by S. A. Beck
Jaxon won’t mind this, he told himself. All we’re doing is talking.
If all you’re doing is talking, why do you have to justify it to yourself?
“So where else have you worked?” Otto asked.
Nadya shrugged and blew out a long stream of smoke. “Chechnya, Syria as a war correspondent. All over America. My favorite was Hawaii. Have you heard of Volcano National Park? There is lava that flows into the sea. You can walk very close. The most amazing colors. Plus I went to the rim of a live volcano and looked down at the bubbling lava far below.”
“Wow.”
“They are beautiful photos. I will show them to you. They are in my room.”
Otto’s eyes widened. “Your room?”
“It is not far.”
Otto’s stomach gave an ominous rumble. He knew that sound all too well. Nadya’s gaze flicked down, and a smile stole across her lips. She put a hand on his knee.
“I think you need to go. Will you hurry back?” she asked.
“Of course.”
She gave his knee a squeeze. He had meant it before. Now he meant it twice as much.
“I better go,” he said, his mouth going dry.
Nadya Antipova watched as that silly American boy hurried out of the café with the stiff-legged walk of someone suffering from a bad case of food poisoning. It was incredible that such a fool had made it so far. It was as she and Dimitri had suspected. He was the weakest link in the chain of the Atlantis Allegiance. She had practically hypnotized him with that lighter trick. Stuck here more or less alone in Timbuktu as the more capable members of his team were off doing something useful, he was ripe for the picking.
She pulled out her cell phone and wrinkled her nose to see there was no signal. Mobile coverage in this part of the world was always unpredictable. Even the smallest building often blocked it. She walked to the door, and her phone showed a weak signal. She dialed.
“Yes?” a curt male voice replied in Russian.
“How are you progressing with your scientist friends?” she asked.
“Well enough.”
Nadya smiled. Dimitri was nothing if not cautious. They must be in the room with him, and even though they almost certainly spoke no Russian, he wasn’t about to say anything that might give him away.
“I met with the young man we spoke about,” Nadya said.
“Did that work out?” Dimitri asked.
“Like a lamb to the slaughter. No, more like a moth to a flame.”
Nadya hung up and went back to her table with a smug smile.
Chapter 5
AUGUST 13, 2016, TIMBUKTU, MALI
8 P.M.
* * *
Jaxon Ares Anderson was the happiest she had ever been. For the first time in her life, she felt like she belonged. For the first time in her life, she felt like she was safe.
She sat in the front room of the home of Daouda Ndiaye, a famous griot, or storyteller, of the Atlanteans. The room was thickly carpeted, and everyone sat on the floor, leaning against yellow and green cushions set against the wall. About thirty people had assembled there, all with the broad Asian faces, dark skin, and sparkling blue eyes typical of her people.
For years, those features had set her apart. White people called her black, black people told her she wasn’t “really” black, and Asians didn’t know what to think. Everyone had been in agreement, though, that she wasn’t “one of us.”
America claimed to be a “melting pot,” she thought bitterly, but when she showed them a melting pot, everyone rejected her.
What she didn’t know until a couple of months ago was that she wasn’t of any race known to mainstream science. She was a descendent of the people of the lost continent of Atlantis, and thus a member of her own distinct race. Or perhaps the race that had given birth to all the others. Not even her fellow Atlanteans had the answer to that riddle.
The scientists Yamazaki and Yuhle were at the local manuscript museum studying historical records with a Russian scholar named Dimitri, so Jaxon was able to enjoy a rare moment alone with her people. The Atlanteans—or People of the Sea, as the locals called them—were uncomfortable around outsiders, so with the prying scientists gone, everyone felt much more relaxed.
The old Atlantean griot Daouda Ndiaye wore a flowing green and gold djellaba that set off his long white beard as he sat cross-legged on a cushion with an old handwritten manuscript on his lap. Jaxon had never seen him without a book open in front of him. Even when deep in conversation, he managed to glance at the pages every now and then and read a few lines. She’d already learned so much from him about her people’s history. Next to him sat Salif Amar, a younger man dressed as usual in a spotless white djellaba. He had been the first Atlantean she had met in Timbuktu and had made it his job to introduce her to everyone.
