I have no idea what to do, God. No idea how to get out of this alive...
She’d heard stories of Latin America’s organized drug runners seeking new routes to Europe via West Africa. Up to two-thirds of the cocaine that moved between the two continents traveled through these small countries, where many of the dealers controlling the trade now lived. The result had been to turn the African coastline into a haven for drug traffickers who could easily afford their safety by recruiting local policemen and paying off government officials.
And now they had her.
She fingered the locket secured around her neck to insure the flash drive was still there. According to journalist Sam Parker, local officials weren’t the only ones tapping into the profits. Sam had died with a secret connecting a prominent US State Department employee to this dark world of drug running. As he lay dying in her care from a gunshot wound, he’d whispered to her in ragged breaths how easy it was to organize frequent drug flights, front companies and fake business deals of government officials. The local government claimed it was insurgents involved in trans-Sahara drug trafficking, not their own officials. She had no idea who was telling the truth, but she did know that Sam Parker had died for the information he’d passed on to her.
And if they found out what she knew, she’d be dead as well.
A young girl, Ana, who couldn’t be more than ten, stumbled past her lugging a heavy pot of boiled water. Maddie caught her glistening ebony skin in the moonlight.
“Ana?” Maddie reached out to press her hand against the girl’s forehead, speaking in Portuguese. “You’re burning up.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
Maddie took the heavy pot from her and motioned for her to go inside the room. Cholera wasn’t choosy with its victims, but was highest when poverty, war or natural disasters were involved. It only took hours for severe dehydration to set in that, if left untreated, could quickly lead to death. Maddie followed the girl into the stuffy room. Maddie wasn’t the only innocent one caught in the crossfire of this drug war. Ana was now infected.
“Lie down, sweetie. We need to get you started on some of the rehydration solution.”
She nodded at the one clean bed near the wall and started praying again, wishing she had some antibiotics for her. If given at the beginning, they could shorten the symptoms. But even with all her efforts to disinfect the bedding and dishes, boil all drinking water and monitor the food preparation, the disease was still continuing to spread. Before she’d arrived, three of the men had died from dehydration and renal failure. The ones she was treating now slept in between treatments, still too weak to even sit up.
And it was possible this wasn’t the epicenter of the disease. She’d watched the coming and going of the men. If this camp was affected, more than likely so were any nearby towns and villages.
Maddie gave Ana one of the last doses of pain medicine she had, hoping it would bring down the girl’s fever, and began asking questions to verify her symptoms. Fever, chills, headache and fatigue, but no diarrhea.
The symptoms didn’t match up.
“I don’t think you have cholera, but I’m still going to give you some of the rehydration mix. Drink as much of this as you can.”
Ana took a sip. “If I don’t have cholera, then what is it?”
“I don’t have a way to test you, but it’s a good chance it’s malaria.”
Cholera had a way of spreading quickly through a community, but malaria killed hundreds of thousands of people every year, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. And Maddie had no drugs to fight the parasite. All she could do was monitor Ana closely, make sure she stayed hydrated and try to keep the fever down.
“How long have you lived here?” Maddie asked, taking the opportunity she’d been hoping for to talk to Ana away from the listening ears of her captors.
She shrugged; wide chocolate-colored eyes looked up at Maddie in the flickering light. “As long as I can remember. My mother married one of the men in the camp.”
“Where is she now?”
“She died a year ago giving birth.”
Maddie caught the sadness in her expression. “And your father?”
“He’s dead, too.”
“So now you cook and do their laundry.”
Ana nodded.
But Maddie knew one day soon the men would start coming to her asking for more than just clean clothes.
“What about school?” she asked, taking the empty cup.
“I liked school, but now...there is too much work to be done.”
“Don’t you have any other family? Someone else you could live with away from the camp?”
“Before she died, my mother told me I should find a way to get to the capital where my grandmother stays. She lives upstairs in a blue-painted house that has a balcony on a narrow street.” A slight smile settled on her lips. “But the mainland is far, and I have no way to get there.”
Maddie turned to pour some more of the rehydration drink into Ana’s cup and stopped. A figure stood in the darkened doorway. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
God, I need You to intervene in this situation... Again...
“I told you it wasn’t safe for anyone other than patients to be in here,” she said as she stood up to face the man.
The man took another step forward.
“Stop—”
“Wait. It’s okay.” He continued speaking in perfect English from the shadows, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s Grant Reese.”
“Grant? I don’t...” She paused midsentence, as memories of a girlhood crush flickered through her mind. How was it possible he was here?
But there was no time to figure out how he’d found her halfway around the world.
A second man stepped in behind him.
“This is my friend Antonio. We need to get you out of here. Now.”
“Wait... I can’t go.” Her mind spun, still unable to determine if this was a dream, or if someone had actually come to rescue her. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
“There’s a young girl here... Ana...” Like herself, Ana wasn’t here by choice. And she wasn’t going to leave her behind. “If I leave her here...”
She tried to hold back the fear starting to crush her. Over the past five days she’d dreamed of some handsome Special Ops soldier coming to her rescue. In her dreams everything might have ended happily ever after, but there was only one ending for this scenario if they tried to escape and got caught. And, she realized, only one ending for Ana if she was left behind.
“Where is she?” Grant whispered.
“Right here with me.” Maddie turned to Ana. “Do you want to leave with us?”
“Yes—”
“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Antonio interrupted.
“We have to take her,” Maddie said, pulling a thin blanket around the girl’s neck and grabbing the backpack she’d had on her when she’d been abducted. She had so