The Taste of Fear (24 page)

Someone cried out. It sounded more like a word than a grunt, though she couldn’t be sure what word it was. She sat up, grimacing against the pain in her head. She was just able to make out the shapes of the others in the feeble light. Sal was lying on the bench. Miranda and Joanna were in a far corner, curled against each other like spoons. Thunder was up front, near the door, away from everyone else.

There it was again—the sound, more of a moan this time. It was coming from where Thunder was sleeping. A bad nightmare? Or was he in some sort of pain? She got up and crept across the room toward him.

“Thunder?” she said softly, touching his shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”

He came awake with a start.

“Shhh. It’s me. You were making noises.”

He tried to sit up but didn’t seem to have the strength. She became more worried.

“Thunder, what’s wrong?”

She felt his forehead. It was hot and drenched with sweat. God, what could he have? Dengue fever? Sleeping sickness? It couldn’t be malaria, thankfully. Malaria symptoms, she believed, took about a week to show themselves.

She remembered the welt on his arm. It was difficult to find in the dark, but she made out a hard, swollen bump just above his left wrist.

“How old are you?” he asked groggily.

The question surprised her. “Thirty,” she said, and for a moment she thought about the birthday party that never was. “Thunder, look at your arm. What happened?”

“It’s just a bite.”

“From what?”

“I’m thirty-six.”

“Thunder, you need—” She was going to say “a doctor” but realized how ridiculous that would sound.

“I’m not married,” he said.

Scarlett brushed his hair gently back from his forehead, wondering if he was speaking through a fever. She decided the least she could do was keep him company.

“Why not?” she asked. “Why aren’t you married?”

“Was in a relationship for ten years. No rush to get serious again. Thought I had all the time in the world.” He licked his lips and swallowed. “How long have you been married?”

“Four years now.”

“He’s a lucky bloke.”

“Thank you, Thunder.”

“He’s also a complete arse.”

Scarlett was so surprised by the comment she laughed out loud. She quickly caught herself and glanced in Sal’s direction. Was he sleeping? Or awake, listening to them?

“Any ankle biters?” Thunder said.

“Huh?”

“Kids?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been to Oz?”

“Sydney a couple times, to promote my films. Some strange animals you got there. Why do they all hop?”

“It’s a big land. Hopping’s faster than walking, I reckon.”

“Have you always lived in Brisbane?”

“Grew up in Canberra, the capital. It’s where my parents met. Mum’s tops. You’d get along with her. She teaches kindy—kindergarten.”

“What about your father? Is he a teacher as well?”

“Foreign diplomat. He was invited to the school where Mum taught, to get the kids stoked about politics or something like that. She was his chaperone. They got married a few months later. His post in Canberra was only for three years. When the State Department called him back, we were both supposed to go. But then Mum’s sister got sick, so we stayed behind.”

He squeezed his eyes, as if he was in pain.

“You need to rest,” she told him.

“No, this is good. Talking.” He opened his eyes again. Even in the darkness they seemed to sparkle blue. “The next year my dad was elected to the House of Reps. He was busy a lot. LA to Canberra was a long flight with a big time difference. Bottom line, it didn’t work.”

“They divorced?”

“That’s life sometimes. Anyway, Mum’s all apples. She remarried. She’s happy.”

“What about your father? Did he remarry?”

“Twice. He was engaged to his third wife when he was murdered.”

“Murdered? God, why?”

“I don’t know. No reason, pointless.” He shivered. “I’m cold.”

“I don’t have anything to give you.” She made a spontaneous decision. “Roll onto your side.”

Thunder did as she’d instructed, grunting with the effort. She stretched out beside him, pressing herself against his back, how Joanna and Miranda were sleeping to keep warm. It felt like she was doing something wrong, but it felt right too. Thunder didn’t say anything.

“Do you think about your father much?” she said quietly. Her mouth was right next to his ear now. She could feel his body heat. It was coming off him in waves.

“Every now and then. I didn’t really see him much after the divorce. How about you? Your folks must be mad with worry.”

“My dad was a cop. He was killed trying to prevent a convenient store robbery when I was six. He died over fifty bucks and a couple bottles of booze. My mother became clinically depressed and hanged herself the following year.”

“I’m sorry, Lettie.”

“I lived with my uncle and aunt for about two years before they palmed me off to child welfare. Then I shuffled between three different foster families. They were all doing it for the money, I think. The upside? I don’t think I ever would have gotten into acting if I’d had a normal childhood. Being an orphan gives you a good imagination. I had a make-believe family in my head until I was sixteen or seventeen. If that’s not method acting, I don’t know what is.”

