The Wrecking Crew

CHAPTER 16

Klea slept in Jonah’s arms as if she’d hadn’t slept for a thousand years. He held her tight, her body pressed into his, cradling her head against his shoulder, running his hand through her short, dark hair, around the curve of her ear, against the nape of her neck. He kissed the crown of her head like a whisper.

“Colin, it’s too early,” she moaned, so quietly Jonah could barely make out the words. Then she nuzzled closer, sheltering herself against him in the quickening heat of the early afternoon, their third day at sea.

They hadn’t spoken much, not since her little ruse on the morning of the first day. Jonah appreciated her ease with silence.

Sometimes they’d sit far from each other with hands outstretched, barely brushing the very tips of their fingers against each other, as if anything but the slightest contact would overwhelm the senses.

Other times, mostly in the cool evenings, she would crawl over and curl up on top of him, so much so that her much smaller body would be completely suspended upon his, not one stray toe touching the inflatable raft.

With no speaking came no complaining. Jonah understood three days without eating was simply an immutable fact, no more changeable than the sun in the sky.

They’d gone through significantly more water than he’d had anticipated. The orange tent over the raft turned the small inflatable vessel into a floating greenhouse. Try as they might to catch the wind with the tent flaps, the exercise was futile. Jonah couldn’t risk repositioning the raft by paddling with his hands. His hands would accumulate salt and sores would soon follow, to say nothing of passing sharks.

Eyes closed, Jonah first felt a gentle, almost imperceptible nudge against the side of the raft. Then a shadow fell across nearly half of the tented canopy. He shook Klea awake. She startled at first, but Jonah held a single finger to his lips, and pointed for her to hide in the far corner, as far from the open tent flaps as possible. It wouldn’t be good to reveal a woman on board the raft, not until he knew what he was dealing with.

Jonah struggled towards the entrance. He hadn’t realized how weak he’d become, every movement felt like a battle against gravity and his own tired, wasting body.

He threw open the flap and shielded his face against the morning sun with his hand. The bow of a sixty-foot wooden fishing vessel curved over him as it nudged the raft like a collie herding a lamb. The vessel was local to the region, with an assortment of garish whites, blues, yellows, and reds painted over the wheelhouse and curved glassless windows.

An older man leaned over the side of the bow, staring down at Jonah, his dark face framed by day-glow-orange hair and beard. Two middle-school-age boys stood beside him, resembling him in the way that only sons resemble their father. They looked a little young for pirates, a good sign.

“Assalamu alaikum,” said Jonah, using the traditional Islamic greeting.

“Subah wanaagsan,” said the father, smiling to reveal a jack-o-lantern grin and pink gums.

“English?” asked Jonah. The father shook his head. Jonah smiled back, stuck an index finger in the air signaling for the man to wait, and briefly ducked into the tented raft again.

“I think we’ve got a ride,” Jonah said to Klea. “But they don’t speak English.”

“That won’t be a problem,” she said, pushing her way past him to reach the tent flap.

Jonah realized he shouldn’t have been surprised when Klea stuck her head out of the tent and spoke to the father in rapid-fire dialect. He wasn’t able to see what was happening, but Klea seemed to be holding her own in the very animated conversation. While he’d been in prison, he didn’t pick up much more than the essentials of Moroccan-accented Darija Arabic; Klea’s fluency was more evidence that she was a quicker study than he was. Within moments, she ducked her head back inside.

“So?” asked Jonah.

“So he’ll help us. I told him my husband accidentally set our ship on fire, and we were forced to abandon it. He says he’ll bring us to his home, but he can’t guarantee his village is safe for westerners.”

“Thanks for making me look like a moron,” Jonah said with a laugh.

“My pleasure,” said Klea with a sly smile. “Thanks for playing the part so ably.”

The fisherman navigated his boat to the side of the raft, using its mass to shadow against the intermittent ocean breeze. Jonah grabbed a waterproof bag, stuffed his pistol inside, and climbed up first, standing to reach the scuppers, then pulled himself up like a rock climber. It felt good, wonderful even, to stretch and use his muscles after three days of virtually no movement.

Fighting off a wave of hunger and dizziness, he brought himself up to his full height on the deck, easily dwarfing the father and two boys. The sons laughed and poked at his neoprene wetsuit with their fingers, amused at the sponginess of the futuristic material.

