The Taste of Fear (23 page)

“So all we have to do is head southwest through the rainforest, then south along that path we followed through the jungle.”

“Is that all?” Sal remarked caustically.

Joanna said, “That would take us right back to the boat, and the two gunmen.”

Thunder shook his head. “We don’t have to go to the boat. When we reach the river, we follow the bank out the way we came in.”

“To where?” Scarlett asked.

“To somewhere away from here.”

“Suicide,” Sal said.

“Why?”

“Say we go through the rainforest. Southwest, like you said. The chance of ever finding the original path is slim at best. Without a machete we won’t get through that jungle.”

Thunder began pacing.

“What about the second river?” Scarlett suggested. “Even if we don’t find the path, we’ll still come across the second river. We can make a raft or something and float out, can’t we?”

“That river was flowing in the same direction as the big river,” Sal said. “The wrong way. Who knows where it would lead us?”

“We make paddles,” Thunder said.

“The current is too strong. You saw how it almost flushed Scarlett away. We wouldn’t get a dozen feet upstream.”

“We can’t just sit around here and do nothing.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Joanna said.

“No. We get to the river. Follow the bank,” Thunder said stubbornly. “We might see another boat. If we could get to one of those villages Lettie saw, we might be able to get the tribal people to lead us out of here.”

“It would take days to get that far on foot,” Joanna said. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t spend the night in the jungle. Where would we sleep? You saw the python skin.”

“There’re also scorpions and other bugs,” Miranda said.

“If someone got sick or injured,” Joanna went on, “they’d be finished.”

“Not to mention food and water,” Sal said.

Scarlett hated seeing Thunder get teamed up on. He was only thinking of a way to get them all out of this. But the others were right. They weren’t going anywhere.

“Finally,” Joanna said, beating the dead horse, “we would still need to get out of this building first.”

“We don’t know if someone is really out there.” Thunder waved to the door in frustration.

“Why don’t you go check it out?” Sal said.

“Right-o. I will.”

Scarlett stopped him. “You don’t know what he’ll do.”

“I reckon he’s not even there.”

Thunder stepped past her. He pressed his back against the wall and cracked open the door. He stuck his head out.

A burst of rapid-fire bullets zinged and pinged off the brick exterior.

Thunder ducked back inside, his face white.

A warning shot.

“I guess that settles that,” Sal said, and he had the gall to smile.

Somewhere in the rainforest, a parrot screeched. The warm colors of dusk faded. Shadows pooled in the room, nibbling at the light until there was nothing left to devour but darkness itself.

Or right about now.

Twenty meters from the riverboat Fitzgerald treaded water, watching for movement on either of the two decks. He didn’t see any and continued on. He reached the boat’s hull, grabbed ahold of a rubber bumper, and pulled himself up quietly onto the stern deck. He unlaced his boots and slipped them off. Waterlogged boots squished and squawked.

Because the Glock was now resting seven kilometers back on the riverbed, likely next to the carcass of One-eyed Bertha, he slid free his old SAS knife from his canvas ankle sheath. The handle was wood with solid brass rivets. The blade was eleven inches long and as sharp today as when the quartermaster issued it back in 1966. It was responsible for more deaths than his ageing memory could recall.

Many years ago he’d nicknamed it
Carnwennan,
after Arthur’s dagger in the Welsh legends, which was known to shroud its wielder in shadows. He never called the dagger this out loud, of course; that would be silly. But that’s how he thought of it.
Carnwennan.
It was a way to personalize it, to make it his own, the same way some men would give a name to their yacht or car or residence.

He crossed the stern deck to the main cabin and peered through the window beside the door. He had expected to see Brazza and Cox and however many other hostages tied up inside, probably blindfolded. The room was empty. He frowned. Had AQ shed some of the hostages along the way, only keeping their golden eggs? And if so, were Brazza and Cox up in the aft cabin? No. Because if that was the case, where were the terrorists? Fitzgerald couldn’t see them cozying up next to their hostages in a five-meter-square room. That left only one alternative. They had all gone ashore.

Words in Arabic floated down from the top deck.

Fitzgerald flattened himself against the shadowed wall of the cabin. He listened. Nothing. He contemplated this and decided a couple sentries must have remained behind to watch over the boat. That made sense, and it left him with two options. Go back to the skiff and spend the night there, wet and cold and hungry. Or clear out the lads upstairs, get a good meal, a good night’s sleep, and set out warm and chipper in the morning. It was not a hard decision to make. Besides, from a tactical standpoint, it only made sense to take out the sentries. If he had to make a quick escape from the jungle tomorrow, he didn’t want to worry about getting sandwiched between the bad guys.

