Sam crept up the hill after Sanford, hoping the dogs would attack without a lot of racket. At the head of the trail a locked gate stood in the six-foot fence.
Sanford used heavy sheers to clip most of the links in a two-foot-square section of the fence. He bent back a corner, creating a hole large enough to comfortably aim the dart gun. After three minutes they’d still seen no sign of the dogs.
Sanford rattled the fence. Still nothing. Sam exhaled impatiently. The first little problem. The gardens were lush enough inside the compound that his men could hide, especially by night, but not if they were going to be jumped by Dobermans.
A single long wispy cloud had draped itself across the sliver of a moon, making fewer shadows. There were no lights illuminating the gardens save two lights a hundred feet distant and mostly obscured on the main veranda dining area. Sanford rattled the fence again. Still nothing. Sam knew the others would be nervous about this development. It was imperative that the compound be alerted only when the team was ready and only by the distraction that Sam had planned.
It was impossible to know where Jason would be staying. According to Aussie, they moved him from one burre to another as a precaution. Most of the time he was kept in what had been the Honeymoon Burre near the cliff edge.
The plan was to create a distraction that would draw the guards out of the burres. Given Jason’s propensity for working without regard to his environment, especially into the wee hours, he would likely be housed in whichever burre did not immediately have its front door flung open. In order to watch every burre, the men would need to be widely dispersed. They would then have to move quickly and coordinate without a hitch. Otherwise someone might die.
It had been nearly five minutes of quiet fence rattling and no dogs. They took out the chunk of fence.
Sam sneaked up the hill and motioned Sanford forward.
“No joy yet. T.J., move to the perimeter,” Sam whispered.
Then they were through the fence and Sam’s blood started pumping. With his goggles he would see infrared beams, but not necessarily trip wires or motion sensors or night-vision-equipped cameras. Aussie believed there were none, and that would have to be good enough.
They stayed along the edge of the lawn, following the garden beds. The fear was that someone would throw a switch, blind them with light, and shoot them before they could react.
Sam’s heart pounded a few beats faster. He reminded himself that success came to the player who got more deliberate and more determined with each bit of added stress.
Fifty feet inside they stopped, and just in time. Two black shadows streaked across the lawn, no fence to slow them. Sanford took careful aim. Sam doubted he could hit both animals. There was a pop and the lead dog tumbled and began whirling and nipping at its chest. The dart itself was heavy enough to pack a wallop. The second dog came on and just before he leaped for Sam, a second pop came from the pistol.
When Sam saw the animal’s jaws open, he dropped and kicked the dog in the throat. There was a yelp and the dog went over him, but came back like a demon. Sam charged the dog with total concentration, leading with a combat knife. As he plunged the knife in to the hilt, frothy lung blood burst from the wound all over Sam’s arm. As the animal went down, Sam strangled the remaining life.
“Shit,” Sanford muttered when it was over. “I missed.”
“Yeah.” Sam hated killing dogs but would not let himself think of it again until this was over.
“We have joy,” Sam whispered into the microphone. For a few minutes they lay absolutely still, waiting to see if there would be any response. They couldn’t afford an ambush. Sam already knew the dogs had a habit of charging the fences, so it wouldn’t necessarily bring the sentries.
Everything remained quiet. They moved forward another hundred feet until they were near the main building.
There were two guards sitting on the dining veranda at the lodge, drinking something he hoped was alcoholic.
Sam and T.J. sneaked to the right of the veranda and headed toward the far right side of the lodge and the planted gardens. Once in good cover, they came back toward the sentries to a narrow pathway between a burre and the edge of the veranda. One man was large, almost fat, the other slender, not more than 160 pounds. Only one weapon in sight—leaning up against a nearby table. Their security procedure evidenced an ease and lack of concern that Sam found hopeful.
They were in some kind of conversation, speaking French, fairly animated. Sam spoke some French, but it was hard to hear them and they were talking rapidly.
One of them seemed to pick his nose incessantly. The other scratched and picked at a bald spot on his head. Sam and T.J. quickly devised a plan.
Sam removed his boots and socks. T.J. went into a planting bed next to the building and made sounds of rustling, gradually escalating in intensity. Finally one of the guards rose and walked to the end of the veranda—fortunately without the firearm.
“Okay,” Sam whispered.
The guard continued walking down the three steps off the veranda.
“Shoo am yaamil hal kalb halloa?”
he
called. Clearly Arabic. An unwelcome surprise.
“C’est seulement quelque genre de fidjien gaufre
—
probablement.”
French from the other man. Sam guessed they were speculating that the dog was chasing some kind of Fijian gopher. The fatter guard rose to watch the first.
