by S. A. Beck
That split-second pause almost cost him his life.
There was a flash of metal, a red-hot pain along his wrist, and Grunt’s pistol clattered to the floor.
Grunt ducked and went for his gun with his good hand and saw lying next to it what had injured him.
An old-fashioned straight razor.
A straight razor? Why hadn’t the guy just shot him?
Just as Grunt was reaching for his gun, the man on the floor kicked it away. The gun slid along the smooth tile floor a good ten feet.
Grunt booted the guy in the head then felt a slice of pain on his shoulder. The maniac on the stairs had thrown another straight razor. His twin on the floor, despite having just taken a kick to the head, was pulling one out of his pocket.
Who the hell uses straight razors as a weapon? Grunt wondered.
Maniacs, that’s who. Grunt needed to end this fight now.
Grunt landed a kick to the guy’s shoulder that should have dislocated it and sent the straight razor tumbling to the ground, but instead it only pushed him back a little. Then Grunt had to duck to the side to avoid another straight razor flying down the stairs at him.
Time to run.
Grunt bolted down the hall, making it around the corner just in time for another straight razor to miss him by inches. He entered the hotel’s front lobby.
It was abandoned. This was another of those neighborhoods where people were good at detecting danger and made themselves scarce. Right next to the doorway Grunt had passed through stood a table with an ornate brass lamp. Grunt picked it up, spun around, and threw it into the face of one of the twins as he came around the corner. It landed with a satisfying thud, and the guy pirouetted back.
Losing no time, Grunt ran for the front door.
Only to find the other twin blocking it.
The guy must have jumped out of an upper window to get there so fast. These two were serious trouble.
Grunt ducked under a vicious swing with a straight razor and landed a fist in his opponent’s stomach that would have doubled over a regular man. Instead it only brought out a little cough of air and made the guy take half a step back.
Grunt had to step back himself to avoid another swing of the razor, its keen blade gleaming in front of his eyes as it whooshed by.
Grunt grabbed his arm with both hands and twisted, bringing the man into an arm lock. His opponent responded by stomping on Grunt’s foot and head-butting him.
“Two can play at that game,” Grunt muttered and head-butted him back.
Before the fight could descend into a head-butting contest that he might not win, Grunt swept a leg under the guy’s feet and dropped him on the floor.
Instinct told him to duck and turn.
Instinct saved his life for the moment.
A blade snicked by, scraping the top of his scalp. The other twin had recovered from getting twenty pounds of brass thrown in his face. These guys recovered remarkably quickly.
Grunt punched him then gasped as the maniac’s razor cut a deep line down the side of his hip. Another slash across his chest made him stagger backward, almost tripping over the other man.
Then the twin in front of him thrust with his blade and took a deep gouge out of his gut.
That feels fatal, Grunt realized.
Once again, he ran.
He made it out the door and several yards down the street before the first of the razors flew after him and embedded itself in his shoulder blade. He made it another couple of yards before another slashed his calf and made him stumble. The crowd in the street screamed and parted, everyone heading for cover.
Jesus, how many razors do these guys have?
Just then he saw a sight that usually made him wary in this part of the world but at that moment felt as welcome as a Christmas tree surrounded by presents.
A policeman.
“Stop!” the man shouted in English, leveling his assault rifle to emphasize his point.
Grunt stumbled into the nearest alley. The cop, more interested in the identical twins throwing straight razors down the street, didn’t follow.
Grunt didn’t stick around to see the end of the story. He stumbled through the medina, passersby leaping out of his way. He came across a pharmacy, a little hole-in-the-wall place that sold bandages and aspirin to the local neighborhood. He lumbered in, threw some money at the startled woman behind the counter, and grabbed a bunch of cotton gauze, tape, iodine, and painkillers.
Next stop was a tailor’s shop. In a narrow storefront no bigger than a closet, a man sat on a carpet with an old sewing machine, making and fixing clothing. He froze in terror as a huge Westerner, blood coursing out of half a dozen wounds and clutching a bag of medical equipment, relieved him of some needles and thread. He didn’t even pick up the money the Westerner threw at him. It was soaked in blood.
Grunt found the dead end of an alley to hide in, swallowed a bunch of painkillers, and got to work on his wounds. He didn’t have time to wait for the painkillers to kick in, not with all this bleeding. Wiping iodine on his hands and on the wounds to clean them as much as possible, he used the needle and thread to sew up the cuts and then covered them with cotton gauze and tape. The pain kept his mind sharp. A good thing, because he already felt a bit dizzy from blood loss. The stitches and bandages would stop the bleeding, but the deep cut to his gut must be bleeding internally. There was no way for him to stop that himself, and he didn’t dare go to a hospital. He’d be arrested for sure.
And he didn’t have anyone he could ask for help. Ahmad Chukri was clear on the other side of town, and Grunt didn’t have his phone number. He wasn’t the kind of person to give it out. Not a chance that he could get there undetected, assuming he could even get there at all.
So he was left with one option—hiding out here and hoping his body could stop its own internal bleeding and survive the injuries.
