The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2

by Christopher Cartwright

  “Are you suggesting we leave that man to die?”

  “I’m suggesting he’ll be dead pretty soon regardless of what we do for him. According to your friends in Bilma this raid happened three days ago. No way could someone have survived strung out in the sun without water for that long.”

  “He might know what happened to Sam and Tom.”

  “There’s no way he’s going to be conscious enough to tell us.”

  “Even so, I want to try. If he’s too far gone, I’ll give him some morphine and we’ll put him out of his misery.”

  Veyron gripped the firing mount of the Browning heavy machine gun at the open starboard-side door as Genevieve landed. Genevieve kept the engines running and looked at Elise.

  “You’ve got five minutes,” Genevieve said. “After that, I’ll shoot him myself.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  The Sikorsky landed approximately thirty feet away from the three men tied to pikes. Elise was certain one of them was still alive, but now that she was on the ground, she couldn’t see any obvious sign of life from any of them. Veyron brought the mounted Browning heavy machine gun around to cover her. Elise climbed out of the Sikorsky, keeping her head down as blades above continued to whir at speed in case they needed to leave in a hurry. Her right finger gently paused on the trigger of her Uzi as she scanned the area. Her eyes darted from the excavation site with the burial ground, to the remains of the burned tarpaulin canopies and back to the three men tied to pikes.

  Even three days old, the acrid smell of charred bodies wafted through the air. She involuntarily felt bile rising in her throat. Death was never more pervasive than when it was sensed by your nose. Ahead of her, the sound of an incomprehensible amount of flies competed with the noise of the rotating helicopter blades.

  Elise fought the urge to vomit. Her self-preservation instincts kicked in, telling her to run. Not to wait for an ambush. So she ran to meet the man who appeared alive from the air. At her far right, he was the largest of the three men by nearly a foot in height and fifty pounds of muscle. The first two men were clearly dead. Maggots had already formed in their head and chest bullet wounds.

  The third person, the one whom she’d thought she saw move from the air, appeared almost just as lifeless. He was tied by his neck to the vertical spike, while his wrists were bound at the ends of the horizontal beam. It looked like a makeshift and cheap version of a crucifixion had taken place, before he’d been shot. His breathing, if he still breathed at all, was shallow and barely evident. He had three large bullet wounds to the left-side of his chest. On his forehead, a single bullet hole was visible. She stepped up close to the man. There was no exit wound. Sometimes a stray bullet will lose velocity, so that it only has enough power to enter, but not enough to exit the human flesh. Even so, there’s only one place a bullet to the head can travel, and the brain isn’t very forgiving. A fly crawled out of the open wound and the man’s face didn’t flinch.

  Elise felt the bile rising in her stomach again. This time, she couldn’t control the involuntary response and vomited. She pulled her hair out of her face, and turned around. She’d seen enough. If this man was alive, he wouldn’t be for long. Her eyes followed the smell of burned bodies around the camp. She was all alone. Everyone was dead. She wasn’t going to find another living person down here. Elise looked back at the helicopter and began walking in that direction.

  “Water!” a deep voice, no louder than a whisper, spoke.

  She turned to face a dead man. More ghoul than alive, his open grayish-blue eyes stared vacantly at her without seeing. Flies still crawled out of the grotesque wounds in his chest. The man was going to be dead soon. There was clearly nothing she could do for him.

  Had he really spoken?

  “Please!” the man begged.

  Elise stared at the man’s face. He looked straight through her as though he were blind. There was nothing she could do to save his life. But she couldn’t leave him to suffer as he was, either. She gripped her Uzi and raised it up toward the man’s face. It might be the most humane thing she could do for him.

  Elise, the savior – she recalled the words Nayram had said to her, and lowered her weapon.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have morphine. Would you like me to give you some? You must know I can’t save you, but I can take away your pain.”

  He made no response.

  Instead his head slumped downwards, as though he’d given up the will to fight off death any longer. She lowered her weapon. Perhaps all he wanted was to hear someone tell him it was okay to die? He took several slow, deep breaths. Known as Cheyne-Stokes, they were often the last breaths a person takes before they die.

  Elise wanted to leave, but somehow felt as though she owed it to the man to watch him die. He breathed in deep and then slowly exhaled. She watched as this continued for several breaths. Each one, she expected to be his last. On the ninth, he lifted his head. His ghoulish eyes opened again. And this time they looked at her with recognition.

  He smiled, revealing a full set of white teeth that appeared at odds with his scarred face and warrior’s body. “I don’t need morphine.”

  “What do you need?” She hurried by his side and offered him some water from her bottle.

  “I’ve been waiting.” His voice was deep, calm, and almost hypnotic.

  “For what?”

  His entire body went rigid. Every muscle contracted individually as though a current of electricity had been discharged through his entire body. When it stopped he lifted his head up and stared at her. “I’ve been waiting for you, Elise.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes. The United Sovereign of Kongo has been waiting for your help.”

  “You know about the USK?”

  “My name is Adebowale, but you know may know me as Mtu Wa Watu Moja.”

