Congo Dawn Read online

  Michael’s grin vanished as he stepped nearer, a hand rising to gently­ cup one side of Robin’s face. Though he did not close the remaining gap, a blaze of fire in his eyes, the tender curve of his mouth so near her tilted chin was as intimate as any kiss. “Shall we give Joseph some company? Together?”

  Robin’s voice shook as she answered. “To the end of the world.”

  “To the end of the world,” Joseph repeated. He had paused in the doorway, intently watching the exchange. Now he spoke again in Swahili, his glance including the entire crowded room. “Michael, you remember the message you brought me from my father. What your own father used to say. ‘Woe to those—’ whether they are mzungu or African—‘who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness’ in pursuit of their own power and wealth. But there was something else my father also said often. Words from the Holy Scriptures your own grandfather first brought to our village. ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’”

  “Yes, of course.” Michael had eased back from Robin, his cupped hand dropping away. “From the Gospel of John.”

  “I was so sure the darkness had overcome the light,” Joseph went on. “But now I know it was only my own eyes that were blind to its presence. These men—Trevor Mulroney, Samuel Makuga, General Wamba, and the others—they can destroy our bodies as they have already destroyed this beautiful paradise our Creator gave to my village. But they cannot destroy the light because the light is more powerful than the darkness. And we have another paradise awaiting us. Did not your father and mine teach that as well? We will meet again.”

  We will meet again. Looking at Michael, Robin saw the same peace that had settled over her own mind. She stretched out her hand. As strong fingers tightened around hers, she turned toward the open door to call out, “Mr. Mulroney, we’re coming out—Joseph and Michael and I. There are wounded and children in here, so please don’t shoot.”

  Hand in hand, Michael and Robin moved after Joseph toward the door. Only as a rustle behind them spread across the Quonset hut did Robin take in that their other companions had risen to their feet, falling into step. Sentries were abandoning their window lookouts, setting down empty guns and bows. Whirling around, Robin announced urgently in Swahili, “No, no, you need to stay here.”

  Jacob’s older brother Nathaniel spoke first, tossing his own bow onto a bunk. “If Joseph goes, I go with him.”

  Behind him, Jacob struggled upright from the bunk bed, yanking the IV from his arm with a grimace of pain and determination. “And I go too.”

  Robin looked from Joseph to Michael, shifting into English to plead, “Tell them they can’t go out! That it’s not safe or necessary. That if they’ll just stay here, we’ll try to negotiate some kind of safe passage for them.”

  Joseph made no answer, but Michael shook his head, shifting also into soft English. “Robin, these people are not children that I, any more than my father or grandfather before me, should make decisions for them. This is as much their choice as it is yours, mine.”

  A middle-aged man had stepped forward beside Nathaniel. If he could not understand their English, he’d read Robin’s expression well enough. “The almighty Creator brought my youngest brother home when we believed him dead. It is on our behalf he has fought evil men, both mzungu and Congolese, who have come here to kill us. If their honor is so small they will kill an unarmed man who surrenders in peace, they will not hesitate to destroy all of us. So let them look on our faces when they do so. We are done hiding. And we will not let our brother die alone.”

  Nods swept the room. A battery of steady, dark eyes held determination, courage, peace. Robin’s eyes were blinded suddenly with tears. She’d prayed for a miracle. Had she just witnessed one after all? She closed her eyes to squeeze the tears away.

  Father God, you are in charge here. I don’t have the wisdom to understand what you are doing. Sometimes you deliver miraculously. Other times you allow human courage and sacrifice to be its own miracle of light in the darkness. Whatever your choice for this day, I leave Kristi and Kelli to your care.

  Opening her eyes, she smiled at Michael, around the room. “Then let’s go.”

  Joseph attempted to step out first. But other villagers were already crowding forward to form a phalanx around him as well as around Michael and Robin so that it was a tangle of bodies that pushed and squeezed together through the narrow entrance. Robin heard Trevor Mulroney’s sharp order as the first villagers began pouring out between brush barricade and stacked barrels. “Shoot! Shoot! What are you waiting for?”

