Congo Dawn Read online

  By then they’d scouted out hundreds of uniformed militiamen filtering forward through the rainforest to form a long, ragged circumference several kilometers from the mine. Among them were other foreign warriors such as had blown up the barge. Joseph had instantly grasped the tactic. Was he not a native of this rainforest, his small band hunters?

  A bush hunt with himself and his companions as prey!

  But a bush hunt was effective only on earthbound quarry. And if the militia had drawn their perimeter so close to the mine, that only meant Joseph and his men need not fear the hunt once beyond that line. The greatest danger for their own passage was where the river pierced the militia perimeter. But they’d timed their approach just as twilight darkened to full night. Once a glow of campfires was visible, they’d turned their two canoes upside down, binding them with vines to a pair of snags they’d pulled along for the purpose. Of greater fear had been the aquatic fauna through which they kicked their way beneath the canoes. But flailing limbs had attracted neither crocodile nor hippo, and if guards had noted two snags drifting with the current, they’d raised no alarm.

  Still, even once they’d been able to paddle freely, they’d been slowed by debris, sandbars, the fear of an unseen lunge or dropping snake, especially since the moon had not yet risen to pierce through the overarching foliage.

  Not so on the return trip, which proved much faster than hoped, thanks largely to Michael Stewart. Joseph had heard of night vision goggles, but he’d never had opportunity to observe them up close. Taking up a steersman’s paddle with expertise, the mzungu doctor had called back warnings that permitted them to quicken their paddling until the canoes were flying through the water.

  Though Joseph had not dared risk returning through enemy lines as they’d come. Even a careless guard would notice a snag moving against the current. So they’d taken to the treetops, greatly helped now by the soft, silver illumination of the moon. With his strange goggles to aid him, the mzungu doctor had slipped through the rainforest canopy with little less ease and speed than his own band. Perhaps Michael Stewart’s claim to be a child of the Ituri was not to be scorned.

  They’d now reached the hiding place where Joseph had left his nephew and their wounded companion who’d stayed behind to tend him. The foreigners had shown some tracking skills in uncovering the band’s primary sanctuary. But only a fool provided for a single bolt-hole. This one was another high perch in a hardwood’s leafy crown, but close enough to the rock outcroppings that the outermost branches brushed stone. If its distance from the river made this retreat less convenient, it was also less likely to be discovered. A hollow even held a few backup supplies, including their only remaining stash of explosives, detonators, and weapons captured from the ­supply ­convoys.

  The rainforest canopy’s dense foliage offered protection from a deepening drizzle, but thickening rain clouds had now swallowed up the last glimmer of moonlight, the resulting darkness such that Joseph had risked turning on his palm-size lantern. They’d arrived to find the boy Jacob still breathing, but unconscious, so that his companion had found it necessary to lash him with vines to a branch to prevent him from rolling out of his treetop eyrie. Shielding the light with fronds so that it could not be glimpsed at any distance, Joseph adjusted its beam over the mzungu doctor’s shoulder. “Will he live?”

  The doctor’s hands were busy with the same sharp instrument with which he’d stitched Joseph’s own wounds. “He lives. He breathes. I have repaired the torn stitches. But he has lost much blood, and he was already weakened by his earlier blood loss. He needs to get to a surgical ward to have this repaired properly. And he badly needs a blood transfusion.”

  The mzungu doctor was speaking Swahili for the benefit of Joseph’s companions, words not in a village vocabulary like surgical and transfusion added in a hodgepodge of English and French. Crouched beside his unconscious charge, Jacob’s attendant cradled against his own chest the bullet-shattered forearm that had kept him from traveling with the rest of the band. Shifting position cautiously to reach his second patient, the mzungu doctor waved for Joseph to redirect the lantern beam.

  “To complicate matters, we’ve got to be out of these trees before dawn when Mulroney and Wamba’s forces make their assault. What about the rock outcropping over there? That’s close enough to the mine workings they won’t want to be firing on it. Are there any caves or crevices where we could hole up? At least to give time for my journalist buddy to make his move.”

