Lords of Corruption

by Kyle Mills

  Josh nodded numbly.

  "You read that article about Aleksei, right?"

  Another almost imperceptible nod.

  "I know from personal experience that it doesn't even come close to capturing what he's capable of. He's the most evil, sadistic son of a bitch that I've ever had the misfortune to meet. I don't even want to think about what he'll do to your sister if this doesn't go exactly as planned. Am I being clear?"

  "What about Annika?"

  It was one of the rare occasions that Trent didn't intuitively know how to respond, and he looked up at the angle of the sun for a moment before speaking. "We can't have her running around with what she knows, Josh. You're not stupid. I don't have to tell you that."

  "She can't prove anything, Stephen. I'll deny everything she says. We --"

  "Josh, please. Don't make this any harder than it has to be. I don't want to scare her, and I don't want her to feel any pain. We're going to do this quick and easy. Tomorrow it'll all be a bad memory, and your sister will be home filling out her Ivy League applications."

  "Quick and easy," Josh mumbled.

  "I just want this situation to go away. I'm not Aleksei."

  "No? Then who are you?"

  Trent actually managed to smile at that. "I'm nobody. I'm a fucking con man from Ohio. Funny, isn't it? How things work out?"

  "Yeah. Funny."

  They walked to the Land Cruiser, and Trent slammed the door closed after Josh climbed into the driver's seat. "Think about your sister, Josh. You're all she's got."

  He stepped back, and Josh accelerated the Land Cruiser up the road, keeping the speed low enough that it was obvious he never wanted to reach his destination.

  Gideon had his pistol out now and was trying to keep his men vigilant. While the color of Trent's skin might offer him some protection from the rebels, Gideon and his Xhisa soldiers had no such hope. The Yvimbo would offer very little in the way of mercy to their age-old enemies.

  Trent dialed his sat phone, retreating to the second Land Cruiser and sitting in the backseat with his feet dangling from the open door.

  "Do you have her?" Fedorov said by way of a greeting.

  "Josh is bringing her back."

  "You sent him alone?"

  Trent didn't allow himself to be baited by the question. Fedorov had agreed to the plan but was now distancing himself from it so that he could more easily place blame if things went wrong. It was a scenario that had played out many times before.

  "He understands the situation with his sister, Aleksei. We haven't left him any choice. He'll be back, and he'll have Annika with him."

  "When they get there, turn them over to the Africans."

  Trent had anticipated the order but wasn't sure what to do about it. Watching Annika Gritdal being repeatedly raped by Gideon and his men before they beat her and Josh to death wasn't something he was looking forward to.

  "We need to get out of here, Aleksei. This is unstable territory. We just don't have time to

  "Shut the fuck up! You're going to do exactly what I tell you. This is your fault, and you're going to sit there and watch the consequences. And I'm going to be on the phone the whole time, Stephen. The whole time, I'm going to be listening to them scream while you describe every detail. Do you understand me?"

  Trent wiped the sweat from his upper lip. "I understand. And Josh's sister?"

  "Oh, I'm going to enjoy doing her. Maybe I'll take a video and send it to you. Would you like that?"

  "The battery in my phone is getting low," Trent lied. "I'll call you back when we've got them."

  He propped his elbows on his knees, staring down at the dirt and thinking of home. The cold wind whipping through the New York streets, the tiny fireplace he'd rescued during the renovation of his apartment. But those images had lost their power to calm him. They no longer seemed real.

  Chapter 40.

  Stephen Trent walked toward the edge of the road, stopping in the narrow band of shade that wasn't yet soaked in the still humidity of the jungle. It was undoubtedly cooler, but it wasn't long before the bugs forced him back into the grueling sun. Gideon's men didn't seem to notice the insects clinging to them like bloodthirsty tendrils of smoke, and they sat silently in the shadows, guns lying next to them in the dust.

  It had been almost two hours since Josh had driven away, and the initial diligence of his guard detail had faded into drowsy boredom. Even the periodic barking from Gideon elicited only brief stirs in the stupor of the African afternoon.

