Havoc

Central African Republic Present Day

Cali woke to the mindless frenzy of gunfire.

With her hotel windows open, the sound seemed amplified. She tensed, waiting for return fire from the jungle that would surely come. Instead she heard the steady beat of a heavy rain and then a burst of drunken laughter. The local troops sent to oversee the evacuation of Kivu had been drinking steadily since their arrival. The lone officer sent to control them seemed to be the worst offender. Not even the six Belgian peacekeepers the UN had dispatched bothered to keep the soldiers from the booze or from smoking the potent marijuana called bhang.

Cali remained on the floor where she’d slept. She’d learned her first hour here that the piebald rug was home to far fewer insects than the bed. Mashed breasts were preferable to being eaten alive by fleas and God knew what else. There had been no water in the hotel when she’d arrived late yesterday so she smelled of sweat, dirt, and DEET. A rotten night’s sleep had done nothing to relieve her aching body following the torturous drive from the capital, Bangui. She rolled onto her back. She’d slept in shorts and a sports bra with her boots lightly laced. Her tongue was cemented to the top of her mouth, and when she finally got it unstuck she found her teeth sticky.

Dawn was slowly creeping over the town. With the approaching sun the canopy of trees outside her room resolved themselves in shades of gray and silver. Mindful that light might attract a burst of gunfire from the drunken soldiers, Cali left her flashlight next to her bedding, slid her arms into a bush shirt, and cautiously went to the window.

The town clung on the muddy banks of the Chinko River, a tributary of the Ubangi, which eventually flowed into the mighty Congo. Kivu had grown around colonial French plantations that had long since been reclaimed by the forest. While mostly built of round mud huts thatched with reeds, Kivu boasted a cluster of concrete buildings arranged around a central square; one was an abandoned government office that now housed the soldiers, and another was her hotel, optimistically named the Ritz, a two-story structure that was riddled with bullet holes after decades of civil war. A quarter mile upriver lay a dirt airstrip that was still serviceable.

Kivu was a tiny island surrounded by a forest sea, an impenetrable expanse of trees and swamp that rivaled the Amazon. There was no electricity now that the owner of the general store had fled with his family and the town’s only generator, no sewer or running water, and the only ready communications with the outside was the satellite phone in her rucksack. Kivu had changed little in a hundred years and it was unlikely to change much in the next century. If it survived the week.

Two weeks earlier, reports had filtered in to the capital that a group of rebels had crossed the border from Sudan and were making their way south in an effort to isolate the eastern third of the country. It was now believed that the vanguard of Caribe Dayce’s Army of Popular Revolution was a mere four days from Kivu. From here it was only thirty more miles to the Ubangi River and the border with the Congo. The government of the Central African Republic planned to make their stand there, outside the town of Rafai; however few believed the CAR’s meager forces would prevent Rafai from falling to Dayce. Any people still in the region afterward would find themselves under the authority of a rebel who found inspiration in Idi Amin and Osama bin Laden.

Cali muttered an oath under her breath.

The Central African Republic was one of the few nations that even the poorest of third world countries could look to and feel proud of their own success. Most mid-sized American companies had more revenue than the CAR. The average person made less than a dollar a day. There were few natural resources, little infrastructure, and absolutely no hope. Why someone would take the time to carve out a piece for himself defied logic. Caribe Dayce would soon make himself the ruler of a few thousand square miles of nothing.

The rain slashed through a thin fog that oozed up from the river, obscuring shapes and making the first stirrings of the townspeople look like ghosts meandering back to their graves. A driver from a relief organization opened the door to his big Volvo truck and fired the engine. The first load of refugees for the day would be on their way out in a half hour or so.

With luck Cali would make it the last miles up to where the Scilla River emptied into the Chinko this morning, check her theory, and be back on the road to Bangui by noon.

She turned from the window, first buttoning her shirt, then using a rubber band she kept on her wrist to tame her red hair into a ponytail. A baseball cap hid the rest of the snarls and tangles. She brushed her teeth with bottled water and spit in the sink anchored to the wall outside the toilet cubicle. She teetered over the seat rather than let her skin touch the filthy commode. She didn’t want to waste her precious water supply so she made do with a towelette from a foil packet to clean the sleep from her face. Using a hand mirror, she applied spf 30 lipstick. Although her hair was a deep shade of red — thank you, Clairol — she still had the pale complexion of a carrottop, with a generous dappling of freckles to match.

Looking at her reflection in the kind light of the dawn, Cali admitted that even in these rough surroundings she managed to look years younger than thirty-seven. In the past year her work had kept her away from home nearly eight months, in places where she was hard-pressed to find enough food to spend her per diem, so she maintained her shape without becoming a slave to a health club.

Shape, she thought without looking down, a nearly six foot bean pole with B cups, no hips, and a flat ass. She didn’t even have the green eyes the red heads in romance novels always seemed to possess. Hers were dark brown, and while they were large and wide-set, they weren’t green. Her older sister had gotten those, along with the boobs and the butt and all the other curves that had attracted men since she’d hit puberty.

At least Cali had gotten The Lips.

As a child she’d always been self-conscious about the size of her mouth. Like any adolescent, she hated to stand out. It was bad enough she had hair that shone like a beacon and that she was taller than all the boys in her class, but she’d also been given a mouth much too large for her face and lips that always looked swollen. She’d been teased about it from kindergarten. Then suddenly, in her junior year of high school, the teasing stopped. That summer her face had matured and cheekbones had appeared, graceful curves that transformed her mouth from something oversized into something sensual. Her lips gained a pouty ripeness that continued to spark carnal fantasies to this day.

