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  Rhodes held out what appeared to be partially burned charcoal. “You see that? Plastic explosive residue. A bomb, and a clever one. Someone hollowed out a piece of charcoal. Not from our kiln either. Maybe a chunk of burned tree from a forest fire. Clever! Somehow it got tucked into our charcoal supply. When it hit the furnace—boom! It wouldn’t have been so devastating if the shed hadn’t gone up too. At this point we’re not actually sure if the shed explosion was another bomb or just a secondary detonation from flying shrapnel and sparks.”

  Trevor Mulroney lifted the fragment from the mine administrator’s hand. “Any likelihood it was an inside job? One of the prisoners or a guard?”

  “No way! Not the bomb, at least. We use explosives to loosen up the rock. But I’m the only one who handles the stuff. Nor would any of our workers have the know-how to put something like this together. We don’t keep plastic explosives in the shed, fortunately, but under lock and key in the Quonset hut. Otherwise there’d be nothing but a crater here right now. Nor is any of our inventory missing. I already checked. No, this attack has Jini written all over it. My guess is the explosives came from the same hijacked load used on the barge and road. How he got inside to plant the bomb is the big mystery. Makuga’s in charge of security, and his forces are all from his own clan, fiercely loyal to him; I can testify they keep this place buttoned up so tight a flea couldn’t get through.”

  Rhodes indicated his companion. “One of the casualties was a nephew of Makuga’s. Believe me, if he thought there was any way our workers could have made contact with this Jini, he’d have a confession sweated out of them by now.”

  That, Robin could well believe. The Congolese field commander looked enough like Governor Wamba to be a sibling or at least a distant cousin. Not just in powerful build and heavy, flat-nosed features, but the arrogance of posture and chillness of gaze. Not a man to cross without an army at your back.

  Out here in the open air, Robin could see for herself that shattered machinery was far from the only damage. Sharp fumes of burning chemicals stung her sinuses. Shards of fuel drums and metal siding, puddles of melted plastic were scattered everywhere. Broken glass and charcoal fragments crunched underfoot.

  And as warned, there were casualties.

  Robin counted four badly burned and bloodied bodies heaped near a smoldering tower of roughly piled stones. One wore the uniform of a security guard. Mounds of processed black carbon identified the tower as a charcoal kiln. Now that helicopter rotors and engines had fallen silent, Robin could also hear groans, cries, whimpers of pain that made it clear this place wasn’t as sparse of human inhabitants as it appeared.

  Since her employer appeared in no immediate need of translation services, Robin followed the sounds to a huge pile of dried branches and foliage. This appeared at first to be discarded trimmings from charcoal production. But when Robin spotted an opening, she realized the piled-up brush actually formed a crude corral such as African herdsmen erected to protect cattle from marauders.

  Though this corral imprisoned no animals. Pup tents of palm leaves lashed down over a latticework of branches provided meager living quarters. Still, a more careful survey showed Robin that this makeshift workers’ barracks wasn’t quite as pitiable as at first glance. A larger thatched roof shielded a fire pit where women prepared food. Grain sacks and reasonable flesh covering bones indicated this group ate as well as the average Congolese.

  Which was no comfort to bloodied, fire-scorched human shapes laid out on straw mats like some bizarre hospital ward just inside the opening. Several were children. One, no more than three or four, a girl by the intricate hair braids, sat on a woman’s lap, wailing. She displayed no burns, but a length of rubber tubing was knotted tourniquet-­style above a gash that flayed her forearm open to the bone.

  At the next mat, a white-haired African man bore down on a wad of cloth folded against an adolescent boy’s upper thigh, forming a rudimentary pressure bandage. So at least one person here had some first aid training. But despite the old man’s efforts, scarlet welled up around the bandage. The boy himself lolled unconscious against the mat, his dark, young features a peculiar gray shade that would have been deathly pale on lighter skin. Nearby lay a young woman, her face and upper body so badly burned that blackened flesh was sloughing away from exposed bones. She was only too unfortunately conscious, anguished moans and babbling attempts at speech issuing from mangled lips.

