Jack Ford - The Killing Grounds - an explosive and gripping thriller for fans of James Patterson

‘I know what you’re like. I know how you love having secrets.’

‘Well thanks for that vote of confidence, Maddison. I didn’t come here for this… Look, I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’

‘Tom, who’s John?’

‘Maddie, leave it okay. There is no John. Cora’s just a kid, she’s got it wrong.’

21

Wednesday turned into Thursday which turned into Friday, before the trio finally arrived in the oppressive humidity of the towered chaos of the capital city, Kinshasa, which spread and sprawled out from the shoreline of the Congo River.

It had been a long trip, with the heat hitting them like they’d just opened a stove door. The twenty-mile taxi ride from the airport hadn’t helped either. The driver hadn’t seemed as if he’d known what he was doing; swerving precariously and speeding, weaving along the city’s half-built tarmac roads like he was the emergency services.

The city was a mass of contrasts; high-rise luxury apartment blocks and offices stood centrally, surrounded by eroded housing with bad sanitation, and crumbling roadways. Kinshasa was home to more than six million people. Homeless young children hid amongst the rubble of derelict buildings and the displaced sat alongside the roads as the disorder of the traffic mirrored so many people’s lives, and poverty roamed the streets like a predatory beast.

And as Cooper stood contemplating all this in the hotel lobby, dressed inconspicuously in casual blue jeans and t-shirt, he stared at Rosedale, dressed in a gaudy canary yellow suit.

‘Do you have to wear that?’ It was Rosedale who spoke.

‘Me?’ Cooper looked at him incredulously. Said nothing else. Took a drink from his water bottle to help the two pills he had under his tongue to go down easier, and walked across to Maddie.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, I’m cool, Tom. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘You just seem quiet. How does it feel to be back?’

‘I’m fine and it feels fine.’

‘You don’t have to pretend.’

Snapping, Maddie said, ‘Well you’d be the expert on that wouldn’t you? It’s a bit late to start worrying about me now… God, where did that come from? Sorry. I’m just tired. Listen, why don’t we go straight to the address we’ve got once Tweety Pie over there finishes checking in.’

Cooper grinned. ‘I know, right. But as long as I’ve known Rosedale, he’s dressed like that. But don’t ever be fooled by him, when he wants to be he’s one of the most dangerous…’

‘Okay, guys, you want the good news or the bad?’ Rosedale’s voice boomed across the lobby, interrupting the rest of Cooper’s sentence. Then Maddie, with zero tolerance of Rosedale, sighed.

‘Just tell us already.’

‘Well the bad news is the booking’s been messed up and they’ve only got one room. But the good news is, it means you, little lady, will be sharing a bed with me, and maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll show you what a real Texan cowboy can do with his lasso.’

22

‘If you go left down the Avenue du Kasai for about three miles, we should be close to where we want to be.’ Absentmindedly, Maddie directed Rosedale as they drove the battered white Toyota they’d been overcharged to hire.

The place looked exactly the same as it had been when she’d visited years ago. And the tight knot in her stomach told her what she’d refused to think… Maybe she shouldn’t have come. Maybe she just wouldn’t ever be ready to come back here. A place where anarchy and the chase for survival was part of the daily life. And the overwhelming pain in the street children’s eyes rushed out of them like an unexpected snow storm. But it was a place, a country which was part of her soul and one she’d once loved. Sighing, as an overwhelming sense of sadness descended on her, she closed her eyes.

In the backseat of the SUV, Cooper was having similar thoughts. Doubting the wisdom of coming. The last time he’d been here, he’d been looking for Ellie, after watching a news report talking about a group of long-forgotten foreign hostages who’d originally been kidnapped in Somalia, but who had been found enslaved by the M23 movement – a Congolese revolutionary army, based mainly in the eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo and operating on the whole in the province of North Kivu. A violent, militia rebel force, known for their use of torture and rape as weapons of war, with forced recruitment of both men and boys.

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