‘We were told he wouldn’t be harmed,’ Gibson said, gesturing at the battered man with the rope digging into his wrists.

From her position at the mouth of the cave, Bennett could see that the Macoutes’ prisoner wasn’t as terrified as Asselin, but not by much. She also had no idea who he was, and she didn’t like that.

The Macoute leader just stared at Gibson.

‘Give him to us,’ he said eventually.

His accent was a mix of French and Haitian Creole, and his mouth glinted in the torchlight—both of his rows of teeth were completely gold.

Gibson looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then he blinked first.

‘Let’s get on with this,’ he said, seemingly to everyone in the cave.

Two CIA agents pulled Asselin off the ground, holding him up as his legs refused to carry his weight.

‘This isn’t right,’ Bennett said to Warren. ‘We have to stop this.’

‘That isn’t our job,’ Warren replied.

Bennett and Warren’s orders had been to keep watch in case more Macoutes were waiting for their friends out in the night. They shouldn’t even have been watching what was going on in the cave, but neither of them had been able to keep their eyes off the Haitians since they’d arrived. And now Bennett couldn’t just keep watching, or stop her legs from carrying her into the Cerro de San Francisco.

The sound of her boots added another echo to the Macoutes’s, who were already turning away from the other CIA agents, two of them dragging Asselin between them. The others gripped their Kalashnikovs tighter as Bennett got closer.

‘Stop,’ she said, her voice reverberating around the two groups of men.

The Macoutes kept walking.

‘Stand down, agent,’ Gibson said. His voice was as loud as hers, and as angry.

Bennett stood her ground, but the mouth of the cave was too wide for her to block the Macoutes. They just snaked around her. Their leader was the last to leave the cave. He gave Bennett a wide, golden grin as he passed her, and made a show of pulling his pistol from his belt.

She watched as the Haitians reached the treeline. Three of them immediately disappeared into the dark, but the two carrying Asselin paused at the edge of the jungle, waiting for their leader. When he reached them, he raised his pistol.

Bennett started after him. But she felt a hand on her shoulder holding her back. It was Warren. All she could do was watch as Asselin was shot point-blank through the head. The sound of the single bullet smashing through skull filled the air. Then the two Macoutes pulled Asselin’s lifeless body into the trees, and their leader gave the Americans one last vicious grin before he vanished after them.

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Author’s Note

Author’s Note