Hunt the Leopard

by Don Mann

  Their moans pierced the night sky and were soon drowned out by the sounds of the Toyota trucks roaring into the compound. Festus Ratty fired his AK into the “Welcome to Utorogu” sign past the gate, then screamed excitedly into his handheld radio, “Rambo One. Rambo One. Entered compound. Front gate taken!”

  Four of Festus Ratty’s men jumped out of the second truck to mop up the area around the gate, drag away the bodies, and assume the position of guards. He and the others proceeded directly to a concrete plaza in front of the second grouping of buildings in the compound—an area known as “expat town,” where most of the plant’s foreign workers resided—and started firing at anyone they saw.

  When the shooting reached the gate, approximately thirty meters from the front of the expat plaza, Crocker turned to Zoe and said, “This sounds serious…Run to the living quarters. Alert everyone to hide and barricade themselves in…I’m going back inside to find Moxie and his men.”

  Zoe stammered back, “I—I…want to stay with you.”

  He pulled her close. “Go inside and warn them…I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Now he was hurrying through the side entrance of the dining hall. As he stopped to look back at the headlights of vehicles hurrying in his direction, a very queasy feeling took over his stomach. He entered the kitchen, pushing around confused, panicked people running out toward the rear of the building. They had apparently already heard the shots, and maybe received a warning from the gate.

  He saw a man shove into a Japanese woman, who slipped and hit the side of her head on a metal counter. Crocker caught her before she hit the floor. In the multipurpose room ahead the sound system was still playing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” which now sounded like a warning.

  I bet you’re wondering how I knew

  ’Bout your plans to make me blue…

  The woman was unconscious and bleeding from a gash above her ear. Crocker grabbed the next man who ran past—a guy with a big gray mustache—and exclaimed into his face, “Take her. Help her out the back!”

  The man looked at him numbly.

  Crocker tightened his grip around the man’s forearm. “Help her out the back. She needs medical attention. I’d take her myself, but I’m headed inside the dining hall.”

  The man nodded, took her from Crocker, and looked back in fear. The gunshots sounded like they were right outside the door now. Then a rocket exploded near the front, shaking foam tiles loose from the ceiling.

  Crocker pushed the mustached man. “Go!”

  With screams reverberating off the walls, he continued through a hallway, into the dining hall—a scene of chaos. Chairs turned over, spilled drinks and ceiling tiles on the floor, the body of a collapsed man holding his throat, people hiding under tables. Fear was electric. Another rocket exploded outside.

  “This man needs medical attention,” Crocker shouted, pointing to the man on the floor.

  A woman crawled out from one of the tables over to the fallen man as Crocker scanned three-sixty for the Brit security officers and his teammates, taking in dozens of impressions, and matching faces. Failed to find them in the red confetti-like colors off the disco ball.

  Called, “Moxie? Has anyone seen Moxie, Brian, or Scott?”

  No one answered.

  “Moxie?” he shouted. “Rufus? Brian? Scott?”

  A second later the lights went off and people in the room moaned with a kind of morbid resignation. Crocker couldn’t tell if someone had turned them off deliberately. Reached the front door, which was hit by a volley of bullets, and went to the floor. That’s when he realized he was unarmed; wasn’t even carrying the SIG Sauer pistol he had brought with him.

  Left it in the fucking dorm…

  Gathered himself, harnessed his massive energy. Hazarded a look out the metal front door. Saw a medley of muzzle flashes in the plaza outside, the dark outlines of the technical painted to look like a military truck by the concrete bench where he and Zoe had been sitting minutes earlier. A Browning or DShK mounted in back. Confused him at first because it was directing fire at the corner of the sand-colored building to his right. Saw sparks zinging off a large trash compactor, then shadows behind it, the outline of an automatic rifle.

  What the fuck is going on?

  Whoever was behind the compactor was pinned. Spotted two dark shapes in the foreground—a man on his back resembled Moxie. Saw Rufus’s body beside him. They were both still and bleeding out.

