Night of Knives Read online

  The one-eyed man waits inside the plantation's treeline, watching the sky carefully, listening. Then he hustles them further onwards. The trail leads between fields of some knee-high, grassy crop. A little past the mud igloo they veer into the fields, down and then along the base of a steep and stony incline that eventually becomes a sheer rock face punctuated by a pale waterfall. They are led up to and then straight through this curtain of water. Veronica has no strength left with which to be surprised. She barely feels herself getting wet again.

  There is a cave behind the water, a stone chamber the size of a ballroom. The light that filters through the water is dim and flickering. The cave is carpeted by unstable rocks the size of grapefruits, and Veronica falls almost immediately, bruising her hip. She struggles desperately back to her feet. The captives are led stumbling to the back wall. There is nowhere left to go, but Veronica stands uncomprehending for a long time, dazed and soaked, before she begins to understand that their awful journey is over, that this cave is their destination and their prison.

  * * *

  The gunmen sit in a tight circle near the waterfall. The eight captives sit in line near the back wall of the cave, as far from their abductors as possible. At first Veronica focuses on regaining her breath and strength. Her shoulders still hurt enormously, there is an odd crawling sensation all down her arms and hands, and her wrists have been chafed bloody by the wet ropes wrapped around them, but none of this matters compared to the sheer bliss of being able to sit in one place without standing or walking.

  Eventually she recovers enough to wonder and fear what comes next. She looks warily at their captors. They too sit slumped on rocks, exhausted and triumphant. It doesn't look like anything is going to happen anytime soon.

  On top of all her other agonies, she is direly hungry. She has two Snickers bars in her cargo pants, but no way to get them, unless -

  "Derek," she murmurs. They are all still roped together, he is perched on a rock only a few feet away.

  He twitches as if roused from a trance. "Yes?"

  She hesitates. Maybe eating now isn't such a good idea. Maybe the candy bars will be needed more later. And bringing them out now will raise the issue of whether she should share them. On the other hand, she's sure at some point they'll be searched, and she doubts she'll be allowed to keep her Snickers then. "I've got two chocolate bars in my pants. The side pocket, left side. Can you -"

  He nods. She stands with a grunt, moves over to sit next to him, brings her leg against his hands. Her khakis are soaked, and torn in a dozen places. He reaches into her pocket, produces a Snickers bar, strips it quietly of its wrapper, and lifts his bound arms up behind him as high as he can. She bends over, keeping her body between the treasure and their abductors, and grabs it with her mouth. Derek turns around to face her. She offers him the other end, leans her face towards his. He takes the other end of the chocolate bar in his mouth, bites it in half. It is almost a kiss.

  They chew meditatively. It is the most delicious thing Veronica has ever tasted. On the other end of their group, Michael and Tom are with some difficulty redressing Diane in her crumpled shirt. Jacob has almost passed out where he sits. Susan and Judy are speaking, quietly, but there are tears streaming down Judy's broad cheeks.

  "We should give the other one to the others," Derek says quietly.

  She nods.

  "Can you get my Leatherman?"

  They twist their bodies again, arranging themselves so her hands can reach his belt. Her fingers are clumsy, it takes her a few attempts to open the button and pull out the multi-tool, but she manages to palm it.

  "They'll search us eventually," he murmurs. "Hide it under a rock."

  She nods, selects an appropriately dark hollow, and with some difficulty squats down and deposits the Leatherman there. Derek nods with approval as she sits back up on her rock. The tool is invisible to the casual eye.

  There is a roar of delight from their African abductors. Veronica turns and sees that one of the pygmies has just entered the cave, carrying four large bottles of Primus beer in a woven basket. He speaks to the one-eyed leader in a dispassionate voice, conveying a message, as the beer is passed around. The leader frowns, dismisses the pygmy with a contemptuous wave, and looks over to his prisoners.

