by Jack Du Brul
There wouldn’t be a second spare in Kivu so she’d have to hitch a ride to Rafai with the refugees. Not only was Rafai bigger, but the military was there in force and only a handful of businesses had closed. If she got a second tire she could return in an empty truck coming back for the next group of evacuees.
And that would waste a day she was sure she didn’t have.
She had landed in the CAR only two days ago, thinking she would have at least a week to get her work done. Then she’d heard about Caribe Dayce’s lightning thrust. She’d rushed to Kivu as quickly as she could, hoping she could get in and out before he overran the town. Could she lose a day and still do it? Were Dayce’s men far enough out to give her the break she needed?
Cali had no choice. She would have to chance it. With luck she would be back this afternoon. She’d reassess the situation then and make her decision about heading farther north. She’d phone in her report after first getting herself a place on one of the refugee trucks. From her rucksack she withdrew a travel wallet and tucked two fifties into her shorts.
She dodged out of the lean-to and ran back to the hotel, her boots sucking at the clinging mud with each rushed pace. The truck driver was hunched over his breakfast, shoveling food into his mouth even before swallowing the previous bite. Two empty plates were stacked at his elbow. A carton of Marlboros rested on an adjacent chair. The hotel’s owner wasn’t leaving anything for Dayce to loot, so everything was going cheap.
She was about to approach when another heavy truck roared into town. Unlike the other vehicles, this one had come in from the north. In the open bed of the six-wheeled diesel were three dozen Africans trying to keep a piece of plastic tarp over their heads. When the truck braked in front of the hotel, the mass of bodies shifted and gallons of water sluiced over the cab just as the driver jumped clear. The full weight of the water poured over his head and ran down his open rain jacket. He looked up through the bed’s stake sides and must have made a face, because children suddenly started laughing.
Cali watched as the white driver raked rain from his hair and flicked drops at the children, eliciting more shrieks of delight. She hadn’t heard a child laugh since she’d arrived in the country. Judging by the bundles of possessions being handed down from the truck, these people had just fled their homes and somehow this man could make their children laugh. She guessed he was an aid worker and they had known him for some time.
Which meant he knew the situation up country.
She looked behind her. The trucker would be at his meal for a while. She stepped back into the rain and approached the stranger. He paid her no attention as he helped people out of the truck, handing infants to waiting mothers and steadying the arms of old men, affording them dignity while making sure they didn’t fall. He was maybe an inch taller than Cali and with his T-shirt stuck to his chest she saw he had a powerful build. Not the grotesque muscles of a weight lifter, but the lean physique of someone who worked hard for a living.
He must have finally felt her presence because he turned. Cali startled. It was the eyes, she realized instantly. The man was handsome, yes, but his eyes, a shade of gray like storm clouds, were riveting. She’d never known such a color existed or could have imagined they would be so attractive.
“Hi,” he said, an amused lift at the corner of his mouth.
“Hi,” Cali replied before gathering herself. “You just came from the north.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Found these people wandering out of the jungle about twenty miles from here. Thought I’d give them a lift.”
“You’re not an aid worker?”
A lanky farmer passed a caged chicken down to the man. He handed it to Cali, making her part of the human chain unloading the truck. “No. I’m a geologist.” He held out a hand. “Mercer. My name is Philip Mercer.”
His occupation took her by surprise as she absently took his hand. For the second time in just a few moments, Cali startled. Even wet, his palm was as rough as tree bark, callused so that the skin picked against her own. She felt strength in that fleeting touch, but also something more. Assurance, confidence, kindness, an utter lack of guile-she wasn’t sure which, or maybe all of them. He held her gaze as he let her fingers drop.
“And you are?”
“Huh? Oh, I’m Cali Stowe. I’m with the CDC. The Centers for Disease Control. In Atlanta. I’m a field researcher.”
“Believe it or not, disease is the last thing these people need to worry about right now.” He was American but had a trace of an accent that Cali couldn’t quite place.
“So I’ve noticed,” she said. “Mind me asking what you’re doing here?”
Mercer slid a large iron cauldron from the truck and set it on the ground. “Prospecting.”
She laughed. “I always picture prospectors wearing union suits with picks over their shoulders and dragging a stubborn mule on a short rein.”
“Only ass here is me. I’m here doing a favor for a friend.”
“My friends ask me to go shopping or help talk through why their current boyfriend is a total creep. You really have to learn to set boundaries.”
It was Mercer’s turn to laugh. “Point taken.”
“What were you prospecting for?”
“Coltan, colombite-tantalite,” Mercer replied. Cali looked disinterested but he added, “It’s used in the capacitors for small electronics. Especially cell phones.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way but I hope you didn’t find any. There are already too many of those damned things in the world.”
“Amen,” Mercer agreed. “And no I didn’t. This was a UN-sponsored expedition. Some functionary from their economic development office in Bangui heard about a hunter who claimed he found coltan on the Chinko River. More than likely he’d smuggled it from Uganda or the Congo, but the UN guy saw it as an opportunity to create jobs in the area.”
“And get his ticket out of here punched, no doubt.”
