‘Yeah, that much we know,’ West said.
‘Then let’s work with that.’
Waiting for the night, we sat in the mud on the high side of the enclosure and glommed together to conserve warmth. No one talked. Someone grabbed my hand and held on tight. It was Ayesha. I could only imagine what was going through her mind. No one said a word, not even Leila. When the darkness was complete, I put our one and only chance into action and slid away from the group, working through the mud on my belly to the far side of the enclosure. LeDuc believed word would get around about Ayesha and Leila. I was hoping order might be a little on the lax side among the CNDP rank and file and that some of the boys might drop in for a little Intercourse & Inebriation.
Our wristwatches had been confscated, but it would have been after 22:00 when the door to our pen was forced ajar. I could make out four — or maybe five — shapes coming through the gap, creeping quietly. Moments later, I heard a woman’s muffled scream. Dropping to the ground and keeping low, I moved in the night shadow that lived at the base of our prison wall, making my way around the circumference of the enclosure. Cassidy, West, Rutherford, LeDuc and Ryder were making things difficult for the Africans, but not too difficult. The soldiers had to think that we were soft targets.
Going down on my belly for the last twenty meters, I snaked through the mud, coming up behind the intruders. From the sound of the gruff commands and muffled shouts, the Africans — five of them — were fast realizing that they’d bitten off more than they could chew. One of them had had enough. He backed away from the entangled shadows on the ground and I heard him hoarsely whisper in French. He leveled his rifle, serious about taking what they wanted. Two of his buddies went forward and dragged a struggling body away from the others.
‘No! No! Help me!’ I recognized the voice — Leila’s.
Then a second body got hauled out by her foot: Ayesha.
I was getting closer, close enough to smell the intruders — a pungent, stale, unwashed animal funk mixed with cheap, coarse tobacco. The intruders hadn’t seen me, or conducted a head count to see if someone were missing. They didn’t know it but, rather than being their friend, the night worked against them. I came up behind the man holding the rifle. He sensed rather than heard my presence, but not before I kicked him between the legs hard enough to put his nuts over a goal post. He began to sink to his knees but I broke his neck with an elbow strike before he reached them. Attacked by a shadow, the Africans were momentarily disoriented and stood rooted to the spot while they processed what they thought they’d just seen happen to their buddy. A few seconds of uncertainty was all we needed. I took out a second African, sweeping his legs out from under him so that he landed on his back, the air rushing out of his lungs. I snapped his head to one side and the vertebrae in his neck cracked like dry walnuts. A furry of intense violence broke out. Cassidy leaped up and strangled the man standing over him. West and Ryder tackled their man, Ryder pounding in his skull with a rock the size of his fist. Rutherford got Mr Lucky Last, sending him off to the land of nod with a sweet right cross to a glass jaw. I kept watch for more intruders, while the Brit sat on the man’s back and pushed his face in the mud, holding it there until he drowned, gurgling and shaking to the end.
Run
They died peacefully, if not in peace, alerting no one. Dragging the bodies to one side, we stripped them of their weapons, collecting knives, three H&K MP-5s and two M16s with spare mags for both.
‘Question is, were they Makenga’s messengers?’ I wondered aloud as we cleaned up. ‘Or were they out on their own initiative?’
Hard answers would’ve been handy. If the guards we just killed were on orders from Makenga, it meant we probably had more time to play with. If, however, they were just out for a little opportunistic gang rape, then the real hit squad could turn up at any minute. Assuming it was the latter, we couldn’t hang around.
‘Now what?’ Rutherford whispered as he checked a captured MP-5, making sure it would work as H&K intended, and that its magazine was full.
‘I’ve got half of an idea,’ I said, following the SAS sergeant’s lead, giving my weapon the once-over.
‘You beat me,’ said West.
‘Ditto,’ said Rutherford.
We hurried back to the civilians.
Leila was hyperventilating, Ayesha beside her. I could hear their teeth chattering.
‘Man, that was some evil shit, yo!’ said Boink in an excited whisper. ‘You fucked those motherfuckers in the ass.’
I hoped not, but I knew where he was coming from. I breathed hard. Adrenalin levels were high. We’d had the fight. Now came the flight.
‘Stick close to us,’ I told our civilians. ‘Be as quiet as you can and keep to the shadows.’
Leila let out a sob. If this was diva crap, it had to end. I considered slapping her but decided this was not the right time to make myself feel better, so instead I sat beside her. Convulsions racked her body. She was in shock, the realization of what she’d just managed to avoid knocking the Rodeo Drive out of her attitude. All that was left was a scared young woman struggling to deal with her current reality.
I put my arm around her. ‘You can do this, Leila,’ I said quietly, giving her a squeeze.
She shook her head. ‘N… no…’
‘Yes, you can.’ I took a deep breath and let it out, which always helps when you’re about to lie through your teeth. ‘We are going to walk right out of this place, one step at a time. You’ll see.’
‘They were going to r… rape us.’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘I’m sc… scared,’ she said.
‘We’re all scared, but it’s time to go.’
‘Yeah, Leila; c’mon, girl,’ Boink whispered.
‘I don’t want to d… die here.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ I repeated. ‘They’d fire my ass for sure.’
Ryder crouched beside her and hooked a lock of her wet, muddy hair behind an ear.
‘You’ll be back in the recording studio next week and all this will just seem like a bad day in rehab,’ I said.
It took a moment for my words to penetrate. She half cried, half laughed.
‘Duke’s going to stay right beside you all the way, aren’t you, Duke?’
‘Right beside you,’ he repeated.
‘But you have to be as quiet as you can. I want you to breathe.’
She breathed.
‘Deeper.’
She breathed in and out several times and her shoulders gave a final shudder.
‘Better?’ I asked her.
She nodded.
‘Things get hard to handle, that’s what you do — breathe deep.’
Leila sucked in another breath.
‘One step at a time, okay?’
She nodded again.
‘Ayesha? How about you?’
‘I’m oh… okay.’
‘Good. Got your bags packed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll send someone up to collect them,’ I said, standing. ‘LeDuc — Marcel’s your buddy. He misbehaves, let me know. Better still, let Boink know.’
The African got the drift, if not the specifics, and his eyes were wide with fear, the whites showing in the almost complete darkness.
‘Oui,’ he said.
Rutherford and West rearranged the corpses so that they appeared to be sitting with their backs against the enclosure, mimicking our positions. We all then moved to the enclosure gate, pausing there to make sure the guys who had paid us a visit had no one keeping watch. Nothing moved. The loudest noise was my own heartbeat. I followed the advice I gave Leila and Ayesha, and dragged a couple of breaths down to my toes to get the nerves under control.