  Veronica freezes as his eyes fix on her, and then move to Susan. A long moment passes. Then the one-eyed man gets to his feet, walks over to the prisoners, and stops in front of the British girl. Susan stares down at the ground, as if pretending he doesn't exist. She is trembling. All conversation has ceased.

  The one-eyed man grabs Susan by her hair and pulls her wincing to her feet. Then he draws out his panga, severs the ropes that connect Susan to Judy and Jacob, and begins to drag the blonde girl away, towards the waterfall. Veronica stares in horror. There is nothing they can do. She knows she will be next.

  Chapter 4

  "No!" Derek shouts, leaping to his feet. "No! Leave her alone!"

  The one-eyed man stops, a little surprised.

  "Come on, we have to stand together," Derek says urgently to Veronica.

  She hesitates a moment; then she too stands and starts to shout, "Let her go! No! You let her go now!"

  Tom and Judy join in, bellowing and screaming, their voices surprisingly strong. Veronica grabs Jacob's shoulder and tries to pull him to his feet. His eyes open and stare blearily at her.

  "He's taking Susan away, we have to stop him," she hisses.

  The message gets through, and Jacob lumbers to his feet. The one-eyed man begins to walk away, pulling Susan with him, but Derek leads Veronica and Jacob in pursuit, gets in front of him and blocks his path, and starts to shout again: "No! Let her go! You let her go, you can't have her!"

  "Laisse-moi," Susan hisses to the one-eyed man, and Derek switches to French too: "Laissez-lui, maintenant! Maintenant!" Then Veronica joins in the shouting, and so does Jacob, also in French. Tom and Judy add their voices, and look like they would like to come join them, but Michael and Diane refuse to get up.

  The one-eyed man looks annoyed and perplexed by this cacophony of protest, as if confronted by buzzing mosquitoes. He looks over to the other Africans. They seem bemused, but also amused, and they do not seem eager to put down their beers and back him. He frowns for a moment. Then he releases Susan, grabs Derek by the throat and pushes him up against the wall of the cave, pulling Veronica along partway. He is amazingly strong.

  Derek chokes for air, tries to kick and writhe out of the hold, but to no avail. The one-eyed man closes his other hand into a fist and slams it three times into Derek's midsection, and once into his face. Blood begins to seep from Derek's nose. Honour satisfied, the one-eyed man lets his victim drop to the rocky ground, and turns to Veronica. She quails - but all he does is shove her away, back towards the inner wall of the cave.

  She and Jacob manage to half-carry a stunned Derek back to the others. The one-eyed man retakes his position with his men, grabs a bottle of beer, and drinks deeply. Derek drops heavily onto a rock, stunned, barely able to sit without falling. Veronica leans towards him and looks carefully into his eyes. To her relief his pupils seem undilated; he has not been concussed.

  Susan sits beside them, keeping Derek between her and the Africans, looking as if she might shatter at any moment. She asks, hesitantly, "Are you all right?"

  Derek manages a smile that's mostly wince. "I'll live. I think. We have to stick together. We can't let them divide us."

  "They're not going to kill us," Veronica says, reassuring herself as much as anyone else. "We're worth too much. They'll ransom us."

  "Not necessarily," Jacob says quietly.

  Everyone looks at him. Veronica is surprised he is making any contribution to the conversation at all. Jacob's face is still pale with exhaustion, both his voice and his whole skinny body are trembling, the back of his T-shirt is dark with blood that has leaked from his whip wounds - but his eyes are steady, and he no longer looks faint. He looks angry.

 
He says, in his faintly nasal voice, "The reason we had guards today was six years ago a bunch of interahamwe came into the park and captured fourteen tourists. They eventually murdered eight. The English speakers. They let the French go."

  Susan's grip on Derek tightens. Veronica swallows. Everyone here is a native English speaker, although it seems Derek, Jacob and Susan can also get by in French.

  Derek shakes his head. "No. If these guys came intending murder we'd be dead already. They didn't march us all the way here for fun. I think Veronica's right. Ransom." He takes a breath. "But I also think if something goes wrong they won't hesitate to cut their losses."

