Suddenly shouting rose up outside. Young men’s voices. It was hard to tell how many—at least half a dozen, I was sure.
Moses ducked his head out the open doorway, then came back in and blew out the lantern.
“They are here,” he said. “You should go. You must go, sah.”
I had to agree, if for no other reason than to keep Moses out of this terrible mess.
“Tell me when it’s clear.”
He hung in the door sideways, watching. I stood opposite, ready to bolt at his signal.
“Now!” He motioned me out to the left. “Go now! Go quickly.”
I darted across a narrow road and straight up another dirt alley. The next street I came to was wider, but completely deserted. I turned left and kept going that way.
It wasn’t until then that I realized Moses was still with me.
“This way.” He pointed straight into the dark. “I know where you can buy a truck.”
Chapter 62
I FOLLOWED THE brittle-looking, one-armed man to an old stone house on the outskirts of the village, back toward Running Recovery. It was at least eleven o’clock by now, but the house lights were still on. I wondered if Moses was an anomaly, or if many people around here would help a stranger, even an American. From what I’d heard, most of the people in Sierra Leone and Nigeria were good, just victims of circumstances and greed.
A salt-and-pepper-haired man answered the door. “What do you want?” he asked.
A brood of kids was clustered behind him, trying to see who had come to the house in the middle of the night.
“The American wants to buy a vehicle,” Moses said simply. “He has cash for it.”
I hung back at first, at Moses’ advice. Before I offered any money, we needed to see exactly what our options were.
“You’re lucky,” the man at the door said and smiled thinly. “We stay open late.”
The best of the old wrecks he had out back was an ancient Mazda Drifter, with a tattered canopy over the bed and an empty space in the dash where the odometer used to be.
But the engine turned over, gingerly, on the first try. And the price was right—five hundred in leones.
Plus, he didn’t mind our spending the night right there in the truck.
I told Moses he had done more than enough and that he should go home, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He stayed with me until morning and then went out to secure the few things he said I’d need for my safe journey, including a police clearance sheet to leave the country.
While I waited, the gravity of this trip back started to sink in. I had to cover more than a thousand miles of unfamiliar countryside to Lagos, over multiple borders, with no more guidance than the maps that Moses only hoped he’d be able to find for me.
So when he came back, I had a proposition for him.
“Make this trip with me and you can keep the truck,” I said. “As a fair trade for your services.”
I expected a conversation, or at least a pause, but there was none.
He hoisted a goatskin bag of provisions from his shoulder into the truck, then handed me back the money he hadn’t spent.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I will do it.”
Chapter 63
“SAMPSON?”
“Yeah?”
“This sucks big-time, you know that? I hate you.”
“Should have called tails, Bree.”
The house on Eighteenth Street was quiet now, not the nasty hive of activity it had been on the night of the murders. Today, this morning, Bree and Sampson had it to themselves. Not that either one of them wanted to be here at the crime scene.
That was why they’d tossed a coin on the front stoop.
Sampson got the master suite.
Bree got the children’s bedroom.
She blew into a latex glove, put it on, and unlocked the door, letting it swing to a stop before she stepped inside. Then she put her head down and hurried upstairs.
“I hate you, John,” she called out.
The kids’ bodies were gone, of course, but there was the residue of printing powder everywhere. Otherwise, the murder scene looked the same: matching yellow comforters soaked through with blood; wide spatter pattern on the bunk bed, rug, walls, and ceiling; two small desks on the opposite wall, undisturbed, as if nothing unspeakable had happened here.
Ayana Abboud had been ten. Her brother, Peter, seven.
The hit on their father, Basel Abboud, was a hell of a lot easier for Bree to comprehend. His columns in the Washington Times had been an early and insistent voice for US military intervention in Darfur, with or without UN Security Council buy-in. He wrote of widespread bribes and corruption both in Africa and Washington. By definition, the man had enemies on at least two continents.
The kind of enemies who go after your wife and kids while they’re at it? It sure looked that way. All four of them had been slaughtered in their house.
Bree turned a slow three-sixty, trying to see it all for the first time again. What jumped out at her now? What had they missed before? What would Alex see if he were here instead of in Africa?
Africa! For the first time, it made some sense to her for him to be there. This kind of violence—Africa was where it came from. This warning could only be fully understood in the context of Lagos, Sierra Leone, Darfur.
Certainly, the killers made no pretense of covering their tracks or hiding anything. Patent prints were visible everywhere that there was blood. Hundreds of latents had turned up as well, all over the house—the walls, the beds, the bodies of the dead.
Food had been hastily consumed in the kitchen: the remains of a pork chop dinner, Neapolitan ice cream scooped from a tub, soda pop, and liquor.
Imagine the level of stupidity, or the indifference to being caught, tried, and sentenced to lifetime in prison for these unspeakable murders.
Bree didn’t need results to know that none of these prints would flag in the FBI’s fingerprint ID system. Her best guess was that the killers were young African nationals with no priors in the US and, most likely, no record of having entered the country either. Some of them would probably match prints taken at Eleanor Cox’s home, some would not. They were savage ghosts whom someone older could use to do his dirty work, she thought. Very efficient. And very much fucked up in their heads. God, she hated him—whoever was behind this!