Jonah wondered what he was supposed to do now. Shake hands? Bow? Hell, he’d dance an Irish jig for the fisherman if thought that would help. The father just smiled at him, offering no clues. Jonah pressed his hands together like a prayerful child and bent slightly. “Thank you,” he said with every ounce of earnestness he could muster. He hoped his appreciation translated, but couldn’t tell for certain. The father, still smiling, waved Jonah away. It’s nothing, the gesture seemed to say.

“Here,” Klea called, stretching to hand over the remaining water bottles to Jonah, who took them and handed them to the boys. The two boys scampered away to secure the bottles in some unseen corner of the painted wheelhouse.

Plumbing his last reserves of energy, Jonah reached down and lifted Klea out of the raft, pulling her light frame to the safety of the wooden deck. The father clicked the wheezing engine into gear and the life raft slowly fell by the wayside, bobbing in the waves, as the fishing boat pulled away. Jonah knew the life raft would someday wash up on shore of some distant coastline, be it days or months. It’d be pushed against some sharp rock or branch and puncture, deflating like a cast-off skin. The bright orange would fade to a gentle pink and eventually to a dirty white. Sun damaged, it would slowly disintegrate into strips. And then there’d be nothing left of the proud Horizon.

The father, still smiling his wide nearly toothless smile, slapped himself on the chest gently and said, “Burhaan.” He pointed at Jonah and Klea.

With a glance at Klea, Jonah patted his own chest and said, “Jonah.”

Klea repeated the process and then pointed at the boys. Burhaan beamed as he introduced his sons, Qaasin and Madar, and then he took Jonah by the hand and led the two Americans into the wheelhouse. It was then that Jonah noticed the man had only one arm — the other, which Jonah initially thought was hidden behind the man’s back, was missing from the shoulder joint, without so much as a stump to indicate where it should have been. Still, with deft movements, he opened a clean wooden box to reveal a slab of thick, doughy lahoh bread covered in lamb and onions and swimming in a dark red sauce that smelled of basil and sweet tomatoes. Jonah’s mouth started watering, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Burhaan spoke to Klea, pointing at the food.

“He’s asking us to eat,” she said.

Jonah didn’t need to be told twice. He and Klea dug in with their bare hands polishing off half the contents, but making sure to leave enough for their rescuers.

Soon the food settled and Klea nodded off, her body fatigued with the effort of digesting an unexpected meal. Jonah lifted her into a hammock in the wheel house just as she was about to fall out of her chair, and then joined Burhaan and sons on the rear deck.

The fishermen cast their nets overboard with a skillful twist. Jonah watched as the nets spun open and sank into the light blue waters. With another twist, the fishermen drew the nets back, empty more often than not, but occasionally with a host of wriggling, flopping fish. There was a casualness to the affair, a simplicity. The brothers each pointed out their larger catches and laughed when the other brought up an embarrassingly small catch or drifting plastic from a far-away land.

Qaasin, the older of the two boys, saw Jonah watching and gestured for him to take his net. His father scolded at first, but then allowed to attempt to duplicate the elegant twisting, flinging motion. With his first try, Jonah managed to dump most of the net directly overboard. When he drew it back, it was a hopeless, tangled mess without so much as an errant piece of seaweed trapped within. Jonah aped helplessness and sent the boys into peals of laughter.

The next two casts were minor improvements, until the fourth, when Jonah mastered the exact twist of the wrist and the angle of the cast. The net flew out beautifully and dropped into the water. He retrieved it with the reverse motion. A single panicked fish flopped within. Jonah removed it and tossed it in the bed of the boat, the fish landing on a small but growing pile. His rescuers nodded in approval.

The manual labor allowed the stress of the past few days to slough off Jonah’s shoulders. He practiced the precise motion of casting the net, enjoying the reward of a successful retrieval. In what felt like minutes, Jonah noticed the sun was now low in the sky. The father retreated to the wheelhouse, steering the fishing vessel towards the distant Somaliland shoreline, drawn in by a restless sea breeze. They were going home. The fact that it was not Jonah’s home didn’t seem to matter.

