LITMIR.BIZ

      PROLOGUE

      Habir Dugula was no stranger to death. He knew there were many ways to die in his country, most of them brutal. Old age rarely claimed life in Somalia. The land itself could kill a man without water in a matter of hours.

      The parched and unforgiving earth produced next to nothing to feed ten million hungry mouths. The country’s famine, though, was no secret to Western relief workers, he knew, nor to the world at large for that matter, thanks to naive intrusion by CARE, UNICEF, the Red Cross and the United Nations, which seemed to take a morbid pride in denouncing his nation as a seething hotbed of outlaws, thieves and genocidal maniacs.

      Starvation, so it was said, had laid waste to nearly a half-million Somalis in the past five years, another two million on the brink, if he was inclined to believe UN or Red Cross statistics. Those numbers, in his mind, were greatly exaggerated—propaganda—if only to give the West excuses to make incursions into his nation, strip him of power and return Somalia to the control of white colonial imperialists. It was true, however, that he was branded the Exterminator by the United Nations, the devils of the American media. To some extent he was responsible for the plight of the starving, at least in the area he controlled south of the city. He had his reasons, plus the blessing of God, to maintain a certain population control, and that was enough. First, they would want food, then, bellies full, education would be the next demand, minds alive and seething soon enough with what they perceived a monstrous injustice perpetrated on them by him. With the power of knowledge there was little doubt an uprising was sure to find its way to his front door.

      Not if he could help it.

      There would always be too many hungry mouths to feed, he knew, always the poor and the needy who would fall by the wayside, and he didn’t intend to let the great unwashed, the weak and the vanquished weigh him down, hold him back from climbing the next rung up the ladder of power and glory. As long as he didn’t have to look at the dying masses on his doorstep, there was no point burdening himself with guilt. Sentiment was weakness.

      Then there was civil war, consuming another half-million or so lives in the past decade, what with roughly five hundred clans divided into twenty-six main factions, all of them heavily armed, shooting up one another in a running bloodbath that saw no end in sight. There was widespread disease, savaging mostly the children, but again, if he didn’t have to see it…

      Why bother, he decided, to attempt to search for reason when madness and the law of the gun ruled his country? How could a man show mercy to even the poor and the needy when his own survival was always in question? As leader of his clan, there was a bottom line, deemed by him every bit as important as seeing the next sunrise. If death, war, famine and pestilence appeared destined to push millions of Somalis to the edge of the abyss, the least he could do for himself—and the continued survival of his clan—was to profit from the madness somehow. Even in the hell that was his country, cash was still king.

      So was the power of the gun.

      Dugula had a busy day ahead. He rose from behind his desk, checking the wall map and factoring in the grueling stretch of miles needed to take him to the afflicted village and its refugee camp, due southwest of Mogadishu. Three events on the day’s agenda, a long, hot twelve hours or more before him, and it was time to embrace death once again. The grim problem could prove the first order of the day’s business, but, then again, he concluded, it was best to deal with the most troubling and by far the most hazardous of his three chores.

      Listening to the soft hum of the air conditioner, pumping out icy waves through the office of his command-and-control center, he knew that once he stepped outside, the sweat would start to flow free and unchecked. Discomfort he could live with, but uncertainty he wouldn’t entertain, since not having answers to certain questions, not knowing who or where his enemies were, could kill. Indeed, the first outbreak of sweat, he thought, would be brought on by more than just the brutal hammering of sunlight.

      He watched as Nahbat, his AK-47 leading the way, swept through the door.

      “They are on Aboyge Street. Perhaps three minutes remain before they arrive.”

      Dugula grunted, a slew of questions about the visitors tumbling through his mind. He picked up his AK-47, chambered a round, aware of the numbers coming their way. “Assemble everyone in the courtyard. Same drill as before. Do it quickly, and may God pity the first man who is not ready to fight to the death, if necessary, because I will not show mercy to cowards.”

      “Understood.”

      White men in Somalia, Dugula thought. They were a rare sight. It was beyond strange—malevolent perhaps—how these whites had ingratiated themselves to a rival clan, even if they had thrown around large sums of both shillings and U.S. dollars to buy protection, gather information, carve inroads into their clans. But for what purpose? Who were they? CIA? Mercenaries? The first time he had met them they had dropped off an envelope bulging with U.S. dollars, saying little, only that they would require his help, that he would be well compensated for, again, some unspecified act. Dugula had some idea what they wanted, catching the whispers from his various informants around the city, but he needed to hear them state it out loud.

      Slipping on his dark sunglasses, he marched outside, grimacing at the first blast of heat. He was halfway across the courtyard, counting his own men, spread along both walls, a gauntlet of assault rifles and RPGs, poised to catch the visitors in a crossfire, when the first wave of the technicals rolled through the gate. The technicals were a common sight all over Mogadishu, he knew, the Toyota pickups or anything else on wheels, with roofs cleaved off to allow free and easy fields of fire for the .50-caliber machine guns or the smattering of TOW rockets. Truck beds, he noted, were crammed with gunmen, most of the them mooryan, teenage thugs. The glaze in their eyes from the amphetamine-like high of qat warned him they were edged out. Not good, no telling what they would do as he saw their fingers tight around the triggers of assault rifles, ready to shoot, he had to assume, for little or no reason.

      He stood his ground, dust spooling in his face, the technicals fanning out. Twelve, no, thirteen technicals lurching to a halt then, nervous-sounding laughter, chatter among the mooryan, a few mouths still grinding away at qat. As before, the black minivan was last, carrying its mystery whites, two motorbikes with gunmen flanking the vehicle. Dugula waited, pulse drumming in his skull. The minivan stopped in the dust cloud, door sliding open.

      Three men in brown fatigues stepped out, slow, sure of themselves. AKs were draped across their shoulders, spare banana clips wedged in their waistbands. Commando daggers were sheathed at their hips. As they cut the gap, Dugula found the black hoods concealing their identities unsettling for a moment. He wasn’t sure what to make of this display, wondering if they were issuing some silent statement meant to unnerve him, or if their desire to keep their faces hidden was genuine, bore some special significance. If he chose, he could have them followed again, but the word from his trackers was that these men were bounced all over Mogadishu in the black van, changing vehicles, in and out of safehouses, able, or so he was told, to vanish into the air. It made him wonder how accurate—or deceitful—their report, whom he could trust, where did the truth lie. Money always had a way of shifting allegiance.

      Blue Eyes, as he thought of the hood in the middle, held his stare. Dugula was certain he was grinning to himself. Arrogant bastard, he thought, stifling the urge to whip the assault rifle off his shoulder and blaze away. Dugula felt himself being measured, Blue Eyes laughing back at him, a private joke.

      “We have to stop meeting like this, Habbie. Your little slice of hell on Earth, not high up on my list of hot spots to start with, is starting to make even me a little jumpy, and I’ve been down some dark alleys in my day.”

      “Perhaps you would prefer we do this on some sandy beach, sipping iced tea?”

      “Right. After a nice dip in the Indian Ocean. No, thanks, but I’d rather swim with sharks of the human variety than what’s

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