WAR: Opposition: (WAR Book 3) (3 page)

Hands shaking, she lowered her backpack to the ground and yanked out a hunter green scarf. While a little voice inside her head frantically chanted at her to hurry up, she hastily wrapped the scarf around her face and head both to hide her wild mass of blonde hair, and to protect her nose and mouth from the blowing sand. Her light pink top would be a beacon for the rebels, so she tore it off and shoved her arms into the sleeves of a dark blue shirt. Then she grabbed the hem of her skirt and tucked it into her waistband to give her more movement without exposing all of her white legs that would be a beacon against the darker rocks.

The shouts from the rebels drew closer. Kirra shouldered her pack and peered through a gap in the wall of rocks. A group of rebels stood on the sand near the spot where she’d entered the rocks. One man directed a group of six to search in her direction, then motioned for another half dozen to head in the opposite direction.

Kirra eased back into the shadowed recess, then turned silently and hurried through the rocks. With so many potential hiding places, it would take them a long time to complete a full search.

She hoped.

Plus, the tide was coming in. Soon it would completely submerge the few spots between the rocks where she’d been forced to set her foot down on sand, hiding her trail.

A fierce gust of wind ripped the scarf away from the lower half of her face. She grabbed it before it could break completely free and repositioned it, tucking it more securely. A quick check out to sea showed fast approaching clouds blotting out the sunset.

Maybe the storm would drive the rebels away.

She moved toward a curve of rocks that formed a finger jutting several meters into the ocean. Okay. It appeared as if there might be a—

Her foot slipped. She barely bit back her scream as she fell between the rocks, landing in an uncomfortable sprawl with her ankle wedged between two lower rocks.

Her pulse raced. Kirra attempted to calm her choppy breathing as she glanced around to make certain none of the rebels were within sight. As she completed her visual scan, a patch of darkness high up on the cliff beneath the road caught her eye. The space had been hidden from view by vegetation, but this angle revealed what might be the opening to a cave.

A dark, enclosed space. Her breath stuttered under a wave of remembered fear and pain. But she had no choice. If she spent the night outside, she’d be at the mercy of the storm and of any rebels who didn’t give up the hunt. Even if she spent the entire night startling at every sound, that would be better than being recaptured by the rebels.

With a gentle tug, she freed her ankle from the rocks. Blood trickled from a scrape across her ankle bone. She swallowed heavily and looked away. Keeping her eyes averted, she gently probed the area with her fingers. When that produced no pain, she stood up. The ankle bore her weight without problem. Brilliant.

A rebel called out to one of his mates, sounding too close for comfort.

Shifting so that she could look between the rocks, she watched the rebels jump onto the sand at the opposite end of this section of beach. She cursed under her breath, then spun around and quickly slipped through the rocks. Her pulse pounded, partly in fear but partly in excitement. Except for the whole life-and-death thing, this wasn’t any different from when she and Kyle had hidden from Dev as kids.

Careful to step only on rocks, she hurried toward the base of the cliff, then scrambled up the rocky incline, using the rocks and bushes as cover. As soon as she passed the water line, she shoved her backpack into the gap between two waist-high rocks.

Crouched behind the rocks, she watched the progress of the rebels. Once she’d determined that they weren’t looking in her direction, she grabbed her torch from the outside pocket of her pack, then quickly climbed up to the next ledge of the cliff.

She eased herself over the rim, flattened herself on her belly behind a thin line of bushes, and watched the rebels draw nearer. She hadn’t had time to cover her tracks up this path, but she’d mostly kept to the rocks. With the failing light, she hoped the rebels wouldn’t spot the few, faint tracks she’d left. The steady wind aided her by tossing sand over her trail.

One of the rebels pulled out a pair of binoculars.

Kirra pressed her cheek harder against the rock and slitted her eyes.

The rebel scanned the rocks, sliding past her location.

She let out the breath she’d been holding.

The rebel slowly quartered the area again. This time he paused his search just below Kirra’s hiding spot. Had he somehow spotted her backpack? She’d thought she’d hidden it better than that.

Her mind raced with possibilities. If the rebel discovered her, she’d have to bolt for the top of the cliff. The few rocks and bushes wouldn’t offer much cover, but they might confuse watching eyes enough to allow her to reach the road. She had no way to tell if rebels also patrolled the road along this section of the beach, but she’d deal with that when she reached the top.