Sitting in a hammered-copper tub with his bare knees nearly touching his chin, Jonah let Qaasin and Madar gleefully pour an entire bucket of fire-warmed water over his body. He ascertained he was in the men’s side of the fisherman’s family compound. The home itself was some Soviet bureaucrat’s vague notion of a coastal dwelling. What was left of the mummified structure with its crumbling façade, broken windows, and peeling paint stood surrounded by traditional-style huts and a timber wall ringing the perimeter.

The two boys scrubbed at his scalp and face with fierce thoroughness. Their small hands were better than the high-pressure shower nozzles on the Fool’s Errand. His thoughts briefly drifted to Klea, to the gaggle of smiling young women that had taken her by the hand and lead her away. To the sly smile she shot at him as she disappeared. To her dark brown eyes and smooth pale skin. To her mouth on his, hot with desperation, with the need to feel alive.

Behind Jonah, Burhaan prepared a pan of mysterious, sweet-smelling oil. Orange hair blazing in the cool courtyard, he poured a small amount into his palm from a repurposed bottle of engine coolant. He rubbed his lone hand against his own bare chest, warming the oil. Suddenly, his hand was on Jonah’s neck, shoulders, and back, nimbly finding each tight muscle, each bundled cluster of nerves.

Jonah slumped in the tub, eyes closed, air leaving his lungs in a long, relaxed sigh. Finished, Burhaan motioned for Jonah to stand up. He shooed his two sons away, and they ran off, laughing and pushing each other.

“Okay,” said Jonah, shrugging. He stood up, dirty water flowing off his naked body and into the copper tub.

Burhaan held two small white ceramic bowls in his hand, each with a hinged ceramic cap. He flipped opened the first, revealing a foul-smelling yellow liquid. Before the American could react, the father dabbed two fingers in the bowl, quickly covering Jonah’s slashed shoulder and stitched abdomen with a thick layer of yellow animal fat.

Setting the first aside, Burhaan then did the same with the second, this time with a thinner, lighter shade of the same yellow. He treated Jonah’s developing salt sores, to the American’s profound relief.

I never want to see that wetsuit again, thought Jonah. Not after those three days of suffering in it. He hoped he wasn’t expected to squeeze himself back into it once his wonderful bath was over.

Burhaan placed the ceramic bowls back in their hiding place in a small nook built into the side of the nearest hut, and returned to Jonah’s side with a tin can full of a deep brown powder, offering it to Jonah.

“What is this?” asked Jonah, taking the offering. He pointed at his mouth. “Is this food?”

Burhaan shook his head and gestured to his own orange hair. It wasn’t food; it was henna hair dye, the same he’d used for himself. Jonah briefly considered taking him up on the offer. It’d certainly get a rise out of Klea, might be worth it for that reason alone, but Jonah politely declined.

The two boys returned, carrying with them a kilt-like man’s dress. Jonah stepped out of the tub into a pair of waiting sandals, and allowed the boys to secure the dress around his waist. It was made of clean, soft cotton and dyed with a beautiful red pattern.

The kilt was joined by an open-necked cotton shirt with short sleeves and an intricate abstract sun pattern embroidered on the chest. Burhaan, Qaasin, and Madar wore their versions loose, but the shirt stretched tight across Jonah’s chest, shoulders, and biceps.

A bell rang in the courtyard, and Burhaan ushered Jonah and the two boys inside the main building. The main room had been stripped of walls and converted into a large family gathering area, bedrolls piled in the corner and a low wooden table surrounded by sitting mats. Jonah sat on the father’s left, and the two boys on his right. Three women walked in carrying hot dishes of bony silver fish, yellow rice and minced goat, each with unique and distinctly aromatic chutney, tamarind, and green pepper sauces. The women wore a Somali version of traditional Islamic dress, ornate robes and skirts with sashes and embroidered cloth.

He’s a polygamist, thought Jonah; flashing the father a knowing smile as the women busied themselves with preparing the meal. Not just a polygamist, but probably a village elder as well, maybe even the leader of a small clan.

