Oliver threw him a glance. Moses kept his eyes on the screen, never blinking.
“Let's see the other rooms,” Oliver said. Adowa eased the drone through the main room and into a short hallway with two open doors on the right opposing a third on the left.
“Inside. One by one.”
They glided into the first room. More blood patterns as before: grisly clumps surrounded by finely dotted spray made by extreme velocity exit wounds. Blaine inched up behind Adowa, peeking over her shoulder at the screen, watching in horror.
“Good God,” he whispered. “How many have they killed?”
“A number no one can count,” Oliver said, and it was the first time Blaine saw, or thought he saw, emotions stirred deep inside the man.
Panning down into the corner of the room, a cot and a blanket swept into view.
“Next room,” Oliver said.
Gliding into the next room, it was the same thing. Blood patterns. Several cots for sleeping and nothing else. Moving on to the third, it looked to be the same, until upon panning a hard left, a body came into view. Pressed into the corner of the room. Motionless, and by all appearances, dead.
“I have one,” Oliver said. Suddenly, the body moved, and a terrified face resolved. A young woman. Alive. Bound with wire and gagged, her head and shoulders were propped miserably against the wall.
“There is a woman,” Oliver said.
“Civilian,” Adowa said, fury knotting her voice.
“Where are the bodies?” Oliver asked no one in particular. “The poachers—we all heard them scream. They are here somewhere. Go back into the main room. Quickly,” he said.
Adowa swung the drone back to the main space. Tilting low, they saw pronounced footprints and drag marks in the dirt. Random and senseless. Hallmark of panic. And there were paw prints. Huge.
LEON.
“I think... I think he dragged them off,” Oliver said. “He wasn't supposed to drag them off.”
“He wasn't supposed to kill them, either,” Blaine countered.
“We have to get that woman,” Adowa said. Moses cut his eyes at her.
“It is too risky.”
“We can't leave a civilian—least of all a woman—alone in there,” she answered, now locked in a stare-off with Moses. “Oliver,” she said. “Oliver!”
“Why did he drag them off?” Oliver whispered, not hearing her. “Go back outside, I want to see where he took them.”
“Oliver, the woman—”
“Not now,” he growled.
Adowa waited a moment, suspended by a sudden, sharp anger.
“Take us outside. Hurry,” he said.
Snapping from it, Adowa moved the drone forward and out, the edges of the door vanishing in the periphery of the camera.
“Steady now...”
The feed terminated, and Oliver thought he saw something sweep the frame a moment before it happened. Something in rapid motion.
“Whoa,” Adowa said. “It's gone.”
“Did you see it?” Oliver asked.
“Yes—just before it shut off—I saw... something,” Blaine said, suddenly amped.
Adowa fought with the app a moment longer. No response. She closed and relaunched it. NO CONNECTION. CANNOT LOCATE DRONE, it read.
“I can't talk to it.”
“It was LEON,” Moses said.
“We don't know that for sure,” Blaine said. “Right, Oliver?”
He hoped for an answer, but got nothing. Finally, Moses said something in Swahili to Hassan.
“I disagree,” Adowa said, understanding their exchange. “Oliver...”
Oliver closed his eyes then. Shutting them all out.
“Oliver, the woman—”
Blaine heard the distinct sound of a gun clacking behind him. His pulse rocketed.
“Wait, now. Wait! What are we doing? Will someone please tell me?” Blaine asked.
“You are a mzungu. You do not need to know anything. Just be still now,” Moses said.
Blaine felt heat rush into his cheeks, tension in his jaw and neck. Anger finally broke the surface.
“Now see here, Mr. Chausiku, perhaps you don't understand who you're talking to, or rather, who I represent. Whether or not you believe it, you don't want to cross me. With one phone call, I can make your life very, very hard. It was my people who put this operation together. My people paid for it. I am their representative. I am the money. And I have the power. Are we clear, Mr. Chausiku?”
Expecting a murderous glare in return, Blaine marveled at what happened next. Moses laughed. A big belly laugh.
