Looking at her reflection in the kind light of the dawn, Cali admitted that even in these rough surroundings she managed to look years younger than thirty-seven. In the past year her work had kept her away from home nearly eight months, in places where she was hard-pressed to find enough food to spend her per diem, so she maintained her shape without becoming a slave to a health club.
Shape, she thought without looking down, a nearly six foot bean pole with B cups, no hips, and a flat ass. She didn’t even have the green eyes the red heads in romance novels always seemed to possess. Hers were dark brown, and while they were large and wide-set, they weren’t green. Her older sister had gotten those, along with the boobs and the butt and all the other curves that had attracted men since she’d hit puberty.
At least Cali had gotten The Lips.
As a child she’d always been self-conscious about the size of her mouth. Like any adolescent, she hated to stand out. It was bad enough she had hair that shone like a beacon and that she was taller than all the boys in her class, but she’d also been given a mouth much too large for her face and lips that always looked swollen. She’d been teased about it from kindergarten. Then suddenly, in her junior year of high school, the teasing stopped. That summer her face had matured and cheekbones had appeared, graceful curves that transformed her mouth from something oversized into something sensual. Her lips gained a pouty ripeness that continued to spark carnal fantasies to this day.
Cali packed her toiletries in her rucksack, swept the dim room to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, and headed down to the hotel’s lobby. The eight-room establishment’s reception area was an open space defined by arches along three walls. At the back was the reception desk, which doubled as a bar, and a door leading to the kitchen. A collection of mismatched chairs and tables dotted the flagstone floor. Beyond the arches, the steamy rain came down in curtains. The town’s dirt square had turned into a quagmire. A group of villagers huddled at the back of a truck for their turn to join the exodus. Their few meager possessions were carried in plaited grass bags or piled on their heads.
Cali took a seat near the back of the lobby.
“Ah, miss, you are awake early.” As with many businesses in Western and Central Africa, the hotel’s owner was Lebanese.
“You can thank the assault rifle alarm clock,” Cali said and accepted a cup of coffee. She eyed the owner, her expression asking the question.
“Yes, yes, yes, the water was boiled, I assure you.” He looked out beyond the falling rain. “The troops the government sent are no better than Caribe Dayce’s bandits. I think if UN had not sent observers the government wouldn’t have even come for us.”
“I was in Bangui yesterday,” Cali told him. “It’s just as bad there. People who can get out of the country are.”
“I know. My cousins live there. Many believe that Dayce will move on the capital after he takes Rafai. Tomorrow I will join my family and we go to Beirut at the end of the week.”
“Will you come back?”
“Of course.” He seemed surprised by her question. “Dayce will eventually fail.”
“You sound sure.”
“Miss, this is Africa, eventually everything fails.” He went off to take the order of the truck driver who’d just stepped out of the rain.
Cali ate two of the plantains he’d brought to her table, and left ten dollars. By Kivu’s standards the Lebanese was a wealthy man, but she felt the need to give him something extra, maybe just the knowledge that people on the outside still cared.
She’d parked her rented Land Rover under a crude lean-to in a dirt yard behind the hotel. The rain drumming against its tin roof sounded like a waterfall. She kept her head down as she slogged through the clinging mud, so she didn’t see the damage until she’d slid under the lean-to’s roof. The four bullet holes in the Rover’s windshield weren’t the problem. Nor were the shattered headlights. She could have even dealt with one of the tires being shot, because there was a spare bolted to the vehicle’s rear cargo door. It was the second front wheel lying deflated that did it.
Hot rage boiled. She whirled, looking for a place to vent her anger. The square was quickly filling with people desperate to leave the region. Some soldiers were trying to keep things orderly, while others slouched negligently in doorways out of the rain. None paid her any attention.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered in frustration. She could blame no one or everyone. It didn’t matter. Finding who shot up the four-wheel drive wouldn’t fix it, and without it she was as helpless as the refugees.
Before she left the States one of the old hands in the office had told Cali an expression that seemed strange at the time but now fit perfectly. Africa wins again. The Lebanese hotelier had said essentially the same thing. Everything fails here. If it wasn’t the weather, it was the disease, or the corruption, or the sheer stupidity of drunken soldiers using her truck for target practice. If it hadn’t been so pathetic it would have been funny, like a Buster Keaton farce where he keeps knocking himself down again and again as he bumbles through his day.
Well this explains why the shots I heard were so loud, she thought as she circled the Land Rover looking for other damage. The lone spare mounted above the tailgate mocked her.
There wouldn’t be a second spare in Kivu so she’d have to hitch a ride to Rafai with the refugees. Not only was Rafai bigger, but the military was there in force and only a handful of businesses had closed. If she got a second tire she could return in an empty truck coming back for the next group of evacuees.
And that would waste a day she was sure she didn’t have.
She had landed in the CAR only two days ago, thinking she would have at least a week to get her work done. Then she’d heard about Caribe Dayce’s lightning thrust. She’d rushed to Kivu as quickly as she could, hoping she could get in and out before he overran the town. Could she lose a day and still do it? Were Dayce’s men far enough out to give her the break she needed?
Cali had no choice. She would have to chance it. With luck she would be back this afternoon. She’d reassess the situation then and make her decision about heading farther north. She’d phone in her report after first getting herself a place on one of the refugee trucks. From her rucksack she withdrew a travel wallet and tucked two fifties into her shorts.
She dodged out of the lean-to and ran back to the hotel, her boots sucking at the clinging mud with each rushed pace. The truck driver was hunched over his breakfast, shoveling food into his mouth even before swallowing the previous bite. Two empty plates were stacked at his elbow. A carton of Marlboros rested on an adjacent chair. The hotel’s owner wasn’t leaving anything for Dayce to loot, so everything was going cheap.
She was about to approach when another heavy truck roared into town. Unlike the other vehicles, this one had come in from the north. In the open bed of the six-wheeled diesel were three dozen Africans trying to keep a piece of plastic tarp over their heads. When the truck braked in front of the hotel, the mass of bodies shifted and gallons of water sluiced over the cab just as the driver jumped clear. The full weight of the water poured over his head and ran down his open rain jacket. He looked up through the bed’s stake sides and must have made a face, because children suddenly started laughing.
Cali watched as the white driver raked rain from his hair and flicked drops at the children, eliciting more shrieks of delight. She hadn’t heard a child laugh since she’d arrived in the country. Judging by the bundles of possessions being handed down from the truck, these people had just fled their homes and somehow this man could make their children laugh. She guessed he was an aid worker and they had known him for some time.