It was dark away from the campfire, but the stars allowed O’Neil to trail after the young guide back to where Komolo Joe lay concealed in a clump of signal grass. O’Neil thought he’d been moving silently but the old tracker heard him and gestured for him to drop beside him. Joe pointed down the hill to where torchlight betrayed the soldiers’ approach.

  The patrol was alarmingly near. Six men, following the trail the mission refugees had left. They were less than half a mile from the place where the hospital rested. With them was a native, a Ngombe or Tembo by the look of him; one of the soldiers held the rope they’d tied around their unwilling guide’s neck. The mercenaries were shining their lights at the tracks in the mud and discussing how recent they might be.

  “Have they wirelessed in yet?” O’Neil asked Joe. The old man shook his head.

  O’Neil looked down at the soldiers and calculated the odds of one man being able to take down six trained fighters with machine guns.

  Komolo Joe had done the same math and came up with the same gloomy answer. He tapped O’Neil on the shoulder and pointed up to the trees. “Bats,” he said.

  O’Neil knew what he meant. The giant bourma trees were home to thousands of fruit bats. The “umbrella-trees” were ideal habitat because they were unclimbable by monkeys, so the bats nested there.

  He pointed his rifle upwards and discharged half a dozen rounds into the dark canopy.

  The bats were disturbed. They swarmed. Many of them dropped to ground level, battering around the soldiers on the forest trail. The mercenaries cried out as they were surrounded by thousands of panicking, flapping flying rodents. Their pressed native took his chance in the chaos to dive off amongst the trees.

  O’Neil could still see the men by the glow of their dropped flashlights. The patrol flailed around uselessly in the bat-swarm. He reloaded his gun, shouldered it, and began to pick off the mercenaries.

  In the chaos he’d taken two men down before the others realized they were under attack. The four remaining soldiers hefted their machine guns and fired randomly into the darkness. The seething colony of bats was stirred to even greater action as some of them were cut down.

  O’Neil spotted the man giving orders and dropped him next. By the time the bats had passed on O’Neil was able to take a fourth mercenary down, although this one was only wounded in the leg and lay on the ground screaming for aid. The remaining pair ignored their comrade, having identified where the shots were coming from at last. They concentrated their fire on the grass where O’Neil and Komolo Joe lay concealed.

  Except that O’Neil, Joe, and the boy were no longer there. O’Neil had circled round during the confusion, taking advantage of the darkness. He came out of nowhere with a chilling cry, bush-knife in hand, and took down the first soldier as the man turned. The last mercenary spun with his machine gun but slammed straight onto his attacker’s wicked hook. He went down hard, clutching his ripped-open face. Then O’Neil’s knife was at his throat.

  “If you like breathing,” O’Neil advised, “Drop the shooter and talk.”

  ***

  “One of my patrols has not returned,” Major-general L’Evesque told his prisoner. “It seems as though O’Neil and his traveling circus are heading down towards Koloneke and the hidden gold.”

  Reverend Foster did not reply. He was handcuffed in the back of a transport truck along with the hostages that the commander had brought along to ensure his co-operation.

  “Now I know where your daughter is leading the American it will be easy to cut him off,” L’Evesque promised the clergyman. “And then, when he is caught… I will cut him off!” He made a slicing gesture at his right wrist to indicate O’Neil’s fate. “As for your beautiful daughter…” The Frenchman had spent several hours describing to the preacher what he had planned for Sophie. “Tell me, Reverend, how it is they know where to go?”

  “They don’t,” Foster answered. “There is no way they could interpret Diane’s message without me. They must just be making for the region hoping I’ll catch up with them.”

  “Explain about the letter again.”

  “The Playfair code? It’s a cipher invented by Charles Wheatstone in the 1840s for sending secret messages using pairs of letters based on a key word. That’s what Diane will have used.”4

  “And the key word? Tell me that.”

  Foster knew what his life expectancy would be after giving that information. “I won’t know until I see the letter. I expect Diane will have given me a clue. Something personal.”

