The Warriors Series Boxset I Read online

  He centers himself and drifts from shadow to shadow towards the perimeter of the village. Some of the huts are dark; some are lit from within by lamps, candles, or burning ovens, throwing a mosaic of light and shadows on the ground outside the huts. No movement that he can see. He sidles around the side of the first hut and peers through the door, his body masked by the wall.

  Nothing.

  Something cooking in the oven, but the hut is empty. The next hut is empty too, and so are the next ten. He goes to the next row of huts closer to the road. He can hear a woman wailing inside, another voice murmuring something. He peers inside. A woman, barely clothed, is lying on the mud floor, her mouth and forehead bleeding, a wash of blood down her thighs. Another woman is pressing a wet cloth to her head.

  He stills even more, his pulse slowing, his mind going into the familiar grey fog, preparing the body for wreaking violence. Extreme violence. The next hut is empty, and after a quick glance, he moves on. Something tugs at the edge of his vision, making him return to the hut and look again, more carefully this time.

  There, just near the oven, something familiar and yet not. He steps inside and sees a baby, maybe six months old, lying close to the fire, her hand outstretched towards the coals. He hunches down and puts his ear to her chest. Her heart is beating. He moves her farther from the fire, puts it out, and ghosts out.

  The next hut, a young girl raped, alone and unconscious; another hut, an old woman beaten and bleeding, lying on the ground, her clothes barely covering her body, moaning softly. She sees him with blank eyes, but does not register his presence.

  He crosses the road to the huts on the other side, figuring to search the huts on both sides of the road, behind the Jeep. The first hut he looks into shelters a young girl, maybe seven years old, lying on her side facing the door. The stench of blood and burning hair fills the hut. Her long hair trails behind her and ends in the oven. He scoops the remaining hair out of harm’s way, kills the fire, and kneels beside her. Her dark, empty eyes regard him with weariness as she rolls on her back, thighs spread.

  Looking down at her, Zeb allows the rage to blossom, unfurling from its controlled core within, reaching out across his body to his extremities, making him the most efficient killing machine on earth. The little girl’s vacant eyes follow him as he leaves the hut.

  Next hut, scuffling and grunting from within. White male, nearly six feet tall, pinning a young girl to the floor, simultaneously raping and strangling her.

  The blackness in him is lightning fast as he grabs the man by his collar, flings him back against the wall, and holds him there.

  Jason Boulder, ex-Delta, ex-Iraq, Somalia, and now here. Zeb recognizes him from Andrews’ dossier. Boulder looks at him in disbelief and is about to yell out when Zeb’s blade severs his carotid. Zeb rolls the body on its belly to lie on its spurting blood and spreads a tattered blanket over it. All this in just a few seconds, with the girl not fully comprehending what has happened.

  He slips out of the hut and pauses in the shadows to take stock. Still the same: women wailing, others consoling them, no one running in his direction, and no bullets fired at him. No male villagers visible.

  He quickly checks all the other huts in that row and discovers more carnage, more blank eyes, but no other soldiers or mercenaries. It takes him another hour to go through all the huts on that side of the road before he heads toward the huts where the Jeep is parked. He figures there must be about two hundred women beaten and raped – many of those young girls. His iPhone memory is nearly full from the pictures he has taken, and he makes a mental note to transfer those to Andrews when he has a good connection.

  He doesn’t know how many soldiers have stayed behind or whether the mercenaries he is seeking are here. The only clue he has is Boulder’s presence.

  The Jeep might have some answers.

  The Jeep is parked on the central road in the village, with four huts on either side of the road in front of it. All those huts are lit from within, throwing the vehicle into sharp focus. He moves along the far row of huts, towards the driver’s side, keeping an eye on the Jeep and at the same time checking out the huts. In some of these huts he sees some men shot and dead. They account for the shots he has heard. Still, for a village of this size there should be more men about, and their absence bothers him. Maybe they weren’t in the village when the trucks arrived, or they were carted off in the trucks by the soldiers.

