Predator Paradise. Don Pendleton

on board for this so-called big event? Let rivals grab the glory these whites were offering? What glory? Or was this some elaborate ruse, a trap being laid by rivals? He didn’t think so; none of the competition was that clever or devious. His rivals were, for the most part, thugs with hair-trigger tempers, rarely, if ever, thinking through the consequences to their impulsive violence. If he was right, then being presented with some bigger picture…

      Dugula felt curiosity and greed wrestle him to the brink of acceptance. “How much money?”

      “Is that a yes?” Blue Eyes wanted to know.

      “The money?”

      “Two million, deposited into a numbered account in one of several European banks of your choosing,” One Eye answered.

      “Half on acceptance,” Scar Hand said, “the other half when the curtain drops on the last act.”

      “I have a large clan,” Dugula said. “Many men to feed, house, equip, arm. They say there are over two million assault rifles in Mogadishu, but, as you said, my ambitions are bigger than just having my men ride around in technicals with outdated Russian machine guns. You demand much, tell me next to nothing. I hear promises, words, big plans. I would like to hear how badly you are willing to enlist my services. Two million,” he told them, shaking his head softly, lips pursed.

      He watched them, no change of expression, their eyes cold, then Blue Eyes said, “Four. That’s as high as we can go.”

      Dugula already had an answer to give them, but the fact that they had upped the ante with little hesitation told him they had come to the bargaining table prepared to lowball his services. So be it, he decided. Depending on what the future held, how great the risk, whatever his undeclared role in this big event, he could always ask for—no, demand—more money. If he was going to be allied with other Muslims for some glorious battle against the infidels, how could a mere three Westerners possibly dare to think they could deceive him into a course of action that would destroy him and the clan?

      “When will you need these services of myself and my men?”

      “Soon,” Blue Eyes said. “Carry on with your day. You’ll know when it’s begun.”

      Dugula smiled back at the laughing eyes, unwilling to show fear or hesitation now that his decision was final. “Then…the envelope, please.”

      HUSSEIN NAHBAT was pained and baffled. Beyond that there was a fair amount of anxiety about the future, namely his own.

      From the shotgun seat of his technical, he saw the village and surrounding camp of nomads rise up in the distance on the barren plain. The panorama of squalid dwellings, meandering camels, goats and black stick figures in rags struck him as little more than some hellish mirage, floating up on the slick heat shimmer. Judging the numbers of shabby stone hovels, the huts erected by sticks wrapped in plastic sheeting, he guessed four to five hundred Somalis. Whatever Ethiopian refugees had crossed the border, survived this far, he figured perhaps another hundred or so bodies would be tossed to the fires. If what he’d heard about their trek and their affliction was true, they were walking contagions, cursing the Somalis here with the same inevitable fate. Drought, famine, another round of civil war between rebel forces and the outbreak of some hemorrhagic fever had been driving Ethiopians across the borders into Sudan, Kenya, Eritrea.

      It was their task, Nahbat knew, to cleanse the area, contain the plague these people had brought to Somalia. This land was not their home, and their leader, calling them leprous invaders, had issued the decree they were to put the torch to all homes and flesh, diseased or otherwise, Ethiopian or Somali.

      As Omari, his cousin, bore their technical down on the northern outskirts of the first line of beehive-shaped hovels, he found the others were already hard at it, rounding up men, women, children. The shooting had started, rattling bursts of autofire coming from all points around the village, limp bodies already being dragged from the tents of various sizes on the western perimeter. Dugula’s men, he noted, didn’t handle the bodies. Instead, they forced Ethiopians at gunpoint to drag their own dead—or dying—to the pit. He saw other Ethiopians, weakened by disease and malnutrition, standing utterly still outside their tents, some of the women hitting their knees, pleading for mercy.

      There was none.

      And the pain bit deeper into his belly. This was madness, this was…what, he wondered—wrong? Evil?

      Nahbat was unaware Omari had ground them to a halt, as he witnessed a small baby ripped from the arms of its wailing mother, a pistol leaping in the hands of her executioner, a bullet through the brain abruptly silencing her pleas. Though he had to follow orders under threat of execution, and related as he was to Habir Dugula—a distant cousin of one of the leader’s countless sons and daughters by various wives and mistresses—what he felt whenever they cleansed a village went beyond horror and pain.

      He felt his heart ache, a swollen lump in his throat threatening to shut off air the more he watched. He wanted to weep.

      Nahbat fought back the tears. He suddenly longed to be a twelve-year-old boy again, a simple goatherd, ignorant to the horrors of his country. That seemed like only yesterday, when, in fact, it was just a little over a year ago his cousin had shoved an assault rifle in his hands, and life had changed forever. Strange, he thought, in this one year of being an armed combatant in the war for Mogadishu and the campaign of genocide against those deemed unfit to live, he felt like a tired, sick old man. He was too young, he thought, to feel such pain. Worse, he was helpless to do anything but carry out his part in the atrocity, thinking himself a coward for being unable to stand up and shout how wrong this was.

      He tried to focus his distress on another baffling matter, failing to will away the nausea as the first wave of the stench of diseased flesh, the sickly sweet taint of bodies being doused by gasoline and torched, ballooned his senses. What was this business with the white men and the rival clan? Why were they involving themselves in some mysterious affair with foreigners that not even their great leader had the first clue was all about? They had lingered at the compound after the departure of the black hoods and Hahgan’s mooryan, while he assumed Habir Dugula made some attempt to verify the existence of the cutout, their supposed marching orders. Then there was a briefing by their great leader, all orders, no questions allowed. Simply put, he recalled, Dugula told them they would do whatever the white men’s bidding, that they would be paid in time, far more, or so promised, than their weekly handful of shillings. The future was more than just in doubt, he feared; the time ahead was in peril. He wondered if he would live to see his fourteenth birthday.

      He was out the door somehow, Omari barking in his ear to get moving. The AK-47 began to slip from his fingers, bile shooting up into his throat. He heard the wailing, pleas for mercy, the braying of animals in terror. The din alone might have been enough to bring him to his knees, retch and cry, but the stink was overpowering by itself, threatening to knock him off his feet. The world began to spin, legs turning to rubber when a rough hand clawed into his shoulder, spun him.

      “Take this!”

      It was Omari, eyes boring into him over the bandanna wrapped around his nose and mouth.

      The slap to his face rang in his ears like a pistol shot.

      “What is wrong with you!”

      “I…I feel sick, my cousin.”

      “Get over it! We have work to do!”

      Omari wound the bandanna around his face, knotting it tight against the back of his skull with an angry twist. He had another disturbing thought right then, as the veil seemed to do little to stem the tide of miasma assaulting him, mind, senses and soul. What if he fainted, flat on his back, the vomit trapped by the bandanna, strangling him?

      The screaming, shooting and the awareness Omari was watching him closely, perhaps questioning his resolve, put some iron in his legs. He was turning toward the Russian transport truck, where they were hauling out more ten-gallon cans of gasoline, when Nahbat spotted their great leader.

      Resentment flared through him, another dagger of pain and confusion to the heart. Dugula was standing