«And you’re going to learn what the problem is. Do you understand that?»
Whitehall smiled. «Do tell … whitey.»
Alison slapped her hands off McAuliff and looked at both men. «Stop it!»
«I’m sorry,» said Alex quickly.
«I’m not,» replied Whitehall. «This is his moment of truth. Can’t you see that, Miss Alison?»
Lawrence’s great hands interfered. They touched both men, and his voice was that of a thundering child-man. «Neither no more, mon! McAuliff, mon, you say what you know! Now!»
Alexander did. He spoke of the grasslands, the plane—a plane, not the Halidon’s—the redneck ganja pilot who had brought six men into the Cock Pit to massacre the survey, the race to the campsite, the violent encounter in the jungle that ended in death in a small patch of jungle mud. Finally, those minutes ago when the runner called Marcus saved their lives by hearing a cry in the tropic bush.
«Five men, mon,» said Lawrence, interrupted by a new burst of gunfire, closer now but still in the near-distance to the north. He turned to Charles Whitehall. «How many do you want, fascisti?»
«Give me a figure, agricula.»
«Goddammit!» yelled McAuliff. «Cut it out. Your games don’t count anymore.»
«You do not understand,» said Whitehall. «It is the only thing that does count. We are prepared. We are the viable contestants. Is this not what the fictions create? One on one, the victor sets the course?»
The charismatic leaders are not the foot soldiers… They change or are replaced… the words of Daniel, Minister of the Tribe of Acquaba.
«You’re both insane,» said Alex, more rationally than he thought was conceivable. «You make me sick, and goddamn you—»
«Alexander! Alexander!»
The cry came from the river-bank less than twenty yards away. Sam Tucker was yelling.
McAuliff began running to the edge of the jungle. Lawrence raced ahead, his huge body crashing through the foliage, his hands pulverizing into sudden diagonals everything in their path.
The black giant jumped to the water’s edge; Alex started down the short slope and stopped.
Sam Tucker was cradling the body of Marcus the runner in his arms. The head protruding out of the water was a mass of blood, sections of the skull were shot off.
Still, Sam Tucker would not let go.
«One of them circled and caught us at the bank. Caught me at the bank … Marcus jumped out between us and took the fire. He killed the son of a bitch; he kept walking right up to him. Into the gun.»
Tucker lowered the body into the mud of the river-bank.
McAuliff thought. Four men remained, four killers left of the Dunstone team.
They were five. But Alison could not be counted now.
They were four, too.
Killers.
Four. The Arawak four.
The death Odyssey.
Alex felt the woman’s hands on his shoulders, her face pressed against his back in the moonlight.
The grasslands.
Escape was in the grasslands and the two aircraft that could fly them out of the Cock Pit.
Yet Marcus had implied that there was no other discernible route but the narrow, twisting jungle path—a danger in itself.
The path was picked east of the river at the far right end of the campsite clearing. It would be watched; the M.I.6 defectors were experienced agents.
Egress was a priority; the single avenue of escape would have automatic rifles trained on it.
Further, the Dunstone killers knew their prey was downstream. They would probe, perhaps, but they would not leave the hidden path unguarded.
But they had to separate. They could not gamble on the unknown, on the possibility that the survey team might slip through, try to penetrate the net.
It was this assumption that led McAuliff and Sam Tucker to accept the strategy. A variation on the deadly game proposed by Lawrence and Charles Whitehall. Alexander would stay with Alison. The others would go out. Separately. And find the enemy.
Quite simply, kill or be killed.
Lawrence lowered his immense body into the dark waters. He hugged the bank and pulled his way slowly upstream, his pistol just above the surface, his long knife out of its leather scabbard, in his belt—easily, quickly retrievable.
The moon was brighter now. The rain clouds were gone; the towering jungle overgrowth obstructed but did not blot out the moonlight. The river currents were steady; incessant, tiny whirlpools spun around scores of fallen branches and protruding rocks, the latter’s tips glistening with buffeted moss and matted green algae.
Lawrence stopped; he dropped farther into the water, holding his breath, his eyes just above the surface. Diagonally across the narrow river offshoot a man was doing exactly what he was doing, but without the awareness Lawrence now possessed.
Waist-deep in water, the man held a lethal-looking rifle in front of and above him. He took long strides, keeping his balance by grabbing the overhanging foliage on the river-bank, his eyes straight ahead.
In seconds, the man would be directly opposite him.
Lawrence placed his pistol on a bed of fern spray. He reached below and pulled the long knife from his belt.
He sank beneath the surface and began swimming underwater.
Sam Tucker crawled over the ridge above the riverbank and rolled toward the base of the ceiba trunk. The weight of his body pulled down a loose vine; it fell like a coiled snake across his chest, startling him.
He was north of the campsite now, having made a wide half-circle west, on the left side of the river. His reasoning was simple, he hoped not too simple. The Dunstone patrol would be concentrating downstream; the path was east of the clearing. They would guard it, expecting any who searched for it to approach from below, not above the known point of entry.
Tucker shouldered his way up the ceiba trunk into a sitting position. He loosened the strap of his rifle, lifted the weapon, and lowered it over his head diagonally across his back. He pulled the strap taut. Rifle fire was out of the question, to be used only in the last extremity, for its use meant—more than likely—one’s own execution.
That was not out of the question, thought Sam, but it surely would take considerable persuasion.
He rolled back to a prone position and continued his reptilelike journey through the tangled labyrinth of jungle underbrush.
He heard the man before he saw him. The sound was peculiarly human, a casual sound that told Sam Tucker his enemy was casual, not primed for alarm. A man who somehow felt his post was removed from immediate assault, the patrol farthest away from the area of contention.
The man had sniffed twice. A clogged nostril, or nostrils, caused a temporary blockage and a passage for air was casually demanded. Casually obtained.
It was enough.
Sam focused in the direction of the sound. His eyes of fifty-odd years were strained, tired from lack of sleep and from peering for nights on end into the tropic darkness. But they would serve him, he knew that.
The man was crouched by a giant fern, his rifle between his legs, stock butted against the ground. Beyond, Tucker could see in the moonlight the outlines of the lean-to at the far left of the clearing. Anyone crossing the campsite was in the man’s direct line of fire.
The fern ruled out a knife. A blade that did not enter precisely at the required location could cause a victim to lunge, to shout. The fern concealed the man’s back too well. It was possible, but awkward.
There was a better way. Sam recalled the vine that had dropped from the trunk of the ceiba tree.