  Trent paced in the center of the road, attempting to create an artificial breeze against his sweat-soaked face. His skin was burning to a deep red, but he barely noticed. Two hours was too long. The village was only a few miles away, and it wasn't as though Annika would have had any possessions to gather. How long could it take to say good-bye to people she'd only just met? He had no choice but to start considering the possibility that they had run.

  No. Where would they go?

  Unknown to Josh, there was a car full of Mtiti's men blocking the only other road out of there. Besides, there was just no way he would do anything to jeopardize his sister. Annika was a beautiful woman, but not beautiful enough for him to doom his own flesh and blood to a slow, horrifying death at the hands of Aleksei Fedorov.

  He glanced at his watch for what must have been the hundredth time and licked the salt from his lips. It was going to be okay. Josh was completely, irretrievably trapped. The villagers had probably insisted that he and Annika stay for a meal or some ceremony. The Africans had a lengthy and pointless ceremony for everything.

  A dust plume became visible in the distance, moving in their direction. Trent took up a position next to Gideon and watched it approach, feeling the tension in his neck and shoulders loosen a bit. It was them. Thank God.

  "When they get here, you can do what you want with them," he said, aware that his voice was barely a whisper. For some reason, he didn't want to be heard by the men around them. As though they might judge him. "We don't have much time, though. We need to be out of here before dark."

  Gideon gazed down at him through his ever-present sunglasses, a vague smile playing at his lips. Trent wasn't sure he had ever seen the man smile before and frankly would be happy to never see it again. There was no humor in it, only a sadistic delight uncontrolled by the conventions of the world Trent had grown up in. The world he hoped someday to return to.

  The vehicle was close enough now to make out two figures in the front, and Trent took a few hesitant steps forward. It continued to approach, though its trajectory was becoming increasingly erratic.

  She'd spotted them.

  Through the dirty windshield, Trent could see that Josh was holding her by the hair, trying to keep control of the wheel as she clawed desperately at him.

  The soldiers were on their feet now, and Gideon said something to them that replaced their malaise with excitement perhaps a description of their role in Josh and Annika's last hour.

  The Land Cruiser slowed abruptly about fifty yards away, nearly plunging into a ditch when Annika managed to get hold of the wheel. The guards laughed and joked with each other as Josh fought to regain control, the drama playing out in front of them heightening their anticipation.

  A young man standing at the edge of the jungle suddenly let out a scream and began desperately trying to pull his rifle from his shoulder. It got caught on his elbow and he was still trying to free it when the left side of his neck exploded, creating a crimson cloud in the humid air as he sank to the ground.

  Trent froze, unable to fully process what was happening as no less than thirty men rushed from the jungle armed with a mix of machine guns, machetes, and spears. Shouts and gunshots filled the air as his guards either succumbed to those weapons or dropped their guns and raised their hands in the air. One broke and ran but made it only a few yards before a spear hit him just below the right shoulder blade. He fell forward, the spear point jutting from his chest hitting the ground first and leaving his twitch
ing body suspended a foot from the ground.

  They were all around him now, and Trent was hit from behind, the force of the blow making the landscape around him spin as he dropped to his knees. He looked toward the approaching Land Cruiser and saw that it was going straight now, rolling unhurriedly toward them as the hot barrel of a machine gun was pressed to the back of his head.

  Gideon hadn't surrendered, but he also hadn't been summarily executed like the other resisters. He blocked a blow from a man holding a stick the size of a baseball bat and slammed an elbow into his face. Another man jumped on his back, only to land on his dazed compatriot when Gideon flipped him over his shoulder.

  But it was useless. There were too many of them, and Gideon was driven to the ground by the sheer weight of his attackers, absorbing blows from fists, rocks, and pistol butts as he fell.

  The rest of Trent's men were facedown in the road with their hands clasped behind their necks, each guarded by no fewer than three Yvimbo men dressed in everything from Western street clothes to traditional costumes of war.