“Every cloud has a silver lining, hey?”

“Even this safari,” she said softly. “You know that? I’m glad I met you, Thunder.”

He was silent for a long moment. “It’s been nice meeting you too, Lettie.”

They were quiet after that. Eventually Thunder’s breathing became deep and regular. Scarlett didn’t want to move. She felt safe and content right where she was. Not so alone. Not so scared. The migraine had even softened a little.

She fell asleep next to Thunder.

Not ideal odds, five against one, he thought, but manageable.

He started along the trail, noting a number of animal tracks as well. A forest elephant, a gorilla moving with a knuckle-walking gait, a large jaguar or leopard, and what he guessed was a red river hog and her piglets. He even came across the papery skin of a python. This one was only a baby, but he knew African rock pythons could grow to be eighteen feet long. Large enough to swallow just about anything—including unsuspecting humans.

Once upon a time, years and years ago during the jungle warfare part of his SAS training in the jungles of Belize, he had been on patrol and came across a group of Mayan Indians searching for a little girl who’d been missing from the village for two days. He lent a hand with the search, and shortly thereafter they discovered a large boa with an ominous bulge extending its middle section. They cut the snake open and found the missing girl inside, curled into a fetal position, partly digested. Not exactly a nice way to go.

As the morning progressed, the rising sun burned away the damp mist, and Fitzgerald began sweating profusely. He drank a full liter of water, then refilled the bottle from a quick-moving river. Soon he entered old-growth rainforest. The trail he’d been following disappeared.

However, AQ had not been concerned with anti-tracking, and their spoor of upturned leaves was as clear as Hansel’s breadcrumbs. An hour later, Fitzgerald slowed his pace. He would be closing in on his quarry and needed to reduce any unnecessary noise. The night before he’d used the southern star to chart his location and determine the tracks up the riverbank led due north. To confirm he was still heading in the same direction, he examined the stump of a felled tree. Growth rings were always closer together on the side of the stump facing the equator. Given what he saw, he concluded he was now heading northeast.

As he pressed on once more, he found himself thinking about the future. He was sixty-one, retirement age. Even for an assassin—especially for an assassin. His body was not as strong as it had once been, his mind not as sharp. Most of all the fire had burned out of him. For so many years he had been addicted to the thrill and adventure and challenge of the job. But recently he found he was going through the motions more than anything else. Still, he kept at it for one simple reason. He was afraid to stop. Because what would he do with himself then? Sit around the flat all day? Read his books? If Eryn were still alive, he could have done that. In fact, he would have enjoyed nothing better. Hell, they might even have had grandkids by now—

He froze.

He had just broken through a wall of foliage into an open clearing. A man was chopping wood by a fire pit two hundred meters away. The man glanced in Fitzgerald’s direction, as if he’d sensed another’s presence. Fitzgerald dropped to his stomach. Scrambled back through the underbrush, flattening himself against the trunk of a tree. He counted to twenty, slowly, then looked around the trunk.

The man was gone.

Cursing himself, wondering if he’d been spotted, Fitzgerald moved through the forest until he found a good spot to lie up. He studied the clearing again. It was filled mostly with stone and timber ruins, and he guessed it had once been a colonial mining town that had been razed by a fire. The door to one of the intact buildings, a church, opened, and the woodchopper emerged. He gathered up some grass and headed off to the forest.

Going to the loo.

Fitzgerald relaxed. He hadn’t been spotted after all. As he waited and watched, the African rainforest came slowly awake all around him. Red-chested cuckoos and Tambourine doves hooted and squawked. Old world monkeys howled. The sun inched higher into the rich blue sky, warming the air and lighting the seemingly infinite canopy like a match to green fire. He breathed the earthy, lush scents of the surrounding vegetation, and he felt extremely at peace right then, at one with nature, just as man had existed in his natural state for hundreds of thousands of years. He took out a bottle of water and drank a third.

Two more AQ came out of the church. One started a cooking fire while the other collected sticks to burn. Fitzgerald shifted his weight and settled in for the wait until Brazza needed to move his bowels himself. When he did, and wandered off into the trees, Fitzgerald would be there waiting for him—

Fitzgerald frowned, suddenly uneasy.

Brazza?

The loo?

The gunman hadn’t returned from the bush yet—

“Hands up!” a voice behind him barked. “No gun!”

The Kalashnikov was resting directly in front of Fitzgerald, within easy reach. But his chance of grabbing it, spinning around, and getting off an accurate round before being filled with holes was slim at best.

Smiling acidly, he raised his hands.