The beaded entranceway between the women’s side of the compound and the main building parted, and Klea entered with a Somali woman on each arm. She’d been scrubbed clean and clothed in an immaculate wrap-around dress cinched at the waist with an embroidered belt, and her hair shone as it peeked from underneath an ornate purple hijab, complementing her fair skin and dark eyes. She flashed Jonah a little smile and proudly showed him her hands as if showing off a new manicure. The women had been busy — both of Klea’s hands were adorned with an elaborate henna pattern, crossing her palms and the back of her hands before disappearing up her forearms and toward parts unknown.

Klea sat directly opposite Jonah, maddeningly out of reach. He wanted to be close to her again, even if that closeness meant only the soft brush of his fingertips against hers.

“You’re very beautiful,” he said.

“I think this is a wedding dress,” said Klea, blushing as she acknowledged the complement. “It’s all they had in my size.”

Jonah laughed. “As you can see, I’m tough to fit in this part of the world.”

“I’m liking your skirt,” teased Klea right before Burhaan motioned for all in attendance to begin. Klea and Jonah obliged, and after a few minutes of uninterrupted eating, Jonah looked at Klea until she caught his gaze.

“I need you to translate,” he said.

“M’kay,” she answered, her mouth still full.

Jonah reached for the waterproof pack he’d taken from the raft and slowly withdrew his polymer pistol. He’d already disposed of the bullets, casting them into the ocean from the deck of the fishing vessel. Everyone in the room stopped to stare. Jonah carefully showed everyone the slide was back, the chamber empty. He laid the pistol flat in the palms of his hands and, with head slightly bowed, presented it to Burhaan.

“Tell him this is a gift,” said Jonah. Klea gulped loudly and translated.

Burhaan accepted the pistol, nodding wisely, testing the weight in his hand. He said something and handed it to Qaasin. The boy ran the weapon into another room and returned unarmed. Burhaan spoke in rapid-fire dialect to Klea.

“He says he could not possibly accept such a fine gift,” she translated. “It’s a tribal platitude. He completely intends to keep it.”

“Tell him the gift is barely worth a mention in comparison to his kindness and hospitality.”

“I don’t know the word for hospitality,” mused Klea, before choppily translating the message.

Burhaan smiled and clapped Jonah across the back like an old friend, then said something to Klea. She answered him without translating for Jonah.

“Yeah, he definitely liked it,” she said to Jonah. “Rifles in this area represent power, but pistols convey status. He asked the construction, I told him it was German. I think he was happy with that fact — said Germans make the best firearms.”

Everyone began talking at once and soon the plates were empty and the wives cleared the low table with the same order and efficiency with which they’d served the meal. The father gestured for Jonah and Klea to get up and join him as he exited the main building and the compound.

Jonah’s kilt hung just above his sandals, but Klea’s dress brushed against the sandy ground, forcing her to hold the hem up to the amusement of the other villagers gathered along the beach. Though the sun had set, the moon was nearly full, and several gas lanterns and other fires kept the small village illuminated with a low flickering light.

Jonah acknowledged the villagers as they passed, some of them reaching out to touch the tanned skin of his hands, others pulling at his short, blonde facial hair.

Despite the earnest warmth of the assembled villagers, Jonah felt something was wrong. A small cough here, a rattling exhalation there, a woman unsteady on her feet, a strange smell of sickness. Jonah realized his elaborate meal may have been more than many of the villagers had seen in some time.

“Come on,” said Klea, pulling at Jonah’s hand.

“What is it?” asked Jonah.

“He wants to show us something.”

Breaking away from the group of villagers, Burhaan stepped onto the beach, his bare feet sinking into the soft, immaculate white sand. He said something to Klea, but she shrugged, not understanding. He repeated himself, a little frustrated, pointing at his arm. Jonah caught a word — Bettencourt.

“He says Bettencorps is responsible for his missing arm,” said Klea, looking up at Jonah. “This is a great dishonor to him — forced to eat and wipe… well, you know. There is no dignity in this.”

“How?” asked Jonah, examining the stump. It looked like a clean amputation competently stitched closed. Maybe not surgical, but certainly performed by an able hand and a sharp implement. Burhaan spoke quickly, forcing Klea to interrupt to translate.

“He was fishing,” said Klea. “And he found a round metal object. He thought it might be worth something, so he looked at it closely. It was leaking a yellow liquid, which ran down his arm when he held it up to the light. It smelled terrible, like peppers — peppers? I don’t know this word. But he threw it back in the ocean. His skin began to swell with terrible blisters that covered his entire arm. Very painful. Eventually a local doctor was forced to remove the arm. I think he’s describing an infection.”

