A One-Way Cruise to Africa, with 2 chapter excerpts
C1: Maku's Shopping Cart C2: He Was a Killer
Anney’s new apartment is a good deal. It turns out to be too good. “Trust your instincts, then follow them.” Paul, a friend.
1. Maku’s Shopping Cart
Maku Boombo, rebel leader for an Islamist terrorist group in Africa, pulled his black Hummer off a road deep in the jungle of Nigeria, took out his iPad, and checked his email. His efforts to find a young girl in America to replace the one who’d recently died on him were paying off.
Jean, the woman he was working with on the coast of Washington State to funnel likely victims to him, had once been the wife of one of his rebels, Abbo Gome, who’d been a foreign exchange student from Uganda in an eastern university when Maku found him. More correctly, when the student found Maku. The impressionable black student had instantly attached himself to the rebel leader when the Islamic terrorist had made an unwelcome round of American universities. The young Ugandan was dazzled by the ruthless Nigerian who wore jungle camos, a black beret, and a heavy gold watch embellished with diamonds, and chauffeured in a long, black limousine. Gome believed Maku when he said he would someday rule all Africa and eagerly joined with him to help recruit new blood and collect funds for Maku’s revolution from the other radical students in American colleges.
Jean, raised in a Chicago ghetto, was an inept student who spent more time attending political rallies than studying; she was close to dropping out when she became friends with Gome at one of the political rallies on campus. She’d quickly fallen in love with his radicalism, if not with him, and they’d married after one of Maku’s rallies. As a show of commitment to her new life, Jean had converted to Islam and she and Abbo had both followed Maku to Africa to join the struggle against Western, Christian culture. In the end, Maku’s United States recruiting trip failed to gain any converts except Gome and his wife before he was quickly deported, his diplomatic papers obtained through bribery in his home country being rescinded after universities complained about his activities on their campuses.
As it turned out, even with the help of Gome and Jean, the students Maku spoke to were easily excited to attend rallies, but slow to follow Maku to a country where Western amenities were few and the possibilities of getting shot were many. Even if the students who attended the rallies had been inclined to help Maku conquer Africa, there was the conversion issue. Few, if any, of the students were Islamic. There was no way they were going to risk offending their Christian parents and endanger their inheritances and family relationships by making such a radical change in religion. Even switching from Baptist to Catholic—or vice versa—was an emotional and financial risk few students were willing to take.
In the end, Maku only succeeded in collecting a few handfuls of crumpled bills that had been tossed into a hat that Gome had passed around the crowd and two new recruits, Abbo and Jean. The rebel leader’s failure at recruiting more followers and the sparse funds that he collected from the upper crust students made him seethe with anger and shame. No one here quaked in fear when he spoke. No one rushed to join his cause, except for the two students who were far from what he had envisioned converting to his cause.
When her husband was killed during a raid on a remote village in Nigeria, Jean returned to America. She still didn’t know why she hadn’t just stayed in Africa; she had no family or friends in her own country, having foolishly burned all of her bridges before she left home. Her best explanation for leaving Africa was that it was a knee-jerk reaction that wasn’t well thought out…one she regretted daily. Why had she done that? Everything she wanted was in Africa: Money. Power. Notoriety.
Now that she was alone, having cut all her ties to relatives when she converted to Islam, Maku was the closest thing the widow had to family. By the time Jean had realized that Maku’s devotion to Islam was tenuous at best, she’d lost her family and her faith in her new religion. All she had left was her faith in Maku. He was also her only connection to her life as a revolutionary and an important part of her self-identity.
When she’d left Africa, she’d stayed in touch with her Nigerian friend via emails and texts and was easily recruited to work with the rebel leader when he wanted to raise funds for his revolution by expanding his sex trafficking trade to the United States to cash in on the huge market for white women all over the world. American white women were the most valuable, desired sex slaves. Maku had a waiting list of anxious customers ready to buy the women as soon as the rebel leader could deliver them.
