by Kyle Mills
"We found these in the secure file cabinets in Stephen's office. Would you happen to know where the documents are?"
Fedorov's stomach tightened, and he was forced to wipe the sweat from his face before it began dripping from his chin. "Josh Hagarty has them."
"And why wasn't I told about this?" Mtiti said, his voice filling the back of the enormous car.
"Because I just found out," Fedorov replied. "And there wasn't a secure way for me to get in touch with you while I was in transit."
The girl started to mumble incoherently, and Mtiti looked down at her. His face twisted with rage, and without warning he slammed the heel of his boot into the side of her head.
Fedorov slid in front of the now silent girl, holding his hands up. "We need her alive. Not for much longer, but --"
"The world is lining up against me," Mtiti shouted. "I can no longer count on you on the people who were supposed to be my friends. The Europeans came here and enslaved the black man for a hundred years, stripping our homelands of everything of value before they turned their backs and walked away. The Americans bomb anyone who might cost them money and develop weapons that can destroy all life. But who lives beneath the world's microscope? I do. I am the man everyone wants to call a war criminal. I am the brutal dictator. And do you know why?"
"Excellency, I -"
"Because my country is poor. We don't have the oil that allows the Saudis to do whatever they want with the blessing of America. We don't have a billion future customers for American products, like the Chinese. And so while their much greater crimes are ignored, I am criticized for doing nothing but trying to keep my country at peace."
"Excellency, I understand your situation, but --"
"Do you? Do you understand that my future -- the future of my people -- is hanging by a thread? Do you understand that your failures, your incompetence, could be enough to destroy everything I've built?"
"It won't come to that, sir. I guarantee it."
Mtiti sat back again, the storm suddenly over. "I hope you're right, Aleksei. Because if you're not, I don't know what will happen."
Chapter 47.
"I'm here," Aleksei Fedorov said into the phone while keeping his eye on Umboto Mtiti across the desk. The president was leaning back in a chair that looked vaguely like a throne, listening in on another handset.
"In Africa?" Josh Hagarty responded. Despite the fact that he was undoubtedly within a few hundred miles, his voice echoed with a slight delay.
"Where the fuck do you think I mean?" "And you've got my sister?"
"Yes. Do you have my documents?" "Yeah, I have them."
"Then we don't have much more to talk about, do we? Where are we meeting, and when?"
"Did Stephen tell you about the village where Annika was hiding out?"
"Yes."
"Let's meet on that road. Say, five miles before the village turnoff."
"Is that where you killed him?"
"It is, actually."
There was a nonchalance to his voice that Fedorov found vaguely disconcerting. In an effort to avoid hiring another overeducated do-gooder, they seemed to have gone too far in the other direction. It was difficult to tell if his attitude was just a bluff or if he'd learned more in prison than they'd anticipated.
"From what I heard, he had five or ten guys with him. Did you kill all of them?" No response.
"That's what I thought. You're in rebel country, and it sounds like you made some friends there. Fuck you, we do this somewhere neutral."
"There is nowhere neutral. We do it there, or we don't do it at all."
"Well, why don't we ask your sister --" Fedorov started but then fell silent when Mtiti held up a hand and nodded. "Okay, fine. When?"
"Five days from now. An hour before sunset."
"Five days? No way. Tomorrow."
"It's a little hard for me to travel right now, Aleksei. I've got a price on my head, and Mtiti's got people everywhere. It'll take me five days just to get there."
"How do I know you aren't trying to get the documents out of the country?" "Because you have my sister, remember?" Fedorov glanced at Mtiti, and again the president nodded.
"Five days, then. And you'd better not be screwing with me. Because you can be sure that while I'm tearing your sister apart, I'll tell her exactly whose fault it is."
"I want this over with, Aleksei. Just like you."
The line went dead, and Fedorov replaced the handset as Umboto Mtiti looked on.
"I don't believe that bullshit about them being five days away from the meeting place," Fedorov said. "Is there any way they could make copies?"
