She nodded her agreement, “But it’ll set her up for life.”

  She tucked the money inside the girl’s loose-fitting blouse under the strap of her bra. Then she walked back to Talley and kissed him.

  “What’s that for?”

  She grinned. “That was a nice thing to do, that’s all.”

  “Whatever. Let’s get out of here.”

  He rode in the rear of Osman’s limo, a black, armored Mercedes S600 AMG. Osman occupied the center seat, and Cate sat the other side of him. Talley had only one African American in the squad, Sergeant Roy Reynolds, and so the Sergeant was at the wheel, minus his distinctive half-helmet. Next to him rode Jerry Ostrowski. He’d blackened his face with camo cream but would only pass muster at a distance, and in very poor light. But he could compensate for any deficiencies of skin color with the fearsome array of weapons he had at his disposal; the suppressed Arctic Warfare rifle, he’d borrowed Talley’s SCAR, and had his own Sig-Sauer. At his feet were a dozen hand grenades. He’d taken half the squad’s remaining stocks, ready to use if they had to blast their way through the gates. They drove through the deserted streets, the only obstacle to their progress the occasional wandering goat that stepped into their path. Except once, when Reynolds bumped over a log he hadn’t seen until the last moment. He called over to the back.

  “Sorry about that, Boss. I didn’t see it until the last minute.”

  “It didn’t seem too hard for a piece of timber.”

  “It was no timber,” Osman said, breaking his sullen silence. “People die here like flies; disease, AIDS, sometimes malnutrition, or they’re simply murdered. They throw the body out into the street if it’s not someone they’re related to. You don’t understand, any of you Westerners. These Somalis have no respect for human life, they’re like animals. You’re wasting your time if you think any of your NGOs or famine relief schemes can make a difference. I do my best here, me and the other UN people, but coming here to murder General Barre won’t change a thing. It’s an African problem, and only Africans can solve it.”

  Suddenly a policeman stepped out into the road and held up one hand, the other contained a flashlight. He waved it up and down, a clear indication for them to stop. Reynolds slowed, an automatic reflex when an American driver saw a cop waving them down. Talley turned to Osman.

  “What is this? Why is he stopping us?”

  The Commissioner sighed. He seemed to have recovered from his shock, and Talley made a mental note to watch him more carefully.

  “It’s a shakedown. These policemen earn very little, and they are often not paid for many months. A car on the road during the night is a rare chance to earn some cash. He’ll want a few dollars in return for not arresting us for some trumped up offence.”

  “What do you want me to do, Boss? We’re almost on him.”

  Talley thought fast. If they stopped, Osman would almost certainly try and warn the cop. It may be impossible to stop him. He had no choice.

  “Go straight over him. Run him down, but don’t stop.”

  “Copy that.”

  Reynolds’s voice was calm and matter of fact. The car ran smoothly on. There was just a slight jar as the heavily armored vehicle struck the Somali policeman, and another bump as the wheels went over his body. They drove on; the compound was only a short distance away. No one spoke, not for several minutes. But he felt Cate’s eyes on him.

  Too bad, he’d have sold us down the line. This country is a battlefield, and he was the enemy. I had to give that order, or this mission would have come to a sudden and very violent end.

  “Compound gates in sight.”

  Reynolds’ voice brought his mind back to the mission. They were driving down a narrow track that widened out into the open space and surrounded Barre’s compound. The gates were closed, and all the compound lights inside were on. That took care of the decision about whether to use night vision goggles. There were four men in the guard tower, one of them armed with an RPG. He could also make out the shadowy shapes of guards on top of the roof of the main building. Barre was ready for them, ready and waiting. He looked aside at Osman.

  “Commissioner, you have one chance, and one chance only, to live. You get us inside that compound, without them suspecting anything.”

  “But, there’s no reason for me to come here,” he blustered. “The General will be suspicious.”

  “You’d better think of a reason, and quick. I’d suggest you’ve received UN intelligence about a US raid on Somalia. You said he knows about the aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea?”

  “He knows everything,” Osman replied, with a slight sneer.