  He tucks this mystery at the back of his mind and concentrates on the Jeep and the huts in its immediate vicinity. After clearing the huts in his row, he lies prone in the deepest shadow and looks at the Jeep from the corners of his eyes to see if he can detect any movement. He takes a risk and runs at a half crouch toward the Jeep, keeping out of its windshield’s sight line. The Jeep is a standard FDLR vehicle, battered but serviceable, with its keys still in it. He is tempted to pocket the keys but squelches the thought. Not knowing the strength of the soldiers left in the village, he doesn’t want to give his presence away.

  He looks across the driver’s seat towards the other row. He thinks he hears some murmuring above the women’s anguish, but he isn’t sure.

  He crouches and runs towards the row of huts. The first of the four is empty. The next one has a woman facing the door, and when he peeks around the opening, her eyes widen and her mouth opens. All she can feel is a rush of air as he flows across the hut, clamps his hand over her mouth, squeezes a pressure point on her carotid, and renders her unconscious. He gently lowers her into a shadowed corner and moves on to the next hut.

  This is where he can hear the murmuring louder. He goes around the rectangular hut to see if he can peer through a crack in the wall, but there is none. The hut has two windows on the two opposite walls, and peering through them would illuminate his face.

  Over the years of working as a PMC with the agency, he has amassed exotic gadgets, from shoe-heel cameras to bug-sized remote-controlled robots. He unsheathes a meter-long slender cable from the leg of his fatigues. One end of the cable has a USB plug and the other end a self-focusing twenty-megapixel camera. The iPhone is its power source. He plugs the cable into his iPhone, loops the camera through a corner of the window, and watches its feed on his phone.

  Two white males, one with his back to the door, the other sideways, are squatting beside an almost naked woman. She is still, and he can’t tell if she is unconscious, dead, or too frightened to move. The men are counting something. One of them is stuffing what looks to be gravel and large pebbles into pouches, and then packing those away into a duffel bag. The other is making notes in a dirty folder.

  He turns the camera 360 degrees to get a full view of the hut.

  No one else. Good.

  He slips the camera out, disconnects it, and puts it away. He makes tracks to the back of the hut and slips across to check the last one. It’s empty, though shows signs of having been ransacked, with clothing and utensils strewn across the floor.

  He goes back to the hut with the men. No camouflage, no way to get in stealthily, so he just slips inside the door, moves to its side, and stands with his back to the wall.

  * * *

  Sideways is still counting when he feels the weight of Zeb’s stare and looks up. His face goes slack with astonishment, and then he blurts out, ‘Who the fuck are you, dude?’

  Zeb is impassive. He recognizes Sideways. Conley Stark, thirty-five, ex-Rangers, served twice in Iraq, likes knives, dishonorable discharge for raping a woman.

  Stark makes another attempt. ‘Qui vous est?’

  Zeb has never believed in pleasantries.

  Backside turns around to see what the fuss is about. Brink Schulte, ex-Rangers, served with Conley in Iraq.

  ‘Who the hell is this dumb fuck, Con?’

  ‘Whoever he is, and he’s certainly dumb, he’ll be dead in a second.’

  Zeb remains calm, allowing his presence to fill the room. This will end in only one way.

  Stark rises smoothly, and a Gerber Mark II
knife appears in his right hand.

  Brink pauses from his bookkeeping to watch Con take out the intruder. He loves a good fight, and Con is the best he has seen with a knife. The bookkeeping can wait for a few minutes.

  Or maybe not…

  The intruder moves from still to attack in a nanosecond, a silent high leap from a standing position. His left leg takes out Con’s knife arm. Brink can hear the bone snap, even as Zeb’s right leg collapses Con’s throat. Zero to dead in less than a second, Brink thinks dimly as the intruder lands smoothly and faces him.

  Not even a glance to Con, who is in his death throes.

  * * *

  Even as Zeb launched his Kalaripayattu strike on Con, he was aware that a third person entered the room, uttered something, grabbed the duffel bag lying near Brink, and made good his escape.

  Zeb gazes impassively at Schulte. Answers. Schulte will give them. He has no choice.

  An hour later Zeb comes out of the hut.

  The Jeep is gone, presumably taken by Holt. It was he who had come into the room during the fight.

