Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Janson Option (Paul Janson) (23 page)

T
here is one rule,” said Paul Janson. “It will be obeyed.”

Cousin Saakin, the dozen turbaned fishermen the former pirate had recruited—former pirates themselves, Janson did not doubt—and a worried-looking Captain Billy Titus were packed into the Embraer’s three small cabins. Kincaid stood directly behind Janson, silent. In the cockpit behind her, Lynn and Sarah were working through their checklist. It was 802 nautical miles to the airport on Socotra Island, which lay between the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, 150 miles northeast of the Puntland coast. Two hours’ flying time from Mogadishu.

“The rule is, no one dies.”

Billy Titus looked relieved.

Cousin Saakin said, “There are accidents sometimes. What if they accidentally die?”

“You cannot accidentally kill.”

“But if I happen to, by accident…” The pirate shrugged. “Accidents happen.”

“If it happens, I will kill you,” said Janson. “No accidents. No mistakes. No wild shooting.”

Saakin grinned. “First you’d have to find me.”

“I’m good at finding.”

Saakin’s grin took on a knife’s edge. “Then you have to
try
to kill me.”

“I’m better at killing.” One of Janson’s phones vibrated. He passed it back to Kincaid. “Believe me, Saakin, this is the way it will be. If anyone dies, you will die. Do you still want the job?”

Kincaid said, quietly, so only Janson could hear, “Ahmed’s here.”

“We’re not taking the kid with us.”

“He says he’s got to talk to you. He won’t tell me why.”

Janson ducked to look out the window. The tall, skinny Somali-American was standing in the door of the private aviation shack, bent over his phone like a question mark. “Tell him to wait there.”

He turned back to the faces scowling at him—the simple fisherman-pirates and the not-at-all-simple Cousin Saakin, who was looking for angles to increase profit out of the operation.

“The plane will take off in a couple of minutes. Grab what seats you can find and buckle in. I apologize that we don’t have seat belts for everyone, but the pilots are the best. Hang on to the guy next to you if we hit rough air.”

Kincaid opened the door they had just closed and lowered the steps, and they walked briskly across the tarmac toward Ahmed. “‘I’m better at killing’?” Kincaid echoed. “Why’d you start a pissing contest with Saakin?”

“Saakin strikes me as a natural-born killer.”

Kincaid nodded. “Could be.”

“Best to squelch his instincts—What’s up, Ahmed?”

“You know how you thought Isse was jerking you around on the phone?”

“I knew he was. I didn’t know why.”

“Guess who he hooked up with.”

“No time for guessing. What’s going on?”

“The Italian.”

Janson looked at Kincaid. Rumors were flying around Mog that AMISOM had raided a villa on the Lido looking for the Italian. No one knew if AMISOM had caught him. But General Ddembe’s refusal to take Janson’s calls since Janson had tipped him off suggested strongly that the general was embarrassed or pissed off that the raid had gone badly.

Janson took Ahmed’s arm. “How do you know?”

“I don’t
know
know. But I’m pretty sure.”

They listened closely as Ahmed described Isse stumbling glassy-eyed into the Internet Café, their odd conversation, and the sudden appearance of the fighters who supposedly belonged to the Italian. “I go in my head, Isse doesn’t like me, thinks I’m a godless criminal, why would he hug me? And why’d he tell me to stay away from him?”

“Stay away from him at the homecoming?”

“I guess. I mean, he looked like hell, but he said he’s going. I said, ‘Hey, you just said stay away and now you’re hugging me?’ Then Isse said, ‘Later.”’

“‘Later,’ like ‘Good-bye, see you later’?” asked Kincaid.

“I don’t think so. It was like stay away from me later. But the main thing was the dervishes. They were definitely terrorists. They walk in and say ‘Come on, Isse,’ and off he goes.”

“What do you mean he looked like hell?”

“Like he’d been crawling in the mud. He had dried blood on his neck. And bumps on his head.”

“As if he were in a fight?”

Ahmed shrugged.

“Or ran away?” said Kincaid.

“That’s what I was thinking, like he was with the Italian for some reason and tried to get away and they caught up with him.”

“But he went willingly, you said.”

“Yeah, but he was stoned.”

“Did you ever see Isse do drugs?”

“No way. Drugs are
haram
to the Islam freaks.”

