* * *
It was the heat and the sweat that made sleep that night a particularly uncomfortable, bothersome affair. Knowing that Nicole had been lying to him ever since they had met though, was what made it nearly impossible for Ethan.
He opened his eyes and checked his watch under the dim moonlight; it was a quarter past three. The night was wet and warm as usual. Without a cloud nearby, the sky promised a night without rain even though it was the middle of the rain season.
He raised his head and blinked, his eyes adjusting slowly to what little light shone through the shadows of the mangroves surrounding the catholic mission. He got up from the soft hay mattress on the floor and leaned to the window, resting both his elbows on the sill. He saw that most of the refugees had remained; a few pregnant mothers shared tents with some large families, while the rest simply slept on the ground, sharing thin blankets, mats, rugs and pillows.
A faint lamp light shone from a hut next to the church across from the small barn-turned-warehouse where Ethan had been sleeping. It was the priest’s hut, the same man who had tried to convince him to leave so eagerly, just like Nicole had. The thought a clergy man was in some kind of shady deal with the likes of Nicole and her people wouldn’t strike him as odd; stranger things had happened and no piece of cloth could turn a man into a saint.
Ethan decided he had to take a closer look into the hut. He scowled for a moment before he put on his trousers without so much as a sound. He kept his eyes fixed on the priest’s hut and noticed the movement of a shadow now and then, a flicker of flame every so often. Someone was working late, and he needed to know who and why. Perhaps the priest simply had trouble sleeping, perhaps there was a lot more than just planning rations.
He strapped his combat knife in its sheath around his leg and got outside through another window on the far right. When he came close enough to the hut, he quickly crossed a patch of dirt. He reached the wall of the hut and flicked his gaze around him. He couldn’t see anyone up and about, but he could hear a man’s voice, somewhat rugged and deep. It sounded like Father Likembe, the difference being that he was speaking French. He used curt, small bursts of words and had a heavy, crude accent.
There was some kind of pattern to his speech; he was repeating words in a staccato fashion. It was as if he was reading something from a piece of paper, a series of words and numbers perhaps.
Then he heard the crackle of static, a small pause and another crackle. A radio, double-tapping the transmit button. A clear, simple way to transmit “acknowledged”. Ethan knew then the father was definitely part of this whole charade that Nicole had put on for his sake. And there was probably a lot that could be answered that night.
He waited for a few more minutes, his eyes checking up on the church, his gaze wandering around the camp. The only people awake seemed to be himself and Father Likembe, while Nicole was sleeping inside the church along with some of the women. How telling that they both seemed to pay him so little attention. They probably thought that he’d fallen for everything, hook and sinker. Too eager to believe that their plan had worked, too eager to get him off their backs and go back to whatever it was he had disrupted by looking for Andy.
The more you rush things, the more chances there are for them to go downhill. And Ethan would prove it to them.
When the radio crackled once more into life, he heard a few short phrases and then he heard some numbers being repeated. After a while, it sounded like Father Likembe had powered down the radio set. Ethan waited for a few seconds before getting up and casually walking straight through the half-open door with a visibly forced grin.
“Evening, Father,” he said, even as his eyes darted around the small, unremarkable room as if marveling at it while in fact he was searching for anything that could be used as a weapon. Father Likembe had barely began to conceal the radio under a thick piece of red embroidered cloth used in the services. He seemed confounded, surprised, almost embarrassed. He looked down to his feet before he took off his glasses, folded them and placed them in the rather large desk that was the single most dominant feature in the room.
“Please, have a seat,” he said with disarming mellowness, motioning Ethan to pull up an empty folding chair.
“I prefer to stand. You see, I’m kind of sore from sitting around lately, ” replied Ethan with a calm, conversational tone.
The priest nodded silently and produced a bottle of colorless liquid from behind a stack of thick books, scribbled papers and ragged notebooks. He offered the bottle to Ethan whose mouth curled into a genuine smile before he asked the priest:
“Is it malt?”
“The local kind.”
