“How? Now?” Hudgens asked. “We don’t even have a plan!”
“We’ll improvise on the way,” Jack said, also standing.
“But that’s insane,” the commander declared, resisting the urge to imitate them. “Can’t you see now’s the worst time to—” He stopped. “Yeah, of course,” he murmured to himself. “It’s so absurd they won’t expect it. Is that it?”
“I think you finally get the idea,” Riley said. “Are you ready?”
“Ready?” he repeated, smiling with disbelief. “Of course I’m not ready,” he added, standing up. “But we’ll do it anyway, right?”
Riley smiled. “That’s right,” he answered. Then he turned and entered the dark jungle without hesitation.
50
Though they managed to follow a natural trail that saved a lot of time and effort, it took over an hour to reach the outskirts of the indigenous village and get in a position that allowed them to see without being seen, hidden on edge of the jungle behind some dense shrubs.
For camouflage, the three of them had smeared themselves from head to toe in the sticky, smelly mud from the jungle floor, which also happened to be excellent protection against mosquitoes. Now only the whites of their eyes and teeth stood out in the darkness, and only if someone got very close.
Before them stood a town of dozens of thatched-roof adobe huts spread irregularly over a clearing. A large fire burned in what appeared to be its center, and human silhouettes busily tinkered with objects Riley couldn’t make out, while female voices sang a song that sounded as gloomy and dark as the night around them.
“They’re all women,” Hudgens said quietly. “There must be forty or fifty.”
“They seem like they’re preparing something,” Jack said. “Some kind of celebration.”
“Yeah but, where are the men?” the commander asked. “We’ve only seen a few since we came.”
“They must all be in the hunting party.”
“Hunting party? What hun—” He stopped. “Oh yeah.”
“There’s two,” Riley said, pointing to the right.
There, on the hill, about two hundred yards from the town, Klein’s house looked like a palace in comparison to the humble mud and straw homes of the natives. Light came through the cracks in the shutters, revealing the occupant was awake.
And why wouldn’t he be? Riley thought angrily. Klein must have Carmen in there, tied up and unconscious.
“Looks like they’re standing guard in front of the door,” Jack pointed out. “Protecting the wretch.”
“Can you see the boat?” Hudgens asked.
“It’s on the other side of the hill,” Riley reminded him.
“Well, we should go over and see if anyone’s watching it.”
“Good idea, but first we have to thin—”
“Hey, look,” Jack interrupted him. “He’s leaving.”
It took Riley a moment to realize what he meant.
An unmistakable figure came through the door, leaning on a cane and carrying a lamp in his hand that made him look like an absurd firefly.
“Klein,” Riley muttered.
A rush of murderous rage came over him when he saw him head lazily toward the town, like he was on a midnight stroll.
Riley decided he could catch up to him before he made it. Surprising him in the darkness, maybe he could kill him with his own hands before a native came to his aid.
It was a rare chance to get rid of him.
Clenching his fists, he stepped forward to do it.
A hand grabbed him hard to stop him. “Where the shit do you think you’re going?” Jack’s low voice spat.
That made him realize his rage was about to cause him to do a ridiculous thing that could cost them all their lives, Carmen included. “Thanks,” he whispered to his friend, who looked at him a little dumbfounded.
He crouched back down behind the shrubs and watched Klein walk on his own two feet over the path to the town, dressed in impeccable white. Out of nowhere several warriors joined him, apparently bodyguards. When they saw him arrive, the women turned toward him and made worshipful gestures and enthusiastic cries. The majority prostrated themselves while he greeted them lackadaisically, like a priest dispensing blessings to his acolytes.
When he saw that huge man in a suit being worshiped by a tribe of natives who painted their black skin white, Riley realized how important color was to all this, and why rumors about ghosts spread in Léopoldville.
“Quite the goddamn success the bastard is with these people,” Jack grumbled.
“They adore him,” Hudgens said, still shocked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“With a skullcap and staff he’d look like the fucking Pope.”
“If there had been any doubt that the attack was his doing,” Riley said, “this clears it up.”
“What now?” Hudgens asked.
Klein had reached the fire and then lifted both hands toward the sky, as if he were crying. The women’s voices stopped immediately, and a murmur ran along the crowd like a wave going back to the ocean.
“Looks like they’re praying,” Riley said, “or something like that.”
The women had formed a semicircle in front of Klein with all their arms extended toward him or toward the sky, while the tone and rhythm of their litany rose until it became a chant in a strange language that may have been Lingala.
A few elderly men joined the semicircle, and given their bearing and the deference with which they were treated, Riley thought they must be the elders of the tribe. There was one among them that was as tall as Klein and seemed to be the leader. He was decked out in colorful feathers and wore a crocodile-tooth necklace.
The big fire’s flames rose much higher than the height of a man. Jack, Riley, and Hudgens watched the ceremony, unable to make out many details of the silhouettes. They couldn’t tell what the women had been doing before Klein arrived or what the bundle sitting halfway between the German and his faithful on a palm-leaf mat was.
