The Geneva Decision (16 page)

Three bullets came from deep in another tunnel. If she were in tunnel number one with number two on her left, numbering around the circle he was in tunnel number five. She would be slightly behind him as he emerged. Perfect.

She scooted over, backed into tunnel number six and aimed at where Big-gut would emerge. She flicked the switch to full auto. She put her phone on mute and whispered into it.

“I’m hit, I’m hit! Somebody get down here.”

Cautious footsteps approached from Big-gut’s tunnel. She raised her M4 and sighted down the barrel. She heard the sound of someone trying to duck-walk but was too fat. She heard his shorts rubbing together. But there was the sound of four feet. Someone was with him. Pia guessed he was shielding himself by placing at least one woman in front of him. A real gentleman.

Pia cried out in pain and made a thrashing noise.

He emerged from the tunnel pushing a bound woman in front of him, his gun pointed at her head. He crouched behind her as he came into the dim light of the ladder chamber. Pia fired a single shot. It missed. Big-Gut ducked and felt the back of his head—the shot had been close.

Pia said, “Hands up or the next one goes through what’s left of your brain.”

He dropped his gun and raised his hands. He froze for a moment then bent down, reaching for his left ankle. Before Pia could yell at him, a gang of angry women poured out of the tunnel behind him. They leapt on him and pounded him with their bound hands. They kicked him with their unbound feet. They yelled obscenities at him through their gags. Pia flicked on the flashlight.

“OK, ladies, I think he’s had enough.” She pressed her gun barrel to his forehead.

Everyone stopped moving.

“Hey, Miguel. Drop down here with a couple knives and help me free these women.”

Miguel slid down the ladder and cut one woman loose, then handed her a knife to free the rest. He patted down Big-gut, found a knife, a radio, and a snub-nose in an ankle holster. Miguel went up first, to hold a dart gun on the captive. Pia sent Big-gut next and followed him up the ladder. Topside, Miguel slapped plasticuffs on him. The first of the freed women came up.

“We have a problem,” Miguel said. “Four of his pals are coming inland right now. We think we have a five-minute lead on them, no more. Another three are blocking our river escape but the Major’s whittling them down.”

Pia turned to the freed women. “Who speaks English?”

Two women raised their hands.

“OK, I need your help. There are three bodies outside, a woman, a man and a boy. They’ve been put to sleep and won’t wake for a couple hours. Tie them to a tree and leave them. Make sure you can see them from a distance. Can you make your way back to Bekumu on your own?”

They nodded.

“We’ll draw the bad guys our way. With your help, we can all get out of here.”

The women thanked their liberators profusely until Pia told them to get moving. Miguel and Marty stared at Pia, who poked Big-gut with her rifle. She said, “You and Calixthe have just the one boy?”

“I’m not talking to you,” he said.

She held up the bottle of Lithium. “Is that because the voices in your head are such great conversationalists?”

He lifted his chin.

“Have it your way, genius. March in front of me five paces, or I’ll dart you and tie you to a tree like your pals.”

The sound of distant gunfire echoed outside. A few bursts—impossible, in this dense jungle, to determine distance or direction. The four of them headed out at a quick clip with Big-gut at gunpoint.

Marty scanned the trees while they marched.

“Hey, where’s Calixthe?”

Pia said, “She’s one of them.”

“I thought she was a conscript.”

“Calixthe didn’t want to stop in Bekumu because they’ve never seen her before. Then she tripped and fell on nothing but air. That was to tip off the bad guys. I accidentally gave her that excuse about being forced into it, but later she tried to sneak up and club me.”

Marty said, “Everybody wants to do that.”

Pia punched him playfully.

“Reckless, going in that hole,” Miguel said. “Those women could have been acting too.”

“I thought about that. They were all ages, including several grandmothers. Can’t imagine what pirates would want with them. They looked like real villagers and cowered at the sight of these guys. Didn’t look like acting.”

Marty said, “The pirates thought we were all going to walk into that bamboo hut and get killed?”

“They only needed one of us,” Pia said. “They kill or torture one and the boat comes up river. Once the boat was in the river, they planned to bottle us up with the Zodiacs, turn it into a kill zone.”

More shots echoed through the trees. They picked up the pace.

