Paul Christopher - The Templar Legion

The crocodile squirmed and shivered as the knife went into its brain and then suddenly went rigid. Eddie pulled out the blade, reached into the water, grabbed one of the creature’s stubby legs, then half flipped the body, exposing the pale, eggplant-shaded belly. He pushed the bowie knife into the crocodile’s throat and sawed downward, esophagus, heart, lungs, liver and intestine spilling out into the shallows like a hideously foul-smelling stew. He used his boot to push the disemboweled creature’s corpse into the current.

“That should keep his friends busy for a while,” said Eddie, grabbing Holliday’s elbow and helping him up the riverbank. At the edge of the dense jungle Rafi was bending over Peggy, who was sitting up and coughing, her back against the thick trunk of a tree that overhung the river.

“She’s okay,” said Rafi. “Half-drowned but okay.”

Eddie watched the remains of Pevensey washing up onshore like flotsam. He turned back to Holliday. “You have some serious enemies, senor. Perhaps you should have warned me.”

“Sorry about that,” answered Holliday, hands on knees as he tried to catch his breath. “I didn’t think they wanted me that badly.”

“I think you were wrong, Comandante ,” said Captain Eddie. “I think they want you very badly indeed.”

Holliday climbed to his feet, his clothes smeared with mud, stinking but alive. “Where’s the widest part of the river closest to here? I need about fifteen hundred feet, say half a kilometer.”

“We’ve just been attacked with rockets and nearly eaten by crocodiles,” said Peggy, her voice weary. “Why would you want to know something like that?”

“Because that’s how much water a good floatplane pilot in a Caravan needs to land,” said Holliday.

“Twenty kilometers behind us or thirty ahead,” said Captain Eddie, wiping the blade of his knife across his jeans. He slid it back into its sheath.

“How long to get to us here?”

“By boat, four hours, more likely five at this time of day. Twice that by land. There are very few trails, so they would have to stay close to the river, follow its turns.”

“Are they likely to find boats?” Holliday asked.

“Perhaps a dugout or two, small ones, not what they need. There are no villages along that part of the river,” answered Eddie.

“So we’ve got eight hours, maybe, until nightfall.”

“For what?” Rafi asked, crouched beside Peggy.

“To get ready,” said Holliday.

“Point me toward a good hardwood,” said Holliday, standing in the narrow clearing between the riverbank and the jungle.

“A tree, senor?” Eddie asked a little skeptically. There were thousands of trees all around them.

“A tree.” Holliday nodded. “A hardwood in particular.”

“Miss Blackstock is leaning against one,” said Eddie, pointing. The tree in question was sixty or seventy feet tall, its summit lost in the jungle canopy overhead. Its roots were splayed and thick, raising the trunk like the legs of a massive spider. The leaves were broad, round and a deep, rich green. The branches hung down like a heavy curtain. “It is an iroko tree. There has been much poetry written about it. It is also in danger of extinction.”

“Looks like it’s flourishing to me.” Holliday shrugged.

“It is pollinated only by the strawberry fox-eared fruit bat. The bat is being killed off by farmers velarcutting for their crops.”

Holliday approached the tree and looked up through the tangle of limbs. Rafi and Peggy followed his gaze.

“What are you looking for?” Rafi asked.

“A dead branch.”

“I thought we were trying to get away from the guys on the floatplane,” said Peggy.

“They’ve got weapons and we don’t,” said Holliday coldly. “One way or the other they’ll catch up to us and kill us, so we have to kill them first.”

“With a dead branch?” Rafi said.

“With that dead branch,” said Holliday. He reached up with the hatchet and hacked off a leafless branch about three fingers thick. He pulled it down, trimmed one end and held it up against himself to measure. The branch was a little shorter than he was, making it about six feet long.

“We’re going to beat them to death with clubs when they go to sleep?” said Peggy.

“Why don’t you and Rafi help Captain Eddie see what he can salvage from Pevensey and I’ll show you,” suggested Holliday, pointing to the Cuban, who was pulling wreckage out of the river.

Half an hour later, after borrowing Eddie’s knife, Holliday’s six-foot stave was further sculpted. Both ends slightly notched, the ends a little more than half an inch thick now, the center a little more than half an inch in diameter. The “front” of the stave was sapwood, with the heavier heartwood on the “inside,” creating a natural laminate. With that much done Holliday went down to the riverbank to see how his companions were doing.

Eddie and the others had retrieved most of the material that had washed up onshore or was easily accessible without arousing the interests of the half-submerged fleet of crocodiles cruising on the edge of the main current. While Eddie and Rafi carried the heavier things higher on the bank Peggy sorted out what they had already gathered. It was an eclectic collection.

Letting his eyes run over the exhibition of junk spread out in the little clearing, Holliday took a quick inventory. There was a pair of two-by-fours with pieces of wallboard and nails still clinging to them-Holliday guessed they were uprights for the boiler room enclosures. The window frame and cardboard shutters; two unopened gift boxes of Ginsu steak knives, twenty-four knives in all; a full-sized ax embedded in a log; a soggy-looking roll of duct tape and an old bamboo fishing rod with a reel of black nylon line still attached.

“Just about everything I need,” said Holliday. “Maybe we really can even the odds a little.” He turned and found Captain Eddie beside him.

“Anything I can do, compadre ?”

“A fire,” said Holliday after thinking for a moment. “A small one, but nice and hot.”

“Going through the files, I can come up with only four really viable candidates to replace Kolingba,” said Allen Faulkener, dropping a stack of blue-and-red-striped top secret folders on Sir James Matheson’s desk. “The obvious choice is Dr. Oliver Gash, late of Baltimore, Maryland, also known as Olivier Gashabi, a refugee from Rwanda in the early days of the genocide. He has the brains, the connections and the innate greed to run Kukuanaland as we see fit, given the right incentives. Number two is Dr. Amobe Barthelemy Limbani, the governor of the Vakaga prefecture before its abrupt name change to Kukuanaland. He presents several serious drawbacks in that he may well be dead; if he’s not we haven’t been able to find him; and last but not least, if he is alive and if we could find him he might well not be bribable.”

“Everybody has a price,” said Matheson. “And if he’s not bribable he’s got something in his past that makes blackmail possible.”

“Not in Limbani’s case. He appears to be clean as a whistle, and besides, there are other problems that may be insurmountable.”

“The third possibility?” Matheson said.

“Ah, the dark horse.” Faulkener nodded. “Francois Nagoupande. He was vice governor of Vakaga and the man who betrayed Limbani. He lives in a compound in Bamako, Mali, on his ill-gotten gains. He’s terrified that Kolingba will try to assassinate him, so he’s surrounded by bodyguards. Best of all he is a Banda, not a Yakima like Limbani-in fact, his ethnicity was the reason he was appointed vice governor.”

“Is he approachable?” Matheson asked.