Congo Dawn Read online

  The phantom must have seen men running toward him. But when he unfroze, it was to step toward the stockade, completing a tossing motion. Something vaguely spherical arced over the wooden pilings. As the phantom turned back toward the bank, empty hands rose into the air.

  But his surrender came too late. At a staccato of automatic gunfire, the man in the water staggered. Recovering, he managed two steps toward shore, then collapsed on the bank, half in, half out of the water. At first Robin assumed Pieter Krueger or Samuel Makuga must have fired. Then as both men stopped dead, weapons still dangling­ loose in their hands, she took in the movement of a sentry atop a riverside watchtower, his assault rifle angled toward the water.

  With a furious exclamation, Michael was already heading for the door. On the way, he snatched up his brown bag. Stripped a bedsheet from a mattress. Snatched a towel hanging over the end of a bunk.

  Rushing after him, Robin grabbed at his arm. “You can’t go out there! You heard Krueger’s orders.”

  Michael spun around, his expression savage as he knocked Robin’s hand away. “Maybe you can’t. But I don’t work for Krueger. I’m a doctor, and there’s a man out there who needs me, no matter what he’s done.”

  Robin made no further attempt to detain Michael, instead staying tight on his heels as he raced for the river. This was no more than twenty meters from the Quonset hut, so they reached the bank just as Samuel Makuga and Pieter Krueger tugged the fallen man out of the water and rolled him faceup.

  Makuga was simultaneously shouting orders. “Get out there and find what he threw into the water! Secure the other prisoners!”

  Pieter Krueger emitted a stream of obscenities that included at least three languages. “That idiot guard. He’d no business shooting before we had a chance to interrogate the prisoner.” He broke off as Michael and Robin entered his line of sight. “What are you two doing here? Duncan, I thought I told you to keep our guest locked up. I want him out of here now!”

  Michael had already dropped to his knees beside the fallen man. “What are you going to do? Shoot me, too? Because you’ll have to shoot me to keep me from tending this patient. And if you really hope to interrogate the man, you won’t want to stop me.”

  A logical enough assessment that when a triumphant shout rose along the riverbank, the South African strode away without further debate. A sentry had beaten his peers to the far side of the stockade by climbing the nearest watchtower and dropping down over the perimeter fence. Now he held up a round object to the chain links. A husked coconut, Robin recognized as the sentry heaved the object over the fence. Pieter Krueger caught it. “At least we’ve recovered the message.”

  But Robin had lost interest in the success or failure of tonight’s mission. Her mind whirled with confusion and dismay as she dropped to her knees across from Michael as he leaned over the sprawled body. The gunfire had caught its victim across the midsection, his lower torso such a mass of torn flesh Robin was astonished to see he still breathed.

  Leaving his face untouched and immediately recognizable. How was it possible the kindly old healer who’d fought so desperately to save the explosion victims could be the spy they hunted?

  “Here, bear down on this for me.” Michael had already put the towel to use as a pressure bandage and was now ripping the sheet into lengths. As Robin scrambled to follow his instructions, scarlet welling up around her hands evoked sharply a memory of this man’s grizzled head and deeply grooved, worried features bent above a boy’s limp form.

  The same boy who’d vanished from last night’s massacre.

  Was that the connection here?

  A mystery likely to remain unsolved, judging by the amount of blood trickling from a corner of the elderly healer’s mouth. Though unbelievably, his lips were now moving. A grunt emerged. Not of pain, but of urgency.

  “Don’t try to speak,” Michael said gently in Swahili.

  The old man only made a fresh effort to move his lips. This time words emerged. Not Swahili, but the educated French Robin had heard from him before. “You are the doctor? Stew-art?”

  Michael shot Robin a glance before he answered quietly, “Yes, I’m Dr. Charles Stewart’s son, Michael.”

  “Michael.” The old man’s nearest hand moved in a gesture that might have been entreaty. He worked his mouth before another word came out. “Woe!”