He wasn’t bothered at all about the risk. The worst that could happen was that his accomplices would get arrested. They couldn’t touch him in Nigeria. He moved his army every day; even the Nigerian Government couldn’t find him in the obscure sections of the jungles where he was preying on villages that were far from police protection. How could the American government track him down?
Even before Abbo was killed, Jean had delusions of dumping him and becoming Maku’s Queen of Africa, but none of her romantic advances were ever successful. She was too old. Too fat. Too used. Later, when she realized how fast he went through women, she decided it would be a lot smarter to forget any idea of romance and concentrate on becoming a part of his political life.
After growing up in a ghetto, Jean was tough and never backed down from a fight when she was moving with Maku and his rebels through Nigeria. She was ambitious and wanted to be sure he noticed her. She was not only tougher than her husband, she was smarter combat-wise than he. Abbo had been raised in a city in Ghana and knew nothing about hand to hand combat. Predictably, he was killed within a year after they’d arrived, having made the mistake of leading the charge into a village that had a higher than normal number of young men who were well-equipped with knives and other weapons—and knew how to use them. Jean was elated. She had already admitted to herself that being married to a weaker person was a hindrance to her advancement in Maku’s army. Now, she was free to devote all her time to moving up the chain of command; her focus was on a spot right next to the future King of Africa.
This work she was doing in the states for Maku was just to get her foot in the door; any idiot could kidnap a helpless, unsuspecting woman and throw her on a slave boat that was destined for Africa. Someday, when Maku took over Africa and proclaimed the whole continent under his power, she wanted to be right there beside him as one of his generals. Her jungle camos and matching green bush hat were already hanging in her closet.
She began her renewed association with Maku by agreeing to work with him in procuring women to help the Nigerian rebel raise money for his revolution. The rebel leader sent her to Washington State because he already had connections setting up all up and down the west coast. He’d never seen the west coast, so he envisioned it as less developed, and therefore, would be easier to capture unprotected women. It was Jean who’d sent the first victim from America to Maku when the unfortunate woman rented Jean’s garage apartment. She found Anney, the second, current girl for her Nigerian boss, on the Internet. While reading the girl’s blog Jean noticed she was apartment hunting in Seattle. Perfect. She was in Seattle and had an apartment already set up for her. Anney didn’t have a car and worked downtown, so she was delighted that Jean’s apartment was close to the bus line. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to her, it was even closer to a boat ride to Africa.
Anney’s active web presence made it easy to sell her to Jean’s boss on another continent. All Jean had to do was send Maku the links that gave him a good look at what he was buying and get him to agree to continue to fund the expenses on the same house she’d used for the first kidnapping. The detached, garage apartment that sat off to the side of Jean’s rented house in an older, quieter neighborhood was the main reason she had picked it over the other available rentals. The converted garage, overgrown with shrubs and trees, made it isolated and hard to see from the street. Most of the neighbors would never remember seeing Anney. To keep her from looking at other rentals on the market, Jean hooked the young woman into choosing her rental by offering such a low rent that Anney couldn’t turn it down. Jean even absorbed the costs of hooking up the utilities to keep the rental cost even lower. This was Anney’s first time away from home. New to the city, she never realized there were extra fees that had not been added to her monthly rent. She just thought she was a shrewd shopper!
Because the apartment had been used as a front once before, Maku and Jean had agreed that they would shut-down the set-up after Anney was delivered and move their operation to another area on the coast. Not to do so could be risky, although no one seemed to be at all upset the first girl had gone missing. Perhaps she had no family to worry about her. If only they were all that easy! Unfortunately, the first girl had died soon after she’d arrived in Nigeria. Even though the girl’s death was no fault of Jean’s, Maku had grumbled to Jean so she’d assured him that this new victim was much stronger and her resale value would be a lot higher than the first girl she’d sent him. To show good faith, she’d agreed to do the new job for less.