  “But that will reveal the co-ordinates for the lost gold?”

  “I can promise nothing. I haven’t heard from Diane since she left the Congo in 1912. I had word she married but nothing more.”

  “If she knew where the gold was, why did she never return to retrieve it?”

  “I don’t know. Really. She returned home with half her father’s stash and I believe she married into money. Maybe she thought the risks of returning were too great? After all, it’s not really her gold.”

  “It is not.” L’Evesque’s face twisted with an evil smile. “It is mine.”

  Foster shook his head. “That gold has too much blood on it already. It was mined by forced labor at the cost of many lives. It was taken from Koloneke during a violent revolution that saw many more atrocities. It provoked the gunfight aboard the barge that caused the vessel to founder. It was surely responsible for the deaths of those survivors who fled on foot into the forests where the Zappo Zaps hunted. It is cursed and damned, Major-general, and any man who goes after it is cursed and damned too!”

  L’Evesque did not care. “Cursed, damned… and rich,” he boasted. He turned to his lieutenant. “Gather the men. Everybody. We move out in force to kill O’Neil and take what is ours.”

  ***

  “They’ll be coming for us now,” O’Neil warned the people of Foster’s mission. “There’s no way we can outrun them, the way we are. There’s no place we can hide.”

  “We can’t just abandon these people!” Sophie Foster objected. “They are in our care. In my care.”

  “In our care,” Fletcher insisted. “I’m not going to leave them helpless, O’Neil. I—I won’t leave them.” He swallowed hard but stayed resolute.

  “I never said we’d abandon them,” O’Neil clarified. “Just that we can’t run and we can’t hide. That leaves one option—to fight!”

  “We have three guns,” objected Komolo Joe. The old man meant that there were but three men present who were armed and might reasonably be expected to stand against the soldiers; he was being generous and included Fletcher in that number.

  “I’ll fight,” Sophie promised. “I have to rescue my father.”

  The two prisoners O’Neil had taken had told everything; how L’Evesque had turned on the former mine manager who’d hired him to trace the Dexter letter, how Reverend Foster was now the Major-general’s captive, what their commander’s plans were for O’Neil, Sophie, and the refugee witnesses. The idea of a code in the letter excited Foster again but his attempts to find it had been futile.

  “That Frenchie’s got thirty-five men to throw against us,” O’Neil reminded the others. “That’s hellishly bad odds. I expect he’ll catch up with us before nightfall.”

  “So what do we do?” Fletcher worried.

  O’Neil glanced back at the crowd of mission refugees huddled in the clearing, waiting to hear their fate. “We use what we’ve got to our advantage and we play the percentages,” he decided. “Heck, we might even have some fun!”

  ***

  Reverend Foster was living a nightmare. L’Evesque left two guards on the prisoners and the trucks and dragged the clergyman with him and his men into the thick forest to hunt Foster’s daughter and the people who looked to the clergyman for aid. The Frenchman was utterly without mercy. Indeed, he seemed to enjoy cruelty.

  What the pastor didn’t understand was why his mission people might have begin to dig a deep hole under the roots of one of the vast umbrella trees in the clearing they’d obviously stopped in the night before.

  L’Evesque was intrigued as well when he discovered the hastily-abandoned site. The small tunnel went back ten feet or more under the bole and was clearly newly dug and propped. “It looks as though they were trying to find something,” he pondered. “Buried treasure, perhaps?” Maybe the letter had been decoded without the Reverend’s assistance?

  The Major-general sent a couple of men to inspect the working. They blundered straight into the trip-wire that brought the roof down on top of them, burying them in dirt and root fragments. It wasn’t a lethal trap but both soldiers were injured and it cost time to dig them out.

  “O’Neil was here very recently,” L’Evesque reasoned. “He set his men mining for something but had to flee when we approached. Therefore he is nearby and the thing he sought is concealed at the bottom of the pit he sabotaged to prevent us deepening.”

  “We can round up some locals from the villages and set them to opening the hole up again,” the lieutenant offered.