"No," Mtiti said. "There are very few copiers in this country, and I have people watching all of them. I also still have the power and phones cut off in most of the country."
"What about the borders? They could be running."
The muscles in Mtiti's jaw started to bulge as though he were chewing something. In the short time he'd been there, Fedorov had come to recognize this as one of the warning signs that the man was about to lose it.
"Just because you can't control your people and your business, Aleksei, doesn't mean I can't. If they show their faces anywhere -- anywhere -- I'll know it."
Fedorov looked around him -- at the guards by the door, at the dilapidated city on the other side of the bulletproof glass that framed Mtiti. All he could think about was cutting Josh Hagarty's heart out for forcing him to come here. For making him a prisoner of this ape that passed for a dictator.
"How much intelligence do you have on the terrorists in that area?" Fedorov said, being more careful of his phrasing this time.
Mtiti's expression turned to one of disgust. "I've left that land to the Yvimbo for now -- there's nothing of value on it. But if your young friend thinks I'm powerless there, he's going to be very surprised."
Chapter 48.
The sun was starting to get low on the horizon, and Aleksei Fedorov dared a quick glance at his watch before going back to scanning the jungle on either side of the road. Nothing. He was alone except for Josh Hagarty's sister, who was handcuffed to the bumper of the Land Cruiser he'd driven there.
She was no longer drugged, but it was hard to tell. Mtiti's people had taken charge of her the day they'd arrived and apparently thrown her into the local prison. She was bruised, battered, and filthy enough that he'd had to drive with the windows open to take the edge off the smell. Alive, yes. But completely broken.
Hagarty was now half an hour late. Mtiti was watching and would be getting impatient. Fedorov considered calling him to make sure he stayed put, but it would do more harm than good. Mtiti did what he wanted when he wanted -- most often with no thought at all for anything beyond that moment.
Instead he dialed the number for Stephen Trent's sat phone. Hagarty picked up on the first ring.
"Yeah?"
"Where the fuck are you?"
"I'm not coming."
"What? What the "
"I told you to come alone, and you're not alone, are you? You were followed."
Fedorov looked around him for signs of Mtiti's men. He'd tried every argument he could think of to get Mtiti to use outside professionals, but the man had insisted on troops loyal to him -- by all measures a bunch of poorly trained, drunk assholes. And now one of them had let himself be spotted.
"This is bullshit, Josh. I'm here with your sister, alone. Just like you said. You --"
"Do you think I'm an idiot, Aleksei? I know what I saw. When you --"
Fedorov cut off the connection and dialed another number. "He's got us. Go!"
At first there was nothing. Then, less than a minute later, small dots in the sky became visible in every direction.
The helicopters arrived first. Nine in all, they'd been brought in four nights ago, full of troops who were now blocking the only road in and out of the area. The planes would be next, flying in from an airstrip fifty miles north. Most were rickety, '60s-era warplanes, but there was one important exception
: a state-of-the-art spy plane full of sensors and high-definition cameras designed specifically to find ground targets. The Russian pilot said he could track a rat through the Siberian forest in a snowstorm.
If Josh and Annika were close enough to have seen Mtiti's men, there was no way they could avoid being spotted or get through the net that was now closing around the area. It was only a matter of time before they were caught.
Fedorov walked back to the car, removing the handcuffs from one of the girl's limp wrists and shoving her back into the vehicle. He'd heard talk of a method of execution that was uniquely African: They slid a tire over you, pinning your arms to your sides, and then set it on fire.
With a little luck, all this would be over by sundown. The documents would be destroyed, and Hagarty, his sister, and Annika Gritdal would be burning.
Chapter 49.
"Oh, my God . . ."
Annika was lying on her stomach in the dirt peering through a pair of binoculars. Josh knelt next to her, and she held them out to let him have a look.
