Just like that. No going back now.
She dropped the shot gun and laid still for a moment before opening her eyes. There was yelling outside, but she didn’t listen to it. She pulled herself to her feet, still refusing to look down. She walked over to the kitchen door and tried to wiggle it. Nothing. She gave it a savage kick and it popped free, swinging shut. While she was picking up the chain, Marc came jogging back into the kitchen.
She hadn’t even realized he’d left.
“Machine gunner outside is dead. What the fuck happened in here!?” he sounded shocked, staring down at the mess on the kitchen floor while he walked back towards her.
“You said four men. Four men. That’s six, by my count,” she said in a low voice, glancing at him.
“I said I was guessing. Did you really shoot that guy?” he asked, coming to stand next to her.
“Yes. Now unchain me,” she growled, shaking the links in his face.
“I take it all back, princess, maybe you are cut out for this,” he chuckled, then shocked her by yanking her close and bending her into a dip, kissing her hard.
She was stunned and she was appalled and she was angry and she was so tired. She slapped at his arms, but didn’t have the energy to actively shove him off. He put a lot of force into it, kissing her like it was the last kiss he would ever have in his life.
“Don’t do that!” she snapped when he finally let her go.
“Why not!? Aren’t you glad to be alive!? We fucking made it!” he actually sounded excited.
“I don’t care if you just won the lottery. Don’t fucking touch me,” she warned him as she stomped across the kitchen.
“Baby, I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but my tongue has been in a lot more places on you than just your mouth,” he reminded her.
“I had forgotten. You should’ve made it memorable when you had the chance. Now get this fucking chain off of me.”
Marc chuckled, but didn’t reply, and they went outside. There was a large machine gun mounted to the top of a truck. A man hung out the top along side it, a small garden spade sticking out of the side of his neck. Lily shuddered and looked away.
They found a pair of bolt cutters in the back of the truck and Marc set her free. He put the chain into his bag, threatening to lock her up again if she gave him any attitude.
There was a large walkie talkie also in the truck, and they listened to the chatter for a couple minutes, trying to glean some information. What sounded like a small army was headed their way. The gang in Liberia had called in a favor from a gang in Mali. A small group had been sent out immediately to find Marc and Lily – the group that was now bloody and laying all over the boarding house. They were supposed to keep Marc and Lily at their location until the larger group arrived, just like Marc had guessed.
Mission: Failed.
The truck would be stupid to take, the machine gun was bolted to the top. Marc was intent on figuring out how to take it off, but Lily couldn’t stand to wait around and watch. She had to get out of there, now. Her skin was ready to crawl off her body and run away. She hacked her way through some bushes, and sure enough, another car was parked off to the side behind the truck.
It was an International Scout II, and it was actually in pretty good condition. Nice large tires, it would be perfect for off roading. And best of all, the keys were in the ignition. She climbed behind the wheel and turned the vehicle on, gunning the engine. Marc came out of the brush, his gun raised. She revved the engine again, lifting her hands in a sign of impatience.
“No way! Get the fuck out, I’m driving!” he yelled.
She put the car in reverse and started to back away.
He bitched about being in the passenger seat for the first couple miles, but Lily tuned him out. She had to keep moving, had to keep going forward. Couldn’t stop. Couldn’t look back. Just go forward.
Morocco. Have to get to Morocco. Don’t think about the blood.
Marc produced a map at one point, told her where to turn, what direction to take. They were out of the savanna and heading into true desert. It should’ve been scary; if the car broke down, if they got lost, if just about anything happened, that was it. African desert in the summer? It wouldn’t be pretty. It would be best to stop to get supplies. Stop to reevaluate her plan.
Don’t think about the blood. So much blood. It was everywhere. All over the kitchen. All over you. His blood is on you. Blood. On you. Blood. On your face. Blood. On you.
Lily veered off the road, causing Marc to shout out in surprise. She didn’t even cut the engine, just slammed on the emergency brake before opening the door and falling to the ground. She managed to crawl a couple feet away from the car before she started vomiting.
She hadn’t wanted to kill anybody. Just Stankovski. She’d been stupid to think she could go all five years without hurting anyone else. She realized that, now. Even without Marc fucking everything up, she probably would’ve run into complications. She was carting around a shit ton of stolen blood diamonds. She was tooling around Africa alone. She was a single woman. Things could’ve been much worse, really.
Still.
I didn’t want to hurt anybody.
“Not so easy, is it, sweetheart?” Marc’s voice was soft as he came to stand next to her.
“God, just fuck off!” she yelled, then retched some more. He lowered into a squat and she was shocked when she felt his hand rubbing her back.
“It’s okay. It’s normal. Did you watch it happen?” he asked. She shook her head, wiping at her mouth with the back of her wrist. He handed her a bottle and she splashed water in her face, trying to wipe away the blood.
“No. Still.”
“Yeah. I get it.”
“You don’t. You’re awful.”
“I am. But I still get it.”
She cried, then. She hated to cry. She had cried at her sister’s funeral. Cried when she was officially hired on for Stankovski’s Bratva. Those were the only times, in five years.
