He was instantly wide-awake, yet it required every ounce of self-control for him to remain perfectly still. He didn’t even move his lips, but rather stage whispered through clenched teeth. “There’s a snake on me. Hurricane! A snake.”
He rolled his eyes toward the fire pit, but the glow from the crimson coals cast scant illumination. He looked back down, trying to spot the serpent as it slithered onto his belly. It was big. He could feel its weight pressing against his diaphragm, not enough to prevent him from breathing, but a constant pressure nevertheless.
“Molly, wake up!” She mumbled a reply, but clearly was nowhere near waking.
He would have spat a curse, but the unseen creature had coiled into a knot on his torso, and he feared that even the act of breathing might trigger a deadly strike.
His fingers brushed the stock of the shotgun, lying where it had fallen to his side, but the proximity of the weapon gave him little comfort; he wasn’t about to blast the serpent with buckshot. There was another way the gun might save him though.
He gripped the weapon then manipulated it so that it was stretching away from him, perpendicular to his body, and then pushed out with it until it encountered something unmoving. “Molly!”
It was a risk, but there seemed little alternative. His repeated jabs and hoarse whispers succeeded in rousing her. “What is it?”
“There’s a snake on me.”
“A snake.” She didn’t sound very concerned. “Well, it will probably go away if you leave it alone.”
“Molly!” He jabbed her again.
“Oh, for pity’s sake.” She sat up, and in the dim light he could just make out her coppery ringlets and the glint of her eyes. “Where’s Hurricane?”
“Molly! There’s a snake on me. Can you focus on that?”
“Hold your horses.” She cut a wide circle around his supine form, then jabbed a long branch into the coals. After a second, bright yellow tongues of fire sprang up on her makeshift torch, throwing light several yards in every direction. Dodge now had no difficulty at all in identifying the arrow-shaped head of the animal coiled on his abdomen; its lidless eyes stared inscrutably back at him.
Molly swept the flaming brand toward him in broad arcs, trying to disturb its rest without unduly rousing its venomous ire. The serpent drew back its head and opened its mouth to reveal hook-like fangs, beading with venom, and on one of her passes, it made a half-hearted strike.
“Jesus, Molly. Be careful.”
She swung the torch again, and the viper relented, slithering away into the darkness. Dodge sagged in place as the adrenaline drained out of his bloodstream.
“Puff adder,” Molly observed. “Good thing you didn’t rile him in your sleep.”
“Poisonous?”
She nodded then held her torch up. “Hurricane!”
Dodge rose and joined her in calling out, but only the chatter of nocturnal jungle animals answered their cries. Hurricane Hurley was gone.
CHAPTER 8
RUN THROUGH THE JUNGLE
He moved through the woods like wraith.
He had always possessed the uncanny ability to move that way, and given his size, that was nothing short of miraculous. He ducked under low hanging branches, slipped through dense thickets without brushing a single leaf, and hopped lightly over deadfalls without leaving a footprint.
He had come by his skills honestly, growing up on the Cumberland Plateau, hunting game and varmints in the Appalachian forests, or simply cavorting on the sandstone bluffs that defended the highlands from everyone but the coal miners. He had always been a creature of the forest, and it mattered not a bit if those forests were in his own backyard, or on a continent on the other side of the world from his Kentucky home.
He now stalked his enemies on a trail that would have confounded a bloodhound. He had exaggerated it to Dodge and Molly; it was no broad path hewn from the jungle by a machete-wielding expedition. Rather, the captives had been driven single-file, while a rear party had done their best to minimize the impact of their passage and cover their tracks. There was however only so much that could be done to mask the presence of such a large group, and Hurricane knew exactly what to look for.
That he could see anything in the darkness beneath the dense canopy likewise defied comprehension. He had always been possessed of good eyesight, a genetic gift from his mother, but on this night he had taken the added precaution of shielding his gaze from the firelight for nearly an entire hour while waiting for Dodge to drift off to sleep. He knew some other tricks for multiplying the efficiency of his night vision — ways of compressing the muscles in his eyes to focus differently, and a technique for looking with the peripheral vision, which was more effective in darkness that looking straight ahead. He also looked with his ears and nose, smelling areas where the vegetation had been trampled and was decaying, or hearing the sound of insects and small rodents agitated by the recent passage through their demesne.
He was, he estimated, only about six hours behind the party, but they had likely stopped moving before dusk, while he was nearly running to intercept them. He was completely in his element; a wolf on the prowl. The only thing that disturbed his deadly calm was his decision to abandon Dodge and Molly.
There were a dozen reasons why it was a good idea, and from the moment Molly had protested being excluded from the pursuit, he had known that slipping away after nightfall was the only logical answer. Yet, he was troubled, mostly because of leaving Dodge behind.
The young sportswriter was a natural; he had not been guilty of exaggeration on the occasion of telling Dodge that he might someday rival even Zane Falcon. They were cut from the same cloth. Falcon had been a lettered man, answering the call to serve and accepting a position of leadership because of inner convictions regarding right and wrong. Dodge had come up from hard beginnings, but he had educated himself and along the way picked up a similar set of values and an ability to quickly take charge of even the most challenging situations; all he was lacking was the battlefield on which to prove himself. Perhaps that was why this act of well-intentioned betrayal stung so much; he had denied Dodge a chance to truly shine.
But there was no way Hurley was going to take that sweet Irish rose into battle. She might be able to hold her own, but her very presence would be a distraction to the men in her company, men who would very likely make the fatal mistake of looking out for her, when they most needed to look out for themselves. Molly could not go with them and she could not be left to fend for herself, ergo Dodge had to stay behind with her.
The odds didn’t concern him too much. He knew he could pick off the rear guard one at a time, thinning the ranks of the enemy before they knew what was happening. Once he reached the captives, he would have allies in hand, more than eager to avenge themselves for the foul attack, to say nothing of the Padre; Father Hobbs, expert at Oriental fighting techniques, was the equal of any three pirate rogues. Hurley had even seen the otherwise unflappable cleric go toe to toe with Falcon during an unfortunate incident toward the end of their long war; not many men could fight Captain Falcon to a draw. If there was ever a man to have at your side in a fight, it was the Padre, the best part of course being that after the fighting was done, there was no additional fighting for the attention of the ladies at the local watering hole. That thought brought a smile to his otherwise darkened countenance and he kept running.
He smelled the pirate camp before he could see the flicker of their flames, and halted in mid-step. They aren’t making very good time, he thought, dropping onto his belly and inching forward. In fact, it had been less than two hours since his covert departure from the ruins of Father Hobbs’ mission.