“Tania’s got them on the run,” Marty said. “She’s a one-woman army since they got Ezra.”

“What?” Pia stopped.

“Sorry, you were down in the hole,” Marty said. “Ezra took a lot of shrapnel.” He shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”

“Dammit.” Pia bit her lip. “He was a good…”

She didn’t try to hide tears slipping out of the corners of her eyes. After giving her a moment, Marty patted her back.

“Need you to suck it up, boss. We grieve later,” Miguel said after a minute. “We can’t avenge Ezra if they gun us down.”

Pia nodded, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, took a deep breath.

They ran on.

“Why did you have the women tie up the pirates?” Miguel asked.

“Psychology,” she said. “We can’t take them with us. So it shows how little they mean to us. Like throwing back the little fish.”

Marty said, “That’s cold.”

“And it’ll slow them down.”

Big-gut stopped running. “Thomas’ll just gun ‘em down for failing. You’ve given them a bleeding death sentence.”

“Are you serious?” Pia said. “Your pals would kill them instead of untie them? Either you’re bluffing or you picked your leader badly.”

Big-gut looked away.

“Get moving.” Marty pushed him forward. “He’s lying. Why would they waste the ammunition?”

Pia looked at Miguel, who shook his head and followed Marty. Pia thought about the situation. If Big-gut was bluffing, there’d be no harm. If he was serious, there’d be a lot of deaths, for which she’d be responsible .

She stopped. “I can’t let Elgin Thomas kill those people. I’m going back to help Tania. You two get this guy into the Zodiac and bring it down river. I’ll meet you on the beach.”

“No way,” Miguel said. “You go with Marty. I cover Tania.”

Marty said, “Hey, both of you free up Tania and I’ll meet you south of the village. I can handle lard-ass, no problem.”

Pia and Miguel turned and ran toward an area just south of the village. When they got close enough to follow the gunfire, Pia tried her phone.

“Tania, can you hear me?”

“Shut up, bitch,” Tania said.

Pia rolled her eyes.

Miguel smiled at her. He pushed his earbud in tighter and said, “Tania, two hundred meters east of you and moving in. Where do you want us?”

“Fifty meters west,” Tania said. “I’m shooting lead, aiming east.”

They moved out, watching the light and shadows.

Pia’s mind wandered. This was the most dangerous situation she’d ever been in. She’d had that same thought three times in the last few days but each new situation presented an escalated level of danger. Eric was right about her lack of experience. Eric… She stumbled.

“Focus!” Miguel said.

She nodded and moved on.

They moved between the trees, snaking their way into the fight. The crackling sound of gunfire echoed through the jungle. Every bug and animal had gone to ground in the hope of staying alive. Even the trees refused to sway. Other than the eerie snap of bullets every minute or so, the jungle was silent.

Miguel pulled up behind a tree and yanked Pia behind him. He motioned with fingers, two hostiles on the left and two on the right. He would take out the left and Pia would stay behind the tree. She shook her head. He shrugged and motioned for her to follow behind him. She watched the right flank, half hoping to shoot someone.

Instead, a barrage of gunfire sent them both to the ground. An indiscriminate burst aimed in their general direction. The element of surprise was lost. Pia crawled backwards to a large tree and tried to locate the enemy. To the right, beyond several trees, she saw two men trotting toward them.

Her glance connected with a pair of hateful eyes.

Al-Jabal.

For all her talk of joining her mother in the afterlife, the idea that this murderer could be the one to send her there made her both furious and afraid. She focused on the anger. She pulled her gun around and fired. He ducked. She missed.

“Tania, Marty will be due south with a Zodiac in three minutes,” Miguel said. “How deep are you?”

They heard her fire a three-round burst.

“I can get there, but I’ll be coming through the two on your left,” Tania said. “If you can brush them back, that would help.”

“Two on the right,” Pia said, “closing in on us. One of them is my friend from Geneva. I’ll hold them. Miguel clears your path and we should be good to go.”

“We’re counting on you, boss,” Miguel said.

He left.

Pia peered around the trunk in the direction of her nemesis and saw bark flying in front of her face— the sound of gunfire reached her an instant later. She backed around the other side and instinctively ducked back an instant before another cloud of bark disintegrated. They had her pinned down. Their bullets could make the distance but her darts couldn’t. She cursed herself for her overconfidence. She ran in the opposite direction, using the tree to shield her retreat.

