Wilma

By Bob Sunman

Originally created as 'A Love of Letterboxes', 'WILMA' (Women's Islamic Liberation Movement Army) describes an amateur attempted bank robbery by a small squad of down-on-their-luck ex-soldiers dressed as Yemeni Muslim women, (eponymous 'letterboxes'), which coincides with a terrorist attempt on the Birmingham Broad Street bullion depot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Jul 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664116115

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Copyright © 2021 by Bob Sunman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/08/2021

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CONTENTS

The Prelude

Chapter 1 ......reality check

Chapter 2 ......the best laid plans of mice and men.....

Chapter 3 .....a time for reflection.....

Chapter 4 ..... gang aft agley

Chapter 5 ........in vino, veritas......

Chapter 6 ......... ab usque ad mortem bibimus et potus ebrietatem

Chapter 7 ... and another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.

Chapter 8 …H.I.B.K. (Had I But Known) that at that very moment.....)

Chapter 9 .....jihad

Chapter 10 ........... send in the clowns - Wednesday, the bar of the Billabong:-

Chapter 11 ..... meanwhile, back at the ranch ....

Chapter 12 ....... while all the household soundly sleeps........

Chapter 13 ......wagons roll.

Chapter 14 .....If I ruled the world.......

Chapter 15 .... Onwards and upwards....

Chapter 16 ......let battle commence….

Chapter 17 ... The point of no return...

Chapter 18 ....Come fly with me.....

Chapter 19 The Wages of sin.....

Epilogue

THE PRELUDE

T HEY STOLE A truck in Berbera, and escaped, bouncing and rattling at the head of a comet’s tail of dust, through Daragodle and Shiik Abdaal, up the mountain road to the sprawling former summer capital of British Somaliland, Hargeysa. About a hundred miles as the crow flies: more than five hours by road. The stench of goat and sheep skins drying in the sun and dust overlaid the city and was solid enough to touch. As they growled through the outlying shacks, shanties and tents, and climbed higher into the Ogo Highlands, the road became flanked by stunted thorn and acacia, struggling among the coarse grasses to earn a living in the thin dry soil. The air was scented with frankincense and myrrh as the heat of the sun forced its own fractional distillation on plant resins, and the road climbed toward the border with Ethiopia, then on to the ancient walled city of Harer, nestling in the fertile coffee growing eastern Ogaden, their journey hindered by a constant trickle of refugees from the Ogaden, heading for Somalia, and by the occasional burnt out truck. They stopped to rest overnight.

Early the next morning, they began the nearly forty mile descent into the relatively modern city of Dire Dawa, where the railway line which brought it into the world, carrying trade between Addis Ababa inland and Djibouti on the coast, stops to rest.

Where steam engines lie, panting in the sun.

Hungry and tired, they stopped to rest and eat in a small cafe near the Dachatu river. Later, rested, they debated whether to go west to the capital, Addis Ababa, north-east to Djibouti, or to ditch the truck and fly from Dej. Aba Tena Yilma, the local airport. Despite the obvious attractions of the cosmopolitan Addis Ababa, the Somali vehicle they were driving would draw too much attention deep into Ethiopia, since the war south in the Ogaden was still going strong.

The local airport also held attractions after their long road journey, but lacked any links with Europe, cost quite a bit more, and they would need to transfer at Addis Ababa, as well as facing the probability of an overnight stop-over.

The road from Dire Dawa to Djibouti is the main highway from Addis Ababa to the sea. A good, metalled road, it is normally maintained in good condition, so they decided to drive to Djibouti.

Fifteen years had passed since they’d deserted from the Legion. Djibouti was no longer the French Territory of the Afars and Issas, having achieved its independence in 1977 under Hassan Gouled Aptidon, who was still president. The Legion was still present however, primarily to guard the oil pipelines from rebel and fundamentalist group attack, but unless they got themselves into a situation where their i.d. had to be checked, they were pretty safe. They had both changed a lot in fifteen years down South.