“Probably a mustard gas grenade,” said Jonah. “I’ve heard similar stories coming out of Italy, the Baltic Sea, even the American eastern seaboard. Fishermen find some strange artifact and they have a reaction like he described. Turns out it’s an old piece of chemical munitions.”

Burhaan waited for Jonah and Klea to finish talking and then went on with his story. Klea listened closely, asking him to slow down so she could follow.

“He says it got worse,”

“His arm got worse?” Jonah asked.

“No — the situation became worse, not for him, but for his village. Over the past three years, many people have become sick with strange symptoms, many have died. He says it is the fault of Bettencorp, Anconia Island. But he’s not calling it Anconia Island. He’s calling it… I have no idea what he’s saying. Sun-killer? The moon of death? I’m at a loss.”

“Death Star?”

Kleah translated and Burhaan nodded and repeated the words in English. “Death Star.”

Jonah drew in a long breath. “If anything could earn the name Death Star, Anconia Island would be it.”

Burhaan continued and Klea translated. “He says they’ve been piling what they find over here,” said Klea, pointing to the far end of the beach.

As Burhaan and Klea followed, Jonah led the way across the beach towards a distant dark pile. The villagers didn’t follow. Soon it became clear that the pile was a large collection of rusting barrels and tanks, all washed up from the sea and leaking.

“Apparently this is just some of it,” Klea said.

Jonah studied the pile. Collecting for years, it’d easily take four or five semis to even attempt to remove it all. He leaned as close as he dared, coughing as toxic fumes poured off the pile. He recognized multiple warning labels and military designations in Italian and Cyrillic Russian. Jonah guessed it was a collection long-obsolete munitions. Hell, a couple of the larger barrels looked like Cold Warera submarine depth charges.

“They’ve got to get rid of this stuff,” said Jonah, more to himself than anyone else. If even one of the explosives nestled in the pile cooked off—

“How?” asked Klea.

“I have no goddamn idea. Can’t burn it. Can’t bury it. Hell, stick it on a raft and mail it back to sender. Makes sense that the rest of the world would send their shit out here. Nobody’s going to be looking for it, not in this godforsaken corner of the ocean.”

“Everybody in the village seems affected,” said Klea. “When I was being dressed, I noticed most of the women had sores and burns. I didn’t know what to make of them at first.”

“Ask him about the children,” said Jonah, his voice catching on a lump in his throat. Klea nodded, and passed the message along. Burhaan responded animatedly as they backed away from the toxic pile.

“He says Qaasin and Madar are not growing as they should and that he’s worried for them. He’s already lost a son and two daughters to disease. And the same ailments have struck many of the village children. Many stillborn babies, too many to be by chance. He says he feels sometimes that his village is cursed by Allah.”

“It’s no curse,” Jonah said through gritted teeth. “This was done intentionally.”

Klea didn’t catch up to Jonah until he was already nearly two full miles down the beach, walking alone in the moonlight. He hadn’t said much since seeing the pile, disappearing soon afterwards. Old habits die hard — and for him, solitude was a familiar respite.

“Don’t leave me like that,” said Klea, half-running, half-walking to match his pace.

Jonah nodded, slowed his step and came to a stop. He sat down on the sand, looking towards the moonlit waves. Klea sat down next to him and slipped her hand around the back of his arm.

“Burhaan says we can hitch a ride on a truck,” said Klea. “His brother-in-law is on his way down to Mozambique with a load of sheep and he always stops by the village for a meal. They’re expecting him soon, maybe even tomorrow. There’s a US consulate there. We may have to hide in the back through some of the militia checkpoints, but that will be a cakewalk compared to what we’ve already done.”

“It’s a good plan,” said Jonah.

“We could go home.”

“Home for you,” he said. “Not for me.”

“You’re an American,” said Klea. “Why can’t you go back? What did you do?”

“Not me. I didn’t do anything. It was my father.”

“What could your father have possibly done?”

“It’s a long story.”

“It’s a long night.”

Jonah squinted at Klea. She wasn’t going to give up, they both knew it. He begrudgingly set aside his resistance and started to speak about things he’d long held inside.

