machine guns, too many armed Somalis to count, their eyes watching the camp over scarves or from behind black hoods. Why were they laughing among themselves?
It struck her as a bad dream, food being distributed by armed men laughing at the sight of so much suffering and death. It all felt so hideously wrong…it was evil, she decided
She flinched, gasped when she felt a hand tug at her shoulder.
“You just arrived?”
He spoke Amharic, the language of her country. There was fear in his stare. She answered, “Yes… I…”
“Did you eat the food?”
She shook her head.
“Come,” he said. “They have all been poisoned.”
“But what of the others?” she said, nodding toward the refugees around the plane. “I must warn—”
“No. If you do that, the Somalis and the white men will most likely kill you and your child. We must make our way to the farthest edge of the camp. Night will fall soon, then we will make our way out of here and run to the Kenyan border. I have family there. You will be safe. But we must make our way now.”
Could she trust this stranger? she wondered. Why, if what he said was true, poison all of them? It made no sense. But in a lawless land like Somalia, where only violence and mayhem ruled, why wouldn’t mass murder of refugees, viewed as a blight and a burden, be acceptable?
She watched in growing horror, knew she couldn’t stay here, counted perhaps another ten refugees toppling to the ground, then let the stranger take her arm and lead her and her son deeper into the camp. She avoided looking anyone in the eye, felt like a coward for fleeing, leaving them to die without warning. But perhaps, she decided, it was God’s will she and her son survive. Afraid more than ever, Nahira Muhdu found the strength to silently implore God to deliver them from this evil.
YASSIF ABADAL WAS thinking God did, indeed, work in mysterious ways, bestowed wondrous gifts to those who remained faithful and loyal and patient. Sometimes God even used the Devil, he thought, to do his work.
As chieftain of his Nurwadah clan, controlling the deep southwest edge of Somalia, he had his sights set on far loftier goals than simply dominating an area populated mostly by nomads and bandits. Mogadishu was the ultimate prize. But he needed a mighty sword’s clear edge, some overwhelming power that would see him crush rivals, bring the entire country under his rule.
The white men, he believed, had brought him, it appeared, all the power of the sword he could have ever hoped or prayed for.
The refugees were spilling all over the camp in droves, their feeble cries flung from his ears as his warriors chuckled and made jokes among themselves. Snugging the bandanna higher up his nose, he watched as the white men quickly handed out the tin containers and the milky-looking drink to the newest Ethiopian horde. They were so concerned with only filling their bellies, they seemed unaware their fellow countrymen were right then dying in their midst.
Toting one of the new G-3 assault rifles, he looked at the white men fanned down the ridge beside him. It was, indeed, the strangest of alliances, he thought, looking at their blond heads, blue eyes that were as cold as chips of ice, catching the arrogance and contempt in their voices for these refugees as they barked in their native guttural tongue.
He had never seen a German in the flesh, but his predecessor had somehow gotten his hands on an old black-and-white film of World War II. It had galled him, back then, how their late leader had so admired white racist barbarians who would have enslaved the indigenous peoples of North Africa if they hadn’t been driven off the continent by the British and Americans. But when the role as leader was passed on to him, Abadal came to see the stunning power of their blitzkrieg and other military tactics, understood the brutal discipline and the steely professional commitment to war that even he now preached to his clan.
If these Germans could propel him into the future glory of complete victory over every rival clan, and if he was destined to sit in the presidential palace in Mogadishu with their help, he had no problem walking into tomorrow with the devil by his side. Nor did it matter how many rivals, refugees or common Somalians died in the bloody path to the crown.
They had flown in a group of emissaries for the first round of negotiation a month prior. It was an unauthorized landing in a country so hostile to the west, Abadal had been, at first, anxious, even unnerved by their brazenness, their lack of fear, but perhaps whatever intimidation they felt was only masked with contempt. The ice was broken, however, when the Germans came bearing gifts of cash and weapons, including heavy machine guns, handheld multibarreled rocket launchers, flamethrowers. The high-tech gear—cell phones with scrambled lines, the ground and air radar, night-vision goggles and other state-of-the-art wonders only dreamed of in Somalia—had required some lengthy instruction. But Abadal and his top lieutenants had gotten the gist, enduring gruff explanations by the Germans until they felt proficient enough to at least get the high-tech goods up and running.
For their generosity, these Germans had a proposal, and they had chosen him to be ruler of all Somalia. Why him? he’d asked. They had grunted, shrugged and answered, “Why not?” Did he wish to remain a nomad in the desert with a few old AKs, some rusty technicals and indulging wishful thinking about greatness? Of course not, he’d countered. What did they want in return? They had claimed nothing more than a possible base of operations when the other clans were wiped out and he controlled the destiny of his country. They had a weapon, the first group had claimed, one that was as potentially devastating as any weapon of mass destruction.
Now that he had seen the almost instant and clear catastrophic effects of this invisible killer, Abadal had questions, most of which were based on concern for his own safety. He found their leader; the tall, muscled one named Heinz with the bullet head and black leather jacket, and walked up to him.
“Ah, my Somali friend. What do you think?” he said, admiring the view as shriveled figures in rags thrashed throughout the camp. “As good as promised, I hope?”
“Tell me something. This virus in the food, can it be spread to others who have not eaten it? Can it be caught through the air? By touch?”
“First of all, this was an experiment. Our way of showing you the future that, uh,” he said, voice thick with his native tongue, “we are prepared to place solely in your hands. Second, it is a biologically engineered parasite, not a virus, taken from the female Anopheles mosquito.”
“I am seeing an outbreak of malaria?”
Heinz shook his head, chuckled. “Yes and no. The details are very complex, scientific jargon you would neither understand, nor do you need to concern yourself with. And if you are worried about contamination, you will only become infected two ways. If you eat what is basically pig slop made from simple microyeast or you come into direct contact with bodily fluids.”
“Blood?”
“That would be a bodily fluid.”
The German was talking to him like a child now. Abadal scowled. “But you said you can deliver an airborne plague, that you have the vaccine.”
“That is true.”
“When?”
“Shortly. I will consult with my superiors. But, I must tell you, there may be a few more conditions before we are prepared to hand this country over to you. A plague that is spread deliberately…well, it
