Dark Asset Page 10

  Nothing. A couple of bird noises, but no voices, no electronic sounds or the cough of a security guard with a dry throat.

  He checked the rear of the building first, and found a double roller door and a fire exit. Both were locked fast. It was time to take a chance. He walked towards the front of the building until he reached a side window a couple of metres from the corner. He peered round the edge of the glass, but all he saw was darkness and the oval of his own reflection. He glanced back towards where he’d left the car. If the Americans came back, he’d have to move fast. But first he had a job to do.

  He pulled a roll of cargo tape from his pocket and ripped off four strips, stretching them in an H pattern across the glass. He then untied an old T-shirt from around his waist and wrapped it around the flashlight. Picking a spot on the window, he jabbed hard until the glass cracked and gave way. He peeled off the cargo tape, taking the broken pieces with it, and was able to reach in and undo the window and climb through.

  He was standing in a short corridor running from the reception area at the front of the building to a door in a wall at the back. Beyond that must be some kind of small warehouse or workshop. A faint crackle of grit sounded beneath his feet as he moved, but there was nothing he could do about it; the building would be full of it, blown in through cracks and crevices every time a door was opened. He kept the flashlight wrapped in the T-shirt to reduce the glow and flicked it on, then moved quickly towards the front of the building.

  He tested the handle carefully before opening the door. It revealed an open space, empty and smelling of mould, the floor layered in gritty dust and showing several sets of footprints. He peered through the front windows but nothing moved out there save for the vague shape of a dog scavenging in the gutter.

  He turned away. A broken broom handle lay on the floor, and he instinctively picked it up and closed the door, leaning the handle against it before moving away down the corridor. As he did so he felt a sudden sense of panic, brought on by not being able to see out of the building. A line of windows might have made his use of the flashlight more difficult, but at least he’d have had the faint comfort of being able to see any signs of movement outside.

  He paused to open a door in the wall halfway along the corridor. This showed another room, also empty. Next he turned and walked to the end door.

  He placed his fingers against the bare wood, hoping to pick up any sense of danger waiting for him on the other side. Was this building some kind of temporary logistical base for the American contractors? Would there be beds inside where they bunked down between operations? There was no way of knowing unless he took the next step.

  He opened the door, subconsciously braced for an attack. But none came. Instead he saw a large shape in the centre of the space, gleaming in the flashlight.

  A car. A pale Mercedes saloon, covered in dust. The two vehicles he’d followed from Portman’s hotel had been quat-quats or 4WDs. But why was this one here? A spare, perhaps.

  Beyond the car against the far wall was a line of sleeping bags on layers of carpet, and nearby a couple of small gas stoves and a box of supplies, like field rations.

  This is their base, he realised with a rush of alarm. They might be back anytime soon.

  He hesitated, fighting the instinct to run. Security first. He walked over to the back doors and released the locking bar on the fire exit. If anybody came, he had a way out of here. Then he returned to the Mercedes and peered through the windows. It didn’t reveal much so he took a chance and opened the rear passenger door.

  Blood. A splash of darkness down the rear seat and on the floor. More on the back of the driver’s seat and some flecks on the ceiling and door panel. He sucked in a deep breath and caught the acid smell of it, and the heavier tang of urine. He backed out, confused by the evidence. This wasn’t the vehicle Portman had been in with the three Frenchmen; that had been a larger, white Land Cruiser. The other two 4WDs had contained the Americans. So who had been in this one? And why the blood?

  He recalled his flight from the bar when the Americans had arrived, effectively leaving Colin Doney behind to fend for himself. He felt momentarily guilty, telling himself that Colin should have been ignored, that he would not have got caught up in this business and—

  He jumped as a sharp slap of sound echoed down the corridor from the front of the building. It was the broom handle hitting the floor. He turned and ran for the fire exit door, knowing he had only seconds to get out of here. Whatever else the Mercedes may have contained, he was sure it wasn’t going to help him now.

