by Leslie North
“Wait in the Jeep, umngane.”
“Wees versigtig,” said Augustine. Be careful.
Augustine returned the way they had come. Samson shuffled the case to his left hand, removed his Glock from his holster, and closed in on the lit window. He hadn’t traveled fifty feet when armed guards swarmed him.
“Hold it, hold it,” his words native and sharp. “Julian sent me.”
Without a further exchange of words, they led him at gunpoint through an east wing corridor. Lightning streaked the distant sky through the blown-out windows but did little to illuminate the dark hallway. What had once been an all-purpose room with glass near the ceiling and a small wooden stage at one end now housed a sophisticated bank of computers, tables lined with weapons and a cross-looking African in full flak who stopped pacing when Samson entered.
“You’re late.”
“Yeah, well, Julian should send a driver next time.”
“Papers?”
Samson reached inside his jacket. In a show of pure testosterone, the guards behind them performed an audible and totally unnecessary clip-loading of their semi-automatic weapons.
The African snapped something off in a dialect Samson didn’t quite catch. Something about idiots and worthless. The guards stared down their leader as if they wanted to shower him with a spray of bullets, but trickled away back into the dark hall.
Samson dropped the mustard-colored envelope Julian had given him on the center table. On takeoff, Samson had assessed the contents: closed-circuit security photographs that captured Julian and Samson in the same frame—presumably to prove alliance, copies of Samson’s passport and old military ID, Angela’s Podium Biotech credentials and lines of instruction written in code.
The African rifled through the contents. When he had satisfied every slip of paper in his mind, his gaze leveled Samson.
“I am Monde, your liaison to the team leaders at each site.” His accent was educated, westernized, not at all thick and gummy as most of the men in the region, similar to Nahyea’s after she had traveled on study visa to Europe for a term. Samson suspected Julian had given this accomplice the means to travel. Recruit, maybe.
“Why can’t I speak with them directly?”
“They don’t trust Americans,” said Monde. “I don’t trust Americans. But it is not my job to think. I take orders. And my orders are to disclose each site, determine the area of greatest need in operations, and deploy you to ensure plans are executed according to Julian’s specifications.”
“Julian promised to release the doctor, Michael McAllister, in exchange for my help.”
“First, the serum.”
A pissing contest. Each wanted something the other had. Serum. Information. In a show of faith, Samson lifted the case onto the table and clicked open the latches. Monde summoned another militant over, who donned black gloves, extracted the vials, and left the room.
“We do not have the resources to retrieve him at this time. He will remain unharmed until such time as transport can be made available.”
Bullshit.
“I want guarantees.”
“There are few guarantees in warfare, Mr. Caine.”
“Your word?”
“You would take that, yet you do not know me? I suspect you do not trust me, as I do not trust you.”
“I’m guessing that judgment is beyond your classification. Shall we get on with it?”
“As you wish.”
Monde unrolled a crude topographical map indicating six sites already equipped to deploy the first line of weapons containing JNXN and a secondary back up of short-range missiles, targeted to the most populous and sensitive targets in the region—government offices, water treatment facilities, the hub of an electrical grid that was spotty at best. Samson surveyed the locations, recalling everything Angela noted about her video interactions with Mike under captivity: warehouse-like, gray walls, empty, clean. The only location on the list that fit that description was a train depot near the epicenter of the target zone.
“How much time do we have?”
“Detonation times are already coded, no override. 0-400.”
Christ, that was less than six hours.
“Five vials are on the move as we speak for loading,” continued Monde. “You will accompany the sixth into the city. Your driver, Imari, has been briefed.”
No. Fuck.
If Imari alerted Monde, his cover would be blown. The drivers here were the weakest link. “Understood. And what of Emmanuel? Also part of the deal.”
“Manny? You will see him soon enough.”
Monde’s tone coiled into a tight ball inside Samson’s gut. Poison. Pure poison. The location was almost certain to be a trap.
