“No one’s shooting, Mr. Nkebe. Come out here, and we’ll arrange for you to get safe passage, but I want those hostages unharmed.”

  “They’re coming with me,” the man shouted back defiantly.

  “Okay, okay, move towards me, and we’ll see about a deal.”

  The hostages moved nearer, a tight group, held together by the glue of fear. Fear of the Somali in the center of their packed group, the Somali who held an AK-47 in one hand and a huge, .50 caliber pistol in the other; screwed into the back of the head of a woman.

  “Oh, my God, it’s Judith!”

  He turned to look at Caitlin. She was right behind him.

  “Judith?”

  “My sister-in-law, Sam’s wife, and she looks dreadful.”

  “They all do, but at least they’re alive. All we have to do now is free them from that madman.”

  The group moved nearer, and now he could see Nkebe. He was rather short, making it difficult to target him. Not that they could shoot him, not yet, so he had to be persuaded to capitulate.

  “Nkebe, that’s far enough. I want to make an exchange. Let them go and you can leave.”

  The man laughed. He was good looking, with two rows of perfect, white teeth; a handsome man, confident, and a natural leader.

  “No chance, American. I go out with these people. If you don’t do anything stupid, I’ll let them go when I’m a mile away. Otherwise I start shooting.”

  “I can’t to it, Nkebe. You’re not taking them out of the compound.”

  The man laughed; a cruel, arctic, grating sound. “You don’t get it, do you? I’ll give you a demonstration of what I’ll do to these people if we don’t get out through that gate. I’m going to shoot this woman in five seconds if you don’t let us through. Five, four, three…”

  “Please, no! Don’t shoot her!”

  A man was remonstrating with Nkebe. Talley assumed it was the woman’s husband.

  Oh Christ, that means it’s Caitlin’s brother!

  “Two!”

  Caitlin started forward, her mouth open to shout. He grabbed her and held her back. Another casualty wouldn’t help them at all.

  “One!”

  “No!!!”

  And then there was an eruption of movement in the center of the hostages. Incredibly, Brenner had half buried himself in a depression in the ground, a masterpiece of skilled, lightning-fast camouflage, waited until they were almost past, and then crawled into the middle of them. He’d waited for the right moment, the moment of maximum tension, when Nkebe was totally focused on slaughtering the hostage. At the precise time when his attention was diverted, Brenner made his move, appearing like a magician next to the Somali; one hand clamped on the pistol, pushing the barrel towards the ground, and the other on the assault rifle, wrenching it out of his hand. Judith Meers screamed as her husband waited on the cusp of life and death. Sam Meers stood rigid, waiting for the shot that would be the last thing he ever heard. But Joshua Nkebe fought back. He gave a great bellow of rage, and with the hand that had been holding the assault rifle freed, he swung a punch that connected with Brenner’s head. The German barely flinched. He held onto the pistol grimly as Nkebe pressed the trigger repeatedly, and five .50 caliber slugs punched into the ground, harmlessly. Brenner knew the gun was empty, and he released his hold on the weapon to take down the Somali. But Nkebe was already changing tactics. He dropped the useless Smith and Wesson 500 and snatched a razor sharp knife out of his belt, aiming a lightning slash at Brenner’s throat. The German jumped back out of danger and swung his own punch at the African. Nkebe’s head jerked back as the punch connected, almost knocking him unconscious. The hostages were scattering, and the German now had a clear target, so he went to work with deadly efficiency. Ignoring the pain of his wound, he brought up his boot in a hard snap kick that sent the knife flying out of the man’s hand. He followed up with a series of vicious blows, part karate, part boxing, mixed with a smattering of what the German had learned during his military career. At first, Nkebe put up some resistance, and even managed to land a punch on Brenner’s arm, as yet another bone-crunching left hook smacked into his face. But it was a lost cause, the German coldly demolished the black man, driving him into a broken, bleeding heap, and Nkebe began screaming for him to stop.

  Brenner stood back, his breathing hardly altered. He grinned.

  “If you wish, I will ask him those questions now, Lieutenant. I’ve softened him up, so I don’t think he’ll put up too much resistance.” He shrugged carelessly. “Not that it would make any difference. He’ll talk, I promise you.”

