The Taste of Fear (22 page)

Someone grabbed her wrist, yanking her back above the surface. She coughed out a huge mouthful of water and kept coughing until her throat stung and her stomach cramped up. She blinked the water and tears from her eyes and looked around. Thunder was next to her, his arm around her shoulder. He was dripping wet and panting hard, apparently having dived in to swim after her. She looked upriver. Jahja and Sal and the others were still on the left bank. Mustache and Beard had their AK-47s trained on her and Thunder. Creep, she noticed, was on the far bank, his gun aimed as well. Small black monkeys were screeching and thrashing the branches overhead, as if amused by the show she’d put on.

“Going for a swim?” Thunder said with a grin.

“Thank you,” she stammered.

He winked. “Anything for a damsel in distress.”

It was the same line he’d used when he’d picked her up on the highway outside Arusha, and she felt a sudden flush of guilt. If she hadn’t waved him down, he’d be back in Brisbane right now. His being here, held captive by Al Qaeda, was all her fault. But he had not once blamed her or shown bitterness toward her. In fact, he had been the exact opposite: solid, supportive, and amazingly good-natured. She had a wild urge to kiss him, which she might just have followed through with had Jahja not been shouting at them to come back.

“I hope
he
slips and drowns,” she said.

“I hear ya,” Thunder said. He took her hand and led her in a diagonal line toward the far bank. While climbing out of the water, she glanced back over her shoulder and saw Sal, halfway across the river, glowering at her. She released Thunder’s hand.

“You must be more careful, Miss Cox,” Jahja said when they had all regrouped. “As I told you, the jungle is a very dangerous place—and not just the wildlife.”

“I’m all for turning back,” she said. “Just say the word.”

“Very amusing. I’m glad you’re keeping up your spirit.”

Creep said something in Arabic. The four terrorists laughed.

“What did he say?” Scarlett demanded.

“Nothing meant for a lady’s ears, Miss Cox,” Jahja told her. “I can assure you of that.”

She glared at Creep. He smiled at her, his white teeth standing out in contrast to his dusty complexion. She turned away, more creeped out than ever by him.

They sorted themselves into single file again, and Creep led the way onward. Gradually the secondary jungle gave way to equatorial rainforest. The trees were impossibly tall and ancient and made Scarlett feel tiny and insignificant. Some soared two hundred feet in the air and had trunks wide enough to build roads through. The canopy formed a shadowy ceiling so dense it blocked out all but the occasional shaft of sunlight. Bromeliads, orchids, and lichen coated the untamed mesh of understory, adding small spots of vivid color to an otherwise murky backdrop. Lianas and vines and creepers looped and snaked through the branches and around the tree trunks like a tangle of woody intestines. Everywhere strangler figs ensnared their hosts in a centuries-long process of asphyxiation, a process so slow and aged it appeared static to the human eye, a freeze-frame in the reel of time.

Nevertheless, the leaf-carpeted forest floor was surprisingly open and airy, and Creep had little trouble pioneering a path through the saplings, ferns, palms, and other herbaceous plants. Even so, moss and fungi covered the rocks and felled trees and other decaying plant life, making the obstacles slippery and deceptively dangerous. Scarlett treaded carefully. The last thing she wanted was a twisted or broken ankle. What would Jahja do then? Make another crack about how dangerous the jungle was? Or shoot her the way you shoot a lame horse? Leave her behind for that monster python—or something worse?

The deeper into the rainforest they went, the more Scarlett’s wonder diminished and the more she found herself wanting to get through it as quickly as possible. A suffocating claustrophobia hung over everything like a heavy blanket, seeming to block out all sound. There were no more birdcalls, no chattering of monkeys. Nothing, in fact, but the omnipresent drip of water. It was, she thought, a dark and primitive world. Alien. No place for humans—at least modern-day humans for whom air conditioning, refrigerators, and paved roads were more necessity than luxury.

Abruptly Jahja called a five-minute break, his voice echoing eerily in the deathly stillness. Scarlett flopped down on the ground.

“I’d keep on my feet if I were you,” Thunder told her. “Don’t know what’s crawling around down there.”

“I haven’t seen anything in ages.”

“Most of it’s too well hidden to spot. That, or it heard or smelled us a kilometer away and rocked off.”

