In collaboration with Whatdreamsmaycome

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in, 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say, “Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you”
It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had.

Africa, by Toto

This was a situation Cabot never wanted to be in. There was a patrol off about five hundred yards to the south and he was hustling to put some distance between them. There were two more patrols that he was aware of between him and where he wanted to go. He didn’t have to worry about them for a couple of days, but it was going to be dicey, if he got back at all. They wouldn’t want him to bring out what he had. He had been looking for something he’d heard about over the border. He’d heard that the regime had camps they were taking children to and “training” them. The training consisted of turning the boys into ten-year old GI Joes and the girls into army sex slaves. It turned out it was true. He had spent two weeks finding the dirty little secret. He had the footage and it was going to ruffle some feathers at home.

He was pretty sure the Wall Street Journal wouldn’t want this stuff. Cabot knew the biggest problem with journalism was that a lot of the top brass were in bed with the politicians they were supposed to be keeping an eye on. There were going to be a lot of unhappy politicians when this came out. The regime was headed by a brutal dictator. Unfortunately, he was “our” brutal dictator. He was the enemy of some other brutal dictators and some other wannabe dictators from their own country that weren’t “ours.” So, the government was pumping money and arms into the country and they wouldn’t like hearing that human rights abuses were being funded with the money of the American taxpayer. Well, they wouldn’t especially mind, but the American taxpayer might object and that, they couldn’t risk. Even if he escaped the situation he was in, he wouldn’t exactly be welcomed with open arms at home, either. Right then, he just needed to put some distance between him and that patrol.

He would probably have been fine if he had just done what he came to do and slipped off into the night. He’d always hated bullies and this was the worst he’d ever seen. He decided to do his small part for justice and freedom and set the place on fire. It was hot and dry, and he got upwind and started the tall grass burning on the perimeter. The wind was strong and by the time they got the fire put out, most of the place was destroyed and the prisoners were fleeing through the trees. He was moving the other way and didn’t expect to see anyone. Evidently they suspected that the fire was no accident, and they were coming. Luckily, he was in good shape. He ran half-marathons and it came in handy. By the time the sun rose, he was ten miles away and still moving. He hadn’t run all the way, but there was no way the people behind him had made that kind of time. He could have run it, but he wouldn’t have been in any kind of shape to do much afterward. He finished twenty-ninth in the Boston Marathon a few years back, and it took him two weeks to recuperate.

It was getting very hot and he hunkered down in the shade by a small stream and rested. He chewed on some jerky and drank lots of water. The heat made him drowsy and he napped off and on until the sun started to go down. When he got up, he took a dip in the stream, boiled some water to restock his supply and put his boots back on. He started off and hadn’t gone a quarter of a mile before he had bad luck. He had just come out of a clearing and into the trees. It was very dark by then, and before he knew it, he ran into two people coming the other way. There was a jumble and they all took a fall. One of them fell into a shaft of moonlight and he could see army camo. His knife was out in a flash and he stuck that one like a pig. He gasped and went rigid. He wasn’t going to do anything for a while and then he was going to die. The other one got in a kick at his hand, and the knife went flying. He was pretty good on the ground, and in maybe two minutes he had a good rear choke hold and began to squeeze. He pulled and cranked at that choke and then her head rolled back so he could see her face. Yeah, it was a young woman and he was about to choke her out. She tried to bite and scratch but she didn’t have a chance. She went limp in his arms and he rolled her off and into the grass. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he thought, ‘Now what was I going to do with her?’

He got some rope, located his knife and tied her up. Maybe she had some information about what the two of them were doing there and if there were any more. He tied her to a tree and knelt in front of her. She was a tall girl, maybe about five ten; slender and very pretty. She was light skinned for a black girl; very light for an African, and he wondered if some of her ancestors might have been white. It wasn’t unusual back in the day for some horny white colonial to impregnate a bunch of the local girls. She started to stir a little and she looked up at him. The first thing she did was spit at him. He slapped the shit out of her and she spit on him again.

