Davidson glared at the new point man. Having someone defend him made his failure sting all the worse.
"Whatever," Lopez said, gathering ammunition and weapons from the dead men. "We'll catch up with her."
"Are you sure?" Talli asked.
Both Davidson and Lopez glared at the supposed sniper.
"Whoa," he said, holding up his hands. "I'm not saying someone shouldn't go after her, but we have a narrow window of opportunity to get in ahead of Brandt. I'm just saying we put the majority of our manpower to laying the ambush."
The man was correct, which bugged the crap out of Davidson. His shame had prevented him from seeing the whole picture.
"Talli's right," Davidson admitted. "I'll head out and catch up with you at the rally point."
Levont stepped in front of him, though. "You are kidding, right?"
Davidson looked to Lopez.
The corporal nodded. "Davidson did just fine last week."
"That was with an entire team. With vehicles, sticking to the roads," Levont pressed. "But out here? In the jungle? How much forest tracking experience do you have?"
Still bristling from the prickle of shame, Davidson was not in the mood to be questioned. "Enough."
"Do you speak Lingala?" Levont asked bluntly. "Dude, you are a white guy in a tux who doesn't even speak the official language of the country. How far exactly do you think you are getting?"
"He's got a point," Lopez stated.
"No." Davidson had lost her. He had to get Rebecca back.
Lopez dug his shoe into the dirt. "We've got GPS coordinates to guide us back to the village. Finding Rebecca out here in this"-the corporal indicated to the dripping leaves that formed a green sky above their heads-"is going to take some mad skills."
They shouldn't even been having this discussion. If Brandt were here, they wouldn't be. Brandt would already have struck out after Rebecca.
"We've got to give Rebecca and Brandt the best chance at survival," Lopez concluded.
"I'll find her," Levont added. "Or die trying, I swear."
"We're not soldiers," Talli chimed in. "We are a team. We've got to work as one."
Great. Talli being more logical than him. It didn't get much worse than that.
Lopez must have read Davidson's capitulation before Davidson even knew that he capitulated.
"Levont," Lopez said, handing him several extra weapons, "go."
"My last spotting marked her about eleven degrees north by northwest."
With a nod, the tall black man took the guns and ammo, tucking them into his tux's pocket as he turned and headed into the forest. Davidson watched Levont's back until it disappeared amongst the foliage.
Talli struck out in the opposite direction. Still, Davidson stood rooted in place. Not sure which direction to head.
Lopez patted him on the back. "I am going to leave it up to you," the corporal said, then turned, walking backward. He looked over his shoulder, apparently making sure Talli was out of earshot before whispering harshly. "But damn, I could use a real sniper on this rescue mission."
Davidson sighed. Brandt's chances did go down sharply if he didn't join them. Whereas, Rebecca's chances were best with Levont.
"Flattery will get you everywhere," Davidson said as he followed Lopez.
"That and taking the plane elevator," Lopez frowned. "I need to get a better name for it, but you get what I mean."
Unfortunately, Davidson did.
Brandt braced himself as the open-aired Jeep slid in the thick mud. If the driver didn't correct, they were about to go off the side of a very steep cliff. Thankfully, the driver was probably born and raised amongst these treacherous, slick mountain "roads," as he turned into the spin, hitting the gas, bumping them up and over the mudslide.
However, the Jeep in front of them did not fare so well. It couldn't fight the force of gravity as the rear wheels went over the edge. The men tried to scramble from the vehicle as it hung from its front tires, but again, those laws of physics didn't seem to give a rat's ass. Which apparently neither did the men's team. No one so much as reached a hand out as the Jeep slipped from its perch and plummeted down the side of the cliff, the men's screams filling the misty mountain air.
Then quiet returned to the jungle.
"See what the problem is," the lead mercanary barked at the driver.
Using his legs, Brandt lifted himself off the seat and looked ahead, finding the problem that had brought this little convey to a screeching halt. Ahead of the lead Jeep was a huge gouge in the road. More than likely the Congonese government's countermeasure to rebel activities. It was a common ploy. Cutting gouges in the road stopped motorized vehicles from disappearing back into the jungle, which made it much harder for the rebels to make blinding strikes in the lowlands. It could take hours to build any kind of stopgap measure to get across.
Brandt had never been so glad for a ruthless, oppressive government in his life.
