by Cindy Dees
“I take-a youze ta him.”
He glanced over at Piper and muttered, “You packing?” And her answer had better be yes or he was going to take her over his knee and blister her butt for jumping Sudanese law enforcement types without a fucking firearm in her possession.
She nodded once, tersely, in the affirmative.
He commented under his breath, “It could be dangerous for us to go back into the hot zone to make this contact. It could be a trap.”
“He’d be a hell of a contact to make, though,” Piper replied low. “Particularly if he’s feeling grateful.”
That sent Mike’s eyebrows skyward. An astute observation. “What the hell. Lead on, Mala.”
The blind woman shuffled further into the alley, back toward the way they’d come. Mike glanced over at Piper. “Are you going to be able to keep your mouth shut and act like a properly respectful woman?”
She blinked owlishly, with exaggerated slowness, at him. Sarcastically, if he wasn’t mistaken.
He rolled his eyes and muttered, “Only way you’re going to come off as respectable is if you pretend to be my wife.”
“Why not your sister?” Piper retorted quickly. Nervous about posing as his woman, was she? After the gnarly things they’d done to each other?
At least she didn’t argue about being under his protection. “I have no reason to bring my sister into a hellhole like this. But I might bring my wife to take care of my…needs. And a dutiful wife would follow her husband to Hades and back.”
“Jeebus,” she muttered in disgust.
Privately he shared her opinion, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of saying so. They followed Mala’s shambling progress in silence for several blocks. The waiting stillness over the whole city was palpable and worrisome. Fun with pulverizing religious cops must be over. He flinched to consider the reprisals that would land on this neighborhood because of it. No help for it, though. He’d done his duty and saved the girl.
He didn’t see any movement whatsoever as they approached the street where the incident had occurred.
Mala murmured, “Dharwani’s boys, dey tied dose El Noori boy’s bodies to Jeeps and drag-ee dem past El Noor’s compound.”
Piper swore under her breath. “They’re asking to be shot.”
Mike retorted, “And the alternative—continuing to live in this hellhole—is any better?”
Piper was silent, but Mala snorted. “Monsieur Mike, he understan’ Khartoum.”
Yeah. Well enough to know that this meeting with Dharwani was an enormous risk. It could be a huge coup for him to make the contact, or it could be a death trap. He would feel better if he went in by himself. Piper was too big an unknown at this point. Unpredictable. And so damned naive! But he doubted he’d get in to see Dharwani without her.
Mala took Piper’s arm and let herself be led along for another block until Mala told them where to turn. The woman’s sense of direction was uncanny.
Mala stopped. “Chile’, no respec’ible woman wear dese boy clothes. Ya gotta not mak-ee Dharwani mad. Here be my melaya. It be no proper abeya, but it be better ’dan nothin’.” The woman peeled off her outer wrap, leaving her desiccated body swimming in a voluminous caftan that hardly revealed more than her previous covering.
“I’ll return it to you as soon as I can,” Piper murmured.
Mike was startled when she deftly tucked one end of the voluminous piece of cloth under her left arm, wrapped it around her body like a bath towel, draped the long end over her head, and then anchored the loose end around her left forearm. Voila. Instant transformation from commando chick into female biblical figure. Freaky.
Mala’s bony hand pointed across the street. “Ovuh’ dere.”
He looked over at a block-long series of boarded up storefronts. So this was Dharwani’s home base, eh? Good to know. He filed the tidbit for his next, and last, report. He stepped off the crumbling curb and Piper did the same beside him. Instantly, a pair of heavily armed men stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the boulevard, a silent challenge. There would be more where those two came from.
“Three paces behind me,” he hissed.
She dropped back immediately. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure her eyes were appropriately lowered. Surprisingly enough, they were. Now, if she could just behave herself through the rest of this outing, maybe they’d both get out of it alive.
A bloody big ‘if’ to hang his neck on.
Four
The small of Piper’s back still tingled from where McCloud’s hand had briefly come to rest on it as they were shown into Dharwani’s house and introduced themselves. His wife. The notion was titillating.
