Читать книгу Target Response: - William W. Johnstone - Страница 5

Jungle hell.

Kilroy had survived and thrived in some of the world’s worst:

The upper reaches of the Amazon where the borders of Brazil and Venezuela blur into each other in a steaming green inferno whose denizens had long ago traded curare-tipped poison darts for shotguns and machetes.

The Suud, that near-impassable morass of hundreds of square miles of reeds and marshland where the White Nile flows south toward the desert flats below Khartoum.

The emerald forests deep in the interior of New Guinea where tribal folk still follow the practices of cannibalism and head-hunting.

The bamboo thickets and teak forests of Myanmar’s Shan State where Burmese warlords and their private armies war incessantly for control of the lucrative opium and heroin trade.

From the Congo to the Philippines, from the Solomon Islands to the Florida Everglades, in some of the planet’s wildest places, Major Joseph Kilroy, U.S. Army, had plied his peculiar trade and come out not only alive but victorious.

Kilroy—the killer.

Now a strange destiny whose source lay in the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. and the corporate boardrooms of Manhattan had led him here to a deadly showdown in the swamplands of the West African coast.

It was in the fan-shaped Niger River delta where that great watercourse flows into the sea by a hundred nameless tributaries. Here, well east of the port city of Lagos, in one of the innumerable mangrove swamps dotting the coastline, Kilroy prepared to make his breakout.

He’d been penned in the swamp for three days and three nights, hunted and harried by his foes. He’d have made his break long ago if he’d been alone. But he had a partner.

When the enemy first struck their treacherous blow, Kilroy had fled into the swamp with Captain Bill Raynor. He and Raynor were the sole survivors of a ten-person Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) team on a covert investigative mission to Nigeria. The clandestine operation required them to pose as civilians.

The other eight members of the team had perished when an explosion destroyed their plane in midair shortly after taking off from a Lagos airfield. They were homeward bound to deliver the results of the fact-finding mission to their handlers in the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

The hidden bomb that blew them and their aircraft to bits had also destroyed the evidence they’d amassed during their probe. Damning evidence that incontrovertibly proved that a leading global corporation had conspired against vital national security interests of the United States.

Sheer chance had prevented Kilroy and Raynor from being on board the doomed flight. They’d been scheduled to depart with the others but a last-minute change in plans had resulted in their separating themselves from the team to follow up a hot investigative lead that took them to the Vurukoo oil fields.

Raynor was an investigator, a veteran sleuth from the U.S. Army Military Police’s Criminal Investigation Division, on loan to the DIA for the Nigerian probe.

Kilroy was no detective. He was a specialist, a trigger-puller supreme. A troubleshooter. His motto: “When I find trouble, I shoot it.”

He was a member of the Army’s ultrasecret assassination arm, the Dog Team.

In the secret vaults where the Army’s black ops files were kept, Kilroy held the rank of major. He outranked Captain Raynor, but was content to outwardly play an unassuming subordinate role as part of his cover. His assignment was to keep Raynor alive.

The two of them had been in their tent in the Vurukoo oil patch when they had learned by radio that their DIA teammates had been blown out of the sky.

Moments later, the enemy had struck.

They had come in the form of a company of well-armed Nigerian troops, an elite unit of hand-picked soldiers from the capital who’d each sworn a loyalty oath to Minister of Defense Derek Tayambo. One of the most powerful and dangerous figures in the government’s ruling cabinet in Lagos, Tayambo was a key player in a continent-spanning terrorist conspiracy.

There’d barely been been time for the two Americans to grab some arms and provisions and flee the oil fields before the attackers swooped down on them in force. Blocked from the land route, the duo fled into the swamp.

Now Kilroy and Raynor had two deadly threats to contend with: their pursuers and the swamp itself.

The swamp was rank marshland half flooded by overspill from the Rada and Kondo branches of the Niger River in oil-rich Vurukoo province. It knew two states of being: gloomy daylight and darkness.

The scene could have been from earth’s primeval dawn hundreds of millions of years ago:

Twisted mangrove trees writhed in eerie shapes, their snaky boughs intertwining to form a canopy of foliage that kept the swamp below locked in a perpetual daytime dusk. Contorted roots formed a gnarly woodwork web that floored land and water. Patches of solid ground were few and far between. Black stinking mud was everywhere.

Weed-tufted islets were honeycombed by slow-flowing channels that frequently pooled into ponds and lagoons. A layer of jade green scum topped dark stagnant water. Here was the haunt of crocodiles, snakes, and insects.

The heat was seething; the humidity, stifling. A murky haze overhung the steaming water. The air was thick with swarming clouds of flying insect pests. Stinging mosquitoes, biting flies, and noxious gnats that flew into eyes, mouths, and nostrils.

At the height of the pursuit, there must have been 150 troops fanning out into the swamp and environs in search of Kilroy and Raynor.

The swamp at least was impartial. It was hostile to all human trespassers in its domain, be they transplanted Yankees or homegrown Nigerians.

Nigeria’s population is 55 percent Muslim and 45 percent Christian. The traditionalist Muslims of the dry northern uplands and the dynamic, business-oriented Christians of the south have a long history of bitter rivalry.

Most of Minister Tayambo’s company of loyalist troops were Muslims from the arid north. The others were mostly city and town dwellers from the coast. The swamp fought and hindered them as it did the Americans they hunted.

No human antagonist but rather a lethal swamp dweller was to spell doom for Bill Raynor. It got him at midday of the second day that he and Kilroy were in the marsh.

The previous thirty-six hours had been a nightmare ordeal of hunger, thirst, fatigue, privation, and harrowing danger for the two men.

They’d managed to scrounge up a single canteen of fresh water and a couple of handfuls of foil-wrapped Meals, Ready-to-Eat (MREs) before taking it on the run. Kilroy was armed with an AK-47 with a single banana clip containing about thirty rounds, a .44 Magnum handgun, and a wicked foot-long survival knife in a belt sheath.

