Chapter 11: Raid
As if in response to the death of the child Alex mourned, the skies opened up the next morning and poured rain down on them. Buckets of rain. Sheets of rain. Standing in the doorway of the hut, Lady Jaye couldn't even see the headman's hut in the center of the village; it had disappeared behind a gray, misty curtain of rain.
The dirt paths through the village turned into muddy rivers. It didn't seem to deter the children; they shrieked and played and ran about, probably happier than they would be if they'd been dry. And the driving rain had an added, unexpected benefit; even though the humidity jumped up, the insects vanished, to Flint's relief; he hated the insects more than anything else about this godforsaken jungle, and he didn't care that Allie and Alex both seemed to find his complaining amusing.
Kris vanished out the door early, saying something about needing to check on the girls in the clinic. The Joes let him go; he wasn't their primary concern. As soon as they'd gotten up and eaten some of the field rations they'd brought (Alex had told them that when militia came through, often they would take whatever food the villagers had with them in a Chicago-mob type tribute, and that meant that they probably wouldn't have enough), Alex said she wanted to go back out to visit another family.
"It's pouring buckets out there," Flint stared at her.
Alex shrugged. "Best time to catch someone at home. Look, the sooner I get this done the sooner we can leave. It turns out that one of the people the ICC wanted me to talk to moved to another village right before the last attack a week ago, so that leaves me with only four people to talk to. And Henri is coming tomorrow around noon to pick us up and take us to Kirumba, and all of this will be over. By tomorrow night you'll be at Goma eating real food and sleeping in a real bed waiting for a red-eye to take you guys home." Her smile was amused.
"Gonna miss you." Gung Ho looked wistfully at her.
She tipped her head thoughtfully. "I live in New York. Before we part ways at Kirumba, I'll give you my number. I don't know where your base is, but if you're in the New York/Manhattan area sometime, look me up." She grinned brightly at him before ducking out the door. "I'll stop at the clinic, first, and then I'm going to see the headman. After you get done updating your boss, come find me."
General Hawk breathed a sigh of relief when they told him they were almost done. "I've been on the edge of my seat worrying about you guys down there," he told Flint—or at least that was what they got from the bursts of sound on the satphones. The weather seemed to be interfering with the signal and they were communicating between short bursts of static and periods of dead air. "So you're set to leave tomorrow around noon?"
"And in Kirumba by afternoon. She said we should get back to Goma in time for a red-eye flight back."
"Good. Let me know if there's any change in plans." And then the satphone stopped working altogether, just as the rain got harder.
"I can't believe how hard it's raining. It's like a monsoon out there!" Recondo groaned.
"There's no sense in all of us being miserable," Flint said decisively. "These villagers are obviously friendly, they know Alex, and it's raining so hard out there that I can't see anybody moving out in this if they don't have to. All the locals seem to have stayed in." Sure enough, the only thing moving out there were the children playing a game of kickball out in the mud.
"Looks like fun," Brawler grinned. "If I'm not needed for guard duty, mind if I show them how to play some real ball?"
Flint nodded, grinning. "Can't hurt to foster some goodwill with the natives. Have fun. Just don't go too far. I'll escort Alex around the village to talk to whoever she needs to, bring her back here when she's done. We have a little less than twenty-four hours left here, and this will all be over." Nods all around; Lady Jaye still had one of Alex's notebooks, and seemed to have settled in to read, so Flint felt relatively safe leaving her.
The cool rain pelting his heated skin as he stepped out actually felt good; he stopped and let it soak him for a moment, idly thinking that if he had a bar of soap, he'd be able to take a shower in the downpour. Then he grinned at himself and headed for the village's clinic.
Alex and Kris were busy inspecting, cleaning, and re-bandaging one of the little girls. Flint decided he'd wait outside, and took up a sentry position beside the door, scanning the gray rain. The soft monotonous drumming of rain on the puddles in the mud covered up a great deal of sound, and the gray curtain of rain cut visibility down to maybe fifty yards, if that. He couldn't see anything threatening, couldn't hear anything threatening, but all of a sudden he had the distinct feeling that something wasn't right. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he straightened up, peering intently out into the surrounding jungle.
