Chapters (96)
- Cover
- Berkley titles by David Ricciardi
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- CHARACTER LIST
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- SIXTY-ONE
- SIXTY-TWO
- SIXTY-THREE
- SIXTY-FOUR
- SIXTY-FIVE
- SIXTY-SIX
- SIXTY-SEVEN
- SIXTY-EIGHT
- SIXTY-NINE
- SEVENTY
- SEVENTY-ONE
- SEVENTY-TWO
- SEVENTY-THREE
- SEVENTY-FOUR
- SEVENTY-FIVE
- SEVENTY-SIX
- SEVENTY-SEVEN
- SEVENTY-EIGHT
- SEVENTY-NINE
- EIGHTY
- EIGHTY-ONE
- EIGHTY-TWO
- EIGHTY-THREE
- EIGHTY-FOUR
- EIGHTY-FIVE
- EIGHTY-SIX
- EIGHTY-SEVEN
- Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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And every one of them had been searching for Masaska.
The tip ultimately came from a paid informant inside the Darood organization. The target was in a warehouse across town.
—
“WE CAN HANDLE this,” said Badeed’s chief of operations. Badeed was strapping on an assault vest, and there was no reason for the big boss to risk his life on such a mission.
The warlord put a hand on the man’s shoulder and looked him in the eyes.
“Some things a man must do himself . . . for his soul.”
He climbed into the lead pickup truck and signaled the small convoy to move out. The operations chief had put a man with binoculars down the block from the warehouse twenty minutes after the tip came in, just before midnight.
Three of the pickup trucks stopped a hundred meters away. Badeed’s men exited their vehicles and advanced on foot, hoping to catch the enemy asleep.
Two of Badeed’s men went behind the warehouse. Most power lines in Mogadishu hung in low bunches across roads and sagged diagonally across streets. Sometimes fifty separate wires would be mounted on a single pole, and it took one of Badeed’s men ten minutes to isolate the line into the warehouse.
The other men surrounded the building with Kalashnikov rifles, Norinco machine guns, and a pair of rocket-propelled grenades while the fourth pickup crept forward silently, barely above idle speed, until it was thirty feet from the entrance. Two men ran chains from the truck’s frame and hooked them to the warehouse’s sliding doors.
The driver gunned the engine.
The six-thousand-pound pickup had already accelerated through twenty miles per hour by the time the chains went taut.
—
JAKE HAD DRIFTED in and out of consciousness many times since the torture had begun in earnest. It was his body’s way of conserving all of its available energy to save itself.
But this time when he opened his eyes, he saw nothing. His world was black. He had no idea where he was or what was happening . . . until he felt the pain.
And it all came back.
Nacay had returned and hooked Jake up to a truck battery with a pair of jumper cables. The warlord’s son had taken an almost deviant pleasure in watching Jake’s muscles and nerves seize up and spasm as the current coursed through his body. A few times, Jake thought his heart or his eyes might explode, but his body had somehow survived. Then had come the burns, and the stress positions that had nearly dislocated both of his shoulders.
A faint glow spilled in through a skylight in the building’s roof. A moment later, Jake heard muffled snores coming from a distant room and realized that he was still in the warehouse, still tied to the rack. The coarse ropes tied around his ankles, wrists, and throat were supporting most of his body weight.