Raynor had an M-16 with a single clip and a 9mm Beretta semiautomatic pistol with one clip loaded and a couple of spares in his pockets.

The initial attack had come swiftly, without warning. Only the chaos and confusion of its opening moments had allowed them to grab those minimal armaments and rations before cutting a hole in the rear of the canvas tent they’d been occupying in the camp and fleeing for their lives as hostile troops invaded the oil fields.

Even so it had been a close-run thing, with enemy bullets nipping at their heels as they disappeared into the brush at the edge of the swamp.

Since then Kilroy and Raynor had been playing a murderous game of hide-and-seek with their pursuers. The hunt was relentless, going on day and night. By the second day the ordeal was seriously taking its toll on the fugitives.

The swamp water was undrinkable, a hell-broth of deadly germs and impurities. Kilroy and Raynor strictly rationed the precious store of clean water in the single canteen they shared, limiting themselves to a single mouthful each every few hours. Despite which, the water level in the canteen declined with alarming rapidity.

It was a losing game. They sweated out more fluid than they took in—the threat of dehydration loomed. There could be no boiling of the swamp water to purify it. They couldn’t risk betraying their position to the hunters with telltale fire and smoke.

Hunger, too, made its inroads on their dwindling reserves of strength and energy. Between them they had about a half dozen MREs. They stretched out their food stores, making them last. Their mostly empty bellies were knotted with want.

No less pressing was the lack of ammo. They evaded the troops as best they could to preserve what limited rounds they had. Sometimes there was no getting around a clash. When discovery by one of the roving bands of hunters seemed imminent, the fugitives opened fire.

Kilroy was a dead shot. Each time he pulled the trigger, he killed a man. Raynor was a marksman but nowhere in Kilroy’s league. Kilroy was world-class. Trouble was, he had too few bullets.

By Day Two the thirty-round banana clip of his assault rifle had been cut in half, with a dead Nigerian trooper for every expended round. His high-powered .44 had a greater reserve of ammo to draw on. Kilroy wore the long-barreled revolver on a belt holster and the gun belt sported about twenty loaded cartridge loops.

He now wore the gun belt over his shoulder, with the holstered .44 hanging butt-out under his left arm. He’d rigged the weapon that way to keep it dry during the many crossings of waist-high water he’d had to endure.

Even when wielded by an expert such as he, though, a handgun was no match for the enemy’s assault rifles and small machine guns. Kilroy had no desire for working that close to the foe.

He and Raynor had killed about two dozen of the opposition since the pursuit began, but at no time had they been able to get close enough to the dead to scavenge their weapons, food, or water. They were constantly forestalled by the nearness of other packs of manhunters, who at the sound of gunfire gave out a hue and cry and closed in to resume the chase.

The fugitives had a simple plan: lose their pursuers, break out of the swamp, and then steal a ground vehicle or boat and beat it back to Lagos.

The goal seemed a long way off. So far it had taken their best efforts merely to stay alive and keep ahead of the foe, a course that had resulted in driving them deeper into the swamp.

Disaster struck on the second day.

Infrequent breaks in the canopy of foliage overhead revealed a heavy, overcast sky. A pale disk of sun smoldered behind gray clouds. The dusky gloom deepened as the steamy heat increased.

Kilroy and Raynor were approaching the ragged edge of exhaustion. The night before, they’d managed to grab several fitful hours of sleep, doled out in small doses when the pursuit slackened.

Soldiers sought them by night, bearing flashlights and flaming torches. Some came on foot, others in small boats.

During the intervals when they’d temporarily outdistanced their pursuers, Kilroy and Raynor took turns, one standing watch while the other snatched a portion of troubled sleep.

All too soon, a glimmer of light, a shouted voice, a splash or crash in the underbrush warned that the hunters were nearing. The fugitives would flog their fatigued bodies into motion, plunging deeper into the swamp as the chase began again.

Now, at midday of the second day, Kilroy and Raynor continued to push their way onward, stumbling along like automatons.

They came upon a rare stretch of solid ground, a low rise covered with thigh-high reeds that opened into a glade. Kilroy thought to himself that they’d finally caught a break, if only for the moment. Hard ground instead of muck to stand on, and a respite from the relentless pursuit that dogged their trail.

Raynor lurched forward, staggering, almost falling. He reached out, resting a hand on a gnarled tree trunk to support himself. He paused for an instant, left arm extended straight from the shoulder, clutching vine-wrapped tree bark, heavy head bowed, looking down as he labored for breath.

Suddenly he cried out in surprise and pain, pulling his arm back as though it had been burned. The cry echoed through the trees.

A black, ribbonlike wriggler clung to his bare forearm.

At first Kilroy thought Raynor had been bitten by a snake. The swamp teemed with them, most of them venomous. Kilroy had already had more than one close brush with green mambas. He’d given the grass-green reptiles a wide berth, knowing the mamba for one of the world’s most virulent and aggressive species of poisonous snakes.

No serpent had battened onto Raynor, however. He’d been bitten by a foot-long black centipede.

Features contorted with pain, breath hissing through clenched teeth, Raynor used his free hand to grab the segmented crawler.

“Don’t!—” Kilroy began, but he was too late.

Raynor tore the creature free from his arm, threw it down on the ground, and stomped it, crushing it beneath his boot sole.

Kilroy went to him. “Ain’t that a bitch?” Raynor said, mustering up a sickly grin.

Kilroy examined the other’s arm. The centipede’s head was still attached to it. It had buried twin pincerlike mandibles deep into Raynor’s flesh, where they clung so tenaciously that when Raynor had tried to free himself from their biting grip, its segmented body had torn loose from its head.

The walnut-sized head had a smooth, shiny, helmetlike black carapace. The centipede’s primitive but tough nervous system kept its severed head alive even though separated from its body.

“Fucker doesn’t want to let go,” Raynor said, making an effort to keep his voice flat, even-toned. He reached for the head to pry it loose but Kilroy stopped him.

