The Templar Legion

seen.

The tent was a jungle camo Marmot Limelight, courtesy of the murder squad that had been sent to kill them. Holliday stared up at the curved roof. The sound of the rain was real enough. Strangely, so was the smell of cooking food. He roused himself, sitting up and scrubbing the troubled sleep from his face. Sometimes he hated the memories of his wife for their persistence and the deep, aching pain they caused, and sometimes he wondered how he would live without them, worried that if they faded he would fade along with them, just like the old song MacArthur quoted from in his famous speech. Maybe that was what he was supposed to do.

He crawled out of the tent and stood up. There was mist on the river and in the trees. The rain whispered, hissing as it fell through the canopy of leaves. Birds called to one another noisily. Eddie was squatting over a fire he’d built in the sheltering boughs of a tree close to the riverbank. A large green-and-white-mottled fish with enormous eyes had been slit and cleaned, then spitted through the gills on a green sapling hung above the coals. The Cuban looked up as Holliday ducked under the overhanging branches of the tree and joined him. They were screened from the river itself by a heavy stand of high reeds, making them virtually invisible to anyone going past.

“More memories, mi coronel?” Eddie asked.

“You see too much, my friend,” said Holliday. “The fish smells good.”

“Puffer,” said Eddie. “Es muy sabroso, good eating.”

“I’m starved,” said Holliday, and realized it was true. Eddie picked up a length of twig and gently pulled it along the scorched scales of the big fish. The skin peeled back easily, showing the thick white flesh below.

“Almost ready,” said Eddie.

On cue Peggy, rumpled and still half-asleep, poked her head out of the tent opening and looked around blearily. She shivered in the damp air even though it was already getting hot. She dragged herself across the tiny little patch of open ground behind the reeds and slumped down beside Holliday. A moment later Rafi appeared and joined her. Eddie took the fish down from its skewer and sliced it into large pieces, putting each one into a large flat leaf. He handed them around. “Eat with your fingers. My restaurant is like Havana where they chain down the spoons.”

Peggy scooped up a handful of the white, flaky flesh and popped it into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed. “Not bad for the middle of the African jungle.” She nodded. “Too bad there’re no condiments.”

“Aha!” Eddie said. “I found this just for you!” He leaned over and handed Peggy one of the big leaves folded into a packet. She opened it and found a pile of little woody flecks.

“What is it?”

“Try a little. A very little,” said Eddie. Peggy picked up a few flecks on the tip of her finger and tasted them. She winced, coughed, squeezed her eyes shut and moaned. “Hot-hot-hot-hot!” She waved her hands. “Water!”

Eddie tossed her one of the bottles of water they’d found in the Blackhawk team’s supplies. She twisted off the cap and drained the bottle, then sat back gasping, tears running down her face.

“What the hell was that?” She gasped.

“Capsicum annuum, African piquin pepper.” Eddie grinned. He pointed with his knife at a densely branched plant with big purple flowers that was growing in a patch of foliage on the other side of the fire. “It grows all over here.”

“She’s used to the stuff that comes in little bottles on the restaurant tables.” Holliday laughed.

“Phooey,” said Peggy. She tore off another chunk of fish from the piece on her broadleaf plate and ate it. They sat in silence, eating the fish and looking out toward the river half-hidden in the mist.

“We have to make a decision,” said Holliday, finishing the meal and licking his fingers one by one.

“About what?” Peggy asked.

“About going on,” he answered.

“I don’t understand,” Rafi said.

“This is no wild-goose chase anymore,” said Holliday. “It’s serious.”

“I always thought it was serious,” retorted Rafi.

“We were looking for King Solomon’s Mines, Rafi. That’s like looking for Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat or the Holy Grail behind the rose-red walls of Petra. All archaeological expeditions are wild-goose chases when you get right down to it, but this goose has become too dangerous to track down anymore. People are trying to kill us.”

“Not for King Solomon’s Mines,” said Rafi.

“No, they’re after something else and we’re getting in the way. And they’re serious. Ask the late Mr. Archibald Ives about that.”

“So we just give up?” Rafi said.

“It’s not a matter of giving up, Rafi; it’s about getting out of the line of fire,” answered Holliday. “These people are firing air-to-ground missiles at us. We’re being given a warning. I think it’s one we should heed.”

“?Silencio!” Eddie barked, suddenly alert, his head tilted toward the river, his eyes closed.

“What is it?” Peggy said.

“Listen!” Eddie hissed. “And keep your heads down.” He scooped a double handful of earth up and dropped it on the fire, covering it. He dumped another load down and tamped it with his hands.

“There,” whispered Holliday. “I hear it now. Upriver from us.”

Eddie scuttled across the little clearing and down to the reeds. Holliday followed him.

“Stay here; stay out of sight,” he cautioned. Rafi nodded.

“It’s getting closer,” said Eddie, peering through the reeds as Holliday joined him.

Voices in the mist, strange, high-pitched like a children’s choir. And then a heavy echoing sound like the muffled beating of a giant wooden drum.

“It is the Guenmilere, I think,” said Eddie, listening.

“The what?”

“The Guenmilere, it is a thing from Santeria, a canto.”

“A chant?”

“Yes, a chant.”

There was a few seconds of silence.

“?Cono!” Eddie whispered.

The source of the strange voices came into view, two massive pirogues, or river dugouts, each made from the straight, heavy trunk of a single ash tree, each sixty or seventy feet in length and fitted with a large banana- shaped outrigger. In each of the long, narrow boats forty paddlers worked, all boys between the ages of eight and twelve, each with a very adult Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle strapped across his back. In the center of each boat was a pile of supplies tied down under tarpaulins.

And they were singing, the familiar song turned into sinister cadence, each brief line punctuated by a grown man in the bow of the boats beating on the hull with a long, heavy club. As the adult beat the side of the boat he let out a heavy, drawn-out grunt:

Onward Christian Soldiers

HUH!

Marching as to war,

HUH!

With the cross of Jesus

HUH!

Going on before.

HUH!

Christ the royal Master

HUH!

Leads against the foe;

HUH!