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She needed to focus on someone else’s pathology, not her own.
Emily was almost at the customs booth now, and her pulse quickened. She shot a look at the other line, saw the last of the science team leaving the terminal, and cursed silently.
While FDS leader, Jacques Sauvage, had hastily cobbled together a deal with their sponsors that allowed her to tag on to the Geographic International team, the scientists themselves had no idea why Emily was actually here, and they were under no obligation to coddle her. In fact, they’d been instructed by their sponsor to ask no questions at all. She cursed herself again. She should have forked over the damn bribe.
The customs official motioned for her to approach.
“Passeport?” he commanded in heavy African bass.
She handed it over along with her currency declaration form.
He flipped open her passport, glanced at her photo, looked up and met her eyes.
Her mouth went dry.
He smiled, teeth bright against gleaming ebony skin. “And what have you got for me today, Dr. Sanford?” he asked in deeply accented English, using her alias.
She slid a hundred dollar bill across the counter, watching his face. He stared at the money, his smile fading.
She pushed another note slowly across the counter. “It’s all I have,” she said in English.
“Vous êtes Américaine?”
Her heart beat faster. It was patently obvious from her passport what her nationality was, and now he was refusing to speak English. “Oui, je suis Américaine.”
“Raison de visite?”
A ball of insecurity swelled suddenly in her throat. “I’m here with the Geographic International science team,” she said firmly, in English, wishing to hell the crew hadn’t left without her. She unfolded and handed him another piece of paper that had the Ubasi palace stamp on it. “See?” She pointed to the signature. “We have permission from the Laroque government.”
The official didn’t even pretend to look at the piece of paper. His eyes continued to hold hers. “Currency declaration form?”
“I gave it to you, with the passport.”
“Non—”
“I did! Look, it’s right there,” Emily said, pointing.
The man shook his head, raised his hand high above his head and clicked his fingers sharply. Two armed guards left their station at the exit doors and started making their way toward his booth. Emily’s heart pounded wildly against her rib cage. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
“There is a problem with your currency declaration,” the customs official said in French, before turning to the next person in line. “Passeport, s’il vous plaît?”
“No, there isn’t. Wait! You haven’t even looked at my form. You—”
The guards took her arms roughly. “Venez avec nous.”
Emily jerked back. “Why? Why must I go with you? Where to?”
But the guards hauled her briskly away.
“What about my luggage?” she snapped, dangerously close to losing her temper. “I haven’t collected my bags yet.”
But they remained mute as they forced her through a crushing crowd of people, all of whom studiously averted their eyes. The reaction of the crowd wasn’t lost on Emily. She saw it as a blatant sign of fear of government authority. These people were terrified of Laroque’s goons, she thought as the guards forced her into an interrogation room. She whirled round as they shut the door and locked it.
Stay calm. Breathe.
But no matter how Emily tried, she couldn’t. The room was airless. The temperature had to be more than 100 degrees, humidity making it worse. Her jeans clung to her legs, her hair stuck to her back, and rivulets of sweat trickled between her breasts. Emily shoved the damp strands of hair back off her face. She refused to let this man or his country get the better of her!
She refused to let any autocratic male make a fool of her.
The heat of humiliation burned into her cheeks again. Damn, she was displacing her anger and she knew it. She needed to focus on this tyrant, not her ex. That’s why she was here. She was a profiler for God’s sake. She could do this.
She clenched her jaw, forcing herself to take stock. She still had her knife, her traveler’s checks, her satellite phone, camera and, most important—her computer.
Anything she typed or downloaded into her laptop would be relayed via satellite to a monitor on the FDS base on São Diogo Island. It was state-of-the-art military communications technology, and it was how she would file her daily briefs, along with her final report on Laroque.
Just as she was thinking she’d be okay, the door banged open against the wall. Emily jerked in fright, heart pounding right back up into her throat.
The customs official loomed into the room. “I will see your checks and francs.” He held out his hand, palm up.
“I…beg your pardon?”
He didn’t budge.
Emily reluctantly opened the pouch strapped to her waist and forked over the wad of traveler’s checks and francs she’d had to declare on the form.
The man thumbed through the wad slowly, mouthing the amounts as he did. He looked up sharply. “There is a discrepancy. The amount here is not the same as you declared on the form.”
“It is. I—”
“This is illegal. You are smuggling currency. You will pay a fine of fifty thousand francs.”