‘This wasn’t going well!’ he thought. Her mouth was bleeding a little and he got a towel out of his pack. He cut her pants off at mid-thigh and used the cloth to tie her head back to the tree. He got some water, wet the towel and cleaned up her mouth. She tried to bite him and spit again, but she couldn’t get much done with her head tied back.

“Do you speak English?” he asked her. “What’s your name?” She just glared at him.

“Wewe unaitwaje?” he tried Swahili.

“I speak English,” she said. “Go fuck yourself. You won’t get anything from me.”

“I think I’ll fuck you instead,” he told her. “I think I’m going to fuck you to death. I think you’ll be happy to tell me anything before I’m through with you.”

She tried to spit again. He moved the knife up to her chin and let it slide down to the top button of her shirt. He flicked it off and then the next two. Her shirt fell open and two sweet little brown tits were exposed. He let her feel the tip of the knife on one hard little nipple, and she shivered. He stood up and opened his pants, letting his cock flop out. She gasped when she saw it. He rubbed it against one of those little milk chocolate nipples and she gasped and shivered again as it grew hard.

“See, not everything you’ve heard about white men is true,” he told her.

“You’re pathetic,” she spat out. “Just another white man raping a black girl.”

“We’ll see,” he told her. He tucked himself back inside his pants and zipped up. He poked her with the knife again. “Maybe I’ll cut your nipples off first. No, that would get me bloody. We could just talk. We don’t have to be uncivilized.”

“What do you want to talk about?” she asked.

“Well, you could tell me what a nice girl like you is doing in a place like this.”

“I’m being raped,” she said.

“Not yet, you aren’t,” he told her. “I’m not usually a rapist.”

“What are you?” she asked.

“I’m a journalist,” he told her. “I write for a living.”

“You fight pretty well for a journalist. Is Franklin dead?”

“Yes,” he told her. “He may still be breathing, but he’s dead.”

“I’m going to kill you for that,” she promised.

“I’m the one with the knife,” he pointed out. “He was trying to kill me. So were you, for that matter. Why were you trying to kill me?”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you, in particular,” she said. “We heard someone destroyed the training camp and we were on patrol, so we tried to intercept you. I didn’t know who you were.”

“Do you know what was going on at that training camp?” he asked her.

“Yes, they were training recruits for the army.”

“You have a loose definition of ‘recruits’,” he told her.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Your ‘recruits’ were kidnapped children. I doubt that any of them were over ten. Have you ever seen ten-year old girls being gang-raped? Have you ever heard ten-year old girls being gang raped?”

“You’re lying,” she said. “That’s what the rebels do. We don’t do things like that.”

“Rebels, loyalists, different tribes slaughtering each other, brutal dictators raping whole countries, colonialists oppressing natives, natives slaughtering the colonials, you’re all the same,” he told her. “You’re all a bunch of barbarians. Don’t pretend to be all righteous to me. I’ve got the video. Either you’re the one lying or you’re naive. Do you actually live here?”

“I don’t give a shit what you think,” she snarled. “I know who we’re fighting. I know we don’t use those tactics, and no; I’m from Kenya. I came here to join the cause for freedom.”

“Freedom for whom?” he asked. “Freedom from what? Do you imagine that ten-year old kidnap victims are free? Do you think thirteen-year old boys with guns or thirteen-year old camp whores are free? Tell me what you mean by free?”

“I mean free to determine who we have as our leaders. You don’t know shit.”

“You’re the one full of shit,” he told her. “Freedom means that you own yourself and nobody else gets to tell you what to do. That’s freedom. Fuck the ‘leaders.’ I don’t want to be led. I want to pick my own path. That’s freedom and it doesn’t exist in this shit-hole or anywhere else on the planet unless you’re very wealthy. Don’t tell me about freedom. You don’t know shit about it.”

She didn’t say anything for a while. “You’re not what I expected,” she finally said.

“What the fuck does that mean?” he asked her.

“I was told you were trying to overthrow the president,” she said. “We were told you were trying to spread lies about the freedom movement.”