She wove back and forth, putting plenty of trees behind her, then pulled up behind a fallen log and squatted. She listened. They were slow, but they were definitely in pursuit, crashing through the underbrush and jumping small ferns.

The first to emerge from the darkness was a stranger. She aimed at him and considered the distance. One shot would give away her position. She couldn’t afford to miss. He ran on, disappearing behind a stand of saplings. Then he re-emerged, light flashing off his face. He stopped. This was her chance—damn, she wished she’d had more training with an M4. She aimed and pulled the trigger.

He dropped.

Knowing al-Jabal would pinpoint her in a second, Pia ran back in the direction Miguel had gone. Gunfire erupted but nothing near her exploded. Al-Jabal was firing in anger. Good. Angry people don’t think straight. Sometimes they channel that energy into working harder, faster, smarter, but Al-Jabal wasn’t that smart—she hoped. A large termite mound offered her cover. She slid behind it, caught her breath, and crawled up. Peering over the crest, she searched the jungle in every direction. He could come from anywhere.

The trees and air were still, the jungle silent. Out there in the shadows lurked Marot’s killer. Something moved. She felt al-Jabal’s presence, sensed his anger at seeing her in Cameroon. She scanned the trees, the shadows, the open spots. Something moved again. On her left. Was it in the shrubs? Behind the tree? A flash of clothing in a sunbeam, a moving fern. He’d gone that way. Should she follow? Make a noise and draw him in? Or should she keep the high ground, a tactical advantage?

Chapter 24

26-May, 1PM

O
n her earbud she heard Miguel announce that his targets were fleeing south. The escape route was clear. Tania and Miguel headed for Marty’s Zodiac. Pia checked her sat-phone’s compass and figured al-Jabal must be east of her, the others south. Everything in her wanted to track him and dart him, but that was a dangerous game against a dangerous man. She’d wait for another day, another time. She slid down the mound and trotted due west.

In a hundred meters she found the river but not Marty, Miguel, or Tania. She ducked back to a secluded place and checked in via phone. Her GPS tracking showed them upstream two hundred meters. She began trotting in their direction while Miguel came to meet her. Twenty meters later, something caught her eye.

Someone in the trees. She planted her feet and jumped backward seconds before bullets shredded a bush in front of her. She dropped to the ground and rolled in tall grass. Not knowing the direction, she dared not stand. At the same time, she couldn’t stay in the open. Rising to a crouch, she ran for a clump of trees, turned her back to one, and looked in all directions.

She saw him.

Only a few meters away, he scanned the shadows down his rifle sights, looking in the wrong direction. If he turned thirty degrees, he’d stare straight at her.

She raised her gun, then froze. Beyond al-Jabal stood Tania, her hands raised in surrender. Al-Jabal would take no prisoners.

But he was too far away, out of range for darts.

Sometimes a bluff is all you need. She flipped the switch to full-auto.

Pia shouted, fired for effect, and ran straight at al-Jabal.

Surprised and confused, he turned, dropped to the ground. Tania fired, missed him but hit his gun. It spun out of his grasp. He scrambled for it.

Pia’s darts flew unaimed and off target as she ran. She stopped, aimed, fired. Too far, another miss. He picked up his gun. She ran, bounding left and right to avoid his fusillade. Tania ran ahead of her, calling and pointing the way. After a few meters, Miguel came alongside and the three of them dove into the Zodiac on top of Big-gut’s comatose body.

Marty cranked the throttle and sped down the river. A sharp bend ahead promised to shield them from al-Jabal’s AK47, if they could get there in time. Only Tania had bullets that gave her the range to shoot back. She fired her last three rounds just left of al-Jabal. The killer fired back, his bullets streaked up the river. Marty cut back to the right and found another line of bullets hitting the water immediately in their path. They all tensed, waiting for the bullets to hit someone or burst the pontoons.

Nothing happened. Marty swerved again.

“Out of ammo.” Miguel pointed at al-Jabal, who threw his gun on the ground. “They always think they have movie-star guns.”

Pia pulled her magazine out. One dart left in the mag, one in the chamber.