Play It Safe (The Safe House Series Book 2) (11 page)

The driver shifted the four-wheel into gear and sped away from the ridge, away from the pre-determined spot from the plan, away from Samson and Mike and the hope of oceans and boats and freedom.

***

The shack was dirt walls, dirt floor, dirt crevices inside more cracks in the structure. From the outside, it looked more like a massive termite mound. Inside, rows of crude wooden shelves stockpiled supplies—a waystation for the militants of the region to regroup and renew their bloody agenda away from the harsh and unforgiving elements.

Angela spent the fifteen minute drive buried in calculations: the speed of the Jeep’s odometer, her estimated passage of time, the angle of the moon in relation to the roll bars. They had traveled at an average speed of sixty kilometers per hour and the moon had swapped positions three times, so by her best estimate, they were between ten and fifteen miles north-northwest of where they had been taken. Their captors had bound their wrists and ankles with duct tape they found on one of the shelves then settled around a makeshift campfire beyond the shack to argue.

“What are they saying?” Angela whispered to Augustine.

“Dey vote. Kills us or negotiate for arms.”

She regretted asking. Fire glow licked the space above her, illuminating shelves filled with supplies. She mentally catalogued the materials present—fertilizer, cleaners, bottled water, fire beyond the shack.

The same man who had favored her on the road entered the room and closed the door behind him. The stench of cheap liquor lifted from his pores. He closed in on Angela, his progress slow, predatory. His weapon hung loosely from a strap at his shoulder; his hand detoured to an exaggerated shift of his manhood.

Her belly scuttled inside her throat.

Augustine followed the man’s progress toward her, his head on full-swivel. His eyelids slashed the full moon of his eyes where there was already scant light.

The captor said something in his native tongue, a whispered coo with an undercurrent of evil, and stopped before her. He crouched, his body pungent with sweat and the musky sludge of the land.

Augustine clipped out a warning—
shiya wakhe
.

The man stood again. He surveyed Augustine as if he were watching a cockroach scuttle across his bare toes then lifted his gun and squeezed three fast rounds into Augustine’s chest.

A scream ripped from Angela’s lungs. Her ears hemorrhaged from the echo in the confined space, from the panic swelling inside and seeking release on the path of least resistance. She squeezed her eyes shut to block the flash of Augustine’s body bouncing from the repeated impacts. A mercurial stench filled the room.

Someone charged into the hut.

Angela’s eyes flashed open.

The leader fisted the killer’s filthy tunic, backed him against the packed dirt wall, and unleashed a string of words inches from his face that had the assailant cowering like a kicked alley dog.  The leader’s napalm tone left little doubt that discipline would be rapid and decisive. He dragged him from the shack and continued to berate him.

Angela waited for a punishing gunshot that never came. She mustered the courage to look at Augustine. His eyes were still open. Gnats buzzed his open lips.

He had died trying to protect her.

Tears brimming on her eyelids raced down her cheeks. Her abdomen rioted against the peaceable meal she had shared with Fana and Nahyea. She leaned over on one elbow and emptied the contents of her stomach in cramping waves that left her spent with each heave. Everything inside, she left on the red clay floor. Everything but her renewed determination to make these bastards pay.

She closed her eyes and imagined them in the sight of a rifle. Inhale, four count. Exhale four count. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Stay alive. Any means necessary.

Her gaze ascended to the shelves. An entire stockpile of chemicals at her disposal, but she needed her hands free first. She couldn’t be sure Samson’s trick would work on duct tape bindings, but she slid her bound hands past her rear and threaded her legs through.

Standing proved more of a challenge. Her quad muscles quivered from disuse and Augustine’s slumped body occupied most of the floor space. She spaced her feet shoulder-width and recalled Samson’s instructions.
Firm your stomach. Yank your elbows down like you’re going to strike your hipbones.

Angela tried.

And failed. Needles of pain gouged the skin beneath the tape.

Beyond the shack, the men argued.

Her exhales came hot and fast. She breathed in for four seconds. Again, Samson’s words returned.
One fast motion. Everything you’ve got.

She pinched her eyes closed and swung her arms.

Her hands flew apart.

Angela nearly laughed with delirium. Snot ran down her face from her tears, and she felt as if she had just used her fingernails to scrape to the surface of a bottomless chasm. She twisted out of her sensible shoes and manipulated her toes to work the tape down and off her feet.

It’s all you, Angela. No one else.