Fitzgerald padded up the spiral iron staircase and stuck his head through the well-hole in the top deck. All clear. He dashed over to the aft cabin and pressed his back against the wall perpendicular to the cabin’s door. He heard the occasional grumble from within the small room. Sometimes there was a response, sometimes there wasn’t. After several minutes of this, he concluded there were only two men inside.

Wood scraped wood—the sound of a chair being pushed backward. The door creaked open. Footsteps crossed the deck.

Fitzgerald peered around the corner of the cabin.

A man dressed in plain clothing stood at the starboard railing, relieving himself. A Kalashnikov dangled from a strap looped over his shoulder.

Fitzgerald snuck up behind him, taking half strides for perfect balance, stepping down on the outer balls of his bare feet, as silent as the moonlight. The only sound was the continuous patter of urine striking water far below. Fitzgerald stopped within touching distance, a shadow, invisible, death waiting to spring. He’d once seen a Polish thug put up a fight for well over a minute with a blade sticking out of his heart, and he knew there was no such thing as a quick and sure kill with an edged weapon. There was decapitation, of course, but without a sword that wasn’t an option. Still, there were a couple close seconds: stabbing upward into the base of the skull, or downward into the soft spot behind the collarbone, severing the subclavian vein and artery; and, if you got lucky, maybe puncturing a lung.

Fitzgerald chose the simplest of all approaches. He grabbed the man by the hair and plunged
Carnwennan
into the side of the exposed neck, ripping outward toward the throat. The man jerked and flailed. Fitzgerald held him secure. Blood fountained everywhere, coating them both. The man was likely screaming, but he made no noise: he had no vocal cords left. He went limp.

Fitzgerald set the body down, wiped the dagger and his hands clean on the dead man’s shirt, and collected the Kalashnikov. The safety, he noted, was in place. He left it that way. Moving the spring-loaded safety-cum-selector made a loud and distinctive click, which wasn’t very productive if you wanted to keep the element of surprise.

Fitzgerald faced the aft cabin. He thought about simply kicking open the door and cutting down whoever was inside. But he didn’t know how far away the land party was and didn’t want to advertise his presence. Instead he returned to his original spot around the corner of the cabin and waited.

Two minutes later the man inside called out to his mate. When the dead man didn’t call back, the door opened.

“Qasim?”

He made it about three paces before seeing his buddy lying in a pool of blood. He went immediately for his rifle. Too slow. Fitzgerald was already moving, slipping around the corner of the cabin, stabbing the man twice in rapid succession. First in the right side, under his armpit, hilt-deep. Then through the underside of the bearded jaw, through the roof of the mouth, into the brain. Before the body hit the deck Fitzgerald had spun to face a possible third attacker.

No one came forth.

He eased open the door with the barrel of the Kalashnikov and peeked inside. Deserted. And lo and behold, there was a stockpile of food and water. The food wasn’t anything special—fruit and cassava, mostly—but Fitzgerald was ravenous, and it would make a feast. He unceremoniously dumped the two corpses into the river, then washed up and set out a large dinner on the deck table. Just as he was about to sit down to eat, he heard a splash in the water off the bow. He snatched the rifle and went to the railing.

A little ways downriver a croc was working on one of the dead men. Another croc was swimming toward the second body, silver ripples trailing from the nostrils. It reached the body, peeled its jaws wide, revealing rows of pointed fangs, then snapped down. Unable to tear meat like a lion, it shook its gnarled, saurian head, boiling up a whirlpool with its combed tail. Sinew tore loudly. Joints grinded and popped. Then the commotion died down, the black water calmed. In the aftermath both the croc and body were gone.

Fitzgerald waited where he was, hoping for an encore. He wasn’t to be disappointed. Moments later the croc broke through the surface of the water, its snout pointed skyward with a human leg poking out from between the jaws, the boot still on the foot. The croc gulped the leg down, its pale throat bulging like a pelican’s. It sank back into the inky depth once more.

“Jaysus,” Fitzgerald muttered. “Now there’s something you don’t see every day.”

Whistling
Finnegan’s Wake,
he went back to finish his own dinner, albeit in a much less dramatic fashion.