Play It Safe (The Safe House Series Book 2) (10 page)

When the compound disappeared in the reflection of the passenger side mirror, Samson pointed his Glock straight at the driver’s temple.

“Pull the fuck over.”

To keep her worries over Samson to a manageable internal storm, Angela passed the afternoon helping Nahyea pull root vegetables from the garden and prepare a meal of rice mixed with mashed pumpkins and sweet potato greens simmered in red palm oil. When an afternoon rain steamed up the mountain and Fana grew weak and could not join them at the table, the women propped the elder woman to a seated position in bed with blankets and pillows and surrounded her, plates in hand to break bread. They reserved the honored space at the foot of the old, iron bed for Angela. Someone lit a candle against the dimness and placed it on crude shelf nearby.

Angela had never felt more supported. This was family, incarnate—that insular sense of rightness against all the unknowns of the world. And she had missed it so very much.

Nahyea brought to the circle a photograph of a young Samson in a brightly-colored African tunic. The beautiful woman Angela had once seen smiling at her from a beach scene occupied his embrace, a spray of pink, trumpet-shaped flowers in her hands.

“Dis is all we have to remember Samson,” said Nahyea.

Fana uttered a few words that Nahyea translated to
so young
.

His hair was military-grade short, which brought his classically handsome features into greater relief. Riley looked radiant in simple white.

“Miz Riley was a missionary wit the kindest heart. Dey help us build dis house. When we learn what happen to Miz Riley, Fana went within herself for three days.”
Three
more like
tree
. “She pray for healing.”

Fana’s stark cheekbones shifted under the burden of her teary eyes. Her words came out splintered, as if they had been chipped away from her soul.

Nahyea translated. “She saw great struggle for him. Darkness, not unlike da clouds beyond da windows. She worry dat he would forget da man she had come to know.”

Fana reached for Angela’s hand. She accepted the gesture warmly. Angela’s chest squeezed from the shared moment. Candlelight swam in her vision.

Fana spoke again, much softer this time.

“She sez she pray for answers,” Nahyea said. “And you came.”

Fana slid a bracelet from her brittle wrist and placed it around Angela’s hand with an uttered sentiment. Her movement was slow and deliberate, as if she had an infinite amount of time to set things right in her world. The stone-and-string adornment brought Angela peace.

“For luck,” said Nahyea. “For love.”

***
 

The rain had ceased, leaving the air like a damp rag against Angela’s skin. Shortly after she settled onto her cot mattress for the long, sleepless night ahead, a knock sounded at Fana’s door.

Nahyea answered.

Augustine entered, his eyes wide and white in the moonlight slashing through the curtains. After words of apology for the late hour and the intrusion, he stumbled through enough broken English to convey a deep and consuming urgency, directed straight at Angela:

Sam-son.

Brutha
.

Come.

Now
.

***

Samson left Imari tied to a buffalothorn tree, high enough so wild, nocturnal felines would not feast on him, tight enough that he wouldn’t go anywhere soon. At gunpoint, Samson had extracted from his driver the location of the vehicle’s tracking device. Samson continued on the set route until he found a truck at a stop headed in the same direction. He placed the bug under the truck’s fender then set off in the direction he had gambled as Mike’s location.

The last thing he had wanted was to involve Angela in an escape plan, but with a six hour window and the distance to Fana’s village, time was a truer enemy than anything Julian could unleash. If Julian didn’t already know the serum was a fake, he would know soon. Samson had to trust that Rockwell had passed along the intelligence to counter the backup missiles and had arranged transport for them on a steamer out of Knysna.

He reached the train station and parked the vehicle behind a cluster of bushwillows. The storms that held such promise earlier skirted his location, leaving the moon a pinnacle that cast no shadows to betray him. Samson sank into the comfort of his SEAL training, his decisions and movements and body systems clockwork, regimented, focused on the mission: extraction of the hostage.

The station was quiet. Dead quiet.

At the heart of the waiting room, tied to a bench, mouth taped closed and a black rag tied around his head, Samson spotted Mike. He had lain awake in Julian’s bed, long after Angela had fallen asleep in his arms, scrolling through the photographs of her brother contained in her phone. Samson had memorized every detail: crazy hair not unlike his sister, slight build, strawberry birthmark on his neck below his right ear, square jaw. The identity of the hostage was affirmative.

And total fucking bait.

Exposed. Waiting.

Julian knew Samson had betrayed him.

Samson needed a diversion.

He stalked the building’s rear flank. A diversion at the opposite end would give them the best chance of escape. He zeroed in on a busted window, scanned the space to ensure it was unoccupied, then slipped inside.

Samson found himself in the train station’s back offices behind the ticket booths—nothing but overturned office equipment and reams of paper that blanketed the ransacked interior like white sand blown from the Muizenberg coast on a tempest. His gaze snagged on a fire extinguisher still mounted to the wall.