“So why is he suddenly doing drugs?”

“I don’t know.”

Janson asked, “What was he on, khat?”

“No, not khat. Khat, you get all wired. Heroin, I guess. Or opium. Or oxy. Something that makes your pupils disappear.”

“Opiates?” Paul Janson’s normally bland features grew sharp. “Ahmed! Describe precisely what Isse looked like. Aside from being dirty and banged up and pupils contracted. What else?”

“I don’t know, I mean…”

“Was he still sick? You remember he said he didn’t feel well.”

“Yeah, he said it was something he ate. He was holding his stomach like it hurt.”

“When’s the homecoming?”

Ahmed checked the time on his phone. “Gates open in an hour.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Kincaid said, “Paul?”

“Ahmed, grab us a taxi.” To Kincaid he said, “I’ve got to get some stuff from the plane.”

“We’re saddled up to get Allegra.”

“You go ahead. You’re in command. Get on the yacht and head for Eyl. I’ll catch up.”

“I can do that. But what are
you
doing?”

“Isse is our guy. We brought him here. We can’t let him kill a bunch of innocents.”

“How’s he going to do that?”

“What if AMISOM didn’t nail the Italian and the Italian got ahold of Isse and turned him into a suicide bomber?”

“I’m listening.”

“We know Isse was enamored of fanatics like Abdullah al-A
mrik
i. Going with the dervishes suggests he caught up with some kind of fanatic. We know he was having fun screwing around with me on the phone. ‘You’ll hear from me loud and clear.’ And we know he’s going to the homecoming.”

Kincaid said, “High-profile target with world media covering it.”

“If he slaughters a bunch of government officials on camera, he’ll knock the government straight back into failed-state chaos. Which the Italian’s been working at all along.”

“It’s a bunch of ifs,” said Kincaid. “Problem is, if you’re right, then right now the dervishes are wrapping him in a suicide vest.”

“Not a vest.”

Kincaid’s eyes widened. “
Jesus
. When he was jerking you around on the phone, he said, ‘Something I ate.’ And Ahmed said Isse was holding his belly.”

“What do suppose is in his stomach?”

“PETN—OK, I do Allegra.”

“No civilians in the cross fire.”

“But don’t you wish they’d learn to duck?”

“Get me the burqa.”

They bounded up the steps. Kincaid hurried to a clothes locker in the back of the plane. Janson beckoned Saakin and Titus to join him in front.

“When you get aboard
Irina,
Captain Titus, you’re the captain of the ship. Saakin, you’re captain of the pirates. But my partner is the boss. You do exactly what she orders, instantly. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” said Titus.

“Where will you be?” asked Saakin.

“I’ll catch up in Socotra or join you at Eyl. Until I get there, Jess is boss. Got it?”

Saakin shrugged, with a dubious “If you say…”

“Saakin, if she says jump, you ask only, ‘How high?’ I’ll see you guys soon. Good luck.”

Kincaid handed him a canvas bag into which she had stuffed his kaffiyeh and the burqa. “I slipped a couple of extra mags in for you.”

“See you soon.” He gave Lynn and Sarah a quick nod. “Come straight back from Socotra. With any luck, I’ll see you in a few hours.”

He jogged down the steps.

The taxi was halfway to the presidential palace, Villa Somalia, when the Embraer thundered over the city and swooped to the north.

“C
AN YOU TELL ME
what’s going on?” asked Ahmed. The taxi was jouncing slowly along a street crowded with SUVs, pickup trucks, civilians on foot, and troops in armored vehicles.

“You know what a belly bomb is?” asked Janson.

“I don’t think I want to guess.”

“One way to get a suicide bomber around security is to get him to swallow explosives. When he’s frisked or wanded, there’s no weapon.”

“’Cause he swallowed it like a drug mule.”

“Same idea.”

“And you think Isse did that?”

“I hope I’m wrong. Three or four hundred grams of pentaerythritol tetranitrate tears through a crowd worse than dynamite. But all the elements are there. You saw him holding his stomach. Like he hurts or he’s obsessed with what’s in it. How would you feel with a condom full of high explosive in your stomach?”

“There’s plenty of ‘Somali Belly’ going around.”