Their luck ran out near the border, while still in Ethiopia, when they were arrested by a heavily armed squad of Ethiopian troops, as probable Somali spies or mercenaries. Which was ironic, since the reason that they were there in the first place was because they had quit being mercenaries. They were beaten senseless and thrown into a three cell prison in Dewele, a nearby village, awaiting ‘trial’, and the inevitable execution against a sun-bleached, blood blackened wall.

They waited.

Three days passed.

A fat black fly, stunned by the blaze of noon, crawled along the window ledge, too exhausted from the heat and the dust to fly. Even the wind was tired and too hot to blow, so the dust lay still, lazy, and unmoving, a khaki pelt over everything. The stench of drying dung mingled with the smell of the dust, - itself half compounded of dried powdered dung, - the whole overlaid by the sweet stink of sun drying animal hides and putrefying flesh. A donkey brayed.

Nothing moved in the hammering heat of midday.

Then, moving with vegetable slowness, a hand flowed to take hold of one of the bars that partly blocked the window.

The fly ignored the hand.

The bar was gently eased away from the dried mud which, moulded with saliva, had for three days hidden the fact that it was being worked loose. A few flakes of mud spiralled, soft as thistledown, to the compacted earth floor and the bar came free

Outside the cell door, away from the blistering midday heat, a soldier slept, his rifle propped against the wall. Gently, quietly, Pete Riley used the bar from the window to force back the elderly weakened door until the lock didn’t hold, turned back to Gannet, his cell mate, and nodded. Softly he pulled the cell door open, oozed noiselessly over to the sleeping guard and shattered his skull with a single blow of the bar.

The guard stayed slumped where he was, his soul already spiralling up to promised virgins and paradise as Gannet frisked him for weapons and anything else of value, while Pete picked up the rifle and checked it swiftly. It was Russian, predictably. A Kalashnikov.

There was no need to check if the guard was dead: his skull was crushed. Gannet pulled his jaw open. Two gold teeth. He took the iron bar from Pete, and smashed the teeth out carefully. He grinned and nodded, and the two men crept soundlessly forward. Gannet stopped, Papers! he whispered. All their papers had been taken from them, but there was the small chance that the ‘office’ in this small jail might still be keeping them until the ‘trial’. As swiftly as they dared, they crept to the room which did duty as the administration centre for the jail, ready to fight if need be, but their luck held. Apart from the now dead soldier outside their cell, the single storey building lay empty, breathless in the heat and dust. On the solitary, drawer-less old metal cookhouse table which served as a desk, lay an even older brown-black wooden filing tray, and in the filing tray lay a bundle of documents covered with a layer of the all pervading khaki dust. Gannet grabbed them and riffled quickly through. Their papers were all there. He nodded at Pete who, with the guard’s gift from Russia to help him, was keeping watch at the door. Pete grinned, and mouthed back the word money? Gannet shook his head ruefully.

Silently, they left the stifling heat of the room and stepped out into the even hotter village which lay sleeping outside the jail, and to freedom.

A donkey brayed. The only sound in the heat-dead village.

The silence was shattered a few moments later by the roar of a diesel engine after they’d found and started an army truck.

Another present to Ethiopia from mother Russia.

Crashing the truck into gear, they lumbered and bounced away at a reckless speed down an almost invisible trail which intuition suggested led north in the general direction of the Djibouti border and ’Ali SabTh, ten miles away.

Money was about to become a problem, even though they had retrieved their papers, since to get back home - or anywhere else, - they would need ready cash for bribes and incidentals. The two gold teeth would not get them far, so they decided to cross back into Somalia first, to avoid any potential problems in Djibouti, and find and rob a money changer there.