Cali packed her toiletries in her rucksack, swept the dim room to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, and headed down to the hotel’s lobby. The eight-room establishment’s reception area was an open space defined by arches along three walls. At the back was the reception desk, which doubled as a bar, and a door leading to the kitchen. A collection of mismatched chairs and tables dotted the flagstone floor. Beyond the arches, the steamy rain came down in curtains. The town’s dirt square had turned into a quagmire. A group of villagers huddled at the back of a truck for their turn to join the exodus. Their few meager possessions were carried in plaited grass bags or piled on their heads.

Cali took a seat near the back of the lobby.

“Ah, miss, you are awake early.” As with many businesses in Western and Central Africa, the hotel’s owner was Lebanese.

“You can thank the assault rifle alarm clock,” Cali said and accepted a cup of coffee. She eyed the owner, her expression asking the question.

“Yes, yes, yes, the water was boiled, I assure you.” He looked out beyond the falling rain. “The troops the government sent are no better than Caribe Dayce’s bandits. I think if UN had not sent observers the government wouldn’t have even come for us.”

“I was in Bangui yesterday,” Cali told him. “It’s just as bad there. People who can get out of the country are.”

“I know. My cousins live there. Many believe that Dayce will move on the capital after he takes Rafai. Tomorrow I will join my family and we go to Beirut at the end of the week.”

“Will you come back?”

“Of course.” He seemed surprised by her question. “Dayce will eventually fail.”

“You sound sure.”

“Miss, this is Africa, eventually everything fails.” He went off to take the order of the truck driver who’d just stepped out of the rain.

Cali ate two of the plantains he’d brought to her table, and left ten dollars. By Kivu’s standards the Lebanese was a wealthy man, but she felt the need to give him something extra, maybe just the knowledge that people on the outside still cared.

She’d parked her rented Land Rover under a crude lean-to in a dirt yard behind the hotel. The rain drumming against its tin roof sounded like a waterfall. She kept her head down as she slogged through the clinging mud, so she didn’t see the damage until she’d slid under the lean-to’s roof. The four bullet holes in the Rover’s windshield weren’t the problem. Nor were the shattered headlights. She could have even dealt with one of the tires being shot, because there was a spare bolted to the vehicle’s rear cargo door. It was the second front wheel lying deflated that did it.

Hot rage boiled. She whirled, looking for a place to vent her anger. The square was quickly filling with people desperate to leave the region. Some soldiers were trying to keep things orderly, while others slouched negligently in doorways out of the rain. None paid her any attention.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered in frustration. She could blame no one or everyone. It didn’t matter. Finding who shot up the four-wheel drive wouldn’t fix it, and without it she was as helpless as the refugees.

Before she left the States one of the old hands in the office had told Cali an expression that seemed strange at the time but now fit perfectly. Africa wins again. The Lebanese hotelier had said essentially the same thing. Everything fails here. If it wasn’t the weather, it was the disease, or the corruption, or the sheer stupidity of drunken soldiers using her truck for target practice. If it hadn’t been so pathetic it would have been funny, like a Buster Keaton farce where he keeps knocking himself down again and again as he bumbles through his day.

Well this explains why the shots I heard were so loud, she thought as she circled the Land Rover looking for other damage. The lone spare mounted above the tailgate mocked her.

There wouldn’t be a second spare in Kivu so she’d have to hitch a ride to Rafai with the refugees. Not only was Rafai bigger, but the military was there in force and only a handful of businesses had closed. If she got a second tire she could return in an empty truck coming back for the next group of evacuees.

And that would waste a day she was sure she didn’t have.

She had landed in the CAR only two days ago, thinking she would have at least a week to get her work done. Then she’d heard about Caribe Dayce’s lightning thrust. She’d rushed to Kivu as quickly as she could, hoping she could get in and out before he overran the town. Could she lose a day and still do it? Were Dayce’s men far enough out to give her the break she needed?

Cali had no choice. She would have to chance it. With luck she would be back this afternoon. She’d reassess the situation then and make her decision about heading farther north. She’d phone in her report after first getting herself a place on one of the refugee trucks. From her rucksack she withdrew a travel wallet and tucked two fifties into her shorts.

She dodged out of the lean-to and ran back to the hotel, her boots sucking at the clinging mud with each rushed pace. The truck driver was hunched over his breakfast, shoveling food into his mouth even before swallowing the previous bite. Two empty plates were stacked at his elbow. A carton of Marlboros rested on an adjacent chair. The hotel’s owner wasn’t leaving anything for Dayce to loot, so everything was going cheap.

She was about to approach when another heavy truck roared into town. Unlike the other vehicles, this one had come in from the north. In the open bed of the six-wheeled diesel were three dozen Africans trying to keep a piece of plastic tarp over their heads. When the truck braked in front of the hotel, the mass of bodies shifted and gallons of water sluiced over the cab just as the driver jumped clear. The full weight of the water poured over his head and ran down his open rain jacket. He looked up through the bed’s stake sides and must have made a face, because children suddenly started laughing.

Cali watched as the white driver raked rain from his hair and flicked drops at the children, eliciting more shrieks of delight. She hadn’t heard a child laugh since she’d arrived in the country. Judging by the bundles of possessions being handed down from the truck, these people had just fled their homes and somehow this man could make their children laugh. She guessed he was an aid worker and they had known him for some time.

Which meant he knew the situation up country.

