Target Response (6 page)

Ordinarily Krentz would have referred to the troops as “kaffirs,” a highly uncomplimentary term. But he was wary of using the word around Sergeant Ajani, who might or might not have been sleeping and certainly would have taken offense at the term. It was a mark of the respect bordering on intimidation that the hulking noncom generated in those around him that even his nominal superior Colonel Krentz was wary of incurring Ajani’s dislike.

“None of the dinghies in the swamp have radios; there’re only so many to go around. Most of them went to the riverboats. One of them heard some shots and called it in. That’s all for now,” Krentz said.

He shrugged, waving a hand in dismissal. “It means nothing. After three days and nights in the swamp the boys are ready to shoot at their shadows—or each other, for that matter.”

“For once I don’t blame them. This hellhole would get on anybody’s nerves.”

“Including yours, Ward?” Krentz snickered. “You’ve got it easy. The Kondo is a paradise compared to the swamp. As you’d know if you set foot there.”

“I don’t see you going in there either, Krentz.”

Krentz smiled bleakly, without warmth, white teeth shining palely in the dirty yellow glow of a kerosene lamp.

“That would be improper distribution of labor. There’s nothing I could do there that the boys can’t do better,” he said. “Besides, somebody’s got to stay here with you and coordinate the hunt.”

Krentz took a cigar from his breast pocket. It looked like a brown twig, long, skinny, and crooked. “Smoke?” he offered.

“Christ no! Those ropes you smoke taste like shit,” Thurlow said.

“The very best dried dung. They use it here to stretch out the tobacco,” Krentz said, chuckling. He bit off the end of the cigar, spat it overboard. He used a lighter to set fire to the end of it, puffed away.

Smoke clouds blanketed him, undisturbed by the still, heavy air. Even out here on the water there was barely the breath of a breeze.

“If you ask me, we’re wasting our time here. The swamp’s probably gotten your man,” Krentz opined.

“Our man,” Thurlow corrected. “Your bosses at MYRMEX want him just as badly as I do.”

Krentz nodded. “Point taken.”

“He was still alive today. Alive enough to slaughter another squad or two of the troops. He’s terrorizing them. Picking them off one at a time, cutting their throats. Strangling them and leaving their bodies hanging from vines on the trail,” Thurlow said, his voice taking a petulant, whining tone.

“He’s lasted longer than I thought he would,” Krentz said. “Who is this Kilroy anyway? I never heard of him—and I should have, the way he handles himself. I know all the big players in the killer elite on this continent.”

“He’s not from this continent. He was U.S. Special Forces or something, I don’t know.”

“If you don’t, who does? Didn’t your spook friends back at Langley give you any background information on him?”

Thurlow shook his head, his expression peevish. “Just the routine handout. Kilroy’s an action man, a shooter. Tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, the usual itinerary.”

“Whoever he is, he’s a jungle fighter. The boys should have done him. If they didn’t, the swamp should have,” Krentz said.

“There was nothing in the record to indicate that he was worth more than a passing notice. I didn’t think he was worth further investigation.”

“Now you know better, eh, Ward?”

“I couldn’t pry too closely. Didn’t want to show an undue interest in him or any others in the DIA team. My ‘friends’ back at agency headquarters, as you call them, wouldn’t be my friends for too long if they knew what I was really up to in Lagos.”

“A very uninformed intelligence agency.”

“They only know what I tell them, Krentz. Washington’s a long way off. But that’s not who I have to keep happy. My bosses back home—my real bosses, not the agency—won’t be happy until the job’s finalized and Kilroy is dead,” Thurlow said.

“It’ll get done. It’s only a matter of time. He’s just one man,” Krentz said. “Go back to Lagos and leave me and the troops here to finish the job. It’ll all be over in another day, two at the most.” Indicating the swamp, he added, “No lone man can last long in that hell.”

“There’s nothing I’d like better than to haul ass out of here,” Thurlow said feelingly. “I’m dehydrated. My bowels are starting to act up on me. The heat and the bugs and the stink are driving me crazy. Lagos is the shithole of the world. I never thought I’d miss it. But compared to this godforsaken swamp…At least back at the embassy compound there’s air-conditioning and clean sheets, hot meals and cold beer, a bath—”

“So go back. I’ll stay out here and kick the butts until the job is done. That’s what they pay me for.”

