The Turn Series Box Set

by Andrew Clawson

  Tonight marked a chance for Juma to settle an old score – and to rescue Leda and make himself a new life.

  On the outskirts of Mwanza’s business district, a no-man’s land of forgotten buildings and empty lots offered the anonymity certain people preferred. Here, tenements and ramshackle homes had popped up on empty land, far enough from the eye of the police that men like Juma had little to fear.

  Moonlight glinted on a shard of broken glass; a dog’s cries echoed down the street. Silence rode on dead air, with no cool breezes to wick sweat from a man’s face. Most of Mwanza’s sensible inhabitants locked their doors and waited for morning, as this time belonged to another type of citizen. And tonight, they gathered with Juma Cheyo, plotting to upend it all.

  Beyond the desolate stretch of the struggling and downtrodden, the warehouse district waited. Here, goods were stacked to the ceiling, imports and exports alike, waiting to be converted into cash. In this part of town, the old guard held sway, gangsters controlling the flow of money from their strongholds. One rusted building, three stories of corrugated metal built like an airplane hangar, was the target of Juma’s assault and the gateway to his dreams.

  “Do you all have ammunition?” Juma asked his men. They were in the storehouse, a smaller dilapidated building adjacent to their armory. His men nodded. “We will review the plan again.” Chatter ceased as word spread, and twenty men lining the walls went still, their eyes on him.

  “Gather in your teams.” Juma waited as his men shuffled around into three groups. “Team leaders.” A trio of men stepped forward. “I am counting on you. Team one attacks through the main gate. The bicycle messenger will deliver two packages at the gate, and I will trigger the bombs as soon as they are inside the perimeter.” Juma looked to the other two leaders. “The explosions are your signal to attack. Team two will come from the back side of the warehouse, and team three from the east. Both of you have selected a demolition man?” The two leaders nodded. “To the front.”

  In response, two of the smallest men stepped forward, chests out and eyes up. “The delivery will happen at ten o’clock,” Juma said. “You have until then to get the explosives in place. When I trigger the package bombs, detonate your devices to create a hole through the perimeter fence. We will overwhelm the enemy from all sides.” Murmurs of understanding sounded. “There is a woman inside. The only woman. She is not to be harmed. Do you understand?” They all did. “Check your weapons. Make no sound as we move.” As the men readied, Juma took deep breaths, to no effect. His heart still pounded, and his hands shook. Destroying his enemy was the objective. To do this, he was forced to put Leda in harm’s way. She must stay safe. Juma closed his eyes and mouthed a prayer to gods he didn’t believe in.

  Juma stood just inside the closed front door of his small building. Every sound seemed amplified. The metallic rattle of clips locking in and safeties clicking on, deep breaths, mumbled curses and prayers, it all boomed like gunfire in the hot air. He gritted his teeth and led them out, each team taking its designated path to the enemy’s warehouse. Lit windows dotted the buildings they passed like accusatory eyes. Lonely streetlights flickered above, casting a haze through which they slipped, hugging the shadows.

  Around a final corner, the warehouses came into view. The one Juma sought stood hidden among the others, tucked up against a shallow, fetid stream in which chunks of garbage and refuse outnumbered the fish fifty to one. Past a handful of deserted buildings with boarded windows and graffiti-clad walls, and Juma paused, his men thudding to a halt behind him. Their target waited across the broken pavement.

  “Teams two and three, report.” The radio in his ear squawked softly; everybody was ready. “Move as soon as I detonate the packages. Put your armbands on, and do not use the radio again.”

  He motioned to his team, and each man slipped on a fluorescent yellow armband. When the bullets started flying in such tight quarters, it wouldn’t do any good to take men down with friendly fire. Blazing yellow covered each team member’s entire right forearm, one way to separate the good guys from the bad. With his own armband secure, Juma hugged the wall at his back and leaned around the corner.

