Night Of Knives Part 2

Veronica doubts it.

Jacob says, "They've got phones."

Everyone looks at him, surprised.

Susan asks, "Phones?"

"Guy over there has a cell phone, I saw it when we got up just now. He was reading a text message or something on it."

"It can't actually work. Not out here," Veronica says.

"It's not impossible. I work at Telecom Uganda, their compet.i.tors provide service in the Congo too, with reasonable coverage from what I saw. And radio's a weird medium. If we're anywhere near a town, there might be pockets of service around."

"But I thought - how do they have cell phones here? I thought there wasn't even any government."

"There isn't," Derek says. "But there's still a lot of money out here, and there's not exactly a war any more. Just good old-fas.h.i.+oned anarchy. The UN keeps a pretty good lid on the cities, but we can't expect them to march out here looking for us. It's probably some local warlord's territory, they'd start a firefight if they came in."

"Do you think that's who sent them?" Veronica asks. "The local warlord?"

"I have no idea."

"The point I was trying to make," Jacob says waspishly, "is that if we can get our hands on one of their phones, we can use it to call for help."

Derek frowns. "Remember that mud igloo we pa.s.sed? This is the middle of b.u.t.tf.u.c.k nowhere. I seriously doubt phones work anywhere near here."

"Doesn't matter," Jacob persists. "They have them because they work somewhere. somewhere. We get a phone somehow, we write a text message, it goes in the outbox, they recover the phone, they go to town or wherever, and the message gets sent as soon as they walk into signal range." We get a phone somehow, we write a text message, it goes in the outbox, they recover the phone, they go to town or wherever, and the message gets sent as soon as they walk into signal range."

There is a pause as the others absorb this.

"Not bad," Derek concedes. "But it'll be hard to grab one long enough to write a text. Probably the second most valuable thing these guys own, after their guns."

"Anybody got a better idea?" Jacob asks.

n.o.body does.

"Okay. So keep your eyes open for their phones," Derek says. "But remember that priority number one is to make sure nothing goes wrong. We don't necessarily want army troops finding us and storming this cave. The best way out of this is to be traded for a big bag of US dollars. Until then we have to stick together and make sure they don't abuse us. We should go join the others."

Veronica realizes she, Derek, Susan and Jacob have instinctively formed a tight group, a little apart from the other four. This makes sense, their foursome drove from Kampala together, Derek knew each of them before they came here, and they are all in their late twenties and early thirties, whereas the others are one or two decades older - but all eight of them need to be a single indivisible group. They get up and move across the cave, a.s.semble into a rough circle.

"Love what you've done with the nose," Tom says mordantly to Derek.

"Thanks. I always thought it was too straight. Is everyone okay?"

"We're fine," Judy says, meaning Tom and herself. "I may never want to walk another step again as long as I live, but otherwise fine. But Diane -"

Diane doesn't look good. She is sitting slumped on the floor, her back to the wall, breathing shallowly, her head lolling, her eyes unfocused.

"She needs a doctor," Michael says to Derek. His voice is hoa.r.s.e. "Tell them that. Tell them we've got money at home, lots of money, we'll get them whatever they want. We have to get her to a doctor. If they just give me a phone I can get them half a million dollars."

"I'll tell them," Derek says. "When I think they'll be receptive. That's not now."

Michael looks like he wants to be furious but can't muster the energy. "Listen, you son of a b.i.t.c.h -"

"Come on, man," Jacob interrupts. He points out the line of blood on his neck. "Don't kid yourself. You think they give a s.h.i.+t about us? They came this close to cutting my throat out there. They would have if I couldn't have made it. There's probably no doctor inside a hundred miles anyways. Best case, we're all going to be here for days, probably weeks. Don't start making trouble now. You'll just make things worse."

"Trouble? Trouble? Trouble? Look at my wife. Look at her. She might, she might be dying here. You have to go tell them to get help. You have to go tell them right now." But Michael's voice sounds hollow, like he knows in his heart that Jacob is right, pleading with their captors will be useless. Look at my wife. Look at her. She might, she might be dying here. You have to go tell them to get help. You have to go tell them right now." But Michael's voice sounds hollow, like he knows in his heart that Jacob is right, pleading with their captors will be useless.

