Chapter 12

Washington D.C.

It was getting late and Kara was about to pack up for the night. Packer had made several more calls throughout the day, but most were routine and didn’t seem to apply to what was happening with Taylor. A few calls had convinced Kara that he was behind what was happening over there. He’d made several comments that suggested the people he worked for didn’t know what he was doing, and suggested that the entire operation in Somalia was some kind of scheme to make a lot of money.

Of course, that was all just her impression. While she thought it was clear and it might be enough to convince Robles to start investigating him, it might not, since it was all impressions. So far Packer hadn’t said anything direct that would tie him to something illegal.

She was just reaching to switch off the scanner when it buzzed to life with another call.

“Yes,” Packer said.

_”We have confirmation. Taylor walked away and knows about the package. He’s talking to someone from the agency, although we don’t know who.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. His wife’s started making noise, asking questions about what’s happening over there and she’s specifically mentioned stolen tech. We’re days away from an investigation getting opened. We need to shut down before they have a chance to start poking around. It’s getting too hot.”

“We’re not shutting down shit. Do you know how much money we’ve spent on this?”

“It won’t matter when we get shipped to f•©king Gitmo. There are too many eyes on us, the auction is days away, and we’ve lost the package.”

“I can fix this.”

“How?”

“We’ve already covered our ass on this end and once the sale goes through, there won’t be anything to look at. Hell, Barsane did us a favor taking hostages. If the people we sent over there never come back, there won’t be anyone but us to say what was actually happening.”

“If he hasn’t killed them yet, he’s not going to. Not at least until he’s gotten someone to pay him for them.”

“That’s not what I was thinking. Barsane has enemies over there. They haven’t taken him on because they’d lose too much and weaken themselves, but if we put up a big enough bounty, they’ll take care of Barsane for us, retrieve the package, and get rid of the witnesses.”

“What about Taylor. If his wife is making noise, she had to hear it from him. Odds are he knows what’s going on.”

“They can take care of that too. Put the word out that we’re putting a bounty on Taylor.”

“What about the deal for getting the package back. Should I put the word out about that too?”

“No, I don’t want to go through channels with that. They might not be able to trace it back, but someone’s bound to catch wind of it. Let’s go the other way. Reach out to Barsane’s competitors about the bounty on Taylor and set up a call with me. I’ll talk to them one-on-one about what else we need them to do. We throw enough money at this, and all of our problems can get solved at once.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of it.”_

The line disconnected and Kara finally stopped holding her breath. She finally had enough that even Robles had to listen to her, but now she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk to him about it. She’d listened to enough of Taylor and Loretta’s stories about how things worked in investigations to know these things took time. If they waited to make a move until after Packer arranged the bounty for Taylor’s death, there wasn’t anything Robles or anyone over here could do to stop it. Taylor was good, but he was also alone in a very hostile country. If someone was going to stop Packer before it was too late, it would be Kara.

She had the beginnings of a plan, but she’d have to go back home to make it work. She only hoped she could get back before it was too late.

Hofyo, Somalia

Taylor stopped the truck when he was about a mile out from the Barsane’s village. It was extremely late, which was good since it gave Taylor the cover of darkness, which also meant it would be fairly quiet. If he came rolling up close to the village in the beat-up old truck, someone was going to hear it, and if Barsane was at all security-minded, they’d come check it out.

He also didn’t have much beyond his GPS, second-hand directions, and a somewhat outdated map of the region to go by. He didn’t want to end up blundering over a ridge right into the village if he could help it.

Even on foot, he almost stumbled onto it. Unlike the compound that was situated below hills, the village was built on a high point where a hill flattened out into a plateau. Unlike modern towns that constantly gave off a glow of lights, this village hardly had any electric lights, and the few it did have were very dim. Taylor got within a hundred yards of the closest huts before realizing he was on top of it.

Just like the village his young friend had been from, this place was a mismatch of buildings. There was an actual building made out of brick and steel in the center of the village, surrounded by a tall wall with barbed wire across the top. Just past it, things became a lot less modern. The nicest houses had stucco walls and thatched roofs and the worst were basically lashed together bundles of sticks and branches that were themselves lashed together to make a wall, with a grass thatched roof kind of just laid on top. Taylor would be surprised if it managed to survive a strong wind.

