Sahara Dawn

by David F. Berens

  Then, he noticed an appliance on which the straps seem to be loose. Stepping between equipment, he grabbed hold of the soft strap and pulled. It slipped over the edge of the fridge and released the door. The fridge was tiny, but Chris squeezed himself in. It was extremely uncomfortable. Their position wasn’t far from the border, but he had no idea how far the driver had to travel on the other side.

  After thirty minutes, when he was already sick of having his knees pushing hard into his chin, the engine started up. The truck began to roll towards the border. It wasn’t long before Chris could hear voices as the driver went through the simple process of showing paperwork to his own countrymen. Next came Okapi.

  After the truck had traveled a short distance, it came to a stop again. The engine was cut. There was silence. A long, long silence.

  Chris heard voices. Multiple people talking in a language different from what he had been hearing during his brief time in Ethiopia. The back of the truck rattled as men put their hands on it to climb in. The voices are now loud, and Chris could hear soles scraping along the floor of the truck as the men made their way among the goods.

  He heard the sound of doors being opened and closed. The men were not speaking, just going about their work. There was a thud against the side of the fridge Chris was hiding in. It sounded like somebody had kicked it. Then, footsteps shuffled off, becoming quieter.

  Chris heard a door creak. A shiver ran through his body. The sound seemed to be coming from the exact place where Tsu had hidden herself away.

  “Hey!” Chris heard a voice say. He knew the game was up. Other voices joined in. Chris couldn’t help but picture Tsu being dragged out and into another form of hell. It was unthinkable what they would do to her in a country like this. His immediate instinct was to kick open the door and go to help her. But he was certain to be overwhelmed. It was a heavily militarized border and there were sure to be plenty of armed guards around. He had to decide quickly whether it would be better to help her from the outside, like he had done in Mexico, instead of being captured with her. He heard another creak. The voices fell suddenly silent. Then, the man Chris thought he had heard shouting in exclamation seemed to be saying something dismissively to his companions. What he did not know is that a few meters away, as soon as the doors had been opened, Tsu had very calmly held out a stack of high-value notes between two fingers. The man who discovered her suddenly found he was mistaken. He confirmed to his colleagues there was nothing to see other than an empty fridge from which a rat had just scuttled away.

  Soon, the trucks were rolling. The shouts along the border faded to be replaced by the sound of large tires on poorly kept roads. The truck drove for what Chris estimated to be around two hours, which was the distance from the part of the border they had crossed at to the capital.

  The noise of heavy traffic told him they were indeed in Buja. It was now the early hours of the morning. When the truck came to a stop, the sound of the driver closing his door echoed loudly. Chris figured they were in some kind of storage facility. He waited for ten minutes. It was quiet. He tapped three times on the door. After a pause, three taps came back across from where Tsu was stowed away.

  They had to emerge some time, and now was the time. The location was a large depot filled with trucks. Now, Chris and Tsu moved quickly, picking their way between vehicles towards the area where the truck had entered the building. Then, they were on the streets. Dawn had broken and there were people everywhere, beginning very early and very long days.

  With their heads down and their collars up, Chris and Tsu made their way towards the city's largest market. They had used the time in Manaus to research the layout of the capital and as much other information as they could about the country.

  Bakri Market was a mess of a million items with little apparent organization, a place where fruit stalls spilled over into the spaces of vendors selling used car parts or children’s toys. Even at this early hour, shoppers were packed shoulder to shoulder, jostling for position and trying to find the best bargains.

  Luckily, the items Chris and Tsu were after were not fresh produce or desirable daily goods. But the wig stall did not let them down. Tsu went long and blonde, Chris for a curly gray item that gave him the look of a 70-year-old university professor. With the beard he had not shaved since the jungle, he felt well hidden in this country where plenty of people in the security services would know exactly who he was.

  While they were in the market, Chris and Tsu also picked up three cheap, second-hand iPhones along with some clothes that looked suitable for a night on the town.

  The rest of the day was spent making their way across the city very slowly on foot, through congested traffic and vibrant human life. Taking a taxi was not an option as it would potentially encourage questions from the driver or glances in the mirror. There were plenty of foreigners in the city, but not so many that citizens of this police state wouldn’t be interested in checking them out and passing on any information to the security services.

  Among those foreigners were the twenty or so hostages now under the control of The Butcher. Chris and Tsu wanted to help them as soon as possible, especially as they believed Haley was still among their number.

  They were heading for a venue that was on the surface a high-end music club, but which in truth was an expensive den of iniquity where the upper echelons of Okapian society headed to wind down by indulging in debauchery.

  30 Vetted

  As night fell, Chris and Tsu approached the exclusive venue on the edge of town. It was a members-only club, and there was no doubt that anyone trying to enter would be vetted very closely at the door. They decided it was better to find another way in.

  At the back of the building, all the glamour of the club was forgotten. Used syringes and broken glass bottles were strewn on the ground beneath drab walls. On the third floor, the windows were dark. The brickwork was crumbling, so there were plenty of foot holes. The main problem was the metal bars over the windows. The bars were not very close together, but the barrier was sufficient to keep out intruders. Most intruders.

