Task Force Desperate by Peter Nealen Read Free Book Online Page B

the sun was going down over the city. Most of the rest of the team was back, and we gathered in the op-center to go over what we’d found out.
    It was mostly atmospherics, and some background info we hadn’t had going in, which was about what we’d expected. We didn’t exactly blend in here, and that was a liability when it came to getting intel. I was pretty sure we’d have to start working sources, something of which I knew next to nothing. Hey, I know my strengths and weaknesses. Shooting and blowing stuff up, I’m good at. Recruiting sources in an entirely foreign culture; not so much.
    There was a picture forming, however. Larry and I had gotten a little of it from Arno Kohl, but other pieces were starting to come together.
    The President had just changed the rules for the second time, allowing himself to run for a fourth six-year term. There had been plenty of outrage the last time, when he had done the same thing, and been elected by a suspicious 80-something percent. He apparently didn’t even try to mask the election fraud this time, with something closer to one hundred percent. This alone wouldn’t be much of a surprise. Kleptocrats were a dime-a-dozen in this part of the world.
    The trouble was, the president was the single richest man in East Africa. Meanwhile, some sixty-percent of the men in Djibouti were unemployed, and living in the crushing poverty we had gotten such a good look at that afternoon. Envy is a powerful tool in the wrong hands.
    Much of his wealth came from the port, i.e., from foreigners. The Islamists, from Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, and Somalia, were capitalizing on that, especially in the slums. Anger at the rich, fraudulent president had started to build.
    There were demonstrations. They started out peacefully, but the president’s security forces had heard some of the grumbling, and overreacted. Over a hundred people died in the resulting massacre, and the demonstrations turned into riots. The president hadn’t been seen outside the presidential mansion since.
    There had been more riots, some aimed at the security forces, but most at the Westerners or even the equally poor Afar. There were militias forming in the slums, and even in some of the more affluent parts of the city. The military was being held close to the presidential palace, and after an entire squad was killed and mutilated in the slums, they didn’t venture too far from the main drags.
    Lemonier had been a target because of the growing outrage against Westerners. Nobody seemed to know why they’d gone after a guarded US military base, but were still leaving the European quarter pretty much alone, but that wasn’t really our concern. It was obvious to me, as more of the story came out, that the opposition had been entirely co-opted by Shabaab and Al-Qaeda types, probably with several other random jihadi organizations thrown into the mix. The Muslim Brotherhood wasn’t making any secret of its presence in most of the mosques, either.
    The bigger picture was, if anything, even more ominous than upwards of two hundred hostages in the hands of psyched-up Islamist terrorists, in the middle of a city that was about to set itself on fire. Djibouti was the only major port on the Horn. That made it very, very important, strategically. If the Islamists were able to install a strict-sharia state here, they could put some serious economic hurt on the West. As if the piracy coming out of Somalia and the worldwide depression weren’t bad enough.
    As we were discussing the worsening intel picture, Imad came back. He looked grimmer than usual, as he joined us at the map table.
    “Most of the people who might talk are scared shitless,” he explained, as he leaned on the map. “Can’t say I blame them. There are some seriously scary motherfuckers in town.” He started ticking off names. “Mohammed Khasam and Ismail Farah I know for certain are here. Farah made his name with Al-Shabaab a few years ago, for his enthusiasm with a