Everything went quiet for a moment. Justin’s eyes followed a stream of dust along the road going toward the south. Yusuf’s jeep was no longer in front of the house. Justin rushed down the staircase, replacing the empty magazine in his pistol with a fresh one.
As he stepped out back onto the road, he heard loud shouts coming from one of the houses across from the bar. He swung his gun toward the noise. Heavy footsteps followed, and three young men hurried outside. The same ones who were having tea and smoking at the bar a few minutes ago. Two were carrying AKs. The third held a rocket-propelled grenade launcher over his shoulder.
“Drop the guns,” Justin shouted at them. “Drop them.”
The young men froze as they found themselves staring at Justin’s gun.
“We want to help,” said the one with the RPG. “To fight al-Shabaab.”
Kind of late for that, Justin thought, but realized he needed a driver if he was to give chase. “Can you drive?” he asked the young man with the RPG.
“Of course I can.” He sounded slightly offended by the question.
“Good. You’ll drive the ‘technical.’ And you,” Justin said to one of the men with an AK, “You’re in charge of the gun in the back. I got the one in the front. Let’s go.”
The two young men nodded and hurried toward the pickup.
“What about me?” asked the third young man.
Justin looked at him. He was barely a teen, but his eyes sparkled with the joy of revenge. And he was holding his AK with both hands, ready to let out a volley of bullets. “Get in the passenger’s seat. When we get closer, you’ll shoot.”
“I can do that,” the young man replied, then ran to the pickup.
Justin scanned the area around him, full of newly-arrived villagers. He saw the two old men and nodded at them. They were standing next to the closest house to the bar. One of them — the one who had offered him tea — called out to him, “You said you were a journalist.”
And you said you were strong and held back al-Shabaab. It was the first reply that came to Justin’s mind. Instead, he said, “I am a journalist. This is my hobby, my pastime.”
The old man grinned. “You’re very good at it. Alhumdulilah.”
I don’t know if I’ll praise God for this bloodbath, Justin thought, as the young men threw the bodies of the two gunmen off the truck. But I’ll thank Him for keeping me alive through the shootout.
Justin nodded his goodbye, tossed his knapsack in the back of the pickup, and climbed in the truck. He stepped around boxes of ammunition and a few RPGs. The young man had already positioned himself behind the PKM heavy machine gun, two gun belts wrapped around his neck. Justin rapped at the top of the cab and shouted at the driver, “We’re good to go.”
The driver floored the gas. Justin hung on to the wooden handle of the PKM mounted on a makeshift tripod. The pickup turned sharply, then gained speed. He looked at the machine gun. Its barrel had some rust spots and the grip was well-worn. It was likely still in good working condition, but there was a big difference between his definition of “good” and “working” and that of local Somalis. Justin checked the gun belt feeding into the machine gun to make sure it was loaded properly. Once satisfied all was in order, he closed the feed tray cover and engaged its latch.
The driver kept the pickup mainly on the road, and a dust cloud soon engulfed them. Justin brought his headdress down to his eyebrows and wrapped its ends around his mouth. Still, the grains of dirt pricked his eyes, making it difficult to see, let alone aim his gun. The driver flipped on his headlights, which did not help much. Justin’s vision was still reduced to a dozen or so feet in front of the pickup.
The young man in the front passenger’s seat popped his head and his AK out of the window. Before he could pull the trigger, Justin stepped closer to him and shouted, “No shooting until we get closer and until I give the order.”
The young man grunted and scowled, but retreated inside the cab.
Justin peered straight ahead and thought he saw the blurry boxed silhouette of the jeep. As he returned behind his PKM, he saw bullets kicking up dirt on the left side of the road.
“They’re shooting at us,” the front passenger shouted.
“I can see that,” Justin replied, “do not fire back. We need them alive.”
The front passenger let out a torrent of curses. He was interrupted by a couple of lucky bullets that struck the side of the pickup as they went around a curve.
“Man, they’re going to kill us,” shouted the gunman at the back.
Justin thought about his options. They had to return fire, but he could not afford to kill Yusuf and his fighters. Not before they had given up their secrets.
“Drive to the left,” he ordered the driver. “Get us out of the road. I need a clear line of sight.”
The pickup veered in that direction. It lost some speed, since the driver was swerving to avoid the dips and rises of the terrain. They moved out of the dust swirling on the road and were now driving parallel to the jeep.
“Faster, faster,” Justin shouted, readying his machine gun.
The jeep came into his view as Justin aligned the sight of the PKM with the target. It was well within the maximum effective range of the gun of over 1500 yards. Justin pulled the charging handle back, sliding the first round of ammunition from the belt and feeding it onto the bolt face. He returned the handle to its previous position and took a deep breath. A second later, he pulled the trigger, firing a six-round burst, followed by a nine-round burst. He sent the bullets in front of the jeep, mainly as a show of strength and to force the jeep to perhaps slow down. He had no illusions Yusuf was going to stop and surrender without a fight.
Incoming bullets stitched a strange pattern around the pickup. One or two whizzed very close to his head. Justin blasted another barrage, aiming closer to the jeep, then let the machine gun barrel cool for a few seconds.
The AK of the front passenger came out of the window
Justin shouted, “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot!”
The young man was already squeezing out round after round. His weapon was bouncing wildly, the powerful recoil almost throwing the gun out of his small, untrained hands.
“Cease fire, cease fire! Stop shooting!” Justin shouted again, his voice lost amidst the gun reports.
The AK clicked empty and disappeared inside the cab.
“Don’t shoot any more, got it?”
“Fine, got it,” came the reply. The young man sounded very much annoyed.
Another stream of incoming bullets hit the pickup. Justin ducked, but there was not much cover on the truck bed. The insurgents had reinforced the sides of the truck with steel plates crudely soldered together. They had provided some level of extra protection at some point, but now they were full of bullet holes. Justin doubted they were going to survive another onslaught.
The truck sank as the bullets blew one of the tires, then stopped. The windows glass shattered. More bullets hammered the doors. Screams of pain came from the cab. Justin looked at the RPG launcher by his feet. The gunman was lying flat next to the box full of machine gun ammunition belts. “The RPG. Give me the RPG,” Justin said.
It took him a few moments to focus and make sense of Justin’s words.
“The launcher. Now,” Justin said.
The man reached for the weapon and handed it to Justin, who gave it a quick look to make sure it was all in one piece. He rolled on his stomach and picked up the launcher. The barrage of bullets had slowed down, but they were still peppering the truck. This rust bucket isn’t going to be my coffin, Justin thought, tightening his grip around the launcher.