  Tsu put her hands around her own waist. It was the skinniest she had ever been. Chris frowned and smiled, reading her thoughts.

  Suddenly, just like back in the jungle, Tsu was climbing again. She didn’t have to climb nearly as high as when she’d had to scale that fruit tree, and she had a much easier route. However, the task at the top was much more difficult. Instead of having to simply rip fruit from the tree and throw it down, she had to try to squeeze through a gap that seemed like it would crush her insides no matter how skinny she was.

  She scaled the wall with impressive fluidity and grace, and Chris watched her with admiration. The next part was difficult to witness. From the ground, it looked like she was feeding herself into a meat grinder. The gaps between the bars appeared even smaller as Chris watched her trying to squeeze her body through. But she was making progress. Somehow, she was ignoring the pain and forcing her way through the bars. Chris had seen some sights in his time, but he found he was wincing as her head squeezed through and made a popping sound on the other side. But she had made it.

  She was now wedged between the bars and window, but it looked more comfortable than the situation she had just been in. She whipped an elbow against the glass and it shattered immediately. She dropped inside, glancing at the fire escape door close to Chris before she dropped.

  All he had to do was wait. He hoped that inside, she would be making her way down the stairwell.

  In that quiet part of the building, Tsu stepped lightly down the stairs. When she got to the bottom, she could see that the alarm system on the fire escape was very simple, as she would have expected in a country with limited technological advancement. A few wires leading up to a bell with a hammer. She split the wires with her teeth.

  Chris heard a crunch as the metal bar on the fire escape door was pushed down. The door opened and he slipped inside.

  Chris and Tsu could hear thumping ba
ss and drums coming from somewhere deep inside the building. They made their way through corridors designed to let caterers bring in goods without ever having to disturb the esteemed patrons.

  Sounds and smells soon told them they were close to the kitchens. There would be no easy way into the entertainment rooms, and it was likely that all doors would be manned by bouncers. The telepathic understanding that Chris and Tsu had between them once again meant the next move didn’t need to be spoken about. They might have had a frosty conversation towards the end of their drug experience, but on a professional level their minds were still very much as one.

  They would be a ‘drunk’ couple who had somehow wound up in the kitchens, either by mistake or because they thought it would be an amusing adventure.

  With the chefs at their stations, hard at work with their heads down, Chris and Tsu actually made it some distance across the kitchen before being spotted.

  It was a female chef who shouted first.

  “Hey! You shouldn’t be in here!”

  Chris laughed and Tsu stumbled into him, grabbing his arm to balance herself.

  “Please, go back to your table! This place is not for customers,” the cook said, her tone having softened. As annoyed as she was, she shouldn’t be speaking to patrons in anger.

  Chris and Tsu were allowed to continue into the main entertainment area without any more questions.

  What they found was a very male environment. Huge guys, many foreign, sitting around in groups of four or five at tables filled with champagne bottles and scattered glasses.

  There were a few women draped over some of the men, but most of the female presence was among the staff serving the drinks. Tsu could feel eyes on her immediately.

  The decor was like something from a former eastern bloc country, and would have looked swish and modern in 1985. The one saving grace about this place was that the clientele were so desperate to show off their appearance that they were willing to do something as stupid as wearing shades indoors. Chris and Tsu put their own shades on now, another cheap and very useful item they had picked up at the market. Their eyes could dart around the room unnoticed.

  They took a seat and ordered a bottle of champagne. Frank had told them they should have a damn good drink on him, and they didn’t want to let him down. Plus, it would make them blend in with the other patrons. In theory.

  They were being stared at before they had taken the first sip. It was the kind of place where the customers were often the same faces every night. There were not many names among Okapi’s elite, and not many people wealthy enough to spend time in a place like this. It was a small country with a very, very small upper class.

  Chris felt Tsu’s breasts against his arm. He was surprised, but he didn’t move. They’d had no physical contact since the jungle, and he had no idea what the status of their relationship was. But now, she was draped over him like she couldn’t get enough of him. Something clicked, and he knew what was going on. She was behaving like most of the other women in the place, trying to make the two of them more authentic as a couple. Nevertheless, it felt genuinely good. As Tsu stroked his arm, Chris’s eyes landed on a face he had been hoping to see. General Kelani: one of The Butcher’s most senior officials. Frank had provided information on these senior figures, and many of them were already well known for horrific deeds committed in Africa.

  Tsu had spotted him too. She took out her new phone and pretended to be playing with it idly. She waited a few moments then walked across the room. The table the general was sitting at was on the way to the bathroom. As Tsu neared the table, she dropped her purse on the floor. One of the men at the table helped her to pick it up.

  Watching all of this happen, Chris knew that she had surreptitiously dropped the iPhone with the voice recording function running. The phone, which had a black cover, would be face down. It would be difficult to spot under those large, plush benches.

