by Jeremy Bates
They broke apart.
“Not bad for an old man,” Zamir said, rolling his shoulders to get the feeling back in his arms.
“Not bad for a Jew,” Fitzgerald shot back.
Zamir rushed, obviously thinking he could wear his much older opponent down with a brute-force, concerted onslaught. Fitzgerald countered by spinning away to the left and landing a hammer fist to Zamir’s temple. He yanked the man’s head down while bringing his knee up.
Teeth shattered.
Zamir wobbled backward, dazed, blood gushing from his mouth. Fitzgerald finally took the counteroffensive. He struck the side of Zamir’s neck with another closed fist, knocking him backward. But he was too confident. As he moved in for the kill, Zamir—somehow still with it—sprung a short hook punch to his solar plexus, blasting the breath from him.
They stumbled apart, both breathing heavily.
Zamir faked left, lunged right, getting close enough to grapple, bringing an elbow up under Fitzgerald’s jaw, stunning him. He tried another elbow strike, this one to Fitzgerald’s face, but Fitzgerald moved with it, twisting around and ending up behind Zamir. He grabbed the man’s collar and tugged him back off balance while jabbing him in the left kidney. He kicked the back of Zamir’s knee, collapsing him to the ground.
Before Fitzgerald could swoop down, however, Zamir executed a low sweep kick, striking Fitzgerald’s injured shins. He cried out and dropped.
Zamir was on him immediately, raining fists into his face, over and over and over.
Fitzgerald heard cartilage crunch, started to see black. He tapped into a last reserve of strength, grabbed Zamir’s hair, yanked down, and brought up his own forehead to land a Glasgow Kiss right between the man’s eyes.
Zamir grunted and went limp. Fitzgerald rolled over so he was now on top. He raised his left fist, intent on finally ending the fight—
Someone slammed into his side, sending him sprawling into the mud.
CHAPTER 38
While Danny and the Irishman went at it, Scarlett sat on the sidelines, torn between who she wanted to win. Danny, of course, was on her side. He would help them leave this godforsaken place. But then again, the Irishman had saved her life, and that was something she could not ignore.
Thunder, finally lucid, or at least partly so, appeared beside her. He was wide-eyed and confused. “Who are they?” he said, nodding at the fight.
“The Irishman and Sal’s security chief.”
“The Irishman? Which one?”
“The older man, in the black—”
Thunder charged recklessly forward. Scarlett saw he was gripping the machete the Irishman had discarded.
“Thunder!” she shouted. “No!”
Fitzgerald had just rolled on top of Danny and appeared ready to finish him off when Thunder crashed into him in some sort of kamikaze rugby tackle, sending them both tumbling six feet through the mud before coming to a rest. Thunder straddled the Irishman. He raised the machete above his head.
“No!” Scarlett shouted again.
This time Thunder hesitated.
Fitzgerald’s mangled legs shot upward, scissoring around Thunder’s neck from behind, ankles locking under his chin. He twisted his torso sideways, flipping Thunder off him. The machete flew from his hand, landing some distance away.
Thunder’s face turned red. He was struggling to breathe.
Scarlett scrambled for the nearby rifle, pointed it in the air, and pulled the trigger. It was on full automatic and spit half a dozen rounds into the sky, rattling her entire upper body so hard she thought she might drop the weapon. She recovered and aimed the barrel at the Irishman.
“Let him go!” she ordered.
Fitzgerald only stared at her. Thunder continued to flop and twist, trapped in the death pinch.
Scarlett fired another, albeit more controlled, burst into the air.
After a dreadfully long wait, Fitzgerald unlocked his legs and rolled away into a crouch. One hand was pressed against the left side of his torso where Thunder had crashed into him. The rain had washed away the mud that had covered his face, and now she could see that his nose looked broken while ugly purple circles had begun to form around his eyes. A white scar tattooed the length of his throat.
