Dirty Diamonds Of Boko Haram Part 1 (17 page)

“I don’t like it either” said Alex and passed
him the binoculars. “Check out the large burnt-out building about
five hundred yards further up and across the road from the
station”

Samuel put the binoculars to his eyes and
checked the building out.

“It’s a cathedral” he said.

“Yeah” agreed Alex. “It’s a catholic church
actually, lots of cover and an alternative exit route out back into
the street behind. That’s where we’ll meet them”

“El Soldat specifically choose the filling
station” said Rufai at once. “Such an audacious change of venue
will likely anger him”

“Perhaps, but not that much, not with one
million dollars waiting for him to pick up. In a way our early
arrival is also to our advantage in that area” Alex got out the
phone. “Time to tell them we’re here”

Alex speed dialed and put the phone to his
ear.

The call was answered almost at once.

“Who iz zis?” came the heavily accented male
Fulani voice.

“It’s me again for the girl” replied Alex. “I
want to talk to El Soldat”

There was a moment’s silence, and then El
Soldat came on.

“What’s the problem?” asked El Soldat
gruffly.

“Absolutely none” said Alex. “I just called
to tell you that I’m already at the NNPC filling station and
there’s no sign of you or anyone anywhere”

El Soldat uttered a foul curse in a foreign
language Alex didn’t understand.

“I said
ten o’clock
and I made myself
very clear!” he said angrily. “Are you deaf or what?”

“You have something of important value to me
so naturally I came as quickly as I could to collect it” Alex kept
his voice down and calm. “I have your one million dollars right
here with me and I will wait patiently until you get here with the
girl to collet it”

“Twenty minutes” came the curt reply.

The line went dead.

Alex lowed the phone from his ear and
half-glanced back at the other two men. “That was El Soldat again.
He wasn’t even aware of our presence here in their territory and
he’s not in the vicinity either but he says he will be here in
twenty minutes. Twenty minutes is exactly the kind of time will
take a fast car to get from Sambisa forest to this place”

“You were right after all” said Samuel with
respect. “This is his neighborhood”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t bring all his tenants
and neighbors when he comes calling” said Alex. He snapped his
fingers at Efosa and pointed ahead. “Move it, Sergeant. Get us in
that cathedral”

Efosa shifted gears swiftly and drove forward
purposefully

*******

The burnt out ruin of the big cathedral sat
like a large empty shell on eight plots of land fenced around by
solid walls with two separate gateways. The main gateway was a pair
of big brown double gates opening out unto the Maiduguri-Bama road
while the second opened out unto a wide street in the residential
neighborhood behind the church…all the residents had, of course,
fled the neighborhood and the entire place was devoid of life.

Only days ago the cathedral had been a thing
of beauty and pride to so many indigenous Catholics but now it was
a brunt out ruin. It had been the very first thing the Boko Haram
terrorists who hated Christians and all western ways, had swooped
on when they captured that part of the town.

The old priest and two nuns who refused to
flee like all the rest of the people in the area did as the
insurgents advanced, had been beheaded right there in the
church.

The rotting corpse of the old priest and its
severed grey-haired head were being feasted upon by scavengers
right there in the open courtyard while the bodies of the nuns were
in a prayer chambers of the personage, a one story building
directly to the rear of the cathedral building. The awful smell of
their rotting flesh attracted Alex straight to the large room and
he found their beheaded corpses lying in dark pools of caked blood
on the tiled floor, the two severed heads in different corners.
Flies in their thousands were buzzing all over the rotting corpse
while other vermin, including rats now too fat and sluggish to run
off at human approach, had their share. The torn robes on the two
women strongly suggested that they had been raped, probably
severally, before being gruesomely murdered. One of the heads was
still fairly intact and Alex felt a terrible bitterness in his
heart when saw how young and innocent the face was. The other
detached head had a face that had been partly eaten up by the
vermin but the hair was very visible and it was graying at the
edges.

The other men couldn’t stand the horrible
sight or smell in the prayer room and so kept their distance but
Alex had seen so many of such before to allow it bother him too
much. He promised himself he would give them some form of a burial
if he got even half a chance, then went off to check the rest of
the rooms in the personage.

The bus was parked securely out of sight in
the large space between the rear of the cathedral and the front of
the one story personage where it couldn’t be seen from either of
the two gates. The high fence enclosing the large compound
guaranteed security if not more cover and the locked gates to the
rear of the compound was the alternative escape route. Out front
the big double gates stood wide open like it had been when they
arrived.

Coordinating their operation over the radios
coms, the experienced soldiers did a clean security sweep of the
entire compound.

The entire church had been completely
destroyed and the magnitude of the havoc wrecked was mind
bending.

The large cathedral itself was a total write
off. Its roof was gone, completely consumed by the fire, but the
blackened solid walls still stood intact. All the large glass
windows had been vandalized, even the metal doors had been
deliberately damaged to some extent or burnt to a black color. The
entire interior of the cathedral was completely bare now and on the
blacked tiled floors were huge piles of cold ash and large stubs of
charred polished wood, the remains of all the furniture and
dedicated items which had adorned the church. Everything, the large
holy alter, all the tables, all the big throne-like chairs, all the
dedicated furniture and instruments, the long heavy hardwood
benches for the congregation, they had all been piled up together
in places and set ablaze right there in the cathedral. The terrible
inferno from all the burning piles of hardwood had risen high to
consume the roof and, subsequently, the whole cathedral itself. The
few areas of the building left untouched by the fire showed clearly
that the church had been a freshly painted brown and yellow
structure before the insurgents struck.

Only the two heavy iron offering boxes seemed
intact in the whole place but their locks had been broken open and
the contents looted.