“You don’t want the jaws to break loose and stay in your flesh,” Kilroy said.

“I’m not going to keep its head for a souvenir,” Raynor gritted.

“It’ll have to be burned off,” said Kilroy.

There was no place to sit but on the ground—and who knew what else might be lurking in the weeds. This was prime snake country, and with the abundance of blackwater channels, crocodiles were never too far away, either. Better to administer the treatment with Raynor standing up.

Kilroy unbuttoned the flap of the left breast pocket of his safari-style shirt and took out a cigarette lighter, a heavy-duty metal job with a nonreflective matte black finish. “This’ll hurt,” he said.

“It already hurts, so go ahead,” Raynor said.

Kilroy flicked on the lighter, a trusty model that had served him well in the past. It did not fail him now but burned with a steady yellow flame. He liked his cigars, and if he’d had one available he would have lit it and applied the hot end directly to the centipede’s head. But he didn’t, so he used a broken twig instead. The twig was sodden with dampness and took a bit of time to ignite. When he got the pointed end of it going he blew on it, fanning it into a glowing orange red ember.

He pressed the tip against the centipede’s head where it butted up against Raynor’s flesh, right at the midpoint of the black helmeted carapace where its clawlike mandibles were buried in the muscle of the forearm.

There was a hissing sound as the twig’s hot point met ebony exoskeleton. A line of nasty-smelling smoke rose from the area of contact.

The creature’s eyes were a pair of shiny black beads on opposite sides of its globed head. They rolled wildly during the burning. Its severed head twitched and jerked.

Raynor’s body was taut, quivering. Veins stood out on his face, his neck cording. His skin was sallow under its bronze tan, misted with a sheen of cold sweat.

Blind instinct caused the centipede’s head to retreat from the stimulus of the burning point applied to it. Its curved mandibles retracted partway, wickedly barbed tips still penetrating the flesh.

Kilroy touched the flame once more to the point of the twig, reheating the fading orange tip before applying it to the centipede’s head again.

Raynor groaned. With a final wriggling spasm the mandibles pulled free and the centipede’s head fell to the ground with a soft plopping sound. Raynor let out with a gasp the breath he’d been holding.

The job was only half done. Like most denizens of the swamp, the centipede was toxic. It injected venom along with its bite.

Kilroy freed his knife from its belt sheath. He ran the lighter flame along the razor-sharp edge near the tip of the blade, sterilizing it as best he could.

His free hand gripped Raynor’s wrist, steadying the other’s arm. The bite was on the top of the forearm. The area was already swollen into an egg-sized red bump. Kilroy made an X-cut over the affected area. Raynor bit down on the edge of his shirt collar to keep from crying out. There was a smell of scorched hair and flesh.

Kilroy knew better than to try to suck out the venom. That would risk poisoning himself. No, that doctrine was exploded. His fingers gripped the flesh around the bite area and squeezed, expelling globs of blood streaked with brown mucouslike veins, spilling it to the ground. He was careful not to get any of the stuff on him.

Raynor shuddered like a wet dog shaking itself dry.

The metal lighter grew too hot to handle. Kilroy paused for a moment until it cooled off. He then held the flame against the flat of the tip of the blade, heating it until it took on a dull red glow. He pressed it against the wound, cauterizing it.

Raynor’s legs started to fold at the knees. Kilroy got an arm around him, holding him up until the spasm passed.

“I’m okay,” Raynor rasped, his voice a croak. He didn’t sound okay.

Kilroy cut a long strip from the bottom of his shirt and used it as a makeshift bandage to wrap the bitten area of Raynor’s forearm.

“Stupid of me,” Raynor said, shaking his head. “I put my hand on the tree without looking and the damned thing got a piece of me.”

“Look at the bright side—at least it wasn’t your gun hand,” Kilroy said.

“Yeah, sure…”

“Take a drink of water,” Kilroy said, indicating the canteen hanging from a strap around Raynor’s neck and across his shoulder.

Raynor shook his head. “That’s all right. Let’s get going.”

“Doctor’s orders. It’ll give you a boost and you need one now.”

“No—”

“Quit fucking around and do it. You can play hero later.”

Raynor unslung the canteen and screwed off the cap, which was secured to it by a tiny length of chain. He held the canteen to his lips and tilted his head back, taking a mouthful. He swirled the water around in his mouth before swallowing, the muscles of his throat working painfully.

He held out the canteen to Kilroy. “Not thirsty,” Kilroy said.

“Now who’s playing hero? Cut the shit,” Raynor said.

Kilroy accepted the canteen, taking a small swig from it. The water was warm, almost hot, but the wetness was refreshing. He screwed the cap back on and reached toward Raynor to return it.

“You keep it,” Raynor said.

Kilroy made a face. “Aw, for chrissakes—”

“You’ll be doing me a favor. It’s one less thing for me to worry about.”

“All right, but only because it’s easier than arguing about it. We’ve wasted enough time here already,” Kilroy said. He fitted the strap over his head and slung the canteen down along his side.

A faint noise behind him caused Kilroy to glance back over his shoulder toward the far end of the glade, the way they’d come. There was a rustling in the brush and a flicker of motion in the bushes about thirty yards away.

A Nigerian soldier in olive drab fatigues parted the foliage and stepped into view in the open. He saw Kilroy and Raynor as he entered the glade. He froze for a beat, then shouted something and reached for the rifle strapped over his left shoulder.

Kilroy already had his AK-47 raised, shouldered, and swinging toward the newcomer. The selector was set for single shots. He squeezed the trigger. The rifle barked.

The trooper fell backward, dead. The space that he’d been occupying opened up, affording a view of several more soldiers positioned in single file along a trail reaching back through the brush.

Kilroy shot the next man in line. The others jumped to the sides, taking cover.

Angry shouts and shots erupted along the trail. A racketing clamor of autofire erupted. The soldiers weren’t aiming at anything they could see—they were just shooting into the glade in the direction from which the gunfire had come.