Until now, the Disciples had been well organized and executed a Special Forcesstyle snatch. Too bad their luck seemed to have run out. As everyone's did eventually. Had the Disciples prepared for this contingency? They were now six men down. Which meant that Brandt was still facing twelve-to-one odds. Odds that were now doable.
"Frellan, we will have to go by foot," the merc leader stated as he grabbed his pack from the Jeep. The Disciple didn't seem any too happy by the fact. Guess the guy didn't do as much research on the African side of this mission as he should have.
Brandt and his team had met with a similar problem last week, approaching from the eastern slope. However, they had brought sturdy planking along. Lopez had gotten them underway within ten minutes. Clearly, Frellan didn't have anyone of Lopez's caliber, which meant if they wanted to get the Jeeps across, they would have to stop, cut down trees, craft planks out of them, and hope they held the Jeep's weight.
And every hour they delayed here trying to build their bridge on a sliding slope of mud was an hour the army could spot them and send in troops.
Guess the Disciples were learning the hard way that Africa was a fickle mistress.
Worse, the group had only made it halfway up the mountain, and even the Jeep's engines had strained at the grade. There was no way Brandt was going to make it in his current condition. And Frellan knew it.
The tattooed man drew in a deep breath. "Administer the antidote."
Brandt kept his face placid, neutral, accepting.
But on the inside? Oh. On the inside, he was grinning ear to ear.
CHAPTER 5.
Pentagon, Washington, DC 10:59 a.m. (EST) Bunny sat in a room not all that unlike the one back in South Carolina. Painted gray, with no windows and a stark metal table. Guess the Pentagon wasn't big on spending their budget on interior decor. She shifted in her chair, trying to get comfortable. Even in a borrowed pair of slacks and a blouse from Emily, Bunny still felt woefully underdressed. The few people they had met coming in through the south parking entrance were in full dress uniform.
She sipped on her can of Fresca. Emily remembered her well, even the exceedingly rare flavor of grapefruit mint. Setting the can down carefully so as not to spill anything on the dozens of files scattered on the table, Bunny reached for the report on Brandt's last mission.
These after-action reports read about as easily as a freshman's term paper. For all of Brandt's virtues, engaging prose was not one of them.
The door swung open as Emily and Prenner rushed in. Neither could hide the look on their faces. Bunny popped up from her chair.
"What happened? Is it Brandt?"
Bunny knew that he had activated his tracker and the Disciples had taken him back to Africa, but had his usefulness run its course?
Emily gulped, nodding to the chair. Bunny didn't sit down. The woman sighed. "No. Brandt is still en route to the African village. No..." Emily gulped again. "The plane we believe was carrying Corporal Lopez's team and Dr. Monroe was shot down deep within the Congo basin."
Bunny sat down. Hard. "Are you sure it was them?"
"Just before it was downed, it looked like someone was trying to break the sound barrier with a Learjet," Prenner answered.
Okay, the lieutenant was right. That had to be Lopez, then. But if Lopez was at the helm, how the hell did they get shot down?
"The Disciples?" she asked.
Her CIA handler shook her head. "The last satellite images we had showed a tribe on the move. I think this was simply a matter of opportunity for them."
"Okay, then," Bunny stated, shifting her mind out of freak-out mode and into figure-it-the-hell-out mode. "You guys have obviously scrambled some kind of rescue effort."
By the shared pained expression on Emily and Prenner's face, that was a big fat no.
She shouldn't have been surprised, though. The men's mission last week had been uber secret. A last ditch effort, as a matter of fact. The African country was on the brink of civil war at all times. Trying to negotiate even the most basic humanitarian aid was fraught with danger. Add in a major American military move? That spelled disaster.
"So they are on their own?" Bunny asked despite already knowing the answer.
"Which is why we need to figure out the Disciples' angle. I have assets in the region, but I can't engage them until we know the end game," Emily said as she sat down across from Bunny. The CIA operative pushed the after-action reports toward Bunny. "There has got to be something in here that gives us a clue."
Bunny shoved the papers back. "I've been over them a thousand times. There is nothing in there."
"What about what isn't in there?" Prenner suggested.
Bunny's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
"All military units are known for let's say 'fudging' their after-action reports. Special Forces, though? Theirs are nicknamed 'time-savers' since they save the redactors all that precious ink blacking out parts that will never see the light of day."
"Can you give me an example?" she asked, still not quite understanding how any of this was going to help save Rebeca and the rest.
