“John Resnick. That's all, Dale. Please wait outside.”
“Aye, sir.”
Resnick sat on the edge of his desk, but didn't offer us a seat.
“Which one's Pike?”
Pike said, “Me.”
Resnick looked at him.
“Our mutual friend speaks well of you. The only reason I agreed to see you is because he vouched for you.”
Pike nodded.
“He didn't mention anyone else.”
I wanted to identify myself as the sidekick, but sometimes I'm smart. I let Pike handle it.
Pike said, “If our mutual friend spoke well of me, then that should cover it. Either I'm good or I'm not.”
Resnick seemed to like that answer.
“Fair enough. Perhaps you'll have the chance to show me just how good, but we can discuss that another time.”
Resnick knew what we wanted and got to the point.
“I used to work with a PMC in London. We used Fallon once, but I would never use him again. If you're trying to hire him, I would recommend against it.”
I said, “We don't want to hire him, we want to find him. Fallon and at least one accomplice abducted my girlfriend's son.”
Resnick's left eye flickered with an unexpected tension. He studied me as if he were deciding whether or not I knew what I was saying, then he sat a bit taller.
“Mike Fallon is in Los Angeles?”
I told him again.
“Yes. He took my girlfriend's son.”
Resnick's left eye flickered harder and the tension spread through him. But then he shrugged.
“Fallon is a dangerous man. I can't believe that he's in Los Angeles or anyplace else in the country, but if he is and he did what you said, you should go to the police.”
“We've been with the police. The police are trying to find him, too.”
Pike said, “Without my resources. You know him. The thought is that you know how to reach him, or know someone who does.”
Resnick considered Pike, then slid off his desk and went to his seat. The sun was beginning to lower and bounced off the cars. Jets arced out of LAX heading west over the sea. Resnick watched them.
“That was years ago. Michael Fallon is under a war-crimes indictment for atrocities he committed in Sierra Leone. Last I heard, he was living in South America, Brazil, I think, or maybe Colombia. If I knew how to find him, I would have told the Justice Department. Jesus, I can't believe he had the balls to come back to the States.”
Resnick glanced at Pike again.
“If you find him, will you kill him?”
He asked it as simply as if he wanted to know whether or not Pike enjoyed football.
Pike didn't answer, so I answered for him.
“Yes. If that's your price for helping us, then yes.”
Pike touched my arm. He shook his head once, telling me to stop.
I said, “If you want him dead, he's dead. Not, then not. All I care about is the boy. I'll do anything to get the boy.”
Pike touched me again.
Resnick said, “I believe in rules, Mr. Cole. In a business like mine, rules are all we have to keep us from becoming animals.”
Resnick went back to the jets. He watched them wistfully, as if a jet could take him away from something that he could not escape.
“When I was in London, we hired Mike Fallon. We sent him to Sierra Leone. He was supposed to guard the diamond mines under a contract we had with the government, but he went over to the rebels. I still don't know why—the money, I guess. They did things you can't imagine. You would think I'm making it up.”
I told him what I saw in the van at the edge of the Los Angeles River. Resnick turned back from the jets as I described it. I guess it sounded familiar. He shook his head.
“A fucking animal. He can't work as a mercenary anymore, not with the indictments. No one will hire him. You think he kidnapped this child for ransom?”
“I think so, yes. The boy's father has money.”
“I don't know what to tell you. Like I said, the last I heard he was in Rio but I'm not even sure of that. There must be a lot of money at stake for him to come back.”
Pike said, “He has an accomplice. A large black man with sores or warts on his face.”
Resnick swiveled toward us and touched his own face.
“On his forehead and cheeks?”
“That's right.”
He leaned forward with his forearms on the desk. It was clear that he recognized the description.
“Those are tribal scars. One of the men Fallon used in Sierra was a Benté fighter named Mazi Ibo. He had scars like that.”
Resnick grew excited.
