Dirty Diamonds Of Boko Haram Part 1 (20 page)

Tariq sighed again with relief.

“We captured one of them alive” said his
Lieutenant close by his side. “A Captain”

Tariq began to smile. “Send the other
commanders and their men back to the town, I will deal with that
fool, Ibrahimo, later. Let’s see what information we can get out of
this Captain and perhaps, find out how loud Captains can scream

Alex drifted out of unconsciousness
slowly.

He became aware of the screams even before he
reached full consciousness. They seemed to be reaching his ears
from very far off. Alex dragged himself to the surface of full
consciousness, and then the screams became deafening. Even before
he opened his eyes he knew it was the screams were that of a man
being badly tortured.

The pains in his chest and stomach were
terrible but the one in his head felt a bit worse. He was unhurt,
the big .45 slugs from the revolver had kicked the hell out of him
but they hadn’t gotten through the bulletproof vest he wore.
Falling clean backward off his feet, he had hit the back of his
head on something hard and that was what added up to knock him out
cold for so long.

Alex took just a few seconds to gather his
wits fully together and condition mind to ignore the pains in his
body then he opened his eyes and looked around.

The cathedral was empty except for a group of
seven armed insurgents standing around a pillar off to one side,
close to the alter. They had Rufai tied up against the pillar in a
standing position and one of them was busy torturing him with a
knife while he screamed in agony. All the insurgents were armed but
not all had on their masks now. Alex recognized the big man he had
seen earlier at the filling station through the binoculars and then
again with El Soldat when the terrorists first came into the
cathedral, he was the one doing the torturing and he wore no mask
now, the red cloth the was the mask was tied loosely around his
neck.

The girl was nowhere in sight.

Moving his right arm carefully and slowly,
Alex reached for the pistol in his side holster but it wasn’t
there. He suddenly realized that all his weapons and personal
effects had been taken away, even his boots had been taken too.
They had assumed he was dead and stripped his corpse of all
valuables.

Alex started struggling weakly to get to his
feet and the insurgents saw him at once.

“By Allah, look at that corpse rise from the
dead!” said one of the insurgents, speaking in Arabic.

“I thought you people said he was dead” said
the big man angrily in the same language. He was also the only one
that wasn’t carrying an AK-47 rifle but he had a big new revolver
stuck in his belt, Rufai’s revolver.

“He has big bullet holes in his chest and
stomach, Tariq, look” said another one, pointing.

“And yet he is still trying to stand up on
his feet right now” said another starting to move towards Alex.

“This infidel must have more than two lives”
said another adjusting the sling of his Ak-47 rifle on his shoulder
as he followed the other over to Alex.

“Bring him over here” ordered the big
man.

They all spoke in Arabic and Alex heard them.
Now on his hands and knees, looking weak and badly hurt, he watched
the two men come.

The two insurgents walked confidently over to
the injured man and caught hold of him. As they dragged him roughly
to his feet, the man suddenly came fully alive with incredible
speed and agility that took them all completely by surprise,
catching them off guard.

Alex hit one of the men with an iron fist to
the throat, smashing his Adam’s apple and killing him instantly on
his feet. In the same fluid motion, Alex lifted a leg and stamped
down hard on the other man’s knee from an odd angle. The man
screamed with pain as the leg broke. Alex caught him by the arm,
jerked him forward and around as he moved in swiftly behind him,
wrapping a powerful arm around his neck and pulling backwards to
keep him upright as he used him as a shield to face the other five
insurgents across the cathedral. The man clawed desperately at the
arm around his throat as breathing became difficult and the rife
hanging from his shoulder dangled free at his side.

In a split second Alex had good hold of the
rifle with his free hand, lifting and point it across at the five
men. He fired a short burst and instantly killed two of them
standing to one side of the pillar before any of them had time to
fully react.

“
Shoot him
!” screamed the big man,
waving the bloody knife franticly at the other two men who had
their rifles at the ready but hesitated to fire back for fear of
killing their important comrade being used as a shield, he was
Tariq’s lieutenant.