  Sons of bitches…On his friggin’ birthday…

  No way the attackers were Nigerian soldiers, or something was very wrong. Instinctively tried to locate the weapons of the fallen Brits, in the chaos and muted light. Calculated that he didn’t have a chance of reaching them before the big guns on the technical ripped him to shreds.

  His survival instinct was turned up to eleven. Observe-orient-decide-act.

  The firing in the plaza in front of the dining hall was relentless—PK machine guns, rockets, AKs, even DShKs. They seemed to be shooting at anyone that moved.

  Fuck…

  Figured he had about a minute to warn the people in the dining hall before the DShK ripped apart the metal front door, and the attackers swarmed in. Turned back and started to spread the message.

  “Fast! Fast! Everyone out the back!”

  Some frightened expats didn’t respond. He went to his knees and pulled them out from underneath tables.

  “Get the fuck out of here now, or you’re dead!”

  As he scurried from one to another, he ran into two Indian men; one of them was carrying an armful of pistols.

  “I need one of those,” he said, grabbing a Glock. “Help me clear these people out the back. We gotta get them out!”

  When he peeked out the front this time, he saw a tremendous roar of fire directed toward the men hiding behind the trash compactor. Violent sounds of rounds clanging off the metal and tearing apart the wall. Watched as someone who looked like Brian dashed from behind the compactor toward the back of the building. Halfway there he was lit up by a spotlight from one of the trucks. Then a DShK ripped his legs out from under him, and continued firing—bang—clang of the recoil—bang.

  Lost another shape following Brian in his periphery, but doubted he’d managed to escape. His doubts confirmed by a shout of “Allahu Akbar!” How he hated to hear that.

  In a split second he noticed the shadow of a figure staggering around the corner toward him, sandy hair splotched with blood. Took him in his arms and recognized Scott’s anguished face, bleeding from a fist-sized wound to his jaw. Crocker was amazed he could even breathe.

  Scott wheezed, “Help…Help me…ge…”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Crocker leaned closer so his ear brushed Scott’s mouth.

  Scott said with great difficulty. “The alarm…Help me…to the alarm.” Then he pointed toward the left side of the compound.

  Crocker pivoted immediately and carried Scott through the back of the dining hall, his left hand holding what was left of Scott’s jaw in place, blood flowing down his arm. Running full-tilt out the back.

  Scott wheezing, “Left, mate…Turn left…”

  Reached the rear of the building next door—the one Moxie, Rufus, and Brian had been hiding alongside of. Scott no longer had the strength to lift his arm.

  “Where, Scott?” Crocker whispered. “Tell me…”

  Shouts of chaos and anguish amid the continued firing coming from the plaza. Echoes of people running.

  “Glass…ba…”

  “What?”

  “B…ox…”

  It was so dark Crocker couldn’t see. Saw a glint of light reflected off a four-inch-by-four-inch piece of glass. Scott was using his last bit of energy to try to make a fist. Crocker got the message. Hit the glass so hard it shattered. Reached in and pushed the button that activated an alarm that rang sharp and loud throughout the compound.

  When he looked down at Scott, his eyes had rolled up in their sockets. He wasn’t brea
thing. As Crocker set Scott’s body down at the back of the building, he caught a glimpse of the satisfied look on his face.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “When two elephants fight it is the

  grass that gets trampled.”

  —Swahili saying

  Tiny Chavez was in bed in the expat dorm playing Oddworld on his laptop, when he heard something in the distance that sounded like an explosion. Left the fictional world of Mudos and returned to Earth, where he quickly confirmed that what he heard outside was real.

  Thinking that it could be fireworks or some kind of salute related to Rufus’s birthday celebration, he slipped out of his bunk on the second-floor of Building A in the expat living quarters to see what was going on. First thing he noticed was that Akil and CT weren’t in their room next door. When he looked across the hall where Mancini and Crocker were bunking, he saw that it was empty, too.

