The truck came to a stop and a cloud of red dust billowed around, dropping another layer on them as they coughed. The driver killed the engine, got out, and closed the door. The driver and his passenger came to the back of the truck. The passenger—the man in charge—held up a hand as some of the men in the truck started to get up. “Wait here,” he said.
Salim slumped back against the side of the truck. A few of the dust-covered men shared a look. They weren’t pleased. Salim wasn’t the only one whose curiosity was grating at his patience. The rest of the men kept their feelings more hidden.
Another half-hour passed with the men waiting. They shuffled in their seats. They looked around. They passed silent questions with their eyes.
“Assalamu alaykum.”
Salim looked toward the voice, a new man was standing on the ground at the back of the truck.
He said, “Each of you has completed your training.”
The speaker’s face was covered, whether to keep his identity secret or the road dust off, Salim could only guess.
“You will return to your home countries in the West. You will receive instructions on the way.”
Salim looked quickly to the sky and thanked Allah.
“Before you return, you need a cover story. You may be required to explain your absence from your Western lives. Your story will be that you lent humanitarian assistance to the people in this village who are in the midst of a typhoid epidemic. Do not drink the local water.”
The speaking man held up a plastic water bottle, the kind that Salim hadn’t seen since before boarding the last plane to Lahore a few months prior. “Drink only from the bottles provided, or you will get sick. You will see men in protective suits. Do not speak to them. They are from international aid agencies. They are afraid of typhoid. You should not be. You will be photographed helping these people so that evidence exists of your work here. When you return to your countries, the pictures will be provided to you. You will need to post them on your social media pages to build your story. You will be notified when to start doing this.”
Salim smiled inside. Helping sick people in Africa was a great cover to explain his absence over the past months. He might be able to make his escape back into American society without having to go to the FBI. Perhaps an anonymous life somewhere far away from his family in Denver, maybe under a new name, would be the key to getting his freedom back and putting this mistake behind him.
“Each of you will be assigned to a squad,” the man behind the truck said. “Your squad leader will tell you what to do. Listen. Do exactly as he instructs. One last thing—typhoid can successfully be treated for those who will accept medical treatment early. These people have gone without treatment for several weeks. Many of them are dying. Typhoid is an ugly disease at its end. Some of these people can be saved, but for the rest, your help will make their passing easier.”
The speaker pointed at the four men nearest the back of the truck. “You four, come with me.”
The man who had been a passenger in the truck selected four other men from the truck to follow him. Soon Salim and Jalal were included in a group of four and following a gruff man with a smelly, matted beard into the village.
Chapter 40
When Austin woke, he heard men’s voices nearby and felt the most wonderful cold water on his skin. He was lying on a bed of something soft and looking up at a familiar dark ceiling, though he couldn’t quite figure out where he was.
Two kids were speaking in a language he was familiar with, but didn’t understand. He noticed his friend Emmanuel’s wife looking down over him, pressing a wet cloth against his face.
She said, “Drink.”
Austin tried to lift himself up on an elbow, and she leaned over to assist. One of the children brought a cup to his mouth. He drank. When the cup was empty, Austin asked for more, but his stomach roiled. He rolled away from Emmanuel’s wife and threw up most of the water onto the dirt floor.
The boy made a noise to express his disgust and his feet shuffled away as Austin laid back. Austin weakly said, “Sorry.”
The children both ran outside.
Emmanuel’s wife urged him to sit back up. Austin scolded himself for not remembering her name, but it was an African name and had too many syllables and way too many consonants. “Take water again. A little.” She held the cup to his mouth. Austin sipped and laid back.
He felt dizzy. He felt confused. He stank badly enough to smell himself. Every part of him ached—his joints, his back, and mostly his head. He lolled his head over to the side to look at Emmanuel’s wife on her knees beside him. “Thanks.”
She smiled. A closed-lipped smile at first, then a broad smile that showed her perfect white teeth. The oddest thought crossed Austin’s mind—that a diet rich in natural, unprocessed foods must be excellent for dental hygiene. They all had great teeth here.
He rolled to his left as another wave of nausea threatened to spill his last sips of water into the dirt.
Emmanuel’s wife made a soothing sound—the kind that mothers instinctively make when caring for sick children—then dipped the cloth back into the bucket and rubbed it over his face, arms, and neck.
The sound of the children’s voices outside changed. Deeper voices joined them. Emmanuel’s familiar voice said something to his son.
Feet shuffled through dirt, and bodies brushed through the shed’s narrow door. Then voices were inside and Austin opened his eyes to see two men in yellow Tyvek suits with AK-47s in their hands. They stood over him, hunched down under the shed’s low roof.
Austin closed his eyes and waited for the bullet.
Chapter 41
Her mother was an Olympic silver medalist. And every time Eric brought it up in front of strangers in the cafeteria, she wanted to take her tray and smack him in the head hard enough to make his thick, red hair pop right off his head. But she didn’t, of course. Instead, she smiled and looked at the disbelief around the table. Nobody ever believed it.
“No,” Eric’s old friend Robert said.
Olivia nodded to confirm and continued to chew her food.
Robert asked, “So your mother is really a Russian Olympic medalist?”
Olivia swallowed, took her billfold out of her purse, opened it up to the pictures she had saved inside, and laid it on the table for everyone to see.
Eric had seen it before and took the opportunity to shovel food into his mouth. He had to shovel. He had such a mound on his tray that if he ate at a normal pace, he wouldn’t finish before their lunch break was over. Olivia couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t obese.
She flipped the photos in their little clear plastic sleeves. She found the old one of her mother on the platform, hands raised, and a medal around her neck.
Robert—without asking—reached out and scooted the wallet closer. He leaned over as did his coworker Joan. “She’s gorgeous,” Robert said.
That wasn’t unexpected. Olivia had heard the comment too many times for it to have any impact.
Joan was a little more catty. “I was expecting—”
Of course, she didn’t finish. Everyone expected female Russian athletes from the mid-eighties to look like brutish men full of growth hormones. Olivia’s mother was nothing like that. If she’d been taller, she’d have looked like one of those magazine cover models.
“What did she earn a medal in?” Robert asked with a vaguely lustful look in his eyes, glancing first at the photograph, and then over to Olivia. There was a strong resemblance between the two, though Olivia thought she had nothing close to her mother’s beauty.
“Biathlon,” Olivia answered.
“You have her eyes,” Robert said. It was what guys always said when they saw a picture of her mother. It probably wasn’t even true. What Olivia thought it meant was, “I want to have sex with you and pretend you are your mother.” Comments about her eyes never got guys very far with her.