Shoot the Bastards

by Michael Stanley

  Chapter 30

  By the time Joe walked in, she had come up with a plan, although it wasn’t very solid.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded. “I’ll tell your boss where the money is.”

  “You tell me, then I tell him.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll only tell him.”

  He hesitated, chewing his lip, clearly thinking of the consequences for him if she said nothing. He left the room and returned a few moments later with the boss man.

  “You have bad men working for you,” she said.

  The boss man frowned.

  “The police put me in jail after Ho died, but your friends from Mozambique bribed a guard to let me out. You know they broke my finger.” She held up her hand. “And that’s when I told them where the money was buried. I didn’t want them to hurt me more. So, they must have the money now. But I didn’t see it because the police came while they were gone and set me free.”

  “They say they not find money. You give wrong place.”

  “They would say that, wouldn’t they? They wanted to steal the money from you. I heard them say so. I gave them the right location. They would’ve killed me if it was wrong! I think they were working with Ho. Going to steal your money and divide it.”

  The boss man stared at her for a long time. She held her breath. She knew the story was credible. Everyone involved in this business was violent and out for themselves. If they could betray each other, they would.

  At last the boss man turned to Joe and said in Vietnamese, “Get food and water for one week. Then lock all the doors. We need to leave now. We’ll talk to her when we get back from South Africa. We can get to the bottom of this story when we meet up with the Portuguese men.”

  Relief washed over Crys, and she started to breathe again. At least she’d bought some time. But now she was a prisoner…again. Her only hope was that Donald would find her. He must know she was somewhere nearby.

  About an hour later, she heard doors banging and a car start up and drive away. She was alone. She had a week to try to figure something out. And she’d learned another important piece of information—the big hit was about to happen—probably on Sunday, just as Pockface had said.

  But, again, there was nothing she could do about it, nobody she could tell. And if she didn’t find a way out of her predicament, she’d be in very big trouble at the end of that week.

  * * *

  She gave it about fifteen minutes, hoping all the men had left, then she started shouting as loudly as she could in English and in Vietnamese.

  “Help! Help me, please!” She shouted at the two doors; she shouted at all four walls; she shouted at the ceiling.

  There was no response.

  Nor could she hear any voices.

  She walked around again, shouting as loudly as she could. To no avail. Her heart sank. It seemed Donald had lost her. Or maybe they’d caught him too.

  This was getting her nowhere. She decided to conserve her energy and shout for help again about the time people would be leaving work—around five o’clock, still several hours away.

  She’d be crazy with fear if she was here for a week. The thought chilled her to the core. She had to find a way out.

  She closed her eyes and breathed slowly for a few minutes, then started to search every inch of the room for something that could help her to escape.

  But other than the mango boxes, ten in number, the can of paint, and the paraffin, there was nothing. And she was going to have to use one or more of the boxes as a toilet, a pretty disgusting thought.

  For food, they’d left her cans of vegetables and cans of fruit, together with ten liters of water in a large, plastic container. There was also a can opener and a single spoon. They weren’t going to help her get out of there.

  She decided the best thing she could do was to center herself, so she took one of the boxes, separated the glued ends, and created a rudimentary rug on which she could meditate. For the next half hour or so, she stretched and quietly chanted her mantra.

  When she’d finished, she opened a can of beans and wolfed it down. Ten minutes later, she’d eaten the whole lot and started on a can of peaches. They were too sweet, but satisfied her hunger. Food out of the way, she settled down to think through her predicament.

  There had to be a way to escape…

  * * *

  Her first plan was to try to reach the windows high on the wall by stacking the mango boxes on top of each other. She tried standing on one, but it collapsed immediately. In that form, it wasn’t going to work. Knowing triangles made strong structures, she then tried making triangular trusses from the boxes. She could form the triangles, but had nothing to keep them in place, so they also collapsed immediately. She gave up—the boxes weren’t going to be of much use.

  She looked around and the windows caught her attention. She wondered if people walked past them. Maybe she could let them know she was inside.

  She decided to try and throw some cans through the windows. She didn’t know whether anyone would see them, but she had to give it a go.

  Crys took a can of peaches and used the can opener to scratch the Vietnamese word for help on both ends. If someone picked it up, she hoped they’d look up and see the broken window. She also hoped they’d see her call for help and act on it.

  When she was finished, she threw the can at the windows, but missed, and it fell back. It took her three more tries before the can broke the glass and disappeared. She could only wait and hope.

  At five o’clock, Crys repeated her shouting routine, but again there was no response. Worse than that, she heard no voices of people heading home. She was beginning to think she was completely isolated.

  She took another can, marked it, and threw it through another window. The glass shattered the first time, and she heard the can clatter to the ground outside. She waited, counting the minutes, but again she heard nothing.

  When another hour passed with no response and no sounds from outside, she decided that the windows couldn’t overlook an outside road—that all her efforts had been in vain.