  Party monsters…They got lucky…

  Tiny loved women, but was trying to avoid temptation. Lately, his marriage was on the rocks. One wrong step and it would be over, and he didn’t want that. Not with a two-year-old son and infant daughter he was dying to spend more time with.

  On the table beside one of the bunks, he found a push-pull radio with a RadioShack logo on it. Thinking he’d get better reception in the hallway, he hurried out wearing only his underpants and called into the radio, “Deadwood, it’s TC. You read me, bad boy? Over.”

  No answer.

  He decided to try Akil. “Romeo, it’s TC…Put your dick back in your pants and answer…Romeo…Hey, Romeo…”

  Tiny stopped when he heard footsteps hurrying up the stairs. Turned and saw what he thought was a Nigerian soldier in a black beret and olive uniform. Grinned.

  “Hey, dude, you speak English? You know what’s going on?”

  Instead of grinning back or answering, the soldier stepped forward and pulled the walkie-talkie out of his hand.

  “Hey…I need that!”

  Tiny reached to take it back.

  When the soldier hid it behind him, Tiny cocked his head and butted him in the forehead so hard he fell backward and hit the cement floor.

  “That’s what you get for trying to steal a radio from a Chicano.”

  As Tiny bent to retrieve the push-pull, two other soldiers ran up behind him with automatic weapons.

  “Yo!”

  Tiny turned as one of them fired and hit him in the foot. Felt like a red-hot poker passing through it top to arch.

  “Motherfucker! Why’d you do that?”

  The soldiers jumped on him. Despite his injured foot, he put up a ferocious struggle, elbowing one soldier in the eye, and slugging the other. When the soldiers finally got him to the ground, they roughly handcuffed his wrists behind his back.

  He continued to protest, shouting, “You stupid idiots…You don’t know who you’re dealing with. I want to talk to your commanding officer, now!”

  One of the soldiers used the butt of his AK to smash him in the face. Tiny’s world went dark.

  Akil and CT were three quarters of a mile away on the other side of the 32.2-acre compound in the VIP section called Company Town, which sat on a little ridge overlooking the gas plant at the south end of the compound. Consisted of a crescent of single-story bungalows that housed the plant’s top administrators and managers, around an office building, combination canteen and rec hall with an outside patio, a Jacuzzi, and a clinic.

  The two big men were drinking bottles of local Trophy beer and playing pool in a back room of the rec hall with two nurses—one light-skinned and Irish, the other darker and Algerian—when the alarm went off.

  CT, who was lining up a bank shot to a corner pocket, stopped and covered his ears. “What the hell’s that?”

  “Don’t tell me it’s a fire drill at one a.m.,” Akil remarked, looking from the clock on the wall to the dark-skinned nurse Saliha.

  They couldn’t hear the fighting from the expat section, which was nearly a mile away. It didn’t help that they were in a windowless room with Akil’s iPad playing “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye.

  Akil turned the music off.

  “Could be a problem with the electrical system, or a fire in one of the other sectors,” offered Sally O’Rourke, the older and taller of the two nurses, as she sniffed the air. She didn’t want the party to end, but felt a strong sense of duty.

  “I’d best check it out,” she announced.

  CT, covering his ears to muffle the piercing sound, said, “I’m coming with you. Make sure you don’t get lost.”

  Sally smiled, “Invitation accepted,” and pushed her long hair back.

  She currently ran the emergency center and on-site ambulance. Having served as a medic in the Kosovo war, and having worked across Africa in a variety of petrol and forestry sites, she considered herself hardened to crisis.

  CT was setting down his cue stick on the table when the lights went out.

  “Now I can’t see where I’m aiming,” said CT.

  “He’s soft,” Akil joked. “Can’t take the slightest bit of adversity.”

  Sally said, “Give me your hand. I’ll guide you.”

  Akil and Saliha chose to stay behind, both hoping that once they were alone, they’d get a chance to slip into the Jacuzzi.

  Sally took charge leading the way along the wall to the rear exit, where she offered CT a pair of hooded chemical-resistant coveralls to wear over his blue polo shirt and khaki pants, and noise-canceling headphones.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Come on, you’ll look sexy.”