Jaxon sat between two women. To her right was Hawa Ndiaye, Daouda Ndiaye’s granddaughter. She was in her twenties, a teacher in the local school, and one of the few people Jaxon had met who could speak good English. Snuggling up on her left was Aminata, a girl of eleven who lived next door and who had instantly decided that Jaxon was her long-lost big sister. Somehow they managed to have long conversations with Aminata’s broken textbook English and Jaxon’s few words of Arabic.
Everyone except Jaxon wore the flowing traditional robes of Mali, all brightly colored. The women all wore headscarves, and most of the men wore skullcaps. Jaxon still dressed in the Western style with jeans and a T-shirt. It was so hot outside that she felt like walking around in a bikini, but this was a conservative society. She’d have to get some local clothes. They looked much cooler.
At the moment, Aminata and Jaxon were trading vocabulary words. The kid felt like it was a wonderful game and never seemed to tire of it.
“Gafsha,” Aminata said, holding up a spoon.
“Gafsha,” Jaxon replied in a pretty good imitation. “Spoon.”
“Spoon?” Aminata giggled. For some reason, she found that word funny. Jaxon wondered if it meant something else in Arabic.
Tea came, as tea always did in this region, on a big brass platter holding a giant gleaming teapot and a collection of little colored glasses. Mariam Ndiaye, the griot’s wife, brought it in. Jaxon couldn’t even begin to guess how old she was. Her dark face was as dark and seamed with wrinkles as a walnut, but her hands remained steady and strong. As guest of honor, Jaxon got the first cup, along with a cube of sugar to set between her teeth. She loved drinking tea this way, but she’d have to watch it. A lot of the older people in this part of the world had pretty bad teeth. Mariam Ndiaye didn’t have any teeth at all.
“Shukran,” Jaxon said.
“Thank you,” Aminata translated.
“Exactly,” Jaxon said and tickled her. As the girl giggled, Hawa Ndiaye put a newspaper in Jaxon’s lap.
“Look at this,” the schoolteacher said.
The newspaper was in Arabic, a mass of squiggly lines that meant nothing to Jaxon, but Hawa was obviously telling her to look at the photo. It showed a group of families walking through the desert with bundles on their backs. They looked like refugees. On the left edge of the photo, she saw a family of Atlanteans.
“What does this article say?” Jaxon asked.
“It’s about refugees from Mauritania,” Hawa replied. “It says that hundreds more refugees have fled the fighting in the past month and crossed illegally into Mali.”
“Does it say anything about us?”
Hawa shook her head. “No, it just talks about the refugees in general, but it’s good to see one family got out.”
Jaxon bit her lip. They’d crossed through Mauritania to get here and had heard that the government was rounding up all the People of the Sea. No one seemed to know why, and Jaxon and her friends weren’t about to ask the government. They’d barely gotten out of that country with their lives.
“We need to bring them here, where they can be safe,” Jaxon said.
“They’re already safe once they got across t
he border,” Hawa said, sipping her tea, “but it would be better for them to be among their own kind.”
“What if they get kicked back over the border? They’re here illegally, right?”
“The article says the government in Bamako will let them stay.”
“What’s Bamako?”
“The capital of Mali!” Aminata laughed. “You no go to school?”
Jaxon blushed. Yeah, she had been to school. But her school never got around to talking about Africa. To cover her embarrassment, she asked, “Have any of our people from Mauritania made it all the way here?”
“No,” Hawa said. “The refugees left with nothing. Many got robbed on the way. They have no way to get here. Right now they are in a camp at Ras el Ma, a village near the border.”
“Is it far? We should go get that family and any others who are there!”
Aminata nodded. “I go too.”