“Growing up, it was just my father and I,” he said. “On paper, he was a mid-level functionary that specialized in security requisitions for American consulates and embassies in hot spots, areas with sudden political or social upheaval.”

“But off paper… he was what? CIA?”

“Yeah, CIA. By the time I was in the picture, his boots-on-the-ground days were long over. He was a section chief, ran all intelligence and covert operations in whatever region they’d placed him, usually to clean up someone else’s mess.”

“And your mother?’

“No memories of her. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I’m fairly certain she was one of his intelligence assets. I think she was killed not long after I was born. My father rarely spoke of her.

“I was left with my grandparents when I was very young, but that couldn’t last forever. Pops eventually took me with him. I spent a few months at a time in DC getting dropped into upper-crust private schools. We didn’t have the money — government salary, after all — but my father certainly had the right connections. Then we’d spend the rest of our time at whatever embassy he’d been assigned. If the CIA needed him there, it usually meant that most of the other kids had already left for home due to safety concerns. I got pretty good at sneaking out and hanging with local kids, when that was too dangerous, I’d hang with the marine guards.”

“Seriously?”

“Sure. Once they got over the fear of my hard-ass dad coming down on them for letting me follow them around, they were usually pretty cool. Treated me like a mascot. Dressed me up in oversize battle-rattle, took me down to the weapons range, let me pop off some rounds. They’d have me play hostage sometimes, and when I got older I got to be the ‘hostile’.”

“You liked being the bad guy,” Klea said with a smile.

“Loved it,” said Jonah. “Speaking of which, have to tell you this one story. So we get a new squad into the embassy, right? They think they’re tough shit. Commander says he’s putting them through the ‘kill house’—the standard urban combat room-clearing exercise on base. They’re talking among themselves; they say they’re going to set a new course record.

“Commander laughs, says they’re going to be up against one guy. And then he trots me out. I’m fourteen at the time. All the Marines can do is stare; they think it’s some kind of a joke or something. Eight tough-as-shit Marines against a fourteen-year-old Foreign Service brat.

“Suspecting a set-up, they take no chances. I find a hiding spot in the kill house and they come in hard. They figure the commander is lying to them and they’re going to face off against a whole squad. After all, Marines have turned fucking with each other into an honored art form.”

“But it was just you.”

“Just me. And I’m hiding in the ceiling, wearing my fake haji clothes. They clear the place, then they’re all just standing around, baffled. Wondering what they’re doing, why they’re all just standing around with nobody to shoot at. Some of them start saying they got the time wrong, they’re not supposed to be there for another hour or two. One of the Marines separates from the others; I drop out of the ceiling and pop a paintball into his facemask.”

“Was he pissed?”

“Hell no. He got it instantly. You ever play sardines as a kid? It’s the type of hide-and-go-seek with a bunch of people. They all break apart, whenever someone finds the hiding person they have to squeeze in with them. So sure, I pop him in the face, but now he’s on my side. He can barely keep from laughing out loud as I steal his helmet, vest, and rifle, put it on myself. Now I’m looking like a mini-marine.”

Klea laughed, trying to picture the ridiculous scene.

“So I stalk from room to room, shooting these guys one at a time. None of them know what’s going on, they just know that they started with eight, now there are five, then three, the bodies are stacking up. And once these guys are down, they say nothing. They’re in on it too. Comes down to the last guy — the squad leader. I walk right up to him and stick a rubber shock-knife up against his nutsack. Never saw it coming. They called him electro-nuts for the next six months.”

“And your father didn’t care that you were running around, electrocuting Marines?”

“At the time, I thought he didn’t know. Eventually, I realized he knew everything. Hanging with Marines, dating local girls, all the other shit I got up to.”

“He didn’t care?”

“I think… I think he just knew me well enough to let me explore the world. Growing up in embassies was tough, especially when your dad was up to his eyeballs in secretagent shit. He knew I needed to find my own way.”

“He sounds like a hero,” said Klea. “Not a traitor.”

