Jacob’s hands tightened on the steering-wheel and his jaw clenched. I watched his eyes flicker to mine in the mirror. “Yeah, things were difficult for me after he left. I kinda lost my balance, ma’am.”
“And you have it back now?” she asked, a softness to the question that surprised me.
He nodded once. “I fucking hope so.” Again, our eyes met in the mirror and I gave him a smile. The tightness in his face released its choke hold.
“What do we know about the man, Clark?” she asked.
“Weasel,” I said.
“Cockroach,” Jacob muttered in the same instant.
“Let’s try to leave emotions out of it,” Brant said.
I sighed. “He’s clever. Far cleverer than I am and dangerous. He sees things inside people that everyone tries to hide, and he uses it against them. On the surface he’s handsome, charming, witty and very slightly submissive; this makes him ideal for underestimation. I don’t think he’s good with weapons because he doesn’t need to be, he can call on mugs like us for wet work he wants done, then he can use it against us. He likes paperwork, keeps everything old school if he can because he doesn’t want a digital footprint outside of the work he’s supposed to be doing for The Firm.”
“A lot of the information he has is in his head and nowhere else,” Jacob said. “It’s like he has entire servers of information up there. Some kind of mind palace I guess.”
“It’s going to make me redundant,” Lydia muttered.
“So, what can we do to track him down?” Brant asked.
When a commanding officer asked for your thoughts you better have something good and it showed they respected your ‘boots on the ground’ approach to a problem. Brant liked her Chinese Parliament perspective to a problem, gaining insights from all those around her and divining the best way forwards with her team. It made us trust her.
“I think you should let Jacob and I visit a few people I know in the city. I’ll tug on some contacts. Ask a few of my boys to do some snooping and see what shakes free. It could take a few days, but we’ll find him if he’s in Kinshasa.”
“And if he isn’t?” Brant asked.
“We track the fucker down to the ends of the earth,” Jacob snarled.
“We go after his contact and finish the mission,” I corrected.
“Good. Now I need to sleep,” she said. The rest of the drive remained silent except for Brant and Lydia’s huffed breathing.
We returned to a hotel in the centre of the city, just a few streets from the museum and a place white skin didn’t stand out too much. I kept the weapons locked in the back of the truck and took Jacob shopping to find him new clothes before checking in properly. Brant and Lydia shared a twin room next to ours. If either of them was surprised we were sharing a double they didn’t say anything. It had caused me to panic when Jacob asked for the double room, but I couldn’t stop him without causing a fuss and that would make things worse.
“You’re quiet,” he said, picking a deep red shirt off the rack which I knew would look amazing with the tawny hair and skin. How did I know this shit? I rarely noticed anything I wore, most of which were varying shades of grey or black. But Jacob? I noticed everything he wore, and he looked great in dark bold colours.
“Just weighing the options.”
He stopped and watched me for a minute, head cocked a little to one side. “Bollocks, you’re mithering over the room.”
I hung the shirt back on the rail, then picked it up again and sighed. “I just…” The thought petered out, lost in the swirling confusion I inflicted on myself because of fear.
“What? You going to try squeezing yourself back in the closet? Mac, you are so far back in the fucking closet you could be in a different universe to everyone else.”
“Narnia,” I muttered.
“What?”
“The back of a wardrobe –” the look of mystery on his face made me smile. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.” Jacob had never been big on books. “I just thought I’d have time to adjust to ‘us’ before having to tell other people.”
“Did anyone notice or disapprove?” he asked.
“No.”
He shrugged. “Then it’s not a problem. Mac, you’ve spent your entire life hiding and fearing people will see you as something lesser because you desire men not women. It means you are always looking through a telescope the wrong way around. Assuming people can see something wrong, so you keep them at a distance. Be the man you were always supposed to be.”
His words wounded me. “You haven’t been out for long.” Even I could hear the petulant tone.