And now, there she was, in the sand, on the side of the road in Africa, her head pressed to the ground, and she was sobbing.
I didn’t want to hurt anybody.
She expected him to be mean. To make fun of her. To possibly leave her on the roadside. But he did none of the above. Marc eventually picked her up. Held her in his arms and walked her around the car. He slid her into the backseat, then went around and got behind the wheel. He sat there for a moment, and she tried to stop shaking.
“It gets easier,” was all he said.
Then he started driving.
DAY THREE
Lily was surprised that Marc left her alone for the next couple hours. No smart ass remarks, no threats of violence, no name calling. She laid in the backseat for a while, her tank top pulled up and over her eyes to block out the sun.
Eventually the heat got to her. They hadn’t eaten anything, and she hadn’t had anything to drink all day. She dug a bottle of water out of his bag, then crawled between the seats to join him up front. She could tell he was looking at her, but she refused to return his stare. She just looked out the window, chugging water.
“Better?” was all he asked. She nodded.
“I just needed a minute.”
“… or a couple hours.”
“Shut up. Were you always this annoying!?”
“Probably. My good looks just blinded you to it.”
She actually laughed. A real laugh, probably for the first time since he’d taken her hostage.
“Probably. Where are we?” she asked, pulling out the map from underneath her.
“Close to Mopti, still in Mali. We have a choice to make,” he informed her, and she was shocked.
“You’re giving me a say?” she double checked.
“The illusion of one. We can keep heading north, up into Algeria. More desert, more time, but safer. Or we can head west into Mauritania, head up towards the coast. Save time, get us to Tangier quicker, but more dangerous. They’ll expect us to g
o that way,” Marc explained. She scowled.
“How much time is ‘more time’?” she questioned.
“Algeria adds around fifteen hours, but either way, we’re looking at about two full days. We should’ve driven through the night,” he said. She rolled her eyes.
“You’re the one who stopped.”
“You needed the rest.”
“I was fine.”
“It’s done,” he snapped. “No point in fucking crying about it now.”
She glowered for a moment.
“Two days, Marc. How are we supposed to do this?”
“Same plan as before. We’ll get you there. You explain that you ran into hostile enemies and had to evade a psychotic mercenary,” he said it all with a teasing tone of voice, but really, it was her only option.
“Okay. Okay, we’ll have to do that. We have no choice. So let’s plan out our next step,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I need a plan. I can’t fly by the seat of my pants. I need to know what we’re doing, where we’re going. What’s the plan,” she stressed.
“Depends on which direction you want to go.”
She rolled her eyes.
“North. We’re already headed in that direction, so let’s keep going.”
“Okay. We’ve been on the road since around seven this morning. It’s almost … two. That gives us about four more hours of sunlight,” he told her.
“Should we be driving at night? Would it be better?” she wondered out loud.
“No, we’d look even more suspicious. We’ll go as late as we can. What’s about six hours out from us?” he asked, glancing at the map. She unfolded it more, following different roads with her finger.
“Gossi is about six,” she told him.
“Perfect. We’ll stop there for the night. Boarding house was a bust. We’ll stay in a five star hotel if they have one. Something gated, if we can,” he said. She snorted.
“How are we supposed to pay for that? Did you bring your American Express card?”
“No. But you have a lot of money.”
“In Moroccan dirhams. I have some West African francs, but not enough to cover a five star hotel,” she explained.
“We’ll trade in a bundle of those dirhams, that should do fine. Get some dinars, too, for Algeria,” he suggested.
“I need this money to -”
“I wasn’t asking, Lily. How much do you have?” he barked out.
“I don’t know, I didn’t ask how much the bribe was.”
“Take it out and count it.”
She grumbled, but decided to do as she was told. She pulled a roll of money out of a side pocket and counted it out – ten thousand dirhams. There were five bundles total, and she figured they would all be the same, but she grabbed the next bundle anyway, not wanting to hear him bitch. She peeled off the rubber band and unrolled the bills, and was surprised when something fell out of the roll.
“What is this?” she asked out loud, picking up a small electronic item that had a blinking red light.
Marc slammed on the brakes and she shrieked, bracing herself against the dashboard. The back end of the vehicle fish tailed a little, swinging around so when they came to a stop, they were straight across the middle of the road.
“Are you fucking kidding me!? You really are a stupid bitch,” he growled, grabbing the item out of her hand and examining it. She gasped.
“Fuck you, you didn’t know it was in there, either!” she called him out. He glared, but didn’t say anything.
“They were tracking you through the money.”
“And … what does that mean for us now?”
“That means at this point, they think we’re heading north.”
“So?”
“So now we’re heading west,” Marc grumbled, and he gunned the engine as they started moving again.
Actually, they kept heading north, to a small town called Tonka. Once there, Marc left the device in a tiny hotel.
After that, they hooked west, straight into the desert. In his bag, Marc had a beat up map of the area, much older than the one he’d taken from Lily’s car. There was an old Jeep trail on the map, or maybe an old tracker trail, she couldn’t tell. Just a dotted line that led through the sand. She was nervous, but trusted him as he drove them off into the night.
