by Jeremy Bates
“She cannot help you, Mr. Young,” Jahja said. “Do as I say. I do not have much patience right now.”
Thunder dropped the fruit and pulled the door open.
“Very good. Now untie that rope supporting the hammock. Don’t get any ideas. If I see you make any move for a weapon, I will shoot you both.”
Thunder entered the cabin and untied the knot attached to the canvas hammock. The end closest to him dropped to the floor. He undid the anchor point secured to the rafters, then came back outside, carrying the six-foot-long piece of braided rope.
“Thank you,” Jahja said. “Now throw it to me.”
Thunder did what was asked of him. Jahja caught the rope with his free hand. He lowered the rifle, took a knife from his belt, and began to cut the rope into thirds. Scarlett saw the window of opportunity and thought about rushing him. But she was 120 pounds, maybe 123 with her clothes on and wet as they were, and she couldn’t see herself doing much damage. Not to mention he was still a good fifteen feet away—more than enough time to raise the rifle and blow her guts out across the deck. He finished up and lobbed one section to her.
“Now would you be so kind as to tie Mr. Young’s wrists behind his back?” Jahja told her. “Tightly. I will be checking your handiwork.”
Scarlett’s mind raced for another option, but there weren’t many when you had a gun trained on you. She reluctantly tied Thunder’s wrists behind his back.
Jahja came over, gave the knot she’d made a solid tug, and smiled. “Very good, Miss Cox. Now turn around yourself.”
She did as she was told and felt the rope loop around her wrists three times before biting painfully into her skin. “Why are you doing this?” she said. “Everybody is dead. It’s over.”
“It’s far from over, Miss Cox. Do you think Al Qaeda’s plans or resolve have changed just because we have lost a few men? We have thousands more lining up to die as true mujahedin on Allah’s path.”
“What are you going to do with us?”
“I think you know the answer to that—” he trailed off, breaking into his worst fit of coughing yet. He wiped his bloody lips with the back of his hand, wiped his hand on his tunic. He marched them down the stairs to the main deck, where he opened the door to the cabin and ordered them inside.
“Listen, mate,” Thunder said. “Take the boat, but let us go. That helicopter that crashed into the church was our ride. When it doesn’t report back tonight, more reinforcements are going to be sent out. They’ll be here tomorrow. They’ll find us.”
Jahja shook his head. “You underestimate the size of the Congo, Mr. Young. There are literally hundreds of tributaries off this river alone. If we go farther downriver, we’ll reach the Lualaba, the greatest headstream of the Congo River, which itself is the second-longest river in Africa, after the Nile.” He smiled humorlessly. “So you see, there are plenty of places to go. No one is going to find us. I can assure you of that.”
He closed the door and locked it.
“Bloody hell,” Thunder said. “We’re right back where we started.”
Scarlett went to the stern window. She didn’t see Jahja, which meant he’d gone back to the top deck. “I’m not going through this again. No way. Not in a thousand years. I can’t. I simply can’t. We have to escape. Right now.”
“I’m with you there, one hundred percent, but how?”
She wriggled her wrists. No give whatsoever. She shook her head, frustrated.
Thunder said, “We can always break the window, jump ship, and hope to swim away.”
“And be sitting ducks. He would pick us off in the water.” Her brow creased in thought. “Unless—”
“Unless what?”
She sketched out a plan for him. When she finished, Thunder was frowning.
“It’s dangerous,” he said.
“What hasn’t been dangerous so far?”
“It could go wrong.”
“It could go right.”
Thunder studied her for a long moment, his blue eyes bright and intense. “Fair dinkem,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
They went to the window.
“On the count of three,” he said.
“Okay.”
“One,” he said.
“Two,” she said.
“Three,” they said together.
They kicked the large square pane of glass in unison. Their feet smashed through it, leaving twin basketball-sized jagged holes. They watched as physics took over and the weight of the glass collapsed down upon itself, spilling out of the wooden frame, splintering on the teak deck into thousands of slivers.
