The Eden Prophecy

CHAPTER 43

Hawker’s thoughts drifted back to Africa.

The quiet of a humid night was broken by the sound of thunder. It drowned out the constant buzz of crickets and cicadas.

Hawker stared out through a warped screen door made of rotting wood and mesh, held together by rusted nails and a coat of peeling and faded paint. The door never closed right, but pulled tight it kept most of the insects out.

The rain began to pour through the darkness of the night. It rattled the corrugated tin roof above, hitting so hard that it sounded more like hail than rain. A second wave of thunder rolled in from the southwest, crashing overhead and shaking the fragile house like an earthquake.

A second later a bedroom door opened behind him. A young woman of no more than twenty came running out, startled and wide-eyed. Not a touch of makeup or even a wrinkle marked her tan face. She seemed to relax when she saw Hawker.

“I dreamt that you left us,” she said, pulling her black hair back in a ponytail and sounding relieved to be wrong.

“I’m not leaving without you,” he said. “I told you that.”

“I know but if Father doesn’t …”

Before she could finish, the phone rang. The sound was peculiar, tinny and dull, as an old worn-out bell inside a rusted metal housing barely managed to function. Hawker picked up the faded plastic phone and held the receiver to his face.

“Right,” he said. “I figured that.”

Sonia looked up at the ceiling in frustration. She knew what was being said.

Hawker hung up the phone.

“He’s not coming back tonight,” she said. “Is he?”

“They’re not giving him much space,” Hawker said. “They’ll keep him at the lab as long as they can.”

“I swear he wants to stay here,” she said angrily. “He doesn’t see what’s happening.”

She looked outside at the pouring rain. Hawker followed her gaze. Somewhere out there, somewhere through all the rain and the jungle and the danger was freedom and a normal life.

Sonia wanted it. Whatever reasons she’d had for coming with her father to Africa, months as a virtual prisoner had been enough to override them. But freedom had been slipping further and further away.

If Hawker hadn’t interfered months ago, she might already be in the generals’ possession, either as a slave or a bargaining chip or both. If that wasn’t enough to fear, the generals’ men, white mercenaries and black soldiers all, looked at her as if she were some prize they might claim.

Why not? She was beautiful, young, healthy. And this was central Africa. You took what you wanted by force. No one asked questions.

Despite his efforts to protect her, Hawker knew a day would come when the general or some of his men gave up caring about repercussions. One day, in this land Sonia would face rape, imprisonment, and eventually death.

Hawker had finally beaten this truth into Ranga’s skull. And despite Ranga’s faith in Hawker as Sonia’s bodyguard, Hawker knew that if someone important decided that day had come, all he could do was make it costly for them.

As he watched Sonia, her chest heaved and fell in a sort of controlled panic. She moved to the sink in the small kitchen.

“Everything is flooding,” she said, turning on the faucet. “The water will be no good in the morning. We should run some and boil it, so that way we have good water to drink on the journey and—”

Hawker walked up beside her and gently turned off the tap. “We have enough,” he said, putting his hand on hers and pulling it away from the spigot.

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Then we should go,” she said, her voice cracking. “We can’t keep waiting. They’re going to know.”

He could hear the panic in her voice, months of living on the edge having chipped away at everyone’s calm and resolve. The last two weeks had been the worst, planning to go each night, postponing it because of the rain or the fact that Ranga was held at the lab or other reasons, including a gut feeling Hawker had that they were being watched.

Their biggest fear was that the generals would suspect their plans to leave. To avoid that suspicion Ranga kept working hard at the task they’d assigned him, and Sonia and Hawker did their best to act as if nothing was wrong. But fearing that someone was watching you had a way of making people act just differently enough to tip off those who were watching.

On previous nights, during a break in the weather, Hawker had spotted military vehicles parked on the dirt road or even patrolling where they’d never bothered to before. Like Sonia, he feared that something had been given away, but to act rashly would only tip their hand.

He’d seen no one this evening. Perhaps that was because they’d planned to keep Ranga at the lab. Or because they knew the rains were coming hard tonight.

He glanced outside. The downpour was turning the dirt road into a bed of oozing red clay. A drainage ditch Hawker had dug to funnel water away from the house was already filled and flowing like a small river.

“We can’t go yet,” he told her.

“When can we go?”

“I don’t know, but not yet. Not tonight.”

She looked away, fighting the internal struggle, shaking her head at thoughts only she knew. Her eyes were welling up, her chest heaving and falling as if panic was setting in. She looked as if she might burst into tears, but instead she grabbed the keys to their four-wheel-drive truck and ran for the door.

She bashed open the screen door, crossed the flat wood planks that served as a porch, and rushed out into the pouring rain. Hawker chased her, grabbing her as she reached the truck.

“Look at this!” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the rain. “Look at the roads. We can’t drive in this.”

“Neither can they!” she shouted back.

“We can’t ford the river if it’s flooded. So if we go now, the only way across is the bridge at Adjanta,” he said. “They’ll have a hundred men there; you know they will. The only thing we can do right now is keep it together and wait out the rain.”

