“This is Desmond. If you want, he can take you to Soko to see the truth. What comes after truth, that you will have to discover on your own.”
TWENTY
Early March, Côte d’Ivoire, Africa
In the car, Desmond said, “You have pretty hair.”
Harper thanked him.
“You look like romantic movie star, no? To my eyes.”
Harper didn’t reply. She settled back, watched the scenery roll by, a woeful slum of narrow alleys cutting between makeshift dwellings of large wooden crates, some thatched roofs, and plywood and corrugated tin. A smoky haze hung low over the shanties.
“So, miss, you like African men?” Desmond was smiling at her with one eyebrow cocked.
“So far I have no reason not to.”
He smiled wider as if they were sharing some intimate joke.
“But that could change,” she said.
He was quiet for the next mile, as if trying to unravel the meaning of her words. When he spoke again, it was clear he’d arrived at the wrong interpretation.
“I never been together with a white woman. Not in the pleasure way. Maybe someday I will get so lucky.”
“Maybe you will,” she said. “But it won’t be today.”
Desmond drew a breath and his smile faltered. She wasn’t sure if he was dangerous or simply inept at flirtation.
“How long is our journey?” she asked.
“How long would you like it to be?”
“How long?”
“You are a serious woman, you. No joking with you.”
“Yes, I am doing serious business. How long?”
“Hours, yes. We arrive before darkness. Return by morning if nothing happen on the way.”
She shifted on the seat, gave her full attention to the vista out her window. The water in a nearby canal was at the brim, lapping through scraggly grass and seeping into the road. The sky was low and gloomy, a warm, breathless breeze fluttering palm fronds, and in the distance she could see low hills, treeless and scarred by erosion. The smell of sewage and decaying meat, which had grown more potent in the last half hour, was finally beginning to fade.
The road was rutted, potholed, and littered with fist-size rocks, and the old car, whose make she couldn’t identify, had long ago lost the spring in its suspension. Every jarring mile they traveled north, they lost more contact with humankind, until the villages grew smaller and scarcer and finally disappeared altogether as they entered a forest where the road meandered like an ancient deer trail, one lane, then less than one, the branches scratching at Desmond’s window and her own.
Another hour on that torturous road through more forest, then open stretches where the timber had been clear-cut, leaving barren plains and an oasis here and there of palms that somehow had escaped the butchery.
It was late afternoon, the sun dissolving behind a range of low hills. They were entering another wooded area, the trees so tightly packed sunlight barely filtered to the forest floor.
“Soko is close,” Desmond said. “Some more minutes ahead.”
Three men appeared from the woods, closing ranks until they stood shoulder to shoulder in the center of the road. Two in red berets, the third in a camo ball cap, all wearing sporty sunglasses. Their uniforms were dark green, sleeves rolled up, leather belts holding an arsenal of small arms. Automatic weapons in their hands. They were blocking the path about fifty yards ahead.
Desmond said, “Oh, lord. These are guerillas.”
“Out in the middle of nowhere?”
“Deserters, charognards. This is bad trouble.”
“Turn around. Get out of here. Go.”
“Trop tard.”
He pointed at the rearview mirror, and Harper turned in her seat to see two more soldiers blockading the road behind them.
“What do they want? I have some money.”
“There is no bargaining with rebels. They will have what they want.”
One of the men in front called out to his rear guard, and both groups broke into a trot. In seconds, the five men surrounded them.
The man outside Harper’s window was stocky with dark wraparounds and a collection of wooden bangles cinching his impressive biceps. He rapped his gold ring on her glass and waved for her to get out. The last of the day’s sunlight was trapped in the overcast sky behind his head.
The men on Desmond’s side stood back a few feet and aimed their automatic rifles in his direction. A tall, thin man in light-blue camo with three ammo belts draped over his shoulder stepped away from his group and leaned close to Desmond’s window and yelled an order at him.
Desmond reached for the ignition key, but his hand was shaking so badly he fumbled it, and fumbled again before he managed to shut the engine off.
