The Watchers

by Mark Andrew Olsen

  “Did the assassin come at your throat? With a scythe?”

  “No, it was some bizarre, untraceable poison. However, my housekeeper was murdered that night, and they said her throat had been cut by a curved blade!”

  Their eyes brightened, then darkened again as everyone realized the somber nature of their discovery.

  “How awful to think that the Scythians might be at work in America too,” Sister Okoye said from her chair.

  “Do your gifts develop,” Abby asked, “after a strange dream about the prophetess Anna at the Temple, meeting Jesus?”

  “Yes! Yes!” Motumbe looked like she might jump onto the table from sheer delight at the disclosure. “Oh my. It is beyond doubt now that Iya Agba truly did cross the Atlantic.”

  “You see, Abby,” said Sister Okoye, “one of the great unhealed wounds of Nigeria is that our harbors served as the launching point for the American slave trade. Many, many of our people enriched themselves and indulged their old tribal hatreds by selling each other into slavery, just a few miles from where we sit. We know from our prayers that a great wound was inflicted on our body when this happened. We know that territorial spirits have jealously guarded their holds over parts of our land and its people. We know that a number of Iya Agba women were sold and taken away. And we have never been able to sense their bond, or even know whether their gifting survived into the New World.”

  “ ‘Heal the breach,’ ” Abby said in a strangely breathy voice.

  “What?” said Motumbe.

  “ ‘Heal the breach.’ It’s the main command Jesus gave me to carry out.”

  “If there is a breach, a wound here, it concerns that subject. Our lost sisters in America, and the horrible sin that led to their being taken from us.”

  “Yes—except that I have no African blood in me whatsoever. That is the greatest question in my own mystery. The women who responded to me by the thousands were African-American. Women who had an awareness of something they called the Sight, but no idea where it originally came from.”

  “The Sight,” sighed Sister Okoye, savoring the words. She now sat at the table, having completely abandoned her pretense of sleeping in the chair. Her eyes were filled with tears and her voice had grown husky. “So even the name survived somehow. Our sisters knew their name, but they did not know their heritage.”

  “It sounds like we are healthy in numbers,” Abby said. “But it seems we are being destroyed by our isolation.”

  “Yes,” agreed Motumbe. “It’s as though the old sins and offenses continue to fester after all these years, keeping us separate and weak.”

  “That’s my mission,” Abby said with a new resolve in her voice. “To heal this breach. I see it now, clearer than ever.”

  “Oh, if you could,” said the third woman, who up until now had been silent. “If you could only help revive us! Do you know how many good things these sisters have done through the years? We once functioned like what they called, in your American West, scouts. Literally scouting the spirit realm for attacks on our people, our children.”

  “Iya Agba leaders,” added Sister Okoye, “often warned kings and generals of upcoming attacks, either from enemy nations or from within their own people. We saved thousands. We prevented wars, helped clear up misunderstandings between tribes. We were considered indispensable at the court of every sovereign in all Africa, whether they believed in Christ or not.”

  “Can you imagine how much good we could accomplish today across Africa?” Okoye said. “There is so much darkness to be dispelled. In Darfur, in Uganda. If only we could have had an influence in Rwanda, warned the poor Tutsis there of what was to come.”

  “They wouldn’t have believed us,” said Motumbe. “No one wants to believe in the purest forms of evil.”

  “If that’s true,” Abby interjected, “then why didn’t anyone predict the attack on the Gathering today?”

  The other women faced each other with blank expressions. Sister Okoye closed her eyes for a moment. She opened them again and said, “I think several reasons. First, I think the idea came from somewhere beyond our land, beyond our influence. It was hatched and conceived by the American side of the Brotherhood, whom we never even knew existed, and yet now it seems is far stronger than our own contingent. That means the spiritual currents around the plot were beyond our detection. Second, we were so completely wrapped up in your appearance and all the media madness that surrounded it, we were distracted. I myself was so intensely engaged in prayer for you that a bomb could have gone off and I would have hardly noticed.”