2. He Was a Killer
She needn’t have bothered. Maku wasn’t a penny-pincher. He was a killer.
Maku tuned out the screaming and gunshots behind him in the village his rebels had just plundered and clicked on the main link to a young woman named Anney Oaks.
A large, color photo of a very attractive young woman came up on his screen. Physically, she fit the description he’d described to Jean: she was young, strong, and white. On her “About Me” page, he read that she was a Christian, educated, played the piano, and liked to travel. Well, he grinned, he had a trip already planned for her—an all-expense paid trip—all the way to Africa. The only downside was it was one-way. Maku rubbed his hands together in glee whenever he thought about it.
One of the photos on Anney’s photo page had a picture of her riding a camel at a local fundraising event. The kid had a lot of spunk. The deranged rebel, pumped up on pills and booze, couldn’t wait to beat it out of her. She was all over the Internet, but when she got to Africa, her social networking days would be over. Like the other girls he trafficked in, once Maku’s men got their hands on her, her parents would never see or hear from her again…unless he sent them a ransom note.
He scanned down to the bottom of her homepage that listed her other links: she was on Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, WordPress, Blogspot, Instagram, and something called Tumblr. Maku grinned. The Internet had become his shopping cart. He’d check out the extra links tonight just for his entertainment but he was already sold. He sent his accountant an email instructing him to set-up an account in Jean’s name under a phony company to cover her expenses. Abducting people from another country was expensive but very profitable in the end. Once he got the young woman to Africa, her value would escalate far more than the amount Maku had quoted to Jean. What he was paying the old white hag was small change compared to what he’d make. And, if anything went wrong, she was expendable like everyone else—except his accountant. His accountant knew more about his business than he did and Maku often joked that he was the only man in the world he couldn’t kill.
He slid the iPad under his driver’s seat. There would be plenty of time tonight to read all about his new victim. He knew from experience there would be no sleep for him anyway while his men rounded up and killed all the males in the village who wouldn’t join their movement. Removal of the men left the women, children, and old people unprotected. Then, his army would be busy until dawn with the women and young girls. There was no plunder in the village Maku wanted for himself and he had no use for the village women; his men could have anything or anyone they found.
The pillaging was just a way to train his men and keep them together and busy while he built his force by enticing new recruits using his interpretation of Islamic belief that allowed the rape of young, virgin, girls. He told the men it was a form of ibadah, or worship. His men were so uneducated and backward that they easily accepted Maku’s warped interpretation of the Koran. Busy with their pitiful spoils and their female conquests, they never noticed—or cared—that they weren’t getting paid. They were happy with whatever they found to steal from the little villages and the women and young girls they raped and abused. Before Maku, his men had known nothing but poverty and hopelessness and were slow to take advantage of their new opportunities after they were recruited. Now, empowered with meager riches they’d never had before, they would stick with him. Fight for him. Die for him. They thought he was a god because he took nothing for himself. When his army was trained and large enough to rule all of Africa, he would rule with an iron fist and his army would back him up. Soon, Maku and his army would run over bigger towns where the plunder would be worthwhile. Then, he would take more interest in the spoils. By then, he’d have a secure palace to fill with his riches. Right now, while they were on the march, he only had a small space in his Hummer for anything valuable. So far, he used the space for his drugs.
Meantime, his side business in white slavery that his men had no knowledge of was worth millions. Maku bought and sold slaves over the Internet and deposited the money into offshore banks that didn’t ask inconvenient questions.
Maku never saw the women his traffickers kidnapped and sold all over the world.
Never saw the men who purchased them.
Never gave either one a second thought.
To him, they were all just names and dollar signs on his many accounts. He didn’t even know exactly how much money he was making, just that it was at least in the millions.
