Then he let fate determine what happened next, and continued crawling toward the convoy.
If they were affiliated with Reed, King knew he would be dead in seconds. He would only be able to squeeze off a few shots before he was outnumbered, given the number of vehicles waiting for him. They had effectively bottlenecked him into a trap.
He slowed to a halt a few feet from the meeting point and waited for two silhouetted Somali men to stride over to his side of the jeep. He rested an elbow on the door and huffed for dramatic effect, acting as if the stoppage were simply an inconvenience.
Like he drove this route all the time.
If they didn’t know Reed, it might save him.
Then he caught a glimpse of the uniforms, and changed his approach.
‘Evening, officers,’ he said.
26
King recognised the insignia on the plain olive button-up shirts — these were officers of the Somali Police Force. What they were doing all the way out here was another matter. If Reed had been correct in his assessment, and this road paved the way for a direct smuggling route to Afgoye, then these men had to be accepting of the practice if they stationed themselves along the trail.
King thought hard as he waited for a response. Perhaps he needed to pay a tariff to be granted safe passage through to Afgoye. He cursed inwardly. He hadn’t left the compound in Mogadishu with a single dollar to his name.
The foolishness of his decisions came racing into the forefront of his mind as the two Somali officers exchanged a befuddled look and motioned for one of their comrades to step forward.
The officer on the left motioned to King, and simply grunted.
‘English?’ the man who had stepped out of the shadows said, surprise in his tone. ‘You speak English too?’
Too.
Reed had been here.
‘Yeah,’ King said, maintaining the disgruntled demeanour. ‘You’re the translator?’
‘Yes.’
‘You usually here?’
‘Only when I need to be,’ the man said.
So they knew Reed was coming. He let someone know in advance.
They’d prepared accordingly, bringing along someone to translate.
King rolled with it.
He analysed the trio, all of them crowding around his side of the vehicle, unsure of how to proceed. They had clearly seen the HK416 assault rifle lying in full view across the passenger seat, but none of them bothered to draw their own weapons.
Either they felt entirely in control, or they thought King had something to do with all of this.
Reed must not have been clear with the specifics.
King rolled with it once more. He narrowed his gaze in mock suspicion and pointed an arm lazily ahead. ‘I’m his brother.’
None of them spoke a word.
‘You going to let me through?’
‘He said nothing about a brother,’ the translator said.
Bingo.
The first hurdle had been traversed. The mere vocalisation of a denial proved that they were unclear about the details. If Reed had implicitly instructed them that he was acting alone and that anyone attempting to pass themselves off as his allies were to be gunned down, then King wouldn’t stand a chance. But the man must have been ambiguous, for the trio of SPF officers merely loitered around in apparent confusion.
But it also meant that Reed had managed to get himself in bed with the Somali Police Force.
How?
Why?
For now, he played ball. The last thing he wanted was for the trio to suspect his intentions, see through his charade, and begin to grill him on the exact details of his involvement. King spotted two or three more silhouettes milling around the vehicles behind them. Six-on-one didn’t favour him, and he had no intention of starting a bloodbath amongst these men. He doubted they deserved it. More than likely, Reed had bent them to his will, just as he’d done to King.
So he switched up his composure, growing visibly frustrated, taking the offensive.
‘Who cares what he said? He told me to follow this piece-of-shit trail until I met up with him in a dozen or so miles. What’s the issue?’
‘We did not know you were coming.’
‘Too bad. And I need a cut of the payment.’
It was a calculated risk — if it proved incorrect, he would brush it off as a breakdown of communication between the involved parties.
It didn’t.
‘Why?’ the translator said, following the question up with a muttered explanation to his two colleagues in Somali. Then he switched back to English. ‘That money was for us.’
‘I need some of it. I don’t need to tell you why. He told me you wouldn’t protest.’
They exchanged a series of glances, each sporting expressions somewhere between annoyance and apprehension. King imagined they didn’t want to upset Reed. He wondered how handsomely he had paid them…
Where’d he get the money from? King thought.
Finally, the translator relented after an awkward silence. ‘How much did he say?’
‘Half.’
The man raised both eyebrows. ‘No.’
‘There’s no negotiation.’
‘You are right. We will not accept that. No negotiation needed. You can tell your brother to come back and talk to us about it if he needs. He should have told us he was dropping off half of it for a follow-up tail.’
‘He’s in a hurry,’ King said. Then he threw both hands in the air, exaggerating the gesture. ‘Okay, fine. A fifth.’
‘A fifth?’
‘Yes. If you can’t do that, my brother will be back. And he will be angry.’
The translator muttered again to his comrades, and they exchanged words. There was hesitancy in their voices, but also a thin undertone of acceptance. They must have expected some kind of catch to Reed’s offering — which made King wonder about the size of the payoff.
He found out a few seconds later.
The translator stepped away from the jeep and disappeared into the darkness, stepping out of King’s field of view. He was blinded by the headlights of the vehicle stalling idly ahead, and he quickly realised he was at the mercy of these men. They could send a round through his skull under cover of darkness, and he would never know what had hit him until it was too late.
But the man returned to the driver’s side a moment later, clutching a fat wad of notes between his fingers. He passed the stash across and King tried not to boggle his eyes at the amount of money he’d been handed. It had to be at least twenty thousand dollars, all Benjamin Franklins.
He didn’t react outwardly, instead taking the bundle with a nod of satisfaction and dropping it carelessly onto the passenger seat as if it meant nothing at all. The cash pooled around the barrel of the HK416.
King motioned to the pair of vehicles parked across the trail itself, blocking his way.
‘My brother will be angry if I wait around any longer,’ he said.
The translator nodded and gestured to his friends. The other officers slunk away, and the next thing King heard was a pair of engines coughing and spluttering into life. For a moment he thought it was too good to be true, and that the next thing he saw would be a gun barrel rising toward his face. But the headlights died out and the vehicles backtracked simultaneously.
The next thing he knew, he had leant pressure on the accelerator and moved off with a slight nod to the translator. The man watched him go, confused and apprehensive but unwilling to protest the demands in any significant fashion.
King slotted straight through the newly-formed gap in the convoy, missing the Somali Police Force sedans on either side of the jeep with inches to spare. As soon as he was through, he crushed the accelerator to the floor and roared away from the procession, eager to cover as much ground as he could.