The Devil's Kingdom

by Scott Mariani

  Ben was silent. He was slumped on his knees on the wet floor, shaking badly and fighting a tide of nausea.

  Khosa’s awful scarred face frowned sternly down at him. ‘Have you nothing to say?’

  Ben couldn’t find the words. After a long silence, he mumbled, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I would like to hear more conviction in your voice.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ben repeated more firmly. He closed his eyes, unable to stare at Jude’s hand for a moment longer.

  Khosa gave a broad smile. ‘You are welcome. Can I now expect to see an improvement in your attitude?’

  Ben nodded, eyes still closed.

  ‘Excellent. It is a shame that we have these difficulties, soldier, but I am pleased that we are making progress at last. Now that we understand each other much better, I will arrange for your immediate release. Your friend Dekker is hereby pardoned for his actions, and will be freed also. Let this be an end to the matter.’

  Khosa swept from the cell. On his way out he said to a guard, ‘Bring the hand. It will make a nice treat for the dogs.’

  Chapter 30

  The dawn light had stained the jungle to the colour of blood. Tuesday didn’t know where to run; he just had to keep moving to stay ahead of the search parties that would be sweeping the whole area for him by now.

  He moved quickly and cautiously through the thick foliage, clutching the rifle he’d taken from the abandoned Range Rover in front of him like a spear with the point of its bayonet leading the way. Every step could put him on a buried landmine; behind every huge, drooping leaf and frond might lurk an enemy. Heavy dewdrops spattered on him like rain from the trees as he went, soaking his clothes and running down his face.

  While Tuesday worried about losing himself entirely in the thick forest, it was a relief to know that he was no longer trapped in the no-man’s land between the inner and outer perimeters circling the city. In many places the terrain had been too exposed to get close to the outer fence without risking being spotted, but some areas had been reclaimed by vegetation that grew thickly all the way up to the wire.

  Lying flat on his belly in the undergrowth at the foot of the most shielded section of fence he’d managed to find, he’d detached the bayonet from the rifle and got to work. The bayonet was a Chinese copy of the Russian AKM model, with a slot in its seven-inch blade that mated to a lug on its metal scabbard to turn it into a scissoring wire-cutter. He’d used the device to snip a hole in the mesh big enough to crawl through, then concealed the hole with bits of branch to cover his tracks. By his rough estimate, he was at least a couple of kilometres from the gate and the road. If he kept his head down and his ears and eyes open, he thought he stood a decent chance of slipping away without getting caught.

  Beyond that, he had no idea, no plan, no shred of a strategy in mind. As a soldier he’d only ever worked as part of a structured unit, carrying out someone else’s orders. He wasn’t like the Special Forces guys who could thread their way through the most trackless wilderness, live off the land right under the noses of superior hostile forces and leave not a bent blade of grass to give away their presence to the enemy. He’d never operated alone on deadly ground, and now he felt hopelessly naked and vulnerable.

  Much worse, he was doubly distraught over having left Jeff behind in the city, then having abandoned Ben in the vehicle. He had to tell himself that in both cases, he’d had no choice. Without a doubt, the inner perimeter guards had made him and raised the alarm; there was no way he’d have been able to make it past the outer gates without getting both himself and Ben shot to pieces, and no way that he could outpace a whole unit of soldiers on foot carrying an unconscious comrade over his shoulders. Khosa’s troops would have caught up with them within minutes, and killed them both.

  What now? As he traced a random path through the forest, Tuesday fought back his emotions and tried desperately to think of his next move. Somehow, he had to go back there and help Ben and Jeff.

  He had the gun. It wasn’t exactly the kind of top-flight sniper’s tool that the British army had taught him to deploy with extreme long-range precision – but it was a usable enough piece of kit, and the thirty-round magazine was full. By the time it was empty, either he’d have done the right thing by his friends, or he’d be dead. Survival meant little to him in any case, if it involved walking away and leaving them to their fate.

