The Tears of Dark Water Read Online Free PDF

shell launched, its back-blast ignited the skiff’s engine and the engine became a bomb. The explosion was so violent that it sent flames high into the sky and flipped the skiff like it was a toy. The waves quickly encircled the broken hull and dragged it under. It sank in less than a minute, leaving behind a scatter of bodies and an oil slick that continued to burn.
    In the wake of the blast, Ismail sat paralyzed while his skiff drifted to a stop, bobbing idly in the Jade Dolphin ’s wake. He didn’t process the shouts of the men around him. He didn’t notice the container ship slipping away. He was in Mogadishu again, crouched behind an overturned jeep on Maka al Mukarama Road, Yusuf huddled beside him, crying. Bullets were flying around, some ricocheting off the jeep, others burying themselves in the house behind them. Men were shrieking in Somali, some injured, some dying, as the government tanks made their advance. Then came the explosion and the black void of unconsciousness. His eyes blinked and he saw the blood again, felt its viscous stickiness on his skin. He heard the shriek escape from his lips—
    —and returned to the present just as suddenly. His men were yelling his name.
    “Afyareh! Afyareh! What are we going to do?”
    They were staring at him, terrified. Guray, aged twenty-four, an illiterate goatherd from the interior whose only talent was wielding a gun; Dhuuban, aged nineteen, the runt of his seven siblings, scarecrow-thin, and desperate to prove himself to his father; Osman, aged twenty-five, headstrong and juvenile, a fisherman with a sixth-grade education; Liban, aged twenty, the trustworthy son of a camel broker, and Ismail’s right-hand man; and finally, Sondare, an introspective boy of seventeen whose mother sold qat to feed his five brothers while his father wasted her earnings on his new wife. Without Gedef, they were like orphaned children. They needed someone to lead them.
    “We’ll search for the living,” Ismail said, speaking with a voice of authority. It was the only gift the Shabaab had given him—he knew how to command.
    He took the tiller in hand and piloted the skiff to the site of the wreck. His men plugged their noses against the stench of burning oil and pointed out the bodies. They found three of them quickly, floating facedown on the water. All were dead, riddled with shrapnel. The fourth they found in a haze of pink some distance away. He was missing half a leg. The sight was so grotesque that Sondare turned away and Dhuuban retched over the side. The rest shouted Gedef’s name and that of his cousin, Mas, into the vastness of sky and sea, but no reply came.
    “They’re dead,” Liban said in a voice tinged with shock. “We have to find the dhow.”
    “No,” Osman replied fiercely. “We can’t leave them.”
    Ismail forced himself to be patient. Osman was Mas’s best friend. “We’ll keep searching,” he said and turned the skiff around again.
    He watched the Jade Dolphin recede into the distance while his men looked for survivors. The RPG shell had missed. Perhaps Gedef had only meant to scare them. Ismail would likely never know. The attack had degenerated into a fiasco. But the mission itself could be salvaged. The dhow had enough food and fuel for another week at sea. Other pirate bands had hijacked ships with one skiff. It was hazardous, but preferable to the alternative. They couldn’t return to Somalia without a prize. Gedef’s investors would have their heads.
    “Look!” Osman shouted, staring toward the east and the sun. “It’s Mas!”
    The young man was floating on a piece of wreckage in water turned molten by the sunrise. He was half drowned, but he turned his head in their direction. Ismail brought the skiff alongside him, and Osman and Guray pulled him into the boat. He curled up in the fetal position, spit drooling out of his mouth. Apart from shock and exposure, he appeared to be uninjured, except for a two-inch-long laceration on his