He managed to supress the smile, almost, at my childish antics. “No, I know. At least I could be honest at home though. You’ve never had that freedom.” He reached for my hand and I started like a wild horse being shown a halter. “Nothing we feel is wrong. Short of shagging in the street nothing we do is wrong.”
“Not sure this lot will want to see your hairy arse anyway,” I said, trying to hold his hand again. A strange elation clamoured through me. I held a man’s hand in public. Unfortunately, the DRC was not a forgiving environment, so I wouldn’t be making a habit of the tender gesture.
My reward though was worth the risk. His eyes shone the moment I laced my fingers through his, a gentle kindness in them I remembered from years before. “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with my hairy arse. It’s a nice arse.”
I chuckled and warmth raced over my cheeks that the air conditioning couldn’t fight. “Yep, it is a nice arse and one I’d like to keep private if possible.”
“I certainly don’t plan on sharing it with anyone else,” he said, staring into my eyes.
Something passed between us in that moment and I realised we were making a silent promise to each other. I gave him a shy smile and he blushed. We paid for our goods and left the shops to return to the hotel.
My phone buzzed and chimed on the way back. “Danny,” I said to Jacob by way of explanation even as I swiped the screen. “You have something for me already?” I’d rung him before the shopping expedition to start the process necessary to find Clark. Danny might be one of the good guys but his contacts from school weren’t and he kept a tentative relationship alive with some of them to help keep abreast of the city’s internal street politics. Being ignorant in Kinshasa usually resulted in death.
“I have something, but I don’t want to give it to you,” Danny said. The darkness in his voice made me stop moving on the busy street. Jacob watched me.
“Just spit it out,” I muttered. I respected Danny but now he was a family man and tended to treat me as if he were protecting a wayward child.
“The general has him,” Danny said. “That’s the word on the street. If he’s a white man who has caused the deaths of people belonging to the Congo, he will be forced to pay a heavy price.”
I grunted. “So it’s okay for the general to kill his people but not anyone else?”
“This is Africa, my friend, no one said life was fair in this place.” Danny spoke with such sadness my anger dissolved. “I have an address where General Delta likes to take his enemies when he’s in the city. After yesterday morning at the museum he is going to be angry and preparing to retreat to his strongholds in the north.”
“What’s the address?” I asked, keeping my voice tight. We’d need to get there quick, the general tortured before he killed if he wanted information and we needed Clark alive, conscious and able to speak.
“Mac, I don’t think –”
“Danny,” I snapped.
He sighed. “Yes, boss.” The subservient tone grated on my nerves. “He’s in the warehouse district behind the Avenue Colonel Mondjiba. I can text you the exact details.”
“Thank you, Danny.”
“Will I see you again, Mac?”
I paused. “They hit my people, Danny. I’ve a job to do. You can keep the museum protected. I’ve taught you enough.”
“Go with God’s Grace, my friend.”
“You too,” I said into the dead line. He’d already hung up.
I looked at Jacob, his eyes were bright. “We have a location?”
“We do.”
He grinned. “Let’s go find your toys and get this fucker.”
10
We returned to the hotel and reported to Brant, she and Lydia would act as back-up. Lydia had sniper training, so she’d take over-watch. She called up the location on her laptop and we devised a quick plan. The location would not be easy to secure but if we could get in, locate Clark and remove him without bringing General Delta’s men down on our heads, we would. If we couldn’t, or we were forced to retreat, we’d leave Clark to his fate and go after the contact. We were already 24hrs behind the previous operation’s parameters.
The warehouse district at the rear of the Avenue Colonel Mondjiba looked like every dog-eared warehouse district in every city from Los Angeles to Mumbai. Broken windows squatted on high breezeblock walls, a shadow of the broken dreams of those people who had lost their businesses or didn’t care enough to replace the glass to keep the flies out. Weeds and small bushes sprouted in an attempt to pull guttering down, or rip into asbestos roofs and crack open concrete roads, all acting to end the dominance of man. These places were a masterful rendering of the post-apocalyptic worlds I’d seen in countless cities. A snapshot of humanity’s future.
