The African Contract (21 page)

The sun dropped fast and long shadows streaked the landscape. All appeared calm.

As Stone signaled he was advancing, Lange whispered over the air, “It's too quiet. No animals. No birds.”

Stone hesitated. Lange was a hunter. He knew this land. Again in the fast-dimming light, he scoped the boxcar with his binoculars. The side door was open about two inches. Back at the original site, he had been too far away to detect this.

“Shit. Door's open. We may have an empty boxcar,” Stone said to his companions.

He moved fast in a crab-like fashion toward the clearing that circled the railcar. Once he reached the open ground surrounding the boxcar, he stopped.

Still no movement. He raised his rifle to ready position, stood, and raced forward.

He slid to a stop, hitting his back against the boxcar. Rifle raised, he searched the surrounding bush over the gun sight.

Inching toward the open door, and without looking, he pushed open the door with his left hand.

As he did, from the open door the hard barrel of a pistol jammed the back of his head.

Two of Nabeel Asuty's men jumped out of the boxcar and threw Stone to the ground. They bound his arms behind his back with duct tape. Kneeling on one knee at the open door of the boxcar, Asuty waved his AK-47 in the direction where Sandra and Dirk Lange lay hidden in the underbrush.

“Come out with your guns lowered,” Asuty shouted, “or Stone is a dead man.”

As Stone lay pinned to the ground, he knew odds were he was already a dead man. Before the tape could be placed over his mouth, he managed to yell, “Stay there. Open fire.” Stone knew the Browning rifles with telescopic scopes Sandra and Lange carried could easily take out Asuty.

Both Sandra and Lange opened fire. Thuds came from bullets penetrating the wooden side of the boxcar. Asuty leaped from the boxcar, rushed over to Stone, and had his men yank him up by his hair. He held the AK-47's barrel under Stone's chin.

“Surrender and Mr. Stone just might live,” Asuty shouted in a panic. “If you don't, I kill him.”

Stone's companions continued firing, and then the skull of the man on his left exploded from one of their shots. Bone and blood splattered on Stone.

Asuty and the other man now held him up as a shield. Asuty let off a few rounds from his machine gun.

Two bearded men jumped out of the brush behind Dirk Lange, guns drawn. Stone watched Lange curse and slowly stand, raising his arms. Asuty yelled at his men in Arabic to find the woman.

“Your choice,” Asuty hollered. “Lay down your gun or he dies.”

Sandra rose from the tall grass and swung her rifle back and forth from Asuty to the two men holding Lange. “Take as many out as you can,” Stone growled under his taped mouth.
Do it. Do it.

Seconds passed. Finally, she tossed the Browning rifle in the grass and came forward. Stone hoped she had a trick up her sleeve, like shooting them with a hidden Glock, but she continued to walk, hands now raised, toward where Lange was held. She had her hands bound and both were marched to the boxcar.

As the three were pushed to the ground next to the wheels of the railcar, Asuty growled. “That was easier than I thought it would be. You CIA are not much of a threat after all.”

For a half hour the beatings continued until the sun had dropped below the horizon and the savanna colors faded. The blows were administered not to gain information or to avenge their dead comrade—merely for sport. Stone had read accounts from victims of jihadist torture. Always at some point the punishment administered shifted from a religious connotation—and this was from the victims' recollections—to a sensual, even sexual enjoyment.

Stone took most of the abuse and he felt himself weakening from the assault. He tried to shift his consciousness to another realm as his Tibetan friend in Lhasa had taught him. Thank goodness he had met her and she had shared her wisdom.

No broken bones yet, but a good deal of torn flesh. Stone's capturers repeated the blows to areas where blood appeared. Asuty enjoyed head kicks, but his attention turned to Sandra.

“Hit her stomach and legs. Do not mark her face,” Asuty ordered. “We will have fun before we kill them.”

His men became excited. Stone saw from Sandra's expression that she understood what Asuty meant. He also knew if the opportunity arose, she would kill him.

“Remove her pants,” Asuty ordered. “And carry her over to the back of the truck.”

Stone saw the flatbed truck that had pulled up during the beatings. The jihadists lost interest in hitting him and moved over for the show. Stone flipped over on his stomach and went into a kneeling position. His feet were bound at the ankles, his hands behind his back. With his fingers he searched for the release switch on the heel of his boot. He found it and the inserted knife blade snapped out. He easily slit the duct tape around his wrists and ankles, got to his feet, and lunged toward the men carrying Sandra's prone body.

