Chapter 15

Hofyo, Somalia

It was a few hours after dark when they got near the village. Taylor learned that he’d been lucky not to be spotted on his first trip down here.

Barsane had gotten his hands on a fleet of Toyota trucks a few years before when he raided an oil-drilling operation that had thought they were getting government protection, only to learn the realities of how far that protection extended after they set up operations. They’d opted to ransom their people back and walk away from operations, and Barsane had taken the money and pretty much everything that hadn’t been nailed down as his just payment. This meant that, for now at least, most of Barsane’s men drove the same type of truck, most of which were newer than the stuff Gehdi’s men were driving.

Taylor figured he probably had been spotted, but only at enough of a distance that they couldn’t tell it was a white guy driving the truck. They’d seen it was one of ‘their’ trucks and hadn’t paid him any further attention.

Thankfully, Gehdi knew how to get close to the village without relying on luck, which was good, since they needed surprise for this to really work out. For all that Barsane had in men and firepower, he had been - at least, according to Gehdi - neglecting anything that wasn’t brute force. Gehdi claimed to have infiltrated Barsane’s operations both in his home village and in some of the other villages he controlled.

Taylor didn’t tell him that, had he been as successful as he thought he had been, he would know about the targeting system that was the real prize Barsane was sitting on. It was possible that Gehdi was playing him and he knew about the targeting system, and was hoping Taylor would get it for him so he could just take it from Taylor, but he didn’t think so. Taylor thought he was a fair judge of people, and he was pretty sure Gehdi was in the dark about what was actually going on. Besides, it wasn’t like he had a lot of choices.

Their convoy had made a weaving path through Barsane’s territory based on where he was the blindest. Just as Taylor had done, Gehdi had all of his men unload from their vehicles so they could finish the rest of the approach silently on foot, although he did leave a few men behind to make sure their transportation was still there when it was time to go.

“My weapon,” Taylor said as the men were piling out of the trucks.

“Yes,” the warlord said, waving at one of his men to bring over Taylor’s rifle. “This has been an interesting partnership. Next time you visit my village, perhaps call ahead.”

Taylor thought calling his being held in a hut under guard a ‘partnership’ something of a stretch, but he had enough to do tonight without getting into useless arguments. They’d gone over the plan several times while Gehdi’s men had prepared, but Taylor still wanted to double-check one last time.

“I’m going to set up on that rise over there,” he said, pointing at a small rise about a third of a mile from the village. “I will give you fifteen minutes to get into position before I take out the first barracks hut, followed by the tank and then the third barracks. As soon as you see the tank go, begin your attack. Please, try and keep your fire towards the front of the village.”

He wasn’t worried so much about the small arms fire. There were enough buildings in the way that, while there would be some danger, it wasn’t going to be worse than the danger of running across Barsane’s men. The thing that worried him was Gehdi’s decision to bring along a very old mortar that looked to be from World War II.

Gehdi had insisted that, even with the tank being taken care of, he needed something to even the disparity in manpower. Taylor was only concerned that, if they overshot, those could cause serious problems for him and the freed hostages.

“Just be careful with the mortar, please.”

“We know our jobs. You make sure the tank is destroyed and we will do them.”

Gehdi had been against putting the tank second on the list, but Taylor had seen enough to know he had some time before it got into action and he wanted to go for the barracks first.

Taylor had used this system several times before and knew that it would be just over a minute before he could fire a second shot. It didn’t actually take that long to drop the launch tube and connect the Command Launch Unit to the next one, but the CLU needed a good minute in the current weather conditions to cool down enough to be good to fire again.

That’s why he wanted to hit the barracks first. A minute was enough time for most of the building to empty once they’d heard the first explosion, since it didn’t take much for a man to roll out of bed and grab a weapon on the way out of the door. The tank, on the other hand, would be slower.

When he’d seen it before, they didn’t keep it manned and ready to go. A few guys had wandered over and climbed inside as he’d watched, but they’d come out again a few moments later. It made sense in a way. Barsane’s village hadn’t been attacked in some time and it would be pretty grueling on the guys operating it to be inside and buttoned up all the time. They were probably living very nearby in one of the huts at the outer edge of the village.

It might have been better for the men, but from a readiness standpoint, it left a lot to be desired. It would take a minute or two for anyone to even get to the tank and another several minutes to get all of the men in their positions inside and the engine turned over. Taylor’s worst case scenario, or maybe best case for the men in the tank, was a minimum of three minutes before it could be brought into action.

This meant that Taylor could have taken out both barracks and still had time to hit the tank before it could start firing against Gehdi and his men. Taylor still had it second on his target list because, although the Javelin was a good system and well tested, there were still occasional failures. It was unlikely that two tubes would be bad, so he was willing to take the risk and hit the first barracks before going for the tank, but he wanted a failsafe option for the tank, just in case, because if he didn’t get it, Gehdi would leave without firing a shot and the whole thing would be off.

