“Are they arguing?” asked Matilda.
“Negotiating,” Gus corrected, wanting to believe that was the truth, but not so sure. The driver, a burly tall, well-built man, normally confident, and macho, seemed to be cowering as the men surrounded him.
“Sounds like an argument to me,” said Francine.
“The driver probably insulted the leader with a low ball offer,” said Gus, annoyed by Francine’s unfounded conjecture. “The men probably know who we are. Wealthy westerners.”
“Can’t we just pay them whatever they want so we can pass?” asked Matilda, her voice tense with traces of panic.
Gus tried to stay calm, and not allow Matilda’s panic to infect him, but he felt his annoyance dissipating, being replaced by apprehension.
“Is there another road we can take?” Asked Matilda.
Gus shook his head. No other road except the one they were on. They weren’t that far from the paved tarmac which led to the capital—to safety. Safety. His thought of the word bothered him. Was that why they’d been ordered to leave the compound? Was something not safe among the villages where they worked? If so, why not tell them? Maybe Weschenfelder hadn’t wanted to scare them.
Shaking the apprehensive thoughts away, Gus struggled to remain logical. Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop thinking that they were so close to the paved road and yet so far away. And he couldn’t fathom why he felt a strange foreboding flooding him, seeping slowly into his veins.
He’d experienced “roadblocks” before. He knew the rules, how the game was played. Pay, and you could go. This time would be no different. Or, would it?
The men grew louder. As they pointed at the Range Rover, their words and shouting sounded like angry, rabid snarls. In the fading sunlight, their dark faces glistened, the fire from the burning torches casting shadows, making the men appear as ghoulish skeletons, with black sockets where there should have been eyes.
The driver started to back away from the men, hands raised in surrender.
“What’s happening?” asked Matilda.
The driver dropped to his knees on the ground.
Gus felt something in his chest drop like a stone into his gut where it twisted.
One of the men, wielding a machete, swung it toward the kneeling driver.
Matilda screamed as the driver’s head fell to the ground.
Gus stifled a gasp as the headless body toppled over into the dirt.
“We need to get out of here,” commanded Francine.
Trembling, his heart hammering, Gus climbed over into the driver’s seat and reached for the ignition.
“No keys!” Gus cried, anguish battling the apprehension. “He must have taken the keys when he got out of the car.”
Francine cursed.
“Oh, God, what do we do?” cried Matilda.
Frozen, Gus stared at the women. They stared back at him, gazes haunted with panic and fear. They expected him to do something, he knew. As the director of the organization, and most importantly, he felt, as a man, he was expected to come up with and then carry out some bold, decisive action. But, what should he do? What could he do? What—
Something smashed against the windshield.
Matilda screamed.
Gus whipped his head forward. The driver’s lifeless eyes stared at him seconds before the severed head bounced off the glass and rolled off the side of the hood.
Repulsed and terrified, Gus recoiled. Matilda's screams intensified to an ear-splitting wail.
“Do we have any weapons?” asked Francine, a determined tenacity in her voice, devoid of shrill hysterics.
Still half frozen, Gus stammered, “I’m not sure. I don’t know.”
“We’re going to die,” shouted Matilda, her eyes wide, glazed with a horrified fervor. “They’re going to kill us.”
“Not if we stay calm,” said Francine. “We can’t give in to panic.”
Gus was both envious of and impressed by Francine’s willingness to take charge. How was she so calm in the face of danger when he was about to shit his pants?
“We may be able to ransom our lives,” said Francine. “How much money do we have?”
“We need to run,” screeched Matilda. “I don’t want to die.”
Matilda opened the SUV door.
“Mattie wait.” Francine grabbed her. “You can’t—“
“Let me go!” Possessed by hysteria, Matilda slapped Francine, yanked away from her, and jumped out of the SUV.
Shocked, and secretly envious of Matilda’s self-preservation, Gus stared as she went running into the dark, dense pineapple fields.
“Should we go after her?” asked Gus.
“We have more pressing issues,” said Francine, pointing toward the windshield.
Gus fought terror as a group of six or seven separated from the pack, rushing away from the old pick-up, heading toward the Range Rover.
Francine said, “They must want money. We’ll give them every dime we have in exchange for the keys.”
Gus tried to swallow his fear, but it wouldn’t stay down. The terror kept rising in his throat.
“We can reason with them,” said Francine.
Gus stared at the men as they came closer. Ten feet from the SUV, they strode with malicious purpose, like feral dogs on the hunt, searching for prey to tear from limb to limb. Two had torches. Three had machetes, one of which glistened with blood. Gus fought his gag reflex.
“Do you think so?” asked Gus, embarrassed by how weak and plaintive his voice sounded.
Francine said, “We have no choice. We’ll die if we don’t.”
Turning in his seat, Gus said, “But, what if—”
The back door was snatched open, nearly torn off by two of the village men.
Francine yelled, commanding the men to take their hands off her but they ignored her harsh demands as they pulled her, screaming and kicking, from the SUV.
Horrified, paralyzed with fear and self-loathing for his abject cowardice, Gus crouched beneath the steering wheel, hiding in the footwell as Francine protested the men’s savage treatment.
The door slammed, the sound of it like a death knell, final and fatal, a foregone conclusion.
As the shouts and screaming continued, Gus opened the driver’s door and slipped out of the SUV, feeling like a yellow-belly.
His foot landed on something solid and
