Target Response (3 page)

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.