  “One practically did,” pointed out Motumbe.

  “Indeed. And last, I hate to say this, but again it shows how far we’ve fallen from our former days of usefulness and relevance. Our enemies have grown strong. We’ve become scattered. Our gifts have become diffused and weak.”

  “Tell me,” asked Abby, “how do these gifts transmit themselves? What are their means of traveling from one believer to another?”

  Motumbe shook her head. “That is one of the great remaining mysteries. Here, all we know is that only women receive the Sight, and that all harbor this ancient strain of the faith.”

  Abby fell silent for a moment, thinking intensely. Then her face brightened. “You know, there is so much talk about sisterhood among you all. And such a spirit of family. I haven’t felt part of such a tight-knit family since before my mother . . . well, since before she left my family.”

  “What are you trying to say?” asked Sister Okoye.

  “I was just thinking back to my trip to heaven. About being greeted at the gate by a group of Iya Agba instead of family. But maybe it wasn’t instead. Maybe they were family.”

  “I’m not following,” said Motumbe.

  “Earlier, you said the other Nigerian believers were spiritually descended from European missionaries. What if the bond from that kind of ancestry was more tangible than we imagined? What if it goes deeper than just the vocabulary we use to describe each other? After all, each of us have what we could call a ‘spiritual genealogy.’ Isn’t that true?”

  “I suppose it’s beyond debate,” mused Sister Okoye.

  “What if the ancient strain really did carry the Iya Agba gifting into Nigeria, and your common spiritual ancestry distributed it to each of you? From your spiritual mother? Your grandmother in Christ? Your great-grandmother?”

  “Like some kind of spiritual DNA . . .” said Motumbe.

  “Exactly. I mean, think about it. Why is it we’re so interested in our biological family trees, but most of us, at least in my country, couldn’t follow their spiritual family tree more than two generations back? I know my mother led me to Christ and taught me about Him.

  But I don’t know who led her.”

  “Maybe that’s an important part of the answers you seek.”

  Abby suddenly fell silent again. The very same thought had just occurred to her too.

  CHAPTER

  _ 37

  Invisible in the midnight shadows, Dylan sat with his back to the small stone building and savored the first prolonged stillness he had allowed himself in a very long time. He closed his eyes and imagined that the chatter of nocturnal creatures and the dappled light of the moon were actually water, trickling cool and pure over his face. He then realized the sound of water was in fact emanating from somewhere around him. Sending out his awareness like a stealth probe around the building’s edges, he finally located the source, peered forward and spotted it.

  How odd. The building itself must have been intentionally built on top of the small spring whose leftover flow spurted out of a small aperture with the rhythm of a heartbeat, down through a bed of ruddy grasses and reeds.

  Returned to the pain-ignoring mindset of his special ops background, he leaned back on his haunches and willed himself not to move or register pain from thighs or ankles. Despite the localized burn, he found it indeed refreshing to sit and simply let his muscles remain motionless, no matter what position they occup
ied.

  He tried to shift his mind away from the emotional disarray of the last few hours by pondering instead the tactical realities of their situation. In a small-numbers guerrilla scenario, the building and its elevated location would prove more than adequate. He had decent concealment, good sight lines, a solid half dozen firing solutions, multiple means of escape, and only one feasible direction of hostile approach.

  The problem was, their enemies weren’t likely to come at them in a simple patrol. He had a good idea of the resources available to Shadow Leader, and it didn’t take a genius to compute the massive resources necessary for that day’s raid on the Believers Gathering. In an afterthought, he glanced back at the building’s roof to see if there was a chimney and any smoke rising from it.

  Good, he noted. They’d had the sense to keep things cold.

  All he had at his disposal was a small blade and a revolver with four rounds remaining. In the coolness of retrospect, he inwardly kicked himself for having heeded the old woman’s harangue and left so many weapons behind. Now it was clear how much he could have used a spare machine gun or two, stashed at strategic points around the perimeter. If only he’d had his old Delta Force mission pack, complete with claymore mines, grenades, booby-trap tripwires, and infrared gear. He could have made any intruder regret sneaking up on this place, that’s for sure. . . .

