Noble Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 3) (18 page)

The vanguard.

“How many other roads are there?” I had to practically shout to be heard over the copter, the rain and Gus’s growling.

Kayla shook her head. “Only this one that the van can handle. Jeeps and Humvees could work their way up and down the mountain between plantations using maintenance trails where the utility lines cross. The rain’s probably washed out some of those, so you’d need mud tires, 4-wheel drive and a high undercarriage to bull your way through. Everything we
don’t
have.”

“Let’s pray whatever’s coming up the mountain isn’t feeling bullish today.” If we met even a small squad on this road, there’d be nowhere this slow, low-riding van could go. We were handicapped, the sick gazelle whose fate was determined the moment a hungry cheetah caught sight of it.

If the militia had cut data-driven communications, that meant they had older ways to communicate—short-wave or CB maybe. Whatever they were using, the men in that helicopter weren’t keeping our position to themselves. Even now, armed vehicles could be rushing our way.

At least, for our engine’s sake, we were headed downhill.

“Go faster!” I urged.

She was thinking about Tamu and Nyota in the back, keeping our speed moderated. I was thinking about Mark and Kayla in the front.

She pressed another 10 kilometers per hour out of the old van. I was pretty sure she could amp it up even more, but this was the compromise between her concern for ride-safety and my growing fear we’d be taken before we even got off the mountain.

Jengo pounded one little gorilla hand and his squeak toy on the dashboard and hooted as we accelerated. Gus’s front paws shifted anxiously as he stared at the road winding ahead. It was the switchbacks mainly that kept us from careening downhill at the speed I wanted. This wasn’t rugged cliffs but a civilized mountain with tamed slopes, gentled with plantations. The switchbacks reflected the lazy lay of the land, but even sweeping curves could be taken only so fast in the rain and mud with visibility so limited we had no idea what we would run into a hundred feet ahead.

Finally, after nearly 20 minutes of white-knuckling it down the mountain, expecting to be ambushed every mile along the way, the road levelled out as we hit the valley below.

“The N4 is just a few kilometers ahead,” Kayla assured me.

That was the road I’d come in on. A cross between graveled and paved—something like pebbles held together by a tar mix Scrooge would have laid. Cheap maybe, and filled with potholes, but infinitely better than the mud road we were skidding over now.

Kayla slammed on the brakes.

I actually saw her right leg move as her foot flew from the accelerator to the brake. It was a full second before the brakes caught, another full second before they had any effect on the churning tires, and another second before they locked and we went into a brief skid that another second later Kayla steered out of expertly. When the van finally came to a stop, its front tires sat in a stream of water up to their rims.

“Damn it!” The rivulet streaming over the road in this low-lying valley wasn’t wide—maybe 20 feet across—but it was running fairly swift. There had to be a dip here because I could see where the road emerged on the other side clearly enough. “How deep do you think it is?”

Kayla shook her head. She threw the van in reverse and we backed about 50 feet. Four pairs of eyes stared at the water rushing across the road. The loaded van was probably heavy enough to not be swept away, but that posed another problem—was it too heavy to move forward if it got stuck in mud in the middle of that stream?

An image of our stranded van, belly-deep in mud and surrounded by a swirl of fast-moving water flashed through my brain. The after-image was still lingering when the van growled forward in first gear, picking up speed and momentum as Kayla upshifted to second.

“What the hell!”

“Check your mirror!” Kayla shot back.

I was only mildly relieved to find the caravan of militia I imagined to be on the road behind us turned out to be a vulture of a helicopter hovering upslope and waiting for us to die. Or at least to strand ourselves on this side of the flooded road—or, better yet, in the middle of it.

Before I knew there was a decision to be made, Kayla had already made it for us. We’d be caught in the mud, helpless as a mouse in a glue trap. My every instinct screamed against making this run through the water. But what alternative was there?

Without consciously thinking about it, I wrapped my left arm around the gorilla’s waist and threw my right arm protectively in front of the dog’s shoulders, bracing us against the sudden stop I fully expected in the middle of the stream.

With tires sliding, we lurched into the water.

“Hang on,” Kayla gritted out as she manhandled the steering wheel and gear shift.