  Tuesday slowed to a halt and stood very still, clutching the rifle, eyes darting left and right to peer through the thicket of moist, dripping greenery that surrounded and loomed over him on all sides, straining his ears past the jungle soundtrack of squawking birds and the unbroken chirp and hum of a billion insects to listen out for the enemy’s presence. He heard nothing that made him suspect he was being followed. The only human sound he could detect was the rapid thudding of his own heart.

  Then the snap of a twig made him jump and whirl around, fully expecting a horde of Khosa’s men to attack, and ready to fight for his life.

  Too late. The twin black circles of a double-barrelled shotgun zeroed in on him out of the bushes.

  Only a man who had spent his whole life in the jungle could have crept up on him in such total silence. And it wasn’t a soldier. The African pointing the gun at Tuesday was a big, powerful-looking man, bare-chested and bare-footed. His trousers were ragged and filthy, his muscular torso and arms striped with thorn scratches. Dawn shadows partially obscured his face, but Tuesday could see the hard glimmer of his eyes, the look of determination that told him the man wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.

  Tuesday had no time to react.

  The boom of the shotgun at close range was stunning. Tuesday sprawled backwards, but it wasn’t the impact of the blast that knocked him down. It was the violent flinch reflex as his nervous system anticipated devastating destruction. Unharmed and in total confusion, he clawed his way out of the bushes he’d become tangled in and stared up at the African who, apparently, hadn’t just shot him after all.

  ‘He was going to spit at you,’ the man said, lowering the smoking gun and pointing a finger at the ground nearby.

  Tuesday looked and saw the torn, limp shape of a large snake coiled up just a few feet away. He knew little about snakes, but it looked like a dangerous one.

  ‘If the spitting cobra gets you in the eye, the poison will make you go blind,’ the African said. He stepped closer, and a shaft of crimson light shining through the trees fell across his face. He held out a big hand to help Tuesday up to his feet. Tuesday was a good three inches shorter and much more lightly built. The man hauled him upright as though he weighed nothing.

  Tuesday was about to thank him for killing the snake, when he suddenly realised with amazement that he’d seen this man before. ‘Hold on, I know you. You’re … Sizwe. We met you on our way here.’

  So much had happened since the fraught journey to the Congo that it seemed like an eternity ago, when in fact only a few days had gone by. The thought flashed through Tuesday’s mind that maybe it was more that he didn’t want to remember.

  The man nodded. ‘I know you, too. You were there when the soldiers destroyed my village and killed my family. My brother Uwase and my friends, Rusanganwa, Ntwali, Mugabo, and Gasimba, we were meant to kill you. And you were meant to kill us. But we did not kill each other. It was Khosa who killed them all. My brother, my friends, my wife, my son. That is why I am here.’

  That was what it all came down to, with such brutal simplicity – the basic primal equation of you kill me / I kill you. Sizwe’s matter-of-fact tone and stoic expression belied the raw grief and raging desire for revenge that Tuesday could sense were boiling inside him.

  Tuesday stared at him. ‘You followed the convoy? All the way across the border from Rwanda?’

  Sizwe nodded. ‘I watched the trucks leave, and I chased them for many hours. They did not see me. When my body became too tired to run fast, I followed the tracks of their wheels. I came to a village. They said the trucks had come this way but did not stop.
I told the people that they were lucky that Khosa did not stop in their village. I told them what he did to our people. I told them I must keep following the trucks, and what I must do when I find them. A man there felt sorry when he heard my story. He let me have his motorcycle and this gun, as trade for the watch your friend gave to me. But the motorcycle soon ran out of gasoline and I had no money for more. So I kept running. Now I am here.’

  Tuesday remembered how Ben had donated his Omega diver’s watch as a goodwill gesture to Sizwe and his fellow Rwandan villagers. That had been before Khosa had characteristically decided to slaughter them all, raze the whole place to the ground and leave behind nothing but a nightmare of hacked body parts and burning huts in his wake. Sizwe had been the sole survivor of the massacre.

  ‘We must move on,’ Sizwe said, glancing at the bushes. ‘The noise of the gun will draw the soldiers.’

  ‘You know about the city?’ Tuesday said as he followed Sizwe at a trot through the trees. Despite his size, the man could move with the speed and agility of an antelope.

