Night of Knives

by Jon Evans

  Don't panic, she tells herself. If you panic you're dead. Her arms are behind her. That's something. She grabs at the darkness and her fingers close on sharp rock. She tries to pull herself sideways, crabwise, instead of fighting the full brunt of the current. She isn't strong enough, not even close, she exerts all her remaining strength and succeeds in shifting herself only an inch - but this is enough to break the equilibrium. Suddenly she is torn from the watery prison and catapulted back up to the surface, just long enough to grab a breath before she is dragged back into the river. Its power is overwhelming, she is like a feather in heavy surf, the notion of fighting for any kind of control is laughable. She will go where the water takes her. Veronica curls into a ball and hopes for the best. Seconds later her head slams into solid rock and everything goes dark.

  Chapter 9

  The world is bouncing up and down. No: she is bouncing up and down. Her head hurts beyond description, it feels as if it has been split open, like a coconut. Veronica opens her eyes and is a little amazed to find they still work. She is hanging upside down, draped over the shoulder of some strong but dangerously thin man. They are climbing an uneven scree of rocks and tangled bushes. Her head is level with his thighs. Veronica opens her mouth and throws up weakly all over the back of his legs. He doesn't even break stride. His ankle is marked by a ring of scar tissue. She wonders dizzily if he was the one who found her, if he drew her from the water and saved her life, or if she clawed her way onto dry land herself, semiconscious. She can't remember. She feels physically broken, a rag doll barely strong enough to breathe, but she doesn't feel dazed, her mind isn't rattled, her thoughts are sharp and her memories intact up to the moment her head hit rock.

  Watching the world upside down is a queasy and headache-worsening experience. She keeps her eyes closed during the journey. She can tell the man carrying her is near the edge of his endurance too, his muscles are quivering. Finally he stops, drops to her knees, and dumps Veronica ungently onto mud.

  She opens her eyes and her heart sinks. She is back in the gorge, in the shadow of the overhanging cliff. There is another man in front of her, standing above her, holding something. The little man in glasses, filming her with the videocamera. A hand grabs Veronica's hair and pulls her up to her knees. She moans, her voice weak and hoarse. She does not resist as someone behind her wraps a rusting chain tight around her neck and locks it with a battered brass padlock. Maybe thirty feet away, in the ragged wooden structure at the base of the cliff, the other captives huddle, watching aghast.

  The man with the camera approaches her, zooming in.

  "Fuck you," Veronica says dully, and tries to spit at the camera.

  The man behind her, the muscular man who killed Derek, pulls hard on the chain around her neck. She falls onto her back, gagging. Three men in dishdashes stand around her. One kneels behind her head, holding her chain. Another sits on her legs, pinning them. The third, the Arab, draws the panga from his belt. Veronica hears herself moan. The cameraman films the Arab as he poses dramatically, then lowers the blade to Veronica's throat. She feels the cold metal against her skin. The mud is soft and damp beneath her. She can't breathe.

  "Please, no," she whispers.

  The camera turns to her. The panga rises into the sky. The Arab tenses, waiting like a home-run hitter ready for a fastball. Veronica starts to cry. This can't be happening. This can't be the moment of her death.

  "No, please," she weeps. "Please, I don't want to die. I'll do anything you want. You can do anything you want to me. Just please don't kill me, please, anything you want, anything, just please don't kill me, please, please."

  Her voice dissolves into wracking, incoherent sobs. The cameraman grunts, a satisfied sound. The Arab lowers the panga. The man on her knees gets off, and the man behind her gets up and yanks on the chain he holds, pulling Veronica brutally to her feet. Veronica is led like a dog over to the structure where the others huddle. It covers a space about twenty feet by ten, made of thick branches lashed together by vines, roofed by a ragged patchwork of canvas and plastic tarpaulins. Two plastic buckets sit by the cliff wall.

  Veronica collapses to the ground. She can't stop crying. Her head hurts and when she puts her hand to her face she discovers her head is half-covered in dried blood. Jacob comes to her, takes her in his arms, holds her wordlessly. The others too have been leashed, and then padlocked to a huge cinderblock half-sunk in mud. Veronica's chain is added to the tangle. Then the men in dishdashes and the cameraman walk away, back towards the trail that climbs to the airstrip.

