The Ares Decision

50

Can you hold it out a little more, Sarie?”

She pressed herself tighter to the bars and twisted the padlock in her hands, giving Smith a better angle to attack it with the rusted saw. They’d been at it for hours and he guessed they weren’t much more than a sixteenth of an inch through the hardened steel. But what was the alternative? Sit and wait for death?

His arms felt like they were on fire and the sweat streaming down his nose occasionally choked him as he gulped the blood-scented air. When he nearly fumbled the blade, he finally staggered back and let Howell take over.

Dr. De Vries was standing lookout at the edge of the only passage into the chamber but was too old and decrepit to be counted on for much else. The infected woman imprisoned next to them was weakening fast, lying in mud created by her own blood. She saw him looking at her and lunged feebly at the bars with twisted, shattered hands. It wouldn’t be long now before she was too far gone to do even that. And then Bahame would be back.

Smith pressed his back to the cave wall and slid down into the dirt, trying futilely to find something he’d missed. Some way to get out of there.

“How do you know Bahame?” Sarie said.

Her face and Howell’s were only a few inches apart, and she seemed to be searching his eyes for the answer.

“There was a time we ran in the same social circles,” he said, starting in on the lock.

“It’s a little late to be mysterious, isn’t it? We’re going to die here.”

Howell stopped sawing for a moment. “Dead is dead and almost dead is alive. Very different things.”

He went back to work, and Smith turned his attention to the equipment in the lab. There had to be something there. Something they could use.

He was examining the broken generator against the wall for what must have been the twentieth time when Howell started talking again.

“I did some work in Angola years ago. After it was finished, I decided to travel around the continent a bit. See the sights. I ended up in a village not far from here where an aid agency was working on an irrigation project. They were a man down and I had some knowledge from growing up in farm country, so I threw in for a bit…A tad higher, dear.”

Sarie adjusted the position of the lock and he continued. “Bahame wasn’t the man you see today. He was leading a group of former drug runners and cutthroats on a bit of a pillaging-and-raping spree. I suppose this was before he found God.” Howell smiled bitterly. “In any event, I’d been at the village for about six months when he and his men showed up.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, they overran us quite quickly — the people living there were a peaceful lot. No weapons beyond the tools they used for farming.”

“But you got away.”

“You’d be surprised how effective certain farm tools can be in the right hands. I killed six or seven of Bahame’s men before I was forced into the jungle. I tried to get back, but I’d been shot and couldn’t move very quickly. I’m afraid by the time I managed to stop the bleeding, it was over.”

“Who is Yakobo?”

Howell didn’t answer immediately, focusing his full attention on the lock. “He was a boy whose parents had died and whose aunt and uncle weren’t particularly interested in his upbringing. I helped him out here and there. More trouble than he was worth, really.”

The heaviness in his voice suggested that Yakobo had, in fact, been very much worth the trouble.

“I’m so sorry, Peter.”

Howell stopped and took a step back, signaling that he needed a break.

Before Smith could push himself fully to his feet, though, De Vries turned toward them. “I hear footsteps!” he said in a harsh whisper. “They’re coming!”

Smith put an arm around Sarie’s shoulder, and they moved to the back of the tiny enclosure. She reached up and squeezed his hand, a simple act that magnified the guilt gnawing at him. What had he been thinking when he’d agreed to let her come with them? He’d known damn well that it could turn out this way.

Bahame entered with the same young boy and three guards that he’d used to put Sarie in the cage with them. The system the African had devised was simple, but also all but foolproof: the boy, unarmed and too small to use for cover, unlocked the cage while the guards set themselves up well out of reach with guns at the ready. Undoubtedly, there were additional men strategically posted in the passageway, turning it into a hopelessly constricted shooting gallery.

Smith supposed it was to be expected. No one was going to be happy about being put in a cage with one of the victims of the parasite—​particularly after sitting a few feet away watching what it was going to do to them. Even the gentlest soul could be counted on to risk the most suicidal opportunity to escape.