  Carsten Holt. Unofficial leader of the Rogue Six. Now Rogue Three, he corrects himself. Ex-Seal, used by the agency for wet work, expert in close protection work and explosives. Quit the army to go freelance and isn’t particular how he earns his money. Now running a mine-hijacking and mineral-trading racket in the Congo. The agency had him on a watch list for some time and had blacklisted him and his closest associates when the Congo happened. The surviving two with Holt are Quink Jones and Pieter Mendes. Both of them ex-Rangers.

  He powers up his satellite phone and wakes up Andrews.

  Over two hundred women raped – some of them young girls – some children and infants killed. The perpetrators – about forty FDLR soldiers and six ex-agency mercenaries. Many of the villagers in the DRC who worked in the mines had a private stash of ore, which they used to trade, and it was such homes that brought Holt and his band to Luvungi.

  The men in the village had been out working in the mines when Holt and the soldiers arrived. Cobalt ore and pebbles were what Stark and Schulte were weighing and recording when Zeb sent them to their Maker. Rape and killing was part of instilling fear and cooperation. Schulte knew that Holt was working with someone in the States for capturing mines and selling the minerals but didn’t know who that was.

  Andrews goes Chernobyl, his tirade lasting a good few minutes, burning the air. Andrews calms down a long while later.

  ‘You have to come back immediately. We need you to meet the UN and depose. You’re the first eyewitness account to this horrific…this atrocious…this sickening…whatever one calls it.’

  Zeb is silent.

  ‘I guess Schulte, Stark, and Boulder are in no position to embarrass the agency?’ Andrews asks, knowing full well what the answer is.

  Zeb keeps his counsel.

  ‘I want you back here immediately. Once the news breaks that FDLR soldiers and some mercenaries who seem to be American were involved in mass murders and multiple rapes in the Congo, the shit will not just hit the fan, it will create a mushroom cloud over Washington. The White House will be brown. I need you back with your photographs and your record of the events to prevent collateral damage here. Your being there, we could spin it that you helped stopped the most horrific abuse in Africa in history. I can see the headlines now.’

  Collateral damage.

  Andrews-speak for covering his and the Director’s ass and playing the D.C. game.

  ‘This’s more important than those three. I’ll put them on an international blacklist and get international warrants issued on them. In any case, Holt and the other two will likely disappear now that you located them.

  ‘And there’s another reason for you to get the hell out of there. The villagers won’t be able to distinguish you from the rogue soldiers. Tempers are no doubt going to be high there for some time. I also don’t want to explain your presence to the authorities there right now, even if you are listed as a charity worker. You aren’t exactly unknown to some intelligence agencies around the world. It’s best you get out and come home.’

  Zeb looks back at the hut where the girl with the vacant eyes lies, and makes his mind up.

  Holt’s lifespan can be measured in hours.

  He just doesn’t know it yet.

  Chapter 2

  New York – a maelstrom of people and energy. Zeb has spent a day sleeping off his months in the Congo. When he rises after a tabla-playing session, he heats up some soup, opens the windows overlooking 77th Street, and lets the world wash over him.

  His second-floor two-bedroom apartment is adequate for his needs. No, it’s too big, he thinks. Maybe he should downsize further. He looks back towards the tabla resting in the corner of his lounge, the shells dark and gleaming from the streetlights.

  He had been walking around in Jamaica, in New York, many years back when he heard the tabla being played in an Indian music school. The taals had stirred something in him that no other instrument had done, something that he thought was dead. He went inside the school and watched a white-haired elderly teacher demonstrate the instrument to a bunch of kids. There were a few drums hanging on the walls of the school. He went closer to view them.

  They were strange instruments to him, the curved wooden shell with ropes to tighten the skin, very distinct from Western musical instruments. He ran his palms over the skin of the drums, felt the texture of the black spot, and behind him, he heard the teacher launching into a taal. He lingered around till he heard the students leaving and turned to the teacher.

  The teacher was much older than he thought, in his seventies, but still strong of body, bright eyes peering at him through his spectacles. He grasped Zeb’s hands without a word and ran his fingers over Zeb’s calloused palms, all the while looking into Zeb.

