Our Hearts. Chapter Six. The Peacemaker

The lab sequencer finished its run at eight-thirty.

It spat out a long strip of thermal paper with a quiet hum, and the faint ozone scent of heated plastic and chemical reagents cut through the stale air of the laboratory tent.

Leo stood over the printout, pressing the curling edge of the sheet against the scratched aluminum top of the folding table. The table’s steel edge was cool, while the paper strip was still warm. He read line by line—lines that should not have existed. Mbul Benga, twenty-one years old, a miner and insurgent, a patient from the red zone—was recovering. His temperature had dropped to thirty-seven point eight. Liver enzymes were leveling out. White blood cell counts were falling. His blood—still thick, dark maroon, but no longer that coagulated, tarry mass with an intrusive, sickeningly metallic smell—had begun to form normal, healthy clots.

The virus was not killing him. It was lying low. It had settled inside his body quietly, discreetly, almost politely—like a tenant in someone else’s rented apartment trying not to move the furniture or leave scuffs on the hardwood floor.

But the very bottom line made Leo purse his lips. Genotypic profile: deviation detected. Genome variability: 0.4% from original sample. Correlation with mutational drift: low. Direction of changes: undetermined.

Zero point four percent in forty-eight hours.

“Rémi, take a look,” Leo said without turning around.

Rémi approached from the sterile enclosure. He smelled of formaldehyde steeped into his coat and bitter canvas dust; he was chewing instant coffee right out of a plastic cup, tossing handfuls into his mouth like roasted peanuts because the water in the electric kettle had sparked and died early that morning. The dry granules crunched between his teeth.

“What’s there?” Rémi asked, swallowing dryly.

“The virus in Benga. It’s rewriting itself.”

Rémi pulled the printout from under Leo’s fingers, scanned the code, and handed it back. He took a pinch of coffee and dropped it onto his tongue.

“Zero point four in two days,” he muttered, squinting at the fluorescent light. “That’s damned high. Or ridiculously small. It all depends on the vector.”

“Precisely. If this is a directed mutation rather than a random copying error, the virus is adapting. It’s learning to mimic.”

“To Benga specifically?”

“Or to humans in general.”

Rémi set the cup down on the corner of the table with a dry clack.

“We need to retake samples from the girls in the village immediately,” he stated firmly. “If they have the same profile—quiet clinical presentation and slow drift—we’re dealing not with an infectious attack, but with a true colonization. The virus doesn’t destroy tissue. It moves in, settles, occupies vacant niches, builds its infrastructure. And when there’s a critical mass of it…”

He trailed off mid-sentence. There was no need to finish—the thought hung in the air like a tense residue.

Sarah entered the tent with a rustle of heavy canvas. She reeked of pungent insect repellent and wet wool. She tossed a leather-bound notebook onto the table.

“Have you seen the final sequence yet? Dzuzu has already left for the village. She took the cooler bag. She’ll draw blood by lunchtime.”

“Good,” Leo said, carefully folding the thermal paper in half.

Rémi was the first to hear the crack.

He froze with his palm raised to his lips. He tilted his head, listening instinctively, like a wild animal catching a subterranean rumble.

“Did you hear that?”

Leo froze. At first, the tent held only familiar noises: the low, vibrating thrum of the diesel generator beyond the fence, the damp rustle of heated canvas, and somewhere far off, a raspy rooster’s crow. But then a second sound cut through the dense green mass of the jungle. A dull, dry crack echoed over the canopy, as if someone had slammed a damp, heavy plank onto water.

“A gunshot,” Leo affirmed.

A third. A fourth. A short, ragged burst—a rolling rat-tat-tat-tat. A pause long enough for only half a breath. Then another burst—long, tight, angry.

Leo knew that distinctive metallic clatter. Not from movies or news reports—from experience.

“Kalashnikov,” he said.

“AKM,” Rémi specified. “7.62 caliber. Judging by the long bursts, some nervous idiot has his finger glued to the trigger.”

Sarah stood up immediately.

“Where is the shooting coming from?”

