Gideon's War/Hard Target (10 page)

He set to work on the other rocks, pushing them all to the edge. As he was pushing the largest one, he noticed a large rust-colored smear on its surface. Blood. He held up his hand, turned it around. A jagged wound ran across his palm. He must have cut himself during his near fall. It wasn’t until he saw it that he noticed how much it hurt. Blood ran down his arm, dripping off his elbow in fat drops onto the limestone. Realizing that he couldn’t afford to think about it right now, he tore a strip from his shirttail and wrapped his bleeding hand, then finished moving the rocks.

It took him only a few minutes to line up the remaining rocks along the ledge. His plan was to push them over the edge in fast sequence, from smallest to largest. His foot lingered on the rock for a suspended moment. Now, he realized. It had to be now. And he pushed the rocks over the edge—one, two, three, four, five—one after the other.

A volley of frantic shouts echoed from below, as he launched himself up the cliff.

The last of the rocks were still clattering down the hill as he scaled the rock face. It was steeper than he’d thought, and his legs were weak. Up and up he climbed, realizing halfway that he’d underestimated the time it would take him to reach the summit.

He would need at least another twenty seconds. And twenty seconds may as well have been a year in this exposed position. He wanted to look back but knew he couldn’t. He waited for the gunfire to start. But it didn’t come. His pursuers were shouting. He could make out their voices now.

“Run!” one of them yelled.

And then there was a sound, like the crack of thunder.

He charged upward, from handhold to foothold, his legs shaking violently from the buildup of lactic acid. Faster, he scolded himself. Go faster.

The thunder grew louder, building on itself. Gideon pounded upward, waiting for the gunfire, which still didn’t come, as he threw himself over the lip and collapsed onto the ground, his body heaving as he tried to fill his lungs.

Below him, the thunder subsided until the only sound Gideon heard was his own ragged breathing. The air was thinner up here. A soft breeze cooled his face.

Finally he peeked over the side, just a quick glance, to see where his pursuers were.

No one was there. Only a massive, roiling cloud of dust. For a moment, he couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at, but then he realized what had happened. He’d started a landslide. And not a small one. The boulders he dropped had caused some kind of seismic chain reaction that had sheared off a large part of the mountainside. Tons and tons of rock had cascaded down and buried the six men who had been trying to kill him.

He found himself remembering every detail of the pursuit up the cliff, every feeling, every thought—none of which, he realized, included a moment of moral equivocation. All the pacifist ideals he had invoked only yesterday during his speech at the UN? Not one of them had even crossed his mind. In fact, he felt the same exhilaration now as he had felt on the river, when he had confronted and beaten the men who’d been pursuing him by boat. He held his hands in front of his face, stretching his fingers. They weren’t shaking. A sense of well-being settled over him like a warm blanket, which he quickly shrugged off. This was not the time to reflect. It was time to act. If he had any moral reckoning to do, he would do it later.

As he surveyed the scene below, he reflected that the rock slide hadn’t just wiped away his would-be killers. It had wiped away the trail.

He had passed the point of no return. Either he would make it to Kampung Naga or he would die trying.

Beyond the rubble, the river wound into the distance, a brilliant red serpent, glowing with the reflected light of the setting sun. He only had another hour of daylight before he’d need to find a place to sleep. He stood, dusted himself off, and turned to enter the jungle. But something was nagging at him, tugging at the back of his brain. ItဠWhatever it was, he couldn’t put his finger on it. And he stopped trying to figure it out when he entered the jungle and found that he wasn’t alone.

A group of men stood before him in a half circle. Their complexions were darker than the Mohanese he’d seen before, and their hair was curlier and thicker. One of the men, the oldest, wore a pair of battered tennis shoes. The others wore only nylon soccer shorts, their feet bare. They all carried spears, which they pointed at his chest.

The man with the shoes screamed something at him.

“It’s okay, guys,” Gideon said evenly, slowly holding up his hands. “I’m not armed.”

One of the men who had tried to kill him had spoken English.

But the men who were now surrounding Gideon and brandishing their spears couldn’t have cared less about his epiphany.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

KATE SAT ON THE floor, her hands tied behind her. The hostages had been thrust into the guest cabin on B Deck, the one that had been assigned to Cole Ransom. In the corner sat a bag and a notebook computer. Both wore scuffed aluminum nameplates with Cole Ransom’s name etched onto them. Kate realized, with a sinking feeling, that if they were the real Cole Ransom’s belongings, then something bad had happened to Ransom.

Ambassador Stearns was sitting stiffly on the floor next to Big Al Prejean. They hadn’t been in the room for more than ten minutes when the door opened and Earl Parker was thrust into the room.

After the door slammed shut, Kate said, “Are you okay? We were worried.”

Parker sat heavily on the bed and said, “I’m fine. He just stunned me for a minute.”

“Did you see any of my crew?”

Parker nodded. “They were herding them into the mess hall. A couple of your people tried to resist.” His lips curled. “They shot them like dogs.”

Kate swallowed. “How many?”

“Five, maybe six. Everybody else settled down. I think they’ll be okay for now.” He shook his head sadly. “I know that’s not much consolation.”