“What! That’s ridiculous. That’s…almost ten thousand dollars. I don’t have that kind of money on me!”
“But you can get it, yes? You will have your passeport confiscated until you return to the aéroport with the francs for me personally, ça va?”
Emily looked at him, stunned. Without her passport she was a prisoner in Ubasi. And illegal. She wouldn’t be able to obtain the visa all tourists had to buy in Basaroutou within twenty-four hours of landing. This was pure corruption. She cursed viciously under her breath. These men had targeted her because she was American, female, separated from her crew, and because she possessed expensive equipment. She was, in their eyes, a perfect candidate for extortion. And who the hell could she complain to? Their dictator, Jean-Charles Laroque?
She cursed again as the customs official abruptly departed, leaving the door swinging open. A guard waited outside with her bags, which no doubt had been searched.
Emily grabbed them from him as the guard took her arm, marshaled her toward the exit doors, and dumped her and her belongings unceremoniously onto the dusty streets of Basaroutou.
A riot of colors and sounds slammed into her, and for a second she just stood blinking at the chaos. People jostled her on all sides, dressed in everything from swaths of brightly colored fabric to tattered western dress and stark white tunics. Women carrying baskets on their heads hawked the contents, and on crumbling sidewalks vendors peddled everything from exotic fruits and strangely shaped vegetables to mysterious oils in brown bottles and weird-looking shriveled animals.
Poverty was clearly evident, as was a mélange of cultures. But the faces Emily saw were not ones of milling discontent. Her first impression was an air of industry and purpose.
She hadn’t expected this, but then virtually nothing was known about Ubasi under Laroque’s rule.
She shaded her eyes, sun burning down hot on her dark hair. Most of the buildings were dun-colored and flanked by impossibly tall, dull-green palms that rustled in the hot wind. Cerise bougainvillea clambered up walls pockmarked by years of war and roads were dusty and cratered with disrepair.
Emily squinted into the light as she searched for something that vaguely resembled a roadworthy cab.
Thankfully she still had what was left of her bribe cash in her boots. Passport or not, she had a job to do. She’d contact the FDS from the hotel and see what she could do about getting her papers back.
But as soon as she tried to elbow her way through the people thronging the sidewalks, she sensed a shift in energy that made fine hairs at the base of her scalp stand on end. She stilled, suddenly acutely cognizant.
There was a strange tension in the air. The mass of humanity around her was growing tighter, quieter. A dark anticipation began to throb tangibly through the crowd.
Emily’s pulse quickened.
Soldiers were beginning to clear the street and line the road, holding people back with automatic weapons.
The air literally began to crackle with a mounting expectancy. Then the crowds grew suddenly hushed, and now she could hear only the rattle of palm fronds in the wind. Something was coming.
Emily’s heart beat faster.
She began to look for exit routes. She knew from experience situations like this had a way of rapidly flaring into extreme violence. But anything vaguely resembling a cab was a good hundred yards off, and the crowds were closing her in even as her brain raced to comprehend what was going on. She was trapped, being wedged and jostled down toward the curb that edged the main street. She gripped her bags tight against her body and peered down the road, trying to see what was happening.
A burst of automatic gunfire suddenly peppered the air, and she jerked back as a convoy of military Jeeps rounded the corner at the bottom of the road. Soldiers triumphantly brandished AK-47s high above their heads, firing with abandon, the sound ricocheting between buildings as the convoy roared up the street.
Emily ducked as the vehicles neared her vantage point, but to her surprise, instead of fleeing in terror, the crowds around her surged forward, singing, ululating, chanting in such a strangely harmonious and resonant chorus it chased shivers over her skin.
Emily slowly stood, awestruck by the elemental effect of the primal sounds on her body.
The first set of Jeeps raced past in a cloud of fine dust. Then the haunting hush returned, silent anticipation thrumming in the humid air. Emily’s heart began to pound like a drum as she leaned forward, trying to see all the way down the road.
A large open-topped military vehicle flanked by smaller Jeeps rounded the corner and crept slowly up the street. The crowd was so deathly silent that the only sound above the growl of engines was of the government flags snapping on the hood. As the big Jeep drew closer, Emily saw what they’d been waiting for.
Their leader.
Adrenaline dumped into her blood. She was seeing Le Diable in the flesh for the first time.
Jean-Charles Laroque sat high in the back of the vehicle, regal, utterly confident. Everything about him telegraphed power.
