Arch Enemy (14 page)

M
organ woke up in the bed of the old Ford pickup truck as Henri pulled it to a stop. His muscles were sore from the previous night's walk and his back was aching from the shovel handle that prodded him through his dreamless sleep. The sun was low in the sky, but sleeping in the open truck bed gave him a nasty sunburn.

They were surrounded by more jungle, but the area seemed wilder, and nature was encroaching on the road as if to reclaim it. In the cab, Henri and Yolande argued in French. Morgan tapped on the window. “What's going on?”

“He will not take us any farther,” Yolande said. “He says this is a bad place. Too dangerous.”

“What's the danger?”

“This is Madaki's territory. His militia patrol the roads. He says there is a gold mine just beyond the ridge over there.”

Morgan hopped off the truck bed onto the dirt road, stretching out his legs. Yolande came out as well. Henri drove away, leaving them with nothing but a canteen of water and two cigarettes, one lit. Yolande puffed away as they walked.

“We should have stolen his car,” she said. She finished the cigarette in two minutes flat, lighting the second one with the smoldering butt of the first.

They decided to keep off the roads. They took a right into the jungle, trekking uphill toward the ridge Henri had pointed out.

It was only an hour's hike in the shade, and once they got going, Morgan's sore muscles regained their limberness. More mosquitoes, but not quite as much heat. The top of the hill was dense with trees, but Morgan found a rock that extended up over the canopy. Using a tree as support, he hoisted himself up, grunting to pull up his weight to the top.

He overlooked the vast country below, jungle sprinkled with the odd family farm. That was all he saw, except for one thing. In the valley, right at the bottom of the hill, the greenery was interrupted by a gash of bare earth. One of Madaki's illegal gold mines. Men, women, and children, numbering in the hundreds, dressed in rags, most shirtless under the punishing sun, digging with pickaxes, sifting, carrying baskets or wheelbarrows of dirt.

Yolande, with her limber frame, climbed on the rock in half the time it took Morgan.

“Mr. White's guns are not there,” she said.

No, but they had their own. The upper levels were patrolled by militiamen, dressed in T-shirts, polos, carrying AK-47s, for the most part—the Kalashnikovs were an infestation in politically unstable third world countries, sold off for quick cash after the fall of the Soviet Union—with a smattering of other rifles and SMGs, handguns tucked into the waist of their shorts. Some of them held leashes tied to . . . “Dogs,” he said. “I really don't like dogs.”

Morgan did a quick count of the guards. For all the people that were working there, there were no more than fifty. Maybe more like thirty-five.

And on one end of the mine, where it connected to the road—cars. Pickup trucks, sedans, nine all told. They were parked near a cluster of buildings.

Morgan heard shouting below. One of the workers, in flip-flops and a maroon shirt, had taken off running toward the road. The guards mustered, aiming their rifles. The
rat-a-tat
of the Kalashnikovs echoed in the valley. The man was hit. He stumbled to the ground, clutching his leg, contorting in pain.

The guards circled him, but didn't shoot. Instead, they loosed the dogs on him.

Morgan looked away. The man's screaming did not last long.

Morgan and Yolande sat down on the rock, watching the sun disappear behind the mountains. He looked at her face, at her rugged beauty, unflappable even here, lost in the middle of nowhere.

“Beautiful country out here,” he said.

“It is.”

“Are you from around this region? You seem to know your way around.”

“I was born at the foot of those mountains,” she said, pointing to the east.

“I don't see anything there.”

“No. It is not there anymore.”

He reclined against the rock. “What's your story? Of all the able-bodied men in his service, how come Jakande picked you for this mission?”

“Do you think he made a poor decision?” she said, in a defiant tone.

Morgan chuckled. “No. I really don't.” He swatted a mosquito on his forehead. His skin stung from the sunburn.

“I get things done. General Jakande knows that.”

His stomach growled. He took a sip from the canteen and handed it to her—the last of it. “How'd you get the scar?”

She finished the water, letting it drip onto her tongue. “I was a child soldier. Do you need to know more?”

Morgan wanted to, but he could tell she didn't want to talk. He closed his eyes and felt the gust of wind that was rising, letting it cool his sweltering skin.

“We need to go down there,” he said. “We need guns and a car. They have both.”

“Are you crazy? They will shoot us on sight.”