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not.”

Parker didn’t reply.

“The guy who’s in charge says he’s Abu Nasir,” Kate said. “It seemed like you knew him.”

Parker nodded. But Kate detected something else behind his silent confirmation, something he was leaving out.

“Do you know what he wants?”

“He hasn’t told us yet.” Parker hesitated, as if deciding whether or not to continue; then, deciding that he would, he lowered his voice to a whisper that only she could hear. “But it’s my fault this is happening.”

“Your fault?”

“The man who calls himself Abu Nasir . . . his real name is Tillman Davis. He used to work for me.” Parker looked away in apparent shame as he went on to tell her about the secret mission he had initiated. He told her about Tillman’s transformation from covert operative to unrepentant terrorist, and about how he had enlisted Gideon Davis, who had come to Mohan with Parker to retrieve his brother. “Trusting Tillman was the biggest mistake of my life. And now Gideon . . .” His voice cracked with regret. “I should have left him out of this.”

Suddenly the steel door slid open, and an Asian man wearing a Sky TV T-shirt walked into the room, pointed at Kate, and barked in heavily accented English, “You! Come with me.”

Kate didn’t move.

“Just do what they tell you,” Parker said softly.

“Come!” the guard yelled. He yanked her toward the door, and she saw Big Al coiling to spring at him, but she shook her head sharply, stopping him before he did anything stupid.

“It’s okay, Al. I’ll be fine.” The sentry pulled a black cloth hood over her head, tying it loosely at her neck. Kate’s heart began beating faster, and her mouth felt dry as sandpaper. Were they going to hurt her, beat her, chop off her head?

The sentry guided her out the door and into the passageway. She couldn’t see through the blindfold, but the man exerted just enough pressure on her arm to steer her down the hallway without her tripping or banging into anything.

Her footsteps echoed as they moved slowly through the passageways. She tried to figure out where they were heading, but after winding around inside the rig for a while, she lost track. Eventually the man stopped.

She stood silently for what seemed like minutes. Finally another man spoke. He was behind her. “Knees,” the man said. She recognized his voice. It belonged to Abu Nasir, the man who had boarded her rig by impersonating Cole Ransom. “Knees,” he said again.

Before she could respond, someone kicked the back of her right leg, buckling the joint and forcing her to land on her knees.

“We have clear and simple objectives here, Ms. Murphy. We will not waver in those objectives. Harming you is not one of them, but if you try to get in the way, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

Only yesterday Senator McClatchy had been questioning her about Abu Nasir, a man who had seemed to her more mythical than real, the stuff of urban legend. And now she not only knew his real name and what he looked like . . . but he was on her rig, threatening her life.

“Please indicate that you understand me, ma’am.”

“I understand English,” she said, “if that’s what you mean.”

Someone punched her in the stomach. She gagged, almost falling on her face, but managed to remain upright.

“You may think that being flippant does not interfere with our objectives,” Abu Nasir said. “You would be wrong in that assessment. Are we on the same page now?”

She nodded.

“Outstanding.”

The blindfold came off. She blinked. She was in the mess hall, a trio of halogen work lamps blazing in her face. Squinting to better see the silhouetted terrorists, she made out an approaching figure whose features came into relief as he drew closer. He was carrying a crisply folded square of bright yellow material, which he tossed toward her, the momentum of his throw causing it to unfurl partially. It was some kind of jumpsuit.

“Put this on.”

Kate offered no response.

“If you don’t do it, I’ll do it for you.” His voice was flat, nonnegotiable.

She picked up the jumpsuit and said, “I need somewhere to change.”

“You have a place. Right here.”

She held his look for a long, defiant moment, then kicked off her shoes, unfastened her skirt, and let it fall to the ground. She unbuttoned her shirt and peeled it off, until she was left wearing only her bra and panties. She held Abu Nasir’s look the entire time. Not once did his eyes leave hers, not even for a flickering moment of voyeuristic curiosity about what her seminaked body looked like. She pulled on the jumpsuit, shrugging her arms into the sleeves, then stepping back into her shoes.

As she zippered the jumpsuit, Abu Nasir nodded toward the man just behind him, who now adjusted a tripod-mounted monitor toward her. Displayed on the screen in large capital letters were the words: MY NAME IS KATE MURPHY. A video camera was mounted on another branch of the tripod. “All you have to do is read the teleprompter, like those phony politicians in Washington.”

“No.”

“Fine. We’ll shoot you in the head. I’m sure Ambassador Stearns will be happy to read the statement.”

Kate tried navigating through her swirling emotions. Anger, fear, humiliation. Whatever message he wanted her to read—was it really worth dying for? She didn’t think so. Especially since whoever saw it would certainly understand that she’d read it under duress. “Okay,” she finally said, her voice soft as a whisper.

“See how easy that was?” Abu Nasir pointed toward the man holding the cue cards. “When he points at you, start reading.”

The man operating the monitor pointed at Kate, who began to read in as flat a tone as she could muster.

“My name is Kate Murphy,” she read. “I am the executive in charge of the Obelisk, which is now under the control of Abu Nasir.” When she read the next sentence on the scrolling text, Kate stopped and her mouth went dry.

