White Bone

by Ridley Pearson

  She continued her chimpanzee dance, appreciating the continued retreat of the smaller man. Winning the numbers game, she focused on fight or flight. To run invited the spear.

  Wild and alive with adrenaline, drained by the horror of the driver’s death, she elected for the unexpected: to charge the man with the spear. He stepped back to hoist the weapon. Grace knocked it aside with the front of her stick, while thrusting the butt end into the man’s chest.

  She hit him hard in the solar plexus, stunning his lungs, then head-butted his right shoulder, sending a stinger down his arm. He dropped the spear. Her right knee found his crotch; her right elbow his jaw. She had a rhythm now, her right limbs punishing his left side, her left hand used to slap his head back to face her. She screamed, a terrifying, painful wail that seemed to come from elsewhere.

  Her opponent found his machete; it took both her hands on his forearm to prevent him from hacking down. This freed his left hand. He threw a punch, full force into her bare breast. Grace’s knees went out from under her.

  He was atop her then, fighting to pin her arms while he held the machete to her throat. He shouted, and Grace felt the other man’s hands on her legs. A split-second decision pushed her again to the unexpected. She fought every instinct, every natural response, and followed a former instructor’s teachings. She went limp, dropped her head, her eyelids closed as she feigned unconsciousness.

  Count to two. One . . . two . . . She felt the man’s hold on her relax ever so slightly. Enough. Grace jerked her head toward the handle of the machete, avoiding its blade, and sat up sharply, kicking the smaller man in the face. Her teeth bared, she sank her jaw into the neck of the one atop her and bit down. She locked her jaw, his salty, sour flesh in her mouth. He let go of her arms. She thumb-gouged both his eyes and rolled, dumping the bellowing man off her.

  She grabbed the spear. The boy ran away hard and fast. She stabbed the tip of the spear into the writhing man’s foot, ensuring he couldn’t follow her.

  The cow had hardly moved. Grace saw the herd now—brown dots in the distance. The two men had been chasing down a stray.

  Carrying the spear, she jogged off, following the boy. When panicked, she thought, we all head home.

  51

  Bishoppe waved from the passenger seat of the single-engine Cessna.

  Despite his making the arrangements, Knox couldn’t believe the pilot had allowed the boy to come along.

  Koigi and Knox occupied a well-hidden vehicle with a view of the roadway where the plane had landed.

  “The boy is yours to deal with,” Koigi said before Knox could ask. “You will not leave him with me.”

  Knox accepted the money and once again shook Koigi’s hand. “I hope I won’t have to see you down there,” Knox said.

  “It is my wish as well.”

  Knox thanked him a final time, grabbed hold of his duffel and made for the waiting plane. His ears rang from the roar of the blade as the pilot turned into the wind on the roadway. Despite the noise, Knox turned in the seat to address Bishoppe, who’d quickly climbed into the back.

  “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I want to be paid,” the boy said, smiling widely. “If I don’t join you, how do I know I will be paid?”

  The plane took off, charging through the black of night, a waning moon rising on the horizon. Knox pulled on the cumbersome headset, adjusted the microphone and waited for the pilot, a weathered South African in his sixties, to complete his procedures. They leveled off at five thousand feet. Knox spoke softly into the microphone, so only the pilot would hear him.

  “Our destination is Oloitokitok. And someplace between here and there, where we can drop the boy.”

  The pilot nodded. “There’s a grass strip used by the Del Monte pineapple farm in the village of Thika. North of the Mathare slum. The boy can easily return to Nairobi in the morning. I didn’t want to bring him.”

  Knox glanced over his shoulder. Bishoppe, unable to hear the discussion, looked deeply concerned.

  “We will land at either Chyulu Hills or Amboseli, not Oloitokitok,” the pilot added.

  Knox didn’t appreciate people messing with his plans or delaying him. If Grace was being moved, it would be at night. That gave him less than eight hours. “Oloitokitok.”

