Rogue

by James Swallow

  ‘We went to war against men like the Combine.’ Solomon tried again to reach his former friend, but he was wasting his breath. ‘They are everything we fought to destroy. You hate me so much you would ally with them, just to humiliate me?’

  ‘Yes!’ Simbarashe roared the reply without a second’s hesitation. ‘A thousand times, yes!’ He pulled back the Redhawk’s hammer with one thumb, taking aim. ‘You have no power here, Ekko Solomon. You sold it when you left us behind, Barandi and me and the rest. He was a thug but he believed in you. I knew better. I knew you abandoned us!’

  Solomon’s expression shifted. ‘Barandi . . .’

  ‘He is not dead, if that is what you think.’ Simbarashe gave a snort. ‘He lost his taste for the fight. He keeps a low profile and stays out of my way, if he knows what is good for him.’

  The warlord kicked open the lid of the ammo crate and studied the hard drives piled inside it, unimpressed with what he saw.

  ‘Brother,’ Solomon began again, ‘you must—’

  ‘Do not tell me what I must do!’ Simbarashe screamed the retort, and fired a thunderous shot from the revolver into the dirt, making everyone jump with shock. ‘This is not your land any more, no matter what you paid for it! You will not be obeyed!’

  ‘Then I surrender to you.’ Solomon crouched, going down on one knee. ‘I surrender, Simbarashe.’

  ‘You give up too easily.’ The other man was disgusted. ‘I hardly recognise you.’

  Solomon released a low sigh. ‘I have already lost one of my people today. I have no wish to lose more. Promise me you will not harm them, and I will not resist.’

  ‘Your people?’ The warlord turned a callous glare towards Marc. ‘You do not know the meaning of those words.’ He walked away and gestured to his men. ‘Put them in the trucks. I will claim their bounty.’

  *

  ‘Sir?’

  Glovkonin looked up from the shimmering ashes in the pit of the hall’s baroque fireplace and found the technician, the one called Andre, hovering nearby. The man had a satellite telephone in his hand, a light blinking on its screen.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Contact,’ said Andre. ‘From the asset in Mozambique.’

  Glovkonin eyed his subordinate. ‘So deal with it. Give it to Saito.’

  ‘He will only speak to you.’ Andre offered the device. ‘He says he has captured Ekko Solomon and he wants to discuss a . . . a reward.’

  The Russian’s face twisted briefly into a sneer and he snatched the handset from Andre’s grip. Glovkonin dismissed the man with an angry flick of his wrist, rising from his armchair to stalk across the ornate room.

  ‘My time is valuable and I have little tolerance for pretence,’ he began. ‘Speak.’

  ‘Do I have the pleasure of conversing with Mr Pytor Glovkonin of G-Kor?’

  The man on the other end of the line mangled his name, cutting it up into pieces with his clipped intonation.

  Glovkonin drew in a hiss through his teeth. He disliked the exaggerated falsity and long-windedness of African manners, always seeing it as poor cover for baser intentions.

  ‘Give me your name,’ he demanded.

  ‘If you please, you are speaking with Colonel Surtur Simbarashe, military commander of the—’

  ‘I do not need to know your life story.’

  Glovkonin nodded to himself. This was the man Saito had mentioned, the one whose name had been gleaned from the intelligence files on Solomon’s past. A viable vector for influence, so he had been described, which was another way of saying he could be bought for the right price.

  ‘As you wish.’ Simbarashe’s tone shifted, becoming curt and irritable. ‘We will speak plainly.’

  ‘Good,’ he replied. ‘Tell me what you have.’

  ‘I am holding Ekko Solomon as my captive, along with four of his operatives. A British, an Arab, a European, an American woman. No harm has come to them, so far.’

  Glovkonin suppressed a smile. ‘They may be carrying certain items—’

  It was Simbarashe’s turn to interrupt.

  ‘Yes, yes, their equipment is secure. Weapons, computers, other devices.’

  The Russian snapped his fingers at Andre, summoning him over.

  ‘Where can I collect them? Give me co-ordinates. I have a team in the area, I will direct them to you.’