“Sure. Except a kid who doesn’t do drugs is suddenly stoned on opiates. Which is exactly what they would give him to keep him from eliminating the explosives before they were ready to blow him up.”

“How do they set it off? Cell phone?”

“Hard to swallow a cell phone. They could separate out the receiver, I suppose, but a cell can get tricky in a place like Mogadishu, where you don’t have reliable mobile phone service. A remote garage-door opener will do the trick.”

“Wouldn’t security notice that?”

“They’ll have his controller carry the opener. Set him off from just outside the blast field.”

“You seem pretty sure how they would do it.”

Janson gave the kid a thin smile. “It’s how I would do it.”

It looked to Ahmed like half of Mogadishu was headed to the homecoming. Ahead, they could see a huge blue banner with white letters slung across the road:

WELCOME HOME, SOMALIA

Ahmed asked, “How do you think Isse hooked up with the Italian?”

Janson said, “More likely, the Italian hooked up with Isse.”

“Spotted Isse for suicide-bomber bait when he was looking for Mullah Amriki? Ohmigod. Poor Isse.”

Janson opened the canvas bag. “Back in Minneapolis, did you ever act in your high school plays?”

“What? Yeah. I was a gangster in
Kiss Me Kate
. We sang a song called ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare.’”

“Here’s your costume. Put it on.”

Ahmed shook open the fabric. ”What is this? A burqa?”

“Pretend you’re in a play. And do exactly what I tell you.”

2°2' N, 45°20' E
Villa Somalia, Mogadishu

V
illa Somalia, the presidential palace, occupied a rise three miles from the airport and half a mile from the harbor. The gates were decorated with the white stars of Somalia set on blue fields. A light sea breeze stirred a hundred flags.

Coffee-colored AMISOM armored personnel carriers with machine guns on the roof maneuvered in the streets outside the walls. Stanchions were set in the street to keep bomb cars from parking next to the wall. Somali National Army soldiers in camouflage fatigues sporting white stars on blue shoulder patches were positioned behind sandbags. A thousand people were lined up to show papers at the gates.

“How would Isse even get in there?” asked Ahmed.

“He has an American passport. Just like you and me.”

Janson looked around for a way in without getting searched for weapons. He saw no sign of centralized digital security. No one was scanning passes. But soldiers were patting people down at the gates, which were split into separate checkpoints. Janson saw long lines of ordinary Somali men and women, shorter lines of recent returnees in Western dress, and an even shorter line for VIPs. Suddenly he saw the sun flash on Kingsman Helms’s blond hair. The tall oilman was approaching the VIP gate. Janson ran to catch up. Helms could walk him through. The crowd was thick. He called out, “Helms. Helms!”

Helms did not hear, and before Janson could reach him security waved him inside, where he was greeted by a young man whom Janson recognized from photos as President Adam’s chief of staff. Janson called again, but they disappeared into the crowds milling about the plaza that surrounded the palace.

A soldier took notice and appeared to guess based on Janson’s skin color. “Media there,” he shouted, pointing toward a separate press entrance where soldiers were searching reporters and inspecting their cameras.

Janson backed away, scanning the crowds, looking for a break.

“Hey, there’s Salah Hassan!” said Ahmed.

The new member of Parliament was already inside, shaking hands with people who had cleared security. Janson pulled out a phone and dialed Hassan’s cell. “I’m right outside with a young lady who an old friend from London asked me to escort. It’s her first time back since she was a child. Can you walk us through the VIP gate?”

He waved over the heads of the crowd and they made eye contact.

The realtor turned politician stepped over to the gate and spoke with the guards. Janson held out a passport, but the guards gestured to spread his arms so they could frisk him and search his canvas bag.

Getting Ahmed in the burqa past them was worth giving up his weapons. He said to Salah Hassan, “Tell them I have my pistol and two spare magazines in this bag. Could I leave it with them?”

Salah translated. The guard took the bag, and the
hundr
ed-d
olla
r bill Janson palmed into his hand, and ushered them in without searching Ahmed. Which meant, Janson feared, that the Italian would find some similar method of joining the festive gathering.

Once they were on the plaza inside the walls, Salah said, “Welcome home” to the burqa-covered Ahmed.

“We’re looking for Isse,” said Janson. “Have you seen him?”

“He’s here. He came early with a friend.”