  “It’s not safe. The village is too near the border. It’s policed. Small planes like mine are searched for drugs and contraband. It’s random, but much more regular at night. These arrangements we’ve made . . . my transponder’s off, as you wanted. I’m giving you as much radio silence as possible. And I’m taking your money, gladly. But I won’t go to prison for you. Grass strips are okay. Roadways, fine. But nothing bigger.”

  Knox unclenched his fists, roiling at the thought of delay. “I will need transportation.”

  “The lodge can supply you.”

  “You’ll radio them?”

  “When we’re closer. Our mobiles will have signals intermittently if I fly the roads.”

  “Do it. And I’d like you to ask some questions about the lodge.”

  They flew for ten minutes. Just the flashing lights on the wings, the glow of the instruments, the reflections off the glass and the pitch-black night outside. Rarely did Knox see a single light below.

  “How do you know the boy?” Knox asked.

  “Bishoppe? He’s an errand runner for a friend of mine. Keeps tabs on everything at the airport. He’s a good boy, just a little aggressive. One of so many in Nairobi, but he’s wise beyond his years, eh?”

  “He’s helped me out. This is the last I’ll see of him.”

  The pilot looked over. Said nothing.

  “Are you familiar with the Oloitokitok Clinic?”

  “Very. I flew its biggest contributor more than once, when she missed a Safarilink or needed a direct flight.”

  “She?”

  “An American, like yourself. From Baltimore, Maryland. I’m told it was very old money. Chemicals, I think.”

  “It closed recently, the clinic.”

  “Yes. Her doing, I imagine. Told me she accounted for over thirty percent of the funding. But the current government wouldn’t support her. Claimed the place was servicing mostly Tanzanians. It’s not true, but that’s politics for you.”

  “Why would she withdraw her funding?”

  “Controversy. The usual for Kenya.”

  Knox wanted to believe the clinic had closed because of Grace—that Grace had had time to celebrate a victory. Something about the vast black night absorbing the small plane made her situation seem all the more grim. He’d seen it in Koigi’s eyes, felt it in the man’s handshake: you don’t fuck with men like Xin Ha and Guuleed. Grace had made one too many hacks, one too many connections, pulling a thread between the clinic, a trio of executions and the funding of insurgents.

  Sooner than Knox expected, the pilot radioed and the plane began its descent. The boy leaned forward.

  “Check your belt please,” the pilot advised.

  The strip was lit dimly: a motorcycle headlight at one end, a man waving a flashlight on the other. The landing was rough.

  Knox climbed out and allowed the boy to follow before saying anything. He didn’t want to wrestle him out of the backseat.

  On the rough strip of grass, he handed Bishoppe a roll of bills. “You can get into the city from here. This should be enough to help your sister for some time. Use it for that, you understand?”

  “You’re getting rid of me?” Despondent and upset, the boy tried for puppy eyes. “I’ve helped you more than once.”

  Knox wasn’t buying. “It’s too dangerous. If I’m caught, you would be considered an accomplice.”

  “I don’t care! We are a team! Take me with you. It is my decision, Mr. John. Please!”

  “You stay here. You’re a good man, Bishoppe.”

  �
�How can you do this, Mr. John? You and all the others, just like the men with my sister. Hello. Goodbye. Get lost.”

  Knox’s chest knotted. “Take care of your sister like you’ve taken care of me, and she’ll be fine.”

  “I can help you.”

  “You already have, Bishoppe. Trust me, you already have.”

  Tremulously, the boy backed away from the plane. Knox climbed into the seat, pulled the door shut and turned its handle. The act itself seemed so final. He understood the limitations from here. Grace was being held in or near Oloitokitok. She was being returned to an unidentified location. Knox didn’t know the area, speak the language or have any backup.

  He waved to the boy. Bishoppe did not wave back. Instead, he lifted his hand and flipped Knox his middle finger.

  52

  Beneath a cloud-shrouded, moonless sky, Grace squatted to urinate. The bellyful of milk had sustained her during her attempt to keep up with the fleeing boy, but his Maasai heritage and endurance soon showed, and he left her well behind. By nightfall even the fleeting sight of him had slowly but steadily disappeared, a boat sailing over the horizon.