  The Land Cruiser glided to a stop a few feet away, and Trent was pulled to his feet by the man behind him. From this distance, he could see that there were actually three people in the vehicle: Josh and Annika in front and an African man in the back. Trent didn't recognize him immediately, but when he stepped out, he saw that it was Tfmena Llengambi. Gideon saw him, too, and his thrashing increased in violence, ceasing only when a knife was pressed to his throat.

  "What are you doing?" Trent heard himself stammer as Josh stepped out. "We .. . we have your sister."

  Josh slammed the door behind him and surveyed the scene. Tfmena's people had everything under control, with Gideon on the ground bleeding badly from a head wound and the other men either dead or subdued. Trent was staring at him with understandable confusion.

  Annika had done better than he'd dared hope. Apparently news of the white woman on the run from Mtiti had spread quickly through the region, and it hadn't been long before word reached Tfmena, who had taken her in. While he'd certainly had the respect of the people working on New-Africa's agricultural project, here, away from the dominance of Mtiti's Xhisa, Tfmena was a man of genuine power.

  "If they don't hear from me, they'll kill your sister," Trent said, obviously still unable to understand exactly what was happening.

  "You don't have my sister," Josh said as Annika came up alongside him.

  "What?" Trent said.

  "You kidnapped a woman named Fawn Mardsen. She's not actually related to me."

  "But she was there," Trent whined. "She was the one you told us . . ." His voice trailed off as Tfmena began shouting orders and Gideon was dragged off to lie with his men at the jungle's edge.

  Hearing Fawn's voice over Trent's phone may have been the happiest moment of Josh's life. His plan had been so desperate and hastily constructed that he'd never really believed it would work.

  He had told Laura to take Fawn's wallet and leave her own out on the table, full of what cash and credit cards she had, before running to the tree house they'd built when they were kids.

  Predictably, Fawn had taken the wallet, and given her resemblance to Laura, Fedorov's men would have had no reason to doubt that they'd found the girl they were looking for. Of course there had been a thousand things that could have gone wrong, but, for the first time in his life, they hadn't. Maybe he had Annika to thank for that. Maybe he was finally taking a few unsteady steps toward getting right with God.

  Trent's eyes had cleared a bit as his mind began to process what he'd heard and the hopelessness of his situation. "What are you going to do with us?"

  "I'm not going to do anything, Stephen. Annika and I are leaving."

  Josh reached for her hand but then though better of it and instead pointed in the direction of the Land Cruiser. Trent grabbed his arm.

  "Wait! You can't leave me like this. You can't leave me to what they're going to do."

  Josh tried to pull away but couldn't so easily escape. Annika's expression had settled into an odd combination of panic and resignation. The realization that there was no way out was hard for her to deal with. Even with all her years in Africa, she couldn't shake the European concept of having choices.

  "Josh," Trent pleaded, glancing back at the ecstatic men whose care he was about to be remanded to, "remember what I said about Annika? Remember that I said it would be quick for her?"

  "But was it true, Stephen? Was she really going to get a bullet between the eyes? Was I really going to get a quarter-of-a-milliondollar-a-year job and a sister at Harvard?"

  Trent's slick facade had completely crumbled. "This wasn't my doing. I swear it wasn't."

  Josh looked down at the bright feathers decorating the spear that had impaled one of Gideon's men and then at the others lined up in the dirt. He was a participant in all this -- not an outsider, not a spectator. These people were going to die, and he was the cause of it. The question was how cowardly and hypocritical he was going to be in dealing with that fact.

  He glanced at Annika but found no help there. He was on his own.

  Gideon's pistol was still lying where he had fallen, and Josh picked it up, trying to ignore the weight of Tfmena's eyes on him. He hoped someone would stop him, but no one moved.

  Trent seemed to be struggling just to remain standing as Josh aimed the gun. The man guarding him moved to a safe distance, but Josh wasn't sure it was necessary. He wasn't going to be able to do it. He wasn't going to be able to shoot an unarmed man in cold blood.