  "Meaning… " Veronica's voice trails off.

  "Meaning killing us all," he says grimly. "So our job is to try to make sure nothing goes wrong. I've been thinking this over all day. Escape, I don't think that's a realistic option. Sorry. We're too far from anything, we stand out too much. Even if we got away somehow they'd track us down too fast. There's no sense even trying, we'd just piss them off. But we do know people are looking for us. That chopper was flying too low for anything else. We need to keep our eyes out for opportunities to signal where we are, and to take any that come up, if we can do so safely."

  Veronica stares at him. The whole lower half of his face is covered with blood, but his voice is clinical, as if he is discussing business objectives, not their very survival.

  "What?" he asks.

  She shakes her head. "You just - how can you be so calm?"

  "I'm not. I'm a security professional, I was in the military, I've seen action before. You learn to suppress your panic reflex, that's all. I'm just as scared as you."

  Veronica doubts it.

  Jacob says, "They've got phones."

  Everyone looks at him, surprised.

  Susan asks, "Phones?"

  "Guy over there has a cell phone, I saw it when we got up just now. He was reading a text message or something on it."

  "It can't actually work. Not out here," Veronica says.

  "It's not impossible. I work at Telecom Uganda, their competitors provide service in the Congo too, with reasonable coverage from what I saw. And radio's a weird medium. If we're anywhere near a town, there might be pockets of service around."

  "But I thought - how do they have cell phones here? I thought there wasn't even any government."

  "There isn't," Derek says. "But there's still a lot of money out here, and there's not exactly a war any more. Just good old-fashioned anarchy. The UN keeps a pretty good lid on the cities, but we can't expect them to march out here looking for us. It's probably some local warlord's territory, they'd start a firefight if they came in."

  "Do you think that's who sent them?" Veronica asks. "The local warlord?"

  "I have no idea."

  "The point I was trying to make," Jacob says waspishly, "is that if we can get our hands on one of their phones, we can use it to call for help."

  Derek frowns. "Remember that mud igloo we passed? This is the middle of buttfuck nowhere. I seriously doubt phones work anywhere near here."

  "Doesn't matter," Jacob persists. "They have them because they work somewhere. We get a phone somehow, we write a text message, it goes in the outbox, they recover the phone, they go to town or wherever, and the message gets sent as soon as they walk into signal range."

  There is a pause as the others absorb this.

  "Not bad," Derek concedes. "But it'll be hard to grab one long enough to write a text. Probably the second most valuable thing these guys own, after their guns."

  "Anybody got a better idea?" Jacob asks.

  Nobody does.

  "Okay. So keep your eyes open for their phones," Derek says. "But remember that priority number one is to make sure nothing goes wrong. We don't necessarily want army troops finding us and storming this cave. The best way out of this is to be traded for a big bag of US dollars. Until then we have to stick together and make sure they don't abuse us. We should go join the others."

  Veronica realizes she, Derek, Susan and Jacob have instinctively formed a tight group, a little apart from the other four. This makes sense, their foursome drove from Kampala together, Derek knew each of them before they came here, and they are all in their late twenties and early thirties, whereas the others are one or two decades older - but all eight of them need to be a single indivisible group. They get up and move across the cave, assemble into a rough circle.

  "Love what you've done with the nose," Tom says mordantly to Derek.

  "Thanks. I always thought it was too straight. Is everyone okay?"

  "We're fine," Judy says, meaning Tom and herself. "I may never want to walk another step again as long as I live, but otherwise fine. But Diane -"

  Diane doesn't look good. She is sitting slumped on the floor, her back to the wall, breathing shallowly, her head lolling, her eyes unfocused.

  "She needs a doctor," Michael says to Derek. His voice is hoarse. "Tell them that. Tell them we've got money at home, lots of money, we'll get them whatever they want. We have to get her to a doctor. If they just give me a phone I can get them half a million dollars."

  "I'll tell them," Derek says. "When I think they'll be receptive. That's not now."