  Joseph shook his head as the mzungu doctor began swabbing dried blood and flesh. “Dr. Stewart—”

  “Dr. Stewart is my father and grandfather.” The lantern beam caught a flash of teeth. “Michael is the name my friends call me. I hope you believe now that I am your friend.”

  “My friend, yes. I do not know of any caves or crevices close enough to provide shelter. But perhaps with the blasting abandoned, we might find a place among the broken rock to lie hidden. Only we dare not show a light for such a search.”

  “We can use the NVGs. Just let me finish here.” Pronouncing the broken forearm a simple fracture, the mzungu doctor—no, Michael, his friend—rebound the arm with gauze and two thin branches as splints. Then he adjusted into place the night vision goggles. The rest of the band settled in to wait as Michael followed Joseph un­hesitatingly out of the tree fork.

  To ensure a safe distance from the ore blasting, the band’s secondary sanctuary was far enough back along the rock outcropping that it did not permit a view of the mine encampment. Its advantage was that creeping along the huge branches offered an easy leap to the outcropping’s nearest flank. The full moon was again peeping through a gap in the rain clouds, and even without NVGs, Joseph’s hardened bare soles had traced this path often enough to take the lead. They had covered half the distance, keeping well below the ridge where their silhouettes might be visible against setting moon and starlight, when the noise of multiple approaching aircraft dropped both men to their bellies.

  Joseph did not move again until the roar of rotors and engines abruptly died. This time it was his companion who took the lead, slipping forward as silently as any Ituri native until the two men reached a spot where they could stretch out to look down over the mine.

  Joseph didn’t need goggles to see what had brought the heli­copters. Indeed, with the blaze of perimeter lights below, his companion had pushed them onto his forehead. Abandoning their watchtowers, the guards were marching through the front gate to where the heli­copters had settled down on the barren, muddy field outside. Joseph watched, stunned, as they clambered into the helicopters.

  Light skin and hair identified the mine administrator as he climbed in after the guards. The helicopters were lifting skyward when the generator’s rumble died, plunging the encampment into darkness. Joseph waited for emergency lanterns to spring to life. But this time the encampment remained dark and still. As the helicopters winked out of view over the rainforest canopy, the heavy metal panels of the mine’s main gates yawned abandoned and wide open.

  Joseph reached out to grab his companion’s forearm. “Look! We will not need to find a hiding place. They have fled the mine. They are letting my people go! Your friend must have succeeded.”

  But Michael’s low response did not hold Joseph’s own excitement. “Or it’s a trick to draw you out. I saw them do something very similar last night. If it isn’t a trick and your people aren’t still being held prisoners, we should be seeing them down there.”

  Hope had been dashed often enough in recent months for Joseph to see wisdom in the warning. The two men watched, unmoving, to the count of a hundred heartbeats, then another hundred. Joseph’s companion had pulled his night vision goggles down again over his eyes and was scrutinizing the encampment vigilantly. But by the time drifting clouds again swallowed up the last probing ray of moonlight, there was still no movement from the encampment.

  “I fear you are right, and it is a trick,” Joseph admitted sadly. “We must find our hiding place a
nd return quickly for the others.”

  But even as Joseph began sliding backward, his companion let out a soft exclamation. Joseph stopped his retreat. A single shadow had glided forward through the opening of the brush kraal. It moved hesitantly toward the yawning gate, stopping at frequent intervals to turn a head from one side to the other. Reaching the entrance, the shadow stepped outside, then back in. Only then did he raise a shout. A moment later other shadows emerged from the kraal. But these ones were now lighting torches.

  “Would you recognize these guys? Here, take a look.” Pulling the night vision goggles off his head, Michael held them out so Joseph could peer through them. “Are they anyone you know or security guards pulling another trick?”

