Mutombo looked at him as if he’d asked what time dinner was being served.
“The charts!” he insisted. “Where are they?”
Mutombo, still unsure why he was asking, pointed at a drawer to his right.
Riley rushed toward it, took all of Verhoeven’s charts out, and started throwing them aside one by one until he found the one for the Mongala and Ebola Rivers.
“Where are we?” he asked, stepping in front of Mutombo. “Do you know?”
He looked at Riley in confusion but finally studied the map for a moment and pointed to a wide bend in the river. “Here,” he said.
Riley looked closer and pointed to part of the river just an inch farther. “We have to get here,” he said. Then he looked directly at the helmsman and asked, “Do you think you can do it?”
Mutombo suddenly understood what he was asking. “You crazy,” he said bluntly.
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.” Riley shook the chart and insisted. “Can you?”
The black Adonis took a second before answering, a fierce grin on his face. “Mutombo can.”
Barricaded behind all the boxes and sacks they could gather, Carmen, Jack, and Riley watched the threatening flotilla of Mangbetu canoes gaining ground with every minute. Since they’d come within sight, they hadn’t stopped letting out howls of excitement, increasing the pace of their chants and with them that of their paddles against the water.
“Do those bastards never rest?” Jack muttered, leaning on a sack of rice, with only enough strength to curse.
“You must have pissed them off,” Carmen suggested.
The Pingarrón’s second smiled tiredly. “It’s ’cause I left them craving . . . ,” he said, patting his leg, “a good Galician stew.”
“Enough chatter,” Riley interrupted. “We still have to fill some more of these.”
In front of them, spread out over an old blanket, were a dozen glass jars of different shapes and sizes: for pickles, drinks—a couple of bourbon bottles even. Riley felt crushed to dump those out to fill them with the kerosene Verhoeven kept for the lamps.
Each bottle, once filled with fuel, got a piece of cloth or wick around its neck and was then placed carefully next to the others.
“Will it work?” Carmen asked skeptically.
“Firebombs?” Riley asked. “Of course. At least they worked during the war. Right, Jack?”
Jack, who seemed about to lose consciousness again, lifted his eyelids heavily. “What?”
Riley studied his friend, who was more gaunt and weaker than he’d like to admit. “You look awful,” he said. “You should go lie down before the commotion starts.”
Jack ran his tongue over his lips, gathering his strength to answer. “I’m better than you,” he replied angrily. “At least I have all my fingers.” He lifted his left hand. “And I don’t complain with every step like an old lady.”
“Everything hurts,” Riley argued. “Let me know how it is when you get injected with venom.”
“Whiner,” Jack said.
Carmen had seen them taunt each other before and knew it was the way the men showed they were there for each other. Normally she let them carry on, but not that day.
“What’ll happen if they wait till nightfall to attack us?” she asked, turning to look at the sun as it headed sharply for the horizon.
“They won’t,” Riley said. “They’ve been rowing for over ten hours without stopping. They won’t wait an extra second.”
“Yeah, but what if they do?”
Riley shrugged. “If they do, we can’t do much to defend ourselves,” he admitted. “That’s why we have to trick them and make them think we’re defenseless.”
Carmen glanced at the spear leaning on the wall next to the Martini-Henry, then at the small gathering of bottles on the blanket. “Well,” she mused, “that shouldn’t be too hard.”
Just then Mutombo showed up, looking agitated and pointing downward. “Here.”
Riley took a second to realize what he meant. “This is the place?” he asked, looking around. “Are you sure?”
“Oui,” the Congolese said confidently. “This is.”
“No time to waste, then.” He stood up and felt like a million glass shards were scratching his insides. “Let anchor.”
Jack started to get up too, but Riley gestured for him to stop. “You two keep going,” he said, gritting his teeth and pointing at the empty bottles. “And reinforce the parapet as much as you can.” He took a strained breath in and gazed at the river. “They’re already here.”