“Probably. I’ve spent the past six weeks shifting tons of worthless mud, until I heard slaughter season was starting up again. I waited as long as I dared, then sent my workers out. When I packed it in yesterday I found these people along the way.”
“Listen, I ah, I’m planning on heading north tomorrow. How bad is it?”
Mercer stopped unloading the truck to give her his full attention. “Since this corner of the world isn’t on many tourist maps, I assume whatever you’re doing here is important. I won’t try to talk you out of it, but if you really need to head upriver, do it today. Right now.”
“I can’t,” Cali admitted. “Some hopped-up teenager used my truck for target practice this morning. I have to go down to Rafai to buy a spare tire.”
“Then forget it.”
He wasn’t being dismissive, or protective. He was stating a fact as simply as he could. Cali appreciated that, but she also had to ignore his advice. “I wish I could. I have to go.”
Mercer pushed wet hair off his forehead. Cali thought he was calculating a price he wanted for his truck. “How far?”
“Sorry?”
“How far do you need to go?”
“There’s a village on the Scilla River about a mile from where it empties into the Chinko.”
“That’s about a hundred miles north. How important is this?”
Cali answered readily. “One of our researchers came across some medical records put together by a missionary in the late eighties. No one had paid any attention to them. It seems the people in this town suffer from the highest cancer rate on the planet. The CDC believes there may be a genetic cause. If we can isolate it, well, you can figure it out for yourself.”
“Gene therapy to prevent cancer.”
She nodded. “And possibly cure it. I need to get blood and tissue samples.”
“And if you don’t get there before Dayce, those people are either going to be dead-”
“Or so scattered I’ll never find them,” Cali finished for him. “That’s why I rushed here as so
on as I could.”
“You’re talking about going further than I’d planned, but I’ll take you.”
“You were going back up there?” Cali couldn’t believe it.
“Why do you think I unloaded the truck?” he said. “I passed a lot more people than I could carry on my way down here. The government’s not going to get them, so someone has to.” His voice went grave. “Just so we’re clear, though. We’re turning around at the first sign of trouble.”
Cali’s tone matched his. This was her best, and probably only, shot. “You got it.”
“Okay, once I get this beast refueled we’re out of here.”
“Thank you,” she said.
He grinned. “Don’t thank me until we come back. Why don’t you wait in the cab out of the rain.”
Mercer watched Cali slide around the battered Ford but didn’t know what to make of her. He was sure that if he hadn’t offered to drive her she would have followed her original plan. It was in the stubborn set of her jaw, but mostly it was the intensity of her eyes. Cali Stowe believed in her mission and he couldn’t imagine much that could deter her. It was a trait he admired because there were few people left who had it.
One of the refugees he’d driven down pressed two tomatoes into his hand as he fed diesel from the drum lashed behind the cab. Mercer was overwhelmed by the gesture. This man had just lost everything he owned, the home he’d lived in probably since he was a child, but still wanted to thank him with perhaps the only food he’d have for as long as it took to get resettled. Mercer carefully inspected the tomatoes, took the best for himself, and handed the other back. Returning the better one would have been an insult. The farmer touched Mercer’s hand and nodded. Behind him his wife smiled her gratitude and hugged her children a little tighter.
Mercer’s thoughts turned back to Cali. As a field researcher for the CDC he imagined she’d been in some rough country before, but he doubted she’d seen anything like this. Yet she’d shrugged off her car getting shot up as though it was a mere inconvenience. That kind of confidence came from experience. He doubted the CDC prepared people for this kind of thing, so he guessed there was something else in her past-military training, perhaps.
That made him feel a little better about driving her north. While he only had one weapon with him, a Beretta 92 pistol, he sensed she wouldn’t freeze if he needed to use it. And for all he knew she had her own gun.
The sudden image of her holding a drawn pistol spiked his pulse. It was the capacity for violence juxtaposed with her delicate features and that sensual mouth. Uncharacteristically, he acknowledged how attractive she was. Uncharacteristically because Mercer hadn’t thought of a woman in those terms in a long time, not since a woman he’d thought he’d loved died eight months ago.
He then found himself circling the same argument he’d faced since her death. He hadn’t told her he loved her until after she was gone, until after there were no consequences to the declaration. He still didn’t know what that meant, or if it had meaning at all. He’d talked about it with his best friend. Harry’s advice was that he should mourn her for a while, miss her probably forever, but not let his guilt make her more than she was. Usually taking advice about women from Harry was like asking a vegan to name a good steak joint; however this time the old man had a point. Harry knew Mercer better than anyone alive and knew how guilt drove him more than any other emotion.
The truth was it was a fear of guilt that drove Mercer, the fear that he could have done more, but hadn’t. That is what pushed him so hard in his professional life. He feared not being able to face the mirror knowing that somehow he had failed at something, really, at anything he attempted. And rather than back down from challenges, Mercer continually set himself tougher and tougher goals. He had no obligation to return north other than his own desire to help those who couldn’t help themselves.
