Redemption aka A Conspiracy of Faith

30

The soldiers came in a battered jeep late in the afternoon, one of them yelling that local Doe supporters had stashed away arms in the village school and that she was going to show them where.

Their skin glistened, and they were as cold as ice when she tried to tell them she had nothing to do with Samuel Doe’s Krahn regime and that she knew nothing about any stash of arms.

Rachel-Lisa, as she was then-and her boyfriend had heard the shots ringing out all day. Rumor had it that Taylor’s guerrillas were ruthless, and so they had been preparing to flee. Who wanted to hang around and see if the future regime’s bloodlust could be held in check by the color of a person’s skin?

Her boyfriend had gone upstairs to fetch the hunting rifle, and the soldiers had surprised her as she busied herself hiding the school’s books away in the various outbuildings. So many houses had been razed to the ground that day that she wanted to spread the risk.

And there they were. The men who had been killing all through the day and who now needed to discharge the electricity crackling inside their bodies.

They exchanged words, words she did not understand, though their eyes spoke a language she knew. She was in the wrong place. Too young and all too available in the empty schoolroom.

She darted to one side and sprang up to the window opening, only for them to grab hold of her ankles. They pulled her to the ground and kicked her until she lay completely still.

Three faces blurred for a moment in front of her eyes, and then two bodies were upon her.

Superior strength and overconfidence prompted the third soldier to lean his Kalashnikov against the wall and help his comrades spread her legs apart. They covered her mouth and entered her one by one, whooping hysterically. She drew in air feverishly through sticky nostrils, then heard her boyfriend groan in the room next door. She was frightened for him. Frightened that the soldiers would hear him, too, and make short work of him.

But that groan was all that transpired. His only reaction.

Five minutes later, as she lay in the dust staring up at the blackboard on which only two hours before she had meticulously written the words “I can hop, I can run,” her boyfriend had made his escape, taking his rifle with him. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to shoot and kill the perspiring soldiers who now lay spent at her side with their trousers around their ankles.

But he had not been there for her. And neither was he there when she jumped to her feet and grabbed the Kalashnikov to discharge a round of bullets that tore open the bodies of the three black men and turned the room into an echo of screams steeped in the smell of burned gunpowder and warm blood.

Her boyfriend had been there for her only for as long as everything had been all right. When life was easy and the day ahead bright. But he was absent when she dragged the carcasses onto the dung heap and covered them with palm leaves. And he was absent when she scoured the walls of the schoolroom, washing away the human flesh and the blood.

That was part of the reason why she had to get away.

It was the day before she gave herself up to God and repented her sins so fervently. But the vow she made that evening when she pulled off her dress and burned it, then washed and scrubbed her crotch until it hurt, was something she would never forget.

If the Devil should ever cross her path again, she would take matters into her own hands.

And if in so doing she broke the command of God, it would have to be a matter between her and Him.

As Isabel sped along the motorway, her gaze flitting between the road ahead, the GPS, and the rearview mirror, Rachel stopped sweating. Her lips ceased to quiver, from one second to the next. Her heart rate returned to normal. In an instant, she recalled how fear can be turned into anger.

The dreadful recollection of the NPFL soldiers, their satanic breath and the yellow eyes that showed no mercy, surged through her body, making her clench her jaw.

She had taken action before, and she could do so again.

She turned to her driver. “Once we’ve given Joshua what he needs, I’ll do the driving, OK?”

Isabel shook her head. “You don’t know the car, Rachel. It’s temperamental. It oversteers, for one thing. The lights are dodgy, and the hand brake’s loose.”

She listed other things that were wrong with it, too, but Rachel didn’t care. Maybe Isabel didn’t believe that this pious woman in the passenger seat could match her behind the wheel. But she would soon know better.

They met Joshua on the platform at Odense. His face was like ash, and he was clearly ill at ease.

“I don’t like what you’re saying!”

“I know, Joshua, but Isabel’s right. This is how we’re going to do it. We have to make him know we’re breathing down his neck. Did you bring the GPS like we said?”

He nodded and looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. “I don’t give a damn about the money,” he said.

She took a tight hold of his arm. “It’s got nothing to do with the money. Not anymore. You just follow his instructions. As soon as you see the light flashing, throw the bag out of the window, but leave the money in the duffel bag. We’ll be following the train as closely as we can. Don’t do anything on your own, but make sure you can tell us exactly where the train is if we should ask. Do you understand?”

He nodded but with obvious reluctance.

“All right, give me the duffel bag with the money in it,” she said. “I don’t trust you.”

He shook his head.

So she was right.

“Give me the money,” she demanded, raising her voice now, but still he refused. And then she slapped him hard in the face, just under his right eye, and snatched the duffel bag from his hand. Before he realized what had happened, she had passed the money on to Isabel.

Rachel grabbed the empty bag and stuffed the kidnapper’s clothes inside, apart from the shirt with the single hair inside the collar. On top she laid the padlock and the clasp and the letter Joshua had written.

“Here. And make sure you do what we’ve agreed. Otherwise we’ll never see our children again. Believe me, I know.”

Keeping pace with the train proved harder than she had imagined. Though they had a head start out of Odense, they were already behind before they reached Langeskov. Joshua’s reports gave cause for concern, and Isabel’s comments as she compared the GPS positions of the car and the train grew increasingly frantic.

“We need to swap places, Rachel,” Isabel urged. “You haven’t the nerve for this.”

Rarely had words had such a forceful effect on Rachel. She put her foot to the floor, and for five minutes the roaring engine was pushed to the maximum. It was the only sound they could hear.

“I can see the train!” Isabel suddenly exclaimed as they approached Nyborg, where the E20 motorway bridged the railway. She pressed a key on the mobile, and a few seconds later she had Joshua on the other end.

“Look to your left, Joshua. We’re just ahead of you,” she instructed. “The road veers away for the next few kilometers, so you won’t see us in a minute. We’ll try to catch up with you again on the Storebælt Bridge, but it won’t be easy. We’ll have to stop at the toll station on the other side. Has he called?” She listened for a moment to his reply, then snapped the phone shut.

“What did he say?” Rachel asked.

“Still no contact with the kidnapper. But Joshua didn’t sound like he was bearing up at all. He refused to believe we could get there in time. He kept stuttering, saying maybe it didn’t matter anyway. As long as the kidnapper understood the message in the letter.”

Rachel pressed her lips together. He had said it didn’t matter. But it did. They would be there when the kidnapper turned on his strobe. They would be there, and the bastard who had taken her children would find out exactly what she was capable of.

“You’re not saying anything, Rachel,” said Isabel. “But it’s true what Joshua says. There’s no way we can make it.” Her eyes were glued to the speedometer. But the car couldn’t go any faster.

“What are you going to do when we get to the bridge? There are cameras everywhere, and traffic. And what about the tollbooths at the other side?”

Rachel considered Isabel’s questions for a moment as she swept along in the fast lane, flashing the headlights to clear the way ahead.

“Don’t worry, Isabel,” was all she said.