  Trent sensed his hesitation and smiled. A clear drop ran down his right cheek, but it was impossible to tell if it was a tear or just sweat.

  "I always knew this is how I would end up," he said. "But I'm still kind of scared."

  The sound of his voice was strangely calming. "I am, too," Josh said. And then he pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 41.

  The outskirts of the capital city were quiet, matching the silence that had prevailed in the car for the last five hours. To her credit, Annika had tried to open a dialogue, but she'd gotten nothing more than one-word answers. She was now motionless in the passenger seat, staring out at the firelight leaking from the shacks lining the road.

  What was there to say? He'd killed a man. The proof was all around him: in the leather-trimmed interior of the Land Cruiser, in the phone and wallet lying on the dashboard, in the diamond ring rattling inside the cup holder. All stolen from Stephen Trent. Or more precisely taken from the dead body of the human being whose life he had ended. Josh's gaze wandered to Gideon's pistol gleaming on the dark floorboard, and he wondered if the African was dead yet. And if not, what he and his men were going through.

  "What did you want me to do?" he said finally, his voice impossibly loud in the confines of the car.

  Annika turned away from the window. "I don't understand what you're asking."

  "They were going to kill Stephen. I . . . I saved him from that. You understand, don't you?"

  "Understand?" She let out a bitter laugh. "For everything he's done -- for the way he's preyed on the most defenseless people in the world. On women and children . . . I would have left him to the Yvimbo."

  She'd actually approached Gideon as he was being dragged away and asked him what had happened to her village. The answer was a string of threats, but in them was the clear implication that nothing had been done yet. Publicity and logistics had to be dealt with before the genocide could start.

  "Annika . .

  "I mean it, Josh. Isn't that strange? I didn't know I could feel this way. If Mtiti was standing in front of me right now, I'd kill him. And I wouldn't regret it. I think I'd enjoy it."

  The memory of the buck of the gun and the sound of Trent's last breaths made his stomach roll. "Doing it is different than talking about it."

  "Is it? How would it feel to kill Mtiti? How would it feel to know I'd saved the people who have been my family for most of my adult life?"

  He stared through the wind
shield for a few moments, straining to see the dark outline of the capital city ahead. "I want to help you, Annika. And I want to help the people here. But my first priority is keeping us alive and making sure my sister is okay. I can't save Africa. Only the Africans can."

  Annika went back to looking out the window. A good five minutes passed before she spoke again. "I used to see God everywhere. But more and more I wonder if He's forgotten this place."

  Ahead, an armored personnel carrier parked across the road became visible through the darkness and smoke, forcing Josh to swerve down a side street to avoid being spotted.

  "Shit! That's the third one."

  He'd hoped that Mtiti would have called off the men blocking access to the consulates and that they'd be able to slip in and get help. But you didn't become president of an African country by being careless. Power, phones, and Internet were still down, making communication with the outside world impossible. Trent's sat phone was charged and tempting, but it would be impossible to know who might be listening and whether it could be tracked.

  Josh eased the car to a stop in the unusually quiet road and turned the headlights off. "Mtiti and Fedorov probably already figure something went wrong."

  She leaned back in the seat and let out a long breath. "They won't stop until they find us, Josh. They'll do whatever they have to.

  "Back in the States, we have an old saying: A good offense is the best defense."

  He could just make out her silhouette as she turned toward him. "Did you have something in mind?"

  Chapter 42.

  The well-maintained asphalt felt strangely exotic beneath Josh's feet as he hurried up the steep road. Around him, rare electric lights were reflecting off walls strung with bougainvillea and razor wire.

  He continued to the end of the cul-de-sac, watched by the man policing the gate to Stephen Trent's home. It was the same guard who had been there the first time Josh had visited, and despite the recognition in his eyes, he hadn't yet fulfilled Annika's prediction and started shooting.