Hawa translated her idea to the rest of the group, and this started a long discussion in Arabic. As usual, Jaxon felt frustrated when everyone started speaking in a language she didn’t understand. It made her feel stupid, and she had been made to feel stupid all of her life because of her dyslexia.
It took some time to get a translation of what was going on, and when she did get it, Jaxon didn’t like what she heard.
“We would like to help, but there is the problem of where to put them and how to support them. They are getting some help in the camp, but if they leave, the government won’t help them. And there is little work here.”
“My friends and I can support them until they find work,” Jaxon said. Thanks to Edward’s activities on the Dark Net, they had plenty of cash, although it wasn’t going to last forever now that Edward was gone. “We can use the two Land Rovers to pick them up.”
This led to more discussion. Finally Daouda silenced them and turned to Jaxon.
“This is very generous of you. Let us get it arranged. But I don’t want you to make the same mistake as many kind Americans and Europeans make.”
“What’s that?” Jaxon asked.
“Thinking that money can solve all life’s problems.”
“I don’t think that!” Jaxon objected.
“You might think that you do not, but you have been raised with that as part of your culture. I have seen Western channels on the television. It’s all advertisements. Even the shows are advertisements. They tell you that if you have enough money, everything will be all right. Some problems can’t be solved with money but only with wisdom and cooperation.”
For the first time, Jaxon felt a bit annoyed by this kindly, welcoming man. Here she was offering to help and all she got was a lecture?
She brooded for a time, letting the conversation go on around her without really hearing it. After a while, Aminata nudged her and started their word-trading game again. Jaxon put on a smile and helped the girl with her English.
Later that afternoon, Jaxon met with the rest of the Atlantis Allegiance at the Caravane Hotel. Yuhle and Yamazaki had spent the entire day at the manuscript library looking for legends about the People of the Sea. Vivian had been working on the Land Rovers, which had taken a beating on their overland journey. Otto had spent the day recovering in his room. At least he looked a bit better.
They all met in Vivian’s room.
“I’m glad you were fixing up the Land Rovers, Vivian,” Jaxon announced. “Because we need to go on a road trip. Some Atlantean refugees from Mauritania have ended up in a village near the border called Ras el Ma.”
Vivian checked the topo map. She traced a slim figure west from Timbuktu across a long, thin lake to a point on its western shore, where a tiny dot bore the name Ras el Ma. “It’s only about 150 miles from here. A long day’s drive on these roads, but we can make it easily enough. It’s a bit too close to the border for my liking, though.”
“We can’t just leave them there!”
“I’m not saying that we should, honey,” Vivian replied, her blond hair swaying as she shook her head. “It’s just that with Edward having disappeared and Grunt away, I don’t think we should split up any more than we already have.”
“We’ll all go together,” Jaxon objected. “We won’t be splitting up.”
Dr. Yuhle adjusted his glasses and said, “I’m afraid we’d have to split up. Otto isn’t well enough to travel yet, and someone has to stay and monitor his progress. I suggest I stay, since Yamazaki is a much better driver than I am. That chase through the desert was better than an amusement park ride. I felt like I was twelve again.”
He grinned at his colleague, who chuckled.
“I don’t think any of us should go until Grunt and Edward come back,” Vivian said.
Jaxon sighed. Edward wasn’t going to be coming back. When she had been half dead, she had seen a vision of him. He was gone. She didn’t know what had happened to him, but he was gone.
His last words to her haunted her.
Make this mean something.
She would.
“I asked the folks at Daouda Ndiaye’s house today, and they told me there’s a bus that goes there. I can go myself, if you don’t want to.”
She decided to leave out the detail that the bus only left once a week, stopped at every village in between, and took eighteen hours.
“Absolutely not! It’s too dangerous!” Otto said. “I won’t let you.”
“That’s not for you to decide,” Jaxon snapped.