  Michael looks like he wants to be furious but can't muster the energy. "Listen, you son of a bitch -"

  "Come on, man," Jacob interrupts. He points out the line of blood on his neck. "Don't kid yourself. You think they give a shit about us? They came this close to cutting my throat out there. They would have if I couldn't have made it. There's probably no doctor inside a hundred miles anyways. Best case, we're all going to be here for days, probably weeks. Don't start making trouble now. You'll just make things worse."

  "Trouble? Trouble? Look at my wife. Look at her. She might, she might be dying here. You have to go tell them to get help. You have to go tell them right now." But Michael's voice sounds hollow, like he knows in his heart that Jacob is right, pleading with their captors will be useless.

  Veronica kneels next to Diane and examines her closely. The wounds on her back have clotted, blood loss couldn't have been that severe. She doesn't look dehydrated. Marathon runners sometimes die from hyponatremia, the opposite of dehydration, but that's clearly not the problem either.

  "She's in shock," Veronica says. "Does she have a heart condition?"

  Michael shakes his head. "No. Always been healthy as a horse."

  "Then it's probably not cardiogenic. Just psychological shock and exhaustion. I think she'll be better once she rests."

  Better but not healed, Veronica doesn't say; psychological shock often leads to post-traumatic stress disorder, and she has a nasty feeling there will be plenty more trauma to come before any of them get out of this.

  "Are you a doctor?" Judy asks.

  "A nurse. I used to work in an ER."

  Michael seems reassured. Veronica doesn't tell him she hasn't practiced for seven years.

  A figure breaks through the curtain of the waterfall, a strong man carrying a woven thatch basket strapped to his back. The cave fills with clanking noises as the basket is emptied. The one-eyed man takes a length of chain in his hands, stands, and turns towards the captives. He is smiling. Veronica shivers.

  * * *

  They start with Derek. First they take his shoes, watch, belt, and camera, his little day pack, and everything in his pockets. Then they wrap a length of chain tightly around his ankle, seal it with a small steel padlock, and run the other end through the fist-sized natural hole in an oblong rock the size of a watermelon. Susan is next to be stripped of her possessions, which are piled with Derek's near the waterfall. Both the chains looped through the anchor rock are fastened to a large padlock, its hasp almost too big for the fingernail-sized links. The locks and chains are rusting but solid.

  Veronica is next. She rises to her feet as the one-eyed man approaches, tries to be cooperative. She doesn't resist as he searches her roughly, not even when his hands squeeze and linger on her breasts and crotch. Sh
e tells herself at least he's only touching her through her clothes. She tries to pretend she isn't really there, that this is happening to someone else. Her pockets are emptied. Her second Snickers bar is taken. She wishes she and Derek had eaten it instead of saving it for the others.The cigarettes in her cargo pants are soaked, useless, and Veronica feels a sudden and powerful pang of regret that she hadn't smoked them. She would maim for a cigarette right now.

  When he removes her belt he discovers the Celtic knot tattooed onto the small of her back, and traces its lines with his rough fingers. She stands motionless until he begins to probe beneath her waistband, then she pulls away and turns around, ready to shout and fight back at last - but he is already crouching before her, wrapping a chain around her left ankle, pulling it tight, locking it with one of the little steel locks. It won't impede circulation, but she knows it will chafe her skin raw, and there's no way she will get her foot loose. The other end of the chain, which is about twenty feet long, joins Derek's and Susan's chains on the big padlock. Veronica sits back down on her rock and stares dully at her new chain anklet. At least they have all been chained together, they will not be dragged away one by one. It is thin consolation.

  Soon they have all been attached to the anchor rock, and the big chromed padlock is snapped shut. No key is in evidence. Veronica is thirsty again, and desperately hungry. She watches as all their possessions are collected in two jute sacks. At least she managed to hide Derek's Leatherman. That's something. Maybe Derek can pick or smash the lock and lead them all to escape. Maybe he's Superman and he can just fly them all out of here.