Target Response:. William W. Johnstone

toll of bodies of slain comrades found floating facedown in a blackwater channel or sprawled in a heap on solid ground. They had been shot, stabbed, clubbed, and even strangled to death.

      Human prey had become predator, targeting isolated individuals, stragglers, and others who’d become separated from the main body of troops.

      A shot would ring out somewhere in the swamp and when the hunters came to investigate, they’d inevitably find another of their number dead with a bullet in the head or heart.

      A shriek would sound in the night—or in daylight—from behind a patch of brush and a victim would be discovered with his throat cut or his middle ripped open to let his guts out.

      Worse, though, to the living, because so unnerving, was the death that came wrapped in silence.

      A line of soldiers would be filing along a trail when suddenly the next-to-last man in line would glance over his shoulder to pass a remark to a comrade who was bringing up the rear only to find that that man had disappeared.

      A search along the back trail inevitably would reveal the vanished one not too far behind the nearest bend, slain in some singularly unpleasant fashion.

      This slow, steady attrition of their numbers was dispiriting—demoralizing. The troops would have been glad to declare that the American had perished somewhere in the swamp and taken themselves back to the barracks at their home base in Lagos.

      Alas, it was not to be. Their commanding officers would not have it so. They took their orders from two white men, the South African mercenary Krentz and the Yankee spy Ward Thurlow. This pair of outlanders were favored associates of Defense Minister Tayambo, the supreme leader to whom all members of the elite bodyguard corps had sworn unquestioning allegiance.

      Truly the ways of politics—like fate—were strange, thought Ojo, shaking his head. One thing was sure, however: the manhunt had gone sour. It might well be cursed.

      The fierce joy experienced by the hunters on the second day when one of the Americans was slain and the other fled into the flooded forest had long since dissipated, eaten away by the rising body count of their own.

      Surely the other American would soon be taken, if not by the troops then by the swamp itself. The swamp was a mankiller, and this man was a foreigner, an outlander infidel soft with the corruptions and weaknesses of the Great Satan U.S.A.

      So argued the optimists in the ranks. Instead, the reverse had happened. The lone American seemed to thrive in the difficult environment, while the manhunters continued to fall victim to him.

      Each setback, each freshly slaughtered corpse, further enraged the company commanders. Of course, the officers stayed safely out of the swamp, remaining behind on riverboats or in the camp pitched on the point at the junction of the Rada and Kondo Rivers.

      Nothing would do but that the rank-and-file troops must continue the quest day and night, even to this midnight hour of the third day, when a half dozen boats prowled the flooded forest to rout the quarry from his hiding place.

      Better to be riding on a motorboat than prowling the land areas of the swamp on foot, thought Ojo. Even with such uncongenial company as Rasheed.

      The northerner sat perched on the bow thwart holding the pole lengthwise across the tops of his thighs, his back turned to Ojo. Rasheed’s stiffly held neck and upright posture radiated the innate arrogance that Ojo found so offensive.

      The steersman was careful to suppress all signs of dislike, however. Rasheed was touchy and quick to take offense, especially at a real or imagined slight from one like Ojo, who was not one of his jihadist coreligionists. And he was ever ready to avenge such slights.

      An enormous panga in a leather sheath was worn strapped diagonally across Rasheed’s back, with the hilt protruding within easy reach behind the top of his left shoulder. His assault rifle lay behind him, propped muzzle-up where the middle thwart met the starboard gunwale.

      Ojo’s rifle stood in a similar position, leaning against the near side of the middle thwart where it joined the port gunwale. Several inches of water in the bottom of the boat prevented its occupants from laying their rifles flat there.

      The engine puttered away, venting a cloud of blue-gray exhaust. The channel wound through what seemed like an endless tunnel whose walls on either side were pillared by dead tree trunks and veiled by trailing tangles of vegetation.

      Torchlight added to the eeriness of the scene, throwing murky shadows into ceaseless, restless motion.

      The passage once more began to narrow. Stands of mangrove trees bordered it on both sides, extending their massive, intricate root system into the water. Branches intertwined overhead, forming an archway.

      Ahead, a sturdy bough crossed the channel at right angles, stretching out about eight feet above it. A thick branch abundant with foliage.

      Ojo eyed it with unease. Such overhangs could be dangerous. Leopards liked to take their prey from above, lurking on a sturdy tree limb to pounce on the unwary victim below, fastening powerful fanged jaws on the back of the prey’s neck and breaking it. Their preferred method of making a kill.

      Ojo shrugged off the thought. He well knew that the flooded forest was barren of leopards. The big cats—leopards, cheetahs, lions—all shunned this forlorn swamp.

      Even the carrion-craving jackal, that none too fastidious cousin of the dog, gave it a wide berth.

      No, the danger here came not from feline predators but from reptiles; namely, crocodiles and snakes.

      The boat neared the overhanging limb. Some bits of tree moss dropped off the branch to fall plopping into the water. The limb creaked as if under some heavy burden.

      Rasheed looked up, tilting his head back. Something moved up there—

      A lightning bolt detonated in the cramped space of the channel. Simultaneous with the lightning came a booming thunderclap.

      Blasted out of the bow thwart, Rasheed fell backward into the bottom of the boat.

      Ojo had time to register the thunderbolt that struck down Rasheed. That was all. Defying the maxim that lightning never strikes twice in the same spot, a second such thunderbolt struck Ojo.

      The top of his head exploded and he ceased to exist.

      The boat continued its slow forward course. The big leafy branch shook as a pair of hands gripped it and a massive form swung down into view. The nightcomer dropped into the boat as it passed beneath him. He was mindful of the danger of swamping the craft or putting a booted foot through its bottom. He landed lightly in the beam of the boat, its widest part, touching down easily in a muscular crouch.

      His weight caused the shallow-draft dinghy to sink deeper into the water, for an instant sinking it so that black water rose dangerously close to the tops of the gunwales. He rode out the disturbance like a surfer on a board, minutely adjusting his position and maintaining his balance until the boat rose and righted itself.

      He was…Kilroy.

      Kilroy piloted the boat farther along the channel, whose switchback course ultimately wound toward the west.

      A night and a day, and half a night again had passed since the ambush that killed Raynor and saw Kilroy flee into the depths of the flooded forest.

      He had evaded his pursuers by the simple strategy employed by most successful fugitives—by being willing to take the chase to more extreme limits and endure more unremitting hell than those who were hunting him were willing to undergo.

      A heavy rainfall on the night following Raynor’s death had allowed Kilroy to slake his thirst and fill his canteen with fresh water. With Raynor gone, Kilroy had enough MREs to last for several days.

      Plastering his flesh with handfuls of black mud, smearing it over every inch of exposed skin, had won Kilroy some relief from plaguing insect pests. He had caught a few blessed hours of fitful sleep wedged into a treetop.

      Daybreak. He’d expended his assault rifle’s