The 13th Tribe

by Robert Liparulo

  “Ahhh!” Creed complained, grabbing the back of his head and glaring at the monk.

  Brother Ramón unclipped the strap from the duffel bag and pulled at it.

  Creed yanked it back. “This stays with me!”

  Ramón leaned in, grabbed Creed’s chin, and turned his head.

  Creed said, “All right, all right,” and shifted to face the wall. Ramón pushed away clumps of bloody hair.

  Leaning around Ramón, Gheronda saw the wound, and it wasn’t what he’d expected. It was several inches long, as though the bullet had struck at an angle, gouging up the flesh. Scar tissue appeared to be already forming along the edges, making it look like a mouth with leprous lips. Ramón touched the hair just below it; blood welled up and spilled out. Ramón snatched his finger away and looked back at Gheronda.

  Gheronda smiled. “I’m sure he’ll be just fine.”

  “I told you,” Creed said, turning to face his audience. He rubbed the back of his head, examined his bloody palm, and returned it to the wound. “Fierce headache, though.”

  Gheronda pulled the monks away. He said, “Let’s give the man some room. Brother Ramón, I’ll leave it to you to keep the bandages fresh.”

  Ramón nodded and walked to a writing desk, where he began rummaging through a satchel.

  As if remembering an urgent task, Creek yanked the duffel up to his chest and unzipped it. He pulled out a mobile phone, ran his thumb across the screen, and squinted at it. “Oh, come on,” he said. He shook it, held it up high, then tossed it into the corner of the room, where bits of it shattered off.

  “Shhh,” Gheronda said soothingly. “There’s time for everything you need to do.” He tugged a blanket up from the bottom of the bed, covering Creed, and gently pushed on his chest. “Lean back. What you need now is rest.”

  Creed grabbed a handful of the monk’s cloak and pulled him close. He gazed into Gheronda’s eyes with a mixture of insistence and pleading. “What I need now, right now, is a phone.”

  [ 30 ]

  Owen Letois rushed along the dirt road, a teenaged girl draped over his arms. Her blood soaked his shirt, splattered his bearded face. He passed rickety houses pieced together with discarded scraps of wood and sheet metal, and huts of timber and straw—most of them long abandoned.

  Gunfire behind him made him look. The heart of the village was beyond a rise in the road, out of sight. He saw no fighters, only a few civilians fleeing in his direction, ducking with each burst of gunfire. Dongo was barely a pinprick on Central Africa’s Oubangui River, but it was the current flashpoint in the hostilities between the Enyele and Munzaya tribes over farming and fishing rights. The clash had been going on for years, and Owen suspected none of the militiamen understood or cared about the reason they fought; they were in it to avenge old grudges and recent atrocities, and because man’s darkest demons were opportunistic creatures.

  The girl groaned, and Owen tried to ease the jostling she received in his arms. The blade had gone deep, cutting through the muscles of her shoulder and upper chest; it had probably broken her clavicle. He angled off the road and started up a grassy slope, aiming for the cinderblock clinic of Médecins Sans Frontières—Doctors Without Borders.

  Roos Mertens came out of the building and ran toward him. She was the only nurse who’d remained when MSF had evacuated the other physicians and staff. Owen was glad someone had stayed, and especially that she had; she was competent, compassionate, and professional.

  “Prep a table,” Owen called out in Flemish, the colloquial Dutch of Roos’s Belgian hometown. “Fentanyl, Hespan, a subcutaneous suture kit . . .”

  Roos held something up, and Owen recognized his private satellite phone. “It kept ringing,” she said. “I found it in your backpack. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head: he wasn’t worried about her invasion of his privacy or the call or anything but getting the girl stabilized.

  “A man on the line,” Roos continued. “He says he must speak to you, an emergency.”

  “This is an emergency,” Owen said, irritation making his words harsher than he had intended. He gave her a weak smile to convey this, but fully intended to trudge right past her if she insisted on not helping. His left foot squished against a blood-soaked sock, and he realized that his entire left side, from where the girl’s shoulder bumped against his chest on down, was drenched as well. He quickened his gait and began a mental checklist of the equipment, instruments, and supplies he’d need for her surgery, pausing on each item to curse its disrepair or shortage or absence. The escalating violence that had driven out MSF, along with its flow of supplies, also increased the need for both.

  As he approached, Roos waved the phone. “Doctor, he was very insistent. He said to tell you . . .” She hesitated, looked puzzled.

  Owen barreled on.

  “Agag?” she said.

  He stopped. “What?”

  “Agag. I don’t know if that’s his name or—”

  “Give me the phone. Put it here.” He shrugged a shoulder, then pinched the phone between it and his cheek. Still talking to her, he said, “Get the QuikClot out of my belt pack, see what you can do.” In the field, there was nothing better than QuikClot for stopping blood flow. The gauze was impregnated with kaolin, which absorbed blood and accelerated the coagulation cascade. “Got a packet of gloves in there too.”

  Switching to English, he said into the phone, “Who is this?”

  “Creed . . . You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

  “How could I ever forget? Is it true—the Agag?”