  At those terrible sounds, horror and nausea boiled over into blinding rage inside Robin. Hardened into cold resolve. A man like this Jini who could so casually inflict such terrible pain and suffering on other human beings had to be stopped, whatever it took to do so.

  Some protesting noise had left her own lips, because the elderly paramedic suddenly raised his head to call out in frantic French, “You there, mademoiselle, whoever you are! Please, you must help us! This boy is going to die! Please, we need a doctor, medicines!”

  Robin started immediately forward, only to be stopped by two guards, who materialized from the shadows on either side of the corral opening to block her way with their automatic rifles. Whirling around, Robin raced instead back toward the executive helicopter. By now Pieter Krueger and several Ares Solutions operatives had joined Trevor Mulroney and the others. Out on the field, more of her teammates were coordinating the unloading of cargo by Wamba’s militia.

  “So, Clyde, I’ll leave you half of our local contingent to bolster Makuga’s security arrangements. We’ll have to figure out how to get a generator and enough fuel out here at least to power the communications equipment. Make a list, and Ivan can arrange a cargo run from Bunia first light tomorrow. I’ll place the Mi-17s at your disposal for that. Should be able to fit a small generator in one of those.”

  Robin hesitated only briefly before thrusting her way into the group. “Mr. Mulroney, excuse me for interrupting. But we’ve got a more urgent need right now. There are civilian casualties here who need immediate medical attention. We’ve got to get them airlifted to a hospital! And if anyone on the team has some serious paramedic experience, we need that, too. And any available medical supplies!”

  But Samuel Makuga was already shaking his head. “The criminals cannot be moved from here. They have their own doctor.”

  The heavy Ugandan accent of his English was guttural enough that Robin thought at first she’d misheard. “What do you mean, criminals? Are you referring to the mine workers? And I saw your ‘doctor.’ He doesn’t even have first aid supplies in there!”

  Robin swung around to face the Earth Resources CEO. “Mr. Mulroney, I’m not trying to cause trouble here. But I saw people in that corral over there who are going to die without immediate medical care. Kids! And what is this that the injured can’t be airlifted out of here? Is this a mine or a prison camp?”

  “Actually, it’s a bit of both.” Rhodes spoke up coolly. “As Mr. Mulroney here is well aware, if you aren’t, lady. Look around you. That fence over there isn’t just to keep insurgents out. It’s to keep our workforce in. Eventually, if we can ever put Jini and his men out of business, we can bring in real equipment, build a modern mine out here. But right now this place is a hazard zone. And using prison labor for such is a common enough practice here in the Congo and elsewhere. Wamba has been generous enough to supply workers to get this venture off the ground. And before you get your nose out of joint, I run a clean operation here. Believe me, these people get treated and fed better than you’ll find in any Kinshasa-run government mine.”

  Which was less approbation of this place than an indictment of the DRC’s Ministry of Mines.

  “As for the casualties,” Rhodes went on, “as Makuga says, they’ve got their own shaman, healer, whatever you want to call him, and he’s proved himself competent enough. Our medical supplies went up in smoke with everything else in that shed. But we’ve got some replacement first aid paraphernalia arriving right now.”

  His nod indicated a cartload of boxes and crates Wamba’s militia had just
trundled through the gate. Robin did not yield. “So does prison labor include women and children too? And first aid isn’t going to cut it. Those people need a real doctor.”

  Trevor Mulroney raised a hand for silence. “Enough, Duncan. If you had appropriate experience, you’d be aware it’s the custom here to let prisoners bring along family members with no other place to go. Or would you rather let them starve? The Congo doesn’t have a lot of welfare handouts. As to your ‘real doctor,’ those aren’t so easy to find around here. I’m sure this healer will do as well as some under­supplied, overcrowded government clinic back in Bunia.”