  It took a moment for Joseph to adjust to the strange green light. The drizzle gave the images displayed a hazy shimmer, but a blaze of white light was identifiable as a torch, while the face below it was unmistakably familiar. “Yes, there is my uncle Kito. And beside him my cousin Moses. They too must have waited to see if it was a trick. We must go get the others.”

  With no urgency to remain hidden, it took only minutes for the two men to reach the hollowed tree fork. Joseph voiced caution. “The docteur is right that we must still be careful. Perhaps it is best to wait until daylight to be sure the soldiers will not return. If our enemy has truly fled from the proof we sent out, others will soon be coming here. Once we see help actually arrive, we will know for sure it is safe.”

  But his words were lost on his companions.

  “If it is a trick, then the more reason we must hurry,” his cousin Caleb argued. “We have not seen our families, our wives and children, in months. We must seize this opportunity.”

  Kavuo, the second cousin with the fractured arm, was even more adamant. “Jacob has told me it was my little Rachel who survived the killers at Taraja. She is now returned to her mother. I must see them.”

  Even the mzungu doctor abandoned his support. “The mine has first aid equipment. I could rig up a transfusion. Joseph’s right that for him it might be best to remain in hiding until we’re sure what’s happening down there. But for Jacob here, I for one have to risk this.”

  In the end they all went, hoisting Jacob between them in a rough cradle of vines. They also took explosives, ammunition, and the two automatic rifles remaining to them. With the moon now set, footing was precarious along the ridge and down the cliff face. The mzungu doctor picked a route through blasted rubble with his night vision goggles. A watchtower joined the chain-link perimeter fence to the face of the cliff. But here, too, a secondary gate stood open, permitting access without circling around to the main entrance.

  A dozen torches blazed in the open area between brush kraal and main entrance. As someone climbed one of the watchtowers, a fluores­cent lantern blinked on. By now the newcomers had been seen. As torches and shadows raced in their direction, Joseph turned on his own lantern and held it high. “It is I, Joseph. We are here!”

  His own band could not run without jostling their burden. The two groups collided just beyond the shattered hulk of the steam engine. The encampment prisoners appeared as astonished at their sudden freedom as the new arrivals. Exclamations turned to joy and wonder as family members found each other. Despite his splint, Joseph’s second cousin had managed to hoist his small daughter into his arms, his young wife patting them both with inarticulate cries of joy.

  Then Joseph, too, was enfolded in a sea of arms. Brothers. Cousins. Uncles. Aunts. No words of censure, but only welcome. Hope blazed into joy as he returned their embrace. It is true! I am forgiven!

  The doctor had already laid Jacob gently on the ground. Family members crowded close with murmurs of “Stewart” and “docteur.”

  “Look! What is happening?” The startled shout put an abrupt end to the celebration. All heads turned to follow a young boy’s outstretched arm toward the main gate. Even in darkness, the gate’s tall double panels could be seen swinging slowly, silently, without any touch of human hands toward each other.

  “No!” Joseph broke into a desperate run. But he was too late. The two panels came together with a loud clang. A dozen other men had joined Joseph, but no amount of pounding, tugging, pushing budged the gate.

  And now in a play right out of Joseph’s own war manual, he caught sight through the chain-link fence of human shapes dropping down on vines or ropes from tree branches on the far side of the clearing. A solid line of them was moving into the open all along the edge of the rainforest. Once again without human touch, the generator rumbled to life. The perimeter security lamps came on, transfixing the prisoners with their bright light.

  All the renewed hope that had persisted in bubbling up in Joseph these last hours evaporated as, in that light, he caught anguish and despair overtaking joy on faces all around him.

  The trap had been sprung.

  His enemy had won after all.

  Robin had long ago replaced a wristwatch with her now-splintered cell phone. So she had no idea how much time had passed. Several hours, surely. Nor in those hours had she glimpsed any Ares Solutions colleague. Her employer was not going to let Robin explain her actions to her teammates.