  Veronica holds Jacob tightly, like a frightened child. Judy sits next to them. She too has been crying. She puts her arms around Jacob and Veronica, and then Tom joins their communal embrace. Michael and Diane stay back. It takes a long time before Veronica's sobs peter out into silence.

  At length Veronica whispers, "What happened to Susan?"

  Jacob shakes his head. "They took her away."

  Slowly they disentangle.

  "I wish I knew where we were," Tom says sadly. "I'd just like to know where I was."

  Veronica thinks it a very strange sentiment, but Judy nods her understanding.

  "I can tell you exactly where we are," Jacob says bitterly. "The heart of fucking darkness. The perfect storm of bad guys. The guys with guns are interahamwe. The ones in dishdashes are terrorists, probably fucking Al-Qaeda, for real."

  "Interahamwe?" Judy asks. "Are you sure? Some of them are teenagers. The Rwandan genocide was eleven years ago."

  "I saw Derek's face. He wasn't guessing. He recognized the guy with glasses, he knew him. But you're right, not the kids. The interahamwe are the older ones with dreads. Ran away from Rwanda ten years ago and been killing their way across the Congo ever since. The kids must be local recruits. Probably taken away after their parents were murdered, raised by monsters. But the ones in dishdashes, speaking Arabic? They're not interahamwe. The Muslims were the only group in Rwanda that didn't participate in genocide. It's perfect, when you think about it. The terrorists have money, weapons, international connections. The interahamwe have muscle and places like this." Jacob waves at the scores of men working in the red mud around them, digging and sluicing and sifting. "They run these slave-labour open-pit mines, fucking fifteenth century technology, then smuggle what they get to the Islamists who sell it in the Middle East. I figured this was a gold mine at first, but I've been looking at what they keep, and it's not gold. I think it's coltan."

  He sounds as if he thinks it matters that he has figured out who has captured them and what is being mined here.

  "Coltan?" Tom asks.

  "World's most efficient heat conductor. Used in cell phones, PlayStations, advanced electronics. Eighty percent of the world's supply comes from the Congo. Shit, I've designed chips that had to use coltan in the heat sinks, I've written it down as a requirement in the specs. Never even thought about where it came from." Jacob looks around. "Hell of a way to find out. Karmic payback or something."

  "Look," Judy says suddenly, straightening up and pointing.

  Everyone looks to the trail that leads up to the airstrip. Susan is at its base, being led across the gorge by the Arab man. She walks like a sleepwalker, hunched over in a kind of dazed shuffle, dragged along like a recalcitrant pet. The men in dishdashes follow. There is blood around Susan's mouth, and she no longer has a bra on beneath her torn T-shirt.

  They Arab man attaches Susan's chain to the cinderblock. She crumples to the ground, her face slack and her eyes unfocused. Veronica wonders distantly why she hasn't yet been raped herself. Maybe she looks too wretched to bother with. Maybe they just wanted the blonde girl first and are saving Veronica for later.

  Judy goes over to Susan, tries to hold her, somehow comfort her. Susan recoils from the contact as if Judy is some kind of loathsome insect. Judy hesitates, then returns to the others.

  The Arab man produces a key and begins to unlock chains from the cinderblock. Veronica tenses as Michael and Diane are
detached from the anchor.

  "No," Diane says, frightened. "No!"

  The strongman who killed Derek takes the end of their chains and begins to pull them away.

  "You're not taking us anywhere," Michael says like a petulant child. He grabs his chain and Diane's and tries to pull them free. "No. We're staying. We're staying here. Don't be stupid. I can get you money. I can get you a million dollars."

  The man with the camera barks an order. Another dishdash man takes the panga from the Arab, walks up to Michael, and unceremoniously thrusts the weapon into the American's stomach. Veronica gasps. Michael lets go of the chains and grunts as if with mild surprise. The blade doesn't penetrate very far, only a few inches, pangas are designed for slashing not thrusting, but Veronica knows that's enough to perforate the intestine.

