Lords of Corruption

by Kyle Mills

  "It gets better. Can you guess when NewAfrica was first chartered?"

  "Right around when Fedorov disappeared?"

  "Exactly. He lost his anonymity, and the government was starting to close in on him in Europe. So he relocates to the U. S. and uses his contacts in Africa to start a bogus charity."

  "But he needed a slick front man," Flan-nary said. "So he found Stephen Trent."

  She grinned widely and lowered her voice. "Congratulations, JB. This is an incredible story -- a known criminal causing incredible human suffering. And now you have the chance to blow it wide open. To make a real difference to the people this guy's victimizing."

  " We have the chance, Tracy. We."

  Chapter 32.

  "What do you think?" Annika said.

  They were parked on top of a hill that gave them an unobstructed view of her village. The rising sun had turned the eastern sky into an orange ribbon that cast an ethereal glow over the tiny dwellings and whitewashed church below.

  A few stovepipe chimneys had smoke rising from them, and a lone woman was walking toward the river for water, but everything else was still and silent.

  "There could be an entire army waiting for us in those huts," Josh said. "We're about to bet our lives that Gideon's too stupid to have figured out who you are."

  "Or that he thinks we wouldn't be crazy enough to come back here."

  "Thin. Very, very thin."

  The ascent of the sun dissipated the shadows, but, for the first time since he'd arrived, he took no comfort in seeing them go. "I'm sorry I got you into this, Annika."

  "It's what I came here for, isn't it? To try to help people?" She smiled but wasn't able to completely mask her fear. "Besides, this is JB's fault. And I'm going to give him a hard kick when I see him next."

  Josh fired the Land Cruiser's motor and glided down the hill, pulling up in front of the church and getting out.

  They didn't speak as they crept through the gate protecting Annika's garden and entered the room that had been her home since she'd arrived in Africa. It was even more austere than he'd imagined -- a twin bed neatly made with threadbare blankets, an old armoire, and a desk with a cross hanging above it.

  "Give me some help," she said, kneeling next to the armoire. They slid it away from the wall, and she began prying up the loose floorboards that had been beneath it.

  "What's that?" Josh said, catching a glimpse of gray metal. "You've got to be kidding me. A safe?"

  "My father was afraid for me when I came here. He sent it."

  "Did he send the concrete it's set in, too?"

  She shook her head seriously and spun the combination dial. "I believe that you should put your faith in God. But a little cement doesn't hurt, either."

  A moment later she had retrieved a pouch containing her passport and a stack of money about an inch thick.

  "I don't suppose you have a gun in there."

  "No guns," she said, hanging the pouch around her neck and slipping it beneath her shirt. Her expression melted into one of resigned melancholy as she looked around the room. "I'll never be back here."

  With his mind occupied entirely by staying one step ahead of Gideon, Josh hadn't considered the effect all this would have on her. The village was her home. And not only that, it was the place she had devoted her life to. The people here were as much a family to her as the people she'd left in Europe.

  And now it was over. No good-byes. No standing back and reflecting on everything she'd accomplished. No celebration of the village's bright future. She was just going to disappear forever.

  "I'm so sorry Annika. I . . .

  His voice faded when the sound of an engine became audible, so close that it seemed as though it had been there the whole time and they just hadn't noticed it.

  "Come on!" he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her toward the door that led to the garden. He threw it open, but instead of running for the jungle, he dragged Annika to the floor. They hit hard, but he still managed to kick the door shut just as a staccato burst of machine-gun fire sounded. Annika threw an arm over her face, protecting it from the splintering wood as the bullets penetrated the room. A moment later, the guns went silent, replaced by the sound of laughter.

  Josh dragged the armoire into a position barricading the rear door while Annika crawled toward the one leading to the main part of the church. She peered through it for a moment and then motioned for him to follow as she ran crouched through the tightly packed benches. Angry shouts and terrified screams penetrated the gaps in the walls, echoing eerily around the structure.