Thunder, rubbing his own throat, got to his knees. To the right of him Danny stirred, shaking the cobwebs from his head. Rise and shine everyone, Scarlett thought stupidly. When Danny noticed Fitzgerald crouched a short distance away, he immediately spun to face the Irishman, as if to continue the interrupted fight.
Scarlett swung the rifle at him. “Don’t move, Danny,” she said.
“He’s an assassin,” Danny told her, never taking his eyes from the Irishman. “He followed you here to kill Sal.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you pointing that damned thing at me? Let me kill the bastard.”
“He saved my life.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” She swung the rifle back at the Irishman again. “Why did you do it?” she said, blinking rain from her eyes. “Why help me?”
He didn’t say anything.
Thunder got to his feet, wobbling a little before steadying himself. He looked at Danny, then at Fitzgerald. “Well, this is a bit of a pickle, isn’t it?”
“There’s a satellite phone in the church, Thunder,” Scarlett said. “It’s on the altar. Can you get it? Also, there’s some rope in one of the wings. Get that too.”
Thunder nodded and jogged off.
“Give me the rifle, Scarlett,” Danny said, taking a step toward her.
She swung the barrel back at him. He stopped.
“You’ll shoot him,” she said, glancing at the Irishman, who remained in a crouch, watching everything that was happening with dark, calculating eyes.
“What alternative is there?” Danny said.
“We tie him up. Take him prisoner.”
“He’s too dangerous. It’s not worth the risk. Give me the rifle. You don’t have to watch.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Nobody else is dying. Nobody.”
Lightning flashed, flooding the black sky with white light. Danny ran a hand through his soaked hair. “At least let me get my gun then.”
“You won’t shoot him?”
“If you don’t want me to, no.”
Scarlett knew she couldn’t play mediator forever, and so she reluctantly conceded. Danny retrieved his monster machine gun from the mud and looped the strap over his shoulder so the weapon hung in a shoot-from-the-hip position. He swung the barrel at Fitzgerald. Scarlett held her breath, waiting for him to squeeze the trigger. He didn’t. Thunder returned a minute later with the rope and secured the Irishman’s hands behind his back. Scarlett finally lowered her rifle and relaxed, feeling as if the tiger had just been caged.
“Where’s the sat phone?” she asked Thunder.
“Couldn’t find it. The wall that collapsed buried the altar.”
“Can we dig it out?”
“Not a chance. Even if we could, I reckon it would be crushed to pieces.”
“Then we walk out,” Danny said.
Scarlett shook her head. “There’re terrorists on the boat.”
“They’re dead,” Fitzgerald said, not looking at anyone in particular.
“I suppose you killed them?” Danny said.
“You suppose correctly. And I suggest we get moving. As I mentioned earlier, where there are some rebels, there are likely more. They might have heard the explosion. They’ll be here soon.”
The prospect chilled Scarlett. She’d cheated death enough times today to know better than to press her luck.
Danny picked up the machete and said, “We head due south and try to keep in as straight a line as possible until we reach the river.”
“Actually,” Fitzgerald said, “we should go southeast.”
“He’s right.” Scarlett withdrew the pendant-compass from her shirt. “And
I think this will help.”
Danny nodded. “Okay. Keep a reading.” He yanked the Irishman to his feet, shoved him forward. “You. Start moving. I’ll follow. Scarlett, you come next and . . . ?”
“Thunder, mate.”
“Thunder, you take up the rear.”
“Okay,” Scarlett said. “But first, Thunder, can you take care of Sal’s body? Put—” She was about to say “the rest of it” but stopped herself. “Put it on the fire. Cremate it.”
She would have offered to help, but she didn’t think she could stand to see what remained of her husband.
Thunder went to do what she’d asked. When he returned a few minutes later, he nodded solemnly, to say the deed was done. Danny, his face wooden, shoved the Irishman forward and started off toward the howling African wilderness.
Scarlett followed, resisting the nearly overwhelming urge to look back at the fire, silent tears spilling down her dirty cheeks.