The sleeves of his camouflage shirt had been rolled back to reveal gleaming biceps. His shoulder-length black hair was drawn back into a ponytail of dreadlocks that accentuated the aggressive angle of his exotic cheekbones. He wore pitch-black shades under an army beret cocked at a rakish angle over his brow.
At his side sat his faithful Alsatian, Shaka. The dog’s fur glistened in the sunlight, its teeth starkly white against a pink tongue as it panted in the heat.
A hot thrill slid sharp and fast through Emily’s stomach.
The Jeep drew close, coming right up alongside her, and a strange primal awareness prickled over her skin. Emily could not have looked away if she tried.
Laroque turned his head, slowly scanning the crowd, then his gaze collided with hers. His body tensed visibly. He raised his dark glasses slowly, looked right at her, into her, isolating her from the crowd, cutting her from the herd like prey. He was close enough for Emily to see that his eyes were ice-green against burnished mahogany skin, and just as cold, devoid of any humor or glimmer of kindness.
She could barely breathe. Her own eyes watered as she met his gaze, unable to blink. Not wanting to. The crowds around her faded into a distant blur, the silence becoming a deafening buzz as her world narrowed to focus solely on him.
Laroque shifted around in his seat, watching her as his convoy crawled up the road…then he was gone.
Emily stood rooted to the spot, dust settling around her as the crowd erupted in a riot of sound. She tried to catch her breath.
What in hell had just happened here?
This man clearly had the adulation of his people. She hadn’t expected that. Nor had she expected the effect he would have on her.
She swallowed, suddenly gravely uneasy with what she was about to do, with the very real impact her profile would have on this country, these people and that powerful man.
Because Emily wielded a power of her own.
Her professional judgment could kill him.
In less than one week.
Chapter 2
18:00 Zulu. Friday, November 8. Hotel Basaroutou, Ubasi
“They’re gone, Jacques. The entire science team had left by the time I arrived at the hotel about two hours ago.” Emily spoke in low tones on her encrypted satellite phone from her hotel room, hot wind whipping through the ragged banana leaves outside her window. “Le Diable’s militia has ordered all foreigners out of the country before curfew.” She glanced at her watch. “Which is now.”
It was already getting dark out, night descending like clockwork so close to the equator. There was also a thunderstorm brewing. “He seems to have shut down the borders in retaliation to the U.S. State Department advisory issued earlier.”
“The State Department is worried about hostility against U.S. citizens,” said the FDS boss. “No one has any idea those murdered Americans were operatives. They were deep cover.”
“You think he’s preparing for some kind of military strike?”
“Could be. I’ll keep you posted. Our men can extricate you within two hours from when you sound the alarm.”
“Apparently there were also five hostages taken from Nigeria by his rebels early this morning. That’s the word here at the hotel,” Emily said softly.
“We’re on to that,” Jacques said. “Looks like three of those hostages are U.S. nationals, and two Nigerian. They were taken from the security barracks of an oil outfit. Apparently Le Diable’s rebels are transporting them into the Purple Mountains and heading toward the Ubasi border. No ransom demands. Not yet.”
“Unrelated incident?”
“I never assume anything on this continent, but it could be. It’s a common enough occurrence. In the meantime, it’s fortuitous your papers were confiscated—it gives you a legitimate excuse to stay in Ubasi and defy the evacuation orders. See how long you can play it, and keep us updated.”
“Gotcha.”
“And, Carlin…stay safe.”
Emily signed off, and bolted the louvered shutters against the hot storm wind, anxiety tangling with emotional fatigue in her body. Perhaps she wasn’t ready for this after all.
01:27 Zulu. Saturday, November 9. Hotel Basaroutou, Ubasi
The night was intensely humid and close. Tattered leaves slapped at her shutters while Emily tossed and turned in fitful sleep. She’d swapped her T-shirt for a skimpy camisole, and still she was soaked with sweat.
Her dreams that night were of Le Diable—dark, sultry images full of smoke and heat and pulsing drums, his green eyes piercing the blackness, his hands touching her in ways she shouldn’t even begin to imagine. Her body was hot with desire—and panic. She was breathless. Running. Trying to escape. Someone was yelling at her, screaming that she must flee, that she was in danger. She awoke abruptly, confused, drenched.
She opened her eyes, trying to gather her senses, and realized with shock that the screaming was real. Emily jolted upright in bed, heart slamming against her breastbone.
Someone was banging on her door!
