“Nice.”
“Shut up back there.”
For the first time I realized if we were tied up in the back of the Range Rover—a moving Range Rover—it meant someone drove. Which meant there was nothing separating the front of the Range Rover from the cargo area. The backseats had been folded down to give Henry and me enough room to lay out, even if we had to lay diagonally in the space to keep from having to curl around each other to fit. I looked up to the front seats and saw two bald heads, one white, one black. The barrel of an assault rifle poked out above the seat back. The black man turned in his seat and glared at us. “Be quiet or I’ll gag you.” The freakiest thing about him—even freakier than the gun—was the complete absence of expression or emotion in both his face and his voice.
Another lurch of the vehicle sent me rolling into Henry. Instead of rolling away from him, I stayed where I was, head resting on his shoulder. I should have moved, of course, but the contact, the connection, was the only thing keeping me from losing my mind completely. Henry looked at me through his swollen eye, the other still hidden from view, and rested his forehead against mine.
Terror jolted and sizzled through my body, so sleep was out of the question. Despite that, we stayed silent, closed our eyes, and waited. What else was there to do?
Chapter 9
I DIDN’T know how much time passed. It felt like hours but was probably a lot less. It wasn’t too early, though. The sun glowed red over the top of the rain forest when the Range Rover stopped. My expensive shoes squished in two inches of mud when I scrambled out of the vehicle’s cargo area. We were deep in the heart of the jungle. We could have been on the set for a movie adaptation of Heart of Darkness. Tall trees, weighed down with dark green leaves, created dense shadows on the forest floor. Bushes that looked like ferns on steroids spread their feathered arms, filling the space between trees. Moss and fungus draped from branches and vines and carpeted everything. It smelled of green and rot. I expected the foliage to swallow me and everyone else in the area.
“We are certainly in one of the dark places of the earth,” I said. Henry looked a question at me. I shrugged. My lit teacher would have been impressed.
Long shadows from towering trees covered the narrow paths surrounding a small block of buildings. Rotting piles of lumber and ancient, rusted cutting equipment littered the clearing. It looked like the place had been used for some kind of lumber processing once upon a time, but it had obviously been a while. The jungle had done its best to reclaim the area, and the big main building—the size of a grocery store—crumbled at the corners. Smaller buildings, barely huts, were positioned in a row behind the larger building. Looking around, it really seemed like the structures had been randomly dropped in the middle of a rain forest. No wonder the Range Rover had lurched and jerked. There was hardly a path wide enough for a go-cart.
One of the guards gestured with his gun to get us moving. The route took us past the big building. A quick glance in a door big enough to back a semi into showed half a dozen smaller vehicles that looked like they came from World War II parked on one side of a giant open space. A couple of other bigger, more modern trucks were parked on the other side. In the back, stacks of wooden crates and metal cases lined the wall. The man escorted us to one of the middle huts and indicated we needed to go in.
It was a small, one-room… thing. The ceiling hung so low barely a foot separated it from the top of my head. There was no furniture of any kind. Slits near the ceiling let in air and light, but they were small, only a couple of feet long and four or five inches tall. Too high to actually see out of, so no way to scope out the camp.
Our escort shut the door behind us. I didn’t hear a lock or anything click into place, but I was sure someone would be guarding the entrance.
Henry and I stood in the middle of the room, arms still bound behind our backs. Now that I could see his whole face, I could tell the black eye was probably the worst of his injuries. A small knot above his brow added to the blotches of red and purple on his face, but his nose hadn’t been broken, and there was no blood.
“Henry?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s going to happen to us?”
“Usually—” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Usually whenever missionaries or foreigners are kidnapped or taken hostage in this area, it’s to be held for ransom.”
I forced my brain to think logically. The exercise helped mute the panic. “But they weren’t planning on kidnapping us, right? I mean, they were looking for those canisters. Does that mean they want to exchange us for the canisters? But they must have gotten the wrong people, right? We picked up medical supplies. When they realize they have the wrong guys, what are they going to do with us?”