“What friend?”

“An Arab businessman. He’s in Mogadishu to build a hotel.”

“Where are they?”

“Wandering the grounds. His friend is hoping for a word with Gutaale.” Salah winked. “Home Boy will make an excellent partner in a hotel venture.”

“Describe the friend.”

Salah looked puzzled by Janson’s abrupt manner. “Thin man. Short. A head shorter than Isse and wearing a Savile Row suit.”

“Necktie?”

“Sky blue. Somalia blue. Like mine.”

Janson had spotted dozens of men dressed like him. Business cards were flying and backs were being slapped, for despite the heat, Welcome Home, Somalia celebrators were in their Sunday best, showing they had prospered in the dollar countries and were hot to make deals. Only the very young like Ahmed eschewed suits for shirtsleeves, and no one but beggars outside the gates wore T-shirts.

“Glasses? Hair? Hat?”

“Sunglasses, no hat, short black hair. Curly. I was pleased to see Isse with a businessman. It could be the beginning of something—there they are now!”

“Where?”

“Home Boy and the president.”

The red-bearded Home Boy Gutaale and the youthful-looking president Mohamed Adam with his oddly white goatee were surrounded by high-ranking Army officers in glittering uniforms and tall plainclothes bodyguards in sports jackets and porkpie hats. Arm in arm, they started across the plaza, a convincing show of solidarity. Aides and guards steered them toward a raised wooden stage so newly erected that soldiers were shouting at the last carpenter, a stubborn old man who ignored them, to hammer a final nail.

“Give me the burqa.”

All were watching the president’s progress. Few noticed Janson whip the cloth off Ahmed. But Salah’s mouth dropped open as he recognized the parolee from Minneapolis.

Janson draped the cloth over his arm, grabbed the startled Salah, and dragged him along. “Look for Isse’s friend.”

“What—”

“Isse has a bomb.
Do you understand me?
” Janson shook him hard.

“Yes. A bomb. I understand.”

“The ‘friend’ you saw will detonate it. The man in the blue suit. Look for him. I’ll watch for Isse. You too, Ahmed. He’ll try to get near the president.”

Shouldering through the crowds, dragging Salah with him, Janson worked closer to Home Boy and President Adam, trying to catch up on an intersecting course. A mob of blue-suited businessmen, Kingsman Helms pushing among them, called for their attention, and the president and the warlord paused repeatedly to shake hands and embrace friends. They were almost at the stage steps when Janson let go of Salah and forged ahead, slamming through the crowd and knocking people out of his way.

There was Isse in a clean white shirt and sky-blue necktie, emerging from under the wooden stage and pushing toward the president and Gutaale. He looked frail, a vacant smile on his face, his hands outstretched and empty in gentle greeting.

Isse got ten feet from the president, well within the kill zone of the explosives in his stomach, before a heavyset plainclothes bodyguard blocked him with a gesture to clear the way. Janson shoved closer. Isse saw him. He turned his head as if to warn his controller. Slamming a bodyguard out of his way, Janson tracked the boy’s gaze toward a slight, dark-haired Arab in a blue suit and sunglasses.

Janson thought he recognized the man. He racked his brain for a connection. He was positive he knew him. But this was the controller, sliding what looked like a phone from his jacket and pointing it at Isse.

Two bodyguards, tall and broad, grabbed Janson. He doubled one up, smashing a knee to his groin, and broke the other’s hand and flung the burqa like a fishing net.

The folds of cloth spun through the air, spreading widely, hovered above Isse, and enveloped him. Janson threw his arms around the boy and held the cloth in place. The controller pushed on his phone, keying it over and over. So far the graphene nanoplatelet cloth was doing the job it had been invented to do—blocking electromagnetic interference. But the strength of the burqa shield was not infinite. Close enough, the signal would penetrate the fabric and detonate Isse’s bomb.

Face contorted, teeth and jaw clenched in thwarted rage, the controller pushed nearer. By this point the scrum of people trying to greet the president and Home Boy Gutaale were aware that something was wrong. The controller thrust the phone ahead of him like a gun. Janson shouted a warning, and the crowd stampeded from the stage. The controller was swept up and nearly knocked off his feet. His sunglasses went flying.

“Yousef!” Paul Janson recognized him instantly.