The third building was the one Taylor wasn’t sure about. Three minutes was a long time for anyone inside to get moving, but it was the only practical target left after the first barracks building and the tank, and Taylor wasn’t one to just waste a perfectly good missile, even though it meant that he’d be shooting at what would most likely be an empty building.

Taylor grabbed one of the launch tubes and two of Gehdi’s men picked up the remaining two and followed him towards the rise, moving low and quietly. Each loaded tube weighed fifty pounds and with the rest of his gear, Taylor hadn’t really wanted to lug all of it up to his firing position by himself. The guys took off as soon as they set down the launch tubes and Taylor got himself into firing position, which for the Javelin meant sitting on his butt with his knees pulled up.

This was partly to brace against the weight of the rocket, which actually pointed kind of up. It was an indirect system so that, as long as Taylor kept the tracker on the building, the rocket would fire up and away from him before acquiring the building and taking its direct flight path towards it. For the tank, Taylor didn’t actually have to keep the target locked in the screen, since it recognized the vehicle for what it was and it became a fire and forget weapon. Of course, he still had to wait for the CLU to cool down, so it didn’t mean he’d get to fire at the third building any faster.

Taylor lined up the building and waited, counting down the minutes for Gehdi to get into position. It was almost at the fifteen-minute mark when something went wrong. A shot rang out from the edge of the village, followed by a barrage of fire from along the line Gehdi had planned to set up at. Since that wasn’t part of the plan at all, one of his men must have been noticed by the sentry. Either way, that meant it was showtime.

Taylor had had the launcher lined up with the building and ready to go for some time, so all he really needed to do was fire, which he did within seconds of the first shot ringing out. The system kicked against him hard as the rocket left the tube and Taylor made sure to reacquire the target in time, as a jet of flame erupted from the rocket above and in front of him. A burning line cut through the night’s sky as the missile entered its terminal phase and plowed through the roof of the long hut just before exploding.

Taylor didn’t stop to see the damage and barely caught the explosion. He was on the clock now and had already detached the CLU and grabbed the second launch tube. Through the reticule, he could see men scrambling towards the tank, which said good things about their response time, but was unfortunate for them, since they were going to be on or inside of the vehicle when it exploded.

Taylor waited for the indicator light that would tell him the weapon was ready to fire again as he watched the men climb up the side and the first one drop through the tank’s opened hatch. The icon turned green and Taylor marked the tank, which the CLU dutifully picked up and identified as a target. Taylor fired and was kicked again as the rocket left the tube. Even with the padded harness on the launch tube, by the third shot, Taylor knew he was going to be hurting.

The rocket didn’t just kick out and make a straight line for the target like it had the first time. Since its system had properly locked on, it did what the Javelin was actually designed to do, shooting up into the air and making a wide arc, so that it would land on the much more vulnerable and less armored top of the tank. On an older model like the one Barsane had, there was no chance it would survive. He already had the CLU clipped into the third tube when the rocket landed on the tank. Despite himself, Taylor stopped to look and make sure the tank was taken care of.

It was. A mixed cloud of debris, fire, and dust exploded out from the vehicle, with big chunks of metal raining down in a several-yard radius as the old machine came apart. Taylor could see men pouring out of the third building and already bullets were starting to whiz by him as the men in the village started to realize where these missiles were coming from. It was dark where he was and with all of the other fire happening, they probably didn’t have the time or discipline to really pick him out as a target, but enough were blind firing in his direction that Taylor didn’t want to stay up here any longer than he had to.

He acquired the third building, which he saw no one leaving from any longer, and fired, keeping the targeting locked in until it impacted. As soon as he saw the missile hit, he dropped the launcher, with the CLU still attached in a pile with the others.

Although the Army would probably be pissed if they knew he’d left one of their high-tech launchers just sitting out in the Somali plains, there was enough soldier left in him that Taylor decided it was better to destroy the system entirely. Putting the launch tubes altogether, Taylor pulled the pin on the incendiary grenade he’d had Lopez set him up with what seemed like a lifetime ago.

As soon as he dropped it down the launch tube that still had the CLU attached, Taylor took off down the hill. Besides starting fires, this grenade was designed to immobilize or destroy weapons systems and vehicles, so it should make short work of the launch tubes and CLU, at least to the point where they’d be unusable.

Taylor slid down the hill he’d been using as a firing platform, his left hand getting cut up as he tried to control his descent against the rocky ground. Behind him, there was a pop and then a strange sizzling/whistling sound as the thermite inside the grenade ignited, heating the metal and electronics of the tube to an incredible four-thousand degrees. There’s wasn’t an explosion, since all that was left was circuit boards, aluminum, and steel, but there was a popping sound as rivets and welds began snapping apart.

Light from the rise increased as enough of a hole burned through the tube, which was the other reason Taylor was running so hard away from his launch site. The bright light began drawing fire from the village, which had been all but certain. The rocket kicked on up in the air and then crashed down and there’d been minimal backblast when Taylor had fired, so only those who’d been looking directly at him when he fired would have seen the launches. None of them could have missed the light and Taylor had known it’d become a fire magnet.