Thurlow shook his head. “Not that I doubt your abilities, Krentz, but I don’t like to leave any loose ends. More important, my bosses don’t like them. I’m not leaving without tangible proof that Kilroy is dead.”

Krentz gestured toward the cannister lashed in place in the stern of the boat. “Proof like that, you mean?”

“That’s another story. All I need is a confirmed kill. I don’t like this business of collecting trophies,” Thurlow said.

“It’s not a matter of what you like or I like, Ward. In this case it’s a matter of what Minister Tayambo likes,” Krentz told the other.

“You don’t have to remind me. What a fucking ghoul! What the hell is his problem anyway?” Thurlow asked.

Krentz’s eyes narrowed, looking sly. “It’s juju,” he said. “Magic. Tayambo’s got a couple of tribal witch doctors on his payroll. Most of the big men in the palace cadre do. It builds their confidence and unnerves their enemies.”

“What does Tayambo do with his…trophies?” Thurlow’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper.

Krentz’s shrug was eloquent. “Who knows? Maybe he gives them to his devil doctors to use in their cauldron of blood to brew up potent black magic spells. Maybe he collects them. A generation ago, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin used to eat the hands and hearts of his enemies.”

Thurlow swore.

“Ritual cannibalism, you know. A widespread practice throughout the continent, then…and now. Eat your enemy and you absorb his power,” Krentz went on, enjoying the other’s evident discomfiture.

“You’ve got to be philosophical about such things, Ward. Minister Tayambo is an important man. If he craves such keepsakes, who are we to tell him no?”

Thurlow grimaced, visibly steeling himself. “Well, at the embassy the ambassador is always telling us to be mindful of building good relations with our hosts. And nothing succeeds like gift giving.”

“There you are. Be guided by the ambassador and you can’t go wrong,” Krentz said cheerfully. “But have you considered the possibility that we might never be able to confirm Kilroy’s death? The swamp is big, with lots of places for a body to disappear. Kilroy might be at the bottom of a quicksand patch or in the belly of a crocodile.”

“I doubt it. That son of a bitch is proving uncommonly hard to kill,” Thurlow said sourly.

Krentz flicked his cigar snipe overboard, its glowing ember describing a meteoric arc until it hit the water and blacked out.

The radio transceiver in his pocket started squawking. Krentz hauled it into the light. Excited shouts came crackling from it.

“What the devil?” Thurlow said.

“I don’t know what it is, I can’t make it out.” Krentz depressed the
TRANSMIT
button and in the local language demanded to know what was going on. The excited-sounding squawking continued unabated. “Bloody kaffirs! Don’t know enough to stop transmitting all at once—”

The radio was of a type that allowed only one user on the transceiver to transmit at a time. Until the present speaker took his finger off the transmit button, the circuit would be monopolized and no other transmission could get through.

Popping sounds crackled somewhere upstream on the Kondo. The sound carried far over open water.

“What’s that? Shooting?” Thurlow asked.

The others in the boat stirred, coming to wakefulness. Sesto took his feet down from the top of the instrument board, placing them on the deck flooring. Hamid swung his swivel chair around toward the bow and began busying himself readying the machine gun. T’gai stood up, hands balled into fists.

Sergeant Ajani rose, opening pop eyes whose corneas were as yellow as old ivory. Pleased by the prospect of action, he smiled, showing a mouthful of crooked teeth.

The boat’s occupants looked upriver toward where the shooting was sounding. A shriek sounded through the transceiver before being abruptly cut off. “Aaaaiiieeee—!”

The scream was accompanied by the release of a
TRANSMIT
button, clearing the circuit. Krentz took advantage of it to jump in and send his message, shouting for all other units to shut up so that he could arrange for an orderly succession of reports from the various handset users.

Commotion showed in the camp on the point of the southeast shore of the Rada, with antlike blurs of troopers running to and fro, backlit by campfires.

Flames flared into being on the Rada near the shore.

“What’s that?” Thurlow demanded.

Krentz peered into the dimness to see better. “Something is burning—”

A dull crumping sound was followed by a vivid orange and red flash.

“My God, one of the patrol boats blew up!” Krentz said.

Pieces of burning wreckage floated on dark water. A puff of smoke telescoped outward from the blasted vessel, growing, climbing skyward.

