Cross Country by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective - General, Washington (D.C.), Suspense, African American psychologists, Fiction - Espionage, American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Cross, Alex (Fictitious character), Fiction, Suspense fiction, Thrillers, Mystery fiction, Nigeria, General, Thriller
ISBN: 9780446536301
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-10-01T17:49:02.296000+00:00

Chapter 80

“THIS IS KALMA.” She pointed at a yellow triangle on the map. “It’s one of the largest camps in Darfur. I’d wager that the Tiger knows it well. Everyone around here does.”

“What are the other colors?” I asked.

There were more than a hundred camps in all, Adanne explained. Green meant inaccessible during rainy season, and blue was closed to nonmilitary aid organizations, based on current fighting conditions. Kalma’s yellow meant open.

That’s where we would start our Tiger hunt.

“And these?” I ran a finger over a line of red flame icons. There were dozens of them.

Adanne sighed before answering my question.

“Red is for villages that are confirmed destroyed. The Janjaweed burn everything they can—food stores, livestock. They put human and animal carcasses down the wells, too. Anything to ensure that no one comes back. In Arabic, Janjaweed means ‘man with a gun on horseback.’ ”

These were the Arab militias, widely believed to be supported by the current government in a vicious campaign to make life as unsafe as possible for black Africans in the region. An unthinkable two million people had already fled their homes and more than two hundred thousand had died. Two hundred thousand that we knew of.

It was Rwanda all over again. In fact, it was worse. This time the whole world was watching and doing almost nothing to help.

I looked out my porthole window at the Sahel landscape twelve thousand feet below.

It was actually quite beautiful from up here—no civil war, no genocide, no corruption. Just an endless, peaceful stretch of tan, sculpted earth.

Which was a lie, of course.

A beautiful, very diabolical lie.

Because we were about to land in hell.

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