Extraction (John Taylor #8) - Chapter 14

Wajideeb, Somalia

“I was told you were the man to speak to,” Gehdi said into the phone, while looking at Taylor and the two men flanking him on either side.

Taylor opened his mouth to make a last attempt at buying off Gehdi, when the warlord jerked the phone away from his head in surprise.

He looked at one of his lieutenants before putting the phone back to his ear and saying, “Hello? Hello?”

The lieutenant said something in Somali and Gehdi replied, sounding more surprised than anything else. They had a brief back and forth, Gehdi pointing at the now disconnected phone.

“Problems?” Taylor asked.

Gehdi said something to the guards, who started dragging Taylor out again.

“Wait. If they’re not going to be ready to pay you, I am,” Taylor shouted.

He half thought Gehdi would wave him off again, but instead, the man said, “This was for more than just your life, and was a lot of money.”

“I’m looking to pay you for more than just my life, too. I came here to try and convince you and your men to help me and I was willing to pay. I still am. If they’re having issues on their end, then let me prove to you that I’m serious.”

“How?”

“One phone call. That’s all I need.”

Gehdi stared at him, thinking it through, before holding out the phone.

“One phone call,” he said, but pulled the phone back as Taylor went to reach for it. “If you don’t convince me though, I might just kill you for free.”

“Fine,” Taylor said, taking the phone which Gehdi extended out again.

Taylor didn’t have the satellite phone with its secure line and hoped Wheeler wasn’t one of these guys that would rather follow things by the book regardless of the situation. He didn’t strike him as the type, but CIA guys could be squirrely when it came to operational security.

“On station,” a different voice than the one last time said.

“It’s Taylor, I need to talk to Wheeler. It’s urgent.”

“This isn’t a secure line.”

“No, it’s a cell phone owned by the leader of the Feedh Ilaah, so tell him to get his ass on the phone while he still has a chance to talk to me.”

The phone clicked and the line went silent, the same as it had the last time he’d been put on hold. Why spooks had to make everything so dramatic, Taylor would never know. Thankfully, Wheeler did answer.

“You’re on whose cell phone?”

“Tahiil Gehdi, who is at the moment staring at me, waiting to find out why he shouldn’t put a bullet in my head and try to collect on it.”

“Yeah, I’d heard about the bounty.”

“Thanks for the warning. You’re going to help me arrange a payment for him.”

“Why would I pay off a bounty on your head? You’re a great guy and all, but you’re an independent contractor, my friend. Besides, I heard you were some kind of badass who could get out of this on his own.”

“It’s not about that money. I’ve looked over the village and there’s no way I’m going to get the hostages back on my own. I need some local assistance and that assistance is going to want to be paid well for their help.”

Taylor hoped Wheeler read between the lines and understood hostages to mean targeting system, since the last thing Taylor wanted to do was to point out there was something even more valuable available for the taking.

“Do you think they can do it?”

“I just need a big enough distraction and I should be able to get in. Well, a distraction and a Javelin.”

“Do you have any idea how much those things cost?”

“Do you care?”

“Not really. How much money were you talking about?”

“A hundred and fifty.”

“That’s going to take some time to get a hold of.”

“Time is the thing we don’t have. I need it, and I need it by tomorrow. Unless you have another plan for taking care of this.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, but Taylor knew Wheeler was just thinking it over. Had there been another option for getting the tracking system back, they would have gone with that from the beginning instead of sending Taylor. The only reason they’d gone with him was because he already had an in and Wheeler saw an opportunity.

Taylor had worked with enough station chiefs to have some idea of what their limits were, which is how he’d come up with the number. From the look on Gehdi’s face, it was probably a lot less than the warlord had wanted, but Taylor thought they could get around that.

“Fine. I’ll make it happen. Anything else while you’re filling out your Christmas list?”

“One more thing. Mr. Gehdi is skeptical that I can come through with this and is entertaining other offers. I’d like for you to explain to him why he should believe this is a very real offer.”

Wheeler let out a sigh, more of an annoyance than anything else, and said, “Put him on the phone.”

Taylor handed the phone out to Gehdi, who took it and after saying ‘yes’ listened intently, occasionally saying ‘hmm.’ Taylor wasn’t worried about Wheeler doing an end-run on him, since there was no way he would tell the warlord about the targeting system and he’d have to if he wanted to ensure it was recovered or destroyed. Taylor may be an outsider from the intelligence community, but he was still several levels more desirable for someone like Wheeler than almost any local capable of getting the job done.