Sam rose and sprinted alongside the lodge around to the front, and then looked back through the double-wide entry doors and beyond through a bar and sitting area and saw the large guard some hundred feet distant, still on the veranda and seemingly absorbed in his partner’s explorations. Sam drew the silenced pistol and trotted on tiptoe straight at the guard with his gun leveled at the man. As the first sentry reached the edge of the thick foliage, he leaned forward and peered through the bamboo. More rustling. The man began making a guttural sort of “shooing” sound, and then quite suddenly disappeared in the foliage.
T.J. was taking him down. Sam took two more long steps and delivered a powerful blow to the base of the other man’s skull.
“Okay,” T.J. said.
“Okay,” Sam responded, dragging the heavy man to the garden to join the first. Taking no chances, they administered hypodermics to the carotids of both men that would have them unconscious for enough time to finish their business. Sam and T.J. retreated to the initial staging point just beyond the fence.
“Team one,” Sam said. His team crept forward one at a time. As each came, Sam tapped his shoulder and sent him to his predetermined ambush point. Coming from the sea and heading inland past the lodge, four of the eight burres lay in a row along a large entry garden that was a good part lawn. At the inland edge of the entry garden was the driveway, and beyond that the public roadway. Also to the landward side of the lodge and on the left of the entry garden stood one burre and a two-story house.
Aussie had been pretty sure that management lived in the house and each of the five guards had a burre. Sam put two men to the side of the Honeymoon Burre. Six men in the garden covered the doorways of the five burres and the main house, their weapons ready. Sam did a roll call. Each man had a number corresponding to the number of a burre doorway on the map they’d studied.
Sam thought it was time for a stroke of luck. He and T.J. crept up on the Honeymoon Burre, hoping to find Jason working inside. All the windows were in the front for the ocean view as was the veranda that might have a sentry, but there was thick foliage to the side that prevented easy viewing. Aussie was not absolutely certain about the size of the staff. If they made a mistake and an alarm were sounded, every guard exiting a burre around the main garden, or for that matter the main house, would take a rubber bullet to the chest from a silenced rifle. Normally it wouldn’t kill, but it would temporarily debilitate.
They crept through the foliage. Sam had not replaced his shoes. T.J. refused combat boots and wore light sneakers. Sam was a couple of steps ahead of T.J. and to the right of him. Through a break in the foliage Sam saw the porch. Nobody. No light. He moved forward while T.J. remained still. The cabin was completely dark. Opening the door could easily set off an alarm.
Sam retreated.
Now they would have to do it the hard way.
Aussie and Anna climbed into the jeep at 1:00 A.M. Unable to think apart from nervous worry, she had paced incessantly and driven Aussie mad until he finally distracted her by insisting that they go over the plan one more time.
“I scream that you’re acting like a whore. ‘Why didn’t you just have sex with him right on the table?’ ”
“And I say, ‘Your ass is sagging and your dick is a marshmallow.’ ”
“That’s not what you say.”
“I know. I’m an actress, remember? I do this for a living. So stop trying to distract me and let me sit here and worry.”
Aussie let it lie.
T.J. went around the lodge and Sam put on his boots. They met in the front garden and waited. Five minutes to go.
As he sat in the complete quiet, watching the bats dart overhead, plainly visible through his night-vision goggles, it struck him. This had all been too easy. Something was wrong.
He heard a car drive up. Loud voices, some in French and one seeming to speak Arabic. Five in all, and one of them appeared to be Jason from the pictures he had studied.
“Clap three times,” one said in French.
“What happens when you mix kava and booze?” another asked.
Kava was a local delicacy that had a mild narcotic type of effect. Although it tasted like old dishwater, it had a bit of buzz if consumed in large enough quantities. Clap three times was a reference to the kava ceremony. He remembered that much. This could be good. Then again, it wasn’t the plan.
The group walked up the middle of the grass toward the lodge and the bar. Sam decided to move.
“Jason—red shirt with the glasses,” Sam whispered. “On three. One ...” Then he stopped. “Wait.” He looked again at the Jason character. He wasn’t sure.
He had been right the first time. Something was wrong.
Aussie pulled the old jeep off to the side of the road at a wide spot created by a driveway entrance that parted the heavy foliage. When he turned off the lights the road was plunged into black. Along the road were more massive vutu trees that held the darkness and made the air heavy with scent. Sweat poured from Anna and the adrenaline in her made the heat a dull ache. She knew she could get killed for real on this gig. For just a second she wondered if she should have stayed a little farther from the action.
“It’s just up ahead,” he said. “The lady who owns this driveway runs a campground and has groups of kids from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the U.S.A.”
“Jason’s just around that bend?”
“You got it. Are you ready to look like a drunken tourist?”
“All ready.” She slipped off her shirt so that she wore only tight jeans and a bikini top. Aussie grabbed his hat. A big Stetson.
“I thought you didn’t wear hats around here.”