Taylor’s run away from the burning equipment was in the opposite direction of where Gehdi and his men continued to fire away. There was enough noise that it was unlikely that anyone would hear him crashing across the rocky ground as he circled the village and he was far enough out that it was unlikely they’d see him circling around to where the fifty-caliber gun was starting to hammer away in Gehdi’s direction. Even if they did look his way, all of the burning fire would have ruined their night vision, making Taylor all but invisible.

He didn’t slow down as he got to the hill the machine gun was on. It was steeper than the one he’d been firing on, and he had to sling his rifle and use both hands to pull himself up the back of it. If he’d had his choice, Taylor would have preferred to just lob a grenade up to the firing position and put it out of action, but an explosion back here would draw attention he didn’t want. Thankfully, both men were operating the weapon and neither was paying much attention to what was happening behind them.

Taylor pulled himself up enough to peek over the edge of the slope and saw both men were completely focused on what was in front of them. The gun was hammering away, which covered the sound of Taylor pulling himself up into a kneeling position. Taylor reached down and pulled his pistol, since it would only be seconds before one of the men noticed the movement behind them and turned to see what was happening.

Neither man had much time to figure out what was happening as Taylor shot both in the back. As soon as the gun fell silent, Taylor was moving again. For the first minute or so, their friends in the village will assume the pair were reloading. They might wait another two or three minutes, since they’d be focused on something else and they could assume there was just some kind of issue keeping the gun from opening back up. Five minutes and someone would be coming to check on it, and Taylor wanted to be long gone by then.

Pushing the men’s bodies out of the way, Taylor moved to the weapon and popped open the receiver cover. It was an older model machine gun and was probably picked up in the nineties when the US was heavily involved in the area. Thankfully, Taylor’s training as an 18B weapons sergeant had covered a wide range of weapons systems, including some older US weapons they might encounter in the field.

Taylor wanted to make sure whoever came to check on why the weapon had fallen silent didn’t have the chance to get it into action again, especially when he’d be in front of it in the village around at the same time. Taylor pushed the bolt release latch down and turned the buffer sleeve to the right, freeing it so he could pull it back, exposing several parts of the rear assembly of the gun. Taylor didn’t try to get fancy, since he didn’t care if he put it out of service long term and he was looking for speed over clever solutions.

He began pulling pieces out, as he disassembled the weapon, throwing each into the darkness as he got it free. The driving spring, bolt stud and eventually the entire bolt came sliding out of the rear of the gun, each sailing into the night. Some of the parts were hot from extended use, and Taylor had been forced to grab a chunk of canvas and wool next to him the loader had sitting on to get some of the parts out. A handful of minutes later, the gun was completely useless until someone went out into the darkness and found all of the pieces he’d tossed. Some of those, like the spring, were going to be tough to find before daylight, and even then it would take some searching.

Taylor was again sliding down a hill, this time into the village. As soon as Taylor was down the hill he unstrapped his rifle and pulled it up at the ready while running through the streets. The plan seemed to be working, since he only encountered a few men on his way to the house at the center of the village. The first two were when he was halfway there and they were making a bee-line for the rise where the fifty-cal. had been, and had probably been sent back to find out why the weapon had gone silent. Neither had expected to run into a hostile a third of the way into the village coming from the opposite side of the attack and neither had their weapon at the ready, which was a fatal mistake for both of them.

The other group of gunmen were near the central house, gathered out front of its protective wall. Taylor saw them well before they saw him and he could have gotten the drop on them, but there was a camera on that wall by the entrance and the last thing Taylor wanted to do was announce his presence. It might not matter as far as getting the tracking system, but if they were still alive it would definitely get the hostages killed.

Instead, he circled around to the rear of the building. The wall was, thankfully, not very tall or well secured. It didn’t have barbed wire around the top or spikes or other deterrents for people climbing over and, while it was high enough to not directly see over, it was still short enough that Taylor could grab the top edge without jumping, making it very scalable.

Taylor looked around the rear of the house for more cameras, and didn’t see any, nor were there any along the outside of the wall, which was another sign of how lax they took their security. Of course, having patrols out and owning the whole town would make you feel more secure, so maybe they didn’t feel they needed them.

The next step was the riskiest, since it required Taylor to sling his rifle again. If anyone came across him during the next several minutes, he would be in big trouble. Taylor pushed the worry aside. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen and this was the only choice for getting inside.

He grabbed the ledge and used the outjutting of a square support post as a brace to pull himself up just enough to look around. There wasn’t any sign of patrols outside of the men standing around the front gate and he still didn’t see any cameras. It seemed inconceivable that they’d only have one camera. Taylor couldn’t imagine any security so lax that they only felt the need for one security camera, but apparently, that was the situation.

Seeing the area was clear, Taylor hauled himself over the wall and dropped down into the thin dirt area that ran between the back wall and the house. His luck continued. The house was a classic European design, including windows on the side and rear of the house. Not that Taylor was complaining. Barsane’s decision to live like some kind of king while his people lived in literal huts would work out for Taylor at least.