  But no gunshots came. Then Robin, too, was in the open, Michael’s arm hard around her shoulders, Joseph at her other side. Limping badly, Jacob managed to insert his slight frame in front of Joseph. The rest of the villagers fanned out to form a solid mass in front of the Quonset hut. Parents lifted infants in their arms, pulled back small children who tried to run forward. Robin jostled forward to ensure her paler features and red hair could not be missed. Joseph’s older brother had it right. If her teammates were truly willing to shoot her, unarmed and un­resisting, let them look Robin in the face as they did so.

  But still no gunshots rang out. In the brief time Robin had been inside the Quonset hut, the equator’s swift shift from night to day had lightened the stretch of sky overhead from dark gray to pale green. Across the muddy field beyond the chain-link fence, a few stars still lingered on the western horizon. But behind the Quonset hut, the faintest streaks of orange and red were already tinting the eastern horizon above the rainforest canopy.

  Security spotlights were no longer needed to highlight the automatic weapons the Ares Solutions operatives held trained on the Quonset hut. The loaded RPG launcher still lay across the overturned cart. At some point during Robin’s absence, Samuel Makuga had joined the others in the storage shed, his subordinates out on the muddy field no longer squatting shadows, but an army of camouflage and assault rifles.

  The surrounding rainforest was still, its daytime twitter of birds, caw of parrots, chitter of monkeys not yet stirring to greet the approaching dawn. But somewhere in the far distance, Robin caught a drone that was not of nature but an engine. A reminder that their Ares Solutions operation was not alone in flying aircraft over this jungle.

  Then from behind Robin rose a new sound. Deep, rumbling, hauntingly beautiful. “Yesu, nuru ya ulimwengu.”

  A treble took up the harmony, then alto and tenor and the high, shrill melody of children. Robin heard Michael’s deep baritone join in before the words from her childhood rose unhesitatingly to her own lips. “Jesus, Light of the World.”

  Behind the overturned cart, fury was naked on Trevor Mulroney’s face. “What are you idiots waiting for? Do your job! Take them out!”

  It was Ernie Miller who first lowered his assault rifle. “Can’t do it, boss. Not when the perp has surrendered. Not when there’s any risk of collateral damage to the hostages. It’s just too easy for that whole thing to blow.”

  Robin broke off her song to draw in a sharp breath. The sudden tension in Michael’s body, the tightening of his arm around her shoulders, said that he, too, had heard and seen what she was witnessing.

  Then with a shake of his head, the French Algerian lowered his weapon, followed by the two South African commandos.

  Mulroney whirled around. “Hostages! Don’t you get it? There are no hostages here. They’re Joseph’s relatives, his accomplices, the whole bunch of them. They’re as dangerous to this mission as he is. Krueger, you’ve got the shot. Take it now!”

  Robin did not breathe as the barrel of Krueger’s assault rifle shifted slightly to center on Joseph and the boy Jacob, standing tall in front of the rebel leader as though his thin frame could offer an adequate shield. But it was Ernie Miller who stepped forward into the South African’s line of sight. “Not this time, Krueger. Not unless you plan to take me out too. Because that’s the only way you’ll keep this one quiet. Think what you’re do
ing, man! Mulroney may pay our contract, but he doesn’t own our souls.”

  The grizzled American mercenary swung toward Trevor Mulroney. “You just called the perp Joseph. That’s what Ms. Duncan called him earlier. Then you knew who this Jini was all the time. Duncan’s right that there’s a whole lot more to this story—and this mission—than you’ve told us.”

  Robin could not see Pieter Krueger’s expression behind Ernie’s brawny bulk. But after a hesitation that seemed like an eternity, the Ares Solutions mission commander laid his rifle down on the overturned cart. “I don’t really care who Jini is, and I don’t want to know his life history. But Miller’s got a point, boss. We’ve got the target now. Whatever you want to do with him we’ll carry out. But there’s no advantage here to risking unarmed women and children.”

  Robin let out her breath slowly. Was it over then? At least for the villagers?

  The multitude did not need to understand the conversation. They had seen the weapons being lowered. Their song rose louder. So did the drone of an aircraft engine.