It was clear in a hopeless blink of an eye that the exfiltration job Janson had accepted a year before in hopes of ending civil war had produced the grimmest of all possible consequences. The dictator’s son he had rescued and delivered to Italy had seized a new opportunity, and had flourished in the chaos of yet another civil war. For who could be better equipped to prevail in lawless Somalia than a dictator’s minister of secret police?

Janson let go of Isse and attacked, smashing Yousef’s arm and wrenching the phone from his convulsing hand. He had it in his own hand when he was tackled from behind by the president’s bodyguards and driven to the ground.

Fighting to shield the phone to keep its buttons from being pushed, he struggled to his feet, only to be grabbed from the front by another guard.

He saw Isse throw off the burqa and run toward the plaza wall. Screaming people scattered from his path, which took him past the stage. Gunfire erupted in the street outside. A dervish in a black-and-white checked head scarf dragged himself onto the high outer wall through razor wire and broken glass and pointed a garage-door remote control at Isse.

The Somali-American vanished in a ball of fire. A thunderous shock wave blew the dervish off the wall and scattered the makeshift stage in a lethal hail of planks and timbers. Paul Janson felt a sharp stab of pain in his chest. The bodyguard who was bear-hugging him let go and fumbled at his own chest. The man had been impaled by a long wooden splinter that lanced through his body and pricked Janson’s skin. Janson lowered him to the ground.

Yousef, whose face was burned and blackened, crouched over a dead bodyguard and snatched his pistol from its holster. Janson stepped on his hand, kicked the gun away, dragged him to his feet, and thrust him at an Army officer who ran up, gun in hand. “This is the Italian AMISOM wants. Take him to General Ddembe.”

“Yes, yes, do as you’re told,” said a voice behind, and Janson turned to find himself face-to-face with President Adam.

“Are you all right, sir?”

“I believe I am.
Inshallah
. And thanks to them.” He peered through the smoke drifting over his fallen bodyguards, who had taken the brunt of the explosion. “Where is Home Boy?”

The red-bearded warlord rose from the victim he had been kneeling over and staggered toward them. He was rapping his palm against the side of his head, as if his ears were ringing. Otherwise, he appeared unhurt. “Ah,” he said to the president. “You survived.”

“Try to conceal your disappointment when we address the media, Vice President.”

“Now?” asked Gutaale.

“Immediately! We must show Somalia we are intact.”

P
AUL
J
ANSON WALKED
over to the body Home Boy Gutaale had been kneeling by.

Kingsman Helms had not a hair out of place. His sky-blue necktie was straight, his suit neither wrinkled nor dirtied by the dust and smoke swirling around the plaza, and he appeared unscathed except for the four-inch framing nail that had pierced his temple and emerged from his left eye.

What had made Helms come in person to such a potentially lethal event? War stalked the oil globals like an ever-roaming shark. Surely he knew how often his ASC deals set off battles like this one?

“He was a damned fool,” said a voice behind him.

Paul Janson turned to face Doug Case. The president of American Synergy Corporation’s Global Security Division was seated in his wheelchair, guarded by contract Special Ops shooters in sunglasses and bush hats.

“He was a
dangerous
fool,” said Janson. “If he was a fool.”

Case shrugged. “So now what?”

“You just moved up in the world,” said Janson. “Temporarily.”

“Temporarily?” asked Case. “What does that mean?”

“It depends on what AMISOM wrings out of Yousef, don’t you think?”

Case shrugged. “A man in trouble will say anything.”

Janson said, “My gut tells me that nothing Yousef says will help you.”

A shot rang out, followed by bursts of gunfire.

People screamed and ran. AMISOM troops formed a circle.

A broad-shouldered American in a flak vest and bush hat rejoined the shooters protecting Doug Case.

“What’s the shooting?” asked Case.

The American said, “The Italian pulled a pistol the idiots missed in their frisk. The AMISOM troopers shot first.”

“Is the Italian dead?”

“Totally.”

Paul Janson said, “There was a shot fired before the troopers opened up.”

Doug Case’s man looked at Case. Case nodded. His man said, “I thought I better shoot before someone got hurt.”

Doug Case smiled. “Hey, where you going, Paul?”

Paul Janson turned on his heel and went looking for a ride to the Puntland Coast.