She wondered idly if he had a real wife back home. She seriously doubted it given the way he’d fallen into the sack with her. That and the way he’d stumbled a little over calling her Mrs. McCloud. The guy’d looked shell-shocked to hear the words coming out of his mouth. She would’ve ribbed him about it if it wouldn’t have blown their cover.
It wasn’t as if she was ever going to marry. She was all about the job. About establishing her credentials and playing with the big boys. Proving she could do the same work as the men and do it just as well, if not better. Her boss had finally given her a legit field op. It even had the sex and danger. Now all she needed were drugs and rock-and-roll, and she would have it all.
She shook her head. Guys like McCloud were trouble. She knew the score. They would float in and out of women’s lives without a backward glance. But then, that was her M.O., too. The two of them were perfect for each other.
Piper stared at the long, food-laden table in Dharwani’s dining room, surprised. Huh. This really was going to be a celebratory feast. A thank-you for saving his niece. Huh. Who’d have guessed there was any honor left in this shell of a failed civilization? Still, she kept her guard up as she was served a heaping plate of exotic North African fare.
Where did Dharwani get all of this bounty? More accurately, where did a local thug get the wealth to fund such opulence? His little strip of Khartoum real estate, comprised of a few dozen struggling family-owned businesses, couldn’t possibly be netting him this kind of protection cash.
Hmm. What else could Dharwani be dealing in? Information? Terrorists for hire? Was this the guy the PHP representatives were in Khartoum to meet…and maybe pay for some service? She’d spotted one of the PHP leaders in a hotel lobby in the respectable part of town a week ago, but had been forced to duck out of sight lest she be spotted herself. By the time she’d dared risk peeking out of her hiding spot, the PHP man had gone.
It had been exhausting and frustrating trying to do the surveillance by herself, but it wasn’t like she knew anyone trustworthy to invite to help her. She had briefly considered asking Mike to spell her and let her get one decent night’s sleep, but that would involve telling him far too much about her mission. So, she’d suffered in solitude. But now, excitement filled her at possibly stumbling into success, after all.
She risked looking up at McCloud, seated next to their host down the table. He and Dharwani conversed easily. The two men appeared to have recognized a fellow warrior in one another and bonded instantly. It was infuriating. She was the one who’d dived in front of that religious cop to save Dharwani’s niece, a gangly teen named Halma who seemed shaken after the day’s attack.
Piper had tried to talk to Halma at the women’s end of the dining room, but the girl threw suspicious looks at her, mumbled something about it being unclean to speak with infidels, and sidled away almost immediately. And it wasn’t like Piper could identify herself as the soldier who had rescued the girl. Apparently, Dharwani thought that had been Mike. And Mike was happy to let the man think so. Chauvinist jerks. Both of them.
Left to muddle along with the women in her rusty French, she endured stories of childbirth and chickenpox while Mike got to talk politics and religion and power struggles with a warlord. The men’s conversation tickled at the edge of her hearin
g, offering her just enough snippets to tantalize her, but not enough to glean anything meaningful. It wasn’t fair, dammit!
Mike caught her gaze and smirked at her from his place of honor. Her gaze narrowed in promise of retribution until she abruptly remembered her ‘place’ in this little charade and looked down hastily. She clenched her jaw and stared down at her tight fists until she regained her composure, and then she smiled apologetically across the table at her hostess. For an instant, sympathetic understanding shone in the older woman’s eyes. Yup, having to put up with men’s arrogance was a universal burden of women everywhere.
Her hostess, introduced to her as Fatima Dharwani, leaned across the table. Piper had yet to figure out if she was Dharwani’s wife or mother, but either way, the large woman clearly reigned supreme among the other females of the house, who seemed to be a collection of near and distant relatives and servants.
Fatima glanced toward the men, lowered her voice, and asked in halting English, “You know girls? Girls to south?”
Piper was surprised enough at the woman’s attempt at English that she almost missed the question itself. “Girls? To the south?”