“Is it stiff?”
“It’s pretty bad if that’s what you mean.”
“Can you spare a cup then, father?”
Father Likembe’s pearly teeth shined under the lamplight as he smiled broadly. He made a motion to reach a cupboard to his right. The move alarmed Ethan and made him reach for the knife around his ankle. The priest gestured with one hand for him to stop, and still smiling broadly he said:
“Always belligerent? I’m reaching for the glasses. It would be sinful to drink whiskey from a cup.”
Ethan nodded while his face had become suddenly stern. Father Likembe slowly opened the cupboard with one hand, showed Ethan the glasses and picked them up. He made some room on the paper-littered desk and set the glasses down. Ethan noticed what seemed to be a one-time pad, used for sending and receiving encrypted messages.
The priest didn’t seem to care; if anything else his flimsy cover had been blown. There wasn’t really any reason to hide anything else at that point.
Ethan picked up his glass and hesitated before having a sip; he saw the priest gulp down a mouthful and flinch. He followed suit but tried to savor the whiskey. He soon understood it for the mistake it was; the burning and the acrid smell of the drink hinted at battery fluid or something equally awful; Ethan spat out the rest and put down the glass, wiping his mouth in the process. He looked sick, his expression sour like lemons.
“How can you even drink that?” he asked almost accusingly. The priest laughed genuinely but politely before he answered:
“It’s an acquired taste. As you should know, we have to make do with what we can.”
“And who exactly are you referring to?” asked Ethan leaning on the desk a couple of feet away from the priest. Father Likembe replied with a serene yet prideful voice:
“The Republic of Biafra. I’m referring to all the starving women and children, all the bloodied, fighting men. All of the Igbo people, fighting for our freedom.”
“A patriot?”
“Are you not, Mr. Whittmore? There are many ways to fight a war, I can assure you. As much as it pains me, I’ve made my choice and let no-one but God alone judge me,” he said and drank a sip from his glass, his red-shot eyes now staring at Ethan intensely. Ethan sat with his back against the wall near the desk, and focused on the papers and the notes that filled its surface. Without turning to look at the priest, he said dejectedly:
“I thought meself as a patriot once. It doesn’t pay off in the long run, not at all.”
“What kind of a patriot expects to be paid?”
“What kind of a priest makes a deal with the devil?”
“The ones that are only human.”
“Where is my brother?”
“I cannot tell you that. I will not tell you anything about that.”
“So you do know he is alive? And you do know his location?”
The priest remained silent for a moment or two before answering flatly:
“I can only hope you will maybe understand.”
“Understand that you don’t want me to find my brother?”
“Please, you are not fooling anyone. This has got to stop. I can play the part of the meek, I cannot be the fool.”
“Well, isn’t that fresh? You’re accusing me of trying to fool you?”
“You’d have me think you
’re doing all this to find your brother? And you’re telling me you just happen to be a Captain in the Royal Marines, serving as a military advisor in Lagos for the past two years? Posing as a journalist, running off in the jungle setting off mines and getting shot at, with no other purpose other than to find your brother?”
“She really filled in the gaps, didn’t she? I’m not sure if family drama is your thing father, but Andy’s all I’ve got left and by God, I’ll see this through.”
“Maybe you are telling me the truth, maybe not. I’ve lost my way with people ever since I’ve had to bloody my hands. But I can’t let you know.”
“Why the bloody hell not, father?”
“I’ve taken an oath.”
“Well, it seems you’ve broken a few before, why are you being so picky with this one?”
“Can’t you realise, I’m only working with Nicole and the French because there is no other choice other than to be eradicated? They were planning a genocide and your country is trying their best to help them commit it!”
“Listen, father,” said Ethan with a grin of irony before he added, “I couldn’t care less. I’m only here because I want my brother back. Dead or alive, I’m getting him back, whether you like it or not. What were those numbers from the radio chat? Coordinates? Some kind of deadline?”
“So much for being a patriot.”
“As I said, it doesn’t pay much. What about those numbers?”
