Wilderness of Mirrors Read Free

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    “Qu’est-ce qui ne va pas?” he asked while his gaze swung to the wing mirror. Nothing there except miles of sand. Perhaps his driver, a wiry mid-twenties mechanic, had been looking further up the road.
    But the snicker of Wouter’s Baikal trigger disabused him of that notion.
    Merde. The bastard’s been bought off.
    “Ce n’est pas dirigé contre vous.” Wouter shrugged as he pulled the trigger.
    Snapping to life, Nigel used the break between shots to his advantage. He whipped loose a knife and sent his knee along as backup. A crack of white pain relayed success. He managed to shatter Wouter’s shooting arm and cut a straight, clean line beneath the man’s chin.
    Blood spurted and the driver’s hand dropped from the steering wheel. Stuck behind his seatbelt, Nigel scrambled to grab the spinning object. Unfortunately, it eluded him and the Toyota winced once before spinning straight into hysteria. Nigel flung aside the filthy weapon and braced himself for the ride to come.
    Two bloody shots
, he seethed, head cracking side to side. And where they’d visited remained to be felt. His nerves were playing games, keeping things secret until they could tally up the truck’s contribution. And the truck, which still thrashed madly across the desert’s back, had abandoned its sense of direction along with the deceased driver.
    Fuck.
    After an interminable time, there was a hiccup of sand being thunked, and the metal heap concluded its panic-attack with a final squeal of wipers on the windscreen. Nigel dislodged a white-knuckled hand and put an end to the machine’s screeching. Remarkably, the vehicle remained upright, now facing the tracks it had made.
    He knocked back a profound breath. The cut of gunfire poisoned his spit and he wondered bleakly if the darker undertone of blood was his own or the splatter of his driver’s. Nerves still mum, he inspected his tremor-ridden right side. Crimson fireworks embroidered his sleeve and chest, while twin dark spots along his outer thigh eyed him over the mock mouth of his pocket flap.
    Pain had yet to crash the party
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So he dropped from the vehicle and limped, legs edgy and disobedient, in the general direction of Wouter’s crooked form. The sand’s voice was monotone beneath the heels of his boots. And wind striations fanned away from him, catching his dead driver in their tilted swathes.
    Eying the body of the man he’d just killed – dusty and dark-flecked in the gathering night – Forsythe shivered. The chills were already beginning to descend upon him in ruffled layers.
    He thrust a handful of fingers through his hair and sighed in the direction of the sun’s final bloom. The day’s heat was hurrying past, anxious as an abandoned child. He waited, hoping the red unblinking father might yet change his mind; then the parsimonious creature slipped away altogether, and so followed Nigel’s hope.
    The SUV was all snarls behind him. He could sympathize. He hadn’t expected the day to blast away on such a depressing note either. His morning, in the city of Laayoune’s dichotomous sprawl, had begun brightly enough with mint infused hot water and fruit.
    The lack of proper tea hadn’t even been a dampener.
    It was what came later, the part when Wouter had become an enemy and then another corpse on the African landscape. The young man, with an eye on immigration and an admirable indifference to religions, had ultimately reminded Nigel of the bedbugs he’d found at the crest of his mattress, disappointing, but not unexpected.
    The sun was well and truly gone now. A cruel shudder racked the agent’s lean frame. His balm-like adrenaline rush had faded and the spiky dullness of Pain’s bite was just warming up. His eyes had begun to burn and he was flirting with dizzy. He forced himself to focus and bent to rifle the driver’s pockets. No use leaving evidence for the local gangs or UN officials. Let them scratch their heads and wonder how this body came to be so