  He ran out of the door and headed for the hole in the fence. As he did so he heard a shout from inside the building and the slam of a door being kicked open, followed by other voices and running feet.

  He didn’t look back, but ran to the rear of the next building along and continued until he reached the alley where he’d left his car. Seconds later he was inside with the engine turning over and driving fast down the road towards the city.

  FOURTEEN

  I was on the road out of Djibouti early to take advantage of the cool air. But if I was hoping to beat the traffic I was in for a shock. This wasn’t some western city with orderly queues of commuter traffic all going the same way; this was a packed North African community where daily survival depended on trade. Instead of gleaming family sedans there was transport of every kind, from donkey-and-carts to cars, pickups, flatbeds, buses and container trucks. I met them all in a seething, seemingly never-ending flow, interspersed with death-wish pedestrians and overloaded motorcycles, all keen to gain right-of-way and get to where they were going by proving they had the loudest horns and nerves of steel. Even overhead there was the constant buzz and clatter of aircraft, from small craft right up through choppers and the thunderous roar of a military transport C-17 Globemaster curving out over the bay. Sharing the sky with these noisy engines were dozens, maybe hundreds of crows, wheeling in dizzying circles overhead or clustering in trees and electric wires around the houses, waiting for their chance to feed.

  Only when I got a few miles out did the madness reduce to a steady flow, and allow me to relax. At least, it would have done if I wasn’t dogged by the feeling that I might be heading into a trap.

  I was keeping an eye out for military traffic in particular. I was pretty certain that the Americans who’d taken me out of the hotel were contractors, and wouldn’t be able to throw their weight around too much out in the open. But I didn’t want to take chances. Nobody argues about a person’s credentials at the point of a gun unless they have a bigger one. I didn’t and I wasn’t able to do much out here if anybody decided to stop me for a chat. All I could do was keep my head down and hope the sight of a bashed-up Mitsubishi pickup that had seen better days would get me past any random stop-and-search.

  I stopped a couple of hours after leaving the outskirts of the city. It had been slow going so far and the heat was building to a point where the air-con was struggling to keep pace. Having to negotiate a dead camel and three accidents all being argued over with heated enthusiasm, while keeping my eyes open for white men in a suspect vehicle, didn’t help speed things up any, and I saw the town of Ali Adde go by before deciding to take a break about a mile outside, away from prying eyes.

  The town itself was a scattered collection of single-storey houses nestled around a group of rolling hills. Some of the structures had flat roofs; some were in whitewashed stone and clay, others of tin. There were no vehicles that I could see and the few people visible were outnumbered by goats, cows and a few camels.

  I drank some water and tried to think where, if the men had brought Colin out this far, they would have taken him. And why. I didn’t think they would have gone too far, but the only reason for coming out here would have been to make sure they were unobserved. In a speeding car, few of the locals would have cared to notice any details about those inside other than, perhaps, their colour. But in this wasteland, who would dare question them?

  I drank some more water
and ate a couple of bananas while trying to tune in to the atmosphere and put myself in the place of Colin’s kidnappers. If I was planning on doing away with somebody it would have to happen off the road – the same end that JoJo and his men had planned for me. The chances of a military vehicle happening along were too high and being stopped at random was a risk that they, like me, wouldn’t want to take. That meant getting out into the hills where nobody could see them.

  I finished my makeshift breakfast and continued driving. I was soon out in dead ground, with hills on all sides, covered in coarse scrub and stones and small herds of goats. On the slopes in between I could see the occasional portable roundhouse known as a toukoul, used by nomads and formed by making a frame of branches and covering it with woven material and bark.

  I came to a fork in the road and slowed for half a dozen skinny goats to get out of my way. They were being watched by a young man sitting under the cover of a spindly bush with a thin blanket thrown over to provide shade. He gave me a wave so I stopped and got out, the heat hitting me like a giant hammer. I was expecting a communication problem but when I asked him if he could speak French, he nodded.

