Play It Safe (The Safe House Series Book 2) Read online

  A nitroglycerin-cold chill burned up Angela’s spine. Her mind reeled: rape, torture, murder.

  Augustine gaze darted around maniacally while he tried again and again to turn over the engine. When the engine failed to start, he pummeled the dash.

  Four sets of legs crossed the headlamp’s beams.

  ***

  “Dat name is dead to me,” said Manny. “I am Tahir.”

  Samson knees nearly buckled beneath him. As his gaze took in the boy he loved so much, he felt like the hostage, the one whose deprivation from things that transcended mere survival had nearly cost him his life. The boy might as well empty his round into Samson’s body cavity now. He had already stopped breathing, really breathing, the moment his dream of the three of them, united, died with Riley.

  Until his dream was reborn in Angela…

  His lungs bloomed hot. He squeezed the hand that still held Mike. Angela wanted nothing more than the three of them, united. And Samson wanted nothing more than Angela. Safe, away from here, with him, maybe forever. Much as Riley had wanted Manny to be. Once.

  “It’s me. Samson. Manny don’t shoot.”

  The boy shook the rifle, still leveled at them. “Tahir!”

  “Tahir. Please.” Samson’s eyes scorched with moisture. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “Explain how it is you know anything about me.” His accent was more pronounced than Samson remembered, his anything more like any-ting. “You. Left.”

  “We have to get out of here, Tahir.” The name closed his throat. The boy before him was no more Tahir, childhood soldier, than Samson was the green tadpole that had once held a dewy optimism of the world and his right to dream of things like crisp, white, wrap-around porches and a family whose love had the power to erase the violence of combat. “Come with us.”

  “Your head is worth too much.”

  “That means nothing if you die for a cause that isn’t yours.”

  “You know nothing of our cause.”

  “I know that in just under four hours, there will no longer be a cause. Everything will be gone. There is time, but we must leave now.”

  “I have my orders.” He withdrew a phone from his pocket and tapped the screen to start a video. The tiny screen cast a bluish glow against the tree-sheltered canopy.

  Julian’s voice reached Samson’s ears.

  “Samson Caine. Always the hero, right? If you’re seeing this, you no doubt have who you came for. Sending Emmanuel was a nice touch, no? Your nature makes you a predictable fool. I guess you never learned that protection is fleeting. For Riley. For Angela, who is already at the mercy of my men.”

  The tracks lifted and spun in his vision. No. Dear God, he’s lying. Beside him, a mewl of grief slipped from Mike’s bloody lips.

  “Returning to Africa was never about the serum. Eventually, perhaps, it had potential as a tool of absolute warfare. The moment we allowed Angela to leave our facility, my team knew she had created nothing more than a mixture of inactive elements in a stable solution. You became the greater goal. Someone to blame during the inquiry that will come from a retaliatory hell-fire attack on the factions responsible for the consulate slaughter, set to detonate one hour from the time this message is played. So you see, you have done this to your people. Intelligence is in place. Any remaining evidence will be destroyed in the blast. You played into my hands when you insisted on returning, being the hero. Nothing more convincing to an international tribunal than an operative with regional sympathies who is willing to die for his homeland.”

  Samson crumbled to the tracks. Sharp pebbles drilled the fabric at his knees. The entirety of the open-air oxygen was no longer enough. To his lungs, Julian’s words were an agent of death.

  “One hour, Samson. Not enough time to clear the attack’s devastating radius. It’s time for Tahir to learn what happens to heroes. He will kill you or be killed.”

  The video went black.

  “Manny…” Samson didn’t care that he used the boy’s name. What the fuck did it matter now? Despite being on his knees, he refused to beg for his life. The only thing he had left was goddamned truth. “I love you. I loved you from the moment you sold us a bag of frozen water out of your three-wheeled wagon and you made Riley smile in a way I never could. I tried to get you, the right way, through the right channels, but the process took years. By then, you had disappeared. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about you.”