  L’Evesque shook his head. “The villages have heard of us by now. All you’ll find are deserted huts. We’ll have to haul this dirt out for ourselves. Detail half the men to work on that. Two patrols of six to locate O’Neil and his workforce. The rest of the brigade on sentry duty. I don’t want anything to penetrate this perimeter.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The Major-general turned to Foster. “What’s down there, Reverend?”

  “I don’t know. Really. I suppose… it might be what you want.”

  “So the ore was recovered from the mud, then concealed until it could be smuggled out of the Congo,” L’Evesque considered. “Yes, it is possible.”

  Foster knew better. He said nothing.

  The West Africa Free Brigade dispersed as their commander had ordered. Sixteen of them worked under the lieutenant’s instruction to clear out the debris of the collapsed pit-tunnel and then to extend it downwards.

  That was what O’Neil had wanted. Lacking warriors, he had set the more able-bodied of the mission folk to dig a huge distraction. Their labor and L’Evesque’s wishful thinking had now halved the number of men that hunted the hospital—and set them up for the next strike.

  The soldiers’ perimeter was secure, but they had not thought to look upwards into the massive, leaf-swathed branches of the mighty bourma under which they dug. That was where Daniel Fletcher and Sophie Foster hid, clutching on to the huge canister of medicinal alcohol that had been brought from the hospital site.

  “I guess it’s time,” judged Fletcher, glancing at his watch. “Do or die.”

  “I’d prefer the doing part,” Sophie told him with a brave wink. She reached out and touched the clerk’s hand. “Daniel… thank you.”

  “Better this than another day sorting M. Carriere’s correspondence,” Fletcher answered. As he spoke he realized it was the absolute truth.

  Sophie tore herself from the special moment they shared there in the green canopy. “So then. Ready?”

  Fletcher flicked the cigarette lighter. Sophie stuffed the alcohol-soaked bandage into the cap-hole of the alcohol barrel.

  “Ready,” said Fletcher, and lit the rag. They pushed the canister off the branch so it dropped onto the digging mercenaries below.

  The world’s biggest Molotov cocktail exploded on top of the soldiers, spraying out flame, soaking the men in blazing spirits. In a single second more than a dozen men were turned into searing columns of fire.

  L’Evesque whirled round at the sound of the explosion. He was just in time to see half his command eviscerated by explosion and flame.

  Fletcher took the machine gun ammunition belt that O’Neil had captured and dropped it down into the conflagration. The heated bullets exploded, sending random shrapnel out at the watchmen who came running at the sound of the blast.

  While the soldiers danced for cover from the random detonations, Komolo Joe slipped the safety catch off his captured machine gun. The old man was hidden in a different tree at the clearing’s perimeter. He checked the Reverend was safely to one side then opened fire on the half-dozen guards who’d dodged the inferno at the pit. Fletcher joined in with crossfire from the central bourma.

  L’Evesque spotted how he was bracketed but didn’t panic. He ran low and fast and grabbed the bewildered, bound Reverend Foster and pressed his Luger to the clergyman’s head. “That’s enough!” the Frenchman yelled, spitting in his fury. “You will cease your attacks and yield, or this man dies!”

  “Oh no!” gasped Sophie. “Daniel…!”

  “He’s got us,” Fletcher admitted. “Stop firing, Joe, or he’ll kill the Reverend!”

  Major-general L’Evesque dragged Foster to the partial cover of a nearby trunk. “Come down from the trees and disarm yourselves,” he warned. “I am still the master here!”

  ***

  The patrol heard the explosion and gunfire back at the dig. The platoon turned to respond when one of them spotted Armless O’Neil retreating into the undergrowth.

  “Over there! That way! Get him!”

  A spray of gunfire failed to reach the retreating fighter. The mercenaries chased after O’Neil down the game track, eager for the reward their commander had promised.

  O’Neil waited until they approached the spot where he’d half-buried the big glass jar then turned and aimed his pistol.

  The shot shattered the container. Surgical ether sprayed out in a thick pungent cloud, choking the soldiers. The anesthetic made them dizzy, blurred their vision, slowed their reactions.