Prenner pulled out a specific file. The one that covered their time chasing after the Ten Commandments tablets. "Did Brandt describe everything that happened in this?"
Bunny snorted. Hell, no. The indoor helicopter incident? Where Lopez stole a Russian military helicopter? Not very likely. The lack of Talli's sniper skills? Completely missing. The report was more a general gist kind of document rather than giving the actual blow-by-blow.
"It looks like you are getting where I'm headed," the lieutenant stated.
She didn't bother answering him. Instead, she dug through the pages, trying to find the ones that had bugged her. The ones that seemed incomplete.
Rebecca watched the snake's forked tongue flicker.
An African rock python.
Genus: python. Species: sebae, if she weren't mistaken. And mistaken she wished she could be. The rock python was the largest of all African snakes, and that damned tongue of its was forked to increase the surface area so that it could more easily detect tropotaxins. Chemical cues that prey was around.
Basically, if exhaustion had a smell, Rebecca was doused in it. The snake probably tasted an easy meal on the horizon. She had nearly been squeezed to death by a cousin of its in Ecuador and really did not want to relive the experience. However, as the metal clasps of the parachute's harness refused to budge, Rebecca feared a repeat performance. Especially since she had been watching the damn snake for about five minutes and had yet to see its tail. It was really annoying that she knew the snake could be as long as twenty feet and could easily consume her, tattered wedding dress and all.
Even if she somehow got out of the tangled harness, there was still that nasty twenty-foot drop. Although, right about now, she would take a broken leg over suffocation via python.
Not a great Plan B, however.
As a branch snapped as the snake coiled itself around the parachute, working out its crushing muscles, Rebecca worked frantically on the latch. She understood that they didn't want you falling out of the parachute at thousand feet up, but seriously, did they have to jungle-proof it?
The buzz of insects, so many insects, rang in her ears as if they were cheering the python on. Not that it needed much incentive. Side to side, it winded its way down the parachute, that tongue testing the air. Making sure she was still an easy mark.
One of the latches finally gave way, taking an acrylic nail with it. She slipped through one of the loops, dropping a good foot. The snake must have sensed its meal getting away, as it sprang open its jaws, striking toward her. Rebecca ducked as its head flew past her. Undeterred, the snake swung back, pulling itself back for another strike. It hadn't spent the last half hour climbing this damned tree to let her go so easily.
Frantic, Rebecca worked at the other carbine, spinning the lock until it, too, released. Just as the python reared back for another, Rebecca threw herself forward. The scales of the snake's head slide past her arm, leaving a trail of python saliva on her skin.
Caught by her leg, Rebecca dangled upside down, pointed toward the jungle floor. Tangled in the rigging, Rebecca really wished she'd done all that "core body" conditioning Bunny bragged so much about. But seriously, who would have thought she would need that kind of muscle strength to escape a python? Bunny probably could have folded herself over and pulled her body weight up to extract herself from the harness.
The best Rebecca could do, however, was keep from puking as she swayed above the lush underbrush. Mr. Python wasn't taking this development lying down, either. His body squeezed the rigging above her so tightly that even if she had Bunny's abs, Rebecca probably couldn't get her leg out now.
Then the insects silenced. Like all at once. The only sounds left were her pounding pulse and the crinkle of the parachute as it was crushed within the python's coils. Maybe the insects didn't have the stomach for what came next, after all.
Blood rushing to her head, Rebecca thought her vision was blurring when she saw movement to the right. But there it was again. Could the men have found her?
"Davidson!" she cried. Dear God, could the cavalry really be here?
Then a stick hit her in the head. What the hell?
The source of the projectile charged out of the dense brush directly beneath her. A chimpanzee. Not one, but a whole troupe of chimpanzees. And apparently really pissed-off chimpanzees.
Face heating up and her leg throbbing, Rebecca was really annoyed that she knew there were two species of chimps. One that warred and one that lived in communal harmony. Of course, man evolved from the war ones. And apparently these chimps were pretty ticked off at their descendant. They hooted and shook the underbrush.
But usually, even these chimps weren't so aggressive. Rebecca guessed it was that earthquake last week. Between it and the aftershocks, the animals were on edge. Territorial. Deadly.
The snake's head slid across her foot, its tongue flickering across her skin, apparently making sure that she tasted as good as she smelled.
Snake above. Mad apes below.