I smiled, but I was trembling.
As the line crept toward the open front door, I silently rehearsed what I would say when I got to the window inside.
I’m Dr. Fitzgerald, from Magwi Clinic. I’m expecting a package from Juba.
I was focused on the length of the line and the distance to the open doorway ahead. So when I was seized from behind and thrown violently facedown in the mud, I was stunned, and for a long second, my mind scrambled—then I screamed.
I tried to get to my hands and knees, but a voice behind me barked, “Be still,” and a heavy boot pressed hard on my back and kept me down. The people who had been in the line and those who had been walking in the street didn’t try to help me. They fled. They simply ran.
I gagged on mud and my stomach heaved, and that was when I became aware of a blade biting into the skin of my throat. I started to black out, but if I lost consciousness, I would surely die. So, by sheer will, I stayed in the horrifying present.
Then, just as suddenly as I had been thrown down, I was hauled to my feet. I was so weak my knees wouldn’t lock, but two men behind me had that covered. One still held his knife to my jugular, and the other gripped my arms so that I couldn’t slip to the ground.
A male voice with a trace of an English accent came at me from the street.
“Could this be Dr. Fitzgerald? What a fortunate surprise.”
Standing ten feet away, dressed in fatigues, with an AK strapped across his chest, was an average-sized man in his forties, going bald, with black-framed glasses and a beard giving cover to a double chin. He was backed by a half dozen Gray soldiers with clay-smeared faces, all of them heavily armed, and he radiated a powerful presence.
I’d never seen his picture, but I knew I was face-to-face with Colonel Dage Zuberi, a diabolic monster and one of the most terrifying people in the world.
Chapter 41
ZUBERI’S SMILE was way too familiar, and he spoke to me as if we were friends.
“Oh. I have wanted to meet you, Dr. Fitz-ger-ald. Brigid, correct? How interesting that we both had business here today.”
Zuberi didn’t know that I had set up this showdown. Or did he? My pulse boomed in my ears. I couldn’t swallow or blink or speak. I couldn’t even think. I just stared until he said, “You’re afraid? Why, Brigid? Did you do something wrong?”
I was twenty-eight years old, a city girl, a doctor with three years of work under my belt. I wasn’t a soldier or a spy. And yet, I had brought this upon myself.
Of course I was afraid. As Christ is the Word made flesh, Zuberi was evil in the flesh. And the reality of that was overwhelming.
I wanted to shout for help, but I didn’t dare. Instead I said, “Please ask your man to put down the knife.”
“Kofi is his own man,” said Zuberi. “Kofi, do you wish to walk away from Dr. Brigid?”
The man behind me scoffed.
I felt the edge of that blade cutting me, and my arms were pinned. I wasn’t going anywhere on my own power. I forced myself to say what I’d come here to say.
“Colonel Zuberi—yes, I know who you are. You have killed so many people. Your soldiers have killed mothers and their babies. You’ve slit the throats of little children and hacked old people to death. Doctors and missionaries who came here to help with food and medicine—you’ve murdered them, too.
“These terrible acts are an affront to humanity and to God. We are all God’s creatures, and He loves us all. How can you dare to take away what God has given?”
Zuberi flicked his eyes up and down, from my eyes to my boots, and when his inventory of my features and baggy clothing was complete, he said, “How do you know what God wants? He speaks to people differently. It’s too bad that you can’t hold conflicting thoughts in your tiny mind. I expected you to be—I don’t know. Smarter. More impressive.”
Sighing with disappointment, he pulled a long knife from a scabbard on his hip and walked toward me. It was only a few paces, and he took his time.
My reaction was born of pure, impotent fear.
“Stay where you are!” I shrieked. “I’m an American. Don’t you dare screw with me.”
The monster was very amused.
“Don’t screw with you? I’ll decide that. Let me see you first, Doctor. Don’t be shy.”
I imagined my face on the kill poster tacked inside the post office door. I envisioned my picture and a fresh red stamp across my forehead. DEAD.
Blackness swallowed me up, and I just let go.
Chapter 42
I HEARD that voice as if from a long way away.
“Wake her.”
I was slapped hard across the face, and then the blade was back at my throat. Blood seeped down my neck and mingled with the icy sweat rolling down my body.
Where is the damned cavalry?