  They both jumped as a man screamed and ran at Nkebe.

  “The motherfucker, you know what he did to my wife? I’ll kill you, you bastard!”

  Sam Meers kicked the African repeatedly in the head, but the kicks were harmless, unlike the precision beating Brenner had given him. They allowed him to vent his rage for almost a minute, and then Talley put a stop to it.

  “Mr. Meers, that’ll do. We need to question this man.”

  Caitlin ran forward and took him in her arms. “Sam, Sam. It’s okay. You’re all safe now.”

  He stared at her. “Caitlin? What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were Stateside.”

  She grinned at him. “Long story, but the main thing is you’re alive, all four of you.”

  “Alive!” he spat out bitterly. “Have you seen Judith? They gang raped her in front of me and the kids. Night after night, and after three days her mind was gone. She’s in mental shutdown. I don’t know if she’ll ever recover.”

  “We’ll do everything we can, Sam. She’ll recover, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah, maybe, but I want to kill that bastard. I just need a few minutes with him.”

  “Not now, Sam. Look after your family, they need you. We’ll get you out of here as soon as we can, and then you can take your family home. Go to them, we’ll talk later.”

  He nodded and joined his wife. She stood vacantly, holding the hands of her kids who’d joined her. They watched Brenner casually dragging Nkebe by his heels into a nearby hut, one that had until recently been a prison for a score of hostages. He looked at them just before he disappeared inside.

  “This shouldn’t take long. But if any of you are squeamish, I’d suggest you move a short distance away.”

  None of them proved to be squeamish, not until the screams started. Talley looked at Caitlin, waiting for her to protest at the torture of a captive. But she was busy attending to her brother’s wife, Judith Meers, who sat on the ground like a child, staring into space. When she saw his glance, she nodded at him in approval. It was a tacit acknowledgement that the liberals could bleat as much as they liked about torturing prisoners for information; until those same prisoners were found to have mutilated, raped, and murdered your own family and friends. Then the cozy liberal attitudes flew out the window, to be replaced by the hard, grim realities of the battlefield.

  Yeah, Jesus turned the other cheek, and they crucified him for it.

  Brenner didn’t shout. There was no sound of heavy blows to signify a hard beating.

  The only sounds came from Joshua Nkebe. After a few minutes, his screams subsided to a whimpering, and after a few minutes more, there was just a pathetic mewling, like an injured cat. Finally, the German emerged from the hut.

  “I’ve got what we want, the name of his boss, and the guy at the top. It’s just as they thought, he’s Al Qaeda.”

  Talley nodded and went to enter the hut. Brenner blocked him.

  “I wouldn’t go in there. He’s not a pretty sight.”

  “They may want him taken back to the Abraham Lincoln for more questioning.”

  Brenner smiled. “They can try, but I doubt he’ll last that long. He was determined not to talk, so I had to hurt him, a lot.”

  Talley nodded and went inside the hut. Nkebe’s handsome face was good looking no more. His two rows of white teeth were missing, and the tell tale chips of white enamel on the floor of the hut told part of the story. Brenner had removed them, the hard way. His eyes were closed, and tears were running from his closed and swollen eyelids. His legs and arms were all twisted at unnatural angles, and the crotch of his pants was saturated in blood. Talley felt sick, and he turned and left before he vomited.

  “We can’t leave him like that, Karl. He looks pretty far gone. They won’t like it.”

  Brenner grinned. “Yes, I agree with you. But it got him to spill his guts. If there’s anything else you want to put to him, ask away, he won’t refuse. But you’ll need to make it quick. I doubt he’ll live much beyond the next hour, and he won’t get back to the carrier. We could put him out of his misery.”

  It was a thought, but Talley shelved that one for later.

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Like I said, the identity of the guy at the top. His name’s General Mohammed Barre. He’s a Somali warlord who’s thrown in his lot with Al Qaeda. I expect it pays better. He also holds down a senior position in the Somali military, so he carries a lot of clout. Nkebe confirmed what Colonel Hakim surmised. Al Qaeda is muscling in on the pirate operation in this area and plan to expand it to other parts of the world. It’s a good earner for them. They offer to furnish the locals with weapons, direct them toward likely targets, negotiate the ransoms for the release of the ships and hostages, and in return take a percentage of the cut.”