  Simbarashe took a breath. ‘There is the matter of recompense.’

  ‘What were you promised?’

  ‘Your man, Saito. When he contacted me, a figure of four million US dollars was discussed. However, there have been some complications.’

  ‘You’ll be paid six million.’

  Glovkonin didn’t wait for Simbarashe to attempt to inflate the finder’s fee, and cut off the train of conversation. The money was irrelevant. Solomon had acted as predicted, and now Glovkonin’s enemy was within his grasp.

  Solomon and the Grey Record would be Glovkonin’s key to the inner circle of the Combine, the price of his passage to a seat at their highest table.

  ‘That will be sufficient,’ said Simbarashe, after a long pause.

  ‘I want Solomon and his possessions perfectly intact, do you understand? Your fee is conditional on that fact. The other captives are of lesser importance.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do I need to tell you what will happen if you attempt to cheat us?’

  ‘No.’ Simbarashe bit out the word. ‘The Combine’s reputation is well known.’

  Glovkonin tossed the sat-phone back to Andre, who caught it awkwardly.

  ‘Get the location co-ordinates from him and feed them to Khadir’s team. I want this wrapped up.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Andre nodded and walked away, pulling the handset to his ear.

  The smile Glovkonin had fought against finally won the battle and it grew into a cruel slash across his face, then a muttering snarl of amusement. The sound of it echoed in the mansion’s empty hall, and he caught sight of his own reflection in the towering French doors that led out to the gardens. In the grey half-light, he resembled a hawk forced into the shape of a man, a predator balanced perfectly before the moment of a killing strike.

  This is how it will end, he told himself, sensing his fortunes pivoting around him, at long last aligning towards the victory he deserved.

  This is how it will begin.

  *

  With rifle barrels resting between their shoulder blades, Lucy and the others were forced aboard Simbarashe’s trucks and they rode in silence from the dusty township through the middle of the day. They drove north, the quality of the roads getting better with every mile, until at last the vehicles pulled into the walled grounds of a big Portuguese-style colonial mansion.

  The building was shabby and faded, the sun-bleached stucco crumbling at the edges, and it reminded her of the kind of place that minor league cartel jefes kept down in South America. Maybe that was deliberate. Simbarashe seemed like the kind of guy who would think it was cool to emulate the narco style out here in East Africa.

  The big man gave some orders and walked away, letting his soldier boys hustle them past the house and a few outbuildings, then down through a workshop and into a basement level. These men weren’t smart enough to put hoods on their captives, so Lucy had a decent chance to scope the layout of the compound as they walked.

  She saw more technicals parked out in front, armed guards patrolling the low walls, garages, a barracks block, and what looked like a vacant helipad in the back. Weapons and vehicles were everywhere, which would come in real useful, she mused.

  In the basement, cages were set up with three reeking, threadbare cots in each, along with a slop bucket and nothing else. The holding cells were more like enclosures for animals, spaces where dogs would have been penned up out of sight. They weren’t built for humans, but that didn’t matter to the militia.

  There were no partition walls, only rows of black steel bars that divided up the hot, stale space into roughly
equal sections, allowing the captives to see one another. A single metal door with a window of reinforced glass looked in on them from a guardroom beyond, and light leaked into the basement through grimy pillbox slits high up the wall, level with the ground above.

  Solomon had a cage to himself, and the rest of them were put into pairs, Marc and Lucy to one side, Assim and Malte to the other. The doors clanged loudly as they were shut, locked firmly by metal keys that were thick enough to look medieval.

  One of the guards drew the butt of his Kalashnikov across the bars in front of them, making a rat-tat-tat noise as he laughed at them. Lucy thought about telling the fool to treat his long arm a little better, but kept her silence. Abusing his weapon would make it blow up in his face one day, and the grinning punk seemed like he deserved it.

  Another of Simbarashe’s militia apparently drew the short straw, glaring moodily at them when it became clear he had pulled guard duty.

  ‘Can we get some water?’ Marc made a drinking motion. ‘Water? Yeah?’