  “But that’s not actually true. Finding a doctor, I mean.” Robin squarely faced her employer, this time unabashedly pleading. “Mr. Mulroney, you told us we’re just a few minutes’ flight here from Taraja, where there happens to be a medical clinic and a surgeon. Dr. Michael Stewart, who flew with us to Bunia, remember? Didn’t you say you wanted the locals’ cooperation? How better than to show we’re not just here to fight this Jini with guns and soldiers, but that we care enough to help his victims, too? I mean, General Wamba can hardly object to airlifting prisoners’ family members. Or claim women and children are criminals to be locked up!”

  Trevor Mulroney was silent longer than Robin could have wished. This was, after all, such an obvious call. He stepped aside to murmur briefly with Rhodes and Makuga before offering an abrupt nod.

  “You really are a troublemaker, Duncan. But once again you make a good point. Rescuing survivors of this Jini’s attacks will certainly score us some points with the natives. And considering the reputation of our local allies, we may need those points.”

  To Robin’s relief, once the decision was made, Mulroney began immediately barking out orders. Within minutes, the executive helicopter had hovered skyward and an Mi-17 settled into its place. Robin hurried back to the brush enclosure. To her displeasure, she found Samuel Makuga on her heels. At least his presence got her past the two guards. At Makuga’s snapped orders in Swahili, four men lifted the mat with the badly burned young woman. The wailing little girl was carried out by her mother.

  The security chief shook his head at a man and two women with lesser burns but permitted a badly burned young boy to be carried out. Meanwhile, the elderly medical worker had not left the side of the older boy nor stopped bearing down on his makeshift pressure bandage. Even in Robin’s short absence, the boy looked grayer, the bandage more scarlet.

  But Samuel Makuga again shook his head. “No, this one is not a child, but a man and a criminal. He cannot go.”

  All Robin’s rage, the accumulation of twenty-four hours of sleep deprivation and emotional upheaval, suddenly reached a flash point. Her hands balled at her sides as she spun around. The Congolese field commander towered above her, but she met his glare squarely, hissing in her own poor but fluid Swahili, “The boy will go! If he does not, he will die. Is this what you wish? If you do not permit me to take him, I will inform Trevor Mulroney and Governor Wamba himself that you caused his death.”

  Whether her fury, her blatant name-dropping, or the unexpectedness of her Swahili, the security chief looked briefly stunned. His glare bore down on Robin. Her own did not waver. Then Makuga’s massive shoulders rose and fell. “The boy will go. But only under guard so that he cannot attempt escape. And do not think to contradict my orders, for they come from Governor Wamba and Mr. Mulroney.”

  It was a compromise Robin could live with. As Makuga strode from the enclosure, Robin turned to the boy’s elderly attendant, switching back to French. “Bring this boy to the helicopter. We will take him to a doctor.”

  Now it was the attendant who shook his head. “They will not permit me to go. But the pressure bandage must be held in place, or he will bleed again. And he must have a doctor’s care, even surgery very soon, or he will die.”

  His cultured French indicated far more education than some village schoolhouse. But there wasn’t time to wonder. “I will hold the bandage in place and watch over him myself.” Robin followed her promise with action. “And he will have a doctor’s care very soon. We are not taking him far—to a place called Taraja where there is a surgeon, Dr. Stewart, who can help the boy.”

  This time it was the elderly medic who looked stunned. More than stunned. Robin had not realized the depth of hopelessness, despair, in the dark eyes until she saw hope, life, reborn there. “Dr. Charles Stewart? He has returned to Taraja?”

  “Not Charles Stewart. Michael.”

  “Michael. The son. Then he too is a doctor now like his father? You know him? He is a friend of yours?”

  “Yes, I know him.” Or at least I thought I did!

  “And will you give him a message? You who have shown yourself a friend to my people though you dress like a soldier and travel with Wamba’s men?”

  Samuel Makuga was striding into the enclosure again. This time there were other security guards at his heels. At his surly order, the men lifting the boy’s mat started hurriedly forward, so that Robin had to move quickly too, in order to keep the pressure bandage in place. The elderly man kept step beside her for several paces, his urgent plea barely a whisper.

  “Tell him—tell Michael Stewart—that all is not as it seems! Tell him . . . tell him the words of the Holy Book his father so often spoke. ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.’ Tell him!”