  Elise translated his name from its ancient Swahili origins. “Man of the One People.” They were the only words she knew in the language, and only because she had spent the past three months trying to find out as much as she could about the man. “You’re the leader of the USK?”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Elise cut the ropes from his wrists and throat. Free from the confines of the pike, the man staggered forward and fell to the ground. His muscles, wasted from days of dehydration and stagnation were no longer capable of holding his massive frame.

  She reached out to help and he pushed her away. “No. Don’t. I’m three times your size, I’ll crush you. Let me fall.”

  Elise eased him toward the ground.

  He rolled on to his side. He tried to straighten himself up using his arms, but they merely pushed vainly into the sand. He smiled and looked at her. “More water, please.”

  She handed her bottle to him. “You’re an American?”

  He took a drink and shook his head. “No. My family came from Zaire, which is now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. As you know, there is very little about the country that is democratically elected. My family was once a proud people – kings throughout the Congo. When I was just a boy, a rebel leader cut my father down with a machete like he was a dog and took over the country. Fortunately, he, along with several other rebels has died in the years since then – but still the pain festers in my wounds.”

  “You want revenge?” Elise said.

  “No. The man responsible for my father’s death was killed when I was just a boy, by a childish rebel who thought he could topple another king. The cycle has continued many times, and still my country suffers. I dream of uniting my country in such a way as to leave everlasting stability and growth in a once proud region, which has suffered greatly since Portugal colonized it in the 16th century.”

  “Okay, so how did you end up living in America?”

  He stared vacantly in silence. Either he didn’t hear her, or didn’t want to answer.

  “Were you a refugee?”

  “No.” Adebowale shook his head. “On the night of my father’s death, my mot
her sent me away. I ran, further than I could have ever believed. I stole a boat and rode the Zaire River north. When I could no longer travel the river I got out and traveled north by foot. I eventually found work laboring for a man in Egypt. He was an archeologist traveling the Sahara in search of an old relic. A book written by Nostradamus, which held visions of the future of humanity. At the time he didn’t speak to us much, instead he told us where to dig and we dug. When I was sixteen years old, and after four years of constant laboring and good eating had put another hundred pounds of muscles on my body, he stopped me and asked if I’d ever played American football. I shook my head, thinking he was mad. When would I have had time to play a game I’d never heard of? He then told me he could arrange for American schooling if I wanted to play some game.”

  “So you went to America to play football?”

  “No. I went to America to get an education, so that one day I might rise up and bring order and stability to my people who so desperately long for peace.”

  She smiled kindly. “How long did you play football?”

  He closed his eyes while he thought about it, and then opened them again. “Six years. I made it pretty far, I suppose. It was a means to an end. I got the education I needed and then returned to Africa to commence my process of change.”

  “Why did you go to Libya, if your fight was in the DRC?”

  “To help the daughter of the man to whom I owe so much – and to instigate the start of a great prophecy.”

  “And what prophecy is that?” she asked.

  He sat up, as though possessed by a demon. His grayish-blue eyes pierced her soul as he spoke with his deep voice – the voice of someone long since dead, a corpse performing a civic service. “The very same prophecy that brought you to Africa! I’m talking about the very same prophecy that has lead the greatest interest and gathering of nations in history.”

  “Go on,” she said.

  He blinked. “The reason Sam Reilly came to Sahara. To place the USK into power before the greatest world war commences over a rare natural resource.”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Elise heard heavy footsteps behind her. She looked up and saw Veyron carrying the Browning heavy machine gun. He must have unclipped the weapon from its helicopter mounting. Sweat poured off his face. He was breathing hard.

  “Time to go,” Veyron said. “We’ve got company.”

  “Who?”

  “A group of nomads. About a mile south of here. They’re armed. Genevieve spotted them on the radar coming over one of the sand dunes.”

  “All right,” Elise said. “We need to get this man to the helicopter.”

  Veyron bent down to feel Adebowale’s pulse. The man’s eyes were closed and he was no longer able to be woken. It was as though he’d used the last of his energy staying alive to this point. “He won’t live long.”

  “Yes he will.”

  “Where are we going to take him? There are no hospitals nearby and he won’t live long without surgery.”

  Elise looked at Veyron. Her jaw fixed with determination and her purple eyes imploring him to help. “We’ll get him to the Maria Helena and I’ll take the bullets out myself.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  Genevieve ran over. “What the hell’s taking so long? We’ve got to go!”

  Veyron looked at her. “Elise is adamant we need to take him with us.”

  Elise met Genevieve’s harsh gaze. “I’ll explain when we’re in the air. Right now we need to get him on board. He’s important.”

  “To what?”

  “Everything.”

  Genevieve swore. “Ah, Christ! You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  Elise nodded without saying a word.

  Veyron handed the heavy machine gun to Elise and then bent down to lift Adebowale using an old fireman’s lift. Displaying remarkable strength he was able to lift the enormous man. Elise followed them back to the Sikorsky.

