by Ninie Hammon
A local entrepreneur had a jeep that he normally leased to government officials or businessmen on their way to the oil fields. Even though Omar drove a hard bargain, it was still a lot of money, and the supply Idris had given him was steadily dwindling. Omar kept meticulous track of every pound. He would stretch the tribal’s funds as far as possible, but when the money was gone, the game was over. Without a vehicle, there was no chance at all of finding the girl; with a vehicle, there was very little.
Omar motioned for Idris to follow him and led the way to the inn where they would spend the night before they picked up the jeep to start their search by daylight. They turned the corner and headed down a dusty side street toward a building with a sign high above it. It was a big, red sign with a roaring lion on the bottom: the al Jubari Lodge.
Masapha’s voice was breathy; it was hard to talk when your entire back from the neck to the waist was an agonizing, throbbing wound.
“That day we found Koto, remember?”
Why in the world was Masapha worried about Koto now?
“The kid will be fine,” Ron gasped. He tried to remain perfectly still. It hurt less if he didn’t move. Much of his body now was turning a hideous mixture of blue, black and red from the merciless flogging. The fiery agony throbbed with the rhythm of his heartbeat, and the pain traveled around his rib cage, where the whip had several times wrapped itself around his torso. A sticky pool of gel had formed in the crack of his buttocks with the blood that flowed down from shattered capillaries. His right eyelid was fluttering— the result of the eighth lash, when the tip of the whip came over his shoulder and caught his eye. For the last hour, he had slipped in and out of consciousness, and he had to focus his foggy mind to speak.
“Koto will make it; he’s a survivor.”
What he didn’t say was, I hope the two of us are, too.
“No, I do not mean that...the crucified men...”
Before Masapha could continue, they heard the footsteps of the jailer and the soldier in the hallway. The man with the scarred cheek opened the heavy door and stepped into the cell. Omar’s henchman followed, and the rusty hinges again creaked as the heavy door thudded shut.
Ahkmad understood the psychology of torture. He had learned to inflict serious injury and then withdraw and allow the victim time to suffer, to experience his agony. It was when you returned for the second round that the prisoners always broke. Already in torment, they were willing to bargain away everything they had, do or say whatever you wanted—anything to avoid more pain.
Ron looked at Masapha. His limp body, already lean, looked emaciated from water and blood loss. Now covered with bloody, bruised stripes, the man hanging from the shackles resembled an antelope carcass that had just been field dressed. Ron imagined he probably looked just as bad.
There was a heartbeat of silence before they heard the whip unfurl and make a rustling sound as it uncoiled on the straw-covered floor. The soldier said something to the jailer in Arabic, and the scar-faced man moved from behind Masapha to behind Ron. The heavy whip dragged through the straw, as ominous as a viper snaking its way across the ground.
There was a pause, and Ron was afraid he was going to be sick. He tensed for the blow he knew would come and cringed away from it, tried to melt into the cold, stone wall. Though he tried to stifle it, a whimper escaped his lips.
Suddenly, Masapha cried out in frantic Arabic. Ahkmad stepped up to him and fired questions. Masapha answered each one, a desperate urgency in his voice. They spoke for several minutes. When he was finished, the jailer said something to the soldier. They both laughed. Then the jailer crossed the room to the door, and from a peg on the wall beside the door frame, removed a key. He used it to unlock Masapha’s manacles and then Ron’s. Both men immediately collapsed and curled up beside the wall.
The jailer left, came back with a small bucket of water and placed it in the center of the cell. Neither of the men on the floor had the strength even to crawl to it. He motioned to the soldier and the two of them walked out and locked the door behind them. Ron and Masapha could hear the men’s footsteps retreat down the stone hallway.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Ron spoke. “What did you tell them?” He was sure he knew already. What else could Masapha have said that would have satisfied their tormentors?
“Everything.”
In short, pain-filled sentences, Masapha explained that he had told the men what he and Ron had really done in Sudan, what they had photographed, what had happened to the film, and why they had remained in Kosti.