  ‘What cars have passed this way?’ I asked, and pointed towards the forks. I figured most of the traffic would have been trucks, but I needed to narrow down the possibilities.

  He mulled it over for a moment, then said, ‘Military?’

  He was smart, and had guessed I was looking for something specific.

  ‘No. A quat’quat’,’ I told him, using the French colloquial for a 4WD. ‘Ford.’

  He scowled and nodded. ‘I know quat’quat. Yesterday, late. There was one, going very fast. It killed one of my goats.’ He nodded behind him to a grass-covered bundle leaking blood. ‘It did not stop. It went that way.’ He pointed down the left-hand fork and flapped a hand to indicate that it had disappeared from sight. ‘Then it came back.’ He nodded towards a slope a couple of hundred yards away. ‘I was up there with my goats.’

  I gave him some money for the information and the goat, and got back in the car. It could be an entirely false lead, of course. But it was the only one I had and sounded plausible. I followed the road along a natural valley, climbing for a short while, then eventually emerging onto a plain dotted with trees.

  It was like going through a portal into a different country. I stopped and checked for signs of life. Nothing. No vehicles or people.

  Then I saw the crows. A couple of dozen at least, darkly elegant against the sky, some moving in a circle over a small clutch of trees half a mile away off the road, others drifting higher on the thermals with an occasional descent to the ground below. As soon as one rose, another took its place, a natural display of raw nature’s pecking order.

  There had been crows in Djibouti city, but not like these. We were a long way from anywhere so I slowed down, scoping the area for others signs of movement. Out here you didn’t have to come across danger up close and personal; it could hit you from a ridge a quarter of a mile away, the report reaching you only when it was too late to duck. But all I could see was a herd of small goats on the other side of the road, nosing for grass among a cluster of boulders.

  When I was satisfied it was safe, I stopped and watched the birds for a couple of minutes, gauging their actions. It wasn’t unusual to see carrion birds in a cluster, but something about the way they were moving portrayed a simple message: something had gotten their attention and it wouldn’t be small, not with this many in one place.

  I drove on and stopped again two hundred yards away on the edge of a clearing and got out. I reached under the seat and took out the SIG, then listened to the sounds around me. Other than the crows, I heard insects clicking and a faint hiss of breeze through the scrub grass. And far away the drone of a plane. I hadn’t seen anybody on my approach here but I wasn’t about to take chances. Out here people can disappear without a trace, lost to everything but the dusty surroundings and the creatures like these birds that eventually feed on what is left.

  As I moved closer, the birds voiced their disapproval, filling the air with raucous protests. A few braver ones stayed in the trees overhead, but soon took off when they saw I wasn’t going away. I was twenty paces off when I finally saw what had aroused their attention: it was a man’s body, pale against the brown earth beneath. As I moved closer I felt the shock of recognition.

  It was Colin Doney. He’d been stripped naked and staked out between two stunted acacia trees with thick, twisted trunks. His wrists and ankles had been wired to each one and pulled tight. In that position there was no way he could have gotten free. The remains of a small fire smouldered nearby, a faint hint of smoke drifting into the air mixed with something sweet and sickly, like burned meat.

  I took a closer look, although it was obvious he was long dead. The crows and other animals had already started picking at the body, stripping away the soft flesh of the torso and under the arms. I couldn’t tell precisely what had killed him, but his chest and belly were a mass of burned flesh and a pile of blackened sticks lay on the ground either side of him. In addition, his left wrist was broken and three fingers on his right hand had been snapped backwards against the knuckles. Somebody’s sick idea of drawing out the pain.

  Knowing too much – or somebody thinking he did – had caught up with Doney, and I wondered what he’d been able to tell his torturers before he’d finally given up and died.

  I left him where he lay, but gathered a few rocks to cover him. I hadn’t got the tools to bury him deep enough to prevent animals digging him up again, and taking him with me would have served no useful purpose. Instead I took a photo of the body before covering the face to record the fact. Petrus or the British embassy could sort it out when this was all over.