“Looks like from the woods,” Leo remarked, stepping outside. “Northwest. About two kilometers. Maybe a bit farther.”

By the yellow plastic perimeter fencing, a captain of the FARDC government forces had already halted. A worn rifle strap dug into his shoulder, and a radio was pressed to his ear, spewing a crackling stream of speech distorted by static. The captain spoke in Lingala—fast, low—and his dark, high-cheekboned face remained impassive, gray, and indifferent, like setting concrete.

“Captain!” Leo called out, stepping over a small drainage ditch. “What’s happening?”

“Shooting on the trail,” the officer grunted without looking at him. “Patrol reports: northern sector, closer to the old quarry.”

“Who’s firing?”

“Anyone. Rebels. Southbridge private security. Or fighting over ore.”

“There might be wounded,” Leo said, stepping right up to the mesh. “We need to check.”

The captain slowly turned his head. A vein throbbed on his sweaty, stubborn neck. There was neither fear nor heroism in his gaze—only the cold, leaden pragmatism of a man who knew the precise boundaries of his orders.

“Out of the question, Doctor. You stay in the camp. Right now, men loaded with live ammo are running around in the thicket, and they won’t stop to examine your medical emblems. Step outside the perimeter, and you’ll get cut down by the very first burst. Then there’ll be no one left to patch these guys up,” he motioned with his chin toward the medical tents.

“We took an oath,” Leo argued.

“You are the only thing standing between this area and the damned fever,” the captain snapped harshly. “Your hide is worth more than a single wounded smuggler.”

The gunfire in the forest ceased. The silence that plunged over Bata Kolé in its wake was anxiously sticky and suffocating. The air between the trees seemed to thicken, reeking of ozone, gunpowder smoke, and rotting foliage.

Leo remained silent for exactly two seconds. Then he turned on his heel, ran into the lab trailer, and ripped a red nylon medical bag with a white cross off the wall. His fingers moved automatically, pulling from the drawers packs of hemostatic sponges, sterile bandages, lidocaine ampoules, surgical forceps, long pickup forceps, and a pack of disposable syringes.

“You’ve lost your mind, Gonzales,” Rémi said with a smirk, leaning against the doorframe.

“Perhaps.”

“If you get shot out there, I’ll perform the autopsy myself. Lucky for you, my incisions are flawless.”

“I’ll be back.”

“Gonzales, wait.”

Leo looked up.

“At least take Lukala,” Rémi exhaled heavily, releasing a breath that smelled of bitter coffee. “He’s local. Knows the forest and the trails. And he isn’t white—in this jungle, that’s your primary body armor.”

Mbuyi was waiting for him at the exit of the “green zone.” He had already changed into high rubber boots and thrown an old hunting vest with numerous pockets over his faded T-shirt. A lightweight backpack hung from his shoulder. His face bore that particular, somber composure with which villagers set out to do hard, dirty, yet unavoidable work.

“I heard the shots too,” Lukala agreed. “Let’s go.”

The captain assigned them an escort after all—a single soldier, a very young, wiry guy with a round, childish face. The Belgian FN FAL automatic rifle in his slender hands looked like an alien, overly massive piece of iron.

They crossed the perimeter line and stepped under the green canopy. The jungle swallowed them instantly, as if a light had been switched off. Humid heat hit their faces in a dense, stifling wave. The post-rain air smelled of humus, damp bark, rotting fruit, and the delicate, barely perceptible scent of night blossoms that appeared with every step, only to vanish and give way to the stench of stagnant water.

The soldier led them along a faint track barely carved through the underbrush. Wet roots slicked under their boots. Dense midge swarms stuck to their sweaty faces, crawling into nostrils and eyes. Lukala moved behind Leo—silently, with the striking grace of someone raised in these woods. He walked on full soles, without crunching dry twigs or catching on hanging vines.

Fifteen minutes of walking. Twenty. Leo’s shirt was soaked through with sweat, clinging to his shoulder blades.

The soldier ahead suddenly raised a clenched fist. Leo froze. Lukala stopped dead beside him, flaring his nostrils slightly as he caught the sounds of the woods.