At Tariq’s screamed commands, they started
firing rapidly, riddling their comrade’s body with bullets but
never got a clear shot at the Alex.

Alex fired another bursts and killed them
both. As he pushed the dead body away from him, the big man
suddenly hurled the bloody knife with incredible accuracy despite
the distance. Alex leaned quickly and easily to one side to avoid
the flying knife then brought up the rifle fast and fired a warning
burst into the floor at the man’s feet as he reached quickly for
the pistol stuck in his belt.

The big man leaped backward quickly and held
up his arms at once in surrender.

Keeping the rifle pointed at the man, Alex
walked quickly forward towards him, darting quick glances around to
make sure there were no more terrorists left lurking anywhere.

“You are Tariq, the executioner, are you
not?” asked Alex in fluent Arabic as he came up to the big man.
“Killer and rapper of women and children, second-in-command to El
Soldat himself”

“Yes, I am” replied the man with a sneer. “I
kill and destroy everything that walks or talks contrary to Allah’s
will. Are you going to kill me in cold blood? You will only be
making me a martyr and so my place in paradise will be assured”

“I’m going to give you a private firing squad
and the only place that will take you is right into the depths of
hell where you and your kind belong”

Alex lifted the rifle swiftly to his shoulder
and opened fire, emptying the last of the magazine at Tariq. The
bullets tore into the big man’s chest and abdomen like crazy, the
sheer force of it all throwing him violently backwards and off his
feet. The big body landed on the floor with a heavy thud and lay
still as the blood began to ooze freely form it.

Alex tossed the empty rifle aside as he
stepped quickly over to the bleeding corpse and tore out the pistol
in the belt. He took a quick look around and took note of the
bodies. He saw Samuel’s body and then Garko’s across the cathedral.
He couldn’t find Efosa at first but then looked out through one of
the large widows and saw his body out in the courtyard or what was
left of it at least. He still could find the girl anywhere.

What a big mess and all because of one fool,
thought Alex as he turned to fool. He moved over and examined
Rufai.

They had stripped Rufai completely of his
military uniform and he was now a mass of blood and mutilated flesh
in blue colored boxers’ shorts, tied systematically to the pillar
with thin wire ropes. He was still alive but in very bad shape.
They had cut open his belly so his intestine half spilled out,
sliced off part of his nose, his ears too and even one breast.
There were deep cuts and wounds all over Rufai’s body but none of
them could explain the large amount of blood pouring out of his
shorts. Alex guessed his manhood had already been cut off, he
glanced around and saw the swollen piece of black flesh on the
floor close by.

Rufai lifted his head slowly and stared at
Alex with the glassed eyes of a man in mind bending pain, one who
had been in it long enough for it to affect his sanity. He looked
very weak, too weak. It was more the ropes that kept him in the
erect position against the pillar than his legs.

“
Please
…
help me
” rasped Rufai
in a barely audible voice. His mouth was bloody and his breathing
was labored.

Alex shook his head. “There’s no more help
for you in this world, these ropes are what is keeping you alive.
Once I cut them away, you will bleed out very quickly and die”

“Then cut them and let me die…
please
…
kill me
”

Alex shook his head again. “Not until I get
some straight answers out of you. El Soldat came back personally
for the girl, didn’t he?”

Rufai nodded weakly, a slight move of his
head.

“What were the documents you wanted her to
sign?”

Rufai lowered his head and didn’t answer.
Alex glanced around, saw the black leather on the floor off to one
side and went quickly over to pick it up. He opened the it and read
swiftly. He went through the first document, the second, and then
he knew.

The knowledge brought him swift anger and he
walked furiously back to Rufai.

