Night Of Knives

Chapter 9

The world is bouncing up and down. No: she is bouncing up and down. Her head hurts beyond description, it feels as if it has been split open, like a coconut. Veronica opens her eyes and is a little amazed to find they still work. She is hanging upside down, draped over the shoulder of some strong but dangerously thin man. They are climbing an uneven scree of rocks and tangled bushes. Her head is level with his thighs. Veronica opens her mouth and throws up weakly all over the back of his legs. He doesn't even break stride. His ankle is marked by a ring of scar tissue. She wonders dizzily if he was the one who found her, if he drew her from the water and saved her life, or if she clawed her way onto dry land herself, semiconscious. She can't remember. She feels physically broken, a rag doll barely strong enough to breathe, but she doesn't feel dazed, her mind isn't rattled, her thoughts are sharp and her memories intact up to the moment her head hit rock.

Watching the world upside down is a queasy and headache-worsening experience. She keeps her eyes closed during the journey. She can tell the man carrying her is near the edge of his endurance too, his muscles are quivering. Finally he stops, drops to her knees, and dumps Veronica ungently onto mud.

She opens her eyes and her heart sinks. She is back in the gorge, in the shadow of the overhanging cliff. There is another man in front of her, standing above her, holding something. The little man in glasses, filming her with the videocamera. A hand grabs Veronica's hair and pulls her up to her knees. She moans, her voice weak and hoarse. She does not resist as someone behind her wraps a rusting chain tight around her neck and locks it with a battered brass padlock. Maybe thirty feet away, in the ragged wooden structure at the base of the cliff, the other captives huddle, watching aghast.

The man with the camera approaches her, zooming in.

"Fuck you," Veronica says dully, and tries to spit at the camera.

The man behind her, the muscular man who killed Derek, pulls hard on the chain around her neck. She falls onto her back, gagging. Three men in dishdashes stand around her. One kneels behind her head, holding her chain. Another sits on her legs, pinning them. The third, the Arab, draws the panga from his belt. Veronica hears herself moan. The cameraman films the Arab as he poses dramatically, then lowers the blade to Veronica's throat. She feels the cold metal against her skin. The mud is soft and damp beneath her. She can't breathe.

"Please, no," she whispers.

The camera turns to her. The panga rises into the sky. The Arab tenses, waiting like a home-run hitter ready for a fastball. Veronica starts to cry. This can't be happening. This can't be the moment of her death.

"No, please," she weeps. "Please, I don't want to die. I'll do anything you want. You can do anything you want to me. Just please don't kill me, please, anything you want, anything, just please don't kill me, please, please."

Her voice dissolves into wracking, incoherent sobs. The cameraman grunts, a satisfied sound. The Arab lowers the panga. The man on her knees gets off, and the man behind her gets up and yanks on the chain he holds, pulling Veronica brutally to her feet. Veronica is led like a dog over to the structure where the others huddle. It covers a space about twenty feet by ten, made of thick branches lashed together by vines, roofed by a ragged patchwork of canvas and plastic tarpaulins. Two plastic buckets sit by the cliff wall.

Veronica collapses to the ground. She can't stop crying. Her head hurts and when she puts her hand to her face she discovers her head is half-covered in dried blood. Jacob comes to her, takes her in his arms, holds her wordlessly. The others too have been leashed, and then padlocked to a huge cinderblock half-sunk in mud. Veronica's chain is added to the tangle. Then the men in dishdashes and the cameraman walk away, back towards the trail that climbs to the airstrip.