  Slowly it came back to him that all these thoughts ran completely against what Sister Okoye and the Iya Agba were all about. Now, given the indignity of being refused entrance and the old woman’s high-handed description of his soul, he began to question his surrender to her fuzzy worldview. What were they supposed to do now, he wondered, sit around and pray while their killers came for them? If not for him and his allegedly excessive tactics, they’d already be cooling bodies in a clearing several miles back, victims of that first gang of thugs.

  And yet—if he rejected Abby’s world, where did that leave him? The killer of an innocent girl? Accessory to the indiscriminate slaughter of several hundred innocent worshipers? He groaned and kneaded his forehead with stiff fingers. On top of all that, there was the evidence of his very own eyes. He knew what he’d seen back on that stage, and he knew that it was not of this world. He’d witnessed a miracle. And even in his limited experience, people who ignored miracles generally did not go down as geniuses in the annals of history.

  He tried to chase the maddening thoughts from his head. Problem was, his only true distraction was to once again address the physical defense of their position. He was a man, and men were wired to take action, to accomplish something.

  He thought of the Australian sheepdogs whose urge to herd animals was so ingrained in their little brains that if deprived of the chance to harass sheep, they would instinctively start to wrangle small children or pets around a backyard.

  Yep, that’s me, he thought with a wry grin. Give me a mission or tie me up.

  He calculated that they had traveled a total of three and a half miles from the initial trailhead. From the maps he’d seen, he was fairly confident that the forest extended on behind them for an indefinite distance. For a satellite or a chopper, that distance was essentially nothing. He remembered the power of contemporary satellites and regretted not having urged the women to trudge through the middle of the stream on their way here, to dispel their heat signatures. But then he thought of their overall condition at that point, and knew such frigid and slippery conditions would have been impossible to bear. Somebody would have broken a leg.

  With an inner chill he realized that if this house was known in any way to their enemies, or if their approach had been detected, they would have a warning time of only a few seconds before an attack helicopter or hunter-killer team struck. He could rig up a few diversionary tricks like rock-falls or bunji pits, but he doubted the time spent would prove worth it. With today’s firing distances and lethal rockets, close distance was no longer necessary. They would be toast against all but the most primitive attack.

  So what do I do then? he asked nobody in particular as he leaned back. Pray? The poor victims of the day’s shootout had done plenty of praying. It hadn’t stopped hundreds of them from winding up dead in a pile too horrific to look upon. Come to think of it, it hadn’t done much for all those victims in Rwanda, or Sudan, or Uganda, or a dozen-plus killing fields on this whole blood-soaked continent.

  So what was it? Had he let himself fall victim to a bunch of pie-in-the-sky, fuzzy female illogic?

  Somehow, in a place deep down within him, it didn’t feel like that. In fact, everything about it had the strange, uneasy feel of unlikely truth.

  But how could it?

  He was about to stand and make his presence known to the ladies inside when he heard the door screech open. He turned and saw Sister Okoye leaning out with an intent look on her face.

  “We’re leaving, Dylan. We’re taking a trip.”

  “Good,” he answered, almost to himself. “Not a minute too soon.”

  “And oh,” she said, turning around in an afterthought. “You can keep those weapons if you like. But just remember. They’re not our first line of defense.”

  CHAPTER

  _ 38

  The first ruddy streaks of dawn had just begun to smudge the horizon when Sister Okoye and Abby emerged from the building and, without a pause, began running downslope toward the valley bottom. Feeling his dignity and male pride almost completely in tatters, Dylan nevertheless jumped up with a shout and started off behind them.

  At an impenetrable thicket near the water’s edge, Sister Okoye reached in and grabbed hold of a tree trunk. To the others’ surprise, the trunk gave way and lifted in her hands. Dylan stepped in to help, only to find that he was holding a long, thin canoe of hollowed bark, uncommonly light and strong.