60
“There are a lot of them,” Carmen said, not hiding her concern.
Crouched behind the improvised parapet, she looked along the line of canoes stretching from one side of the river to the other. In each of them, four to six men rowed vigorously in their direction. When she got to fifty men, she stopped counting. With only a dozen bullets in the gun, she thought, it didn’t matter if it was eighty or a hundred. They all chanted of death and war, roaring like crazed demons.
Carmen had never heard anything so terrifying in her life, and she felt her heart rate accelerate as if it were trying to escape her body.
“Seems like they brought their friends to the party,” Jack murmured behind her in a weak voice.
Carmen turned toward him, and her heart sunk at the sight of his waxen face and always sparkling eyes now hidden behind eyelids at half-mast.
The Galician felt her gaze and raised his chin. “I’m not as bad as I look,” he claimed.
Carmen decided not to reply to that blatant lie, because Riley appeared on the stairs coming up from the lower deck, clenching his teeth with each step from the pain. His skin had taken on a sickly yellow color, and the sweat beading on his face showed how hard his body was fighting the poison.
“Are you ready?” he asked calmly, showing a confident smile.
“I’m getting bored,” Jack answered in a whisper from his position on top of the rice sack, looking like a satrap on an ottoman. “Can’t you ask them to hurry up?”
Riley smiled wider. “I’ll see what I can do,” he answered, giving him Verhoeven’s old lighter. Then he bent down next to Carmen and looked at her closely with his amber, bloodshot eyes. “How are you?” he asked in the same tone he’d use if they were having coffee on a terrace in Paris.
That apparent lack of concern was like a balm to Carmen, but when she raised her left hand in response, it shook like a leaf.
Then, out of nowhere, she blew him a kiss.
That little gesture, in those circumstances, gave him more courage than if a battalion of bagpipers started playing “Yankee Doodle.”
Riley wrapped Carmen’s hand in his and kissed her fingers tenderly.
As the sun set behind them, shadows lengthened and the river and sky blazed a fresh blood red that would be impossible anywhere but Africa.
“Everything will be fine,” he whispered, bringing his lips to her ear.
Carmen did the same, whispering, “You’re a bad liar.”
Then she ran her right hand along Riley’s cheek, where his beard couldn’t hide the scar a broken bottle had left years before in a bar in the south of Spain.
Suddenly, a hiss broke through the air less than six inches from their heads, and a long black arrow with a green feather dug into the aft cabin with a thud.
“Take cover!” Jack called, lunging behind the parapet while Riley dove over Carmen to protect her.
That first arrow was followed by a storm of a hundred more, like a downpour that peppered the deck in search of victims to skewer, as a hundred Mangbetu throats roared in a bloodthirsty frenzy.
Ignoring the arrows, the captain of the Pingarrón scurried over to the Martini-Henry and the ammunition box. He took the few bullets left and put them in his pocket.
When he looked up, Carmen had a kerosene-filled bottle in each hand and a fierce look on her face.
“Wait till they’re close enough!” he shouted at them bot
h.
Jack and Carmen nodded together. Jack smiled maliciously and with a flick of his thumb lit the lighter. His lips moved without a sound. “Let them come,” Riley read.
Then he took the first bullet from his pocket, put it in the rifle chamber, and cocked the loading lever.
In that moment, under the rain of arrows, Riley realized the Roi des Boers could be his own stagecoach, and he could be John Wayne in the role of Ringo Kid. In the same way, he had next to him alter egos of Dallas and Doc Boone, preparing for the imminent Indian attack.
Once again, life imitating fiction, he thought with a bitter smile. But in this case it’s unlikely the seventh cavalry will show up blowing their bugles to save us.
“How’s it going, Mutombo?” he asked loudly, without taking his eyes off the Mangbetu.
The Congolese’s response came from the lower deck. “If you no ask, I finish first,” he replied grumpy.
“Hurry up!” he urged, bringing the rifle to his shoulder.