“Go!” Thunder said. He gave her a half nudge, half lift with his shoulder, helping her up and over the low window ledge. Then she was running to the portside railing, straddling it, leaping to the river below. She hit the water with a splash and was immediately enveloped in darkness. For a moment she had no idea which way was which. Panic swelled inside her. She swung her head from side to side, her hair trailing in front of her eyes. A foot brushed the bottom and she knew up from down. She looked up and saw what she thought was the dark hull of the riverboat. She kicked toward it.
The riverboat had a very shallow draft, only a couple feet deep, which made it easy for her to swim beneath. The width, however, was much wider than she would have thought possible. She barely made it to the keel before her lungs were aching and her head pounding from oxygen deprivation.
She kept kicking until the darkness finally lightened and she knew she had cleared the hull. She fought the natural instinct to crash through the surface. That would likely earn her a bullet in the head. Instead she poked her head above the water as quietly as possible, sucking back a huge gulp of air, which for her overworked lungs was like sucking back gasoline fumes. She made a sound like a rusty door opening, but she didn’t think it was loud enough for Jahja to hear. Her eyes watered and she thought she was going to sputter and cough. Nevertheless, she bit back the gagging impulse and got her breathing under control.
She started swimming away from the riverboat.
Thunder remained by the window until Scarlett had jumped over the portside railing, then he flattened himself into the crook next to the door. Seconds later he heard Jahja stomp down the staircase, pausing when he reached the stern deck. Thunder imagined he was studying the broken glass. The lock clicked, the door swung inward. If Jahja had shoved it open all the way, it would have bounced against Thunder’s chest, giving away his presence. Luckily, he only opened it enough to stick his head inside and give the room a quick perusal before hurrying over to the portside railing.
Thunder left the hiding spot and stuck his head out the door. Jahja was bent over the railing, looking down at the river, the AK in one hand, a kerosene lantern held high in the other. The clear yellow flame was constant and bright, enveloping him in a circle of light.
Thunder started across the deck, taking large steps to gain momentum while trying to remain silent at the same time. Glass crunched underfoot.
Jahja turned, his eyes widening in surprise.
Roaring, Thunder lowered his shoulder and barreled into him, sending them both sprawling to the deck. The lantern smashed the deck a few meters away, the glass globe exploding on impact. Kerosene spilled and caught fire. Two-foot-tall flames whooshed into existence.
Jahja, however, managed to hold onto the AK. Before he could swing it around, Thunder kicked him in the neck. This time Jahja released the rifle. It clattered across the deck, slipped beneath the iron railing, and splashed into the water below.
Shouting something in Arabic, Jahja leapt at Thunder. Thunder planted his feet firmly in Jahja’s chest, catching him in midair and using the terrorist’s own momentum to toss him over his head. He landed with a thump and an unearthly howl. Thunder twisted around and saw Jahja flopping from side to side in the pool of flames, which were now nearly a meter high and spreading quickly. Jahja sprang to his feet, a human torch. Screaming, he ran blindly around in circles until he collide
d with the starboard railing, cart-wheeled over, and plunged into the river seconds later. The night smelled like burnt flesh and hair and clothes.
“Thunder!” It was Scarlett, faint, somewhere far away. “Get off the boat! It’s going to blow!”
He looked left, to the fire. The flames were licking the twin diesel engines. He scrambled to the railing, scissor-hopped over it, and was just about to jump when there was a deafening explosion. The pressure wave from the hot, expanding gas caught him from behind and launched him like a rag doll through the night.
“Thunder!” Scarlett cried, swimming back toward the riverboat, kicking with her feet. She stopped a few yards away from the now burning wreckage and treaded water, her eyes darting from each piece of fiery debris floating on the water. She didn’t see him anywhere.
A hand grabbed her shoulder from behind.
“Thunder?”
Even as Scarlett turned, she knew the hand couldn’t belong to Thunder because his were bound behind his back, as were hers. Instead she found herself staring in horror at Jahja—or what had once been Jahja—because what stared back at her was no man but something from a nightmarish world, a Halloween mask come to life.
