Page 67 of Murder Island
I grabbed my flashlight out of my pack and aimed it up. When I switched on the beam, a chill shot through me. I dropped the light and scrambled to my feet. The roof of the mine was quivering and alive. It was packed from front to back—with bats! While I was sleeping, they had flown home to roost.
I grabbed my backpack and weapons and vaulted over the barricade. I could hear scratching and squeaking behind me and I swore I could feel tiny claws in my hair. I hunched over and slapped my head with both hands. But all I felt was my own sweat.
For a second, I wondered if I could have slept right through a bat bite. What if the rabies virus was alreadycoursing through me? I checked my arms and felt my neck. No pinpricks or blood dots. At least none that I could feel or see. But I shuddered just the same. I’d been spending the night with a few thousand pointy-fanged killers.
I needed to get away from the mine opening, as far and fast as possible. It was still dark, but I could gauge my position. I turned west, facing a dark curtain of green. I raised my machete. Before I could swing, I heard a chop.
Then another.
Somebody else was cutting through the jungle. More than one person. Maybe twenty yards away.
I heard more blades swiping, then the wet stomp of shoes and the rattle of metal equipment. I saw the flicker of headlamps. I ducked down and saw shapes moving through the underbrush. Men and boys with heavy weapons.
It looked like a small army.
CHAPTER 84
ABAI WAS LEADING from the rear, waiting for the point men to clear a path with their blades before he ordered the whole column forward. He knew that his men were wishing they were back on the water right now. Because this was a punishing trek. Hot, humid, and buggy. Even in the middle of the night, the temperature was still in the nineties.
Two days back, the flotilla had landed near Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast. From there, a fleet of trucks and jeeps had transported the militia across the savanna and through the upper bulge of Zambia. But here, in the thick of the jungle, motorized vehicles were useless.
Besides, Abai didn’t want to announce his arrival. The grueling hump through the jungle would pay off in the element of surprise. He had the destination from Captain Savage—a small copper mine near Kolwezi, in theLualaba Province. Mission: eliminate the two primary targets. As a bonus, take back the mine.
Bilan was standing alongside the commander, rifle across his shoulders, waiting for the path to be cleared. “Forty men,” said the warlord’s son. “For two people?”
“The force fits the mission,” said Abai curtly.
Abai couldn’t wait to turn his troops loose. The boys were itching for a fight, and the captain had warned him that his targets would not go down easily.
CHAPTER 85
KIRA WAS TUGGING on her chains in her nightly quest to find a comfortable position. She was in Hemple’s tent, with the day’s sweat still crusted on her body. Her back and joints ached from bending and kneeling for fourteen hours straight.
And she was alone.
Vanda and the other workers were quartered in their squalid tent city just below the compound. But Gurney made sure that Kira got special treatment. Every night after she climbed up the ramp from the pit, her wrists were zip-tied and she was led back to the compound at gunpoint. She was apparently considered the ultimate flight risk.
The truth was, Kira thought she might be safer here than she would be in the tent village with her coworkers. Many of them still considered her a demon, and she knew they wouldn’t think twice about stabbing her in her sleep.
But here, sleep was hard to come by.
The tent was never totally dark. A small lamp hung from the ceiling, casting an eerie yellowish glow all night long. And it drew bugs. Kira was constantly shaking her head to get them out of her hair and clenching her lips to keep them out of her mouth.
She sat on the hard-packed dirt floor, with the chains wrapped tightly around the post behind her. For the first few nights, she had tried to work the post loose, but she soon realized that it was set in concrete. It wasn’t going anywhere. The lock was out of reach above her, and none of the contortions she tried brought it any closer.
Kira’s mind was restless and resourceful. It was how she’d been trained. But at some point every night, her machinations about escape were overcome by her desperate need for rest. She had reached that point now.
She inched back against the post, which was the only support for her head. She had figured out that if she slouched at just the right angle, she could nod off for a few minutes at a time, pooling enough precious energy to survive another day. Those were the times she found herself thinking about Doc, dreaming she was with him, swimming in warm, clear water…
Kira felt herself drifting into that cloudy nether state. Then, suddenly, she felt a gloved hand clamp tightly over her mouth.
Her eyes popped open. Her heart was racing. She whipped her head around, but the post blocked her view. A second later, she felt the chains loosen around her torso.
“Stay quiet.” A woman’s voice.
The glove slipped off her mouth. Kira could move now. She rolled onto her knees and stood up in a crouch, hands up, ready for anything.
In the glow, she could see the intruder. T-shirt, jeans, dark ponytail. Kira knew the face in an instant. It was Lial. She had a gun pointed at Kira’s forehead.