Butler Did It! (4 page)

Tommy, who had been in the back of the
crowd at this point, was able to avoid the pile of struggling
combatants and raced on after the dog. Doc and Butler were not far
behind him, with the survivors of the pileup limping after. The
little dog skittered around a corner then stopped short, waiting
for his followers. Tommy rounded the corner and stopped in
surprise, as the creature gave him a big, silly grin, its long
tongue hanging out of the side of its mouth. Doc and Butler, of
course, cannoned into Tommy, followed by the remaining members of
the chase.

“Hold on, hold on, I may be able to get
him,” cautioned Tommy in a pseudo-whisper. He crouched low with his
arms spread wide and slowly moved toward the dog.

Taking this as a play posture, the
little dog bent his front legs, rear end high in a play bow, danced
from side to side a bit, and took off running again.

“It thinks it’s a game,” laughed
Butler, “it’s not going to do any good to chase it.” However, his
advice fell on absent ears, since by the time he finished saying
it, he was alone on the deck with the sounds of pursuit rapidly
fading. Another sound, far off in the distance, attracted Matthew’s
attention.

Damn, that sounds like an
explosion!
He thought.

Forward of the science lab, the great
dog chase was still going strong.

“The little mutt is laughing at us,”
hollered Tommy, now in the lead of a small but determined group of
pursuers. They followed a torturous rout through portable labs and
various tethered storage containers on deck. Tommy though he saw
his chance as the chase neared two massive loading cranes at the
ship’s midsection. The dog had paused in front of a hanging cargo
net, seemingly considering its options.

“I’ve got you now,” Tommy bellowed.
Stretching to full length, he dove onto the panting dog. Of course,
it was no longer there. The dog, microseconds before, had slipped
through a gap in the cargo net. Tommy realized, too late, where he
was going to end up. Attempting to abort the leap in mid-air, he
slammed awkwardly into the hanging net. The resulting crash left
Tommy hanging upside-down in the net with his arms and legs twisted
tightly in its nylon straps. Barking, the little dog took off
again, ready for more fun.

At that very moment, two sharp blasts
on the ship’s powerful whistle brought the chase to an abrupt
halt.

Matthew Butler was the first to see a
huge column of smoke rising in the distance.

Dashing up to the bridge, he found
Captain Nikos Zamora, the 60-year-old craggy-faced and white
bearded Master of the Pelican standing at the ship’s railing and
looking at the smoke through binoculars. Trask, nursing a bruised
lump on his elbow, immediately joined the pair.

“What do you think it is,” asked
Matthew, taking the binoculars Captain Z handed him.

“Can’t really tell from here,” the
Captain replied, “my best guess is that something happened at the
airport, maybe a plane crash or something.”

“I don’t like it,” Trask interjected,
“we think of Kenya as a fairly stable country, but there are rival
political and military factions here that could blow up, so to
speak, at any time.”

“Okay,” said Matthew peering through
the binoculars, “I see emergency vehicles on the bridge. They’re
all headed toward the airport. It must be a plane
crash.”

“But if it’s not…” Captain Z returned,
“If Trask is correct that it might be a coup, they could close the
port and we’d be trapped here. We have all the paperwork in with
the harbormaster. I originally planned to weigh anchor in two hours
at high tide, but I say we get out now, while we still
can.”

“I reckon you’re right, Cap’n, We’d
better get out while the getting’s good,” replied
Butler.

Immediately the command went out and
the ship’s crew set to work leaving port. Butler gathered his
staff, many of them limping and groaning from their
injuries.

“We don’t know what has happened here,
but we don’t want to be trapped by something political, so we’re
leaving now.”

“What about the dog?” a voice from the
crowd asked.

“There’s nothing we can do about it
now. We’re stuck until we hit another port,” said Matthew. “I’m
telling you all right now; no one is to get attached to the pooch.
We’re not keeping it.”