Vivian smiled. “I can see where this is leading. You always end up winning these arguments, so all right, honey, we’ll go. We should find out what’s going on in the country next door anyway. It might clear up why General Meade has been chasing us so much. But we’re going to do this intelligently. Yuhle will have to stay here with Otto. The rest of us will go. We’ll leave before dawn so as not to attract too much attention. Tell your friends that we have to go down to Bamako for some of Dr. Yamazaki’s research.”
“What’s Bamako?” Otto asked.
“It’s the capital of Mali. Didn’t you go to school?” Jaxon laughed.
Her boyfriend rolled his eyes and didn’t reply.
Jaxon blew him a kiss and turned back to Vivian. “I don’t really want to lie to my new friends about where I’m going.”
“It’s for their own protection as much as ours,” the mercenary said.
“I agree with Vivian,” Dr. Yamazaki said. “She knows more than us about these things. We have to work as a team, Jaxon. The scientists handle the science, and the mercenaries handle security.”
“And what do I handle?” Jaxon said.
“You’re the reason we’re out here in the first place, honey,” Vivian said. “Plus your instincts seem to be pretty good. Remember that well? Don’t worry, I’m trusting your instincts from now on.”
“All right, but my instincts tell me not to lie to the other Atlanteans. I’m not sure they’d believe me anyway, because I was already talking about going to collect the refugees. How about this? We’ll just leave without saying where we’re going. If anyone asks, Otto and Yuhle can say we’ll be back in a day or two and not volunteer any more information.”
“All right,” Vivian said, although she didn’t look happy. “Let’s start getting everything ready. We’ll leave first thing tomorrow. The sooner we get this over with, the better.”
Everyone filed out into the hallway and split up to go to their own rooms. Jaxon noticed Otto looked down.
“Hey, I was only teasing about Bamako. I just learned that. I suck at geography too.”
Otto shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s that I feel like a fifth wheel around here. They busted me out of prison to help convince you to run away, but now what good am I?”
“Oh come on, you’ve done plenty!” Jaxon said, although she couldn’t actually think of anything. Still, it was nice to have him along.
They walked down the dark corridor for a moment in silence. As they made it to Otto’s door, he brightened.
“Well, I know one thi
ng I’m good for. Hold on a second.”
He went into his room and came back carrying a scarf of emerald cloth with gold thread running through it.
“Wow, this is beautiful!” Jaxon gave him a hug and a kiss. “Where did you get it?”
“From that guy across the street. I think it will look good next to your skin and eyes. Really bring them out.”
“You sounded like a fashion designer for a second there,” Jaxon said and laughed. “Did someone help you pick it out?”
Otto got a strange, guarded look on his face. “No.”
Jaxon felt confused for a second and then brushed it aside. The poor guy was still sick and depressed.
“Well, you have a good eye for fashion. Thanks. I’ll wear it on my trip to meet the refugees.”
Otto gave a sad little shrug. “At least I’m good for something.”
Chapter 6
AUGUST 14, 2016, MARRAKECH, MOROCCO
11:30 P.M.
* * *
Grunt had been right—this really was turning into one of the top ten most messed-up situations he’d ever been in. Lying in a filthy Third World alley covered in bandages and suffering from internal bleeding was something he’d experienced a few times before, but this time, it felt personal. Usually when an enemy got the better of him, it was in some anonymous fight in which they just happened to be on different sides.
But a secret faction within the US government was out to get him and his friends in particular, because they were the only ones opposing what General Meade was up to. One side was so much smaller than the other.
Even that hadn’t bothered him too much. He’d been in unequal fights before. It was just that he was failing against the one man he’d sworn to defeat. That bastard—General Meade, his former boss—had won.
Grunt eased himself into a sitting position. Lying flat on the ground would only attract the rats, both human and rodent. Pain lanced through his body as he moved. He gritted his teeth and shifted the few inches to the alley wall and forced himself up. The cuts on his body and the deep wound in his side tortured him. He kept his left hand pressed against the worst wound. His right hand gripped a length of pipe he’d scrounged somewhere. He couldn’t remember picking it up. It was his only weapon, and he didn’t have the strength to swing it, but he could still bluff with it.
