Cross Country (Alex Cross 14)

“I’ve seen a few horrors,” I said. “More than a few.”

“Perhaps you have, but not like this. Nothing like this, believe me, Alex.”

Part Three

CAMP

Chapter 79

SO FAR, ADANNE’S connections were very good, and I was impressed by how quickly and efficiently she got things done.

It took her only one brief conversation on the tarmac, and then one radio call, before the African Union sergeant in charge allowed us to board the C-130 freighter the following morning.

We were in the air by six, the only civilian passengers on a plane carrying millet, sorghum, and cooking oil to Darfur.

The murder investigation continued, and now it was airborne and seemed to have more purpose than ever.

I borrowed a situation map from one of the flight crew and saw that Darfur was about the size of Texas. If I was going to get anywhere, I had to run with a few assumptions—one, that the Tiger had been in Nyala at the time of the massacre of the Shol family, and two, that Adanne’s information was correct, and he might still be culling boys from camps for displaced persons in the area.

Given all of that, how far would he have gotten in the past eighteen hours? That was the next question that had to be answered.

During the flight, Adanne patiently told me much about Darfur and Sudan, and though she spoke in a low-key manner, there was no disguising the horrors—especially against women and children, thousands of whom were raped, then branded to increase their humiliation.

“Rape has become such a cruel weapon in this civil war. Americans have no idea, Alex. They couldn’t possibly.

“Sometimes the Janjaweed will break a woman’s legs first so she can’t possibly escape and will be an invalid for the rest of her life. They like to flog victims; to break fingers one by one; to pull out fingernails,” Adanne said in a voice that barely got above a whisper.

“Even some of the ‘peacekeepers’ are guilty of rape, and of using the refugees as prostitutes. What’s worse, the government of Sudan is behind much of it. You won’t believe what you will see here, Alex.”

“I want to see it,” I told her. “I made a promise to a man in Sierra Leone that I would tell Americans what was happening here.”

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.