Veronica kneels next to Diane and examines her closely. The wounds on her back have clotted, blood loss couldn't have been that severe. She doesn't look dehydrated. Marathon runners sometimes die from hyponatremia, the opposite of dehydration, but that's clearly not the problem either.

"She's in shock," Veronica says. "Does she have a heart condition?"

Michael shakes his head. "No. Always been healthy as a horse."

"Then it's probably not cardiogenic. Just psychological shock and exhaustion. I think she'll be better once she rests."

Better but not healed, Veronica doesn't say; psychological shock often leads to post-traumatic stress disorder, and she has a nasty feeling there will be plenty more trauma to come before any of them get out of this.

"Are you a doctor?" Judy asks.

"A nurse. I used to work in an ER."

Michael seems rea.s.sured. Veronica doesn't tell him she hasn't practiced for seven years.

A figure breaks through the curtain of the waterfall, a strong man carrying a woven thatch basket strapped to his back. The cave fills with clanking noises as the basket is emptied. The one-eyed man takes a length of chain in his hands, stands, and turns towards the captives. He is smiling. Veronica s.h.i.+vers.

They start with Derek. First they take his shoes, watch, belt, and camera, his little day pack, and everything in his pockets. Then they wrap a length of chain tightly around his ankle, seal it with a small steel padlock, and run the other end through the fist-sized natural hole in an oblong rock the size of a watermelon. Susan is next to be stripped of her possessions, which are piled with Derek's near the waterfall. Both the chains looped through the anchor rock are fastened to a large padlock, its hasp almost too big for the fingernail-sized links. The locks and chains are rusting but solid.

Veronica is next. She rises to her feet as the one-eyed man approaches, tries to be cooperative. She doesn't resist as he searches her roughly, not even when his hands squeeze and linger on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and crotch. She tells herself at least he's only touching her through her clothes. She tries to pretend she isn't really there, that this is happening to someone else. Her pockets are emptied. Her second Snickers bar is taken. She wishes she and Derek had eaten it instead of saving it for the others.The cigarettes in her cargo pants are soaked, useless, and Veronica feels a sudden and powerful pang of regret that she hadn't smoked them. She would maim for a cigarette right now.

When he removes her belt he discovers the Celtic knot tattooed onto the small of her back, and traces its lines with his rough fingers. She stands motionless until he begins to probe beneath her waistband, then she pulls away and turns around, ready to shout and fight back at last - but he is already crouching before her, wrapping a chain around her left ankle, pulling it tight, locking it with one of the little steel locks. It won't impede circulation, but she knows it will chafe her skin raw, and there's no way she will get her foot loose. The other end of the chain, which is about twenty feet long, joins Derek's and Susan's chains on the big padlock. Veronica sits back down on her rock and stares dully at her new chain anklet. At least they have all been chained together, they will not be dragged away one by one. It is thin consolation.

Soon they have all been attached to the anchor rock, and the big chromed padlock is snapped shut. No key is in evidence. Veronica is thirsty again, and desperately hungry. She watches as all their possessions are collected in two jute sacks. At least she managed to hide Derek's Leatherman. That's something. Maybe Derek can pick or smash the lock and lead them all to escape. Maybe he's Superman and he can just fly them all out of here.

The one-eyed man produces his panga, panga, and everyone tenses; but he uses it only to cut free their arms. The relief is acute. Her shoulders still feel wrenched in their sockets, and her hands are still full of weirdly damped sensations, but Veronica thinks, as she flexes her wrists, that maybe the damage isn't permanent after all. It feels strange, almost unnatural, to be able to hold her hands in front of her body again. and everyone tenses; but he uses it only to cut free their arms. The relief is acute. Her shoulders still feel wrenched in their sockets, and her hands are still full of weirdly damped sensations, but Veronica thinks, as she flexes her wrists, that maybe the damage isn't permanent after all. It feels strange, almost unnatural, to be able to hold her hands in front of her body again.

"A demain," the one-eyed man says, after freeing Derek last; and he leads the rest of the Africans out through the waterfall, leaving the captives in the cave.

"What does that mean?" Michael whispers.

Jacob translates: "See you tomorrow."

The cave faces westward, and the red light of the setting sun s.h.i.+mmers gloriously in the waterfall, like flowing stained gla.s.s. It seems wrong that anything here should be so beautiful. The temperature is dropping with the sun. Veronica isn't cold exactly, not yet, but she is uncomfortably aware that all her clothes are still soaking wet.