She looked behind her. The trucker would be at his meal for a while. She stepped back into the rain and approached the stranger. He paid her no attention as he helped people out of the truck, handing infants to waiting mothers and steadying the arms of old men, affording them dignity while making sure they didn’t fall. He was maybe an inch taller than Cali and with his T-shirt stuck to his chest she saw he had a powerful build. Not the grotesque muscles of a weight lifter, but the lean physique of someone who worked hard for a living.

He must have finally felt her presence because he turned. Cali startled. It was the eyes, she realized instantly. The man was handsome, yes, but his eyes, a shade of gray like storm clouds, were riveting. She’d never known such a color existed or could have imagined they would be so attractive.

“Hi,” he said, an amused lift at the corner of his mouth.

“Hi,” Cali replied before gathering herself. “You just came from the north.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Found these people wandering out of the jungle about twenty miles from here. Thought I’d give them a lift.”

“You’re not an aid worker?”

A lanky farmer passed a caged chicken down to the man. He handed it to Cali, making her part of the human chain unloading the truck. “No. I’m a geologist.” He held out a hand. “Mercer. My name is Philip Mercer.”

His occupation took her by surprise as she absently took his hand. For the second time in just a few moments, Cali startled. Even wet, his palm was as rough as tree bark, callused so that the skin picked against her own. She felt strength in that fleeting touch, but also something more. Assurance, confidence, kindness, an utter lack of guile — she wasn’t sure which, or maybe all of them. He held her gaze as he let her fingers drop.

“And you are?”

“Huh? Oh, I’m Cali Stowe. I’m with the CDC. The Centers for Disease Control. In Atlanta. I’m a field researcher.”

“Believe it or not, disease is the last thing these people need to worry about right now.” He was American but had a trace of an accent that Cali couldn’t quite place.

“So I’ve noticed,” she said. “Mind me asking what you’re doing here?”

Mercer slid a large iron cauldron from the truck and set it on the ground. “Prospecting.”

She laughed. “I always picture prospectors wearing union suits with picks over their shoulders and dragging a stubborn mule on a short rein.”

“Only ass here is me. I’m here doing a favor for a friend.”

“My friends ask me to go shopping or help talk through why their current boyfriend is a total creep. You really have to learn to set boundaries.”

It was Mercer’s turn to laugh. “Point taken.”

“What were you prospecting for?”

“Coltan, colombite-tantalite,” Mercer replied. Cali looked disinterested but he added, “It’s used in the capacitors for small electronics. Especially cell phones.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way but I hope you didn’t find any. There are already too many of those damned things in the world.”

“Amen,” Mercer agreed. “And no I didn’t. This was a UN-sponsored expedition. Some functionary from their economic development office in Bangui heard about a hunter who claimed he found coltan on the Chinko River. More than likely he’d smuggled it from Uganda or the Congo, but the UN guy saw it as an opportunity to create jobs in the area.”

“And get his ticket out of here punched, no doubt.”

“Probably. I’ve spent the past six weeks shifting tons of worthless mud, until I heard slaughter season was starting up again. I waited as long as I dared, then sent my workers out. When I packed it in yesterday I found these people along the way.”

“Listen, I ah, I’m planning on heading north tomorrow. How bad is it?”

Mercer stopped unloading the truck to give her his full attention. “Since this corner of the world isn’t on many tourist maps, I assume whatever you’re doing here is important. I won’t try to talk you out of it, but if you really need to head upriver, do it today. Right now.”

“I can’t,” Cali admitted. “Some hopped-up teenager used my truck for target practice this morning. I have to go down to Rafai to buy a spare tire.”

“Then forget it.”

He wasn’t being dismissive, or protective. He was stating a fact as simply as he could. Cali appreciated that, but she also had to ignore his advice. “I wish I could. I have to go.”

Mercer pushed wet hair off his forehead. Cali thought he was calculating a price he wanted for his truck. “How far?”

“Sorry?”

“How far do you need to go?”

“There’s a village on the Scilla River about a mile from where it empties into the Chinko.”

“That’s about a hundred miles north. How important is this?”

Cali answered readily. “One of our researchers came across some medical records put together by a missionary in the late eighties. No one had paid any attention to them. It seems the people in this town suffer from the highest cancer rate on the planet. The CDC believes there may be a genetic cause. If we can isolate it, well, you can figure it out for yourself.”

“Gene therapy to prevent cancer.”

She nodded. “And possibly cure it. I need to get blood and tissue samples.”

“And if you don’t get there before Dayce, those people are either going to be dead—”

“Or so scattered I’ll never find them,” Cali finished for him. “That’s why I rushed here as soon as I could.”

“You’re talking about going further than I’d planned, but I’ll take you.”

“You were going back up there?” Cali couldn’t believe it.

“Why do you think I unloaded the truck?” he said. “I passed a lot more people than I could carry on my way down here. The government’s not going to get them, so someone has to.” His voice went grave. “Just so we’re clear, though. We’re turning around at the first sign of trouble.”

Cali’s tone matched his. This was her best, and probably only, shot. “You got it.”

“Okay, once I get this beast refueled we’re out of here.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He grinned. “Don’t thank me until we come back. Why don’t you wait in the cab out of the rain.”

Mercer watched Cali slide around the battered Ford but didn’t know what to make of her. He was sure that if he hadn’t offered to drive her she would have followed her original plan. It was in the stubborn set of her jaw, but mostly it was the intensity of her eyes. Cali Stowe believed in her mission and he couldn’t imagine much that could deter her. It was a trait he admired because there were few people left who had it.