  Michael stares disbelievingly down at himself as the blade is withdrawn and blood gouts forth. Diane begins to scream. The strongman yanks hard on their chains, choking her silent and pulling Michael to his knees. Then he has to scramble to his feet again as he and Diane are forcibly dragged away from the wooden shelter, across the ravine. The cameraman and the other men in dishdashes follow. The trail of blood Michael leaves behind glistens in the sun.

  On the other side of the gorge he collapses like a toy whose battery has run out. The other prisoners stare, silent and aghast, as the Americans are carried up the trail that ascends to the airstrip.

  "I just want to go home," Veronica whispers, but no one seems to hear her.

  Chapter 10

  "They won't come for the rest of us yet," Jacob says thoughtfully, in his slightly nasal voice, as if proposing a solution to an interesting puzzle. "Not today. They'll want to maximize the media coverage. They have enough now to make a big splash, they'll want to draw it out as long as possible."

  "Media?" Judy asks.

  "That's why we're here. That camera. It's like those hostages in Iraq. Al-Qaeda doesn't just kill the people they grab, they kill them on video. And not for Taliban's Funniest Home Videos. For CNN. Bet you a million dollars the footage from that camera will be edited and released to Al-Jazeera sometime this week. They know what they're doing. Dead bodies are a story that runs once. Live hostages have legs."

  "Then we've got a chance," Tom says desperately. "People are looking for us. They could have tracked the helicopter. They might know we're here."

  Jacob shrugs. "I doubt it. Everyone gets around by air in eastern Congo, they have to, there aren't any roads. I'm thinking, if they couldn't find us at Gabriel's, they won't track us down now. Maybe that's why they kept us there for a few days, let the trail cool down. Or maybe Gabriel decided to renegotiate his price after he grabbed us. Either way, I strongly doubt anyone knows we're here."

  Veronica sags to the ground, defeated. There is no out, no escape from the terrorists. Sometime in the next few days, maybe later today, they will all be killed. She will be beaten and gang-raped and murdered with a panga.

  Then Jacob says, "But maybe we can tell them."

  After a communal moment of silent surprise, Tom asks, "How?"

  "That satellite dish up there. All I need is five minutes alone with it. Or with that Thuraya satphone of theirs."

  "Up next to the airstrip?" Tom shakes his head, and his chain rattles. "Might as well be in Timbuktu, mate. Unless you have a way to get loose of these bloody chains."

  Jacob has no answer. The hope that briefly flowered in Veronica's heart quickly wilts. She turns and stares dully at the river. The workers are keeping their distance from the white prisoners, the nearest team of men is a good hundred feet downstream, digging near the riverbank, filling hand-woven baskets with red mud. They are desperately gaunt, they remind Veronica of Holocaust pictures, but they work ceaselessly under the sharp eye of their whip-wielding overseer. Veronica can't believe she is in this horrific place. She can't believe a place like this even exists.

  "They didn't even leave us guards," Jacob says. "Nobody's watching us. They're overconfident. There has to be some way out of here."

  But nobody has any suggestions.

  "Look on the bright side," Tom says to Jacob. "You're Canadian. They might let you go. Not us, not her, but maybe you."

  "Derek was Canadian."

  "Yes, but he… " Tom hesitates. "I thought he said he was set up."

  Jacob nods slowly. "Yeah. He did."

  Veronica blinks. A memory creeps through her despair and into her pounding head. Derek's last words, shouted to the others: This was never a random kidnapping, this is a fucking execution. Islamists and interahamwe, working together, that's exactly what I was here to investigate, someone set me up -

  And before that, in the helicopter, even more mystifying: Was it you? Did your husband send you? Danton DeWitt. Did he send you? Did you know he was involved? Is that why you came to Africa?

  "This isn't coincidence," Jacob says. "Derek gets kidnapped by the same people he was investigating? No way that happened at random. He was set up. We all were. Someone knew he was going to Bwindi and wanted to stop him before he found something."

  "Investigating for who? Who did he work for?" Tom asks.

  Jecob hesitates. "Private security consulting company called Azania. It was just him and his partner, guy called Prester. Doesn't really matter now. We're here. He's dead. The why stopped being relevant a while back."

