The bucket of water was for Jack to wash with. As grateful as he was for the chance to sponge away the sick-sweat, he grumbled through the process, annoyed at how weary he still was. It didn’t help that Blade stuck around, ostensibly fixing dinner, but in reality watching with a concerned eye, undoubtedly ready to catch Jack should he topple over. By the time Jack put his jeans back on, he felt as if he’d been through assault diving training again. Exhausted, he slumped onto the improvised chair and hauled the sleeping bag around his shoulders. The heat of the day was fading fast, revealing a sharp bite to the air that would soon turn into a bone-deep chill.
Blade had a small camp stove, and he heated tins of baked beans and canned vegetables. Jack ate with a desire to regain strength, not hunger, and afterwards dozed while Blade counted ammunition. It was when the assassin began assembling a frightfully diverse arsenal Jack remembered the world and all its issues beyond the walls of the stable.
He’d been out of it for three days, four including the one that had just passed in idle laziness. How had Blade handled that, considering his eagerness to get the dune buggy? There certainly appeared to be no resentment in him regarding the new delay, but then it had taken pushing Blade into a mild loss of control to get him to show some annoyance over Jack’s screw-up at the torture shack. Was that the way to get anything honest from him? Needle and push until he got angry enough to break his rigid control?
One way to find out.
“How’s the schedule looking?” Jack asked innocently.
Blade looked up, eyebrows raised. “Fine.”
“Really? You’ve been nursing me for three days. Did you account for that in your plan? Are you that perfect?”
“I thought we’d already covered my ability to make mistakes,” Blade said mildly, thumbing what looked like hollow-points into the magazine for the Assassin X. “But as it were, finding the buggy was very fortuitous.”
Finding the buggy? Jack snorted. “Yeah?”
“Indeed. It not only allowed me to carry you here while your infection had you incapacitated, but reduced the travel time by exactly four days. We are perfectly on schedule.” He dropped the filled mag into a bag and began on another. “That is, if you’re feeling up to continuing on in the morning.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. Will I get to drive?”
“You may if you wish. So long as you know how to steer a camel.”
Jack gaped. “We’re not taking the buggy?”
“Oh no, it’s far too conspicuous.”
“And two blokes on a crazy camel isn’t?”
“It won’t be, under the right circumstances.” The twitch to his lips promised circumstances Jack probably wouldn’t appreciate.
“I’m not getting on that stinking, spitting, devil-spawned creature.”
Blade shook his head. “Devil-spawned? What has poor Sheila ever done to you?”
“Besides try to deafen me with its tongue?”
“Yes.”
Jack floundered. “Well . . . I’m sure it’s plotting something. It looks at me like it wants to step on me.”
Blade put the second mag into the bag and stood, stretching his lean body. “Of course she wants to step on you. You took her bedroom. Not to mention my attention for two days straight.”
“You’re saying it’s jealous of me?”
Blade patted his cheek as he passed. “Only a little. And please, she’s a she, not an it.”
Jack scowled but thought better of picking on the camel any further. “So, what’s the next step in your plan, then? What will be expected of me?”
Clear in his memory was Blade saying they would “hit” the compound. Blade certainly had enough weaponry here to accomplish a halfway-decent assault, but Jack could only hold two guns at once, and he was fairly certain Blade wouldn’t be able to handle more than that. Unless he was planning on arming the camel.
Jack shook that thought away before it could gather any momentum. Right at the moment, he couldn’t be sure Blade wouldn’t use the camel as an assault vehicle.
“Hopefully nothing too strenuous,” was the reply as Blade stacked crates opposite him. “But just in case it goes haywire, I thought I could teach you a few things.” He sat and faced Jack.
“Teach me what?” Jack eyed him warily.
Blade smiled reassuringly. “Nothing untoward. You needn’t look so worried.”
Jack looked away. It wasn’t right, sitting here with this man, wanting to return his smiles and teasing. Maybe he’d spent too long amongst the snakes. Become a little too used to the relaxed morals of a criminal lifestyle. Hell, he hadn’t had to force a laugh at Mr. Valadian’s humour for damn near a year. Had, in fact, come to appreciate the wit and cunning insights.
