Brotherhood and Others (18 page)

When he was done, Monarch flipped back on the satellite radio, started moving back toward the outhouse, and whispered, “Rogue.”

He heard Barnett sigh with relief. “Where have you—?”

Monarch cut her off, whispered, “In about five minutes I'm either going to have the diamond and be heading toward that lake, or I'll have sent an innocent man to his death, and probably me along with him.”

A pause. “It's rarely gray with you.”

“Tell me about it,” Monarch whispered.

*   *   *

“What's in there?” Julio demanded again.

“Bags of loose stones!” Claudio cried.

“Diamonds?” Julio called back, excited.

“Some of them,” Robin said. “And rubies and emeralds and sapphires.”

“Nothing big, and not a ton, but they're here,” Claudio said. He was already reaching inside.

Robin got out one of the plastic grocery bags, held it open while Claudio pulled out small Ziploc bags that held the gems and dropped them inside. In less than five minutes, they had cleaned out the precious stones. Robin tied the grocery bag shut, put it in a second bag, and tied that one up too.

“Anything else?” Robin asked, looking over Claudio's shoulder as he moved aside a ledger to reveal four small gold ingots, each stamped with a “2.”

Eight ounces of gold! Robin thought.

“That's all,” Claudio said loud enough for Julio to hear as he palmed the ingots and shut off his light.

Robin aimed his flashlight back toward Julio so the leader of the Brotherhood was blinded while Claudio pocketed the gold. Then they worked their way back through the light beams cleanly. But Robin was sweating when he handed the bag containing the loose gems to Julio. If the leader of the Brotherhood ever found out—

“A fortune!” Julio exulted. “Feel how heavy it is!”

He made as if to untie the bag until Claudio climbed out the window and said, “It's past nine. We need to get out of here right now.”

Julio nodded and set off in the lead across the factory floor to that hallway that led to the loading dock. He reached in his jacket pocket, came up with a flask, said, “Found this in one of the desks.”

He drank from the flask as he swaggered down the hall to the door to the loading dock. He stuffed the flask in his back pocket, opened the door, and stepped through. “Shit,” Julio said.

Robin rushed up behind the leader of La Fraternidad to see that the cleaner had managed to get his arms free and his hood off. He was staring at them, his fingers tugging at the knots in the rope that still bound his ankles.

Julio drew his pistol, marched right up, aimed at the poor man's head, and pulled the trigger.

*   *   *

The sound—a hollow
whumph
like a mortar launching, before a full blast and roar—was surprisingly loud, even from the south side of the old plantation house where Monarch was pinned to the wall below and to the side of Lieutenant Zed's bedroom window.

Shouts went up all around the interior of the stockade. He heard cursing from the open window before the second explosion, and the third.

Somewhere up there, Gahji shouted, “They're after the diamond, Lieutenant!”

More cursing, the chatter of more bullets, and then distinctly Monarch heard Lieutenant Zed yelling, “Get them to fight, Gahji! Get them to fight!”

Suddenly Monarch spotted a dark figure at the window. Something dropped, and hit the ground right next to him. An AK-47. Something else fell and hit. Then the figure jumped, landed with a grunt, and rolled over.

The second Lieutenant Zed tried to stand up, Monarch nailed him hard from behind, hitting him just back from the ear with a fair-size rock. The rebel leader crumpled. Monarch pivoted, saw a second, smaller figure at the window.

“It's not here!” Fasi cried.

“I've got it,” Monarch yelled. “Jump!”

Fasi hung from the windowsill, dropped, landed hard, cried out in pain.

Scores of boys were running from the bivouac toward the north wall of the compound as Monarch moved to the box Lieutenant Zed had dropped, and hissed in French, “You all right?”

“My ankle,” the pygmy said. “But I'm okay.”

Monarch opened the box, pulled out the cloth wrapped around the diamond, stuffed it in his knapsack.

“Rogue, do you have the stone?” Barnett demanded.

“We do,” Monarch said, beginning to move.

“We?”

“I had help.”