  “Do you think I’d say it if it weren’t?”

  Even through the bad connection, Owen detected exhaustion, defeat, and fear. He glanced at Roos, packing the gauze into the girl’s wound. He dipped his arms, giving her better access, then he closed his eyes. “The Agag” meant a specific catastrophe that would make the horrors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo look like a Disney cartoon.

  The man on the other end of the line said, “You told me you’d help. You said anytime. Are you still willing?”

  “That depends,” Owen said. “You’ve . . . reconsidered?” He knew what the man was: just a man, cursed to be one forever. Several times Owen had tried to convince him to use his extraordinary lifespan and the wealth and knowledge that accompanied it for good instead of for the atrocities he’d been committing. He’d told him that when he changed his mind, Owen would help—whatever that entailed.

  Creed explained his situation and why he needed Owen’s help.

  “Are you all right?” Owen said.

  “I took morphine for the pain. Knocked me out flat on the plane. Used to be like popping a couple aspirins, you know? I must be getting old.” He laughed, but it was cold and hard, like ice cubes dropped in an empty glass.

  “Where are you now?”

  “Sinai . . . St. Catherine’s monestary.”

  Owen wasn’t surprised. He’d been tracking the Tribe for years, trying to convince all of them, not just Creed, to amend their ways. The Tribe maintained relationships with people, organizations, places around the globe, and Owen had gone to all of them—the ones he knew about—to appeal for their help in stopping the Tribe’s activities. None of them—including the old man at St. Cath’s—wanted anything to do with him. Apparently they felt it was a sacred calling to protect the Tribe any way they could; what the immortals did was between them and God.

  Creed continued: “Owen, either they’ll get me and the microchip or find a way to replace it—only Ben knows if that’s possible. I need you now. Promise me you’ll come now.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Roos stripped off the gloves and retrieved the phone.

  “I have to go,” he told her.

  She looked stunned. “When?”

  “Now, this second.”

  “But, Doctor . . .” She indicated the girl in his arms.

  “I’m taking her. You too. I’ll drop both of you off in Bétou.” It was in neighboring Repu
blic of Congo, where many refugees were now located. He started for the clinic. “We need to ABORh her.”

  The ABORh card, designed for battlefield use, would type her blood in two minutes.

  “And take blood with us. Pack a bag for yourself and one with everything we’ll need to stabilize her until we get to Bétou. We should be there in fifty minutes on the outside.”

  “Doctor, I really don’t think—”

  He stopped her with a look. “I don’t have a choice, and I’m not leaving you here.” As if to punctuate his point, a fresh burst of sustained gunfire rang out from the town. He looked back at a thick column of black smoke rising from the other side of the hill, then sidestepped through the open door of the clinic. He laid the girl down on a table and stepped back. The gauze was already soaked through, but the flow out of the wound had diminished substantially. When he pressed his fingers to her neck, he felt a pulse in her carotid artery. It was weak, but any measurable pulse meant a blood pressure of at least sixty; he suspected that most of her blood loss was exiting from the wound and not leaking into her body cavity, a good sign.

  He sighed and pushed his fingers into the rat’s nest that was his hair. Two days of walking through smoke, rolling in dirt, and being spattered by blood had taken their toll on his already shaggy and perpetually mussed hair. He took the phone from Roos and dropped it into a backpack, which he carried to the door.

  “I’ll be back in ten.” He left and jogged around the building toward the jungle behind it. The stench of animal carcasses, fish entrails, and other refuse assailed him forty yards before he reached the offal-filled trench. The Dongo men he’d enlisted to help him keep visitors out of the forest had suggested it, and not a month had passed before it proved worthwhile: a group of soldiers from the Republic’s army looking for God-knew-what had ventured that way, caught a whiff, and turned around.

  Owen arced around it and entered the forest. He pushed through a fencelike line of foliage and into the shadow of a dilapidated barn. One side angled in, and the crumbling roof drooped toward the ground, a collapse waiting to happen. In truth, Owen had forced the look and stabilized both the wall and roof in that precarious-looking position.

  The clearing in front was hemmed in by tall trees. At one of these trees, he used a pocket knife to saw through a thick rope, which sprang away, pulled by a falling tree. The dead sapele tree in turn yanked away a wide rectangle of chain-link fence that had been foliated with vines and branches. The new gap was directly in front of the barn doors and opened onto a grassy field.

  Moving to the side of the barn, he located the end of a square wooden beam eight inches from the front wall. Gripping it, he hefted back and tugged it out slowly. When ten feet of beam jutted from the barn, he stopped. The huge front doors were now effectively unlocked. When he pulled them open, sunlight fell on a monstrous pile of dried straw, leaves, and tree limbs. He reached into this mess and pulled. A section of shrimp netting and all the agriculture glued to it flowed toward him and fell to the ground. He did this five more times and stepped back.

  Resting in the center of the barn, gleaming despite the dirt and dust, the bits of straw and leaves clinging to it, was a sleek white Cessna 501 corporate jet.

