Page 40 of Soul on Fire
But Schafer had made some stupid joke about navy faggots while they were deployed in the North Arabian Sea, and Elliot had thrown him into the bulkhead and pressed his forearm against Schafer’s throat and let him struggle, let him gasp and sputter while he chewed him out. “Never use that word again,” he’d hissed. “Never.”
The guys had looked at him, wondering.
Questions, too many questions. He didn’t have answers, not for his team and not for himself. But as he watched Ikolo clean and dress a little girl’s foot, smiling as he listened to her tell him the story her father told to her every night before she went to sleep, he felt that raw, aching hunger again.
Maybe there was an answer in Ikolo’s smile.
Hell of a fucking time to be navel-gazing. He was elbow deep in shit and he didn’t have time to be staring at anyone’s smile. Groaning, Elliot dug his satellite phone out from his pack. Time for his check-in.
He called theKearsarge’sCDC and asked for CDC Actual. The sailor answering hesitated but passed the call through to Kline with no further questions.
Elliot appreciated that.
“Lieutenant?” Kline sounded weary. “Are you all right?”
“I’m alive. We’re stopped for the night in a village. Matenda, if you can find it on your maps.”
A flurry of noise in the background, Kline snapping orders. Someone was pulling up maps of the Congo, the best the military and CIA had. “We launched a drone overhead to track you but we can’t see a damn thing through the canopy.”
“Makes sense. I can’t see the sky.”
“Any progress on tracking Majambu?”
“Not yet. But we’re hoping for a lead here with these villagers.”
“Elliot…” Kline’s sigh was a warble and whine over their connection. Buried this far in the forest, his satellite signal was weak and almost nonexistent. “Don’t be wrong about this choice you made.”
“How are the kids my team evacuated?”
“We’ve got them in isolation on the hangar deck. Doc says she has to quarantine them and check for Ebola symptoms. But they’re being fed and I’ve got volunteers going in and entertaining them when they’re off duty. Long term… well, legally, you kidnapped those kids. The State Department is shitting bricks over their status.”
“Doctor Ngondu will take charge of them when we’ve completed the mission.”
“He’d better.”
Ikolo headed for him, his expression serious, his wide eyes scooping up firelight. “Gotta go, Kline. Comm check in twelve hours. Out.”
Ikolo kneeled beside him. “Come with me,” he said softly, “Keise has something to tell us.”
* * *
They atecassava cooked into a flat bread, taro roots, plantains,nsafou—African black pear—and sweet tea. Elliot didn’t know what the tea was brewed from, but he watched the water come to a rolling boil before the leaves and sugar cane were added. There was absolutely nowhere to go out here if he got sick. But, whatever the tea was, it was delicious. He hoped he didn’t pay for it later.
Keise spoke some Swahili, and he and Elliot made small talk as they ate. Elliot listened to his history, enraptured as Keise spoke. His voice was deep, like warm velvet and a baritone sax playing soulful blues on a foggy New Orleans night. Elliot could get lost in that voice.
Keise was old, maybe in his seventies, he said, but he couldn’t remember. His hair had gone white and his skin was tight around his face. His eyes laughed and he smiled easily. He shared himself and his village with a warm kindness, and told Elliot of the days when he’d worked for the Belgians when they were still the colonial occupiers, and remembered when cars traveled on a two-lane highway up and down the track they had ridden. Elliot couldn’t imagine cars driving through the forest over the track that was barely wide enough for their bike. The forest had swallowed up everything.
He asked about their travel so far, and about the condition of the track. Where the rebels had been, and what they’d seen. “Now, I heard two men who were not from the forest were riding up the track earlier today. And now you are here.” He smiled. “Where are you going? What brings you through the forest?”
“We’re looking for someone.” Elliot described Majambu, his height, his slender build, his sharp facial features. “He’s dangerous. We think he already killed a man in the forest and stole his bicycle. We think he’s going to kill again. We’re trying to stop him.”
Keise frowned as he listened, nodding his head. “We did see a man travel up the track before you came by, and we did not like the look of him.”
Elliot pulled out his tablet and showed Majambu’s picture to Keise. “Was this him?”
Keise nodded. “Yes, that was him. He was on a motorbike and he slowed down to look at us. I thought we would have to defend ourselves, but he moved on. Thank God. The village down the track, three hours’ walk from here? They were slaughtered. We could smell the smoke. We heard the screams. I sent people to see if they could help, but they were too late. We wondered if we were next, if the rebels or the Mai-Mai were on the move. Usually, we hear of any rebel movements before they arrive. The villages, we share information with each other out here. But we’d heard nothing. That is unusual. And then we saw this man.”
The bicycle in the center of the burned village. He’d thought it had been remnants of the village’s life, debris left over after the attack. It stood out in his mind like a beacon, a klaxon wailing. “Did that village have any motorbikes?”