Since he was looking straight into the village, instead of down onto it, Taylor thought for a moment the streets were deserted. Backing off as far as he could and keeping mostly below the flattened out plateau, he circled around to a rise on the southern side of the village that would offer him the only position to see down into the village and get a fuller idea of what kind of opposition there was. As he circled, he started seeing men wandering around in groups of two and three, assault rifles slung under their arms. Although it seemed closer to wandering than patrolling, there were enough of them that, even before he got close, he could see it was going to be impossible to just sneak in, and definitely impossible to sneak a bunch of hostages out.

Things seemed pretty bleak before he got to the hill and started making his way up the rise. Taylor couldn’t get to the top, because there were a handful of guys stationed up there with a pair of what looked like an older model Russian PK machine guns set up. They were facing perpendicular to the town, which gave them a pretty wide field of fire. From their position, they should have been able to see Taylor when he’d gotten close to the village, but like the guys patrolling, they weren’t paying that much attention. Most of them probably felt pretty secure that no one would mess with them in the heart of their own territory.

The machine gun nest wasn’t, however, the thing that worried Taylor. His bigger concern was the old Russian made tank sitting on the other side of the village. It had to be forty years old at best, but with the limit of high ground to operate from, it would be hard to get at for the simpler RPGs found in this part of the world and it would eat through guys in trucks only armed with AK-47s pretty fast. Taylor couldn’t help but wonder where the hell he’d managed to get one, although maybe one of the old soviet satellites had just offloaded it when they were selling off all the rest of their old stock in the early nineties as the Soviet Union fell apart.

Taylor backed his way down, being more aware of the machine gun nest and the guys on high ground. He’d gotten lucky so far, but this whole trip could have ended badly if these guys were even a little bit professional. Making his way back to his stolen truck, Taylor tried to work his way through a plan. Sneaking in and getting the hostages out was clearly a non-starter. As was any chance of getting outside help to deal with it. Luckily, using limited assets without the availability of additional US forces was specifically what the Special Forces did, and Taylor already knew what he could do to make this work.

Of course, a lot of the groundwork hadn’t been done and he’d be going in with a lot less intel than he normally would have liked, and he wouldn’t have the rest of the members of an ODA to rely on, but you made do with what you had.

By the time he got back to the truck and slowly worked his way out of Barsane’s territory, Taylor had a plan.

Wajideeb, Somalia

Taylor backtracked his way towards the compound and the village he’d left Lopez in. He had a rough idea of where the Feedh Ilaah was based from his young friend’s father, the one whose brother served with that particular militia. He hadn’t said it outright, but there were enough context clues from the few things he and his wife said to give Taylor a place to start.

While any contact with local fighters was a problem, this was much closer to Taylor’s field experience than anything he’d done with the FBI. One of the primary tasks of Army Special Forces was coordinating with local allies, whether they be warlords or freedom fighters, and working to direct those allies to achieve whatever goal the brass had decided needed to be achieved. While he was doing this solo and without any significant backing, it was still a dance he understood.

The hard part was going to be making contact. When he was doing this kind of thing in the Army, they’d use local assets to make initial contact and feel out whoever they were hoping to work with before sending in the first Americans. Sometimes, if local allies weren’t available, they’d have to rely on in-country assets like CIA operatives, who were better equipped for making that initial contact. Once their new ally was aware that members of the US military were coming to work with them, Special Forces would be deployed and they’d take it from there.

Now, Taylor had to do that first step on his own. It was going to be made harder by the incursion into Feedh Ilaah territory by Barsane’s men and a second incursion by a US-based PMC. All that activity would have the warlord and his people on edge, and make them automatically more suspicious of anyone showing up on their doorstep. Unfortunately, Taylor didn’t have a lot of other choices. He needed a combat force to help assault the village where the hostages were being held, and this was as close as he was going to get to it.

Taylor once again got close and started to look for a place to hide his stolen vehicle. The upside to this region was lots of crevices, ravines, and depressions big enough to hide a vehicle in. Eventually, he’d press his luck one too many times and it would be stolen by someone who stumbled across it. This time, he found a separate place to hide his rifle and the ammo for it, covering it with rocks under a large flat rock that jutted out from the hillside and made an overhang, and then covering it with brush and rocks until it looked like just more hillside. He’d keep his sidearm, but if things went bad and he did manage to get out of the village, he’d want to have access to a weapon. If not he could always walk back and retrieve this one.

He also hid his satellite phone with the rifle, since losing that could be devastating. Although it had already been made clear that he wasn’t going to get any help from the outside world, if he did manage to pull this off, he would still need to arrange for transport out of here, and Wheeler was definitely the type to use a non-secure call as a reason to leave Taylor to rot.