That’s hundreds of miles away,” Jamie said, pointing out the obvious.
“This is the military, Jamie. You cannot dial 911 and ask your local helicopter flight leader for help. It will take two hours for your request to get through the chain of command.”
Jamie looked out to sea and chewed on her knuckles, trying to hide the fact that her eyes were brimming with unshed tears.
***
“Todd, we have to do something pretty quickly. The chances of the cavalry arriving to save the day are remote, in the extreme.”
“There’s not a lot we can do without weapons, mate,” the Aussie replied.
The Nissan was performing as well as could be expected on the uncertain road surface, and with a new, less than aerodynamic front end, but the road ahead was level and straight, which would favour the Eldorado.
With a good fifteen miles still to go to the border, the Eldorado started to draw level with the Nissan. Todd laughed out loud, relieving the tension in the car.
“What the hell is there to laugh at?” Max demanded.
“Sorry, Max, it’s just that here we are in the middle of the bloody desert in Somalia, and we’re about to enter a drag race with a 1960s Cadillac Eldorado. It’s just surreal.” Max had to agree, but reality kicked in as shots riddled the Nissan’s saloon.
“Ram them, Todd!” Max yelled.
“You’re joking, right? There’s about three tons of steel under that Eldorado in the form of welded I-beams. This fella,” he patted the steering wheel, “is designed to crumple to protect the passengers. In any collision they’ll disable this car and we’ll be sitting ducks.”
Nonetheless, he swung the wheel and the Eldorado dropped back, taking avoiding action.
“Well, look at that! He doesn’t want to get his paint job ruined!” Todd continued to weave across the carriageway to stop the Eldorado encroaching. Shots were still puncturing the Patrol’s body work. It was only a matter of time before the gunmen aimed at the tyres, and then the game would be up.
“Up ahead!” Max pointed to the road ahead. Todd saw it, too - a rough sandy road that headed in the direction of the border, with more humps than an Egyptian camel farm. Todd pulled off the main road and took the old smuggling track. After five hundred yards he had to slow down and shift into low ratio gear and full four-wheel drive, but they were moving.
Max looked behind them. The Eldorado was following, but its low-slung chassis kept bottoming out on the humps, and sparks flew from the underside of the car. Before they had covered a mile, the Eldorado came to a halt and gave up the chase, but just a few hundred yards behind came the Toyota pickup.
The Toyota slowed just enough to pick up the leader of the gang, Abdulsatter and his sidekick Wasama, who pulled themselves up into the truck bed and loaded their sub machine guns. The men in the Nissan would not be allowed to escape. They would die the death of infidels; slow and painful.
It was pitch black now, and Todd could see the headlights of the Toyota closing on them. It struck him that the Toyota driver had probably travelled this route many times. They needed an advantage of their own. According to the satnav, they were running almost parallel with the main road, which lay about seven hundred yards to their left. As they took the next bend, Todd killed the lights and struck off across the desert as the darkness enveloped them.
“This is madness, Todd! We could hit anything out here!” Max complained, while knowing that it was their only chance. The Nissan bounced over dunes, rocks and fallen trees, but it ploughed on relentlessly. Max took hope from the fact that the Toyota had carried on along the road, chasing a shadow. He hoped that they would be safely back on the main road before the Toyota driver realised his error. His hope was short lived; red brake lights shone in the distance, followed by white reversing lights and then headlights once more heading their way. Todd flicked the Nissan’s headlights back on. The ruse had failed; they might as well see what they were going to hit.
The road was just yards away when Todd saw the ditch ahead, illuminated in the beam of the dipped headlights. There was no way they could cross it, as the ditch was too deep. He braked hard, then reversed back and spun the wheel to run parallel with the ditch, losing a lot of ground to the Toyota in the process. Two hundred yards ahead the ditch levelled out, and there was access to the main road, but the Toyota was heading for the same gap, and it was travelling on firmer ground.
There seemed to be only one course of action open to them, and so Todd aimed the Nissan at the gap and pressed the pedal to the metal. The Nissan responded, arriving at the gap in the ditch at the same time as the Toyota. There was a huge crunching of metal as the vehicles came together in a sickly ballet of carnage. Panels screamed as they tore, and lights and fittings flew through the air. The Nissan hit a hump and took off. The two men held on tight as the vehicle went airborne and then landed on paved road, bouncing them violently in their seats. The Toyota landed just behind them, tearing off the Nissan’s rear bumper as it slid across the road.