Searchlight beams crisscrossed upriver, scissoring as several boats tore back and forth across the Rada, searching for the cause of the commotion. Shafts of white light skimmed over land and water.

The base camp was in an uproar, figures running about shouting wildly to no purpose except to menace each other.

A sputtering sound neared as a patrol boat broke loose from the pack and plowed downstream away from the others.

“It’s one of ours—why doesn’t the idiot turn on his light?” Krentz wondered aloud.

Sesto started the engines. They labored roughly for an instant, coughing, choking, sputtering, then suddenly came alive with a dual, full-throated rumble of power.

Hamid manned the aft machine gun, unlimbering it, unsnarling the cartridge belt so it would unwind freely from the ammunition box within which it lay coiled.

T’gai took up a stance at the stern machine gun and set about readying it for action.

Its searchlight dark, a square-bowed, flat-bottomed patrol boat came zipping downstream like a rock skimmed across the surface of the water. It cut a dirty-white wake across black water as it swung toward the gunboat to approach it at right angles to its starboard side. It came head-on at full throttle.

“My God, they’re going to ram us!” Thurlow cried, backing away from the starboard side.

Krentz was excited. “This is what we’ve been waiting for! The breakout!”

“What?!—”

“Action at last, Ward! Now we can make an end here!”

The flat-bottomed boat closed fast, arrowing toward the starboard beam amidships.

Hamid was unable to get his forward machine gun into play; the line of fire on the attacker was too acute for the weapon’s transverse sweep.

T’gai stood at the stern machine gun post, grinning wolfishly as he swung the muzzle into line with the oncoming boat.

Sergeant Ajani hefted his assault rifle, leveling it at the motorboat.

Krentz hefted a fire ax. “I’ll cut the anchor line—”

The flat-bottomed boat suddenly switched on its bow-mounted searchlight. A white beam of brilliancy stabbed across the narrowing water at the gunboat.

Behind the glare could be seen the outline of two human forms. They sat rigidly upright in the pilot’s and passenger’s forward seats, motionless, unflinching. From behind and between them erupted a stream of rifle autofire.

Rounds cut the air above the gunboat. Krentz dropped the ax to take hold of a searchlight by its handles, swinging it around on its stand to pin the attacker.

A line of slugs ripped into the searchlight, shattering the lens and snuffing out its beam. Krentz cried out, cursing as his face and hands were sprayed with broken glass, and he fell back.

“They’re going to ram us—shoot!” Thurlow yelled.

Sergeant Ajani opened fire on the nearing boat.

T’gai gripped the stern machine gun’s handles, thumbs depressing the firing studs. The machine gun let rip with a racketing blast. The weapon ate up the cartridge belt, spewing empty brass cartridges into the air.

Tracer bullets, part of the ammo load, appeared as hot-yellow-white streaks clawing the darkness as they reached across the water. T’gai used them to sight in on the charging patrol boat.

Fifty-caliber rounds chewed up the bow, disintegrating the figures at the front of the craft. Still it came on, its speed not slackening, following a course as straight as a torpedo running hot.

Thurlow, frantic, all but danced in place. “What keeps it going? Why don’t they die?” He shook his fist at the square-bowed boat. “Die, damn you, die!”

T’gai, unflappable, kept pouring it on, streaming lead into the foe. The oncoming boat abruptly swerved to starboard.

Something went over the port side into the water, unnoticed by those on the gunboat in their excitement.

The patrol boat’s engine choked, stuttering. Gas leaked from it.

Tracer rounds poured in. Fire leaped up. The patrol boat became a fireball, coming apart in a shattering blast. Flaming debris spewed on the waters.

The night bloomed bright, blazing for an instant before fading to dark.

Its forward movement arrested a stone’s throw from the gunboat, the burning wreckage of the patrol boat sank beneath the surface. Steam hissed, raising pale white clouds as the hulk was swallowed up by the Kondo.

Giant ripples expanded outward from it in concentric circles like when a rock is dropped into a pond.

Krentz sat up in the bottom of the gunboat, pawing at his face. Shards and needles of broken glass jutted from the backs of hands that had protected him when the searchlight was shot out. Droplets of blood like red sweat oozed from a dozen places on his cheeks and forehead where minute glass particles had stung him.