  Streetlights dotted the metal fence, ten feet high along each side abutting the river, topped with rows of razor wire. Two guards stood well back from the locked front gate, leaning against the actual warehouse, a pair of orange dots glowing as they smoked in silence. Bay windows along the building’s top floor offered weak yellow light, though no shadows moved inside. According to Leda, there were ten other men inside, not including the man holding sway over this network of killers. The man who had moved quickly and filled the power vacuum created when his boss died.

  No one moved as a distant squeaking sound grew louder, drawing closer. Right on time. A ragged bicycle whizzed around the corner, its rusted wheels protesting with every turn. Shadowy behind the flickering headlight mounted atop the handlebars, a teenage bag of skin and bones threw his weight backward on the pedals and skidded to a halt directly outside the warehouse’s front gate.

  “Delivery,” he said, shouting in Swahili.

  Sweat dribbled down Juma’s face, one salty drop catching on the corner of his lips. Don’t just stand there. Come and get the packages.

  Several heartbeats passed, and the guards didn’t move. The boy shouted again, rattling the front gate. Then the orange dots fell to the dirt. Two shadows turned solid as the guards walked out, rifles still slung across their chests.

  “Who is it for?” one asked.

  “Don’t know,” the boy said. “I can’t read.” Given the thirty percent literacy rate in Tanzania, that explanation should hold up. “It is my last stop. Come and sign for it or I do not get paid.”

  Don’t let him starve. He’s just a kid.

  A key turned in the big lock, then one guard reached out for the boxes, checking and seeing his boss’s name scrawled on the front. As the guard tossed one box to his mate, the kid held out a clipboard and pen, grabbing it as soon as the guard stopped writing and pedaling away like mad, his shouted thanks chasing him down the street. Exactly like I told him. Good boy.

  Smart, too, since Juma wouldn’t have held back if the kid had hung around. Those bombs went off one way or another. As the gate swung shut, Juma pulled out his cell phone.

  An identical phone hidden in each box waited for his call. It probably lit up, maybe even rang, but Juma didn’t know. The only thing he knew for sure is that when he pressed Send, nothing happened.

  No fire, no noise, nothing. Just the gate screeching as it closed.

  “Come on,” one guard said, headed into the warehouse with the package. “These might be important.”

  No. This can’t be. He mashed the button again. They’d tested the phones over and over, checked the service in the area.

  “Damn thing’s stuck,” the other guard said, slipping the package under one arm as he fought with the swinging gate. “It won’t—”

  The package exploded, night turning to day as the front gate blew outward, ripped from its hinges.

  The closest guard vanished in a maelstrom of fire and smoke. “Go,” Juma shouted, racing toward the open gates, one completely gone and the other hanging askew. He was halfway across the street when two more blasts roared around the warehouse, explosions ripping the surrounding fence. His men raced through the broken metal barrier, guns flashing as the first wave of defenders burst outside through the flames and smoke; each of them was cut down in a flash.

  A body lay crumpled in the warehouse’s front door, jamming it open, and Juma darted through, ducking and rolling to one side. The man behind him didn’t roll and caught a chest full of buckshot for his trouble. Scrambling behind an empty crate, Juma surveyed the interior, a weak yellow light washing over the sea of concrete.

  Enemy guards ran in all directions, some firing, some hiding. Too many to count, but more than he’d been told. At least thirty, maybe more. In disarray now, but once they gathered themselves, they could be mo
re than enough to take out his twenty men, half of whom were armed with only pistols.

  Fire spat from his own Kalashnikov and two enemies went down. Two more turned his way, firing blindly as they ran for cover. Dodging across an open aisle, Juma dove for an overturned table as bullets pinged off the ground, concrete chips biting his ankles. He glanced up at the men on the walkways above, men who according to Leda should have been drunk at their posts. Behind him, his own men were now being cut down left and right, picked off by the enemy from above.

  Boxes and cartons lined the warehouse walls, offering cover as he skirted the battle, looping behind the enemy toward an unmanned staircase leading to the walkways. Bullets sparked off the metal grating ahead, his men firing as they searched for cover from the attack.