  A cough increased the scarlet trickle from his mouth to a stream, but still he battled for words. “‘Woe to—’”

  Raising the elderly healer’s head so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood, Michael finished for him, “‘. . . to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.’”

  “Yes.” The old man’s voice was now only a thread of sound. “Your father knew. Things are not as they seem.” Another paroxysm of coughing shook him before he spoke again, this time in such a low whisper Robin had to lean close to hear. “Son of Charles. Save . . . save my son.”

  “I will do what is possible.” Michael’s quiet reassurance sounded shaken. “Please, rest yourself.”

  The old man did not respond. But from him came a long exhalation of air that might have been relief, hope, satisfaction. Except that Robin knew too well that particular exhalation. Not until she felt warmth splashing on her hands did Robin realize tears were spilling down her cheeks. Why was she shedding tears for a traitor, a criminal?

  Somewhere in the distance, a drone escalated until it drowned out the generator’s rumble. Then flashing lights swept overhead, heading downriver. A helicopter. Not the Mi-17, but the smaller executive helicopter by the pattern of running lights. Its roar, the lights, that still, silent form on the muddy bank triggered something in Robin’s chest so that she leaned forward to grab at Michael’s T-shirt with one bloodied hand.

  “Please, you have to do something! You can’t let him die! Not this time! Promise me you won’t let him die!”

  Hope died in Robin as Michael’s bleak gaze met hers, the thick-fringed, tawny eyes deep pools of pain and grief under the glint of restored perimeter lighting. Robin relaxed her grip on the cotton material. But before she could snatch back her hand, hard, warm fingers as sticky and damp as Robin’s own closed over it, flattening her palm against a heartbeat.

  With his other hand, Michael brushed across the elderly healer’s still features, closing wide, staring eyes. The grim line of his mouth had softened to a tenderness and regret as profound as the sorrow that darkened his gaze. Michael’s lips parted to release words. Apology? Comfort?

  “Robin, I—”

  The world exploded into a rain of heat and fire.

  The man now called Jini had seen the helicopter’s earlier arrival. Watched the mzungu warriors hefting ore bags aboard. His high perch was the same branch from which he’d witnessed the steam engine explosion. If not his original plan, one benefit of that event had been an end to the logging that had drastically reduced the rainforest camouflage separating his refuge from the mine.

  He’d discovered his refuge while searching the sunken barge for weapons, food, and other useful items such as he’d recovered from disabled supply and ore convoys. The explosives he’d laid under cover of darkness had been positioned to sink the barge midchannel where its cargo could not easily be salvaged. But the river was not deep, and the barge crew had managed to snatch up any portable possessions before splashing ashore.

  Two successful ambushes had ended attempts to raise a hundred tons of heavy ore sacks to the surface, Makuga’s security force adamantly refusing to risk their necks to an arrow or bullet they couldn’t see coming from the thick jungle foliage. Only after a week’s abandonment had he risked diving on the wreck. Finding nothing in the submerged wheelhouse, he’d dived deeper to slide through the jagged hole in the stern. The list of the sunken barge had piled up ore sacks along one side of the hold, leaving an open channel to swim above them. But in his search, he’d penetrated too deeply, the river water so murky once away from sunlight filtering through
the shattered hull, he’d found himself in utter darkness, unable to retrace his dive.

  He’d been desperate for air. Certain the Creator’s judgment had finally overtaken him. Then a last frantic lunge for freedom had brought his head out into a large air bubble trapped by the vessel’s sharp upward list just under the undamaged bow. The trapped air reeked with petroleum seeping from some fuel tank to puddle on top of the water. But to his oxygen-starved lungs, its taste was the sweetest perfume. His bearings now recovered, it had been simple to retrace his course back to the opening.

