Cross Country

card will do.” Each of them clearly knew I was American. They all required a small bribe, or maybe they thought of it as a gratuity.
    By the time I reached the baggage carousel, got my duffel, and pushed back out through the twenty-deep wall of people pressing in, I was tempted to fork over a few more naira to a raggedy-looking kid in an old skycap hat who asked where I wanted my bags taken.
    I thought better of it, however, and pushed on, hauling my own luggage, keeping everything close to the chest.
Stranger in a strange land,
I thought, though I was also strangely pleased to be here. This promised to be quite an adventure, didn’t it? It was completely new territory for me. I didn’t know any of the rules.

Chapter 36
    THERE WAS NO relief outside, where the air smelled of diesel, and no wonder: There was a raft of old cars, trucks, and bright yellow buses everywhere that I looked. Locals of all ages walked alongside the traffic, selling everything from newspapers to fruit to children’s clothing and used shoes.
    “Alexander Cross?”
    I turned around, expecting to see and meet Ian Flaherty, my CIA contact here in Nigeria. The CIA was good at sneaking up on you, right?
    Instead, I came face-to-face with two armed officers. These were regular police, I noticed, not immigration. They had all-black uniforms, including berets, with insignia chevrons on the epaulets of their shirts. Both of them carried semiautomatics.
    “I’m Alex Cross, yes,” I told them.
    What happened next defied all logic. My duffel bag was ripped from my arm. Then my small suitcase. One of the officers spun me around and I felt cuffs on my wrists. Then a hard pinch as they snapped down too tightly.
    “What’s going on?” I struggled to turn to look at the policemen. “What is this? Tell me what’s happening.”
    The officer with my luggage raised a hand in the air as if he were hailing a cab. A white four-door Toyota truck immediately pulled up to the curb.
    The cops yanked open a rear door, ducked my head, and pushed me in, throwing my travel bag after me. One officer stayed on the sidewalk while the other jumped in next to the driver, and we took off.
    I suddenly realized —
I was being kidnapped!

Chapter 37
    THIS WAS SURREAL. It was insane.
    “Where are you taking me? What is this about? I’m an American police officer,” I protested from the back of the truck. No one seemed to be listening to a word I said.
    I leaned forward in my seat and got a baton hard in the chest, then twice across the face.
    I felt, and
heard,
my nose break!
    Blood immediately gushed down my face onto my shirt. I couldn’t believe this was happening — not any of it.
    The cop in the front passenger seat looked back at me, wild-eyed and ready to swing the baton again. “You like to keep quiet, white man. Fucking American, fucking terrorist, fucking policeman.”
    I had heard that some people here didn’t like American blacks referring to themselves as African American. Now I was feeling it firsthand. I breathed hard through my mouth, coughing up blood and trying to focus though my head was spinning. Humidity and diesel fumes washed over me as the truck weaved through airport traffic, the driver repeatedly sitting on the horn.
    I saw a blur of cars, white, red, and green, and several more bright yellow buses. Women were walking on the side of the road with swaddled babies held low on their backs, some of them with baskets balanced on top of their
geles
. There were a great number of huts in view, but also modern buildings, plus more cars, buses, trucks, and animal-driven carts.
    All around me, business as usual
.
    And business as usual inside this truck,
I feared.
    Suddenly the cop was on me again. He stretched over the seat and pushed me onto my side. I braced for another strike of his billy club. Instead, I felt his hands patting me down.
    Then my wallet was sliding out of my pocket.
    “Hey!” I yelled.
    He pulled out the wad of cash I had — three hundred American, and another five hundred in naira — then threw the empty wallet back in my face. It sent a shudder of pain deep into my skull.
    I coughed out another spray of blood, which hit the seat and earned me another baton strike across the shoulder.
    The dark blue nylon sheet covering the backseat suddenly made sense to me. It was there for bloodstains, wasn’t it?
    I had no bearings, no idea why this was happening, no idea what to do about it either.
    In spite of my own better judgment,