She came full circle and was staring at the children’s beds again when a soft tap-tap sounded at the dormer window behind her.
Bree wheeled around and nearly cried out in surprise. She had always had a fear of getting shot in the back.
A young boy, small and wide-eyed, hung on to the fixed burglar bars outside, and he was looking in at her. When their eyes met he let go of the bars with one arm and beckoned her over.
“I saw the bad murders. I saw everyting,” he said in a quiet voice meant only for her. “I know who the killers are.”
Chapter 64
“PLEASE? I CAN tell you what happened in the house. Everyting.” The boy’s small voice came muted through the glass. Bree was thinking that he couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve.
He was either scared or a good little actor—or maybe he was both.
Sampson was in the bedroom behind her now. Neither of them drew a weapon; not that they trusted the boy for a second.
Bree had a hand on her piece.
“Tell me what you know about this,” she said.
She and Sampson approached the window from opposite angles. Bree moved in first. She had to duck her head to get inside the dormer alcove.
From here, she could see that the boy had his feet on a lip of decorative brickwork outside.
Beneath that was the roof of the back porch, and a small, November-dead garden maybe ten feet below.
“No further,” the boy warned, “or I run away. I can run very fast. You never catch me.”
“Okay. Let me get this out of the way, though.”
The old rope-and-pulley window sash took some coa
xing, but finally Bree forced it up about six inches.
“What are you doing out there?” she asked.
“I know how it happened. They kill the girl and boy in dis very room. The others down de hall.”
His accent was African. Nigerian was Bree’s guess.
“How do you know so much?” she asked. “Why should I believe you?”
“I am the lookout, but soon they will make me go with them to kill others.” He looked past Bree and Sampson to the scene inside. “I do not want to do dis. Please—I am Cat’lie.”
“It’s all right,” Bree told him. “You don’t have to hurt anyone. I’m Catholic too. Why don’t you come down from there, and we can—”
“No!” He took a hand off again, threatening to jump and run. “Don’t try nah tricks on me!”
“Okay, okay.” Bree held up her hands, palms out. Then she knelt down a little closer. “Just talk to me. Tell me more. What’s your name?”
“Benjamin.”
“Benjamin, do you know anything about a man they call the Tiger? Was he here?” Alex had told her about the Tiger during their phone call. Supposedly the killer was in Africa now, but maybe Alex’s information was wrong.
The boy nodded slowly. “I know, yes.” Then he said, “More than one, though. Not just one Tiger.”
That certainly stunned Bree—and she assumed it would surprise the hell out of Alex too.
“Many men are called the Tiger?” she asked. “You’re sure about that?”
Another nod from the boy.
“Here in Washington?”
“Yes. Maybe two or three.”
“And in Nigeria?”
“Yes.”
“How many Tigers, Benjamin? Do you know?”
“They do not tell me, but dere are many. Bosses of gangs are all Tigers.”
Bree looked over her shoulder at Sampson, then back again at the boy. “Benjamin, do you want to hear a secret?”
The question seemed to confuse him. His eyes went from side to side; he looked down again, checking his escape route.
And when he did that, Bree moved. Fast! Much faster than Benjamin thought she could.
Chapter 65
SHE REACHED IN through the bars and got her hand around the lookout’s skinny wrist.
“Sampson, go!”
“Let go of me!” the boy yelled at her.
He tried to step away, and his weight wrenched her arm against the bar. There was no leverage from this angle. She could only try to ignore the pain, and hold on until Sampson got to the boy from below. Hurry, John, I’m losing him!
“Benjamin, we can keep you safe. You need to come with us.”
He screamed at her. “No, fuckin’ bitch! You lied to me!”
His transformation was startling. The scared eyes had gone fierce. He clawed at her hand and drew blood. Had he lied to her? Was he one of the killers?
Finally, Bree could hear Sampson’s feet pounding somewhere outside. Faster, John!
Just when she thought her arm might break—the kid twisted free. He dropped to the porch roof and all but bounced another eight feet to the ground.
Two quick strides and then he was scrambling up a small ash tree, barely big enough to support his weight, much less an adult’s.
Just as Sampson came running around the back, the boy flipped sideways over the top of a high cedar fence into a service alley beyond.
Seconds later, Bree came out the front door.
There was no gate to the alley. They had to sprint back through the house, out another door, and around the block, just to find out what they already knew: The boy named Benjamin was long gone.
The so-called lookout for the murders had gotten away from them.
Five minutes later, they had an APB out, but Bree wasn’t holding her breath. Her thoughts had already turned to Alex, and how to reach out to him.
“He needs to know about this. Like, last week. Only I don’t know how to reach him. I don’t even know where he is now.”
Chapter 66
THIS PART OF Africa wasn’t recommended for backpacking or camera safaris. The yowl of hyenas was a constant reminder of where I was now. So were the road signs that said things like WARNING—LIONS—CROCODILES!!
