somewhere in the middle of the city, or at a damn meet-and-greet center at one of the city's five main airports? Why in Gurja's name did they have to end up doing this now, on his watch, here, tonight? Had he not been devout in his work, his home life, his prayers? What had he done to deserve this?'
'Chief Inspector?' In the darkness alongside him, Johar was staring a little harder than usual at the glowing screen of his spinner.
'What now, Lieutenant?' Somehow, Keshu managed to substitute resignation for exhaustion in his voice.
'It looks like we have another new heat signature, sir.'
Oh great. Wonderful wondrous, an exasperated Keshu thought. Who could it be now? A wandering politician in search of nocturnal votes? Teenage forestry scouts desperate to earn commendations? Was there perhaps a small convention scheduled for this region he had not been informed about? He directed his attention to the far right-hand portion of his readout as the unseen distant drone slightly adjusted its position and magnification to accommodate the new arrival.
Recognition shot through him as if he had received a full jolt from one of his department's own advanced mob control stunners.
The telltale heat signature of the new arrival was far too big, and moving much too fast.
*16*
Five people stood around the artificial water hole. A sixth had begun to retreat slowly through the dense undergrowth that concealed her. Given so many choices, all equally oblivious to its presence, the tiger logically settled on the one that had its back facing the jungle.
To his credit, Chal sensed the big cat's approach and whirled with almost superhuman speed. Expecting to find a human bearing down on him, he was sufficiently taken aback, for just an instant, to hold off pulling the trigger of his small but exceedingly deadly weapon. When instinct and reflex finally managed to overcome shock, it was too late.
Depahli screamed. Everyone screamed. In the darkness and shadows of the night, the tracker's blood spurted like black milk as the huge cat brought its jaws together across the man's neck. Paws big enough to completely cover a car hubcap slammed into the tracker; one digging deeply in his right shoulder, the other shredding his face like
an angry child toying with a piece of burnt toast. Muscle was pulled away from bone, bone splintered. The tracker went down with the cat on top of him.
It was Sanjay who had enough surviving presence of mind to grab hold of his employer and his employer's girlfriend and pull them in the opposite direction. 'Run, Mr. Taneer, sir! And you too, lady! Run this way now, please, back to the fence! We need to get through the fence!'
'Y-yes.' Stumbling backward in the clutch of the shopkeeper's determined fingers, a shocked Taneer had to rip his gaze away from the nightmarish scene in front of him. Once, the tiger looked up, glaring green eyes meeting his own. He had seen tigers before; in zoological parks, from elephant back in Bandhavgarh. But not like this. It stunned him, threatened to root him to the spot as effectively as an infinitesimal dose of the deadly fluid contained in the tracker's syringets. Only when the big cat looked down to check on its unmoving prey did the scientist find his feet again. It helped that Depahli, too, was now tugging at him.
Together the three of them turned and sprinted, stumbled, staggered back the way they had come. Only Sanjay dared to occasionally check back over his shoulder to see if the cat was in the mood to take multiple prey tonight. Mercifully, the jungle trail behind him remained empty in the pale starlight.
What was it with him and cats, anyway?
They were halfway back to the fence line before Taneer realized he was still clutching the security case tightly to his chest.
Mr. Vaclav, alias Karlovy Milesclova, was used to dealing with the dangers of large, civilized cities. He knew how to negotiate with muggers, with prostitutes plying their trade on public streets, with beggars and the desperately drug-addicted. He knew how to find his way rapidly and efficiently through airports and other congested public transportation termini. He understood traffic flow and corporate intrigue and social backbiting.
He had not wanted to be here, in Sagramanda, doing this thing. But the consortium's overboard had voted, and he had been designated. Or lost out, depending on one's perspective. More than willing to forgo the promised bonus, he had done his tactful best to beg off. His polite pleading had been turned down.
Now he found himself running for his life. Not from some addled street person with a knife, not from some bomb-throwing antiglobalization terrorist, not from some irate religious fanatic whose personal precepts the consortium he worked for had inadvertently offended, but from a tiger. A tiger, of all things! In this day and age! It was absurd, outrageous, unbelievable. That he, Vaclav Milesclova, executive vice president of an international family of companies whose name was known throughout the world, should be frantically huffing and puffing his way through the jungles of the subcontinent without a chauffeured Mercrysler or Rollsbach in sight, was too much to countenance.
Wild of eye, flushed of face, his heart pounding like a runaway bass drum despite all the hours he had spent on his office treadmill and electronic toner, he looked back. Nothing stirred in the dark behind him except the fronds of the plants he had brushed up against. The starlit path was devoid of devils and empty of pursuit. Though he knew nothing of the habits of wild creatures, it seemed to him quite possible that the beast might well be preoccupied with its fresh… meal. Shuddering, he turned to run on.
He tripped over an unkind tree root, and fell.
His face smacked into the dirt. Raising his head almost immediately, he wiped grit from his flesh and looked apprehensively back over his shoulder. Was that movement, there in the night? Or only wind stirring the trees? Hastily, he scrabbled to his knees and began searching the area where he had fallen. On contact with the ground, he'd dropped both of the prized packages. He found the one containing the molly almost immediately. Like most modern forms of portable information storage, it was well made and had survived the fall with no visible damage. The second envelope…
The second precious, irreplaceable envelope had ripped on impact. While a small portion of its contents lay scattered nearby, the bulk had thankfully remained inside the transparent glassine container. Rising to a kneeling position, he started to pick up what had fallen out, when he heard what was a loud cough somewhere behind him.
Utterly consumed with sheer terror, he struggled the rest of the way to his feet and ran on, heading for the pickup point located just inside the preserve's fence line. He would have used the communicator zippered into his inside shirt pocket to request an immediate pickup instead of the one already scheduled, but he did not want to spare either the time or the wind to make the call.
If the general outline of the massive heat signature that had appeared so suddenly and unexpectedly on his spinner had not been enough to identify its source, the reverberant snarl that traveled through brush and across trees to the place where Keshu had set up his temporary command post was confirmation enough.
'Vishnu!' Johar muttered as he stared at his own readout. He looked over at the chief inspector. 'Seems to me I remember seeing something on the news about a rogue cat taking people in this part of the preserve.'
'I knew we'd have to coordinate this operation with Transport, but not with Wildlife and Game.' Keshu's words came sharp and fast. His difficult decision had been made for him. By an animal. 'Tell the two flying squads to head this way. Instruct everyone on the ground to move in.' He took a deep breath. 'Pick up the Frenchwoman.'
Johar eyed his superior uncertainly. 'But Chief Inspector, you've been saying all along that without unassailable proof, a court case can't be-'
Keshu cut him off. 'It doesn't matter now, Lieutenant. We've done as much as we could, and it's all flown to pieces. I won't risk letting this woman slip away and hide.'
'What about the others-these other people?'
Keshu adjusted his turban as he regarded the officer. 'One crisis at a time, please, Lieutenant Johar. First the Frenchwoman. Then we'll see if we have a need, or responsibility, to deal with these others.' Motioning for the officer to follow, he started forward along a pre determined route that led through the jungle. 'Inform everyone as
