Patterson, James - Alex Cross 14 - Cross Country

Less than half an hour east of Monrovia, we passed the last billboard and radio tower and entered dense rain forest that went on for hours.

Sometimes it opened up into clear-cut fields, with stumps like grave markers for miles in every direction.

Mostly, though, the road was a tunnel of bamboo, palm, mahogany, and vine-choked trees such as I'd never seen before-with leaves and low scrub slapping and slathering the sides of the truck as we pushed through.

Late in the afternoon, we were near the coast, driving through tidal flats and then wide swaths of open grassland that were the antithesis of the jungle we'd just left.

I saw a huge colony of flamingos around sunset, thousands and thousands of stunningly beautiful birds, an incongruous sea of pink in the orangish light.

Finally we had to stop for the evening. We were both too tired to drive. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered how many fathers got to tell their kids they'd spent a night in a real African jungle.

Cross Country

Chapter 68

I WOKE UP some hours later. Moses was already laying out breakfast on the tailgate of the Drifter.

Canned sausages, a couple of bruised tomatoes, and a two-liter jug of water to sip from.

“Looks good,” I said. “Thank you, Moses.”

“There is a river. Over there if you wish to wash up.” he pointed with his chin to the opposite side of the road. I noticed his shirt was soaking wet. “It is not far.”

I bushwhacked with my arms, skirting a huge knot of thorny scrub the way Moses had obviously done before me.

About twenty-five yards in, the brush opened up and I came out onto a mud-and-gravel bank.

The river itself was a wide, murky green piece of glass. I could barely tell it was moving. I took a step toward the water and sank up to my ankle mud.

When I pulled back, the mud sucked the shoe right off my foot. Shit. I'd wanted to clean myself up, not get filthier.

I looked up and down the bank, wondering where Moses had gone to wash.

First, I needed my shoe back, though. I reached down into the guck and felt around. It was actually nice and cool down there.

Suddenly the water in front of me boiled up. Some thing rough, like a huge log, came to the surface very, very quickly.

And then I saw that it was a full-blown, honest-to-God crocodile. Its black eyes were set on me. Breakfast was on the table.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Good-bye shoe. Good-bye leg or arm?

I stepped back ever so slowly. So far, the croc showed just a layer of tiled skin at the water's surface. I could see the bulge of its snout. The great beast's eyes didn't leave me for a second.

Never taking a breath, I kept inching backward.

On the next step though, my foot turned in the mud. I fell! Like it had received a cue, the crocodile sprang forward.

Nine, ten, maybe as much as twelve feet long, it surged out of the water, slashing in and out of an S-shape as it leapt straight at me.

I tried to pull in my legs, if only to postpone the inevitable savage bite. How could this have happened? Everyone had been right- I shouldn't have come to Africa.

Suddenly a shot exploded behind me!

Then a second shot!

The huge croc let out a strange, high-pitched noise that was part scream, part gasp. It reared up off its front legs, then smacked back down into the mud. I could see a red ooze on the side of its head. It thrashed once more, then rapidly backed away into the river and disappeared.

I turned to see Moses standing behind me. He was holding the Beretta.

“I am so sorry, sah. I meant to say that you should take this with you. Just in case.”

Cross Country

Chapter 69

AFRICA! WAS THERE anywhere in the world like it? I didn't think so.

We reached Porto Novo the next day and decided it would be best if I took the bus from there to Lagos. A man stood outside the public toilet at the bus station. He tried to get me to pay to enter, until I told him I would pee on his shoes first. He laughed and stepped away.

Then Moses and I parted, and he drove off proudly in his truck. I never found out whether he was a good Samaritan or an opportunist, though my nature favored the former. I will always think of Moses as my first friend in Africa.

Back at the hotel in Lagos, I showered off three days' worth of dust, sweat, and blood. I looked at my crooked nose in the bathroom mirror. Alex, you are a piece of work. Finally, I plopped down on the bed to call home.

I started with a call to Bree's cell this time. It was good just to hear her voice again, but the warm hellos between us were quick.

She had news that couldn't wait-about a new murder, on Eighteenth Street, and about the young boy she'd found there and what he'd said: There was more than one Tiger. Flaherty had told me the same thing, but I was pretty sure I was looking for one killer-I could feel it in my gut.

Bree countered, “If this boy is for real, it's the closest thing we've got to inside information. He was in the gang, Alex. You could be doing just as much damage control in DC, maybe more. Come home.”

“Bree, you're talking about a phantom witness back there. A young boy. I know that the man who killed Ellie and her family is here right now. He's in Lagos.” At least my instincts told me he was. Who knows now?

“I'll see what else I can find out, specifically about him.” Her voice was tight. We'd never really fought before, but this conversation was feeling pretty close.

“Listen, Bree,” I said. “I swear, I'm not going to stay here any longer than necessary.”

“I think we have very different definitions of what that means, Alex.”

“You could be right about that.”

I might have kept that to myself, but the only thing I could offer Bree right now was the truth.

“I miss you like crazy,” I finally said, telling Bree another kind of truth, while trying to change the subject. “What are you wearing?” I joked.

She knew I was kidding and laughed. “Where do you think I am? I've got Ugly Fred looking at me across my desk”-I heard a shout of protest in the background-“and half the Major Case Squad's in the room with me. You want me to keep going?”

I took a rain check and we said our good-byes. Then, before I could dial home to Fifth Street, I heard a rattle at my door.

“Hello?” I called. “Who's there?”

The door swung open so fast I didn't have time to get off the bed to look. I recognized the front-desk manager.

But not the two dark suits with white shirts standing in the hall behind him.

“What are you doing in my room?” I asked the desk man. “What is this all about? Who are they?”

He didn't say a word to me. He just held the door open for the other two and then closed it from the outside as they moved across the room toward me.

I jumped up off the bed and set my feet on the floor. “What's going on here?” I said. “What's happening now?”

Cross Country

Chapter 70

“SSS!” ONE OF them shouted at the top of his voice. I had heard the initials before. State Security Service, if that's who these two men really were.

They went right at me, totally unafraid of any consequences. One of them bear-hugged my arms and shoulders; the other scooped my legs out from under me.

Now what was happening? Were they really State Security? Who had sent them for me? And why?

I struggled, but both of them were freaks sizewise, incredibly powerful men, quick and athletic too. They had my body twisted in a corkscrew and it was impossible to break free.

We crossed the room like that, with me tangled and helpless in their arms. Then I heard a window slide open, and I felt the rush of humidity on my skin.