Stone used his body as a ramming device. He and three of the assailants tumbled to the ground. The other men seized Stone and dragged him toward the boxcar. Asuty tossed Sandra aside and yelled a long succession of Arabic curses, approaching Stone with a knife.

Stone's pants were yanked down and as Asuty placed a knife to his genitals, two gunshots stopped him. Asuty and his men froze.

“Don't we have more important tasks at hand, Nabeel?” came a hard voice speaking in Arabic.

Another voice in English sneered, “Bloody lowlifes your men are, Abdul.”

Stone twisted his head around and through swollen eyelids saw Abdul Wahab and Dawid van Wartt standing a few feet away. Wahab had a Beretta pistol leveled at Asuty's stomach.

Van Wartt and his companion, Bull Rhyton, took little time gathering the guns from Asuty and his men. Bull threw them in the backseat of an old Land Rover.

“Nabeel, dear friend,” Wahab said, still pointing his automatic, “you may have these back when you leave with the bomb. For now, your hands will be full moving the bomb to the truck.”

Asuty stood expressionless and Stone wondered what he was thinking. What was more interesting, months before on the Riviera, Stone had seen Wahab at a party but never heard his voice—it was deeper and had more authority than he had expected.

Wahab continued, “Shall we look at what we've paid for?” He motioned with the gun toward the open door of the boxcar.

Bull came over to Stone and motioned for him to stand up. When he did, he yanked up Stone's trousers and told him to go and sit next to Lange and Sandra. Bull cradled his submachine gun and used it to wave Asuty's men over to their flatbed truck. He knelt down next to Sandra and closed her shirt, cursing low in Afrikaans. At that point Dirk Lange made a loud sound under his taped mouth and nodded his head.

The Afrikaner rose and asked Lange if he was a
Landsman
. Again, Lange nodded vigorously. Stone watched the wide-shouldered man glare at Asuty's men milling about the truck, now guarded by two of Van Wartt's men.

Wahab, Van Wartt, and Asuty had climbed into the boxcar and were examining the bomb, which Stone now saw for the first time. Bull interrupted Stone's attention when he reached down and carefully pulled back the tape from Lange's mouth. Dirk's right eye was swollen, and blood ran down his ear. He whispered a few minutes to Bull, who partially replaced the tape so that it drooped.

Interesting and encouraging, Stone thought and noted the same impression in Sandra's eyes. His attention went back to the nuclear weapon inside the boxcar. The terrorists held flashlights that illuminated the same fat, brutish bomb that had appeared in the photographs he studied a day before in the CIA safe house. Stone had never been in the presence of a nuclear bomb. As he studied it, he tried to fathom the awesome destruction contained within the bronze-colored metal casing. Then there was the radiation leakage. How bad was it?

Wahab, Van Wartt, and Asuty seemed to be perplexed about how they were going to move the heavy object onto the flatbed truck.

Bull jumped from the boxcar and walked in the direction of Asuty's men, who had assembled by the truck, speaking quietly. He stopped, placed the submachine gun on his shoulder, and shot a worried glanced back at Lange.

Van Wartt ordered the truck to be pulled alongside the boxcar and instructed Asuty to position his men to move the bomb while Van Wartt's two men watched with guns ready. The makeshift crane on the flatbed truck didn't look capable of lifting the heavy metal mass, but it could drag it. Bull climbed on the back of the truck and directed the maneuver. The crane pulled rather than lifted the bulk resting on a wooden pallet onto the flatbed, straining the truck's suspension and flattening its rear tires. After securing the bomb with ropes, a ragged canvas tarp was thrown over it. They were ready to move to the airstrip, and Stone knew the next order of business was the disposition of him and his two companions. Would Abdul Wahab do the killing?

Asuty leaped from the truck and shouted in Arabic to two jihadists. They walked purposefully in Stone's direction. At the same time, Stone saw that Bull was talking to Van Wartt and pointing to Dirk Lange. Bull knew that Lange was a South African and an Afrikaner. Did he suspect Lange was an intelligence officer? Van Wartt turned away, but Bull continued to speak, now gesturing with his hands.

The two henchmen approaching with Asuty had large grins. Asuty spoke as if addressing a classroom of students. “Time to die.” He waved back to the truck, enjoyment in his eyes. “This bomb is a message to your corrupt world.”

“We don't have time for this nonsense.” It was Van Wartt speaking, aiming an automatic at Asuty's head. Bull and Van Wartt's men covered the jihadists standing on the truck. “Get your bloody asses on the truck. Now!”

Asuty straightened and lifted his chin. “They will die. Then we leave.” He motioned to the man next to him, who drew an automatic pistol from inside his shirt.

