Havoc - v4 (7 page)

After another couple of minutes Cali pushed back to a sitting position, her lower lip quivering slightly. “We’re wrong.”

“You can’t be sure.”

She composed herself and gave him a wry smile while mimicking Caribe Dayce’s voice. “You can’t spread optimism in Africa.” She looked at him levelly. “If there really is a UN force out there, they’ll wait until after sundown to attack. That’s what I would do in their position, making it a bit late for us.”

Her easy grasp of military tactics was at odds with what she’d told him about herself. Again Mercer wondered if she’d been in the military. “Who are you?”

“I told you. I’m with the CDC.”

“And before that how long were you in the army?”

“What makes you think…”

“No one who hasn’t seen combat is as calm as you.”

She looked away. “I was captured by Sunni insurgents in Baghdad in 2005. They couldn’t pull a Jessica Lynch for me because no one knew I was missing.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Medic in the National Guard. I got separated from my unit just before they ran into an ambush. It took three days for our guys to recover our Humvee and realize mine wasn’t one of the four burned bodies. Another five days passed before Special Forces got me out.”

Mercer was about to ask why the media never picked up the story, but he stopped himself. He imagined that military censors quashed it. The reasons would forever be locked in a file someplace and in her heart.

A tense silence filled the hut. Even the village had gone quiet.

“I wasn’t raped,” Cali said softly after a minute.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said I wasn’t raped. I just wanted you to know. I’m scared shitless right now but the Iraqis didn’t touch me and I’m relieved that Dayce’s men won’t get to me either.”

“I’m grateful for that too,” was all Mercer could think to say.

Although it put his wrist in an awkward position, he reached out as much as the binds would allow and took Cali’s hand. She returned the grip and together they waited for a rescue that seemed less likely with each passing second.

A half hour before the sun set on the overcast day, the final flicker of hope vanished when the white soldier they had seen crossing the camp suddenly stepped into the hut. In the glow of the lantern he carried, they could see he was as large as Caribe Dayce and equally muscled. His features were Eastern European, with thinning blond hair and thick, slack lips. One of his eyes was hidden by a black patch that couldn’t cover all of a scar that ran from his temple to his nose. His other eye was watery blue and small, but held dark malevolence. Whatever had taken his eye had damaged the tear ducts because the patch was moist and he wiped at it with a finger absently as he regarded the two prisoners.

Mercer knew the type. He’d even run across a few. The man was Special Forces from the former Warsaw Pact, now turned mercenary. Spurned by the countries who’d trained them to be killers, many elite soldiers had sold their skills on the open market. While Western governments concentrated on keeping Russian nuclear scientists from trading their skills with terror organizations, ranks of highly specialized soldiers had gone to the very same terror groups to train the next generation of fighters. While the fear of a nuclear device falling into the wrong hands was very real, a perhaps more immediate threat was thousands of fundamentalists with skills rivaling the best Special Force troops in the world.

Caribe Dayce entered the room and slapped the mercenary on the shoulder. The man whirled. Dayce recoiled. He had an army of soldiers at his command, a reputation of brutal savagery, and the confidence that came from his huge size, and still he feared the mercenary.

“What have they told you?” The mercenary’s accent was thick, Slavic or Russian, and his voice was as deep as Dayce’s.

“There is nothing they can tell us,” the rebel leader said with a touch of deference. “We will find what we find, as I said.”

“I do not like that they are here when we arrived.”

“I don’t either, Poli,” Dayce agreed. “My men saw them enter just before the attack. Whatever they learned will die with them here.”

“We do not know who sent them.”

“They are American. It must be the CIA.”

The mercenary looked Mercer up and down, then gave Cali the same scrutiny. He didn’t appear impressed by what he saw. “I do not think they are CIA.”

“Then torture us and find out, you stupid son of a bitch.” Cali’s outburst startled all three men. Mercer tightened his grip on her hand to steady her, but she continued. “Jam bamboo shoots under our nails. Cover us in hot coals. Do whatever you want. In the end you will know that I work for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and Mercer is here on behalf of the UN. In case it escaped you, your little revolution has caused a humanitarian crisis that has killed God knows, no
you
know, how many people, and forced thousands to flee their homes.”