  He plucked the photo from his pocket, the day the three of them went to Bloubergstrand and Manny’s toes sank into ocean water for the first time. Samson extended his arm for Manny to take it.

  The boy’s expression softened as if he wanted to scoot closer, to accept the offering. His generous lips twisted before the pebbled, man-like ridge along his throat jumped in one vigorous swallow.

  “Go.” The word barely cleared the boy’s voice box.

  Tears charged Samson’s eyes, unbidden, totally without restraint. His body refused movement, as if his ears negated the word—go. Mike’s hands hooked under his armpits. In his weakened state, he lifted Samson’s listless frame.

  “Come with us, Manny.” Samson’s whisper was sodden, awash with guilt and love.

  Manny lowered the weapon. He shook his head, turned, and walked away.

  Mike urged Samson to move. One foot in front of the other, their stumbles became a sprint for the cluster of trees where Samson concealed the vehicle.

  By the time Samson slid his legs into the all-terrain’s cockpit and started the ignition and Mike had cleared the debris from the open cab enough to drive, Samson had reached a decision.

  He wasn’t leaving without Manny.

  “I have to go back,” said Samson.

  “I know,” answered Mike, as if driving straight back into a throng of his captors was already a foregone conclusion.

  Samson floored the gas and spun the tires clear of the roots and overgrowth. They rounded two buildings, taking the corner fast enough to put distance between the tire treads and the dirt. The train station loomed ahead.

  “There!” Mike pointed to one thin, small soldier, kneeling apart from a small cluster of others, weapons at the ready.

  One word roared into Samson’s brain: execution.

  Manny would not pay the price for saving him.

  He downshifted and ground the petal to the floorboard. The engine surged, eating the dirt at a faster clip than before. Samson clicked on his high beams and aimed straight for the lone executioner.

  Bullets sprayed the all-terrain’s front profile. Samson and Mike slid low in their seats. By the time the vehicle reached the cluster of soldiers, most had scattered. One remained, his gun trained directly at Manny’s head.

  Samson plowed the executioner. Bursts of flame erupted from the muzzle of the soldier’s gun. His body crumpled nearly in half, a twisted pile of limbs that landed atop the vehicle’s hood. Frozen eyes through the windshield left little doubt the bastard died on impact.

  “I’m not leaving without you, Manny!” Samson yelled over the rising clamor of swelling militia. He reached for his hand. “I love you.”

  Manny rose from his knees, so very much like a boy—his eyes saucers, his petrified features still fleshy and full. He placed his hand inside Samson’s. The moment Samson felt the sweet pressure against his palm, he hauled him into the open back of the vehicle. Mike dove through the front seats and covered Manny with his body.

  Samson carved a frenetic pattern though the teeming road and whizzing bullets, past the train depot and out into the dark night, headed straight for Angela.

  For Samson knew three things with absolute certainty: Julian would lie to his maker to advance his agenda, Samson’s shoulder had taken a round and seared like fucking hell, and everything he had ever wanted was in reach.

  He wasn’t about to let it slip away twice in one lifetime.

  ***

  Angela recoiled from the man’s decaying breath. He shouted commands inches from her face, his spittle l
anding against her cheeks and lips, but the divide in communication might as well have been the Sahara for all she understood. Augustine managed to eke out two words—say nothing—before his stomach absorbed the blunt handle of a semi-automatic.

  He caved to the dirt. A fountain of blood erupted through his teeth.

  She flinched. Were she to speak, they would know she was American. Augustine was trying to save her.

  The man who had frisked her for weapons faced her. He cocked his head to the side and gave her a long, slow undressing with his eyes then nuzzled the hemline of her cotton dress with the barrel tip of his pump-action grenade launcher. The growling string of words unearthed from deep inside him rivaled the stench of his earlier commands.

  If she could get one of their guns…

  But there were three more captors. Augustine and Angela would both be dead before she could get off a clean shot. Keep your head, Ang. You probably have an IQ higher than all of them combined. What would your father do? What would Samson do?