Even with the magnification, he couldn't make out much more than dark specks against the sky. Their speed and pattern of movement made an educated guess possible, though. "Maybe seven or eight helicopters and probably double that many planes. Looks like a few are jets."
"I think it's the entire air force, Josh. I can't believe it. Mtiti sent the entire air force."
They were many miles from the place where they were supposed to meet Fedorov and, until the aircraft appeared, hadn't known if he'd kept his word and shown up alone. Clearly deceitfulness ran deep on both sides of the table. While everyone talked about an honest exchange, Fedorov's real agenda was to see them dead, while theirs was to stall and hope Katie hadn't gotten cold feet.
"Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?" Annika said as Josh rolled onto his back and stared into the empty sky.
"What?"
"What do you mean, what? Mtiti shut down the country's entire power grid, and now he's sent the entire air force after us."
"Good thing we're not down there."
"This time. But what about next time? Or the time after that?"
"I don't know what to say, Annika. We talked about this, and it was the best thing we could come up with. If you have any other ideas, I'm listening."
She shook her head, her frustrated expression seeming foreign to her face. "I've spent my entire life doing things myself -- never counting on anyone else for anything. And now we've given the only things that can save us to a woman I barely know, so she can deliver them to someone I've never heard of, so that maybe he can do something that will stop Mtiti before he decides to set the entire southern half of his country on fire to kill us."
She was right. Their lives were hanging from an extremely long chain made up entirely of weak links. "I know it's starting to seem hopeless, Annika. I'm sorry --"
She clamped a hand over his mouth, silencing him. "I'm not blaming you, Josh. I knew what I was getting into. Well, that's not entirely true. I was hoping it might go a little better than this."
He motioned around them at the empty knoll and pulled her hand from his mouth. "What do you want? A butler?"
That elicited a smile, and for some reason it made him feel better about their situation.
"My idea of luxury is running cold water," she said. "I used to think that made me a cheap date."
"Me, too."
She looked through the binoculars again and watched Mtiti's pilots continue their futile search. "So what now?"
He wanted to call Katie, to find out what was happening. To get some idea of how long they'd have to keep ducking Mtiti or if they should try to get over a border. But there was no way. Fedorov would be able to see what numbers had been called from Trent's phone, and Katie would be dead in an hour.
"I guess we set up another meeting."
"Now? Maybe you should wait until he's in a better mood."
"Nah," he said, dialing Fedorov's number. "Let's see if we can make it worse."
"Where the fuck are you, you little son of a bitch?"
"Somewhere you're not going to find me. Don't get me wrong, though. I applaud the effort. Annika and I have been wondering -- is that the whole air force?"
The tirade that followed was mostly in Russian, with a few choice English words for emphasis. Poking a wild animal with a stick was a dangerous game, but he and Annika had decided it made sense in this situation. The more they could keep Fedorov focused on homicidal fantasies, the less he'd be able to think straight. The problem was that the strategy had the potential to backfire badly if he ever got his hands on them.
"Aleksei! You're wasting my time again. We --"
"Wasting your time?" he shot back. "You want me to use your time better? How about you listening while I cut your sister's finger off?"
"Aleksei! Don't
The sound of Fedorov's phone dropping to the ground was followed quickly by Fawn's screams. At first they were just fear, but then they became the gurgling screeches of pain and horror. And then, just as suddenly as they had started, they stopped.
"Aleksei!" Josh shouted. "Aleksei! What
"The little bitch passed out," Fedorov said when he returned to the phone. "Ruining all our fun, huh, kid? Tell you what. I'll just leave her finger here for you. You can come and pick it up later. A souvenir of your trip to Africa."
Josh's mouth went dry, and he had to make a concentrated effort to conjure enough spit to speak. Aleksei was trying to rattle him, and he couldn't let that happen. Not with the odds stacked so high against him.
"That's fine, Aleksei. If I'm not getting my whole sister back, you're not getting all your documents back. I just peeled ten pages right off the top."
