Sacrifice, page 8
part #18 of Rogue Angel Series
Balut nodded. “And the one we sought originally.”
Eduardo breathed. “The sniper.”
“Yes.”
Eduardo waved for the men to fan out again. If the sniper was close, that meant things were a lot more dangerous than if they’d just been after the woman. The sniper could turn the tables on them if he thought they had found his trail.
He grabbed Balut. “Be extra careful from here on out. If he sees us, he will kill you first.”
Balut smiled. “He would have to be able to see me.”
“Maybe he already has.”
Balut shrugged. “I’m an old man. I’ve had a good life.”
Eduardo shoved him away. “Find the trail and keep us on it. If you think they are close, then signal and we will take over.”
Balut nodded and stalked off.
Eduardo readied his AK-47 and then moved on. In his peripheral vision, he could see his men moving ahead with him. Their distance was still such that they could keep visual range.
Balut disappeared from view ten yards ahead of them. Eduardo frowned. Figures, he thought. I tell him to stay close and he goes and does what he wants. Well, just so long as he gets results. That was all that mattered.
Out of the corner of his eye, Eduardo saw the man farthest away to the left suddenly vanish.
He stopped.
The man closer to him on the left saw Eduardo stop. “Sir?”
“Where did he go? The one on the other side of you?” Eduardo asked.
“I don’t know. He was there a second ago.”
“Go and find him!”
The man turned and ran off into the jungle. Eduardo frowned. He didn’t like this. Not one bit.
Balut still hadn’t returned. Eduardo called a halt to the advance. Had the sniper picked off the man on the far left?
No, it couldn’t be. They would have heard the shot. Unless, of course, he had a sound suppressor on his rifle. Eduardo frowned. It was possible, but did it make sense? Suppressors could affect the accuracy of the bullets, he had once heard.
Whether it was true or not was another matter.
He called his men in close to him. He knelt on the ground and tried to figure out how to best approach the situation. The man on the left came back from the jungle shaking his head.
And only one man came from the right.
“Where is the other one?” Eduardo asked.
The man from the right turned. “He was behind me as we came in. I heard him walking behind me.”
Eduardo swept the area with his rifle, ready to fire. The two men with him looked scared. Eduardo had seen them both in action enough in the cities to know they didn’t frighten easily.
“What’s going on, sir?” one of the men asked.
Eduardo shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“We have to find them.”
Eduardo nodded. “All right, we’ll go together. But slowly and stay close. I don’t want either of you disappearing.”
“What about the old man?”
“Leave him,” Eduardo said. “He can find his way around these parts. He doesn’t need our help.”
They rose and moved toward where Eduardo had seen the first man vanish. As they crept through the jungle, all of them kept their rifles up at their shoulders. It was a drill they’d been taught over and over again. With the rifle stock in their shoulder it was much easier to bring the gun to bear on an enemy.
Eduardo saw it before the men with him. “No.”
A smear of fresh blood coated the trunk of a buttress tree. Eduardo felt the sticky blood and knew that one of his men had been hurt.
But where was the body?
The area around the blood showed little sign that anyone had been there. Eduardo could see evidence of his man’s presence, but beyond that, nothing.
If the sniper had shot him, then there would be a body. There was no way the sniper would have exposed himself just to come and get the body. Was there?
He thought about what to do. “We’ll move to the other side and check for the other one,” he said.
Again they rose and crossed back over the area they’d trekked through. On the right flank, they found another smear of blood but nothing else.
Where were his men? And where was Balut?
The old man had vanished just like the men on either side. Eduardo frowned. Was it possible that Balut had led them into some kind of trap? Was he working with the Americans?
Rage flooded Eduardo’s veins. “If the old man has betrayed us, we will kill him, as well,” he said.
Both of the men with him huddled close by, ready to shoot at anything that moved. One of them turned to Eduardo. “Now what, sir?”
Eduardo felt his heart hammering in his chest. “We go forward.”
“Sir?”
“We need to find out who is doing this.”
The other man frowned. “Whoever it is, they are able to kill without making any noise. That means they are accomplished and skilled. Very dangerous.”
Eduardo took a hand off of his rifle and laid it on the man’s shoulder. “You, too, are also accomplished and skilled. And you, too, are dangerous. We will go forth and find the people who did this. And we will kill them.”
Both men looked unsure but rose with Eduardo. He nodded at them both. “Let’s go.”
But as he took his next step, he heard what sounded like two big breaths swishing past his ear. Instinct took over and he dropped to the ground, squeezing off a burst from his heavy AK-47 as he did so. The relative silence of the jungle exploded as the rounds tore into the undergrowth.
Eduardo lay there breathing hard. He could see the man on his right also lying flat. Eduardo crawled over to him.
“Did you see anything?”
He got no response.
Eduardo nudged the man with the butt of his gun. The body shifted and then separated from the head. The head turned over and Eduardo was face-to-face with the dead man’s stare.
