She intended to move away when a gap formed in the crowd, among a gathered group as several people stepped aside. Instinct made her withdraw toward the walls of the market building, taking Giovanni with her, climbing the steps up to it without taking her eyes away.
Through the gap came armed men, the green-banded militia carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles. Five of them, pushing roughly through where the crowd was not quick enough to part. Within the gathered people were clustered groups in conversation. Giovanni tensed and stepped across her slightly.
Shouts came from the crowd, sparse and muted jeers for green-bands as much as the anticipation of something about to happen.
“We should leave,” Giovanni said.
Jess shook her head. “I want to see what happens.”
A small man within one of the gathered groups, a dark-skinned older fellow face mostly obscured by a dusty shemagh, seized another beside him by the shoulder. The warning’s recipient turned sharply, immediate fear evident in his altered stance, and, on seeing the approaching green-bands, turned to run.
Their attention caught, the green-band militia shouted. Weapons rose and two broke off and ran after the fleeing man who had found his way barred by others, less by design than by surprise at what unfolded around them.
Jess watched, dry mouthed.
The man tried to get too his feet, tossing frightened glances over his shoulder, but the green-bands were on him. Rifle butts came down and he screamed and pleaded with them. The others came. Handcuffs jammed onto his wrists. More blows from the butts of their Kalashnikovs until he became pliant and submissive, blood oozing from wounds on his face. Arms huddled close into his torso.
The green-bands half-led, half-dragged him to a waiting truck. When it roared away, tires kicking up dust and frozen sand, a black mood descended on the market. Faces became tight, heads lowered. In places, anger boiled over, and gestures toward the long-gone green-bands did little to hide their bitterness.
“We can go now,” Jess murmured to Giovanni.
“See what you needed?”
“I saw enough.”
Chapter 8
Al-Jawf, Libya
Jess and Giovanni went for an aimless walk after the incident at the market, both of them lost in their thoughts. Perhaps that simple preoccupation was the reason she misjudged the significance of the ball. Perhaps it was the innocence written across the boy’s face, and the playful dance of his slight frame that deceived her. She ought to have been aware of it—there were instances in Afghanistan of the Taliban martyring children as suicide bombers.
But she didn’t see it coming.
Instead, in the child’s dirty face she saw what she wanted to see: hopeful naivety and happiness. She saw what she wanted for Hector.
She picked up the ball and the boy stopped. For a moment he seemed scared, then held out his hands in anticipation of the return of his plaything. She tossed it back to him, and he caught it and offered her a laugh in return. Then he threw it back, but this time she didn’t catch it.
“Jess,” Giovanni warned.
The ball rolled in the sand.
“No,” she said to the boy, shaking her head. “We can’t play. We have to go.”
The boy looked at her, seeming not to understand. He gestured to the ball. Jess sighed and went to pick it up again before realizing her mistake.
Six men approached, all in long coats with shemagh scarves obscuring their faces and wooden hats pulled down over their heads. Three either side of her and Giovanni, each carrying something in their hands, a hammer or pipe. They appeared silently from nearby buildings. The boy ran. An obvious ruse.
The ground nearby offered nothing she or Giovanni might use as a weapon. The men would have thought of that and prepared the scene of their robbery, if that’s all this was.
Jess sought to buy them time. “We were just playing with him. He kicked the ball to me.” She studied each of them, searching for the weakest.
“Canadian.” She gestured to Giovanni. “And Italian.” Hoping it might make a difference, she added: “Students in Turkey.”
“What you have to give us?” one of them said, his words heavily accented.
“We don’t have anything. Nothing worth taking.”
Already Jess was considering how to fight them, which one to take down first and from where she might seize a weapon. A fist hard to the bridge of the nose, or the hard, flat knife of her hand into the softness of the throat.
A shout came from behind her.
She turned.
A man stood in the entrance to the alleyway. Thin and wiry, with a thick beard and long, unkempt hair. His face weathered. In his hands he held two lengths of piping. He tossed one to Jess.
“You really want to get hurt that much?” he said to their attackers. His accent was American.
Hesitation crept over the faces of the men.
The American hammered his bar against a wall. “I’m not messing around here,” he warned.
The men exchanged uneasy glances and one of them spat onto the ground. He muttered to his friends. They laughed.
The American approached. He was sweating, despite the cold. “Come with me,” he said to Jess and Giovanni.
He took Jess’s arm and backed them away. The men watched them carefully. Maybe they were considering their options, not quite willing to let her and Giovanni go—maybe it was a matter of pride—but they let them go. The American took them around the corner, still brandishing his weapon. As soon as they were out of sight, he broke into a jog. Jess and Giovanni followed.
“Who are you?” she said as they half-walked, half-ran through the crowd. There were no footsteps or shouts from behind them, but they didn’t stop.
“I heard you talking to them,” he said. “Your accent’s American, so I came to take a look.”
“I’m glad you did.”
He stopped her, glanced over his shoulder before dropping the pipe. He held out a hand. “My name’s Peter Connor.”