“Is a third man involved?”
“We don't know. It's possible.”
“All right, listen, now L.A. is starting to make sense. Ibo was tight with another merc named Eric Schilling. I guess it was a year ago, something like that, Schilling contacted us looking for security work. He's local, from here in L.A, so Ibo might have contacted him. We might have kept something.”
Resnick went to work on his computer, punching keys to bring up a database.
I said, “Was he involved in Sierra Leone?”
“Probably, but he wasn't listed in the indictments. That's why he can still work. He was one of Fallon's people. That's why it stood out when he contacted us. I won't hire any of Fallon's people even if they weren't involved. Yeah, here it is.”
Resnick copied an address from his computer, then handed it to me.
“He had a mail drop in San Gabriel under the name Gene Jeanie. They always use these fake names. I don't know if it's still good, but it's what I have.”
“Do you have a phone for him?”
“They never give a phone. It's like the mail drop and the fake names. It's a way to stay insulated.”
I glanced at the address, then passed it to Pike. I stood, but my legs felt wobbly. Resnick came around his desk.
He said, “We're talking about very dangerous people right now. Don't mistake these men for your basic shit-eating criminals. Fallon was as good as it gets, and he trained these people. No one is better at killing.”
Pike said, “Bears.”
Resnick and I both glanced at him, but Pike was staring at the address. Resnick gripped my hand and held it. He looked into my eyes as if he was searching for something.
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Cole?”
“When I'm scared.”
“I pray every night. I pray because I sent Mike Fallon to Sierra Leone, so I've always felt that part of his sin must be mine. I hope you find him. I hope the little boy is safe.”
I saw the desperate darkness in Resnick's face, and recognized it as my own. A moth probably saw the same thing when it looked into a flame. I should not have asked, but I could not help myself.
I said, “What happened over there? What did Fallon do?”
Resnick stared at me for the longest time, then confessed.
Sierra Leone
Africa
1995
The Rock Garden
Ahbeba Danku heard the gunfire that morning only moments before the screaming boy fled down the road from the mine to her village. Ahbeba was a pretty girl, twelve years old this past summer, with long feet and hands, and the graceful neck of a princess. Ahbeba's mother claimed that Ahbeba was, in fact, a royal princess of the Mende tribe, and prayed every night for a prince to take her eldest daughter as his bride. The family could claim as many as six goats for their dowry, her mother predicted, and would be so rich that they could escape the endless war that the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front waged against the government for control of the diamond mines.
Ahbeba thought her mother crazy from smoking too much of the majijo plant. It was far more likely that Ahbeba would marry one of the young South African mercenaries who protected the mine and village from the rebels. They were strong handsome boys with guns and cigarettes who grinned brazenly at the girls who, in turn, f
lirted with the young men shamelessly.
Ahbeba spent most days with her mother, sisters, and the other village women tending a rock-strewn subsistence farm near the Pampana River. The women cared for a small goat herd and grew sweet potatoes and a hard pea known as a kaiya while their men (including Ahbeba's father) mined the slopes of the gravel pit for diamonds. As diggers and washers, the men were paid eighty cents per day plus two bowls of rice flavored with pepper and mint and a small commission on any diamond they found. It was hard, dirty work, shoveling gravel out of the steep slopes by hand, then pumping it into small washing plants where it was sorted by size, sluiced for gold, and picked through for diamonds. The men worked in shorts or underwear for twelve hours a day with only the dust that caked their skin as protection from the sun and the South Africans to protect them from the rebels. Princes were in short supply. Even more rare than diamonds.
That morning, Ahbeba Danku had been left to grind kaiya into meal while her sisters tended the crops. Ahbeba didn't mind; working in the village gave her plenty of time to gossip with her best friend, Ramal Momoh (who was two years older and had breasts the size of water bladders), and flirt with the guards. Both girls were blue with pea meal as they snuck glances at the guard who stood at the edge of the village. The young South African, who was tall and slender and as pretty as a woman, winked at them and beckoned them to join him. Ahbeba and Ramal giggled. Each was daring the other to do it, saying you, no, you, when a string of faraway pops crackled down the hill.