There must have been gunpowder or some kind of heavier ordnance stored in the bottom of the ammo dump because a fourth explosion—more powerful than the others—ripped the night, sending off a brilliant flash that was followed by a barrage of bullets cracking. The boy soldiers were opening up now, firing at shadows. Slipping from the side of the house toward the stockade wall with Fasi limping behind him, Monarch moved away from the gunfire toward that brush pile set against the east wall of the fortress.

“Slattery says well done, Rogue,” Barnett said. “The both of you.”

“That was the easy part,” Monarch said, running. “Now to get the hell out of here.”

*   *   *

“Why'd you shoot him?” Robin cried, horrified by the hole in the cleaner's head and the blood and gore on the floor and wall behind him. The only other people he'd ever seen die were his parents, gunned down as well.

“He saw me,” Julio said, his hands shaking as he stuffed the pistol back in his waistband. “He saw both of you, too.”

Still clutching the bag of gems, the leader of La Fraternidad reached for the flask again, draining it this time.

“We've got to get out of here,” Claudio said. “Get the van keys, Robin.”

“What?” Robin said, still staring at the body.

“The keys,” Claudio insisted. “We'll drive somewhere, and leave it.”

“What about him?”

“No one's going to find him until Monday morning,” Julio said. “Claudio's right. Leave him.”

Robin wanted to puke, to cry, and to smash his fists into Julio's drunken face.

“Robin!” Claudio yelled. “The keys.”

“I'll get them,” Julio said, suddenly disgusted. He thrust the bag of gems at Robin, crouched, and started rifling through the pockets of the dead man's coverall until he came up with the car keys.

Claudio punched in the alarm code. Julio grabbed the bag of precious stones and slapped the keys in Robin's gloved hand. “You're driving.”

Claudio raised the overhead door several inches, sprawled on his belly, and looked through the crack. Then he got to his knees, raised the door a full two feet, and said, “Out.”

Julio ran over, lay down, and rolled sideways under the door and out into the night. Robin trudged after him with zero enthusiasm. He looked at Claudio. “No one was supposed to get hurt.”

“Someone did,” Claudio said. “You can't change that now. So unless you want to spend a long time in jail for being part of a killing during a burglary, you better get outside and into that van.”

Robin hesitated, but then nodded and crawled under the door and off the loading dock onto wet cement. It was raining hard now.

The world seemed incomprehensibly small and suffocating to him when he climbed into the driver's seat of the van, and saw pictures of the cleaner's children taped to the sun visor.

*   *   *

Fasi and Monarch kicked and pushed at the brush pile, trying to find that drainage ditch.

“Your signal's getting weaker,” Barnett said.

“Couldn't bring the instrument case with me,” Monarch replied as rounds kept going off from the ammo dump.

“Give me a pickup time and place in case I lose you,” she replied.

“North shore of the south lake,” Monarch said, continuing to rip branches from the brush file. “ETA five hours. Copy?”

But there was no reply.

Somewhere in the darkness behind him, he heard Bergenheim yell, “Where is the Lieutenant? Where is that stone?”

“Shut up!” Gahji screamed. “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

Monarch gave one last push and the pile rolled away, revealing the drainage ditch, rank and watery. He jumped in, landed in loose mud to his shins. Still clutching the diamond, Fasi slid in less enthusiastically, but followed Monarch forward and under the wall of the stockade.

The shooting had all but stopped now. The air stunk of explosives. And the moon had come out from behind clouds when Monarch climbed out of the drainage close to where he expected to see the fishing boats.

But there were none anywhere that he could see.

“The Lieutenant!” he heard someone yell back inside the fortress. “He's here!”

“Where are the fishing boats?” Monarch whispered.

“I don't know,” the pygmy said in a whining tone. “They either leave them here, or over there, in the cove, on the other side … of the crocodiles.”

*   *   *

Driving the cleaner's van toward the Villa Miserie, Robin felt like he'd aged years watching Julio shoot a man in cold blood at point-blank range. His parents had always avoided violence, preferring a more subtle, intelligent approach to crime. Julio used to preach the same controlled methods. But then, with no warning, Julio had a pistol, and he'd used it.