“That’s what the one-time pad is for,” said the priest, his nostrils flaring. “I didn’t have time to decode it just yet.”
“What about the rest of the message?”
“That’s nothing but chatter to have the cryptanalysts working on it for no reason. It’s just the numbers and the one-time pad.”
“Smoke and mirrors? That simple?”
“People doing this kind of job tend to become paranoid after a while. Think of it as hiding in plain sight.”
“I think you’re pulling my leg, that’s what I think. Get back on that radio.”
“It’s no use. There will be no-one to receive until the next transmission.”
“Well, go on, try it out,” said Ethan and drew his knife in one swift motion. Father Likembe did not seem impressed at all and replied flatly after downing the last mouthful in his glass:
“Do it if you think you must.”
“I’ve done worse.”
“It will get you nowhere.”
“I never said I’m as smart as people might think I am.”
“Go on then,” said the priest with an unnerving serenity drawn across his face.
And then they suddenly heard a thin, rising wail that rapidly cascaded into a shrieking cacophony that seemed to pierce the skies. Ethan’s eyes searched sideways through the window for a moment, and barely said to himself:
“Bloody jets.”
In the flick of an eye, Father Likembe sprang up from his chair like a coiled snake and threw himself against Ethan, both his hands aiming for the Englishman's knife. The sound of jets screeching overhead blanketed everything else, including Ethan’s shout of surprise and the priest's anguished cry of effort.
Half the camp was practically on their feet the moment the jets clearly passed overhead, their engines leaving a white hot flare in the now murky dark sky.
Ethan’s blade flashed steel-white as he struggled with the priest. He could hear the gasps and the instinctive shuffling of feet from the still groggy crowd.
The priest kicked him hard against the ankle, forcing him to fold his leg. Trying to compensate for the loss of balance, Ethan swerved low and punched Father Likembe in the stomach.
As the thundering roar of the jets seemed to grow distant, a small moment of shocked silence preceded the dazzling explosion that threw them both off their feet and across the room, through the flimsy wall.
Ethan’s ears rang with a high-pitched buzz and he felt his heart thumping in his head. An excruciating feeling of pain ran down his left side.
As he struggled to get back on his feet, his eyes caught the jarred glimpses of pure panic: mothers screaming and dragging their children alongside with them, men craning their necks to find the next trail or engine exhaust in the night sky. A fire had started out somewhere nearby, smoke and the smell of burned flesh being carried aloft into the night.
He looked around then for Father Likembe and out of the corner of his eye he barely had time to see him before the priest knocked him in the head with something blunt and heavy. Ethan felt his head was about to crack open when he blindly threw a couple of quick jabs. One of those connected and made the father stumble before taking a step back to have another swing at him.
Ethan drew his wits about him and saw the opening, lunging head first with the knife in his hand. He swung the knife and fell forward, knocking the priest down on the ground. Father Likembe tried to squirm away, in an effort to avoid getting pinned down by the more heavy-set Ethan.
The priest was bleeding either from the blade's cut or the lacerations from the explosion. The blood on his body made him slippery enough and while Ethan was forcing most of his weight on top of the priest, he was slowly inching his way towards the base of the hut.
Ethan growled and punched him in the face. Then Father Likembe threw a handful of dirt right into Ethan’s face and in that split second of disarray and blindness, he freed himself away from Ethan and leaped with what seemed to be his last vestiges of energy. Ethan went right after him, blinking furiously and crying, trying to clear the dirt from his eyes.
The priest was frantically searching the ground for something, when he upturned a stone and drew a shiny, metal object from inside the ground. A gun creche; Ethan swung the knife up high and as he forced it down on Father Likembe, the priest rolled on his back and sent a couple of shots into the air.
He missed wildly, while Ethan's swing had teared open his neck. Women’s shouts and children’s cries could be heard anew. Father Likembe was vainly trying to plug his gushing wound with bare hands. His body was sagged and a small pool of blood had already formed around his buttocks. His vestments were a blood-soaked ruin.