  He’d been aimed directly at Kilimanjaro. As she pursued him, she’d tried to outrun her own incredulity as well: there was no nearby village in this direction. The two herdsmen were a hundred kilometers from home, had probably been in the bush for months, living on cow’s milk and root vegetables.

  Olé had spoken of such an existence, but at the time his stories had seemed more lore than reality: an encounter with a lion; a friend dying from a soup he’d made that could have killed them all; hunting gazelle with primitive, poison-tipped spears. The stuff of film.

  Slumping down, Grace scraped the hard-packed dirt with the tip of her attacker’s aluminum spear, trying to break up the surface. Crumbling chunks of sandy dirt began building up in a pile alongside her. The loosened dirt would weigh down a blanket of salvaged car upholstery while she slept.

  The night promised to be cool. Running had exhausted Grace; her chills warned of a fever. She’d used up the last of her energy, had begun hallucinating, a vision clouded with red and purple that frightened her. Too much information was a dangerous thing, she realized, trying to ignore the warning signs of her body shutting down. Despair chased away her courageous optimism. Depression replaced hope. She wanted to sleep and never wake up.

  Though she could no longer see her hand in the thick dark, she saw herself digging her own grave. She was two people now: a woman who’d been well trained; and another woman, at the whim of the devils and ghosts her superstitious mother had warned her about.

  As she thought of her family, Grace broke into tears. Yellow and orange joined the swirling colors. She willed it all away, but to no effect. Closing her eyes tightly, she shook her head in an attempt to clear the canvas. The colors remained, now spinning to create vertigo and push her out of her squat. She fell back onto her bottom.

  Lying down felt worse, and she feared that without a substantial layer of dirt atop the car seat fabric she would be at risk of hypothermia. Eyes open, eyes shut. The yellow glow came and went. The purple and red remained.

  Focusing on the difference—open, shut—she strained to explain the yellow’s absence when she closed her eyes. The color reappeared when she opened them, stayed in place while the red and purple colors shifted and flowed in her periphery like northern lights.

  Eventually she determined that the small yellow blur actually existed in the landscape. It burned, real, steady. A campfire.

  53

  The Chyulu Hills airstrip was lined with five road flares, black smoke billowing upward as if from long-wick candles. The wind was from their right and slightly ahead. The plane bounced only once and taxied. Knox, consumed in thought, nearly missed seeing the tall Kenyan wearing khakis and a windbreaker standing alongside the army-green safari vehicle.

  He was focused on two words in the intercept: “wounded gazelle.” He’d pushed that aside without thought, but now he’d locked in on it. Was it an expression to allow the full meaning of the message to resonate, or was it literal?

  “Nice landing.”

  The plane shuddered to a near stop and turned a full 180 degrees. “Pleasure,” the pilot said, extending his hand. A dazed Knox took a moment to meet it with his own, then held the man’s hand a little too long.

  The pilot throttled the engine down lower, quieting it. The plane rumbled beneath them, as if eager to fly. “Well, it was a pleasure flying you—and the boy, too, I guess.”

  “You said Bishoppe ran errands and supplied information for a friend of yours. Do you mind me asking who?” Knox blurted out.

  “Not at all. A journalist, Bertram Radcliffe. Bert’s got ears and eyes all over Nairobi.” The pilot reached out and put his hand on Knox’s shoulder. “What is it, man?”

  Trying to mask his shock, Knox thanked him and climbed out clumsily, struggling to squeeze his large frame through the small door. He felt sick. Bishoppe connected to Radcliffe, Radcliffe with his bizarre political agenda, his association with the dead reporter, his enlistment of the boy’s services and the trouble chasing on its heels.

  54

  A steady and foul wind blew out of the northwest, drying Guuleed’s tongue. He could still feel grit between his teeth, nubs worn to the nerve from years of chewing khat.

  His prickly mood matched the weather. Eyes stinging, he knew better than to be outside in such a storm.