Now, with Blade, he could see something similar starting to happen. The man wasn’t what Jack had imagined when contemplating a highly successful assassin. He had a sense of humour dry enough for Jack to enjoy and, oddly, an approachable openness. Odd because the man was insanely cryptic at times, which drove Jack crazy. And it certainly didn’t help that he had the sort of tight, trim body that usually drew Jack’s attention.
Jack swallowed hard, then muttered, “What is it, then?”
If Blade noted anything awkward, he didn’t show it. “A means of passing information while in suspect company. It’s fairly easy, as it entails actually saying what you want to pass on, just mixed up in an otherwise unrelated conversation. The important words are signified with various gestures.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“It really isn’t.” Blade had put his dress shirt back on with the setting of the sun, and he presently unrolled the sleeves and did up the cuffs with quick, practiced motions. “Say I wish to pass on a location for us to meet up at later. I would start a conversation about, hmm, places I’ve visited in the past. For example, I do enjoy Johannesburg in autumn, but it has nothing on Darwin in the summer.”
“Really?” Jack raised two sceptical brows. “Darwin in summer?”
Blade pursed his lips. “It’s an example. However, I do like summer in the gulf. Wonderful fishing opportunities. Back to the matter at hand. Which city would we be meeting in?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll repeat it, shall I?” He did so, shaking out the rumples in his left sleeve as he did so.
“Jo-burg?” Jack hesitated, thinking he’d detected a slight emphasis on the name.
“And again.”
Naturally, Jack said, “Darwin.”
“Yes, but without resorting to the process of elimination, tell me why you would have picked that one.”
“No clue.”
“Clearly.” A patient little sigh, and Blade pointedly held out his hands. “I indicated the city I had chosen by motioning with my left arm. I did it all three times. Did you really not pick up on it?”
Jack gave him the finger. “I’ve been ill, all right?” Now it was pointed out, it had been rather obvious.
“Fine, Jack, I’ll give you this one. Meeting places are signified by the left arm, be it gesturing with it, or stretching, or adjusting your clothes. Understood?”
“Yes. Just get on with it. I know what you’re up to now.”
What followed was several hours of instruction involving hand gestures, tapping fingers and feet, leg nudges, coughs, sneezes—though Blade despaired over Jack’s fake sneeze, advising him to keep to coughing—and even eyebrow quirks. They followed it with practice conversations.
Finishing a story about fishing in the Amazon, Blade sat back. “Where, when, and how?”
“Rio, in two weeks, on a Tuesday at four p.m., and . . .” Jack hissed, trying to remember the sequence of taps and nudges. “Um . . . by goat?”
Blade laughed. “Goat? Honestly, Jack. Why would I want you to travel to Rio de Janeiro by goat?”
Waving his hand towards the great outdoors, Jack snapped, “You’ve got us assaulting a paramilitary compound on a camel! Why wouldn’t you do something as crazy as hitching a ride on a mountain goat?”
“Please, I am not crazy. Just practical. If you’ll recall, I rubbed my chest when I told you about the train ride across Colombia.”
Which had diverted Jack’s concentration for a moment. Scowling, he muttered, “I thought you were itchy.”
“When having a circumspect conversation relying on hand gestures, best not to randomly scratch anything, don’t you agree?”
“Shut up.”
Blade smirked. “Your turn. Tell me something you think I need to know.”
Eyes narrowing, Jack considered him for a moment. Blade sat with his back to the open night, his pale skin and white shirt picked out in stark lines against the blackness. The Milky Way, thick and creamy across the sky, haloed his dark hair. It was an entirely distracting image.
“Right,” Jack said gruffly. “A story imparting something I think you should know.” He closed his eyes to think, but mainly to eradicate the sight of Blade from his thought processes. “Okay, try this one. I’d just been accepted into the SAS, and my first deployment was part of a training exchange program with a couple of commando units from the 911 Special Forces Regiment of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. We were on manoeuvres in Sre Ambel, in the southwest of the Cardamom Mountains, when we heard about several girls being taken from a village nearby. The mountains used to be a safe haven for the Khmer Rouge, but it had been years since there was any trouble. The locals said the girls had probably been taken for sex slaves. Our CO thought it would be an interesting training opportunity, so we went after them. Straight into some of the wildest rainforest I’ve ever experienced.”