  The guard was in his mid-twenties, Lucy reckoned, built big but not muscular, and his uniform looked a size too small for comfort. He sucked his teeth, eyeballing Marc like the Brit had cussed out his mother, and then pulled a smartphone from his back pocket. He wandered away, fiddling with the device and pointedly ignoring them.

  When the guardroom door slammed and locked, and it became obvious no water was on the way, Marc swore under his breath.

  ‘Well, that tosser isn’t going to get a tip.’

  Malte was already working his way around the edges of the cage he shared with Assim, testing every bar at their welded joints, methodically searching for a weak spot.

  Lucy looked closely at the lock on their cage, rapping it with a knuckle.

  ‘Cast iron,’ she pronounced. ‘Like a goddamn Wild West jail.’

  ‘They’re not going to kill us,’ said Assim to himself. ‘They could have done that back in the township.’

  Lucy saw how he was holding his hands together to stop them from shaking. The young man was a house cat, and it had never been plainer that he wasn’t cut out for work in the field.

  ‘Simbarashe will get his money,’ Solomon said quietly. ‘A price for one and all, no doubt.’ He hung his head. ‘I was a fool to think I could still believe in him.’

  ‘Blaming yourself gets us nothing,’ Lucy said, more sharply than she expected. ‘We need to work on this problem.’

  ‘They took the kit we had on us,’ said Marc. ‘Anyone got anything hidden away?’

  ‘Yes.’ Malte hesitated in his survey, and worked at his boot for a moment. His pale fingers came back with a stubby, skeleton-handled knife. ‘Missed it.’

  Lucy’s lip curled. ‘That’s not much against an army of AK-carrying assholes.’

  ‘Then we come up with a different exit strategy.’ Marc crouched, scanning the floor. He found a bent nail and frowned at it. ‘Can’t pick the lock with this.’

  ‘Could kill a guy with it,’ Lucy offered.

  ‘Hold that thought,’ he replied, pulling at something half-buried in the dirt that covered the flagstone floor. A tiny length of chain glittered in his fingers, resembling the sort of toy-like bracelet one might give to a little girl.

  ‘Give me that.’

  Lucy took it from him and held it up to the light. It was a cheap trinket, the gold plating worn off along most of the length where someone had fingered it, kept it close. The edges were broken, and a chill came over her as she imagined who it had belonged to and where that person might be now.

  ‘They’ve used these cells a lot,’ said Marc, and she knew he was seeing the same thing she did.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Lucy didn’t say any more than that.

  ‘If we get out of here, where can we go?’ Assim looked towards Solomon as he asked the question. ‘We just flee . . . ?’

  ‘Didn’t come all this way to run.’ It took a second for Lucy to realise that it was Malte who had spoken. It was rare to get more than two words out of the reticent Finn at a time, and Malte uttering complete sentences was practically unheard of. ‘Cost us a good man to get to those drives.’ He ran a hand through his hair, giving each of them a wary look. ‘Can’t leave them behind.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Marc. ‘It’s all or nothing.’

  He moved to the corner of their shared cell, craning his neck to see into the guardroom.

  Lucy did the same, and saw a sliver of the big-built guard’s back. He was hunched over in a chair, backlit by a rainbow of bright colours coming off the game he was playing on his phone.

  ‘Break the problem into bits,’ said Marc, stepping back down. ‘Last part first. We’re out, we got the drives, we got a vehicle. Where do we go?’

  All eyes turned to Solomon, and he looked up at them. At length, he gave a rueful nod.

  ‘Barandi, perhaps. In the old days he had an airstrip close to the coastline. But we would have to get there first. It is hours away from here.’

  Marc frowned. ‘Would he help us?’

  ‘Would he back-stab us?’ Lucy asked, more pointedly.

  Solomon sighed. ‘I saved his life when we were young. He owes me that debt.’

  Assim raised his hand, doing that schoolboy-in-a-classroom thing again.

  ‘Uh . . . I could work with that. I mean, there’s someone I could call. To get us a plane.’

  ‘Your black hat pal on the dark net?’ Marc eyed him suspiciously.

  ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Assim gave a nervous chuckle. ‘I need a cell phone and ten minutes.’

