Deployed Read Online Free PDF

radar.
    Whatever the reason, the jeep pulled into the alley after Daud, and he hardened his heart for what he knew he must do, for what he must accept. Only for the moment. That was a promise he silently made to himself. Hardening the heart these days didn’t take much. Sometimes he was surprised at the violence that he could unleash. Perhaps he was not so different from his father.
    “Hold on there. We want to speak to you.” The voice was blunt and heavy, full of authority.
    Daud kept facing the other end of the alley and walking.He wore khaki pants that were a little too big for him and a lightweight cotton shirt that had once been white. He was slim and of medium height, his skin dark except where months-old scars crossed his arms, neck, and right cheek. His hair was short and curled tightly in toward his scalp. He no longer looked like the man he had been. His losses had marked him and changed him forever. He was a hollow man now, filled only with hate and a desire to make others hurt.
    One of the men released the slide on an AK-47. The sound was immediately distinctive, and Daud knew it well. He stopped and held up his hands.
    “Now you understand.” The men laughed in the bullying tone that made Daud so angry. Lately, there were many bullies in Somalia, many killers and defilers who did atrocious things in the name of God.
    Daud hated those men and knew they were worthy of his attentions. Slowly, he turned to face the three killers. His gaze swept over their faces, and he knew them in a glance more deeply than they would expect. After all, he had grown up around such men. His father had commanded them, keeping them in line with his hard fists and a bullet when necessary.
    The one holding the AK-47 lowered it. He was young and brash, a youth who had taken to the hard side of life because he feared being a victim. His scraggly beard barely shadowed his cheeks. He couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen. Still, even small children were dangerous when armed with assault weapons as they often were these days.
    For a moment, though, Daud thought of his own son, how he had held him after he’d been born, and how he’d heldhim the last time only a few months ago when he’d laid him in the same grave as his mother. Daud quelled the flicker of pity he felt for the boy holding the rifle and instead focused on the ice-cold intensity of the ever-present rage that wore him like a suit of clothes.
    The driver was a slightly older version of the boy. Not a relative. He was just what the boy would become if he lived so long and learned no other direction in his life. Older, heavier, with eyes that were totally dead and uncaring. He picked at his yellowed teeth with a fingernail.
    In the passenger seat, their leader sat and glared arrogantly, filled with self-importance. He was in his early thirties—the oldest of the men—and wore better clothes. A gold tooth gleamed at the front of his mouth. That tooth told Daud that the man wasn’t a native of Mogadishu, and probably not of Somalia either. The Somali people knew better than to choose something like that gold tooth because it would mark them for thieves who would take that very tooth out of their mouths to put food on the table.
    Daud guessed the man was from the Middle East, come down to be a leader among the al-Shabaab faction. Many were arriving from the Middle East since they had more training than the local people.
    “What do you wish?” Daud lowered his hands to his sides.
    The leader nodded curtly, his lips curled cruelly. “We are al-Shabaab, and we are raising funds for our efforts to retake our city. We wish for you to donate.”
    The al-Shabaab were Islamist militants warring with the Transitional Federal Government. When the TFG had takenover the city, the al-Shabaab had retreated to the jungle, but they hadn’t entirely gone away. Mogadishu was too big and scattered for the TFG and the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) to effectively police.