Dead Centre - Andy McNab [92]
18
Tuesday, 22 March
THE PLACE WAS crawling with lights. There were thousands of the things – not just the ribbon of cooking fires and lanterns I’d been expecting.
I kept the skiff as close to the shore as I could. As we were thrown about by the surf the adhan for Fajr prayers, the first of the day, kicked out from mosques all over town. I checked behind left, to the east. A thin ribbon of light was starting to stretch across the horizon.
The engine howled as the propeller momentarily left the water. Awaale was now sitting on the mid-ship bench, a hand either side of him, gripping it tight. He still wasn’t enjoying this one bit.
‘Is this Merca, Awaale? Is Merca this big?’ I leant forward, keeping one hand on the tiller. ‘You sure this is it?’
‘Yes, this is it. I’m sure.’
I checked my iPhone. I still had three bars of signal. It was a quarter to five. About the time I’d expected to be here.
I pushed the tiller sideways as we bounced over the surf line. The skiff slewed and powered back the way we’d come.
Awaale spun round. ‘Back to Mogadishu? That would be much better, Mr Nick. This is a very dangerous place.’
I raised my free hand. ‘Watch and learn, mate. You lads need skills if you’re going to go up against Lucky Justice. Otherwise, you’re all going to end up dead. That’s an end to the parties and women, and al-Shabab will come straight in and take over the city. That wouldn’t be good, would it? You’ve got to learn a few tactics.’
He nodded slowly. ‘You’re going to teach me?’
‘As much as I can. But tell me this. Why don’t you team up with Lucky to fight al-Shabab?’
He looked at me like I was mad. ‘No way. We must kill Lucky first.’
‘It’s up to you, mate. Sometimes you’ve got to look at the big picture. You’ve got to think about the way you’re doing things. That beach we’ve just turned away from is in the middle of the town, isn’t it? So what would have happened if we’d just landed and wandered round looking for them?’
We’d now cleared the surf and were paralleling the white line of breakers. The lights of Merca were over my left shoulder as we headed north.
‘You would fight and you would get your friends out.’
‘No, I would lose. I have no idea what’s in there. Do you?’
‘Yes. There are guys from Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi.’
‘Exactly. And they’ve all got weapons. I’d be dead, and the three I’ve come for would still be prisoners. So I’m not going to do that. I’m going to use my head. First, I make sure that this thing is hidden up so we can escape.’
He thought about it, then nodded.
‘The next thing is to find them. Do you know where they’re being held? You’ve been to this town.’
He looked at me again like I was mad. ‘They’ll be with all the other prisoners. The thieves. The adulterers. The cheats.’
‘So there’s a jail?’
He nodded. ‘The Russians built it. Before I was born.’
The lights of the town were about a kilometre behind us. A light grey arch was growing out of the sea to our right. The sun itself wouldn’t be far behind.
I could just make out the shapes of vessels parked further out on the swell, maybe five or six of them. Dozens of skiffs lined the beach, pulled up away from the water line.
I swung the tiller to take us in. Beyond the skiffs I could make out a procession of scrub-covered dunes, punctuated from time to time by small, dried-up wadis. We could drag the skiff up there and hide it in the dead ground. If it wasn’t there when we got back, or had been compromised, I’d lift a technical or another skiff. Fuck it – I’d worry about that later. I had plenty to do first.
The propeller guard scraped along the bottom. I tilted up the 150 as the bow dug into the sand.
I slung the AK over my shoulder, jumped out and splashed water at Awaale. ‘Come on, mate. Get out and push.’
He clambered out reluctantly. The skiff moved easily up the sand, like a sled. The wadi we pulled it into looked like a golfcourse bunker.
Awaale collapsed alongside it. Like mine, his Timberlands and the bottom of his jeans were wet with seawater and crusted with