“I understand, mzungu. More than you realize,” Moses said through the last of a lingering giggle.
“Sunrise is upon us,” Oliver said. “We will wait here for light, then drive to the building. We will recover the drone, find the bodies to confirm the kills, and...” He hesitated, finally opening his eyes, touching Adowa with a magnetic stare. She pleaded with him in silence.
“And we will bring the woman back with us. If she is still alive.”
Through the windshield, sunlight arced over the savannah, bathing everything in a honey-gold wave. It was a long way and a long time from anywhere, Blaine realized. No man's land.
* * *
It was a case of structural autoimmune disease, the tortured exterior of the squat building scarcely able to prevent an inevitable collapse. As soon as they alighted from the Land Rover, Hassan quietly handed out radios. Oliver, shouldering an old canvas bag with Velcro closures, quickly restated the plan.
“Hassan and Blaine will come with me to find the bodies. Moses will sweep the building for anything the drone missed. Adowa, you will find the drone.”
Adowa protested sharply, “I'll check on the woman first, and then find the drone.”
“Moses will check the woman, you will recover the drone,” Oliver said. Adowa remained still, her reaction promising nothing of the sort.
“There can be nothing here that will trace the poachers back to us. We cannot leave the drone. Not one part of it.”
“Perhaps I should remain and assess whether this other vehicle might be of use,” Blaine said, motioning to the poachers’ Jeep.
Oliver truncated his escape. “And what did I just say about no traces? The Jeep stays here. You are with me, Peterson.”
Blaine quietly resigned, trying hard to ignore his nervous, fidgety bowels.
“Okay. How long will this take?” he asked, adjusting the straps of his brand new backpack. The only thing missing was the price tag, which Adowa figured he'd removed a few hours before they left Dodoma.
“I do not anticipate it taking too long,” Oliver said, “because I think I know where the bodies are.”
At his feet were depressions in the grass that snaked off toward an island of trees nearby. Randomly painted in the depressions were deep red slashes. It could be only one thing. Oliver muttered something to Hassan in Swahili and the man quietly readied an AK-47. Aiming the barrel ahead, he moved step by step into the brush. Oliver and Blaine followed, the three of them vanishing almost instantly.
Adowa watched them go, feeling a sudden wave of trepidation as she stood at the door of the building near Moses. It was just the two of them.
“Go and find the drone,” Moses said. It was an order.
Fifty yards removed from them, beneath a canopy of trees, Blaine fought the growing urge to vomit. The bones of the dead were piled together, save for the skulls, which were strangely lined up. The air was alive with spinning, vaporous clouds of insects. Splashes of drying blood rounded the kill. Oliver launched the camera function on his tablet.
“Did LEON bring them here? Did he pile them together... arrange the skulls to line up like this?” Blaine asked.
Oliver didn't have an answer. Instead he began to take pictures of the carnage. One frame at a time. Methodically.
“I can't think of a more terrible way to die,” Blaine said.
Oliver took another photo and said, “These me
n deserved much worse than this, Peterson. Hell is too good a place for them.”
The remark knocked Blaine off center.
“Mr. Banda, did you... do this? Did you instruct LEON to kill these men?” he pressed.
Oliver was a sealed vault.
“My God, what the hell have you done here?”
A text arrived on the tablet. HIDE AND SEEK, it read.
“Is that LEON?” Blaine asked. Quickly, Oliver typed in a command and waited. Blaine glanced at Hassan. The big man shivered, glancing about the area nervously, eerily in all directions.
A text response landed on the screen.
Blaine edged in for a look, but Oliver drew the tablet away, lowering it at his side.
“What was that?” Blaine asked. “What did it say?”
Oliver spoke Swahili to Hassan, but the man was unresponsive. Paralyzed. Blaine felt his heart slamming against his chest, his eyes falling on all the bones and blood.
“Listen to me,” he said, “your beast did this. And now we are dead men standing out here. The rest of these poachers will come soon to find out what happened to their men. They will come and they will kill us if your monster doesn't kill us first! Do you understand, Mr. Banda? Are you listening to me? We have to leave. Right. Now.”