Well, that’s the ballgame, Ron thought, and the realization sliced pain into him as real as the blows from the whip.
“You do not ask me why I spoke,” Masapha said. “But I will tell you. You could not understand the words of the soldier to the whipping man. He said to forget about the Arab and concentrate on the American. He said Faoud had given instructions to make you talk or kill you.”
Masapha let that sink in for a heartbeat before he said softly. “There are easier ways to die, my friend, than to be beaten to death. And we are going to die.”
Ron looked at Masapha, who lay bleeding in the straw beside him. His mind reeled, stumbled, tried to track what the Arab was saying. But he backed up from the reality of it like a calf from a branding iron.
“I was in such pain, I dreamed about the crucified men,” Masapha continued. “And that is when I remembered. When we were there, you took pictures, a whole roll, then you loaded in another roll in your camera, yes? But only you had shot a few frames, and then we saw Koto and...”
The memory dropped into Ron’s mind with the force of a refrigerator dropping on his head. Those were the last pictures he’d shot! But he didn’t finish the roll so he didn’t unload it! That roll was still in the camera!
“The slave man has that film, and when he sees the pictures, he will know crucified men are not for a magazine of traveling,” Masapha said. “He knows who only would take pictures like that. He is aware who we are or can figure it out.”
Masapha grimaced in pain when he tried to sit up, so he gave up and remained where he was. “Why would this slave man let us live? He will say, ‘Oh, you have tried to destroy me, so now you can go free?’”
Ron said nothing.
“Who will come to rescue us from this death? Even who knows we are here?”
Masapha’s words were like ice picks that jabbed again and again into a smooth, hard, frozen surface, and sent little cracks in all directions.
“We are going to die, my friend. You Americans think the guy always wins who wears the white hat. You do not really yet understand Sudan. It is death here all around. Only you can avoid it for a while, and then it catches you. For that death, it is time now to prepare. I will make peace with Allah; you should make peace with your God.”
Masapha turned on his side to face the wall, in what he hoped was the direction of Mecca. He began to gasp out familiar words, long-ago-memorized phrases. Allah might listen to his prayers; he might not. It was impossible to know. He could only hope that he had done a sufficient number of good things in his life to earn Allah’s favor.
Ron lay where he had fallen, wondering what in the world he ought to do to prepare to die.
Koto had never felt so lost. Not even when he’d escaped from the slave traders and wandered wounded through the bush. He’d been alone then, but he’d been in his own element. He knew how to survive in the wild.
Nothing was familiar here; everything was foreign. As long as Masapha and Ron had been there with him, it had been exciting—the sights and smells of the marketplace, the strange people in odd clothing who spoke languages he didn’t understand. With Masapha to translate, to talk to, to—yes, take care of him!—it was an adventure.
Now, he was alone with no one to understand. He had spent the day in the marketplace. He had listened, searched for his own sound, his language. But he found no one who spoke Lokuta. He was hungry. He’d had nothing to eat since the meal he, Ron an
d Masapha had had the preceding night. And he was frightened, not just for himself, but for the two men who had so quickly become family to him. Out of nowhere, armed men had snatched them up and carried them away. Where? What was happening to them? What would happen to him?
Koto returned to the al Jubari Lodge because it would be night soon and he had nowhere else to go. He squatted in the dirt under the big red sign, put his head in his hands—and even though he’d said he never would again—he began to cry.
Omar had decided to spend the night at the lodge because he had no desire to tangle with the gangs that wandered the streets of Kosti at night. Tomorrow, he and Idris would pick up the jeep he’d leased and begin following the leads his sources had provided.
Three or four men were talking with the lodge owner. Omar had to wait until they finished before he could make arrangements for the night; Idris stood behind him, looking around. That was when he spotted a boy with a bandage on his shoulder. The teenager sat beneath the lodge sign crying.