Twelve hours later, in the dark of the night, Grunt had to admit to himself that that was not going to happen. He could feel himself weakening with every hour. The painkillers gave him a pleasant fuzzy feeling, the only sensation coming from his various cuts being a bit of tightness. But he could sense the life ebbing out of him. He was a goner.
Damn. He didn’t want to end like this. Otto needed him. Jaxon needed him. The others could take care of themselves, but the kids needed him alive.
So the only option is to live, soldier.
Grunt shifted his weight again, bending one leg to get it beneath him. Then he tried to rise.
He fell before he got halfway up, pain jabbing through the medicinal fog. He gritted his teeth and tried again.
In the pitch darkness of a forgotten alley, unseen by anyone, Grunt started the toughest struggle of his life.
Chapter 8
AUGUST 14, 2016, THE ROAD BETWEEN TIMBUKTU AND RAS EL MA
4:30 P.M.
* * *
Jaxon was startled at how quickly they passed through the green zone around the River Niger. Within a few minutes, they had left the cultivated farmland behind. The last little irrigation channel ended, and the desert took over. Then for hours nothing lay on either side of the dusty, narrow highway except rolling dunes and a few dried-up little shrubs. Civilization clustered around water in this part of the world, and water was scarce.
They headed west, along the shores of what the map called Lake Faguibine. There was no lake. Jaxon guessed that in the rainy season, there might be a lake or something that kind of looked like a lake, but all she saw out the passenger’s-side window was a valley surrounded by gray, shelving rock with a few palm trees and bushes at the bottom. She spotted the occasional flock of sheep or goats and figured there must be some water down there somewhere. But a lake? She hadn’t seen a lake in a long, long time.
She was amazed every time they passed a little village. How could anyone live here? She supposed they didn’t have any choice. The better land by the river was all taken, and these people didn’t have the money to go anywhere else.
> And to think her people were fleeing neighboring Mauritania to come here for a better life! The worst of it all was that Mali probably would give them a better life. At least they wouldn’t be persecuted.
What was going on? Why was the Mauritanian government hunting down the Atlanteans? General Meade couldn’t be directing all this, not all the way over here. Besides, he had plenty of Atlanteans to mess with back in the States. So was someone else looking to enslave her people?
Why couldn’t everyone just leave her alone? All her life, she’d been picked on for being different. She had never fit in, and now that she had found her place in the world, she discovered that she was a member of a people who had been suffering persecution for centuries.
“Just my luck,” she muttered.
“Sorry?” Salif Amar asked from the back seat. He’d come along to act as translator. Vivian, sitting behind the wheel, didn’t even glance at Jaxon when she had talked to herself. She’d gotten used to Jaxon’s habits long ago.
“Nothing,” Jaxon grumbled. “I’m just mad at all the crap our people have to put up with.”
Salif shrugged. “Yes, sometimes we have trouble, but we have a great history, and each of us has something special about us.”
“What do you mean?” Jaxon asked, turning in her seat.
Salif looked confused. “You know.”
Jaxon felt confused for a moment. “Oh, you mean how we’re stronger and faster than other people?”
“We don’t really talk about that around outsiders,” Salif chided, glancing nervously at Vivian.
“Does everyone have special powers too? I can make plants grow. Can you do that, or is your power different?”
Salif stared at her like she’d just shouted her most intimate details in the middle of a crowded theater.
“H-how can you say that in front of just anybody?” he finally spit out.
“Anybody? Vivian’s not ‘anybody.’ She saved my life.”
Salif glared at her. “We don’t talk about these things with outsiders.”
Vivian caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “I’m on your side, honey.”
Salif clicked his tongue. “We’ve heard that many times before.”
He crossed his arms, looked out the window, and said no more. They drove in awkward silence for the rest of the way.
The village of Ras el Ma looked even worse than Jaxon had imagined it. It stood on the edge of the “lake,” a sad collection of adobe huts and a few ugly concrete buildings. They didn’t get to see any more of it because a police checkpoint stopped them at the edge of town. A pair of cops with Kalashnikovs studied the two Land Rovers curiously.
Salif stepped out and spoke with them.
“What are they saying?” Jaxon whispered to Vivian.
“My Arabic isn’t too good, honey, but I think they’re wondering why we don’t have the Doctors Without Borders logo on our vehicles. Sounds like they’ve set up a refugee camp on the other side of town.”
Jaxon nodded. She’d heard of the organization. They went to all the troubled areas of the world and provided medical care. At least someone did something for her people.
The conversation continued for several minutes, with Jaxon growing more and more anxious. The last time they’d had to deal with cops, they’d been shot at. Of course, that had been in Mauritania. Mali seemed more chilled out. She still hadn’t gotten used to policemen toting assault rifles, though. She also didn’t like how the younger cop kept peeking in the window and leering at her and Vivian.
At last Salif climbed back into the Land Rover.
“They’ll let us pass. I told them I am looking for family members. That is true in a way.”
They passed through the little village, maneuvering around a group of chickens pecking at something on the dirt road that passed for a main street in this place. Jaxon wondered if the chickens were eating seeds dropped from some truck. Back in Mauritania, she had made a bunch of them grow into vines that had trapped a cop who had tried to arrest them. She smiled at the memory. If every one of her people had powers like that, the world better start treating them better! She’d have to talk about it with Salif once he stopped pouting.