Poli regarded her for a moment as Cali struggled to get her breathing under control. He said nothing and backed from the rondavel. Dayce followed him out and a moment later four teenage guerillas stormed into the hut. Since Dayce’s pronouncement earlier, Mercer and Cali had known this was coming, but now the moment of reckoning was here. Cali screamed and Mercer struggled to his feet. He kicked the gun from one rebel’s arms and threw himself bodily at a second, knocking the skinny youth to the ground and landing on him with his full force. The teen’s breath exploded in Mercer’s face, a rank combination of stale liquor and rancid meat. Mercer head-butted him to keep him down and was just getting his legs untangled from the youth’s when a third soldier rammed the stock of his AK-47 into his kidney.

Mercer recoiled from the strike, searing agony radiating from the blow. The guerilla tried to repeat the attack. Mercer managed to roll enough so the wooden butt slammed into the back of his thigh, deadening his leg. He continued to roll as the soldier rained blows, swinging the assault rifle like a club. Mercer came up against the hut’s wall and frantically tried to kick his way through. It was a test of endurance between the rondavel’s rickety walls and his ability to absorb punishment, but as fate would have it the wall was the hut’s strongest, and a particularly sharp blow to the back of his head knocked Mercer momentarily unconscious.

The rebel clubbed Mercer once more for good measure, then he and his partner hauled him to his feet. Cali had been subdued in the first seconds of the melee with a rifle butt to her lower abdomen that nearly ruptured her bladder.

They were both dragged outside, where several excited soldiers waited in the village’s central clearing. Only two huts remained; the rest were smoldering piles of ash. A short line of men waited outside the second hut. They joked with each other with nervous gibes and toothy grins as they waited their turn with whoever was alive inside.

Two wooden poles had been rammed into the loamy soil behind an odd stone pillar. Mercer was dimly aware of the strange column’s size, about seven feet, and how it was shaped like an obelisk, before he was turned and thrust up against one of the poles. Cali fell as she was pushed against the second one. A rebel hauled her to her feet while another tied her bound wrists to the pole. Mercer tried to fight off his two guards but was eventually secured as well.

Dayce ambled over to them, examining the glowing tip of his cigar in the fading light. There was no sign of the mercenary.

“Any last requests? Sorry but I can’t spare one of my cigars. Maybe one of my men will give you a cigarette instead.”

“General Dayce,” Mercer began. He was about to beg for their lives and he stopped himself. Dayce’s bemused expression showed he’d been in this position countless times and enjoyed the entreaties for mercy. Mercer wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. If he was going to die, he wanted it at least partially on his terms. “I want to give the order to fire.”

Dayce’s expression changed slightly. He nodded and gave a deep, barking laugh. “You are a man, I see. I respect that.” He shouted to the four men milling a short distance off. The firing squad. One of them gave Mercer a thumbs-up gesture.

“I’m no man,” Mercer said. “Not like you think.”

Dayce patted Mercer’s cheek.

“In that case, die well, No Man.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Cali whispered as Dayce moved off to form up his troops.

“When the shooting starts, drop to your butt.”

“What?”

“Do it.”

“Think we can dodge the bullets like in that
Matrix
movie?”

“You never know.”

The four troopers had formed their firing line. Caribe Dayce stood to their right and slightly behind. He had his big pistol in hand to administer the coup de grâce. Poli, the mercenary, stood a dozen or so yards behind them, idly wiping a tear from under his eye patch.

“Make your count.”

The men held their weapons low at their waists, their eyes bright with the prospect of killing two more people. Mercer glanced at Cali’s profile. Her face was rigid while her chest heaved. “Mercer,” she cried softly. “I don’t want to die.”

“Drop to the ground like I said.” Mercer looked beyond the firing squad, even beyond the mercenary, where shadows played at the edge of the jungle.

“Make your count, No Man, or I will do it for you.”

As loudly and with as much authority as he could muster, Mercer shouted, “At the ready!”

In unison, four Kalashnikovs snapped to port arms. All around them the rebels watched the proceedings with fascination. Most of them had left their weapons outside the hut they used to rape any of the women they’d captured.