“Right. It offends the chief. But I’m supposed to be a dumb tourist.”
Aussie took the mag light from between the bucket seats.
“All go, jungle man,” Sam’s voice crackled in their earpieces.
They walked up the road toward the bend where they would step off into the thick foliage. “Ten minutes,” he said as they walked.
A vehicle came around the corner. It sounded like a truck. They kept walking, moving over very close to a large ditch that ran down the road edge. The truck slowed as it approached. It frightened Anna, but she didn’t know why. She told herself that there was nothing so unusual about a truck in the middle of the night. As it drew close she could see that it had a roofed-over cargo area in the back. On the sides were canvas curtains.
The truck pulled up, making an unmuffled rumble. It was white under a film of mud. A bright and blinding light pierced the night from the driver’s-side door. She saw men jumping from the back.
“Run,” Aussie said. He plunged into the bushes and she followed the white of his T-shirt. They galloped over and past bushes clawing at their clothes, her tennis shoes sliding. Lights flashed through the foliage and pockets of darkness leaped out at her. Then a man was right behind her, grabbing for her. He tackled her and she fell hard.
Aussie appeared above her, fighting; then came others. A big man held her to the ground. She couldn’t move.
Two of them attacked Aussie, knocking him down. A third man started clubbing him with a rifle butt.
“Stop,” someone said.
A blond, mustached man with a scar under his chin appeared. He had a coldness about him that felt like snakes on a carcass.
“Hold him,” the man said. Now she saw that there were four of them plus the leader. Aussie was unconscious and bleeding badly from the nose. One of them held Aussie’s head by the hair. The leader pulled up Aussie’s eyelid and shone a light in the pupil.
“Cuff them both.”
Roughly they put handcuffs on her and on Aussie.
“Go back to the truck.”
The men looked at each other, confused.
When they were gone, he turned to Anna.
“Shut up and stay there or I’ll beat your face in.” The accent was heavy French. He stared at her as if to let his words sink in. “You get to watch. This is the easy way to die. You don’t want the hard way. Those animals would love to torture and rape you.”
Then he pulled out a syringe and stuck it up Aussie’s nose. In seconds his body shook and spasmed.
“No,” Anna screamed.
A fog enveloped her face and she was choking, dying, hot mush filling her lungs, taking her air.
“I thought I said shut up.”
“Wait,” Sam whispered. “Hold fire.”
As the group strolled forward the leader stopped. “There’s nobody here,” he called out.
Sam wasn’t sure whom he was talking to.
“I’m going to bed. Hey, Chief. You can come out now. This is stupid. We’ve done this for three nights and there’s nobody here.”
“Make sure you’re under cover,” Sam whispered into the mike, and moved farther back in the bushes. Obviously it was a trap, and the leader was now breaking discipline.
“Aussie?” Sam said.
He heard a grunted response.
“Get Anna back.”
“It’s too late.”
It was another voice.
“Switch to Robin,” Sam said. Reaching down to his radio, Sam keyed in a code.
“Listen up. There’s no time. If lights come on, shoot them out. Take off your night vision.”
Just as Sam said it the place lit up like a stadium. His men responded with rapid fire and within seconds, no lights.
“Night vision back on,” Sam said. Take ’em out.”
There were muted pops from all around, and in two seconds the men that had been fleeing across the lawn lay flopping on the ground like so many boated fish.
Return fire came from the trees. A muzzle blast lit the night. Sam’s men shot back without an order. Stun grenades began going off in the trees, people falling to the ground. It was a war. Sam knew better than to listen on the old radio channel. He didn’t want to hear the ultimatum. He knew the guys in the trees were only part of the enemy force, maybe not even the main force. There would be many others on the trail back to the boat.
“Holt, Gomez, Ruby, stay here, mop up. Everybody else, follow me,” Sam said, running.
Somebody had completely outthought them, and he had nearly gotten them all killed. Now Anna was probably as good as dead.
They ran down the road, around the bend, and saw the truck.
“If it moves, shoot it,” Sam said. Men jumped from the truck and took a volley of silenced shots. Anna and Aussie weren’t in the truck. Sam noticed the break in the foliage. No Anna. Down the road there would be a car. Sam suspected they had been taken by the occupants of the truck while on foot.
Spying another break in the foliage he tapped T.J. and jumped into the brush, running, then stopping. He heard struggles and a woman’s groans.
“Let’s die trying,” he whispered to T.J.
They charged at the bushes, firing rubber bullets everywhere, not worrying if they hit Anna.
Gaudet worked fast, wanting to know what Anna knew before killing her. The big man’s heart was fluttering but hadn’t quite quit; Gaudet knew better than to leave him prematurely. He sprayed more potassium chloride and felt for a pulse again.
