The Templar Legion

material, so the taste is usually fresher.” He laughed. “In Cuba now they think the catfish is an agent of the devil god, Babalu Aye, because he can walk overland on his fins, but they eat him anyway.”

Holliday sensed it before he heard it, and heard it before he saw it. As he took his plate from Samir some instinct and perhaps a fleeting glint seen out of the corner of his eye made him suddenly tense and twist around on the plastic milk crate he was using as a seat. He squinted, looking for something he wasn’t quite sure was there, and then he saw it: a phantom in the mist above the trees, the first flash of sunlight reflecting off the windscreen of a low-flying aircraft. A small plane, maybe a Cessna Caravan, tricked out with floats and painted dark green to blend in with the jungle treetops.

A split second later he spotted a bright double flash from under the wings followed by a strangely clipped, hollow whoosh, like the abruptly terminated sound of a bullet striking water at high speed. The sound was horribly familiar: a pair of underwing Hellfire air-to-ground missiles being fired-forty pounds of fire-and-forget high explosive coming at them at roughly a thousand miles an hour.

“Incoming!” Holliday bellowed. And almost before the warning was out of his mouth the Hellfires struck. Used by a skilled operator, the AGM-114 Hellfire could be aimed through the open window of a moving vehicle. In the case of the two missiles aimed at the Pevensey, one struck the rear wall of the lounge behind the wheelhouse and the second exploded in the boiler room simultaneously, putting a ragged hole the size of a car door through the bottom of the old barge.

Bakri, standing in the wheelhouse, was vaporized on the spot. As the Pevensey suddenly lurched with the impact of the two missiles, Jean-Paul, standing in the bow with his pole, was thrown into the river, and Samir, crouched in front of his frying pans, had his ribs crushed as the stove tipped over on him, then was turned into a human torch as the furiously boiling cooking oil spilled onto his head, neck and chest. Samir’s thin cotton clothing and his hair burst into flame as the blackened, crackling firewood spilled out of the overturned stove and he died, his bubbling scream choked off as his mouth and throat filled with the burning oil.

Sitting on the starboard side of the barge Holliday instinctively threw himself toward Peggy and Rafi, his outstretched arms bowling them over as a hail of cast iron, glass and wood debris flew over them. Pevensey, helm gone, swung hard into the current, then almost tipped over as the surging water poured into the gaping hole in her bottom.

Holliday had a brief glimpse of the aircraft as it roared overhead. He hit the river, automatically assessing: a Cessna Caravan 208. Nine passengers, but six or seven was more likely with the Hellfire payload. The water closed over his head as he was pushed down toward the stony bottom, his vision cut in half by the silt-heavy current. Then he remembered.

Crocodiles.

The Nile version, up to twenty feet long and sometimes weighing as much as a ton-bronze, the green- yellow-and-dirty-purple prehistoric horrors-could travel up to forty miles an hour if they were hungry enough. They had sixty-eight cone-shaped teeth and a bite force of five thousand pounds per square inch. They sometimes hunted in packs of five or more and had been known to take down a four-thousand-pound black rhinoceros. An average- sized human being would be little more than a hors d’oeuvre.

Holliday flailed his way frantically back to the surface. He was being swept along with the current along with the remains of the Pevensey. He shook the water out of his eyes and spotted Rafi struggling to drag an unconscious Peggy toward the shore. Captain Eddie was already there, hauling himself up the muddy bank. The half-submerged wire kindling basket whirled by and Holliday reached out and levered the hatchet out of the top piece of firewood. On the shore Captain Eddie yelled out a warning.

“?Detras de usted! Behind you!”

A huge, surging creature was powering its way toward him, massive armored tail swirling, its dead dinosaur eyes barely breaking the surface of the swiftly flowing river. Almost immediately Holliday realized that the grotesque creature had its attention elsewhere-it was racing toward Peggy as Rafi and Captain Eddie tried to haul her out of the water.

Holliday twisted away to one side like a matador playing a bull and backhanded the blade of the hatchet into the creature’s eye. The crocodile reared up, making a terrible, deep-throated bellowing sound. Holliday managed to jerk the hatchet out of the animal’s eye and struck out for the shore as the wounded creature rolled away from him. He reached the shallows and staggered to his feet as Captain Eddie came back down the bank and held out one hand.

“I would advise you to be a little quicker, senor,” said the Cuban. He jerked Holliday up onto the muddy shore, sweeping the big bowie knife out of its sheath. As Holliday stumbled up the bank he turned and saw Eddie lunging forward and driving the heavy blade up to the hilt high between the eyes of the already half-blinded giant that had been seeking its revenge.

The crocodile squirmed and shivered as the knife went into its brain and then suddenly went rigid. Eddie pulled out the blade, reached into the water, grabbed one of the creature’s stubby legs, then half flipped the body, exposing the pale, eggplant-shaded belly. He pushed the bowie knife into the crocodile’s throat and sawed downward, esophagus, heart, lungs, liver and intestine spilling out into the shallows like a hideously foul-smelling stew. He used his boot to push the disemboweled creature’s corpse into the current.

“That should keep his friends busy for a while,” said Eddie, grabbing Holliday’s elbow and helping him up the riverbank. At the edge of the dense jungle Rafi was bending over Peggy, who was sitting up and coughing, her back against the thick trunk of a tree that overhung the river.

“She’s okay,” said Rafi. “Half-drowned but okay.”

Eddie watched the remains of Pevensey washing up onshore like flotsam. He turned back to Holliday. “You have some serious enemies, senor. Perhaps you should have warned me.”

“Sorry about that,” answered Holliday, hands on knees as he tried to catch his breath. “I didn’t think they wanted me that badly.”

“I think you were wrong, Comandante,” said Captain Eddie. “I think they want you very badly indeed.”

Holliday climbed to his feet, his clothes smeared with mud, stinking but alive. “Where’s the widest part of the river closest to here? I need about fifteen hundred feet, say half a kilometer.”

“We’ve just been attacked with rockets and nearly eaten by crocodiles,” said Peggy, her voice weary. “Why would you want to know something like that?”

“Because that’s how much water a good floatplane pilot in a Caravan needs to land,” said Holliday.

“Twenty kilometers behind us or thirty ahead,” said Captain Eddie, wiping the blade of his knife across his jeans. He slid it back into its sheath.

“How long to get to us here?”

“By boat, four hours, more likely five at this time of day. Twice that by land. There are very few trails, so they would have to stay close to the river, follow its turns.”

“Are they likely to find boats?” Holliday asked.

“Perhaps a dugout or two, small ones, not what they need. There are no villages along that part of the river,” answered Eddie.

“So we’ve got eight hours, maybe, until nightfall.”

“For what?” Rafi asked, crouched beside Peggy.

“To get ready,” said Holliday.

14

“Point me toward a good hardwood,” said Holliday, standing in the narrow clearing between the riverbank and the jungle.

“A tree, senor?” Eddie asked a little skeptically. There were thousands of trees all around them.

“A tree.” Holliday nodded. “A hardwood in particular.”

“Miss Blackstock is leaning against one,” said Eddie, pointing. The tree in question was sixty or seventy feet tall, its summit lost in the jungle canopy overhead. Its roots were splayed and thick, raising the trunk like the legs of a massive spider. The leaves were broad, round and a deep, rich green. The branches hung down like a heavy