  [ 31 ]

  Toby held the satellite phone to his face and waited for it to connect. He stood outside a shallow cave on a flat area of ground, which if it were not so far off the beaten path would make a perfect rest stop for trekkers on their way to the peak. Spires of stone rose all around, giving him the impression of standing at the bottom of an ice-cream cone. There were three gaps in the spires: one leading down the mountain, another up, and the third heading in a slightly upward but more lateral direction.

  He stared straight up and hoped the oval of bleached sky was enough for the phone to find an up-linkable satellite. The Iridium service the Tribe subscribed to kept sixty-six satellites in low earth orbit, constantly zipping around 600 miles overhead—supposedly covering every inch of land.

  Except here, he thought, listening to dead air. Just my luck.

  He had just lowered the phone to looked at its screen when it beeped and displayed a single word: Connected. Ben’s voice came through the small speaker.

  “Toby, is that you?”

  He raised the phone and said excitedly, “He’s here. I just saw him.”

  “At the monastery?”

  “Yeah. He’s got bandages around his head. He must’ve got medical help before leaving, ’cause I got here a few hours before him.”

  “He only now arrived?” Nevaeh said, and Toby realized Ben had put him on speakerphone.

  “A helicopter brought him about forty minutes ago. I watched for a while to make sure he was staying.”

  “Don’t tip them off that you’re there,” Nevaeh said.

  “Uh . . .” As soon as he said it, Toby knew he should have said Sure or No problem—anything but Uh.

  “What?” Nevaeh said. “They saw you?”

  “Like they wouldn’t have guessed we’d be coming for him after they find out he stole our stuff.”

  “Great . . . ,” Nevaeh said, and she and Ben began arguing about the consequences of losing the element of surprise. Toby crouched in front of the cave—more of a finger-poke, really, but large enough to keep his backpack and sleeping bag out of the weather and out of sight.

  “It’s a Haven, Nev,” Ben said, as if explaining manners to a child. His voice, even over the satphone, was deep and soothing. “They’ll expect us to respect that. If they anticipate we won’t, they’ll have no idea of our timing. That’ll be our advantage.”

  Toby said, “I thought you liked challenges, Nevaeh?”

  “Shut up, Toby. Okay, here’s what we’ll do—”

  “Wait, wait,” Toby interrupted. He listened, and the sound reached him again: rocks, tumbling down the mountain, scree sliding with them. “I gotta check on something.”

  “Toby . . . ,” Ben started, but Toby set down the phone and didn’t hear the rest. He stood and turned toward the closest opening in the ice-cream-cone cliffs, the one that led down the mountain. More tumbling rocks . . . and the crunching of footsteps. He edged up to the opening and peered around. A man was hiking up the gravelly slope. He was leaning forward and scanning the ground for decent footing, giving Toby a clear view of the top of his hat. Despite the angle, Toby could tell he was muscular and fit. No one he wanted to tangle with. The sun sparkled on something in the man’s hand, then he realized it was the man’s hand: a black hook poking out from a long shirtsleeve. He wondered what kind of damage it could do in a fight. It seemed like an unfair advantage. Behind the guy, where the mountain leveled off for a few feet, a camel was tethered to a rock. The hat tilted back, and as the man’s face began to appear, Toby ducked behind the slab of rock.

  He crept back to the satphone. “I have to go,” he said quietly.

  “What’s happening?” Nevaeh said.

  “A man’s coming,” he said. “He’s wearing a security guard’s uniform.”

  “Get out of there, son,” Ben said. “Do not kill—”

  “I have to!” A firm whisper. He could hear the man’s heavy breathing now.

  “No, Toby, listen—”

  Toby disconnected.

  X I I I

  Jordan had been kicking the ball around the courtyard in front of Temple Church with three other boys, fresh out of school, when two bobbies shooed them away. It had taken him less than a minute to circle the buildings. When he returned, the cops were gone. So now he stood on the east end of the court, where he could see the front of the Master’s house—only the front, but he’d decided that’s where Creed would show up—and juggled the soccer ball with his knees. His stomach growled. He was out of candy and energy bars, and he wondered if it would be so terrible for him to slip away for twenty minutes to grab some food. Just the thought of a basket of fish and chips made his stomach noisy again.

  No, no, I can’t. The Tribe’s depending on me.

&nbs
p; Maybe he could pay a kid to get something for him, tell him his mum said he couldn’t leave the courtyard. But no local lads were there now, just a few tourists and businesspeople hurrying past.

  Okay, think of something else, take your mind off your stomach.

  He started counting the number of times the ball shot up from his knee without going astray. But he’d practiced so long he could do it in his sleep. It was instinctive, thoughtless, no distraction at all.

  He kicked the ball as high as the church’s window tops, and a tingling shot up his spine. He froze, wondering what crazy thing his body was up to. Then he remembered that he’d taken the satellite phone out of his shirt and shoved it into his waistband at the small of his back so he could kick the ball around. It’d been there so long, he’d forgotten about its bulk and how it pulled his belt too tight in front. The ball hit the stone ground and bounced away as he struggled to get the phone out.