“Channel 2. Emergency only.” Monde handed him a battered, two-way radio that had seen better days.
Great. He had to find a way to slip away and alert Augustine.
Monde didn’t offer anything from the arsenal lining one wall. Samson wasn’t surprised. You do not trust me, as I do not trust you.
He took leave, accompanied by Imari, and made a show of having to take a shit so the guy wouldn’t insist he piss in the courtyard when he used the restroom excuse. When Imari strolled away to light a cigarette, Samson sprinted to Augustine and told him the plan: get Angela, meet at the highest rise on the plateau road between two villages, two hours, lights on. Samson had barely cleared the restroom wall when his guard turned the corner, flicked his cigarette butt at Samson’s feet and crushed it out against the concrete floor.
Sweat drizzled Samson’s brow from the exertion. The guy made a smartass comment about the virile nature of the shit. Samson grunted, struggling to keep his labored breaths even. They climbed into the all-terrain transport vehicle and joined the dirt road, headed north.
When the compound disappeared in the reflection of the passenger side mirror, Samson pointed his Glock straight at the driver’s temple.
“Pull the fuck over.”
Chapter Twelve
To keep her worries over Samson to a manageable internal storm, Angela passed the afternoon helping Nahyea pull root vegetables from the garden and prepare a meal of rice mixed with mashed pumpkins and sweet potato greens simmered in red palm oil. When an afternoon rain steamed up the mountain and Fana grew weak and could not join them at the table, the women propped the elder woman to a seated position in bed with blankets and pillows and surrounded her, plates in hand to break bread. They reserved the honored space at the foot of the old, iron bed for Angela. Someone lit a candle against the dimness and placed it on crude shelf nearby.
Angela had never felt more supported. This was family, incarnate—that insular sense of rightness against all the unknowns of the world. And she had missed it so very much.
Nahyea brought to the circle a photograph of a young Samson in a brightly-colored African tunic. The beautiful woman Angela had once seen smiling at her from a beach scene occupied his embrace, a spray of pink, trumpet-shaped flowers in her hands.
“Dis is all we have to remember Samson,” said Nahyea.
Fana uttered a few words that Nahyea translated to so young.
His hair was military-grade short, which brought his classically handsome features into greater relief. Riley looked radiant in simple white.
“Miz Riley was a missionary wit the kindest heart. Dey help us build dis house. When we learn what happen to Miz Riley, Fana went within herself for three days.” Three more like tree. “She pray for healing.”
Fana’s stark cheekbones shifted under the burden of her teary eyes. Her words came out splintered, as if they had been chipped away from her soul.
Nahyea translated. “She saw great struggle for him. Darkness, not unlike da clouds beyond da windows. She worry dat he would forget da man she had come to know.”
Fana reached for Angela’s hand. She accepted the gesture warmly. Angela’s chest squeezed from the shared moment. Candlelight swam in her vision.
Fana spoke again, much softer this
time.
“She sez she pray for answers,” Nahyea said. “And you came.”
Fana slid a bracelet from her brittle wrist and placed it around Angela’s hand with an uttered sentiment. Her movement was slow and deliberate, as if she had an infinite amount of time to set things right in her world. The stone-and-string adornment brought Angela peace.
“For luck,” said Nahyea. “For love.”
***
The rain had ceased, leaving the air like a damp rag against Angela’s skin. Shortly after she settled onto her cot mattress for the long, sleepless night ahead, a knock sounded at Fana’s door.
Nahyea answered.
Augustine entered, his eyes wide and white in the moonlight slashing through the curtains. After words of apology for the late hour and the intrusion, he stumbled through enough broken English to convey a deep and consuming urgency, directed straight at Angela:
Sam-son.
Brutha.
Come.
Now.
***
Samson left Imari tied to a buffalothorn tree, high enough so wild, nocturnal felines would not feast on him, tight enough that he wouldn’t go anywhere soon. At gunpoint, Samson had extracted from his driver the location of the vehicle’s tracking device. Samson continued on the set route until he found a truck at a stop headed in the same direction. He placed the bug under the truck’s fender then set off in the direction he had gambled as Mike’s location.