“What now, Caleb?” Howell said, approaching the bars.

The African smiled and stepped aside as Mehrak Omidi and a tall man in a spotless white turban and galabiya entered. His skin gleamed like obsidian, as did his eyes as they scanned the room. Definitely not one of Bahame’s followers. Almost certainly from Sudan.

“Who’s he?” Smith said.

Omidi didn’t acknowledge the question, instead watching as the man rolled out the prayer rug he was holding and knelt.

Bahame seemed barely able to contain his impatience, fidgeting like a child in church as the man prayed.

“I’d like to show you why you will never win,” Omidi said when the man stood again and swept aside the plastic in front of the woman’s cage. The bars clanged dully when she stretched an arm through.

The Sudanese used a bejeweled dagger to put a long cut his forearm and then held the wound out to the woman.

He wasn’t expecting her sudden burst of strength and was pulled hard into the bars as she clawed at him. Blood spattered his arm and he was forced to grab her hair with his free hand to prevent her from biting him. They fought like that for a full thirty seconds before he finally managed to pull away, his weight and the slickness of sweat and blood finally trumping her superior strength.

He was clearly shaken by his experience and kept his eyes on the woman as he retreated to the sound of her frustrated screams.

Omidi pointed at De Vries. “Tend to Dahab’s wound.”

The old doctor looked to be on the verge of collapsing from fear, but he managed to pull on a pair of surgical gloves and keep his hand from shaking too much to suture.

Bahame grunted and pointed to their cage, prompting the boy with the key to approach and release the lock.

“Dr. van Keuren,” Omidi said. “Please come out.”

She pressed her sweat-soaked body a little tighter to Smith’s. “I think I’ll stay here if it’s all the same to you.”

“You know what will happen to you if you stay. I’m offering you a way out of here. I’m offering you freedom.”

She just shook her head.

Howell had the tip of the saw blade between his fingers, and he turned his hand subtly so that Smith could see the rest of it running up his forearm. A burst of adrenaline throbbed in Smith’s head, further clouding it. The Brit wasn’t suggesting an escape attempt — that was pointless. He was offering to put a quick and painless end to Sarie van Keuren.

“No…,” Smith stammered. Suddenly, it was impossible to separate her from Sophia. Impossible to separate this day from the one he’d watched the woman he loved die.

Omidi let out a frustrated breath and pointed to De Vries, who was winding a bandage around Dahab’s arm. “Kill the old man.”

One of the guards redirected his aim, and Sarie jumped toward the open door to their cell. “Stop!”

The Iranian just smiled and held a hand out to her.

The Sudanese shoved Sarie and De Vries into the back of a canvas-covered military transport as Omidi looked on. Her companions were still alive — a loose end that infuriated him, but one that he would have to tolerate for the moment. They were formidable men, but the chance that they could escape their prison and stay ahead of Bahame’s men in unfamiliar terrain was unlikely in the extreme. Particularly with time running out so much more quickly than they imagined.

“You remember our agreement?” Bahame said as Omidi started toward the cab of the truck. “You will give me whatever the woman discovers.”

“Of course, my good friend. We fight for the same thing. The freedom of our countries.”

That seemed to please the African, and Omidi accepted his hand, counting on the darkness to hide his disgust. Bahame put his own desires before those of God — something he would be made to pay dearly for.

The Iranian climbed into the truck and started the engine, putting a hand through the open window in a respectful salute as he pulled away.

Bahame glowed red in the taillights and Omidi waited until his image disappeared from the side mirror before pulling out a small GPS unit and switching it on. The signal would transmit the coordinates of Bahame’s camp to a Ugandan military force waiting some two hundred kilometers to the southeast.

In a way, it was regrettable. Smith and Howell didn’t deserve the quick death that he was giving them. No, they deserved to die like their countrymen soon would: insane and bleeding.