  ‘You will not find forgiveness in the tabla. But you will lose yourself in the drums.’

  Zeb started training that day.

  Pounding on his door startles him from his reverie.

  Andrews. Distinctive and impatient.

  ‘You know the phone was invented for a purpose.’ He strides inside, looks around, and finds Zeb’s phone on the dining table. ‘Twenty calls. Twenty fucking calls and messages from me.’

  Zeb shrugs.

  ‘Have you seen the news? Luvungi is front page and has been on TV all day.’

  ‘I don’t follow the news, and I don’t have a TV.’

  Andrews shakes his head in exasperation. ‘Tomorrow is your big day. You’re meeting the Secretary-General of the UN, who wants to hear about what happened over there,’ he says, waving in the direction of the ocean.

  Andrews, being Andrews, is pointing to the wrong ocean. ‘The book deals and movie rights will start pouring in now.’

  Zeb is amused. ‘Is that what you drove through rush-hour traffic to tell me?’

  Andrews hesitates, his manic energy subsiding. ‘No, I wanted to see you, to see if you were okay. That girl you mentioned…’ He trails off and looks searchingly at Zeb.

  Zeb ushers him towards the door, saying, ‘Pick me up tomorrow,’ and shuts the door on Andrews.

  He hears Andrews cursing. ‘Prick! Why do I bother to be sympathetic? I must need a shrink. You had better be ready at eight sharp tomorrow. I’m not going to take any shit about your waking up late.’

  It’s cold, crisp, and sunny the next day when Andrews arrives driving an agency car. He’s dressed to the nines and drives off without a word as soon as Zeb is seated. Andrews drives with utter disregard for the traffic, honking wildly, sticking his finger out at every opportunity, as he cannons across Roosevelt Avenue and then Queensboro Bridge toward United Nations Plaza.

  ‘Andrews, are you from New York?’ Zeb asks.

  Andrews flips the bird again as he overtakes a blonde applying lipstick. ‘Bronx born and raised. Doesn’t it show?’

  ‘Who would have guessed? Hasn’t anyone shot at you, the way you drive?’ Zeb is unruffled as Andrews ove
rtakes and nearly sideswipes a cab.

  ‘Once this guy chased me all the way from Central Park to Wall Street, waving his handgun. I pulled over and stuck my AK-47 out. He went from Mighty Mouse to Minnie Mouse and drove away.’

  Andrews pulls into UN Plaza, the utter professional now. The massacre has made the news, and there’s a throng of protestors opposite UN Plaza, many of them holding placards either shaming the UN or urging it to do more. A few news stations have their broadcast vans outside, providing live coverage.

  They are whisked upstairs after passing through security, and ushered into a boardroom.

  Andrews steps to the window overlooking the plaza and immediately steps back as a few TV cameras train their lenses on him. ‘Vultures,’ he mutters.

  They don’t have long to wait. The door opens, and the Secretary-General enters.

  ‘So, Mr. Andrews, we meet again. Never at happy moments, should I say? This is a shameful episode for us,’ he says in his dry, precise voice.

  He looks at Zeb. ‘Major Zebadiah Carter, I have read your file, what little of it Mr. Andrews gave me. I think we owe you thanks for recovering some warheads.’

  ‘I am no longer a major, sir. And I don’t know anything about any warheads.’

  ‘Quite. You’re the first Western eyewitness to what happened in Luvungi. I want to hear what you saw.’

  Zeb recounts without emotion.

  The ensuing silence is loud and heavy.

  ‘You’re sure about these numbers? No, I take that back; it’s a stupid question. The scale of what has happened makes an exact number quite irrelevant.’

  ‘These mercenaries you came across…they were capturing mines and selling the ore to unknown parties? And the FDLR was helping them in this? Or were they helping the FDLR in this?’

  ‘The mercenaries had access to buyers for the ore. They recruited the FDLR to help them hijack the mines,’ Zeb replies.

  ‘They told you all this? Just like that?’ asks the Secretary-General.

  ‘I did say pretty please,’ replies Zeb.

  A long pause. ‘Quite.