“You bastards lied to me from the very
beginning” yelled Alex angrily, waving the folder in Rufai’s bloody
face. “This was not a legitimate rescue mission. It was a mission
of murder! That girl’s father is the real owner of the entire
Goldfield holdings and with him dead she inherits it all. Your boss
is just an exalted caretaker and he hired me to get the girl back
so he could force her to sign over her inheritance to him. It
wouldn’t surprise me if you and your boss had a hand in tipping the
terrorists off to kidnap her in the first place, what better way to
get rid of a billionaire heiress without raising a single eyebrow
than to get a bunch of no good terrorist to do the dirty work for
you then publicly pretend to play the hero that goes to the rescue.
What you really came along to do was to force the girl to sign
these documents, and once she did you were going to kill her right
here. It was the ideal plan, the ideal place to get away with
murder because no law exists. We all become well paid accessories
to the murder and no witnesses will ever come forward. No wonder
you people were coughing out so much money left and right, the
profit margin was in the billions of dollars and you couldn’t
afford any mistakes. The official story you people put out would’ve
been that the terrorists killed her despite the ransom demand being
paid in full. Wasn’t that the plan?
Answer me, god damn
it
!”

“
Yes
…
yes
” breathed Rufai
weakly. “
Please
, just… just kill me and get this over
with”

Alex stared at him angrily for a moment then
shook his head and stepped away. “No, I won’t give you an easy
escape, you sadistic bastard. You will live and breathe until you
die, and that should take a good amount of time”

“No, no,
please
… have mercy” Rufai
gasped pleadingly.

“If that innocent girl had cried ‘please’ a
thousand times would you have spared her life?” Alex inclined his
head and started to back away. “Of course you wouldn’t”

“
Please
, for god’s sake, have mercy!”
rasped Rufai desperately.

“You killed me remember? Dead men are
incapable of showing emotions such as mercy particularly not
towards their killers. You need to save your strength and try to
make yourself very comfortable. These bastards are really good at
what they do, you’re going to stay alive for at least three
hours”

“No,
no
… please…
Pleeeaassee
”

Alex turned his back on Rufai for good and
went over to where the terrorist had gathered up all the weapons
and loot from the ‘dead Nigerian soldiers’. Their boots, their new
rifles and pistols, ammo, grenades, commando knives, watches, radio
coms and even the phones, the two phones that had been in his
pocket, everything was neatly laid out on the floor by a pillar and
the terrorists would have split it amongst themselves once they got
through with Rufai, it was the way things worked in this war.
Stealing and stripping dead bodies was standard procedure for the
insurgents, it was how they got most of their stuff.

Alex picked up the GX-2 phone at once and
checked to make sure it was fine then put it back in his pocket
along with the other phone he used to reach El Soldat. He put his
boots back on then started re-arming himself quickly for war. He
tossed aside the revolver and picked up one of the better Gloak
pistols, checked to make sure it was fine and fully loaded before
putting it in his holster. He picked up one of the new AK-47rifles
and checked it too, got the commando knife in its leather sheathe
and strapped it back in place on his belt.

One of the dead insurgents had a good sized
Army backpack with him. Alex got the bag quickly, emptying out the
worthless contents onto the floor. then repacked it with lots of
extra ammo and grenades but left the radios and the other things
behind.

Fully ready, Alex ran over to a window and
leaped easily through it, landing lightly on his feet in the open
compound. He stood perfectly still for a full minute, surveying the
area for signs of anyone. The whole place was dead quiet and there
was definitely no one around. The dark Pickup Jeep the terrorists
had come in was parked a short distance away but the Mitsubishi bus
was gone.

Alex crossed the compound quickly to the
Pickup Jeep, thrust his rife and the bag in through the open window
and dropped them on the front passenger seat. He went to check the
open back of the truck and found two full ten liter gallons of fuel
there. Alex got one of the gallons and carried it towards the
personage, picking up a big granite stone along the way. He went
straight to the prayer room and proceeded to drench the bodies and
cut off heads of the two nuns with fuel. He used up nearly three
quarters of the gallon’s contents and once done, recorked the
gallon, placed the stone on one of the bodies and retreated to the
door.