Blade leaned forwards, elbows on his knees, expression intent. Whether he was just looking for Jack’s signals or actually interested in the story, Jack wasn’t sure, but he found it scary to have the assassin’s undiluted attention. Scary and . . . thrilling.
“I was on point, scouting ahead, when I got the sense I was being watched. Don’t get me wrong; there were millions of eyes in that jungle. Birds, monkeys, insects, snakes, spiders the size of your head. But this was different. The feel of it was . . . heavy. Aware. Like there was a definite purpose behind it, as if whatever it was could understand what I was, and that I didn’t belong there.”
The memories rushed forwards as he spoke. The heat of the rainforest, the cloying moisture thickening the air. The constant rattle and hum of the insects, the eerie screeching of monkeys he couldn’t see. Golden-green sunlight punching through the solid-seeming canopy. The scents of damp rot and verdant life. Towering tree ferns alongside delicate orchids. The hidden funeral site they stumbled across, a cache of ancient ceramic jars filled with the remains of the deceased, the atmosphere sacred and sombre, isolated from the chaos of the jungle by a sense of quiet eternity.
And the awareness of being not the hunter, but the hunted. Stalked by an invisible, silent predator. Knowing he wouldn’t see it when it finally struck putting a near-constant shiver down his back.
Looking at Blade sent the same shiver along his spine.
“You know what I mean?”
Blade nodded. “I do.”
“We had no idea what it was or why it was stalking us. We just knew it was always there. This went on for six days while we tracked that group deeper into the mountains. We set traps at night and checked for prints every morning and found nothing. But it was always there, keeping pace.
“Our stalker stayed with us as we got closer to the abductors. Was right there when we attacked them and rescued the girls. All but one. She was dragged into the jungle by one of the kidnappers. I chased them. Lost the rest of the squad in the process. That was when the predator revealed itself.”
Blade’s breath caught in a startled gasp. “What was it?”
“A tiger. I haven’t ever been so close to something that big, that deadly before. It was breathtaking. It just looked right at me with these golden eyes, like it knew me. Knew it could kill me quicker than I could run. It had watched me for days, was familiar with my habits, my weaknesses. Yet here it was, calm as you please, presenting itself to me, acknowledging another hunter passing through.”
Jack recalled the regard of the tiger, the clear danger it presented, but also the gentle sense of companionship between them, the linked cause of hunting and protecting. The fear of this apex predator hadn’t left him for an instant, but it had been modulated by respect and understanding. They knew each other, understood just what the other was and that they were the same.
The eyes regarding him now were silver, but the impression was terribly, and excitingly, familiar.
“The kidnapper lost his shit,” Jack continued roughly. “He started screaming and panicking. He let the girl go free, so I had a clear shot. As soon as he was down, the tiger disappeared. Never saw it again, but I felt it following us all the way back to camp.”
Jack took a drink to wet his dry throat. Blade was quiet for a long time, expression slightly awed, slightly perplexed, slightly sceptical.
“Was that true?” he asked.
“Every word.”
The assassin frowned. “An animal will always leave behind spoor. If a tiger had been pacing you the entire way, you would have found some evidence.”
“You calling me a liar?” Jack demanded. “Or just plain dumb?” That edge of thrill peaked when Jack taunted the current predator in his midst.
Blade jerked back. “No! Of course not. I’m just perplexed as to how . . .” He trailed off when he noticed Jack’s smirk. “Oh, very amusing.” After a moment’s silent contemplation, Blade continued. “Either way, I thought the Cambodian tigers were extinct.”
“So they say.”
“Are you saying they aren’t?”
“No. I’m just saying what I saw. What I felt.”
Blade threw his hands up. “Then what? Are you saying it was a ghost tiger?”
“I’m not saying anything. Well, except for the information I thought you needed to know. Did you get it?”
Sitting back, Blade regarded him contemplatively for a long while, then nodded.
“So? What was it?”
Eyes narrowed, Blade recited, “‘I don’t understand you or why you haven’t killed me.’ Correct?”
Jack stood and grinned. “Perfect. Night, Blade.”
Sleeping bag around his shoulders, Jack went to bed.
All the way, he felt those eyes on him.