The notion came unbidden, unwelcome. She sank into its truth, trying not to lose herself in the abyss again. Her arms were free. Now she had to work them to get to the Jeep and get back to Samson.

She straightened her glasses and charged the shelves at an angle that afforded her the best light refraction from the raging bonfire beyond the cracks. Her brain shifted into overdrive—properties of explosives, refuse lying around that might act as a holder, possible accelerants, the most potent and disabling gas possible without a heat source.

Until she found matches.

Tears threatened again. This time, she would not allow them. She was in her element, her safety zone. Plans cycled in her mind. She dismissed the reactions whose impact was negligible and settled on one—the combustibility of ammonium nitrates in fertilizer. Under the right conditions, her surest bet to disable her abductors.

Angela needed foolproof.

At a frantic speed, she cycled through her mind the properties under which the compound would best lead to a runaway reaction. It was only a matter of time before they entered the hut and decided she wasn’t worth the trouble. She discovered a broken liquor bottle kicked beneath a shelf and used it as a glass housing for the reaction. The shards at the moment of reaction would act upon human flesh as a fragmented bomb to anyone within a standing radius. She poured out the pink-ish granules, crafting a pyre that she could then seal so the ammonium nitrate would create its own oxygen. When she had crafted the perfect pyre and sealed it with a densely-packed rag, she ripped an unlit match from its booklet and crouched beside the door.

Angela drew in a breath that did little to subside the pronounced shaking of her hands. She glanced at Augustine one final time and unleashed a scream laced with desperate cries of help so powerful, the summons originated in her diaphragm.

The door rifled open. Her captors ran past where she hid in shadow. Their bodies crowded the tight space; their boot trampled Augustine’s limbs. She waited for them to charge the suspicious bottle ringed in uncapped chemicals with untapped potential to maim, if not kill, then backed halfway out the door. She struck the match and tossed it into the bullseye of her concoction.

She didn’t have to slam the door behind her.

The explosion rocked her very foundation and hurtled her through the air. A brilliant orange light flashed to black. Her spine collided with a rock, dangerously close to the fire. The impact sliced long-blade swords of pain through her neck and down her extremities. Everywhere, the remains of the hut’s interior lay strewn.

Bellows of dying men reverberated through the night. Three charred figures danced in fire and collapsed to the dirt.

She scrambled to her bare feet, away from the campfire. It was only a matter of time until the fumes reached the generous flames and triggered a secondary explosion. The pads of her feet found purchase and propelled her toward the Jeep, toward freedom.

The distance was out-of-body. Her mind took her to an alternate place, a place where she hadn’t just ended the lives of men who wanted to kill her, where her knowledge of chemicals hadn’t just exacted a disturbing and satisfying revenge for Augustine’s life, a place where she liberated herself as much as she had Simon.

The Jeep turned over on the first try. She slammed it in gear and drove away, the cries of her captors lifting behind her, haunting the wild and unforgiving landscape.

***

Samson’s homeland had never been more beautiful. On the biggest rise of the dirt road connecting the surrounding villages, drenched in moonlight, a lone Jeep waited, two headlamps beckoning him. He didn’t allow himself to think or speculate or plan anything past the next breath; his singular focus was on the lone occupant sitting behind the wheel.

In silhouette, her crazy hair came to him first.

Unabashed tears came second.

His body liquefied. The Jeep swerved from his unsteady grip. Mike leaned over and gripped the steering wheel to keep them from rolling.

At their approach, she stood atop the driver’s seat, her arms supported by the Jeep’s roll bar. Her clothes were ripped and tattered and red and flapped in the breeze like an embattled flag of surrender.

A stab of regret shot through his heart. Was she hurt? How could he have left her alone?

He brought the vehicle to an abrupt, angled stop to keep the tires from losing purchase against the hill. Nearly before the vehicle had ceased its forward momentum, Samson was out of the driver’s seat, running.

“
Sam
-son!” Her cry was battered and fractured on her tongue, but his name had ever sounded so sweet.

Angela clamored free of Augustine’s Jeep, her bare feet carrying her at a clip that rivaled his. She launched into his arms, legs wrapped around his waist, and clung to him, damned near squeezing him so tightly there was no room for inhale. Her body was an earthquake of sobs.

He buried his face against the warmth of her neck and vowed to make her his, forever.

Angela stood on the green rise behind the gingerbread-white home that had once been a Samson’s safe house. Spring emerged in a virulent display of primroses and columbines that made everything about Mthatha and Pamuromo seem like a distant memory.