She shifted her weight, ready to run.

Down below, one of the other rebels spoke to the man with the binoculars and gestured toward the cliff. The rebel raised his binoculars a fraction.

He’d spot her in a second.

She took a deep breath to oxygenate her muscles. Her senses went into overdrive, sifting through sights and sounds for any threats.

The rebel shook his head and lowered the binoculars.

Kirra remained still and tense as the rebel and his teammates searched the rocks below her. Water now covered half the beach. Thanks to the storm clouds, dusk had already fallen. A few of the rebels pulled out torches, shining them in between the rocks.

Kirra’s attention bounced between the rebels and the place where she’d hid her pack. She calculated distances and the probability that the rebels would climb up that far. To have caught up with her this quickly, they must have conducted only a cursory search of the rocks along the other beaches. Hopefully, they’d soon give up this search, as well.

Unless additional rebels had joined the search and were combing the other beach. Damn. She wished she could see back to where she’d entered, but the contours of the coastline hid that area from sight.

A gust of wind peppered her with precursor raindrops.

Come on. Come on. Rain, already. Drive the rebels away.

S
purred by panic
, Dev pushed his Jeep to its limits. The dark storm clouds building over the ocean turned the sunset into a brilliant display of purple, pink, and orange—a physical representation of the tension riding him.

Kirra’s bus had never reached the way station. The agent there had shrugged when he gave Dev the news, and waved to the vendors sprawled around the small lorry park waiting to offer their wares to the passengers. “Sometimes, the passengers demand that the bus make an unauthorized stop to buy food or relieve themselves,” the agent had explained. “It will come when it will come.”

Dev’s gut didn’t buy that. So he’d jumped back in his Jeep and headed in search of the missing bus. He spotted official vehicles blocking the road ahead and his concern spiked into alarm.

He brought the Jeep to a screeching halt a hundred meters away from the roadblock. The muted sunset light did nothing to soften the blow of seeing police loading body bags into an ambulance.

“No!” He leapt out of the Jeep and raced toward the scene.

A uniformed officer blocked his way. “I’m sorry, sir, this is a crime scene. No one is allowed past this point.”

Dev looked beyond the ambulance. A repurposed school bus sat in the middle of the road. The front end had been blackened and torn apart by an explosion. Dead bodies lay scattered across the road and in front of the vine-infested building to his left.

“Constable, was that the VTE bus from Cotonou to New Accra?” Dev demanded.

“Yes, sir.”

“My sister was on that bus!” Dev tried to muscle his way past the man.

But the constable had training and determination, and he continued to block Dev. Dammit, he couldn’t risk the political fallout if he assaulted a constable of the law. WAR already struggled to get cooperation from law enforcement. But he had to know what had happened to Kirra.

Dev noticed a man wearing the insignia of a sergeant and motioned for the man to join them. The man took his time approaching, then gave Dev a thorough visual check. His raised brows indicated that he was less than impressed.

Ja,
okay, Dev still wore only board shorts and surf shoes, so he didn’t look like a highly trained operator. But maybe that would work to his advantage here.

“Is there a problem?” the sergeant asked.

“Yes, sir,” Dev said with as much respect as he could muster given the urgency riding him. “My sister was on that bus and I need to know if she’s among the dead.”

The sergeant glanced back at the scene. “We have found no white people,” he said.

Tension slipped from Dev’s shoulders.

“All of the bodies are African,” the sergeant continued.

Dev didn’t point out that technically he and Kirra were also African.

“But if there was a white woman on board, it might explain why there are no survivors,” the sergeant added.

Shit. “Was this a rebel attack?”

The sergeant shrugged. “We have no witnesses. But it seems likely, yes.”

Dammit. He was going to wring Kirra’s neck when he found her. Hadn’t she realized that her very presence would put all the other passengers at risk? Clearly, despite her claims that she’d matured, she still didn’t have the common sense God gave a turtle.

“Now, sir, we need you to please move back so that the coroner’s van may enter.”

Dev stepped to the side and let the vehicle go by. The sergeant followed in the van’s wake.

“I promise not to cross into the crime scene,” Dev told the constable, who was still blocking his path.

The constable gave him a sharp look, then nodded and went back to his post. After a few moments, his attention stopped straying toward Dev, so Dev moved slightly to the side where he could better see the action.