We hit the middle of the flash-flood and my premonition came true. The van’s wheels spun, impotent, tractionless. It would be only a moment before the tires were buried in the churning mud. My stomach churned in anticipation.

Gus and Jengo seemed to understand the direness of our predicament, both of them unnaturally quiet and still under my hands as they continued to stare intently out the windshield.

“Tomba!”
Kayla muttered. I wasn’t familiar with that particular Swahili word but it was easy to guess it for a potent curse. She downshifted, timing the accelerator in a valiant maneuver to grab the last bit of traction available.

The tires slipped again, and my heart dropped into my stomach as we hung there, our control lost and the only direction down and deeper into the mud.

Kayla didn’t let up, and for a split instant the treads caught, propelling us forward. Kayla didn’t let that brief advantage go to waste. With a grim-faced twist of determination, keeping steady pressure on the accelerator, she willed the van forward.

Catch-slip-catch-slip
, the battle between mud and tires waged on, the van advancing with agonizing slowness. But advancing it was until its front end emerged from the water and the front-wheel drive kicked full in and carried the rest of the van to safety.

Even then Kayla didn’t let up. Until we hit the N4 we’d be vulnerable still. Two miles on, the view ahead opened up and our mud road teed into the highway. The strain on Kayla’s face eased as we made the turn, heading north toward the Sudans. She glanced at my arms as I relaxed my holds on Gus and Jengo, and I wasn’t sure if I really saw a faint smile flit across her lips. What I was sure of was that a moment later her expression was hard again.

“That little maneuver burned through more petrol than I was expecting.”

“And if you hadn’t tried it, it wouldn’t have mattered how much gas we saved. Did you see how that chopper flew off? It looked as pissed as the men inside probably felt.”

She definitely smiled at that. An
in-your-face-and-eat-it
expression that looked wholly out of place on that beautifully maternal guise of hers. That smile humanized her even more in my eyes. Mother Goose and Mama Bear could also be a Bad-Ass Bitch. I hadn’t realized how much that combination appealed to me. I approved.

An unexpected swipe of Gus’s tongue across my cheek surprised me almost as much as the gorilla suddenly handing me his squeaky banana did. Gestures of thanks for my attempting to protect them in a crisis? Or approval of my approval of their mom?

It didn’t even occur to me to believe that there wasn’t motive or intelligence behind the gestures. Gus and Jengo had somehow elevated themselves above the cows Kayla despaired leaving behind. They weren’t simply Kayla’s property to be looked after any more, but individuals in their own right who I found myself bonding with.

As if bonding with Kayla weren’t dangerous enough.

All right, then, I could accept Gus and Jengo as special cases for the moment. But that didn’t mean the rhino and okapi were on their grade level. They were, at best, a single grade above the cows, deserving of special attention but not special protections. Not where I was affected, at least.

Hauling them around was still a mistake.

Wasn’t it?

Staring at Kayla’s profile with the mix of heritages so evident in the way her cheekbones, nose and chin each underscored the warm color mix of her skin and the quality of her smooth, dark hair made me appreciate the value of diversity, of this woman of two worlds who chose to live in her own where all life had value equal to her own, perhaps even equal to mine. Was what she was doing to save her family any more or less noble than what her plantation workers were doing to save theirs? Did her beliefs and obvious love for her strays make her less desirable in my eyes? Or did her convictions and that same love make her even more desirable?

Without her strays, would Kayla be the same person I’d come to…respect…so much?

Respect
. My brain could keep substituting in that word all it wanted. My heart knew better. My heart knew what word was meant to be said, meant to be felt. At some point, my brain would have to acknowledge the word of my heart. Just as it would have to acknowledge how my heart really felt about Kayla’s strays.

Dangerous didn’t even begin to describe the territory I was heading into, heart first.

Or the territory we were all headed into now, on the road to South Sudan.

Up until the time I turned north I still had a choice about where we’d go. A couple of kilometers south and west was the Lentu tribe’s village where Ikeno and Mshindi had taken their families to wait out the elections. About 20 kilometers due south was Hasa. Since the same data towers that served my plantation served the city too, Hasa would be under the same communications blackout. There were friends in the city who would welcome me and tolerate Mark, but few—if any—who would be able to accommodate all the
watoto
too.

