69

Aaron advanced through the small copse of trees, dragging Alex slowly behind him, the undergrowth grabbing their clothes at every step, the noise to Aaron sounding like an elephant wandering by.

He’d initially tried moving up the mountain, away from the majority of the buildings, to either escape outright or—if they reached a protective fence that proved too hard to cross—at least find a place to hunker down until Shoshana could arrive to help. Instead, they’d run into a mini-city of cement barracks, with men out front cooking over open fires, drinking beer, and using trails to go back down the mountain, winding right by their hiding spot. He’d slowly retraced their steps, fearing they were going to be discovered by accident.

Once they’d returned to level ground, he’d crouched in the undergrowth, thinking. Alex had whispered, “What now?”

“Pretty easy on our part. We just need to stay hidden until Shoshana arrives, but I want to do it as close to the front gate as possible. I don’t want to force her to penetrate the length of the base.”

She trembled, saying, “I’m not sure how long we can sit here. Those trails are all over the place. Sooner or later, someone’s going to stumble over us.”

Aaron realized that Alex was barely holding it together, but he didn’t fault her for it. Given the complete lack of experience and training for the trials they’d been through, she’d held up pretty well. He said, “She won’t be long. She’s on the way right now.”

Alex nodded, then said, “I’m more worried about what happens when she is found. How is she going to sneak in here and then sneak us back out?”

Aaron quietly chuckled. He said, “She’s coming with a team. A friend of mine from America. They’ll sneak when they can but kill when they can’t. They think they’re conducting a snatch and grab, then hightailing it off the base.”

Alex said, “They ‘think’ they’re conducting a snatch and grab? What’s that mean?”

Aaron said, “Well, they are doing that, but we’re taking out more than just us. We’re going to rescue some of the men in that prison.”

Alex hissed, “What? Are you crazy?”

“Shhh . . . keep your voice down. You heard them talking about killing Thomas tonight? I can’t let them do that.”

“Yes, you can. We can’t be responsible for what they do to their own people. This is their country. We can’t save everyone.” She started vibrating in fear at the very thought. “Aaron, you’re going to kill us both trying to do that, along with your friends.”

Aaron’s face dropped in disappointment. He said, “Alex, without Thomas you would have been gang-raped every hour you were in there. I would be dead. As far as I’m concerned, every minute now is just extra time I would have already lost. He’s coming with us.”

Alex drew back, the words cutting deep, and Aaron could see the shame fall over her. She said, “I . . . didn’t mean . . . I know it’s the right thing . . . but we can’t . . .” And then she seemed to come to grips with what she was saying, understanding her fear was sealing another man’s fate. One who had already saved her life. “Okay. Okay.”

She took a breath, then pointed to the east and said, “I think the gate is that way. I was in the front of the prison, and I could see trucks coming and going toward the west through my window.”

Aaron smiled and said, “Good. Very good. We’ll stick to the woods as long as we can.”

She started to say something else, and he patted her arm, saying, “Drop it. Forget about it. I already have.”

He struck out in the direction she’d indicated, hoping the woods extended all the way to the fence line. They did not.

He reached the edge of the cover, staying deep enough inside to remain in the shadows of the brush. He saw a rutted track snaking its way around a U-shaped cinder-block building with a single lamp on the far corner.

He heard movement and crouched down. Lurch and another man came running up to the building, shouting something in Sesotho. Two men came out, one short, with a bald head and a thick neck, looking like someone had slapped a bowling ball between the shoulders of a five-foot mannequin. The other was the exact opposite, a tall, thin man, reminding Aaron of a cattail caught in the wind.

Lurch began shouting, waving his arms, and Aaron knew he’d returned to the interrogation cell. He’d found the general.

The bald-headed man rattled off a sentence and then snorted, as if he was trying to clear his nose. They went back and forth, Bowling-Ball Head snorting each time he finished, like he had some form of Tourette’s syndrome.

The tall man raced inside the building, and Aaron knew the window for their escape was ticking down. Before the thin man could return, a lorry came flying up the gravel road, screeching to a stop, a cloud of dust enveloping it. The driver leapt out and ran forward, then close to ten men spilled out the back, all armed with AK-47s.

At first, Aaron thought they were the search team, until they unloaded two bodies from the back, dumping them unceremoniously on the ground. The driver began arguing with Lurch, the latter looking confused. Lurch began shouting, gaining control.

Aaron recognized two things: One, Lurch outranked everyone there, and two, nobody but Lurch knew Aaron had escaped. The truck full of soldiers was a reaction to something else, not a planned response, and it would take time for Lurch to develop a course of action.

Aaron grabbed Alex by the hand and began going back the way they’d come, trying to find a path that would allow them to circle around the group. He hit a line of trees that went south, sparsely running between two tin shacks, and took it. He stopped in between them, slowly inching forward, and was overpowered by the smell. The door to the one on the left opened, and a soldier exited, buckling his pants.

Aaron whirled at the noise, and the man shouted at him. The soldier realized something wasn’t right and began screaming, a banshee wail that split the night air. He turned to run. Aaron dropped his AK, darted forward, and caught him around the neck, silencing the noise. He cinched the man’s upper arm, rotated, and flipped him over his hip, slamming the soldier into the ground. Aaron dropped onto his neck with his knee, using the force of his body to kill him outright.

Aaron surveyed for other threats but found only Alex, crouched with a hand over her mouth, shocked at the violence. Aaron picked up the AK, then heard shouting from the direction of the U-shaped building. The sound of the truck split the night, and Aaron grabbed Alex’s hand and began running through the trees. He reached one of the few asphalt roads on the base, seeing nothing but open space and decrepit buildings beyond it, the area sporadically lit by rusted lamps bolted to the roofs. Behind the buildings was an open field full of waist-high grass and undulating hillocks.

He saw headlights to his right and said, “Come on. Fast.”

They sprinted across the road, caught briefly in the glow from the truck, then were across, back in the darkness. He avoided the lamps of the buildings, continuing to the field. They reached it, and he dropped to a crouch, saying, “Get low. Get below the grass.”

They started moving west, and the truck stopped on the shoulder of the road, the men spilling out. He reached a small ravine and ducked into it, scrambling until he reached the end. He poked his head over the top and saw the fence line about seventy meters away, a ten-foot chain-link barrier with razor wire on top. A guard tower with a lone sentry was spaced every fifty meters. To his right, a hundred meters past the northern tower, he saw the front gate, brightly illuminated, with a drop bar and two soldiers standing guard.

So close.

The northern tower turned on a spotlight, followed by the southern one, and they began randomly sweeping the field, curious about the commotion surrounding the truck. Sooner or later, Lurch would coordinate their actions.

He dropped flat, looking back the way they’d come, and saw the men from the truck spreading out in a line, Lurch giving orders, the Sesotho language floating out in the wind.

The soldiers began moving forward, and Lurch shouted in English, taunting them. “Jew, we will find you. You have nowhere to go. And when we do, the girl will be the searchers’ reward. You will be mine. I’ll leave your body naked just like you did General Mosebo.”

Alex looked at her clothes, and Aaron realized Lurch thought they’d taken them as some kind of statement. A final insult that must have driven him mad with rage.

Aaron dropped the magazine in his AK, pressing down to determine how many rounds it held. It was full. He said, “Get behind me, in the bank of the ravine.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Fight.”