His preparations had consisted of making sure the Battlesuit had recovered from the dunking in the Gulf of Aden. The material had finally dried after spending the afternoon stretched across the Peleliu’s steel deck. It had slowly stretched over his frame until the heat from his body activated chemicals in the fabric and it relaxed, fitting like a glove.
Luckily, the Battlesuit’s plates were still one hundred percent. He had spent the evening cleaning and oiling his spare M11 pistols. His watertight backpack had protected his other gear, including the M11 suppressors, and the pistols now hung from his hips. He checked his HK416, on loan from the ship’s armory, and cursed himself for not bringing a spare HK 417 from Area 51.
They reached the edge of the beach and jumped from the boat, landing in warm water up to their knees. They grabbed the nylon ropes and hauled the boat up the craggy beach. Taylor made a chopping noise with his hand, up the beach, and John nodded.
Time to go.
He concentrated and activated the map overlay in the VISOR. It appeared on the split screen, above the output from the thermal and night vision. He headed north, up the beach, running in a slow jog, half-crouched.
He was tired. With the atmospheric disturbances still causing communication problems, he could not request Implant activation. The Implant had shut off sometime during his sleep, and the lack of pain relief was apparent when he woke.
His arm and leg still hurt from the wounds suffered in Syria, but his prosthetic was really bothering him. Each step sent a mild electric shock of pain up the prosthetic and into his tibia.
He took a deep breath as he crested the hill and looked toward the village of Ely. He was going to have to put the pain out of his mind.
Hard to focus when I feel like I’m moving in molasses.
The village — a small city, really, as rough estimates put the population over twenty thousand — was a collection of stone buildings, some no bigger than huts, and it stretched over several square miles.
He approached the village, trying to match the overhead map with the display in the VISOR. He tucked the HK behind his shoulder and pulled the M11 from his right hip holster. He couldn’t risk the HK unless it was a full-out battle, because once he started firing, it would wake the town.
The M11 with subsonic ammo and suppressor had a much better chance of killing without raising the dead. And, if all else failed, he still had his Kabar knife.
Lights flickered in some of the houses. He stopped and pressed himself against the wall of a stone house with darkened windows.
It occurred to him, then, that without satellite contact, he was free. The OTM couldn’t monitor him. Eric couldn’t watch his data feed. For the first time since he’d been abducted after blowing up the Red Cross building, he could do as he pleased.
He hated himself for it, but he thought of running. He could remove the VISOR. Without it to act as a relay, the Implant would require a network connection or a satellite tower to give away his location. It would severely limit where he could go, but he could disappear into the Somali back country.
He suspected that they had a way to disable him… perhaps even kill him… as long as the VISOR could connect via satellite or cell tower. The OTM could reach him anywhere in the world.
Surely not in the center of Somalia?
Did they have taps on Somali’s meager cellphone network? What if he crossed into Ethiopia or Kenya? Could he really escape the OTM? If he could find someone to operate, could the Implant be removed?
He shook his head. It was crazy. The Implant was connected to his aorta. Could he really trust a cut-rate doctor with minimal training to perform surgery in the bush?
Besides, there was another reason for not leaving. What he had done that cold January in Fairfax, Virginia, could not be forgiven. It couldn’t be washed away.
I deserve this.
And, like that, he came back to his senses. The chronometer in the VISOR showed only five seconds had passed, five seconds where he had contemplated freedom.
The only freedom I can earn is death, but only after the OTM is done with me.
He peeked around the corner of the house and looked for heat signatures. A pair of men patrolled in the distance, but they were headed northwest, away from him. He stepped around the corner and headed up the dirt alley.
According to the intelligence, Asad Hassan lived near the center of the village, not down by the shore with most of the pirates. He believed himself to be an honest fisherman and leader of the local coast guard, committed to securing the shores and protecting the people of his village. Hijacking a cargo ship now and then and ransoming it back to wealthy foreigners was just another means to provide for his people. There were numerous reports of him giving speeches, protesting the world powers and their destruction of the fish habitats off the coast.
He continued through the village, ducking under the few lit windows. He was sweating, even though it was hours after sunset. He watched in the distance as the patrol rounded a corner and headed west down another alley.
According to the map displayed in the VISOR, he was close. The building in front was larger than the rest, barely half the size of a typical American house. A light in the front window was the only sign the house was occupied.
He leaned into one of the house’s darkened windows. The occupants blazed with heat in the VISOR’s thermal vision. He flipped over to night vision and saw a woman, asleep on a cot against the wall. At least four children slept on the floor, their tiny bodies clutching bundles of rags for pillows.
It didn’t surprise him. Hassan might be the local leader of the pirates, but pirating had become a business, like any other. Hassan paid fees and taxes to several warlords in Mogadishu, and rumors abounded of foreign investors bankrolling their activities. Hassan was wealthy by Somali standards.
He made a quick circuit around the house, peeking in all the darkened windows. Three men slept in another room, this time on a stone floor. He guessed they were guards, by the AK-47’s leaning against the corner wall.
He crouched down at the front of the house and paused to remove a thin wire from his side pouch. It had a plastic ball on one end, the size of a pea. He made a ninety degree bend in the wire and slowly eased the thread-like wire to the corner of the window.
The fiber-optic camera interfaced with the VISOR and provided him a fish-eyed view of the room. Two men were sitting at a table. The man he guessed was Hassan faced away from him, drinking from a bottle. Hassan was in his late fifties and was of normal weight, a rarity among the villagers. That, more than anything, tipped him off to Hassan’s identity. The whip-thin man across from him stared at the table, slowly chewing.
Probably khat.
The thin man’s eyes were glassy, the corner of his mouth drooping. Hassan would speak and the thin man would slowly nod, then continue chewing.
He checked his chronometer. He needed to get Hassan back to the shore as soon as possible, but couldn’t risk a firefight. The men patrolling the village would return, sooner or later. The Battlesuit offered him some camouflage, but he wasn’t invisible.
He didn’t wait long. Hassan barked an order and the thin man stood, lazily picking up his AK-47, and staggered to the door.
He yanked the camera back and took cover around the corner, sticking the camera low around the stone wall and watching as the thin man headed northwest, following the same path as the patrolling men.
He had to be quick. Without a drone feed, he could only guess how long it would take before the guards returned. He eased back around the corner and used the camera to look inside. Hassan was still in the same spot, drinking from the bottle.