As he spent a moment catching his breath, Ethan saw Nicole smudged and tarnished, her clothes a ragged mess, rushing towards him through the thinning smoke. She saw them lying down on top of each other and went inside the nearly destroyed hut without so much as a word. Ethan’s instincts sprang into action and he rushed right behind her, grabbing her from the waist only a few inches away from the cot.
“I need a towel, you moron!” screamed Nicole while Ethan tried to tie her hands behind her back. Without letting go of the knife he fumbled and swerved this way and that without really grappling her. They both fell awkwardly on the cot’s torn mattress, and Nicole found the opportunity to drive a hell of kick with her bare-footed heel on Ethan’s foot. Flinching from pain, he loosened his grip involuntarily and allowed her to spin around and punch him hard in the face.
Ethan staggered for a couple of moments and saw her indeed grab a towel from the cot and completely ignore him. She hurried close to Father Likembe who was trying to breathe through sputters of blood. He kept opening and closing his mouth aimlessly as if trying to speak but no sound came out of him other than a shallow, hollow roar, like a deathly snore.
“Hang on father, don’t try to talk, just breathe. Let’s stop the blood, ” said Nicole in an impossibly calm voice, even as she tied the towel around Father Likembe’s neck as tight as possible without choking him.
A few of the braver men that had remained in the camp, were trying to evacuate the women and children without anyone getting trampled. Some were trying to put out the surrounding fires before they became a real threat for the church. They saw them then near the body of the priest and shouted something in Igbo. Ethan looked their way with a puzzled expression as he felt the first drops of rain fall on his face.
Nicole shouted back in what sounded surprisingly good Igbo, and didn’t even spare a moment away from Father Likembe.
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Then she felt Ethan’s knife against her throat, the coldness of the steel a stark contrast to the warm sweat covering her from head to toe.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she said even as she calmly tried to apply more pressure to the father’s wound, the white in Likembe’s eyes rolling about as if he was about to have some sort of seizure.
“What does it look like?” said Ethan, his kneecap forcing Nicole to bend forward in a very uncomfortable position down on the ground. He forced her arm behind her back and kept it there, her free hand flailing wildly with the towel.
“Whatever it is you’re thinking, just let me try and save this man, for God’s sake!”
“You’re just wanking me around again, aren’t you? He’s got another minute or two to live and that’s all. Main artery’s ripped open. He’s bleeding like a pig.”
“That’s your handiwork right there!”
“Next time I’ll stand by and have me shot then.”
“We needed this man alive.”
“After all this, you still take me for a pillock? Why, the nerve!”
“The man’s dying, could you at least have the decency-”
“Enough!”
The dripping rain grew into a rainstorm in mere moments. From the corner of his eye Ethan could see the women and children had sought refuge in the small church.
Nicole’s voice was calm and quiet.
“Father Likembe,” she said and swallowed hard.
“What about him?” asked Ethan with eyes flickering about, searching for signs of danger.
“He’s dead,” replied Nicole unassumingly. Ethan simply said with a shrug:
“Godspeed then.”
“You’re going mad, aren’t you?” she replied, breathing with evident difficulty. Ethan’s stare wandered to a couple of men who were gathered outside, eying both of them intently. His voice was vexed, weary and coarse:
“For the last time, I know about the fake body. I know you’re not CIA, because I checked. What I don’t know is why you’re so hell- bent on making me think Andy’s dead. And I need answers, love. Not any more of your bullshit. Answers!”
A heavy silence ensued, while two of the younger looking men made a few steps towards the hut. Nicole motioned them to stop with her free hand. She breathed deeply and sighed before asking Ethan:
“Could we do this in a more civilized fashion?”
“I like it just the way it is, crass and sharp. Who do you really work for?” he asked her, every word out of his mouth seeping with controlled anger.
“Who do you think?”
“The French, right?”