“That will be fine,” Gehdi said before handing the phone out to Taylor.

“Yeah?” Taylor said, taking it.

“You should be good. Do you still have your sat phone?”

“Yeah,” Taylor said, not elaborating.

“Smart. You’re planning on waiting until night for your strike, I assume?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Go get your sat phone and signal me your position. We’ll have a drop in five hours and we’ll signal when the plane is in country. This is your one thing. After this, I can’t help you again until after you’ve taken care of the targeting system.”

“Understood. We’ll be waiting.”

He clicked off the phone and handed it back to Gehdi’s minion.

“I thought you said you were not with the CIA,” Gehdi said.

“I’m not. I was here to rescue hostages. I just knew they had some interest in the area and when the rescue attempt failed I leveraged that for a little help. At best, I’m an independent contractor.”

“Isn’t everyone who works for you Americans in this part of the world?”

“Probably. Right now, what I want and what they want align, which works out for you, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I will lose men and material on this. At best, I break out even. And don’t pretend like this will earn me some kind of favor with your intelligence services. We both know that means very little.”

“I won’t, and you only break even if you think of it on a one-to-one basis. You haven’t accounted for Barsane’s actively working on finding someone willing to pay for his captured Americans, and if it gets public, the company might not have any choice but to go along. How would you fare if he got his hands on that kind of money? He’s already come into your territory once and he’s been edging you out a little at a time for a while.”

“I suppose you have an equally good reason why I shouldn’t try and get my hands on those hostages and sell them myself.”

“I do. For one, the odds of them surviving the attempt are low and you’ll lose a lot more men doing it. If you are successful then you have to worry about someone like me out here again, trying to do the exact same thing, but against you. It’s why you never tried to recover them when they were actively on your territory, and that was when it was easier. This is your best play, with the highest possible reward for the least risk. I’m not asking you to break into the town or even get that locked in. I just need you to keep them busy for thirty minutes.”

“I assume you know about the tank?”

“Yes, I’ll take care of that for you.”

“Fine. Deliver the money and we’ll help you.”

“I left some stuff a mile or so away that I need to retrieve if I’m going to get the money drop.”

“Do you really think I’m letting you out of my sight before we’re paid?”

“I need you and your men for my plan to work. I came here on my own originally, remember? I still need your help. Running doesn’t get me anywhere. If it’ll make you feel better, send one of your men with me.”

“Fine,” he said, turning to his lieutenant. “Go with him and make sure he comes back.”

“One of the things I’m getting is my weapon. I’ll need it when we go after Barsane. I don’t want anyone getting jumpy when I get it.”

“Fine, but we’ll still be keeping an eye on you.”

“Fair enough. It’s a good walk, so let’s get going,” Taylor said to the lieutenant.

Washington D.C.

Kara had made it home around four in the morning, being very careful to move as quietly as she could, tracing back through the paths through the surveillance blind spots. The house was under video monitoring, but she’d figured out there were blind spots over the last year and tested those out before leaving the house that night.

On the way home, she’d pulled the magazine from the pistol and dumped both in the Potomac a block from where she’d shot Packer, before turning up and heading towards the center of DC, which took her through some sketchy areas before getting into the more touristy areas where she knew she could find a taxi even this late.

She’d dropped her gloves as she passed an underpass where a few homeless were sleeping, figuring they’d be in someone’s possession before the morning. She did the same to her hoodie at the next block, with the same goal.

Both the hoodie and gloves would have gun powder residue on them, so they needed to disappear. Although she liked that hoodie, it had been big enough to cover a good section of her pants and she’d kept her hair up in the hood, so they should be the only thing she’d been wearing to pick up gunpowder.

She did go to her range with Taylor occasionally, so she could have probably explained the traces away if anyone looked, but she figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

To give the police plausible reasoning for Packer’s death, she’d also taken his wallet and his phone. The Phone had gone into the river with the gun. She hadn’t had a chance to look it up, but she was pretty sure the magazine and phone would be light enough for the current to carry them further away, so at least they wouldn’t be near the weapon. She’d also pulled the bullets out of the magazine and thrown them in by themselves, just in case she’d left fingerprints on any of them and to make it harder for anyone dredging the river for evidence to find all of the pieces.

She’d thrown the wallet into a storm drain after pulling the cash. If the cops did find it, they’d think the thief wanted to get rid of evidence and threw it in the drain after stealing the money. Hopefully, it would disappear with other junk into the sewer and never be found, or at least not for a while, making it harder to backtrack her steps into DC.