“I’m not so sure they got the wrong people.”
“What?” I jerked my head toward him. Was he serious? “We didn’t have what they wanted.” A sudden thought made my body still. “Did we?”
“Maybe we did. Remember those footprints we saw around the Range Rover this morning? What if someone took something out?”
“What? You think the refugee camp is a front for some kind of smuggling thing? There’re, what, diamonds in these mysterious canisters?” I rolled my eyes.
Henry frowned. “It’s not unheard of, you know.”
“Come on. You can’t think my dad, the king of the do-gooders, is involved in anything that would lead to this?” I rotated my head to indicate the room.
“Of course your dad doesn’t have anything to do with it.” Henry scowled at me.
The door banged open. Shorty and a couple of his goons strode in. A couple of the taller ones had to slouch to fit under the low ceiling. I’d thought I had my fear under control. Seeing Shorty’s cold, determined face proved how wrong I’d been. My hands grew clammy and my mouth dried out. He looked at one of his companions then nodded at us. The companion pulled out a knife as long as his forearm and moved toward us. I stumbled back until I hit the wall. Henry matched me step for step.
Shorty growled and jerked me forward, then spun me around until my chin met the rough wall. The guy with the knife stepped up behind me. I squeezed my eyes closed and held my breath. The cool, flat edge of the blade slid across the sensitive skin of my inner wrist, and my stomach dropped to my knees. A sharp pull on the bindings…. My hands fell to my sides, and tiny pinpricks radiated from my shoulder to my fingertips as blood began to move more freely in my arms.
Relief rushed through me even as strength deserted me. My legs buckled. I didn’t fall, thank God, but I didn’t think I’d be able to move for a minute. I rested my head against the cool wall. I kept waiting for my fight or flight instinct to kick in, but so far my body and brain seemed to be stuck on pause. When I was sure I wouldn’t collapse, I turned and faced our captors. Next to me, Henry rubbed his abraded wrist.
“Sit,” Shorty barked.
Quicker than well-trained dogs, we sat. The ground—there was no floor built in this little hut—was hard packed and covered with a dusting of fine dirt. The constant, back-and-forth spikes of fear and relief left my guts knotted and my muscles trembling. I should have been doing something more, right? The characters in books and movies didn’t wait passively for rescue. They did something. They plotted and planned, or executed a synchronized dance of martial arts moves to kick some bad-guy ass. If I hadn’t already known that real life wasn’t like the movies, I’d have learned it real quickly here. Even knowing any kind of action—especially my nonexistent martial arts skills—would lead to certain death didn’t stop me from feeling like a coward.
My right hand rested next to Henry’s left, close enough that our pinkies nearly touched. That he was in the same predicament I was and he wasn’t acting reckless helped. I slid my hand over the fraction of an inch. Our pinkies hooked. The small contact helped calm my jittery nerves. He didn’t move his hand away, which made me feel even better. Maybe he, Mr. Calm-In-A-Crisis, struggled as much as I did to keep from freaking out.
“What are you going to do with us?” Henry looked up at the towering men with the big guns. The setting sun slanted in through the short window, blazing a wide orange bar across Shorty’s face, giving him a demonic look. I so didn’t need him looking scarier.
Shorty ignored Henry. His dark-eyed gaze bore into me. “You are Isaiah Martin. The son of Dr. Charles Martin.” It wasn’t a question, but he clearly expected an answer.
“Ah… yeah. Yes.” My mouth was so dry my tongue stuck to the roof of it. How did he know that?
“And you.” Shorty swung his head to Henry. “Who are you?”
Henry swallowed. “Henry Jackson.”
“What is your relationship with Dr. Charles Martin?”
Eyes wide, Henry said, “I work for him at the Lobéké refugee camp.”
Something shifted in Shorty’s face, satisfaction or fear, I couldn’t tell. “If your father cooperates,” he said, looking at me again, “nothing will happen to you. If not, well, eventually you will become a burden.” He turned, gesturing the other men to precede him through the door. “Burdens get eliminated.”