Bingo.

Samson bent down and ripped out his 550 cord that doubled as a boot lace. He zeroed in on the smallest space he could find—a maintenance closet that adjoined the office—pulled the extinguisher pin and tied his paracord around the trigger mechanism. He placed the extinguisher inside the closet, ran the cord beneath the door, closed it and yanked as hard as he could.

Beyond the door, the extinguisher rocketed to life. The loud sibilance of the foam jetting from the apparatus joined the racket of the shell colliding with wall after wall.

The string nearly zinged out of his hand. He lassoed it around his hand, bracing his boots against the door and knotted the free end around the door handle. On his feet in seconds, he doubled back through the window as he heard voices swarm behind him.

He entered the depot waiting area, stalked to Mike, and ripped off his blindfold.

Mike jolted, his hair-trigger of defense after being tortured was instantaneous, raw. A desperate scream backlogged in his throat, muffled by the tape.

“I’m a friend of Angela’s, Mike. I’m gonna get you out of here.” Samson’s voice was low, his mouth centered at the hostage’s ear. He removed his pocket knife. “No noise, all right? We gotta move.
Fast
.”

Mike nodded, his head pumping faster than Samson’s heart.

Samson removed the tape from Mike’s lips and sliced the bindings at his extremities. Mike scrambled to his feet. The challenge of his body weight proved too much for his feet to carry him. Samson looped Mike’s arm around his shoulder and buddy-handled him toward the exit.

Swarms of militia men occupied the road, headed toward the back of the depot. The extinguisher’s grenade-like racket still reverberated from the ticket office.

Samson scanned for an alternate route back to where he hid the vehicle.

“Tracks.” Mike indicated a strip of line that disappeared into overgrowth shortly after it left the depot. Perfect cover.

Samson hauled Mike out an emergency side door and down toward the tracks. Mike’s feet found renewed purchase and began to function. Without Samson carrying him, they cleared the distance to the trees in under ten seconds. The moment they broke into the trees and their feet found purchase on railroad ties, the deafening crack of a cartridge being loaded into a rifle chamber collided with Samson’s gut like a freight train going sixty.

“Stop! One more step and you’re both dead.”

Samson grabbed Mike’s arm to ensure he complied. SEAL training taught that deprivation from captivity compromised the decision-making process. He had to think enough for them both. Instinctively, Mike raised his hands in surrender. Samson turned and followed suit.

The advanced darkness did not afford much of a chance to size up their opponent: no more than five feet tall; a wild afro that all but screamed desperate warrior, a semi-automatic longer than his arms.

“Step into da light.”

His voice was half-baked, pitched too high for a grown man. Samson detected the slightest hint of uncertainty in his command. But that wasn’t all. Something about the voice had the capacity to burrow beneath Samson’s skin and nest, dark and painful, in the chest.

No.

Jesus Christ, no.

Monde’s words charged his memory.
You will see him soon enough
.

Samson and Mike complied.

In the eyes of the gunman, Samson saw a boy, not yet a man. The hand holding the weapon shook with the ferocity of inexperience. The boy, no more than fourteen, stood as a killer, poised to exact a grand re-balancing act, retribution for forsaking him all those years ago.

“Manny?”

By the time Angela and Augustine reached a high crest in a road that looked more desert-like than the land surrounding Fana’s house, she had pieced together the plan: wait at a pre-determined spot, Samson and
brutha
come, drive fast until ocean and something about a boat. Angela didn’t want to get too far ahead of herself. The plan wasn’t neat script on successive sticky notes kind of plan, but the notion that a plan existed did wonders for her runaway pulse. The Jeep’s dull headlamps sliced the night dust rising from their abrupt stop. Beyond two rusted-out bulbs and a waning moon, the night was pitch.

Augustine killed the engine.

A cacophony of crickets rose from the brush. The loamy smell of the land filled her nostrils; the closeness made it difficult to breathe.

Augustine surveyed their surroundings, where the horizon would be had they been able to decipher it, as if his vision was powerful enough to infiltrate the ink-soaked night. It occurred to Angela that on a rise such as this, the Jeep acted as a beacon. For Samson and Mike, good. For anyone opposed to two Americans escaping captivity, not so good.

“Shouldn’t we turn off the lights?”

“No.” Augustine’s response was absolute, the clearest syllable she had heard him utter since Samson found him servicing his Jeep on a road closest to the abandoned landing strip that had once been used to airlift supplies. Julian hadn’t sent a driver, nor did the crew have instructions to stay—two red flags that had set Angela and Samson both on edge. Rather than wait for communications to untangle, they opted to make their own arrangements. But in a land of heated strife, violent ideology, and radicalized factions, allegiances were anyone’s guess.

What if Augustine had brought her out here to die?