Jess dropped her pipe as well and shook his hand. “Where are you from?”
“The Midwest. Elsmere, Nebraska. And you’re East Coast, unless I miss my guess. New Yorker?”
“For a while.”
“So, I’m guessing you have a story to tell. You and your Italian friend.”
“I bet we all do.”
He smiled and raised his hands. “Yes we do. Come on. I know a little place we can get a real drink.”
“You’re kidding? Here?”
“The locals are Muslim, so they aren’t going to drink it.”
Giovanni took Jess by the arm, a little more roughly than she cared for. “We’ve had enough excitement today. I think it’s better we—”
Jess pulled away. “Come on, just a drink.”
Giovanni hesitated, but then smiled. “Just a drink,” he said. “Why not?”
Persian rugs hung from the walls of what was little more than a cellar. More were laid out on the floors. Instead of chairs there were cushions, and upturned crates covered in brightly patterned fabric for tables. Oil lamps and candles provided a flickering, shaded light and areas of the long room were lit only by a dim half-light.
Others occupied nooks and alcoves already, talking quietly to companions sat across from them, men and woman, few local, most foreign. For the most part they avoided looking at her or Giovanni as they entered, focusing instead on their own conversations.
Peter gestured to an area in one corner and they sat, cross-legged, on heavy cushions. On the wall across from them, lit by candles and a single, buzzing strip light suspended by its own electrical cable from the ceiling, were hundreds of images and scraps of paper. From her seat Jess studied them: photographs of people on holiday, smiling and relaxed, taken all over the world. Tacked to everyone, or scrawled in dark ink, were names and details, addresses in the Al-Jawf township.
In a small alcove over which a curtain hung, a man and woman huddled over a radio set. The man held headphones so they could bot
h hear, and played with the dial while speaking softly into a microphone. The curtain almost obscured them.
A man in local dress came to Peter and took him warmly by the arm. They spoke briefly in Arabic, during which Jess guessed from what they seemed to be saying, from the gestures that accompanied the words, that she and Giovanni were being introduced. The man nodded to them both and smiled, then turned away and returned shortly with a bottle and three glasses.
“The best stuff in town,” Peter said. “It’s hardly a Macallan, but it does have a certain something.”
She took a sip and the heat on the back her throat rose to a searing burn that forced her to cough. “That really is something.” She set down her glass.
Giovanni didn’t touch his, but sat back, arms crossed.
Jess fixed her gaze on Peter. “So tell me about yourself.”
“Not much to tell,” he said. “I was a freelance photojournalist before Nomad. I worked for the Economist, National Geographic, Reuters. You get the idea. I was in Egypt at the time and couldn’t get out of the country. Before Nomad, flights were grounded. There were threats of attacks on Egyptian targets so I stole a car and made a run for it. Crossed the border at night.”
“How long have you been here?” Giovanni asked.
“About a month. You?”
“Just arrived,” Jess said.
He nodded. “From?”
There was no hesitation, the story already clear in her mind. “Turkey. I was a student there.”
“What did you study?”
“Local tourism. I used to spend a lot of time guiding in the Alps, a bit of ski mountaineering, that kind of thing.” She hesitated, then added, “What do you think of this place?”
“You need to be careful what you think here.”
“I’m serious.”
He regarded her for a moment, then relented. “There’s an oil field at Zuetina and refineries along the road between Al-Jawf and the coast. The Zuwayya control it all. Irrigation technology here is pretty sophisticated, and there’s a hundred and fifty cubic kilometers of groundwater in aquifers two hundred meters below the surface. You put those two together, and this place is pretty damn valuable.
“You didn’t answer the question. I asked what you thought of it.”
Peter glanced round the room and leaned in. His voice dropped. “I’ve dodged suicide bombers in Baghdad and Kabul. I’ve been pulled out of a collapsed building after earthquakes in Nepal. I was in Rwanda and Yugoslavia when neighbors turned guns and machetes on each other. The things I’ve seen in my life, you probably can’t even imagine…”
He paused to take a drink. “But this place beats all of it. What do I think? It’s insanely dangerous here, is what I think. Everyone has an angle. Watch your back.”
Giovanni said: “The militia at the front gate seem nervous.”
“There have been attacks. The Zuwayya have this place and the Toubou tribes aren’t too happy about it. Rumors are they want to hook up with militia groups in Chad looking to take control of Al-Jawf, and there are newcomers every day.”
“So why stay?” It was a question Jess struggled with herself.
Peter gestured with his hands. “Where else is there? At least we’re not freezing to death.”
The same reason they came. “There was mention of trucks heading north for salvage?”
“There were hundreds of container ships in operation in the Mediterranean, and on the Nile, when Nomad hit. They capsized and washed dozens of miles into the high deserts before the water retreated. Whatever’s in them, it’s up for grabs.”
“Have you been?”
“Nothing worth seeing for a guy like me up there.”
“Are you still reporting? I mean, not much need for photographs now.”
