Booty near Djibouti

Liban’s legs had rubbed raw from being sticky against the pickups bed liner. The owner had made quite a living using this Toyota pickup as a glorified bus. The interior had no air conditioning or radio, but the bed had been lined with the best faux fur that money could buy around Mogadishu. The quality was suspect and the longer Liban sat the more he stuck to it, melded to the “fur”. This was just part of the mission in his mind. The trip was about 1700 miles of driving that had to be spread out over the course of 7 days. Their path meandered through park reserves, desert, grassland, all of it hot. It wasn’t yet summer but still the temperatures were routinely hitting 100. 7 days sweating and eating nothing more than beef jerky, water, and khat. The khat had its downsides but it was wonderful at keeping down the hunger pains. The destination. Flying with a duffle bag full of AK47’s was out of the question. Taking the direct route through Djibouti invited too many questions and checkpoints. After his last time out on the water, boating to the north was too risky. Too many eyes watching him.

   Liban was a Somali. He had been taken in young to act as a runner, then later a radio man, and eventually crew member for gang that ran for years in Mogadishu. The gang ran for years because they stayed quiet for the most part. When the US and UN came to Mogadishu for the infamous Blackhawk down days, they were under orders to stay put, stay quiet, stay hidden. It was in those times that Liban worked outside the city. He ran Khat, he ran guns, but mostly he ran parts. Parts for boats. Eventually when his leader was killed Liban decided to take to smuggling on his own terms. He could buy them cheap inland and smuggle them north or south, away from the eyes of the remaining UN observers. This made him decent money, but the real money was in ransoms around here. Africa was war torn; guns were so easy to get that smuggling them wouldn’t make anyone rich. He patrolled the waters off the Gulf of Aden in little more than a fiberglass canoe with an outboard motor. He couldn’t board a tanker; he couldn’t board a cruise ship and he had to be wary of passing warships but … he could pick off yachts. After all point wasn’t goods, it was ransoms.

 He boarded his first yacht, a 38ft benateau with very sleek shaded cabin windows. He was annoyed that nobody had answered his hails or even looked at him. When he boarded, he grabbed his Kalashnikov and looked for the crew. He found no crew. But he did find a couple in the middle of some sexual exploration that Liban couldn’t really wrap his head around. He clothed them and tied them up on the bow of the boat. Liban remembered a couple of the ports that he’d heard were full of other Somali’s like himself, the big “pirate” gangs. One was near Berbera and he turned to find it. When he realized he didn’t know how to sail he untied the couple and made them sail for him. He pointed on a map to Berbera and the man said, “Oi no, reefs up here mate”. So Liban made him pilot the boat for him around the reefs. In this way the man unknowingly taught Liban to sail and to navigate. When they reached shore many kids and other “pirate” types came out cheering to see the yacht. Liban found the one “pirate” that spoke English enough to talk to the couple, they needed to contact somebody. Liban told them they needed to give him $300,000 or he would kill them both. In a twist, the man offered to transfer the money himself. With no blood shed, no negotiation, Liban now had an account with 300,000 US dollars in it. 300,000 he needed to launder fast.

   Liban took to the Pirate life well and became a bit of a celebrity for taking on ships solo. But eventually for bigger takes he had to join up. His little gang was very good at intimidating oil and cargo shipping crews. The world marveled at these men who could board such large vessels with nothing more than an AK47 and a rope ladder. His group was loosely linked to the Captain Philips incident where an American ship captain was taken hostage. Liban was not directly involved but he knew the players. He was taken into custody by the Americans and questioned, then detained. Once Philips was home safe Liban thought he would also be released. This did not happen. He sat in a prison, unsure of where it was located. He learned a little English, watched American TV, prayed, worked out. For 2 years. It was in captivity that Liban saw a TV series where an energetic Israeli took on some of antiquities biggest mysteries, claiming to find Noah’s ark, the spear that was used to stab Jesus, the cup of Christ. The show was good, but the host an insufferable boob. Liban thought how easily he could rob the man. Then he caught one episode that made him think. It was about a lost tribe of Israel that had been linked via DNA to a group in north eastern Ethiopia in a place called Aksum. This was interesting, but the man claimed that this tribe had taken a treasure from Jerusalem prior to the city being sacked. They had taken this great treasure under the nose of Islamic invaders and fled across the red sea. The great treasure now and always guarded in Aksum, the final resting place of the tablets Moses wrote the 10 commandments on, the item of great power that struck down all who dared to look inside it, the ark of the covenant.

  According to the show there was small church surrounded by what looks like a 4^th century fortress wall. Inside the walls were some garden features, some stone ruins, mostly obelisks, and a structure roughly 14 ft high, and 20x20 square. It is made of stone and decorated the same as all the buildings in the area with colored wood trim. One single door hardly wide enough for a man to fit his shoulders through. Always guarded by 2 blind monks. It’s assumed they were blinded by their duties with the ark. Nobody is allowed to view the item but these monks. It’s value, immeasurable, and practically in Liban’s back yard.

 Once in Aksum, Liban put on his best garb and attempted to enter the church to pray. He was denied until Sunday services. With an action cam hidden in his garb he surveilled the location. There really were no guards, just 2 monks that traded off. This was even better, 1 monk on duty. That night he hopped the wall wearing black linen and carrying his AK47. He landed in the courtyard but there were no dogs, no chickens. Nothing to alert that he was coming. He walked up to the building supposedly containing the ark and cracked the door.