All around lay a ringing silence, stretched taut as a wire. But this silence was alive—it breathed with unseen bodies.

The soldier rasped out a few short, guttural phrases in Lingala. His voice sounded quiet, yet carried distinctly beneath the tree canopy.

The response arrived ten long seconds later. The voice from deep within the thicket was hoarse and deep.

The soldier exchanged a look with Lukala. Lukala gave a brief nod.

“Militia,” Lukala whispered in Leo’s ear. “Three of them. One took a bullet in the leg.”

They stepped into a small clearing trampled into the ferns. Three men sat near the fallen trunk of a wild ficus.

Two were on their feet. Tall, lean men in tattered camouflage pants, rifles casually slung over their shoulders. Their sweat-glistening black faces reflected less hostility than a wild, animal vigilance. The taller one had an old, pale scar running across his cheek, from eyebrow to jawline.

The third was semi-reclined, his back resting against the mossy bark. A guy of about twenty-five, with short, coarse hair and a broad, flat face. He clutched his right thigh frantically with both hands. Blood seeped through his fingers and the torn fabric of his pants—thick, crimson, almost black in the jungle gloom, smelling of salty iron.

Leo knelt right in the wet mud beside the wounded man.

“Gunshot?” he asked, looking up at the scarred man.

The man nodded.

“Thigh. No exit wound. Spent round, probably. Or passed through a tree trunk before hitting him, otherwise it would’ve blown out a fist-sized chunk of flesh.”

Leo took blunt-tipped shears from the kit and cut through the blood-soaked fabric with a crunch. The wound looked deceptively innocent—a small, neat entry hole with jagged edges. But Leo’s fingers, carefully palpating the deep tissues through a sterile gauze pad, immediately located a dense mass lodged between the muscles. The bullet sat deep, but the bone was intact, and the absence of a pulsing, spurting stream meant the femoral artery had miraculously been spared.

“I can get it out,” Leo said, retrieving a lidocaine ampoule and a metal clamp from his kit. “But not on the ground. We need to carry him to our camp.”

The militia members looked at each other. The scarred man frowned. “Where exactly?”

“To the WHO field hospital,” Lukala interjected, switching to Lingala. His voice was soft, persuasive. “We are doctors. There’s power, antiseptics, and instruments. We’ll have him back to you on his own two feet in a couple of hours.”

Scar looked down at the wounded man. The youth raised his head. His eyes, dilated with pain and shock, locked onto Leo’s face. He evaluated the doctor with the quick, instinctive precision of a wounded animal gauging a human.

“Let’s go,” the wounded man murmured hoarsely. “Carry me.”

The FARDC soldier and one of the fighters fashioned a stretcher out of two sturdy poles and buttoned jackets. They placed the casualty on it and hauled him back. Leo walked alongside, holding the leg steady so the lead core wouldn’t mangle soft tissue during transport.

On the trail, Leo couldn’t help asking the scarred fighter softly: “Who did you clash with?”

“Mine patrol,” he grunted, pushing through vines. “Southbridge security.”

“They opened fire?”

“Just walked out of the thicket. They roam four deep now, body armor and night optics. Even in broad daylight. On our land.”

“Any wounded on their side?”

The scarred man smirked crookedly, dropping: “Don’t know. We struck first.”

Lukala, walking behind, leaned toward Leo’s ear: “Just business as usual. The militia steals ore from the pit, Southbridge shoots them down. Sometimes they fire into the air to report back to management. Sometimes like this. Local trade.”

They brought the wounded man back to camp in thirty minutes. He was carried into the dressing trailer. Within seconds, Lukala set up the workstation: sterile oilcloth, the bright beam of a headlamp LED, a tray with clamps.

Leo worked without pause. An ampoule snapped. The syringe penetrated the tissue around the wound—dry skin resistance, then a soft sink. An incision—sharp, short, exactly three centimeters. The surgical forceps dipped into the depth of the wound softly, by feel, like a key entering a tight lock. Metal clinked against lead. Leo clamped onto the bullet and extracted it in one smooth, single motion.