  Veronica opens and then closes her mouth. She wants to tell them he mentioned Danton's name, but Jacob is right, it doesn't matter any more. Still, the question nags at her. She never mentioned Danton to Derek at all. She certainly never mentioned her ex-husband's full ridiculous name. So how did Derek know it?

  Could Danton have been involved with terrorists? No, the notion is ridiculous, laughable, obviously false. Danton is not a nice man, their divorce proceedings made that abundantly clear, but thre is no way he supports Islamic terrorists. It's true that he has African connections - it's even true, in a roundabout way, that Veronica is in Africa thanks to those connections - but Danton is a commodities trader, not some kind of international terrorist financier. She shared his life for seven years. She ought to know.

  She can't come up with any answer that makes sense. Her head hurts too much to think clearly. Anyways it doesn't really matter. Derek is already dead. She will join him soon. Veronica almost wishes they would come right now and get it over with. She is so weak and miserable, her head hurts like her skull has been fractured, her ears are actually ringing with the pain, and her skin is riddled with innumerable other gashes and bruises and blisters, an inescapable, discordant symphony of pain. In many ways the end will be a mercy. Maybe she should try to find some way to finish it herself, suicide as a final act of defiance, a way to avoid whatever they will do to her before they kill her.

  Veronica wonders who will really grieve when she is dead. Her parents, of course. They are old and frail, they married late and had her late in life, she is their only child, the shock of it might kill them. Nobody else. After marrying Danton she drifted slowly away from all of her friends.

  The daylight begins to fade. They hear and briefly see the helicopter fly away. A boy with a gun brings them a bucket of rice. They eat in silence, except for Susan, who doesn't eat at all. The rice is dirty and undercooked, and Veronica doesn't feel the least bit hungry, but she forces herself to eat nonetheless. She wonders why their captors are bothering to feed them at all. Maybe so they won't be too weak to scream and plead when they are executed.

  At least her sickness has abated. A small mercy, if a mercy at all. It was easier to deal when her mental acuity was sapped by sickness. This endless gruelling fear is crippling, both mentally and physically, her stomach muscles cramp violently every time the image that has conquered her mind recurs: herself forced to kneel on the red river mud, naked and bloody and violated, as a man in a dishdash stands above her, a machete in his hand. That is what will happen to her soon. Not a nightmare but a near-certainty.

  Then Susan says, quietly, "It's not over." />
  Everyone turns to stare at the blonde British girl.

  She says, "Derek gave me something."

  * * *

  "He gave it to me in the cave," Susan says, looking down at the Leatherman multi-tool in her hands. "They never… they never bothered to search my clothes."

  Tom shrugs indifferently. "Lovely. What do you intend to do with it? Have a go at stabbing them all to death?"

  "No," Jacob says sharply. "She's right. We can use it."

  "How?"

  "These locks." He fingers the little brass padlock on his neck.

  "You can pick locks?" Judy asks.

  "What I had in mind was more brute force and ignorance." Jacob reaches for the Leatherman. Susan gives it to him. He opens the multi-tool's handles and snicks out one of its blades. "Look at this hacksaw blade. Derek was showing it off to me last week. Hardened steel impregnated with diamond dust. Should be able to cut right through brass."

  "Then what?"

  "Go up to the dish, call for help, run like hell, and hope the good guys find us before the bad guys do."

  "Not much of a plan," Tom says doubtfully.

  "Anybody got a better idea?"

  Nobody does.

  "He could have broken out any time," Veronica says, amazed. "Even back in the cave."

  "Sure," Jacob says. "Once. But then what? Run for it? They would have caught him. He was waiting for opportunity, but it never knocked." He looks up to the top of the canyon. "We have to make our move as soon as it gets dark."

  The first stars have already appeared in the sky. Down the length of the gorge, the slaves are beginning to cluster and huddle in little groups; apparently they sleep out on the mud. Most of the overseers are climbing back up to the airstrip, leaving only a skeleton crew of overnight guards at either end of the gorge. No one is paying any attention to the white prisoners, they aren't part of this ecosystem. A dim hope begins to flicker within her.