“There is no fucking freedom movement,” he told her. “There are two sides; maybe half a dozen, I don’t know. Every one of them just wants power. They all want that. When they get it, they’ll suck all the wealth out of the country into their own pockets. They’ll kill everyone who opposes them in the most brutal way they can get away with. Then the next ‘freedom movement’ will overthrow the present ‘freedom movement’ and the cycle starts over again. It’s all just a blood bath, and you’re one of the butchers. Fuck you and your freedom movement. You want freedom? Buy yourself an island, or get onboard a spaceship. You ain’t going to find it here.”

“Cover up my tits,” she said.

“Why, I like them,” he said.

“Do I get to choose?” she asked. “Are you just feeding me a line, or do I own myself?”

“I own you,” he told her. “You tried to kill me; remember?”

“Cover me up and I won’t do it again,” she said.

“Bullshit,” he told her. “You trying to tell me you just got converted by my little speech?”

“No, but I want to see the tape,” she said. “Prove it.”

“Okay, I’ll play,” he told her. “You don’t have any buttons.”

“Just pull my shirt together. If I believe you, I’ll let you look.”

“I can look now and you can’t do shit about it,” he told her.

“You said you weren’t a rapist.”

“I’m not.”

“Prove it,” she said again.

He pulled her shirt together, reluctantly covering up those firm little tits. He went to his bag and got his camera. He had seven hours of footage and three hours of battery. He ran them down and when the screen went dark, she was shaking and sobbing. She had tried to get him to turn it off after the first ten minutes.

“I hate you,” she sobbed.

“Yes, I know. That’s why you tried to kill me.”

“No, I tried to kill you because you were my enemy. Now I really hate you,” she wept.

“Hey, I just did what you wanted me to do.”

“No you didn’t. You made me watch all that. You destroyed my life. You bastard, I tried to get you to stop, but you just kept making me watch. You just made me watch everything I believe in turn to dust. Oh, my God, oh my God,” she wept. “I’m such a fool.”

“I’m sorry. Life is brutal and sometimes you get caught up,” he told her. “You never told me your name. Do you mind?”

“It’s Akeela,” she said. “What’s yours?”

“Cabot,” he told her. “Cabot Preston. Akeela, I’m sorry to break the news to you, but most of the countries on this planet are violent and homicidal. The only way to get them to stop is to shine the light on them bright enough so that they’re afraid to do it. That’s what I do. I’m sorry to rain on your particular idealism, but pictures don’t lie. I couldn’t have edited them to make a fake. I don’t have the equipment. You saw exactly what they’re doing. The question is, what am I going to do with you?”

She looked at him and her big brown eyes were full of resentment. “Cut me loose. How long are you going to keep me tied up here?”

“Well, let’s see; how about until I know I can leave here alive?”

“I’m not a threat to you. I don’t know where my weapon is, I suppose you took it.”

“I didn’t. It’s a piece of shit. Mine is better. I’m going to break yours before I turn you lose.”

“Please, don’t do that,” she begged. “It’s the only way I have to protect myself. I can’t stay here now. I’m going to have to make a run for the border. I just hope I can get home alive.”

“Where’s home? he asked her.

“Katali, Kenya,” she said.

“So what are you going to do if I turn you loose?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” he told her. “I’m going to leave you here tied up if you don’t convince me I should turn you loose.”

“I’ll die if you leave me here. Something will come along and eat me. What do you want me to do to convince you.”

“Let me look at your boobs,” he told her.

“What? What’s the matter with you? I’m not going to do that.”

“Then I’m leaving.” He turned away and started pulling together his gear. She sat there for a minute.

“Why do you want me to do that?”

“You told me if you believed me you would let me look.”

She laughed for a long time. “I was talking shit. I just wanted you to close my shirt.”

He kept packing.

“Jesus Christ! You can’t be serious!” she said.

He pulled his pack on and stood up.

“Okay, Okay, don’t leave me here. I’ll do it.”