  Josh kept up for a few seconds but then slowed when it occurred to him that this was exactly what the men who had shot at them wanted -- to flush them out the front of the church and into the square where their comrades were waiting.

  Ahead of him, Annika slid up to the edge of a window and looked outside. The morning light illuminated her face, and he actually had to turn away when he saw the horror there. This was his fault. He'd killed them both.

  In the small plaza, men in dirty fatigues were making a game of dragging terrified, half-dressed villagers from their homes. Children wailed, women struggled, and men were beaten with rifle butts at the slightest hint of resistance.

  Josh counted six soldiers, all teenagers and all staggering drunk despite their tender age. The only adult stood in the shade of the machine gun mounted in the bed of the rust-eaten pickup he and his team had arrived in. He was unsteady but didn't seem quite as hammered as the others. His uniform, consisting of a pair of gray camouflage pants and an unbuttoned olive drab coat, was clean and untorn. There was a flash of pink and yellow whenever the jacket swung open, and Josh found himself mesmerized by the odd familiarity of it.

  He moved closer to the window, concentrating on the man. Without the ubiquitous grin and subservient gait, he was transformed. But still there was no mistaking the Hawaiian shirt or bulging cheeks. Luganda.

  Josh was too preoccupied with his bartender's betrayal to notice the quiet whimper that escaped Annika when a bawling child was thrown to the ground in an effort to shut him up. But he wasn't so distracted as to overlook her breaking for the church's front door. He chased her down before she could reach it, grabbing her around the waist and clamping a hand over her mouth as she fought against him.

  "What are you going to do?" he whispered. "Throw rocks?"

  She got an arm free and pulled his hand from her mouth. "This is about us, Josh. Not them."

  He knew she was right, and he was disconcerted at how easy it was to hide from the realization. Everything in this country seemed vaguely like a movie to him -- real enough to look at, maybe even interact with on some superficial level, but not an actual part of his reality.

  When he was certain she'd stay put, he released her and went to the window again. Despite the lack of military discipline, Luganda's soldiers worked with impressive efficiency. The huts were all empty now, and the entire population of the village was kneeling in the square. It wasn't a movie. These were real people. And real guns.

  "Is there any other way out of here?"

  She didn't seem to hear him.

  "Annika!"

  She blinked a few times. "No. Just the front and back doors."

  Outside, Luganda had one hand on the shoulder of what seemed to be his youngest soldier and was pointing at the church with the other. The kid, probably no older than thirteen, nodded reluctantly before heading their way. The other boys cheered him on drunkenly as he thrust out the machine gun hanging around his neck.

  Josh looked behind him at the empty church, trying to quell the panic rising in him. The makeshift barricade of the back door seemed to have held, but judging from the silence coming from that part of the building, it was due more to a lack of interest than the strength of the barrier. Those men were just there to keep them boxed in.

  "Is there anywhere we can go? Somewhere to hide?"

  He let himself feel a small glimmer of hope when she took his hand and led him
back down the aisle. She'd put in a safe, maybe she'd built an escape hatch of some sort. Or maybe she really did have guns and hadn't wanted to resort to them until it was absolutely necessary.

  When they got back to her room, though, she knelt down in front of her desk and looked up at the cross.

  "Annika, what the hell are you doing?" "Praying. I know you say you're not religious, but I think you should pray with me. You might --"

  "Are you fucking kidding me? There's a time and a place for praying, and this sure as hell isn't it."

  "No? Then when?"

  The sound of the front door to the church opening reached them, followed by the echo of approaching footsteps. He picked up one of the boards she'd removed to expose the safe while she looked on passively.

  "What are you going to do with that, Josh? There are too many of them. And they're armed with more than sticks."

  "I can't die here, Annika. I have a sister at home who needs me. I have things I want to do. . . ."

  "Sometimes things are beyond our control."

  He suddenly became aware of the weight of the sat phone in his pocket, and he clawed it out, dropping the board.

