Within a few hours of securing the encampment, a detailed inventory of the terrorists’ weapons and munitions cache had been found and checked. A single crate of twenty new H&K submachine guns, and boxes of ammunition to go with them, was unaccounted for. And Monroe’s theory that one of two high-powered inflatable boats was missing had been confirmed. Wilkes believed that Duat, stripped of his bank account, and with his terrorist partner Kadar Al-Jahani dead and his army of fanatics killed by the very weapon he’d intended to use on innocent people, had skipped camp as soon as the UAV was launched, taking something he could readily turn into cash: weapons. And where would he try to sell them? The New Guinea highlands? It wasn’t such a stretch. There he had contacts and he was largely anonymous. He could trade the guns for dope which could easily be onsold for a tidy sum — and he’d sure need one to have any chance of successfully lying low, his highest priority now. Every police and intelligence agency around the world was after him, a wanted man right up there with terror’s pin-up boy, Bin Laden.
Wilkes suddenly collided with Ferallo. He’d had his head down, deep in thought, and she’d stopped on the trail in front of him. He glanced up to apologise and realised the collision was no accident.
‘My spies tell me your engagement’s off,’ said Ferallo, feet apart, hands on her hips.
‘Sorry? I —’
‘You’re a free agent now, Tom. So maybe we can have that drink,’ she said.
‘How did you know about me and —’
‘I’m a spy,’ Ferallo said with a shrug.
‘Oh, right…’ Wilkes was taken aback. An approach like this, in the middle of the jungle, was completely unexpected. At their first meeting, he hadn’t found himself particularly attracted to Gia Ferallo. But she’d proved herself to be competent, tough. And by the looks of things, aggressive. Also, Ferallo knew what he did for a living and she was obviously okay with it. He looked at her again. She was striking — the dark, mysterious type. Very different to Annabelle. And that was a good thing, wasn’t it? ‘Sure, a drink. Here,’ he said, handing her his waterbottle.
Ferallo shook her head and said, ‘I’m going to let you off now, but when this is over, you owe me that drink, something in a long chilled glass with ice in it.’ She turned and moved off.
Wilkes watched her disappear, swallowed by the trail. He had to admit that having a drink with Ferallo was actually a pretty exciting prospect, and that realisation caused a twinge of guilt. There was unfinished business with Annabelle. Cancelled engagement or not, she was still very much in his mind. And, at that moment, the image was of an angry Annabelle, an Annabelle looking at him with her arms crossed, frowning, annoyed because he hadn’t told this woman that he wasn’t interested.
The sun was high overhead when Muruk left the trail and led them through a dense patch of low, wet scrub full of spiders the size of a man’s hand with long, delicate black legs. According to Muruk, they were not overly dangerous to humans, apparently, but a bite could leave a nasty wound and permanent ugly scarring. Fortunately, the arachnids seemed more afraid of the large mammals moving through their habitat, and they scuttled away and hid amongst the leaves and branches of the foliage. Muruk was wary of the spiders because he was naked, but the boy was even more leery of what lay on the other side of the scrub.
Wilkes cautiously parted the leaves and saw that Muruk had brought them back to the marijuana field. Women and young children moved through the plants, snapping off thick heads and dropping them into baskets. Harvest time. It occurred to Wilkes that they’d made far better time on the return journey to this village because they’d used the main paths, arriving in broad daylight rather than at dusk.
‘Now what?’ said Atticus, kneeling beside Wilkes.
The children in the plantation horsed around as children everywhere do, chasing each other, getting in their parents’ way. The one area they seemed to give a wide berth to was the spider bush Wilkes and the rest were hiding in. It was a good place to observe goings-on with little risk of discovery, which was obviously why Muruk had led them here. But observation was not the point this time, it was contact. ‘C’mon,’ said Wilkes as he began to move forward. ‘Time to meet and greet.’ He pushed the mat of leaves aside with the tip of his rifle and a large spider fell to the ground and ran away. A few steps later and he found himself standing amongst the towering marijuana crop, the smell of the cannabis almost overpowering. A young girl squealed and ran away, and a few seconds later, Wilkes, Monroe, Ferallo and the rest were surrounded by naked warriors with spears levelled at them, the barbed tips quivering with the fear coursing through their holders’ veins.
‘Jesus, Tom, thanks for the warning,’ said Timbu. He began to talk to the warriors, who shouted back. The men darted half a step forward, feinting aggressively with their spears. ‘Drop your weapons and packs,’said Timbu quietly, maintaining eye contact with the people on the other ends of the spears, ‘or we won’t get further than this.’
Wilkes slid the pack off his shoulder and slowly, carefully, placed it on the ground. The spearheads were coated with a black substance that was probably a nerve poison, a theory he was not prepared to test. He lowered his M4 beside the pack and dropped it the last few centimetres. The others followed his example. Wilkes slowly looked behind him. Muruk had not left the safety of the spider bush and was probably, by now, watching the proceedings from another vantage point further away.
A warrior darted forward and took Wilkes’s rifle. He popped out the magazine and half stripped it down before reassembling it. The man knew his way around the Bushmaster and the fact that he was wearing a penis gourd and had a very large boar tusk through the septum of his nose Wilkes found quite disconcerting — something about the clash of cultures, or maybe even the contamination of one culture by another. And Wilkes recognised him. He was one of the men he and Ellis had knocked out when they first scouted the village all those months ago.
‘I know this is going to sound corny, Timbu, but can you ask them to take us to their leader,’ said Wilkes with the calmest voice he could muster.
‘You’re right. It does,’ said Monroe under his breath. All their weapons had now been confiscated and the one that seemed to be giving their captors the most enjoyment was Wilkes’s sawn-off Remington. They laughed at it and threw it up and down, not taking it seriously. One of them snatched it, aimed it casually at a tree and pulled the trigger. The plantation filled with a BOOM and when the blue smoke had cleared a large section of the trunk was missing. The man who fired the weapon let it fall to the ground and rubbed his shoulder vigorously, the shotgun’s vicious recoil having taken him by surprise. The noise brought more of the villagers to the plantation to see what was going on. One of the men reached forward and placed his hand on Ferallo’s breast and gave it a good squeeze.
‘Ouch,’ she said.
The men behind the spears laughed at Ferallo’s reaction and the release cooled things down some.
‘They couldn’t figure out whether you’re a man or a woman,’ said Timbu.
‘Gee, that’s funny,’ said Ferallo. Still, a sore breast was better than a spear in the guts, she reminded herself. ‘They worked it out yet?’
Another man reached forward to squeeze Ferallo’s other breast, only to have one of the women start shouting at him. The man withdrew from the armed detail and the two, obviously husband and wife, began having a vocal domestic disagreement. ‘Yeah,’ said Monroe, ‘I think they’ve solved that riddle.’
The atmosphere had relaxed somewhat, and children began to dart in and out of the circle created by the ring of armed villagers. One of the men barked a demand and motioned with a flick of his head.