One of the refugees he’d driven down pressed two tomatoes into his hand as he fed diesel from the drum lashed behind the cab. Mercer was overwhelmed by the gesture. This man had just lost everything he owned, the home he’d lived in probably since he was a child, but still wanted to thank him with perhaps the only food he’d have for as long as it took to get resettled. Mercer carefully inspected the tomatoes, took the best for himself, and handed the other back. Returning the better one would have been an insult. The farmer touched Mercer’s hand and nodded. Behind him his wife smiled her gratitude and hugged her children a little tighter.

Mercer’s thoughts turned back to Cali. As a field researcher for the CDC he imagined she’d been in some rough country before, but he doubted she’d seen anything like this. Yet she’d shrugged off her car getting shot up as though it was a mere inconvenience. That kind of confidence came from experience. He doubted the CDC prepared people for this kind of thing, so he guessed there was something else in her past — military training, perhaps.

That made him feel a little better about driving her north. While he only had one weapon with him, a Beretta 92 pistol, he sensed she wouldn’t freeze if he needed to use it. And for all he knew she had her own gun.

The sudden image of her holding a drawn pistol spiked his pulse. It was the capacity for violence juxtaposed with her delicate features and that sensual mouth. Uncharacteristically, he acknowledged how attractive she was. Uncharacteristically because Mercer hadn’t thought of a woman in those terms in a long time, not since a woman he’d thought he’d loved died eight months ago.

He then found himself circling the same argument he’d faced since her death. He hadn’t told her he loved her until after she was gone, until after there were no consequences to the declaration. He still didn’t know what that meant, or if it had meaning at all. He’d talked about it with his best friend. Harry’s advice was that he should mourn her for a while, miss her probably forever, but not let his guilt make her more than she was. Usually taking advice about women from Harry was like asking a vegan to name a good steak joint; however this time the old man had a point. Harry knew Mercer better than anyone alive and knew how guilt drove him more than any other emotion.

The truth was it was a fear of guilt that drove Mercer, the fear that he could have done more, but hadn’t. That is what pushed him so hard in his professional life. He feared not being able to face the mirror knowing that somehow he had failed at something, really, at anything he attempted. And rather than back down from challenges, Mercer continually set himself tougher and tougher goals. He had no obligation to return north other than his own desire to help those who couldn’t help themselves.

Yet like so many men, he avoided the challenges of his own emotional life. Rather than take time following Tisa Nguyen’s death, he’d buried himself in work. Soon after her funeral he’d returned to the Canadian Arctic where he was under contract with DeBeers. Then it was off for two months on behalf of the Brazilian government to head a task force investigating illegal gold mining in the Amazon rain forest, and then six weeks consulting in Jo’Burg followed by another couple of months working with geologists at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository. As he’d known, the distractions hadn’t healed the wounds, but he felt the scars were less raw, which was why he could see Cali Stowe as an attractive woman.

A gush of diesel erupted from the gas tank and Mercer quickly shut the hose’s valve, his thoughts snapped back to the present. He looked around, chagrined. People were struggling for their very lives while he was rediscovering the first flicker of his libido.

He coiled the hose around the bracket mounted behind the cab and hauled himself into the truck. He slid out of his wet raincoat and stuffed it behind the seat. Cali had changed into a dry bush shirt and had used makeup to cover the dark circles under her eyes and freshen her lips. She was probably in her mid-thirties, but the freckles made her look like a teenager. Mercer smiled at her efforts.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Typical woman, can’t go anywhere without makeup. For your information I’ve been a field researcher for the CDC for five years in some places that make this look like paradise. My makeup kit weighs exactly six ounces and I don’t go anywhere without it.”

“With your fair complexion it’s a good idea.”

Cali stopped and looked at him, her mouth creased upward in a surprised grin. “Thank you. You wouldn’t believe the grief I get from some of the men I’ve worked with.”

“I spend seven or eight months a year away from home,” Mercer told her. “I know how important the little things can be. I worked with a guy in Canada a while ago who carried the remote from his TV set. He said holding it makes him feel he’s back in his living room. Although it really pisses off his wife and kids.”

Cali laughed. “What about you? Anything you carry to make yourself feel better?”

Mercer turned serious. “Not to sound dramatic, but this helps.” He slid his Beretta from behind his back and set it on the bench seat between them. “I thought you should know I have it.”

She nodded. “Let’s just hope we don’t need it.”

The jungle began just five feet from the back of the town’s last building, an arcing canopy of greenery that met above the single dirt track so it was like driving through a living tunnel. For the first half hour they passed miserable groups of refugees trudging south toward Kivu. Mercer stopped at each to tell the refugees that if he had room he’d give them a lift on the way back but to hurry nevertheless. None of the locals had seen or heard Dayce’s army, but Mercer and Cali remained quiet and vigilant as they continued northward.

The rain started to slacken, and even though the windshield wipers made a sound like nails on a chalkboard with each swipe, Mercer wouldn’t turn them off. Too much water was dripping from the trees, and if he had any hope of spotting an ambush, he needed clear visibility.

Two hours into their drive, and an hour after seeing the last group of refugees, they neared the swift Scilla River. The mud brown Scilla was barely fifty feet wide where it swept into the Chinko. A ferry made of empty barrels lashed with wire and topped with corrugated metal was the only way to cross. Mercer was relieved to see that before he’d fled, the ferryman had punctured enough barrels so the flat craft was half-sunk on the near shore. If Caribe Dayce had followed the Chinko down from Sudan, which the rumors said he had, he would have to track east for at least fifteen miles to where the river could be crossed on foot.