  Talley nodded. “It looks as if the job is only half done. I guess the Colonel will want to target this guy before too long. First though, we need to get the hostages out of here. I’ll get Caitlin to make contact with the Abraham Lincoln. When we return, I guess they’ll want to brief us on the next part of the mission. By the way, where is this General Mohammed Barre located?”

  Brenner grinned. “Mogadishu.”

  “He would be. Shit.”

  Talley found Caitlin and asked her to contact Hakim. No more than a minute later she called him over, and he was talking to the Colonel.

  “We’ve got them, Sir. The surviving hostages are all safe, no fatalities. Except for the Somali pirates, but they got what they deserved.”

  “You kept at least one man for questioning?”

  “We did, Sir.”

  Talley explained about Nkebe. Hakim was more than a little impressed.

  “So we have the name of the man at the top. I didn’t think we’d get it quite so easily. I expected to have to go up a chain of sub-commanders until we reached him. We’ll need to talk some more to this Nkebe person.”

  Talley cleared his throat. “That may not be so easy, Sir. Brenner had to push him pretty hard to get what he did out of him.”

  “Did he? How hard, Lieutenant?”

  “Fatally hard. He’s in a bad way.”

  “I see. That’s unfortunate, as is the location of General Barre. Mogadishu is not an easy target, as you know. Sadly, it’s not the only bad news this morning. We received a signal from the Somalis. They’re kicking up like crazy about your incursion into their territory.”

  “We wouldn’t need to have come here at all if they were policing their people,” Talley said angrily.

  “That’s true. But it’s past history. You are there, and they’ve made a diplomatic protest. More to the point, they’ve forbidden us to send in aircraft or overfly their territory for any reason, including bringing you out.”

  Talley digested that information. He clicked angrily on transmit.

  “You’re condemning us to death, you know that. These pirates don’t work in isolation. They have contacts up and down the coast. If they’ve heard of our attack, and it’s almost certain they have, there could be armed parties on the way even as we speak.”

  “They are already on the way, Lieutenant. As soon as we knew about your incursion into the compound, we widened the recon area for the UAV. We picked up an armed party on the way in from the south. They’re still about eighty klicks from you. They’re making slow progress, but we estimate they’ll arrive at the compound in three hours. You need to be out in two, no more. But we haven’t abandoned you, Talley. I said the Somalis have forbidden any further incursions. I didn’t say we weren’t coming in to get you. You’ll need to get the hostages back to the shoreline by any means and wait there. The Abraham Lincoln will launch a couple of landing craft to get everyone off, all except for your men. We need you back here A.S.A.P. We’ve decided to ignore the Somalis for now, so we’ll send in a couple of helos to pick you up and bring you home.”

  “We can’t leave the hostages unguarded, Sir. We can’t pull out until the LCs arrive.”

  “There’s no choice. General Barre will already be alerted to the operation, and he may well have increased his security. He has to be removed, permanently.”

  “So you’re sending us into Mogadishu?”

  “Unless he’s moved elsewhere, yes, that’s where your men are needed next.”

  Talley worked to control his thoughts. Mogadishu, famous for the film Black Hawk Down, when the US moved in to capture the notorious warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The mission, Gothic Serpent, ended in an early withdrawal, and heavy casualties including the loss of the helos. The Somalis were formidable and ruthless enemies.

  “The hostages can’t be left unguarded, Colonel. That’s not negotiable.”

  Hakim sighed. “Very well, I can spare two of your men, Talley, but no more. As I said, I’m sending in the helo to pick you up, so be on the shoreline in an hour, no more.”

  “And those pirate reinforcements coming in, can you arrange for a welcoming party for them?”

