The one who’d already spoken said, “Not until morning, my friend.” He knelt down and helped me sit up, though. My rib cage felt like it was ready to explode, and I had a monster headache that wasn’t going away by itself.
I saw that I was in a bleak, filthy holding cell of some kind. Even with my nose broken, the smell was unbelievably strong and foul, probably coming from a latrine in some unseen corner. I took shallow breaths through my mouth.
What little light there was came through a grated door on the far wall. The place looked big enough for maybe a dozen of us, but there were at least three times that number, all males.
Many of the prisoners were lying shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor. A relatively lucky few were snoring away on wall-mounted bunks.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Midnight, maybe. Who knows? What’s the difference to us? We’re all dead men anyway.”
Chapter 39
AS MY HEAD cleared some, I realized that my wallet was gone. And my belt.
And, I realized as I felt around some more, the earring from my left ear. The lobe was scabbed over where a small silver hoop had been, a birthday present from Jannie.
Where had they taken me? How far was I from the airport? Was I still in Nigeria?
Why hadn’t anyone tried to stop them from kidnapping me? Did it happen all the time?
I had no idea about any of these questions, or their answers.
“Are we in Lagos?” I finally asked.
“Yes. In Kirikiri. We are political prisoners. So we have been told. I am a journalist. And you are?”
A metal scrape came from the direction of the door as it was unlocked, then opened wide.
I saw two blue-uniformed guards pause in the light of a cement corridor before they stepped in and became shadows themselves. Seconds later, one of them played a flashlight over us.
It caught me in the eyes and hung there for several seconds.
I felt sure they were here for me, but they grabbed the man two down from me instead. The one who had said he was a journalist.
They pulled him roughly to his feet. Then one of the guards unholstered a pistol and pressed it to his temple.
“No one talks to the American. No one,” the guard told the room. “You hear me?”
Then, as I watched in disbelief, the man was pistol-whipped until he was unconscious. Then he was dragged out of the holding cell.
The reaction of the other prisoners around me was mostly silent acceptance, but a couple of men moaned into their hands. No one moved; I could still hear snoring from a few of them.
I stayed where I was, holding it all in until the vicious guards were gone. Then I did the only thing I could, which was ease back down to the floor, where every shallow, rapid breath produced another slice of pain through my chest.
/> What kind of hell had I gotten myself into?
Chapter 40
I WISH I could say that my first night in the prison cell in Kirikiri was a blur and that I barely remember it.
It’s just the opposite, though. I will never forget any of it, not one second.
The thirst was the worst, on that first night anyway. My throat felt like it was closing up. Dehydration ate at me from the inside. Meanwhile, oversize mosquitoes and rats tried to do the same from the outside.
My head and torso throbbed like a metronome all night, and a sense of hopelessness threatened to overwhelm me the minute I let my guard down, or, God forbid, slept for half an hour.
I’d read enough from Human Rights Watch to know something about the conditions in this kind of prison—but the gap between knowing it and living it was enormous. It was possibly the worst night of my life, and I’d had some bad ones before this. I had spent time with Kyle Craig, Gary Soneji, and Casanova.