  Once Tsu came back from the bathroom, it was simply a matter of waiting. They took the champagne very slowly. Getting too drunk would do no good, and anyway Frank wasn’t as wealthy as he liked to pretend.

  Finally, very late, the last of the drinkers had drifted away. The band that had been playing soft jazz in the background were packing away their instruments. Tsu stepped over to where the general had been sitting and picked up the phone from under the bench.

  She stood slowly, and Chris noticed her wince. She had been through so much. She was so strong, and she never showed any kind of pain. But even the strongest body can only take a certain amount of punishment.

  He wanted to hold her, but he did not. There was no longer any need to pretend they were a couple for the purposes of the mission, and whether they actually were was still in doubt.

  31 Exodus

  Haley walked on, trying to assess how long she could expect the tunnel to be, but she had no idea. It was so hot. She realized she should have made a plan to bring some water, at least fill up a glass from the bathroom. Anything. But her mind wasn’t working well enough to make contingency plans like that. The whole episode in The Butcher’s chamber had been surreal.

  After an hour of walking, she began to feel dizzy. She was stumbling in the darkness. She was touching the sides of the tunnel to keep herself steady, but either human debris or natural growths were dotted along the floor. Her mind told her she was stumbling over skulls of animals or humans. Her mouth was completely dry. She stopped to take a break, but standing there in stillness was the most terrifying few seconds of her life. She was soon moving again on wobbly legs.

  Finally, she thought she could hear the sound of birdsong. She prayed she was not mistaken. And then, there it was. A ladder just like that at the other end, so far away. She grasped it and began to climb. She reached the top and smashed the cover with her forearm. It didn’t budge. She hit it again once, twice, three times. It exploded open sending dust and dirt scattering everywhere. She saw the moon.

  Covered in a hundred different substances, she emerged into the desert. This place was not like the Sahara, it was more scrubland with trees here and there, but people she had met in Okapi referred to it as the desert. She soon saw the acacia tree that Lysha had talked about, as it was the only one close to the tunnel exit. What she could not see, however, was Lysha.

  They had not discussed an exact time. It would have been impossible to know precisely when Haley could have gotten out, and their plans had been made in a hurry. Haley’s relief quickly turned to panic. She calmed herself. She told herself that her friend…or recent acquaintance...would be here soon. She had no idea if that was true. Maybe the woman had left already. Maybe she never intended to arrive.

  Haley was alone in this barren place, with no food and no water. The only signs of civilization she could see nearby were the lights of the palace some distance away. That was one place she would not be going back to. She would rather die of thirst.

  She waved her arms, then realized it was useless. If there was any car in this area, it would be easy to see in the moonlight. Even if Lysha approached with the headlights off, Haley would easily be able to hear the engine. It was painfully quiet out here.

  Haley sat at the base of the tree with her head in her hands. She began to cry. She cursed herself for being a stupid, naive child, thinking she could go off and have wild adventures instead of taking responsibility. Being responsible to the family she still had left, and to her friends. Instead of playing stupid games in dangerous places.

  They would be coming for her soon. Her best hope was that her disappearance would not be discovered until morning, when The Butcher first awoke. She also hoped his security team would assume she had exited by the door. There had been no guard directly at the door, presumably because The Butcher didn’t want anyone hearing the sounds of passion that emanated when he brought different women to his room each night. His team might even guess she had slipped out of a window. But it didn’t matter what they thought. They would know she had escaped and they would be looking for her
. She had no doubt they would torture her for her crime.

  She decided she would wait one more hour, or until the very first light of dawn peeked over the horizon. It would not be long. Then, if Lysha did not arrive, she would run. Run for the Ethiopian border. She had a vague sense of which direction was northeast. By the time she had controlled her tears, she was exhausted.

  Nobody came for her. As the first pale light of dawn touched the sky, she stood up straight, pointlessly dusted herself down, and turned to face northeast. Then, a sound. The sound of an engine. She looked back over her shoulder.

  No vehicles had been close the whole time she had been there, and there was no good reason to take a car across the rough ground on what amounted to nothing more than a dirt track. It must be Lysha. Haley felt excitement rising up from her stomach.

  The engine grew louder. It was suddenly cut. Haley heard shouting filled with aggression. It was a long way from her, but the sound drifted quickly across the morning breeze. A car door slammed. Then, screaming. Haley knew it was Lysha. The woman was crying and begging, her pleas mixing in with the sound of barking male voices. Gunfire filled the air. A warning to subdue the captive.

  Haley turned and ran. She didn’t stop until she was exhausted. Then she was walking and stumbling, holding back tears the whole time. She was in the wilderness, and the only people she expected to see were those hunting her down. But she was rapidly losing her sense of direction, and she knew she would need help soon.

  Suddenly, there was a squelching underfoot. A terrible stench. She was in stagnant water or a swamp. It could even be sewerage. It was a rare cloudy day in Okapi, and the bruised gray skies made the whole environment dark. Night was approaching again. Haley had spent a whole day wandering lost. There were so many insects. Mosquitoes biting her everywhere.