He put down his pack. When he approached her, she looked up at him and if looks could kill he would have been writhing on the ground. He knelt and reached out to spread her shirt open. There they were; beautiful and firm, just like he remembered. They weren’t large, but they were beautiful. Her nipples were erect, whether from fear or being exposed or from his looking at them he didn’t know, but they were very cute. Little brown buttons, slightly darker than the areolas around them and just begging to be kissed. He slid his hand in and cupped one hard little mound. She arched her back and hissed.

“I didn’t say you could touch, just look.”

He took his hand away. “You’re a beautiful woman, Akeela. Here’s the deal. I’ll take you with me, but you can’t wear your shirt.”

“Things will bite me,” she objected. “Bugs and things will eat me up.”

“Okay, leave it open then. I have bug spray.”

“You’re really an asshole, you know that, Cabot?”

“I wasn’t the one trying to kill you. I’m not the terminally stupid person who was supporting a bunch of homicidal lunatics. I believe that would be you. Who’s the asshole?”

She turned her head away and he could tell she was furious with him. ‘Tough, she would just have to get over it,’ he thought.

“I’m going to cut your head loose,” he told her. “If you spit on me or try to bite me, I’m going to leave you here.”

He cut the material holding her head back. She rolled her head around on her shoulders. “My arms are killing me,” she complained. “I can’t feel my hands. If you don’t let me loose, my hands are going to fall off.”

“You can’t kill me as well with no hands,” he told her.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I was ignorant.”

“Well, that would have been a big comfort to me. ‘She killed him, but she did it because she was ignorant.’ I would have felt a lot better about that.”

“I made a mistake. Jesus, haven’t you ever made a mistake?”

“Yes, I got a 50 percent on a biology test because I went to a party instead of studying. I bought a car that had been wrecked, because I didn’t check it out well enough. I didn’t ask the right girl to the prom. I wrote a story and I said 95 percent when I should have said 92 percent. My mistakes don’t kill people. I try really hard not to make mistakes like that.”

“You killed Franklin over there.”

“That wasn’t a mistake. He was trying to kill me. He was supporting a bunch of psychopaths and trying to kill me to keep it secret that they’re gang raping ten-year old girls. He killed himself,” he told her. “You told me you were going to kill me because I killed him. Have you changed your mind?”

“Yes. I saw the video.”

“Prove it,” he echoed her words.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Walk in front of me with your shirt open. Keep it that way. Do everything I tell you instantly. Don’t make any noise or any sudden movements.”

“Okay, I’ll do all of that.”

He moved behind the tree and untied the rope, careful to stay out of the way. She scooted away from the tree and stood up. She started looking around in the grass.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“My gun,” she said. “We may need it.”

“Okay, I know where it is. You sit back down and I’ll get it.”

She sat down and he went and got it. It was some kind of AK knockoff. Simple, and cheap. He unloaded it and gave it to her.

“I may need it loaded,” she said.

“No, I’ll give you the clip, you put it in your pocket and you don’t get it out until I tell you to,” he said.

“How can I get you to trust me?” she asked.

“You can’t do anything,” he said. “Trust is earned and your credit limit has been exceeded.”

“This isn’t going to work,” she said. “We’re going to die here. We’re going to run into some situation and you’re going to be watching me to see if I’m going to shoot you and we’re going to die.”

“What do you suggest?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I understand why you don’t trust me, but you’re wrong. I need your help to get out of here.”

He sat down in front of her. He couldn’t help admiring her cute little tits. “How old are you, Akeela?” he asked.

“I’m twenty-four,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“You just look very young,” he told her.

She saw the direction of his eyes and she blushed. She cocked her head to one side. “If I fuck you, will you trust me?”

“Would you do that?” he asked.

“No, well, maybe. I don’t know. Would you?”

“Maybe under other circumstances. You’re very cute. I’m afraid of you though. I’d always be looking for the knife.”

She laughed. “You’re good looking, Cabot. You’re white and that’s a problem for me, but I have an idea. Let’s walk together. I’ll keep the clip in my pocket for now. You put your arm around me. I’ll even let you feel me up. When we get comfortable with each other, maybe this will work. I have a secret though. I’m going to trust you.