  He took the headphones and left the chem suit behind. Soon as they got outdoors, they heard gunshots and explosions in the distance. “You hear that?” she asked, pausing near the ambulance.

  CT had just removed the headphones when a Gulf Oil 4x4 skidded up and a blond-haired engineer got out, shouting, “Terrorists! Terrorists! Fucking hell…It’s a terrorist attack!”

  “Where?” CT asked.

  “Front gate. The expat section! Holy shit! They’re killing everyone!”

  Keeping a cool head, Sally initiated the appropriate protocol. With CT’s help, they pounded on bungalow doors, rousing sleeping administrators and engineers, and instructed them to lock themselves in and hide under their beds.

  Moving to the rec center, they did the same to the half-dozen expats they found there. That’s when Akil and Saliha appeared, pulling on their clothes.

  “What’s going on?”

  “While you’re jonesing one another, the compound is being attacked,” CT explained.

  “Where?” Akil asked.

  “They hit the expat section where our buddies are,” answered CT.

  “Who?”

  CT turned to Sally. “We need weapons.”

  “No weapons,” Sally answered. “Protocol is to sit tight and contact the duty officer at Shell headquarters in South Holland. They’ll notify Nigerian authorities and handle everything.”

  “Fuck that,” exclaimed Akil. “We’re trained for this kind of thing.”

  “He’s right!”

  “You don’t understand. The plant is particularly vulnerable because of—”

  Akil cut her off. “Where are the weapons? Our teammates are under attack!”

  Sally reluctantly obliged, unlocking the security locker, where the SEALs armed themselves with automatic weapons, shotguns, pistols, armored vests, and flares.

  Now the debate between CT and Akil was whether one of them should stay and guard Company Town and the gas plant next door, or both hightail it to the expat dining hall. It was over quickly, with Akil insisting, “You stay here and do what you can, I’ll go!”

  “Roger.”

  A half-minute later, Akil and Saliha climbed in the ambulance and sped north on the paved road that paralleled the eastern fence. As he drove, Akil saw military vehicles parked in front of a cluster of buildings on a promontory to his right.

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing.

&
nbsp; “That’s the LN section?” Saliha answered, craning her neck.

  “LN?”

  “Local nationals?”

  “Those military vehicles normally parked there?” CT asked.

  Saliha shook her head: “Never seen that before, but I’m not sure.”

  Mancini had left the party early and returned to his room in the expat dorm Building A—an airy, sand-colored three-story building. He’d seen Crocker go off with some Aussie babe. Crocker was single, so good for him.

  Manny had decided to read for a while, two chapters of Stephen Hawking’s book The Grand Design. Trying to grasp the concept of a multiverse—the idea that our universe is one of many that had appeared spontaneously out of nothing—he stood in the shower and let the warm water calm his head and body as he considered the idea that another version of him existed in a separate universe or dimension.

  Mind-blowing stuff, he decided, as he toweled himself off in the paneled locker room. Since boyhood, he had a sense that the past was still alive somewhere in the universe, and had never understood where that idea had come from.

  He was curious to read more, but decided to hit the hay, and continue in the morning. Maybe try to contact Carmen via Skype or Viber. She was five hours behind in Virginia, and probably cleaning up after dinner.

  Mancini, with a towel around his waist, took a step toward the door when two men rushed in, one with red hair holding a bleeding wound on the side of his head, the other an Asian man whose eyes were practically bulging out of their sockets.

  “What happened to you?”

  He barely got his question out when the Asian man pointed behind him and spit out the word “T-t-terrorists!”

  “What terrorists? Where?”

  “Outside…They’re swarming all over the plaza shooting people!”

  What had been a peaceful night so far for Mancini was now interrupted by the sounds of men in the hallway, breaking down doors and shouting.

  “Any idea how many?”

  He was trying to remember where he’d left his pistol, when the bleeding man leaned into him and said in a panic, “Lots. We’d better hide. They’re targeting foreigners.”