The Power of Five Oblivion

dark with black eyes and a moustache … he recognized him at once. It was the cafuzo – half African, half Brazilian – who had bought Matt the last time he had been sold.
    “Is this him?” the trader asked.
    “This is him,” the other man replied. Lohan saw him draw back his foot and tried to roll out of the way as he lashed out a second time. The foot caught him on the shoulder, sending a bolt of pain all the way down his arm.
    Matt watched helplessly from the platform. There were too many soldiers here, too many guns. He was tied up. There was nothing he could do. A small crowd had gathered around Lohan. People weren’t having a lot of fun in a place like Jangada and a man being beaten up was the closest thing to entertainment that they got. The cafuzo had Lohan’s gun in his hand. There could be no doubt that he was going to use it to kill him.
    The soldier with the beard and the broken nose stepped forward. “What’s this all about?” he demanded.
    “This man is a thief,” the cafuzo explained. “He and the American boy – they have this thing together. He sells him, then he takes him back again. Fernandinho sent me to find them. He wants them both dead.”
    “You can’t kill the boy,” the soldier said. “He belongs to me now … and where he’s going, it’s a living death anyway. It’ll come to the same in the end. You can tell Fernandinho that. As for this other one…” He looked down at Lohan, who was lying there, his eyes sullen, furious with himself for allowing this to happen. Suddenly a thought came to him. “I’ll take him too, if you like.”
    “You mean you’ll pay for him…” the cafuzo said.
    “I’ll take him for nothing. You’ve got his money. How much did he have on him?”
    The cafuzo had ended up with a bundle of notes which he had taken from Lohan’s pocket. He counted them quickly. “Six hundred.”
    “That’s plenty.” The soldier laughed humourlessly. “You can pay back Fernandinho what he’s owed and split the rest between you. It looks like the Chinese guy’s got plenty of work in him so I’ll take care of him. I get an extra pair of hands for nothing. I’d say that works out all round.”
    There was a brief pause. But what the soldier had said made sense, and anyway, he had his men close by and if there was going to be an argument or even a fight, the trader would have got the worse of it. He knew that. He glanced at the cafuzo , who must have thought the same thing. He nodded. The agreement had been made.
    After that, things happened very quickly. Lohan was pulled to his feet. His hands were tied behind his back and he was propelled forward, joining the others on the platform. All at once he was standing next to Matt. Even at that moment, it occurred to him that Matt didn’t seem particularly surprised by what had just happened. Certainly, he wasn’t concerned, even though they were now both prisoners with no one to come after them wherever they were taken. At the same time, the trader completed his negotiations with the soldiers and suddenly it was over. There were thirty-four people on the platform, but they were no longer human beings. They were possessions.
    “Vamos lá!”
    One of the soldiers shouted the order and the pack of them began to move off. The other men used the butts of their rifles to lash out at anyone who was slow or who tried to break away. The local townspeople watched with blank faces. Lohan knew what they were thinking. It might have amused them to see the slaves being bought, but in their hearts they knew that one day their food and their money would run out and they would end up just the same. The captives were herded down the main street past shops that were empty or closed and houses with the windows boarded over. Everything was dirty and run-down. Finally, they came to an old bus station. There were still one or two buses left behind, missing their windows, their wheels and their seating … nothing more than rusty, burnt-out cans.
    There was a helicopter parked there, waiting for them. Matt and Lohan had seen nothing in the air since they had found themselves in Brazil so the sight of it was both surprising and alarming. Clearly, they had a long journey ahead of them. The helicopter was a four-bladed Super Puma painted in the colours of the national air force, sitting on its own in the rubble, hardly in better condition than the buses. It had been constructed to hold just eighteen passengers but almost twice