  Walking back to the car I passed two sets of tyre tracks in the earth, figuring on one arriving and the other leaving. The treads were deep and heavy, of the kind used for rough terrain travel in these parts. I couldn’t tell if they belonged to a Land Cruiser but I wasn’t going to bet against it.

  It was dry as dust out here and the sun was relentless, baking everything in sight, even beneath the sparse cover of the trees. I decided to make tea. It would give me something to do while considering my next move. I dug out the small spirit stove and filled the billy pot, both courtesy of the store in Djibouti. The water was already warm from the ambient heat and didn’t take long to boil.

  As the steam rose in the air, I heard a sound and turned to see an old man standing at the edge of the clearing a hundred yards away. He wore the traditional regional clothing of a sarong and shawl and was leaning on a heavy stick, its length gnarled and browned with age and marked with scars. He had a decorative cloth bag slung over his shoulder and looked as if he’d come up out of the earth itself. I certainly hadn’t spotted any dwellings for a while since the toukouls, and the reality was he’d probably walked many miles to get here.

  Then I saw movement either side of him and two more men appeared. They were younger, dressed like the old man but carrying AK47 rifles.

  They didn’t look friendly.

  I stayed very still and focussed on the old man, keeping my hands in plain sight. He was holding his free arm out to one side and it took me a moment to realize that he was signalling for the two younger men to hold back while he assessed the situation. There wasn’t a sound save for the crows in the distance and the wind, sighing through the scrub grass, and it was easy to believe that we might be the last four humans on the planet.

  I smiled. It was all I could do. I didn’t want to alarm the old man’s companions, because if anything kicked off they’d already got the drop on me and a quick squeeze on the trigger of an AK47 would be enough to turn me into chopped meat.

  He evidently thought it was safe, though, because he moved forward a couple of steps and lifted his chin in greeting. The two men stayed close, guns levelled.

  I made a careful gesture of welcome and he eventually decided it must be safe. He shuffled forward, leanin
g on the stick, until we were only a few feet apart.

  ‘Would you like to share tea with me?’ I said, and pointed at the billy pot.

  He nodded and moved closer, settling into a squat and waving his companions forward on either side. There was a certain etiquette to these things, and we were both keen to observe the rules.

  I only had two small mugs but the old man solved the problem. He dug into his bag and produced two battered tin cups and placed them by the fire. I poured the tea and placed the cups on the ground, then took a box of sugar cubes out from my supplies. I knew the locals had a case of sweet tooth, especially with black tea, and this got them interested. I held out the box for them to help themselves. The old man went first. He very daintily picked out a single lump, which he dipped into his tea for a second, then sucked on it with a nod of enjoyment. The other two followed, after which we all took more sugar lumps to put in our tea.

  ‘Are you French?’ the old man said, the courtesies observed. He spoke carefully and softly, his French clear but the words lightly blurred due to the absence of teeth.

  ‘American,’ I replied in the same language.

  He turned and said something to the two other men, and they moved away and stood watching the open countryside around us.

  ‘I was a guide for the Legion for many years,’ he explained. ‘I learned their language and taught them how to track. It was a good time; I earned much respect and had many sons.’ He looked proud at the thought.

  I nodded at his two companions. ‘Like them?’

  He pulled a face. ‘No. My sons are in school or working for the military. They will become doctors or teachers or engineers, if Allah wills it. These two fools are from my cousin’s family; they are running from the Mujahideen.’

  That meant al-Shabaab. ‘What did they do?’

  ‘They journeyed across the border to join them because they were promised money and thought it would also bring them respect. They found there was no money or respect and what they were told to do was only going to get them killed.’ He shrugged and took another sugar lump and dipped it in his tea. ‘Young people … they have no commitment. Now they must look over their shoulders all the time and pray the Mujahideen will forget about them.’