She stood and brushed her bottom. Then brushed it again, just to be safe. “I need to use the toilet,” she said. “Tell Scarface and his goons that’s where I went, if they come asking.”

She wandered off behind the trunk of a tree large enough to conceal a minivan. She lifted her zebra-print dress, pushed down her panties, and squatted. She was alarmed to discover her urine was dark. Was that because she was dehydrated? Or was it a sign of something worse? Exhaustion or heatstroke? God, either could cause organ failure, brain damage, even death. Not that the great, civilized Jahja would care. She and the others were just props to him in an elaborate play. And when the curtain closed? She was trying not to think about that.

She reemerged from behind the tree, fiddling with the thin leather belt on the dress, and noticed Creep sitting on a nearby rock, unloading and loading his pistol, watching her. She glared at him, then promptly returned to the others. They had been given a bottle of water to share, which she eyed longingly. Despite having her fill back at the river, she was parched. The bottle came around to her, and she drank as much as she thought fair before passing it on again.

“Has anyone been noting the direction?” Joanna asked quietly.

“We went due north from the riverbank,” Thunder said. “But after we entered the rainforest—” He shook his head. “It’s impossible to see the sun or any other marker.”

“Everything looks the same,” Miranda said. Her hair was knotted and greasy. Her lips were blistered. “I can’t see more than fifty feet ahead of me.”

It was true, Scarlett thought. Plants and brush and low branches no longer hampered their movement, but the forest of towering trees was dense. Visibility was limited and disorientating. It was like one of those optical illusion pictures. If you stared long and hard enough, the green-gray vegetation would start moving, or you’d see breaks and passages in it that weren’t really there.

She was reminded of a choose-your-own-adventure game book she’d read as a child called the
Jungle of Peril,
where you had to choose the right path through puzzling, deadly jungle terrain. If you made the wrong choice, you’d meet a grisly fate or be banished back to the beginning; if you chose correctly, you’d be one step closer to the pyramid of Oraz and the lost treasure. Likewise, Scarlett had the antsy feeling she was going to have to start making some big, perhaps life-or-death decisions sooner than later if she wanted to reach her elusive treasure of freedom.

Sal nodded toward Jahja. “Even those jokers got tripped up. And it looks like they have some sort of map.”

Map,
Scarlett thought. “I have a compass!” she whispered, pulling the pendant out from the neckline of her dress and cracking it open.

“Why the hell haven’t you been using it?” Sal said.

“Oy, take it easy,” Thunder said.

“Don’t tell me how to speak to my wife.”

“I know tempers are a little short—”

“Get out of my face, you dumb shit.”

“Mate. Look. We’re on the same side here—”

Sal shoved Thunder backward. Jahja noticed the commotion and yelled at them to form a line again. Sal and Thunder stared one another down for a tense moment before Thunder shook his head and turned away.

Soon they were trekking forward, and Scarlett was surprised to find a warm tingling inside her chest. Thunder had stood up for her. And to Sal. She had not seen many men do that. In fact, she didn’t think she’d ever seen someone openly oppose her husband like that.

What was Sal’s problem anyway? It seemed as if he was getting more snappish by the hour. Was he cracking under the pressure of captivity? If so, she was surprised. She would have thought he’d be the last to break.

As they trudged on, it became a little cooler. Scarlett was no longer sweating. The sunlight that had managed to penetrate the canopy softened a little, changing from a brilliant white-yellow to a burning, muddy orange. Dusk was settling. It would be dark soon. And here they were still in the middle of the rainforest. Was Jahja planning on camping out here? She hoped not. She thought of that python skin again, of bird-eating spiders and foot-long centipedes and—and jaguars. Yes, there were jaguars in the jungle, weren’t there? What if one grabbed her by the scruff of the neck while she slept and dragged her off?

Gradually the trees began to thin. The charcoal-gray air lightened a few pencil shades and they emerged from the murky rainforest into a clearing bathed red by the setting sun.

No, not just a clearing, Scarlett realized. The ruins of a long-forgotten town. It looked as if there had once been fifty or so buildings in total. Most of them had since been reduced to skeletal timber frames or big piles of charred rubble. Only four Victorian-style structures remained intact. A church was the largest. It rose against the bloodying sky, creepers covering the redbrick façade and bell tower like a green disease. No terrorist paradise, that was for sure. A European colony perhaps? But why out here in the middle of nowhere?

