Galeta—end
of the backstory.
Strafe sent a sideways glance at the boss
man. “We lost a few good men in that crew.”
Ian’s team—a mountain of a man with a
tumbleweed halo of hair, a chink barely out of the schoolroom, and a
lightning-fast Arab—neatly rounded up and handed the six abandoned mercenaries
to the authorities in Bambari or so Strafe heard. A couple of police on the
payroll had reported in.
“I’ve never lacked for replacements,”
Marcus said.
And he hadn’t. Strafe didn’t like leaving
good men behind, but as long as the boss kept him around, he’d live with it.
Marcus’s shock of white hair plastered to
his head in the tropical heat. Many first mistook him for an albino with his
pale eyes, the faintest of blues. This prolonged trip and loss of time annoyed
him. Other inconveniences, however, escalated Ian’s status to a decided
nuisance. The man managed to convince authorities that his ship harbored
terrorists.
The police found a few men on their wanted
list, but more importantly, his ship was now under observation. They would need
to hire a smaller boat and meet the ship out at sea. Ian also froze some of his
financial assets. While another time waster, Marcus knew a thing or two about
moving money. No one would find his every account and holding. He set his mind
to figuring out a way to put a wrench in Ian’s activities.
An earlier search on the man offered
little, just the name of an under-the-radar group called the Devoted, a name
deucedly hard to come by. So far, nothing else had surfaced. Marcus thought it
time to delve deeper, perhaps starting with what Ian had wanted of the woman.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to have one of
his hirelings pass the word that Galeta possessed power and knowledge beyond
human sources? Witchcraft was a crime punishable by death in the Central
African Republic. Would Ian intervene or leave the old woman hanging?
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