Poppoppop . . . pop . . . pop . . . poppoppop.
The guard jerked toward the sound like a street puppet in the Freetown bazaar. Ramal jumped up so quickly that the grinding stone tipped over.
“They're shooting at the mine.”
Ahbeba had heard the guards shoot rats before, but it was nothing like this. Older women stepped from their huts and younger children paused in their play. The young South African called across the village to another guard, then unslung his rifle. His eyes were bright with fear.
Bursts of automatic-weapon fire layered over each other in a furious overlapping rage that ended as quickly as it began. Then the valley was silent.
“Why were the guards shooting? What is happening?”
“That wasn't the guards. Listen! Do you hear?”
A boy's scream reached the village, and then the thin figure of a child raced between the huts. Ahbeba recognized eight-year-old Julius Saibu Bio, who lived at the northern edge of their village.
“That's Julius!”
The boy pulled to a halt, sobbing, flapping his hands as if he was shaking off something hot.
“The rebels are killing the guards! They killed my father!”
The South African guard ran several steps toward Julius, then turned back toward the trees just as a white man with hair the color of flames stepped from the leaves and shot the South African twice in the face.
The village exploded in chaos. Women scooped childen and infants into their arms and ran to the bush. Children burst into tears. Ramal ran.
“Ramal! What's happening? What do we do?”
“Run! Run NOW!”
Two more South African guards burst from between the huts. The flame-haired man dropped to a knee and fired again—bapbap, bapbap—so fast that the shots sounded as one. Both South Africans fell.
Ramal disappeared into the jungle.
Ahbeba started for her family's hut, then ran back for Julius. She took him by the arm.
“Come with me, Julius! We have to hide!”
A flatbed truck crowded with men roared into the village, horn blowing. Men jumped off the truck in twos and threes as it raced between the huts. The flame-haired man shouted orders at them in Krio, the English-based Creole that was spoken by almost everyone in Sierra Leone.
The rebels fired into the air and beat the running women and children with the butts of their rifles. Ahbeba picked up Julius to run, but more rebels jumped from the truck behind her. A skinny teenager with a rifle as big as himself dragged Ramal from the bush, pushed her down, then kicked her in the back. A man wearing nothing but shorts and a fluorescent pink vest shot at the village dogs, laughing every time a dog screamed and spun in a circle.
Julius shrieked.
“Make them stop! Make them stop!”
The flatbed truck skidded to a stop in the center of the village. As quickly as the gunfire had come and gone from the mine, the village was captured. The South Africans were dead. No one was left to protect them. Ahbeba sank to the ground, and tried to pull herself and Julius into the earth. This could not be happening to a princess waiting for a prince.
A muscular man in wraparound sunglasses and a ragged Tupac T-shirt clambered up onto the truck's bed to glare at the villagers. He wore a bone necklace that clattered against the ammo belts slung from his neck. Other men stood beside him, one wearing a headband made of bullets; another, a net shirt sewn with small pouches made from the scrotums of warthogs. They were fierce and terrible warriors, and Ahbeba was very afraid.
The man with the bone necklace waved a sleek black rifle.
“I am Commander Blood! You will know this name and fear it! We are freedom fighters of the Revolutionary United Front, and you are traitors to the people of Sierra Leone! You dig our diamonds for outsiders who control the puppet government in Freetown! For this, you will die! We will kill everyone here!”
Commander Blood fired his rifle over the heads of the villagers and ordered his men to line everyone up to be shot.
The flame-haired man and another white man came around the side of the truck. The second man was taller and older than the first, wearing olive-green pants and a black T-shirt. His pale skin was burned from the sun.
He said, “No one's killing anyone. There's a better way to do this.”
