Darkness at Dawn (13 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Jennings

Tags: #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Contemporary, #Fiction

BOOK: Darkness at Dawn
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General Mitanga was nominally a Muslim, but Mazari knew he didn’t believe in Allah, the All Merciful. He believed in Goodfellow Mitanga and his bank account.
The general had had the previous president beheaded a month ago, and his troops had declared him President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces an hour later. It had cost him three million dollars, and as long as he kept paying the general staff of the Nigerian Armed Forces, he’d stay president, and he’d keep his head on his shoulders.
His officers had a taste for luxury. The previous president had left the country’s coffers bare, which is why Mitanga had jumped at Mazari’s offer of ten million dollars for a quiet little trial run on an obscure tribe living in isolation deep in the equatorial jungle.
That would buy him three years of life at the top. And if he couldn’t steal enough in three years to let him retire and live in luxury on the French Riviera for the rest of his life, then he wasn’t worthy of being a prominent Nigerian politician.
“Let me run through the plan once more,” Mazari said, and President Mitanga nodded his head enthusiastically, nearly falling out of his chair with the movement. He was extremely drunk, Mazari thought with disgust. The general’s eyes were completely bloodshot, and he moved with the exaggerated care of the drunk or drugged. He reeked of alcohol and sweat, and Mazari had to use every ounce of self-control not to show his disgust.
But he couldn’t. He and his second in command had worked hard to find an isolated settlement of humans where they could test TS-18 in a controlled experiment. It had to be done far away from prying eyes, and it had to be done to people no one would miss.
Harder than one would think.
Luckily, the tribe was situated next to what was suspected to be a substantial copper deposit and the Chinese were very interested in copper. The Chinese were very interested in everything. They would love to prospect for copper without any pesky natives nearby. So getting rid of the small and unfortunately situated Gombi tribe was going to be doubly worth the general’s while.
Mazari didn’t care at all what happened to the copper. The economics of jihad were not his concern. His brethren in the movement took care of that. There was always money. The world was sick with it.
Knowledge—ah, that was a much more rare commodity. Knowledge was going to win them the world.
He caught the general’s eyes, so bloodshot it was painful to look into them. “We start tomorrow.”
Had the general even heard? Mitanga sat swaying in his chair and took another drink. The general pulled closer to him the file Mazari had brought, opened it and checked the cover page. It was the original of the bank statement of three million dollars deposited a week ago in the Banque Suisse Populaire, in the name of Goodfellow Mitanga. The general tapped the paper as a sly smile crossed his face.
“Top secret mission, eh? I’ll bet it would be worth your while to make sure there’s nobody in a hundred-mile radius, eh? No prying UN eyes, no NGOs out in the bush, no journalists. Just the Gombi and jungle. Be worth money, it would.” The craftiness of the very drunk lit up his red eyes. “My troops could set up a roadblock at every access road or path leading to the area, make sure you have . . . privacy. I’ll bet that would be worth another half a million dollars.”
Mazari was disgusted. The man couldn’t even stay bought. And the notion that his thugs, who were high or drunk almost round the clock, would be disciplined enough to provide a cordon around the test area was laughable. The general was just trying to extort more funds.
But . . . money was something Mazari had in excess. The test was important to a lot of people, and he reckoned that at least two billion dollars had been spent already on the lab and the salaries of the researchers. Half a million dollars was nothing. If it bought even a little more privacy . . .
“Two hundred thousand,” he said firmly. “Half now, half in a week, when the experiment is over.”
“Three hundred,” the general slurred.
“Two fifty,” Mazari answered, and General Mitanga nodded his assent, and on the downward movement of his head, he just kept on going until his forehead hit the desktop.
Mazari looked at him in disgust for a moment, then let himself out of the room.
Let the drunken general put more money in the bank. He’d be shot by one of his soldiers by year’s end, anyway.
Mazari didn’t care. He had a world to conquer.
IN FLIGHT, DESCENT TO THIMPHU
 
