Silent Arsenal

Which was why the refugee camp of Barehda lit a flicker of hope inside her punished body, rubbery legs finding energy at the sight of the food lines near the massive transport plane. Her only thought that food might sustain life until God opened another door.

The net veil was some protection against the buzzing hordes of flies, but she gagged as the fumes from the initial wave of rotting and diseased flesh and bodily waste clawed her senses. She followed the others toward the plane, appalled and pained at the sight of their stick figures, bodies sheared of muscle by malnutrition, dark, sagging flesh like leather, aware she looked every bit a walking corpse herself.

They skirted the outer northern perimeter of the camp, weaving past camels, goats and mules, their hides likewise worn to the bone. She heard the faint sobs of children, saw mothers cradling tiny bodies in spindly arms, skeletal fingers pushing some sort of grainy oatmeal into their mouths. But the infants, and even the older children, appeared almost too weak to chew. God, she had heard, might create drought, but man made the famine. What had been created here as the result of man’s inhumanity, she thought, had to be an abomination in the eyes of God.

She looked at the smattering of plastic tents, spotted shells of dark figures stretched out inside the flimsy covering, but most of the refugees were forced to bake under the sun, the suffocating heat, she knew, only compounding their suffering. She fell farther behind the others, shrouded in dust, her heart sick at the sight of so much misery, aware she and her son would most likely die here.

The refugees were eating all around her, a hopeful sign, she thought, the older males—teenagers mostly—shoveling the gruel into their mouths, slurping some white liquid from small plastic containers. There were a number of men, even small children, with missing arms and legs, cruel and sudden amputations as the result of countless land mines buried across both Ethiopia and Somalia.

She scoured the sea of displaced and starving, head spinning from the stink and the sight of so many living dead. She felt the cry of anguish burn in her chest, the thought that this would soon be the open burial ground for so many too much to bear when she saw tin containers suddenly falling to the ground. Refugees began clutching their stomachs, men, women and children convulsing, vomit spewing from mouths like burst faucets, bodies slumping over. Paralyzed by horror, she watched, listened to the cries fade, infants spilling from the arms of mothers who tumbled, thrashing on the ground. It was no mystery, she knew, disease was a major killer throughout Somalia, but something else was happening across the camp. The ravages of whatever the affliction were too sudden, too violent, to be any illness she had ever seen.

She found herself alone, the others now falling into the food line far ahead, unaware of what was happening, caring only about whatever food was being dispensed. She watched those she had made the trek with, fear mounting, something warning her to flee this place. There were armed men, wearing filter masks and white gloves, she saw, some of them barking orders to the refugees to hurry, other gunmen handing out the tin containers from the ramp of the silver transport plane. Why were they protecting themselves from breathing the air? No Red Cross or United Nations relief workers she’d ever seen came to the camps, heavily armed, donning protection as if they feared close contact with the local populations. That was no UN plane, either. She strained to make out the emblem on the fuselage: a white star inside a black ring, a fist that looked armored inside the star. They were westerners, that much she could tell. Another group of white men, she could see, stood on a ridge where the plain gave way to a jagged escarpment, far to the east, well beyond the camp. There were the dreaded technicals, she noted; Toyota pickups with mounted 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 is something that requires serious planning, contingencies to be thought out, and so forth. There is also the question of loyalty, compensation, reward and the like.”

And there it was, Abadal thought, suspecting all along it was too good to be true. “So there is more in it for you than using my country as simply a base for whatever your intentions.”

Abadal heard the quiet laugh again as Heinz told him, “A man of vision such as yourself surely must understand personal greatness and glory comes with a price.”

“And what will mine be?”

“We will be in contact with you. In the meantime, I suggest you thoroughly sanitize the area as we discussed.”

Abadal clenched his teeth, angry that the German, this arrogant foreigner who had come to his land as if he owned it, would just walk away, dismissing him, a flunky. “You realize I could either decline your offer…or take what I want from you.”

Abadal watched as the German kept walking, smiled at the death being spread below, then laughed out loud. “Yes, perhaps you could do just that, my Somali friend, but there would yet be another price to pay.”

THE HORROR BEGAN just after nightfall.

She was struggling to keep up with the man who told her his name was Mawhli. Beyond his name, she knew nothing about him, but if promised flight to Kenya…

At the moment safe passage into the unknown future was her only option.

Nahira Muhdu stumbled, Mawhli turning at the sound of her cry. He caught her before she was flung into a headlong tumble down the steep incline for the wadi, a fall that might have ended any hope of escape with broken bones or her son crushed in her arms.

There was screaming behind her, brief hideous wails that chilled her to the bone. She gasped when she saw the tongues of fire, glowing waves shooting from hoses extended in the hands of shadows moving away from the technicals, a ring of death that encircled the camp.