The door shut behind him with an ominous click.
WE SAT there, unmoving. After a minute I released the breath I’d been holding. “He knew my name. How did he know my name? He knew mine, but not yours.”
Henry drew his knees up to his chest. “Your passport, probably. I’m sure he looked through your backpack.”
“Right.” I waited, hoping my pulse would eventually get back to normal.
The sun must have fallen below the tree line because the room was suddenly filled with darkness.
“Henry?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do they want my dad?” I sounded like the scared seven-year-old I’d been when I asked my mom why Chuck wasn’t coming with us. “How do they even know who he is?”
“I don’t know.” His words were muffled, as if he rested his head on his knees. “I don’t understand what’s going on here.”
I had my suspicions. Maybe it was too many Jason Bourne movies, but these goons had the look of mercenaries: the hodgepodge of nationalities, the military-bearing… their propensity for kidnapping random people off the highway. I kind of wished I’d read more Soldier of Fortune magazines during study hall and less A Game of Thrones. Maybe then I’d know what to do.
And if they were mercenaries, it still wouldn’t explain what Chuck had to do with anything. He was a missionary doctor, not Indiana Jones.
“Things are pretty stable in Cameroon right now, right?” I asked, sort of skirting around the issue.
“Yeah, it’s the CAR that’s a mess.”
“What’s going on in the CAR? I mean, I know there’s been a lot of violence and stuff, but it hasn’t exactly been making headlines in the States.”
“I bet. Ever since the rebels took over the capital, things have been pretty bad. It was bad before, but it seems like things have actually gotten worse. When the rebel leader declared himself president, his forces started executing people. Not just the opposition. Kids, women, the elderly. They don’t discriminate. It’s been pretty horrible.”
“What are they fighting for? I mean, the Central African Republic isn’t exactly an international power center.” I thought about the country I’d lived in for the first seven years of my life. From what I recalled, the people were mostly subsistence farmers. The government pretty much ignored them. Things were probably different in the cities, but I didn’t remember much about the cities in the CAR. Mostly I remembered the kids I played with and the ladies who exclaimed over my red hair.
“Who knows? There’s ethnic conflict in the northeastern part of the country. It’s like the American Revolution and the Tea Party. No taxation without representation. Some of the minority groups want their share of the decision making. Also, the CAR has a huge supply of natural resources. Lumber, of course, like Cameroon, but they also have diamonds.”
“Really?” I’d seen the movie Blood Diamond—hello, Leonardo DiCaprio—and the horrors it showed about the diamonds mined in African war zones to finance conflict and empower warlords made me cringe. I could easily imagine our friends with the guns outside involved in some kind of diamond-smuggling, gun-running enterprise. “Whoa. What if the canisters they want really do have diamonds?” I’d been sarcastic before, but now it seemed like a real possibility.
My senses were hyperaware in the dark, and I sensed rather than saw Henry shake his head. “They don’t generally smuggle diamonds into the country. Usually, they smuggle that kind of thing out.”
“I suppose.” Silly to be disappointed he rejected my theory. After all, did I really want to be held hostage by diamond-smuggling mercenaries?
“Henry?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too.”
I closed my eyes, blocking the dark, and leaned against the rough wall.
Our pinkies were still linked.
Chapter 10
TIME WAS a very inconsistent thing when you were stuck in the dark. It felt like we’d been sitting there against the wall for hours, but when someone opened the door, the outside light showed the shadowed gray of dusk instead of midnight black. Even that small illumination made me squint. A hulking form filled the doorway, features indistinct.
“Water,” he said in a gravelly, heavily accented voice. This accent I recognized: French. He set a blue two-gallon jug of water on the floor and left.