Inwardly, she cursed her stupidity. Fana’s house had been safe, an insular refuge, where she had only to consider Samson’s safety. Now, thoughts of her safety scraped upward, stomach to windpipe.

Not now. Stay calm, Angela.

She breathed a four-count and thought of Samson. When air again passed freely through her passages, she studied Augustine’s eye movements, concentrated beyond the driver’s side, out into the unknown.

A voice rose from the brush.

Then two.

Then three.

Hairs at the base of Angela’s neck lifted like cactus spines. Her body froze in a quicksand of her own fear. Her mind, however, was light years ahead. Had Augustine betrayed her? Handed her over to Julian’s men—or worse—the same men who had slaughtered the Americans at the consulate years earlier?

His hand reached for the ignition and turned, simultaneously pumping the gas pedal.

The Jeep coughed and sputtered.

Augustine looked at Angela, the white of his eyes swallowing his pupils, transfixed in horror, a curse in his native language hot on his tongue.

He wanted out of there as much as she did.

The voices grew louder, three or four men, maybe more, growing more raucous the closer they sounded. Their foreign words bounded through the spindly landscape like starving jackrabbits pursuing the last edible sage on earth. A piercing hoot lifted from the throat of one, half human, half coyote-like.

A nitroglycerin-cold chill burned up Angela’s spine. Her mind reeled: rape, torture, murder.

Augustine gaze darted around maniacally while he tried again and again to turn over the engine. When the engine failed to start, he pummeled the dash.

Four sets of legs crossed the headlamp’s beams.

***

“Dat name is dead to me,” said Manny. “I am Tahir.”

Samson knees nearly buckled beneath him. As his gaze took in the boy he loved so much, he felt like the hostage, the one whose deprivation from things that transcended mere survival had nearly cost him his life. The boy might as well empty his round into Samson’s body cavity now. He had already stopped breathing, really breathing, the moment his dream of the three of them, united, died with Riley.

Until his dream was reborn in Angela…

His lungs bloomed hot. He squeezed the hand that still held Mike. Angela wanted nothing more than the three of them, united. And Samson wanted nothing more than Angela. Safe, away from here, with him, maybe forever. Much as Riley had wanted Manny to be. Once.

“It’s me. Samson. Manny don’t shoot.”

The boy shook the rifle, still leveled at them. “Tahir!”

“Tahir. Please.” Samson’s eyes scorched with moisture. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Explain how it is you know anything about me.” His accent was more pronounced than Samson remembered, his
anything
more like any-
ting.
“You. Left.”

“We have to get out of here,
Tahir
.” The name closed his throat. The boy before him was no more Tahir, childhood soldier, than Samson was the green tadpole that had once held a dewy optimism of the world and his right to dream of things like crisp, white, wrap-around porches and a family whose love had the power to erase the violence of combat. “Come with us.”

“Your head is worth too much.”

“That means nothing if you die for a cause that isn’t yours.”

“You know nothing of our cause.”

“I know that in just under four hours, there will no longer be a cause. Everything will be gone. There is time, but we must leave now.”

“I have my orders.” He withdrew a phone from his pocket and tapped the screen to start a video. The tiny screen cast a bluish glow against the tree-sheltered canopy.

Julian’s voice reached Samson’s ears.

“Samson Caine. Always the hero, right? If you’re seeing this, you no doubt have who you came for. Sending Emmanuel was a nice touch, no? Your nature makes you a predictable fool. I guess you never learned that protection is fleeting. For Riley. For Angela, who is already at the mercy of my men.”

The tracks lifted and spun in his vision.
No. Dear God, he’s lying.
Beside him, a mewl of grief slipped from Mike’s bloody lips.

“Returning to Africa was never about the serum. Eventually, perhaps, it had potential as a tool of absolute warfare. The moment we allowed Angela to leave our facility, my team knew she had created nothing more than a mixture of inactive elements in a stable solution.
You
became the greater goal. Someone to blame during the inquiry that will come from a retaliatory hell-fire attack on the factions responsible for the consulate slaughter, set to detonate one hour from the time this message is played. So you see, you have done this to your people. Intelligence is in place. Any remaining evidence will be destroyed in the blast. You played into my hands when you insisted on returning, being the hero. Nothing more convincing to an international tribunal than an operative with regional sympathies who is willing to die for his homeland.”

Samson crumbled to the tracks. Sharp pebbles drilled the fabric at his knees. The entirety of the open-air oxygen was no longer enough. To his lungs, Julian’s words were an agent of death.

“One hour, Samson. Not enough time to clear the attack’s devastating radius. It’s time for Tahir to learn what happens to heroes. He will kill you or be killed.”

The video went black.