We drove into the area with care. Brant and Lydia took a different car and came in from the south. We knew the odds were not in our favour. We knew we’d be facing men with at least some training, perhaps there would even be professionals among them. General Delta had once been a special operative with Mugabe’s forces in Zimbabwe. He’d not become a general by being a nice man.
“It’s almost too quiet,” Jacob murmured.
He drove the truck, leaning slightly on the steering wheel, hands lazy, eyes bright. I sat beside him, Glock in my right hand, near my thigh. We wore body armour and webbing with extra mags. We weren’t in full fatigues, just street clothes so we could disburse more easily if necessary. With baseball caps on it meant our white skin was covered as much as possible. We turned left, following Lydia’s directions. A stray dog nosed at a doorway to our two o’clock. It looked up at us, the blank stare of the starving in its dark eyes, tucked its tail and vanished into the shadows.
“Pull over,” I said.
Jacob, body tense, did as instructed. We both checked our surroundings before exiting the vehicle. The warehouse squatted in the rising heat of the day to our one o’clock, the large doorway 50 metres from our position. There were no guards, no vehicles, no sign of anything including strays. Brant and Lydia would be arriving at the RV in a matter of minutes.
“This isn’t right,” Jacob said. “We’ve been given bad int.”
“I hope you’re right but I’ve a nasty suspicion something else is going on.” I opened the door of the truck, no one shot at me. Jacob followed suit. He stepped out into the road. Again, no shot from a hidden crow’s nest. We should have waited for the others, but instinct told me we were alone and didn’t need the back-up we’d planned for, so I pulled out my phone as we didn’t have a comms unit.
“Go ahead, Delta One,” Brant said the moment the line opened.
“Zero, we have no company in the area. It looks like we’re alone but approach with caution.”
“Understood, Zero out.”
Jacob glanced at me over the roof of the truck. “Clark either isn’t here, or he’s dead.”
“Well, let’s go and find out,” I said. We picked up the HK33 and the HK417 and attached them to the lanyards already hanging around our necks, eyes working constantly to ensure our surroundings remained peaceful.
“I’ll go across first,” Jacob said.
“Roger that,” I said, taking up a firing position with my back to the truck and the opened door to cover my flank. Jacob dropped his height, kept his weapon close to his body, eyes and gun muzzle moving together as one unit. He ran with a fluid precision a leopard would struggle to emulate.
I did 5 seconds on each compass point sweeping from the ground to the roofs of the warehouses and checking any changes in the windows. When Jacob reached the edge of the target warehouse, he took up his firing position, dropping to his right knee and I raced over the road while he checked the street as well. When I took up position behind him, I tapped twice on his shoulder. Jacob turned, using me as his pivot point and headed for the door. I walked backwards, occasionally doing a 180 degree turn to take in my six. All remained quiet.
“No lock on the door, it slides but it’s going to be nasty as we move it,” Jacob reported. He pressed his ear to the door, but I could already tell the place was empty. “I’m opening the door,” he said. If we were going to go noisy now would be the moment.
I heard the door groan and turned to cover the widening hole. Jacob stopped pulling it open at 50 centimetres and the muzzles of our weapons went first. Nothing happened. My skin crawled though at the smell tainting the thick air. It reminded me of a butcher’s gone bad. I’d smelt it before in many warzones after the bullets stopped.
Jacob pushed the door open a little more, remaining on his right knee as I covered over his head. “Going right,” he murmured.
“Going left,” I mirrored.
We entered the warehouse.
It contained nothing in the first 35 metres. The wide concrete space had multiple dusty footprints. The light from the high, narrow windows coloured the room an ethereal orange which almost sparkled from the still shifting dust. Whoever had been here left only a short time before we arrived, the currents of air told us that story.