And then a bullet whizzed past him, burying itself in the mud wall of the hut.
"Alex!" He yelled her name at the same time he yanked his guns out of their twin shoulder holsters, cursing the rain that had made him leave the heavy weaponry back in their hut. Around him, he heard the sounds of other bullets as dark shapes broke out of the treeline and started hurtling into the muddy village streets. Bullets flew, and around him, people started screaming.
"Alex!" He ducked his head inside the hut, to see Alex helping the children to their feet. "We gotta go, now! We're being attacked!"
Three of the village men burst in. One scooped up the oldest child; the other two grabbed two of the other children. The youngest one was already in Alex's arms, crying in terror and refusing to let go. "Bring her with you. Come on. We gotta go meet the others. We gotta get you safe."
Kris ran with them as the four of them ducked out the doorway and out into the blinding rain. Flint pushed her along in front of him, urging her to try and run as best she could with the crying child held tightly in her arms. The villagers seemed to have the same idea; they were running into the surrounding jungle, hoping to lose pursuit once they were in. Flint took a quick look at the hut the Joes had occupied; it was empty. He didn't know if their gear was still in it, but the heavy dark waterproof nylon carrying bags that had held their heavy guns and weaponry lay empty on the ground in front of the hut, so he assumed they'd grabbed their guns before following the villagers. The ball that the children had been playing with lay forgotten in the mud; Flint knew that if Brawler had been playing with the children when the bullets started flying, he would have taken them into the jungle to keep them safe.
"Come on, sweetie." Alex put the little girl on the ground. "I can't run carrying you. Can you run?" The child suited action to word, running on ahead toward the treeline, glimpsed through the gray curtain of rain. Kris and Alex followed, with Flint bringing up the rear, turning to fire occasionally at the gray shapes of people pursuing them.
And then almost ran right into Alex as she stopped. He looked up—and cursed. There was a dark-skinned African standing behind the child Alex had been carrying, and rain dripped off the gun barrel held to that child's head.
Kris stopped running. It was over. They'd lost. He had hoped, when they got here the day before, that maybe Zimurinda would get the timing wrong, get the day wrong. They had gotten here a day earlier than had been originally expected, due to Alex and the Joes' sudden precipitous exit from the hotel in Goma. He had hoped that the Colonel's forces would get that wrong, wouldn't know that, would wait until the day they were supposed to wait—if they'd come at the prearranged time (which had been tomorrow afternoon) they'd have missed Alex. The old pilot Henri had planned to come for her tomorrow.
The Joes had surprised him too, given him hope. The way the old grandmother had teased Alex and the big Cajun Frenchman—and their reactions to them—had made him hope that maybe they would care about her, protect her, get her out alive. Now, as he saw Lieutenant Colonel Zimurinda's right hand man Jacques Owusu holding a gun to the child's head, he knew Alex would give herself up to save the little girl.
"Let her go, Owusu. It's me you want." Alex raised both her hands slowly, in the age-old gesture of surrender.
"Tell soldier behind you to put weapons down." The man spat back in badly-accented but still recognizable English.
Flint hesitated. Putting his guns down now would mean the difference between failure and success of this mission—and most importantly, Alex's life. Could he let a monster kill a child to save hers?
And then fire erupted in his back, behind his left shoulderblade, and he howled in pain as the impact of being shot drove him forward on one knee. "Flint!" he heard her cry out, and in that smooth motion, she whirled, her hands going to the concealed revolver in the back waistband of her shorts, drew, cocked, and fired.
The man standing behind Flint with the gun never knew what hit him.
She whirled, her gun now aimed at the man holding the gun to the little girl's head. "Let her go."
"Put your gun down." He snarled.
"I'll put mine down when you let her go."
Flint heard Alex's scream, and struggled to his feet. The child lay in a crumpled heap at the African soldier's feet, and his gun was now trained on Alex. "There. I let her go."