Dev studied as much of the scene as he could from his vantage point, cursing the fact that his sat phone didn’t have a camera. Since he’d planned to spend his vacation either on the water or sleeping, he hadn’t bothered to bring a regular camera with him.

When the constable continued to ignore him, Dev inched round the perimeter of the crime scene, studying the details and trying to reenact what had happened, while staying out of the line of sight of the officers. Local law enforcement tended to be split in their opinions of WAR, so he couldn’t risk having these men guess he was anything more than a frantic brother.

Most of the victims appeared to have been shot execution style in the back of the head. Personal possessions covered the ground in uneven piles. Suitcases and purses had been emptied of their contents and their linings ripped out.

So this hadn’t been a random attack with the intent of burglary or intimidation. The rebels had been searching for something.

Which meant that it was possible they’d taken hostages. Including Kirra.

Icy fingers squeezed his heart. He knew he should have been keeping a closer watch on her. But with his switch from South Africa’s special forces to WAR, and his team at WAR running round putting out fires, he hadn’t had time to keep in touch.

His team’s schedule had also provided an excuse to avoid the chaos that inevitably surrounded Kirra. Although, right now he’d gladly endure a shit storm of turmoil if it meant he could hold his sister and know that she was okay.

He walked along the length of the bus. Just beyond the rear wheel, a glimmer of white next to a burnt cell phone caught his attention. Waiting until the police were all looking elsewhere, he darted forward and picked it up. The heat had separated the phone’s screen from its interior, and most of the protective case had burned away. A quick rub against his leg cleared the worst of the soot, revealing what had once been a white case with black musical notes.

Sounds dimmed. His hand trembled. This had been his Christmas gift to Kirra.

Not caring that he was removing evidence, Dev slipped the phone into his pocket. Then he simply stood in place for a moment while he wrestled his fear under control.

Don’t jump to conclusions. You don’t know that the rebels have her. This only proves that she was here.

Once he could think again, he headed to the back of the building. A dead man lay face down not far from the building. From the position of the body, the man had been heading away from the bus. He must have either attempted to make a break for it or had been dragged apart from the others. Dev moved closer and knelt down to get a closer look at the man’s face. No one he recognized.

He remained crouched by the body, thinking and studying the scene around him. A dark gap in the wall of the building indicated the previous existence of a door. Farther down, vines partially covered the security bars protecting a window. Dev stood and went to investigate the door. The vines on the outside of the doorframe appeared newly torn, and the weeds between the door and the tall coastal grass had been trampled. So, someone had exited the building and run into the grass. The number of bootprints indicated that the rebels had given chase.

The police hadn’t marked the door as part of the crime scene. After checking that they remained out of sight, Dev stepped inside. The light had fallen enough that he needed his torch to examine the room.

The footprints in the dust indicated the rebels had been here. Along with someone wearing some sort of sandal. A vaguely rectangular shape suggested that there’d been some sort of luggage here also. But what interested him the most was the metal handcuffs dangling from the security bars over the window. There was blood on the bracelets.

That put things into a different perspective. He studied the room again. The rebels had found someone of particular interest among the passengers and secured him or her to the window. But the prisoner had escaped.

God, he hoped it was Kirra, although he had no idea how she would have managed to free herself from the cuffs. Maybe the dead man outside had helped her.

Dev carefully poked around a bit more, but didn’t find anything else of use. He stepped back outside and followed the trail of trampled weeds and grass out to the road, half expecting to find another dead body.

No more corpses. Just empty road.

Dev crossed to the other side and climbed down a fall of rocks onto the beach. After a series of devastating storms two decades ago had eroded kilometers of beach, the local governments had reinforced the coastline with tons of rocks and dirt. This stretch of coastline had been raised several hundred meters to create a cliff where before the beach had run straight to the highway.

Right now, Dev wished the government had been less enthusiastic in its development efforts, because the rocks offered too many hiding places.

The tide was up, leaving only a strip of sand about as wide as his surfboard. Lines of bootprints led both right and left. Damn. The rebels had been out in full force. So who had they been pursuing?

He glanced up and down the beach.

“Dammit, Kirra, where are you?” He had no reason except for stubborn hope to believe that Kirra had eluded the rebels. But if she had escaped, the beach would be a perfect hiding place for her. God knows that as kids, she and Kyle used to drive him crazy hiding in nooks, crannies, and barely safe caves near their home.