She didn’t think the cops would put that kind of all-out effort into tracking down a mugging gone wrong, but the one thing she’d learned from listening to Whitaker’s stories about investigations was that you could never be too paranoid. Which is why she’d dumped the last of the evidence she was disposing of several blocks before she hailed a taxi, to put a little buffer between where they might find the evidence if everything went wrong and where they’d need to look to find a taxi that had picked up a girl in the middle of the night. It was the same reason she’d had the taxi drop her off almost half a mile from the house she lived in with Mary Jane.

None of the agents had noticed her window was cracked open and checked on her apparently, since everything was the same way as she’d left it. She changed into the large shirt and shorts she wore to bed and threw the rest of her clothes from the evening in with her dirty clothes, and crawled into bed, hoping to get just a little sleep.

Kara felt like she had just closed her eyes when a soft knock on her door woke her up.

“Kara, are you up?”

“Wha…?” Kara said, groggy from only having been asleep for an hour.

“There’s a man from the FBI downstairs that is asking to see you.”

Kara wasn’t surprised by the news and was positive she knew who was downstairs and what exactly he wanted to talk about.

“Yeah. I gotta get dressed. Tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” her friend said, her footsteps receding down the hall.

Kara threw on sweats and a big t-shirt and sat down on the edge of the bed, running her fingers through her tangled red hair, breaking through some of the knotted curls. Closing her eyes and took a deep breath to steel herself before pushing off the bed and heading downstairs to face the music.

“Kara, I’m sorry to bother you so early. Can we talk for a moment,” Robles said as she walked down the stairs? He eyed Mary Jane and added, “Alone?”

Mary Jane looked at Kara, who nodded in confirmation, “Sure. Let’s go sit in the dining room.”

She led the way through the foyer and into a mid-sized room with a small rectangular table with a chair on each end. Walking past the chair by the door, gesturing for Robles to sit there, while Kara pulled out the chair at what was ostensibly the head of the table.

“What can I do for you Agent Robles,” she said, sitting down.

“About an hour ago I was notified that the body of Edward Packer was found not far from his home, shot once in the head at close range.”

Robles was looking at her closely as he said it, probably trying to recognize any sign of guilt or anything else that might give her away. Kara was sure that Robles was good at his job, but she’d spent nearly her entire life hiding her true thoughts and feelings away from men. For her, it was as easy as breathing. They both knew how she felt about Packer, which meant shocked or any strong emotion would have been too much, so she’d decided on nonplussed acceptance with a hint of satisfaction.

The only thing she had to really pay attention to controlling was her English, which she sometimes let slip when she was excited or angry. She’d only spoken to Robles the one time, but she didn’t remember stumbling on words or dropping prepositions, which she still struggled with. He might not know that her English became worse when she was off-kilter, but he would notice it.

“If you are expecting me to be sad, you will be waiting for a long time,” Kara said.

“You’re not surprised that the man you were asking me to look into was suddenly murdered days after I told you I couldn’t investigate him without evidence?”

“I told you then that I believed he was involved in some kind of criminal activity that was going to get Taylor hurt. Criminals often come to unfortunate ends.”

“Sure, but even expecting it, most people would be a little surprised, or upset, or even happy, since this means he won’t be able to do whatever you were worried about him doing. When I see a young girl who’s been told someone she knew was murdered, they always have a reaction, even for someone they didn’t like.”

“I assume you’re here because you put together my recent interest in him and his death, and became suspicious of me. I’m betting that also means you looked into my background. Because of who I’m friends with and who my parents are, I know the government has a record of my history, including Taylor’s reports of how I first met him. Having read that and knowing how I spent half my life, do you think hearing the murder of someone would have any effect on me at all?”

“Maybe not,” he said, not even pausing.

The speed he’d replied meant he’d already considered it and he’d made the comment as another tactic to see some kind of reaction from her. Kara might have only been with Whitaker and Taylor for a couple of years, but that still left plenty of opportunities for them to need to get her to tell them something she didn’t want to. Robles was probably a good interrogator, but next to Whitaker’s subtle prodding, he was obvious and clumsy.

“I also know you’re aware that I live in a house protected by the Secret Service around the clock and you would have checked with them before you came to see if I’d had any part in whatever happened to Mr. Packer.”

“I didn’t accuse you of anything,” Robles pointed out.

“Not directly, Agent Robles, but you have been prodding, looking for some way I might indicate I had some part of it. I know I am young and it is hard not to see me as a child, but you know my history and you know who my parents are. Please don’t treat me like an idiot.”