“I don't intend to be seen.”

S
cott Renard picked up Lily outside her Cambridge apartment in a white Lexus coupe. She came in out of the cold, red-nosed and chilled, with a huge idiot smile on her face. Why did everything feel so great all of a sudden?

She ran her hands over the leather detailing of the interior. “Is this yours?”

“Rental, while I'm in the city. I'm kind of a car guy.”

He flipped on his turn signal and set off.

“Shut up,” she said. “I love cars. Well, I love the driving part, anyway. We should race.”

“I took a course in stunt driving last year. So you'll have to forgive me if I end up leaving you in the dust.”

Lily suppressed a scoff.

“What was that?”

“I said, ‘where are we going?'”

“Well, that's a surprise.”

“Oh, exciting.” She clapped her hands. “You're not going to take me to a
museum
, are you?”

“What's wrong with a museum?” Scott asked.

“Nerd.”

“You were under no illusions about that when you asked me out today.”

Lily smiled. She was giddy. Giddy! Like a bloody
teenager
!

A car cut them off and Scott missed a light.

“You drive like a girl,” she taunted him.

“I'm being
prudent
.”

“This is not a car to be prudent in.”

They bantered back and forth as he drove past Longfellow Bridge and then Faneuil Hall. It was so different from Baxter's imperious manner, his barking orders. Things flowed with Scott. They felt good.

He turned into valet parking at the New England Aquarium.

“I know,” he said. “Kids. Families. Not ideal. But have you ever been here before? It's my favorite place in the entire city. And it's not too busy midafternoon.”

She was unconvinced. “I'll suspend disbelief for now.”

They got their tickets and Scott pulled her right for the main chamber. When she caught her first look of the four-story Giant Ocean Tank, she changed her mind.

“This is beautiful.” They started along the spiral ramp that wound around it.

“I know,” he said. “It's my favorite thing in the city.” He put his arm around her. “Well, second favorite.”

She pulled him in for a kiss. This got them the stink eye from a teacher leading a group of kids on a tour.

“So you haven't told me a thing about what you do,” Scott said.

“Uh uh,” she said, wagging a finger. “Work talk's still taboo.”

“Then you ask me a question.”

“How old are you?” Lily asked.

“Twenty-seven.”

“My God, you're such a child,” she said. A tiger shark passed the window, but Scott was more interesting.

“How old are you?” He furrowed his brow.

“Twenty-eight,” she said, laughing. “I thought you Silicon Valley rich guys were all after twenty-one-year-old models.”

“The guys after twenty-one-year-olds are the ones who can't get women their own age to believe their bullcrap.”

“Is that right?”

“I mean, you can dazzle a college girl if you don't eat ramen noodles for every meal and all your furniture doesn't come from Ikea, as long as you like the right music. It's a pretty low bar to clear.”

“And you can get an older girl to believe
your
bullcrap?”

He laughed. “I like someone who can challenge me.”

“You don't want a tight twenty-one-year-old body to play with?”

“To the extent that that matters,” he said, looking her up and down with wolfish eyes, “I've got all I can handle right here.”

They kissed, pulling apart before things progressed past a G rating in a family venue. They walked in silence, Lily clinging to his arm, watching as a stingray passed, gliding through the water.

“So what's your story?” she asked as they neared the top. “What makes you, you?”

“That's a big question.”

“Bigger than this fish tank?”

He half-smiled. “All right. I'll give you this. I used to think that being good was about being nice.”

“You aren't nice?”

“I try to be kind,” he said. “There's a difference. Being nice is not offending people. It's not making anyone feel uncomfortable. But sometimes being nice keeps you silent when you should speak up. It keeps you from acting when you need to do something.”

“I hadn't really thought about it that way,” she said.

“It's this whole spiritual thing.”

“And here my family was happy to attend Anglican services on Christmas and Easter. So you're religious?”

“I like to say I'm Silicon Valley Buddhist,” he said with a chuckle. “I know it doesn't have that much to do with real Buddhism, even though we like to pretend it does. But it's a way to live.”

The tiger shark came close to the glass, to the delight of the nearby kids.

“I wasn't always like this. When I was, oh, fourteen, I used to play video games all day after I got home from school.” His eyes grew distant. “Hardly any friends, maybe none if I'm really honest with myself. I would justify it by telling myself I was doing what I wanted.”