While I desperately wanted an update on Lisha, I knew in my heart any change would only be for the worse. Knowing the moment she died wasn’t worth the risk of going into the city where the violence would no doubt be escalating.

Turning north meant joining a caravan of vehicles fleeing Hasa. The road wasn’t packed with cars—the typical morning commute on any road in Cape Town was hundreds of times more crowded—but the numbers were appreciable for Ushindi, and included motorscooters and bicycles.

Ahead of us, about 90 kilometers on, lay a wide strip of land between Ushindi and the mapped border of South Sudan. Land that was in continual dispute and patrolled by armed forces belonging to the DRC, South Sudan and whatever other factions felt they currently had the power to make a land grab. Even in the best of times, flying out of Ushindi—even in the puddle-hopping private jets that were as big as our airfield supported—was the safest option out. 

About halfway to that first border we started seeing a disturbing trend—a steady flow of vehicles heading south,
toward
Hasa.

“What’s that mean?” I had a good idea but I didn’t want to believe it.

“A border patrol ahead, maybe,” Mark said.

“Someone who doesn’t want Ushindi citizens leaving.”

“Or someone doesn’t want to deal with them on the other side.”

Why had that last not occurred to me? I felt stupid for thinking
Subs
-based quarantines would be our only obstacles. Surely heading into a quarantine area would be like a convict getting into a prison—easy in with a quick check for contraband at the door, but no way out. That we might not even be let in the door, though…

“Maybe some are getting through.” That was hope more than logic speaking. “I have money if a bribe is needed. You’re a doctor—surely they won’t turn a doctor away.”

Mark eyed the oncoming trickle of vehicles. “At least they’re not slaughtering everyone who tries to cross the border. Still, that’s not nearly enough cars coming back as are going.”

I slowed, honked and waved at the oncoming traffic. An open-air taxi with a handful of older women in traditional head wraps and colorful dresses riding in the back under a makeshift tarp with an older man at the wheel slowed till we stopped in the road, holding up traffic either way save for a vehicle or two that braved the muddy shoulders to go around.

“Is anyone getting through?” I shouted to be heard above the engines and the rain.

“Only those willing to risk the
bunduki
,
mama
,” the driver shouted back. “The old like us, mothers with
watoto
and the sick are being turned back.
Vijana
, strong folk, like you, are
kamatwa.
For what, only fortune knows. You would be best served, I think, not finding out.”

“What of foreign visitors?”

“I saw none, so I cannot say.” The man looked anxious as impatient drivers honked.

“The Ushindi border?

He nodded.

“Who’s holding it?”

“The Reds and the DRC.”

“Not the Sudanese?”

He shook his head, Swahili-polite, but clearly growing more and more agitated and ready to move on.

“
Asante-sana, bwana
.” I thanked him, with a wave to him and the women behind. We crawled off our separate ways, gaining speed before the impatient honking turned angry.

“Kamatwa?”
Mark asked once we were at traffic speed again—about half as fast as either of us wanted to be driving.

“Arrested or detained.
Bunduki
are guns. Ushindi and Congolese guns. Apparently Sudan hasn’t made this their fight yet. Probably too concerned with their own internal problems right now. “

“So if we could find another way into South Sudan?”

“You don’t think every passable border road between Ushindi and the DRC isn’t patrolled? Ushindi just isn’t that big. If the DRC is supplying men, it doesn’t take many to stand guard at every point in or out. And the longer it rains, the less-passable any dirt road that crosses into the DRC becomes. Even then, anyone who makes it across this border still faces crossing a 200-kilometer strip of land between Ushindi and South Sudan. The DRC will likely be crawling that territory.

“Would heading south be any better?”

I shook my head. “Here we have only 300 kilometers ahead of us to worry about. Not many hundreds of kilometers of the DRC to cross before hitting any half-way friendly soil. If it were just Ushindi forces to the north or south we might get through. But with the DRC turned against us and anything that smacks of true democracy…the incumbent parliament doesn’t stand a chance. This is what we get for wanting change. This is what the parties get for promising it. If Ushindi is even allowed to survive as its own nation, it’ll be puppet-ruled by the DRC. So it’s not just the Ushindi Democratic militia we have to keep away from, it’s the entire Democratic Republic of the Congo. And they have us surrounded on three sides.”

