“And no one would be the wiser.”
“Right.” Sean’s brain was running at light speed. “Get Fitz to find all the flight paths of any aircraft leaving that airstrip in the last twenty-four hours. We can narrow it down to a list of likely candidates and go from there. Call me back when you have something.”
“On it.”
Sean ended the call and stared at the map. On top of the innumerable ideas flashing through his mind, one kept popping out at him and smacking him in the face. “Whoever is pulling these strings is being awfully careful,” he said to himself.
Terrorist groups were careful. They planned things well and executed them to near perfection. But this was something else. Even the most organized terrorists left breadcrumbs now and then. The person or persons behind this plan had more cover-ups in place than he’d ever imagined.
That could mean only one thing, at least in Sean’s mind.
Whoever it was had a lot to lose. And Sean wanted to make sure they lost it.
They would have to be wealthy and well connected, possibly with political allies. Sean wondered if it was someone who had their fingers in American pockets. He shook off the thought. He knew there was corruption and conspiracy around every corner. Sometimes he found it best to just not think about it.
After running through a short list of potentials, he wrote off every one. None of the most wanted terrorists in the world had the finances to carry out this sort of intricate operation. It had to be someone bigger, a fish that none of the other fish would mess with. Someone whose pockets were deep but had a hidden agenda, a thirst for chaos.
No faces came to mind.
He sat back down on the edge of the bed and waited, hoping that Fitz and Emily would find what they were looking for.
He didn’t have to wait long. Only thirty minutes later, Emily called him back.
Sean answered on the second ring.
“What have you got for me?”
“Well,” she stalled, “I have good news and bad news.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Yeah. You’re not gonna like any of this news either. The good news is that we found the plane.”
“You’re sure? How did you narrow it down so fast?” he asked, impressed.
“That part was easy enough. Only one plane has flown out of that airstrip in the last twenty-four hours. For the most part, it’s unused. If your hunch is right, it’s safe to say the goods were picked up and loaded onto a plane there.”
“Great. What’s the bad news?”
She hesitated to answer for a few seconds. “It’s where the plane went. We tracked it to a place where Americans have had trouble in the past.”
He already had an idea of what the answer might be before she said the words.
“It landed in Somalia.”
27
The next day, Sean woke early and drove back to Dar es Salaam. From there he took the relatively short flight to Nairobi to meet up with the other agents.
Tommy had stayed behind with the IAA team. After all, he had a major agency to run and a big contract with the Tanzanian government. An engineer was flying in from Sweden later in the day to take a look at the golden statue and run some scans that would show whether or not the thing could be taken apart.
Sean understood. It wasn’t Tommy’s fight. Plus he wasn’t a government agent. The fact that he’d been involved in the first place could have gotten the other three in a heap of trouble. They’d agreed it was something that wouldn’t be put in their reports.
Sean especially didn’t want his friend coming along, given the destination.
Americans didn’t exactly have a great history with carrying out missions in Somalia. The story of the Black Hawk helicopters that were shot down over Mogadishu in 1993 sent chills through people who read the book or watched the movie. Lawlessness abounded in much of the city, and the surrounding countryside mirrored that culture. Still did to this day, in fact.
People did as they pleased, stealing, raping, and murdering with reckless abandon. The chaos had been brought about by local warlords seizing power. As their reach grew, so did the mayhem until the city was bathed in a constant stream of crime and violence.
There were pockets of civilization. The mosques carried out the ritual prayers five times each day. And in the business sector, new buildings were being constructed on an almost yearly basis.
Where the money went was a mystery. One thing was certain. It wasn’t being reinvested back into the community.
Just before he got on the plane to Kenya, Tommy called to wish his friend a safe journey and good luck. They talked for a few more minutes before Sean was called to board.
Once he was in Kenya, Sean found himself sitting on the edge of Fitz’s hotel bed and staring at a laptop. Fitz was in the desk chair near the computer, and Emily sat up straight on the twin bed next to Sean.
The room was sparsely decorated in drab colors that could have come from the 1970s. It was the best the Americans had been able to find on such short notice. But they weren’t on vacation, so what the room looked like didn’t matter.
Fitz pointed at a map on his screen and then zoomed in. “This is Mogadishu.”
“I can see that,” Sean said. He couldn’t ignore the inner smart aleck.
Fitz sighed and kept going. “Anyway, it’s not like it used to be. When those Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, everything was a mess. Now there are emerging boroughs where the people are taking back the city. They’re a long way from being civilized, but it’s headed in the right direction.”
“That’s good to know. So maybe we won’t have as much trouble as we suspect?”
“Not so fast,” Fitz held up a finger. He then pointed at an area on the edge of the city, close to the airport. He zoomed in on an aerial photo of a large building with a tin roof.
“We believe this is where the missiles are. It’s in an area that is still run by a bunch of different gangs. And they pretty much kill anyone they don’t recognize, without asking any questions.”
“Okay. Noted. But I have to ask, Fitz. How do you know that’s where the missiles are?”
“We don’t,” Emily answered for him. “But that warehouse has been abandoned for nearly a decade. It’s a wonder the thing is still standing.”
“Building codes aren’t really their specialty in that part of the world,” Fitz added.
Emily kept going. “Notice anything unusual outside the warehouse?”
Sean leaned in. “Those look like transport trucks.”
“Right. Now what would trucks like that be doing outside an abandoned warehouse?”
Sean’s lips creased. “Very nice deduction, Sherlock.”
“It took us a few hours of scouring the surrounding area of the city,” Fitz explained. “Not the most exciting work, but it paid off.”
“We hope,” Emily said.
“Unless the two of you have a better lead than this, it looks like our only shot. Now the only problem is getting into Somalia. Tension between the Somalis and the Kenyans has been a little rough of late. I doubt we can stroll up to the border and simply drive across.”
Emily shook her head. “No, you’ll need to do it a little more clandestine than that.”
Sean raised an eyebrow. He couldn’t help but notice the way she’d phrased the sentence. “You? What happened to we?”
Fitz answered for her. “It’s better if you go alone. One person can move with a lot less notice than two. Plus she’s a woman.”
“Hey!” Her faux protest brought a grin to Sean’s face.
Fitz finished his thought. “An American woman in Mogadishu would be like seeing a hundred-foot unicorn walking around in Central Park. You don’t want that kind of attention.”