  Lucy looked back at the door to the guardroom.

  ‘Okay, let’s start with that, and get him what he wants.’

  *

  Attracting the guard’s attention was a case of Marc shouting and kicking the bars until the man couldn’t ignore him any more, and with a rattle of the adjoining door’s deadbolt, he came storming in with his rifle dangling from one hand. The phone he had been using was in his back pocket, the screen still aglow with his hi-scores.

  ‘Shut up!’ shouted the guard, waving the AK-47 in Marc’s direction. ‘I kill you if you don’t shut up!’

  ‘Do you want to be rich?’

  Lucy put a seductive purr into her voice that gave everyone in the room a moment’s pause. She immediately reeled in the guard, tamping down his bluster.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You see him?’ Lucy pointed towards Solomon. ‘You know who he is, right? You must’ve heard your boss talking about how loaded he is, right?’

  The guard gave a slow nod but said nothing.

  ‘Rich and powerful,’ Lucy added.

  ‘More wealth than you can imagine,’ offered Marc. ‘You let us out of here, you could be set for life.’

  The guard started to snigger. ‘How much?’

  Solomon rose to his feet, adjusting his ragged cuffs as he stood.

  ‘Name your price, my friend.’

  The guard’s snigger became a full-throated laugh, and Lucy cracked a smile along with him, enticing him a little closer.

  But then the amusement turned hateful and angry.

  ‘Fuck you!’ He spat the words at them. ‘The colonel told me you would try to buy me like I am a puta! I say fuck you and fuck your money! You will see what happens to prositutas here!’

  The guard lifted the rifle and ordered Marc and Lucy to the back of the cage, then he unlocked the door and stepped inside, keeping the weapon trained on them.

  ‘Easy, man,’ said Marc, raising his hands.

  The muzzle of the Kalashnikov pointed down at one of the soiled camp beds at the far side of the cage.

  ‘Pick it up! Look underneath and you see!’

  Marc wasn’t sure what was going on here, but the guard was furious and too close to the trigger, so he did what he was told. Grabbing the side of the lightweight folding bed, Marc tilted it up to reveal the dirty stone floor beneath.

  ‘Good grief.’

  The words cam
e from Assim, looking through the bars from the next cage.

  Hidden by the shadows beneath the beds was bare stone stained rust-brown by patches of old, dried blood. The dark stains were running alive with tiny black insects feasting on the crusted fluids, and Marc felt his gorge rise. Someone had been cut here and left to bleed out.

  ‘That is what is left of those who are bought and sold!’ snarled the guard.

  Marc let the bed drop back down, his breath caught in his throat.

  ‘Okay, mate. You made your point.’

  ‘We can still work something out.’ Lucy said the words gently, taking a step towards the guard.

  He whipped the gun towards her, and Marc instinctively advanced, getting into the younger man’s personal space, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Hey—!’

  White fire exploded in Marc’s skull as the rifle butt flew up and caught him across the side of the face. He stumbled into the guard, bouncing off him, staggering back until he tripped over his own feet and went down.

  The guard shouted something at Lucy, but it was hard to understand. Marc’s ears were filled with wool and he could only hear the rushing hiss of his own blood.

  He held one hand to his head, clutching it as if he was afraid it would crack open.

  The cage door clanged shut and the guard stormed out of the basement. Marc swallowed the pain, the hiss in his ears fading. He heard the thudding of boots on wooden stairs as the guards stomped up and out into the fading day.

  Lucy helped him up. ‘You break anything?’

  ‘Just my face,’ he said thickly, tasting blood.

  ‘You never were that pretty,’ she replied, in a way that made him smile a little, and that hurt, so he flinched.

  Marc leaned against the bars and beckoned Assim closer. He dropped something into the Saudi’s hand. The guard’s phone, snatched from the man’s pocket when they bumped.

  ‘You sneaky sod,’ Assim said admiringly. He tapped at the device and smiled.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Marc waved him away, probing along his jaw to make sure none of his teeth had been knocked loose.

  ‘What exactly are you doing, Mr Kader?’

  Solomon came to the door of his cage and hung onto the bars.