Cross Country (11 page)

I
WAS ON the job now, definitely working the case I had come here to solve.

Diamond trading for oil, gas, weapons, drugs, and any number of illicit goods was no secret around here. Moses knew that it went on the same way everyone knew that it went on. He'd been a diamond miner himself as a teenager and in his twenties. Until the civil war.

"Now, they call us 'san-san boys,' " he said. I assumed he meant those who could no longer do the work, like him.

At first I was surprised at the man's apparent openness. Some of his stories seemed too personal to share with a stranger, especially one who might be an American journalist, or maybe even CIA. But the more he spoke, the more I realized that talking about what had happened to him might be all he had left.

"We lived over that way." He pointed abstractly in a direction without looking.

"My wife sold palm oil at market. I had two fine sons. When the RUF soldiers came to Kono, they came for us like the others. It was at night, in the rain, so there were no torches. They say to me, if I watch them kill my boys, then they will spare my wife. And when I did as they told, they killed her anyway."

The RUF was the revolutionary force responsible for the death of thousands. He was devastatingly matter-of-fact about it — a terrible family massacre, not unlike the ones in Washington, I thought.

"And you lived," I said.

"Yes. They put me on a table and held me down. They asked if I want short or long sleeves for after the war. Then they cut my arm, here." He pointed, though of course it was obvious what had happened.

"They were to cut the other arm, but then an explosion came from the next house. I don't know what happened after that. I fell unconscious, and when I woke up, RUF soldiers were gone. And my wife too. They left my murdered sons. I wanted to die, but I did not. It was not yet my time."

"Moses, why do you stay here now? Isn't there anywhere else for you to go?"

"There is nowhere else for me. Here at least sometimes there is work. I have my friends, other san-san boys." He smiled at that revelation for some reason. "This is my home."

We had walked all the way into town by now. Koidu was a sprawling village of dirt roads and low buildings, still recovering from "the war" six years ago.

I saw a half-finished hospital as we walked, and a mosque in decent shape, but other than that, I found mostly abandoned buildings, burned-out husks of small homes, everywhere I looked.

When I offered Moses money for his trouble, he said he didn't want it, and I knew not to force it on him.

"You tell the story I've told you," he said. "Tell it to America. Still, there are rebels who would like to kill all of us from the war. They want to make it so no one can see what they did." He held up what was left of his arm. "So maybe you tell people in America. And they tell people. And people will know."

"I will, Moses," I promised. "I'll tell people in America and see what happens."

T
HE HALL IN town was named, incongruously, Modern Serenity. The name was scrawled in blue on an old wooden sign out front, and it made me think of an Alexander McCall Smith novel,
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
.

Someone turned on a boom box, and the guy who showed up with a keg of Star Beer dispensed it into previously used plastic cups and took money.

Moses and his friends wouldn't come inside and let me buy them a drink. They said they'd be kicked out if they couldn't pay for their own beer. Instead, Moses told me, he'd hang out with some other men around an open fire, singing and talking, not far from the hall, and he pointed in the direction where he'd be.

I spent the next few hours casually asking around and mostly getting nowhere. Even the few people who would talk to me about mining shut up as soon as I moved my questions anywhere else… such as to the subject of the illegal diamond trade.

Twice I noticed men in camos and flip-flops licking their palms. Diamonds for sale, they were saying. You need only swallow them to get them out of the country. Both of them stopped and spoke with me, but just long enough to figure out I wasn't selling or buying.

I was starting to think this night might be a washout, when a teenage kid came over and stood next to me against the wall.

"I hear you lookin' for someone," he said, loud enough just for me. Busta Rhymes was doing his thing on the boom box at high volume.

"Who do you hear I'm looking for?"

"He's already gone, mister. Left the country, but I can't tell you where he is. The Tiger."

I looked down at the kid. He was maybe five foot nine, muscled, and cocky-looking. Younger than I'd first thought too — sixteen or seventeen maybe. Barely older than Damon. Like a lot of teenagers I'd seen on the continent, he wore an NBA jersey. His was a Houston Rockets jersey, an American basketball team that had once featured an excellent player from Nigeria named Hakeem Olajuwon.

"And who are you?" I asked the boy.

"You wanna know more 'bout anything, it's a hundred dollars American. I'll be outside. It's dangerous to talk in here. Too many eyes and ears. Outside, mister. We talk out there. One hundred dollars."

He pushed off from the wall and pimp-strutted toward the front door, which was wide open to the street. I watched him drain his cup of beer, drop it on a table, and leave the hall.

I had no intention of letting him get away, but I wasn't going to walk outside the way he wanted me to either. It was his accent that told me what I needed to know. Not Sierra Leonean. Yoruban. The boy was from Nigeria.

I counted thirty, then slipped out the back of Modern Serenity.

S
URVEILLANCE. I WAS decent at it, always had been good at keeping a step ahead of an opponent. Even, hopefully, some as tricky and dangerous as the Tiger and his gang.

The kid in the red Houston Rockets jersey was standing off to the side with another, younger boy. They were facing different directions, surveying the street while they talked.

An ambush? I had to wonder.

After a few minutes, the older one went back inside, presumably to look for me. I didn't wait to make my next move. If he had half a brain, he'd go exactly the way I'd just come.

I skirted the dirt intersection and changed position, moving to a burned-out doorway on the opposite corner of the street. It was attached to the black concrete skeleton of whatever the building had once been, possibly a general store.

I pressed back into the empty door frame and hung there out of sight, watching, doing the surveillance as best I could.

Considering that I was working on Mars.

Sure enough, Houston Rockets came out a minute later, then paused right where I had been standing before.

His partner ran over and they conferred, nervously looking around for me.

I decided that as soon as they made a move, I'd follow them. If they split up, I'd stick with the older one, Rockets.