  Having found nothing of value, he’d thought little further of the submerged barge until the steam engine explosion brought combat helicopters packed with mzungu warriors. By then he’d begun to feel safe in his treetop eyrie. Vicious though they were, Wamba’s de­mobilized fighters now masquerading as mine security thought like most rainforest outsiders—in two dimensions, not three. He and his companions simply lived and moved thirty meters or more above their heads, the tangle of creeper vines, mosses, and thicker lianas interweaving massive hardwoods into a single labyrinth allowing them to range widely without setting foot on solid ground except to launch ambushes against their adversaries.

  Even the explosives, detonators, ropes, knives, and other items purloined from convoys were stashed only a few feet from where he now lay, inside a rotted-out hollow where branch met tree trunk, a hardwood plug wedged in tightly to shield against the thieving, clever fingers of monkey troops that shared their habitat. There were captured firearms, too. A handful of assault rifles. An Uzi machine pistol. Ammunition. But these were rarely unearthed since in the close quarters of jungle foliage, the silent stealth of the rainforest’s own weapons—bow, arrows, spear, machete—far outweighed the greater reach of mzungu weapons.

  Hidden behind him, too, was the single prized possession to which he clung. His only hope of finding a way out of this madness.

  If such a way still remained.

  Though combat helicopters were a new element to this fight, he’d grown familiar enough with the smaller aircraft. It had been the mine’s sole reliable transport and supply line once he’d cut off land and river access. But its usual flight path from Bunia brought the smaller helicopter in over the opposite side of the mine clearing, at no time approaching his hideout or the sunken barge tucked out of sight from the mine by a curve of the river.

  Aerial surveillance was among the many marvels he’d learned of during his university studies, and he’d quickly recognized the smaller helicopter’s new flying pattern as a search grid.

  Convincing his companions to hide underwater had been more difficult. That the patrolling aircraft carried a magic eye that could penetrate the thick foliage of triple-canopy rainforest seemed to them as implausible as the jini he was accused of being. But they’d learned by now to trust his leadership. The first time he’d heard the heli­copter approaching their hideout, he’d ordered his band down to earth. Breaking off some bamboo stalks, he’d led the way under the river surface into the submerged hull, hoping if he could not pray that its air bubble had not bled away.

  It hadn’t, and he’d had just enough time to hand each companion a length of hollow bamboo before the roar of rotors swept low above the sunken barge. They’d remained submerged beneath the water, breathing through the stalks, until he felt certain the aircraft was not returning.

  At least twice daily since that first heart-pounding retreat, a distant drone had sent the band scrambling for their underwater hideout. Enough that he’d ordered his companions to remain at root level, no longer such a risky move since the hiatus on logging had also put a halt to ground parties intruding into his territory. That there’d not been more alarms was less comforting than his unsophisticated companions assumed. It simply signaled his new enemy’s search ranged widely enough that his small band dared not withdraw far from their refuge.

  Excepting last night’s terrible trek.

  Many hours had passed after the explosion before he’d recovered a message detailing the airlift of young Jacob and other victims to Taraja. The message also included the orders prompting a dangerous canoe expedition up winding, treacherous waterways to reach the mission compound that in another lifetime had signified to him a place of knowledge and comfort and safety.

  By then he’d ascertained that the mzungus showed no stomach for night maneuvers, and he hoped the newcomers were no exception. He had no other alternative. Preventing his youthful ally from spilling what he knew to interrogators was just a minor corollary to their purpose at Taraja. But by the time the boy stumbled over their band on the riverbank, it had become clear they could no longer hope for success in their primary mission. Jacob himself, when questioned, had little to contribute regarding the steam engine debacle. The wasting of his own careful preparations had simply been an unfortunate chance accident.

  So they’d returned here to regroup. But now for the first time since all this began, he could offer his companions no proposal of what to do next. Twice already since their return, they’d had to retreat to their underwater refuge. This time the helicopter’s slow, deliberate pass along the course of the river left no doubt his enemies had discovered his escape by canoe. At least they’d never find the canoes, buried under ore sacks at the bottom of the river.

