Raynor had an M-16 with a single clip and a 9mm Beretta semiautomatic pistol with one clip loaded and a couple of spares in his pockets.
The initial attack had come swiftly, without warning. Only the chaos and confusion of its opening moments had allowed them to grab those minimal armaments and rations before cutting a hole in the rear of the canvas tent they’d been occupying in the camp and fleeing for their lives as hostile troops invaded the oil fields.
Even so it had been a close-run thing, with enemy bullets nipping at their heels as they disappeared into the brush at the edge of the swamp.
Since then Kilroy and Raynor had been playing a murderous game of hide-and-seek with their pursuers. The hunt was relentless, going on day and night. By the second day the ordeal was seriously taking its toll on the fugitives.
The swamp water was undrinkable, a hell-broth of deadly germs and impurities. Kilroy and Raynor strictly rationed the precious store of clean water in the single canteen they shared, limiting themselves to a single mouthful each every few hours. Despite which, the water level in the canteen declined with alarming rapidity.
It was a losing game. They sweated out more fluid than they took in—the threat of dehydration loomed. There could be no boiling of the swamp water to purify it. They couldn’t risk betraying their position to the hunters with telltale fire and smoke.
Hunger, too, made its inroads on their dwindling reserves of strength and energy. Between them they had about a half dozen MREs. They stretched out their food stores, making them last. Their mostly empty bellies were knotted with want.
No less pressing was the lack of ammo. They evaded the troops as best they could to preserve what limited rounds they had. Sometimes there was no getting around a clash. When discovery by one of the roving bands of hunters seemed imminent, the fugitives opened fire.
Kilroy was a dead shot. Each time he pulled the trigger, he killed a man. Raynor was a marksman but nowhere in Kilroy’s league. Kilroy was world-class. Trouble was, he had too few bullets.
By Day Two the thirty-round banana clip of his assault rifle had been cut in half, with a dead Nigerian trooper for every expended round. His high-powered .44 had a greater reserve of ammo to draw on. Kilroy wore the long-barreled revolver on a belt holster and the gun belt sported about twenty loaded cartridge loops.
He now wore the gun belt over his shoulder, with the holstered .44 hanging butt-out under his left arm. He’d rigged the weapon that way to keep it dry during the many crossings of waist-high water he’d had to endure.
Even when wielded by an expert such as he, though, a handgun was no match for the enemy’s assault rifles and small machine guns. Kilroy had no desire for working that close to the foe.
He and Raynor had killed about two dozen of the opposition since the pursuit began, but at no time had they been able to get close enough to the dead to scavenge their weapons, food, or water. They were constantly forestalled by the nearness of other packs of manhunters, who at the sound of gunfire gave out a hue and cry and closed in to resume the chase.
The fugitives had a simple plan: lose their pursuers, break out of the swamp, and then steal a ground vehicle or boat and beat it back to Lagos.
The goal seemed a long way off. So far it had taken their best efforts merely to stay alive and keep ahead of the foe, a course that had resulted in driving them deeper into the swamp.
Disaster struck on the second day.
Infrequent breaks in the canopy of foliage overhead revealed a heavy, overcast sky. A pale disk of sun smoldered behind gray clouds. The dusky gloom deepened as the steamy heat increased.
Kilroy and Raynor were approaching the ragged edge of exhaustion. The night before, they’d managed to grab several fitful hours of sleep, doled out in small doses when the pursuit slackened.
Soldiers sought them by night, bearing flashlights and flaming torches. Some came on foot, others in small boats.
During the intervals when they’d temporarily outdistanced their pursuers, Kilroy and Raynor took turns, one standing watch while the other snatched a portion of troubled sleep.
All too soon, a glimmer of light, a shouted voice, a splash or crash in the underbrush warned that the hunters were nearing. The fugitives would flog their fatigued bodies into motion, plunging deeper into the swamp as the chase began again.
Now, at midday of the second day, Kilroy and Raynor continued to push their way onward, stumbling along like automatons.
They came upon a rare stretch of solid ground, a low rise covered with thigh-high reeds that opened into a glade. Kilroy thought to himself that they’d finally caught a break, if only for the moment. Hard ground instead of muck to stand on, and a respite from the relentless pursuit that dogged their trail.
Raynor lurched forward, staggering, almost falling. He reached out, resting a hand on a gnarled tree trunk to support himself. He paused for an instant, left arm extended straight from the shoulder, clutching vine-wrapped tree bark, heavy head bowed, looking down as he labored for breath.
Suddenly he cried out in surprise and pain, pulling his arm back as though it had been burned. The cry echoed through the trees.
A black, ribbonlike wriggler clung to his bare forearm.
At first Kilroy thought Raynor had been bitten by a snake. The swamp teemed with them, most of them venomous. Kilroy had already had more than one close brush with green mambas. He’d given the grass-green reptiles a wide berth, knowing the mamba for one of the world’s most virulent and aggressive species of poisonous snakes.
No serpent had battened onto Raynor, however. He’d been bitten by a foot-long black centipede.
Features contorted with pain, breath hissing through clenched teeth, Raynor used his free hand to grab the segmented crawler.
“Don’t!—” Kilroy began, but he was too late.
Raynor tore the creature free from his arm, threw it down on the ground, and stomped it, crushing it beneath his boot sole.
Kilroy went to him. “Ain’t that a bitch?” Raynor said, mustering up a sickly grin.
Kilroy examined the other’s arm. The centipede’s head was still attached to it. It had buried twin pincerlike mandibles deep into Raynor’s flesh, where they clung so tenaciously that when Raynor had tried to free himself from their biting grip, its segmented body had torn loose from its head.
The walnut-sized head had a smooth, shiny, helmetlike black carapace. The centipede’s primitive but tough nervous system kept its severed head alive even though separated from its body.
“Fucker doesn’t want to let go,” Raynor said, making an effort to keep his voice flat, even-toned. He reached for the head to pry it loose but Kilroy stopped him.
“You don’t want the jaws to break loose and stay in your flesh,” Kilroy said.
“I’m not going to keep its head for a souvenir,” Raynor gritted.
“It’ll have to be burned off,” said Kilroy.
There was no place to sit but on the ground—and who knew what else might be lurking in the weeds. This was prime snake country, and with the abundance of blackwater channels, crocodiles were never too far away, either. Better to administer the treatment with Raynor standing up.
Kilroy unbuttoned the flap of the left breast pocket of his safari-style shirt and took out a cigarette lighter, a heavy-duty metal job with a nonreflective matte black finish. “This’ll hurt,” he said.
“It already hurts, so go ahead,” Raynor said.
Kilroy flicked on the lighter, a trusty model that had served him well in the past. It did not fail him now but burned with a steady yellow flame. He liked his cigars, and if he’d had one available