She nodded silently. Ethan noticed the men were taking slow steps towards the hut. He eyed them vehemently and they stopped moving. He went on:
“Why do you want me to think Andy’s dead so badly? Is he your hostage? Is that how you got hold of his things?”
Ethan was practically shouting while Nicole remained calm. She told him then, “Andy is my husband. He’s not anybody’s hostage.” Ethan scoffed, cringing his face and looking disgusted.
“I said no more bullshit,” he told her and twisted her arm to the point of breaking.
“That much was true!” she cried in anguish. The men were closing in on them with deliberate steps. Ethan jerked the blade no more than an inch before the men stood still. He asked her with urgency in his voice:
“What else was true then?”
“Not much,” she replied, shaking her head imperceptibly.
“Where is he then?” said Ethan through gritted teeth.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“What’s going to stop me from cutting your throat then?”
Nicole grinned and said: “I didn’t think you had a penchant for being so bloodthirsty. They might though.”
“Will they now?” he said and ran his tongue over his lips. He eyed the men warily, pressing the knife’s sharp edge against her throat to the point it cut her skin. She flinched and a few drops of blood smudged the knife. She said with cool determination:
“They’re Likembe’s sons.”
“Oh, bugger me. I guess I’ll have to take my chances with the bastards then.”
“Christ! Adopted sons,” she cried out as she felt the knife tear another small cut.
“I’m way past caring right now. Where is Andy?”
“Listen, we can work this out, if you’re willing to let me go!” said Nicole, her cool manners giving way to an attitude of mounting panic. Ethan looked at the three young men still standing outside, ready to have a go at him at the flick of an eye.
“I thought the only reason they haven’t jumped on me now is the sharp instrument at your throat,” he said and grinned at them nodding at the knife. They remained calmed but poised, not the least troubled by the small fires in the distance and the general mayhem.
“I can reason with them,” said Nicole trying to sound convincing with little effect. Ethan shook his head and let out a short laugh before saying:
“You’re trying to swing this around, aren’t you? No joy. For the last bloody time, where’s Andy?”
“I can’t tell you, because I don’t really know where exactly!”
“More lies, at a very inopportune time. If this is how it’s going to be, I think I’ll have to take my chances anyway,” he said and traced the knife around her throat in the mockery of a slow, ominous ritual. The man closest to them seemed ready to plunge forward but hesitated when a loud shrill noise signaled a jet passing over them. Within moments the night lit up with plumes of fire nearby. The light illuminated their faces with the modest warmth of a candle. The cries of some unlucky few were dulled by the falling rain.
“Jesus! I can tell you were they hit the caravan!” she cried in fear, the words coming out of her mouth of their own volition.
“Some random point in the map? I may be half Scottish, but I’m not a complete idiot.”
“You’ve got a knife against my throat and you still can’t believe a thing I’m saying!”
“No reason to act surprised, love,” Ethan told her and lightly tapped the knife against her throat. She breathed in deeply before she spoke again:
“What if I walk you over there? It’s not very far from here, it’s some ways over to the west, near the river.”
Ethan frowned. He remained silent for a moment.
“The Niger?” he asked then and Nicole replied by simply nodding. He puckered his lips and said:
“Hands tied behind your back. Legs tied with a foot-long rope. That means no running. And these boys better leave first.”
“Fine,” she said, feeling the knife around her throat relax only to the point it did not cut directly into her skin. She asked him with a weary sigh: “And then, will you release me?”
“I’ll think about that when I find Andy. Good enough?”
She nodded lightly and turned her head sharply, establishing an uneasy eye contact with Ethan after quite some time.
“How can I trust you?” she said anxiously.
“I should be the one asking that,” replied Ethan with an expressionless, sombre face, his features strict and unyielding.
“Alright, let me talk to them,” she said as the storm continued unabated.
She spoke in Igbo, her sentences small and curt but fluent. Ethan couldn’t understand half of it though; he suddenly wished he had taken a much more serious interest in learning the language when he had had the chance.