No one speaks for a long time. Veronica doesn't know what to say or do. Nothing in her life has prepared her for this situation.

"Come on," Derek says eventually. "Let's move this rock to the middle so we've got more s.p.a.ce."

He and Jacob manage to carry it from the wall into the middle of the cave. By the time they have finished, the glistening red orb in the waterfall has been cut in half; they are almost on the equator here, and the sun sets with amazing speed.

"Any more bright ideas?" Michael demands of Derek, inexplicably hostile.

Derek shakes his head coolly. "Not today. I think we should just follow your wife's example." Diane has moved from shock straight into a nearly comatose sleep.

Michael glares back for a moment, then goes back to his wife, slumps to a sitting position beside her and covers his face with his hands. Veronica walks over to the waterfall and drinks deeply, the anchor rock is just close enough now for that. She hugs herself as she backs away from the water. She is now officially cold. Maybe she wouldn't be with dry clothes, but that's a moot point. The darkness is now almost absolute, except that their captors have set a fire on the slope just outside, and the flickering firelight radiates through the waterfall;. Even if they were to somehow escape their chains, they are being watched; even if they somehow escaped their watchers, they are countless miles from anything they know. Derek is right. There will be no escape. There is only the hope of ransom or rescue.

"I'm cold," Veronica says.

Susan nods. "So am I."

Derek says, "We should huddle together. All of us, for warmth. At least until we dry. And, s.h.i.+t, we have to clear rocks to make s.p.a.ce, I should have thought of that earlier."

Veronica doesn't like this intimation that Derek is mortal and makes mistakes. They labour in the dark at some length, groaning from their many agonies as they stumble and b.u.mp into one another, until they have finally cleared a flat patch of ground big enough for them all to lie down.

Veronica stays close to Derek, almost instinctively. When they all lower to the ground and tentatively pull each other close she is between him and Jacob. Derek's back is to Veronica, his arms are around Susan, who is sobbing quietly. Veronica feels angry, and jealous. She wants Derek's attention and his strength. She tries to tell herself it doesn't matter, this is about warmth, they have to all stay together. Susan needs him more than she does, and anyways being jealous here is totally ridiculous. She hugs Derek tightly and presses her face against his strong back. Jacob, behind her, is more tentative, and she reaches back to pull him closer against her. His long, lean body is bony and uncomfortable. The stone floor and the ankle chain are painfully hard.

"It's going to be okay," Derek murmurs.

Susan sniffles a bit, then announces through tears, "It better be."

Everyone tries to laugh.

"I mean it," Derek continues, louder. "We'll be okay long as we stick together. And I think we will. You guys have held up really well. "

"You were amazing too," Susan says. "You are amazing."

"This isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Top ten, maybe, but not even top three, not yet. Makes it easier."

"It's easily the worst thing that's ever happened to me." Susan is on the verge of tears again.

Veronica feels Derek tighten his arms around Susan, and hears him whisper to her, "Things will look better in the morning. I promise."

Veronica closes her eyes and hopes he's right.

Chapter 5

For a long moment Veronica doesn't understand what she is doing lying on a stone floor pressed between two other bodies. Then memory jolts her like a thunderbolt and she moans with terror, instantly wide awake.

She hurts seemingly everywhere: badly blistered feet, cuts on her legs, a big bruise on her hip, a pulled calf muscle, aching shoulders, skinned wrists, chafed ankle, headache, hunger, thirst, stiffness everywhere, an overall feeling that she has been hit by a freight train. At least her clothes are now mostly dry. The cave is dark. She has no idea how long she has slept. Jacob, Derek and Susan seem asleep, albeit uneasily. She hears but can't make out soft, frightened whispers from Tom and Judy. Veronica wants to lie where she is and sleep for days, and she is so exhausted that despite the hard, cold, uneven stone floor she probably could, but she needs to pee. At least she isn't dehydrated.

Just getting to her feet feels like climbing K2, but somehow she manages. Her right calf won't flex at all, she can barely walk, but that hardly matters, the chain on her left ankle keeps her from going more than twenty feet from the anchor rock. She isn't sure where to go, but she has to go somewhere, so she limps near the waterfall. Her chain clanks bleakly behind her, as if she's the ghost in a ghost story. She doesn't want to pee so close to the others, but tells herself they can't afford niceties like personal embarra.s.sment anymore, and anyway the white noise of the waterfall swallows up the sound.