The matriarch nodded. “The Black One…buy sick girls. He take them in…how you say…lorry…away they go. No one see no more. No come back.”
“Lorry? You mean a truck? How many girls?”
“Yes, yes. Vroooom. Truck.”
“How many girls?” Piper repeated.
“Thirteen. Twenty. Dying fever or blood sick.”
Piper frowned. A fever from this region that killed people? The Ebola outbreak that had ravaged West Africa had never really caught a foothold in the eastern part of the Dark Continent. “Lassa Fever?” she tried.
A vigorous nod. “Yes, yes. Lassa.”
Blood sick. What was that? “Hemophilia?” she guessed.
“No, no. All body make blood…” Fatima touched her gums, and pointed to her eyes and then her belly. “…Blood everywhere. And die.”
Comprehension dawned. The woman was talking about a hemorrhagic fever. Here? In the Sudan? Piper breathed, “Ebola?”
“Ebola, yes. And Lassa.” A vigorous nod.
Why on earth would anyone ship truckloads of girls out into the countryside, or perhaps more accurately, away from Khartoum to places unknown? Was Dharwani running a prostitution or slavery ring? Is that how he got so rich? But with sick girls?
Fully a third of all Lassa victims died, and Ebola mortality could run in the 95 to 98 percent range under the right conditions. Even with the best medical care available in this part of the world, mortality ran a solid 50%. Although progress had been made in developing treatments during the big Ebola outbreak of 2014, commercial quantities of antivirals to fight it had been too slow in coming.
Regardless, with both of the fevers Fatima had named, the illness and death were messy, painful, and by the end, extremely contagious. Not the stuff of prostitution.
She reviewed the brief conversation so far, looking for clues to the woman’s meaning. Fatima said The Black One was buying the girls. The Black One. Another bolt of understanding struck her. “Black” translated to noir in French. El Noor. Got it.
Piper leaned forward urgently. “El Noor is trucking girls with Lassa and Ebola to the south. What’s he doing with them?”
A shrug. “No come home. Poof. Go.”
“To South Sudan?” Piper asked. “Or just to the southern part of North Sudan?”
“South Sudan. Cross border. No follow. No find.”
Why was this woman telling her all this? Fatima was staring at her expectantly. Piper mumbled, “Uhh, thank you. That’s very interesting.”
The woman rocked back on her cushion, expansively satisfied. As if Piper had comprehended something vitally important at long last.
But she didn’t understand anything at all. Why in the world was El Noor shipping sick girls to South Sudan? Surely, he wasn’t trafficking the young women. They would be far too expensive to restore to health. God knew, there were plenty of impoverished, homeless, healthy young women who could be kidnapped into the slave trade.
She glanced up the table at Mike and was startled to see a grave look upon his face. Dharwani was leaning close, whispering in Mike’s ear. Apparently, this was the true confessions course of dinner.
Mike nodded once, tightly, and Dharwani leaned back, speaking volubly once more. He made a short speech about his gratitude for Mike’s rescue of his niece, and for exposing the El Noori spies pretending to be religious police.
Yeah, right. She would bet he’d be singing that tune to anyone who’d listen for the next few weeks. It was that or bring the local Muslim clerics and Sudanese government down on his back like a ton of bricks for allowing his people to tear two legitimate religious policemen limb from limb.
While servants commenced clearing the table, Fatima waved Piper to her feet. To her chagrin, Piper was led away from the men and into a small, stuffy sitting room with the other women. She felt naked and exposed without McCloud nearby to keep an eye on her and rescue her if need be.
Someone turned on a CD player while Fatima pulled out a water pipe and commenced smoking. It smelled too sweet for tobacco. Must be hashish. Blue, pungent smoke swirled thickly around Piper and a headache began to pulse at the back of her neck. Just what she needed. To get stoned with a bunch of Sudanese women while McCloud picked up all the hot intel. Which she had utter faith he would keep completely to himself and refuse to share with her.