Getting out of Sierra Leone and back to Nigeria was proving to be even more complicated than I had expected. And dangerous too, treacherous at almost any curve.
Like right now. Two military-issue jeeps sat nose-to-nose across the road, blocking our way. This was no ordinary border crossing, though. We were less than an hour outside Koidu.
“Are these guys actually government?” I asked Moses. “Any way to tell?”
He shrugged and shifted uncomfortably on the seat of the Drifter. “Could be RUF.”
There were six of them by my count, all wearing a mix of fatigues and street clothes and the familiar flip-flops. All of them were armed, including a mounted gunner in the back of one of the jeeps.
A lanky guy in a maroon beret came striding over to my window. His eyes were bloodshot, like he might have been stoned. He raised his rifle with one arm and held out the other hand.
“Papers.”
I played it cool for now and showed him the police clearance and my passport.
He barely looked at them. “Fifty dollars. To pay for your visa.”
Whether these men were government officers or not, I knew right then that this was grift, pure and simple. A holdup.
I raised my gaze and looked into his red eyes. “I just spoke with the US embassy in Freetown this morning. Deputy Ambassador Sassi assured me himself that my papers were in good order. So what’s the problem here?”
He stared back hard at me, but I didn’t flinch. Two of the other guards started over from the side of the road, but he held up a palm to save them the trouble.
“Still, it is ten for the passenger. Twenty, if it’s in leones.”
Somehow, we both knew I’d pay that one. I didn’t want to push my luck. I gave him two American fives and we were on our way—to the next roadblock anyway.
We hit four of them before the actual border crossing. Each rite of passage went about the same. It got easier as we went, cheaper anyway, and by the time we finally crossed at Bo Waterside to Liberia, I’d paid out only another fifteen bucks or so.
The precious thing we did lose was time.
We didn’t get into Monrovia until after dark, and with no guarantee of supplies east of there, we had to spend the night.
I worried through the night and didn’t sleep very well. We were safe so far, but the speed we were traveling was no Tiger’s pace.
He was getting away again.
Chapter 67
WE DROVE ALL the next day and into the second night, alternating at the wheel, trying to make up time. As we traveled, Moses told me that he was representative of most people here—not the RUF, and certainly not the Tiger and his murderous gang.
“There are many good people in Africa, sah, and no one to help them fight back against the devils,” he said.
Less than half an hour east of Monrovia, we passed the last billboard and radio tower and entered dense rain forest that went on for hours.
Sometimes it opened up into clear-cut fields, with stumps like grave markers for miles in every direction.
Mostly, though, the road was a tunnel of bamboo, palm, mahogany, and vine-choked trees such as I’d never seen before—with leaves and low scrub slapping and slathering the sides of the truck as we pushed through.
Late in the afternoon, we were near the coast, driving through tidal flats and then wide swaths of open grassland that were the antithesis of the jungle we’d just left.
I saw a huge colony of flamingos around sunset, thousands and thousands of stunningly beautiful birds, an incongruous sea of pink in the orangish light.
Finally we had to stop for the evening. We were both too tired to drive. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered how many fathers got to tell their kids they’d spent a night in a real Africa
n jungle.
Chapter 68
I WOKE UP some hours later. Moses was already laying out breakfast on the tailgate of the Drifter.
Canned sausages, a couple of bruised tomatoes, and a two-liter jug of water to sip from.
“Looks good,” I said. “Thank you, Moses.”
“There is a river. Over there if you wish to wash up.” He pointed with his chin to the opposite side of the road. I noticed his shirt was soaking wet. “It is not far.”
I bushwhacked with my arms, skirting a huge knot of thorny scrub the way Moses had obviously done before me.
About twenty-five yards in, the brush opened up and I came out onto a mud-and-gravel bank.
The river itself was a wide, murky green piece of glass. I could barely tell it was moving.
I took a step toward the water and sank up to my ankle in mud.
When I pulled back, the mud sucked the shoe right off my foot. Shit. I’d wanted to clean myself up, not get filthier.
I looked up and down the bank, wondering where Moses had gone to wash.
First, I needed my shoe back, though. I reached down into the guck and felt around. It was actually nice and cool down there.
Suddenly the water in front of me boiled up. Something rough, like a huge log, came to the surface very, very quickly.
And then I saw that it was a full-blown, honest-to-God crocodile. Its black eyes were set on me. Breakfast was on the table.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Good-bye shoe. Good-bye leg or arm?
I stepped back ever so slowly. So far, the croc showed just a layer of tiled skin at the water’s surface. I could see the bulge of its snout. The great beast’s eyes didn’t leave me for a second.
Never taking a breath, I kept inching backward.
On the next step though, my foot turned in the mud. I fell! Like it had received a cue, the crocodile sprang forward.
Nine, ten, maybe as much as twelve feet long, it surged out of the water, slashing in and out of an S-shape as it leapt straight at me.
I tried to pull in my legs, if only to postpone the inevitable savage bite. How could this have happened? Everyone had been right—I shouldn’t have come to Africa.
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