  Carrying the craft over his head to the creek, Dylan couldn’t help but glance around him anxiously. As glad as he was that they were leaving, and leaving on water no less, he remembered that right now they were operating smack-dab in the center of what he’d picked as the likeliest attack zone. He breathed in relief when Sister Okoye stepped in expertly, picked up a steering rod, and started instructing Abby on how to step in and sit properly without tipping the boat.

  “It’s going to be difficult, honey,” she warned.

  Abby gave her an understanding smile. “Don’t worry, Sister. I’m a surfer. If you’ve never seen that before, it requires excellent balance.” Sure enough, she stepped in with perfect control and quickly sat down on her haunches, hardly lurching the boat at all.

  Dylan had far less luck. He stepped in and nearly launched the whole canoe downstream with only a single foot planted inside. Catching himself, he used that lone foot to steer the front of the canoe closer to him, then gingerly placed the other one inside.

  “Good,” said Sister Okoye from the rear of the craft, and with one long plunge of her rod they were off.

  It was a strange navigation for both Abby and Dylan, for the stream’s channel was incredibly narrow, just barely deep enough to accommodate the canoe’s shallow hull. At nearly every push, Sister Okoye’s choices of navigation angle narrowed down to one thin slanted approach through thick undergrowth. Often, passage required a helpful push against a tree trunk or even a hand-paddle from Dylan in the front. It impressed the two how skillfully the older woman managed to steer their ungainly boat through the bottlenecks and sharp turns required to proceed downstream.

  Soon a second lively creek joined theirs, then a third just minutes later, and before they knew it the stream’s volume had doubled, making their path far easier. The three began to breathe more freely and glance around them. Three thick, mist-layered columns of sunlight had just pierced the jungle ahead of them, testimony to the coming dawn. A huge flock of birds chose the moment to launch into a vigorous chorus, filling the forest with a soaring crescendo.

  Again, Abby thought about how Nigeria and its people continued to confound her expectations and surprise her at every turn.

&nbs
p; “So where are we going?” Dylan asked at last, breaking the blissful silence.

  “We’re taking the next step in Abby’s search,” Sister Okoye said. “A place called Sungbo’s Erebo. One of the most amazing spots in all Nigeria, and it’s right at the end of a few miles’ boat ride from here.”

  “Will we be exposed between here and there?” asked Dylan.

  “No, although such concerns mean very little to us now. We’re in God’s hands, not that of G.I. Joe or anybody’s armed guerrillas.”

  “I understand, Sister, but if this is God’s route for our leaving, I’ll just say that God has an excellent nose for tactical planning. He made a call I would have heartily approved of.”

  “I’m sure He’ll be glad to hear that,” Sister Okoye answered with a defiant grin.

  Just then, as in counterpoint, a pair of choppers bellowed overhead, just a half mile or less in front of their position. Dylan ducked by reflex, but noted that where they were on the creek was well concealed by tree branches extending from the banks. Only northward, in the distance, did open sky even reveal the passing aircraft.

  He shook his head in relief. Had they been delayed by just a few minutes more, or been a few hundred yards still upstream, they would have been caught and—unless Abby’s and Sister Okoye’s God performed a feat worthy of the Old Testament—would be dead by now.

  Then he saw them—his blood froze in mid-heartbeat. Mere hundreds of yards behind them, but headed in the opposite direction, ran a dozen barely visible silhouettes. Armed machete men.

  He pulled out the gun, his fingers straining for action. He turned, raised an index finger to his lips for silence, and gestured for Sister Okoye to slowly push them farther downstream.

  She complied. Her motion produced the sounds of wood creaking and water lapping. He gritted his teeth in dread, then breathed once as the motion caused them to float forward nearly ten feet.

  Dylan looked back at the human caravan. He gripped the stock and trigger guard, hard. But he could also see that the gunmen were not looking around. Although distant, they were clearly fixed only on what lay ahead. They were preparing for a raid, and their gazes were locked resolutely before them.