Other shouts sounded in the near distance, coming from the right and left of the trail, the voices of other hunting bands calling out to their comrades under fire.

Hot rounds zipped through the air, smacking tree limbs and cutting down branches. They all fell wide of the mark, but once the troopers got their bearings and augmented their numbers with reinforcements, they’d zero in on their targets.

Kilroy’s expression was rueful. If he only had a tenth of the ammunition they were so prodigally expending, he could clean house. But he didn’t, so—

It was time to move out.

“Here we go again,” he said sourly.

Crouching low, he and Raynor scrambled into the brush on the near side of the glade, disappearing behind a tangle of green.

The chase was on again.

By midafternoon they seemed to have lost their pursuers. One thing that couldn’t be outrun, though, was the poison in Bill Raynor’s system. Raynor had been favoring his left arm, the limb that had been bitten by the black centipede, holding it close to his side, using it as little as possible.

He and Kilroy were making their way through a patch of dense scrub brush. Kilroy was a few paces ahead, blazing the trail. The ground was spongy underfoot, the tangled foliage bunched up close.

Raynor stumbled, bumping into a low, shrub-like tree with his left side. He gasped, trying to regain his balance. He grabbed a tree branch with his right hand, steadying himself.

Kilroy looked back. Raynor stood frozen, eyes squeezed shut, face a mask of agony. Kilroy caught a glimpse of Raynor’s left arm. The forearm was swollen to twice its normal size.

Raynor opened his eyes; it took several beats before they came into focus. Kilroy went to him. “Let me see that arm,” he said.

“It’s nothing,” Raynor said.

“What affects you affects me. So let’s see.”

The arm was deep red from elbow to wrist. A paler red blush extended into the bicep area and the back of the hand, outriders of the crawler’s toxic contagion. Kilroy touched Raynor’s bare arm, careful to rest his fingertips well away from the bandaged area of the bite. The skin was hot to the touch.

Raynor’s glassy-orbed gaze met Kilroy’s clear-eyed appraisal without flinching. “It is what it is. Nothing to be done about it. It hasn’t reached my legs, so let’s keep moving. Cover as much ground as possible while it’s still daylight,” Raynor said.

Kilroy nodded. “You ready?”

“Lead on.”

Kilroy turned, resuming his forward progress. Now that his face was turned where Raynor couldn’t see it, his expression was worried. Not for himself but for Raynor.

Kilroy trudged onward, the other following. He caught himself listening for the sound of Raynor’s footfalls, to make sure he was keeping up behind him. Were they making progress?

Yes, of a sort, if progress was defined as putting some distance between them and the hunters. But their course was taking them not out of the swamp but ever deeper into it.

Kilroy glanced over his shoulder, back along the trail. “If you need a break, sing out,” he said.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll walk your ass into the ground,” Raynor said. His face was sallow, strained. He did not so much walk as stagger.

The slog into the morass continued. The two men didn’t talk much. They needed to save their breath for the hike, and besides, when they opened their mouths to speak, gnats flew into them.

The air was so heavy, so humid, it was as moisture-laden as it was possible to be without actually raining. Kilroy longed for a rainfall. It would give them a chance to slake their thirst and refill the canteen with fresh rainwater.

Distant thunder rumbled, but no drop of rain fell. Tortuous miles grew as the day lengthened and the gloom deepened.

They came to a basin, a shallow hollow several football fields in length. The boggy ground was a maze of dozens of small ponds linked by twisty creeks and threaded by narrow lanes of solid ground. There had been a fire here once, possibly caused by a lightning strike during the dry season. The basin was studded with skeletal remains of dead trees killed by the blaze. Most stood upright but a number of them had fallen, forming impromptu walkways and bridges.

Kilroy halted. “What are you stopping for?” Raynor demanded.

“I’m going to climb a tree and take a look around,” Kilroy said.

“Oh—sorry. Thought you were stopping on my account…”

“Don’t think so hard.”

Raynor sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree. He looked like hell—filthy, haggard, and exhausted—but so would any man who’d spent a day and a half in the swamp.

Kilroy figured he looked the same. What worried him was the haunted, feverish look in Raynor’s eyes and the way the bones of his skull showed beneath taut, yellowish skin. His face was taking on the semblance of a death’s head. And his left arm—it wasn’t good. The swelling had reached his hand and the red flush was stealing up into his shoulder.

Kilroy unslung his rifle and set it butt down on the ground, leaning it against the fallen tree.

He crossed to a nearby tree that he’d picked to use for his vantage point. It showed a number of limbs that had broken off close to the trunk, forming ladderlike handholds. The green fought to reclaim its fire-blighted hulk, wrapping it with a mass of flowering lianas and dangling vines.

Kilroy reached for a low-hanging limb that looked sturdy enough to support him and tested his weight against it.

It held, so he pulled himself up, knees and thighs gripping the trunk as he reached for the next handhold. He wedged a booted foot in the crotch where a branch joined the trunk, affording him a steady platform. He groped for the next handhold and mounted higher.

In this fashion he scaled the tree. His ascent was not without incident. More than once, a branch that he tested snapped off under his hand and fell to the ground. That’s what testing is for. When it happened he was braced and ready with a solid perch beneath him. But it always came as an unpleasant discovery.

The noise was the worst part, for a dead tree limb breaks with a sharp, sudden crack like a rifle report, and it sounded dangerously loud in his ears. The first time it happened, it started a sudden flight of birds from a nearby tree. They took to the air as one, scattering in all directions. Kilroy worried that the sound or sight would draw the attention of nearby spotters.

He did not climb straight up the tree. The branches were not uniformly steady enough for that. He followed a spiraling course up and around the trunk. When he was fifty feet above the ground he stopped. That was high enough. None of the branches above him looked able to hold his weight.

In his treetop perch Kilroy took his bearings. Heat, haze, clouds, and the long shadows of falling day all conspired to obscure his vision and blur the view, hemming in the horizon.