Omar paid the proprietor and motioned for Idris to accompany him into the building. Idris didn’t follow. Instead, he walked over to where the boy sat with his head in his hands. Omar made it all the way to the door before he noticed Idris wasn’t with him. He turned, called Idris’s name, and motioned “come on” with his hand. Idris shook his head no and pointed to the boy.
Then Idris motioned for Omar to come to him and again pointed to the boy. Idris said something in Dinkan and pointed to the boy a third time. Omar couldn’t speak Idris’s language, but you couldn’t miss the intensity of his tone. And he had come to know the farmer well enough in the weeks they’d spent together to know that the thin black man would not budge from that spot until Omar came.
He stepped out of the doorway with a sigh and wondered why he’d ever allowed himself to be talked into bringing the soft-hearted father with him.
The boy looked up when he sensed Idris in front of him. He saw only kindness in the man’s face, but there was no kindness in the face of the Arab who stalked toward them. Koto began to inch away and glanced quickly from side to side for an escape route.
Idris spoke several phrases to the boy in Dinkan. The boy caught a word or two and replied in Lokuta. Idris was about to try again, when over his shoulder, he heard the gruff voice of the mixed-race mercenary, son of a Lokuta woman.
As soon as Omar spoke, a wave of relief washed over Koto’s face. Omar barked only two words, a callous, “What’s wrong?” That launched Koto into a 10-minute, blow-by-blow description of the raid on his village, his capture, escape, meeting Ron and Masapha, going to the hospital and arriving in Kosti.
Without any understanding of how damning the information could be in the wrong hands, the boy told Omar in detail what Ron and Masapha had done in Sudan and what they were looking for in Kosti.
Then he described what had happened the preceding night, how the men had come in the dark with guns and hauled Ron and Masapha away.
Omar listened intently to the boy’s story. He asked a question or two now and then. His mind raced. An American and an Arab who snooped around the slave trade are kidnapped and hauled away in the middle of the night? You didn’t have to do mental cartwheels to figure out that someone must have gotten wind of what they were doing, someone who didn’t want the light of international scrutiny focused on the slave business. And who might that be?
Omar didn’t care what happened to Koto’s friends, but their abduction provided a great opportunity for the mercenary. The most logical jumping-off point in a search for a slave was a slave trader. Obviously, there was one around here close by, and Omar intended to track him down. The proprietor had likely been bribed when the American and his friend were taken—by whom? Somebody in the lodge or the neighborhood saw the pair hauled away, probably a lot of somebodies. Somebody noticed what kind of vehicle the thugs were driving. Omar was confident that if he waved a few pounds under “somebody’s” nose, he’d get the answers he needed.
Yes, indeed, this chance meeting could provide a wealth of information. Omar intended to be up early in the morning to track it down. He motioned for Idris and the boy to go in ahead of him while he paid the proprietor for Koto’s lodging, too.
Chapter 19
Joak had almost fallen asleep when the door at the front of the room grated open—again. For the third time that evening, the lodgekeeper had admitted more people. Well, he couldn’t let many more in; there were only a few beds left.
Leo had passed out in the bed beside Joak’s even before the sun began to set. He’d been drinking all day, and the high alcohol content of the home-distilled liquor finally hit him. He’d been so drunk when Joak guided him to the inn that he hadn’t even tried to get the two of them private rooms, just staggered into the dormitory and collapsed on one of the bunks.
Joak was furious. If Leo had let him come earlier, they would be asleep upstairs in real beds, not down here on canvas cots crawling with chiggers. Every bite made him more irritable; he hoped when Leo woke up his body was one gigantic itch from head to toe. And he also hoped these were the final travelers the innkeeper let in for the night. Joak wanted quiet, so he could toss and turn in peace.
