The Watchers

by Mark Andrew Olsen

  He turned in his hammock to face her, amazed that any revelation could repel her so strongly. She breathed in calmly, seemingly gathering strength for the disclosure.

  “They are actually feeding the evil ones. Do not ask me how or why. All I know is what we have seen with our very own . . . eyes, if you will. It as though the demons are feeding on the souls, or the residue, of the dying process. It seems the Scythians are their feeders, their gatherers of food.”

  “And this ancestral hatred of the Iya Agba,” he said, almost explaining it to himself, “is why they feared Abby enough to coerce me into killing her?”

  “Exactly. They are deathly afraid of her not only advancing in her gifts, but answering the questions you and I are solving right this very minute. Because with every piece of the puzzle we discover, the Sisterhood regains a little of its former strength.”

  “No wonder they’re so intent on stopping us.”

  “Indeed. They will not stop until they kill us, or until you and Abby finish her quest. And for that to succeed, she will need a godly warrior. Something you have yet to learn.”

  CHAPTER

  _ 42

  BENIN CITY MILITIA HEADQUARTERS —AN HOUR EARLIER

  “My name is Saronu.”

  “Mine is Motumbe.”

  “And mine, Kofu.”

  “Yes, you have all three confessed to your names repeatedly. And for the record, we believe you. But what you’ve yet to tell us is—who else was with you in that forest?”

  “God Almighty was with us,” said Motumbe with a coy smile.

  “Yes, He certainly was,” rejoined Kofu. “He granted us perfect weather, right up until the end, and delightful fellowship.”

  “I’m speaking of human encounters, if you please.”

  “Well, we met you, right at the end of our journey,” said Saronu. “And by the way, who might you be? You seem to be American, if my ear is correct. What is your authority to detain us, least of all interrogate us in this manner?”

  “How spunky of you to ask. However, I will be asking the questions today.”

  “Couldn’t you at least introduce yourself?” asked Motumbe. “After all, your proper name couldn’t really be, as we overheard you called in the helicopter, Shadow Leader?”

  Hearing himself addressed by his operational moniker caused the man to leap up, his eyes bulging with fury, and slap Motumbe across the face. A hard slap, which sent the woman and the chair to which she was handcuffed crashing into the wall behind them.

  “We’ve committed no crime!” Kofu shouted at the man. “You cannot do this to us. We were hiking through the jungle. That is our right. It is not our responsibility to account for our lack of provisions or packing gear. We were walking briskly and expected to meet some sisters of ours that afternoon. If we were on a wrong trail, then surely that was our problem.”

  The man grudgingly walked behind the interrogation table and shoved Motumbe’s chair back upright again.

  “Nor must we surrender to anyone, especially as we are women alone in a wilderness area,” said Saronu. “That applies even when the chase begins with a helicopter. Nor did it change when you people added squads on foot, and dogs too. If you want to chase innocent women through the wilderness, don’t expect them to stop and offer themselves up. You should know the rule of jungle travel—you hide until someone is known to be friendly.”

  “Especially right after one of the worst massacres in our nation’s history,” Motumbe said sullenly.

  “For the record, ladies, you are being held as suspects and material witnesses in the disappearances of Abigail Sherman, Solodra Okoye, and Lloyd Sanders. Two of whom are American citizens. Hence my jurisdictional authority, which, I assure you, is quite real, having been personally granted by the Minister of the Interior of the great nation of Nigeria.”

  “And we’ve told you,” replied Saronu, “that we have neither abducted nor harmed any of the people you named, in any way.”

  Shadow Leader inhaled heavily, like a man laboring for breath. He reached down, pulled out a large chrome revolver, and laid it on the table with a heavy metallic clank.

  “Last chance,” he said wearily. “Where are they now?”

  Ten, twenty, and finally thirty seconds passed without a single word from any of the three women. Wearing a disgusted smirk, Shadow Leader stood, picked up the revolver, and sighted it with a practiced swiftness—right at the center of Saronu’s forehead.

  His other hand then appeared, and the women gasped.

  It was holding a scythe blade.

  Just then a door opened loudly behind them. The scythe disappeared behind his back.

  “Hold on, sir,” called a bold African voice. The man swaggered into the room. He was large, muscular, and wore a perfectly tailored uniform of the Nigerian Army. “Why don’t you let me do the honors.”

  “Why? I have authority.”

  “I know you do, but this is an official governmental facility. It would look far better if we simply allowed me to finish what you so ably started. With you completely out of sight. I won’t need the blade, of course, but I can assure you I’ll get the job done right.”

  Shadow Leader’s eyes narrowed at the blade reference. The two men stared at each other. An almost palpable coldness seemed to chill the air between them.

  Finally, Shadow Leader broke contact and walked away.

  “Fine. You do the honors,” he said before disappearing through the same back door.

  The officer did not waste a moment before turning to regard the women through heavily lidded, hateful eyes.

  And yet something about the man seemed to put the prisoners at ease. They glanced up and down and around his figure, and faint smiles began to appear on their faces. Even when the man picked up the gun, checked its chamber for bullets, then cocked it, they did not seem fearful in the least.