They went for hours, just headlights in the sand. She took off her boots and put her bare feet on the dash, sinking down in her seat. She chewed on the side of her thumb nail, then stopped, wondering how long it had been since she’d washed her hands. Since she’d taken a proper shower.
There was so much blood. Who knew the human head could hold so much blood?
“How old were you,” she suddenly spoke out loud. Her voice was hoarse, after so many hours of silence.
“Huh?” he asked, looking at her like he’d forgotten she was there.
“How old were you, the first time you killed someone?” she asked in full, turning to look at him. It was dim in the car, but the dash lights cast a glow on his face and she watched as he clenched his jaw for a moment.
“Fifteen.”
“Wow, so young.”
“It wasn’t a job,” he filled in. “I wasn’t … I wasn’t what I am now.”
“Then what were you?”
“Young and stupid.”
She sighed.
“Tell me your story, Marc.”
“Why?”
“Because we have a lot of time to kill, and maybe it’ll make me hate you less,” she offered, and it earned her a small smile.
“I was born in Haiti,” he started, and she was shocked.
“Really? I never would’ve guessed!”
“My parents were American. They lived in a commune there with a bunch of other American do-gooder hippy types, taught English to local kids, taught people how to farm, how to irrigate, shit like that. We spent four months in Key West every summer, I wasn’t exactly a ‘local’ in Haiti,” he explained.
“Your parents were ‘do-gooder hippy types’ and you’re a mercenary. How does something like that happen?” she asked.
“How does a loan officer from Cleveland become a transporter for a Russian Bratva?” he countered.
“Touché. And I wasn’t a loan officer. I was in business accounts.”
“There was a hurricane, a big one. We lived on the coast, it hit us hard. My parents were killed, along with most of the commune. I was badly injured. I was, am, American technically, so I should’ve been taken out by FEMA or Red Cross, or some shit. But I got carted off with a bunch of the local kids and left in a hospital, unconscious for about two weeks. Took me even longer to get my memory back after I woke up. By then, though, all the aide had pulled out. I didn’t know what to do. I was eight, I didn’t know anybody in the states, didn’t have any family there. My family was dead. I was sent to live at a sort of orphanage. A weird kid who couldn’t speak French wasn’t high on their list of people to help,” he told his story.
“But I’ve heard you speak French,” she pointed out.
“Oui. I learned. Ran away from the orphanage when I was twelve. Joined a street gang, did some drug running. When I was fifteen I got mugged while on a run. I shoved a knife into his jugular. Didn’t even think about it. He had a gun, I had a knife, I just knew I had to make it count.
“That made me realize I was better than running drugs. I had killed someone. Suddenly, I wasn’t a scared little boy anymore. I was a commodity, someone unafraid of death. I stole what earnings there were from the drugs and I got the fuck out of Haiti. Stowed away on a boat to Jamaica, bought an identity while there, then hopped another boat to Puerto Rico. Flew to Miami, then started working my way through the crime circuit there. Honed my craft, you could say,” he finished explaining.
“How does a guy go from Miami crime rings to Russian Bratvas?” she was curious. He shrugged.
“I got really good at what I do. Pulled off a couple big jobs, worked my way up the east coast.
While I was in Jersey, the Pshenichnikov Bratva got in touch with me. Hired me for a hit. They liked my work, word spread to other Bratvas. I moved over to Europe and my reputation followed me. Lots of jobs in Armenia, Syria, Ukraine, that whole eastern area leading into Russia.”
“How old were you then? When you first got involved with a Bratva?” she was fascinated. Five years had felt like a life time to her, and here was a man who had literally spent his whole life in crime.
“Pshenichnikov, I was … twenty-two? Twenty-three?” he guessed, rubbing his jaw.
“How old are you now?”
“Thirty.”
“Wow.”
“Why?”
“You look older.”
“Bitch.”
She smiled anyway.
“Not too much. But you like it? You really like being this person?” she continued with her questions.
“Obviously. I make a fuck ton of money, I get to see the world, and I literally get to do whatever I want, whenever I want. Yeah, I fucking like it,” he chuckled. She was quiet for a minute, mulling over his words.
“You’re not doing whatever you want right now,” she pointed out, her voice soft as she went back to looking out the windshield.
“Yeah, well, every job has its moments.”
She didn’t respond, staring hard at something through the windshield.
“What is that?” she finally asked, leaning forward and trying to get a better look into the distance. Something was twinkling. He leaned forward as well, then barked out a laugh.
“That is a town. We’re almost home, sweetheart.”
Calling it a town was generous – Néma was more like a village. All rocks and sand and donkeys. A couple cars and a couple camels, as well. People stared as their vehicle tooled past. Marc scowled and kept going, and it took hardly any time before they were leaving the village behind them.
“Not stopping?” Lily asked, working to put her boots back on.
“Not in that town. If shit goes down, I don’t want a bunch of locals getting shot up. We’ll move on. Keep an eye out,” he instructed.
Driving through the desert had been slow going, so Lily was happy to finally be on an actual road again. But then after about forty minutes, Marc spotted another dirt road and he immediately turned onto it.
Best Laid Plans Page 10
