Cross Country (13 page)

T
HIS PART OF Africa wasn't recommended for backpacking or camera safaris. The yowl of hyenas was a constant reminder of where I was now. So were the road signs that said things like
WARNING: LIONS-CROCODILES!!

Like right now. Two military-issue jeeps sat nose-to-nose across the road, blocking our way. This was no ordinary border crossing, though. We were less than an hour outside Koidu.

"Are these guys actually government?" I asked Moses. "Any way to tell?"

He shrugged and shifted uncomfortably on the seat of the Drifter. "Could be RUF."

There were six of them by my count, all wearing a mix of fatigues and street clothes and the familiar flip-flops. All of them were armed, including a mounted gunner in the back of one of the jeeps.

A lanky guy in a maroon beret came striding over to my window. His eyes were bloodshot, like he might have been stoned. He raised his rifle with one arm and held out the other hand.

"Papers."

I played it cool for now and showed him the police clearance and my passport.

He barely looked at them. "Fifty dollars. To pay for your visa."

Whether these men were government officers or not, I knew right then that this was grift, pure and simple. A holdup.

I raised my gaze and looked into his red eyes. "I just spoke with the US embassy in Freetown this morning. Deputy Ambassador Sassi assured me himself that my papers were in good order. So what's the problem here?"

He stared back hard at me, but I didn't flinch. Two of the other guards started over from the side of the road, but he held up a palm to save them the trouble.

"Still, it is ten for the passenger. Twenty, if it's in leones."

Somehow, we both knew I'd pay that one. I didn't want to push my luck. I gave him two American fives and we were on our way — to the next roadblock anyway.

We hit four of them before the actual border crossing. Each rite of passage went about the same. It got easier as we went, cheaper anyway, and by the time we finally crossed at Bo Waterside to Liberia, I'd paid out only another fifteen bucks or so.

The precious thing we did lose was time.

We didn't get into Monrovia until after dark, and with no guarantee of supplies east of there, we had to spend the night.

I worried through the night and didn't sleep very well.

We were safe so far, but the speed we were traveling was no Tiger's pace.

He was getting away again.

W
E DROVE ALL the next day and into the second night, alternating at the wheel, trying to make up time. As we traveled, Moses told me that he was representative of most people here — not the RUF, and certainly not the Tiger and his murderous gang.

Less than half an hour east of Monrovia, we passed the last billboard and radio tower and entered dense rain forest that went on for hours.

Sometimes it opened up into clear-cut fields, with stumps like grave markers for miles in every direction.

Mostly, though, the road was a tunnel of bamboo, palm, mahogany, and vine-choked trees such as I'd never seen before — with leaves and low scrub slapping and slathering the sides of the truck as we pushed through.

Late in the afternoon, we were near the coast, driving through tidal flats and then wide swaths of open grassland that were the antithesis of the jungle we'd just left.

I saw a huge colony of flamingos around sunset, thousands and thousands of stunningly beautiful birds, an incongruous sea of pink in the orangish light.

Finally we had to stop for the evening. We were both too tired to drive. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered how many fathers got to tell their kids they'd spent a night in a real African jungle.

I
WOKE UP some hours later. Moses was already laying out breakfast on the tailgate of the Drifter.

"Looks good," I said. "Thank you, Moses."

"There is a river. Over there if you wish to wash up." He pointed with his chin to the opposite side of the road. I noticed his shirt was soaking wet. "It is not far."

I bushwhacked with my arms, skirting a huge knot of thorny scrub the way Moses had obviously done before me.

About twenty-five yards in, the brush opened up and I came out onto a mud-and-gravel bank.

The river itself was a wide, murky green piece of glass. I could barely tell it was moving. I took a step toward the water and sank up to my ankle mud.

When I pulled back, the mud sucked the shoe right off my foot. Shit. I'd wanted to clean myself up, not get filthier.

I looked up and down the bank, wondering where Moses had gone to wash.

First, I needed my shoe back, though. I reached down into the guck and felt around. It was actually nice and cool down there.

Suddenly the water in front of me boiled up. Some thing rough, like a huge log, came to the surface very, very quickly.

And then I saw that it was a full-blown, honest-to-God crocodile. Its black eyes were set on me. Breakfast was on the table.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Good-bye shoe. Good-bye leg or arm?

I stepped back ever so slowly. So far, the croc showed just a layer of tiled skin at the water's surface. I could see the bulge of its snout. The great beast's eyes didn't leave me for a second.

Never taking a breath, I kept inching backward.

On the next step though, my foot turned in the mud. I fell! Like it had received a cue, the crocodile sprang forward.

Nine, ten, maybe as much as twelve feet long, it surged out of the water, slashing in and out of an S-shape as it leapt straight at me.

I tried to pull in my legs, if only to postpone the inevitable savage bite. How could this have happened? Everyone had been right — I shouldn't have come to Africa.

Suddenly a shot exploded behind me!

Then a second shot!