  But it was not over so easily. Letting out a torrent of curses, Trevor Mulroney snatched the RPG launcher up to his shoulder and leveled it. Not at Joseph or the choir of villagers, but smack center on the stacked barrels and drums with their attached explosives, just outside the Quonset hut entrance.

  How had it ever come to this?

  Trevor Mulroney’s convulsion of grip on the RPG launcher contained as much perplexity and mounting panic as rage. He was not a bad man. At least not in his own estimation. If he’d killed often enough in Africa’s bloody wars, he’d taken no particular pleasure in it. He’d remained true to his own code of honor. Never go after women and children, unless unavoidable as collateral damage. Never kill one’s own—a white man or woman—unless absolutely necessary or an enemy. Some might consider him ruthless as a businessman, but until recently he’d never crossed the line of international law.

  Mulroney’s first step over the line had not seemed a major one at the time or even avoidable, his need so desperate, his salvation so fortuitously dropped into his lap. One man’s life had seemed acceptable collateral damage.

  After all, this was a war. Not just for his own personal survival. For the survival of an entire way of life. Of free market capitalism, stability, prosperity. For Africa and the Congolese people themselves. If the Ituri had already been ripped apart by warring factions and greed for conflict minerals, only let word get out that an unlimited supply of a scarce military component had been discovered here. How quickly this zone could become a killing field between battling world ­powers, as Howard Marshall had cautioned. Not just China and India, but Russia with its renewed global ambitions. Perhaps even Iran and other Islamic states.

  Was not keeping this treasure in friendly, democratic hands, ensuring stability and peace for the Ituri residents as well as the mining venture, of greater urgency than the life of a single insignificant Congolese native?

  And so Trevor Mulroney had barely hesitated when he’d stepped at last over that invisible line.

  Unfortunately, it had been necessary to leave the youth free until he’d pinpointed the exact location of his discovery. Then Joseph’s tale of a destroyed and abandoned birthplace proved to be false. Still, a single village was not beyond acceptable collateral damage. After all, how many villages might be wiped out should war come to this region? And when the young man’s stubborn tenacity had made the operation more difficult than expected, that too was part of war.

  But now it was all spiraling out of control. Every time Mulroney trussed up one knot, another began unraveling. To kill a bunch of rainforest natives was one matter. Such things weren’t so difficult to hide. To blame even on local allies like Wamba and Makuga.

  Explaining away two American citizens would be more difficult. Doctors Without Borders would hardly leave unquestioned the loss of one of their own. And now a journalist as well? BBC, no less.

  Perhaps he should have accepted Duncan’s proposal. Perhaps it was not too late. As the troublesome female translator had suggested, Mulroney could walk away. Even still retain some return on his investment, however vastly reduced.

  Except reduced profits would not cover Mulroney’s debts. Perhaps not even permit him to hold on to the concession.

  Nor was it too late to win this war. For every unraveling thread, there was an answer. Today’s assault would handle most of it. His Kampala contacts would have the journalist by now. If further fallout arose at Taraja, Makuga would deal with it as he had the other night. If suspicions arose concerning expatriate casualties, a story could be planted. Collusion with an insurgent leader in return for mineral rights was a common enough tale to work. Mulroney’s loyal Africa hands like Krueger and Miller would fall into line once no other option was left them.

  And Howard Marshall had pledged to deal with any wider fallout. The American understood the inevitability and necessity of collateral damage. His vast connections would ensure this all went away.

  It would all work out.

  Some might say Trevor Mulroney was no longer entirely sane as he settled the rocket-propelled grenade launcher to his shoulder and closed his fingers around the firing mechanism. That his desperate grasp for power, wealth, renown, the months spent watching all to which he’d committed his life and future washing inexorably away like sand in an outgoing tide, had left him no longer capable of sound judgment or moral compass.

  Mulroney knew better.

  He was completely sane.

  Entirely sober.

  Fully aware of what he was doing.

  And wholly satisfied with his decision as he closed his fingers on the trigger, releasing the lethal combination of projectile and explosive that would at last secure him victory.