All but the people.

She held a letter from Nahyea, the culmination of a vigilant correspondence since leaving Africa that included much shared news, a bracelet from Fana inside each new envelope, and plenty of updated photos of Samson enjoying new pursuits. After the hell they had been through, Rockwell had granted Samson a much-deserved extended leave to enjoy his new family. Fana never failed to mention how handsome Samson looked, especially in the beach photos of Samson sporting the scar of an
umkhululi
, liberator, on his right shoulder.

The missiles never launched.

Rockwell, with his unparalleled connections, took Samson’s satellite call—relayed through Mike as they sped away from the train depot and out into the wilderness—and turned Samson’s intel into a multi-national response that halted all six phases of the attack and netted local and international agencies a network of radicalized terrorists that had been destabilizing the region for decades. Rockwell had also deployed a protection team to Fana’s house and arranged transport for her family to Cape Town to reunite with Samson and Angela before they were flown to Landstuhl, Germany for Samson’s surgery.

Mike assisted in the surgery, returning to the waiting room often to update her. She was nearly as elated at seeing her brother emerge from the surgical wing, healthy and healed and in crisp scrubs, than she was to hear Samson’s progress under anesthesia. Samson told her before surgery he wanted to marry her. He was nothing if not a man of his word.

Julian awaited extradition to France, where the persecution of fraud and conspiracy in his financial empire was the first of many legal tangles that would ultimately lead to international charges of conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder too numerous to count. If anything good came from his agenda, it was that politicians could no longer hide behind the official account of his wife’s embassy massacre. As a result, security practices for diplomats serving in areas of political unrest improved.

As for Angela, Africa inspired her to start a biotech company, along with her brother, that aims to eradicate third-world diseases and inspire talented individuals like Nahyea to receive a world-class education and return to their birthplace to make a difference.

She watched Samson line up objects on the fallen log—bottles, cans, a rubber duck that had seen better days. The rules were the same as they had always been: clean shot, nothing left on the log, opponent chooses the target. The game had never been more spirited.

Manny selected his favorite slingshot. Samson, having once skipped rocks on a pond in boyhood
and
pitched for a baseball team in Cape Town, bragged that the hand was a far superior launcher. Manny had a tempestuous relationship with guns. At his request, Samson rid the house of firearms. Part of Manny’s healing was to learn who he was away from violence.

“What’s the wager?” interrupted Angela.

“I take his Spyder out tonight.” The musicality of Manny’s accent never failed to delight her. It was Samson’s accent with the heavier downbeat of their shared culture.

“You just got your license,” said Angela, with more mock-protest than sincerity.

Samson handed Angela a rock and gave her a peck on the lips. “The stakes have never been higher. You’d better take this one.”

Angela laughed and laid out her terms. “Rubber duck.”

Manny beamed. In the half year since leaving Africa, his baby face had slimmed and took on the sculpted cheekbones of manhood. His chocolate eyes still held pain, but his megawatt smile and generous heart reminded her that life, and love, happened outside her comfort zone.

He aligned his shot, eye to target, and released the band.

The duck never stood a chance.

Manny celebrated his victory as if he had won the lottery. In many ways, he had. They all had. Samson’s handsome features distorted to pain as he fished the keys from his pocket and handed them over. Manny pulled Samson into an embrace. Affection did not come easy to a boy who had raised himself and endured brutality.

Samson’s eyes squeezed closed. His fist gripped Manny’s shirt. She knew, to prolong the moment.

Angela’s throat constricted.

Manny said his good-byes and brushed away Samson’s unyielding chorus of
be-careful
and
no speeding
pleas. When he had disappeared inside the house, Angela grabbed the belt loop of Samson’s jeans and tugged him closer.

“How about another wager to take your mind off of our son driving your hundred-thousand dollar car?”

“Hmmm…” The groan caught in his throat was purely sexual. When coupled with his irresistible smile, devastating. “Rules?”

“Opponent chooses. I win, you’re my slave for the night. You win, I’m your s—”

He abducted her words with a kiss. “You’re already mine.”

She handed him a rock.

Samson took one look at it and tossed it over his shoulder. “I missed. You win.”

Angela bit her lip in anticipation.

He gave her a playful smack on the ass and retreated back to the house. As he walked away, he said, “Oh, and Curie?”

“Yeah?”

“Best bring your inhaler.”