“According to the report,” Cali spoke for the first time in twenty minutes, “the village I’m looking for is about a mile to the left.”

Mercer peered into the jungle. While the area where the two rivers met was relatively flat, the Scilla carved through a series of hills so its banks were steep dirt berms. There was no road in, just a narrow footpath meandering along the bluff that quickly grew to eighty feet in height. He backed the truck next to the ferryman’s abandoned hut and killed the engine. It appeared silent for the moments it took for his hearing to return and then he caught the sound of the river, the patter of water dripping from the trees, an occasional bird cry.

“Ready?” he asked Cali.

She eyed him. “Are you taking your gun?”

“Yes.”

“Then, I’m ready.”

On the approach to the village, Mercer and Cali passed what appeared to be an old open-pit mine carved into the top of the bluff. It was a maze of interconnected trenches that covered at least four acres, one long wall acting as a dam to keep the filthy water trapped within from dumping down into the river. Mercer estimated the workings were at least ten feet deep, but as flooded as they were they could have been deeper. He paused at the lip of the main trench, his back to the steep bank and the river. He dropped to a knee, taking a handful of damp soil in his hands and letting it sift from his fingers. Cali stood rapt at the edge of the trench for a moment before taking a small camera from her knapsack and snapping a dozen digital pictures.

Judging by the erosion, Mercer guessed the site was at least fifty years old, possibly older. As he thought about the incongruity of such a mine, he realized he might be able to pin down the exact year the mine was worked, by whom, and at the same time answer the mystery of the village’s cancer rate. He looked more closely at the surrounding topography, noting that the far bank of the river was primarily dark granite while this side contained intrusive basalt.

“I think you can forget your gene theory.” Mercer stood, wiping his hand on the seat of his pants.

Cali gave him a wary look. “Why do you say that?”

“I’m not positive. We need to talk to the villagers. Someone old preferably. Come on.”

“Can you give me a minute,” Cali asked. “I need to powder my nose.”

“Powder your — Oh, sorry. Sure.”

He stayed at the trench while Cali meandered into the jungle. He called to her. “Don’t go out of earshot.”

“Peeing fetish,” she called back. “Like to listen, do you?”

Mercer could tell she was teasing. “Watch usually.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going any farther than decorum requires.”

After five minutes Mercer called her name.

“A minute,” she answered, her voice strained. “Jesus, what do they call Montezuma’s Revenge in this part of the world?”

Mercer kept the instant concern from his voice. “In India I’ve heard it called Hindu Tush. Egypt it’s Tut’s Curse or Pharaoh’s Fanny. I don’t think Central Africa has its own nom de poop.”

“Cute.” Her voice sounded a bit stronger. A minute later she emerged from the jungle. She looked none the worse for her troubles.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Fortunately when I get the, ah, Congo River Runs, it passes quickly. No pun intended.”

“Want me to carry your bag?”

Cali tightened the strap over on her shoulder. “No. I’m fine.”

The village sat atop the bluff with a commanding view of the river below. Ten or so acres of jungle had been cleared to raise crops, manioc mostly. Several near-feral dogs roamed the round huts while a pair of staked goats watched Mercer and Cali’s approach with disinterest, their bodies as scraggly as their beards. It wasn’t until they reached what passed as the village square that the first person came out to greet them, a child of about six wearing an overly large Manchester United T-shirt that fell past her knees. A woman in a print dress dashed from her rondavel and rushed the child back inside. A moment later an old woman emerged from the same hut. Her face was perfectly round and so deeply wrinkled that the only way to see her eyes was by the light reflecting off them. She leaned on a cane made of a tree root and wore a shapeless dress that completely covered her ample figure. She said something in a dialect Mercer didn’t know, an accusatory question by the tone. Her voice was a force of nature that startled birds into flight and sent one of the dogs slinking with its tail curled under its belly.

“Pardon, madam,” Mercer said in French. “Parlezvous Français?”

She stood as silent as a statue for a moment, appraising the two white people, then grunted something into the hut. The child’s mother emerged with the toddler clinging to her shoulder.

“I speak English,” the young woman said haltingly.

“Better and better.” Mercer gave her his best smile. “We’re American.”

The matron said something else to the younger woman. She lowered her child to the ground and went back into her hut. When she reemerged she carried a low stool and set it on the ground behind whom Mercer assumed was her mother, or maybe grandmother. With a groan the old woman lowered herself onto the stool. Mercer half expected the chair to collapse as the woman’s generous backside enveloped the seat.

Mercer and Cali approached a few paces and hunched down near the woman’s bare feet. She smelled of wood smoke and animal dung. In the doorways of other huts Mercer could see eyes watching them — most of them female and all of them older.

“Where are all the young people?” Cali asked.

“Gone into the jungle,” Mercer said bitterly. “I’ve seen this happen before. Other places, other wars. With Dayce on the move, everyone who can takes off, leaving those too old or infirm behind.”

“My God that’s…”

“I know.” The young mother must have stayed behind to care for her elder, though Mercer couldn’t understand why someone didn’t take her baby when they fled. He looked more carefully at the child and understood why. She had a tumor on her neck the size of an orange, an angry reddish mass that if left untreated would soon choke off her breathing. Cancer. Why would someone slow themselves down with a child who would die soon anyway?

“You are very brave to stay,” Mercer said slowly.