  Time to even the odds. Flipping his rifle to full auto, Juma took aim and ran up the stairs, the enemy soldiers above falling under his rapid fire. As he gained the top level a shot whistled past his ear from below, but the bullets stopped when he flashed his yellow armband. He kept shooting as more enemy soldiers went down, now taking fire from two sides.

  As he ejected an empty magazine a flash of movement in a tiny room beside him caught his eye. The guards were to have been passed out drunk, but one guy was awake now, and was on his feet, weaving back and forth with his gun aimed at Juma.

  The gun flashed, and hot pain ripped through Juma’s shoulder as the bullet twisted him around. He grabbed a metal rail an instant before he fell off the edge, which left him dangling from the walkway, one injured arm hanging uselessly at his side, his rifle gone.

  And a drunken enemy soldier rushing out from the room above.

  Better a broken leg than a bullet. A desk waited underneath him, one body sprawled across it and two more on the ground. Swinging with all his strength, he aimed for it, hoping for a miss from above as he let go and hurtled through the air. The desk collapsed when he hit it; grimacing, he tucked and rolled to somehow come up on his feet directly under the walkway – where he looked up into a gun barrel. Aw, shit.

  Clutching his wounded shoulder, he ducked to one side just as the man overhead jumped. Or tumbled, rather, spinning like a rag doll to land head first.

  The drunken soldier must have tripped as he stumbled out and plunged over the guard rail. He lay on the concrete now, his neck bent at a most unnatural angle.

  “I’ll take this,” Juma said, grabbing for the gun. Only his hand didn’t work any longer. Damn. Blood coated his shoulder from a deep, ragged cut. His non-shooting arm, but still.

  Gunfire demanded his attention, and Juma turned to find bodies sprawled across the floor, men staring with unseeing eyes. Two more combatants went down as the battle raged, still firing as they fell.

  Shadows flashed by the front door. Three men running for it, none with yellow armbands. Juma went still as the last man passed. It was him. The man who’d taken Leda.

  “Not today.” Juma ran for the door, stomping over corpses and injured enemy soldiers; a few screamed in protest. On one side, his men had a group of the enemy pinned down and seemed to have upped their firepower during the fight. Automatic weapons chattered, though no one fired his way as he ran toward the door. If that man got away, tonight meant nothing. He’d regroup, find a way to come back and keep fighting. If that happened, Juma’s life wasn’t worth the spit on his sandpaper tongue right now.

  He pressed against the warehouse wall and looked through the open front door. Nothing waited outside; moonlight painted the patchy grass. He slipped out, going still when he heard a whispered conversation in frantic Swahili. Juma waited, then moved along the exterior wall. Where was it coming from? More words, this time near the destroyed gate, and a moment later three shadows appeared in the gloom, thirty feet ahead.

  Juma lifted his pistol and took aim. Two shots flashed, and two men went down as their leader aimed his Kalashnikov at Juma. Bullets whistled by, sending Juma backpedaling, firing as he stumbled. A piece of tangled metal caught his heel and he tumbled back, landing in the dirt as his pistol flew out of reach.

  Shots smacked the ground inches from his face, dirt clods flying as Juma rolled. He lay prone on the ground as the other man came back through the gate with his gun leading the way. The man stopped and fired another shot, though this one landed further from Juma than the first one.

  He doesn’t know where I am.

  Juma scarcely dared move his eyes. How can’t he see me? The fence lights – that was it. The bomb had taken them out. He’d landed in a dark spot, pools of light spreading on either side of him cast by the remaining lights.

  This cover wouldn’t last long, he knew. Sporadic shooting came from inside the warehouse, though it was anyone’s guess who now held the upper hand. Right now, Juma didn’t care. Getting out of this alive had his full attention. And he had to do it without a gun.

  Moving with exaggerated care, the man came closer. Another step, and he stumbled, cursing as he tripped on a rock. No, not a rock. Something that sounded soft, almost hollow. Something big and square.

  The other package. The bomb that hadn’t exploded.

  Please be here, please be here. Juma reached into his pocket and found it. The cell phone detonator. The phone his bombmaker warned might still have spotty service out this far. Shaking fingers found the Send button. Juma clenched his teeth and pressed it.