Blue Camo Man wrenched Desmond’s door open, grabbed him by his shirt, and hauled him out of the car. The stocky wraparound man on Harper’s side was more placid. He opened the door, stepped back, gave a slight nod, and in a flourish he waved his hand for Harper to step out.
She did.
Desmond was chattering with the blue camo man, gesturing at Harper and chattering some more.
“Your friend say you American,” the stocky man said.
“Yes.”
“You long away from home.”
She didn’t answer.
“Why come here? Jungle is not safe for woman.”
“I’m studying,” she said.
“Study? What you study?”
“Your country, its resources, trees, cacao beans.”
Stocky Wraparound yelled across the car’s roof to Blue Camo. Blue Camo glared at Harper and said, “Journalist?”
“No,” Harper said. “Student.”
Blue Camo shoved Desmond toward the other two soldiers and gave them a terse order. They gripped Desmond’s arms and marched him into the roadside trees. He shot a backward look at Harper, eyes wild with panic.
Across the roof of the car, Blue Camo spoke to Wraparound. Harper caught a phrase in French. Search her. Then another burst of French she couldn’t follow, and both men laughed. Then Blue Camo headed off toward Desmond and his captors.
Wraparound gripped her upper arm and swung her toward the nearby woods. She jerked her arm loose.
“Wait a minute. What the hell do you want?”
Blue Camo grinned. “Soon enough you will know.”
Stocky Man glanced at his comrade and said something guttural that was unmistakably foul.
It had all been too easy. The blond guy at the Edgewater Apartments who she’d caught off guard and sent over the balcony rail, Jules and his stumblebum street gang. Even the cops she’d blindsided the night Ross and Leo were killed. So much combat in these last few weeks, but all of it so unchallenged she’d lost touch with her limitations as a fighter. She hadn’t been tested.
So when Stocky Man’s head was turned, Harper saw an opening that wasn’t there, not crediting the soldier’s reflexes or his wariness or his strength as she snatched at his automatic rifle, twisted it against his thumb, tried to tear it loose from his grip. She’d pictured it, once she broke the rifle free, finishing the move by ramming the butt into his groin. He’d gasp, double over, and she’d slash upward, crack the handguard against his nose, send his wraparounds flying.
But it didn’t go that way. The man kept his steel grip on his weapon, and with a casual smile he brushed aside her move, levered his arm upward, hammering the stock against her temple.
She knew she should duck and parry a second strike, but the world was gray and wobbly, and her arms useless, and when he smacked the rifle against her head again, a yellow flare filled the sky, and her vision shrunk to a pinhole. Then that shut.
She fell backward, smacked hard, and that was all she knew for five minutes or five hours before her head began to clear.
Layer by layer, she surfaced through the nauseating haze and spin, a vast weight holding her in place. Trapped in a cocoon of numbness. Her chest empty, mind blank. Struggling to
remember where she was and why.
There was blood in her mouth. A molar felt loose. Her tongue swollen. Something sticky sealing her eyelids shut. There was an insect tracking along the rim of her nostril. Voices. Men speaking a language she didn’t recognize.
She peeled open one eye, then the other.
In the dusky light, a flickering nimbus hovered around the trees. She couldn’t lift her head but she could turn it. She saw them. The stocky one with his back to her. He was pissing. His comrade stood beside him doing the same. High glistening arcs into the brush. A schoolboy contest.
Her bag lay on the ground nearby. Its contents strewn. Hotel key, wallet, the atomizer. Ten feet off, their rifles were propped against a tree.
She felt a breeze spilling across her bare breasts. Her shirt was open, bra torn loose. Trousers tugged to her thighs.
Holding very still, she toured her body, clenched herself down there, a long Kegel, as she’d done before Leo’s birth to strengthen the pelvic floor. Another clench and she felt no burn, no wetness, nothing leaking from her.
They hadn’t raped her. What then? Just had a look? A feel?
She lifted her head. Wiped her eyes, caught the chlorine smell of sperm. Looked down at her exposed body. A sprinkle of fluid on her breasts, gray droplets going clear.