With Anna it had to be done much more carefully, had to look like a real accident, and that was becoming impossible fast. The Chellis and Aziz men at the beach had radioed no sightings of men retreating to the boat. Anna’s friends had all been killed or wounded. It would take Aziz’s men a while to figure out that she was missing, and by then he would have her in the helicopter.
The pepper spray had turned her into a choking mess. To shut her up completely he’d need to kill her, and he wasn’t ready to do that. “Screw it,” he muttered to himself, tired of waiting for the man to die. He picked Anna up and threw her over his shoulder. It was at that moment he suspected that he might have made a major miscalculation.
“If it moves, shoot it,” he heard.
He began to run, but it was hard without a light and a light would bring them. There were shots, lots of them. Some very muted. A few unmuted.
After he went about twenty feet or so bullets began pouring past him. They didn’t know he had her, he reasoned, or they wouldn’t be shooting. Then something slammed into his thigh, nearly breaking his leg. Another bullet hit him square in the back. As the pain electrified his body he realized the bullets were rubber and knew he had made a mistake. He dropped her to her knees and considered killing her. He listened, trying to locate them. She rose and stumbled into the brush. Only an instant of time flashed before discipline took over. More bullets poured past him. Never kill except exactly according to plan. The rule had kept him alive and free of the law.
“Later,” he said into the darkness. Then he ran as best he could with his bad leg.
Sam hadn’t gone twenty feet when he heard more movement. He charged headlong. The other men did likewise.
There were more groans. Quickly all the men crisscrossed through the thicket.
“Here,” one of them called. Sam burst into a little hollow and found Anna leaning on a tree near to collapsing. “Aussie,” she choked. Back a ways Aussie was lying completely still. Sam felt his carotid. He was dead. There didn’t appear to be a mark on him other than a broken nose. Then his instincts told him there would be a needle mark somewhere. Maybe the same needle mark that had been missed on Wes King.
Pepper spray. Gingerly Sam examined Anna, who was now on the ground. Like a parent checking a baby fallen from its crib, he felt her face and body. She was gasping horribly, panic in her eyes.
“You’ll be fine, I promise. Keep the others at the compound, nobody goes back toward the boat,” he said to T.J. He turned to Sanford, who had been watching Anna. “Carry her to the truck,” he said. The big man hefted her carefully. Sam looked at Yodo. “Let’s hope they left the key. Leave all the bad guys trussed on the ground. Give them a dose.”
If it was a setup, Jason could be anywhere. At that moment he heard a helicopter and figured they had lost the group’s leader, the man who’d killed Aussie.
“Chopper One,” he radioed.
“Yo.”
“Lift off and watch for a chopper down by the point. Probably low and fast. Follow it now.”
“Roger that,” the pilot said. The airport was less than a mile away. If they got airborne fast they might catch whatever just took off. Sam considered that they probably were keeping Jason away from the fighting and near his satellite dish in the compound.
“Back to the resort,” Sam said. They climbed into the truck and drove through the gate. Cuffed men lay everywhere. Most were out with an injection; those they hadn’t gotten to yet were in a lot of pain, judging from their cries.
“Search every building, especially the house,” Sam said.
The men went to work. T.J. remained in the central garden and began interrogating a couple of the conscious guards. Frenchmen and Arabs. By sheer luck, and maybe a tad of instinct, Sam had one man who could interpret some Arabic. French was not a problem. Sam went into the house. Nothing about the place looked like it might have been occupied by Jason. His men were systematically searching every closet and cupboard.
Sam walked out, through the lodge, and into the Honeymoon Burre. It looked like Jason’s place: a lot of books everywhere, a giant white board covered with equations, two computers, a world globe, and a model of a carbon atom.
So where was he?
Sam opened a few closets and then stepped out when two men came through to really search the burre. They would look for any place to hide, trapdoors, built-in cupboards that might house an entry or a secret space.
Sam walked out to the two burres that were supposedly not in use. On the way he noticed a window at the end of the main building. Walking up on the veranda and into the sitting area, he went to the only door, opened it, and walked in. An office with another door. Behind the second door, which he had to break for want of a key, was a long closet with shelves and a leather couch that looked completely out of place. On the couch lay a sleeping Jason, obviously drugged.
There were pills in a box and a blue liquid in a squeeze bottle. He remembered Anna’s story about Jason and the oil. He took both the oil and the medication.
In sleep Jason Wade looked content. Sam shook him. He groaned, but that was it. Sam checked his eyes. The pupils were dilated, the eyes rolled back. They had used strong stuff.
Sam clicked on his transmitter. “T.J., you have Bravo?”
“I do.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got the goods. Meet you on the road. All hands meet me at the gate. Chopper, you there?”
“We’re here. We’ve got the bogey chopper headed to Venua Levu.”