The last thing he had wanted was to involve Angela in an escape plan, but with a six hour window and the distance to Fana’s village, time was a truer enemy than anything Julian could unleash. If Julian didn’t already know the serum was a fake, he would know soon. Samson had to trust that Rockwell had passed along the intelligence to counter the backup missiles and had arranged transport for them on a steamer out of Knysna.
He reached the train station and parked the vehicle behind a cluster of bushwillows. The storms that held such promise earlier skirted his location, leaving the moon a pinnacle that cast no shadows to betray him. Samson sank into the comfort of his SEAL training, his decisions and movements and body systems clockwork, regimented, focused on the mission: extraction of the hostage.
The station was quiet. Dead quiet.
At the heart of the waiting room, tied to a bench, mouth taped closed and a black rag tied around his head, Samson spotted Mike. He had lain awake in Julian’s bed, long after Angela had fallen asleep in his arms, scrolling through the photographs of her brother contained in her phone. Samson had memorized every detail: crazy hair not unlike his sister, slight build, strawberry birthmark on his neck below his right ear, square jaw. The identity of the hostage was affirmative.
And total fucking bait.
Exposed. Waiting.
Julian knew Samson had betrayed him.
Samson needed a diversion.
He stalked the building’s rear flank. A diversion at the opposite end would give them the best chance of escape. He zeroed in on a busted window, scanned the space to ensure it was unoccupied, then slipped inside.
Samson found himself in the train station’s back offices behind the ticket booths—nothing but overturned office equipment and reams of paper that blanketed the ransacked interior like white sand blown from the Muizenberg coast on a tempest. His gaze snagged on a fire extinguisher still mounted to the wall.
Bingo.
Samson bent down and ripped out his 550 cord that doubled as a boot lace. He zeroed in on the smallest space he could find—a maintenance closet that adjoined the office—pulled the extinguisher pin and tied his paracord around the trigger mechanism. He placed the extinguisher inside the closet, ran the cord beneath the door, closed it and yanked as hard as he could.
Beyond the door, the extinguisher rocketed to life. The loud sibilance of the foam jetting from the apparatus joined the racket of the shell colliding with wall after wall.
The string nearly zinged out of his hand. He lassoed it around his hand, bracing his boots against the door and knotted the free end around the door handle. On his feet in seconds, he doubled back through the window as he heard voices swarm behind him.
He entered the depot waiting area, stalked to Mike, and ripped off his blindfold.
Mike jolted, his hair-trigger of defense after being tortured was instantaneous, raw. A desperate scream backlogged in his throat, muffled by the tape.
“I’m a friend of Angela’s, Mike. I’m gonna get you out of here.” Samson’s voice was low, his mouth centered at the hostage’s ear. He removed his pocket knife. “No noise, all right? We gotta move. Fast.”
Mike nodded, his head pumping faster than Samson’s heart.
Samson removed the tape from Mike’s lips and sliced the bindings at his extremities. Mike scrambled to his feet. The challenge of his body weight proved too much for his feet to carry him. Samson looped Mike’s arm around his shoulder and buddy-handled him toward the exit.
Swarms of militia men occupied the road, headed toward the back of the depot. The extinguisher’s grenade-like racket still reverberated from the ticket office.
Samson scanned for an alternate route back to where he hid the vehicle.
“Tracks.” Mike indicated a strip of line that disappeared into overgrowth shortly after it left the depot. Perfect cover.
Samson hauled Mike out an emergency side door and down toward the tracks. Mike’s feet found renewed purchase and began to function. Without Samson carrying him, they cleared the distance to the trees in under ten seconds. The moment they broke into the trees and their feet found purchase on railroad ties, the deafening crack of a cartridge being loaded into a rifle chamber collided with Samson’s gut like a freight train going sixty.
