The Warrior

The next hut, a young girl raped, alone and unconscious; another hut, an old woman beaten and bleeding, lying on the ground, her clothes barely covering her body, moaning softly. She sees him with blank eyes, but does not register his presence.

He crosses the road to the huts on the other side, figuring to search the huts on both sides of the road, behind the Jeep. The first hut he looks into shelters a young girl, maybe seven years old, lying on her side facing the door. The stench of blood and burning hair fills the hut. Her long hair trails behind her and ends in the oven. He scoops the remaining hair out of harm’s way, kills the fire, and kneels beside her. Her dark, empty eyes regard him with weariness as she rolls on her back, thighs spread.

Looking down at her, Zeb allows the rage to blossom, unfurling from its controlled core within, reaching out across his body to his extremities, making him the most efficient killing machine on earth. The little girl’s vacant eyes follow him as he leaves the hut.

Next hut, scuffling and grunting from within. White male, nearly six feet tall, pi

The blackness in him is lightning fast as he grabs the man by his collar, flings him back against the wall, and holds him there.

Jason Boulder, ex-Delta, ex-Iraq, Somalia, and now here. Zeb recognizes him from Andrews’ dossier. Boulder looks at him in disbelief and is about to yell out when Zeb’s blade severs his carotid. Zeb rolls the body on its belly to lie on its spurting blood and spreads a tattered blanket over it. All this in just a few seconds, with the girl not fully comprehending what has happened.

He slips out of the hut and pauses in the shadows to take stock. Still the same: women wailing, others consoling them, no one ru

He quickly checks all the other huts in that row and discovers more carnage, more blank eyes, but no other soldiers or mercenaries. It takes him another hour to go through all the huts on that side of the road before he heads toward the huts where the Jeep is parked. He figures there must be about two hundred women beaten and raped – many of those young girls. His iPhone memory is nearly full from the pictures he has taken, and he makes a mental note to transfer those to Andrews when he has a good co

He doesn’t know how many soldiers have stayed behind or whether the mercenaries he is seeking are here. The only clue he has is Boulder’s presence.

The Jeep might have some answers.

The Jeep is parked on the central road in the village, with four huts on either side of the road in front of it. All those huts are lit from within, throwing the vehicle into sharp focus. He moves along the far row of huts, towards the driver’s side, keeping an eye on the Jeep and at the same time checking out the huts. In some of these huts he sees some men shot and dead. They account for the shots he has heard. Still, for a village of this size there should be more men about, and their absence bothers him. Maybe they weren’t in the village when the trucks arrived, or they were carted off in the trucks by the soldiers.

He tucks this mystery at the back of his mind and concentrates on the Jeep and the huts in its immediate vicinity. After clearing the huts in his row, he lies prone in the deepest shadow and looks at the Jeep from the corners of his eyes to see if he can detect any movement. He takes a risk and runs at a half crouch toward the Jeep, keeping out of its windshield’s sight line. The Jeep is a standard FDLR vehicle, battered but serviceable, with its keys still in it. He is tempted to pocket the keys but squelches the thought. Not knowing the strength of the soldiers left in the village, he doesn’t want to give his presence away.

He looks across the driver’s seat towards the other row. He thinks he hears some murmuring above the women’s anguish, but he isn’t sure.

He crouches and runs towards the row of huts. The first of the four is empty. The next one has a woman facing the door, and when he peeks around the opening, her eyes widen and her mouth opens. All she can feel is a rush of air as he flows across the hut, clamps his hand over her mouth, squeezes a pressure point on her carotid, and renders her unconscious. He gently lowers her into a shadowed corner and moves on to the next hut.

This is where he can hear the murmuring louder. He goes around the rectangular hut to see if he can peer through a crack in the wall, but there is none. The hut has two windows on the two opposite walls, and peering through them would illuminate his face.

Over the years of working as a PMC with the agency, he has amassed exotic gadgets, from shoe-heel cameras to bug-sized remote-controlled robots. He unsheathes a meter-long slender cable from the leg of his fatigues. One end of the cable has a USB plug and the other end a self-focusing twenty-megapixel camera. The iPhone is its power source. He plugs the cable into his iPhone, loops the camera through a corner of the window, and watches its feed on his phone.

Two white males, one with his back to the door, the other sideways, are squatting beside an almost naked woman. She is still, and he can’t tell if she is unconscious, dead, or too frightened to move. The men are counting something. One of them is stuffing what looks to be gravel and large pebbles into pouches, and then packing those away into a duffel bag. The other is making notes in a dirty folder.

He turns the camera 360 degrees to get a full view of the hut.

No one else. Good.

He slips the camera out, disco

He goes back to the hut with the men. No camouflage, no way to get in stealthily, so he just slips inside the door, moves to its side, and stands with his back to the wall.

*   *   *

Sideways is still counting when he feels the weight of Zeb’s stare and looks up. His face goes slack with astonishment, and then he blurts out, ‘Who the fuck are you, dude?’

Zeb is impassive. He recognizes Sideways. Conley Stark, thirty-five, ex-Rangers, served twice in Iraq, likes knives, dishonorable discharge for raping a woman.

Stark makes another attempt. ‘Qui vous est?’

Zeb has never believed in pleasantries.

Backside turns around to see what the fuss is about. Brink Schulte, ex-Rangers, served with Conley in Iraq.

‘Who the hell is this dumb fuck, Con?’

‘Whoever he is, and he’s certainly dumb, he’ll be dead in a second.’

Zeb remains calm, allowing his presence to fill the room. This will end in only one way.

Stark rises smoothly, and a Gerber Mark II knife appears in his right hand.

Brink pauses from his bookkeeping to watch Con take out the intruder. He loves a good fight, and Con is the best he has seen with a knife. The bookkeeping can wait for a few minutes.

Or maybe not…

The intruder moves from still to attack in a nanosecond, a silent high leap from a standing position. His left leg takes out Con’s knife arm. Brink can hear the bone snap, even as Zeb’s right leg collapses Con’s throat. Zero to dead in less than a second, Brink thinks dimly as the intruder lands smoothly and faces him.

Not even a glance to Con, who is in his death throes.

*   *   *

Even as Zeb launched his Kalaripayattu strike on Con, he was aware that a third person entered the room, uttered something, grabbed the duffel bag lying near Brink, and made good his escape.

Zeb gazes impassively at Schulte. Answers. Schulte will give them. He has no choice.

An hour later Zeb comes out of the hut.