Below, swampland extended in all directions out and away from him. No structures, no signs of human habitation showed as far as the eye could see. A pale sun disk hung about thirty degrees above the western horizon, floating amid towering gray clouds.

Nearer, a quarter mile west of the basin, a branch of the river wound and coiled its way down from the north, sluggishly flowing south. The water was so brown it was almost black, the color of coffee murky with coffee grounds.

Kilroy and Raynor had come down from the northwest, striking a roughly southeasterly course. Kilroy scanned the northwest quadrant, searching in vain for some sign of the derricks of the Vurukoo oil fields rising above the treeline. An unbroken vista of swampland unrolled toward the north.

East of the basin lay a vast tract of flooded forest, masses of gray-green foliage held in a web whose strands were channels of stagnant water.

South, the swamp extended to a low ridge that stretched east–west along the horizon. Beyond it, a tantalizing sliver of silver emptiness wavered at the limits of visibility. It glimmered like a mirage, winking in and out of sight.

That razor line of open space could be the Kondo, the big river into which all the water-courses of the swampland ultimately drained. An avenue of escape to the coast, the goal that he and Raynor sought.

That would make the water west of the basin the Rada River, which flowed southwest to meet the Kondo somewhere beyond the ridge.

Kilroy’s spirits lifted.

They received a swift check from a glimpse of motion on his right.

A boat rounded a bend of the Rada and came into view. A long, open bargelike boat with a stern-mounted motor. In it were about eight to ten men—soldiers armed with rifles.

The boat came downriver, creeping along at several miles per hour. There was something ominous in its slow, steady advance. It rippled the water’s surface with an arrow-shaped wake. Its stern was tailed by a thin, fan-shaped plume of blue-gray exhaust from the motor.

Now Kilroy could hear the engine’s stuttering putt-putt. He squirmed around on his perch, putting the tree trunk between him and the boat. The troops betrayed no sudden excitement or alarm, fired no shots. He guessed they hadn’t seen him.

On the far side of the river, a line of soldiers inched into view, marching south in single file on a path that ran along the top of the west bank. There was something about them suggestive of a column of ants.

Kilroy was unable to see the Rada’s east bank, hidden from him by an overhanging canopy of foliage. Was there a second column of soldiers prowling the river’s near side?

He didn’t intend to stick around and find out. He started his descent, covering behind the tree trunk as much as possible to screen himself from the hunters on and along the river.

He looked east, beyond the basin rim where a flooded forest was webbed by dozens of waterways. Several of the widest channels were speckled with objects floating on the surface. At this distance they were mere blurs, but they could have been small boats filled with more hunters.

Kilroy climbed down as quickly as he dared, careful to avoid breaking any branches, whose sharp cracking sound would alert the troops. About halfway down to the ground, he stepped onto what he thought was a sturdy branch—only to have it move underfoot.

Recoiling, he looked down. Coiled around the branch below was a huge snake, a python twenty feet long and as thick around as his thigh. Its scaly hide was brown with dark brown bands.

It writhed, its sinuous body one giant muscle. It lifted a massive, boxy head, yellow eyes glaring. Jaws gaped, baring a fanged maw and wicked forked tongue, as it hissed a warning.

Kilroy’s heart felt like it jumped up into his mouth as he was seized for an instant by primal fear. Adrenaline flooded him.

His nerve returned. He drew the survival knife from his belt sheath and brandished it, holding on to a branch with his other hand.

The python was curled around the branch below so that its swaying head was at the far end of the branch. A long upswooping curve of its neck raised its heavy head, bringing it to Kilroy’s eye level.

Kilroy knew that the python kills not by its bite but by constriction, wrapping its muscular coils around its prey and crushing the life out of it. Lethal or not, though, a bite from those curved and gleaming three-inch fangs would be no picnic. The python also uses its hard head as a club to stun its victim into insensibility.

He and the python were eye to eye. “I’ll cut your fucking head off,” Kilroy rasped throatily. He wasn’t sure he believed it, and he didn’t think the python did, either.

The python hissed in response, a sound like the venting of a steam engine.

Steadily eyeing the serpent, Kilroy squirmed away from it, circling to the other side of the trunk. One foot extended, he felt around with it until he found a lower branch opposite that wasn’t occupied by the python.

Clenching the flat of his blade between his teeth to free his hand, Kilroy hastily climbed from his perch, scrambling down the side of the tree. Coming to a branch twelve feet above the ground, he gripped it in both hands, extended his arms full length beneath it, and hang-dropped to the earth below. Soft, marshy soil cushioned his fall, which he took on bent legs.

The python remained where it was on the branch, looping its head around the trunk to follow Kilroy’s progress. Kilroy scrambled out from under the tree.

Raynor was on his feet, holding the M-16 in one hand, muzzle angled toward the serpent. Kilroy sheathed his knife, securing the butt strap that held it in place. “Don’t shoot—he’s harmless.”

Raynor laughed without mirth. “That must be why you got down that tree so fast.”

Kilroy grabbed his rifle. The python made no move to pursue. Kilroy gave the snake a dirty look. “You’re lucky I didn’t turn you into a pair of cowboy boots, you prick,” he said to it.

The python seemed unimpressed.

“What’d you see up there? Apart from your new buddy, that is,” Raynor asked.

“One of those good news, bad news deals,” Kilroy said. “The bad news is that there’re troops a quarter mile west of us. There’s a river there—the Rada, I think. They’ve got a boat looking for us. Ground troops, too.”

“How many?”

“A shitload. There’s a flooded area to our east. Looked like there were boats out there, too.”

“And the good news?”

“There’s a big river to the south. The Kondo, the one that’ll take us to the coast.”

Raynor showed his teeth in a forced grin. “How far, Kilroy?”

That was the question. On foot through the swamp, while being sought by a small army? And Raynor with a skinful of poison, his condition worsening by the hour?

“How far?” Raynor repeated.

“A day’s march,” Kilroy said, not sugarcoating it, giving it to him straight. Raynor’s face fell, his expression one of defeat.