  Hakim sounded amused. “Already arranged. As I told you, we’re taking our time about ending our overflights, so we’ve decided to attack when they reach the compound. It’ll muddy the waters and destroy the evidence of your having been there. Maybe they’ll blame the casualties on a falling out between rival groups. Who knows? The MQ-9 Reaper we’re using has enough fuel to remain on station until the strike begins, and she’s carrying a full load of ordnance, Hellfire missiles. I’ve asked the aircraft controller to attack as soon as they enter the compound. I suggest you move out to the coast right away. The LCs have already set out for the hostages. I wouldn’t keep them waiting. They’re anxious to get everyone off that beach before the Somalis start to nose around.”

  Chapter Five

  Talley watched the Somali coastline fall away to the west as they headed out into the Arabian Sea, bound for the deck of the carrier Abraham Lincoln. He’d left two of his men, Sergeant Ramis and Sergeant O’Malley, to guard the hostages. They were both good soldiers and tough fighters. But then again, all of his people were good, and they were certainly tough, or they wouldn’t have a place in Echo Six. But it meant that he was two men down. And they were going into Mogadishu. He suddenly remembered Nkebe. Damn, he was tired, and in the rush to get back to the coast and bring out the hostages, he’d forgotten the man. Even though he was close to death, he should know what had happened to the man. He looked for Karl Brenner.

  “Sergeant, that Somali you interrogated, Joshua Nkebe. Did you leave him alive?”

  The German was poker faced. “Those were your orders, Lieutenant. I did as you said.”

  But something in his expression belied the words. Brenner looked across at Dubois, and he saw Dubois grinning. The Frenchman pulled out his knife, an oversized combat knife he’d seen him continually sharpen, honing the blade to a razor’s edge. Dubois stared at him, chuckled, and ran his thumb along the blade of the knife.

  “You know what my blade enjoys more than anything, Lieutenant?”

  He sighed. “Tell me, Dubois.”

  “Blood, the blood of an enemy, mixed with a little flesh. It’s a good recipe, and it keeps the blade in good condition.”

  Talley looked away without making a reply. It occurred to him that Echo Six was not quite as his NATO masters had envisaged. Most of the men were good, damned good. They were men he could take to hell and back, and they wouldn’t let him down. But some of the Europeans were wild cards. Not Jerry Ostrowski, who was a skilled soldier and a solid and reliable sniper; nor Guy Welland, the tough, laconic Britisher, who could be relied upon to obey an order without question and execute it with ruthless precision.

  But the German, Karl Brenner, was another matter, as was the Frenchman, Michel Dubois. Talley was saddled with a throwback to the Nazi SS and a psychotic French killer. He’d just have to deal with it, that’s what he was paid to do. But he resolved to watch his back with those two men. They’d been mighty quick in shooting the two old folks back in the mission, and on the flimsiest of pretexts. Echo Six was set up to work outside the established rules of engagement that hampered the efforts of modern anti-terrorist task forces, but it didn’t mean they were entitled to ride roughshod over the ordinary rules of humanity. Their last victim, Joshua Nkebe, was a case in point. It was true they’d been green lighted to use the most extreme methods of extracting information. But he knew that Brenner and Dubois had gone outside of even those loose guidelines, to the point where death had become for them the pursuit of a game. A game, like a computer game to a teenager on their home PC, played merely for pleasure. They’d tortured the Somali and butchered him for their own gratification. Echo Six wasn’t in the business of enjoying the killing of random folks. That would be the way to endless hostility, the kind of hostility engendered by such actions as the Abu Ghraib debacle, which angered an entire nation, if not much of the civilized world. And then there was Blackwater, the security company; another disaster. As a US naval officer, he’d been taught the principles of conducting warfare with honor, and of the political fallout that resulted when a sick minded minority lost all respect for human life. He’d need to rein in Brenner and Dubois, straight after the end of the current operation. But when he did, he resolved to have a couple of reliable men at his back; men who were well armed.

  He felt someone’s eyes on him and looked across the cabin of the Black Hawk UH-60. They’d packed into the single helo sent out from the Abraham Lincoln. After the loss of Mulligan to the mine on the beach, and leaving behind two men with the hostages, one helo was sufficient, just, to transport them back to the carrier. Caitlin Walker sat opposite him. He hadn’t worked out how to explain that he couldn’t take her into the armpit of hell that was Mogadishu. Or maybe he meant he wouldn’t. She met his eyes.