A small, deformed piece of jacketed lead, 5.56 millimeter caliber. Leo dropped it into a kidney tray with a soft ping.

The wounded man didn’t utter a sound. He lay there, jaw clenched to the crunch, large glistening beads of sweat rolling down his temples.

Lukala flushed the wound tract with peroxide—white foam sizzled against tissue—inserted a drainage tube, and quickly tied a neat suture.

“What’s your name?” Leo asked, pulling off his blood-stained latex gloves.

The wounded man closed his eyes, then exhaled: “Mwepu.”

Lukala let out a short grunt, wrapping a sterile bandage around the thigh: “‘The Peacemaker.’ In Lingala, Mwepu. Irony, isn’t it, Doctor?”

“Not irony,” Mwepu replied in a weak but steady voice from the shadows of the cot. “A reminder. My father named me that so I’d remember: the shooting begins when people run out of normal words.”

By the time the last suture was tied, the sun had already touched the tree canopy. Dense tropical dusk shrouded Bata Kolé so quickly it felt as if a thick velvet blanket had been thrown over it from above. Mwepu fell asleep in the trailer—the painkiller had taken effect. His companions melted into the woods, promising to return at dawn. The captain gave Leo a monotonous five-minute lecture on military discipline and responsibility for disobeying orders before returning to his radio.

Leo stood outside the trailer, inhaling the cool evening air, smelling of campfire smoke and wet grass.

Rémi stepped out of the lab, carrying fresh thermal printouts.

“Results for the village girls,” he said, handing over the sheets. “Carbon copy. Filovirus markers. Minimal titer. Immune response silent. And a 0.3 percent genomic shift. Same vector.”

“Where is it heading?”

“Toward complete adaptation,” Rémi sighed heavily, wiping his bald head with his palm. “The virus is wiping its tracks. In a couple of weeks, we won’t be able to distinguish its RNA from standard cellular material.”

Leo folded the paper into his pocket.

“Porthole,” he murmured quietly.

“What?”

“We look into the microscope, but we’re looking through glass. There’s nothing there. The virus has turned transparent.”

Rémi opened his mouth to add something, then checked himself.

The low growl of a diesel engine echoed from the direction of the forest road. The camp tensed instantly: sentries at the gate raised their rifles.

An old Mitsubishi Pajero rolled out onto the cleared clearing—caked in dried, brick-red mud, with a crack across the windshield. The diesel engine sneezed, blew a bluish puff of foul smoke from its exhaust, and settled into a steady hum.

A stocky man in a camouflage jacket sat behind the wheel with a rifle across his knees. From the passenger seat hopped another—around thirty, lean, with sharp cheekbones and dark, piercing eyes. He wore a plain gray T-shirt, dirty army trousers, and high boots. A handgun hung in a leather holster at his waist.

He raised his hands palms forward, showing clean fingers, and walked briskly toward the medical tents.

“It’s fine,” Leo stepped forward. “They’re here for the wounded man.”

The newcomer stopped in front of Leo. He looked at him—intently, unblinking, without a trace of a smile.

“I’m in charge of them,” he said. His voice was low, raspy. “Thanks for patching up Mwepu.”

“Just doing our job,” Leo replied.

“I know. Dr. Gonzales from WHO. And this is Dr. Mbuyi. Rumors spread through these woods faster than malaria mosquitoes.”

He unzipped a leather shoulder bag, reached in, and pulled out a bottle. “Johnnie Walker Red Label.” Real, thick glass, with an intact tax stamp. Leo hadn’t seen liquor like that since flying out of Kinshasa.

“I suggest we seal our acquaintance. You saved my guy. That deserves a drink.”

Leo glanced at the bottle, then at Rémi. The Frenchman merely shook his head and retreated deep into the trailer. Sarah didn’t even come out. Only Lukala remained standing at the edge of the platform, arms crossed over his chest in neutral expectation.

“All right, let’s have a drink,” Leo agreed.

