Patterson, James - Alex Cross 14 - Cross Country

I leaned forward in my seat and got a baton hard in the chest, then twice across the face.

I felt, and heard, my nose break!

Blood immediately gushed down my face onto my shirt. I couldn't believe this was happening-not any of it.

The cop in the front passenger seat looked back at me, wild-eyed and ready to swing the baton again. “You like to keep quiet, white man. Fucking American, fucking terrorist, fucking policeman.”

I had heard that some people here didn't like American blacks referring to themselves as African American. Now I was feeling it firsthand. I breathed hard through my mouth, coughing up blood and trying to focus though my head was spinning. Humidity and diesel fumes washed over me as the truck weaved through airport traffic, the driver repeatedly sitting on the horn.

I saw a blur of cars, white, red, and green, and several more bright yellow buses. Women were walking on the side of the road with swaddled babies held low on their backs, some of them with baskets balanced on top of their geles. There were a great number of huts in view, but also modern buildings, plus more cars, buses, trucks, and animal-driven carts,

All around me, business as usual.

And business as usual inside this truck, I feared.

Suddenly the cop was on me again. He stretched over the seat and pushed me onto my side. I braced for another strike of his billy club. Instead, I felt his hands patting me down.

Then my wallet was sliding out of my pocket.

“Hey! ”I yelled.

He pulled out the wad of cash I had-three hundred American, and another five hundred in naira-then threw the empty wallet back in my face. It sent a shudder of pain deep into my skull.

I coughed out another spray of blood, which hit the seat and earned me another baton strike across the shoulder.

The dark blue nylon sheet covering the backseat suddenly made sense to me. It was there for bloodstains, wasn't it?

I had no bearings, no idea why this was happening, no idea what to do about it either.

In spite of my own better judgment, I asked again, “Where are you taking me? I'm an American policeman! I'm here on.a murder case.”

The officer barked out something in dialect to the driver. We swerved, and I fell against the car door as we came to a fast stop on the shoulder of the road.

They both got out! One of them tore open the door on my side and I dropped to the ground, cuffed and unable to break my fall.

A world of dust and heat and pain swam around me. I started to cough up dirt.

Powerful hands were under my arms now, lifting. The cop, or whoever he was, brought me up to my knees. I saw a little boy staring from the back of a packed Audi station wagon as it passed.

“You are a brave man. Just as brave as you are stupid, fucking white man.”

It was the driver talking now, stepping in for his turn. He slapped me hard, once across the left side of my face and then back across the right. I struggled to stay upright.

“You two are doing an excellent job-” I was definitely punchy. Already I didn't care what came next.

It was a hard overhand fist to my temple. I heard a strange crunching sound inside my head, then another.

I don't know how many closed-fist blows came after that.

I think I passed out at four.

Cross Country

Chapter 38

UNREAL. UNPRECEDENTED. UNBELIEVABLE.

It was dark when I woke up, and I hurt all over, but especially around my nose. At first my mind was blank. I had no idea where I was; not Africa, not anywhere. I just thought How the hell did I get here?

And then, Where is here? Where have I been taken?

My hand went up to my temple. I felt a sharp sting where I touched an open wound, and then I remembered the handcuffs. But they weren't on my wrists anymore.

I was on my back, on a hard floor, stone or cement maybe.

Someone was looking down at me. I couldn't make out his expression in the nearly lightless room. I could only tell that he was a dark-skinned man.

Not one man, I realized. Many. A dozen or more men were standing around me. Then I got it! They were prisoners- like me.

“White man is awake,” someone said.

My clothes gave me away, I supposed. They had made me for an American. “White man” was meant to be an insult, one that I had heard already on the trip.

“Where am I?” It came out as a croak. “Water?” I asked.

The one who'd already spoken said, “Not until morning, my friend.” He knelt down and helped me sit up, though. My rib cage felt like it was ready to explode, and I had a monster headache that wasn't going away by itself.

I saw that I was in a bleak, filthy holding cell of some kind. Even with my nose broken, the smell was unbelievably strong and foul, probably coming from a latrine in some unseen corner. I took shallow breaths through my mouth.

What little light there was came through a grated door on the far wall. The place looked big enough for maybe a dozen of us, but there were at least three times that number, all males.

Many of the prisoners were lying shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor. A relatively lucky few were snoring away on wall-mounted bunks.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Midnight, maybe. Who knows? What's the difference to us? We're all dead men anyway.”

Cross Country

Chapter 39

AS MY HEAD cleared some, I realized that my wallet was gone. And my belt.

And, I realized as I felt around some more, the earring from my left ear. The lobe was scabbed over where a small silver hoop had been, a birthday present from Jannie.

Where had they taken me? How far was I from the airport? Was I still in Nigeria?

Why hadn't anyone tried to stop them from kidnapping me? Did it happen all the time?

I had no idea about any of these questions, or their answers.

“Are we in Lagos?” I finally asked.

“Yes. In Kirikiri. We are political prisoners. So we have been told. I am a journalist. And you are?”

A metal scrape came from the direction of the door as it was unlocked, then opened wide.

I saw two blue-uniformed guards pause in the light of a cement corridor before they stepped in and became shadows themselves. Seconds later, one of them played a flashlight over us.

It caught me in the eyes and hung there for several seconds.

I felt sure they were here for me, but they grabbed the man two down from me instead. The one who had said he was a journalist.

They pulled him roughly to his feet. Then one of the guards unholstered a pistol and pressed it to his temple.

“No one talks to the American. No one,” the guard told the room. “You hear me?”

Then, as I watched in disbelief, the man was pistol-whipped until he was unconscious. Then he was dragged out of the holding cell.

The reaction of the other prisoners around me was mostly silent acceptance, but a couple of men moaned into their hands. No one moved; I could still hear snoring from a few of them.

I stayed where I was, holding it all in until the vicious guards were gone. Then I did the only thing I could, which was ease back down to the floor, where every shallow, rapid breath produced another slice of pain through my chest.

What kind of hell had I gotten myself into?

Cross Country

Chapter 40

I WISH I could say that my first night in the prison cell in Kirikiri was a blur and that I barely remember it.

It's just the opposite, though. I will never forget any of it, not one second.

The thirst was the worst, on that first night anyway. My throat felt like it was closing up. Dehydration ate at me from the inside. Meanwhile, oversize mosquitoes and rats tried to do the same from the outside.