  Nothing. More buttons mashed, and still nothing happened. Other than the phone lighting up like a Christmas tree, each button glowing green. The other man looked toward the light. As Juma rushed to cover the glow, something about the phone struck him.

  It was upside down. Which meant that whatever buttons he’d pushed, Send wasn’t one of them.

  A gunshot ripped the air, grains of dirt peppering his face. Juma rolled away and punched the bottom button. Orange light filled the horizon, his own body suddenly weightless, the ground and sky flipping around as he twisted through the air, crashing back to earth as everything went dark.

  “Hey, boss.” Someone smacked his cheek, intruding on the deep, dark nothing where Juma just wanted to sleep. He tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. His tongue felt two sizes too big. “Boss, you awake?” Another smack, harder this time. A dozen suns blinded him from above, fluttering in and out of sight. His eyelids felt like manhole covers being pulled open.

  He sat up slowly. “Where is he?” Bad idea, sitting up at all. He felt light-headed; the figures in front of him went blurry.

  “Easy, boss. You lucky you alive.” Strong hands grabbed his shoulder, steadying him. “Drink this.” Juma took the proffered cup and swallowed, spitting and sputtering before some of the cool liquid went down his throat, the rest soaking his chest and face. A few deep breaths of cold air and he felt better. Well, at least like a man who’d nearly been blown up and lived to tell about it.

  Sitting in the warehouse, he stretched and moved, finding all fingers and toes in working order. Upon closer inspection, the bullet had mostly grazed his shoulder. It stung like hell, had bled a lot, but he’d be fine. All in all, it was a minor miracle given what had happened. Although he wasn’t too sure what had happened. At least he recognized most of the faces looking down at him. “How did I get in here?”

  “The second bomb went off,” one man said, gesturing toward the door. Juma realized it was the supposed bomb expert talking. “Did you detonate it?”

  “Yes, no thanks to that cell service.”

  The man shrugged. “I warned you.”

  “I know. But it finally worked. Lucky for me.”

  “Not lucky for the enemy,” another man said, earning a round of shouted cheers. “They sorry they mess with us tonight.”

  “What about Leda?”

  The man frowned. “Who is Leda?”

  Juma clenched his teeth. Damn. Didn’t mean to say her name. “The woman. Where is she?”

  “Back there.” His man pointed across the warehouse. “She hit her head during the battle. But she will be okay.”

  Juma sho
ved the man aside, tried to get up and fell back on his rear end.

  “You must rest,” his man said. “And we have a problem.” Now he pointed behind Juma. “Not all of the enemy are dead. We caught these men trying to escape.” A half-dozen bloody and bruised men were brought out to face him, hands bound as rifles prodded them forward. “You want us to kill them?”

  Juma studied the bedraggled crew. He should kill them. That’s what happened in war. Each man here had chosen sides, and these six had chosen poorly. So yes, they needed to die.

  Juma blinked, rubbing grit from his face. So many dead. His own soldiers, the backbone of this power grab. A backbone that had been decimated in the battle. Gaining his feet, he studied the captives. Most of them were standing with their eyes downcast, a few tears mixing with the sweat. Except for one. A younger man, no more than a teenager really, who held his gaze and didn’t flinch. Juma recognized that look, saw behind the pain behind the hate. He knew it, because he had the same look every day. A hunger for life. The hunger to just make it one more day.

  Now that, that he could use.

  “No. Not yet.” No need to show weakness, not with all eyes on him. “What’s your name?”

  The lone captive held his gaze. The eyes staring back weren’t so much for seeing any longer. They offered a reflection in which Juma saw confusion, and if he looked hard enough, the future.

  “Manny.”

  “Do you know who I am?” Manny’s head wiggled back and forth. “My name is Juma. This is my warehouse you are standing in. And Mwanza, this is my town. Do you agree?”

  Tons of sheet metal creaked all around them. As the young man stared back with those unblinking, wise eyes, Juma let the silence stretch on until the other men began shifting around, unable to stay still.