  ‘Yes. I have been watching them. Something is happening.’

  ‘My friends Ben and Jeff are in there,’ Tuesday said. ‘Khosa has them prisoner. I managed to escape, but they’re in serious trouble.’

  ‘Ben is a good man,’ Sizwe said. ‘He tried to save my family. I could not blame him for what happened to them.’

  ‘I’m afraid that Khosa’s going to kill him, and Jeff too. Unless I do something. But I don’t know what. There are so many of them.’

  ‘Then I must help,’ Sizwe said. ‘And we will kill Khosa together.’

  Chapter 31

  Earlier

  ‘I think we’re caught,’ Jude said, turning away in panic from the window as the glare of headlights and revving of engines drew rapidly closer.

  ‘Hide,’ Rae hissed frantically from inside the cage. ‘Don’t let them see you. Maybe you can still get away.’

  ‘Not without you,’ Jude said. ‘I’m staying.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Jude! You have to run! Run! Get out of here!’

  But there was nowhere to run to, even if Jude had wanted to. He dared to steal another quick glance through the window. There were five vehicles speeding across the compound towards the huts. Four were jacked-up pickup trucks with all kinds of ancillary grille and roof bar lights that dazzled him as he looked. The fifth, bringing up the rear, looked to be a conventional sedan, long and wide and much lower than the others. Like an executive car, or a limousine.

  César Masango.

  No place to run. And not enough time to finish unbolting Rae’s cage and get her out. They’d be here any second. Throwing open the door of the hut. Crashing inside with weapons loaded and cocked. Catching the would-be escapees red-handed. Jude sank down the wall, screwed his eyes shut and tried desperately to think of a way out of this. Think!

  Rae pleaded with her eyes. Her fists clutched the cage bars. ‘Jude!’

  ‘I told you, I’m not going anywhere without you,’ he said.

  ‘They’ll kill you if they catch you here.’

  ‘Bollocks to them.’

  ‘You hardly know me. I won’t let you die for me.’

  ‘Right now, you’re all I’ve got,’ he said, and he’d never meant anything with more sincerity in his life.

  Outside, the vehicles skidded to a halt one after the other on the loose dirt. Their stationary headlights blazed through the hut window above Jude’s head. He heard doors slamming, footsteps running, a confusion of voices. The elongated sedan was Masango’s black Mercedes, all right. Jude would have recognised that car anywhere. The man was back. And that couldn’t mean anything other than bad news.

  Jude was resolved not to hide. He would sit quietly and wait for them to come bursting into the hut. If he was caught, he was caught – even if he didn’t understand how or why it had happened. He’d tried his best, and failed, but at least he’d tried. He would tell them that Rae had had nothing to do with this. He’d do all he could to protect her. Then he would take whatever punishment they had to dish out, and he’d spit in their faces as they did it.

  Half a minute ticked by, the longest of his life. Then a whole minute had passed, and still the men hadn’t come storming into the hut to unleash a world of hurt on them both.

  Jude opened his eyes. Maybe … just maybe …

  … He and Rae weren’t caught after all.

  ‘Stay down!’ she rasped at him. But he couldn’t resist. Slowly, cautiously, hardly daring even to breathe, he straightened up on jelly legs and risked another tiny peek out of the window.

  Whatever was happening out there, Jude was becoming increasingly certain that it had nothing to do with the two of them. A whole crowd of people was milling outside one of the other huts, just a stone’s throw away. One of them was César Masango, every bit as gangster-chic as before in a three-piece suit that shimmered in the lights. Also present was Promise, carrying his Uzi slung from his shoulder. Jude couldn’t tell if Promise had been in one of the vehicles or come out to greet their arrival.

  What were they doing? As Jude stared, unable to tear himself away, he saw one of the armed guards hop onto the back of a pickup and grab hold of a large, obviously heavy object that he started dragging off the truck’s flatbed. Another came to help him. In the bright lights Jude realised that it was a wooden block, a section of trunk sawn top and bottom, maybe three feet long. As the two men heaved it down to the ground, another was setting up a kerosene burner, like a kind of stove, next to the hut. Masango stood by, waiting. Promise was at his side, the pair of them looking very serious and purposeful as they watched the kerosene burner being lit. Meanwhile, the wooden block was down on the ground and being rolled over to them. Jude blinked and went on watching in bewilderment.