“Yeah, let’s get back to our dinner,”
said Tommy, “Mrs. Yan’s Szechuan Chicken doesn’t deserve to get
cold.”

“You’re right about that, no rat with a
bob-tail should come between us and dinner,” Doc
affirmed.

The group made their way back down from
the bridge and entered the Mess hall, all the while speculating
about the large column of black smoke that continued to rise from
Mombasa’s airport.

Tommy was the first to cry; “You Little
Devil!”

As they entered the dining room, they
found the little dog on the table cleaning up the last of the
Szechuan Chicken. Crockery flew as incensed people dived and
tumbled across the table and out the door after the happy little
dog.

“There’s no point to this Chinese Fire
Drill, the dog just thinks it’s a big game,” repeated Butler, but
he was talking to himself again as the merry romp resumed. He
shrugged and sat down to a cold cup of coffee, listening to the
sounds of chaos, which slowly died away as the pursuers finally
tired and gave up the chase.

As night fell, the Pelican made her way
across the great Indian Ocean, on her way to the beautiful white
beaches of the Seychelles Islands.

Sensing that the delightful game was
over for now, the little dog wandered below decks until he came
upon a room he thought smelled right, and there, in Matthew
Butler’s cabin, under the bunk on a forgotten t-shirt, the little
dog curled up, heaved a great sigh, burped Szechuan Chicken once,
and fell into a satisfied sleep.

<<>>

MOMBASA AIRPORT

Within moments of the first gunfire,
Kobi had begun to move. His mind and body were running on
automatic. He knew that if he didn’t do something the artifacts
would be lost forever. He raced on foot toward the Main Gate,
hurdled over the bodies of the dead guards, and grabbed a mo-ped
leaning against the airport fence. Pushing the mo-ped to its
maximum, he trailed the Rebel’s truck and the following Mattatu out
into heavy traffic. About halfway to the city center a convoy of
Mombasa’s aging fleet of emergency vehicles sped by in the opposite
direction, obviously heading for the Airport and further snarling
traffic.

Without any idea of what he would do if
he caught up, he managed to keep the Mattatu and cargo truck in
sight through the long drive from the airport into Mombasa. His
cause was aided somewhat by the mo-ped’s ability to move in and out
of traffic while the truck could not. Unfortunately, the mo-ped’s
gas gauge read nearly empty and by the time Mombasa’s outskirts
were in sight, the brave little vehicle was running on fumes. As
they passed through the busy city center, the truck carrying the
cargo began to pull ahead. Kobi knew he was not going to be able to
keep up with it on the mo-ped, especially if the traffic
eased.

Surely, an alert about the theft had
gone out, hadn’t it? Kobi asked himself.
After all those
speeches about what a 'momentous historic occasion' this was, they
weren’t going to let someone kill everyone and just drive off with
the artifacts, were they?

Pausing to reconsider, he suspected
that the disaster at the airport had overshadowed the theft of mere
tribal artifacts. He wondered how many of his nation’s leaders had
been killed. He knew in his heart that this tragedy could grow into
internal chaos and the deaths of possibly thousands of people if
the government of Kenya was sufficiently undermined.

Night fell as pursuer and the pursued
made their way into the warehouse district near the docks. After
several minutes, the truck disappeared into a warren of alleys
between dilapidated buildings. Kobi just couldn’t keep up with the
truck carrying the artifacts. Rather than give up, he decided to
try to tail the slower moving Mattatu, thinking that he had a
better chance of keeping up with it. With a sinking heart, Kobi let
the truck go and stayed with the overloaded bush taxi, trailing
along behind on his straining mo-ped. At least he knew that the
group of gunmen in the Mattatu was associated with the vehicle
carrying the crate of artifacts, and perhaps in time they would
lead him back to them.