“There’s every need. Words alone can’t document what will become the most important period in human history.” He sat back, as though considering this. He smiled. “There are radios, too. People trying to connect with the rest of Africa; with others in Europe and beyond. Even maybe back home.”
“What have you heard? The White House, FEMA, the military? Any word?”
“Rumors are the Yellowstone eruptions did a lot of damage. I don’t know much, but the radio waves are starting to fill up. You think the ash is bad here, it sounds like most of the US is choking under it. A lot of people dead, infrastructure totally collapsed. The White House declared a state of emergency, but they didn’t have a lot of time. Like I said, there’s more coming through every day, but—” He shook his head and poured another drink.
“Is there any way to get back over there?”
“Why would you want to go back?”
“It’s my home.”
“There’s barely anything left. “
“Does that matter?”
He didn’t answer for a few seconds, but then said: “I know who you are. Jessica Rollins, right? Your face was all over the newswires just before Nomad. I was surprised when I saw you, but I’m right, right?”
It was Jess’s turn not to answer.
“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me,” Peter added. “Some people blame your father, but there were a lot of rumors too, about how you fought against the ones that really screwed us. I’d love to hear your version. Sometime.”
“I’m not Jessica Rollins,” Jess lied.
Peter regarded her for a few more seconds. “I’m trying to get a few others together to contact more people in the US. There are radios in the camps. The Zuwayya don’t like it, but some technical guys are trying to find ways to boost the signal, that kind of thing. They need parts. We were thinking of taking a trip, seeing what we could find. We could use the bodies, extra eyes. Interested?”
Hamza watched the woman and the Italian man leave and waited. He had been reluctant to agree to his American friend’s plan, to play on fears born of her natural prejudices toward him and those like him. A Muslim man in North Africa—of course the American woman with the funny leg would believe it was his intention to rob or molest her, as though all men like him would do such things.
However, the offer of valuable items to trade at the market was too much for Hamza to refuse. Clothes to replace the frayed, worn ones his family now wore, food beyond the tiny portions they were entitled to from the Zuwayya. Fuel for the generator, oil for their lamps.
The instructions had been simple enough. The suggestion to use his son to attract her had been the man’s, and Hamza had initially objected. The man had been insistent, assuring him there would be no danger. American women would not hurt a small boy, of course not, he’d argued.
Hamza had been assured he would not need to hurt her, that his American friend would step in at the right moment and all they would then need to do is swear as they backed away, apparently cowed by the American’s threats.
“You have what you wanted?” Hamza asked.
“Thank you, my friend. You did a good job.” The American handed over a bag. Hamza took it, but didn’t look inside. So far, he trusted the American. He had been good to Hamza.
“This stays between us, understood?”
“Of course, my friend.” Hamza couldn’t help but ask: “What do you want from her?”
“It’s always good to know people from your home. Nothing more than that. You understand that, don’t you?”
Chapter 9
Al-Jawf, Libya
Massarra stood to one side the seething street and watched salvagers barter at makeshift stalls, or in the anonymous shadows cast by balconies, tarpaulins and frayed awnings. It smelled of raw meat, from a butcher behind her, and of diesel oil from canisters carried on shoulders, bobbing through the crowd. Arabic music drifted over the hiss of the constant sirocco wind of the Sahara.
Amidst what might have seemed like chaos—an anarchy of jealous hoarding of whatever desperate humans could find to help them survive for another day, another week—she witnessed a curious mechanical order. If the cities along the coast of Libya, to say nothing
of those littering the banks of the Nile more than six hundred kilometers to the east, had suffered in the wake of Nomad, there was likely still much to salvage for those who had survived. People’s immediate and even short-term needs varied and there would always be trade. Did the Zuwayya permit such illicit trading so long as their taxes were paid? It was outside the purview of the markets and therefore not regulated or scrutinized, but black markets had always existed whatever the regime. Perhaps there would be a raid at some point and arrests made. Perhaps, for now, the Zuwayya just didn’t care enough to do anything about it.
She wondered if any of these raiders and salvagers who bartered beside her had considered heading south to the lands beyond Chad and Sudan in the south. What remained there? There were rumors of course. That it was verdant and green, a promised land. Or that it was buried in ash, the Rift Valley collapsed into the oceans. It was hard to tell truth from fiction, and the Levantine Council didn’t know any more than she did.
As she considered this, she continued her surveillance of the faces and body language of those occupying the street. She searched for anything that caught her attention, which to her instincts seemed irregular or out of place. There were specific markers to look for. Those who, like her, seemed to be waiting without engaging with those around them. She noted these seemingly casual observers, scrutinized them to assess what caught their interest, and whether they appeared to be in communication with others.
If there were markers of surveillance, tells that might give away even the most scrupulous watcher, much of her tradecraft relied on instincts shaped by experience in theaters where mistakes were punished severely—if not by her opponents, then later by her employers. Only when she was certain the streets were clear of such threats, that no one watched and waited for her or for those she protected, did she signal to the balcony above.
Resistance (Nomad Book 3) Page 18
