The Taste of Fear (A Suspense Action Thriller & Mystery Novel) Read online

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid this isn’t about money, Miss Cox.” He stood. “Please stand and turn around.”

  Scarlett reluctantly obeyed. The blindfold was replaced, her wrists bound. Her despair deepened. The light had only reminded her of how helpless being blindfolded made her feel. One of the gunmen led her back down the stairs to the main cabin.

  “Scarlett?” Sal said.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “What happened?” Then, to someone else: “What the hell are you doing?”

  “What’s happening, Sal?” she demanded.

  “Some chump is taking me.”

  “They just want to question you.” She added quickly, “Ask for water.”

  The door slapped shut.

  “The party’s over here,” Thunder said. “Follow my voice.”

  Scarlett made her way cautiously forward. She came to a wall and slumped down against it, adjusting her hands awkwardly so she wasn’t sitting on them.

  “They gave you water?” Joanna said. “Sweet Jesus, I’d love some. At least it’s not as hot in here as in the van.”

  “What did they want to know?” Thunder asked.

  “Personal information.”

  “Why?” Miranda said.

  “Proof they have me, I think.”

  “Proof of life,” Joanna concurred.

  “How many blokes are up there?” Thunder asked.

  “The three who were driving the van and another three dressed in camouflage. And if you’re wondering, we’re in the middle of some huge lake. I couldn’t see land in any direction.”

  “There are three very large lakes along the East African Rift Valley system,” Joanna told them. “Malawi, Victoria, and Tanganyika. It must be one of those.”

  Scarlett said, “Lake Victoria is up near the Serengeti, right?”

  “Yes. It’s administered by Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. It’s also the source of the Nile.”

  “What about the other two?” Thunder asked.

  “Tanganyika is surrounded by Zambia to the south, the Congo to the west, Burundi to the north, and Tanzania to the east. Malawi is bordered by western Mozambique, eastern Malawi, and southern Tanzania.”

  “Great,” Scarlett said. “So we could be anywhere.”

  “Seems that way.”

  With that glum news, they fell silent for a while.

  “Oi,” Thunder said abruptly. “Your husband. That’s Sal for Salvador, am I right?”

  “Yes,” Scarlett said.

  “Salvador Brazza?”

  “Yes.”

  “That makes you Scarlett Cox, the actress? Or actor…”

  “Actress is fine.”

  “Don’t know how I missed that.”

  “Not quite as glamorous as in real life, huh?”

  “Come off it, Lettie,” he said, purposely notching up his accent. “You’re a right Sheila.”

  Scarlett couldn’t help but smile. “Do you guys really say that? Sheila?”

  “Fair dinkem.”

  Now she laughed. “Stop it.”

  “What?”

  “Talking like that.”

  “It’s how I talk.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Okay, you got me. Busted.”

  “Well, you accomplished the impossible. You made me laugh. Under the circumstances, I’d stay that’s pretty damn impressive.”

  “You sound like Crocodile Dundee,” Miranda said.

  “That’s not a knife…”

  Miranda giggled.

  “How do you know Sal?” Scarlett asked, liking Thunder more and more by the minute.

  “I was in the corporate side of law. Property development, specifically. My team dealt mostly with time-share resorts along the Queensland coast. Not knowing Star International would be a little like a criminal lawyer not knowing OJ. Not saying your husband is OJ…” His voice became hoarse, and he trailed off.

  Scarlett didn’t feel so hot either. The water had helped a little, but she still felt weak and faint, and she very much regretted not eating breakfast at the Safari Moving Camp the day before. She should have forced something down, regardless of how anxious about her marriage she’d felt at the time.

  Thunder cleared his throat. “Time we get serious, ladies,” he said, the levity gone from his voice. “Are you ready for the hard facts?”

  “Why not?” Scarlett said.

  “I’ve been thinking this through, and I reckon there are four possible outcomes to kidnapping. One is that the ransom is paid, and we’re released. Two, we’re rescued. Three, we escape. And four, we’re killed.”

  “There’s one more,” Joanna said. “No ransom is paid, but we’re still released.”

  “Fair enough. I reckon we can toss that in with the first alternative. Now, I’m going to be brutally honest here. I’m not sure how much faith I can put in a ransom payment bailing us out. Not now, not with them knowing who Lettie and Brazzy are.”

  That’s what Scarlett had surmised, and what Miranda had spoken out loud. Hearing it from Thunder, however, who seemed to be a rock of stability and reason, made the prospect terrifyingly real.

  “That leaves being rescued,” Thunder went on. “Again, can’t see it. These blokes are obviously taking extensive precautions to keep us hidden. I’m not about to consider the fourth alternative, so that leaves the third. Are you with me?”

  Scarlett nodded, even though she knew nobody could see her. It was a bleak outlook, but she felt it was the truth. What was that verse from the Bible? And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. She wished.

  “So do you have a plan to get us out of here?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” he told them. “But it’s time we start thinking of one.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Friday, December 27, 3:32 p.m.