Parents of kidnapped white children in America would pay any amount in ransom for the chance to get back their sons and daughters. If they couldn’t raise the ransom by themselves, their churches would help them. Then, they’d help him by sending more young people to darkest Africa to work as missionaries guarded by only a few naïve, middle-aged chaperones. Their mission was to convert Islamics into Christians even though the natives lived in the middle of a country whose majority of people were Islamic and were resistant to embracing someone else’s white god.
So far, not one daughter kidnapped by Maku’s men had been released after the ransom was paid. It wouldn’t be smart to release one of his slaves and have her describe to the world on television news shows what Maku was doing in Africa’s jungles. Better to keep a low profile as long as he could. Soon, he’d be so rich and have so many police paid off no government person would dare touch him.
If Maku had no use for a woman after the ransom was received, she was sold into slavery and never seen or heard from again. If one died before she was sold, she was thrown over a cliff or into a river without the parents ever being notified of their child’s death. He or no one else in his army had any concept of a proper, respectful burial—not even for their own. Even if they had known about proper burials, they wouldn’t have cared. They were only interested in the next village. The next treasure. The next woman. The next girl.
Maku’s latest sideline was young men. The new start-up was in San Francisco where there were thousands of fit, good-looking gay and straight men right on the coast where they could be easily drugged and transferred to a reclaimed old freighter waiting off-shore that could barely stay afloat in rough water; the same cargo ship that would carry the women to Africa. On the inside, Maku had stripped the old boat down as far as he could so it could carry more people; on the outside he’d improved it just enough to avoid the notice of the various coastguards that patrolled the coastlines he approached. Captives were kept drugged to keep them from abandoning ship. Each victim was worth thousands, and they were collected from all over the world; the new slave business in San Francisco would be especially profitable because it was already on the route to Mexico where victims were many and the Mexican coastal security was weak. In the beginning, he was surprised that he collected as many white men and women in Mexico as he did in California. He soon discovered young people loved to go to Mexico where drink, drugs, and sex were cheap, and sometimes free. All the partying in cantinas on Mexico’s warm beaches made them easy to collect. The Mexican government, clueless as to what was happening, listed the missing as drunk and lost at sea in the rip tides.
Another reason the new venture would be successful was that he would be kidnapping several men a night as they came out of the bars and clubs. He thought of it as a kind of slave trade in reverse. Maybe some of the abducted men would be related to Africans who’d been captured in Africa, loaded into the bottom of The Good Ship Jesus, the first British slave ship, and sold in the New World. Now, almost five hundred years later, the relations of those first slaves were going back to Africa—as slaves. Maku’s version of history made his lips curl up in delight.
Unlike his main slave trade, Anney was a custom order for himself. Kidnapping one victim at a time was not the way Maku normally did business. In order to fill the yacht, Maku had to scoop up victims in multiples, then quickly move on to the next stop before the victims were missed. Maku saved the best for himself and special clients.
Although he got paid more for white women, most of his customers would buy live bodies of any color or religion. For himself, he required a white woman not only to quench his sexual appetite, but also to absorb his scorn of all things Western. The first woman from the United States died the first time he’d raped her, before he was able to use her as a vessel to absorb all his hatred of non-Islamic culture. He never knew if she’d died from pain, the drugs he forced on her, or shock. No matter. He looked at the loss as just one more Christian woman who’d not be having Christian children. Besides, he could order a replacement on his iPad without ever leaving his Hummer. Maku smiled. Life was good, at least his was, anyway.
In the background men yelled and women screamed with fear and pain. Maku didn’t notice; he was used to the noise. He wasn’t even affected by the sounds of the children crying for their mothers. Evil through and through, Maku looked at it this way: they should be grateful he left the old women to comfort them after their mothers were dragged into the jungle never to return.
Dear readers, I wrote A One-Way Cruise to Africa as a warning to young women and men to be aware of sex-trafficking which is exploding in America. I wrote this novel with romance and humor to make it an entertaining read because young people shy away from the subject. They are sure they can take care of their selves! I’d give it a PG rating. On Amazon Kindle. Suspense, FBI, Romance, Humor.