The first canoes were less than a hundred yards away and were approaching rapidly. He counted more than thirty.
“Ready?” he asked Carmen, who crouched to his right, without looking at her.
She didn’t answer, but out of the corner of his eye, Riley saw her move closer to Jack and light the wicks of the two bottles in her hands.
Without another word he aimed at the fore rower of the nearest canoe and fired.
And that was the starting shot of the chaos and insanity to come.
In a cry of pain, the rower grabbed his chest and fell in the water under the incredulous gaze of the other men in the canoe.
For a moment Riley thought maybe they’d be intimidated by firearms and turn around running.
But no.
If anything, they seemed to feel the use of the gun was inappropriate. Their immediate response was to look at Riley furiously and let out a murmur that conveyed anger and resentment more than anything else, as if they’d caught him cheating at cards.
The Mangbetu he’d seen with Klein the night before, acting as master of ceremonies at Verhoeven’s murder, still had on his crown of multicolored feathers and necklace of crocodile teeth as he stood and pointed at the boat, fiercely urging his men on as he swung a curved machete over his head.
Riley growled as he grasped his weapon with the remaining fingers on his left hand and pulled the trigger again.
The crown of feathers flew through the air, but the screaming man escaped the bullet by an inch. He touched his head in amazement and pointed at Riley again, shouting loudly for all the natives to rush the ship at the same time.
“Shit,” he muttered, aware he’d made things worse, if that were possible. “Mutombo!” he shouted.
“Not yet!”
Three canoes converged on the starboard side and two on the port like sharp, primitive torpedoes.
“Carmen!” Riley yelled, firing a third shot on the natives preparing to unload.
But he didn’t have to say anything. She had already leaned over the starboard railing and, like a seasoned fighter, smashed the bottle against one of the approaching canoes.
The bottle shattered on the boat’s bow, splashing its occupants with kerosene. A split second later the kerosene ignited, and a small fireball appeared in the middle of the river. The five rowers, enveloped in flames, jumped in the water amid terrible cries of pain. The rowers of the two closer canoes seemed to hesitate, but the once-feathered boss waved them on with his machete, and after a moment’s hesitation they pressed on.
Carmen went to throw another firebomb at them, but this time her aim wasn’t as good, and the bottle hit the water with a disappointing glop.
“Other side!” he ordered her. She took two pickle jars filled with fuel, brought them to Jack so he could light them, and threw them one after another over the port side.
A powerful blast told Riley that at least one of the bombs had reached its objective.
Five more canoes pressed the starboard side, getting in each other’s way in their haste. He fired twice more, finding his mark each time, but there were more than twenty warriors determined to board the boat, and they didn’t pay attention to their fallen comrades.
“Alex!” Jack shouted.
Riley turned and saw Jack already had a lit bottle in his hand.
He made the decision in less than a second, leaving the gun on the ground and grabbing the bottle. Then he threw himself down the stairs to find five Mangbetu had already climbed aboard and were helping many others to do so.
“Hey you!” he shouted halfway down, surprising them all. “You have to ask permission before coming aboard!”
Then he threw the bottle as hard as he could against the deck. It broke into a thousand pieces and formed a fireball that engulfed all the natives, who had no choice but to dive into the water, screaming in terror.
Riley realized that might not have been the smartest thing to do, since the boat was made entirely of wood.
“Hell with it,” he said loudly to himself, putting that new problem off for later.
He hurried back up and found Carmen leaning over the port side, throwing two more firebombs.
One fell in the water and the other hit the body of a terrified rower, but it bounced off his chest and fell on the bottom of the canoe without breaking.
Riley looked down at the bleak sight of only five jars left on the blanket in front of Jack.
Carmen turned to get two more, saw the same as him, and looked up to meet his gaze.
Her messy black hair fell over her face, which was sooty from the smoke of the explosions, but her eyes were full of savagery and her parted lips hinted at excitement he never would have expected from her. She was enjoying it.