Ethan was focused on the two men, eying them intently. They looked like they were about to speak but had second thoughts all of a sudden. The men looked at each other, and then said a few words that seemed to make Nicole uneasy. She asked them something repeatedly in a nervous voice, but they didn’t answer.
Ethan’s instinct told him things were about to take an even stranger turn and then the deafening noise of a jet making a low fly-by blanketed every sound. Moments later a grove no more than a hundred feet away erupted in flames. A wall of fire rose upwar
ds through the jungle and bathed everyone in light, when finally the scattered anti-aircraft guns opened fire, dashes of tracer rounds going up in the night sky from seemingly random locations.
Through the corner of his eye Ethan saw a rising shadow on the remains of the hut’s walls. The two men lunged forward. Nicole realised who they were aiming for and shouted:
“Behind you!”
Ethan was already sweeping about with one leg extended, blindly trying to trip the assailant from behind. As he did so, he let go of Nicole, ducked furiously and brought the knife on his other hand. He barely had time to see a tall, heavy-set man in fatigues before he was dragged down to the ground.
Nicole managed to kick one of her now former comrades hard in the face, before rolling halfway towards the hut. The man screamed in pain and instinctively tried to stem the bleeding from his ruined nose. The other one staggered for a moment before rushing to Nicole.
Ethan grappled with the man in uniform only a few feet away from her. A hasty jab with his knife missed and hit nothing but muddied dirt near the man’s ear. He then felt something hit him in the face with the force of a brick. His head throbbed with pain, his skull seemingly about to explode. When his eyes could focus again, he realised the man had simply punched him with a powerful right fist. He heard Nicole struggling but couldn’t do anything about that for the moment; the brute that had assaulted him rolled over him with all the weight of his body and pinned him down.
His knife hand became free for barely a moment and Ethan made it count. He put as much power into his strike with his arm as the grappling allowed and felt the blade go deep. The man on top of him grunted and placed both of his massive hands on Ethan’s throat; he began to choke him.
Ethan felt warm blood pour down on his hand and mingle with the thick rain. He heard dulled grunting noises and shouts from Nicole, as he felt a crushing pressure around his windpipe and blood rising up in his head and ears. He threw another jab with his knife that didn’t pierce through; it met only bone. Then another one, and another one, as the seconds that passed by seemed an endless ordeal. He couldn’t breathe or move, one hand flailing wildly at the man’s face with no effect, while his knife hand was all bloodied as each strike buried the blade inside the man who would refuse to give up or die.
He could see the man’s icy black eyes staring back at him in the playful light of napalm flames eating away at the grove behind them. He saw a gleam of fury and zeal; that man would see to killing him first before bleeding to death. And then he heard a piercing shot but no cry. He felt the man buckle and groan, the pressure on his throat relaxing.
Ethan turned his head only slightly towards Nicole and saw her lying with her back on the ground, drawing the gun in her hand coolly towards the two men who dived towards the gun head-first in a desperate attempt to stop her. The man with the ruined nose crumbled down first when Nicole fired next, hitting him straight in the chest, sending a sputter of blood flying forth in a wide arch.
The bulky Biafran had little life left in him and grew weak, finally letting Ethan gasp for air, blood starting to circulate once more. Ethan pushed and shoved him aside before slithering his way under his body and back on his feet. He saw the last man standing punching Nicole hard in her face while with his other hand he was trying to disarm her
The first few breaths hurt like hell as Ethan’s larynx expanded back into its normal size. He wasted no time; he didn’t know why they had turned on her but he knew she was all that stood between him and Andy and that was reason enough. He rushed him with a primal scream, bent forward.
The Igbo man threw a glance at him but still focused on grabbing the gun away from Nicole. As he lay on top of her he kicked her with a knee hard against her kidneys. Nicole’s scream pierced through the rumbling rain; the pain was mind-numbing. She relaxed her grip on the gun reflexively, stretching her fingers for only a moment.
