The Ghosts of Westgate, Stanley Mungai [reading books for 7 year olds .txt] 📗

1

21st September 2012, 1800hrs, Malakal South Sudan.

The Maghrib salatcould be heard above the din of the noisy market place. The Malakia mosque just a few meters away was still alive with white gowns and taqiyahs that seemed to hover in the air unmanned. A number of hooded women stood silently at a corner probably gossiping about the male worshippers who had been late to attend the evening prayers and now hurriedly lay down their sajadda and knelt on it bowing low till their foreheads touch the decorated surface of the prayers rug before lifting the bearded faces up towards the eastern sky. A donkey laden with goods from the market brayed noisily drowning the Allah Akbar from loud speakers on the towers of the Mosque. The sun had bid the last farewell to the tired traders and the western sky was dulled by a Stratus cloud hiding the sunset orange. The relief of the hot day gone was imminent on the children who now raced on the dirt road that joins Malakal to Kurmuk near the Ethiopian border.

Above the roofs of the low structures facing the upper Nile towered a magnificent one storey house with tall pillars jutting above the k-apple fence. An electric fence hugged the K-apples in a symbiotic embrace that kept sneaky eyes out of the otherwise beautiful scenery inside the compound. The gate was manned by burly looking figures obstructing the gate inscribed الأسد with large blue print. A Toyota Premio car drove quickly and stopped at the gate. Two security men immediately signalled the driver to lower the tinted glass. Two middle aged men of Somali origin gestured from within the car without saying a word. One of the gate security men gestured towards the rear of the car and the car boot was flicked open. Another man whom the two vehicle occupant had not noticed from the corner of the still closed gate joined the other two in figuring out what the cargo was that the two had brought in.

Car bombs were not uncommon in this region since the second Sudanese civil war when the town served as a garrison for the Khartoum-based Sudanese Armed forces. After the war and independence in 2011, the men could still not trust a Somali manned vehicle that had probably been driven thousands of miles from Hargeisa in northern Somalia through Keren in Eritrea, across Sudan border through Kassala and down further across South Sudan border into Malakal. The open boot revealed a concealed a General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), four hand grenades, a bullet belt and five AK-47 assault Rifles. One excess arm and the security would have sprayed the car with bullets. They had received strict Instructions only to allow this much cargo into the building including the hidden wrapping of bullet-proof vests at the back seat of the car. In a brown envelope also was a map of Nairobi an indication that these weapons were meant to go over the border into Kenya. This would be the most difficult section of the journey as the borders were closely watched.

The two occupants could not have acquired these in Eritrea or Somali and so they had made a brief stop-over at Al-Qadarif to purchase them from a former SPLA commander who they only knew as Lomoro. Names were extremely restricted in this occupation and it was not possible to know whether this was his real name as most people in the business used aliases. After one last peak at the occupants and satisfied that they fitted the description as given by the Lion, they opened the gate to let the car in.

The car almost skidded to a halt at the front of the house and the high wooden door seemed to open automatically as five hooded figures, each welding an automatic weapon emerged racing towards the car. The two occupants were dragged in leaving the exhausted car behind glad that it had reached a final destination. The large airy room was painted all white except for a green spot at the middle of the inner wall where a round circle was painted with a crescent that embraced a bright white start in its bosom. The Somali men were allowed to look around as the hooded figures nosed them with their weapons. They were unmoved by the seemingly act of high-handedness that the Lion had welcomed then with. Theirs was a higher calling and of a nature that even the lion will never ever dream of in his Entire hiding life.

“I was expecting three. So unless you can explain why you are two, I will have you detained until I get the three of you here, now” A voice that seemed to have originated from somewhere in the upper room called at the stranded travellers.

“We left him at New Halfa in Sudan.” Retorted one of the Somali men. Even the Lion did not have names and had never met them. But they exactly matched the description and their cargo matched as well. So they must have been the ones. He was however expecting three men and not two. The whereabouts of people mattered so much in this business that he was ready to put their heads on a pole and not think twice about their fate.

“This was not part of the Plan, was it?” He asked starting to feel angry at their unmoved countenances.

“No it was no part of the plan but now it is.” The second Somali said in defiance. Each was trying to show the other who was in charge here.

“What good are you if you cannot stick to a simple plan?” Asked the lion.

“You have not even asked whether he is dead or alive” the Somali added when he noticed the sudden spark of malice in the lion’s eyes.

“Well is he?”

“No he is not.” They answered in unison.