“Then what happened?”

“I saw a bird die. I know, stupid, right? He hit a window as I was walking home from school one day and fell to the ground, right in front of me. He twitched for a few minutes and then stopped moving. I watched the whole time. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything but keep watching, for minutes and minutes after he was dead.

“It could have been nothing. I didn't believe in signs. It wasn't even the first bird I'd seen die. But something just clicked. I was fifteen, and already all I did was kill time. Eat, sleep, video games, zone out at school. That was it. No real hope for something better, no real will to do anything with my life.”

“And so you changed?” Lily asked.

“I sold my video game console and all the games the very next day. Made me a cool two hundred. Put it toward some running shoes, free weights, and a couple of books on programming. The books turned out to be mostly useless, but I got into a couple Internet forums for people like me who were learning to code.”

She squeezed his hand. “Strange that such a small thing could change your life like that.”

“I think it had been building for a long time. One of the hardest things is admitting it. Once I did, things just kind of fell into place.”

She leaned into him, head against his shoulders. He enveloped her with his arm.

“What about you?” he asked. “What makes Lily Harper tick?”

Her fake name in his voice caused her a pang of sadness, reminding her of the gulf that separated them that she couldn't cross. It made her want to be open with him.

“I'm an orphan,” she said. “Raised by my gram. Kind of a lonely kid. By the time I realized I was pretty, it was too late, and I already wanted to do something with my life.”

She trailed off.

“You know what? Why don't we just look at the tank for a while?”

A puffer fish stared at them from behind the glass, wide-eyed and distended. She rested her head against his shoulder, feeling close to him. At least that much she could do.

M
organ and Yolande waited for hours after nightfall, after the mine guards huddled all the slaves into a warehouse surrounded by barbed wire. They drank around a bonfire, now and then firing bullets into the air just because, and then went to sleep. Only four of them kept a lookout, carrying rifles, walking around the edge of the camp, which was illuminated by lightbulbs hung up on posts, connected to a generator.

Insects were screaming, and the night sky was darker than it could be in any city. The moon lit up the forest, and millions of stars were visible against the smear of glimmering points that was the Milky Way.

Once most of the men had either passed out or gone off to sleep, Morgan and Yolande got down from the rock and began their careful descent. The ground was treacherous, and a false step could mean falling to their death.

They reached the camp within the hour. The jungle extended right up to the edge, where an armed guard was standing. They stopped fifty feet short of his position.

“Go around,” Yolande whispered to Morgan. “I'll provide the distraction.”

He crept to the right while she went left. One step at a time, he came closer, careful not to make a sound. To draw the guard's attention now would mean putting the whole camp on high alert and there would go their one chance at this.

When Morgan was within thirty feet of the man, he heard a rustle.

The man raised his Kalashnikov. “
Qui est là?
”

Yolande came out of the bush and stepped into the light. She had removed her shirt, breasts bare for the guard to see. Her scar, Morgan now saw, went from her shoulder all the way down to her belly.

This was his cue to move in.

“
Qui es-tu?
” The harshness had melted from the man's speech. His eyes were locked on Yolande.

“
Je suis perdu
,” she said. “I am lost.”

The man lowered his rifle. “
Vous êtes au bon endroit
.” Morgan could imagine the eyebrow wag that went with that statement. He bent down to pick up a rock, smooth and heavy. Yolande was flashing the guard a coquettish smile.
Poor bastard. Must think it's his lucky night.

With a nod from Yolande, Morgan raised the stone and brought it hard against the man's head, caving in his skull. He grunted and toppled to his knees, falling at his side. His AK-47 clattered to the ground.

Morgan grabbed the rifle, and Yolande led the way through the wooden shacks. The nearest was a sort of warehouse where Morgan figured the gold was stored. Next was a kennel, where the dogs were kept tied up. Then, the building where the guards slept, from which they heard a choir of snoring. They skulked around it, keeping to the shadows and taking their time.

Morgan looked around the corner at the makeshift parking lot. “I'm going to check the cars for keys,” he whispered to Yolande. He crept forward out into the open, taking cover behind a VW pickup truck. He pulled the handle, slowly, making no sound. Locked.