They were within a block of the docks
when the bush taxi abruptly turned a corner. Kobi leaned his mo-ped
into the turn at a top speed of ten kilometers per hour, feeling
more ridiculous than daring, like a comic version of James Bond.
The Mattatu was no longer ahead of him on the deserted street, but
he spotted a large warehouse door slowly closing. Kobi drove by
without glancing at the door. When he was sure he had passed out of
sight, he pulled the poor thing to a stop. He gave it a small pat;
he felt a little affection for it after it had performed such an
extraordinary pursuit. Cautiously, utilizing all his skill as a
Park Warden stalking poachers, he crept back to the location of the
warehouse and carefully scouted around it to see if there were any
other entrances to the building.

Climbing up on a couple of precariously
stacked trashcans, he peered cautiously through a window so covered
in grime that he might as well have been trying to see through a
wall.

If he lost this group of rebels, any
hope of finding the crate was truly lost and he would have to be
the one who bore the responsibility for losing it, at least as far
as his family was concerned.

The thought of facing the loss and the
humiliation it would bring was too great; he knew he had no choice.
He would have to do everything he could and hope that something
would happen to help him recover both the artifacts and his
honor.

Gently, he pushed on the top of the
window and was grateful to see that the bottom swung easily
outward. Teetering on the wobbly trashcans, he gradually worked
himself under the protruding window and in through the opening. He
followed the sound of voices to an office in the front of the
building. The people inside must have felt secure about any
intrusion because they had left the inner door of the office
open.

“We have done as you asked; we have the
objects in our possession, now it is time for your people to
produce the weapons. It would not be a wise thing to cross the
Lord’s Resistance Army.” This voice was speaking in English with a
heavy Ugandan accent.

Kobi felt his strength leave
him.

The LRA in Kenya!
He had not
thought it was possible to be more frightened than he had been when
breaking into the warehouse. Now his fear was not only for himself
and for his honor, he was afraid for his country and the entire
region of Eastern Africa. The brutal LRA had conducted a terrorist
revolution against the government of Uganda for twenty years. Their
methods of mass murder, mutilation, torture, and kidnapping had
created one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent times. If
they were acquiring arms, it meant that they intended to break the
2006 ceasefire, which the world believed was holding. He felt
sickened as he thought of the villages destroyed, the refugees
created, and the thousands of children abducted and forced to be
soldiers or sex slaves for the LRA. He could not accept this
happening in his own country, or that it would begin again in the
ravaged and poverty-stricken Uganda. Reacquiring the artifacts
would make little difference if a well-armed LRA were once again
unleashed upon the people of the region.

“You have no need to threaten me,
Commander. You will tell your people to meet our ship at 4̊ 06’ 04
S, 55 ̊ 47’ 16 E; roughly twenty nautical miles northwest of
Silhouette Island in the Seychelles on the day agreed upon. There,
we will load the weapons and ammunition onto your craft and you
will hand over the artifacts. These are the terms we agreed upon
and they will be met.” This voice had a vaguely Scandinavian
accent. It was a hard voice; a voice that Kobi, for one, felt he
would not want to cross. “I will be there to meet you,” said the
voice.

It was apparent to Kobi that the
meeting was breaking up and that he had to make a decision. He knew
where the exchange would occur but not when. If he let these people
out of his sight in order to go to the authorities, he would have
no chance of finding them again. Even if he did, the authorities
might not believe him or even have resources they could spare. In
the end, he decided to follow the Europeans with whom the LRA had
met. He knew that the Europeans were the source of the guns and, as
much as the artifacts were important to him, it was far more
important to prevent the LRA from getting the arms. If he was
lucky, he might be able to retrieve the artifacts at the same
time.

Kobi streaked to his window and, as
silently as possible, squirmed through the opening. He jumped to
the ground, avoiding the treacherous and possibly noisy trashcans.
It was easy to identify the Europeans as they left the warehouse.
Their white faces and light colored hair stood out in the gloom of
the sparse city lighting. Their path led eastward. The intricately
foul odor on the wind told Kobi that the Europeans were heading
toward the docks.