Beyond Gone by Douglas Corleone

Author:Douglas Corleone
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448303847
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2019-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FOUR

Jadine leapt from the lip of the trailer and made for the marsh. Currently less a lake and more a seasonal wetland, the freshwater surrounding the expansive maze of bite-sized islands in the Lake Chad Basin ranged in depth from just a few feet to no more than a couple of dozen. Since the water was stagnant, swimming through it wouldn’t present a problem. The three bastards running toward the explosion with AK-47s, however, were a different story altogether.

As stealthily as possible, I jumped down and followed Jadine’s route to the shoreline. On the other side of the truck, I paused to listen for reinforcements. In the stillness of the night, I was able to hear them perfectly and determined they were much too far away to fire with any accuracy. I poked my head around the corner and looked through my sight to determine the size of their contingent.

Too many. Too close. We’d need to move quickly or risk a bullet to the back.

As soon as I had spun round and started running again, I knew I had been spotted. Kicking up sand, I lowered my head and pushed forward. Just as the bullets began hitting the beach, I ducked into the reeds and vanished in the black water.

While those first shots sounded small and distant, they quickly became louder, closer. I held my breath and ducked my head underwater, pushing myself as hard as I could, hoping to disappear in the pitch before the Rusul Alharb fighters reached the shore. Since there were plenty of islands within reach, Jadine and I could swim in virtually any direction. Which meant that as long as we remained out of sight, once we were farther from the beach, they’d likely need to get lucky to hit us.

Or for us to be unlucky, I supposed.

And we needn’t be unlucky just on the Nigerian side of the lake. In the pitch dark, it was impossible to know for certain which islands were uninhabited. The lake region’s geography meant it was an ideal spot for smuggling networks to set up shop. And because of its terrible poverty and ever-worsening conditions (including looming food and water shortages), it was fertile ground for Rusul Alharb recruitment. In other words, it was a flip of the coin whether we came ashore on a quiet little fishing village or a quiet little Rusul Alharb hideout.

But staying in the water any longer than necessary wasn’t an appealing option either. Buried within the intelligence reports on the Central African lake region was the fact that the Chari River ran through Lake Chad. The Chari was a 900-mile waterway known as one of the few remaining marine habitats on earth of a species called Dracunculus medinensis, which roughly translated as ‘the little dragon from Medina.’

The name had struck a rather disgusting bell for me. Years earlier, I’d seen former President Jimmy Carter on one of those late-night talk shows. He was publicizing the Carter Center, which had initiated a program to wipe out the guinea worm, a species thought to be near eradication.

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