“Of course.”
“Then you must do something for me. Tear those pages out of your diary, and never speak of this again. Will you do that for me?”
The request was like a knife through Stanley’s heart. For years he had dreamed of learning the truth behind Livingstone’s story, and now, instead of finding a patron who would help him accomplish that, he was being told to sacrifice it all.
And yet, what was he really being asked to give up? An uncertain reward that might amount to nothing more than a fever dream, in exchange for real wealth, real glory? Perhaps it wasn’t such a sacrifice after all.
He sealed his pact with a single word.
“Yes.”
The young man shifted into reverse and applied steady pressure to the accelerator pedal. The engine revved and the wheels began to spin, throwing up a shower of mud in front of the Land Rover, but the vehicle did not move. The driver shifted back into first gear and tried again with no more success. He pounded his fists against the steering wheel in frustration.
“What about the winch?” the youth in the passenger seat asked.
“There’s no time,” another young man said from the back. “They’re right behind us. We must leave the truck, David.”
David, the front seat passenger, shook his head, but the gesture was more an indication of his frustration than an outright refusal. “Keep trying, Ki,” he told the driver. “Turn the wheels back and forth.”
Ki did as instructed, but while the engine roared and mud flew, the Land Rover refused to budge.
“We have to leave it,” a boy named Christophe urged, from the backseat. “We can take our chances in the jungle.”
The idea sent a chill through David. Although he had grown up on the edge of the dark, Congo rain forest, he had never felt safe leaving the well-traveled roads that sliced through its dark depths. Out here, deep in the Kivu region, his mild aversion bordered on outright terror. Still, better to brave the uncertain risks of the jungle than face the guns of the mercenaries who pursued them.
It took him a moment to recognize that the others were waiting for him to make the decision, and that scared him even more.
How did I become the leader?
David would have been hard pressed to explain how he had become part of this rebellion in the first place. He’d been caught along in a wave of passion, seduced by the message that it was time to throw off foreign oppression. He didn’t know much about politics or Communism. He had no idea who this Mao fellow was, and he couldn’t find China on a map, but the oppression was real enough. He’d watched his father, all his friends and their families ground under the heels of the Belgians and their lackeys all his life. Yet, while he sympathized with the rebels and their position, he hadn’t been given much of a choice. The rebels controlled the region and all young men were expected to fight for them.
At the beginning, it had felt a little like a game, playing at being a soldier, which wasn’t surprising, since he had been just fourteen. War, it seemed, had a way of quickly aging a person.
He still wasn’t sure exactly how it had all led to this, though. There had been persistent rumors that things were not going well, but new recruits like David were likely to be beaten or shot if they asked too many questions. So when the mortar rounds rained down on their camp, no one knew whether it was merely a skirmish or the beginning of the end. When the rebel leaders — none of them locals — had slipped away in the dark of night, the answer seemed plain enough.
The compound exploding around them, David and six others had fled on foot, unaware that pro-government forces had the camp surrounded. Two of David’s companions had died, and another had been badly wounded, as they ran the blind gauntlet to freedom. But somehow the rest had slipped through the net and reached an abandoned plantation, where they’d commandeered an old Land Rover and headed west.
That had been six hours ago.
The rain, which had turned the road into a quagmire, pounded against the roof of the Land Rover. Although it was midday, the sky was so dark that it felt like dusk. David didn’t know if the enemy soldiers were indeed right behind them, but to stop moving was foolish.
“We must be close to the border,” Christophe said. “We have to go on foot, through the jungle. It’s the only way.”
“Songa can’t walk,” argued a different voice.
David craned his head around to look at the other passengers. Songa was the name of the young man who had been wounded in the escape. He was sprawled out on the floor, between the inward-facing safari bench seats. The only indication that he still lived was the faint tremor of his fevered shivering. The bullet had struck him in the abdomen, and David knew that the boy would not last must longer.
“We have to leave him,” Christophe said.
David shook his head. “I won’t leave anyone behind. We have to try the winch.”
He didn’t wait for Christophe’s inevitable reply. He threw open the door, exposing himself to the downpour. What he saw nearly caused him to pull it shut again. The Rover wasn’t merely stuck, it was mired in a veritable sea of mud that rose nearly as high as the running boards. David felt his resolve crumble, but he couldn’t give up now. He kicked off his sandals, then braved the driving rain, swinging onto the vehicle’s hood and crawling forward.
The mud was nearly up to the front bumper, and the winch mounted there was half-submerged. Tentatively, he lowered himself into the murk, cringing a little as it oozed between his toes. He pulled out several feet of cable from the winch, and hook in hand, he trudged forward. He had to fight for every step, wrestling his bare feet out of the deep, sucking mud only to plunge them in again, but he fought against the wet earth and reached a section of the road that was still firm. There were small trees alongside the road, but they would not serve as an anchor for the winch cable. In the rain loosened soil, they would simply be pulled out by their roots. He kept going, searching for anything that might work.
Suddenly, the world was filled with blinding white light, followed almost immediately by a thunderclap so close and powerful that it drove David to his knees. Yet, even more frightening than the close proximity of the flash was what the lightning revealed. On the road behind them, less than a half a mile away, was a convoy of dark green military vehicles, moving slowly but relentlessly forward.
Another burst of noise shook him. This time it wasn’t thunder. David felt the heat of stray bullets streaking through the air around him. Most of the rounds found their target. The Land Rover shuddered under the impact of machine gun fire.
Unbelievably, two figures tumbled out into the mud — Christophe and another, whose name David did not know. He shouted and waved to them, but they paid him no heed. Instead, they slogged through the mud, desperate to find cover in the trees. When another volley of gunfire hammered into the Rover, David hastened after them.
His feet sank into the saturated ground with every step, and the low growing vegetation wrapped around him like the tentacles of some nightmare monster; the jungle was trying to swallow him whole. He struggled forward, ripping through the ferns and vines that clung to his clothes and skin, wrestling free of roots tripping him up. He found himself wishing for a long panga knife with which to hack out a path to freedom. Only then did he realize that he was completely unarmed. He had left his rifle in the Rover. As if to underscore the gravity of this error, the foliage overhead exploded into a blur of green fiber, as it was raked by a barrage of gunfire.