Cali began to whimper.

Mercer waited as long as he dared, never taking his attention off Dayce, judging the man’s impatience to the second. Just as the guerilla was about to speak, Mercer whispered to Cali, “Don’t forget what I said.” Then, tensed for the inevitable, he shouted, “Take your aim!”

Guns came up to shoulders, the men settling into their stances as their fingers sought triggers. Mercer flicked his eyes to the jungle perimeter, then back to Dayce. He opened his mouth wide to fill his lungs.

Fire erupted from all quarters of the jungle. The four men making up the firing squad were scythed down like wheat. Caribe Dayce was stitched from thigh to head from two different directions, his body exploding under the onslaught. The men who’d preferred to keep their place in line at the hut rather than enjoy a ringside seat at the execution were taken at the same instant, shot through the head with a pistol by a figure dressed in black who had materialized behind them. The assassin slipped into the hut and two more shots rang out.

Any of the rebels holding weapons were targeted next. One managed to counterfire and was gunned down with half his neck vanishing in a gout of blood. Next came any soldier who made for his rifle. Some dropped to the ground to crawl to the cache while others ran doubled over. It didn’t matter. The unseen gunmen found their marks and the guerillas died. Those that tried to flee into the jungle were shot in the back. Those that turned to beg for mercy were shot in the front.

At the instant of attack, Poli was far enough from the mass of rebel soldiers to escape immediate detection. Rather than run and draw attention to himself, he eased to the ground and edged toward the river embankment, crawling so slowly that in the fading light he looked like nothing more than a faint breeze blowing through the undergrowth. When he reached the steep hill, he slowly rolled over the precipice and slid down the unprotected face, keeping his arms and legs spread to maintain a slow pace. He allowed himself to roll into the water without making a splash, filled his lungs with as much air as his powerful chest could hold, then struck out underwater for the far shore.

He surfaced near a felled tree and drew himself from the water with the patience of a crocodile stalking a shore animal. Despite his exposure, he crawled slowly and steadily, knowing a sniper with a night scope could easily pick him off. But he reached the top of the escarpment and faded into the jungle. By the time the firing in the village stopped, he was a half mile away and eating ground with every pace.

Mercer hadn’t told Cali about seeing the shadowy figures encircling the village, because he wasn’t sure if he’d really seen them himself. They were like wraiths, hints of movement rather than solid form. He hadn’t wanted to give her false hope again. His whole charade about wanting to give the command to fire was his way of helping his rescuers if they really existed.

As soon as the first rounds raked the firing squad, he dropped to his backside and leaned as far over as he could, trying to present as small a target as possible. He couldn’t shout to Cali over the din of automatic fire but he saw she had followed his lead. She’d even managed to flatten herself to the ground using some double-jointed maneuver.

The one-sided firefight lasted less than five minutes, dwindling to silence as the unknown force picked off the last of the rebels who’d fled into the night. In all, one hundred and forty-eight well-armed guerillas had been massacred. The mysterious attackers had done what neither the Central African Republic’s army nor the UN had been able to do.

When it was over Mercer stood on shaky legs. He’d hoped for this but the aftermath left him drained. Cali didn’t bother to stand. She lay back against her pole, her eyes shut.

“You knew they were out there?” she finally asked.

“I suspected.”

“You weren’t going to tell me?”

“I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

“You’re right. I would have thought it was a lame attempt at being gallant, and I would have died thinking you were a misogynist jerk.”

“And now?”

She finally looked over. “Well, you’re not a misogynist.” And then she rewarded him with a tired smile.

A few seconds later Mercer felt someone behind him. He stiffened before feeling a knife slice through the ropes securing his wrists. When he tried to turn to face his rescuer, strong hands clamped the sides of his head.

“Do not turn around.” The voice was pitched low and expressionless, as if masking an accent. Keys rattled next to Mercer’s ear. “These were in Dayce’s pocket. The two men he sent to search for your vehicle have been dispatched. Take your woman and go. Never return here.” The man thrust the keys into Mercer’s hand along with two other items. “You dropped these.” It was the canteen and the necklace made from the bullet that the old woman had worn.