  “All is not as it seems! ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.’”

  What had the old man meant? The woe reference sounded scriptural and vaguely familiar. But to what did it refer? Or whom? And how did a criminal from a Bunia prison know Michael Stewart and his father? Where had he learned such educated French?

  Well, those were questions Robin could pursue soon enough. But at the moment, more urgent issues occupied her thoughts and hands. The guards had pushed the old man away, forcing him back inside the brush enclosure, as Robin accompanied the straw-mat stretcher out to the Mi-17. She was too busy maintaining pressure on the boy’s wound to look back.

  Members of the Ares Solutions team were now helping lift straw mats through the clam doors at the rear of the helicopter. Samuel Makuga stood outside, checking each mat as it was lifted in. The teenage boy’s mat was last, Robin keeping pace beside him, a hand holding the pressure bandage in place. At a snap of Makuga’s fingers, two of the camp security guards clambered in after her, taking up positions on either side of the mat as though the prone youth might jump to his feet and attempt to flee.

  No other accompanying attendants had been permitted into the helicopter, but with a total of six straw mats besides the little girl with the tourniquet, the interior of the Mi-17 was crowded enough. A half dozen of Robin’s teammates rounded out the passenger load. Somehow, while Robin had been dealing with the injured, they’d all managed to provision themselves with the automatic rifles that Wamba’s militia carried. As the helicopter rotors began to turn, Trevor Mulroney thrust his head through the open side door to address Marius at the throttle. “You have the coordinates? We shouldn’t be long behind you. If the C-130 touches down before we do, you know what to do.”

  His piercing blue gaze shifted to Robin, kneeling beside the boy’s mat. “Duncan, you requested this assignment. So I’m making you responsible for these people.”

  Side doors screeched shut. The Mi-17 climbed skyward. Hunkered down on a vibrating metal floor, Robin could no longer see the spectacular vista over which they were flying. Nor had ear mufflers been supplied here. If Robin found the noise horrendous, how frightening it must be for their new passengers, this flight in all probability an unfamiliar experience for them.

  The little girl with the tourniquet had already grown hysterical when she was separated from her mother. Her wails grew to screams of terror until Ernie Miller lifted her onto his lap. Robin would not have thought that dour stranger’s face, the weapon in his other hand, comforting to a small child. But after a few hiccups, the little girl fell silent a
gainst his Kevlar vest.

  The noise at least helped drown out the badly burned young woman’s garbled cries, the moans of pain and terror from the other victims. Robin’s own patient, in contrast, showed no awareness of his surroundings, the rise and fall of his chest so slight Robin was terrified he might quit breathing altogether. For a dizzy moment, this was not the Congo, but the dusty mountains of Afghanistan; not an Mi-17, but a Black Hawk medivac helicopter; no young African boy, but a redheaded young man whose bloody wound she fought to stem.

  The anguished screams, roar of rotors and engine, fumes of engine fuel, and sweetish, metallic scent of blood mixed with perspiration were pushing her over the edge. Robin’s stomach rose into her mouth. Her vision swam. She could no longer breathe.

  No, focus! You made a promise! This will not happen again! You will not fail this boy!

  One hand on the pressure bandage, the other lightly on the boy’s chest to monitor breathing, Robin closed her eyes, forcibly shutting out sight, sound, smell as she set herself to endure. And Trevor Mulroney’s assessment of distance proved accurate enough because less than a quarter hour had passed when Robin felt the helicopter lose altitude. Then the jolt of runners touching ground.

  The side doors screeched open before the rotors ground to a halt. Robin’s teammates spilled out, weapons in hand, to take up defensive positions around the helicopter. All but the Vietnam vet with the little girl in his arms. Unbelievably, the child appeared asleep against his Kevlar vest. Squatting beside Robin, he slid his hand gently under hers to separate it from the pressure bandage. “I’ll take over here. You go find that doctor pal of yours.”

  He raised his voice. “Frank, you want to lend the girl a hand?”