The woman said nothing, but her wide eyes filled with tears.

“I have a truck near the ferryboat that crosses the Chinko River. I can take you all with me to Rafai.” As quickly as the tears welled, they subsided and the woman’s stoic expression exploded with a smile. “Tell the others to prepare,” he added. “We can leave in a few minutes.”

“You are from the government?”

Mercer didn’t want to explain to her that her government had pretty much abandoned everyone north of Kivu. “Yes.”

The woman shouted out to the villagers, many of whom had stepped from their mud and thatch huts. In seconds they ducked back into their homes to collect anything of value the younger people hadn’t already taken when they ran away.

“What do you know of the mine on the bluff overlooking the river?” She didn’t respond, so Mercer said, “The holes dug into the hill. Do you know who did it?”

She spoke to the old woman, who in turn gave a lengthy reply punctuated by a wet cough. “A white man came when my grandmother was a child.” That put the time frame right in Mercer’s mind. “He paid the men to dig many holes; then he left with crates of dirt. Some time passed and then more men came. They forced the men of our village to dig more holes and they took away even more dirt.”

“Soon after, did the people of your village get sick?” Mercer touched his neck in the same spot where the little girl had her tumor.

The young mother clutched her daughter’s hand. “That is what my grandmother says. Many children die and many are born with…” She didn’t have the words to describe the horrors of newborns deformed by the ravages of acute radiation poisoning, many of whom probably never took a breath.

Mercer turned to Cali. “I think this is where the United States mined pitchblende during World War Two.”

“I thought that came from the Congo,” Cali said quickly, then stammered, “That is the stuff used in the atomic bomb, right? I saw a special on the History Channel about the Manhattan Project a month ago. I could have sworn they said we got our uranium ore from the Congo.”

“I’m not sure,” Mercer replied. “But someone mined something from here, and judging by the woman’s age I’d guess around the Second World War. Then a short time later the villagers begin suffering what sounds like radiation poisoning. Then it’s discovered this place has the highest cancer rate in the world. The guy who did the initial medical survey probably thought the mine was irrigation canals or something and never put the pieces together. Usually pitchblende isn’t dangerous. It needs to be refined before radiation concentrations are high enough to cause illness. But not here apparently. The natural concentration of uranium 235 was high enough to cause birth defects and cancer.”

The old woman spoke to her granddaughter. She went back into her hut and returned with something in her hands. It slipped when she handed it to Mercer. He picked it up from the ground. It was a metal canteen with a waterproofed canvas cover. The olive-drab canvas was frayed and brittle but remarkably intact. The metal was still bright. It looked government-issue to Mercer. He slid the canteen out of its cover and a scrap of paper fell to the ground. Written on it were the words “Property of Chester Bowie.”

He showed it to Cali. “That’s an American name if there ever was one. I think the History Channel got it wrong.”

The daughter translated what her grandmother was saying. “The first man. He gave this to my grandfather’s father.” The old woman pulled something from around her neck, a leather thong she wore as a necklace. Hanging from it was a small copper object fastened to the leather by a tiny wire cage. “The second men, the ones who came later, gave her this.”

The old woman handed the necklace to Mercer. The pendant was a misshapen bullet. Mercer looked at the woman, confusion written on his face. She hiked up her skirt to reveal one of her thigh-sized calves. The black skin was puckered by a small scar on the outside, and when she turned her leg he saw a much nastier exit scar, the skin shiny and gray even after all these years.

“They killed many of the workers when they were finished with the digging,” the daughter translated. “They used fast guns and just a few escaped into the jungle. My grandfather’s father and all his brothers died.”

Cali looked to Mercer. “I don’t understand. The Americans killed the miners to hide what they’d done?”

“I can’t believe that,” Mercer replied even with the evidence in his hand. “I know the whole project was shrouded in secrecy, but I just can’t see Americans systematically killing innocent villagers.”

“If not us, then—”

Mercer never let Cali finish her question. It was the brief instant of silence, the absence of the omnipresent jungle sounds that launched him into action. In one swift movement he shoved her into the dirt, covering her body with his own as automatic fire erupted from behind them.

The barrage struck all three generations of women. The old woman took two slugs in her chest, the fat rippling with the impact before she fell back off her stool. Her granddaughter and great-granddaughter were stitched across the stomach and head, both dead before their bodies hit the earth.

Banshee cries and more gunfire followed as elements of Caribe Dayce’s army attacked the isolated hamlet. Mercer caught a glimpse of a teenage rebel soldier with an AK-47 nearly as long as he was tall. His young body shuddered as though he was holding a live wire when he fired the weapon into a hut.

Mercer’s first instinct was to save as many people as he could from the onslaught. But with only a single pistol, he knew he didn’t have a prayer, so he opted for his second choice and that was to save himself and Cali. The truck was a mile away and it would take the rebels at least ten minutes to satisfy their bloodlust. They had a chance if no one saw them.

He rolled off Cali, grabbed her knapsack, and started to slither toward the old woman’s hut. He felt Cali respond to the tug and follow him. The hut’s mud walls hid them from the rebels but otherwise offered no practical protection. Once inside, he got to his feet, locked eyes with Cali in the dim light to make sure she was okay, then kicked out the back of the hut. A thin strip of vegetation ran along the crest of the bluff before it dropped to the river. He considered making a dash for the water but there was no cover on the sloping bank. They’d be cut down long before they reached the water, and even if they made it, the river offered no cover. They were trapped between the army of Caribe Dayce and the Scilla. He led Cali into the hedge, not knowing when he’d drawn his pistol but not surprised it was in his hand, a round chambered, the safety off. He’d also given Cali her pack to free both of his hands.

