Target Response:. William W. Johnstone
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No matter. He still had his .44 Magnum handgun and survival knife to take the war to the enemy.
The flooded forest was ideal for bushwhacking; it made it so easy for lone troops to become separated from their fellows. A hand from behind clapped over a foeman’s mouth to stifle his cries, a razor-edged knife blade cutting a throat—and the deed was done.
The first Nigerian soldier he’d slain had furnished him with a rifle and ammunition to further fuel the ongoing fight. As the long, murderous day had worn on and their numbers decreased, the men of Tayambo’s elite bodyguard had grown unsure of who was hunting whom.
Night fell, and with it had come teams of torch-bearing boatmen to ply the flooded forest and bring him to bay. Kilroy had welcomed their advent; a motorized dinghy was his ticket out of the swamp.
Hours had passed before the proper opportunity to strike presented itself. A lone boat separated from its fellows, taking a course that would deliver itself into his hands.
He had raced to get ahead of it and intercept it, jumping from matted tussocks to gnarled mangrove root works, climbing trees and crawling out to the ends of their branches to leap to his next solid stepping-stone through blackwater channels. He had lost a rifle along the way.
But he had reached the critical junction point ahead of the boat, whose bow-mounted torch glowing fuzzily through green mist heralded its arrival from a long way off.
Kilroy had scaled a mangrove tree, climbing out along a branch that overhung the channel. It had groaned with creakings and sagged dangerously under his weight but held. Crouched on a crooked limb, hidden by masses of leafy boughs, he had waited with drawn gun and a hunter’s terrible patience for the boat to arrive.
As it neared, he had drawn a bead on the spotter in the bow and shot him in the heart. A second shot had taken the steersman above the eyebrows…and the boat was Kilroy’s.
He now moved to take control of the boat, a type familiar to him. It was the same basic model of slim, shallow-draft craft used in swamplands around the world, from Central Europe’s Pripet Marshes to the archipelagoes of Malaysia.
The engine was about the size and horsepower of a lawn mower motor. The tiller was fitted with a handgrip throttle controlling the rate of fuel flow.
The boat nosed against a cluster of half-submerged mangrove roots, bumping into them. Kilroy’s form unfolded, moving aft.
Ojo the steersman sat slumped against the stern’s square-edged transom, dead hand still clutching the tiller. A .44 slug had taken him above the eyes, blowing off the top of his skull. His head was tilted back over the top of the stern board, shattered cranium oozing blood and brain matter into dark waters.
Kilroy pried open the steersman’s fingers, unwinding them from the handle of the tiller. He elbowed the corpse to one side, careful not to upset the boat.
The bow was snagged in a knotted tangle of mangrove roots, its progress temporarily halted. The motor idled, sputtering, laying down a plume of blue-gray exhaust that mixed and merged with the green mist.
Kilroy made quite a sight. His shirt was in rags, and his baggy pants were in little better condition. Strapped across his upper body was a shoulder harness with a holstered .44 under his left arm. He still retained his sheath knife and canteen.
From head to toe his body was covered with a coating of stinking black mud, protection against the hordes of omnipresent swarming insects. Without it they would have eaten him alive or driven him mad.
As it was he was perhaps not at the moment what could have been called entirely sane.
The mud pack also provided good camouflage. Only the whites of his eyes, his teeth bared in a snarl, of which he was unaware, and the palms of his hands and undersides of his fingers broke the dark uniformity of his mud-daubed form.
Using Rasheed’s pole, he pushed off from the mangrove roots, freeing the boat’s snagged bow. He steered it into the middle of the channel.
The throttle was already set low; Kilroy left it alone, fearing to throttle down any farther lest the motor stall and he be unable to restart it. He pushed the tiller handle downward, causing the engine to tilt forward and raise the driveshaft and propeller clear of the water.
The boat now drifted forward, drawn solely by the sluggish current. The two shots with which he had downed the boatmen had sounded with thunderous crashings.
In their aftermath, the cries and howls of the swamp had become muted and stilled. Even the ferocious whirring and buzzing of the insect swarms had temporarily subsided to a hush.
Kilroy listened for the answering call of man-made sounds: gunshots, shouts, or boat motors. Anything that would indicate the nearness of other boatmen searching for him. No such noises were to be heard.
It seemed he had slipped pursuit for the moment.
He turned out the steersman’s pockets but found nothing of value. He hoisted the body over the side, easing it into the black water.
The corpse bobbed around, rolling so that it floated facedown, its shattered skull upturned. An arm got snagged on a mangrove root.
The drifting boat began to pull away and presently left the cadaver far behind. Kilroy took note of the two assault rifles on board and eagerly examined them. They were dirtier than he liked but nonetheless in decent working order. With them he also found a canvas ammo bag filled with spare magazines.
Kilroy thrilled to rising exultation. Armed with this much firepower, he’d raise merry hell breaking the ring with which the opposition had encircled him.
Careful to avoid disturbing the balance of the low-sided boat, Kilroy moved forward.
Rasheed the spotter lay faceup with his back on the bottom of the boat and his long legs tangled up in the bow. His eyes were open; they’d rolled back in the sockets so only the whites showed. His mouth gaped open. Flies were already buzzing around inside it. They really flocked to the hole that the .44 slug had punched through his chest.
Kilroy hooked his hands under the dead man’s arms, hoisting him up and draping his upper body across the port gunwale. He drew the panga from its sheath, holding it up to the torchlight and eyeing it. The long blade was a well-tempered piece of steel with a keen edge. He could put it to good use should the occasion arise. He decided to keep it, and the sheath, too. He worked the scabbard and straps free of the body.
The corpse he didn’t need. It would follow the steersman’s into the water.
Kilroy wrestled around with it, positioning it preparatory to dumping it overboard. Hard work, made doubly difficult by the need to take care to avoid tipping the boat, forcing him to expend a lot of energy he could ill afford to spare.
The placid waters of the channel began to swell and seethe with agitation. The boat swayed from side to side.
Something bumped against the bottom of the hull, nearly causing Kilroy to tumble overboard. He saved himself by gripping the gunwales. For an instant he thought he’d collided with a submerged log or rock. The turbulence increased, whipping up the surface of the water.
Suddenly something emerged from below, thrusting an enormous wedge-shaped snout into view.
The snout divided in two, opening on the fulcrum of a massive pair of jaws, revealing a stinking, gaping maw whose upper and lower halves were lined with double rows of jagged teeth. Each tooth was roughly the size and shape of a flint arrowhead. Topping the far end of the snout were two golden, glittering orbs.
Crocodile! Kilroy had dodged plenty such during his time in the swamp but this brute was one of the biggest he’d yet seen.
It closed its jaws on the head and shoulders of Rasheed, hauled him over the side. The boat tipped hard to port, nearly capsizing before the corpse came free of it. Rolling its massive bulk to one side, the crocodile submerged, dragging the body underwater. The wave generated by its movements rocked the boat again.
Kilroy lunged for the stern, gripping the tiller and