They were probably no more than seven miles from the border now, and the Toyota was stuck in the ditch on the other side of the road. The two men in the Nissan were about to start celebrating when acrid smoke and hissing steam began pouring from under the hood.
***
Jamie desperately wanted to call one of her colleagues, but they were now out of signal range and her calls would not connect. She knew that there were some mountains close to the border, albeit they were little more than rocky outcrops, which may have been blocking the signal. There was no way of knowing where the nearest cell tower was.
At her insistence, Dominic had tried to contact his brother on his cell phone, but without success. He then tried calling the French Foreign Legion HQ number and, after speaking to a sergeant in the communications room, he was told that his brother was out of contact because he was ‘operational’.
The French Foreign Legion’s 13th Demi Brigade was the only Demi Brigade in the French Armed Forces. Formed in 1939, it had an impressive history. Then, in June 2011, it was to be demobilised from Djibouti to a new permanent base in Abu Dhabi. The move had been slow and protracted, and whilst most of the mechanised division had relocated, some operational units remained, using the posting to support anti-piracy efforts in the horn of Africa.
It was this diminishing force that Dominic’s brother Nikolas commanded, but only for the next few months. Soon the base would be abandoned, and the 13th Demi Brigade would be back together in the Emirates.
It had been a great honour for Nikolas to be the last post commander, albeit overseeing a small contingent of legionnaires, because when Dominic and Nikolas were young they lived in Djibouti with their mother and father whilst their dad served as Demi Brigadier. It was partly his history in Djibouti, partly his French skills and partly the presence of his brother that had attracted Dominic to this unwanted assignment with the Djibouti government.
“If Nikolas can do anything, he will,” Dominic assured Jamie as he squeezed her hand.
***
Abdulsatter and Wasama berated their men and kicked them as they all pushed together to try to lift the front of the Toyota back onto solid ground. It was hard, backbreaking labour, but the men were too fearful to complain. In the preceding fracas, one of the gunmen had fallen from the truck and broken his arm, but when he cried out in pain his boss pointed a pistol at his head and threated to shoot him. There had been no complaints after that.
Inch by inch the pickup moved back towards the paved road until the front wheels found some grip on rock. The driver quickly spun the wheel and reversed back onto the highway, to the accompaniment of a grating sound. Wasama banged on the hood to get the driver to stop, whilst he examined the car.
“The wheel arch will shred the tyre,” he informed them, pointing to the bent body panel that was torn and which was obstructing the freewheeling of the tyre. Abdulsatter grabbed an old long barrelled repeater rifle from one of his men and, using it as a lever, he placed the stock on the tyre and pulled on the barrel, using the stock as a fulcrum. The torn metal panel pulled away from the tyre, leaving it free to revolve. The rifle was ruined, but its owner said nothing.
The Nissan was almost a mile ahead by now, but Abdulsatter was acting like a man possessed. None of his men wanted to contemplate the consequences of not catching their prey, and so they jumped aboard the Toyota as its wheels spun and it took off in a cloud of dust in pursuit of the Nissan.
Todd was pressing the Nissan hard. He had coaxed it up to almost forty miles per hour, and the steam and smoke had subsided. He knew that they should stop and attend to the engine, but he also knew that if they did so they were dead men. They were on the last portion of straight road on the way to the border. There followed a series of bends and curves that followed the valley between what passes as mountains in the horn of Africa. What he and Max saw behind them was worrying; the Toyota - it had to be the Toyota - was gaining fast, and the Nissan was already moving as fast as it could. Within two miles the Toyota would be upon them and there was little, if anything they could do about it. Todd just drove on relentlessly, and the two men indulged in the dark humour that comes from being in mortal danger.
“If they catch us, you take the five armed men on the left and I’ll take the five on the right,” Max suggested.
“Nah, mate, it would never work. I’ll take on the hardened crims, you take out the sissies,” Todd replied.