The attack had originated from farther upstream, so Mercer pressed Cali ahead of him. If they were caught from behind he would take the first rounds and hoped his sacrifice would see her clear. They stayed low and Mercer kept a hand on her back to steady her pace. Quick movement would catch the eye of even the least trained soldier.

A gush of smoke overwhelmed them as the rebels put a hut to the torch. Someone within screamed as the thatched roof ignited as though it was soaked in gasoline. The scream was ended abruptly when the roof collapsed in an explosion of sparks. There seemed to be no break in the gunfire. As soon as one weapon went silent, another rebel found a target and opened up.

Mercer didn’t dare look at the carnage behind him as he and Cali threaded their way through the thin tangle of trees and ferns. He’d seen it before. He’d been orphaned by such an attack not five hundred miles from here. His hand on Cali’s back was as much to steady her as it was for himself.

Fifty yards from the edge of the village the strip of jungle ran out. Mercer and Cali paused, keeping low in the shadows of a tree. Mercer finally looked back. Smoke billowed from several huts, and indistinct figures moved through the haze, some firing weapons, others dropping. No one seemed to be looking in their direction. Dayce had assumed his attack would overwhelm the village so quickly that there was no need to station sentries on the perimeter.

The mine was another hundred yards away. The trenches would provide cover, and beyond it the jungle grew thick and impenetrable. Mercer surveyed the ground, picking his route through the barren land, while another part of his brain dealt with the adrenaline overload that was flooding his system. Next to him Cali seemed to be faring better. Her eyes were wide, her body loose and ready.

“We’ll make it,” she whispered, adjusting her pack so it rode high on her shoulders.

“I know.” He forced confidence into his voice.

They struck out, commando crawling across the damp ground, and had made half the distance when Mercer saw a pair of rebels cross the dike separating the mine from the edge of the bluff. Dayce had sent pickets. The rebels were coming at a jog, anxious to join in the slaughter. They would spot the two prone Americans in a matter of seconds.

Mercer was an expert with the Beretta but he had no chance at this range. There was no cover nearby, nothing to hide them. He had no choice and brought the pistol to bear. His mouth had gone stone dry. He watched them come, two boys with bandoliers crossing their thin chests, sandals made of truck tires on their feet, their AKs battered but serviceable. They were thirty yards off when one finally spotted Mercer and Cali lying on the ground. His mouth opened in a surprised O. His partner saw the duo an instant later and his face went savage. He shifted his weapon to fire.

Mercer had his sight picture and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked. The first rebel went down. The next shot was hurried and Mercer was positive the round went high, but the second rebel dropped his AK-47, clutching his shoulder, and began to wail as he collapsed.

Cali and Mercer were up on their feet before the youth had fully fallen. They ran stride for stride, accelerating like sprinters out of the blocks, eating distance with each pace. The distinctive crack of the pistol had created an eerie lull in the gunfire behind them. It lasted just long enough for Mercer and Cali to cover another thirty yards before rebels began firing in their direction.

They covered another ten yards before the gunmen calmed themselves enough to aim. Hornet swarms of 7.62-millimeter rounds cut the air around the fleeing pair, stitching fist-sized craters in the dirt at their feet. A round hit something solid in Cali’s pack and the force of the impact saved her life. She pitched to the ground as a half dozen rounds sped through the space where her head had been.

Mercer barely broke stride as he dragged her back to her feet, then bodily tossed her into the trench now three yards away. She rolled with the impact and fell into the ditch as Mercer leapt over her, hitting the far wall of the eight-foot-wide trench and sliding into the fetid water.

“Are you okay?” he gasped, spitting a mouthful of water.

Cali stripped off her pack, taking just a moment to examine the bullet hole. She tossed it aside and nodded wordlessly, her cheeks flushed and her breathing coming in irregular gulps.

“Come on.” Mercer took her hand and began wading through the thigh-deep water. It would take less than a minute for the rebels to reach the open-pit mine. Mercer and Cali had to lose themselves in the labyrinth and then find a way back out.

They half-ran half-swam, their feet sliding on the slick mud of the trench’s floor. Mercer led her into the interior of the maze so that gunmen at the perimeter couldn’t simply pick them off. He had no idea how many of Dayce’s men would come, all of them probably, but with four acres of trenches to cover he doubted the rebel leader had enough troops to fully encircle the mine.

The dirt walls were sheer and all the corners were still sharp. Their view of the leaden sky was reduced to angular ribbons, like walking through a scaled-down version of Manhattan’s canyons. Mercer hadn’t taken a close enough look at the mine to know the way out of it, but his acute sense of direction had been honed through years working in the three-dimensional network of tunnels in coal, gold, and diamond mines. And while the sun was hidden behind storm clouds, he could judge its direction and thus maintain his own.

Two minutes after tumbling into the trench, Mercer estimated they were a quarter of the way across. He heard voices behind them, far enough away that he knew the men had just reached the lip of the workings, but close enough to make him quicken their pace. A soldier fired off half of his AK’s banana magazine. His cohorts cheered him on. The rebels didn’t have a clue where their quarry had gone.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Cali asked after another minute.

“Not exactly,” Mercer admitted. “But we need to get away from the river, where Dayce is sure to station troops along the main trench. I think our best hope is to get to the opposite side of the mine, nearest the jungle, and hope we can make a break for it.”

“Lead on, Macduff.”