Blaine was a perfect cocktail of rage and terror, his mind grappling with Oliver's iron-like, uncaring expression and the blood-painted grass hemming them in on all sides. It was in that moment Blaine decided Oliver was not human. That the man himself was nothing more than software—lines of genetic code created to perform inhuman, unconscionable acts.
“I don't care what you do from here, Mr. Banda. But I am leaving,” Blaine said, pressing Hassan with a lidless glare. Are you with me?
A sudden, fresh gust of wind swept the plain, causing Oliver and Blaine to teeter on their feet. Squinting against the blow, Oliver saw the tall grass of the savannah purling in a languid, slow-motion waltz—waves atop an amber, windblown sea. Blaine watched the grass carefully, noting every fold, every wrinkle formed by the fingers of the wind. Resolving fifty yards out in the middle of the grass, an alien pattern emerged. Moving in their direction. As if something was in the grass creating a hole around which the wind kept making variant patterns.
Blaine snatched the tablet from Oliver and quickly read the text on the screen: HIDE AND SEEK. YOUR TURN. I SEEK YOU. He wheeled back toward the growth. That strange pattern. The hole... gone. Now there was only the sound of the grass—a million blades whispering to each other. Clarity crashed over him. Complete and total understanding.
“You've killed us all,” he heard himself say as he passed the device back to Oliver.
Hassan spoke in Swahili, his voice sharp with nervous energy. He tipped the AK in the direction of that strange pattern, and as quickly as he did, Oliver swung in front of the barrel, barking an order Blaine did not understand. The situation was imploding.
* * *
“Go and find the drone,” Moses ordered Adowa again. “What are you waiting for, woman? Go! Now!”
Steely-eyed, Adowa broke from him, shooting quickly away and into the building, crossing the main room, traveling down the hall, arriving at the third room. Pressed into the corner, the imprisoned woman squirmed as soon as Adowa arrived, scared out of her mind with wild, racing eyes. The gag was still in her mouth, wire wrapped taut around her wrists and ankles, hands and feet purple and swelling.
Adowa spoke to her in Swahili: “We are here to help. We are going to get you out of here.” She quickly pulled the gag from the woman's mouth, then examined the wire.
“Moses, I need cutters,” she called over her shoulder. “There's a set in the back of the vehicle.”
She heard footfalls in the dirt, and a moment later Moses was standing behind her in the doorway. The woman's stare landed on him and her pupils dilated into deep, dark pools.
“One of them,” she said in Swahili. “Poacher! He's one of them!”
A thunderclap struck in the room, and a red mist exploded from the side of the woman's head. Adowa screamed. Moses snapped the barrel of his gun to the center of her face.
“You belong to me now,” he said, his eyes gleaming razors. She barely heard him over the shimmering ringing in her ears.
Blaine, Oliver, and Hassan all heard the gunshot and the scream. Blaine stumbled, falling into the pile of bones, making contact with the skulls, those horrific, cavernous orbits judging him silently. He scrambled away, desperate for some kind of footing while his feet slipped grotesquely over the blood lacquered grass.
Hassan vaulted off his spot in a furious dash back toward the building. Oliver screamed after him in Swahili, which did nothing. A moment later came a stunning volley of gunfire, followed by two precise rounds. Adowa's scream came from midair beyond the moving tall grass. More gunfire. Oliver typed furiously on the pad.
“What the hell are you doing?” Blaine hissed.
“I am terminating the program. I am shutting LEON down.”
“Shutting him down?”
“Yes.”
“He's a beast, not a program!”
“I am wiping the program. He will go to sleep and not remember a thing.”
Waiting for the confirmation code, Oliver mopped his brow with the back of his hand.
“No one gets the program,” he said. “No matter what happens—no one gets LEON. Follow me.”
Oliver crab-crawled through the grass and Blaine followed until they made it close enough for a view of the building. No one visible.
“I don't see anyone,” Blaine said.
“Lower your voice,” Oliver replied in a dangerous whisper.