Van Wartt turned his head, keeping his eyes on Asuty and the man with the gun. In Afrikaans he spoke to Bull, standing behind him. Bull said, “
Ja
,” and raised his gun to eye level, aiming at the man.

“
Enough
,” Abdul Wahab shouted from the side. He pointed his Beretta at Asuty. “Tell him to drop the gun.”

Asuty's face contorted, and then he motioned to his henchmen to drop their weapons.

“Get in the truck.”

Wahab's actions confused Stone. Why did he stop Asuty from killing them? Did he fear Van Wartt? Stone looked over at Sandra, who also appeared perplexed.

At this, a plane roared past a hundred feet overhead, landing lights on, heading for the Bruin Karas airstrip. Stone looked up, not believing what he saw. An ancient twin-engine Fairchild C-119, Flying Boxcar, a Korean War-era military cargo plane. Probably the only remaining aircraft of its kind not in a museum. He detected a faint trail of black smoke coming from its starboard engine.

Asuty's men began shouting. One started the truck and switched on the truck's headlights. Amid the commotion, Wahab took Asuty's arm firmly. “Let's go!”

Van Wartt and Bull looked down at the three lying on the ground. “We'll put them in the boxcar for the time being. If the need arises, we can use them as hostages,” Van Wartt said while studying Lange.

Stone and the other two were dragged across the hard-packed dirt to the boxcar and lifted inside. When all three were in, Van Wartt looked at them for a moment, but again said nothing. The door closed and someone slid the bolt shut. The straining groan of the overloaded truck's motor grew fainter as it headed for the airfield. The Land Rover could be heard following.

A moment of quiet passed in the darkness, and then, as if on cue, all squirmed next to each other. Stone and Sandra with their free fingers attempted to pull off the duct tape, first from their hands, then when free, their feet. Lange freed his mouth from the loose tape and whispered words of encouragement. The two carefully peeled the duct tape from their mouths and took deep breaths.

“Do you see any way out of here?” Stone asked, finding the closed door with his hands.

“This might help.” Sandra switched on a miniature LED flashlight attached to a key ring.

The interior of the wooden boxcar smelled of dust and age from years sitting in a relentless sun. They found the doors on either side locked from the outside.

“Shine the light up on the roof,” Lange said. “Should be hatches up there.”

“There,” Sandra said. “Either of you two gents care to give me a boost?”

Both Stone and Lange lifted Sandra up to the hatch. She pushed and banged, but the hatch wouldn't open. While holding her, Stone's legs, groin, and arms ached. His face, he knew, was bruised, but neither eye was closed like Lange's. Sandra hadn't complained of any injuries. “Tough gal,” he wanted to tell her, but knew she would consider the remark condescending.

They sat, or rather collapsed to the floor, with the flashlight's thin light pointing in the center of their circle. Exhausted, Stone wanted to close his eyes and sleep, but knew they had to come up with a plan of escape.

“Nothing in the realm of possibility would allow for one of us to still have a radio?” Lange asked.

“They used mine to put this gash in my head,” Stone said.

“I threw mine out in the bush along with my Glock before I surrendered.”

Stone stretched, but stopped when a pain shot along his back. He closed his eyes and reviewed what could be the sequence of future events. “Our terrorists are now loading an ancient atomic bomb in the hold of an equally ancient Fairchild C-119, named by airmen years ago without affection as ‘The Flying Coffin' for its shape as well as its propensity to crash.”

“Hayden, how do you come up with that stuff?” Sandra sounded annoyed.

“I had a ride on one when I was in college ROTC.”

“Considering your age, I imagine it would have been in one of those World War I biplanes, mate.” Lange laughed. “By the way, I want to thank you two for inviting me along on this little picnic.”

Remembering that the man called Bull had a private conversation with Lange, Stone asked, “What was up with you and your fellow Boer?”

“Agh. To take a turn on one of your expressions, Boers are thicker than water.”

Stone explained. “Dirk. Knowing you were an Afrikaner saved us … for the time being. I still can't believe Wahab let us live.”

“Any ideas where they're taking the bomb?” Sandra asked, but no one answered.

Sandra turned off the light to save the battery. They sat silently in the dark. Colonel Gustave Frederick would soon fly in with the bomb removal team, late for the show. Chances were good they'd come to the boxcar and release them. Then they'd make plans to intercept the C-119 carrying the bomb.

Stone began thinking about how radioactive the boxcar could be when Lange whispered, “Hello. I believe one of our motorcycles has returned.”