by Fiona Quinn
“Good, now up you go, quiet as a cheetah stalking his dinner.”
Without any assistance, Ahbou scrambled up onto Rooster’s shoulders. With remarkable balance, he bent his knees and sprang up to a limb. Rooster peeked up just long enough to see Ahbou swing his legs like a gymnast on the uneven bars to get the momentum to catapult himself onto the limb and clamber up until he disappeared. Rooster edged over to the remaining hostages. Meg sat on a rock, staring at her knees.
Momo moved back toward Meg. “Your scientist made a stupid move. Rash and deadly. His decision cost not one but two lives. We cannot afford such stupidity.” He raised his voice to a pitch that could be heard by all. “The next person who tries to escape will be beaten without mercy, and then killed. And he will die knowing that it will cost the fingers of all of your fellow scientists. Weigh that in with your stupidity.”
“Where is your son?” the gunman asked Meg.
Meg looked around at the scientists, then back between her knees.
The gunman prodded her with his rifle. “I ask you, where is your son?”
“My son?” She cocked her head to the side. “I don’t have a son.”
“The African boy.”
Meg shook her head then turned to Momo with a What should I do? I’m so confused look.
Momo turned to his guard. “Meg Finley is not a married woman. She has no children. Why are you asking about a boy?”
Meg turned innocent eyes on the guy. Meg deserved an Oscar for her performance. It was so good, in fact, that Rooster saw the young hostile second-guess himself. Whatever it was that went through his head, it made him self-doubt. That might be a key to help them make their escape.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Meg
The Truck—Ngorongoro (maybe?) Tanzania
Abraham Silverman, or whoever he was, was passed out with his head in Meg’s lap. Rooster seemed to know him. That was odd. Small world or not, the kind of people that Rooster would brush up against lived in the dark underbelly of things. Meg wanted to know whether Abraham was trustworthy, but there were others in the truck, and she didn’t feel free to talk about it. Besides, Rooster had distanced himself from her. If she spoke, it would be for everyone’s ears.
They had two guards in the cab and two in the back with them. They had put Rooster in the far back. Smart move. If he was sitting where she was, he could grab them at the same time and shove them out the opening in the canvas and make his escape. She looked down at her fingers and wondered if Momo’s threat was real or a psychological shackle. Making a life or death decision for one’s self was different than for the whole group. Meg thought back to her studies of World War II concentration camps and how the Nazis reined in the masses by that threat. Humans were, after all, animals. Animals with a biological predisposition to save their community, however that community was defined in the moment.
As if reading her thoughts, Jared Dolan, the scientist next to her said, “That was a pretty horrifying threat the leader made about our fingers. I wonder if someone from one of the other trucks attempts an escape if they’d punish everyone, even if we weren’t around. I’m rather attached to my fingers, don’t you know.” He tried to chuckle as if he were making light, but it came out as a rasp.
“Do you think they’re planning to do that anyway?” another scientist, Johnathan Marley asked. “Isn’t that what they do? They ask for payment for the release of a prisoner or some such thing and when there isn’t compliance then they chop off a finger and send it in a box to prove they’re serious?”
“No, that’s not what they do,” Rooster said.
When Rooster spoke, the guards got nervous. They were non-English, non-Kiswahili speakers. They had mostly communicated with glares and gun pointing. Meg could feel them stirring in their seats, their fingers moving to their triggers. If the one near her swung his rifle in Rooster’s direction, Meg thought she could probably grab hold of the barrel and use it to shove the guy back. If she had enough power behind the move, it might just force him out the back hatch. Of course, with Abraham in her lap, that would make things difficult. But that was her plan—for this guy anyway. She didn’t have a plan for the guy on the other side of the truck.
“How do you know that?” Jared queried. “It’s what they do in the movies. They make stuff up, sure. But it has to be based on something.”
“You’re a scientist,” Rooster said. “What’s your specialty?”
“I’m an agronomist. I work in soil reclamation.”
“Okay, good. Then you’re aware of what happens when an organism dies. It decays. Apply what you know to this situation,” Rooster said. “Say they decided to cut off someone’s thumb.”
Meg felt the anxiety in the truck rising. Not just the soldiers this time.
“The tissues would start an immediate decaying process, yeah? Where are you from?”
“Nova Scotia,” Jared murmured. “Canada.”
“All right. Some observations and conclusions—first, we seem to be headed farther into the bush, not closer to civilization. No electricity means no ice or refrigeration. They would have to get to the nearest post office and that post office would need to mail the package. The package would need to go through customs. Then it would need to be delivered. Let’s say that takes a minimum of five days. Do you think that your thumb would be a distinguishable part of you to your family? I mean, even if you were to receive a freshly sliced-off thumb and were asked to definitively say this was or was not the thumb of a loved one, could you? No. Unless there’s something remarkable about your thumb, it would be a stupid way to make a point. Let that go.”
Now Meg felt the collective brains mulling over the argument. Agreeing with the assessment and easing up.
“Okay, then,” Johnathan said. “What will they do?”
“Most likely they’ll make a video of you crying and looking in the lens of a camera begging your family earnestly to do whatever it takes to save you.”