  ‘What’s happening out there?’ Rae asked urgently. ‘Speak to me, for Chrissakes.’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s weird.’

  But he was beginning to understand that something ugly was in the offing. Very ugly, and very nasty. That didn’t come as a huge surprise.

  One of the Africans had taken out a long, glittering thing that Jude realised with a chill was a machete. The man was inspecting it, running his fingers up and down the blade as though checking to see how sharp it was. The wooden trunk section had been set up on end, like a chopping block. The kerosene burner was lit nearby, its flame glowing and flickering beneath the iron pot that the guards had hung over it. Whatever was inside the pot quickly began to smoke. Jude sniffed a familiar odour that for some reason evoked a childhood memory of the playground at his primary school in rural Oxfordshire, when maintenance men with shovels and a van used to come to resurface it. It was the smell of hot tar.

  ‘What’s that stink?’ Rae whispered.

  ‘Hush.’

  Promise reached down to his belt, unhooked something that glinted in the light and handed it to Masango. It was a large ring of keys, the one that Promise carried with him on his rounds. Masango stepped up to the door of the hut they were all gathered around, fiddled with the keys until he found the right one, then unlocked the door and walked in. Promise and one of the guards followed him inside. The rest stood by, clutching their weapons.

  At least now Jude knew which of the other two wasn’t the guard hut.

  ‘They’re not here for us,’ Jude whispered over his shoulder to Rae, now that he was completely sure.

  ‘What are they doing? What’s happening now?’

  ‘I can’t see them. Oh, wait. Here they come. They’re bringing someone out with them.’

  He was a white man. Promise had him by the scruff of the neck and was physically pulling him from the hut. He was dirty and dishevelled and looked exactly like a man who had been cooped up like an animal in a cage for quite a few days. Whoever the poor bastard was, Jude thought, it didn’t take much to see that he was reluctant to be brought out. He was kicking and struggling and doing all he could to prevent himself from being dragged across the dirt towar
ds the chopping block.

  Jude swallowed hard and told himself, Get ready for this. ‘What does Craig look like?’ he asked Rae, with all the calmness he could put into his tone.

  ‘He’s forty-eight. Tall, thin, glasses, greying hair, wears it kind of long. Why?’

  Then it was just as well that Rae couldn’t see what was going on, Jude thought. He wasn’t sure he wanted to either, but he couldn’t look away. Promise dragged the prisoner up to the block and let him go. Munro’s hair was sticking out in all directions and his glasses had been knocked askew. The eyes behind the lenses were crazed with fear.

  ‘Please! Don’t do this!’ he screamed hoarsely. ‘I’ll give you anything! I’ll give you everything I own if you’ll just let me go!’

  Rae heard the cries, recognised her colleague’s voice, and began rattling the bars of her cage as though she could have torn them apart. ‘What are they doing to him? Jude! Tell me!’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ Jude said. ‘Take your hands off the bars, and clamp them over your ears. Hard as you can. Do it now, Rae.’

  She hesitated, staring at him with all kinds of emotions etched into her face. Then she took her hands off the bars and pressed them hard over her ears as he’d said. She closed her eyes and bowed her head.

  The guards simply laughed at Munro’s terrorised pleas. ‘It is just business,’ Jude heard Masango say. ‘The General’s orders.’

  Then the inevitable horror unfolded in front of Jude’s eyes. Munro wasn’t a strong man. He was a desk guy, a city guy, not a fighter. It took only one guard to pin him down and another to seize his left wrist and stretch his arm out over the top of the wooden block. A third, the one with the machete, took up his position in the middle. He did a couple of practice swings to judge the fall of the blade, like a golfer about to let rip from the first tee. Then his face hardened, he raised the machete above his head and accelerated it hard downwards. The steel struck flesh and then wood, with a dreadful crunch that Jude wished he’d never heard before and certainly never wanted to hear again.