  “Tell him it’s scheduled to put troops ashore, and you’ve brought the Security Council message from the UN for him to see. That should get his interest.”

  Osman nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it may just be enough. And you’ll let me live, I have your word on it?”

  “You get us in there, and I won’t kill you, and neither will any man in this squad.”

  “Very well, tell your driver to stop before the gates, and I’ll speak to the guards. I’ll have to go to the guardhouse so they can contact the General.”

  “That’s a negative. You don’t get out of this vehicle. When we stop, you call the guard out here, and tell him to open that gate fast. Tell him it’s the most important thing to hit Mogadishu since ’93. Tell him the Americans are coming in force. That should do it. But try and get out of the car, and I’ll kill you.”

  He nodded nervously. Then the limo halted and a guard came out. He spoke in rapid, urgent Arabic. The man shook his head, but Osman shouted at him, almost screamed, and Talley had to admit he made it sound pretty good. The gates opened. Reynolds touched the pedal and rolled the Mercedes into the compound, and the other cars followed. They were inside. In front of them, they could see the General’s men, deployed to defend against an attack from outside the fence, but not from inside the compound.

  “Quick, where can we find the General, Commissioner?”

  “He would normally control his men from his operations room, but I understand you destroyed it earlier. In which case, he will be using the basement of his mansion, the building in the center of the compound. It is also heavily guarded,” he added with a faint suggestion of a sneer. Talley ignored it.

  “Roy, head for the mansion. We’re going visiting.”

  He nodded and accelerated slowly forward, nothing to alarm the Somalis. The car stopped only a few meters from the front door. The door opened, and a black man in military green camouflage uniform with a General’s rank badges stepped out, a smile on his face. He was hatless, revealing a huge, bald head covered in scars. A big man, heavily muscled, and with broad shoulders, he was also very tall, at almost six feet six inches. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. Osman was lowering the electric window. It was so silent that they didn’t notice at first. Until Osman shouted through the open window, “Mohammed, help me! The Americans are here!”

  Despite his huge bulk, General Barre had the reactions of a cat. He sidestepped fast and vaulted through an open window back inside the mansion.

  “It’s Barre, take him down!” Talley shouted. In the same moment, he put a bullet through the UN Commissioner’s head. “That’s the last time he plays that little trick.”

  Several troopers had already opened fire, and the silenced rounds chipped pieces of stonework from the front of the mansion, but they were too late.

  “Roy, drive to the side of the house, we’re getting out. Take Virgil Kane and come back around to cover the front. Make sure they don’t get out this way. I’ll take a couple of men, and we’ll assault the house from the rear. Move now!”

  Reynolds stamped down on the gas, and the car surged forward. The guards still hadn’t worked out they were under attack, and they rolled around to the side of the mansion without any shots being fired. Reynolds brought the car to a shuddering halt, and Talley was already piling out of the door, shouting orders into his mic.

  “Guy, the door, get it open fast. We need to get inside. Rovere, take two men and look around for Delta Six. If Osman was telling the truth, they’ll be tied to trees somewhere in the grounds. When you’ve located them, free them and bring them back here. We may need the vehicles to get them away. It could be too hot for a medevac. They’re probably in a bad way, and we need to get them clear of this place as fast as possible. The rest of you, watch our perimeter. When the Somalis realize what’s happening, there’ll be all kinds of shit coming our way.”

  Rovere dashed off into the shadows with two troopers, to hunt for the missing men. Cate ran over to him.

  “Do you want me to call in the Cobras? We’re going to need some air support pretty soon.”

  “Good plan, get them here. If we keep our forces to the west side of the compound, it should be possible to direct their fire to the east side. That’ll slow Barre’s men down some. Put that out on the commo, and make sure our people understand they have to stay to the east of the area of operations. And tell those helos about the RPG on the roof of the guard tower. We have to assume they have other RPGs, so warn them to be careful.”

  “Copy that. I’ll call them in and follow you into the mansion.”

  He nodded and turned to Guy. “How’s that door coming?”