That's when a voice came from directly behind me.

"Hey, mister, mister. Want to buy a stone? Want to get your skull crushed in?"

I turned, and before I saw anyone in the dark, something hard and heavy clocked me in the head; a rock or a brick, maybe.

It stunned me and I fell to one knee. My vision whited out, then went black before it started to come back.

Someone grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the street — into a building. Then more rough hands — I didn't know how many — forced me to the ground and flat on my back.

My awareness swam in fast circles. I was working hard to get my bearings. I could feel several people gripping my arms and legs, holding me to the floor with their strong, lithe bodies.

As my vision got a little sharper, it was still hard to make any of them out in the dark. All I saw were vague, small shadows, but lots of them.

All the size of boys.

"Y
O!" ONE OF the threatening shadows called out with a voice too cocky and young to be anything but a street punk's. "Over here! We got di bastard good now."

I shook off whoever was on my right arm and swung at whoever had my left. None of them was stronger than me, but collectively they were like fly paper covering every inch of my body. I fought even harder, fighting for my life, I knew.

I finally struggled to get halfway to my feet, each leg carrying an extra hundred pounds, when the other two bangers from the street came running in.

One of them shined a flashlight on me; the other smashed the butt of a pistol into my face.

I felt my nose snap. Again!

"Sonofabitch!" I yelled.

The blinding pain ran up into my brain and seemed to spread through my whole body. It was worse than the first time, if that was possible. My first thought was, You've got to be fucking kidding me.

The killer boys swarmed all over me, half as many this time, and brought me down. A sneakered foot came to rest on my forehead.

Then I felt the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed hard into my cheek.

"He da one?" someone asked.

A flashlight's bright light sent another spike of pain through my eyes.

"He da one, Azi." I recognized the voice from the town hall. The speaker crouched down next to my head. "Listen, we gonna send you out of here with a message. No one fuck with us, you understand?"

I tried to raise my head and he fired a shot into the ground right next to my temple. "You understand?"

I stopped straining and lay back. I couldn't hear in one ear. Was I deaf in an ear now too? It was the pistol that kept me where I was. More than anything, I was seething mad.

"Go ahead," the lead punk said. I saw the silhouette of a long blade in somebody's hand. A machete, I thought.

Jesus, no!

Houston Rockets leaned in close again, rubbing his pistol up and down my temple. "You move, you die, Captain America. You stay still, most of you goin' home."

"T
HIS GONNA HURT real bad. You gonna scream like baby girl. Starting now!"

"At the joint, Azi. Less bone," said Rocketman in the coolest, calmest tone.

The blade touched the crook of my arm softly once. Then the machete was raised high. They boy called Azi grinned down at me, enjoying this like the psychopath that he was.

No way. No way. Not going to happen, I told myself.

I wrenched my arm free and rolled hard to one side. The machete whiffed and the pistol fired, ringing sharply.

But at least I wasn't hit. Not yet, anyway.

I wasn't done. Or even started. I entwined my arm with the shooter's and snapped his wrist. I heard it break, and the gun fell from his hand.

The first one to get to it was me!

Everything was shadows and noisy chaos after that. The punks were all over me again, which was lucky in a way. I think it kept the machete blade away long enough for me to get off a warning shot.

Then I scrambled up, my back to the door. "Get over there!"

I shouted, motioning with the gun. I had them covered, but it was dark, and the layout of the building was a complete mystery to me. They would figure that out soon.

Sure enough, Rockets barked an order.

"Go! Outside!"

Two of the gang whipped away in opposite directions. One of them vaulted out an empty window frame. I didn't see where the other one went.

"What you gonna do, man?" Rockets said with a shrug.

"Can't kill us all."

"I can kill you," I told him.

The others were doubling around behind me, I knew. I was either going to have to start shooting these boys — or run like hell.

I ran!

I
HAD ENOUGH of a head start and enough cover from the darkness to get out of sight fast. Suddenly I could smell a combination of things — burning, rotting, and growing — all at the same time. I flew down a couple of dirt streets and around a corner and eventually saw the light of a fire in a vacant lot.

I threw myself down in a stand of high weeds and waited for the thugs to run past. They shouted as they went, one small group to another, splitting up and looking for their prey — me.

It was difficult to accept that boys this young could be hardened killers, but they were.

I'd seen it in their eyes, especially Rockets's. That boy had definitely killed before.

I waited several minutes. Then, keeping low, I cut around behind the fire until I was close enough to call out quietly.

Thank God Moses was there! He and his friends were eating crumbly rice and homemade peanut butter. He was tentative at first, until he saw who it was skulking in the tall brush.

"Come with me, sah," he told me in hushed tones. "It's not safe for you to be here now. Boys lookin' for you. Bad boys everywhere."

"Tell me about it." I wiped a stream of blood from my face with the back of my arm, forgetting how much it was going to hurt it.

"Shit!"

"It's not much, ya'll be okay," said Moses.

"Easy for you to say." I forced a grin.

I followed him through the back of the lot and up the next road to a narrow side street. We were in a shabby tenement neighborhood, one long row of mud-brick hovels. Several huts had people in front, cooking and tending fires, socializing at this late hour.

"In here, sah. This way, please. Hurry."

I kept my head down and followed Moses through an open doorway into one of the huts. He lit a kerosene lamp and asked me to sit down.

"My home," he said.

The place was just one room with a single window cut into the back wall. There was a thin mattress on the floor, and a jumble of cookware, some clothing, and caved-in cardboard boxes stacked in the corners.

Moses deftly tossed a dirty cloth onto two hooks over the open doorway and said he'd be right back. Then he was gone again. I had no idea where he'd gone — or even if I could trust him.

But what choice did I have right now? I was hiding out for my life.