Every inch of his face was bright red and purple and mushy, except for his nose and lips, which were black and charred. The skin along his left brow had clumped and now drooped in front of his eye, almost completely covering it, while that around his right eye had melted away, leaving the eyeball unnaturally wide and round. His mouth was open in a soundless scream.
Scarlett tried desperately to shake the hand off her shoulder, but it held her firm. His other hand grabbed her around the throat and squeezed. She brought her legs up to try to kick away from him. To do that, she had to stop treading water, and her head immediately sank beneath the surface. In her panic she swallowed mouthfuls of water. She coughed, swallowing more water.
She was going to drown.
Then she remembered what the Irishman had done to Thunder. She stopped kicking and shot her legs straight up, out of the water, locking them around Jahja’s neck. She corkscrewed her body, the maneuver working like a teeter-totter, dunking Jahja beneath the water while buoying her up. Her head broke through the surface again.
Jahja’s hands clawed at her legs. She squeezed her thighs and ankles tighter. The clawing became less persistent. Five long seconds later it stopped altogether. She held firm for another five seconds, just to be sure. Finally she released his neck and, with the last of her strength, kicked to shore. When she felt mud beneath her knees, she stopped kicking and began waddling. She got halfway up the bank before she could go no farther.
She collapsed beneath the great, black, African sky.
Chapter 43
It was midmorning when Scarlett noticed Thunder stir.
“Wakey, wakey,” she said.
His eyes fluttered open and he squinted against the bright, golden sunlight.
“Lettie?” He blinked several times. “What? Where?”
“Take it easy,” she said. “You had a rough night.”
He sat up, groaning. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this bad.” He rubbed his head, stopped, and looked in amazement at his hands.
“I sawed through my rope on a rock during the night,” she explained. “Then I untied yours.”
He arched an eyebrow at the small fire in the crudely erected fire pit a few feet away. “You’ve been busy,” he said.
“I borrowed a few flames from the burning boat.”
He looked toward the river. “Christ!”
“Yeah.”
The scattered flotsam from the explosion the night before had burned out pretty quickly, but the actual riverboat, or what remained of it, had continued to burn throughout the early hours of the morning. Just as the sun was rising, it began to sink until only the tapered bow remained visible, protruding at an angle five feet from the water.
“I remember a flash of light, heat.” He shook his head. “That’s it. What happened?”
“First things first,” she told him. “Jahja’s dead.”
“I saw him catch fire. He jumped into the water. Maybe—”
“He’s dead.” Scarlett explained everything that had happened. “I managed to get to shore okay,” she finished. “After I caught my breath, I went back in the water to look for you. But I didn’t find you—at least, not until I was back on shore again, looking for a rock to free my hands.”
“Where was I?”
“Right here.”
Thunder looked at the riverboat, twenty meters away, then back at her. “Are you having a go?”
She shook her head.
“Blimey.”
“Do you think you can stand? I want to show you something.”
He tried pushing himself off the ground but collapsed back to his rear. She helped him the second time, then led him along the bank. With each step he grew more surefooted until he was walking on his own. A little farther on she stopped and pointed. Instead of looking where he was looking, following her finger, she watched his face. His eyes widened and he broke into a grin that lit up his entire face. Then she, too, turned toward the small skiff tied up against a tree stump. She smiled the first real smile in days.
“There’s even an extra tank of fuel between the seats,” she said.
“The Irishman’s?”
“Has to be.”
Thunder didn’t say anything more, and Scarlett realized he was choked up with emotion. She took his hand and they continued the rest of the way to the boat. They untied the painter line and pushed away from shore. She tugged the starter cord. The 25-hp Johnson motor fired up on the first go. It was one of the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard. She opened the throttle and pointed the skiff upriver.
They were going home.
About the Author
Jeremy Bates has spent the last ten years traveling the world, visiting more than thirty countries. He has lived in Canada, the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. Bates is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario with a degree in English literature and philosophy. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Inc., and Crime Writers of Canada. Visit the author at www.jeremybatesbooks.com.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
About the Author
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