  But he was less sanguine about how long he and his companions could remain undetected. Did he not know just how great the resources his enemy could muster? What if some clever mind or instrument deduced where he and his companions had found refuge? Since the failure of last night’s Taraja trek, a growing sense of doom was impressing upon him that he was running out of time.

  Which was why he still lay on this branch while his comrades slumbered down on the ground. He’d grasped instantly the possibilities when the generator died and the mzungu warriors flew off into the night with their precious cargo. Surely his father would seize on the darkness so miraculously offered him to attempt a message.

  He’d found the first message washed against a storm-toppled mahogany right where the river made its first sharp bend past the village. The underwater tangle of rotting branches offered a hazardous obstacle to canoes, but also a natural trap for debris. As any villager was well aware. He’d fished out the green coconut for eating when he spotted a whittled chunk of wood hammered into the husk to make an airtight plug. Breaking the coconut, he’d discovered its milk drained out, in its place rolled-up palm fronds etched with his father’s neat lettering.

  Go. Leave. Bring aid. Such the message’s contents summed up to be. He had not obeyed. His father, who had not been out of the rainforest in decades, simply did not understand how today’s world worked. The futility of his faith and optimism in human nature.

  Instead he’d begun his own war.

  With some success, but more failure.

  And even should some semblance of victory be obtained, could his father ever forgive him?

  Especially now that he’d failed his father’s most recent directive. Nor without the logging parties could he get a message of his own through that chain-link barrier. Were any of his earlier preparations still in place? Or was all now lost?

  Baba, tell me what to do! This time I will listen!

  His straining eyes had to this point made out no shadow creeping from the brush kraal. But what could he expect to see in such darkness? A sensible course of action would be to join his companions. To get some sleep, then check the debris trap at first light.

  Instead he lifted his gaze to the pale, round globe of the full moon floating high above the mine clearing. A light to guide his father’s steps in the darkness. A light that offered comfort to all hunted things.

  Beneath that silvery, forgiving radiance, the devastation greedy men had wrought to his birthplace was no longer apparent. A strong breeze rustled leaves and branches around him. Its soughing music, the open clearing, swaying treetops, a glimmer of moving water all offered a momentary illusion of the paradise an almighty Creator had once placed here for the enjoymen
t, not pillaging, of his greatest creation, man.

  Yesu, nuru ya ulimwengu.

  There was no reason why at this moment, under this quiet moonlit sky with the sweet rustle of the rainforest’s melody in his ears, a lyric learned in distant childhood should spring so strongly to mind.

  Yesu, Light of the World. The shining central figure of childhood stories taught by his father, read from the Holy Book, reiterated by mzungu and Congolese teachers alike at the Taraja mission school. A light to those in darkness. To the hunted. The brokenhearted. The hurt and the weak.

  But not to me. I am lost in the darkness. Lost with no way out.

  No, he would not be distracted by self-pity. Nor could he continue to lean on a frail old man for counsel. A solution to their current impasse rested like all else on his shoulders alone. If neither justice nor redemption remained for himself, he would not relinquish hope of achieving either or both for his people.

  The rush of wind so filled his ears, he didn’t note the generator’s rumble until the white glare of security spotlights stabbed at the night, destroying its illusion of peace and beauty. But he couldn’t so miss the drone of an approaching aircraft. A helicopter flying by night?

  He was already scrambling back from his lookout perch when he heard the gunshots. He dared not linger for a look. Nor did he call out a warning. His companions would also have heard that approaching drone. With practiced speed, his feet and hands sought out artificial gouges in tree bark that marked a path across treetops. Only when moonlight glimmered on water below him did he descend earthward, more swiftly than prudent because the helicopter was now almost upon him.

  The riverbank stretched away silent and empty from his muddy feet. But a swirl of disturbed water out where the sunken barge lay beneath the surface indicated his companions had preceded him. He was sliding into the water when he spied shadows separating from the base of tree trunks onto the riverbank. He froze long enough to take in moonlight glinting on the knobby disfigurement of night vision goggles, body armor, automatic weapons.