"You little son of a bitch! If I don't get every page back, I'm going to --"
"Shut the fuck up!" Josh screamed into the phone. "You want the documents, and I want my sister. Now, if you quit fucking around, we can get this done. But every time something happens to my sister, some of these pages are going to disappear. And I wouldn't want to be the one explaining why that happened to Umboto Mtiti."
"If you think you're going to --"
"Three days from now, Aleksei. Same place. And this time, leave the troops at home. I have spies everywhere. There are a lot of people in this country who hate Mtiti, and they're falling all over themselves to help me. If my people don't tell me that all those aircraft are sitting on the base outside the capital, I'm not coming."
"I wouldn't wait too long, Josh. You know where we're keeping her? The prison. Doesn't look like she's been gang-raped yet, but three days from now . . . Let's just say I can't make any guarantees."
"Another five pages of your documents just disappeared, Aleksei."
Fedorov exploded into another Russian diatribe, and Josh turned off the phone. When he did, though, it suddenly became hard to breathe.
"Josh? Are you all right? What happened?"
He walked toward the edge of the knoll, feeling increasingly dizzy despite the cool of the approaching darkness. Fawn Mardsen was an evil bitch. A white-trash con woman who took advantage of the goodwill of others. Maybe even a half-assed murderer. But she hadn't deserved that.
"Josh?" Annika said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
"He cut her finger off."
It was a few seconds before she responded. "It's not your fault, Josh. You had no way of knowing --"
"I had every way of knowing. I wrapped her up and delivered her right into the hands of a homicidal psychopath. What did I think was going to happen? The answer is, I didn't care. As long as it wasn't Laura, I didn't care."
Chapter 50.
Aleksei Fedorov rolled over in bed, awakened by the crack of gunfire outside. He'd become accustomed to the sound over the days he'd been confined in Mtiti's palace, but today it seemed closer. More urgent.
He went to his open window, squinting against the sun reflecting off the razor-wiretopped walls protecting the compound. The fortifications were better-manne
d than before, and there were two armored personnel carriers coming through the heavy steel gate. The soldiers crammed inside jumped out before the vehicles had come to a full stop, taking up positions on the wall with their machine guns at the ready.
The meeting with Hagarty was scheduled for that afternoon, and by that night Fedorov hoped to be on a plane out of this shithole. He'd managed to get Mtiti to agree to let him bring in another group of mercenaries, and they were already in position near the meeting site dug in with sniper rifles that would finally put an end to Hagarty and the Norwegian bitch who was helping him. They deserved something so much slower than a bullet for the trouble they'd caused, but it was better to resolve the situation quickly. Before Mtiti's paranoia became any more dangerous.
The sound of men running in the hallway prompted him to start toward the robe hanging on the bathroom door. He was supposed to meet Mtiti in an hour to go over the plans for dealing with Hagarty. It was the fifth such meeting, and each time the man displayed an uncanny ability to ask the same questions over and over again.
Fedorov was just reaching for the robe when the door to his room burst open and armed soldiers flooded in.
"What the fuck --"
The lead man slammed a rifle butt into his stomach, driving him to his knees. Another kicked him in the side, knocking him to the floor and leaving him to try to protect his head from the blows that followed.
Were they Yvimbo rebels? Was this a coup? No. Mtiti's soldiers wouldn't have gone down without a fight. And he recognized some of the men from his time there.
The hard toe of a boot hit him in the small of his back and he grunted in pain as he tried to crawl away from the now laughing men.
"I'm here as Mtiti's guest!" Fedorov said. "I want to talk to him. Take me --"
An arm snaked around his throat, and he heard the thickly accented words of the man choking him. "You want to see Mtiti? Yes, we take you there."
He was dragged naked through the halls, passing soldiers, maids, and servants, all of whom stopped and stared dully. The door to Mtiti's office was partially ajar, and the men holding him slammed his head into it as they passed through. His vision blurred and the room rocked sickeningly as he was shoved to his knees in front of the president's desk.