At that instant, Ethan was already hurtling the man on top aside, arching his knife for a deadly blow. As he did so, the man somehow flicked the gun off Nicole’s hand and tossed it into a pool of runny mud only a foot away. That only allowed Ethan a wider opening and as they tumbled away from Nicole, Ethan’s knife found its way with practiced ease into the man’s heart, straight between his ribs.
He saw the man’s puzzled expression and his vacant stare before he turned his head to see Nicole scrambling again towards the gun. She reached for it with a groan, the kick in her kidneys still sending pulses of pain throughout her body. Ethan slipped on the mud before he found enough purchase to leap onto her.
As he did so, she finally grabbed the gun and breathing heavily brought it to bear against Ethan, who missed her for an arm’s reach.
“Don’t move!” she shouted above the thundering roar of the rain and carefully tried to stand back up on her feet.
“I won’t if you put the gun away,” Ethan managed to reply through heavy, pained breaths in between.
“You throw away the knife and start running before I change my mind,” she said as she barely lowered her aim.
That tiny slice of time was enough for Ethan to lunge forward as he swiveled his torso sideways, trying to present a smaller target. The gun didn’t go off but a rather hollow click was heard; Nicole was already running away towards the burning grove behind them, tossing the now useless gun away and cursing:
“Merd!”
Ethan was right behind her, only two or perhaps three steps short. She ran through thick brushes nimbly without looking back, swerving this way and that, changing direction as if following an unseen trail. Ethan felt he was falling behind, but he couldn’t risk throwing the knife at her; he had to catch up somehow.
In front of them the grove had turned into a smoldering ring of trees and bushes, the small nests of fire slowly dying away as rain fell and the napalm mix burned off. The stench of burned human flesh, an acrid, sickly sweet smell assaulted him and made him queasy. He kept on running, even though his lungs had started to burn; the gasoline fumes from the napalm, and the exertion from the hand-fighting were taking their toll.
Nicole jumped above small sizzling logs and pools of mud; once or twice she slipped and lost her footing only to regain it not a moment too soon, with Ethan’s hand outstretched right behind her.
Frustrated and exhausted, Ethan thought she was actually going to get away. He made a final push and leaped after Nicole more so in faith and hope; as he did so, Nicole stumbled on something on the ground and fell head-first on a sheet of thin slippery mud.
She tried to get up but Ethan had already fallen right on top of her. She heard him then, breathing laboriously, probably in as much pain as her:
“You’re a real bitch, d’you know?” he said as he immediately grabbed her arms behind her back, causing her to let out a cry of pain.
“They thought so too, but they’re dead,” she said as she flinched and relaxed her body, yielding to Ethan.
“Well I’m not just anyone. I’m your brother in law, remember?” he said with a smirk and scrounged up his face from the terrible stench.
“I would’ve shot you in the leg so I could get away.”
“Good thing that priest of yours didn’t keep it fully loaded then. We’ll never know now, will we? Up. Up,” he said with an authoritative voice, urging Nicole on her feet. She saw that she had stumbled on a charred corpse, frozen in a bizarre stance. She suddenly became sick, while Ethan produced an extra pair of shoe laces from one of his pants' pockets.
“Up against that tree,” he said and pushed her, both hands holding her arms behind her back like grappling hooks. She complied almost meekly and using his weight he pinned her against the trunk of a tree that hadn’t been engulfed in the flames of napalm. He tied her just enough so that blood barely flowed and then grabbed her from an arm, before leading her back towards the church.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, exhaustion trimming her voice.
“To Andy,” he said flatly.
“I told you, the
re’s no way we could-”
Ethan interrupted her with a violent tug:
“Shut up and walk. We’ll be at the rendezvous.”
“There’s no-”
He turned her around and grabbed her face, his words coming out harsh and accusing:
“Maybe you’re thicker than you look. Those numbers back there, on Likembe's desk, those were coordinates.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said sniffing sorely.
“Is it now? What about your so called friends?”
“There are no friends in this business,” she said as Ethan let go of her face.
“So, let’s make this a family affair. Shall we?” he said and pushed Nicole towards the church, as the rain continued to fall.