Suddenly, as the chant grew higher and faster, some women got up and moved closer to the bundle that seemed to be the center of the ceremony.
They unwrapped it carefully.
“My God,” Hudgens mused.
“No fucking way,” Jack said.
It was Verhoeven.
The Boer lay in the fetal position on the ground, motionless, with his hands and feet together, presumably bound.
“Don’t move,” Riley said.
“Maybe he’s dead or unconscious,” the commander said, without any indication of which would be preferable.
“If he were dead, they wouldn’t have him bound and gagged,” Jack said anxiously.
“Good God, what are they going to do?” Hudgens asked himself, probably without realizing he’d raised his voice.
The chanting grew stronger, the participants’ excitement barely contained.
Klein moved closer to Verhoeven’s motionless body. Then he pointed an accusatory finger and shouted vehemently, though his words couldn’t be heard over the chorus’s crescendo.
Then one of the women took something from the ground—a long, flat object she lifted over her head with both hands.
As soon as Riley realized it was a machete, she unleashed it with all her force on Verhoeven, who now shook in a spasm of unspeakable pain, and even through the muzzle over his mouth, the three witnesses to that madness hidden in the brush could hear a muffled, anguished scream from the belly of the poor man, and it made their blood freeze.
Riley put his hands on his head. Mute. Horrified. Incapable of taking in what was happening before his eyes. It was as if his wildest nightmares had come true.
The chant turned into a paroxysm of exalted howls driven by the woman who struck Verhoeven again and again with the machete as he writhed on the ground, unable to move.
Then the woman finally dropped the machete, stooped down, and picked something up with both hands, then raised it before Klein like an offering.
And when it didn’t seem like that madness could go any further, Klein took the offering from the woman’s hands and brought the severed end to his mouth and took a bite, tearing flesh and tendons and smearing his face with Verhoeven’s blood.
“It can’t be,” Riley muttered in a whisper of a voice.
“Jesus,” Jack said incredulously. “He’s a cannibal too.”
“No, it’s not possible,” Hudgens said, hardly containing another retch. “And Verhoeven’s still alive. Good God. We should do something.”
Riley understood how the commander felt because he felt the same way, so he used a patient tone when he put his hand on his shoulder. “We can’t,” he said regretfully. “If we do, we’ll end up the same way.”
“But we can’t leave him like that,” he said, raising his voice.
“It won’t last much longer,” Jack said, his voice shaky.
“But Christ. They’re going to eat him completely!”
Riley covered Hudgens’s mouth. If it weren’t for the noise by the fire, they would have discovered them right then. “Be quiet, Commander,” he said coldly. “I know they’re going to eat him, but there’s nothing we can do, and once he’s dead may God bless him. What we have to do is try to stay alive,” he added. “And if possible make sure the bastard Klein doesn’t.”
Hudgens’s eyes still seemed glazed from what he’d just seen, but after a deep breath he nodded a couple of times and Riley took his hand off his mouth.
“Don’t be intimidated by what we just saw,” Riley told them, assuming his captain’s voice. “Once you die, you die. There’s no good way to do it, and Klein’s just an overweight psycho. No more acting like scared children. We’re men, damn it, and we’re going to do what we have to do, okay?”
There was a pause, then he had to ask again fiercely, “Okay?”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” Hudgens said.
“We’re going to get that bastard,” Jack said.
“That’s right,” Riley confirmed. “But first we have to rescue Carmen, and the best time to do that is now—now that Klein’s occupied.”
“Agreed,” Hudgens said with a nod. “But how?”
“Assuming Carmen’s in the house,” Jack said, “there’s two guys guarding the door. As soon as we show up they’ll sound the alarm.”
“Then we’ll have to take them by surprise,” Riley argued.
“Yeah, but how?”
Riley rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Remember what we did in Malta?”
Jack snorted loudly. “You mean that day they almost killed us both?” he asked sarcastically. “Yes, I remember.”
“Well, I thought we could try something along those lines.”
“Come on, man. Don’t mess around.”
“What are you talking about?” Hudgens asked, confused. “What happened in Malta?”
“It was a disaster,” Jack replied. “We thought we were being clever setting a trap for a couple guys who were waiting for us, but they caught us and we barely made it.”
“Did you reach your objective?”
Jack shook his head. “Not even close.”
“And you want to do it again?” Hudgens asked Riley. “Why?”
Riley tutted impatiently. “Not the same. Just something similar. It wasn’t such a bad idea in the end.”
“Even so,” Jack insisted. “We had weapons and equipment then, not to mention that there were more of us. What do we have now? A Smith & Wesson with wet bullets, a lighter, and three guys in their underwear covered in mud. And he,” he added, pointing at Hudgens’s feet, “doesn’t even have shoes.”
“Don’t get lost in the details, my friend,” Riley objected.
“The details. I’m talk—”
“Shh.” He raised his hand. “Do you hear that?”
Jack went quiet, listening hard to the sounds of the jungle.
For a few seconds the three of them remained completely silent.
In the distance they heard a murmur of voices speaking Lingala.
Voices approaching quickly.