He squeezed his eyes shut, willed himself to relax again, as someone padded down the aisle and lay down on a bed on the other side of the room. Suddenly, a particularly vicious chigger chomped into his calf, and he rolled over to scratch the spot. That’s when he saw a tall, thin tribal enter the room. Although four candles burned in the wall brackets, Joak couldn’t see his face well. But there was something about him that looked familiar. Joak half sat up on one elbow and peered at the bare-chested black man in the dim light. The thin face with tribal marking scars on his forehead, the bead necklace, the ebony spear. He could swear he had seen this particular tribal somewhere.
Omar came in and made his way down the aisle past Idris and the bed on the other side of the aisle where Koto already had stretched out. The big man located the next available bunk near the end of the row, slid his rifle carefully under it, sat down and pulled off his boots. He took the small leather pouch of Idris’s money out of his backpack and placed it on the mattress beside him, then shoved the pack under the bed beside the rifle.
Joak took no notice of Omar at all; his attention was focused Idris.
The tall tribal leaned his ebony spear against the stucco wall by his assigned bed. He placed the small roll that was his pack under the bed, knelt on his knees beside it for a moment and then stretched out on the canvas mattress.
Joak lay back down, his mind whirring. Where had he seen...? That face? That bead necklace? Where? Oh, forget it! Joak was annoyed that he couldn’t remember, so he resolutely dismissed the tribal from his thoughts and concentrated on going back to sleep. That’s when it clicked. The southern tribal they had scammed upriver. Leo had promised to help him find his daughter and had conned him out of a lot of money!
Joak’s heart began to pound. No use trying to awaken Leo; he was out cold. Joak lay still, didn’t move for half an hour. He gave the African plenty of time to settle into his bed. Then the toothless man in a flowered shirt sat up, got to his feet quietly and limped slowly toward the door. As he did, he swerved by the African’s bed to get a closer look at the now motionless form. It was the same villager they’d scammed weeks ago and 350 miles south of here! Joak eased the door open, signaled to the manager that he needed to relieve himself, and escaped into the night.
Prepare to die.
For some reason, those words made Ron think of the movie The Princess Bride, when the Spaniard had announced time and again in his heavily accented English: “My name ees Inigo Montoya. You keeled my father. Prepare to die!”
But that fleeting connection was the best Ron could do to be flip about his situation, and that didn’t last long. Then he was back in a stone jail cell as evening dissolved into night, his back a screaming agony, his mind running madly around in all directions in an effort to come to terms with what Masapha had sai
d.
Masapha’s logic was too sound to argue.
Unless they could escape, the ugly slave trader would kill them. And they couldn’t escape.
Unless someone came to rescue them, the fat man with the little rat eyes would kill them. And there was no one to rescue them.
Unless...
Ron quickly ran out of unlesses. Exactly how the man would kill them, Ron couldn’t imagine, and it turned his stomach to think about it. But he couldn’t pretend that it wouldn’t happen. Ronald Joseph Wolfson, 385 Barrington Ridge Boulevard, Fairfax, Virginia, the proud owner of a four-year-old Honda Civic, a little condo full of mismatched furniture, a cat named Scrubs that lived at Dan’s, and a storage shed loaded with scuba gear and rock-climbing equipment, was going to die.
The full impact of that realization hit him like a left hook to the chin. It staggered him.
The sun was about to set outside. Very little light filtered in from the lone window high above his head. Masapha lay on his side facing the wall—either asleep, unconscious or on his own private journey. And as the light dimmed, Ron became more and more terrified. Not afraid of dying; afraid of the dark! He knew the room would soon be blind-man black, and that thought sent his heart on a thudding rampage that threatened to explode out of his chest.
While he still could see, he forced his pain-wracked body to move and crawled/scooted across the room to where Masapha lay. When all the light was gone, he had to be able to reach out in the darkness and touch another human being. He couldn’t be alone; not now. After the torture he’d endured, he couldn’t be here in the blackness by himself.
And he remembered the nights he’d crawled into bed with Dan because he was afraid to sleep by himself. Ron would never have confessed such a weakness to his father, but as soon as the lights were out, and his father had gone to bed, Ron scrambled out of his top bunk and crawled in beside his big brother in the bottom.