  Stay alive. Any means necessary.

  Another of the men, the leader who had buried himself under the Jeep’s hood and kept the others in line, stepped around the vehicle’s front bumper. His sharp, chastising words caused Angela’s pursuer to back off.

  Angela exhaled the deep, lung-sated breath that had been trapped inside since the ambush. Two men worked the Jeep from inside the cab. The engine launched two complete revolutions and turned over with a decisive rush of gasoline. The leader slammed the hood and motioned Augustine and Angela into the center of the back seat, bookended by captors.

  She stared down the barrel of the grenade launcher. Her insides fractured. Her body moved as instructed; her spirit stayed on that desolate road, waiting, waiting, waiting.

  The driver shifted the four-wheel into gear and sped away from the ridge, away from the pre-determined spot from the plan, away from Samson and Mike and the hope of oceans and boats and freedom.

  ***

  The shack was dirt walls, dirt floor, dirt crevices inside more cracks in the structure. From the outside, it looked more like a massive termite mound. Inside, rows of crude wooden shelves stockpiled supplies—a waystation for the militants of the region to regroup and renew their bloody agenda away from the harsh and unforgiving elements.

  Angela spent the fifteen minute drive buried in calculations: the speed of the Jeep’s odometer, her estimated passage of time, the angle of the moon in relation to the roll bars. They had traveled at an average speed of sixty kilometers per hour and the moon had swapped positions three times, so by her best estimate, they were between ten and fifteen miles north-northwest of where they had been taken. Their captors had bound their wrists and ankles with duct tape they found on one of the shelves then settled around a makeshift campfire beyond the shack to argue.

  “What are they saying?” Angela whispered to Augustine.

  “Dey vote. Kills us or negotiate for arms.”

  She regretted asking. Fire glow licked the space above her, illuminating shelves filled with supplies. She mentally catalogued the materials present—fertilizer, cleaners, bottled water, fire beyond the shack.

  The same man who had favored her on the road entered the room and closed the door behind him. The stench of cheap liquor lifted from his pores. He closed in on Angela, his progress slow, predatory. His weapon hung loosely from a strap at his shoulder; his hand detoured to an exaggerated shift of his manhood.

  Her belly scuttled inside her throat.

  Augustine followed the man’s progress toward her, his head on full-swivel. His eyelids slashed the full moon of his eyes where there was already scant light.

  The captor said something in his native tongue, a whispered coo with an undercurrent of evil, and stopped before her. He crouched, his body pungent with sweat and the musky sludge of the land.

  Augustine clipped out a warning—shiya wakhe.

  The man stood again. He surveyed Augustine as if he were watching a cockroach scuttle across his bare toes then lifted his gun and squeezed three fast rounds into Augustine’s chest.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A scream ripped from Angela’s lungs. Her ears hemorrhaged from the echo in the confined space, from the panic swelling inside and seeking release on the path of least resistance. She squeezed her eyes shut to block the flash of Augustine’s body bouncing from the repeated impacts. A mercurial stench filled the room.

  Someone charged into the hut.

  Angela’s eyes flashed open.

  The leader fisted the killer’s filthy tunic, backed him against the packed dirt wall, and unleashed a string of words inches from his face that had the assailant cowering like a kicked alley dog. The leader’s napalm tone left little doubt that discipline would be rapid and decisive. He dragged him from the shack and continued to berate him.

  Angela waited for a punishing gunshot that never came. She mustered the courage to look at Augustine. His eyes were still open. Gnats buzzed his open lips.

  He had died trying to protect her.

  Tears brimming on her eyelids raced down her cheeks. Her abdomen rioted against the peaceable meal she had shared with Fana and Nahyea. She leaned over on one elbow and emptied the contents of her stomach in cramping waves that left her spent with each heave. Everything inside, she left on the red clay floor. Everything but her renewed determination to make these bastards pay.

  She closed her eyes and imagined them in the sight of a rifle. Inhale, four count. Exhale four count. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

  Stay alive. Any means necessary.