Blood pumped out of the body into the ground. Eduardo covered his mouth and choked back the rising tide in his throat.
He crawled away from the corpse and moved to his left. He heard the angry buzz of insects before he got close enough to know that the man on the left was dead, too.
Decapitated.
Eduardo huddled in the vines with his rifle. What could possibly have taken their heads off? He knew of no bullet in the world that could do such a thing.
It was as if their heads had been cut with a very sharp blade.
But who had done the cutting? And had the blade been thrown?
Eduardo knew that he would be the next to die unless he acted. With a rush of adrenaline, he got to his feet and screamed as he pulled the trigger on the AK-47. Shells tumbled out of the ejector port as his bullets tore into the jungle. Bits of leaves, branches and bark exploded as the bullets found their marks.
Eduardo raked from side to side until at last, the magazine was empty.
Click-click-click.
He breathed long and hard. Sweat had soaked him through.
And when he heard the next sound, it was almost too late for it to register before Eduardo felt something bite into him.
And he saw nothing but blackness.
12
“Where’d they go?”
Vic’s voice remained nothing more than a whisper. But Annja could detect a sense of something else—fear.
She peered out from the undergrowth. “What do you mean?”
“I mean they’re gone.”
“How is that possible?”
Vic shook his head but kept himself glued to his scope. “I don’t know. After that last burst of fire, I fully expected them to come storming through the jungle straight for us.”
“Was he aiming at us?”
“Tough to tell. It looked like they were shooting ahead of them, but we’re still about half a klick away. They could have seen something else, I suppose, but I don’t know what.”
Vic slid down next to her. “I don’t know what’s going on here.”
“And you don’t like it,” she said.
“No.”
Annja smiled. “Welcome to my world.”
He ignored her. “I’m used to being a ghost, Annja. People don’t know I move in and out of their world. I take my time, I move on the periphery of their awareness, make my shots and then vanish right back where I like to be.” He frowned. “But this, this is something else. And it just feels…weird.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.”
Annja lay on her back looking up at the green above her and all around her. Tube vines, trees, palms and some of the tall grasses seemed to arc above her like a greenhouse of skyscrapers. Scattered raindrops still worked their way down from far above, splattering her face and clothes. But Annja was beyond caring about her comfort at this point. Somehow she’d managed to tune out the physical discomforts of jungle living and she concentrated now on the most important aspect of it all—survival.
She closed her eyes and breathed slowly. Her gut was needling her with concern. Somewhere out there was something dangerous.
But what? An animal? Could there be some type of deadly jungle predator that had attacked the search team? It didn’t add up.
Human? Were there people out here that neither the terrorists nor Vic knew about?
Annja opened her eyes.
“Bingo.”
Vic looked at her. “What?”
Annja rolled over and looked through the plants back at where the search team had gone down. “Tell me again about the stories you heard about this place.”
“We don’t really have time for that right now, Annja.”
She frowned. “I think there’s someone else out there tracking us. And I think that’s what we’ve been feeling today.”
“Not the search teams?” Vic looked skeptical.
Annja shook her head. “No. I don’t think they even knew what hit them.”
Vic got behind his rifle again, peering into the scope. “They’d have to be extremely adept if they could escape notice like that.”
“You’ve heard rumors about them?”
“Not really. Just what I told you earlier. That a lot of people used to come into this part of the jungle. Inevitably, they went missing.”
“But you came in here.”
Vic grinned. “Orders, ma’am. Just following my orders.”
Annja sighed and closed her eyes. Hovering in her mind’s eye, she could see her sword ready to pull out the moment it seemed she was in danger. Of course, there was no telling how Vic would respond when he saw the blade.
But she’d have to risk it.
“Vic.”
“Yeah?”
“If something happens…”
He glanced at her. “Use the pistol. You said you knew how.”
Annja nodded. “I do. It’s just that something might happen and I don’t want you to be shocked.”
Vic looked away from the scope. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just remember I said that, okay? Don’t be shocked.”
He smirked. “Uh, yeah, okay. Whatever.” He went back to peering through his scope.
Annja felt for the pistol. She knew it was ready to fire, but she slid the safety off anyway. Somehow, having the gun didn’t make her feel nearly as safe as when she’d had her sword in her hands.
Vic shifted. “I thought I just caught a glimpse of something.”
Annja rolled over. “Where?”
“One o’clock to our position.”
Annja swept her eyes over the point just to their northeast. She ran her eyes back and forth, preferring not to try to focus, but instead let her peripheral vision pick up the motion.
“I don’t see any—”
Her words were cut off by the sudden explosion from Vic’s rifle. As quick as could be, Vic slid the bolt back, caught the ejected shell casing, and then slammed the bolt back forward again.
His voice seemed almost robotic, and Annja knew he had switched on to the part of himself that ran on automatic during such situations. “Movement. Moving now to one-thirty,” he said.