“Stop! One more step and you’re both dead.”
Samson grabbed Mike’s arm to ensure he complied. SEAL training taught that deprivation from captivity compromised the decision-making process. He had to think enough for them both. Instinctively, Mike raised his hands in surrender. Samson turned and followed suit.
The advanced darkness did not afford much of a chance to size up their opponent: no more than five feet tall; a wild afro that all but screamed desperate warrior, a semi-automatic longer than his arms.
“Step into da light.”
His voice was half-baked, pitched too high for a grown man. Samson detected the slightest hint of uncertainty in his command. But that wasn’t all. Something about the voice had the capacity to burrow beneath Samson’s skin and nest, dark and painful, in the chest.
No.
Jesus Christ, no.
Monde’s words charged his memory. You will see him soon enough.
Samson and Mike complied.
In the eyes of the gunman, Samson saw a boy, not yet a man. The hand holding the weapon shook with the ferocity of inexperience. The boy, no more than fourteen, stood as a killer, poised to exact a grand re-balancing act, retribution for forsaking him all those years ago.
“Manny?”
Chapter Thirteen
By the time Angela and Augustine reached a high crest in a road that looked more desert-like than the land surrounding Fana’s house, she had pieced together the plan: wait at a pre-determined spot, Samson and brutha come, drive fast until ocean and something about a boat. Angela didn’t want to get too far ahead of herself. The plan wasn’t neat script on successive sticky notes kind of plan, but the notion that a plan existed did wonders for her runaway pulse. The Jeep’s dull headlamps sliced the night dust rising from their abrupt stop. Beyond two rusted-out bulbs and a waning moon, the night was pitch.
Augustine killed the engine.
A cacophony of crickets rose from the brush. The loamy smell of the land filled her nostrils; the closeness made it difficult to breathe.
Augustine surveyed their surroundings, where the horizon would be had they been able to decipher it, as if his vision was powerful enough to infiltrate the ink-soaked night. It occurred to Angela that on a rise such as this, the Jeep acted as a beacon. For Sa
mson and Mike, good. For anyone opposed to two Americans escaping captivity, not so good.
“Shouldn’t we turn off the lights?”
“No.” Augustine’s response was absolute, the clearest syllable she had heard him utter since Samson found him servicing his Jeep on a road closest to the abandoned landing strip that had once been used to airlift supplies. Julian hadn’t sent a driver, nor did the crew have instructions to stay—two red flags that had set Angela and Samson both on edge. Rather than wait for communications to untangle, they opted to make their own arrangements. But in a land of heated strife, violent ideology, and radicalized factions, allegiances were anyone’s guess.
What if Augustine had brought her out here to die?
Inwardly, she cursed her stupidity. Fana’s house had been safe, an insular refuge, where she had only to consider Samson’s safety. Now, thoughts of her safety scraped upward, stomach to windpipe.
Not now. Stay calm, Angela.
She breathed a four-count and thought of Samson. When air again passed freely through her passages, she studied Augustine’s eye movements, concentrated beyond the driver’s side, out into the unknown.
A voice rose from the brush.
Then two.
Then three.
Hairs at the base of Angela’s neck lifted like cactus spines. Her body froze in a quicksand of her own fear. Her mind, however, was light years ahead. Had Augustine betrayed her? Handed her over to Julian’s men—or worse—the same men who had slaughtered the Americans at the consulate years earlier?
His hand reached for the ignition and turned, simultaneously pumping the gas pedal.
The Jeep coughed and sputtered.
Augustine looked at Angela, the white of his eyes swallowing his pupils, transfixed in horror, a curse in his native language hot on his tongue.
He wanted out of there as much as she did.
The voices grew louder, three or four men, maybe more, growing more raucous the closer they sounded. Their foreign words bounded through the spindly landscape like starving jackrabbits pursuing the last edible sage on earth. A piercing hoot lifted from the throat of one, half human, half coyote-like.
