CHIUN WAS STANDING by the fire, his hands in his kimono sleeves. "Have you finished?" he asked, merely curious.
"Yes."
"You could thank me for lending you assistance," Chiun suggested.
"Huh? What? You took out one guy and then let me take care of the rest of them."
"It is your job to do so. You, not I, are the Reigning Master of Sinanju," Chiun explained reasonably. "It is you who are charged with carrying out the edicts of the Emperor. However, since I was in close proximity to that one at the boat, I thought I would lend you my assistance."
"Yeah, well, thanks a whole lot."
Chiun beamed. "You are welcome."
"All done?"
Aurelia Boldiszar jumped down from her hidden perch, rejoining them. If she had seen Remo disposing of their enemies, it didn't seem to bother her unduly, though her face was solemn as she scanned the camp. "Did they hurt Jean? Where'd he go?"
"I smell him that way," Chiun said with a slight tilt of his head.
The Cajun's voice reached out from the surrounding darkness. "Is it safe to come out?"
"Yeah, come on," Remo said.
"I had to tap a kidney," said the sheepish-looking Cajun as he stepped into the firelight. "Barely found myself a place, before all hell broke loose."
There was a dark stain on his blue jeans, and Cuvier attempted to conceal it with one hand.
Remo retrieved the lifeless gunners and lined up their bodies near the fire, then asked the Cajun, "Friends of yours?"
"No way," said Cuvier. "I recognize some of them, though. That's Florus Pinchot on the far end. Next to him, Claude Something, I don't know his last name. That one-" he pointed to the next-tolast body in line "-he Remy Arridano. Them be Armand's boys."
"No werewolf," Remo said. "Surprised?"
"Shee-it, man," Cuvier replied, "I got surprises comin' ever time I wake up still alive."
THE BAYOU WATER TASTED foul, and Maynard Grymsdyke came up spouting like a porpoise, gasping for fresh air. He thrashed his arms to stay afloat, the closest he had come in years to swimming, but his feet couldn't make contact with the bottom. Once again, his head slipped underwater, and he fought back to the surface with a desperate strength he didn't know that he possessed.
That strength wouldn't last long, in any case. His wild dash from the camp into the water had covered not more than fifty yards, but Grymsdyke felt as if he had been sprinting all-out for a mile. His heart was pounding, hammering against his ribs, and even with his head above the brackish water Maynard found it difficult to catch his breath.
Somehow Grymsdyke turned himself around and faced back toward the bank. Tall grass and reeds combined with darkness to obscure his vision of the camp, but Grymsdyke stared into the night regardless, more than half expecting some demented nightmare to come crashing through the undergrowth where he had lately passed. He tried to listen, too, but his own splashing in the water made the effort futile.
Christ, what was that in the camp?
The wolf-dogs were no mystery to Grymsdyke. They were something he would have expected to inhabit bayou country, one more reason why sane men should stay in town. The first creature, however, had been something else.
No matter how he tried, Grymsdyke couldn't persuade himself that he had conjured up the man-thing out of nightmares. He most desperately wanted it to be a man-even a man who roamed the swamp with vicious feral dogs, attacking other men-but he had glimpsed its face, and one glimpse was enough.
Whatever it had been, despite the fact that it was wearing denim overalls and big, mud-clotted boots, Grymsdyke knew it wasn't human. Not with those long arms and burly shoulders covered by the same dark, matted hair that sprouted from the creature's head and face. And that mouth. That distended, tooth-filled maw...
Grim silence descended on the swamp-or rather, the expected night sounds returned, after their rude disruption by the sounds of mortal combat. There were no more gunshots from the campsite, and the angry snarling sounds had also ceased. Maynard was terrified to think what that had to mean.
Grymsdyke lost track of time before he drifted very far. For all he knew, he could have floated thus for hours, or it could have been brief moments. He was slipping in and out of consciousness until he woke with water burning in his throat and sinuses. Blinking scum out of his eyes, he saw a log, nearly submerged, floating directly toward him, shining where an errant beam of moonlight found rough bark. Grymsdyke beheld salvation, thrashing toward the log, intent on climbing aboard and allowing it to carry him wherever it might go.
He was within arm's reach before he realized this log was moving steadily against the current, driven by some power of its own. Too late, he saw the alligator's glinting eyes, tried to reverse directions, swallowing foul water as he tried to call for help.
Only the reptile heard him, opening its trapdoor of a mouth to swallow Maynard Grymsdyke's helpless scream.
Chapter 17
Merle Bettencourt was eating shrimp cocktail and chasing it with chilled chablis when Ansel Rousseau showed up at his elbow with a cell phone in his hand. A green light on the telephone was blinking, signaling an open line.
"What?" Bettencourt demanded.
"Some guy say he gotta talk to you," said Ansel. "Say it's about some huntin' party on the bayou." Bettencourt set down his wineglass, careful not to tip it, startled and unnerved to find his fingers trembling. "What's his name?"
"Won't say." Ansel shrugged. "Guy tells me you be pissed if I don't pass him on. Want I should hang him up?"
The Cajun mobster thought about it, wished the question were as simple as it sounded. Only six men were supposed to know about his little bayou hunting party-those involved as trigger men-and any one of them who felt a need to call him would have given up his name. It made no sense, but he could say the same of so much else that had been happening the past few days.
"Gimme," he said, and took the telephone from Ansel, waiting for the other man to leave and close the door behind him. Then, into the cell phone's mouthpiece, he said, "Yeah, who's this?"
"You wouldn't recognize my name," a very average voice replied. "I'm calling for Jean Cuvier."
"Don't rightly recollect that name," Bettencourt replied eventually.
"That's funny," the stranger said. "He sure recognized the boys you sent to waste him. Most of them, at least. You want them back, I'll tell you where to send the garbage truck."
That's all I need, thought Bettencourt. Admit to knowledge of attempted murder on an open line and get myself shipped to Atlanta for conspiracy. No, thank you very much.
"I don't know where you got this number," Bettencourt replied, as cool as he could manage in the circumstances, "but there must be some mistake. Sounds like you need to talk to the police."
That was a nice touch, Bettencourt decided, smiling to himself. He was about to disconnect, but then he heard the stranger speaking almost casually, as if he didn't care if Merle was listening or not.
"If that's the way you want it, fine," he said. "Thing is, Jean wondered if you could get together, maybe work this whole thing out before somebody else gets hurt. But since you never heard of him-" The Cajun's mind was racing, one thought stumbling on another, but he knew it would be madness to admit a link to Cuvier or the hunters in the swamp.
"Can't say I have," he said, "but I could ask around with my people, for the hell of it."
"No, never mind," the stranger said. "I should have gone to the police first thing, as you suggested. They can check out the bodies, see who they worked for, whether they had-"
"But let's suppose one of my people recognized this name ...what was it?"
"Cuvier." The stranger paused and spelled it for him. "First name Jean."