The wails of a new attack broke the spell, and he turned and grabbed the Martini-Henry, took a bullet from his pocket, put it into the chamber, cocked it as he aimed, and looked over the horde of cannibals who had converged on them with one goal: to tear them apart.
He looked for the boss again, but the coward had hidden behind a giant warrior with only his machete poking out from behind the warrior’s shoulder.
Unless he got rid of him, Riley thought, those guys wouldn’t give up.
So, he took a deep breath, planted his feet, held his breath, aimed at the ringleader, and gently stroked the trigger.
“Careful!” Carmen screamed.
He hadn’t seen that two warriors had climbed up the paddles and clambered over the parapet, and were ready to skewer Riley with their spears.
As soon as he saw them, Riley knew he couldn’t handle them both.
He reflexively jumped back to get some distance, but the closest Mangbetu was faster and pounced on him, managing to get the gun barrel. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t seem to know that the end against his stomach was the one the bullets came out of. Taking advantage of his mistake, Riley pulled the trigger and taught him.
The point-blank shot opened an ugly hole in the Mangbetu’s guts, causing him to fall with a puzzled look on his face.
A second later, the other cannibal jumped to the floor in front of Riley and tried to stab him with his spear. Riley still had the reflexes to deflect it with the rifle, just enough to keep from being skewered like an olive.
The warrior smiled cruelly, showing his serrated shark’s teeth. He kicked the Martini-Henry, tearing it from Riley’s weak hands, and raised his spear over his head, ready to bring it down with all his might.
“Liwa!” he cried triumphantly, showing all his teeth.
Then he froze, astonishment on his lips.
He let the spear fall to the floor and turned around like a crazed dog chasing his own tail.
Riley glimpsed the shaft of a spear stuck in the middle of his back. The Mangbetu turned in a circle a couple more times and opened his mouth to say something, but the only thing that came out was a bloody gurgle. Then he shook his head as if to show his total disagreement with what had just happened, and collapsed suddenly like a puppet whose
strings had been cut.
Jack was right behind him, kneeling on the deck.
Riley, still on the floor, gave his friend a nod of recognition.
In response, the Galician stretched his lips in an effort to smile, and when he was about to raise his thumb, he closed his eyes and passed out on top of the man he’d just killed.
Carmen, the only one of them still standing, went over to Riley to offer a hand.
The captain took it and with a huge effort managed to stand up. For a moment he was in front of the woman he loved while dozens of canoes surrounded the boat and their occupants tried to board them amid frenzied howls.
“I love you, Carmen Debagh,” he said, looking directly at her, perhaps for the last time.
The sun set behind the horizon, slowly erasing the world around them.
“I know,” she answered, looking back at him.
Then someone else shouted at their feet.
Riley recognized Mutombo’s voice, and before he had time to ask what happened, he heard the familiar rumble of the engine starting.
The Roi des Boers had come back to life and brought with it a final glimmer of hope.
61
A few seconds later the paddles started to lazily pat the water, ruffling a murmur of white foam at the stern.
The Mangbetu paused their assault, believing the ship was starting to move, but they soon realized it wasn’t. The Roi des Boers’s two stern anchors clung to the riverbed, holding the boat in the same place despite the stubborn thrust of the steam engine.
“We’re not moving,” Carmen said.
“Wait,” said Riley, squeezing her hand.
The natives, after a brief moment of unease, resumed the attack.
Carmen pointed at the nearest canoes. “But . . .”
“Wait,” Riley repeated.
Mutombo appeared on the steps, drenched in sweat, hands painted by the white lead.
He went next to Carmen and Riley and without a word started to look around impatiently. Then he reached out and pointed at a smooth black rock sticking out of the water.
“There!” the Congolese said enthusiastically.
A second later, twenty more such rocks emerged from the water like big black bubbles in a boiling cauldron.
Darkness: Captain Riley II (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 2) Page 43