  “Prisoners, I am with the Nigerian People’s Army, and I assure you that I have the authority to act according to my own discretion,” he said in a voice dripping with menace. “Your sentence has already been decided, and it is about to be carried out. Now stand and follow me.”

  He led the three out of the room and into a bleak prison courtyard. As soon as the door was shut, he leaned toward them and whispered, “I know you are brave women,” he said, “but you had better be prepared to scream like you never have before. Now kneel.”

  All three women knelt in the dirt, with their faces low to the ground. No blindfolds were provided as he was an executioner’s team of one. At last, he raised up his gun and then lowered it swiftly in Saronu’s face.

  “Where are they?” he asked in a suddenly kinder voice.

  “At our Eredo safe house. Just downriver from the first house, where it meets the rampart.”

  He nodded. “Now scream for your lives.”

  A shot cracked in the humid air. Then another. And a third.

  The officer inclined his head to the left, indicating with a fierce look a side door left ajar.

  The women needed no additional urging. They stumbled to their feet, sprinted to the door, and disappeared through its crooked frame.

  As soon as they were gone, the officer walked slowly back into the building where Shadow Leader awaited him in a conference room.

  “They’re gone,” he said, quite accurately.

  “Yes, and so am I,” said Shadow Leader. “Taking off for a long canoe trip. Down the creek to the Eredo Rampart. Ever heard of the place?”

  “I have. But why go there?”

  “It’s where our satellite picked up the escapees’ boat, washed up.”

  Shadow Leader turned on his heels and began to walk out.

  “Best be careful,” the Nigerian called out after him. “It’s quite the swamp down there. Better bring a lot of men.”

  “I’m going alone.”

  “You’re joking. You’ll never make it.”

  “Colonel—Colonel Shawkey, is it? I was belly-flopping through Laos when you and the Nigerian
brothers were still stealing dash from your mamas at corner checkpoints,” Shadow Leader snarled. “I’m through with your incompetent teams of teenaged machete wavers. I’m going in myself, and there will be a body count.”

  CHAPTER

  _ 43

  ONE MILE SOUTH OF FIRST SAFE HOUSE — THREE HOURS LATER

  An idle observer would have had to stand within thirty yards of the insertion point, and even then with an unobstructed view in strong daylight, to make out what was taking place.

  Silent inflating into the shape of a Kodiak boat, the large rubber sheath lay camouflaged in an interweaving pattern consisting of eight shades of green. Shadow Leader walked over to the creek’s edge in a ghillie suit of the same design. Even his face and hand paint bore identical hues.

  He was so well concealed that, running down to the boat, he appeared like little more than an undulation in the jungle backdrop. His intrusion resembled the blowing of a stiff breeze against the underbrush more than the passing silhouette of a warrior.

  He patted his trunk and limbs as a last-minute weapons check. He would travel light. A fairly well stocked combat bag was strapped to the boat, but on his person he carried a relatively light load. A sniper rifle, three handguns of differing ranges and calibers, three grenades and an equal number of knives stashed in various pockets and Velcroed sleeves. No radio headpiece or any of that high-tech stuff other than a pair of infrared goggles, which was a point of pride. He had a last-ditch radio stowed away on the Kodiak. None of that battlefield GPS stuff either. Finally, he had a map and a compass and solid briefing about the terrain.

  That was all he needed.

  And of course a well-oiled, sharpened sickle blade—a scythe as he preferred to call it—dangled from his belt.

  After all, this was in part an amped-up grudge mission. Not the best-advised strategy from a tactical perspective, but that wasn’t the point. It was also a man’s desperate bid to save his own life with a single grandstanding achievement.

  He was well downstream from where they believed his prey had put in, so the Kodiak’s girth was not an issue. Besides, a foot of rain had fallen since then, and every waterway within a hundred miles was now swollen to twice the previous day’s volume. With this nimble craft and its silent but powerful trolling motor, the extra water was a definite advantage.

  He jumped in, turned and waved off his men. At first, there was no need of the motor, even with its quiet propeller. He would need it later for steering more than for propulsion. His strong first push had sent him into a deliciously quiet glide, which the onshore men did not wait to watch. Their superior disappeared against the Kodiak’s floor, lying prone for his first few, vulnerable moments as the support crew melted back into the jungle.

  Time elapsed: four minutes, thirty-two seconds.

  Three hundred miles above his waterborne path, a KH-12 keyhole satellite peered through the cloud cover with lenses using near invisible, thermal infrared plus radar enhancement to scan the targets’ hiding place at a resolution four feet across.

  The original source for this satellite-tasking request lay buried under layers of highly classified communications channels. It would have taken months for even an experienced navigator of America’s covert landscape to discover the official with whom it had originated.

  Then, even if the inquirer lived a week, which was not likely, he or she still possessed a miniscule chance of uncovering the person’s link to the Brotherhood of the Scythe.

  SUNGBO'S EREDO RAMPART

  They spent the night warm and dry in the hammocks, swathed in light cotton throws and raised well above the cool floor.

  The next morning Abby awoke to the sound of heavy rain pelting the rampart outside. She padded out to the entrance and, instead of light and an outdoor world, was greeted with a curtain of water nearly obscuring the entire outside view.