“Maybe both. Maybe neither. All I know is that one day he just disappeared. Happened just before my eighteenth birthday. Everybody was freaking out, thinking he was captured or killed. I wasn’t too worried at first. But then, well, it was different this time. I actually got delivered back to the states under armed guard, supposedly for my protection. I started college not long after, studied marine engineering. About a year and a half after his disappearance, the story went wide. Apparently a lot of classified files went missing at about the same time he did. I didn’t know what to do, but it wasn’t looking good for dear old Dad, so I got out of the country. I think leaving pretty much confirmed what everybody already thought of me.”

“That he was a traitor, and you were in it as well.”

“Yeah, as if I knew what my father was up to and missed the chance to jump ship with him. I tried college overseas at first but the fact I was no longer in the US meant the gloves could come off as far as the intelligence services were concerned. I’d catch cars following me and the stuff in my apartment wasn’t always where I’d left it. They hacked my computer. Eventually, a couple of my remaining backchannel connections got in touch and warned me that my name was being floated as a potential grab target. So I left again, hooked myself up with a pretty decent set of fake papers, and went underground.

“I’d always been interested in diving, so I completed my saturation certification in Norway. Really took to it. Spent the next few years bouncing from one salvage or energy sector dive job to the next. Some of it was legal, the betterpaying jobs weren’t. So that was that, until I ended up in prison for an illegal salvage mission off Morocco.”

Klea nodded and sighed. “You think we’ll see Fatima and Hassan again?”

“The good doctor got what he wanted. Maybe not the way he wanted it, but I don’t think they’re looking for us.” He stretched out his legs, tipped his head back and looked up at the star-spangled sky. “I think getting to Mozambique’s a good start. Maybe I can jump a cargo ship towards the South Pacific. Seems like one of the few places a wanted American can still make a go of it.”

“I don’t have a life to go back to either,” Klea said. “Not sure I’d want to go back to MIT after Colin… and things were very bad with my parents when I left.”

“Make up with them. Let bygones be bygones.”

Jonah leaned back and laid on the sand, his hands behind his head.

“So that’ll be it? I go my way, you go yours?” She turned to look at him.

“Was there ever another plan?” He met her eyes, dark, moonlit. “I’ve got nothing, Klea. If not for Dr. Nassiri, I would have eventually died in prison. Maybe I’ll find somewhere to land, maybe I won’t — but I know for certain I’ll be running for the rest of my life.”

She laid back next to him and looked up. The constellations, familiar friends all those endless nights of captivity, seemed cold and soulless.

“You, on the other hand, will be a returning hero,” Jonah whispered, his voice soft, rough. “A survivor.”

“I don’t feel like a hero. Just a survivor.”

“What will you do?”

“I guess finish grad school. Get a job. Get on with life.”

“Write a book and do all the morning shows,” he said. “Just don’t make me look like some reckless asshole.”

“I do have an obligation to the truth to consider,” she laughed and rolled onto her side. “What about you? You have to have thought about it. Dreamed about what would happen if you ever escaped.”

“I’ll get on with life, too. In my own way, at least. Maybe I’ll be a salvage diver or SCUBA instructor in Thailand, Vietnam. Somewhere beautiful and very, very far away from here.”

“Is there a woman in this vision for the future?”

“There are lots of women in this vision,” joked Jonah. “But none like you.”

“There could be,” she said as she laid back and deftly unraveled a single central knot in her robes. Her headscarf slipped back, revealing her short, dark hair, shimmering in the moonlight. She slipped off her embroidered belt and opened her dress, revealing her full naked form, her freshly-scrubbed skin nearly glowing.

Jonah raised himself to his elbow and drank in the sight, marveling at the way her fresh henna tattoos danced their way up her arms, down her clavicles, collecting like a teardrop in her solar plexus, emphasizing the curves of her small breasts. He crept onto her laid-out robes, pausing for one last look before he kissed her. And for the first time, he felt she was actually making love to him, not to the ghost of her lost fiancé, not some long-ago memory fading on a burning funeral pyre, and not some desperate stranger in a life raft, but to him, Jonah Blackwell, and him alone.

Jonah and Klea walked slowly back to the compound, fingers intertwined, every step soft and measured, as if together they could float across the surface of the moonlit sand without leaving so much as a footprint. Jonah gave Klea one last deep, silent kiss and opened the front gate to the sleeping compound, the wooden panel gently sliding opening as chickens and goats stirred from their slumber.