“Manny…” Samson didn’t care that he used the boy’s name. What the fuck did it matter now? Despite being on his knees, he refused to beg for his life. The only thing he had left was goddamned truth. “I love you. I loved you from the moment you sold us a bag of frozen water out of your three-wheeled wagon and you made Riley smile in a way I never could. I tried to get you, the right way, through the right channels, but the process took years. By then, you had disappeared. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about you.”

He plucked the photo from his pocket, the day the three of them went to Bloubergstrand and Manny’s toes sank into ocean water for the first time. Samson extended his arm for Manny to take it.

The boy’s expression softened as if he wanted to scoot closer, to accept the offering. His generous lips twisted before the pebbled, man-like ridge along his throat jumped in one vigorous swallow.

“Go.” The word barely cleared the boy’s voice box.

Tears charged Samson’s eyes, unbidden, totally without restraint. His body refused movement, as if his ears negated the word—
go
. Mike’s hands hooked under his armpits. In his weakened state, he lifted Samson’s listless frame.

“Come with us, Manny.” Samson’s whisper was sodden, awash with guilt and love.

Manny lowered the weapon. He shook his head, turned, and walked away.

Mike urged Samson to move. One foot in front of the other, their stumbles became a sprint for the cluster of trees where Samson concealed the vehicle.

By the time Samson slid his legs into the all-terrain’s cockpit and started the ignition and Mike had cleared the debris from the open cab enough to drive, Samson had reached a decision.

He wasn’t leaving without Manny.

“I have to go back,” said Samson.

“I know,” answered Mike, as if driving straight back into a throng of his captors was already a foregone conclusion.

Samson floored the gas and spun the tires clear of the roots and overgrowth. They rounded two buildings, taking the corner fast enough to put distance between the tire treads and the dirt. The train station loomed ahead.

“There!” Mike pointed to one thin, small soldier, kneeling apart from a small cluster of others, weapons at the ready.

One word roared into Samson’s brain: execution.

Manny
would not
pay the price for saving him.

He downshifted and ground the petal to the floorboard. The engine surged, eating the dirt at a faster clip than before. Samson clicked on his high beams and aimed straight for the lone executioner.

Bullets sprayed the all-terrain’s front profile. Samson and Mike slid low in their seats. By the time the vehicle reached the cluster of soldiers, most had scattered. One remained, his gun trained directly at Manny’s head.

Samson plowed the executioner. Bursts of flame erupted from the muzzle of the soldier’s gun. His body crumpled nearly in half, a twisted pile of limbs that landed atop the vehicle’s hood. Frozen eyes through the windshield left little doubt the bastard died on impact.

“I’m not leaving without you, Manny!” Samson yelled over the rising clamor of swelling militia. He reached for his hand. “I love you.”

Manny rose from his knees, so very much like a boy—his eyes saucers, his petrified features still fleshy and full. He placed his hand inside Samson’s. The moment Samson felt the sweet pressure against his palm, he hauled him into the open back of the vehicle. Mike dove through the front seats and covered Manny with his body.

Samson carved a frenetic pattern though the teeming road and whizzing bullets, past the train depot and out into the dark night, headed straight for Angela.

For Samson knew three things with absolute certainty: Julian would lie to his maker to advance his agenda, Samson’s shoulder had taken a round and seared like fucking hell, and everything he had ever wanted was in reach.

He wasn’t about to let it slip away twice in one lifetime.

***

Angela recoiled from the man’s decaying breath. He shouted commands inches from her face, his spittle landing against her cheeks and lips, but the divide in communication might as well have been the Sahara for all she understood. Augustine managed to eke out two words—
say nothing
—before his stomach absorbed the blunt handle of a semi-automatic.

He caved to the dirt. A fountain of blood erupted through his teeth.

She flinched. Were she to speak, they would know she was American. Augustine was trying to save her.

The man who had frisked her for weapons faced her. He cocked his head to the side and gave her a long, slow undressing with his eyes then nuzzled the hemline of her cotton dress with the barrel tip of his pump-action grenade launcher. The growling string of words unearthed from deep inside him rivaled the stench of his earlier commands.

If she could get one of their guns…

But there were three more captors. Augustine and Angela would both be dead before she could get off a clean shot.
Keep your head, Ang. You probably have an IQ higher than all of them combined. What would your father do? What would Samson do?

Stay alive. Any means necessary.

Another of the men, the leader who had buried himself under the Jeep’s hood and kept the others in line, stepped around the vehicle’s front bumper. His sharp, chastising words caused Angela’s pursuer to back off.

Angela exhaled the deep, lung-sated breath that had been trapped inside since the ambush. Two men worked the Jeep from inside the cab. The engine launched two complete revolutions and turned over with a decisive rush of gasoline. The leader slammed the hood and motioned Augustine and Angela into the center of the back seat, bookended by captors.

She stared down the barrel of the grenade launcher. Her insides fractured. Her body moved as instructed; her spirit stayed on that desolate road, waiting, waiting, waiting.