Korfa unzipped his pants, unhooked a money-belt, and handed it to the general.
General Adad opened the Velcro pockets, seeing they were stuffed with cash from Nairobi’s safe house. The general grinned as he watched the jeep, carrying the ransom negotiators, drive out the gate.
Chapter Forty-Nine
The jeep’s worn shock absorbers jostled Dante and Fuller about in the backseat. They felt every bump, pothole, and turn as the Somali pirate drove them from the airport through the good part of Hargeisa, and then plunged into the poor section of the capital of Somaliland. In numbing detail, past eye-flinching poverty, abandoned properties, scarred slums, with the poor moping about, drained of life. Dante had seen it all before, but that night it felt different.
The blunt images flickered with each swerve of the jeep. The mercenaries saw a dirty mother sitting on the curb barefoot, breast-feeding her baby in rags; trash piles strewn here and there with rats crawling over the refuse; the one-arm drunk twitching and staggering, sucking on a bottle of whiskey. Life was hard for most people in the world — Dante understood that. Broken, hungry, filthy conditions amid the squalor that most people of the world endured daily reminded him of growing up in the South Side of Chicago. Dante knew how far he had come from the violent streets, up through the navy SEALs ranks and into semi-retirement. Forming a hostage security company in Azure Shell kept his skills, spirit, and mind from going dull.
As the Jeep turned down another narrow alley, they caught a glimpse of a woman lifting her dress, bent down at the knees, urinating in the middle of the street. The driver honked the horn, hit the high beams, finally chasing her off. The alley was located behind the market street, where the acrid stench of urine and rotting fish heads overwhelmed their senses. Fuller’s eyes watered; Dante covered his nose.
Ahead in the shaky headlights, pirates escorted a line of hostages across the alley from the green building into the fish warehouse — when two men made a break. They dashed away from the jeep’s headlights.
On the curb, the tall pirate waved the hostages to hurry into the warehouse when out of the corner of his eye he saw the Danish captain and the Filipino pilot knock over a guard and sprint down the alley, their once-bound arms cut free. One pirate aimed a RPG launcher, ready to fire, when the tall pirate lifted the weapon in the air and drew a pistol. He squeezed one round and shot the pilot in the thigh, dropping him to ground. He yelped, squirming in pain, holding his wounded leg. The Danish captain glanced back at the fallen pilot, and then to the tall pirate, who aimed the pistol skyward and fired the next round in the air.
The gunfire signaled two pirates to chase after the captain. The pirate with the rocket launcher wheeled around, kneeled, scoping the RPG at the jeep as it pulled up and shut off its headlights. The tall pirate sent more guards to grab the wounded pilot and drag him into the warehouse. Then the ragged Filipino first mate ambled out of the green building unescorted. The sight was strange, but for Dante it was the first mate’s catatonic stare that unnerved him.
The tall pirate, backed by armed guards, strode over to the jeep and pounded on the hood. The driver stepped out of the jeep, sweating, nervous, batting his eyes about. Finally, he looked at the tall pirate and opened the back door, waving the negotiators to come out. Dante and Fuller stepped out, each carrying a black laptop case slung over their shoulders.
They were led into the fish-processing warehouse. Once inside, the smell grew harsher, the lighting dimmer. The odor of the fish lingered, far more acute than outside in the alley.
The hostages were moved into a false-wall room, where Korfa’s double sat at the end of the wood table, donning shades and a kufeya scarf, with a laptop facing him. He motioned the Americans to wait as the bodyguards frisked and patted the hostage negotiators one more time.
“Can’t be too careful,” Korfa Double said in a British accent. “You shot my bro, Sama.”
“We didn’t shoot anybody,” Dante said calmly, not wanting to escalate a delicate first meeting into something intense or unwieldy. Hostage negotiations were always unpredictable, rarely by the book, and could turn upside down in a flash.
Dante stared Korfa Double in the eye. With the hostages stowed in an adjacent room, Korfa’s double was in charge. He wore an earsleeve, allowing the real Korfa to watch and coach the negotiations from the Syrian jet at the airport. With a webcam hidden in the ceiling streaming a live feed to Korfa, the double swung the laptop around showing Dante where the hostages were being kept — next door.
Guards waved the hostages out of a freezer. They were shivering, trying to warm up inside the humid plant, before they would be herded back into the freezer for another icing. “Twenty minutes in the freezer, ten minutes out,” the double said. “The longer our talks go, the worse shape they will be in. Maybe one or two will freeze to death if you talk too much.”
“Who ran away outside?” Fuller asked.
“The captain,” the tall pirate said, standing behind him. “There are no heroes.”
“Know—” the double said, opening meta images of street people of Hargeisa taking pictures and video of the Danish captain running for his life through the market and streets of the Hargeisa ghetto. “He won’t run far. Not with his white skin. How much ransom did you bring?”
“Right now?… A cool million,” Fuller said.
“That’s short by three,” the double replied. He waved Dante and Fuller to sit down and swung the laptop back to face him. They sat down and put their laptop bags on the table.
“Yeah, we know that. It’s by design. We’re dealing with two different shipowners in two different countries,” Fuller said.
“We will give another million dollars for the release of the Blå Himmel supertanker in Berbera and the release of the Shining Sea container ship we flew over in Zeila,” Dante said. “For the last million, we need her crew set free.”
“Ummm, maybe,” the double said.
“We give you this money for the hostages next door and the captain,” Dante said.
“Go out and catch him yourself,” the double said, shaking his head with laughter, his voice deep and calm like the real Korfa.
Inside the Syrian jet, Qas, the young Syrian Electronic Army hacker, emerged from the back office. He sat down at a desk with multiple computer screens, and then set up the real Korfa to talk into a mic, coaching his double in the warehouse, as he watched the negotiations live.
“…Shipowners and insurance companies have another problem,” Dante said, remotely.
The real Korfa spoke into the mic, saying, “Don’t say a word. Let him speak.”
“Look, we know there are two bombs planted under the tanker in Berbera,” Dante pointed out. “They’re on the starboard hull.”
“To hell with the owner,” the double said. “Why look at me? The port guards did it to stop Americans from stealing the hijacked ship back at night.”
Korfa spoke into the mic: “Remember, we don’t trust you. We are trading ransom money for lives. The ship will come later, since you came short of cash.”
The double held up his finger, repeating word for word the first two lines. Fuller gave Dante a look, but kept silent.
General Adad sat down next to Korfa, watching the double repeat the words to the negotiators online. “Your double is good,” the general observed.
“He should be. He went to acting school in London,” Korfa said.