  Instead Mulroney had dragged Robin to the door of the plane where Samuel Makuga was just arriving outside with several other uniforms. “This woman knows nothing further of value to finding our enemy. Her services have been terminated. You will take charge of her removal from these premises. I do not wish to be troubled by her again.”

  An exultant gleam springing to black eyes was more frightening than anything else Robin had undergone that night. How cleverly Mulroney had phrased his orders so that no one could accuse him of wrongdoing. Yet Robin had no doubt she’d just heard the order given for her execution. Nor after what she’d seen in that massacre footage could Robin hope Makuga’s concept of “termination” was clean or merciful.

  Desperately she strove for a calm tone. “Look, what is your hurry on this? Fire me if you want. I’ll . . . I’ll even give up claim to past wages. But you may still need me. To . . . to talk to Joseph. Or Michael. Maybe even get them to surrender before anyone else gets hurt. I’m sure you want that as much as I do.”

  Robin would let a personnel carrier roll over her before asking Joseph or Michael to surrender to this man. And surely Trevor Mulroney was too astute to swallow that Robin had misinterpreted his directive as a simple job dismissal. But he’d stopped shoving Robin forward. “I’m not looking for surrender. But you’ve got a point that you may still have value as a hostage. As you say, what’s the hurry?”

  Mulroney had locked Robin inside a sleeping compartment at the rear of the plane. Its door was hardly the reinforced bulkhead of a cockpit, and Robin had no doubt she could have kicked the lock open. But she had smelled on Makuga’s accompanying detail the sickly sweet fumes that were not tobacco, seen their dilated pupils. Suggestions at least two separate guards called out when she rattled the doorknob made Robin thankful for a lock between them. A porthole showed more militiamen mounting a perimeter guard around the plane. Beyond them she could see Mulroney and Makuga striding toward the communications trailer.

  So Robin retreated instead to the couch that unfolded into a bed. As prisons went, this one could be far less comfortable. She took advantage of a connecting bathroom. Mulroney hadn’t bothered to confiscate her knapsack, so she fueled herself with a protein bar and bottled water. Eat, drink, sleep—the first priorities of any deployed soldier to be ready when a call came for battle.

  But if she’d managed the first two, sleep did not come so easily.­ Had Trevor Mulroney truly succeeded in reaching across inter­national borders to grab Alan Birenge and his family? And Ephraim. Had Miriam been able to stop the bleeding? Would Mulroney leave the family alone now that he’d gotten his own way? Or would he consider what they might tell friends outside Taraja an unacceptable risk?

  Then there was Kristi. With Robin’s phone in splinters, there’d be no way now for Kelli to get in touch if she tri
ed to call back. Father God, I promised to leave Kristi in your hands. But it’s so hard not knowing! Please be with Kristi and Kelli both in that hospital. And please send your angels to protect Alan Birenge and his family! And Miriam and Ephraim and their beautiful children. Joseph, Michael, and the others, too. Trevor Mulroney thinks he’s so powerful. That he can get away with anything. Like Joseph’s father said, he calls evil good and darkness light. But you are more powerful. You are our light in the darkness. So please, whatever your plans for my own life on this black, horrible night, don’t let Mulroney win. Don’t let evil triumph over good, darkness over the light!

  Out on the airstrip, Robin could now see action. Militia soldiers and Ares Solutions operatives alike were crowding into the Mi-17s. Then a roar of rotors and engines shook the Gulfstream as the two huge combat helicopters lumbered toward the night sky. Robin watched them bank over the rainforest in the direction of the mine.

  Despite the late hour and exhausted muscles screaming for oblivi­on, adrenaline was not going to permit Robin to doze. Digging through her knapsack for some distraction, she pulled out the Bible Miriam had given her before Trevor Mulroney’s posse burst through her front door. Without her iPad search engine, Robin could find few of the references she’d researched earlier. But eventually she stumbled onto the epistle of 1 Peter Miriam had mentioned as offering comfort in her own darkness.

  Yes, there in chapter 1, verse 6 was the reference her earlier Google search had turned up. “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.”