“Or a couple of hours by boat,” Kilroy added quickly.

“We don’t have a boat,” Raynor said. “Why not wish for an airplane while you’re at it?”

“We’ll steal one or hijack it from the Nigerians. If it comes to it, we can build a raft and float downstream on it by night.”

“It’s a plan, anyway.” Raynor’s tone was bleak.

He and Kilroy resumed their trek, crossing south across the basin. Not much of a hike if they had been able to move in a straight line. But the swamp offered few straightaways and no easy routes.

It was a journey of constant detours, zigzagging between isolated spans of solid ground too soon interrupted by marshy bogs, impenetrable thickets, and channels too deep to ford.

Several hours passed before they neared the basin’s south rim. The way was barred by a belt of black muck some fifteen feet wide.

Kilroy used his knife to cut off the branches of a slender sapling, trimming it down to an eight-foot pole. Toeing the edge of the black belt, he probed the mud with the pole. The stuff was deeper than a man’s height.

Not quicksand, but quickmud.

Twenty yards away, a fallen tree stretched across the black belt at right angles. It had once stood on the far side but had toppled toward the near side, forming a natural bridge that spanned the quickmud. The trunk was largely bare of branches where it crossed the obstacle; it was three feet in diameter, its rounded upper surface partly covered by patches of moss.

Raynor handed Kilroy his M-16. “You take it. My sense of balance is a little shaky. I wouldn’t want to fall in and foul it.”

“You won’t,” Kilroy said, but he took the weapon, slinging it over his left shoulder.

Raynor went first, stepping up onto the fallen tree.

“Easy,” Kilroy said. “Take whatever time you need.”

“The longer I stand here dicking around, the more likely I am to fall,” said Raynor.

“Cross it on hands and knees if you have to.”

Raynor shook his head. “My best chance is to scoot across.” He stood sideways, leading with his left side. His legs were spread wider than shoulder width apart. “Here goes nothing,” he said.

He edged across the tree like a basketball player moving sideways downcourt. He lifted his left foot, moving it forward, planting it securely before lifting his right foot and advancing it. A mechanical style but it seemed to be working for him.

He reached the midpoint of the tree before his foot slipped. He cut off a choked cry, fighting for balance. He regained his footing and sidestepped quickly, hurrying to the far side.

Raynor had reached the opposite bank when he pitched forward, falling headfirst toward the serpentine tangle of dirt-encrusted roots that spread umbrella-like from the base of the downed tree.

His right arm flailed around seeking a handhold to arrest his fall, not finding one. He fell heavily on his left side. Gnarled roots cushioned his fall. Still, he shrieked with pain.

His outcry pierced the thick, oppressive air.

A troop of monkeys clustered in a nearby tree fled, startled, loosing a chorus of shrillings and chatterings as they scrambled to the tips of the boughs and flung themselves through empty space to a neighboring treetop.

Kilroy nimbly crossed the tree bridge to the opposite side. Raynor lay still, unmoving, tangled in brownish-white root work. His eyes were squeezed shut; pencil-thick veins stood out on his forehead.

“Bill. Bill!” Kilroy said in a hoarse stage whisper, gripping the other’s right shoulder.

Raynor stirred, groaning. His eyelids fluttered, opening on pain-dulled orbs. “Huh?…Must’ve blacked out for a second,” he muttered.

Kilroy helped Raynor extricate himself from the mass of roots. He held him under the arm, steadying him. Raynor shivered. Kilroy guided him to the tree the monkeys had quitted, easing him down so he sat with his back propped up against the trunk.

The monkeys swarmed the upper boughs of a nearby tree. They were small creatures, each measuring about eighteen inches long from head to toe pads, with long, thin, curling tails. They had short brown fur, black snouts, and gray bellies. Still agitated, they howled and screeched down at the human intruders.

Dusk was falling fast; shadows thickened in the basin’s gloom. In the thinning light Kilroy eyed Raynor.

Raynor’s bitten left arm was grotesquely swollen from fingertips to shoulder. His hand was thick and clumsy as if covered by a gardening glove, with fingers the size of sausage links. Beyond the arm itself, the creeping red flush denoting the poison’s progress had spread to his neck and the top of his chest.

Kilroy started at what sounded like distant shouts. They were hard to distinguish over the monkeys’ clamorings.

Alert, intent, he listened for a repetition of the shouting. None came, and he’d almost convinced himself that his ears had been playing tricks on him when there came the sound of a shot.

A dull, flat cracking report that came from a good distance away, but all the same, a shot. A few beats later, a second shot sounded, as if in response to the first.

With no visual referents it was hard to determine from what direction a sound emanated, but it seemed to Kilroy as though both shots had come from somewhere to the west, beyond the basin.

The reports further stirred up the monkeys, sending them into fresh screams of outrage and abuse.

“We’re in for it now,” Raynor said. “Sorry.”

“Can you walk?” Kilroy asked.

“Sure. Give me a hand up.”

Kilroy gripped Raynor’s right hand and helped him to his feet. Raynor swayed, then recovered his balance.

“I’m useless. Take off while you’ve still got a chance,” Raynor said.

“Don’t talk stupid,” Kilroy said.

“Face the facts—I’m done.”

“Hell, if you can stand, you can walk. If you can’t, I’ll carry you.”

“You’ve already carried me long enough, Kilroy. Too long.”

“Don’t throw in the towel now, Bill, not when we’re so close to the river.”

Raynor shook his head. “Alone, you can make it. Not with me. The poison bite’s getting to me…. It’ll finish me off soon anyway.”

“Guys have lived through worse than that and so will you,” Kilroy said. “Hey, I’m supposed to be bodyguarding you. What’re you trying to do, make me look bad by dying on me?”

Raynor forced a smile. It was pretty ghastly—Kilroy could see the skull behind that smile.

“Do I have to carry you out of here? Because we’ve got to go and I ain’t leaving you behind,” Kilroy said.