Saylac is an arab port on the Somali coast in the area still known as Somaliland, It gives onto the Indian Ocean. Once the most important arab settlement on the coast, where Christian Ethiopia met and traded with Muslim Arabia, buying ivory, incense and slaves, it is now little more than a small quiet port for motorised arab dhows, small commercial shipping and the occasional leisure yachtsman. Quiet, - and ideal. So ignoring the very real possibility of land mines on the way, they turned east at the first intersection on the trail.

Throughout the arab world, money changers act as the equivalent of small Banks, their ‘Bank’ usually being nothing more than an outer office with a table, behind which sits the money changer, - with two or three beefy individuals sat to one side talking, smoking or reading a newspaper. These are the reason the money changer doesn’t get robbed.

They are armed.

Behind the money changer is another room, a strong room, with a safe in which he stores his money.

To rob one of these successfully, planning, nerve and speed are needed. After years of military training, Pete and Gannet possessed these qualities to a high degree, and the money changer they hit in Saylac neither saw it coming nor going.

The fact that there was a war on west and south in the Ogaden helped their escape, since they had removed all Ethiopian insignia, and now were apparently just another anonymous military vehicle as they made their getaway. The money changer and his guards slept, bound and gagged behind them.

From Saylac to Djibouti is only a short run along the coastal plain, although there is not much of a road, but just in case of possible pursuit, they left the road and cut up into the coastal hills, entering the State of Djibouti down a faint track a few miles south of Djibouti city, then drove the short distance into town, and looked for somewhere to abandon the truck.

Djibouti, with a population of nearly three hundred thousand, is the old capital city of French Somalia. The railhead for the line that joins Addis Ababa to the sea, it is a large, busy and thriving container port, so once in the town they became almost invisible, and felt safe from identification or arrest. The one remaining problem was that it was possible that their i.d., despite the fifteen years, could start alarm bells ringing. The question was whether the docks would be safer than the airport, but they finally decided on the airport. They booked into a cheap hotel, got cleaned up, and went out for a meal. The raid on the money changer had left them with quite substantial funds, so they then went to check on flight departures. It was obviously safest to book the flight just before leaving, rather than hanging around with their names on computers and notepads, so they picked a Paris flight for the following morning, enquired about availability of accommodation on that and, so as to sow confusion, various subsequent flights, then returned to their hotel. The next morning, fed, refreshed, showered and invigorated, they bought the tickets and shortly afterwards found themselves in the comfort of the air-conditioned first class cabin of an Air France Caravelle to Paris, with transfer tickets taking them straight through from Paris to London.

From London, they caught the 125 train home to Cardiff, marvelling at the soft green coolness of Wales.

Time passed……

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CHAPTER 1

......reality check

I T WAS MONDAY morning; late November cold and bitter raining: grey, dirty, miserable and wretched as only a wet Welsh winter day can be. Rain drops, grey swollen rain drops, bouncing sullenly from roof and gutter, from street and pavement, soaked the world below, as the November sky poured out its tears of sorrow for the end of summer, the wind raged in its hatred for everything which blocked its way while the sun, having finally given up the unequal struggle, had gone south for the winter. Dogs and cats huddled, cold and wretched, outside of firmly closed terrace doors, banned from entry and the warmth of fire lest they tramp the wet through the house, - while the rain struggled to fly horizontally to get under the bent, black umbrellas, and freeze, still more, the wet and frozen faces which they failed to shield. In the posher houses, pampered poodlepets panted in the radiant warmth of open fires - or condensation-generating central heating, - behind closed doors and doubly glazed windows that kept the dust and emphysema in, and the sheets of grey wet wind outside.

Pete and Gannet were working together in Abercynon, supposedly re-roofing a terrace house on Railway Street. They’d been there since seven o’clock, erecting the scaffolding from the hired skip dumped outside the house. The constant drizzle had changed to serious rain by half past eight. Now, by half past nine, despite their waterproofs, they were both soaking wet, cold and discouraged. They looked at the job again, looked at the sky, looked at the cafe across the road, looked at the sky, looked at the cafe again, and gave up in favour of a couple of cups of hot tea and a second breakfast.

"In