A young man wakes up in the desert. The wreckage of an ambulance lies smashed against a boulder and charred to a crisp. By the stitches on his head and face, he assumes he was the patient. But why was an ambulance driving through a desert? Where wa...
Skyler landed safely, thanks to the priceless collaboration of the silvered sea cast by the full moon upon nocturnal vegetation over the limestone floodplain. Still, the thump against the ground jolted a stinging pain in his damaged rib and made him hunch forward and cough several times. He was almost sure he spat blood, even though he couldn't taste it. He hurried to unfasten all the belts and run to the northeast. During his descent, he had seen half the Earth from the parachute, apparently clean of life, and he'd seen the two airplanes landing to his left, but he hadn't seen the other half of the Earth at his back. He calculated it would take about an hour to reach the plane's landing area.
But he didn't know he wouldn't get that far.
Two sudden bobbing lights broke the darkness from a wavering distance, and the sound of pneumatic rubber scrubbing against the gravel ground shattered the night's silence. Skyler jumped aside as soon as he made out the pickup truck steering towards him, and he holed up in the undergrowth, watching the vehicle drive past him on a relentless approach toward the parachute. After it parked, six black men in military uniform came out of it, two from the front seats, the other four from the hoodless trunk who, after grabbing the parachute and taking a brief glimpse, dropped it in the rear of the vehicle. Then, after exchanging a few unintelligible words, they formed a circle around the car, and each one of them began to walk outwards, combing the area with the flashlights in their rifles and military efficiency. It was too late to run, he thought. Too late even to panic.
The suicidal lack of fear mixed with a slight feeling of euphoria led him to assume the hashish was taking hold.
The only thing Skyler could think of doing was to show himself to them and say the name of their leader. But that was easier said than done; these men didn't seem as comprehensive as Seiber had led him to believe. He waited patiently for the soldier who was combing the area to his right to pass him, and then he inched slowly forward behind the break, skulking gradually out of the men's sight range, camouflaging his sounds in their strident shouting to each other in primitive languages, in the rattling of their weapons hanging from their belts, in the gnashing and rubbing of their boots as they stepped on the grass, until he finally reached the vehicle at the end of twenty yards and two agonizing minutes.
Upon arriving, he found there was no one inside. Just the pale light bulb from the ceiling. Once inside the driver's seat, he considered it extremely stupid to take a stab at stealing the vehicle, given the men were armed and the wheels were only made of rubber. Instead, he opened the glove box in search of any document bearing the names of Nevin Wagner or René Hinault; even noting whether the documents were written in German or French would be enough.
He was about to take a paper when he saw, beyond the windshield, one man give an order in a strange language, and then everyone turned around and backtracked. With no time to lose his nerve, he moved between the seats and snuck to the trunk, where he hid under the parachute fabric and listened to a tumult of steps approaching the car, concluded by the tough sound of doors closing and boots stepping into the trunk around him.
That almost involuntary action sealed his fate; the die was cast and, realistically, there were enough possibilities for the gamble to work, bearing in mind the car would allegedly go to the base of one of the two warlords. Once discovered—it was only a matter of time—he would have to be conniving enough to do just what Seiber had told him to do. And if not, maybe marijuana and caviar could reach whatever kind words couldn't grasp.
Hashish was definitely taking hold.
He was trying to override the chemical euphoria so he could ponder his next move when he noticed the engine making a strange sound, almost like an echo. The voices around him turned from serene to downright panicked in a heartbeat. He soon realized the engine's sound was actually a mixture of several engines sputtering from afar and closing in, topped with horn noises. The vehicle stopped immediately, and then he heard a tense conversation in an indecipherable language between possibly the copilot and someone from another car a few yards beyond. He thought he made out certain fragments of English interspersed throughout what seemed to be orders to get out of the car. Soon everyone in the truck got out.
Well. Wagner against Hinault. One more dust-up.
Riled discussions ensued between many voices from all sides, voices that fell suddenly silent with the cocking of rifles from all directions and with his truck as a single vanishing point.
One order, from afar, in perfect English.
"On the ground," he said, and he said nothing else.
And then there was silence. The others were now in control. Steps of two feet, left, right, left, right, up to the truck. The touching of the parachute with two hands, as if searching for the cat to let out of the bag. Then, the sudden firm gripping of fabric and pulling it up. It turned out there was a cat, an amnesic one.
"Hi, how are ya?" Skyler said.
The other man couldn't help but utter in his thorny language a string of insults, offenses, curses, outrages, grievances, mentions, and threats, all stressed with his AK-47 waving feverishly as he yelled, as if trying to prick Skyler with its muzzle. He finished speaking in perfect English, as though he wanted to speak in his language just to let off steam.
"Get out, hands up."
So Skyler did. The former occupants of the truck were on their knees, handcuffed and staring, stunned, at the extra cargo they had been hauling. But he ignored them; to him, those who mattered were those who were winning. He was forced into the back of a car with his hands in cuffs and a guard on his right, and he would not miss a beat to address any of them as soon as he had the chance.
"Let's drive back to the Maskelyne Station. I'll call Siraj and the boys to let us through," said the copilot to the driver, after which he engaged Skyler through the rearview mirror. "You're gonna meet the boss."
"I don't care," replied Skyler. "I know your boss."
Skyler could see the man's reflection draw a killer smile. He knew at that moment he had fucked up.
"That's fun, because I'm one of Hinault's lieutenants, and I know the group that wants to take the mine away from us is led by a bastard called Wagner," he muttered before yelling an incomprehensible order in his language.
Skyler didn't even have time to dilate his pupils before the guard at his side hit him in the face with the back of his rifle. He barely felt any migraine. His self bounced back to the edge of his mind and filled the void of sleep again.
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