He spoke Krio like the flame-haired man.
The two white men were on the ground; Commander Blood stood on the truck's bed. The commander charged like a lion to the edge of the bed so that he towered over the men. He fired his weapon angrily.
“I have given the order! We will kill these traitors so that word will spread throughout the diamond fields! The miners must fear us! Line them up! Now!”
The man in the black shirt swung his arm as if throwing a punch and hooked Commander Blood's legs out from beneath him. The commander landed flat on his back. The man jerked him from the truck to the ground and stomped his head. Three fierce warriors jumped from the truck to help their commander. Ahbeba had never seen men fight so fiercely nor in such strange ways—the man and his flame-haired friend twisted the warriors to the ground so quickly the fight ended in a heartbeat, with the two men defeating four. One of the warriors was left screaming in pain; two others were unconscious or dead.
Ramal edged close to her and whispered.
“They are demons. Look, he wears the mark of the damned!”
As the black-shirted man held Commander Blood by the neck, Ahbeba saw a triangle tattooed on the back of his hand. Ahbeba grew even more fearful. Ramal was wise and knew of such things.
The demon pulled Commander Blood to his feet, then ordered the others to bring the dead South African guards to the well at the center of the village. The commander was dazed and submissive; he did not object. The flame-haired man spoke into a small radio.
Ahbeba waited anxiously to see what would happen. She held Julius close and tried to calm him, fearing that his sobbing might draw the rebels' attention. Twice she saw brief chances to escape, but she could not leave the boy. Ahbeba told herself that there was safety in numbers; that she and Julius would be safe within the crowd.
As the rebels stacked the dead South Africans by the well, a second truck rumbled into the village. This truck was battered and misshapen and cowled with black dust. Great winged fenders hooded the tires like a sorcerer's cloak, and broken headlamps stared crookedly over a grill like a hyena's snaggletoothed grin; the rust on its teeth was the color of dried blood. A dozen young men with glassy unblinking eyes
squatted in the truck. Many had bloody bandages wrapped tightly around their upper arms. Those without bandages showed jagged scars cut into these same places.
Ramal, who had been to Freetown and knew of such things, said, “You see their arms? Their skin has been split so that cocaine and amphetamines can be packed into the wounds. They do this to make themselves crazy.”
“Why?”
“It makes them better fighters. Like this, they feel no pain.”
A tall warrior jumped down from the new truck and joined the two white men. He wore a sackcloth tunic and baggy trousers, but that is not what drew Ahbeba's eye; his face was as cut and planed as a finished diamond. His upper arms bore the same scars as his men, but, unlike the others, his face was also marked: three round scars were set like eyes along each cheek and a row of smaller scars lined his forehead. His eyes were fired with a heat that Ahbeba did not understand, but he was breathtakingly beautiful, as beautiful and as princely as any man that Ahbeba had ever seen. He held himself like a king.
The black-shirted man twisted Commander Blood toward the stack of South African corpses.
He said, “This is how you create fear.”
He glanced at the tall African warrior, who motioned his men from the truck. They jumped to the ground, howling and hooting as if possessed. They were not armed with rifles and shotguns like the first group of rebels; they carried rusty machetes and axes.
They swarmed over the dead South African guards. The machetes rose and fell as the crazy-eyed rebels hacked off their heads. They threw the heads into the well.
Ahbeba sobbed and Ramal hid her eyes. All around them, women and children and old men wailed. Ishina Kotay, a strong young woman with two babies, as fast as any boy in the village when she was a girl, jumped to her feet and bolted for the jungle. The flame-haired man shot her in the back.
Ahbeba felt light-headed, as if she had smoked the majijo plant. She lost track of what was happening, and vomited. The world grew hazy and small with empty spaces between moments of brilliant clarity. The day had begun with cakes for breakfast as the first kiss of light brushed the ridges above her village. Her mother had spoken of princes.