Alex's gun was shaking as tears streamed down her face. "You son of a bitch, you didn't have to kill her!"
The guy—Alex called him Owusu—laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound. "Put your gun down." He waved a hand, and another man came out of the underbrush beside him. Before Kris could react, the man had an arm across his chest and a knife held across his throat. "Put it down or I kill him now."
"You'd kill him anyway. He's your operative, isn't he. You blackmailed him into this." They were now surrounded by African militia, and Flint knew they were going to die. He could feel hot blood trickling down his back, between his shoulderblades; his left hand was numb, but his right…he carefully maneuvered his hand so that he could reach the gun strapped to his thigh.
"No." Owusu said calmly, and fired.
Alex's scream pierced Flint's ears a scant half-second before fire blossomed in his right. Owusu had fired at Alex, and the bullet had passed directly through her left shoulder and into his chest. It as a flesh wound, on him, but for Alex…her gun splashed into the puddle at her feet as she screamed in agony, clutching at the red flower of blood that blossomed just under her left collarbone.
Flint grabbed her to keep her upright as the militia members swarmed over the both of them, picking up Alex's gun from the puddle where it had fallen, Flint's guns from the mud, and then they swiftly disarmed him of the rest of his weapons by the simple expedient of holding his own gun to Alex's head and waiting until he took them all off. She was crying, tears pouring down her face mixing with the ran pounding down on them—and then suddenly one of the militia members jerked, screamed, and went down—and Flint's heart surged in his chest. Lady Jaye was out there with Gung Ho, Recondo, and Brawler, and they were coming for him and Alex.
The shot and the fallen militia member galvanized the entire troop into action. Several turned and fired into the jungle behind them; and, under cover of that fire Owusu and a knot of men gripped Alex's and Flint's arms, propelling them into the jungle on a different path than the direction of the concealed Joes' bullets. Flint tried to fight the hands, yanking away and fumbling for the concealed knife strapped to his upper thigh under his pants, but the bullets he'd taken to the shoulders made his grip weak, and he couldn't get a grip on it fast enough. The last thing he saw was the butt of an assault rifle coming down on his head, and darkness descended.
Alex had forgotten just how much getting shot hurt. Memories flashed back—a cold rainy Manhattan street, Olivia's hands on her right shoulder, trying to staunch the blood from the bullet Velez's hitman had just hit her with, her best friend's desperate pleas to stay with me, Alex, but she hadn't, and it was all happening again. But this time, she was responsible for another life, too…Flint. Despite being as hard as his codename, she did like him.
She cried out, a short, sharp sound, as she saw one of the militia members club him brutally in the head. He went limp, didn't move; two men walked on either side of him, half-carrying, half dragging his dead weight, as more people laid down cover fire, keeping Gung Ho and Lady Jaye and the other Joes from recuing them.
And then, with a sudden heave, she was almost thrown into the bed of a rusted, battered truck. She screamed as her injured shoulder hit the bed, and the pain almost made her black out. She fought for consciousness, hanging on as her vision grayed, dimmed, grayed, and came back. By the time she could blink the tears of pain out of her eyes, something heavy had thudded on the bed of the truck next to her and she reached out blindly with one hand, encountered heavy military fatigues. Flint.
She knew it was hopeless, then, as the driver floored the pedal and the truck sped away. The Joes and the villagers would be on foot; they couldn't chase a speeding truck. Several trucks, her mind corrected fuzzily as she heard the sound of several engines around her, and she squirmed on her side, gritting her teeth against the anguish in her shoulder, to try and see where they were going.
Hands grabbed her right wrist, then her left one, and she cried out in pain as her arms were wrenched behind her and her hands were cuffed. Whoever it was behind her did the same to Flint, but she was in no condition to really notice. The strain that being handcuffed put on her shoulder caused the bullet wound to start bleeding again, and no matter how she fought to hang onto consciousness again, this time she couldn't manage it and she spiraled down into darkness.