  O’Neil picked his targets carefully and put the men down. He didn’t go for only kill shots. He didn’t need to. Crippled men couldn’t interfere any more in his private war with L’Evesque and stood at least some small chance of survival in the jungle.

  He stopped long enough to disarm the living and the dead, then hurried back towards the clearing where the Major-general was waiting.

  ***

  L’Evesque was not in a good mood. His powerful brigade was reduced to three badly-injured survivors from the inferno at the umbrella tree pit and the one six-man patrol that had returned herding mission refugees from their place of concealment. He took out his temper on Fletcher, hitting the tied young clerk again and again while screaming questions.

  “Where is O’Neil? Where is the letter? Where is my gold?”

  “Stop it!” cried Sophie. “You’ll kill him!”

  “Then tell me! One of you will tell me! Tell me, preacher, or I’ll carve your daughter up before your eyes. Tell me, wench, or I’ll cut pieces from your father and make you eat them!”

  “You…” gasped Fletcher, spitting blood, “you leave her alone!”

  The major-general hit him again. “I am Antoine L’Evesque! I do what I want! I take what I want! The girl is mine! The gold is mine! Vengeance is mine!” His six soldiers kept their guns on the trembling captives from the mission hospital and on Komolo Joe as the Frenchman raged.

  There was a rapid crack that they recognized too late as a gunshot. A mercenary jerked and tumbled dead to the floor.

  O’Neil called from the bush. “Your command’s looking a bit reduced, Frenchie!”

  The soldiers made a mistake. They took their guns off the hostages and pointed them at the undergrowth.

  O’Neil’s rifle put another man on the ground.

  L’Evesque was smarter. He seized Sophie by the hair and pressed his gun muzzle into her cheek. “Surrender, American, or this girl will look a lot less pretty!”

  O’Neil had reduced the odds to five-to-one. He wasn’t going to do any better. “Okay, you win. I’m coming out.” He stepped from cover, hoping that the Frenchman’s desire for vengeance would be greater than his common sense.

  O’Neil wasn’t immediately gunned down. He held out his pistol and dropped it in the grass. He unslung his rifle and threw it away. He undid his knife belt and let it fall.

  Two of the remaining soldiers rushed over to him, patted him down, found and removed the second knife in his boot, then pushed him roughly over to L’Evesque.

  “Armless O’Neil,” the Major-general snarled. “You will wish you had never crossed me.”

  O’Neil shrugged. He wasn’t big on banter.

  L’Evesque tossed Sophie over to one of his men. “Keep a gun on her.” To O’Neil he said, “The Dexter letter. Give it to me.”

  O’Neil unslung his backpack and bent to unbuckle its flap.

  L’Evesque stopped him. “No. No more surprises. I will do it.”

  O’Neil glowered and stepped away.

  The Major-general unstrapped the buckle. “You will live quite a long time, O’Neil,” he promised as he worked. “Long enough to watch the deaths of these savages. Long enough to see the slow end of your attorney’s lackey. Certainly long enough to witness the ordeals of Miss Foster. You will be helpless to do ought but weep, though. You will have been… disarmed.”

  He threw open the pack to find the letter. The angry young black mamba that Komolo Joe had caught for O’Neil earlier sprang out and went for L’Evesque.

  O’Neil had used the resources available to him: medical supplies, captured weaponry, and a cunning old guide who knew how to catch anything.

  The Major-general leaped backwards to avoid one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. O’Neil took the opportunity to swing round and rip his hook into the guard behind him. He directed the man’s arm as the soldier instinctively squeezed the trigger of the machine gun he held. The spray was high enough to miss the kneeling captives, wide enough to take down two more of L’Evesque’s troopers.

  Sophie slammed her head back into the nose of the remaining mercenary that held her. As he staggered back, bleeding, Fletcher hurled himself at the man despite being tied, shouldering him, crashing him over. The Reverend likewise fell on the soldier, keeping him pinned until Sophie could aim a head-kick to quieten the enemy properly.