  Dylan sat before the scene while he prepared himself to venture out to scout for enemies. But given the forbidding nature of the weather and the long list of things she wanted to teach Dylan, Sister Okoye had other plans. He protested weakly and only for a short time, for experience was teaching them that not only was the older woman persuasive, but her entreaties always wound up having ample merit.

  So they spent the bulk of that day huddled in the cave, watching the rain and listening to Sister Okoye’s lilting, patient voice.

  What the Nigerian taught Dylan, in the course of those long hours, was essentially a reeducation into a whole new form of warfare. It began, however, with a primer on the most essential parts of his relationship with God.

  “God is far less interested in what you can do for Him, or in all this spiritual warfare,” she said, “no matter how important it may be, than He is first of all in knowing you. Abiding with you. That comes first. All the other wonders come second.”

  So she taught him the varied ways of being in Him—the vital role of daily time in His Word. The critical importance of remaining constantly in prayer instead of just speaking to Him at mealtimes or important occasions. Especially, she emphasized, during times of warfare. She stressed the enormous value of hearing His voice through the less reliable yet still crucial sources of creation and of other people. She told him about the gifts of the Spirit.

  “I’m surprised, and fairly confused,” Dylan confessed after several hours. “All this time and you haven’t yet talked about do’s and don’ts or getting clobbered for committing this or that sin.”

  “Well, don’t get your hopes too high,” she answered with a smile, “because following His commands for righteous living is definitely important. The problem is, most people get it backward. Living right is not the way you become saved by Him. It’s the proof, the evidence, that you already are in Him. So it’s not as high on the list as you might have imagined, that’s all. First comes brokenness, then walking with Him. Obedience is a byproduct.”

  After a light lunch, she moved on to the rest of his warrior’s training. Relentlessly, she verbally pounded on the notion of his self-reliance, of his turning his heart cold and hard during battle. Dylan argued that emotionally insulating himself was the only way he could do what had to be done. And Sister Okoye responded that it could be true in conventional earthly combat, but not in the spirit realm. In that realm, complete openness and receptivity to God’s Spirit was a prerequisite. She insisted that he empty himself during battle and soften his heart to hear from a general who wasn’t far away in some command bunker but right there inside him, trying very hard to speak to him right where he stood.

  And if he had done the real work of what she had taught him that morning—the practice of abiding in Him every day—then his most crucial preparations for conflict were already in place. He would be already primed to hear God’s voice clearly through His Spirit. He had already invoked the strongest angelic protection possible, already sharpened his spiritual senses by having cleaned away all the impurities clogging his soul.

  Sometime around six hours later, at the crown of midafternoon, the expression in Dylan’s eyes began to soften and relax. His gaze toward Sister Okoye began to ease and yet somehow grow more intent, more understanding.

  Somewhere in his thinking, Dylan had just turned a corner. His comprehension of spiritual things had just reached critical mass. And yet his doubts over being able to follow through had just crested as well.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” he said. “It all goes so completely against the training I’ve imposed on myself for decades. I’ll try, because I’ve seen what God can do through women like you. But I don’t know . . .”

  Both Abby and Sister Okoye smiled at him knowingly.

  “What is it?” he asked, self-conscious.

  “It’s our Sight,” Abby began. “We can already see a difference in your spirit.”

  “Yes, and by the way,” said Sister Okoye, “the little nuisance spirits are gone. They’ve all fled, because you already have twice the angelic escort you once had.”

  “It’s true,”
Abby said. “You already look different in the spirit than you did first thing this morning.”

  “Yes, but if you follow my advice,” said Okoye, “you will soon be twice the strapping warrior in that realm than you are in the flesh. And more important still, your name will be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. You will be a follower of the Most High.”

  CHAPTER

  _ 44

  Soon afterward, a respite in the rainfall beckoned them out once again. The threesome exited the cave and stood peering out over mile after mile of thick emerald vegetation, punctuated only by clouds of fog which rose like white ships sailing a dark green sea.

  “Let’s not expose even the tops of our heads,” Dylan warned. “Even now, someone could be in the jungle, reconnoitering.”

  “I’m seeing something,” Abby said, her eyes closed as though experiencing some kind of torment. “I’m being shown an image. It just keeps blinking in and out, like something that’s trying to stick in my mind’s eye but keeps slipping away.”

  “Do you recognize anything?” asked Okoye, staring at her anxiously. “Well, I think unless I’m fooling myself, it involves a thick mass of darkness moving down the river. That’s all so far.”

  “A mass of darkness,” Okoye repeated thoughtfully. Slowly, her hand crept up to Abby’s head and settled there. Okoye closed her eyes and her lips began to move furiously.

  Dylan instantly realized what was happening and felt his own hand moving forward, almost of its own will. He felt bashful for some stupid reason, as though it somehow corroded his manhood to join in earnest prayer.

  Yet he also knew, more strongly than ever, how vital this all was. He had tilted his allegiances irrevocably, forever.

  “It is a single warrior who brings with him a whole dozen demonic strongmen. And he is coming for you,” Sister Okoye said in a somber voice.