a fat storybook character?”
“They have become my family, and now I realize that they are more family to me than you.”
“There is no honor in living this way, Zahir. It is a slap in the face to every tradition we hold dear. Muslims do not befriend Jews. Girls do not go to school. Nor do they address Muslim men with comical nicknames. The world I shall make will reimpose tradition. It will restore the old notions of honor. You clearly have no place in such a world, which is why you must die.”
“At least I die for my friends. You, my brother, will surely die alone.”
“I see.” Scimitar looked down at the ground. “So be it.” He began to walk away. “Out of respect for our father, I shall tell him that you died honorably, Zahir, shielding my body from an enemy bullet. I will not allow him to be shamed by your death. I leave you to the savages.”
Then, with Vulture beside him, Scimitar departed via the gantry elevator, shooting up out of the mine.
“Do as you will, my brother,” Pooh Bear said after him. “Do as you will.”
And thus Pooh Bear was left alone in the vast underground mine, suspended in a medieval cage above a pool of foul liquid, not forty yards from the pit where his good friend, Jack West, Jr. had met a violent death at the hands of his own father.
Tiny against the vast scale of the mine, abandoned by his own brother, and now totally alone in the darkness, Pooh Bear began to weep.
KIBUYE PROVINCE, RWANDA
DECEMBER 11, 2007, 2335 HOURS
HAMMEREDby pouring rain, out of gas, and using only three of its engines, The Halicarnassus made an unseen landing on a stretch of highway in the remote southwestern Rwandan province of Kibuye.
Once the 747 was down, its rear ramp yawned open and out of it zoomed the Freelander—with Zoe, Wizard, and the kids on board. They took with them Wizard’s laptop computer, a multifrequency radio scanner, some jerry cans filled with petrol, and a couple of Glocks.
Thirty minutes earlier, a call had gone out to Solomon Kol in Kenya. Ever knowledgeable about the local hazards and safe meeting points, Solomon had instructed them to link up with him at an abandoned United Nations repair depot, number 409, on the outskirts of the Rwandan town of Kamembe, located in the southwesternmost province of the country, Cyangugu.
Sky Monster, however, did not go with the others.
He stayed with his beloved plane, alone, wearing twin holsters on his waist and a shotgun on his back. He was going to remain with The Halicarnassus and wait for some companions of Solomon’s who were to bring him some jet fuel, enough to limp over Lake Victoria to the old farm in Kenya when the aerial patrols were called off.
And so as the Freelander sped away, Sky Monster stood beneath the giant Halicarnassus, alone in the Rwandan hills.
In the distance, something howled.
Wizard, Zoe, Lily, and Alby sped along a remote Rwandan highway.
As Zoe drove, Wizard kept the radio scanner on, searching the airwaves for transmissions.
Just before sunset, the scanner picked up a military signal instructing all government forces to be on the lookout for a compact Land Rover just like theirs, carrying passengers just like them: a blond woman, an old man with a beard, perhaps a third male, and two children.
Zoe swore. Unmanned drones patrolling the air over Kenya. Rwandan forces combing the country for them. It felt like every bad guy in Africa was on their tail.
This wasn’t altogether untrue.
She didn’t know that twelve hours previously, on instructions from Vulture, a series of multimillion-dollar wire transfers had fanned out from the treasury of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into the bank accounts of a dozen desperately poor and hopelessly corrupt African regimes. Each transfer was accompanied by a message:
Find a black Boeing 747 that was expected to make an emergency landing somewhere in central Africa. On it would be at least two Western fugitives: an old man with a long white beard, a woman with pink-tipped blond hair, and possibly a third man, a pilot from New Zealand. With them would be two children: an Egyptian girl, also with pink in her hair, and a little black boy with glasses.
Any African nation that partook in the search would receive $50 million simply for their efforts.
To the country that found the fugitives and captured the old man and the little girl alive would go an additional $450 million.
Thanks to a half-billion-dollar price on their heads, they really did have a dozen African regimes hunting them in the most dangerous place on the planet.
AFRICA.
In this age of GPS satellites and rapid air travel, it’s easy to say the world is small, but it is Africa that shows what a lie such a statement is.
Africa is big and despite centuries of exploration, much of its jungle-covered central region remains untrampled by modern man. Its outer territories—like Nigeria with its oil and South Africa with its diamonds—have long ago been plundered by European nations, but the unforgiving nature of the interior has defied Western penetration for over five hundred years.
With isolation comes mystery, and the mysteries of Africa are many.
Take, for instance, the Dogon tribe of Mali. A primitive tribe, the Dogon have known for centuries that the star Sirius is in fact atrinary system: it is accompanied by two companion stars invisible to the naked eye, stars known as “Sirius B” and “Sirius C.” Western astronomers using telescopes only discovered this fact in the late 20th century.