We both stopped, 3 metres into the interior, 30 degrees away from the doorway. “Fucking hell,” Jacob whispered.
I’d lived in the DRC for just over two and half years and had never seen anything like this in any warzone, even under ISIS. All the nights I’d dreamed of this, this moment, coming face to face with Clark and I always thought I would be the one to end it. I walked towards the man who had ruined my career. They hadn’t even allowed me to RTU, return to unit, by the time the bastard finished stitching me up and only my agreement to leave the country kept me from prison, so I owed this fucker… and yet even my darkest thoughts couldn’t have created this vision.
Jacob started to walk forwards but while my eyes were busy on the vision before us, my subconscious had been working. The footsteps in the dust didn’t just tell a story, they screamed it.
“Wait!” I shouted, the sudden noise making Jacob flinch and turn his weapon to our backs. We were both jumpy as hell.
“Wait,” I said, remembering to breathe. “The dust. Mark the dust. I think it’s a trap.”
Jacob tore his eyes down to the ground and traced the marks. “Cover me,” he said.
We were alone in the warehouse, we both knew it, but we had survived countless battles because teams as good as us did not make mistakes by being lazy. Jacob pushed his HK over his back and dropped to a press up position. “Damn, Mac. You’ve lost none of your skills. I can see a wire. It runs in a grid around the body, 15 centimetres off the ground. I’m going to track the system, see where it leads.”
“Roger that, I’ll keep eyes on.”
Now Jacob had his focus on the wire he moved without effort to a crouching position. “Should we check for a pulse?” he asked without lifting his gaze to the vision before us.
“If he’s still alive he’s not going to want to be, so no,” I said.
“Mac…” Jacob admonished.
I huffed. “Fine, you check him for a pulse and if he has one put him down.”
“I’m going to be defusing the bomb,” Jacob pointed out as he crab-walked along the wire to a dark corner of the warehouse.
“I’m not touching that,” I said, pointing at the body.
I had a right to feel a little squeamish about touching the remains of Clark. He hung by his ankles from rough ropes that lacerated his skin, probably as he’d been struggling. There wer
e no toes ending his feet and no fingers on the mutilated hands that dangled over the blood pool which contained flies and had a slowly hardening congealed skin covering it, the Devil’s custard couldn’t be fouler. To be honest we were almost assuming it was Clark hanging there, he’d had most of his face removed by a knife and chunks of his scalp. There were some body parts scattered about but not enough. His cock and balls were stuffed between his teeth, all too clear without the lips to protect them.
“I have six grenades laced together with some plastic and a simple pin pull mechanism. I’m going to remove the wire and separate the grenades. We should be able to take them with us, and the C4,” Jacob reported from the dark.
“Is there a detonator for the C4?” I asked.
“No, they just wanted a bigger explosion,” Jacob said. He sounded distracted, so I left him to figure out the IED.
I stepped over the wire, confident that if something unexpected happened and I stepped back into the wire it wouldn’t blow us to hell. The flies were already making the most of their miserable host and the stink made me wish I didn’t have to breathe. I’d seen some foul things over the years, but this had to rank in the top three of my nightmares. Working hard to keep my boots out of the blood splatter I leaned over and managed to place two fingers to the jugular pulse point. Don’t be sick, repeated itself inside my head on a loop. I had to hope Clark hadn’t been awake for the facial and genital disfigurement.
“Guess the old adage of harm being sent back ten-fold is about right,” I told the corpse. Weird didn’t begin to describe how it made me feel to see such a central figure in my downfall so broken. I wanted to pity the bastard for the last hour or so of his life, but I found it hard to have much sympathy and I wished I could have made him face real justice, then I might have been able to clear my name.
Jacob emerged from the shadows. “Dead?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Good, fucker.”
“Yeah,” I said, my anger with Clark older. “We still need to find the target though and we’ve lost our only lead.”
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