Some of the trenches were long, straight galleries while others dead-ended or branched into innumerable side channels. As he ran, Mercer scanned the edge of the trenches above them, in case rebels had managed to reach the interior earthworks and were searching for them.

They rounded yet another corner. “Damn.”

“What is it?”

“That tree branch leaning against the left wall. We passed it a minute ago. We’re circling ourselves.” Mercer looked back the way they’d come, then glanced at the sky. He could no longer tell where the sun had hidden itself behind the scudding clouds. It began to drizzle.

He turned around and led Cali the way they’d come, feeling a slight hesitation in her step. He didn’t blame her.

The young rebel had already killed three people today, but wanted more. His friend, Simi, would be able to cut six new notches on his AK’s already serrated stock. He had managed to jump the outside trench and had been running along the top of the maze in his search for the whites. Suddenly he saw where the normally calm water sloshed against the side of the channel. They were near. He kept running, his rubber sandals mere inches from the lip of the trench. He turned another corner and saw them. They were below him, running in his direction, their legs hidden by the water, their heads down.

He skidded to a stop and was about to fire when something slammed into his shoulder. His feet slid out from under him. As he fell he managed to twist himself and clutch the ground before sliding into the trench, his assault rifle pinned uselessly under his chest, his feet scraping against the trench, trying to climb back out.

Mercer stopped and raised his pistol, yet hesitated to fire at the defenseless, wounded boy. Who knew how many people this child warrior had killed, how many women he’d raped, how much suffering he’d caused? At that moment, it didn’t matter. Mercer couldn’t shoot him in cold blood. Instead he ran forward and grabbed the boy’s skinny ankle. The rebel shouted out to his comrades as Mercer yanked him off the wall.

The boy splashed into the water and before he could regain his equilibrium, Mercer fired a straight right fist into his face. With a broken nose and several loose teeth, the boy would be unconscious for hours. Mercer made sure the kid wouldn’t drown, tucked his Beretta into the flat holster sewn into the back of his pants, and took the AK-47.

Who had shot the kid? he wondered. Could there be government troops in the area? Is that who took out the second rebel when he and Cali were pinned in the open? Because Mercer was sure his second shot had gone high.

A shadow passed over his face. He whirled, firing from the hip. The first two rounds blew dirt from the lip of the trench; the other three punched blooming crimson holes in the chest of another rebel. An instant later a third rebel ducked his head over the parapet. Keeping out of view, he swung his weapon and sprayed the trench with a full magazine.

His shots went wild as the assault rifle bucked in his hand. Mercer and Cali raced around the next corner. A moment later came an anguished cry as the rebel peeked over the rim of the mine and saw the cloud of blood forming around the friend he’d just finished off. The rebel and three others jumped into the trench and started after the whites.

Hand in hand, Mercer and Cali ran on, staying in the shorter stretches of trench, trying to keep from being spotted, but Mercer knew their wake was as easy to follow as a trail of bread crumbs. At the next corner, he pushed Cali ahead of him and flattened himself against the wall. The pursuing rebels made no effort at silence, coming on like charging crocodiles. Mercer waited another two beats, then rounded the corner.

The AK was at his shoulder and he had complete surprise. He killed the first before they were even aware they were being ambushed. The second went down an instant later. The third dove flat and Mercer fired his last two rounds into the spot where he’d sunk. The body floated to the surface, two neat holes in his back. Mercer threw the gun aside and took off after Cali.

He caught up with her just as she rounded another corner. Twenty paces away a rebel stood in the center of the trench, a rocket launcher tucked under his arm. Mercer and Cali both dropped into the water as the RPG punched out of the launcher and ignited. A blazing trail of fire and smoke corkscrewed down the trench and hit the far wall. The projectile detonated an instant later, blowing a twelve-foot hole in the dam separating the flooded trenches from the steep riverbank.

Mercer erupted from the water, pistol in hand. The instant his vision cleared, he put two rounds in the terrorist’s chest. As he fell back he realized what had happened. With the dam breached by the RPG, the stagnant water began to rush through the opening, worrying at it, eroding the sides so the hole doubled in size in seconds. Caught in the inexorable pull, he and Cali were swept along with the current. Neither could dig their heels into the muck at the bottom of the trench or find purchase on the crumbly walls.

Water swelled through the cleft, a remorseless torrent that bore them like so much flotsam. Mercer cursed and Cali clung to his arm as they were sucked through the opening. They went airborne for what seemed like forever before crashing to the ground, tumbling in the flood, and sliding down the bank amid a batter-thick sludge of water and mud. They cartwheeled over each other and the Beretta was stripped from Mercer’s grip.

When they hit the river, they were pushed far out into the stream but were so disoriented they couldn’t seize the opportunity to escape. Together they struggled back to the bank, choking and coughing up water with every painful breath. Mercer pushed Cali ahead of him as they floundered back to land. Neither looked up until they’d dragged their upper bodies from the surprisingly cold river.

The man was huge. Six four at least, with a broad chest and a head like a cannonball. He wore fatigues, new boots. A leather vest made of some animal hide was all that covered his muscled upper body. His features were cold and distant while his sunglasses mirrored the pitiable figures at his feet. The holster belted around his waist was big enough to carry a railroad gun. He took an unlit cigar from between his teeth and gave a short derisive laugh.

“Welcome to hell, Mr. CIA Man.” The looming rebel removed his sunglasses, revealing deep-set fanatical eyes. “I am General, soon to be Emperor, Caribe Dayce.”