  Stuttgart, Germany

  Chief Master Sergeant Larry Cohen was sitting behind his desk in the United States Africa Command. He finished off the dregs of his cold coffee, then drew his thumb and forefinger across his tired eyes. Talk about a long bloody day. He was the senior enlisted leader of AFRICOM, a newly created subcommand that was responsible for US military operations in fifty-three African nations. Yesterday’s bombings of the Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies were its first major crisis. Larry had just ended a secure video conference with the White House Situation Room, and his boss, the defense secretary, had made it very clear he wanted all twenty-three hostages found within the next twenty-four hours. Which was next to impossible, but which, of course, Larry had not said.

  The phone on his desk rang. It had been ringing all fucking day.

  He picked up the receiver. “Cohen,” he said curtly.

  “Shalom, Chief,” a familiar voice said.

  Larry sat back in his chair and smiled humorlessly. “I was expecting a call from you, Danny. Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing your man is paying you the big bucks to keep his ass out of?”

  “And get his ass out of.”

  “This is out of even your league, my friend.”

  “Probably. But I’m not calling for permission.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  Larry shook his head. “Christ, Danny. I don’t get anything from you in six years. And now you call up and expect the works?”

  “What are old friends for?”

  Larry had known Danny Zamir since they were kids. Both had grown up in the same apartment building in the same sleepy Jerusalem neighborhood, where they had spent much of their free time out front San Simon Monastery smoking cigarettes and chasing girls. When Larry was seventeen, his parents moved to the US. His father was American, his mother Israeli, giving him dual citizenship. He didn’t care much for university, so he enlisted in the Air Force instead, entering into active duty in 1988. Danny, meanwhile, joined the Tzahal—Israeli Defense Forces—and less than eight months later he volunteered for the Sayeret Matkal, the country’s equivalent to the SAS or
SEALs, an elite special operational forces unit dealing in deep reconnaissance, counterterrorism, and intelligence gathering. Despite the distance and the passing of the years, however, they had remained close friends.

  “The truth is,” Larry said, “I don’t have much to tell you.”

  “Humor me,” Danny said.

  “They’re an Al Qaeda cell that’s been active in Somalia. Last year we learned that three senior members tied to the ’98 bombings had popped up in Afmadow and Hayi. We hit them hard. AC-130 gunship. Attack helicopters. A dozen dead, including their leaders. We thought we shut them down.”

  “The media’s saying there were three vans at each embassy?”

  “Correct. We’re working with local police to set up roadblocks along major roads. But it’s like fishing for minnows with a tuna net. If you ask me, they’re already out of the cities. And if they have any smarts, they’ll have all split up, which is going to make finding them that much harder.”

  “Who’s running the show?”

  “A Saudi named Abdul al-Jeddawi. Grew up in Kuwait and Pakistan. He was one of the guys behind Bojinka back in ’95. He and his nephew also had their hands in the original embassy bombings ten years ago. Since then he’s laid pretty low, but he’s been a suspect in several other international operations.”

  “He’s not after money?”

  “Not this guy. He gets all the cash he wants through backdoor Saudi charities. Nice to know where your oil dollars are going, huh?”

  “Has he made contact?”

  “Only one message so far. A lot of theater about the blood of Muslims being spilled, Crusaders, Holy Warriors, all that. The gist is they want a bunch of their guys released within seventy-two hours.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “You know our policy on negotiating with terrorists.”

  “And I know you regularly ignore it.”

  “It’s not my call. I’d say it’s a last option.”

  “Special Forces?”

  “Not off the table. But we don’t even know where these fuckers are. Listen, Danny. That’s all I have. It’s gone to shit here. The crisis committee is pointing fingers at everybody, including yours truly. I need to get back out there.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Sure. But listen. Like I said, this one is out of your league. There isn’t anything you can do—”

  Danny Zamir had already hung up.

  CHAPTER 21

  Fitzgerald followed the blue sedan into the parking lot of a Victorian Turkish bath on Mawenzi Road in Oyster Bay, a posh area of Dar es Salaam where many senior foreign government officials resided. The sedan pulled into a corner spot. Fitzgerald parked three spaces down. He watched the Indian general get out, collect a black bag from the trunk, and enter the old brick building. Deciding to give him a few minutes to get comfortable inside, Fitzgerald wound down the Land Cruiser’s window and lit a Kent. His mind turned to the previous evening. He’d spent much of it watching the tracker continue west across Tanzania. At roughly ten o’clock it had stopped seventy kilometers south of Dodoma before moving again at one in the morning, continuing west, eventually reaching the westernmost border of Tanzania at two in the afternoon, twenty hours after the bombing.

  Then it started across Lake Tanganyika, toward the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

  That had surprised Fitzgerald—and concerned him too. If AQ and the hostages had remained in Tanzania, or even crossed into Kenya or down into Mozambique, he knew he could have caught up with them easily enough. The DRC, on the other hand, covered an area of more than two million square kilometers. Or what was roughly the size of Western Europe. That was bad. Worse: years of economic mismanagement had reduced the infrastructure to ruins.

  And then, of course, there were the rebels.