Blowing out a breath, Dev decided to start his search to the left, since the beach didn’t extend very far to the right and therefore wouldn’t have appealed to Kirra. He picked his way between the rocks and sand, searching for any clue that his sister had passed this way. “Kirra!” he called. “Kirra, are you here?” But the wind snatched his words away.

Within minutes, the storm clouds blotted out the setting sun and the wind whipped the waves into whitecaps. Thunder rumbled an instant before the skies opened up and dumped a torrent of rain on his head.

Driven by panic, he kept searching even though he could barely see a meter in front of him. He had to find Kirra. What if she was out here, hurt and frightened?

He couldn’t fail her yet again.

“
B
ureh’s faction
needs to be destroyed,” Rio Martinez said into his satellite phone while he watched the cops process the scene of the bus attack. It was a risky move telling his boss, Jonathan Morenga, what to do, but Jesus, if someone didn’t rein in Bureh, his rebels would kill off half the damn region. “They killed every passenger.”

Rio averted his eyes so he didn’t have to watch the coroner load a child-sized body bag onto the wagon. Taking advantage of the shadows thrown by the setting sun and the massing storm clouds, Rio prowled through the crime scene. He’d disguised himself with a police uniform, yet he was careful not to let anyone get a good look at his face. His skin was brown enough to pass as a very light-skinned black African, but his facial features would definitely give him away. Plus, there was always a chance that someone would recognize him as being part of Morenga’s organization.

Spotting a white man slipping around back of the building, Rio mentally cursed, then followed. This was a complication he didn’t need.

“Did they get my diamonds?” Morenga demanded.

And that’s why Morenga had risen to the top of the West African illegal arms trade. His boss possessed a stone-cold attitude when it came to his business deals. Never mind how many innocent people had died here today.

The only time he’d seen his boss show any deep emotion had been after his son had been killed.

Although, come to think of it, Morenga had winced slightly when he’d seen the video of the Hospital Massacre. Video Rio sincerely wished he himself hadn’t watched. Because that had been some seriously sick stuff. Yet while Rio had been horrified by the brutality of the attack against the patients and hospital staff, Morenga’s primary objection had been that the massacre had turned the population against the rebels, weakening their support and forcing them to go underground to avoid the vigilante groups that sprang up.

Rio didn’t want to know what six years of working undercover with such men said about him. He sighed and barely resisted rubbing his eyes. He was so damn tired these days. Yet another sign that he was treading too close to the edge and needed to get out.

But first he had to finish this job. And that meant not pissing off Morenga after spending a year working his way up in the man’s organization until Rio, aka Rick Martin, became second-in-command of Morenga’s security forces.

“I don’t know about the diamonds, boss,” Rio said, keeping far enough back that the white man, who he now recognized as Dev Neilson, second-in-command of one of WAR’s military teams, wouldn’t realize Rio was following him. “There’s no one left to question.”

“What do you know?” his boss demanded.

Uh-oh. Morenga rarely raised his voice, but when his tone turned icy, watch out.

“Your supplier validated the diamonds before handing them off to our courier. The courier completed all but his last check-in, indicating that he had not been followed and that the bag of diamonds had never left his sight.”

“And then?”

“The courier called me to report that he’d been robbed by rebels belonging to Bureh. I told him to go to our safe house, but he never made it. By the time I reached the area, our man was dead and Bureh’s men were chasing the bus to New Accra.”

“Are you certain the thief was on that bus?”

“One hundred percent certain, boss.” Rio turned the corner to see Neilson kneeling by the dead body of the man Rio had hired to steal the bag of uncut diamonds from the courier.

Rio pulled back out of sight as Neilson examined the body.
George, why’d you run, man? You knew better than to draw attention to yourself that way. The rebels love to chase down prey.

But George didn’t answer.

Rio had already searched the body, so he wasn’t concerned about Neilson discovering anything that would tie George to the theft or to Rio.

Neilson stood, then entered the abandoned building. The man wore surf shoes, board shorts, and nothing else, giving him the appearance of a laid-back surfer. In fact, he was a highly trained military operator who Rio didn’t want to compete against to find the diamonds.

Dammit, could this situation possibly get any more complicated?