I braked to a near stop as one of the passenger trucks ahead made a polite but insistent U-turn in the narrow road. Apparently others were having the same discussion in their vehicles that Mark and I were.

“Maybe that truck has the right idea,” Mark said.

I shrugged. “We’re the gazelle caught between the cheetah and the crocodile. Which way does the frightened animal run?”

As if in answer, a jeep came speeding along the southbound shoulder, mud flying from its wheels. It overtook the renegade truck that had just made the U-turn and crowded it off the road at riflepoint. Then the stark scene disappeared from view as our road dipped behind a rise. The
crack
that followed could have been a rifle or distant thunder, it was impossible to know.

“Maybe it doesn’t run.” Mark’s face was ashen.

“Yeah, I’m not sure we need any special attention right now.”

The whole flow of northbound traffic slowed significantly not many kilometers later where more military jeeps stalked the shoulders, herding us into a line that was
start-stop
for the next two kilometers. The line of cars heading back south was starting to look like a trail of whipped puppies crawling guiltily along after being caught piddling on the rug.

One of the patrol jeeps slowed as it passed our cab. We were sitting up higher than them, and I couldn’t see over dog and gorilla heads or Mark to know what the men in the jeep were doing. I stifled a smirk even while my stomach clenched in fright as Mark flashed the men a smile, pulled Jengo up on his lap and handed him a bottle half-filled with water, then kissed the top of ‘his’ baby’s head. Impudent, and a sure way to get us pulled over. Although, to be fair, everything about us—from a van that could hide a couple of dozen refugees to having a white man as a passenger to the Rottweiler to the gorilla—were more than enough triggers for getting singled out and stopped separately.

Mark nodded and waved out the window. In his side mirror, I watched the jeep move on, the four uniformed and bereted men pointing back at us and laughing in the rain.

Exhaling sharply, Mark and I exchanged looks of relief.

“Plenty more jeeps, though,” I muttered. “Not to mention the border checkpoint itself.”

We’d be searched. Of that I had no doubt. What they’d do with the animals I didn’t know. Possibly let them return with us. Possibly shoot them all. No doubt our valuables would be confiscated. My mother’s jewels, if they found them, my cash and the petrol for certain. And that assumed they’d even let Mark and me go. He was a doctor and valuable both for his skills and his worth as a hostage Westerner. I was a woman, young enough and pretty enough to be valuable for a whole other reason.

The closer we crept to the checkpoint, the more my stomach twisted in fear. I had been feeling pretty good when we’d made it off the mountain, past the jeeps and helicopters there. How naïve was it to think escaping Zahur would have been our biggest challenge? Now we were stuck, trapped. Going off-road, the van wouldn’t make it more than 50 meters in the deepening mud, even if we could find enough of a clearing to steer it through. If we tried the U-turn dodge, the van wasn’t fast enough to outrun a slow water buffalo.

It was seeping in hard what a grave mistake I’d made.

“If we’d stayed at Zahur,” I said to Mark, “I could have at least fought for my home.”

“No, you couldn’t have.” Mark’s voice was gentle, his tone reasonable—neither of which I wanted or needed to hear right now. “Two rifles against a militia? You might have died a hero, but I think it’s the being dead part you need to focus on. Being dead—that’s a total deal breaker for the women I’ll sleep with. Call me a bigot but I prefer my women alive.”

“Bigot,” I murmured, taking the hand he offered with grateful reluctance.

“Whatever happens,” he murmured back, “we’re in this…together.”

Not wanting to be left out, Jengo laid his hand over ours. Gus rested his chin on top.

“Together,” I agreed. “For better or worse, through what may or may not come.”

I didn’t know we could reach each other across the long bench seat until I felt Mark’s lips on mine. A cold nose on my left cheek and a fur-fringed face against my right sealed the deal.

Together
meant
all
of us coming out of this alive.