Chapter 3 #4
Deaver dropped the bag into Axel’s hands. The bag opened under Axel’s eager, fumbling fingers. When the bag was open, he poured the contents in his hand. It took him a few seconds to realize that he held not diamonds, but stones. His head lifted.
“What—” he began. It was his last word on this earth.
Deaver hooked his left arm around Axel’s chest and with his right he slipped the stiletto he kept as sharp as a scalpel straight into the brainstem.
It immediately stopped all bodily functions.
Axel went from sentient being to stone in a tenth of a second.
He slumped into Deaver’s arms, an instant corpse.
Deaver worked fast.
In five minutes he’d exchanged clothes and shoes.
Axel kept his passport and airline ticket on his person at all times.
He’d told Deaver he had an unholy fear of the cleaning staff stealing them.
The UN peacekeeping mission had been too much for him.
He was thinking of resigning his commission back in Finland and getting a good job with Apple, something he should have done eight years ago.
Well, good old Axel wasn’t going to get that job with Apple, but he was getting out of Africa, in a manner of speaking. Permanently.
Deaver hitched Axel up in a fireman’s lift and made for the door.
He opened it slightly and waited for a moment in which no one was visible.
It was 17:20, close to dinner time and the encampment was deserted.
When Deaver was sure no one could see, he slipped out the door and made his way around the back.
The detention center backed onto the jungle.
In the steamy heat, Deaver made his way carefully, disappearing immediately into the dense foliage, leaving barely anything to track.
He was lucky. If he’d had to carry a man in the high deserts of Afghanistan, the sand would have kept his footprints for weeks.
In the jungle, his tracks would be covered within the hour.
He walked until his instincts told him he was beyond the natural patrol point and put Axel down. Deaver looked at him, stretched out on his back. He looked peaceful, as if he were taking a nap.
You should thank me, buddy, Deaver thought. I just gave you a great death. The best.
It was the one thing soldiers feared above all else—a bad death.
Long, lingering, painful. The RA rebels specialized in hacking deaths, where it takes a man maybe an hour to die after having his hands, then his arms, then his feet and finally his head chopped off.
Sometimes it took the child-soldiers, wielding axes half their size, ten tries to separate the head from the body.
Deaver had seen men taking hours of agony to die after having been gut-shot or having their insides ripped open by a land-mine.
Two employees of ENP had been hacked to death by a ragtag squadron of RA thugs.
It was after looking down at their bodies that Deacon vowed to get himself some real money and finally get out of the business.
That was when he heard about the diamonds.
Axel had had his own fears. Four UN peacekeepers—a Norwegian, a Pakistani, a Brazilian and a Brit—had been found tortured to death last month, their bodies having been dumped into the UN encampment during the night as a warning not to cross RA troops.
The medical examiner said they’d been raped repeatedly ‘with something big and wooden’ and then skinned alive. Axel had told him this with a shudder and Deaver realized it was his worst fear.
It would never happen to Axel, now. He’d gone out like a light being switched off. One moment he was happy in the knowledge that he was going to give diamonds to Maja and then bam! Lights out.
Lucky guy.
Deaver was going to have to mutilate the body, but Axel was already dead. It wouldn’t make any difference to him.
When a patrol finally found him, they had to think it was Deaver’s body, fallen into the hands of the RA. Deaver looked down, studying the body. Hacking off limbs is harder than it looks, unless you have a tree stump and a big axe, which most of the assholes in the RA did.
All Deaver had was his Kobun Tanto, but he kept it as sharp as a scalpel.
He’d dressed enough deer growing up in Arkansas to know how to go about doing what he had to do.
He bent, inserting the knife point between the tendons on the inside wrist, and quickly severed Axel’s right hand.
He picked it up and flung it far into the jungle.
He could hear the small thud as it fell.
In five minutes, the second hand was severed and was flung in the opposite direction, the unclotted blood forming a red arc as it flew through the air.
The hands would be eaten before nightfall.
Now came the distasteful part. Deaver bent down, knife point on the throat and in one quick, hard movement, slashed Axel open from sternum to pubic bone.
There was very little bleeding, but Axel’s bowels bulged out through the opening.
With several more slashes, the skin on Axel’s face hung in tatters.
The Revolutionary Army was known for its stoned thugs who loved torturing and mutilating their victims. There would be no doubt in anyone’s mind what had happened.
The story of the diamonds was well-known.
RA soldiers broke into the encampment, kidnapped Deaver, tortured him for the diamonds and left his body to rot in the jungle.
While Axel left for Finland and Maja.
Deaver straightened and stepped back to admire his handiwork.
The predators of the jungle would come across the body as soon as he left.
No matter when a UN patrol found the body, what would be left would be Deaver’s clothes, wallet, passport, ENP Security ID and very little else.
With no hands and no face, the only thing that could identify Deaver was DNA, which would have to be analyzed back in Paris, if anyone cared enough to want a positive ID.
By the time the DNA analysis results were back, Deaver would be long gone, back in the States, tracking down Prescott to get his diamonds back.
He knew just where that fucker Prescott would go. Back to that bitch he’d mooned over forever, the one he jacked off to.
Deaver’d find him, oh yeah. He’d find them both and the diamonds, too. It would be a real pleasure killing them before he disappeared again, forever.