“Thanks, but I don’t want to know,” he told her.

“We’re going to have a lot harder time getting out than you know,” she said.

“Well, that’s really mysterious. What’s the problem then?”

“We’re not alone,” she said. “There are three people hiding out there in the grass. We’re taking them with us.”

“No, we’re not,” he said. “If you’re not alone you can go with them. We part ways here.”

“We won’t make it,” she said. “Wasichana, kuja hapa,” she called. It meant, “girls, come here.”

He saw three little black heads pop up above the grass. Three slender girls stood up and made their way through the tall grass until they were standing in front of Akeela. They were young teenagers and they were gorgeous. They had on what had been brightly colored wraps, now very dirty and bedraggled. They were barefoot and their big, frightened brown eyes stared up at him. They looked like sisters. Akeela introduced them. Kira was the oldest at seventeen. She had on a red wrap and there were things going on under that wrap that told you immediately that she was becoming a woman. Jema was fifteen, just a bundle of beautiful coffee colored skin and black ringlets. Mora was fourteen and maybe the most beautiful of them all. She was going to be a heartbreaker in a few years. They all dipped their heads when Akeela introduced them.

“This is Kira and her sister Mora, and their cousin Jema,” Akeela said. “They were in a camp like the one you burned down; only that one was run by the rebels. Franklin and I rescued them, and we can’t leave them behind.”

“Rescued them from what?” Cabot asked.

“Probably what you showed me on that video,” she said. “It looks like everyone here uses the same tactics. You have to believe I didn’t know, Cabot.”

He did believe her. The reaction she’d had while viewing what he had on his camera couldn’t be faked. He’d watched as her world collapsed around her. All that misplaced idealism had run out of her in a flood of tears and destroyed dreams.

“Shit!” Cabot said, “Tanzania is around 100 miles and it’s not exactly a walk in the park, not to mention the patrols...

“Well, we’d best beat feet out of here while we still have daylight, find a place to camp for the night, and try to scrounge up some food.”

“What about Franklin?” Akeela asked, “We can’t just leave him there for the jackals and hyenas!”

“We don’t have time for the niceties; besides, I’d rather have them feeding on him than hunting us.”

Akeela shivered. “You’re a cold hard man, Cabot.”

“Maybe, but that’s what will hopefully keep us alive.”

Akeela felt devastated. She had believed so strongly in what she’d been told by people she trusted. Joseph, especially, had convinced her they were fighting for a righteous cause. He had to have known, she now realized. He had been playing her for a fool, taking advantage of her naiveté. How could she have been so stupid? Akeela’s vision of herself had changed, forced through the sieve of that awful video, and there was nothing left. Her life had become a nightmarish lie, and there was no possibility of rebuilding it here. The best she could hope for was survival.

She looked up at this white man who seemed to be her only way out. He was very good looking, she decided, a rugged self-reliant confidence exuding from his demeanor. She hated him, of course. He had destroyed everything she had believed all her adult life in the short time since they’d met, but now, she was entirely dependent on his good will. If she could get her gun back, her odds improved, as long as it was loaded, of course, but the likelihood of her getting out alive, especially with the girls in tow, was slim to none.

Her thoughts were interrupted. “Je, ni sisi kufanya? Hii ni nini mtu kwenda kufanya sisi?” It was Jema, voicing the thought that must have been running through the heads of all three girls.

“Do they speak any English?” Cabot asked. “I understand Swahili, but I understand more than I speak.”

“Yes, they know some,” Akeela answered. “They are like you; they understand more than they speak.”

Cabot turned to the girls. “I’m not going to do anything to you,” he said. “If you mean will I hurt you, I’m not going to do that. As for what we’re doing, we need to be getting the hell out of here. We’ll do that together, okay?”

“Yes, but we are very thirsty, sir,” Jema spoke. Her accent was delightful, and Cabot wanted to hear her speak more.

“Sir, we are also very hungry.” It was Mora, this time. “Do you have any water, or food?”