  "Who are you calling?"

  "Trent. I'm going to tell him that none of this is any of our business. That we just want the hell off this continent."

  The footsteps on the other side of the closed door slowed, becoming more cautious.

  "I'm going to tell him that if he calls these guys off, we'll never say anything about this."

  Trent's office phone started to ring, and he thought about Laura. About how she'd take the news that he'd been gunned down in middle-of-nowhere Africa. About what would happen to her when she had no one to turn to -- no one to shove her out of the life she'd been born to.

  It was still ringing when the boy kicked the rickety door open. He started screaming in Xhisa, jerking the barrel of the gun from Josh to Annika and back again every second or so.

  Josh put the phone slowly back into his pocket and retreated a few steps, holding his hands out in front of him. "Take it easy, kid. Okay?"

  Annika looked around the room with an expression of sad nostalgia. She barely seemed to notice the shouting, gun-waving child.

  "Talk to him," Josh said. "Say something!"

  She shook her head. "They don't send children to negotiate, Josh. They send them to kill. We're his initiation into manhood."

  "I'm not going to just stand here and let this little bastard shoot us."

  "It happens every day here. To people more innocent than us."

  The boy was shaking visibly, trying to conjure up enough rage to do what he had been told. Around his eyes, though, it was clear how far from home he was. And how much he wanted to be transported back there.

  He swung his gun toward Annika yet again, but this time something in him had changed. He was ready.

  Josh lunged, but it was too late. There was the deafening crack of the gun, Annika falling backward, the warm spatter of blood.

  His momentum carried him into the boy, slamming him hard into the wall. The gun fell from his hands, and Josh grabbed for it, already fantasizing about using the butt to cave the kid's skull in and then going out the front door shooting. He might not ever leave this village, but he was going to make sure Luganda didn't, either.

  The fury that was blinding him started to subside when he noticed that the boy wasn't fighting back. It was only then that he saw that part of the kid's head had been ripped away. Josh released him and watched him slide to the ground, finally comprehending what had happened. The rusted old Russian gun had blown up in his face.

  He turned and dropped to his knees next to Annika's motionless body, yanking her T-shirt up and finding nothing but smooth, unbroken skin. The only blood on her was in her hair, a matted section above her left temple about the size of a silver dollar. He put a hand on her chest and felt the rise and fall of her breathing. She wasn't shot. She'd just hit her head on the bedpost when she'd fallen.

  More shouting drifted in from the front, and he pushed closed the door leading to the church before opening the armoire and shoving the clothes hanging in it under the bed.

  He dragged the boy's body across the floor, trying not to think about the mangled head nestled against his chest. His shirt was soaked with blood by the time he had crammed the body inside the armoire and closed the door.

  When the urge to vomit subsided, he pulled Annika to the crimson puddle that the boy had left by the door, splaying her limbs artistically before lying down next to her.

  Less than a minute passed before the door was thrown open. He didn't move, looking through his nearly closed eyelids at the boots that passed by. Annika's right hand was beneath his leg, and he tried not to tense when it twitched. He hadn't prayed since he was a kid, but she was right. If not now, when?

  Okay, God. I can understand why you might not want to help me out. But Annika's lived her whole life for you. Please don't let her wake up.

  From what he could see from his position on the floor, there were three soldiers in the room, one of whom was Luganda. Even in Xhisa, Josh could confirm that his speech was slurred by alcohol.

  "Agabezi!" Luganda shouted.

  Probably the name of the kid leaking into the armoire. For obvious reasons, there was no answer, and the man said something that elicited guffaws from the other soldiers in the room. Maybe they thought that the boy had run off and hidden after killing them. If so, they obviously found it hilarious that an act as trivial as cold-blooded murder would bother the average adolescent.