  “It’ll take too long to do it quietly, so I’ve rigged a charge to the lock.”

  “Okay, hit it!”

  “Fire in the hole!”

  They took cover away from the blast. Just as he was about to set off the charge, two shots whistled past them. But Jerry and Vince were ready, deployed behind the vehicles. They dealt with the two Somalis who’d rounded the side of the building, their AKMs ready to take down the infidel invaders in a hail of Russian 5.56mm rounds. Then the charge detonated, and the door crumpled on its hinges, hanging at a crazy angle inside the frame. Guy ran forward and kicked it hard. The door fell away with a crash. In front of them was a dark passage that led into Barre’s mansion. The explosion had destroyed all the ceiling lights. They were in, and Talley charged forward.

  “Let’s go, Barre should be in the basement somewhere. There’s sure to be another reinforced door. Guy, you find the entrance and get us in there. Snipers, stay out here and cover us. The rest of you, spread out. There’ll be more than our share of targets inside. We need to finish all of them before they get a chance to recover. Move it!”

  He plunged into the hallway, holding up a hand to stop the men behind him as a door opened, and a flood of light lit up the corridor. A gun barrel poked through, and the man holding it came into view. Talley dropped him with a single shot from his SCAR assault rifle and got up to move further inside the building. Another head poked around the doorway and stared at them. One of his men fired just as the head was withdrawn.

  “Damn, I missed him,” Guy muttered.

  “There’ll be plenty more, don’t worry. Just find that basement and get us in there.”

  He went to the opened door and peered around. It was another long passageway, an inner hallway, brightly lit, but he jumped back as a hail of bullets smashed into the doorjamb beside him. He’d seen the machine gun the Somalis had set up to cover the rear entrance. Toward the front of the house, two men were crouched behind a Degtyarev DP light machine gun. They were waiting for them to come through the door. Talley ordered the men to hold while he unclipped two hand grenades from his webbing, primed them, and threw them into the inner hallway and stood back. The machine gunners screamed in terror as they saw their deaths arcing towards them, and then were silenced forever as they exploded. Immediately, Talley led his men into the maelstrom of smoke and flame before the Somalis could recover. They grouped at the bottom of a wide staircase leading up to the second floor. Further along, the hallway widened out into the reception area and the front door of the building.

  “Guy, find the basement. It has to be one of these doors. We’ll hold this hallway. They’re sure to send more troops here to try to push us out.”

  “What about the upstairs part of the house?” Guy asked.

  “We’re spread too thinly. We can cover most of the house from here, and our snipers are covering the rear. Roy is out front, so we should be able to see them coming.”

  Guy suddenly shouted, “It’s here, the basement entrance. Give me a few…”

  He stopped as automatic fire chipped pieces of plaster out of the wall, and they flung themselves flat. It came from up the stairs. Talley shouted at them to cover him, and without waiting, launched himself up the staircase. The stairs went up and then around a corner. But the top landing had a railed section that gave anyone looking down a view of the stairs and into the hallway. As he ran, he could see the automatic rifles pointed through the wooden slats, and the spit of flame as they opened fire. He twisted and dived behind the corner. The bullets slashed past him. One came within an inch of his head, and he had to rub plaster blasted from the wall from his eyes. He felt his webbing, but the loops he used for grenades were empty; he was out. He winced as another blast of fire hammered into the wall close to him. He was in a bad position, pinned down by the men on the landing and with no way of killing them all. He shouted down the stairs.

  “I need a couple of grenades up here, and fast!”

  “This is Jerry, Boss. I left Vince out there with Cate. It looks pretty quiet so far. I have two grenades left, so I’ll bring them up. While you throw them, I’ll keep their heads down.”

  “Do it, Jerry. I’m running out of time here.”

  He looked down and saw two of his men break cover and empty their magazines up at the landing, and then Jerry Ostrowski sprinted up the stairs and dropped down beside him. He handed over the two M67 fragmentation grenades and sighted his rifle.

  “Ready when you are, Boss.”