Cabot began to realize they were in trouble. He had definitely not come equipped for five people. Water shouldn’t be a problem, as they would cross streams, he had plenty of purification tablets and they could boil water, but food was going to be a problem.

What he had in his pack might last them three days. After that, they would need to forage. It might be possible to get food from some village they passed, but that was sketchy. He sighed, put his pack down and opened it.

Handing one of his canteens to each girl, he got out four of his MRE’s. “How far to water?” he asked.

Kira pointed off through the trees in the direction he’d been going when he encountered Akeela. “Hour’s walk, sir,” she said.

“Drink as much as you can hold, then,” he said. “We’ll fill up there. Wait, don’t drink yet. Do you like lemon-lime?”

It was obvious that none of the girls had any idea what he was talking about. He looked at Akeela for help. “Chokaa,” she said. The girls nodded their heads vigorously.

Cabot handed a MRE to each girl. Akeela knew what to do, but the younger girls were lost again. “I hope you like cheese tortellini,” he said.

He knew they had no idea what he was saying, and he laughed at the expression on their faces. He and Akeela opened the MRE’s, showing them how the heaters worked. Cabot put one of the packets of lemon-lime powder into a canteen and shook it, mixing the contents. The three girls each took a cautious sip and broke out into beautiful smiles, holding their canteens out for some of the powder. They ate the peanut butter and crackers that are in every MRE while their dinners were heating, and by the time they were warm, they had their spoons ready.

Akeela showed them how to tear the tops off their meals and they dug in. The smiles on their faces would have made a chef at a four-star restaurant proud. Hunger and thirst satisfied, the little troupe started out.

The three girls were familiar with the area, and Cabot let them lead as they walked, winding through trees, avoiding thorns and chattering together in Swahili. It wasn’t long before they came to a small stream. They stopped to refill their canteen and Cabot dropped a purification tablet into each. An hour later, Mora, who was walking ahead and leading them began to seem uncertain.

“Everything okay?” Cabot asked.

The girls conferred, and Mora spoke up. “Don’t know this place, sir. We have never come this far.” He looked at Akeela, who just shrugged.

“Don’t ask me,” she said. “Franklin was the local.”

Cabot got out his GPS unit and turned it on, briefly. After orienting, he took the lead, turning the GPS off to conserve the battery. He had a solar charger, and would use it while they were resting the next day.

They pushed on through the evening and into the night until the girls were stumbling in exhaustion and Akeela called a halt.

“Cabot, stop. We need to rest. The girls can’t take this.”

He felt an immediate pang of guilt as he looked down at three drawn faces. They looked ready to drop, and he kicked himself for pushing them so hard. They found a group of trees growing close together and he got them seated in the middle. He took his machete and cut many of the smaller acacia, quickly forming a thorny barrier.

He thought they could risk a small fire, and the girls showed that they had been paying attention to learning how to prepare the MRE’s. They had beef stew this time, and Cabot unpacked his ground sheet, spreading it out so that there would be room for them all if they didn’t mind a little crowding. He was a bit surprised when the girls removed the top part of their wraps, using them for pillows. His head was leaning against his pack, but Akeela had no such luxury.

She scooted up beside Cabot. “If you touch me I’ll kill you in your sleep,” she said.

He laughed. “Well, I think we have too much company for romance. I’m going to touch you in your sleep, though, and you’ll never know. She glowered at him, but when he awoke the next morning, there was a firm little body pressed up against him and his left arm was over Akeela.

He eased it back and she stirred, her arms moved over his, holding his hand pressed up against the warmth of her bare belly, under her shirt where it had ridden up. He froze, then relaxed.

Akeela was very much awake. She had been for some time and had gradually become aware that she had moved against him during the night. She felt his arm, heavy across her body, and she realized that she liked the way it felt. Her feelings were very conflicted, and she was having trouble reconciling them with her entire life up to that point. She felt him start to withdraw his arm and she moved, preventing him from moving. She just dozed for a while, soaking in the morning sun. The sound of soft whispers and giggles slowly made her aware that the girls were awake. She rolled toward them, Cabot’s arm slipping away, and she sat up.