  Her gaze ascended to the shelves. An entire stockpile of chemicals at her disposal, but she needed her hands free first. She couldn’t be sure Samson’s trick would work on duct tape bindings, but she slid her bound hands past her rear and threaded her legs through.

  Standing proved more of a challenge. Her quad muscles quivered from disuse and Augustine’s slumped body occupied most of the floor space. She spaced her feet shoulder-width and recalled Samson’s instructions. Firm your stomach. Yank your elbows down like you’re going to strike your hipbones.

  Angela tried.

  And failed. Needles of pain gouged the skin beneath the tape.

  Beyond the shack, the men argued.

  Her exhales came hot and fast. She breathed in for four seconds. Again, Samson’s words returned. One fast motion. Everything you’ve got.

  She pinched her eyes closed and swung her arms.

  Her hands flew apart.

  Angela nearly laughed with delirium. Snot ran down her face from her tears, and she felt as if she had just used her fingernails to scrape to the surface of a bottomless chasm. She twisted out of her sensible shoes and manipulated her toes to work the tape down and off her feet.

  It’s all you, Angela. No one else.

  The notion came unbidden, unwelcome. She sank into its truth, trying not to lose herself in the abyss again. Her arms were free. Now she had to work them to get to the Jeep and get back to Samson.

  She straightened her glasses and charged the shelves at an angle that afforded her the best light refraction from the raging bonfire beyond the cracks. Her brain shifted into overdrive—properties of explosives, refuse lying around that might act as a holder, possible accelerants, the most potent and disabling gas possible without a heat source.

  Until she found matches.

  Tears threatened again. This time, she would not allow them. She was in her element, her safety zone. Plans cycled in her mind. She dismissed the reactions whose impact was negligible and settled on one—the combustibility of ammonium nitrates in fertilizer. Under the right conditions, her surest bet to disable her abductors.

  Angela needed foolproof.

  At a frantic speed, she cycled through her mind the properties under which the compound would best lead to a runaway reaction. It was only a matter of time before they entered the hut and decided she wasn’t worth the trouble. She discovered a broken liquor bottle kicked beneath a shelf and used it
as a glass housing for the reaction. The shards at the moment of reaction would act upon human flesh as a fragmented bomb to anyone within a standing radius. She poured out the pink-ish granules, crafting a pyre that she could then seal so the ammonium nitrate would create its own oxygen. When she had crafted the perfect pyre and sealed it with a densely-packed rag, she ripped an unlit match from its booklet and crouched beside the door.

  Angela drew in a breath that did little to subside the pronounced shaking of her hands. She glanced at Augustine one final time and unleashed a scream laced with desperate cries of help so powerful, the summons originated in her diaphragm.

  The door rifled open. Her captors ran past where she hid in shadow. Their bodies crowded the tight space; their boot trampled Augustine’s limbs. She waited for them to charge the suspicious bottle ringed in uncapped chemicals with untapped potential to maim, if not kill, then backed halfway out the door. She struck the match and tossed it into the bullseye of her concoction.

  She didn’t have to slam the door behind her.

  The explosion rocked her very foundation and hurtled her through the air. A brilliant orange light flashed to black. Her spine collided with a rock, dangerously close to the fire. The impact sliced long-blade swords of pain through her neck and down her extremities. Everywhere, the remains of the hut’s interior lay strewn.

  Bellows of dying men reverberated through the night. Three charred figures danced in fire and collapsed to the dirt.

  She scrambled to her bare feet, away from the campfire. It was only a matter of time until the fumes reached the generous flames and triggered a secondary explosion. The pads of her feet found purchase and propelled her toward the Jeep, toward freedom.

  The distance was out-of-body. Her mind took her to an alternate place, a place where she hadn’t just ended the lives of men who wanted to kill her, where her knowledge of chemicals hadn’t just exacted a disturbing and satisfying revenge for Augustine’s life, a place where she liberated herself as much as she had Simon.