They’d had a circle jerk and left their drizzle on her belly and breasts and face.
To humiliate her? Degrade the American.
Or was this foreplay? Waiting for Blue Camo and the others to finish their work with Desmond and form a line to begin the real assault.
She rolled onto her side, pushed to her knees. Groaned against the headache spiking behind her left eye. Felt the lump above her ear.
She staggered to the tree as the two were zipping up. She grabbed the closest weapon, fit the butt to her shoulder, fingered the trigger. Swung around.
It was a Type 56 assault rifle, a cheap Chinese knockoff of the Kalashnikov AK-47. She couldn’t be sure how many rounds were in the magazine. She believed it maxed at thirty. She hadn’t trained on the Type 56, but she was well acquainted with the AK. Close enough.
Stocky Wraparound was the first to turn.
Harper’s vision was blurry, knees unsteady, a burn in the back of her throat like the prelude to vomit. Her shirt was still open, their cum crusty on her flesh.
“What an idiot you are,” the stocky man said. “Give my rifle.”
He held out his hand and took two steps toward her.
The automatic bucked hard, spraying a burst of fire in the dirt at his feet. It wasn’t as earsplitting as the AK, but loud.
Wraparound lowered his hand, and his mouth hardened.
He cursed her in French and lowered his head and reset his feet as if he meant to rush her. She emptied the clip. Tore his legs from under him, kicked him sideways. He landed hard on his back and thrashed his arms above his head as if he were trying to backstroke into the bush. Alive but going nowhere.
His buddy had disappeared into the trees.
Harper tossed the rifle into the grass, seized the second one and headed in the direction that the others had taken Desmond.
She met them as they were sprinting out of the woods, no doubt summoned by the gunfire. Blue Camo Man was bringing up the rear, a cigarette hanging jauntily from the corner of his lips. His two fighters froze when they saw her. Ten feet away. So close she could shred all three of them with a single trigger pull.
Instead she barked at them in French.
“Déposez vos armes.”
Giving them a chance to drop their weapons.
Blue Camo Man waited behind his crew with an amused look, as if he were observing some painfully amateurish performance.
She repeated her order quietly and firmly so there was no mistake.
Blue Camo Man hissed something only his men could hear, and after a moment’s hesitancy both soldiers raised their weapons. Harper swept the assault rifle at their legs. One screamed and fell writhing to the ground, the other slammed the earth with solid finality.
Coolly, Blue Camo Man said, “And what now for you?”
She told him again to drop his gun. And when he’d set it lightly at his feet, she said, “Take me to Desmond.”
“Ah, Desmond,” he said. “Your friend is much changed.”
“Lead me.”
In a clearing thirty feet from the jeep trail, Desmond sat propped against a palm tree. He was weeping into his hands.
She called out his name, and Desmond wiped tears from his face and stared at her, stunned for a moment, then his eyes widened, and he called out her name with something like reverence.
She wheeled and, with the rifle’s stock, clubbed Blue Camo Man in the skull. He wobbled but managed to turn his head and give her a sulky look as if to disparage the strength of her blow. She clipped him a second time, and without further mockery he shut his eyes and finished his collapse.
“Can you walk?” she said to Desmond.
Desmond pushed himself to his feet, groaned, and straightened upright in painful stages.
“We go in hurry back to city, yes.”
“No,” she said. “Finish what we started. We’re going to Soko.”
“These men, they have camp close by,” Desmond said. “Other guerillas there. Must go back to city. Go now before others come.”
“You said Soko was near. We see that first, then the city.”
She drove the old car with Desmond sunk low in his seat, eyelids heavy, flirting with sleep.
“Did they hurt you?”
Desmond closed his eyes and turned away. She asked him again.
He looked at her grimly and pulled up his shirt and presented the welts and blisters, at least a dozen of them.
“Cigarette?”
Desmond nodded.
“Man say I am spy, come to send military after them. They make me confess to what I do not do.”
The village was another ten minutes down the jeep trail. She parked, got out. Desmond led her down a short pathway to a clearing of about an acre.