Multiple lights flashed, blinding him. He held a hand up to his face to shield himself when a rifle butt caught him in the side of the head at the same time the back of his legs were kicked out from underneath him, forcing him to his knees. With harsh, white light still overwhelming his vision, he felt a dozen rough hands feeling over his arms, his legs, inside his kilt, searching for hidden weapons. Several voices barked out orders in English. Finding nothing, the unseen men threw him forward. Jonah landed face-first on the concrete slab, his arms held behind him as a rope wound around and between his wrists. Eyes adjusting, he caught a glimpse of the orange-haired father, his two boys held back by his single arm, wives holding up their hands in surrender as several mercenaries held them at gunpoint.

A hulking, mammoth man leaned over him, muscles slithering underneath a too-tight synthetic shirt, twisted face squinting as his eyes darted over Jonah’s prone form. The colonel, the man who’d stumbled drunk onto the Fool’s Errand a lifetime ago. The mercenary stank like sour sweat.

“I should have gunned you down in the bar of your stolen boat,” drawled Colonel Westmoreland. “I saw you itching to pull on me — should have given you the bullet you deserved right then and there.”

Jonah raised his head and opened his mouth to issue a smarmy response, but the wind left his lungs as the massive soldier kicked him in the back of the head, slamming him back into the concrete. Klea screamed from beside him, her wail piercing the stillness of the night.

The colonel lifted Jonah a second time, pulling him to his feet as his knees buckled beneath him. Jonah tried to make sense of his blurry vision, the bitter, metallic taste in his mouth, his pulse ringing in his ears like a gong. He caught a single glimpse of Klea’s dark eyes staring at him in horror and for he realized that for one infinitesimally small moment he was Colin, staring back at her as he was torn away, bottomless loss welling up in her eyes.

“You just made one of these skinny-ass sand niggers a rich man,” bellowed the colonel. “They couldn’t fucking wait to drop a dime on your ass.”

The colonel pulled back a single fist, ramming it like a piston into Jonah’s left kidney. Jonah collapsed, blacking out just long enough to wake up to the sound of his own gasping breath. Mercenaries grabbed fistfuls of his borrowed clothing, dragging him bodily out of the compound — and into a hail of stones and chanting.

The village had awoken. Men and women — from young, tall sons to hunched grandmothers — surrounded the mercenaries, massing and indistinct in their flashing lights. Eyes and teeth glinted white in the glare, fists waved in the air with righteous fury. A cascade of unintelligible shouting and chanting was accompanied by an irregular rain of arcing rocks, pummeling the men from all directions.

Panicking, one of the mercenaries jerked his rifle to his shoulder, eye already at the custom scope as he yanked back the plunger back to chamber a live round.

“Did I say you were cleared to engage?” barked the colonel, slapping the twitching man’s barrel to the ground before he could loose a bullet. “Push your way through!”

The mercenaries shoved back at the building crowd, Jonah wriggled free of the colonel’s grip for just long enough to shove Klea free of her captor. She spun, her light frame launched sideways. In an instant, she tripped on the hem of her beautiful dress, stumbled and fell, disappearing into the mass of villagers.

Swearing, three mercenaries rushed into the spot where she’d fallen, beating the crowd back with kicks and rifle butts. But she was gone, vanished into the mob as if she’d never been anything more than a figment of Jonah’s imagination.

“Leave her!” shouted the colonel as the churning body of villagers pushed against the mercenaries, threatening to envelope them as well. Furious, the three soldiers retreated to the colonel’s side.

Having taken a prize from the mercenaries, the crowd grew ugly, daring, bravely advancing on the them, grabbing at their leveled weapons.

“You’re going to regret that,” whispered the colonel to Jonah, his lips pulled back to reveal gold-capped molars and a cruel sneer.

Jonah met the sneer with a smirk, watching as the colonel drew his pistol, cocked it, and aimed it at Jonah’s head, oblivious to the crowd. Reconsidering, he thumbed the safety back on, drew his hand back and slammed the butt of the gun into the side of Jonah’s face once, twice, three times, each with a sickening sound of metal on bone.

Jonah lapsed into forced unconsciousness with a sick feeling of total satisfaction seeping into his very soul.

You go your way, he thought, holding Klea’s dimming image in his mind. I’ll go mine.