I heard the word water and it was as if my whole body suddenly realized it was thirsty. I crawled forward, feeling a bit like a cockroach in the dark. I almost wished it was completely dark. A complete absence of light, total blindness, somehow seemed less disturbing. My brain knew the room was empty, but the varying levels of darkness and shadow had me imagining things that weren’t there. Creepy-crawly things. Rodents. Snakes. This was like my phobia about walking somewhere when I couldn’t see my feet, only magnified.
I grabbed the jug and dragged it back to the wall where I’d left Henry. “Do you think it’s safe?” I asked, twisting off the cap and sniffing at the water. I didn’t pick up any strange odor; mostly it smelled like the plastic container and dirt.
“It depends on where the water came from.” Henry shifted a little closer. “We’ll have to risk it. I don’t think we can count on them bringing in a case of filtered, bottled water for us.”
I tipped the jug up to my mouth. I swear I could feel the stale, flat liquid soaking into my parched cells.
“Not too much,” Henry warned, reaching for the water. “It won’t do you any good if you barf it back up.”
I didn’t want to stop, but I knew he was right. “We should ration it a bit too, yeah? There’s no way to tell how much water they’ll bring us.”
Henry took a few swallows and set the container aside.
“Question.” I slid down until I lay on the hard ground, pillowing my head with my arms.
“Shoot.” The vague form that was Henry mirrored my position.
“Before you came to Cameroon, when you were living on the street, you had sex for money, didn’t you?”
There was a long pause. The tension growing in the room was a physical, palpable thing, lurking in the shadows.
“How’d you come up with that?” Henry asked finally.
“Thinking. It makes sense, and I’m curious if I’m right. And”—I looked around the small, dark room—“we’re not going anywhere.”
“My life story doesn’t exist to entertain you.”
“I’m not looking to be entertained. I want to understand you.”
“Why?”
“I like you; I like who you are. I wanted to figure out what drives a person to live on the streets for two years and suddenly come to Africa to be a missionary. You have to admit, it’s not a common story.”
“So what do you want to know? You want me to admit that I was a rent boy? Sure, I can admit that. It’s not a pretty reality, but no one promised me everything
had to be pretty.” The hard edge to his voice was so different from the calm, controlled Henry I’d known the last two days, I cringed back.
I wouldn’t be put off, though. “How? I mean, how does a person get into that… field?” Given everything we’d been through so far, did it really have to be this awkward?
“It wasn’t that difficult, actually. I had wandered into one of the soup kitchens one day and met a guy my age. We became friends of a sort. I said something about being turned down for yet another dead-end, minimum-wage job. It’s crazy how hard it is for fifteen-year-olds with no ID to get a job.” I couldn’t see it, but I’d bet money he rolled his eyes. “He said he knew a way I could make decent money—fifty bucks a night if I was lucky. I laughed and told him I wasn’t that desperate. Eventually I got that desperate. I told him I’d do it once, just to tide me over for a couple of days while I tried to work something else out. He showed me the ropes, so to speak. I made fifty bucks, and all I had to do was go down on a couple of dudes.” He sounded colder, more distant, than he had at any time before this. I shivered despite the warm climate.
“I take it the fifty wasn’t enough?”
“I managed to make it last a week. But then it got cold and none of the shelters had room. I tracked down my buddy and asked him what I had to do to make enough money to find a room for rent with a couple of other guys. It sort of snowballed after that. Within two months I had a place to stay—small and crappy as it was—that I shared with a couple of other guys, and I was bringing in serious cash. I wasn’t rich or anything, but a guy who’s young and willing can actually make decent money.”
“It didn’t bother you, what you were doing?”
“At first. Then I discovered that alcohol and drugs had a way of numbing the righteous part of me—small part though it was.”
I couldn’t define the emotions swirling inside me, let alone which of those emotions likely stamped my face. Pity. Disgust. Guilt. Curiosity. I thought back to all of the stories I’d read with my GSA work about homeless youth and prostitution and the terrible cycle that was so hard to break. Drugs. Disease. They were only a part of it. Even if the body survived it, what kind of psychological damage did it do? “I’m sorry,” I finally said.
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