They’re not thinking about work now, Saundra thought, and she felt guilty as soon as the thought had manifested. She scanned the camp.
Night was coming, lengthening and deepening the shadows. As soon as the sun dipped below the horizon, full dark would be upon them for a time before the moon rose. It had been full last night, but Saundra couldn’t remember if that had been the second or third night.
The men sat around the campfire eating the supplies Saundra and Simon had outfitted their clients with. They’d also found the vodka left over from last night.
In the flickering firelight, Saundra thought she recognized two of them. She knew that wasn’t good. If she knew them, they probably knew her. They wouldn’t want any witnesses talking about what they’d been doing. Gamekeepers would find the elephants’ bodies soon enough, and they’d be looking for the people responsible.
You’re a witness, she reminded herself. That’s like an inch away from being dead. She pulled at the ropes again, but she still couldn’t feel her hands or the ropes. The others were all in the same shape. Even if they’d been able to sit back to back without getting noticed, they wouldn’t have been able to untie the ropes.
Worn and weary, caked in dirt and dried sweat, Simon knelt beside an acacia tree and peered through the open sights of his hunting rifle. It was a bolt-action .375 Weatherby Magnum. Even as quick as he was, he could only get off one round, perhaps two, before the poachers reacted. By then the survivors might try for hostages.
The rifle wasn’t the way to do this. And if he’d been a regular wilderness guide, he wouldn’t have been the man for what he had to do.
He put the rifle to the side and reached into the backpack again. Taking out both punching daggers, he strapped them on. Then he crept deeper into the shadows, getting closer to the poachers.
The men didn’t think they were being followed. Otherwise they’d have posted guards. More than that, they wouldn’t have been sitting around the fire where they’d be highlighted so easily and ruining their night vision with full dark coming on.
Even as he worked his way toward them, Simon kept his eyes averted from the fire and used his peripheral vision. In darkness, direct vision suffered. It was what was seen from the corner of the eye that was seen best.
He counted all five of them. He could smell them now, too. Even over the smoke from the fire, he scented their unwashed musk and sour odors. Saundra often told him he had the keenest nose of any man she’d ever met. She also said that about his hearing and eyesight.
That was due, in part, to the training Simon’s father and the other Templar had put him through. Even down in the Underground, there had been combat zones and tests and trials. He’d been shown how to use all his senses in battle.
“—some kind of craziness goin’ on over the radio an’ the television,” one man said. “I heard there was some kind of alien invasion going on in London. Said some kinda beasts just beamed down from a mothership of some kind.”
“That’s a bunch of crap if you ask me,” another man said.
Simon moved out of the brush, crouched down, and eased one foot in front of the other. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His first thoughts were of his father. But aliens weren’t demons. Then he was behind the closest Land Rover, inching his way forward, trying to figure out how the men would split once they knew he was there.
“Nobody asked you,” the first speaker growled. “So just keep your trap shut.”
The second speaker made a rude comment.
“What kind of aliens?” someone else asked.
“From another world,” the first speaker said. “What kind of other aliens is there?”
“Like those aliens out of Alien? Or like the ones out of Predator?”
“How should I know?”
“You said you seen ’em.”
“On tri-dee.”
“When?”
“Few days ago. While we were back in Cape Town. Before we got ready to come out here.”
“Did they say where they came from?”
“No.”
“That would be interestin’. I wouldn’t mind baggin’ a few aliens.”
The other men laughed.
Hunkering down beside the front of the Land Rover, Simon took fresh grips on the punching daggers. He shoved all the questions and extraneous thoughts from his mind and achieved the focus his father had trained him to have. He took in a deep breath and let it out.
Then he moved, as quick as he could, going for the man closest to him. The poacher sat in a collapsible canvas chair that Simon thought he recognized from the gear their clients had brought. There was no hesitation in Simon as he attacked, no forgiveness. Seeing Dalton and Carey had drained that from him. If he was going to save Saundra and their clients, he couldn’t be merciful.
Except for quick deaths. And that was more a tactical choice than out of compassion. A dead man couldn’t get back up at an inopportune time.
Still crouching as he closed on the nearest man from behind, Simon rolled his right arm forward, twisting his hips and getting his shoulder behind the blow. The katar sliced through the canvas back of the chair, then sank deeply into the poacher’s back and punched through his chest.
Kicking out, Simon yanked the dagger from the dead man and knocked him forward into the fire. The smell of cooking flesh and burned hair filled his nose. He whirled, going back behind the Land Rover as one of the poachers pointed a rifle at him and fired.
Three
T he rifle shot jerked Saundra’s attention back to the poachers. She’d drifted off to sleep, never knowing when she’d given in to the fatigue that clung to her after spending tense hours traveling in the hot Land Rovers.
A dead poacher lay in the fire, one of the younger men, not their grizzled leader. Flames embraced the body,