The personage had been set ablaze too but
most parts of it had somehow survived to show that it had been
looted first. All the nice furniture and home appliances, even the
beds and the rugs on the floor where gone and the place was bare.
The other detached building, a low building of several rooms, had
been razed to the ground completely.

The security sweep was complete in a few
short minutes and the men took up positions in the cathedral to
wait. Rufai and Samuel somehow managed to salvage some things that
passed for chairs and set them up in one of the clear areas, using
one of the empty iron offering boxes as table. Alex joined them
after he detailed the Sergeants to lookout duty and they all sat
quietly, waiting.

The steel briefcase was right there on the
offering box before them and also there was the expensive black
leather document folder which Rufai had been carrying since they
left the safe house. Alex had asked him about it once and the reply
had been that it was very important documents requiring the girl’s
urgent attention so he never bothered about it again.

“Christ! What a horrible crime in the name of
religion!” exclaimed Samuel suddenly, shaking his head and looking
around again. He was deeply shaken by all what he had seen. “If I
get my hands on any of these bloody Boko Haram Muslim bastards and
the imam teaching them these things before I leave this godforsaken
state, I will so torture them”

Rufai bristled at once. “I take great offence
to that remark, lieutenants. I’m Muslim and I certainly don’t live
my life like this at all. I live and work peacefully with
Christians and the world in general, many millions of other true
Muslims will tell you the same thing too. These Boko Haram animals
are just criminals and ignorant souls being led astray by crazy
zealots who wrap and present their lies and evils in the cloak of
Islam” Rufai angrily waved a hand around. “The motherless bastards
who did all these things have no idea what real imams or true Islam
is, what they know is a piece of igneous rock in Sambisa forest
that gives them holy power and knowledge and a crazy leader that
tells them what to do which includes killing thousands of good
Muslims as well as innocent women and children too or haven’t your
noticed?”

Samuel kept his big mouth shut.

Alex stared at him. “It’s a good thing you
didn’t make such talk with lots of other Muslims around, try not to
do such again while you are up here in the north because it’s a
very sensitive issue that will get even ordinary market women very
angry and very quickly. These terrorists are nothing but criminals’
period. Their attacks are not limited to Christians alone but reach
out to everyone, great and small. What you are seeing here is
nothing compared to what I saw at a big mosque in Maiduguri two
years ago. They bombed the place while it was in full prayer
session and the fires that originated form there destroyed half the
houses on the street. Over fifty people died that day with
countless others injured, some permanently disfigured, and not one
of them was a Christian”. Alex glanced at his watch then back at
Samuel “You may just get your wish to lay hands on some of them,
they should be showing up any minute from now”

“You really think they will come in numbers?”
asked Rufai.

“They will
definitely
come in numbers”
replied Alex, stressing the word. “Most likely upward of a dozen
men for show of strength. When they get here none of you mustn’t
show any sign of weakness, all our lives may depend on it. Be very
watchful and alert, be like you are ready to swing into action in a
second but still very calm and controlled. Keep your eyes fixed on
them at all time, guns at the ready but pointed at the floor. Be
silent and let me do the talking, follow all my leads and we’ll be
fine”

“What if we are not fine?” asked Samuel.
“What if the bastards start trouble or try to double cross us? That
seems to be what they are really good at”

“Hopefully, they won’t do either of the two
but if they did, then we are in big trouble because we’ll be
outnumbered five to one at first, and then more of them will
quickly come rushing in to make it ten to one. The odds will just
keep growing on us from there and even so, we’ll still have to get
the girl back and fight our way out of here somehow. It’s in our
best interest that this transaction gets successfully conclude the
first time because there won’t be a second chance” Alex stared at
the two men. “There can be no mistakes on our part”

In the silence that followed the ear piece in
Alex’s ear came to life.

“We’ve got serious company on the way, sirs,
two vehicles” came Garko’s voice urgently and they all heard him,
their ear piece coms were on the same channel.

Alex was already on his feet, running for
the stairs

The two Sergeants, armed with the binoculars,
were on lookout duty up in the church’s two story high tower. The
structure was part of the cathedral itself and it commanded a good
view of the entire vicinity including the immediate area around the
church, both gateways and the street behind. The tower was one of
the reasons Alex had chosen the church, it also offered an
advantageous firing position if there was a gun fight.

Very alert and watchful, the Sergeants had
been at their post for less than fifteen minutes when Garko’s hawk
eyes picked the movement in far distance to the south of the
Maiduguri-Bama road

“Hey, Joe” Garko waved frantically. “Come
take a look”

Across at another wide widow in the small
tower room, Efosa had the binoculars glued to eyes, looking in the
opposite direction towards Bama. He lowered the binoculars at once
and hurried over to take a look.

Garko pointed and Efosa focused the
binoculars, took a good look.

“Two Jeeps, both coming up very fast” said
Efosa. “It’s them, call it in quick”

Garko already had his hand to his ear piece.
He called it in fast.

Alex ran up the stairs two at a time and in
seconds was in the tower room.

“What kind of vehicles are they?” he demanded
at once, hurrying over to join the two men at the window.

“Jeeps” said Efosa stepping away and handing
Alex the binoculars.

Alex put the binoculars to his eyes and took
a good look at approaching Jeeps. The lead Jeep was a brown
Cherokee and behind it came a black Toyota Helix Pickup Jeep packed
with armed men in military camouflage uniforms and masks. Alex
focused the binoculars on the Cherokee and adjusted the
magnification settings of the lens as he tried to see through the
dark windows which were all rolled up. He tried hard but couldn’t
see a thing, nonetheless, he was sure that El Soldat and the girl
were in that Cherokee. He moved the binoculars back to the Helix
again, its cabin was packed with men like its open back. All the
men wore masks, some red and others army camouflage in color.