deliberate and more determined with each bit of added stress.
Fifty feet inside they stopped, and just in time. Two black shadows streaked across the lawn, no fence to slow them. Sanford took careful aim. Sam doubted he could hit both animals. There was a pop and the lead dog tumbled and began whirling and nipping at its chest. The dart itself was heavy enough to pack a wallop. The second dog came on and just before he leaped for Sam, a second pop came from the pistol.
When Sam saw the animal’s jaws open, he dropped and kicked the dog in the throat. There was a yelp and the dog went over him, but came back like a demon. Sam charged the dog with total concentration, leading with a combat knife. As he plunged the knife in to the hilt, frothy lung blood burst from the wound all over Sam’s arm. As the animal went down, Sam strangled the remaining life.
“Shit,” Sanford muttered when it was over. “I missed.”
“Yeah.” Sam hated killing dogs but would not let himself think of it again until this was over.
“We have joy,” Sam whispered into the microphone. For a few minutes they lay absolutely still, waiting to see if there would be any response. They couldn’t afford an ambush. Sam already knew the dogs had a habit of charging the fences, so it wouldn’t necessarily bring the sentries.
Everything remained quiet. They moved forward another hundred feet until they were near the main building.
There were two guards sitting on the dining veranda at the lodge, drinking something he hoped was alcoholic.
Sam and T.J. sneaked to the right of the veranda and headed toward the far right side of the lodge and the planted gardens. Once in good cover, they came back toward the sentries to a narrow pathway between a burre and the edge of the veranda. One man was large, almost fat, the other slender, not more than 160 pounds. Only one weapon in sight-leaning up against a nearby table. Their security procedure evidenced an ease and lack of concern that Sam found hopeful.
They were in some kind of conversation, speaking French, fairly animated. Sam spoke some French, but it was hard to hear them and they were talking rapidly.
One of them seemed to pick his nose incessantly. The other scratched and picked at a bald spot on his head. Sam and T.J. quickly devised a plan.
Sam removed his boots and socks. T.J. went into a planting bed next to the building and made sounds of rustling, gradually escalating in intensity. Finally one of the guards rose and walked to the end of the veranda- fortunately without the firearm.
“Okay,” Sam whispered.
The guard continued walking down the three steps off the veranda.
“Shoo am yaamil hal kalb halloa?” he called. Clearly Arabic. An unwelcome surprise.
“C’est seulement quelque genre de fidjien gaufre — probablement.”
French from the other man. Sam guessed they were speculating that the dog was chasing some kind of Fijian gopher. The fatter guard rose to watch the first.
Sam rose and sprinted alongside the lodge around to the front, and then looked back through the double-wide entry doors and beyond through a bar and sitting area and saw the large guard some hundred feet distant, still on the veranda and seemingly absorbed in his partner’s explorations. Sam drew the silenced pistol and trotted on tiptoe straight at the guard with his gun leveled at the man. As the first sentry reached the edge of the thick foliage, he leaned forward and peered through the bamboo. More rustling. The man began making a guttural sort of “shooing” sound, and then quite suddenly disappeared in the foliage.
T.J. was taking him down. Sam took two more long steps and delivered a powerful blow to the base of the other man’s skull.
“Okay,” T.J. said.
“Okay,” Sam responded, dragging the heavy man to the garden to join the first. Taking no chances, they administered hypodermics to the carotids of both men that would have them unconscious for enough time to finish their business. Sam and T.J. retreated to the initial staging point just beyond the fence.
“Team one,” Sam said. His team crept forward one at a time. As each came, Sam tapped his shoulder and sent him to his predetermined ambush point. Coming from the sea and heading inland past the lodge, four of the eight burres lay in a row along a large entry garden that was a good part lawn. At the inland edge of the entry garden was the driveway, and beyond that the public roadway. Also to the landward side of the lodge and on the left of the entry garden stood one burre and a two-story house.
Aussie had been pretty sure that management lived in the house and each of the five guards had a burre. Sam put two men to the side of the Honeymoon Burre. Six men in the garden covered the doorways of the five burres and the main house, their weapons ready. Sam did a roll call. Each man had a number corresponding to the number of a burre doorway on the map they’d studied.
Sam thought it was time for a stroke of luck. He and T.J. crept up on the Honeymoon Burre, hoping to find Jason working inside. All the windows were in the front for the ocean view as was the veranda that might have a sentry, but there was thick foliage to the side that prevented easy viewing. Aussie was not absolutely certain about the size of the staff. If they made a mistake and an alarm were sounded, every guard exiting a burre around the main garden, or for that matter the main house, would take a rubber bullet to the chest from a silenced rifle. Normally it wouldn’t kill, but it would temporarily debilitate.
They crept through the foliage. Sam had not replaced his shoes. T.J. refused combat boots and wore light sneakers. Sam was a couple of steps ahead of T.J. and to the right of him. Through a break in the foliage Sam saw the porch. Nobody. No light. He moved forward while T.J. remained still. The cabin was completely dark. Opening the door could easily set off an alarm.
Sam retreated.
Now they would have to do it the hard way.
Aussie and Anna climbed into the jeep at 1:00 A.M. Unable to think apart from nervous worry, she had paced incessantly and driven Aussie mad until he finally distracted her by insisting that they go over the plan one more time.
“I scream that you’re acting like a whore. ‘Why didn’t you just have sex with him right on the table?’ ”
“And I say, ‘Your ass is sagging and your dick is a marshmallow.’ ”
“That’s not what you say.”
“I know. I’m an actress, remember? I do this for a living. So stop trying to distract me and let me sit here and worry.”
Aussie let it lie.
Thirty-three
T.J. went around the lodge and Sam put on his boots. They met in the front garden and waited. Five minutes to go.
As he sat in the complete quiet, watching the bats dart overhead, plainly visible through his night-vision goggles, it struck him. This had all been too easy. Something was wrong.
He heard a car drive up. Loud voices, some in French and one seeming to speak Arabic. Five in all, and one of them appeared to be Jason from the pictures he had studied.
“Clap three times,” one said in French.
“What happens when you mix kava and booze?” another asked.
Kava was a local delicacy that had a mild narcotic type of effect. Although it tasted like old dishwater, it had a bit of buzz if consumed in large enough quantities. Clap three times was a reference to the kava ceremony. He remembered that much. This could be good. Then again, it wasn’t the plan.
The group walked up the middle of the grass toward the lodge and the bar. Sam decided to move.
“Jason-red shirt with the glasses,” Sam whispered. “On three. One
…” Then he stopped. “Wait.” He looked again at the Jason character. He wasn’t sure.