He fired again and Annja winced as the deafening roar echoed into the jungle. Birds overhead that hadn’t moved during the first shot suddenly erupted from the trees, scattering like bits of ripped paper into the winds.
Vic repeated his shot and then waited before firing again.
“Did you get him?” Annja asked.
“I don’t know.”
Annja frowned. This situation was rapidly becoming extremely uncomfortable. She didn’t like waiting for the enemy to come to her. She much preferred to go on the offensive. She’d found it worked more times than not.
But this waiting…
Vic brought himself up into a kneeling position, sweeping his arcs from left to right and back again.
Annja’s sense of danger continued to grow. The intensity of it increased and she knew that Vic had not scored a hit on his target.
“You missed,” she said.
But Vic didn’t even look at her now. “How do you know?”
“Gut feeling,” she said.
He sniffed. “I’m one of the best, Annja. That’s not bravado, either. If I shoot at something, I hit it.”
“Not this time.”
“How can you be so certain?”
Annja sighed. “The same way you knew there was something else out there today watching us. The same way you know there’s something out there right now that wasn’t even scratched by your shots.”
Vic stopped moving. “You got a suggestion? I’m all ears.”
Annja shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“In that case, I’ll keep shooting if I see something. One of these times, I’m going to get the bastards.”
He swung left at the moment. “Get down!”
The rifle spit a round just as Annja ducked down into the leaf litter. Vic chambered another bullet and waited. “How the hell did they get to the other side without us seeing them?” he said.
Annja looked down at the pistol in her hands. There was no way it was going to be of help in this situation. Bullets didn’t seem to matter one whit to whatever it was that was stalking them.
I want my sword, she thought.
Vic’s rifle suddenly dropped.
Annja blocked it from striking her on the head. “Hey!”
Beside her, Vic’s body crumpled to the ground.
“Vic!”
Annja searched for any obvious wounds, but found nothing. She rolled him over and saw something bright and flashy jutting out of the side of his neck. It was a small piece of wood tipped with bright feathers.
A blow dart?
Annja closed her eyes and summoned her sword. When she opened her eyes, her hands were wrapped around the hilt. She took a breath, feeling the energy from the sword wash over her, seeping into her system and energizing her in ways she hadn’t felt since the last time she’d used it.
Annja frowned. Forget the pistol. This is how I’ll deal with this, she thought.
She got to her feet and felt a wave of energy build inside her, and in the next moment, she opened her mouth and let loose a roar of challenge.
She sensed movement all around her.
My God, she thought. It’s not just one, after all.
There were almost twenty of them.
As they stepped from the undergrowth, Annja knew why they hadn’t been easy to spot. They wore very little in terms of clothing, but their brown skin was carefully painted with greens and browns in a mesmerizing pattern that made them blend in completely with their surroundings.
They stood roughly five feet tall, but their small stature did little to diminish the looks of absolute ferocity simmering in their eyes.
Annja held her sword out in front of her.
They seemed to consider her something strange. A few of the men glanced at each other as if surprised by the appearance of a woman wielding a sword in the middle of a jungle in the Philippines.
That makes two of us, thought Annja with a wry grin.
I’d much rather be home.
Three of the tribesmen wielded small bows and arrows. Annja wasn’t concerned about them. She knew the sword would be able to cleave any airborne missiles out of the air without much effort.
The other tribesmen held wicked-looking small scythelike objects, however. Annja could see the glint of metal, and the edges of those weapons looked positively lethal. Several others held up long tubes. Blow guns.
Annja knew she’d have a tougher time fighting those off. The small darts would be hard to deflect.
But she would have to try.
Vic’s body lay behind her and Annja had no way of knowing if he was dead or simply unconscious. The dart could have been tipped with a sedative or a poison.
She couldn’t risk getting nailed by one of them.
Annja spun the sword in her hands, its blade flashing back and forth in the jungle air, whistling as it did so. The tribesmen seemed to almost smile. Two of the men wielding the scythes did their own maneuver with their weapons as if answering Annja’s unspoken challenge.
Annja almost grinned. Maybe they respect the fact that I’m not using a gun, she thought.
She leaped into the air and did a four crosscut with the sword before landing softly on the jungle floor again.
This time the men whooped once before launching into their own complicated acrobatic stunts.
Annja found herself smiling now. Common ground, she figured. If they respected her as a warrior, there might be hope for some kind of détente.
Maybe.
“Excuse me.”
Annja’s mind whirled. She turned and in the next instant felt two things.
The first was that something small and sharp pricked her flesh on her throat. The second was that her sword was plucked from her hands as if she hadn’t even been holding it.
As she started to topple to the ground on her back, the last image she saw was the curious face of an old man with a long, wispy white beard.
And the wide smile that blazed across his ancient face.
13
“Annja!”
She heard the voice but it buzzed in her head like the annoying mosquitoes that surrounded her in the jungle. She tried to ignore it, focusing instead on how lovely it felt to be sleeping in the pitch darkness of her mind.