He gave a wry smile and said, “Fair enough. Although, considering your history and your parents, along with your interest in Mr. Packer, you can see why you would be the first person I thought of when I learned he’d been murdered.”

“I can. I hope I put those concerns to rest. The Secret Service can confirm that I was here all night, in my room asleep and I’m sure they can even show you the video surveillance they have to prove I didn’t leave at any time. That is a pretty solid alibi, I believe.”

“You’re right,” he said, not addressing her point directly. “You would have had to have been clever to survive as long as you did before you came to America, and your parents are two of the best investigators I’ve ever met. I’d be surprised if you hadn’t picked up a thing or two over the years. With a smart girl like you, I can’t help asking myself if you found a way around all of that.”

“Around the Secret Service? We can go talk to the agents, see if they have any suspicions. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with them, so they probably know me pretty well. Do you think they’ll agree with you that I am capable of completely circumventing their security?”

He of course knew that, no matter what they thought of her, they’d never admit to flaws in their security or that a teenager, regardless of her history, would be able to outfox them. Asking them would only create animosity, which was already somewhat high between the FBI and the Secret Service after the business during the election where their agency came out looking inept. He’d need a lot better reasons than unfounded suspicion to poke at those tensions.

“I don’t think that’s necessary. I’m sure you were here all night, tucked into your bed. Still, I might be back with a question or two, if that’s okay.”

“I’m always happy to cooperate,” Kara said, looking innocent.

She was a little worried she might have played things a little too cleverly. He might have had suspicions of her when he’d shown up, but as he left she was sure it was more than a suspicion now. He knew she’d done it, but he couldn’t prove anything.

Kara was pretty sure she’d covered her tracks well enough and her alibi would be hard to get around, but she’d still have to walk carefully for a while. She didn’t regret what she’d done and if it came to it, she’d be willing to take the punishment for her crime. Taylor had saved her life and taken her out of hell, and she was willing to do anything to protect her new parents, including going to jail if it came to it.

Of course, she’d prefer to get away with it and not have to do that. He’d talk to Whitaker soon, and Taylor when he got back, which would change things. Until then, she’d just have to wait and see what happened.

Wajideeb, Somalia

Gehdi hadn’t just let Taylor walk out of the village on his own. He might have decided there was more profit in working with Taylor, but that didn’t mean the Warlord actually trusted him.

Two of Gehdi’s men drove Taylor out to pick up his stolen truck and equipment, where they ran into their first problem when the truck wasn’t where he’d left it. That shouldn’t have been a surprise, since the number of times he’d left a vehicle unattended in the middle of nowhere had reached the point where it was all but certain that someone would drive away in it. Thankfully, Taylor had been prepared for this and made note of other landmarks.

Without the truck as a nearby point of reference, it took some time to actually find his hidden gear, but he did eventually find it, although not before convincing his two guards that he’d been playing them all for a fool and there was nothing out here. He had to twice convince them not to drag him back to Gehdi and let him turn over yet another set of stones that looked exactly like every other little pile.

They also hadn’t liked that the first thing he’d pulled out of the pile was his rifle. Both men were very twitchy and even though he said that he had a rifle on top of the pile and he was taking it out gently, they’d both snapped their weapons up and gotten twitchy. It hadn’t been a surprise when they snatched his weapon from him, but it was still annoying. However, there was no way they were going to let him just leave it here to come back to later, and the way one of them constantly looked over his shoulder at what he was doing made it impossible to hide.

They’d also torn through his pack, just to confirm he wasn’t trying to sneak some kind of explosive in to kill their boss. They’d both been present for the agreement between him and Gehdi, so all of this seemed a bit ridiculous, but their leader had told them to keep an eye on him and apparently they took the job seriously.

Once they were comfortable that Taylor hadn’t secreted away a supply of C4, they handed everything back to him and the small group returned to the village, where they once again relieved Taylor of his supplies, which they then presented to Gehdi like they’d done something more complicated than watching a guy dig around in the mountains. Gehdi didn’t seem particularly bothered by any of it, but he also didn’t return any of it to Taylor, except the satellite phone.

Once he’d been properly motivated, Wheeler moved pretty fast but it was still the next evening before they could get the supplies dropped into Gehdi’s village, which meant Taylor had the pleasure of sitting on the floor of an empty hut guarded by more nervous ‘freedom fighters.’

He spent the first few hours going over his plan in his head, which because of their lack of supplies and the need to coordinate with a group that wanted to minimise their exposure as much as possible, was extremely limited.