They sat down on rough concrete blocks beneath a camouflage canopy. The surrounding air was steeped in the scent of burnt wood, smoke, and fallen leaves. The sky over the jungle had darkened completely into deep purple, and the first large stars flickered above the canopy.

The man popped the bottle open with a short, practiced motion—twisting off the cap with a metallic crack. He poured the amber liquid into two plastic cups. At the bottom, the whiskey glinted with the reflection of a distant campfire.

“To health,” Leo said, raising his cup.

“To Mwepu,” the other corrected. “And to that idiot taking fewer metal deliveries.”

The whiskey scorched his esophagus with clean, oaken heat. Leo closed his eyes for a second, and for a fleeting moment, a dim bar in Kinshasa flared in his memory—tequila, the muffled strain of “Love is Blindness,” and the delicate, tart floral scent rising from Imani’s skin.

“Good stuff,” Leo sighed, nodding toward the bottle. “Where’s it from?”

“Spoils of war,” he smirked and extended his hand. “Ilunga.”

“Leo.”

“I know.” Ilunga smiled again. “Whispers about you are already circulating around here. The white doctor who trekked into the bush for smugglers. Almost gave the captain a heart attack.”

“He’ll survive.”

“He will,” Ilunga poured another round. “He’s been stuck in Haut-Katanga for three years. Bones harden fast around here.”

Leo took a sip of whiskey. He remained silent for a moment, studying his companion, then asked evenly: “What are you washing out in the woods?”

Ilunga looked him dead in the eye.

“Rare earth metals,” he answered calmly. “Lanthanum, neodymium, cerium. Everything without which your smartphones and turbines turn into chunks of plastic. A kilo fetches good money on the global market. Deposits run deep here. But IC Waze snatched up a twenty-year license ahead of everyone. On the best land.”

“And you work for them?”

Ilunga let out a raspy chuckle: “I don’t work for them. I’m local. My grandfather dug copper here back when the Belgians were still wearing knee pants. But the Israelis came along and claimed: we have a paper with a stamp. And we said: the land has the right of first claim. So disagreements arose.”

“So you’re rebels?”

“I don’t care for those big words,” Ilunga took a sip. “Rebels fought for an idea. We just want to live on our land and dig our ore… Sure, we sell on the black market. But it’s not a war. It’s survival.”

Leo nodded.

“And that dead white man found in the thicket? The one the hunter caught it from?”

Ilunga set his cup down on the concrete.

“I think he was from Southbridge.”

“A mercenary?”

“Possibly. They’ve got no fewer than thirty guns posted at their restricted facility. South Africans, Romanians, a couple of white guys from Kinshasa. Sitting behind electrified razor wire. They never come down to the village. Own well, own diesel generator, helipad. A state within a state. But occasionally they skulk through the woods. Patrol.”

“And one of them just walked off into the woods and died?”

“Or they wrote him off themselves,” Ilunga raised a finger. “Strict rules in there. If someone starts drinking, losing his mind, or getting hallucinations, they toss him out the gate. No weapon, no papers. No money. Local method of firing someone.”

“Have you seen that happen before?”

“I’ve seen bodies,” Ilunga replied quietly. “Twice. Ragged, beaten. One had a bullet in his back. But this guy of yours… no bruises on him?”

“No.”

“Then either he got thrown over the perimeter and croaked from the fever, or…”

“Or?”

“Or he didn’t flee. Or he left on his own because he found something at the mine that broke his mind.”

“What could be found there?”

“You asked about the ore?” Ilunga leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “The company declares rare earths. But my guys who hired on to do road grading said they’re digging the mine shaft far too deep. You don’t need those depths for neodymium. They’re looking for something else down there. And security isn’t posted to keep us out. They’re guarding whatever lies at the bottom.”

“Uranium?”

Ilunga shrugged noncommittally: “Maybe uranium.”

Leo finished his whiskey. The rich oak aroma blended with the scent of night dampness.

“And is it here?”

“Uranium?.. It is. Or was… But there’s something worse…”

“You believe tales like that?”