“You hardheaded bastard. All right, I’ll stick for now. You can let go of me,” Raynor said.

Kilroy released his grip on the other’s arm, standing ready to catch him if it looked like he was going to fall. Raynor lurched, steadying himself by taking a wider stance. “Okay, I’m all right. I may just be able to do you some good yet. Give me the weapon,” he said.

“Now you’re talking,” Kilroy said, grabbing up the M-16 and handing it to Raynor. Raynor slung it over his right shoulder.

A lot of dead wood littered the ground. Kilroy found a likely-looking branch and picked it up. It was three feet long, solid, mostly straight, with a knob at one end. He tested his weight against it; it seemed sturdy enough.

“Here, use it as a cane,” he said.

Raynor shook his head. “Don’t need it.”

“Maybe you don’t need it now but you might later. What the hell, when you run out of ammo you can throw it at the enemy,” Kilroy said. Raynor took it.

Twigs and pieces of rotten fruit from above began pelting the ground around the two men.

“The monkeys are throwing them at us. Let’s get out of here before they start throwing something else,” Kilroy said.

He and Raynor started up the long, shallow slope leading out of the basin. It was a relatively dry spot of ground, watery mud oozing up to only the tops of their boot soles with every step.

After a few tentative strides Raynor began using the makeshift cane to brace himself. He lurched along like a drunken man but kept moving.

The slope was covered with spindly ten-foot-tall trees whose interlaced boughs formed a thin but more or less continuous canopy. The duo slogged to the crest of the slope, the southern rim of the basin.

It was a low elevation but still provided a vantage point of sorts. Ash-gray shadows pooled in the hollows of the landscape, thickening and thrusting east. Through a gap in the trees a stretch of the river could be seen.

On the far side of the crest, a short downgrade slanted into a broad valley whose low point was cut by a sluggish blackwater channel that ran roughly east–west.

At the west end of the valley it joined the river bordering the rim of the basin, the Rada River, upon which Kilroy had earlier seen the barge and on its far bank a column of troops. Neither were now in view.

“We’ll go downhill and follow the creek to the river,” Kilroy said. Raynor grunted assent. He was saving his breath for walking.

He and Kilroy descended into the valley. The hillside was covered with the same type of spidery, stunted trees that covered the inner wall of the basin.

At the bottom of the hill the ground leveled off into a muddy field thick with knee-high weeds. The spidery trees thinned here, giving way to tangles of scrub brush that screened off much of the surroundings, forming a kind of maze.

The foliage ended near the channel, leaving a five-foot-wide strip of bare earth bordering the edge of the north bank. The strip was a game trail, its muddy surface marked by the hoofprints and paw marks of the creatures that used it.

The bank ended suddenly, dropping three feet straight down to the water below. That explained why the trail was bare of the basking crocodiles that sunned themselves on riverbanks where the water was easier to access.

Kilroy and Raynor paused under the foliage at the edge of the tree line. Shadowy stillness was broken by the gurgling sounds of slow-running water.

Kilroy reached out to part the bushes. Raynor’s good hand clutched the other’s shoulder. “Kilroy,” he began, soft-voiced, “if I don’t make it—”

“You will,” Kilroy said.

“If I don’t, when you reach Lagos, don’t trust Thurlow,” Raynor said.

Ward Thurlow was the CIA agent who’d been the primary liaison with the Pentagon’s investigative unit, the team of which Kilroy and Raynor were now the only two survivors.

“You’ll make it. But why Thurlow?” Kilroy asked.

“I’ve done plenty of thinking since we took it on the run, turning the facts over in my head and trying to make sense of them. I keep coming to one conclusion: it had to be Thurlow who fingered the team to Tayambo,” Raynor said.

“I never had much use for the guy, but how do you figure him for the Judas?”

“Process of elimination. That the others were flying back to Washington yesterday was a closely held secret. So was the fact that you and I were nosing around at the Vurukoo fields. But only Thurlow was in a position to know both.”

“Well…” Kilroy was doubtful.

“There’s more,” Raynor said quickly. “I was suspicious of the extent of Thurlow’s contacts in the Lagos power structure. He was too chummy with the Tayambo crowd at the Ministry of Defense, always trying to steer the investigation away from them,” Raynor said, sounding short of breath.

“You’re the detective. I’m just a trigger-puller. If that’s your theory, I’ll buy it.”

“Listen, Kilroy. When you get clear of this mess, drop out of sight. Don’t use any of the usual channels to get out of the country. Our system here is compromised, rotten. Drop off the radar and go black. Not just the agency’s radar, the Pentagon’s radar, too. That way you might have a chance of getting out alive.”

“I’ve got contacts in Lagos and alternate ways out. We’ll use ’em both,” Kilroy said. “But first we’ll roast Thurlow over a slow fire and get some answers out of him before feeding him to the crocs.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Raynor said, smiling wanly.

“I’ll go first, scout along the trail. Wait here till I tell you it’s all clear,” Kilroy said.

He parted a couple of leafy branches, stepping out onto the trail. He stood in a half crouch, rifle leveled, looking, listening. He nodded to Raynor, who was watching him from behind the screen of brush.

Kilroy faced west and began moving forward. The valley was thick with gray gloom, giving it a feeling of unreality. A ribbon of open sky showed above the channel. Heavy clouds hung low over the treetops.

Kilroy advanced twenty, thirty yards. The hush was intense. Even the insects had momentarily fallen silent.

A flock of flying things suddenly burst out of the trees, the flapping of their wings seeming unnaturally loud as they broke the silence.

They flew in a rising spiral, winged shapes swirling upward in a rushing whirlwind toward the open sky above the channel. Jagged black silhouettes were outlined against the backdrop of gray clouds.

They were not birds but bats. Bats! Hundreds of them. Something had spooked them from the boughs they clung to while waiting for the coming night.

Gunfire crackled on the trail behind Kilroy. Raynor shouted, “It’s a trap!”