He went for the next one, a Toyota with a door of a different color. He tried this one. It was locked, too. Keeping low, he moved toward the front of the car, looking for the next—

Footsteps. Right on the other side of the car. He bent down to look. Male feet, in sandals.
Shit
. How had Morgan not heard him coming?

The man was moving toward Yolande. She would come into view within seconds. He motioned for her to move, but she was looking away at another guard on the far end of the camp.

Only one thing to do
.

Morgan stood up and opened fire. Several bullets burrowed into the man's back and he fell forward, dead.

Yolande looked at him as if to say,
What the hell are you doing?

“Grab his gun!” Morgan yelled. He ran to the next car, an old Ford Mondeo. He tried the door. Locked.

Gunfire. Yolande, rifle in hand, shooting at the men coming out of the dormitory. Another guard was running toward them from the direction of the mine. Morgan took careful aim. He pulled the trigger. The single bullet found its target, and the man stumbled to the dusty ground.

Guards were pouring out of the dormitory now, each armed, each shooting. Morgan and Yolande took cover behind the Mondeo and fired, trying to hold them back. Yolande, less thrifty with her bullets, ran out in seconds. Morgan kept them away with spaced bursts of the Kalashnikov, but there were too many. As the guards circled them, he dropped his gun and raised his hands, nudging Yolande to do the same. She spat at the ground but complied.

They were surrounded by twenty men, carrying their mismatched weapons, shouting at them and each other. Morgan did his best to appear nonthreatening.

“What are they saying?”

“Well,” said Yolande, with her characteristic irrational calm, “they're going to shoot us. They're trying to decide if they will do it now or torture us first.”

More discussion. “
Bouge ton cul!
” a man shouted at them.

“What's happening?”

“They decided to shoot us. But they don't want to damage the car. I believe the expression he used translates to
move your ass
.”

The man who'd shouted, who appeared to be their leader, motioned with his rifle for them to move away from the car. Morgan looked for a way out. He was unarmed and surrounded by rifle-wielding men who wanted to kill him. Even he had to admit this one looked bad for him.

“Yolande?”

“Yes?”

“Sorry I got you into this.”

“Screw your apology. Die like a man.”

The woman had a way with words.

Morgan stared at the barrel of the leader's AK. Would that be the one that killed him?

He relaxed. Nothing else to do. Nothing, except to die. There was some peace in that.

Then he heard gunfire—not from the men surrounding them, but coming from the edge of camp, and not automatic fire, but pistols. Everyone's attention turned. Men were coming in from the darkness, dressed in civilian clothing. There was maybe one automatic rifle among them. The rest carried revolvers, or hunting rifles, with the odd semiautomatic. Some, lacking firearms altogether, were wielding machetes or axes.

Morgan pulled Yolande to the ground as the place became a war zone. They retreated behind the VW truck and watched the carnage.

The camp guards were better armed, but the raiders had the numbers, and were mowing down their enemies.

Yolande tugged at his shoulder. “Let's go.”

They moved back the way they came, around the barracks, hoping to disappear into the forest. But raiders came out of the woods there, too, cutting off their escape route, yelling for them to move back toward the killing field.

Morgan put his hands up as the gunmen closed around them. Most of the guards were dead, and those that weren't had surrendered. There were around two hundred raiders all told, by Morgan's estimation. A group of them ran off to the slaves' quarters. One man was hitting the lock on the door with an ax.

The raiders were dressed in civilian clothes, much like the mine guards, but they were not all men in their teens or twenties, as the guards were. There were older men among them, even some whose hair was gray or white, and even some women. These were not regular bandits.

“Tell them we're not one of them,” said Morgan.

Yolande spoke to one of them men in French. They had a brief exchange.

“They know,” said Yolande. “They saw what happened before they arrived.”

“Good news then?”

The door to the slaves' quarters opened. The first were scared to cross the threshold, but once the first group had emerged to freedom, the rest poured out, whooping with joy. The raiders collected the guns, and someone found the keys to the cars, which they started loading up with everything they could find. Morgan took a step back as he saw a man carrying a box of dynamite.

One of the raiders motioned for them to move. The group was retreating back toward the road. They were starting the cars, too, filled with supplies and the slaves that were least able to walk.

“Where are they taking us?” Morgan asked Yolande as they moved along at gunpoint.

“I don't know. But at least we are alive. For now.”