  “One second.” He shouted back down the stairs. “Hit those bastards on the landing again. They haven’t got the message.”

  “Copy that,” one of the men shouted back. Then they both leapt out and emptied two further magazines, ripping into the woodwork around the landing balustrade. One of the defending Somalis screamed and pitched forward, smashing the remains of the balustrade and tumbling down the stairs to land at Talley and Ostrowski’s feet. Jerry kept firing, single, well-aimed shots that made Barre’s men think twice before showing themselves. Talley primed both grenades and lobbed them up to the landing.

  Both men stood back from the anticipated blast, and they heard the sound of Somali voices, panicking and screaming as they fought to escape the blast from the deadly ordnance. Then the M67s exploded.

  “Now!” Talley leapt up the final flight of stairs and stepped onto the landing. It was a scene of chaos. The Somalis had tripped over one another as they ran, and there were at least a dozen bodies jammed in the narrow space. Most were dead, and the two men finished off the survivors with single shots.

  “They’ve left us some cover,” Jerry said cheerfully, as he shot a black defender who was feebly trying to lift his rifle to shoot the two NATFOR men.

  “What cover?”

  The Pole pointed to the tangle of bodies. “This should stop most things they fire at us.”

  Talley grimaced and nodded. “Yeah, I guess. Watch that area at the top of the staircase. There must be more of them up here somewhere. I guess it’s some kind of a dormitory for the troops guarding the house.”

  “You think there are more of them? There are a lot of dead bodies here.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Talley saw movement further along the landing. Someone had poked the large barrel of a light machine gun out of a doorway and was pointing it towards them. He shouted just as the first shots cracked out.

  The Pole had been correct. The pile of bodies protected them. The Russian 7.62mm rounds thudded into the bodies, causing them to twist and jerk with the heavy impacts. But the dead soldiers prevented any incoming bullets hitting them. When the firing stopped, the two men checked each other out. They were both unwounded. Talley put a finger to his lips. The Somalis were about to get a surprise. They crouched in silence behind the bodies and waited. The wait was short. After less than fifteen seconds, there was a chorus of shouts, and the Somalis came out, charging straight for the stairway. Jerry started firing immediately, single shots that each took down a man. They hesitated, and then Talley stood and unleashed his SCAR on full auto. Twenty 5.56mm rounds smashed into the wavering Somalis. Talley stayed on his feet as he snatched out the empty magazine and pushed a new one home. A second hail of bullets shredded the horrified men who’d come out in the confident expectation that the Russian DP machine gun had finished off the enemy. Instead, the two infidels stood almost like Leonidas’ 300 Spartans, throwing down a storm of fire on the enemy as they stood waist deep in corpses. But unlike the ancient Greeks, these corpses were the enemy, and they were firing the very latest advances in ordnance, not throwing spears. Ten more Somalis fell before the remainder turned and fled.

  “Jerry, stay here and make sure they don’t try again.” He keyed his mic. “This is Talley. Guy, have you opened that basement door yet?”

  “Charges set ready to detonate, Boss. It’ll be a big bang, so stay where you are. As soon as it’s gone off, we’re going in there.”

  “Copy that. I’ll be coming down to join you. Is there any word from outside?”

  “Not yet, Rovere hasn’t reported any trace of Delta Six, and there’s no sign they’re regrouping out there.”

  “Understood. Take that door down. I want to finish this.”

  “Copy that.”

  The detonation was immediate. Guy had excelled himself, and the thunder of the explosion shook the entire house. They both had to duck to avoid the shards of broken glass whistling through the empty spaces like a deadly hailstorm. The SAS man’s voice came through the commo.

  “The door is open. I say again, door is open. No opposition, no, wait, they’ve opened up on us. Get back. Get back, all of you! Boss, they’ve got another of those DP machine guns covering the entrance. We’re out of grenades.”

  He heard the distinctive hammering of the gunfire, sounding almost like a pneumatic drill of a road repair gang. The bullets whined and ricocheted around him as they smashed into the walls, chipping yet more plaster and masonry out of Barre’s headquarters.