It was the rum. How else could you explain it?

Every time they'd go by a streetlight, Robin would catch sight of Julio in the seat beside him, bleary-eyed but staring straight ahead, the bag of gems in his lap. Robin wanted to backhand the man for his stupidity, to grab the pistol and—

“Go down by the tracks and that old mill,” Julio said.

Robin felt like a zombie, but followed his instructions, and several minutes later drove the van across the muddy parking lot of a decrepit textile mill. He got out, left the keys in the ignition, watched Julio tear off his black T-shirt and stuff it in the mouth of the gas tank.

Julio lit the shirt with a lighter. They ran and were several hundred yards away when the gas tank erupted.

*   *   *

Tight to the southern stockade wall, Monarch ran toward the crocodile-infested moat with Fasi limping hard behind him. How were they going to get across? Lowering the bridge was too noisy. Chancing a swim was unthinkable.

It came down to a choice of alerting the boy soldiers or trying to remain in hiding until the new helicopter arrived, and—

Monarch was fifteen feet from the edge of the canal when he heard shouts from the boys go up in French and Congolese: “Where is the American? Find the American!”

So much for leaving quietly.

Monarch decided if he was going to make noise, it should be useful noise. Flipping the safety off, he stepped up to the bank of the crocodile pit and opened fire with the AK-47, strafing the water back and forth from one side to the other. In the moonlight, he looked at Fasi, who was right there, terrified.

“No,” the pygmy said, holding up his hands.

“We're gonna end up in there one way or the other, my little friend,” Monarch said, grabbed Fasi by the upper arm, threw him into the moat, and jumped in after him.

Monarch splashed into the foul water right next to Fasi, grabbed the pygmy around the neck in a lifesaver's hold, aimed the gun back at the upper walls of the fortress, looking for movement even as he kicked them toward the opposite bank of the moat.

Something blunt, hard, and prehistoric bumped Monarch's back, stopped him cold.

*   *   *

Robin was beyond numb by the time they reached the house where he'd spent the last four years of his life with Claudio, Julio, and his other brother thieves. But when he followed them through the door that night, it seemed like an alien place where he was an alien visitor.

Six or seven members of La Fraternidad were in the kitchen drinking beer and cooking. Another six were playing cards or watching a game on a television screen in the largest room in the house.

“My brothers!” Julio cried, heading into the kitchen and grabbing a beer from a brother who'd only just opened it. “Tonight La Fraternidad de Ladrones went to a whole other level. Downstairs if you want to get your share!”

The brothers jumped from their chairs and couches, cheering and grabbing more beers and rum as they headed toward the staircase to the basement, where meetings of the Brotherhood were held, especially when they were dividing loot.

Claudio handed Robin a beer, and he was instantly angry that he not only wanted to drink the beer, he needed to drink the beer and a whole lot more of them if he was ever going to sleep. He chugged it down, grabbed two more.

*   *   *

The crocodile's corpse bumped Monarch again. It was floating belly up in the water behind him. But then he heard a powerful tail slap the water somewhere near and to his left, and realized he hadn't killed them all. Fasi heard the slap too, wriggled from Monarch's arms, making weird hysterical sounds as he scrambled over the dead crocodile and up onto the muddy bank.

Monarch was right behind the pygmy, threw the gun up onto the bank and tried to claw his way up after it. But the earth there was super-slick. He slipped twice back into the water.

Fasi's hand appeared. Monarch grabbed at it.

The pygmy was surprisingly strong and hoisted him up the bank. He was on his knees, his feet still hanging over the edge, when he heard the water behind him swirl.

Monarch yanked his feet up onto land. A powerful jaw slammed shut on dozens of teeth and air right where his feet had been. The croc splashed back into the canal.

“We go!” Fasi cried, tugging at Monarch as he grabbed the gun.

Up on the walls of the stockade, Monarch saw flashes of light and figures moving. He knew he should fire whatever remaining rounds he had at them.

But something in his gut prevented him from trying to kill teenaged boys even if they were armed and dangerous. Instead, he fired two bursts horizontally about six feet below the top of the wall, forcing them to take cover.