Rooster was very blasé about the information. Making her cry wasn’t going to be hard. In fact, Meg had been working overtime trying to keep her emotions in check. But Rooster? Except for tears of laughter, like he’d shed when he realized she’d thought he was Randy’s lover, she couldn’t imagine anyone wringing a tear from him.
Randy. Was he still alive? She’d seen Rooster standing under the tree, and Ahbou climbing to his shoulders and jumping up out of sight. He, at least, was probably safe. As their truck was being loaded, Rooster had said he and Ahbou had made a plan to care for Randy—and he reminded her to stay the hell away from him. “Distance yourself physically and emotionally.” Physically, was hard but doable. Emotionally? Um, no. That wasn’t going to happen.
What actually happened was she had been sitting in a bar with this intelligent, funny, kind man who also happened to be handsome as hell. She had put her hands on his thighs, leaned in, and kissed him. And somehow, her fate had been sealed. Her heart belonged to a near-stranger. Now that was a revelation.
About a half hour down the road an explosion lit up the sky, and the sound waves blasted the night. Meg shut down completely. Hundreds of people had probably just lost their lives. She, Rooster, Ahbou, and Randy could very well have been amongst them. Randy…had he survived it? Was he alive? Could she have done more for him? Guilt was an acid that burned through her veins. Horror seeped through her pores. She shook so hard she could barely stay upright. She could feel Rooster sending her strength. It was the only thing holding her together.
***
They bounced over the ground through the bush. They hadn’t been following any roads for what seemed like an eternity. Meg’s stomach was growling. The adrenaline must be working its way out of her system. She was suddenly thankful for Rooster taking the extra minutes to get her prepared. The extra socks that she pulled off her right foot very well could have saved Randy’s life. Please God. And now she had a food supply. She wasn’t sure how long it would have to last. She selfishly didn’t want to share
with the others in the truck. And if she pulled the protein bars out here, the guard might just take them from her. She’d wait.
She could see the other two Key scientists had fallen asleep. Rooster had his head resting in his hands. He was the only one who was restrained. They’d tied his hands together with rope. She’d slip him some food as soon as she was close enough.
Her stomach rumbled again. Maybe she could sneak a bite. She reached under her windbreaker into the kangaroo pocket on her hoodie. She’d stuffed it to the max getting the bars in. This had kept them in place during their ordeal. Ordeal? That word didn’t have enough octane. She needed a better word. But she couldn’t land on one. Terror? She had a feeling, though, that even though this night had been the worst thing that she’d experienced in her life, that she shouldn’t call it terror—even that was overused and had lost the scale she was looking for. But there wasn’t really a step above terror. And she felt like she was balanced on one of the first rungs in that ladder. Meg shoved the power bar deeper into her pocket. She’d lost her appetite. She’d also lost her will to dam her tears. She let them flow silently down her cheeks as they traveled farther and farther into the wilderness.
***
Meg came awake with a jolt as the rear gate of their truck banged open and the canvas was pushed aside. She must have cried herself to sleep, because it was dawn. The sky was just beginning to lighten with the new day. Abraham lay still in her lap. His mouth was open and hung slightly to the side. His lids weren’t tightly closed. Her body convulsed, and she almost pushed him off her lap. She thought he’d died there last night, and she had been cradling the head of a corpse. But then his tongue protruded, and he licked his lips and groaned. Still alive.
The guards came and lifted Abraham under the arms, and they got him mostly upright as they dragged him away. The door to the truck shut. The flap descended, and they were back in the dark.
“Is everyone okay?” Meg asked.
“Other than being in desperate need of some water and a tree to piss on, I’m fine,” Jared said.
“I’m about the same,” Johnathan replied then leaned toward her. “Was Abraham still alive?”
“How about you, Meg?” Rooster asked. His quiet words came to her as if telegraphed, so that no one else would hear the vibrations disturbing the atmosphere. Maybe she imagined it. She sent him a thumbs up then answered Johnathan, “Yes, but he obviously needs medical attention.”
“Do you think this is our destination? Why do you think we stopped?” Jared asked.
No one answered, but for her it set off wild speculation as to what came next. Rooster had said they’d be making videos. She thought she was pretty much all cried out after last night. Maybe if I drank some water, I could cry some more. Irreverent thoughts were often her go-to way of dealing with stress. But this time it backfired. Was there water to be drunk here? They were pretty far from anywhere, and you couldn’t just drink any found water. Cholera and other waterborne diseases were a major problem in East Africa. She had a bottle and a half in her coat pocket—no one had taken that from her yet. How long could she make that last? Could she get some of it to Rooster? Would he take it from her?
Maybe those kinds of thoughts were irrelevant right now. Maybe she should be thinking about the video instead. What would she do if they asked her to say something horrible, like renouncing her reason for being in Africa, or renouncing America, for that matter? Would she? This was a question she’d never asked herself before. Was she willing to be hurt or killed for words said or not said? Would she say whatever needed to be said and know that what was in her heart was the truth, not the words? Meg guessed that depended on who would see the video. If the recording of her saying bad things about America was used to inspire terrorists who would jump on a bus with a suicide vest and kill dozens of innocent people, then she’d be complicit.