Yet like so many men, he avoided the challenges of his own emotional life. Rather than take time following Tisa Nguyen’s death, he’d buried himself in work. Soon after her funeral he’d returned to the Canadian Arctic where he was under contract with DeBeers. Then it was off for two months on behalf of the Brazilian government to head a task force investigating illegal gold mining in the Amazon rain forest, and then six weeks consulting in Jo’Burg followed by another couple of months working with geologists at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository. As he’d known, the distractions hadn’t healed the wounds, but he felt the scars were less raw, which was why he could see Cali Stowe as an attractive woman.
A gush of diesel erupted from the gas tank and Mercer quickly shut the hose’s valve, his thoughts snapped back to the present. He looked around, chagrined. People were struggling for their very lives while he was rediscovering the first flicker of his libido.
He coiled the hose around the bracket mounted behind the cab and hauled himself into the truck. He slid out of his wet raincoat and stuffed it behind the seat. Cali had changed into a dry bush shirt and had used makeup to cover the dark circles under her eyes and freshen her lips. She was probably in her mid-thirties, but the freckles made her look like a teenager. Mercer smiled at her efforts.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Typical woman, can’t go anywhere without makeup. For your information I’ve been a field researcher for the CDC for five years in some places that make this look like paradise. My makeup kit weighs exactly six ounces and I don’t go anywhere without it.”
“With your fair complexion it’s a good idea.”
Cali stopped and looked at him, her mouth creased upward in a surprised grin. “Thank you. You wouldn’t believe the grief I get from some of the men I’ve worked with.”
“I spend seven or eight months a year away from home,” Mercer told her. “I know how important the little things can be. I worked with a guy in Canada a while ago who carried the remote from his TV set. He said holding it makes him feel he’s back in his living room. Although it really pisses off his wife and kids.”
Cali laughed. “What about you? Anything you carry to make yourself feel better?”
Mercer turned serious. “Not to sound dramatic, but this helps.” He slid his Beretta from behind his back and set it on the bench seat between them. “I thought you should know I have it.”
She nodded. “Let’s just hope we don’t need it.”
The jungle began just five feet from the back of the town’s last building, an arcing canopy of greenery that met above the single dirt track so it was like driving through a living tunnel. For the first half hour they passed miserable groups of refugees trudging south toward Kivu. Mercer stopped at each to tell the refugees that if he had room he’d give them a lift on the way back but to hurry nevertheless. None of the locals had seen or heard Dayce’s army, but Mercer and Cali remained quiet and vigilant as they continued northward.
The rain started to slacken, and even though the windshield wipers made a sound like nails on a chalkboard with each swipe, Mercer wouldn’t turn them off. Too much water was dripping from the trees, and if he had any hope of spotting an ambush, he needed clear visibility.
Two hours into their drive, and an hour after seeing the last group of refugees, they neared the swift Scilla River. The mud brown Scilla was barely fifty feet wide where it swept into the Chinko. A ferry made of empty barrels lashed with wire and topped with corrugated metal was the only way to cross. Mercer was relieved to see that before he’d fled, the ferryman had punctured enough barrels so the flat craft was half-sunk on the near shore. If Caribe Dayce had followed the Chinko down from Sudan, which the rumors said he had, he would have to track east for at least fifteen miles to where the river could be crossed on foot.
“According to the report,” Cali spoke for the first time in twenty minutes, “the village I’m looking for is about a mile to the left.”
Mercer peered into the jungle. While the area where the two rivers met was relatively flat, the Scilla carved through a series of hills so its banks were steep dirt berms. There was no road in, just a nar
row footpath meandering along the bluff that quickly grew to eighty feet in height. He backed the truck next to the ferryman’s abandoned hut and killed the engine. It appeared silent for the moments it took for his hearing to return and then he caught the sound of the river, the patter of water dripping from the trees, an occasional bird cry.
“Ready?” he asked Cali.
She eyed him. “Are you taking your gun?”
“Yes.”
“Then, I’m ready.”
On the approach to the village, Mercer and Cali passed what appeared to be an old open-pit mine carved into the top of the bluff. It was a maze of interconnected trenches that covered at least four acres, one long wall acting as a dam to keep the filthy water trapped within from dumping down into the river. Mercer estimated the workings were at least ten feet deep, but as flooded as they were they could have been deeper. He paused at the lip of the main trench, his back to the steep bank and the river. He dropped to a knee, taking a handful of damp soil in his hands and letting it sift from his fingers. Cali stood rapt at the edge of the trench for a moment before taking a small camera from her knapsack and snapping a dozen digital pictures.
Judging by the erosion, Mercer guessed the site was at least fifty years old, possibly older. As he thought about the incongruity of such a mine, he realized he might be able to pin down the exact year the mine was worked, by whom, and at the same time answer the mystery of the village’s cancer rate. He looked more closely at the surrounding topography, noting that the far bank of the river was primarily dark granite while this side contained intrusive basalt.
“I think you can forget your gene theory.” Mercer stood, wiping his hand on the seat of his pants.
Cali gave him a wary look. “Why do you say that?”
“I’m not positive. We need to talk to the villagers. Someone old preferably. Come on.”
“Can you give me a minute,” Cali asked. “I need to powder my nose.”
“Powder your-Oh, sorry. Sure.”