“Just read what’s on the screen, Ms. Murphy. Please don’t make me shoot you in the head. I’m trying to save ammo.”

She didn’t want to continue, but short of dying on the

When Gideon was ten years old, he and Tillman had whittled spears out of hickory, sharpening the points with Case knives and playing a game of their own invention called Spartan. The rules were simple. You stood about thirty yards apart and threw your spears at each other. If you had to move to get out of the way of the other person’s spear, you lost.

Since he was Tillman’s junior by two years, Gideon couldn’t throw quite as hard or quite as accurately. So he usually lost.

One crisp fall day, he hurled the spear, and before it even left his hand, he knew that he had done everything right. The spear was heading straight for Tillman.

But Gideon’s euphoria vanished as quickly as it had appeared when he realized that Tillman wasn’t going to move. The spear arced gracefully through the air, seemingly as slow as a feather carried on a soft breeze. Gideon had watched his brother’s face. Tillman knew the spear was coming, too, knew it was going to hit him. But he didn’t so much as flinch— he just clamped his mouth shut and let it come.

The tip of the spear hit him just above the collarbone, passing through his right shoulder and out his back, clean as a knife through butter. He grimaced slightly, then turned a quarter turn, fell on his side and began, improbably, to snore.

Eighteen inches of bloody, sharpened wood stuck out of his back.

According to the doctor, a half inch lower and it would have hit the subclavian artery, killing him in under five minutes.

It was the only time Gideon’s father ever laid a hand on him. He doled out his son’s punishment as methodically as a tennis player practicing his forehand before a match.

The image of his snoring brother and the searing pain of his father’s hand on his backside came back to Gideon now, as he stood looking at the ring of spears pointing at him. They were tipped with sharpened scraps of iron that looked as if they might have been ripped from car hoods or forged from cook pots. Crude as they were, Gideon knew how easily they could slice through muscle and bone.

The men were still bombarding him with angry questions and accusations in a language he couldn’t understand, so he just kept talking in as soothing a tone as he could muster. “I’m just here to find my brother.” Gideon hoped that even if they couldn’t understand his words, they would understand his intent, but he might as well have been reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “His name is Tillman. Tillman Davis.”

More shouting and spear waving, so he decided to try another tack. “Abu Nasir.” he said. “He calls himself Abu Nasir.”

The commotion suddenly stopped. “Abu Nasir?” one of them said softly.

“Yes. Abu Nasir.”

Two of the older men exchanged glances, their hostile suspicion giving way to curiosity.

Suddenly remembering that Uncle Earl had given him a recent photo of his bearded brother, Gideon reached slowly into his p. &ñ€ocket and pulled it out.

The oldest man snatched it from him, studying the photo, then looked up at Gideon. The others crowded around, setting off a raucous debate. Several of the men pantomimed stabbing Gideon with their spears. Did these men work for Abu Nasir, or were they rivals? Did they love him, hate him, what? He wasn’t sure.

Abruptly, they came to a decision and settled down.

The old man pointed his spear at Gideon’s chest and then nodded once, as if bestowing some seal of approval on him. “You. Abu Nasir. Come.”

“Okay.” Gideon smiled and nodded vigorously. Keep smiling, he thought. Keep smiling.

The men—there were seven of them—turned and began to walk silently back into the jungle. Gideon followed. They walked for several hours, stopping several times to listen carefully before moving on. Although their faces betrayed no emotion, it was clear that they were nervous. Gideon got the impression they were worried about being ambushed.

They followed a hardpacked trail, which was only sporadically overgrown. Several of the men carried machetes, but they used them only once to clear the trail.

Late in the afternoon they came to a ruined patch of land where a village had stood until recently. Black soot and cinders were all that remained of its grass-and-bamboo huts. The air smelled of rotting meat. The carcasses of a sow with her litter of piglets lay in a heap, thick with buzzing flies. Since pork had to be a prized food here in the jungle, Gideon couldn’t imagine several hundred pounds of meat being left to rot by local tribesmen.

Then he saw a body, a woman, lying tangled in the underbrush. And then it was as though some key had turned in his vision. Suddenly he could see more dead people—women, old men, children—lying around the periphery of the clearing.

The highlanders kept their eyes straight ahead of them, not remarking or even looking at the evidence of tragedy around them. Who did this? Gideon thought. But no one was there to answer him.

Soon they were back in the jungle, the light waning. Gideon realized that other than the tin of peaches, he hadn’t eaten all day. With all the physical activity he’d been engaged in, he was starving. As the light began to die, the highlanders finally stopped. They sat in a circle, silently eating dried meat and some kind of smelly goo wrapped in broad leaves. The men never offered him anything, and he didn’t ask.

As night fell the sounds of the jungle filled the darkness. Hoots and howls, growls and buzzing noises. Except Gideon saw no animals, no monkeys or snakes, nothing but mosquitoes and moths nearly as big as his hand, which thudded around in the trees above him. The highlanders never spoke. One of them moved away from the group—presumably to serve as sentry. The others simply lay down on the cold, hard dirt and fell asleep.