  She sat and stared at the broken window, her mind frozen. She had nothing to work with.

  What else she could do?

  * * *

  As she was about to eat another can of vegetables, an idea came to her. If she started a fire, maybe someone would notice and come to investigate.

  Her first thought was to short out the power point, but she abandoned that immediately. It would just trip the circuit breaker—that was exactly what they were for. Then she thought about the reading lamp and had an idea.

  It seemed farfetched and she almost discarded it at once. But she had nothing to lose. She grabbed the flattened mango box she’d been using as a mat and cut out the thinnest strips of cardboard she could with the can opener. Then she pulled off some slightly larger pieces. She took an empty can and stuffed it full of the strips with the thinnest on top.

  Now came the tricky part. She went over to the desk and checked that the desk light actually worked. Next, she unscrewed the bulb and tapped it gently with one of the cans. After a couple of hits, the glass broke. She peered inside and smiled when she saw that the filament was still intact—just what she’d hoped.

  She screwed the bulb back into the lamp. Then she poured some of the liquid left in the paraffin bottle into the bulb until it just covered the filament.

  Shielding her eyes and mouthing a silent prayer, she flipped the switch.

  “Yes!” she said out loud.

  The paraffin was burning, and she felt the first glimmer of hope.

  Carefully, she fed a few cardboard strips into the flames until she had a little bonfire going. Then she held the can full of strips over the fire until it burst into flames. When it was burning well, she threw it at one of the broken windows, but missed, and the burning strips fe
ll all over the floor.

  She told herself to keep trying. The plan was good.

  She opened another can, making sure the lid remained fixed to the can. She threw out the contents and built up another little fire, closing the lid far enough to prevent the strips from falling out.

  She threw the can at the window and this time she succeeded. Now all she could do was wonder what was on the other side. Would someone notice? Would it set light to something, which would attract attention? She was back to waiting.

  Nothing happened for what seemed like forever. She couldn’t sit still and paced the room, wondering if she should throw another fire can through a different window.

  And then, she smelled smoke. Something was burning.

  Perhaps her luck had finally turned. Surely a fire would attract somebody’s attention. It had better, because she’d run out of ideas…

  Another few minutes passed, and smoke started coming in through the broken windows. Whatever was outside had started to burn fiercely. With every second, the smoke grew thicker and drifted inside in bigger clouds. It smelled toxic, choking. Crys hadn’t thought about that possibility.

  She realized she had to get out of there, and quickly.

  She walked around the room shouting as loudly as she could—through both doors and up at the windows, but still there was no response.

  The smoke continued to pour in, and she started to cough uncontrollably. Her lungs began to hurt and it was hard to shout, so she beat on the doors with one of the cans. No response. She was terrified now that the whole place would burn down.

  She tried not to think of how that would feel…

  She was taking shallow breaths through her nose, but the smoke was getting worse.

  She lay on the floor in front of the door to boss man’s office and started to suck air from the gap at the bottom. It was a little better. But the room was getting hotter and hotter.

  She was beginning to panic.

  Suddenly she was deafened by a fire alarm. It was so loud she had to hold her ears.

  She jumped up and tried to shout again, but the smoke was too much, and she was drowned out by the alarm. She collapsed to the floor and sucked at the tiny draught of fresh air coming under the door.

  Úm ma ni bát ni hồng. Úm ma ni bát ni hồng.

  She concentrated on slowing her metabolism by breathing slowly and shallowly. She needed to keep calm…

  And then she heard sirens. Soon there would be people around the building. It took all her discipline not to jump up again. She knew she had to preserve her strength and wait.

  Only when the sirens had stopped and the alarm was silenced, and she could hear voices above the crackle of the flames outside, did she start shouting and banging on the door to the boss man’s office with her can.

  “Help me,” she screamed in Vietnamese. “Here. Here. Help!”

  There was no response, and she was struggling to breath.

  “Help!” she choked. “Help me, please.”

  Her head was swimming, and she could hardly breathe at all now.

  Bang, bang, bang. Her thuds were slow and weak against the door.

  Then she could hear voices in the office. “Over there,” someone shouted.

  The door handle rattled. “It’s locked.”

  She managed a final bang but everything was going black. Her eyelids were heavy. It felt like she was drowning.

  “Break it down! Quick!” The voices seemed far away.

  There was a crash against the door. Then another and another. She dragged herself away from it and the small source of air she had left. Then the door burst open. She opened her eyes to see a figure standing above her.

  “Here,” he shouted. “A woman.” She heard him ask in Vietnamese if she was okay. His voice seemed to come from miles away.

  She raised her head and nodded weakly. “Cảm ơn. Cảm ơn,” she managed, no longer caring who knew she could speak the language.

  “We need to get out,” he said and grabbed her injured arm. She gasped, sucked in a lungful of smoke, then doubled over coughing. He pulled her through the door.