Lucy came up out of sleep in slow swoops. Unlike most nights, she’d slept dreamlessly. Her dream life was always intense, often with sharp nightmare edges. She was used to sleeping in fits and starts. But now she woke up with an unusual feeling of being rested.
There was a low background hum, constant, so that it wasn’t disturbing. And a low-level vibration that almost lulled her back to sleep.
Though . . . since when did she have a vibrating bed? Lucy’s eyes snapped open and she sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. A large brown hand reached out, pressed a button, and her seat moved smoothly upright.
Seat, low hum, vibration.
Plane.
Danger.
Lucy gasped, looking around wildly. A man was sitting across from her, watching her carefully. Dark hair, dark face, dark eyes . . .
He put his hands together at chest level, left hand fisted, right hand enveloping the fist, and bowed his head.
“
Nominè
,” he said.
Peace.
Lucy breathed deeply. In. Out. In. Out. Since childhood, her calming exercise.
It took a moment for her emotions to settle, which she took to be a huge step forward. Ten years ago, waking up in a plane would have had her choking on a scream.
She replicated the salute, right hand enveloping left fist, bow of head. “
Nominè
.” She sketched a smile, feeling her heart rate slowly come back to normal. It was the Nhalan formal greeting, usually of inferior to superior. “You’ve been doing your homework.”
Mike nodded. His dark eyes searched hers. “Interesting place.”
A garbled announcement came over the intercom system.
“We’re landing,” Mike said. “Hold on tight to me.”
She didn’t even question it. She simply held on tightly to the big, strong hand holding hers and did her breathing exercises while the pilot landed the plane at Thimphu.
A light snow was falling as they exited the plane, still hand in hand. They would be expected, as fiancées, to be holding hands, but Lucy was clutching Mike’s as if it were a lifeline thrown to her in a raging river.
She was holding on so tightly, to a lesser man her grip might have been even painful, but she doubted she was hurting him. She doubted she even
could
hurt him. His hand in hers felt like a warm rock.
At the bottom of the stairs were four members of the Royal Guard—the equivalent of lieutenants if she remembered Nhalan rank insignia correctly.
They were lined up two to a side, at attention, and as she stood at the top of the stairs Lucy understood that the easy part was over.
She was tunnel-visioning. The reaction of panic, the therapists had told her. The way to combat panic was to gain control of yourself and your surroundings, and to do that you had to understand your surroundings. Expand your senses. Ground yourself in the here and now.
She pulled in a deep breath. The sun was setting behind a high, snowy peak, a dim milky pale disc in the fog. Tendrils of fog shifted with every movement, a silky white smoke that followed them.
They were in a remote part of the airport. She could see no other planes, only a primitive hangar and a stretch of runway. The airport proper was nowhere to be seen. There were also no vehicles to take them to the airport, so they would be boarding a helicopter very soon. She couldn’t even bear to think of that right now.
There were clearly to be no diplomatic formalities, no showing of passports, no border controls at all.
By the time she made it to the bottom of the stairs, Lucy had herself under control.
The mission started here and it started now, and she didn’t want to start it with a show of cowardice.
She let go of Mike’s hand as her shoes touched the tarmac. The light snow was swirling in the air, so light the wind carried flakes every which way, even up. They might be headed for a storm, so the sooner they got under way the better.
A fifth man joined the military escort, facing the stairs. He was the senior officer, a colonel, judging from the shape of the cap and the bars on his shoulders.
As a matter of survival, her parents had taught her to read military rank in every country they’d lived in.
Lucy and Mike walked up to the colonel, side by side. The four soldiers sprang more tightly to attention, clicking their heels together, fairly quivering with military zeal.
Lucy approached the senior officer. Before she could greet him, he said, “Sampan Merritt. We are honored you are coming back to our country.” He used the honorific
Sampan
, usually reserved for high female members of the nobility, irrespective of their marital status.
Calling her
Sampan
was already extraordinary. Then he did something even more surprising. Instead of the usual Nhalan greeting, which Mike had mastered, with his closed fist he thumped his chest over his heart and bowed so low she was afraid he’d strain his back.
Amazing. This salute was one reserved for royalty, and signified absolute fealty—
my heart is yours to command—
and the deeply low bow was a sign of enormous respect.
Luckily, there was a greeting in return for this, which she’d watched Paso and her mother execute a hundred times. And luckily it didn’t involve bowing, because she didn’t think she could bow from the waist more deeply than he had without giving herself a hernia.
She laid the flat of her own hand over her heart and dipped, back straight, sort of like ladies in waiting did at Buckingham Palace. If she’d been in a formal Nhalan aristocratic gown, the silk of the gown would have pooled at her feet. Paso and her mother had curtsied so beautifully their gowns formed a perfect circle around their feet.
“It is an honor to serve Nhala,” she answered in Nhalan. His eyes widened. He hadn’t expected her to answer in his language.
Had she made a mistake? Maybe she should have kept her knowledge of the language a secret. Had she just thrown away a tactical advantage?
No. Paso would address her in Nhalan automatically. And the colonel would know she’d spent part of her early adolescence in Nhala. It might even have seemed strange if she’d pretended she didn’t understand or speak the language.
The eternal split-second weighing of choices, the eternal vigilance of being on a secret mission. She’d thought she was rid of this forever.
She turned to Mike, who’d been watching carefully. Good. He was here as a soldier, but the more clued in he was, the better.
She looked him over carefully. She could tell he was a soldier, but could the colonel? His body was combat-hard, not gym-hard. Mike was very well dressed and his heavy winter coat disguised his unusually strong physique.
His hands were gloved, which was good because they were a real giveaway. Though his nails were now manicured, his hands were incredibly strong and hard, covered in nicks and callouses, something no banker would ever have. If someone noticed, she hoped he’d have the presence of mind to slip into the conversation that he was a competitive polo player.
Maybe she should work that into the conversation at the earliest opportunity. Covers had been blown for less. Come to think of it, Scarlett’s dire situation had been revealed to Rhett because of the roughness of her hands.
Another thing. Last night’s pampering had not been enough to give him that rich-man ruddy spa look. It was a good thing they were going undercover in a harsh mountain climate where all the men looked weather-beaten and older than their age. His looks would be a dead giveaway in London or New York.
“Darling,” she said. “This is a colonel of the Royal Guard. He and his men will accompany us the rest of the way to Nhala.”
“Colonel,” Mike said in his deep voice. He gave the traditional Nhalan greeting, fist in hand, head bowed.
The colonel nodded his head then looked up at the quickly graying sky. A thick flurry of snowflakes enveloped them. Lucy’s long coat swirled around her legs.
“Come,” he said in English. “We must go before the storm arrives.” He strode off to the side, to an empty stretch of tarmac.
Within a minute they could hear the
whump whump
of helicopter rotors, and Lucy swallowed heavily as a huge black helicopter slowly settled. The mist blanketed them. The rotors gave the mist an almost elegant swirl, tendrils fanning outward in lacy spirals.
This was it.
A helicopter.

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