“I believe my eyes,” Ilunga replied. “And my eyes see: as soon as IC Waze broke through the deep layer, people around here started dropping. First one. Then two. The hunter. Then the miner. You came here and call it an ‘epidemic.’ But I say: it’s not a disease. It’s a response.”

“A response?”

“The elders say that’s how the earth responds,” Ilunga looked at Leo intently. “To those who’ve forgotten how to treat her.”

A silence fell, filled with the chirp of night cicadas and the distant ticking of the cooling diesel engine. Ilunga shifted his gaze to Leo’s right wrist.

“Where did you get that thing?” he asked.

Leo glanced at the metal: “Bought it in Kinshasa. From a street vendor. He swore it was a protective amulet.”

Ilunga smiled crookedly.

“Market peddlers don’t sell stuff like this,” he remarked  softly. “This is forged metal. Real. From a lineage holding the secrets of the copper smiths. There are only two or three of them left in all of Katanga. Every hoop like this is forged specifically for a person. They aren’t sold for pennies. They’re passed from hand to hand.”

Leo looked down at the spiral patterns and notches stamped into the dark copper.

“And what’s engraved here?”

Ilunga leaned closer. His calloused finger with a battered nail hovered over the metal without touching the skin.

“I’m no sorcerer,” he said. “But reading the sign… to me, the spirals are open-pit mines. Ever seen what an open-pit mine looks like from above? Circles descending into the depths. Earth turned inside out. And the tiny dots around them are people. Small, trapped from all sides.”

“Trapped by what?”

“By the circles,” Ilunga straightened his back. “But that’s just my reading. I’m only a smuggler.”

Leo laughed softly. Ilunga let out a brief chuckle too.

“Are you married, Leo?” Ilunga asked suddenly.

Leo shook his head: “No. Not with this kind of life. Three months in Kenya, then Bangladesh, then Congo. What woman would wait for someone who constantly disappears into foreign quarantines?”

“There are those who would,” Ilunga remarked.

“Maybe. But I haven’t met one. What about you?”

Ilunga twirled the cup in his fingers, staring into the dark jungle.

“Married. Or listed as married. Our parents betrothed us when I was eleven and she was six. The elders decided it. Union of lands, security guarantees. Just like old times. She lives far from here. And I’m here. Between us is a piece of paper, a couple of ritual phrases, and a copper ring I took off and hung on a nail back home.”

“Does she love you?”

“I don’t know. Never asked. In marriages arranged in heaven but lived out on cold earth, people don’t ask those questions.”

Leo said nothing. The image of Imani rose in his mind once more. The curve of her neck, the feel of her fingers on his shoulder, the scent of an unfamiliar flower that still hadn’t faded from his lungs—as though that aroma had become part of his very breath.

Ilunga got up from the concrete block. He stretched his shoulders.

“Time to go. My guys will drive Mwepu to the village and set him up on a bale.”

They shook hands. Ilunga’s palm was dry and hot, with hard calluses at the base of his fingers.

Leo walked him to the Pajero. The fighters had already laid Mwepu on the back seat—he reclined, cradling his bandaged leg against his chest.

Ilunga opened the door, but before getting in, he turned around: “Leo.”

“Yeah?”

“If that white guy from the forest was from Southbridge… The patrol was moving south with purpose. You get it? They were heading straight for your camp. They were after him.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“It means they’ll come. If not today, then tomorrow. Or the day after. They have thirty pros with assault rifles, night vision, and a direct line to Pretoria. And you’ve got four canvas tents, a handful of soldiers, and a Frenchman chewing instant coffee granules.”

“Thanks for the truth.”

“Take care of yourself, Doctor.” Ilunga hopped into the cab. The diesel engine roared, kicking up clumps of red mud beneath the wheels.

The old SUV turned around and rattled down the forest road. Its two headlight beams sliced through the nocturnal darkness of the jungle like a sharp blade slicing through heavy cloth—smoothly and inevitably.

Leo stood at the perimeter of the camp, watching it go. The clattering rumble of the engine gradually melted into the endless, deafening drone of the cicadas.

Chapter Seven. The Raid →
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