Kilroy threw himself into the foliage bordering the path. His limbs got tangled up in a mess of vines, hampering his freedom of movement. Writhing, thrashing, he fought to break free and bring his weapon into play.

The scene came alive with shots, shouts, action.

Across the channel, on the south bank, a flashlight beam blazed into being. It lanced through the dusk, sweeping along the trail Kilroy had just quitted, searching for him. It swept east along the trail where a fusillade of gunfire sounded.

The beam picked out the scene of a deadly confrontation. A band of armed men maybe a dozen strong materialized on both sides of the creek about twenty yards east back of where Kilroy had left Raynor.

Ambushers!

Raynor’s cry of pain when he had fallen earlier must have alerted the troops scouring the riverbank to the west. They’d sent an advance guard east into the valley to close it off.

Now they were in motion, sealing the trap. But they’d moved too soon, alerting Raynor, who opened fire on them.

Raynor stepped out into the open on the north bank, facing east. He stood swaying, holding the butt of the M-16 braced against his right hip, firing it one-handed at the soldiers charging at him on his side of the channel.

A round tagged a Nigerian trooper in the middle, chopping him down. Several more rushed forward to take his place, firing wildly. Their assault rifles were on autofire, racketing like jackhammers.

Raynor pumped out single shots from his M-16 into them, one by one.

Another soldier shrieked and fell sideways, toppling off the bank and falling into the water with a splash.

Troopers on the far side of the creek opened fire on Raynor. Raynor’s form jerked and shuddered as rounds ripped into him.

He turned toward them, squeezing off more shots. His weapon fell silent—out of ammo. Empty.

Muzzle flares sparked on both sides of the creek as more ambushers got Raynor into their sights, streaming lead into him.

He jerked this way and that as the slugs impacted him. The M-16 fell from his hand. He fell to his knees, head bowed.

There was a lull in the shooting as three troopers closed on him. The flashlight beam fell on the tableau like a spotlight, illuminating it.

One of the Nigerians wielded a panga, the local equivalent of a machete. With a wordless shout of triumph he raised it high over his head, swordlike blade poised for a vicious decapitating downstroke.

Kilroy, now free of the weblike vines that had netted him, thrust the muzzle of his assault rifle through the bushes and shot the panga wielder.

The meaty thud of a round drilling flesh was accompanied by the sight of the panga man falling over backward out of sight.

Kilroy’s shot suddenly set the west side of the valley boiling with the figures of a horde of armed men pouring into it, racing east along both sides of the channel. They were part of the main body of the troop column, of which the dozen ambushers east of Raynor had been an advance guard.

Many booted feet stamped and thundered over the ground in double time. Branches broke and brush rustled as hidden lurkers poured out of their places of concealment.

Where Raynor knelt, the panga wielder had been closely trailed by a pair of riflemen. They had fallen back in alarm as their fellow had been cut down by Kilroy’s snap shot. Recovering from the sudden fright, they now swung their rifle muzzles toward Kilroy.

Raynor’s good right hand moved, drawing his 9mm Beretta from its holster and firing into the duo looming over him. The pistol barked, its muzzle flares underlighting the agonized faces of the two troopers as bullets opened up their middles.

The remnants of the advance guard, seven shooters, all let rip at once at Raynor. Slugs poured into him, shredding him ragged.

Raynor fell down dead.

The flashlight beam now swept west over the trail, searching for Kilroy. The light was held by a trooper on the other side of the channel not far opposite from Kilroy. Several riflemen were grouped around him, ready to open fire when the beam picked out Kilroy.

Kilroy shot first, firing in the prone position from behind a fallen log. A howl of pain sounded from across the channel as the light-bearer was tagged. The flashlight dropped, falling to his feet. It did not break but remained lit, rolling on its side back and forth in a small, tight arc.

Gunfire erupted from the riflemen grouped nearby as they sprayed the woods in Kilroy’s direction.

The Nigerian troops pouring into the valley from the west began shooting, too. Many guns fired, yellow spear blades of light stabbing from rifle muzzles. Bursts of automatic fire crackled, tearing into tree trunks and branches. The attackers couldn’t see what they were shooting at but that didn’t stop them.

The valley was an arena of mass chaos. Soldiers shot without looking. Some of them shot at each other.

A nasty little firefight broke out between skirmishers from the main body of troops and the handful of the ambushers still left alive in the east. Bodies piled up before the combatants realized they were trading shots with their comrades in arms.

The confusion suited Kilroy just fine. It turned what could have been a death trap into a first-class clusterfuck. Noise, gunfire, squads of troops running this way and that—all combined to hide him from his pursuers.

As silent as smoke Kilroy faded back into the brush, slipping away from the hunters. The deepening darkness of oncoming night was his ally, cloaking him with its sheltering shadows.

Raynor? Nothing to be done for him. No man could have survived the merciless final fusillade that had all but shot him into pieces.

Kilroy was alone now. The western end of the valley was filled with troops. He went northeast across the basin’s outer slope, swinging a wide detour around the few ambushers still alive in that area. Unaware of his passage and concentrating on not being shot by their fellow troops, they were easily evaded.

Leaving them far behind, Kilroy crossed the creek, wading through listless, waist-high waters that were as warm as blood. After climbing up onto the south bank, he followed its winding course due east, into the recesses of the flooded forest.

In the distance, bursts of gunfire still sounded.

“Joseph Kilroy” was a war name assumed by he whose birth name was Sam Chambers. He’d never known his real father but he knew of him.

He was the bastard son of Terry Kovack, the supreme warrior in the Vietnam-era Dog Team. That particular cadre of elite Army assassins had been disbanded in the war’s sorry aftermath of national defeatism and antimilitary agitation.

Terry Kovack had soldiered on to fight without banners or bugles for lost causes he considered right in a succession of conflicts in global hot spots, ultimately making the supreme sacrifice in a bloody last stand in a dirty brushfire war here on the African continent.

Would history repeat itself and doom his son to a similar fate?

“Not if I can help it,” the man called Kilroy vowed to himself.