  Veyron laid Adebowale on his back in the middle section of the helicopter. Elise closed the side door and Genevieve got them back in the air. Elise quickly inserted an intravenous cannula into the large vein at the bend of his arm, known as the cubital fossa. Genevieve increased their altitude and banked to the right to avoid the incoming group of armed nomads. Elise primed an IV line with saline, attached it to the cannula and opened it up to full. The liquid would help counteract the man’s severe dehydration and might just save his kidneys from irreparable damage, but he would need blood products to survive – and someone was going to have to remove the bullets from his head and torso.

  Genevieve looked over her shoulder, back at her. “You want to tell me what this is all about, Elise?”

  “We need to save this guy’s life.”

  “He looks like he’s going to die to me,” Genevieve said.

  “He won’t.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Genevieve. It was as though he knew exactly why we’d come to the Sahara. And that he was at the center of everything Sam and Tom were doing in the Sahara.”

  “That’s impossible. We’re nowhere near the DRC. Nothing we’ve done or said, would give him the indication that’s why we’re here.”

  Elise smiled. “And yet he knew.”

  “Even if he didn’t,” Genevieve said. “The coincidence alone is quite creepy.”

  “So, where are we taking him?”

  “Back to the Maria Helena.”

  “Why not a hospital?”

  Elise shrugged. “He says he needs our help.”

  Genevieve said, “He’ll die without a doctor.”

  “He says I can remove the bullet and he will live.”

  Genevieve shrugged. “It’s his life. I’m still not very happy about it, though.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t really care whether he lives or not. I’m far more interested in finding Sam and Tom.”

  “There’s something else. He says he needs to speak to Sam Reilly immediately.”

  “So do I. Did you tell him it doesn’t matter what they were talking about before he arrived, right now he’s lost in the Sahara somewhere.”

  “I know. I already told him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said the three of them are still alive and will find their own way back to the Maria Helena by the time he regains consciousness.”

  Veyron looked up from what he was doing in the back of the helicopter for the first time. “Who’s the third person?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Genevieve glanced back at the man lying on the helicopter’s stretcher. His breathing was erratic. Veyron had told her his pulse was barely palpable.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Elise. I think you’re trusting heavily in a corpse.”

  “He said you wouldn’t believe a word he said.”

  “Then what did he think I’d do?”

  “He said you’d take him back to the Maria Helena where Sam and Tom would make you into a believer.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Zara opened her eyes. She was surrounded by darkness. The complete oblivion that can send a sane person mad. The sort of pitch black that only the blind may recognize. She breathed in deeply. The air was cool. Possibly even cold. She felt the fine hairs on her arms stand up on their ends. In a dome shaped cavern, a hundred and sixty feet below the surface of the Sahara she sat upright. Her body rigid. Listening to the silence, like a child frightened in the night. Zara turned her head suddenly. She’d heard something. It sounded like the slightest ripple of water lapping on the side of their tiny island. Her eyes focused on the sound, but saw nothing.

  She breathed silently.

  There was always a possibility her pursuers had found their way inside the dome. It was unlikely. Not impossible. She exhaled slowly as a faint light began to manifest beneath the water. Not quite bright enough to see clearly, it looked like a single dot bouncing around underwater. It was li
ke an after-image in the corner of her eye – there, but not there at the same time.

  Her eyes focused in on the light. As it grew, recognition dawned on her. The light was turning blue. It was on the side furthest from where they had entered the dome and was slowly approaching the surface.

  Zara grinned as she watched Sam Reilly surface. Along the outer wall of the dome he carefully ran his hands along the ancient brickwork. Ignorant that she was watching, he worked his way around the dome. After shaking his head, he dipped under the water and disappeared from sight for a few moments before surfacing at the other end of the room.

  At the opposite end of the dome lake he continued to study the ancient walls. She thought he was about to dive again, when he swung around and faced her. This time he noticed her. Their eyes met and he beamed like a child playing at the beach.

  Zara asked, “What are you doing?”

  Sam said, “I’m looking for a way out.”

  She laughed. “We know the way out. It’s through that trapdoor you discovered and it goes to the surface where about five hundred or so men, eager to find a life of great riches, await to kill us.”

  “That’s certainly one of the options,” Sam agreed. “But there’s two problems. One. Like you said, a few hundred soldiers are out there hunting us. And two, the longer we wait down here the more likely we are to starve before we get the chance to cross the desert.”

  “You’re a hundred and sixty feet down a well beneath the Saharan desert! Where do you think you might go?” She looked at him like he was a fool. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the land above us was filled with sand for hundreds of miles in all directions. That means there’s no way to the surface for hundreds of miles. Even if you do find the Garamante Fogaaras, there’s no reason the ancient subterranean irrigation tunnels should still be intact, and even less reason to believe there’s any way to reach the surface at the other end of the tunnels.”

  Sam nodded, as though he’d already concluded pretty much the same as her. “Even so, I think I’ll have a look around.” Sam shrugged indifferently. He inspected the wall nearest to him. Zara thought he looked like a kid casually collecting sea shells at the beach. He spoke to himself, not to her. “These walls were built a long time ago. It’s hard to build anything that lasts this long.”