The details were kept sparse, as they always were. He had only completed a single mission for Black Force and its inner workings were suitably muddled — King imagined that little ground had been made between the time he had arrived back from Tijuana and the moment he had been thrust aboard a cargo plane with zero information as to what he was doing.
He dropped into a cold metal seat and pressed a pair of fingers into his eyeballs, rolling with the stress and the tension and the unease.
Truth was, he wouldn’t like to be anywhere else.
Internally, he felt a strange calm permeating through him.
‘Lars,’ he said, interrupting his own twisted thoughts as his handler dropped into the seat alongside him. ‘Please. Give me something.’
‘Truth is,’ Lars said, ‘I don’t know much more than you do.’
‘Then what the fuck are we doing here?’
‘Rolling with the punches,’ Lars said. ‘I don’t know if you understand this, but this is our life now. This is what we signed up for. You and me both. I’m not some know-it-all who’s secretly conspiring to keep you in the dark. I’m reacting the same as you are — confused by what’s unfolding, determined to make things right. You get that?’
‘I get it.’
‘Then bear with me.’
‘Give me everything you know.’
‘Hang on.’
Lars straightened up as a pair of men in khaki overalls stepped into the fuselage, their footsteps ringing off the walls. ‘You’re the pilots?’
‘Pilot and co-pilot,’ one of the men said. ‘We’re responsible for depositing you two in Mogadishu.’
‘No,’ Lars said, wagging a finger. ‘Just one of us. I’m heading back with you.’
‘Then why are you here?’ the other man said, disdain in his tone.
‘Shut up and fly the plane,’ Lars said. ‘Off you go.’
He shooed the pair into the cockpit, where they invisibly set to work firing up the aircraft.
‘No-one else?’ King said, shooting daggers around the cockpit. ‘Just us?’
‘Just us,’ Lars said. ‘Or, to be specific, just you.’
‘And what am I here to do? For the millionth goddamn time.’
Lars paused, rubbing the back of his neck with a calloused hand. ‘Have you heard of AMISOM?’
‘No.’
‘African Union Mission to Somalia. They’re a peacekeeping operation, backed by the United Nations. They were allowed into Mogadishu a few months ago after much deliberation. They’ve managed to secure a small portion of the city — namely, the major areas of transportation. Land around the airport and the seaport, to be specific. They’re doing good for the common people, the civilians whose lives have been torn to shreds by the civil war.’
‘Noble,’ King mused. ‘But I don’t see how I fit into this.’
‘You don’t. At least, not into their structure. They do their own thing, and we do ours. Unfortunately, sometimes they overlap.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Our Armed Forces offer sporadic protection to the peacekeepers — every now and then. Ordinarily we would embed ourselves into the UN peacekeepers themselves, but the blue helmets were forced out of Somalia. So a handful of our Force Recon Marines are carted over to spend time with the Union peacekeepers. Make sure they don’t catch a stray bullet, if you get what I mean. It’s not discussed anywhere public, because we’re strictly there for protection — and not many of us. We’re not there to start World War Three.’
‘Okay,’ King said. ‘I’m still in the dark here.’
‘I’m working up to it,’ Lars said. ‘Bear with me.’
The ground shifted underneath them, and King reached for a harness as the rear ramp of the cargo plane finished its ascent and the aircraft taxied out onto the runway. Without any portholes or windows in sight, both he and Lars were blind to the takeoff. There was a drawn-out moment of acceleration, then the typical stomach lurch as the wheels left the tarmac and the cargo plane jettisoned into the sky.
Destination: Somalia.
Nothing more reassuring, King thought.
‘There’s an issue with one of our Force Recon Marines,’ Lars admitted as the plane reached altitude and coasted into a monotone trajectory.
King pressed a finger on either side of his nostrils and blew hard, popping each eardrum in turn and acclimatising his senses to the altitude. Relief washed over him.
‘Who?’ he said.
‘His name’s Bryson Reed.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘Good goddamn work, if I’m being honest,’ Lars said. ‘I don’t like to let personal opinions get in the way of an operation, but this man has taken the initiative and I commend him for it.’
‘Good for him,’ King said.
Lars clearly sensed the unrest, because his tone changed. He hunched over, resting his elbows on his knees, and leant in. At the same time, he lowered his tone.
‘Reed’s similar to you,’ Lars said. ‘In fact, this little escapade has put him on the radar for Black Force. I’m thinking that we could make him the second recruit to our organisation. We’re brand new, so we’re improvising as we go, but I think…’
King reached forward and clamped a hand down on Lars’ thigh, pressing enough force into the action to startle the man and seize his attention.
‘Lars,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘We’re headed to Somalia for a reason.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘How about you stop fucking around with your fantasies, and you tell me exactly what Bryson Reed has done to warrant all this attention and justify snatching me out of a hotel room at all hours of the night and throwing me onto a cargo plane headed for Mogadishu. How does that sound?’
Lars sensed the shift in atmosphere, the frustration leeching out of King’s pores. He nodded and leant back in his seat. ‘Okay.’
‘Are we on the same page now?’
‘We are.’
‘What the hell has Bryson Reed done?’
‘He abandoned protocol, deserted the AMISOM unit he’d been assigned to protect, and stormed into the Port of Mogadishu. He single-handedly busted a trafficking ring smuggling narcotics and firearms into the city, to sell at extortionate prices to the jihadist militants and the army. They discovered him snooping around the port, and now he’s wanted by almost every dirty profiteer in Mogadishu for spoiling the plans of an international supply chain. There’s already been an attempt on his life by al-Shabaab militants, who we think were hired by the dock workers to silence Reed for good. All in all, he’s caused a shitstorm.’
‘Sounds like my type of guy,’ King said.
‘I thought you might say that. We need you to protect him. And — if it comes down to it — hire him.’
5
Before Lars elaborated, King raised a hand and gestured to the fuselage around them. The claustrophobic tunnel encapsulated them, sealing them into an aircraft travelling twenty thousand feet above the ground.
‘What is this?’ he said, diverting the conversation away from the most pressing issue.
Lars raised an eyebrow. ‘The plane?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What about it?’
‘It’s a civilian aircraft.’
‘You’re perceptive.’
‘Comes with the job description.’
‘It’s the easiest way to get us in-country.’
‘How so?’
‘Somalia’s a cesspool of degradation,’ Lars said. ‘They’re in a constant state of war. The situation lends itself to those searching for a profit.’
‘Standard airlines?’ King said. ‘What about military planes? Our planes?’