  Fitzgerald knew the sick bastards up close and personal. Between 2001 and 2003, when most of the world had their eyes glued to the events following 9/11, he had been in Africa, making a small fortune taking out high-ranking officials from the eight nations involved in the Second Congo War—Africa’s World War—as well as the twenty-five-and-change armed militia groups. The politicians in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, were a pack of spineless muppets who didn’t want to risk their national army in the fighting. So instead they funded rebel factions with guns and other weapons to do their dirty work for them. But a lot of these well-armed, government-backed guerilla groups became consumed with their unbridled power, ultimately raping and pillaging and participating in rampant cannibalism, with a special taste for the local pygmy population. They ran unchallenged everywhere, including the Katanga province along the Congo’s eastern coast—right where AQ was taking Salvador Brazza and Scarlett Cox.

  Knowing all of this, Fitzgerald had initially thought bollocks to following them. Chances were good Brazza and Cox would never get back out alive. They’d be killed by AQ or the rebels or disease or the ruthless wildlife. Or some kid with a machine gun who decided he wanted to kill somebody that day.

  Nevertheless, the more he thought about it, the more he reconsidered that position. AQ had a pretty sophisticated network of bad guys and rocks to hide under. If they were going into the Congo, they probably had some sort of base set up there, or at least a safe house, which meant there was still a good possibility they would broker some kind of deal with the hostage negotiators. Brazza could return home unscathed. If that happened, Fitzgerald would be back to square one. So he rang up the airlines to inquire about flights into the DRC. Not surprisingly, there were limited connections. Present-day Congo wasn’t exactly Disney Land.

  Kenya Airways flew to Kinshasa via Nairobi every day, but Kinshasa was way over on the western side of the country, more than fifteen hundred kilometers from where he wanted to be. Eventually he discovered that a United Nations plane made regular stops to the eastern port town of Kalemie, to resupply the aid workers stationed at the UN base there. The next flight left the following morning. The man in charge of it was the Indian general likely steaming himself in a sauna right now.

  Fitzgerald flicked the Kent away, left the Land Cruiser, and entered the Turkish bath. A black man behind the front desk smiled at him. Fitzgerald didn’t smile back. “I want to look around,” he said. The man started to shake his head but stopped himself when Fitzgerald dropped fifty thousand shillings on the counter. “It’s okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay” was the most recognized word in the world, and Fitzgerald always liked hearing it. He passed through the changing area and emerged in a large and airy art deco room. Shafts of sunlight slipped through the slit windows near the domed ceiling, casting a chiaroscuro effect on the numerous marble statues of naked men and women frozen in classical poses. To his right was a steam room; to his left, a cold plunge pool. He stuck his head in the steam room. It was hot and dry and smelled like eucalyptus. Several men in towels and slippers sat around on the wall-mounted benches. No general.

  He continued to the far end of the spa, checking each hot room he passed with no luck. That left only the body-scrub room. He pushed through the door and was greeted by humid air and colored quartz-tiled walls. Lying facedown on a raised stone platform was the plump brown general, naked and covered in suds. A young Middle Eastern attendant stood next to him, holding a branch of soapy oak leaves.

  “Get out,” Fitzgerald told the kid.

  The attendant bowed and left.

  The Indian general looked up, squinting. Gold chains dangled from his neck, while gold rings boasting oversized gemstones adorned his fingers. The fashion faux pas aside, it was a fair bit of bling for somebody who didn’t clear much more than a grand a month, and it said a couple things about the general. One, he was a self-conscious materialistic fuck. And two, he was likely open to bribes. To a Western mentality, bribery was frowned upon. In Africa, it was simply the way things worked. There was a name for it here: the Dash System. Everybody—police officers, politicians, military officials—hustled for the dash. Gov
ernment put up a lot of anti-bribery posters and talked tough about stamping out corruption, but it was all hypocritical bullshit. They skimmed twenty percent off the top of everything that came their way.

  “General Deshepande?” Fitzgerald said.

  “Who are you?”

  “I was told you’re in charge of the flight leaving for Kalemie tomorrow?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I need a seat on that flight.”

  “You come here, to ask me that?”

  “Aye, I did.”

  “Why are you dressed in street clothes?”

  “I don’t like young boys scrubbing me down.”

  “Who are you?”

  “We’re going in circles, General.”

  “The flight is for UN workers.” He shook his head, his double chin wobbling like a rooster’s wattle. “No civilians. Call up an airline. Buy a ticket like everyone else.”

  Fitzgerald knew that Deshepande knew that there were no commercial flights to Kalemie. If there were, he wouldn’t be chartering a plane. “One thousand dollars,” he said bluntly. There was actually a certain etiquette to offering a bribe, but he had neither the time nor the patience to see it through.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m a big supporter of what the UN is doing over here, General, and I’d like to make a one thousand dollar donation to whatever cause you find worthy.”

  The annoyed look left Deshepande’s face. It was replaced by sly calculation. “You could make this donation into a bank account of my choosing?”

  “I can do better. Cash. Tomorrow morning.”

  “You are a very kind man. But one thousand dollars does not go very far these days.”

  “Two thousand then, though I’m afraid that is all I could possibly afford.”

  Deshepande was silent.

  Fitzgerald waited.

  “Why do you need to go to the Congo so badly?”

  “I’m a journalist covering the humanitarian crisis.”