Jahja consulted with Creep before leading the way down a lonely dirt road that had once served as the main street. Everyone followed. He stopped in front of one of the old yet intact buildings. Bushy plants surrounded the base while other tropical vegetation overhung the roofline. Carved into the weather-worn stone above the door was a blue-painted circle that sported an unrecognizable symbol. Below that were two words. Some of the letters had eroded away, and all that remained were: NEEMA O.N.G.O.

Scarlett had no idea what the first word was, but she had a good guess at the second one.

Congo.

Was that right? Were they in the Congo, the least explored landmass on the planet except for Antarctica? Great. Fan-tiddly-tastic. But it didn’t surprise her or scare her. Not really. Because it didn’t matter what country they were in. They were still in the middle of nowhere.

Jahja poked around inside the building, then returned and announced, “This is where you will be spending the next little while.”

“For how long?” Sal asked.

“For however long it takes.”

“What takes?”

“That doesn’t concern you, Mr. Brazza.”

“Of course it does,” Sal snapped. “It’s my life we’re talking about here, you arrogant shit.”

The three gunmen raised their rifles. Three safeties clicked.

“Some respect, please,” Jahja said, unfazed by the outburst. “Now, as I was saying, this is where you will be staying. I don’t encourage you to think about escape. As I’ve said—”

“It’s dangerous,” Scarlett cut in.

“Very dangerous, Miss Cox,” he said, eyeing her, apparently unsure whether she was mocking him or not. “It’s pure wilderness in every direction. The only way out is the river, and even if you made it that far, which is highly unlikely, two of my men would be there to greet you. Also,” he nodded at Creep, “he will be posted out front of your accommodations. Test him at your own peril.”

Jahja smiled at them, smugly again. The waxy scar tissue twisted the smile into something unnatural and sinister, and Scarlett had the image of a monster trying to play a gentleman—or a gentleman made to play a monster. She wondered for the first time how he’d been burned, and whether it had anything to do with his hatred of Westerners.

Sal went inside the rickety building first, followed by Thunder, Scarlett, and the embassy women. It was a single room about the size of a large bedroom, furnished with a table, six chairs, and one plain wooden bench. There were no windows. Thin strips of light slipped through the cracks in the roof thirty feet up, painting rosy prison bars on the floor. It was better than the van and riverboat cabin certainly, but Scarlett wouldn’t be recommending it to any of her friends any time soon. She slumped down in one of the chairs to rest her sore and blistered feet. Her legs and arms were covered with nicks and scrapes and insect bites. She began to worry about infection.

“No cable TV?” Thunder said, scratching a red welt on his arm.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

“Just a bite.”

She thought she saw something resembling fear cloud his eyes, but then it was gone.

He’s just worried, she thought. Like all of us. He might be big and strong and an eternal optimist, but he was human as well. He wasn’t immune to the hell they were going through.

“Yuck!” Miranda screeched suddenly. “Yuck!” She pulled a face and flapped a finger at her calf, where a black leech was attached, fattened with blood.

“Stay still,” Joanna told her. “I’ll pull it off.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Thunder said. “You’ll leave part of the jaw in the wound. It could cause an infection.”

“Well, we don’t exactly have matches or salt, do we?”

“Not a good idea either. They cause the little buggers to regurgitate what’s in their stomachs and can also cause an infection. It’s best to let it get its fill and fall off.”

“No!” Miranda said.

“You’ll be right,” Thunder told her.

“No!” She looked as though she was about to pass a kidney stone. “Get rid of it! Please?”

“Okay. Okay. Take it easy, hey.” Thunder glanced around. “Who has long fingernails? Lettie? You’re going to have to break the seal of the oral sucker.”

Scarlett came over. “How?”

“Slide your finger under the anterior end.”

“Which end is that?”

“The thinner one.”

Grimacing, Scarlett shoved her fingernail along Miranda’s skin and under the plump, slimy leech. The leech came loose, thrashing violently. She flicked it away in disgust. It hung on. She tried again. The damn thing was like sticky glue. She went to a wall and rubbed it off.

“So much for the entertainment for the night,” Sal said, sitting down at the end of the bench.

Thunder said to Scarlett, “Did you keep a compass reading?”

She nodded. “Checked every ten minutes or so. Each time we were heading northeast.”