  As they went through the boss man’s office, she spotted her bag on the desk — her camera and cell phone were there too.

  “My stuff…” she gasped, pointing. “There…”

  The man grabbed her bag and threw in the phone and camera.

  Out on the street, she sank to her knees, shaking, and gasping for breath. The outside air seemed like cool water.

  “Are you all right?” she heard a man ask in English.

  She managed to raise her head to look at him.

  It was Donald.

  “What…what took you so long...?” she rasped.

  “I’ll tell you later. We need to get out of here. Can you walk?”

  She nodded. “I…I think so…”

  He helped her to her feet. “Okay. Lean on me.”

  Then he put his arm around her shoulders, grabbed her backpack and began to lead her away, back along the street she had originally come down several hours earlier. When they reached the corner, she turned and looked back at the flames engulfing the building.

  “Come on,” he said. “We must keep moving. We’re still in danger here.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Crys was sitting in Søren Willandsen’s office at End Extinction, a glass of water in her hand and a blanket around her shoulders. The stink of smoke was everywhere. She was saturated with it.

  “How did you know I was in that building?” she asked Donald. Her voice was scratchy, but she no longer felt dizzy.

  “I didn’t,” he replied. “I lost you when those men took you. So I walked around, hoping I would see you leave. But I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t you see Joe, the shopkeeper, leave with several other men?” she asked swallowing more water.

  “No. I couldn’t be everywhere; I must have missed them.”

  “And then the fire?”

  “When the building went up in flames, I was nearby. I watched the firemen. Then I heard one of them shouting that there was a woman trapped inside. I had to check whether it was you.”

  “Thank you. I guess I’m lucky the fire alarm worked and the fire department is efficient.”

  “You see why we were following you now,” Søren said. “And you led us to people we didn’t know. Did you learn any more about the rumors you told us about?”

  Crys looked at him. He hadn’t asked how she was. He’d simply watched as Donald took care of her.

  They held each other’s gaze for a moment. Crys recalled how he’d told her a few days earlier not to trust anyone, and she decided to take him at his word.

  “No. Joe seemed upset when I asked him about it. That’s when he booted me out of the shop and we followed him. But they spotted me and thought I was spying—which I was, I guess. That’s why they locked me up. There was a man in charge, but I don’t know his name. And four or five others. All Vietnamese.”

  “And they didn’t say anything about South Africa or a big operation?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t going to share what she’d heard—not yet, anyhow.

  “That’s too bad,” Søren said. “You went through a lot and didn’t get anything in return.”

  Crys just nodded.

  “What are you going to do now?” he asked.

  “I’m getting out of here. Maybe go home. It’ll be safer writing my article there than here or in South Africa. I just want to be a journalist again.”

  Søren stood up. “Well, I look forward to reading your piece when it comes out,” he said. “But, if you hear anything more, please let us know.”

  “Of course,” she lied.

  * * *

  Donald wanted to accompany her back to her hotel, but she refused. She wanted to move quic
kly. She remembered that she’d told Joe where she was staying and definitely didn’t want to meet him again. So, back in her room, she showered the smoke out of her hair and off her skin, dumped her ruined clothes, then packed up her things and checked out as quickly as possible.

  She jumped into the first cab at the hotel entrance, then had the driver drop her off several miles away, around the corner from another hotel. She dashed inside, looking up and down the street, terrified that Joe or his colleagues were following her, but she saw nothing.

  Fortunately, the hotel wasn’t full, so she checked in and immediately called Nigel in Geneva.

  He was shocked by the story of what had happened.

  “You’re lucky to get out alive.”

  “I was lucky. I thought I was going to suffocate or be burned to death.”

  He quizzed her some more about her experience, and then asked, “Did you pick up any useful information?”

  “Two things,” she replied. “First, in a passing comment, the boss man said it was too difficult to kill a lot of rhinos. Joe said pretty much the same thing earlier. So, I think they must have something else planned. My guess is they’re going to attack and steal a stockpile of horns somewhere. Or maybe three stockpiles…”

  “That makes complete sense,” Nigel said. “It’s probably Kruger itself. There are several stockpiles there from rhinos that have died naturally. There must be hundreds of horns in those…” He paused, and Crys wondered what he was thinking. “And the second thing?” he asked.

  “When they locked me in that room, the boss man told one of his men to get me food and water for a week. Then he said they would deal with me when they returned from South Africa. So, whatever is happening is going to happen in the next few days. That ties up with what I overheard from Pockface too. It’s all pointing in the same direction.”

  “I need to tell Dinh all this. Perhaps he can help from the Vietnam side. We have to move quickly…”

  Nigel was quiet for a few more moments.

  “This is very helpful, Crys,” he said in a business-like tone. “Thank you. I think I can take it from here. I’ll go to South Africa myself, contact the South African authorities, and see if I can persuade them to set up ambushes at all of their storage sites in Kruger. That should surprise your friends.”