  He moved for his truck. The remainder of his men huddled inside the two other vehicles, gambling away their meager earnings. A driver sat alone behind the wheel of Guuleed’s truck, monitoring the CB and shortwave radios used by police and KGA rangers.

  From the moment the sandstorm had risen and blown across their camps like a dry fog, Guuleed attributed it to Allah. He had ordered his men into the three best trucks and, driving separate routes, they had made for the forested hills in Aberdare National Park, a swath of land east of Kijabi. Allah had provided them cover at a time of need: they’d been hunkered down under the watchful eye of an overhead drone. The camps had been left intact, along with several vehicles to sell the ruse of their still being occupied.

  “Anything?” he asked his driver.

  “No mention of us. No deployment. I believe we’re in the clear. Praise Allah.”

  “I have already,” Guuleed said testily.

  “There is this, on the website.” The man spun the laptop, which was wired to the satellite phone. Guuleed read. Blinked. Read again.

  “Do we trust this source?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. He works the hotels, same as the others.”

  “This is the American?” Guuleed suggested.

  “I believe so, yes.”

  “A private flight? As soon as this shitstorm clears we head south, the lot of us.”

  The driver looked deeply troubled.

  “Fucking Leebo’s gone AWOL. Rambu’s shorthanded. Cheer up, man. There’s a woman who’s going to make us rich. The Larger Than Life rangers travel in pairs. We can overpower any of their patrols. In and out. Quick strike. Ten, twenty times the money for you and the men. Our luck changes here.”

  55

  Knox apologized to the hotel driver/guide who’d met him at the grass strip. “I’m fine with paying for a night’s stay in the hotel—two, three, whatever your minimum is—but I need a ride to Oloitokitok now.”

  “It is I who is sorry, sir. It is not possible, this request you make. My instructions are to deliver you to the hotel. In the morning, such a trip can be arranged.”

  “It can’t wait until morning.”

  “Then I am sorry, but you should have instructed the pilot to drop you off in Oloitokitok, sir. This is Ol Donyo. Chyulu Hills. It is seventy-five kilometers on dirt track across the bush. It is slow enough by light. At night, it would be four hours or more. My advice is for you to arrive to the lodge. Wake a
t sunrise. You will arrive to Oloitokitok at approximately the same hour. It will be my pleasure to drive you.”

  “It has to be now. It has to be Oloitokitok. There’s a man there named Brantingham, Travis Brantingham. Director of Larger Than Life. You’re smiling. You know him?”

  “Mr. Brantingham lives five minutes up the road from the lodge, sir.”

  “Travis Brantingham? He commutes seventy-five kilometers?”

  “Several times a week. Oloitokitok is not so pretty as Chyulu Hills, I think.”

  56

  Grace’s initial hope, that the two men around the campfire might be rangers sent to rescue her, was crushed by what she saw. Dressed in ratty bush clothes and car-tire sandals, they sat close to each other, as if for protection. Both looked hardened, and far too comfortable. A blackened saucepan was balanced on stones over a fire no bigger than a fist. It amazed her that she’d spotted it from so far away.

  While one of the men cut up a tuber, the other smoked a foul cigar. Its smoke nearly made Grace sick. She left her hole, shed the skirt for fear of it making noise and belly-crawled twenty meters to the edge of the firelight.

  In the flickering glow, she saw a backpack alongside the man smoking. He carried a Kalashnikov 74 across his back, the strap pulled over his head and under his opposing arm so the weapon ran on the diagonal. She was close enough to the fire to see what might have been her own small boot impressions in the sand. They were trackers. They were hunting her.

  Both wore equipment belts around their waists, laden with bulging ammunition pouches and Velcro pockets. If there was a second gun, she couldn’t see it.

  A light breeze blew. Each time the wind shifted, so did the men.

  Seeing the supplies and the rifle, experiencing the dementia brought on by starvation and exposure, Grace nonetheless began plotting. They had water. Every fiber of her body ached at the sight. She would leave with it, or die trying.