Thankfully, these kinds of guys, which meant both Gehdi’s and Barsane’s men, weren’t much on tactical thinking. They tended to go with charging straight at any danger or obstacle, blasting away on full auto until they were out of ammo or their target was dead.

Taylor thought it unlikely that they’d leave much of a rear guard beyond the guys on the rise with the machine gun and maybe some guards on the prisoners.

Taylor was roused out of his introspection when the door to the hut opened, revealing one of the guards who’d gone with him to retrieve his things.

“Come, American.”

Taylor got up and followed him out, to join in a small group of men gathered outside of the village’s central building. Gehdi was in the center of the group, smiling an off-putting smile that made Taylor want to check his valuables.

“It looks like your CIA friends have come through,” Gehdi said.

Sure enough, Taylor could hear a prop-engine plane in the distance. It took a little time to pick it out of the clouds, until he realized it was flying very low. Somalia didn’t have much in the way of radar or SAM capability and their government was still fractured enough that it was unlikely to even protest a US overflight of its uncontrolled regions, but perhaps old habits die hard with the agency.

The plan was going slow and three very large bags attached to a parachute were kicked out as it passed overhead. It looked like it was actually going to land just outside the village, although no one rushed to recover it, which made sense. In a place like this, it was unlikely some random person would steal the package before Gehdi retrieved it. A few minutes later a group of men came running up carrying the packages delivered by the plane.

Taylor was held back as Gehdi’s men opened it. Two revealed stacks of bills that seemed to cover all of the standard denominations and looked crumpled and worn, making Taylor wonder where exactly this money had come from. The third held a still sealed Javelin, and what looked like two rockets for it, all well packed against the shock of the drop.

“Don’t mess with that,” Taylor warned as one of the men started to try and opened the sealed coverings the rocket was wrapped in. “Unless you don’t want me to take care of the tank for you.”

Gehdi looked at him and, after a moment, smiled his wolfish smile again.

“Leave it for Mr. Taylor,” he said to his men before turning to Taylor. “So, your friends came through. It will take me a day to get my men together. You will stay with us until we get close by, and then we will allow you to have your weapons and go your own way.”

“Fine. I’ll actually start with you guys and once the tank is gone, I will circle around wide and come up from behind the village. I need them to have enough time to fully engage with your men before I make a move for the hostages.”

“As long as you remove the tank as an issue, we will do our part. I will warn you, though, that we will not stay for long. Barsane may be a fool, but he has more men than I do and if we let him, he will overwhelm us.”

“Have you ever scouted his village before?”

“We have sent men in, yes.”

“Do you know if he uses specific buildings for an armory or for barracks for his soldiers?”

“He doesn’t have anything like an armory, except in one room of the main house. Most of the men keep their weapons on them and what is extra or things he doesn’t distribute, he keeps in his home for safekeeping, since none of his men are trustworthy enough to guard equipment. He does have two buildings he uses as barracks, however.”

“I see. I thought my friends would only send me one missile for the Javelin, but it looks like they sent three. Before I move, I will use all three and try and take out his barracks as well, to try and even the odds.”

“Fine, but if we start getting in trouble, we will be leaving.”

“Okay,” Taylor said, hoping this wasn’t just Gehdi laying the groundwork for pulling out as soon as Taylor was out of the way.

There wasn’t much Taylor could do in the situation, since he’d already used all of the leverage he had to get Gehdi to go along in the first place. It was possible that he’d stick around long enough for Taylor to cause some damage and then bail when there wasn’t anything in it for him any longer.

“Just remember, if I don’t get the hostages, Barsane can still ransom them and use the money to replace anything he’s lost. If I get them, between not having that money and the money you just received, it should finally give you a leg up against him.”

Gehdi just nodded and signaled for his men to take the money into the central building and then started shouting orders in Somali. It took a while to get everyone organized, but within an hour Taylor was sitting in the back of a pickup, armed guards still around him. It was impossible to tell, but Taylor had the impression that Gehdi was bringing about half his men. Taylor could still see a fair number of armed men around the village as they left.

It was a good bet that Gehdi felt like he needed to leave some kind of security behind in case this was an elaborate trap, but the more men he brought, the more damage he could do to Barsane.

Taylor had already made his case to the warlord, so there wasn’t much he could do about it now. They had the forces Gehdi was willing to endanger and at least the warlord was along with them, which meant maybe they’d actually try and make this work. Either way, they were on the way and would arrive at Hofyo that evening, hopefully, late enough that Barsane’s men wouldn’t notice a convoy of trucks heading their way.