Veronica drinks from the waterfall, soothing her throat. The water feels cool and clear. She hopes it is also clean, that no upstream village dumps dead animals or feces into the water. Dysentery is all she needs right now. Maybe she shouldn't drink from it, but she already did last night, what the h.e.l.l. She feels her way back to her slot between Jacob and Derek, lies laboriously back down, and starts to cry. It feels like an involuntary physical reaction, like sneezing. She can't stop, she starts weeping more violently. Derek wakes up and rolls over to face her.

"Sorry, I'm sorry," she bleats.

"It's okay," he mutters, and reaches out for her, wraps his arms around her, holds her close as she sobs against his shoulder. She tries to relax into his arms and let her exhaustion carry her back into sleep. It doesn't seem to work, she is not conscious of having fallen asleep, but somehow, when she next opens her eyes, the cave is filled with filtered dawn, the sun is on the rise, and others are up and moving.

The ceiling of the cave is barely high enough to stand, and except near the waterfall, it is so dark she has to squint. Veronica moves as close to the light and the water as she can, as quickly as she can, heedless of the pain in her strained muscles. Being buried alive has long been her greatest fear. Yesterday she was too exhausted to react to her surroundings, and fear of imminent death trumped claustrophic anxiety, but now just the thought of being in one of the dark corners of this cave makes her dizzily lightheaded and a little nauseous.

Once they have moved from lying on stone to sitting on a rock there is precious little to do. Jacob mutters, "I'm hungry," and there is general agreement. Otherwise everyone seems dazed and disinterested, too weak for conversation. Diane seems better, she's at least ambulatory, but she doesn't speak and her eyes are wide as a child's.

"You have to tell them to get me a phone," Michael says, breaking a brooding silence. "I'll get them money. Tell them I can get them a million dollars if they let us go."

Veronica wonders if the us us in question means all of them, or just Michael and Diane. in question means all of them, or just Michael and Diane.

"I will," Derek says. "When they come."

"I can do it fast. I can transfer fifty thousand dollars today, over the phone."

"What makes you think they'll let you go once they have the money?" Jacob asks.

Michael flinches. "What - why wouldn't they?"

"Wrong question. Why would would they?" they?"

n.o.body has an answer.

The waterfall noise changes as two men push through its flowing curtain. One of them is the muscled one-eyed man. They other they have not seen before. He is even taller than Jacob, at least six foot six, he reminds Veronica of basketball players she has met. The cave is not quite big enough for him and he has to stoop. He wears sneakers, black shorts, and a ragged blue T-s.h.i.+rt too small for him, and he walks with a p.r.o.nounced limp. The one-eyed man carries a plastic bucket full of some pale pastelike substance, and a jute sack holding a half-dozen spherical things about the size of human heads. Veronica freezes in place as it dawns on her that they might actually be human heads. Both men carry pangas pangas lashed to their belts. lashed to their belts.

"Good morning," the tall man says, putting down sack and bucket. His accented English is soft-spoken and Veronica has to strain to hear him over the waterfall. "My name is Gabriel."

"I can get you money," Michael bursts out. "Give me a phone and I can get you a million dollars if you let us go."

Gabriel examines him curiously. "What is your name?"

"Michael Anderson."

"You are a rich man, Mr. Anderson?"

"Yes I am," Michael says. "And I'm ready to make you rich too."

"C'est vrai? The Bible says it is harder for a camel to pa.s.s through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." The Bible says it is harder for a camel to pa.s.s through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."

Michael stares at him. "Don't you want money?"

"Of course I want money. But please, how is it you would give it to me?"

"I can do a bank transfer today, for fifty thousand dollars, I can do it in ten minutes if you give me a phone -"

Gabriel half-smiles. "Do I seem like a man who has an account at a Swiss bank? Please, Mr. Anderson. Be sensible. Who will negotiate the arrangements? Who will transform the numbers in your bank account into dollars that I can hold? Such a magical transformation. Like water into wine. Who will bring me those dollars? Where will we meet? How will my safety be guaranteed? Are these arrangements that you can make today, in ten minutes, Mr. Anderson?"