Skull had mixed feelings about operating in fluid environments.
On one hand, they were places where his experience and natural skills could be showcased and put to maximum use. If the situation was predictable, you could write a set of instructions and any gun-for-hire could do the job. You wouldn’t need someone like Skull.
On the other, he liked to plan a mission to the last detail, and some extremes of fluidity made even Skull uncomfortable. Places that simmered to the point of boiling over with thick and deadly murderous hate. Genocidal, organized extinction, employing the weapons of the industrial age, but using nothing but machetes and bayonets if necessary.
Skull had seen it firsthand in places such as Sudan, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Not where anyone wanted to be, even when you weren’t the intended target of a blind killing frenzy fueled by hatred and fear.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the DRC, had never been a model of stable government. Set in the heart of Africa, it had gained independence from Belgium in 1960 and almost immediately devolved into spasms of chaos and violence that remained the only constant for the next sixty years. In such an environment, skill and experience meant less than in other places; you could be killed from a block away by child soldiers with hand-me-down AK-47s, lost boys devoid of judgment and moral compasses.
Skull had looked into the vacant eyes of these immature zombies and found their souls composed of nothing but wounds stitched together by loyalty to some warlord father figure. Sympathy for their plight didn’t fool him into thinking them any less dangerous…or more human.
Even more importantly, he prided himself on blending into any environment, but that was impossible in the DRC. Though many African countries were filled with people of dark skin, other types – Caucasians, Asians, Semitics – abounded.
Not so in the DRC. Skull was the only non-black person he’d seen in the forty-eight hours since his arrival, and he drew stares wherever he went. With those stares came attention, demands for bribes, and approaches to sell him anything from food, to rides, to even themselves, for an hour or a night.
This was no place for a professional like Skull to linger. One too many variables could kill him.
He knew the spread of the Eden Plague through the sprawling country had at first signaled a positive change. This giant forested river basin that was home to countless tropical plants and animals was also the birthplace of Ebola, AIDS, and human monkey-pox. Other diseases that originated elsewhere found a friendly home here. Malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, rabies and a host of others ran wild in this giant tropical land.
The Eden Plague improved everything nearly overnight, but the unintended consequences of Daniel Markis’ decision took only nine months to manifest. In a country where infant mortality ran close to fifty percent in some regions and average life expectancy hovered under the age of fifty, near-perfect health and youth brought with it a population explosion. Food supplies, already inadequate, became even more scarce.
Even so, “virtue effect” of the virus engendered a newfound spirit of cooperation, and people pulled together to do the best they could. With crime reduced, the economy improved. People shared more, wasted less. Aid shipments made it through more often instead of being seized by competing warlords.
The populace soon realized their corrupt, non-Eden government officials were the principal source of their problems. For the first time in its history, Congolese citizens united in opposition to their government.
This was something those in power could not tolerate. They fought back, using the usual oppressive tools: the military, the police, and the criminal organizations on their payroll.
Therefore, as in so many places in the world, Congo’s Edens were demonized and dehumanized in order to divert the others from the ruling class’s misdeeds. Society blamed them for every wrong, their “affliction” painted in the worst possible light, as demon possession. They were denied civil rights and forced to place symbols on their clothing and homes declaring their “unclean” status.
So very much had changed in the last few years...but it was still the same old predictable show. Skull expected the play’s final act would end no differently.
He stepped out of a taxi that smelled of old onions and unwashed feet, and looked up at the Free Communities compound in Kinshasa. Never intended as a fortress, the large work and housing area was secured by hastily erected walls, with makeshift barriers set up at key locations.
Vulgar anti-Eden graffiti had been written on those walls, and teenage gunmen from the local militia stood watching the FC compound, weapons and cigarettes dangling contemptuously. They eyed Skull across a swarm of boys playing soccer in the street, too young to be given guns.
He eyed them back, ready to move if they did.
Walking up to the large sliding metal door, he pounded on its surface. A few seconds later a small opening appeared and a pale face peered suspiciously out at him, and then around and beyond.
“Candygram,” Skull said with false cheer.
The slot slammed shut.
Skull sighed. No one had a sense of humor anymore. He beat louder on the metal surface. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the militia becoming more interested.
“What do you want?” the face asked when the slot was opened again.
Biting off a sarcastic response, Skull forced out. “I’m here to see Shawna Nightingale. I’m a friend. Let me in, or I may have to kill someone.” He jerked his head in the direction of the armed men.
“Name?”
Two gunmen started to stroll his direction. One of the two opened and closed his fists, as if working up to violence.
Skull was sure he could deal with the two, but it would draw unwanted attention to the compound, perhaps providing an excuse to raid it. He turned back to the man in the window. “Listen, if it’s all the same to you, perhaps we should move this inside. Then you can do whatever the hell checks you want.”
“Name!” the man said even louder, looking at a clipboard.
Gritting his teeth, Skull said as softly as possible. “Alan Denham.” He wasn’t there under that name, of course, and in the wrong circles its use could get him detained for a long time and in unsavory circumstances.
Even enlightened governments tend to get a case of the ass about people running around with false identities, he thought. This place looks to be much worse.
“Alan Denham,” the man said loudly. “Here it is. Identification?”
Skull winced, leaned as close to the hole as he could and glared in at the man. “Listen. If you don’t open that door right now, I’m walking away. That might be good for you in the short term as you get to avoid doing your job, but there are some very important people inside who want to see me. Then you might not have a job at all.”
The guard glared at him for a long moment, and then the hole closed. He heard metal locks turning with protesting squeals. The door swung open.
Skull heard one of the gunmen behind him call out, but ignored the sound. He pushed his way through the door and slammed it shut, shoving the metal locking bars into place. The noise of yelling and beating on the door came through clearly.
“Put your hands on the wall and spread your legs for a search,” Skull heard the guard say behind him.
He turned slowly, and then suddenly kicked the man as hard as he could in the crotch, catching a pump shotgun in his hands as the guard dropped to the ground. A second guard had barely changed his expression from boredom to surprise when he found himself looking down the weapon’s barrel.
The man on the ground moaned as he tried to roll up into a ball the size of a cantaloupe. He kept trying to suck in oxygen while simultaneously retching.
“You earned that, you dumb shit,” Skull said to him, not taking his eyes off the one in front of him. “You almost blew my cover and got me grabbed out there.”
The one on his feet held his hands up and his eyes roamed, looking for help. Skull tracked where the man’s gaze traveled, to a door with a camera pointed in their direction. The door constituted the only inside access to the small, enclosed area, a safety measure no doubt.
With a buzz, the door popped open.