  Inside sat a blind monk in prayer with his back to the door. He lifted his head and in broken English said

“there is no need for violence what you seek is right here. It has been taken over 7 times now and gods will has always brought it back.”

Liban told the man to give him the ark. The old man stood up startling Liban to the point he almost accidentally pulled the trigger. The monk walked in a little and from a shelf pulled off what looked like a very dark koa wood bowl approximately 3ft in diameter and 2 ft deep. On its sides two large circular handles and over the top a very simple looking lid made of a different wood, lighter.

“it’s not what you expected is it? You expected gold, silver?”

Liban took the bowel anyways, he tied the man to a post inside the building and walked out the door with the “ark”. He strapped the lid down and had to roll it. The doorway was so small he accidentally scraped the bowl on the frame on his way out, but that didn’t matter. He ran out the front gate and loaded the “ark” into the bed of the waiting truck. His driver was used to smuggling strange items and this was no stranger. They drove to the coast and loaded the “ark” onto one of Liban’s old fiberglass boats, the first he’d ever used to “pirate”. He loaded on extra fuel to the point the boat sat very low in the water. He started south.

      He could travel only at night and he calculated he must be in the waters off Djibouti by now, still a bit low in the water he really tried to avoid the wakes of passing tankers, some of which were 4 to 5 ft tall. Passing by a shipping port there was enough light that he could finally take a good look at this item for himself. It was not much to look at. Even in terms of woodworking this was done by a journeyman at best. What was in this thing anyways to make it this heavy. He popped it open and with closed eyes got to where he could look in. He opened one eye slowly, afraid to go blind. Nothing happened. Inside was a rock. dark, probably iron or obsidian, it was hard to tell but it did have a sheen to it. He closed the lid, confused as to what he had just stolen. He knew at best he could sell for a few thousand dollars to some collector in Mogadishu and the rock inside the same.

  Liban’s eyes started to get heavy. He was a bit sleepy; he rigged the boat to continue course and tried to close his eyes. After about an hour of this he realized he wouldn’t be able to sleep, the boat had cranked his neck so bad that he had a terrible headache now. His vision started to kaleidoscope a bit, classic symptom of a migraine to come. He rubbed his head; it was near dawn.

  Suddenly Liban was blasted with spotlights from the air. He was buzzed by a helicopter; over the loudspeaker he was told to stop his engine. Liban looked back and could see a dozen boats behind in chase. All much faster and all with very large guns at their bows. He cut the engine and put his hands up. This pirate smuggler was caught. He couldn’t believe anyone would be after him for such a small item as this bowl. Soon he found himself in a familiar place, in custody, with some man from the US interrogating him.

Liban spoke “Why am I here, I have done nothing to deserve this. I have a bowl and nothing more”

“Yes, we know about the bowl and we could put you in prison for 2 years because of the unregistered AK47 moving across an international border. That doesn’t even count the time you’d do once we figure out who you stole this bowl from Liban. The fact is that’s small time. We don’t care about that. So, tell us what you think you have here”

“I have a bowl nothing else, somebody want me to take it for them, so I take. This happens every day in Somalia, it is how trade works here.”

“did you happen to look inside your bowl Liban?”

“yes, I did, I opened it, some rock, so what”

“Well I’ll tell you so what. That rock you have in there set off every nuclear material alert sensor we have in the port of Djibouti, most of which nobody knows we have. It turns out the gulf here is quite the smuggling route for old soviet nuclear material. But for the last decade we’ve seen nothing, until you showed up. That rock of yours is a mix of a few minerals of note. You have a few nice specs of tritium speckled throughout the biggest piece of solid Uranium 235 we’ve ever seen. Now you can find U235, but you have material that is 95% pure. Our nuclear weapons are generally using material enriched to a point of 90% U235 and tritium is what we call a yield booster. In other word you floated by with enough weapons grade nuclear material to incinerate New York city, Washington, Paris, London. So where did you get it”

Liban told his story, he mentioned the monk at Aksum, he mentioned that this was the ark. None of that mattered. Liban had time to think as he was treated for radiation sickness. His vision wasn’t fully gone, but his eyes were never the same. After 6 months in a US prison, again with location unknown Liban got a visit. It was the original officer that interrogated him.

“This is your lucky day Liban. We’ve worked out a deal. It turns out that that because of our current relations with the country of Ethiopia we are returning the fissile material and your bowl to Aksum. They also insisted that we hand you over instead of holding you in this lovely place for 10 years. They say they are going to put you on guard for 5 years, then you’re free. They’ll give you room and board, but you must guard the very bowl you took. Kind of a strange but fitting punishment. That fissile material of course we’ll be watching closely as well. The part I can’t wrap my head around is its makeup. Uranium just doesn’t appear like that; it must be made. It also doesn’t appear with tritium naturally. So, if your boys up in Aksum are right and this thing did come from biblical times that means somebody back then was enriching uranium and new how to boost its power. They could irradiate people, fake plagues, hell maybe even cause a reaction and blow something up. It boggles the mind. “

  Liban gladly took the sentence and lived out the remainder with the monks, never looking at the Ark’s contents again. This Pirate was a believer now and who better to guard such an ancient treasure.