After a minute, they left the village and sped out onto a flat stretch of barren desert.
Jaxon caught her breath. Before them, a huge tent village stretched across the sand. Dozens of bright-white tents stood in the sunlight, and beyond those stood smaller tents made of tarpaulins, old blankets, plastic sheets, or whatever else the refugees could find to shelter themselves from the Saharan sun.
A small painted wooden sign in front read, “Médecins Sans Frontières. Camp de réfugiés Ras el Ma.” Below that were several words written in Arabic, presumably saying the same thing.
Just behind the sign stood a large tent with open sides. Inside was a row of examination tables and smaller tables beside them covered with medical equipment. Several doctors treated a large crowd of patients, mostly women holding small children and babies.
Jaxon felt her mouth go dry and her heart start beating faster. Vivian parked the Land Rover next to a couple of trucks bearing the Doctors Without Borders logo. Dr. Yamazaki parked the other Land Rover next to them.
Jaxon stepped out into the sunlight, but even in the 110-degree heat, she felt a chill. There must be thousands of people here. The rows of tents seemed to stretch forever. People began to gather to stare at the newcomers, as they did in every little town or village they’d stopped in as they crossed the Sahara.
This time it was different.
Everyone was thin to the point of emaciation. Sunken eyes in skull-like faces fixed on them. The people—the elderly, the women, and especially the children—all had a lost, exhausted look to them. She saw very few men and wondered what had happened to them.
Jaxon scanned the crowd for people with Atlantean features but didn’t see anyone.
A man in a doctor’s coat came through the crowd. He was black but obviously not from here. He looked too well fed. Even the healthy people in places like Mauritania and Mali tended to look too thin, with sharp features and skin battered by a lifetime spent in the punishing sun, but not this man. He looked like he was in his early forties and had lived a healthy life.
“Bonjour,” he said, then asked a question in French.
“Um, do you speak English?” Jaxon asked, feeling foolish.
“Yes. You’re not the delivery of rehydration packs, are you?” he said in English with a French accent.
“No, sorry.”
“Then what are you bringing?” he asked in a tone that told her that he didn’t have time to waste. Now that Jaxon got a closer look at him, she could see his eyes were red and puffy from lack of sleep.
Jaxon decided not to waste this guy’s time. If he was running this place, every minute counted.
“I’m staying in Timbuktu. I’m American, but I’m one of the People of the Sea.”
The man’s brow furrowed. “What’s that?”
“An ethnic group in this region. Did you just fly in?”
“Usually I work south of the Sahara. My last postings were the Congo and Burundi. My team and I came last month when the government asked us in to help with the crisis, and I haven’t had time for sightseeing,” the man said with a dismissive wave of the hand. It was obvious he had already tired of the conversation. He glanced back at the tent, where his colleagues were busy giving medical aid to the refugees.
Jaxon cut to the chase.
“My people are being persecuted in Mauritania, and my community in Timbuktu has decided to shelter any of the People of the Sea we find here. We came because we saw a photo of one family in the newspaper.”
The doctor looked away from her to Vivian and Dr. Yamazaki before resting his eyes on Salif.
“Are you one of these Sea People too?” the doctor asked him.
“Yes.”
“How many housing units do you have?”
“Several dozen homes.”
&nb
sp; “That may not be enough.”
Jaxon cut in. “If it isn’t, we have the money to put them up at one of the hotels.”
The doctor glanced at Jaxon and turned back to Salif. The conversation continued without her. She wondered if she was being dismissed because she was a teenager or because she was a girl. Perhaps both.
“Do you have the money to feed them?” the doctor asked.
“Yes.”
“What about medical care?”
Dr. Yamazaki said, “There’s a physician in their community, plus my colleague and I are both geneticists and trained in basic medical practices.”
“They don’t need genetic work, they need rehydration packets, a good diet, and proper shelter. A lot of the children are suffering from diarrhea, and everyone suffered a shortage of water getting here.”
“They will get all these,” Salif said.
“I know how to mix rehydration packets to UNICEF standards,” Dr. Yamazaki said. “I was mixing some up just yesterday. A member of our team got a bad case of food poisoning.”
“What’s the recipe?” the doctor asked as if Dr. Yamazaki was a medical student.
“Eight teaspoons of sugar and one of salt per liter of water. I also put in a bit of lemon juice for the electrolytes and vitamin C. I’d add mashed bananas for the potassium if I could find some.”
“Good enough,” the doctor nodded. “Did you bring any with you?”
“Eighty liters, a little over twenty gallons.”
“Give it to me.”
It came out as an order, not a request. Jaxon couldn’t believe this guy’s rudeness.
Dr. Yamazaki shrugged and went off to the Land Rover. A minute later, she brought back two large plastic jugs, which the doctor took from her.
“Can we go through the camp and search for my people?” Jaxon asked. She was sick of being passed over in this conversation.
The doctor sized her up for a moment before replying. “Well, I can’t stop you. Any burden off my back is welcome. You better clear it with the local authorities, though. I don’t think they want the refugees wandering around the countryside.”