Chapter 6

“Roland searched the continent for the man who’d done him in.
He found him in Mombasa, in a barroom drinking gin.
Roland aimed his Thompson Gun, he didn’t say a word,
But he blew Van Owen’s body from there to Johannesburg.”
-Warren Zevon, “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner”

Contessa Helena de San Finzione sat on the cot in her cell. She held the string containing the worry beads in her left hand, between her forefinger and middle finger so that half the beads were in her palm and the other half draped over her forefinger. Helena turned her wrist and the beads behind her hand flipped over and clacked with the beads in her palm. A flick back, and the top half of the string flipped back around and made a smaller clacking sound as they hit the back of her hand. She repeated this rhythmically while she waited to act.

The noise of the beads drowned out the sound of Umiwama being joyously plowed by Igazi’s men somewhere in the courtyard below, which made Helen sad. There hadn’t been anything she could do to spare the girl from her fate, but she’d done her Thing so that the girl could at least enjoy the life of prostitution that David Igazi had in mind for her. And if everything went well with the assault, Helena would be certain to undo the damage and try to make the girl forget the experience.

As Helena waited for midnight, when the Ultimados would strike, she had plenty of time to think about the past few days. The African warlord’s men had shot down Maria’s helicopter with the intention of capturing the occupants. It wasn’t likely that they just shot down every helicopter they saw and hoped something good came from the wreckage, so they somehow knew that this one would be carrying something of value. They were right: Lady Maria, her great-granddaughter, was aboard.

Maria’s helicopter ride, however, hadn’t been a scheduled flight from the base, but the whim of a young, wealthy girl who’d never seen the wildlife of Africa from the air and had the influence to arrange a private flight. That’s why Helena had instructed Jeanne to monitor them when they left; to insure that she arrived safely. But they couldn’t have known who would be in the helicopter, when it would leave, and what flight path it would take without someone on the inside feeding them information.

She’d been kidnapped with the sole purpose of luring Helena here, to Igazi’s compound, where a meeting of the warlords was to take place in the morning. Igazi wanted Helena to do the thing that she and her friends learned at an early age to take control of the warlords and make them swear loyalty to him. From there, his much larger force would take over the country of Uongo. They would have to go through her own troops to take over, which would undoubtedly spark a war between San Finzione and Uongo, or whatever Igazi planned to change the name of the country to once he’d taken over. Igazi seemed unworried by the possibility.

The trick his men did with the smoke grenades and the six Humvees driving in opposite directions back on the savannah was particularly effective against satellite or aerial tracking. It was possible that Igazi might have anticipated satellite surveillance, but given all the other inside information he seemed to possess, having been tipped off about it was equally likely.

That he’d kill Helena once he got her to do what he wanted was obvious. But Maria was still unharmed, which was more than she could say for the tribal girl screaming in ecstasy down below. Why not send Maria to the Rape Basement he’d had planned for Umiwama if Helena hadn’t made her happy with being a prostitute? If war with San Finzione was his ultimate goal, why not just execute Maria at the same time that he killed her?

Her thoughts answered the question for her: Because Maria was someone special. She would be Contessa after he killed Helena. Maria wasn’t the kind of person that Helena was; she would certainly not send San Finzione’s troops to war just to avenge her great-grandmother. Even after what he’d done to both of them, Maria would still choose to negotiate peace. It made Helena sometimes wonder which of them had more Italian in their blood.

Igazi couldn’t have counted on that, though. He had no way of knowing that Maria was too good a person to seek revenge. And he’d been careful to this point, especially with how he kept Helena from using her thing to get them both out of this. No, he had some other reason not to worry about a war with San Finzione.

As Helena figured out the only explanation that made sense to her, it started outside. A few minutes before midnight, she heard the first sounds of vomiting: One person, then a second, followed by a third. Up on the walls, she could see guards dropping to their knees, clutching their stomachs, or leaning up against something as their legs began to give out.

She looked over at the Humvees, still parked where they’d stopped after bringing her to the compound, and watched as two shadows emerged from under the vehicles. Helena had expected that Igazi would have people watching the rendezvous site for anyone trying to sneak in camouflaged, however she took a gamble that Igazi hadn’t seen the film “Cape Fear.” The two Ultimados who’d strapped themselves to the underside of her jeep before reaching the site had concealed themselves in the savannah grass, then lashed themselves to the underside of two of the Humvees that had been sent to collect her, and were now making their move.

Helena stuffed her worry beads back into their pouch, watching the commandos make their way through the shadows and up onto the wall of the compound. As they’d pass one of Igazi’s men rolling on the ground and moaning in agony, a knife would come out of the darkness and end the man’s suffering before dragging the bleeding body into the shadows and then moving on. Upon reaching a clear section of the wall, they went to work cutting away the razor wire on top of the wall and tossing ropes over the side for the rest of the Ultimados to climb up.

More sounds of sickness began to fill the compound. She saw someone run into Igazi’s hut. “Fuck,” she said to herself. The Ultimados weren’t ready to strike yet.

Helena racked the slide of her Ruger LC9 and made herself ready to move. The rest of the Ultimados were coming over the wall and beginning to fan out across the compound. As she waited for one of them to be able to make his way to the tower to unlock the shack she was being kept in, reflex caused her to check the doorknob. To her surprise, it turned easily and she stepped outside.

A siren rang out across the compound as Igazi emerged from his hut, followed by the Englishman and the goons with AKs who’d watched her do her thing to Umiwama. She gave another “fuck” under her breath as Igazi pointed toward the shack where Maria was being kept and the Englishman started running. He was too far away for a shot with the Ruger. Helena turned and ran for the stairs. When she reached the top of the stairs, a guard down at the bottom had a cigarette dangling from his lips, a pack of cigarettes in one hand, and a shotgun in the other.