Progress was slow and wet. The dense canopy blocked out most of the rain from reaching the small party, but Scarlett was still soaked and shivering. She focused on putting one foot down in front of the other, trying not to think, although her thoughts were banging around inside her head, impossible to ignore.
The last time she’d felt this lost, this scared and miserable, had been the day the woman from Child Services had come to her school to tell her that her mother wasn’t going to be picking her up that day—or any day ever again (she would learn years later that her mother had been hanging by an electrical cord from the backyard swing set that afternoon). Only then, all those years ago, Scarlett had had a child’s resilience, a child’s amazing ability to forget and move on. Now…well…now she didn’t think she’d ever be able to forget what happened. How could she? Against her will images of Sal’s mutilated body jumped to the forefront of her mind, cutting cruelly through the out-of-body unreality she’d been floating through since his death.
I’ll never see you in one of your William Fioravanti suits again, she thought, knowing she shouldn’t be going down this road but unable to stop herself. Never tease you about looking like a gangster. Never see the excitement and pride in your eyes when you spoke about your hotels.
How insignificant the brief affair seemed now in light of everything else.
When they eventually left the rainforest for the secondary jungle, they didn’t find the path they’d come in on, and Danny was forced to use the machete to carve a new route through the tropical vegetation. Just as Scarlett was beginning to think they were hopelessly lost, they came upon the river in which she’d almost been swept away.
“Thank God!” she blurted. “This means we’re only twenty, maybe thirty minutes away from the main river.”
“Good,” Danny said. “It gets dark fast at the equator. We don’t have much light left.”
Fitzgerald, who hadn’t said a word since they’d left the ruins, forded the stream first. Danny went next. Thunder took Scarlett’s hand and they followed together, wading through the chest-deep water. By the time they climbed out on the far bank, Thunder was huffing for breath.
“You okay?” she asked him. She knew he was still suffering from whatever ailment had afflicted him. “Do you need to rest?”
“I’m all right.”
She glanced at the welt on his wrist.
“I’ve been bitten by a funnel-web back home,” he explained. “Never a widow before.”
She was shocked. A black widow? She’d found a few in her garden back in LA, and she’d always killed them on sight. Their venom might rarely be fatal, but the symptoms from a bite could become severe if untreated.
“Walked right into its web yesterday while, pardon the slang, hanging a piss.”
“You’re sure that’s what it was? A black widow?”
“Nah. Brown widow. Venom’s twice as poisonous.”
“You said you didn’t know what it was.”
He shrugged, appearing both boyish and bashful. “Guess I didn’t want to worry anybody.”
They almost bumped into the back of Danny before they realized he’d stopped.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Ask him.” Danny nodded at the Irishman.
“Well?” she demanded.
Fitzgerald looked at her. His face was pale and expressionless. “We’re being followed,” he said simply.
Scarlett’s blood turned to ice. She glanced fearfully about. She couldn’t see anything except gloomy shades of greens and grays.
“More rebels?” Thunder asked.
Fitzgerald shook his head. “A leopard—and a big one, at that. I saw its tracks coming in.”
“Did you see it?” Scarlett asked Danny.
“No. I was watching him”—he tipped his head at the Irishman—“not the forest.”
“I reckon it’s just curious,” Thunder said.
“Leopards are opportunistic hunters,” Fitzgerald said. “They’ll eat anything. Moths or crocs, it doesn’t matter. If it thinks it can take us down, it’ll try.”
“We’re not far from the river now,” Scarlett said. “Let’s just keep moving.”
They agreed and pressed on. Scarlett found herself wishing she hadn’t left the AK-47 behind. But it had seemed rather redundant considering Danny’s machine gun looked like it could take down an elephant. Thunder, too, had brought no weapon, saying he’d felt too weak to carry one.