“How will I know which ones are the sissies?” Max asked.
“They’ll be the ones in pink,” Todd laughed.
They were around five miles from the border when the Toyota began to loom large in the rear-view mirror.
***
The Nissan was rounding a left hand curve about two hundred yards ahead. The next curve, a right hand curve, took the road behind another tall rock formation, but for a minute or more the Nissan would be in plain view.
“Get your guns ready! I want to take them on the next bend. Don’t spare the ammunition. Once we start firing, don’t stop until their vehicle is destroyed, understand?”
Everyone nodded. Ishmael looked on forlornly, as his rifle was broken, but then he saw Assa lying on the truck bed, cradling his broken arm and moaning, with his unused Kalashnikov beside him. Ishmael leaned over and took the gun; he was back in the fight.
A few seconds passed and Abdulsatter gave the order to fire. A barrage of gunfire erupted, many of the shells finding their target. The fusillade of bullets shredded the rear end of the Nissan, and both tyres were shredded. Oil and water laid slick on the road, when it should have been in the Nissan’s radiator and engine. The game was up; the Nissan skidded to a halt, sitting across the road. The Toyota stopped about twenty yards away, and its occupants sprayed the Nissan with killing gunfire.
***
When the rear end of the Nissan exploded in a mess of shrapnel, Todd knew that they had only one chance.
“As soon as I bring this to a stop, we dive out of my side and try to get to cover,” he told Max. “Use the Nissan and the darkness to avoid being seen.” He threw the steering wheel around to the left, whilst pulling on the handbrake. The Nissan ground to a halt, blocking the road. Todd opened the door and dived out. Max did likewise, and almost landed on top of the Australian. They crawled on their stomachs towards a small rocky outcrop and slid in behind it, as the Nissan was pummelled with small arms fire.
“Well, Todd, it was all too brief, but it was good knowing you,” Max said, a grim look on his face. He grasped Todd’s hand. They shook hands firmly and grasped one another’s shoulders. Todd set his jaw determinedly.
“I’m not going to be taken prisoner, Max. How about we go out Butch and Sundance style?”
“Yeah. As soon as they realise we aren’t in the car and come looking for us, we’ll rush them.”
Todd nodded. Neither of them admitted what they were thinking; suicide by terrorist.
***
Abdulsatter and Wasama were liberally spraying the Nissan when Wasama heard a noise other than the gunfire. He strained to hear where the noise was coming from. Abdulsatter noticed that Wasama had stopped firing, and looked up into the sky, where his friend had directed his gaze.
In the starlit night sky, just coming into view around the low mountain, was a bright light. It shone directly at the men in the Toyota. A few shielded their eyes and stopped firing. A loud voice hailed them from behind the light, first in French and then in English.
“Put down your weapons! This is a fully armed warship.” The full sound of the rotors was discernible now, and the downdraught churned up dust and flapped at their clothes. Abdulsatter and Wasama were nothing if not pragmatic; the occupants of the Nissan were dead, and the French soldiers had no jurisdiction here. They would have to let his men go.
Abdulsatter nodded to Wasama and they both raised their weapons to show they were setting them down peacefully. Ishmael, still in a bloodthirsty frenzy, mistook the signal and let fly at the helicopter with a hail of bullets from his Kalashnikov.
His leader shouted “No!” but Abdulsatter’s voice was drowned out as his men followed Ishmael’s lead and shot uselessly in the direction of the armoured chopper. An instant later the French Helicopter returned fire, visiting death and mayhem on the screaming terrorists. The helicopter’s twin, American made, M24A1 20mm cannons had been pressed into action, dispensing judgment at over a thousand rounds a minute. In less than a minute, what was left of the Toyota was resting on its axles, and the men on board were shredded to the extent that no-one would ever be quite sure how many gunmen had perished in the hailstorm of gunfire.
***
When the gunfire had ceased and Max and Todd unclamped their hands from their ears, they received an instruction from above.
“Stay where you are. Ground transportation is two minutes away.”
“Well, Todd, you sure know how to show a guy a good time,” Max joked, the relief showing on his dusty face.
“I don’t know whether it’s just me, but a lot of the parties I go to end like this,” Todd replied. Both men laughed out loud.