There were the remains of a few dozen huts, thatched roofs, mud walls. They’d been burned a few months back; most had caved in and were almost hidden in vines and weeds. Circling the perimeter of the village was a rock wall that had been partially dismantled, its large stones assembled into dozens of neat piles scattered around the open spaces.
“Graves,” Desmond said. “Mossi people return to bury the dead.”
There were at least fifty grave markers, clustered in groups of three or four. Families.
“And there,” Desmond said. “In the tree.”
He pointed to the frayed remains of a half dozen ropes knotted to several heavy branches. Below the ropes in the dust were a collection of moon-white skulls, rib cages, leg bones, and arms.
“Mossi men return to Soko for burying children. They captured and hung by necks.”
“Who did this? The guerillas? Like the men we just saw.”
Desmond closed his eyes and opened them again. “Officials in government say yes, guerillas do this.”
“Is that true?”
“Children at Fatou’s, they say no. Not rebels.”
“Fatou’s orphans, they escaped this massacre.”
“A few from here, yes.”
“What happened?”
“Ran into woods,” he said. “Hid for days. Many starved.”
“Who did this?”
“The children may tell you. You must speak to them.”
“You tell me.”
Desmond turned his back on her and headed to the car, calling over his shoulder. “We must hurry before more soldiers arrive.”
She caught up to him, gripped his shoulder, and stopped him. Twilight birds swooped over the highest branches of the forest like the ragged remnants of the dead—the spirits of villagers unable to depart this blood-soaked ground. Circling and circling.
“Who, Desmond? Who’s behind this slaughter?”
Desmond looked down
and muttered under his breath.
She put a finger below his chin and lifted his head so he was looking into her eyes. “Say it.”
In his dark, opaque eyes she saw him frame the words. He swallowed, touched his tongue to his upper lip. His face shone with sweat.
“It was revolt. The Soko people rise up against men who come steal their children and make them slaves. Go on that way for many years. They say no more, no more stealing children. All finished.”
“Who stole the children, Desmond?”
She knew the answer but needed to hear the words.
“You are strong woman,” he said. “And brave, but you cannot win against these men. They have too much muscle even for you.”
“Tell me, Desmond.”
He sighed and looked off.
“Chocolate people,” he said. “This what children say. The chocolate people do this.”
TWENTY-ONE
Early March, Zurich, Switzerland, Paradeplatz
“You wanted to see me?” asked Adrian.
Larissa Bixel didn’t look up from her engorged right biceps. Wearing a low-cut purple bodysuit with serious cleavage showing, the sturdy, thick-limbed woman perched on the edge of a weight bench in the corporate gym, elbow on knee, curling what looked like forty pounds of iron.
“I have some queries for you, Mr. Naff.”
She stayed focused on the bulge, didn’t make eye contact with Adrian Naff. Hell, she rarely looked anyone in the eye. It was some kind of neurological disorder, Adrian believed. Asperger’s syndrome or one of its cousins.
She must have been closing in on forty years old but had the thickly muscled body of a compulsive gym rat half that age. Almost Adrian’s height, she was an intimidating presence, a woman whose twenty-year rise through the ranks of the Albion Corporation was rumored to have been a bloody gladiatorial affair. Some said the hallways of the Albion building were littered with the ghostly remains of the men who’d briefly blocked her passage.
Behind Larissa Bixel, with his blond crew cut glinting in the sunlight, stood Helmut Mullen. Dressed impeccably as always. Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, or was it Prada? It was beyond Adrian’s expertise, but somehow Mullen’s almost scruffy look radiated high-culture affluence. A black bomber jacket in a soft leather. Tailored jeans that hung just so and a mustard-colored turtleneck sweater. The jacket and sweater couldn’t quite disguise his build: slim waist, wide shoulders, long and sturdy arms, and thick wrists. At this moment, Helmut’s hands were clasped behind his back, but Adrian had seen the man’s knuckles. They were defaced by scars. Either years of harsh blue-collar work or plenty of bare-fisted brawls. Adrian’s money was on the latter.
When They Come for You Page 11