The huge croc let out a strange, high-pitched noise that was part scream, part gasp. It reared up off its front legs, then smacked back down into the mud. I could see a red ooze on the side of its head. It thrashed once more, then rapidly backed away into the river and disappeared.

I turned to see Moses standing behind me. He was holding the Beretta.

"I am so sorry, sah. I meant to say that you should take this with you. Just in case."

A
FRICA! WAS THERE anywhere in the world like it? I didn't think so.

Then Moses and I parted, and he drove off proudly in his truck. I never found out whether he was a good Samaritan or an opportunist, though my nature favored the former. I will always think of Moses as my first friend in Africa.

Back at the hotel in Lagos, I showered off three days' worth of dust, sweat, and blood. I looked at my crooked nose in the bathroom mirror. Alex, you are a piece of work. Finally, I plopped down on the bed to call home.

I started with a call to Bree's cell this time. It was good just to hear her voice again, but the warm hellos between us were quick.

She had news that couldn't wait — about a new murder, on Eighteenth Street, and about the young boy she'd found there and what he'd said: There was more than one Tiger. Flaherty had told me the same thing, but I was pretty sure I was looking for one killer — I could feel it in my gut.

Bree countered, "If this boy is for real, it's the closest thing we've got to inside information. He was in the gang, Alex. You could be doing just as much damage control in DC, maybe more. Come home."

"Bree, you're talking about a phantom witness back there. A young boy. I know that the man who killed Ellie and her family is here right now. He's in Lagos." At least my instincts told me he was. Who knows now?

"I'll see what else I can find out, specifically about him." Her voice was tight. We'd never really fought before, but this conversation was feeling pretty close.

"Listen, Bree," I said. "I swear, I'm not going to stay here any longer than necessary."

"I think we have very different definitions of what that means, Alex."

"You could be right about that."

I might have kept that to myself, but the only thing I could offer Bree right now was the truth.

"I miss you like crazy," I finally said, telling Bree another kind of truth, while trying to change the subject. "What are you wearing?" I joked.

She knew I was kidding and laughed. "Where do you think I am? I've got Ugly Fred looking at me across my desk" — I heard a shout of protest in the background — "and half the Major Case Squad's in the room with me. You want me to keep going?"

I took a rain check and we said our good-byes. Then, before I could dial home to Fifth Street, I heard a rattle at my door.

"Hello?" I called. "Who's there?"

The door swung open so fast I didn't have time to get off the bed to look. I recognized the front-desk manager.

But not the two dark suits with white shirts standing in the hall behind him.

"What are you doing in my room?" I asked the desk man. "What is this all about? Who are they?"

He didn't say a word to me. He just held the door open for the other two and then closed it from the outside as they moved across the room toward me.

I jumped up off the bed and set my feet on the floor. "What's going on here?" I said. "What's happening now?"

Now what was happening? Were they really State Security? Who had sent them for me? And why?

I struggled, but both of them were freaks sizewise, incredibly powerful men, quick and athletic too. They had my body twisted in a corkscrew and it was impossible to break free.

We crossed the room like that, with me tangled and helpless in their arms. Then I heard a window slide open, and I felt the rush of humidity on my skin.

My whole body tensed and I started to yell for help — as loudly as I possibly could to anyone who might hear me.

There was a blur of sky and earth and swimming pool and then my back slammed hard into the hotel wall.

I was suddenly outside — and hanging upside down!

"What do you want?" I screamed up at the one holding my legs. He had a very round face, flat nose, kind of a Mike Tyson squint. It was a struggle to keep still and not fight him, but I sure didn't want him to lose his grip.

The SSS man, or whoever he was, grinned down at me over the curve of my knees.

"You been here long enough, Cross. Time to cross you off." He laughed over his shoulder, sharing the joke with his partner.

Even if the swimming pool had been directly below me, which it wasn't, I figured I was too high to survive any fall. My blood coursed through me. I could feel it everywhere, especially in the growing pressure in my head.

But then my body was moving again. Inside!

My spine scraped hard against the aluminum window track, and I came down on the floor of my hotel room.

I
JUMPED UP and went at the nearest SSS man, until the other pressed his gun into my ribs.

I saw that my duffel was out on the bed.

And packed.

"Pick up the bag."

"Who sent you?" I asked them. "Who are you working for? This is insane!"

He didn't answer me. Instead, they grabbed me and moved me out into the hall. Freak One shut the door behind us and pocketed the key.

Then they both just turned and walked away.

"Go home, Detective Cross. You're not wanted here. Last warning."

There was a bizarre half minute or so while they waited for the elevator, talking low to each other. Then they calmly got on and left me standing in the hallway.

Clueless.

And keyless.

Obviously they'd taken this as far as it was going for now. Whoever they were, police or not, and whatever connection they might have to the Tiger, they didn't kill for him.

They hadn't even tried to put me on a plane.

But why not?

What was going on in this crazy country of theirs?