Several of the teen girls began to dance, not in the traditional Middle Eastern style, however. Rather, they gyrated in a hideous parody of twerking that made her giggle uncontrollably. Crap. She was getting high on the fumes.
She fought to concentrate on the gossip floating around her. It took nearly an hour, but she was finally able to turn the women’s conversation—which was taking on a distinctly slurred quality—to the political events of the local neighborhood. She was stunned by how much they knew. Apparently, men held private and even secret meetings with complete disregard for the women present. No doubt the assumption was that women would not understand anything they were overhearing. Hah.
They casually related how Dharwani was getting rich buying black market food stolen from refugee camps in Ethiopia on the cheap and reselling it to the Sudanese government. How El Noor’s ambitions extended far beyond Sudan. How El Noor was getting funding from Muslim charities overseas, and bribing government officials to tolerate his power grab in return for his foot soldiers driving out the Christian coalition. And how two white men had come to town recently.
The haze from the hashish smoke cleared sharply from her head. Were the white men American? The women thought so. They had pale skin and one had orange hair—a fact which made the women laugh like drunk hyenas. Bingo. One of the PHP leaders was a redhead. Sadly, the women didn’t know who the white men were in Khartoum to meet. Not Dharwani, according to Fatima. Disappointed, Piper crossed her dinner host off the list of possible people the PHP guys were here to meet with. Rats.
Fatima took a long drag on the water pipe. Her eyes fogged over even more thickly. Piper could only hope the woman forgot the entire conversation they’d just had. When the hookah’s mouthpiece was passed to her, Piper took a cautious suck. Her mouth filled with sweet, herbal tasting smoke. She held it in her mouth an appropriate interval, then released it without ever inhaling it into her lungs. Now she had to hope she didn’t get too stoned to remember the conversation.
A boy came to fetch Piper not long after that. The women escorted her to a courtyard where a cluster of antsy young men milled about, their jeans and T-shirts draped in weapons and ammunition. Apparently, she and McCloud were ever so politely being kicked out. It must be El-Noor-hunting-o’clock.
Piper noticed Fatima fading back toward the kitchen, lifting a veil over her face and casting her eyes down toward the ground, and all but disappearing—literally—into the woodwork. But Piper caught the sideways look Fatima threw at her. She’d
swear the woman was laughing under that veil.
She wrapped Mala’s melaya around herself, pulling its voluminous folds over her head. She caught an edge of the fabric and lifted it across her face modestly as she and McCloud were escorted through the crowd of armed youths. Local women weren’t the only ones who could play that game.
She and McCloud were shown to a Jeep, and she managed to climb inside without breaking her neck in spite of being wrapped up like a mummy. Mike gave the driver curt instructions on where to go and when to pull over and drop them off. They were still a few blocks from his hooch. In this town, on this night, they might as well be ten miles from his place.
The Jeepload of soon to be dead youths, if she didn’t miss her guess, drove away into the night. Heavy silence settled, eerie in the middle of a large city like this. It was as if all of Khartoum held its breath, waiting for the violence to come.
“C’mon. We’ve got to get off the street,” McCloud muttered.
“Thanks for that update, Einstein,” she muttered back.
He scowled and unzipped his gym bag, pulling out a snub-nosed MP-7 semi-automatic rifle. He slung its nylon strap over his shoulder and glanced up at her. “You did remember to get your gun, didn’t you?”
She scowled and lifted her left elbow. Without her left arm to anchor the melaya against her ribs, the fabric sheath fell away, revealing the latest version of an Israeli Tavor urban assault rifle lying close to her side.
Mike stared. “You had that on you the whole time we were at Dharwani’s?”
“His men wouldn’t dare frisk me. They’d go straight to hell if they laid hands on a woman in such a fashion.”
“Where’d you get a hold of a Tavor, anyway?”
The state of the art Israeli weapon was all but impossible to obtain on the open market. But Doctors Unlimited had inside sources for such things. It was good to work for a CIA front, sometimes. She shrugged. “You military types have to go through channels. We civilians aren’t so encumbered.”