“Then stop wasting my time and start explaining how and why you deviated from standard protocol.”

“Lomoro was beginning to waver in the Faith. We had to take care of him.” One Somali explained.

“You killed him?” The Lion asked aggravated. “How?”

“Do not worry Teskalem.” The Somali said addressing him by name. “He will meet a tragic Road accident tomorrow on his way to Sennar. That is why we had to make sure that they have not met. We are well within the Protocol and in correct timing according to my calculation”.

2

30th October 2012, 1300hrs, Baraawe, Somalia.

The camp was situated several kilometres from the main Baraawe town off Jidka Baraawe towards the North. The grove provided a perfect architecture to funnel the occasional explosions that emanated from the camp to the duty ground. The hot sand augured well with the moonscape that cruelly smiled at the trainees who stood in straight rows as if an architect carved them into the ground after several complex mathematical functions. The dry wind howled angrily whistling against the Acacia thorns that dotted the empty lands as far as the eye could see till blue distance swallowed up the distinction between the sky and the ground.

A small mound of Earth marked the entrance to the underground cavern where the recruits and the trainers dwelt away from the spying eyes of the Kenya Defence Forces. On this hot day, they would be learning all manners of survival tactics in the Holy war that they were taking back to Nairobi and other Kenyan towns in order to inflict as much damage as possible. Going up the ranks was rated by the number of deaths and negative financial impact.

The trainers made sure that only a few trainees were in the camp at a time. Too many of them would easily be noticed but the Mujahidin was always on the watch from the air, sea and land. Training at the sea had become almost suicidal with the arrival of the KDF. The twenty trainees, all Kenyans drawn mainly from the coastal town of Mombasa and North Eastern town of Garissa rolled on the brown dirt, all hooded. They were amazed that their trainer whom they only knew as Boom also Kenyan could identify them by names however hooded they were. The twenty were divided into two groups each with similar task and each as a backup plan for the other.

A lonely track camouflaged into a bush by acacia braches slept comfortable on one end of the camp that doubled up as a toilet. A bush that was watered three times a day hid the truck and unless you knew it was there you would never find it by just looking. This was the lone equipment to train in driving and it never left the camp for other duties. Any other vehicle that came to the camp had to leave in less than thirty minutes as they were easier to detect from the sky. The training also included light weapon training, grenades and establishing and utilizing safe houses. Effective and secure communication and escape and evasion tactics were given a larger portion of the curriculum. A dead Mujahidin was of little use to the course.

“Godane”, Boom called the tall slender figure that jerked to a halt and saluted.

“Targets?”

“Westgate and Holy Family Basilica”.

“Resource?”

“Sheikh Abdiweli”

Khalid had made the twenty recruits recite the targets over and over at will although he knew there was no need to make this group do this as they were Kenyans. The others who came for training needed to say it over and over. They had to be focussed on the goal. He wanted them undistracted by either family or relation or anything else in the world. They lived only for this one purpose.

3

13th November 2012, 0300hrs, Huruma, Nairobi.

A Tuesday morning in Nairobi was nothing special and at 3 am in the morning, only the brave, the robbers and the whores were familiar with the streets at this time of the night. One or two police figures in long rain coats could also be seen once in a while wielding the old rifles that were probably used in the First World War. If they became too broke, they turned robbers themselves and robbed anyone mad enough to be walking the Outering road at this time of the night. Revellers were careful with the police. They knew where to find the police and where to avoid them. Even the police avoided certain streets which were controlled by the not so small residents of Dandora and Huruma estate. They had a kind of Symbiotic relationship where they never robbed certain streets which were left to the police to rob. So for the clean citizens, you were left with a choice between the police and the robbers.

On this night though, a new but not unfamiliar intruders roamed the streets, the white robes and the taqiyahs were all too familiar in this sector of the road. The mosque was a few minutes away and even the police would not question a lone Sheikh deep in prayer and contemplation and probably heading to the Mosque for the Fajr salat. A car drove past him momentarily distracting him from his deep moment of meditation. He looked up at the car that had now disappeared into the slight morning mist. A Matatu that had started ferrying passengers to the city centre for work slowed down near the Sheikh urging him to board. “Tao Boss”, Hailed the Conductor as the driver honked loudly splitting the quite noise with an array of tunes. The Sheikh unperturbed continued with his prayer walk and the Matatu conductor gave up on him and asked the driver to move on and find more co-operative passenger. “Inua Dere”. He said