“Nai, we are meeting a US negotiating team in a few hours — after dark. You’re going to help me close the deal. Hostages for money, simple, right?” Korfa said, motioning the guards to take her away until she would be needed.
Out of the shadows, Bahdoon stepped to Korfa, and said, “General Adad has landed.”
Korfa nodded. The pirate warlord flashed one finger for the number of men who would join him to meet Syrian General Adad at the airport, and tapped Bahdoon on the shoulder.
Korfa and Bahdoon followed a dozen armed pirates out the back door of the warehouse into an abandoned building across a vacant alley. A tall pirate put down a RPG grenade launcher, opened double padlocks, and stepped inside a filthy cement floor room where the Blue Heaven crewmen were being held hostage. A dozen sat on the floor with their arms tied behind their backs, duct-tape slapped over their mouths.
Sporting a bloodied head bandaged and missing a tooth, the ship’s Filipino first mate watched over the crew. Had Korfa found the hostages set free by the first mate, he would’ve castrated him under Somaliland law.
After a swift, brutal beating, Bahdoon sat down with the broken first mate and got inside his head. Within half an hour Bahdoon had flipped the captor, persuading him to work for him, and not the ship’s crew.
Bahdoon stepped out from behind the armed pirates and handed two canteens of water to the first mate to give to his crewmen one at a time. The first mate started with the captain, in the far corner of the room. He ripped the duct tape off the captain’s mouth and pressed the canteen to his parched lips. Water ran down the captain’s face as he gulped like a thirsty dog.
The tall pirate clicked digital photos and shot a video of the hostages being given water by the first mate.
The crew was alive, beaten, but faring well under such foul conditions, with their mental health deteriorating each passing day; their images would be sent out in two batches. First, to the shipowners and NATO anti-piracy command on Socotra Island, and then on the World Wide Web and social media sites for all to see.
Korfa planned to light a firestorm of international fear by bringing the world audience to the plight of his people in Somalia; of the US and European forces invading the lands of Islam; of the toxic waste dumped off the shores of Somalia, poisoning a generation of Somali children; of foreign countries stealing their fish; of Somali people starving, malnourished, dying in a civil war that the CIA sponsored with the former puppet leader Barre in the 1980s. Korfa no longer relished being just a warlord. He wanted a ton of flesh, not a pound, for all the injustices put on him and his people. Spurred on by the death of his brother Samatar, he would kill to get it.
Bahdoon uploaded the digital files to an al Qaeda cloud portal with the cryptic note:
Beheadings will start at dawn, one every six hours, unless our demands are met. Failure to deliver, attached images will be shared with the world. Somalia’s Heart Bleeds
Chapter Forty-Eight
A landing signal worker emerged from the white control tower, hopped in a cart, and was driven out to a waiting plane with Arabic lettering painted on the tail along with a diplomatic emblem. The dark-skin Somali wore a grimy baseball hat and yellow safety vest, and held a pair of yellow paddles in his hand.
They rode across one runway to the distant tarmac at the far perimeter fence of the airport. Just inside the chain-link fence, crowned with coils of concertina wire, sat the plane with its airstairs folded open by the cabin door.
An armed Syrian soldier stood at the bottom of the airstairs, waving the cart to ride over. The driver crossed the runway and parked, turning off the engine. The soldier approached the driver as the signal worker took off the safety vest and handed it and the paddles to the driver. He pulled off the hat and tossed it in the cart. Korfa showed his face and studied the soldier, saying in Arabic, “General Adad is waiting for me. I am Korfa, brother of the slain warlord Samatar,” he said to the soldier, who clicked a radio mic twice.
An assistant to General Adad peered out the cabin door, spotted Korfa, and motioned the soldier to let the Somali warlord board the plane. Korfa climbed the airstairs. Bodyguards greeted the warlord at the cabin door and patted him down as a precaution. Korfa pulled up his shirt showing his bare chest and abdomen scarred from knife fights and bullet wounds. Confirming the Somali warlord wasn’t wearing a wire or carrying weapons, the Syrians escorted Korfa into the jet and closed the door behind him.
A young female Syrian officer, assistant to General Adad, offered Korfa a drink of scotch, whisky, or gin. The Somali warlord wagged his finger no and reached for a bottle of mineral water. After a few minutes, General Adad emerged from a back office, sitting his weary frame in a leather chair across from Korfa. They shook hands. The general offered the warlord a Cuban cigar, but he declined that, too — Korfa neither drank nor smoked.
“How is the project coming along?” Korfa asked in Arabic.
“We were on track… we were ahead of schedule until being attacked at the missile site,” the general said, reaching for a glass of twenty-one-year-old single-malt scotch, on the rocks with a twist, from his assistant. “It was the CIA, dressed as journalists. An al Qaeda deception. Reporters, we thought, snooping around the Iraqi border,” he said, taking a well-deserved swig.
“I have the same problem here in Somalia. Too many spies.”
“You have a problem? I have ISIS to the north and al Qaeda to the south in Yemen.”
“A couple of American SEALs landed yesterday,” Korfa said. “They are hunting for me while a US plane will be dropping off the hostage negotiating team across the runway.”
“When are you supposed to meet them?” the general asked, chewing ice.
“In twenty minutes,” he said without looking at his watch.
“I see. Don’t you have to go then?”
Korfa shook his head, and replied, “My double will be there. Right after we make the trade of the tanker hostages for money, we will release the images of the hostages being fed water. But General Adad, we keep the Danish captain.”
“Why, Korfa? Why risk that?
“Betrayal.”
“Revenge? Don’t Americans want to confirm the captain is alive?”
“Of course. We tell, no, we then show the negotiators that he escaped. Street photos on our social media sites will prove the Danish rat runs through the ghetto of Hargeisa and is alive.” Korfa drank the sparkling water. “Until we shoot him for escaping.”
A Syrian army copilot emerged from the cockpit, announcing, “General, the US bird has landed. Across the tarmac on the other end of the airport.”
General Adad signaled his assistant to bank the lights in the jet. He led Korfa to the port windows, where they peered into the darkness. Down the far end of the runway, they saw the flashing lights with rotor blades whirring in the dark air. A silhouette of a quartet of armed navy SEALs led hostage negotiators Dante Dawson and Chris Fuller out of the Black Hawk to a waiting jeep.
“How did you arrange the Americans to show up so fast? It usually takes weeks,” General Adad asked with a wave of his hand.
“We sent a message to Washington through our hot channel,” Korfa said. “What are you going to do with the missile site now?”
“Build it,” he said, adding, “But with a new site in Yemen. We need to unleash the holy hell of my Syrian Electronic Army.” He banged his fist.
Korfa turned away from the window and looked the general in the eye.
“Why wait, Ferryman?” asked the general. “Cut me in on half of the ransom money and I will bomb the US base when the second batch of hostages land in Djibouti. My Syrian e-Army is already inside the base’s firewall.”