51
Forced by the imminent appearance of the search party, which had apparently found their trail, they had no choice but to quickly separate after outlining a plan that was at best full of holes.
As he stepped through the shadows on the edge of the jungle, trying in vain to be silent, Riley prayed that everyone had understood his part of the plan. If not, he thought with a slight smile, the disaster in Malta will seem like a joke in comparison.
The chanting of Klein’s acolytes had already faded away, and Riley purposefully kept his gaze in a different direction.
He’d seen a lot of men die in his life. Too many, no doubt. More than a few of them by his own hands and many in absurd and undeserved ways. But what he’d just seen . . . That was no way to go. Not even Hitler deserved an end like that.
After that nasty thought, he promised himself he’d make sure Klein got what he deserved one way or another.
Then he listened to the guttural voices of the natives again. They were even closer than they had been a few minutes before. It was impossible to know if they’d walked behind them and had found their tracks in the jungle—which seemed impossible in that darkness, though given the circumstances, couldn’t be ruled out—or if they’d simply returned to the town, attracted by the songs of their women like bells announcing dinnertime.
Making his way through the undergrowth, Riley finally found a good place, reasonably hidden by shadow and right in front of Klein’s house on top of the hill.
The door was only fifty yards away and was guarded with obvious negligence by two natives white with soot who leaned on their long spears like yeoman at the entrance of a castle. Their attitude was not at all soldierly, and they seemed more concerned with their conversation than keeping watch. Still, the ground between Riley and them was completely clear, and though the only light was from lamps in the house, they’d see him before he’d gone ten yards.
If there had been one guard, he might have been able to surprise and disarm him before he sounded the alarm, but since there were two, it wasn’t an option. Especially since the two guards had sharp spears and muscles Riley probably never could have matched in his life.
Jack had reached the bank of the river, whose current murmured lazily toward the distant ocean. He stopped to listen for any sound of natives around him, and when he felt reasonably certain there was no one nearby, he entered the water up to his chest and stopped again. He looked left and right for signs of light from torches or shadows from canoes filled with cannibals. Nothing.
Then he turned his attention to the flimsy floating structure moored a few dozen yards upstream, only able to glimpse the shape of its black hull contrasted against intermittent reflections of stars on the water’s surface.
There were no lights lit on board, and it didn’t look like anyone was standing watch, though that was unlikely given that they were still on the run. Swimming the distance to the boat upstream was possible but would be very tiring, so he started to walk along the riverbed, keeping his head and hands out of the water.
The natives weren’t his only concern. He had no doubt there were crocodiles hanging around like they owned the place, and as he’d learned during the trip from Léopoldville, they were most active at night.
Forcing himself to forget those images of huge jaws lined with teeth opening suddenly to trap him and pull him underwater, he walked heavily against the current, dodging the dead trunks and roots carpeting the bottom, until he reached the stern of the Roi des Boers. He hung on to one of the paddles and held his breath for a few seconds, sharpening his sight and hearing, but he neither saw nor heard anything suspicious. That didn’t mean much, really, given that there could be half a dozen natives in that dense darkness, sitting peacefully on the bank, watching him with amu
sement as he tried to go unseen and waiting for the right moment to turn on the lights and shout surprise! or whatever the hell cannibals shouted on birthdays.
Then he slid along the side of the ship facing the river, gripping with both hands until he reached one of the crossbars used to support the gangplank on the starboard side. It took enormous effort to pull himself up enough to find a support grip with his right leg, and then he groaned as he finished the job, landing on the deck where he hid behind a stack of boxes, panting from exhaustion.
He stayed like that nearly a minute, gasping and promising himself for the umpteenth time to go on a diet. Then he poked his head out and confirmed there was no one on deck, so he quickly approached the part of the bow next to the boiler, which was used as a kitchen. There he should have found the gas stove and kitchen knives, which was what he was really after, but it seemed the natives had ransacked the ship and taken Verhoeven’s sharp kitchen knives.
“Shit,” he muttered quietly as he searched the floor in case they forgot one.
Finally, feeling around under a sack, his fingers hit a wooden handle and he nearly jumped for joy when he found it was a knife. The problem was that as he ran his hand along its edge, he realized it was broken in half, which may have been why they hadn’t bothered taking it.
“It’ll have to do,” he mused, finding the one or two inches of blade remaining were sharp enough for his purposes.
Then he headed to the stern to cut the port quarter mooring without taking his eyes off the bank, which, hard as it was to believe, seemed deserted.
Jack shrugged, figuring it was a result of the monstrous ceremony he’d witnessed that there wasn’t even one guard watching the boat.
The half knife got caught a couple of times on the rope threads, but he was able to cut it pretty quickly and even keep it from making much noise when it hit the water.
He headed to the port bow with the same intention, more confident now that his actions seemed to have gone completely unnoticed. He brought the knife blade to the rope again and moved it forward and backward with enthusiasm.
It loosed with a snap due to the tension and he couldn’t keep it from crashing into the water.
Darkness: Captain Riley II (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 2) Page 38
