Scott Mariani - The Devil’s Kingdom - Part 2 of the best action adventure thriller you'll read this year!

Jude kept stealing glances at the gun. A pressed-steel box with a stubby barrel. Very compact. Ideal for close-up and personal killing. The kind of killing that could be done in the back seat of a car with no danger of hurting anyone but the intended victim. Just perfect.

‘This is your new companion Promise Okereke,’ was how Masango had introduced him. ‘You will be seeing a lot of him, my young friend. From now on, he will never be far away from you. Like your guardian angel, there to keep you from getting into trouble.’

‘That’s very considerate of you,’ Jude said. He was determined not to show the slightest weakness or emotion to his captors. The deaths of his friends Condor and Hercules had shaken him badly and his own predicament was terrifying. But outwardly he remained cool, almost flippant in his defiance.

Masango pointed at Promise. ‘Do not try to speak to him, because he will not reply. Promise, show him why you will not reply.’

Promise opened his mouth. Jude didn’t really want to see, but it was hard to miss. The space between Promise’s lower teeth was a big purple-red hole of flesh and veins where his tongue used to be. If Jude’s stomach hadn’t been empty already, he might well have distributed its contents over his lap, making the rest of the journey even more pleasurable.

‘I don’t suppose he was born like that,’ Jude said when he’d collected himself.

Masango shook his head. ‘The man who did this to him is called Louis Khosa,’ he explained. ‘The brother of my friend and associate Jean-Pierre Khosa. If you are afraid of Jean-Pierre, you would be much more afraid of his brother. Louis is a very terrible man.’

‘What a charming family,’ Jude said. ‘Are there any more of them? Just so I know.’

‘One day soon, Louis Khosa will be dead. Only one man can kill him.’

‘Let me guess. His dear brother.’

‘That is right. And that is why Promise is so loyal to Jean-Pierre, and to me. He is not called Promise because he keeps his promises. He cannot make any. But he always keeps mine. And I promise you, my young friend, if you try to escape or resist us in any way, there will be no second chance for you. You will die a death that you cannot imagine.’

‘Thanks for the tip,’ Jude said. ‘So am I allowed to ask where you arseholes are taking me, or would that constitute resistance?’

Masango’s face was stony. ‘To a place where you will be safe and well looked after, as long as you behave yourself. I hope for your sake that you will not forget that advice.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream of giving you any trouble,’ Jude said. And while the Uzi was only a couple of feet away, he wasn’t being entirely sarcastic. He thought about his father. In this situation, he was certain, Ben wouldn’t waste any time getting the gun out of Promise’s hand. Probably breaking a few fingers in the process, but Promise wouldn’t have a chance to feel much pain or even cry out, because he’d be dead a second later, quickly followed by César Masango. Or maybe Ben would just break Masango’s arms and keep him alive to extract information from him. However he played it, Ben would have got out of this. He wouldn’t have sat here like an idiot, letting himself be taken off somewhere nobody would ever find him.

But then, as Jude reflected bitterly, he was not his father.

The Mercedes drove through the night, pausing for the silent driver to refuel the tank from a couple of jerrycans stored in the boot. Jude was allowed a bathroom break behind a roadside bush, with his guardian angel hovering watchfully nearby. Before they set off again, Masango offered a floppy sandwich from a plastic wrapper, a half-melted chocolate bar and a bottle of warm Pepsi. The kind of stuff you’d give a twelve-year-old. Jude wanted to throw them angrily into the bushes, but then recalled Ben’s advice: eat when you can, drink when you can, sleep when you can . If he couldn’t fight like his father, then at least he could manage those.

He polished the food off in resentful silence, then got back in the car, folded his arms, sank down low in the soft plush seat, and pretended to fall asleep just as a ‘fuck you’ signal of defiance to Masango.

As he lay there with his eyes closed, he kept wondering what was happening to him. One thing was clear enough – he was a hostage. They were planning on isolating him as far away as possible from Ben, Jeff and the others, so that his friends had no way to find him. He would be imprisoned in some totally inaccessible shithole, a cellar maybe, or a dug-out pit in the ground with a truck parked over the top of it. He’d seen that in a movie and the idea appalled him.

If he was a hostage, it meant there was a deal going on. Jude had already figured that much out, from the moment Khosa had started keeping him under separate guard back in Somalia. Hostages were leverage, either for money or some other kind of trade. Nobody was going to pay money for Jude, at least not while Ben and Jeff were Khosa’s prisoners too. Even if they hadn’t been, Jude didn’t think he was worth much for ransom. No, it wasn’t about money. It had to mean that Khosa wanted something else from Ben. But what?

Genuine sleep came eventually, and when Jude awoke it was daylight outside. He expected them to arrive soon. But the drive went on, and on. Another fuel stop. Another floppy sandwich. More interminable miles along empty dirt roads, nothing but trees and bushes to look at all day long. How big was this damn country?

It was evening by the time they arrived at the military checkpoint. Men with guns appeared in the headlights. The Mercedes slowed. Masango rolled down the window and a soldier with a red beret and a bad harelip peered through before waving them on. Jude saw lots of lights and men with guns, and a big wire fence with a metal gate opening to let them pass, then yet more soldiers and fences as the car was ushered through what seemed like more layers of security than surrounded the US president’s country retreat at Camp David. Jude hadn’t known what to expect, but certainly nothing as elaborate and organised as this.

The Mercedes whisked him onwards, away from the checkpoint and along a narrower, bumpier dirt track that wound past earth-moving machinery and piles of dirt and rock as large as hills. Garbage was everywhere. A bonfire was burning, sending embers like fireflies into the night air and casting flickering orange shadows across a patch of empty ground to a row of makeshift wooden shacks. Jude saw movement in the firelight and realised there were people over there: some who looked like soldiers, and more who didn’t. A crowd of them, thin, bent, ragged Africans, men and women, being herded at gunpoint towards the shacks. The way they shuffled along, their bare feet dragging on the ground, they looked ready to collapse from exhaustion. Even in this light Jude could see that their clothes were in tatters and caked with filth.

Who were they? Jude wanted to ask, but then another sight killed the words in his mouth before they could come out.

Planted in the ground on the far side of the shacks, dimly bathed in the fire’s dancing light, stood a thick wooden post. The wood was all burnt and blackened, wrapped around with chains. Three blackened skeletons were held with their backs to the post. The burnt debris around the base of the post was still gently smouldering.

Jude felt sick. This was what these animals were doing here, burning people at the stake. He sensed that César Masango was looking at him.

‘What is this place?’ Jude managed to say. The defiance was all gone from his voice now.

‘Your new home,’ Masango said. ‘Oh, do not worry. You will not be joining the slaves. Here is where you will live, behind these gates.’ He pointed ahead. The Mercedes was arriving at another gate inset in another fence, this one built out of galvanised sheet-metal like a high grey wall streaked with dirt and rust in the light of the car’s headlights. The gate was heavily chained and padlocked. As the Mercedes pulled up, Promise Okereke got out of the back. He swung the rear passenger door lightly shut and walked towards the gates, taking a key from his pocket. He stopped at the gate; then with his back to the car, brightly lit by the headlamps, he started to undo the padlock. The Uzi submachine gun was dangling from his shoulder.