“There must be another way,” she said.

He shook his head.

“There must be,” she begged, as if he could make it so.

Tears streaked her face, mixing with the rain. She pulled from Hawker’s grasp and slumped down in the mud, her back against the truck. Her face registered surrender, exhaustion, and despair.

“I don’t care what happens anymore,” she said. “I just need it to happen and be over with.”

“Sonia, just hang on,” he said, crouching beside her.

“I can’t wait any longer,” she said, sobbing. “Father will never leave. Even if we all die here. He’ll never go.”

Her hands fell heavy into her lap. The keys splashed into the mud. In some ways she was right: Twice they’d had chances to make a break for it during gaps in the weather, and twice Ranga had found some excuse why they couldn’t go just yet.

Reaching forward, Hawker put an arm under her legs and one around her back, scooping her up. She was limp, a rag doll, exhausted by an obsession and a life no twenty-year-old should have to live.

“Look at me,” he said, holding her against his chest.

She turned her eyes toward him.

“I promise you,” he said. “I promise you, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. When the rains pass we’ll go. If your father doesn’t want to come then he can stay on his own. But I’ll take you out of here, whether he comes or not.”

Her head fell heavy onto his chest, her arms wrapped weakly around his neck, and her body shook with chills and sobs. He carried her across the porch, up the two steps, and back into the house.

He brought her to the kitchen, placed her down on the counter, and brushed the wet hair off her face. He smiled at her and stretched for a towel. It was just out of reach.

“You’re going to have to let go,” he said.

“I don’t want to.”

She stared into his eyes and he sensed that calmness had returned to her. The fear was gone; she felt safe in his arms. And Hawker had to admit it felt good to have her there.

She leaned forward and kissed him. When he didn’t pull away, she pulled him closer, holding on tightly and kissing him harder. He kissed her back, feeling the warmth of her body through their wet clothes and giving in to feelings he’d kept at bay for months. Feelings that Sonia had made clear to him but Hawker had chosen not to act on.

It wasn’t that she was too young; she wasn’t. She was twenty. He was only thirty. It wasn’t that he worked for her father. Or that they spent their days as virtual prisoners who could not let their guard down. Those reasons had never really mattered, and to whatever extent they had, they evaporated as he kissed her and pulled her close.

In the heat and the passion of lust and love and breaking away from the fear, all thoughts left him except one: The moment he got Sonia and Ranga to freedom, to some civilized part of the world, he would have to let her go. There was nowhere for this to go, nothing ahead except pain for both of them.

That thought lingered, even as they pulled off each other’s soaking wet shirts and their hands began exploring each other’s bodies.

“Take me with you,” she asked, giving voice to Hawker’s lingering fear.

“I can’t,” he said. “It won’t be good for you.”

“It can’t be worse than this,” she said.

“It’s always worse than this,” he said. Until recently, guarding her and Ranga had been like heaven. Whatever was next would be closer to hell.

“I don’t care,” she said, her eyes closed, her words breathless as she pressed the side of her face against his. “I don’t care.”

Hawker wanted not to care, but he knew in his heart that he couldn’t do that to her. Not if he loved her. Not even if he didn’t.

The door banged open behind them. Hawker turned with a start.

Two men in fatigues, one white, one black, stood there. The white man held the keys to the truck.

“You lose these?” he said.

The men had been watching. From where, Hawker didn’t know, but this was a bad sign. It may have tipped their hand.

Hawker turned and stood with his back toward Sonia. He put his hands against the countertop. His fingers found a knife.

“That’s a nice piece of ass you got there,” the white man said. He turned to the black soldier. “What do you say we get some of that?”

As the man spoke, Hawker gripped the knife and charged. The white soldier swung his head back around just as Hawker slammed into him, plunging the knife into his chest. Gunfire sprayed into the floor and off to the right as the soldier squeezed the trigger on his weapon reflexively.

Hawker pushed him back, slamming him into the black soldier. The three of them crashed to the ground. Hawker pulled the knife out and plunged it into the black soldier’s neck. It erupted with blood. The man’s head tilted back and his eyes rolled up.

Hawker held it there, held the two men down as they died. And then a shot rang out.

He snapped his head around in time to see a third soldier fall in the doorway.

He turned back to the kitchen. Sonia held his pistol, her hands shaking. She and Ranga had sworn they would never kill, but to save him Sonia had done just that.

Hawker stood, grabbed one of the rifles, and scanned the terrain outside the door. A military jeep with a hardtop sat there. It appeared to be empty.

He backed up to Sonia. She was still shaking, still aiming the pistol where she’d fired it.

“It’s okay,” he said, helping her to lower the gun.

Her eyes blinked and she refocused on him as the sound of thunder rumbled again.

“Put this on,” he said, handing her shirt back to her.

She nodded slowly and slipped her arms into the shirt.

“We have to go,” he said, pulling his own shirt on.

She seemed confused. “What?”

“We have no choice now,” he said.

She turned to him and instead of fear or concern, all he saw was relief. They would finally be leaving this horrible place, and whatever happened they would never be coming back.