  Josh focused on staying completely relaxed and controlling his breathing, but what were the chances that no one would open the wardrobe or check to make sure they were really dead? When they did, though, he'd be ready. The board he'd dropped earlier was within reach, and with the element of surprise he still had a chance of cracking open Luganda's lying, back-stabbing skull before they shot him. Surely Annika's God wouldn't deny him that.

  Luganda's dusty boot prodded Josh's shoulder and then delivered a hard kick to his stomach. He'd seen it coming and managed not to react, keeping his muscles slack as the pain flared and Luganda shouted down at what he assumed was a corpse.

  Once again Josh cursed his inability to understand. He thought of the dismissiveness with which JB had treated Luganda and how he himself had fallen into that trap. He realized that he didn't know the first thing about the man -- how old he was, if he had a family, how he'd come to work at the compound. The African had just faded into the background -- a provider of drinks and maker of arrangements.

  Luganda kicked him again, this time nearly falling over from the effort. When he regained his balance, he gurgled a few orders and Josh was lifted from the floor.

  The soldiers swung him back and forth a couple times, and then Josh felt himself floating in the air for a moment before slamming down in the bed of the pickup truck. Something metal jabbed into his back, but he managed to keep from grimacing. Not that it was likely the two soldiers would notice. They'd dropped him three times on the way through the church to hit off a jug of African moonshine and were well on their way to not even being able to stand.

  Luganda could still be heard shouting the dead boy's name as Annika was thrown into the truck on top of him. Josh waited a few seconds before allowing himself to partially open one eye. From his position, no one was visible, and he dared a glance up at the belt-fed machine gun above him.

  It was almost unbearably tempting. He'd never fired a gun like that, but it seemed simple enough. Jump up, throw the bolt, and a second later you were cutting people in half. The problem was, which people? It didn't exactly have the look of a surgical tool, and while he didn't have as big a problem as he should with leaving Annika's villagers to their own devices, shooting indiscriminately into them in an attempt to save his own skin was another matter entirely.

  He shifted his head subtly to look over the truck's back gate as muffled shouts erupted from inside the church.

  "Agabez
i! Agabezi!"

  It was a familiar theme, but with critical differences. The voice was unfamiliar, and the tone was panicked.

  They'd found him.

  Josh shoved Annika's limp body off him and leaped over the side of the pickup, spotting two soldiers running out of the church as others ran to meet them. No one was looking in his direction when he slid into the driver's seat and reached for the keys hanging in the ignition. That changed when the truck's sickly starter began to turn. The first shots sounded just as the engine caught. He slammed his foot to the floor, feeling the pickup's sluggish acceleration and watching the young soldiers grow larger in his rearview mirror.

  He waited for the bullet that would kill him to penetrate what was left of the back of the cab, imagining it puncturing his lungs, leaving him to drown in his own blood while they pulled Annika from the back and beat her to death. Or worse.

  But the bullet never came. There were shots -- seemingly thousands of them --but the soldiers were too young and too drunk to hit anything.

  Just before Josh rounded the corner and disappeared behind a low ridge, he stuck his arm out the open window and raised his middle finger.

  Chapter 33.

  Stephen Trent didn't rise from his desk when Gideon entered but jumped to his feet when Umboto Mtiti followed. He glimpsed soldiers taking up positions in the hallway before Mtiti slammed the door shut behind him.

  "Mr. President," Trent stammered, feeling the sweat break cold at his hairline, "why didn't you tell me you were coming? We aren't prepared --"

  "Yes, that's obvious, isn't it?"

  Gideon's ubiquitous sunglasses were gone, revealing yellow-and-black eyes. The casual arrogance of his stride had disappeared, too, replaced by the awkward gait of someone completely consumed with not doing or saying the wrong thing.

  "To what do I owe this honor, Excellency?"

  Mtiti sat in one of the chairs in front of Trent's desk, the medals on his uniform rattling ominously. Gideon stood well behind him, partly out of subservience and partly in an attempt to disappear.

  "Your new man found the bodies of the people we relocated," Mtiti said.