  A clap of thunder put an end to the singing.

  Robin’s move to leap in front of Rachel and other small children was as instinctive as it was futile. A shower of dirt and debris rained down across the mining encampment. Eardrums screaming in pain, it took Robin the space of several heartbeats to recognize she was not only still alive, but unhurt.

  Turning her head, Robin discovered she was not the only one to have moved. As futile as her own gesture, Joseph had flung himself in front of the explosive-rigged barricade toward which the RPG had been directed. Michael was still racing toward the storage shed, where Ernie Miller had knocked the weapon off target and now struggled to wrench it out of Trevor Mulroney’s grip. Hurdling the overturned cart, Michael joined the Vietnam vet in wresting away the weapon. Robin turned her head again cautiously to take in the dust and smoke rising in a thick cloud above fire-scorched branches and thatch, where the RPG round had struck the dismantled brush corral.

  And in all this time, the noise did not abate but grew. As the painful ringing subsided in her ears, Robin could distinguish the roar of rapidly approaching aircraft. Helicopters, from the throp-throp of rotors. And not Ares Solutions aircraft since their three charter helicopters were already on-site.

  New enemies?

  Or was it possible the cavalry had actually arrived?

  Then they swept into view over the Quonset hut. Three Sikorsky helicopters and two Black Hawks. All bearing sky-blue and white markings. One by one, the Sikorskys hovered down to the far side of the storage shed and slurry pits from the Ares Solutions aircraft. The Black Hawks settled into a leisurely orbit low enough one couldn’t miss massive machine guns thrusting from side doors, missiles under their bellies.

  At the storage shed, Trevor Mulroney had relinquished the RPG launcher to watch with narrowed eyes as helicopter runners touched dirt. The Ares Solutions team seemed as uncertain of their next move as the villagers jostling tightly around Robin.

  But even deep in the rainforest, the significance of that sky-blue and white color combination was familiar. As the first blue helmets poured from a Sikorsky, a cheer rose around Robin.

  Robin was not so sanguine, because she’d spotted familiar broad features and huge, powerful fra
me in a medal-bedazzled uniform stepping down among the UN troops. Governor Wamba strode their direction, a detail of his own militia at his back. Keeping stride with him was a Caucasian male with gray hair and weathered features, his suit and tie clashing sartorially with a wide-brimmed Stetson hat and cowboy boots.

  Robin had never seen Mulroney disconcerted. Never thought he could be. But the Earth Resources CEO looked stunned as he stepped forward from the storage shed. “Marshall? What are you doing here?”

  Then his glance fell furiously on a second Caucasian male ­trailing Wamba’s security detail. “Jensen, is this your doing? Consider yourself fired!”

  “No, consider yourself fired!” The man Mulroney had referenced as Marshall turned to the huddle of Ares Solutions operatives now emerging from the storage shed. “Pieter Krueger, right? Haven’t seen you since Angola in ’97. And Ernie Miller, you were one of ours. So you’re running ops with Ares Solutions these days? Well, I’m here to tell you this op’s over. In fact, as of—” the new arrival checked a Rolex watch—“three hours ago, Ares Solutions is under new management. Marshall Corp has bought out your company. That goes for Earth Resources, too. All terms of your current contracts will remain the same. But I want your team packed up and ready to roll out of here within twenty-four hours. Consider this a not-so-hostile takeover. Wamba?”

  At a snap of Wamba’s fingers, the governor’s own security detail hurried forward. “Samuel Makuga and Trevor Mulroney, you are both under arrest for crimes against the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

  A blue helmet stepped away from one of the helicopters. “Just a minute. We’ve got at least two embassies registering charges against Mr. Mulroney here. We’ve been ordered to take him into custody.” The sight of uniforms swarming around Mulroney and Makuga was as incredible to Robin as the compliant retreat of her Ares Solutions teammates.

  But even as she grappled to make sense of it, Michael was striding forward to greet another newcomer heading toward them from a Sikorsky. “Alan Birenge! I don’t know what’s more welcome medicine for sore eyes—you or that UN contingent! How did you pull this off?”