Danny stopped again. He pressed a finger to his lips and pointed silently. At first she didn’t see anything, then she made out a black shape slightly darker than the background of shadowy foliage. It gradually resolved itself into the shoulder and long abdomen of a large animal.
Moments later it shifted and was gone.
“That wasn’t a leopard,” Scarlett said softly. “It was completely black.”
“It’s called a melanistic leopard, lass,” Fitzgerald told her.
“What does that mean?”
“Melanism is a genetic mutation, the opposite of albinism, a selective advantage for survival in dark rainforests. It’s also known as a black panther.”
“Great,” she said cynically. “But why is it following us?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said without mirth. “It’s hungry.”
A branch snapped ahead of them. Danny shoved Fitzgerald to his knees so he couldn’t make a break for it, then swung the machine gun toward the noise.
“Will that stop it?” Scarlett asked.
“It’ll pulverize it,” Danny said. “But I think all it needs is a little warning shot. Cover your ears, if you want.” He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Frowning, he checked a plastic box attached to the underside of the weapon, which contained a linked belt of green-tipped brass cartridges. He swore. “Feed tray’s mangled. Must have happened during the crash.”
Fitzgerald laughed. Scarlett’s jaw dropped.
“It doesn’t work?” she said.
“No.”
“Can you fix it?”
He never had time to answer. The leopard finally abandoned stealth and burst from the bush. It was a low dark blur, nothing but yellow eyes and white teeth and pink tongue. Scarlett grabbed Danny’s arm to the left and Thunder’s to the right. The Irishman remained on his knees in front of them.
“Don’t run!” she shouted, thinking wildly of what Cooper had told her back in the Serengeti. “Whatever you do, don’t run!”
The leopard didn’t slow.
She felt both Danny and Thunder stiffen beneath her grip.
“Trust me! Don’t—”
Danny broke away and ran. The leopard swerved from its course and plunged into the forest behind him.
CHAPTER 39
Danny knew he shouldn’t have run.
Nevertheless, some wild, primal urge had overwhelmed him, and his legs were moving before he could think better of it. Now he heard a crashing sound behind him: the leopard, following its hunting instincts to pursue the fleeing prey.
He had only gone about ten or fifteen meters wh
en he felt two paws on his back, dragging him to the ground. He managed another few steps, but the leopard was too heavy, and his legs collapsed beneath him. He dropped the machete.
A fiery heat spread through his left leg. He flipped onto his back and saw that the leopard had seized his calf between its jaws. Its sharp claws mauled his upper legs. He shook and twisted, but the cat was too strong. His struggling did nothing to free himself. Crying out in pain as the claws continued to shred his flesh, he brought his free leg back so his knee was almost touching his chest, then he kicked forward, landing the rubber heel of his boot square to the leopard’s sensitive snout. The leopard made a furious hiss and released his leg.
The victory, however, was short-lived. Even as he shoved himself backward and away, the cat lunged for his throat. He threw up his right arm in time, and instead of tearing out his larynx, the leopard now had his forearm in its vice-like jaws. It shook its head back and forth with such power Danny feared it was tearing his arm right out of his shoulder socket.
Desperate, he smashed the cat across the side of the head with his free hand. The leopard didn’t let go. He smashed it again and again. It still didn’t let go. Finally, with his strength failing, Danny formed a claw with his index and middle fingers and dug it into one of the leopard’s eyes. The beast went ballistic, making a noise like ice cubes being crushed in a blender. It released his forearm.
Instead of scrambling backward again, he rolled onto his knees, shoved himself to his feet, and started limping away. His injured leg could barely support his weight, and he knew he wouldn’t get far. His only hope was that the leopard had had enough—
Claws sank into his back, pulling him down once more. Stiletto-like fangs punctured the flesh surrounding his eyes. To his horror, he realized the leopard had his head in its mouth. He heard a low, hot growling next to his ear. A dreaminess washed over him, replacing the agonizing pain and terror and filling him with a sense of tranquility—and distantly Danny realized there was one positive to being eaten alive.