“We have to do something,” Blaine whispered. “If we can make it to the other side of the building and reach the Land Rover, then—”
The engine started, and ramped into the howl of sudden, hard acceleration with the slashing of stones and dirt from beneath angry tires.
“No, no!”
Blaine tore through the grass, dashing blindly into the open where, at his feet, Hassan's dead body suddenly loomed. Blaine rounded the building and caught sight of their Land Rover, bombing away from them through the grass. It shrank in the distance, all but vanishing behind the growth. Blaine felt Oliver land at his side. Amped and unsteady on his feet, Blaine reeled in a circle.
“This cannot be happening... This is not happening!”
“Who took it?” Oliver asked. “Did you see?”
“No,” Blaine said. “I didn't see anything. We're dead, aren't we? We are dea—”
“Shut up,” Oliver barked. “Steady yourself!” He examined the tablet. The screen was locked, the program hopelessly frozen. A voice broke in on the radio in Blaine's hand.
“Oliver. Oliver, can you hear me.”
The two men traded a glance. Moses. Blaine handed his radio to Oliver. Hesitant, he carefully pressed the talk button.
“Moses, is that you?” he asked.
A beat later, Moses replied, “I am parked a quarter mile from your position. I have Adowa with me, and I am holding a gun to her head.”
Softly in the background, they heard sharp intakes of breath and quiet sobs.
“The son of a bitch,” Blaine growled.
Oliver keyed the radio. “What is this about?” he asked.
They waited for a response while Blaine swatted at insects buzzing his ears.
“You will give me LEON. I will give you Adowa.”
Her voice cut in, “Don't give him the tablet, Oliver! Don't give him—”
A sickening crack hit the microphone. A shriek.
“Do not make me kill her, Oliver.”
Electric moments passed. Oliver lowered the radio and glanced at the tablet once more, at the program still running aimlessly. Or so it seemed. A text appeared: I WILL HELP OLIVER, I WILL HUNT.
Over Oliver's shoulder, Blaine read the message, and a shudder ran through him.
“He knows,” he said. “How can an animal possibly know?”
Without blinking, Oliver thumbed the radio on. “Who are you working for, Moses?” he asked.
“That is none of your concern. I will make this simple. I will drive halfway, you will walk halfway. You will give me the tablet and I will give you Adowa.”
“And then what, Moses? You will drive off and leave us here to die.”
Blaine dug into his backpack and palmed a set of binoculars straight from the Sky Mall catalog. Tilting them to his eye line, he adjusted focus and panned the shimmering horizon, eventually landing on what appeared to be the top quarter of the Land Rover. Through the glass resolved the impressions of two figures, and a gun which was indeed in the grip of the driver, pressed against the head of the passenger.
“You do not tell me what I will do, Oliver. I am in charge now! You will give me LEON. For that, I will allow you to live.”
Oliver skimmed the staggering width of the land surrounding them. The sun was already striking blunt shadows off trees and brush. The longer they remained out here, the more likely they were to become prey for any number of predators. Oliver studied those words on the tablet again. I WILL HELP OLIVER, I WILL HUNT.
Moses' voice exploded on the radio. “I give you exactly one minute before I will kill Adowa! You will give me LEON now! What is your answer?”
“Don't give him the program, Oli—” she yelled before the radio went dead.
Blaine centered his binoculars on the rolling waves of distant grass surrounding the Land Rover. The motion was hypnotic, but through it Blaine thought he saw an interruption of that pattern. More exactly, a hole. A hole that was approaching the Land Rover.
“I think,” he began, “I think I see LEON. Wait...”
Sunlight struck the windshield in a blinding, optical flare, and Blaine pulled his eyes from the glass.
* * *
Adowa felt a painful throbbing in the side of her face and heat radiating from the spot where Moses had struck her just moments before. He still had the tip of the gun pressed firmly against her temple and she could feel the roundness of the barrel on her skin. One clean shot through the brain. She heard Moses speak, but did not look at him or cry out.
The Cyborg Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 14