The Taste of Fear (21 page)

“Pretty,” Fitzgerald remarked.

“I have a generator inside,” Michael said proudly. “It is one of the few houses in town that has power.”

They followed a side passageway overgrown with weeds to a small backyard. In the middle of it, amidst waist-high grass and an assortment of junk, was a sixteen-foot wooden skiff resting upside down on its gunwales. Fitzgerald inspected the hull and found no holes or cracks. She would float.

“There’s no motor,” he said.

“You never said you needed a motor.”

“I’m not going on a fecking joy paddle.”

“I can get you a motor, but it will be expensive.”

“I also want two jerry cans of fuel.”

“Good petrol is difficult to find.”

“You have a generator. I’m sure you know where to find some.”

“It will also be expensive.”

“I’ll give you one hundred American now, one hundred when I return the boat.”

“Two hundred now, two hundred when you return the boat.”

Fitzgerald knew that was more cash than this guy saw in a year. Still, he said, “Two hundred now. Another hundred when I return.”

“You have a deal, my white friend,” Michael said immediately. “Meet me under the bridge where the Boulevard Lumumba crosses the Lukuga River in two hours.”

“One hour.”

“Yes, fine, one hour.”

The drunk named Michael was twenty minutes late. He arrived with two young, muscular men. They carried the skiff between the three of them, two at the stern, one at the bow. As they lugged it down the bank to the shoreline, Fitzgerald saw two rusty jerry cans sitting on the floor between the front and middle bench seats. A green 1950’s-looking motor was mounted on the transom. “Johnson” was written in yellow letters across the power head. Below that: “Sea Horse 25.” He flicked his Kent away and walked over.

Michael smiled at him. “There’s your boat, your motor, and your petrol,” he announced triumphantly.

“Does the motor run?”

“It runs.”

Fitzgerald handed over two crisp one-hundred-dollar notes. Michael accepted the money, then seemed to consider something. “Thank you,” he said. “But unfortunately, this is not going to be enough. That is a good motor. I had to cash in several favors to get it. The petrol was more expensive than I thought. Also very good, very clean.”

Fitzgerald said nothing.

“I want more money. It is only fair.”

“How much more money?”

“Another two hundred up front.”

“Four hundred dollars?”

“You will not find another boat in Kalemie. I can guarantee that.”

“We had a deal.”

“This is business.” He shrugged. “I have to survive too, yes?”

Fitzgerald had expected something like this. He slipped the silenced Glock from the holster under his jacket and fired two rounds into the thief’s chest.

Michael collapsed, an expression of surprise on his face.

“You don’t have to worry about surviving anymore,” Fitzgerald said as he bent over and plucked the two notes from the dead man’s fingers. He folded them into fours and tossed them at the other two young men, who had ducked into defensive crouches, like they were either going to run or attack. “For the boat and the motor and the gas,” he told them. “That was the deal.”

With big smiles on their faces, the men each grabbed a bill for themselves and hurried back up the bank together.

Life in the Congo was cheap.

Friends were even cheaper.

Fitzgerald was sitting in the jump seat of the skiff, his hand on the tiller, speeding down the eerily quiet Lukuga River. He eased up on the throttle and came to a full stop. He flipped open his MacBook and took another reading of the tracker’s location. It had stopped moving fifteen minutes ago, less than seven kilometers away. Given it was still bright out, still another two or three hours of sunlight left, he wondered why AQ had stopped so soon. Had they reached their final destination? Because if that was the case, he would be on them by nightfall—

The skiff’s stern bucked suddenly and powerfully from beneath, launching Fitzgerald into the air. He crashed into the muddy-brown water, breaking back through the surface with a gasp. He glanced quickly around, and something inside him shifted, something queasy. Not more than a dozen meters away, two tiny ears and two bulging frog-like eyes were visible, just above the rippled water.

A hippo.

Fitzgerald had seen several herds of the mammoth suckers bathing together, usually just beyond a bend in the river, where the water had pooled and was still. In each case he had heard the deep grunting-snorts before seeing the animals, and he had given them a safe berth. Bulls were fiercely territorial and would run off other males, crocs, and even small boats that passed too close.

But this one had come from nowhere.

The hippo jointed open its cavernous pink mouth and roared, revealing four tusks protruding from the lower jaw, each more than a foot long.

Fitzgerald knew his life depended on what he did within the next few seconds. The fight or flight hormone kicked in, and for the first time he could remember, he was going to flight. He splashed toward the skiff. The water and sucking mud beneath his feet made it feel as if he was dragging a train of cinderblocks behind him.

The hippo charged, half swimming, half running along the bottom.
Bloody thing was fast.

Fitzgerald hiked himself over the gunwale just as the hippo struck, coming from beneath again. The impact shot the stern into the air almost vertically. Fitzgerald gripped the transom with both hands, his feet dangling in the air. The hull crashed back to the water with jarring force, slamming the breath from his chest and throwing up curtains of spray along each side of the boat.

