The truth was, I’d flown in planes like this too many times to be concerned. If it hadn’t received its last full service, or somebody had left out a few critical bolts, there was damn all I could do about it. The only thing worrying me was the sports bag under my seat. If a cop or security guard got conscientious and took a look inside, I’d have a hard time explaining the contents.
The aircraft dipped and yawed incessantly, giving us occasional glimpses of brown-and-green swathes of land below, and endless stretches of blue sky above. We’d embarked with little or no apparent organization at Mombasa airport, shuffling up the steps surrounded by people carrying what might have been their lifetime possessions. If there was any aircrew save the pilot, we hadn’t seen them.
We were seated separately. Piet was in his normal persona as a park ranger, while I was travelling as a tourist consultant from New York, checking out the coastal and National Parks region for extreme tour organisers in the States. There were plenty of people with the money and time who liked to go off-track to remote regions, so the cover wasn’t much of a stretch. I’d also arranged for a business accommodation bureau to answer any calls while I was away, so if someone did think to call up and check, they’d hear a genuine sounding business name and a request to call back another time.
Piet hadn’t yet told me how we were going to travel on from Malindi to the border area with Somalia, but I wasn’t too concerned, since I figured he had something worked out. By sea would be one way, and shouldn’t take more than a few hours, hugging the coast to stay off any local radar. The Somalis pretty much ruled the waves around here, but since their hunting ground was further out, often by hundreds of kilometres, we’d only be in trouble if we ran into one of their motorised skiffs coming in for supplies. White faces close to the border would undoubtedly raise their suspicions.
We hit the ground at Malindi with a bump and careered down the short runway, which was surprisingly smooth. The airport was without frills: an L-shaped, east-west and north-south layout, with a collection of peeling sheds for a terminal, often used by adventurous tourists travelling to the Masai Mara game reserve. Beyond the perimeter, the town, which was substantial, lay baking in the sun, a mix of thatched houses, stucco-type buildings and, in the centre, the tall minaret of the local mosque.
As we turned and taxied towards the terminal, we were watched by a few locals, seemingly unaware of the hazards of walking across the runway when a plane was coming in to land.
I followed Piet down the steps and across the tarmac. The heat was bouncing off the ground in waves, and I didn’t much like the idea of being inside a shed for long. So I nodded at the uniformed guard standing by the door, and waved my sat phone. He pointed behind the building across the access road, to a bunch of tables and chairs under some trees where two men and a woman were busy shouting into cell phones.
I walked over to join them, leaving Piet to do his thing, and dialled Vale in London.
‘They’re in Nairobi, at the Crowne Plaza.’ Vale’s voice was tinny and faint. The time-lag while using a sat phone was like holding a conversation under water.
‘What’s the plan?’
‘There’s been a delay. Xasan, the middleman, says the Somali gang holding the hostages has been held up by bad weather. Their main man is called Musa — his face is on the data I supplied. Xasan and our people will probably be heading out to the RV early tomorrow.’
‘Do we know where that is?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ Vale gave me the coordinates for the town of Kamboni, just inside Somalia. The meeting was to take place in a remote beach-front villa a few clicks north of the town, close to a fishing village called Dhalib.
I was surprised they had been given such precise information so early. The usual way of these things was that locations for meetings were a closely guarded secret until the last minute to avoid compromising the site.
‘It’s a puzzle,’ Vale agreed. ‘Particularly since there’s been a strong Kenyan Defence Force presence in the region for the past eighteen months, centred on the port of Kismaayo to the north. They were sent in to put a dent in al-Shabaab’s activities and to stop them bleeding across the border into Kenya. But why Xasan and his crew have felt free enough to hold any kind of meeting so close to the border is a mystery.’
‘Could be they’re operating under the radar while the Kenyans are focussed on looking to the north.’
‘Maybe. Their National Security Intelligence Service aren’t supplying any useful answers, and claim the problem of al-Shabaab has been curtailed.’
It seemed ridiculous that with a military force so close, these negotiations were being allowed to happen without any kind of protection from the army. I said as much to Vale.
‘That’s not in our control,’ he replied heavily. ‘Xasan came forward with the plan and we’ve gone along with it.’ His tone made it clear what he thought of that. ‘Even if I could, I can’t ask the Kenyans for help. There’s a risk they’d go in mob-handed and we’d lose the hostages — who probably aren’t being held close by, anyway.’
He was right. All it would take was one phone call and the hostages would turn up dead.
‘We can’t send in our own people for the same reasons,’ Vale continued. ‘The Somalis have got armed boats in the area, so a seaborne approach would be difficult to hide. And the Kenyans won’t take lightly to our interference, no matter what the reasoning.’ He went on to explain that the area around the town of Kamboni was still thought to host limited elements of al-Shabaab and other groups, all with strongly suspected links to al-Qaeda. ‘If Xasan and his contacts are holding talks here, it’s with the tacit acceptance of al-Shabaab — which confirms what we’ve suspected for some time: that Musa must be one of their main players. Nothing moves in this region without their knowledge and his say-so.’
‘Could be a reason for the early release of the location,’ I suggested. ‘They’re checking to see if the news gets out.’
‘Exactly,’ he conceded. ‘Even more reason for you to be careful going in. They’ll be watching for you.’
I saw Piet coming across the perimeter road, so I cut the call and went to meet him. He was carrying a gun bag, which I assumed he’d had locked away somewhere secure inside the terminal. He looked relaxed and led me to one side of the terminal building.
‘You’ll want to see how we go from here,’ he said. ‘How’s your head for heights?’
‘Heights don’t bother me; it’s landings I worry about.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ He turned his head and nodded. ‘Meet Daisy. She’s your new best friend.’
‘Christ.’ Daisy was a surprise, but immediately made sense. I was looking at a microlight aircraft with a V-shaped wing above two open seats and an engine with a large rear-facing propeller.
‘She might not look much, but she’s my daily workhorse. She’s a flexwing, powered by a four-cylinder, four-stroke, eighty horse-power Rotax nine-one-two engine. I tell you that only so you know she’ll get us to where we’re going better than anything else.’ He looked at me. ‘You ever flown in one before?’
I had, as it happened. It had been with a madman of an army pilot at the controls, and hadn’t ended well. ‘Once.’
He grinned and clapped a hand on my arm. ‘Great. So you know the drill.’
‘Drill?’