Maybe they’d just make the recordings and send them to the Gateway Foundation or her university. Proof of life, isn’t that what they called it? If that was the case, they’d reach out to her family. Her mom and step-dad, her sister Kelly, and Steve. Steve! Steve was with the FBI. The FBI operated around the world on American hostage rescue. Surely, they would race to save any American, but maybe having a special agent’s sister in the mix might add a little extra boost to their rockets. And there was Rooster. She knew so little about him, other than that he had a sister named Mary Margaret. If Mary Margaret got a recording, she’d definitely contact Iniquus. Iniquus had operatives in Africa and the Middle East. They could probably get on-site quickly. How quickly? It would no doubt take days for them to mobilize. Yeah, this situation would go on for days and days.
The gunmen came to get her next. As she slid over the lip of the tailgate she forced herself not to look back at Rooster. She could feel him burrowing inside her mind. Reminding her that she’d made promises to him. “That’s what you’ll do. That’s what you’ll keep doing. You will never give up.”
I didn’t get a chance to hand him some food.
The gunman grabbed the sleeve of her jacket and tugged her toward the building. A whisper of fear coated her. She blocked the images of what might be waiting for her as the only female in the group. She thought for a nanosecond that she might be safe. She was an uncircumcised female, and there were taboos barring the men in many African cultures from any sexual contact with uncircumcised women. And then she entered the building and thought, Fuck. And that’s the word that hammered in her brain with a consistent beat as she walked down the cement hall lined with cells.
This must be an abandoned prison.
Old. Dank. Rusted. Filthy. They turned the corner. Dark. Smelly. Leaking. Horrible. On this corridor, there were four cells—two on the left and two on the right. The one on the left side at the end stood open. The man said in broken Kiswahili, “Momo says as his guest of honor you get the most beautiful room. Two windows.” He waved her in. It was the last place she wanted to go.
“I need to use the bathroom,” she stalled. As the only woman, would she be segregated from the group? Alone? Wasn’t there something she’d read about what happens to people when they are isolated—put in solitary confinement? Panic was a palpable thing. It engulfed her.
Across the hall, she spotted a lump of clothes in the corner. That cell had a single window and there wasn’t much light outside at this time of the morning. After focusing, she realized it was Abraham, dumped in a pile in the corner. “Can I help him get more comfortable? He’s badly hurt. His arm is broken.”
The guard wagged a finger at her.
“The bathroom then?”
He pointed at a plastic bucket inside her cell. She spun around and saw that each of the four cells had a matching bucket, much like the one they’d drunk honey beer from just yesterday. Could that really be just yesterday? So much had happened in such a short time. The bees and Robert, the truth behind Rooster’s call name, the wonderful follow up in her bed that was interrupted by all hell breaking loose, and now here she was. Wherever “here” was.
“Some water? To drink?” She tried again.
“After everyone is put away.”
She eyed the door to her cell. She’d be locked in there. The windows were too high to see out. Too small to crawl through, even if they didn’t have bars. She’d be a prisoner. She had been a prisoner all night, sure. But this seemed radically different somehow. She just stared into the cell. And blinked.
Suddenly, the guard took his rifle in two hands and, using it like a shield, he thrust it out at her, pushing her into the cell. The door shrieked against its hinges as he swung it closed with a final bang before she could catch her balance and contrive some other means of avoiding this fate. She moved back over to the wall made of bars and wrapped her hands around them as she watched the guard leave. What was she going to do now?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rooster
Who the Hell Knows, Tanzania (?)
“Meg, are you all right?” Rooster sat with his
back against the bars in the cell beside Meg’s, thank God. Three walls made of cement blocks, one wall of rusty bars. He reached out his hand as far as it would go toward her cell and felt her fingers interlace with his.
“Abraham isn’t moving,” she said.
“He may be playing possum. Let’s hope so.” There seemed to only be natural light in this place. He was glad that Meg got the cell with two windows. That would help her morale. His cell was dark and mostly empty. They gave him a waste bucket—that was something—at least he didn’t have to piss in the corner and lay in the puddle. Bonus.
Meg was pushing a power bar into his hand. At first, he thought he should refuse, he’d eaten the one in his pocket surreptitiously last night in the dark. But the truth was, they had missed lunch yesterday because of Robert, and dinner because of this crap. He’d had three power bars—that gave him about four hundred calories in the last twenty hours, when normally he ate ten times that amount. He’d be more help to her if he was functional, and he wasn’t sure the guards wouldn’t eventually take the bars from her and eat them themselves. Get while the getting was good. “Thank you.”
He quietly tore away the wrapper, shoving it into his pocket, then ate it down in two bites. Rooster reached out for Meg again. He had to stay wary though. He didn’t want to get caught holding her hand. He’d weighed the comfort he thought he might bring her versus aligning them in the eyes of the captors and decided this was worth the risk. Psychological studies, after all, had proven that holding a woman’s hand—or better, hugging her—brought their stress levels down and increased their ability to cope. He’d seen that play out on the different missions he’d run. When women were touching someone they cared about, be it a child or an adult, be it a man or another woman, they always were better off than if they were isolated from others.