Wheezing, Fitzgerald lunged for the motor. Pulled the selector into start—

The hippo heaved its massive bulk over the stern, roaring again, as loud as a lion, so close Fitzgerald could smell its foul, rotten breath. He stared into the beast’s black, piggy eyes. Then he yanked the start cord. The engine kicked over. The growling propeller made a heavy, chainsaw-like buzz, as if it was sinking into a tub filled with lard. Bits and pieces of bloody flesh burst from the water like confetti. There was a loud, jarring noise as the propeller blades hit bone. The motor wanted to shoot back up, but Fitzgerald kept it pressed down, like the lid on a blender, the blades chewing, shredding.

The hippo made a bass-like bellow before vomiting a liter of blood. Fitzgerald yanked out the Glock, pressed the barrel into the hippo’s left eye, and fired four point-blank shots. The hippo’s head jerked upward, the snout slamming Fitzgerald’s hand and batting the pistol away into the water. It made a final attack, trying to bite off Fitzgerald’s head and shoulders. He moved back just in time and its gaping maw closed on air. Finally, it slipped back into the water, which had turned a diffused pink all around the boat. If the animal wasn’t dead, it would be soon enough.

“Bleeding right!” Fitzgerald said, shoving the gear selector into forward.

He cranked the throttle and got the hell out of there. Despite what felt like one or two bruised ribs, he let out a whooping, raspy laugh. He’d just duked it out with a half-ton beast and won. Not many people he knew—in fact, no one he knew—could say that.

He sat straight to see over the hydroplaning bow. Wind caressed his face.

Seven kilometers to go.

Scarlett stood her ground for another two or three seconds, but she knew she had lost that standoff. She might be able to see now, which made her feel more in control, but Jahja still held all the cards. She went down the gangplank. The tide was high, and she had to wade through knee-deep water before reaching the bank. She struggled up, digging her hands into the mud and grabbing at plants. An African fish eagle watched her pathetic progress from its perch on the low branch of a riverside tree. Probably thinking she was one hell of an uncoordinated monkey.

Once everyone made it to high ground, they set off in single file: Creep, Scarlett, Thunder, Sal, Miranda, Joanna, Jahja, Mustache, and Beard. The forest was a snarl of secondary jungle. Creep whacked at the vegetation with a machete every now and then, but the action seemed to be more for show or boredom rather than any real purpose. They were following some sort of path made either by wildlife or humans, and the passage was relatively easygoing.

The entire time questions burned in the back of Scarlett’s mind. Where were they going? What could possibly be out here in the middle of the jungle? Some kind of terrorist paradise? Something along the lines of the hidden civilization in
King Solomon’s Mines
? Only in place of Kaukauna warriors were suicide bombers, and in place of stone statues of pagan gods were statues carved into the likeness of bin Laden?

Sure, why not, she thought, teetering on mental and physical exhaustion. Why the hell not?

About ten minutes in they came across a python skin. It was dry and tubular and bunched at a crevice between two rocks, which the snake had apparently used to catch its skin on so it could slither out of its old coat. Next to the husk was a pile of brown and chalky-white feces, laced with bits of bone and fur. Scarlett shivered at the sight and turned away. She hated snakes.

Sal and Miranda and Joanna had gone pale. Only Thunder seemed nonplussed. Not so surprising since he was likely used to seeing such things back home in Australia. Jahja and the gunmen, for their part, looked indifferent, probably because they carried automatic weapons, which were more than a match for any-sized snake, anywhere.

“Would have made a good feed,” Thunder mumbled under his breath.

“I heard it tastes like chicken,” Scarlett whispered back.

“More like pheasant—with a lot of bones.”

“You see,” Jahja said with a smug smile, “we may be your captors, but this land is your prison. It is very dangerous. You would not survive one day on your own.”

Scarlett knew he was right. She pictured herself waking up in the middle of the night to find the python that had left that skin behind curled around her, squeezing ever so tighter each time she took a breath until the pressure became so intense she could no longer draw any more air into her lungs. But perhaps even before that happened, her head would already be inside its unhinged jaws.

Scarlett shivered at the image.

They pressed forward again, for which she was grateful. The farther they put between them and the snakeskin, the better. She concentrated on her footsteps. One-two, one-two. On and on. Jesus, she was hot and thirsty. She glanced every now and then at the military canteen hanging over Creep’s shoulder. She guessed he had a few bottles of water in his rucksack too. She was thinking about asking him for some, knowing he would likely ignore her request, but thinking about asking anyway, when they came upon a quick-moving river.

“Thank God,” she said. She turned to Thunder—not Sal, she realized, but Thunder—and asked him if it would be safe to drink from.

“It’s flowing, so it should be right,” he told her. “Unless there’s a rotting animal carcass in it upstream.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Jahja overheard them and said, “Yes, everyone, drink if you are thirsty. But do not over drink. You may become sick. This is not a place where you want to be sick.”

“Reckon he was a personal trainer before he hung up the whistle for the machine gun?” Thunder said to Scarlett softly.

She surprised herself by laughing out loud.

Jahja frowned. “Do I amuse you, Miss Cox?”

Ignoring him, Scarlett forded the river behind Creep, who was gripping his rifle in both hands above his head. Halfway across, she stopped and scooped water into her mouth with her hands. After she’d quenched her thirst, she dunked herself under to cool off—and lost her balance. The swift current immediately took advantage of her weightlessness and whisked her downriver. She opened her mouth to cry out and water filled her lungs. She thrashed and clawed at the mossy stones on the riverbed, trying to get a handhold or footing, but her efforts were in vain—